Shabtabnews In this dark night, I have lost my way – Arise from a corner, oh you the star of guidance.

iranintl – Water management researcher Aida Tavakoli calls the current condition of Lake Urmia “an ecological disaster” as the Middle East’s once second largest lake disappears. Tavakoli blamed the shrinking on several factors including mismanagement, drought, and increased water diversion for irrigated agriculture within the lake’s watershed. “Like all totalitarian regimes, food self-sufficiency has been a core priority of the …

iranintl – The limited responses from Iranian officials to the US and UK’s attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen have largely consisted of typical rhetoric from the regime. So far, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani has provided the most “critical” response to the Western air strikes. He strongly condemned the military action and claimed that they only divert attention …

VOA – More than a week after Iran experienced its deadliest terror attack in decades, its Islamist rulers said one of the suicide bombers trained in Afghanistan with the Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for the attack. Iranian leaders have vowed to retaliate against the IS perpetrators of the January 3 suicide bombings that killed at least 90 people …

VOA – India’s Minister of External Affairs will make a two-day trip to Iran starting Sunday, following Western airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Tehran-backed group’s attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. The visit by Subrahmanyam Jaishankar comes a month after a drone attack on a ship near Indian waters that the United States blamed on Iran. A …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The BBC gives massive coverage to so-called diplomatic initiatives to bring about a ceasefire. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “shuttle diplomacy” between Washington and the Middle East is presented as a serious enterprise rather than a banal version of shadow-boxing. [T]he Beeb wants only Israel to rein in its furies, never mentioning that Hamas, too, could help …