Iran's railroad system came under cyberattack on Friday. Hackers posted fake messages on display boards at stations across the country - such as "long delayed because of cyberattack" or "canceled" on the boards. They also urged passengers to call for information, listing the phone number of the office of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that the hack led to "unprecedented chaos" at rail stations.More chaos: A major explosion occurred in the western section of Tehran:
Earlier in the day, Fars said trains across Iran had lost their electronic tracking system. It wasn't immediately clear if that was also part of the cyberattack. The spokesman of the state railway company, Sadegh Sekri, as saying "the disruption" did not cause any problem for train services.
It was not clear if the reported attack caused any damage or disruptions in Iran's computer and internet systems, and whether it was the latest chapter in the U.S. and Iran's cyber operations targeting the other.
Fire and rescue teams rushed to the scene, as eyewitnesses detailed the initial blast sounding "like a building collapsed." Reports have suggested that the explosion erupted inside a residential building near Mellat Park, one of the capital province's largest green spaces. It is believed that the explosion was caused by a malfunction in the building's gas system. So far no fatalities were reported.
Hamidreza Goudarzi, the deputy security chief for the Tehran Province, noted in a statement to the Tasnim News Agency that "there was only one explosion," and that officials were at the scene. Goudarzi did not confirm or deny whether the blast was part of a planned attack, as the area is near the headquarters of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the New York Times reported.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Maj. Gen. Babar Iftikhar says Pakistan has been working on strengthening security at the border with Afghanistan amid foreign troops withdrawal.
"Right now, 90 per cent of the Pak-Afghan border has been fenced. " He added that Pakistan is "very well prepared" and the current border security mechanism is "much better."
According to Iftikhar, Pakistan's Interior Ministry is prepared for a possible influx of refugees from Afghanistan. The foreign troops withdrawal from Afghanistan, almost complete on the American side ahead of the September 11 deadline, is widely feared to bring about a humanitarian crisis in the country and cause waves of refugees to flee to the neighboring states.
Pakistan is concerned that extremists may hide among refugees coming from Afghanistan and spread uncontrollably across the region with migrant flows. The instability in the country will allow drug trafficking to flourish, as various groups inside Afghanistan will increasingly rely on the drug trade to fund their operations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in contact with the leaders of Central Asian countries on the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden stressed, he does not want "to send a third generation of American soldiers to fight there." The government in Kabul continues to fight, and many Afghans who have collaborated with the Western allies are being exfiltrated to the European Union.
On Saturday, a US defence official confirmed that American troops had come under "indirect fire" by unknown forces in Syria's Deir ez-Zor province. That attack took place at a base situated near the Conoco gas field, which is home to a large portion of Syria's gas riches, and has been illegally seized by US forces and their local allies since 2017.The "Biden administration" is taking heat for not doing more to counter the attacks:
A US military base near the Omar oil field - Syria's largest source of crude oil - has come under attack, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported Sunday, citing local sources.
Footage of the aftermath of the attack has yet to be authenticated,
This is reportedly the fourth time facilities near the Omar field have been attacked in the past week or so. On Wednesday, the Syrian Democratic Forces - a US-backed mostly Syrian Kurdish militia involved in the illegal occupation of eastern Syria - announced they had "thwarted" a drone attack in the area. However, pro-Syrian government media reported that a drone attack carried out on Thursday caused smoke to rise from the base near the field, and that two other attacks were launched before that in the space of several days.
Biden was criticized for just two retaliatory strikes that were cited as failing to do much to deter Iranian proxies held responsible by Washington for the attacks.
"Iran-backed militias' continued assault on US personnel in Iraq cannot be tolerated. President Biden must put forward a real strategy for deterring and ending these attacks, rather than continuing his bare-minimum, tit-for-tat approach that is failing to deter Iran or its militias and puts American lives at increased risk," Oklahoma's Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, on the Armed Services Committee, was cited as saying in a statement to POLITICO.
In response to the criticism, Biden's Democratic allies point to the fact that the POTUS is acting under Article II powers, contained in the Constitution, to defend US service members by retaliating.
He does not, they underscore, possess the authority to launch offensive strikes against the Iran-backed militia groups without congressional approval.
"These are very fact-specific determinations," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) of the US Foreign Relations Committee was cited as saying.
Some Democrats have likened the situation with the plethora of attacks to a low-scale war. Since it might be considered "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Act, they are calling on Joe Biden to consider asking Congress for approval to continue striking the Iranian proxies.
[T]he OPCW states that its secretariat "deployed a team to perform a technical assistance visit" related to the suspected poisoning of a "Russian citizen" at Germany's request on August 20. The problem is that on that day, Navalny was only flying from the Russian Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. It was on that flight that he first felt ill and was then rushed to a hospital in another Siberian city, Omsk, following the plane's emergency landing.
Russia demanded that the OPCW explain "how this is even possible" and why the organization had previously told the participating states that its team was only sent to Germany in early September, Shulgin said.So, what do we have here? When Navalny first felt unwell while still onboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, the OPCW experts were already waiting for him in Berlin?The revelations also elicited a reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. She said the glaring inconsistencies in the OPCW report only show that some Western nations, together with Navalny himself, are "going down" with their whole "chemical weapons poisoning story."
Instead of answering Russia's questions, the OPCW executive committee session saw another "drama" about Navalny's "supposed poisoning with a chemical weapon agent," Shulgin said. "Routine anti-Russian theses have become a 'must' for the NATO nations at any OPCW event," he added.
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