Iran Financial News

PARIS—France is transforming its capital city into an open-air fortress, rolling out the largest peacetime security operation in the country’s history to protect athletes, residents and more than 10 million visitors during the Olympic Games. Officials say as many as 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 22,000 private security guards will keep watch at the Paris Olympics, which begins Wednesday and spans the heart of the city—on streets, at landmarks and in the waters of the Seine River. Place de la Concorde, the city’s largest public square, is set up for BMX bike races, skateboarding and breakdancing, a French addition to the Games.

nuclear war and a Hiroshima-Nagasaki crisis.

Netanyahu visits Washington this week, under pressure to end the Gaza war both from Israelis who want hostages brought home and from a U.S. administration focusing increasingly on the presidential election. The visit, Netanyahu's first to his most important international ally since returning for a record sixth term as prime minister at the end of 2022, has been overshadowed by President Joe Biden's decision not to seek reelection. A meeting with Biden is tentatively planned for Tuesday if the president has recovered from Covid-19, and Netanyahu is scheduled to address the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.

Biden's withdrawal from the U.S. presidential race injects greater uncertainty into the world at a time when Western leaders are grappling with wars in Ukraine and Gaza, a more assertive China in Asia and the rise of the far-right in Europe. During a five-decade career in politics, Biden developed extensive personal relationships with multiple foreign leaders that none of the potential replacements on the Democratic ticket can match. After his announcement, messages of support and gratitude for his years of service poured in from near and far. The scope of foreign policy challenges facing the next U.S. president makes clear how consequential what happens in Washington is for the rest of the planet. Here's a look at some of them.

Houthi targets in western Yemen following a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv the previous day. The Israeli strikes appeared to be the first on Yemeni soil since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, and they threatened to open a new front in the region as Israel battles proxies of Iran. A number of «military targets» were hit in the western port city of Hodeidah, a Houthi stronghold, the Israeli army said, adding that its attack was «in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the state of Israel in recent months.»

China's challenge to American primacy, it's believed, will be the defining contest of the century. While this may be true, a far more dangerous contest is afoot between what seems to be a crumbling old order (US-led West) and a rivalrous new Axis that is struggling to be born — China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRIK). Award winning journalist John Pilger tells us that Mao in 1944 had made an appeal to Washington, «China must industrialise, this can only be done by Free Enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. We cannot risk crossing America; we cannot risk any conflict». He received no reply. Mao's successors decided to join the system and beat the US at its own game — capitalism & innovation — and are now with its bete noire Russia challenging the American-led order. Iran and North Korea have strengthened this New Axis. The evolving powerplay has created the precise construct that Henry Kissinger had once warned: a Bear-Dragon tandem that is in delightful synchrony. The New Axis has not only performed well in the Ukrainian and West Asian theatres of war, but is also looking towards the Global South (125 countries, 80% of the global population, 40% of global GDP) as its wider field of play.

A 33-year-old Iranian woman who had been in the country less than two months was found dead inside a suitcase in St. John’s on Tuesday, according to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.

Israeli military is checking whether an explosion in central Tel Aviv in the early hours of Friday was caused by a drone attack, the army said. Police said the body of a man was found in an apartment close to the explosion and said the circumstances were being investigated. «Earlier tonight (Friday), an explosion sounded in the area of central Tel Aviv. We are looking into the reports that it was an aerial target. The incident is under review,» the military said in a brief statement.

India is likely to cut the floor price for basmati rice exports and replace the 20% export tax on parboiled rice with a fixed duty on overseas shipments, government sources said, as rice inventories in the country jumped a record high. The world's biggest rice exporter imposed various curbs on exports in 2023 and continued them in 2024 in an effort to keep local prices in check ahead of the general elections held in April-May. New Delhi is expected to lower the basmati rice's minimum export price (MEP) to $800-$850 a metric ton, down from $950 a ton, to boost shipments, said the sources, who didn't wish to be identified as they are not authorised to talk to media.

Vivek Ramaswamy speaking at the Republican Party's National Convention promised illegal immigrants will be 'returned' to the country of their origin. «Our message to illegal immigrants is also this; we will return you to your country of origin. Not because you're all bad people, but because you broke the law and the United States of America was founded on the rule of law» the 38-year-old who dropped out of the presidential race earlier this year. He was addressing the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Tuesday night.

An Israeli drone strike on a car near the Lebanon-Syria border HAS killed a prominent Syrian businessman who was sanctioned by the United States and had close ties to the government of Syria’s President Bashar Assad

India needs a stronger and prominent presence in Central Asia in the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's successful foreign policy outreach and there are several promising areas of cooperation including in the fields of green energy and digital technologies, according to Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies chief expert Aliya Mussabekova. “Foreign policy of PM Modi over the last ten years was very successful; here in Kazakhstan we feel its cooperative and supportive interest in our country as well as in the region. But in my point of view, there is a need for a stronger and more prominent Indian presence in Central Asia,” Mussabekova, a leading strategic affairs expert in Kazakhstan, told ET. “I work at an analytical centre, and I can say that even at the level of relations between think tanks, we do not have an established ongoing dialogue. For instance, representatives from Kazakhstan do not participate in the main Indian forum, the Raisina Dialogue,” Mussabekova noted.

Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran's runoff presidential election Saturday, besting hard-liner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the West and ease enforcement on the country's mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic. Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran's Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country. But even Pezeshkian's modest aims will be challenged by an Iranian government still largely held by hard-liners, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and Western fears over Tehran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.

Argentina designated Hamas a terrorist organisation on Friday and ordered a freeze on the financial assets of the Palestinian group, a largely symbolic move as President Javier Milei seeks to align Argentina strongly with the US and Israel. Announcing the decision, Milei's office cited the militant Palestinian group's cross-border attack on Israel last October 7 that killed some 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage, in the deadliest assault in Israel's 76-year history. The statement also mentioned Hamas' close ties to Iran, which Argentina blames for two deadly militant attacks on Jewish sites in the country. The move comes just days before the 30th anniversary of one of those attacks, the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. It killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more in the worst such attack in Argentina's modern history.

A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has targeted a Liberian-flagged tanker in the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait

Iran's president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian said he looks forward to improved relations with European nations, even though he accused them of reneging on commitments to mitigate the impact of US sanctions. Pezeshkian on July 6 won a runoff election against ultraconservative Saeed Jalili. The 69-year-old has called for «constructive relations» with Western countries to «get Iran out of its isolation», and favours reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers.

Iran will not respond to pressure, President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian said in a statement published on Saturday, in which he also highlighted his country's friendship with China and Russia. Pezeshkian, a relative moderate who beat a hardline rival in elections, also reiterated that Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, adding that Tehran would expand ties with neighbours and engage with Europe. «The United States...needs to recognise the reality and understand, once and for all, that Iran does not — and will not — respond to pressure (and) that Iran's defence doctrine does not include nuclear weapons,» Pezeshkian said in the statement, titled «My message to the new world» and published in the daily Tehran Times.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels likely fired an Iranian-made anti-ship cruise missile at a Norwegian-flagged tanker in the Red Sea in December, an assault that now provides a public, evidence-based link between the ongoing rebel campaign against shipping and Tehran

Narendra Modi on Thursday said the 'Make in India' initiative can add to engines of global growth and help democratise the global economy, and highlighted the importance of creating multiple, reliable and resilient supply chains. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who is in Astana to attend the SCO Summit, delivered Modi's remarks at the extended format meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Heads of State here in the Kazakh capital. Modi said that India has contributed significantly to enhancing the economic agenda of the SCO grouping with institutionalised mechanisms such as the SCO Startup Forum and Special Working Group on Startup and Innovation. With 130,000 startups in India, including 100 unicorns, our experience can be useful to others, a Ministry of External Affairs statement cited the prime minister as saying in his remarks.

The Biden administration is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum shipped from Mexico that were made elsewhere

Mint examines this question and more. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was formed in 2001. It evolved from an earlier avatar known as the Shanghai Five, comprising Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China.