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Trump Iran Tag

Facebook and Twitter have announced the decision to crack down on thousands of Iran-linked accounts carrying out disinformation campaigns in the United States. The move comes after a California-based cybersecurity company, FireEye, exposed an elaborate online network being operated from Iran. Some of the fake accounts from Iran were impersonating Republican congressional candidates, the company disclosed Tuesday.

Iran is close to reaching an oil sales deal with the European Union, in direct violation of the U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported. The EU and Iran were "on the brink" of an oil agreement, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif confirmed Tuesday.

The White House has officially designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In a statement, President Donald Trump said that he and the Department of State "recognizes that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft" and that the IGRC is the Iranian regime's "primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign."

The European Union wants to challenge the longstanding dominance of the U.S. dollar in oil trade, the French broadcaster EuroNews reported. Brussels has created a working group comprising of representatives from European trade and industry to "challenge the dominance of the dollar" in energy trade and promote the use of euro to price oil imports, the broadcaster said.

In what can only be described as another diplomatic victory for President Donald Trump's administration, European countries have stopped importing Iranian oil. The Iranian regime has admitted that European buyers have refused to touch Iranian oil despite temporary waivers extended to them by the United States. "No European country is buying oil from Iran except Turkey," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said.

German authorities have banned the Iranian airline Mahan Air from operating in the country amid fears of espionage and terrorism.  Iran's second largest airline has been linked to regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. The German Federal Aviation Office, equivalent of the U.S. FAA, has barred the airline from landing in the country with intimidate effect, German news outlets reported Monday.

In what can only be described as another foreign policy win for President Donald Trump, the European countries are 'tiptoeing' towards Washington's position on Iran, Reuters reported Friday. Describing the recent shift in European diplomacy, the news agency noted that the "new approach moves Europe closer to U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy of isolating Iran with tough sanctions."

German army has caught an Iranian spy working in its ranks. A 50-year-old German-Afghan man has been arrested on charges of spying for Iran's Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS). The man, named by the state prosecutor as Abdul Hamid S., has been passing on sensitive military intelligence to the Iranian spy agency for many years, the local newspaper reports said.

An Iranian activist jailed for 'insulting Islam' on social media has died after a prolonged hunger strike, media reports say. Vahid Sayadi Nasiri, a 37-year-old Iranian blogger, was arrested in 2015 and received an eight year jail sentence for "insulting Islamic sanctities" and criticizing Iran's Shi'a Islamist regime, the U.S.-based watchdog Iran Human Rights Monitor said. He began his hunger strike in October protesting the inhumane prison conditions and frequent beatings by fellow inmates.

The United States has accused Iran of hiding its chemical weapon-related activities. Tehran was failing to report military facilities designed to manufacture chemical-filled aerial bombs, and maintained stockpiles of toxic munitions, in violation of the 1997 international chemicals weapons convention.

The U.S. Treasury has sanctioned an illicit Iranian-Russian network supplying oil to the Syrian regime. The elaborate oil scheme was used to finance the Islamic terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, a department press release said Tuesday. The covert shipment of Iranian oil was run by the aid of the Russian state-owned company Promsyrioimport. The network delivered millions of barrels of oil to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime and hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamic terrorist groups, the Treasury Department disclosed.

The European Union may switch to non-dollar transactions to protect its trade with Iran in the wake of the latest U.S. sanctions, Reuters news agency reports. The news comes as Iran's European trading partners are working to set up a Special Purpose Vehicle, which is a payment clearance house where Iran's proceeds from oil and gas sale could be offset against the country's purchases -- much like a transnational barter system without financial transactions. The move is in response to crippling sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump against Iran's energy, banking, and other sectors earlier this month.

President Donald Trump's administration has announced that it will reimpose sanctions on Iran that were terminated under the 2015 nuclear deal. A few countries received exemptions. From Fox News:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced the sanctions on Iran’s shipping, financial and energy sectors. Particularly, the sanctions will target Iran’s crude oil exports and will penalize countries that don’t stop importing oil and foreign companies that do business with certain Iranian entities.

A German court has ordered the extradition of an Iranian diplomat suspected of involvement in a bomb plot over to Belgium, German media reported. Assadollah Assadi, a diplomat posted to Vienna, was arrested by German police in early July for planning an attack on an Iranian opposition rally in France. The event organized by an exiled Iranian opposition group was attended by several prominent figures, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, has revised its regulations to stop Iran from withdrawing €320 million ($400 million) in cash from the country's bank accounts. Under the new conditions, the Bundesbank can stop cash transfers that violate US Treasury sanctions, the German newspaper BILD disclosed. The drastic measure to physically ship the cash out of Germany demonstrates Tehran's demising trust in the European financial institutions as the US Treasury tightens screws on the regime's worldwide financial operations. The transaction is "one of the largest cash transfers ever in German history," a spokesman for the country's finance minister admitted.