Iran

23 July 2022; MEMO: At least 20 people were killed and three others went missing in flash floods caused by heavy rains in Iran's southern Fars province, state media said on Saturday, Anadolu Agency reports.

Khalil Abdollahi, head of the province's crisis management department, said heavy rains near Soltan Shahbaz village in the city of Estahban led to the flooding from the Rodbal Dam, according to IRNA news agency.

TEHRAN, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from Friday's flash floods in the southern Iranian province of Fars has risen to 21, and three others are still missing, rescue sources told state media on Saturday.

Mehdi Valipour, head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, said initially 89 people were stuck in the flood waters, and that the rescue operation will continue until the rest of the missing people are found.

Speaking to the semi-official Mehr News Agency earlier in the day, Estahban Governor Yousef Kargar said 13 of the recovered bodies have been identified.

23 July 2022; MEMO: Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has announced that Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) intend to raise their diplomatic representation in Tehran to the level of ambassador, adding: "We were informed of Saudi Arabia's agreement to raise the dialogue from the security to the political level."

TEHRAN, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has said that both Iran and Saudi Arabia have voiced readiness to begin their talks on a political level to normalize ties, Iran Front Page (IFP) reported on Friday.

There has been some progress in the past five rounds of talks between the two sides in Iraq, which were held mainly at the security level, namely on security issues, Amir-Abdollahian was quoted as saying.

TEHRAN, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Iran's chief banker said the U.S. dollar will be gradually eliminated from Iranian-Russian economic transactions, the official news agency IRNA reported on Thursday.

The trade volume between Iran and Russia stood at 4 billion U.S. dollars, which can be conducted through the Iranian currency rial and the Russian ruble, said Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Ali Salehabadi in a televised interview.

The two countries have exchanged a memorandum of understanding to use their national currencies in small-scale trade transactions, he added.

21 July 2022; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said US forces should withdraw from areas of Syria east of the Euphrates River as part of the Astana peace process, the Anadolu news agency reported.

"America has to leave east of the Euphrates now. This is an outcome that came out of the Astana process," Erdogan said a day after an Astana process summit with his Russian and Iranian counterparts, stressing that his Astana partners agree with this judgement.

TEHRAN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Wednesday that for the talks to save the 2015 nuclear deal, the United States should give guarantees for securing Iran's economic interests under a possible agreement, according to official IRNA news agency.

"The ground is ready for an agreement, and we believe that there is no important problem to this end," he said during his press conference.

Washington should make a political decision, Kanaani said, adding that Iran demands "serious" guarantees from the United States.

19 July 2022; MEMO: Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has advised Turkiye's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not to launch a new military operation in Syria, in advance of a trilateral summit with Russia, Reuters reports.

According to the report, a new military operation would be to the detriment of Syria, Turkiye and the region, Khamenei said.

TEHRAN, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Tuesday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Iran is "a turning point" in bilateral relations.

Raisi made the remarks at a joint press conference with Erdogan after their meeting in the Iranian capital of Tehran, according to the Iranian official news agency IRNA.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin held meetings Tuesday in Iran, seeking to deepen ties with regional heavyweights as part of Moscow’s challenge to the United States and Europe amid its grinding campaign in Ukraine.

In only his second trip abroad since Russian tanks rolled into its neighbor in February, Putin met Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on pressing issues facing the region, including the conflict in Syria and a U.N.-backed proposal to resume exports of Ukrainian grain to ease the global food crisis.