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RFL/RE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was among the targets of an investigation in Turkey into suspected bribery and money laundering in connection with a scheme to help Iran evade sanctions, a former Istanbul police officer has testified. The officer, Huseyin Korkmaz, told a New York court on December 11 that the Turkish investigation that he led in 2012-2013 …

heraldscotland – WHEN Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looks west from his Tehran residence, he can be forgiven a wry smile. An arc of Iranian influence from the Shia republic to the shores of the Mediterranean is taking shape in the increasingly troubled and unpredictable Middle East, slowly but certainly surely. And his great adversary in a campaign for …

RFL/RE – World powers are pushing Saudi Arabia and Iran to stop interfering in Lebanon’s politics while urging Iranian ally Hizballah to rein in its military activities in neighboring states.

RFL/RE – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the New York trial of a Turkish banker accused of conspiring to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions “blackmail” and a “blemish” on his country. His comments in Ankara on December 5 came as the trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla continued with a fifth day of testimony by the U.S. …

RFL/RE – The U.S. government’s star witness in a high-profile Iran sanctions case has admitted in court that he paid bribes to secure his release from a Turkish jail after he was arrested in a sweeping corruption scandal in 2013. Reza Zarrab, in a fourth day of testimony in New York after pleading guilty to charges that he helped Iran …

VOA – The United Nation’s envoy for Yemen is due to brief members of the Security Council on Tuesday, a day after rebels killed the country’s former president and their former ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and following a spike in violence in the capital with the dissolution of their alliance.

Al-Arabia – Usually the Iranian media compete to broadcast news of Houthi infiltrations against the Yemeni people or the Arab countries, starting from besieging Yemeni cities and starving people there, to the launch of Iranian-made ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia. But with the latest developments during the past 24 hours in Sanaa, the media and its officials are keeping silent, …

RFL/RE – Ankara has urged Washington to drop federal charges against a Turkish-Iranian gold trader and a banker who are accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on November 27 that the case against Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab and banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla had “no legal basis” and should be “dropped or terminated.” …

PayvandNews – Famed Iranian photo-journalist Shahrokh Hatami, who began his career as a journalist for an Iranian newspaper, has died in France at age 89.

RFL/RE – Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has warned the European Union not to meddle with its missile development program.