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Based on the whistleblower's extensive presentation, including internal emails, text exchanges and suppressed draft reports, we are unanimous in expressing our alarm over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus on 7 April 2018. We became convinced by the testimony that key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday suggested that the new US sanctions against Tehran are useless, stressing that the unilateral measures reveal the helplessness and inability of the Trump administration to use diplomacy.
"As we have repeatedly stated before, such measures only show the plight and helplessness of this regime, which does not know how to use rational diplomacy mechanisms", a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Abbas Mousavi, said, condemning the sanctions and noting their futility.
"Any place and any territorial point sheltering the interests of the United States and its allies would be threatened (in case of any war) and the Islamic Republic has proved that it has the capability to do so. Even if a country does not directly participate in any possible war but its territories host the enemy, we consider that country as a hostile territory and will treat it as an aggressor."Emphasising that Iran would never be the instigator of a war of aggression, the spokesman also stressed that
"if an aggressor commits a strategic mistake" and starts a war, "that aggression will be confronted with the strongest and most crushing response over a geographic expanse beyond what the ill-wishers of the Islamic Republic could imagine."
The head of Iran's nuclear program, Ali Akbar Salehi, has announced that the country is now operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges, which is twice the amount that was previously known, and which appears to be a violation of the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA) also known as the Iranian nuclear deal.
He also declared that Iran is now working on a prototype centrifuge which would be 50 times faster as those that are allowed by JCPOA.
Salehi made this reveal to state television on the 40th anniversary of the US embassy takeover in Tehran, adding that the IR-6 centrifuges are capable of producing enriched uranium 10 times as fast as the first generation IR-1 centrifuges that were permitted by the deal which limited Iran to using only 5,060 of the IR-1s.
Any actions whatsoever - we are not talking about anything in particular now - that the United States undertake to keep themselves militarily present in Syria are unacceptable and illegal from our point of view and under international law.Turkish media reported earlier on Tuesday that the US has started constructing two new military bases in the Deir ez-Zor governorate which is known for its oil reserves. It is claimed that one of the facilities is being built near the former Syrian Air Defense Forces' 113th Brigade base and another in the al-Sur region.
Comment: Not only that, the Iranians had a stern warning for any country hosting U.S. military bases, in the event of an American attack: