Iran condemns U.S. strikes as a show of ‘bad faith’ and begins restoring internet after long shutdown

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Iran on Tues­day de­nounced the most re­cent U.S. strikes as a sign of “bad faith and un­re­li­a­bil­i­ty” as ne­go­ti­a­tions pressed on to­ward a pos­si­ble deal to end the war, and the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic be­gan restor­ing in­ter­net ac­cess af­ter one of the longest na­tion­wide shut­downs ever.

The U.S. mil­i­tary char­ac­ter­ized Mon­day’s strikes in south­ern Iran as de­fen­sive, with tar­gets that in­clud­ed mis­sile launch sites and minelay­ing boats, and said the U.S. act­ed with “re­straint” in light of the week­s­long cease­fire.

Iran’s for­eign min­istry called the strikes a cease­fire vi­o­la­tion and warned that Wash­ing­ton would bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for “all con­se­quences,” with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

“The Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran will leave no act of ag­gres­sion unan­swered,” it added in a state­ment.

Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard said Tues­day that it shot down at least one drone and de­terred an­oth­er drone and a fight­er jet that en­tered its air­space, ac­cord­ing to Iran’s of­fi­cial Mizan news agency. It didn’t spec­i­fy when the in­ci­dents oc­curred.

Iran’s supreme leader, Mo­jta­ba Khamenei, used a state­ment about Is­lam’s an­nu­al Ha­jj pil­grim­age to ad­dress his coun­try’s con­fronta­tion with the U.S. and Is­rael, de­clar­ing that oth­er Mideast na­tions “will no longer serve as a shield” for U.S. mil­i­tary bases. Iran has pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained about U.S. mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties in the re­gion and tar­get­ed them.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear what the de­vel­op­ments would mean for ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Iran­ian state TV re­port­ed Tues­day that Iran­ian Par­lia­ment Speak­er Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf and For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi left Qatar, where talks had been tak­ing place. The re­port did not elab­o­rate or point to any next steps.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio pro­ject­ed that talks on ex­tend­ing the cease­fire and re­open­ing the cru­cial Strait of Hor­muz will “take a few days.”

Ira­ni­ans get back on­line, to some ex­tent

Mean­while, Iran­ian au­thor­i­ties eased a month­s­long in­ter­net shut­down that they cast as a wartime ne­ces­si­ty, but that has cost the coun­try’s econ­o­my an es­ti­mat­ed $30 mil­lion to $40 mil­lion a day. In­ter­net users re­port­ed that ac­cess was grad­u­al­ly be­ing re­stored, at least in some places. State me­dia said fixed broad­band ser­vice was back. It was un­clear when mo­bile in­ter­net would be wide­ly re­stored.

Iran has long en­forced fil­ters and po­liced con­tent on plat­forms such as YouTube and In­sta­gram. But be­fore the war, Ira­ni­ans could by­pass re­stric­tions with cheap vir­tu­al pri­vate net­works, known as VP­Ns, and oth­er easy workarounds.

Au­thor­i­ties cut off in­ter­net ac­cess in Jan­u­ary dur­ing mas­sive an­ti-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions and lat­er be­gan to re­lax those re­stric­tions be­fore im­pos­ing a com­plete in­ter­net black­out af­ter the U.S. and Is­rael at­tacked on Feb. 28.

The in­ter­net out­age made it dif­fi­cult for Ira­ni­ans out­side the coun­try to main­tain con­tact with loved ones, and the lack of con­nec­tiv­i­ty dev­as­tat­ed the coun­try’s rel­a­tive­ly vi­brant on­line busi­ness­es, putting fur­ther pres­sure on an al­ready bat­tered econ­o­my.

An ex­e­cu­tion in Iran

In oth­er de­vel­op­ments, Iran hanged a man it con­vict­ed of spy­ing for Is­rael, the lat­est of more than two dozen al­leged­ly es­pi­onage- and se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed ex­e­cu­tions since the war in­ten­si­fied a crack­down on dis­sent.

The Iran­ian ju­di­cia­ry’s news out­let, Mizanon­line, iden­ti­fied the man as Gho­lam­reza Khani Shakarab, call­ing him “a ring­leader” for op­er­a­tions for Is­rael’s in­tel­li­gence agency, the Mossad, and ac­cus­ing him of re­cruit­ing mem­bers in­side and out­side Iran to work against the na­tion’s se­cu­ri­ty. He was in­volved in sports and trav­elled to neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to the news agency.

Ac­tivists and rights groups say Iran rou­tine­ly holds closed-door tri­als in which de­fen­dants are un­able to chal­lenge ac­cu­sa­tions and of­ten are forced to con­fess.

The of­fi­cial ju­di­cia­ry agency said the coun­try’s Supreme Court had up­held Shakarab’s death sen­tence.

Glob­al food of­fi­cial con­cerned about strait clo­sure

The U.S. strikes were the lat­est flare-up in the frag­ile cease­fire that be­gan April 7 and has large­ly held.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions cen­tre in part on the Strait of Hor­muz, the wa­ter­way off south­ern Iran through which a fifth of the world’s crude oil and nat­ur­al gas passed be­fore the war be­gan. Once the fight­ing start­ed, Tehran re­tal­i­at­ed by ef­fec­tive­ly clos­ing the strait, strand­ing hun­dreds of ships, shock­ing the glob­al econ­o­my, dis­rupt­ing en­er­gy mar­kets and squeez­ing fer­til­iz­er sup­plies world­wide.

Iran has let a lim­it­ed num­ber of ships pass and has charged tolls. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard navy said Tues­day that 25 oil tankers, con­tain­er ships and oth­er com­mer­cial ves­sels were al­lowed to pass in the pre­vi­ous 24 hours, ac­cord­ing to state broad­cast­er IRIB. Be­fore the war, over 100 ships a day went through the strait.

The full ef­fect of the fer­til­iz­er crunch might not be­come clear un­til har­vests that are months away. U.N. Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Qu Dongyu warned Tues­day at an event in Rome that “the de­ci­sions we make now will de­ter­mine whether this re­mains a man­age­able shock or evolves in­to a deep­er glob­al food se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis in 2026 and 2027 and be­yond.”

The strait has be­come a pow­er­ful lever for Tehran in talks, join­ing the long-run­ning is­sue of Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram and its high­ly en­riched ura­ni­um. Iran wants the U.S. to lift its mil­i­tary block­ade of Iran­ian ports that be­gan on April 17.

In the near­by Gulf of Oman, an ex­plo­sion was re­port­ed Tues­day aboard a tanker, ac­cord­ing to the U.K. Mar­itime Trade Op­er­a­tions Cen­ter. No one was in­jured, and there was no im­me­di­ate in­for­ma­tion on the cause. —DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)