Political Desk

Top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani was among the history-makers of Islam and Iran and reminder of the companions of Imam Ali (PBUH), the first Imam of Shia Muslims.
The remarks were made by Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in an address to a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, IRNA reported.
He added Lieutenant General Soleimani was at the center of the Islamic awakening initiated by the great awakener of the contemporary era and the late founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini.
The top commander’s moves and measures were indescribable and unbelievable, Velayati said.
Noting that he has had the honor of accompanying Lieutenant General Soleimani in joint efforts to promote Islamic awakening, Velayati stressed that the Iranian commander had been brought up based on the teachings of the Islamic school and was a devoted follower of Imam Ali (PBUH) and ready to make any sacrifice to serve Muslims and Islam’s goals.
Velayati said Imam Khomeini became the pioneer and harbinger of the Islamic awakening in the contemporary era, as he said he would “slap the U.S. in the mouth”, noting it means that America, the symbol of the global arrogance, no longer has a place in the region.
Velayati added Imam Khomeini had many devoted followers, such as Lieutenant General Soleimani, whose efforts and martyrdom rescued the region – the heart of the Muslim world in political geography – from the grip of foreign-backed terrorist and extremist groups, such as Daesh.
Commemorating Lieutenant General Soleimani’s memory, he said, “We are indebted to the great martyr.”
Along with his companion second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Unit Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Lieutenant General Soleimani was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.

Call for condemnation

In addition, in remarks to praise the Iranian commander, Mick Wallace, a member of the European Parliament stressed in a post on his Twitter account that nobody did more to defeat Daesh in Iraq than Lieutenant General Soleimani.
His said while the U.S. and its allies were responsible for the rise of Daesh and the arming of extremist groups, nobody did more to defeat the terrorist group (Daesh) than Lieutenant General Soleimani.
Wallace added, “Where was the condemnation from the International Community when he was murdered by the US...?”
He made the remarks in reply to a tweet by the Iranian Embassy in Belgium which said, “We invite you to watch a short video we put together at the Embassy in commemoration of the second anniversary of the martyrdom of General Soleimani, the hero strove to bring about the peace in the region & was a sturdy bulwark against the spread of extremism and terrorism. #HERO.”



 

The Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare declared Iran’s readiness to dispatch Iranian skilled workforce to Serbia.
Director General of the Ministry of Welfare and Social Security for International Affairs Hamed Forouzan made the remark in a meeting with Serbian Ambassador to Tehran Dragan Todorović on Wednesday, IRNA reported.
Referring to long-term political and international relations between Serbia and Iran, Forouzan noted that a draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) on job creation and vocational cooperation is being finalized and that another MoU on social security is being prepared, which would be inked hopefully concurrent with a visit by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to Iran.
The Iranian official also invited the Serbian ambassador to pay a visit to the Social Security Investment Company of Iran (SHASTA), adding that the meeting with the ambassador can help facilitate cooperation between Serbian and Iranian economic and trade groups.
Forouzan underlined that the Islamic Republic of Iran expects Serbia to support Tehran in international organizations.
Todorović, for his part, said that the joint meeting has been held to evaluate the current situation in order to pave the way for the expansion of trade ties in different fields such as agriculture and tourism.
Emphasizing on the need for facilitating issuance of visa for businessmen of both countries, the ambassador said that the main obstacle to the expansion of trade relationship is problems concerning banking transactions.
He expressed hope that resolving political issues would pave the way for feasible trade and banking cooperation.
Statistics indicate that trade ties between Serbia and Iran have been boosted in recent years. The economic exchanges stood at $52.3 million in 2018. Iran exported goods worth $42.4 million to Serbia in that year.

 

International Desk

Russia sounded upbeat about ongoing talks in Vienna on salvaging the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, saying chances are “very high” for a breakthrough.
“I cannot guarantee that an agreement will be reached, but I believe that chances are very, very high as the main prerequisite for success is already there,” Russian envoy to the Vienna talks Mikhail Ulyanov told the American magazine Foreign Policy.
Iran and the remaining parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reconvened in the Austrian capital on Monday for an eighth round of talks aimed at revitalizing the pact by bringing back the US to compliance three years after its unilateral withdrawal.
Ulyanov said he is “rather optimistic at this stage” for a possible deal.
“I see no objective reasons for being skeptical.”
Iran’s top negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani on Wednesday met Enrique Mora, the chair of the Vienna talks who coordinates the discussions on behalf of the European Union, as expert-level meetings were held to hammer out the detail of an agreement.
Baqeri Kani also met representatives of France, Britain and Germany, which are parties to the JCPOA along with Russia and China.    
Iran demands that all US sanctions be removed in a verifiable way before Washington reenter the pact. It also seeks assurances that the US government will not violate the deal again in the future with a unilateral pullout.
The European troika on Tuesday again pressed for urgency in a statement in which they accused Iran of escalating its nuclear program to a point that “will have completely hollowed out the JCPOA”.
They said while they were not setting an artificial deadline, there were weeks not months left to strike a deal, Reuters wrote.
The Russian negotiator played down “this sense of urgency”, saying it is “a little bit exaggerated.”
Ulyanov said now is not the time to threaten Iran with greater pressure.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Tuesday expressed optimism about the prospects for a “good deal”.
“The Vienna talks are headed in a good direction... We believe that if other parties continue the round of talks which just started with good faith, reaching a good deal for all parties is possible,” Amir-Abdollahian told reporters in Tehran.
“If they show seriousness, in addition to the good faith, arriving at a deal soon and in the near future is conceivable,” he added.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Ulyanov said he observed “indisputable progress.”
He said a working group had a “useful meeting” on nuclear issues and informal discussions on lifting sanctions.
“Sanctions lifting is being actively discussed in informal settings” in a working group at the talks, he said.

‘Modest’ progress

The United States said Tuesday it had seen possible progress in talks with Iran.
“There may have been some modest progress,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington, AFP reported.
“But it is in some ways too soon to say how substantive that progress may have been,” he said.
“We are now assessing, in the course of these talks.”
US negotiator Robert Malley is participating indirectly in the talks, with European diplomats shuttling between hotels, as Iran refuses direct contact with the US.
Mora said on Monday that all sides were showing “a clear will to work toward the successful end,” but that “very difficult” negotiations lay ahead.

 
 

By Mojtaba Koohsari*

The United States pulled out of the Iran 2015 nuclear deal two years after former president Donald Trump, a Republican, rose to power in 2016. Trump failed to secure a second term in office and the Democrats who had promised a return to the pact on the campaign trail won the 2020 election. The administration of Joe Biden did not rush to rejoin the pact. Indirect talks for the revival of the troubled deal began in Vienna back in April but six rounds of discussions bore no concrete results.
The Vienna talks resumed in November a few months after a new government was formed in Iran. The seventh round saw Iran’s new negotiating team presenting two draft proposals for striking a deal on the restoration of the JCPOA agreed upon by other parties involved.
Now the ground appears to be paved for hammering out the terms of an agreement and finalizing drafts. A deal seems to be possible if the US shows necessary political willpower. Otherwise, the eighth round could come to an end without a result and we may witness new international and regional conditions.
Now the question is: What options does the US possibly have at the talks?
The first option could be a US return to its obligations under the JCPOA by removing sanctions imposed after the 2018 withdrawal and providing guarantees that no pullout would reoccur as Iran demands.
The US has so far refused to lift the sanctions by categorizing them into different types and evaded the issue of guarantees as it stresses that the JCPOA is a political deal and not a legal one.
If the US accommodates Iran’s demands in these key areas, the 2015 nuclear deal would be resuscitated and the obligations under the JCPOA would be lived up to again. This would help the US partially repair the damage inflicted to its image by Trump’s withdrawal from the deal both at home and overseas.
It could also bring down crude oil prices, ease regional tensions fueled by instability, open up opportunities for more regional cooperation between Iran and its Persian Gulf Arab neighbors, and improve regional stability.
Israel may not welcome this process as it would find it a hindrance to its destabilizing and crisis-mongering policies.
The second option could be a collapse of the Vienna talks and the continuation of the US “maximum pressure” campaign.  
Since the sanctions did not work in the past and failed to produce favorable results, the US should not expect them to work in the future. The continuation of the failed campaign would significantly undermine Democrats inside the US and diminish Washington’s influence internationally and regionally.  
On one hand, it could foster mistrust in the Middle East and set off an arms race. On the other hand, this may stoke disputes between the US and its rivals China and Russia and as a result drastically reduce the impact of the sanctions.
Israel would obviously seize such a situation and use it as a leverage inside the US.
The third option could be an interim agreement. An interim deal under which no new sanctions are imposed and in return Iran rolls back its nuclear steps is definitely a nonstarter.   
Rationally, Iran will not agree to a deal that keeps the sanctions in place and at the same time requires it to give up the capacity acquired through “the remedial measures” Tehran took in response to the US withdrawal and its “maximum pressure” campaign.       
It is also unlikely that the US lifts its sanctions under an interim agreement and would prefer the issue to be addressed within a final deal.
Out of the options, only the first one appears to be a real possibility for the US. Washington has a history of resorting to a possible alternative if it finds any. For sure, if the US had any alternative in the case of the JCPOA, it would have opted for that.
As a matter of fact, the Biden administration’s delay to enter talks during its first few months into office was to weigh up a second option which turned out to be unproductive.
For the time being, a return to the JCPOA by meeting Iran’s demands is the sole option before the US gets rid of the self-made crisis.   
Knowing this, Iran remains vigilant enough not to take any measure that could disrupt the status quo. The US also inevitably has to accept the reality and fulfill Iran’s reasonable and understandable demands. The US is the party that has to pay the price for its mistake, not the Iranian nation.

*Mojtaba Koohsari is a political analyst based in Isfahan.
 

The head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday that he’s worried about the Omicron and Delta variants of COVID-19 combining to produce a “tsunami” of cases, but said he’s still hopeful that the world will put the worst of the pandemic behind it in 2022.
Two years after the coronavirus first emerged, top officials with the UN health agency cautioned that it’s still too early to be reassured by initial data suggesting that Omicron, the latest variant, leads to milder disease. First reported last month in southern Africa, it is already the dominant variant in the United States and parts of Europe, AP wrote.
And after 92 of the WHO’s 194 member countries missed a target to vaccinate 40% of their populations by the end of this year, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged everyone to make a “new year’s resolution” to get behind a campaign to vaccinate 70% of countries’ populations by the beginning of July.
According to WHO’s figures, the number of COVID-19 cases recorded worldwide increased by 11% last week compared with the previous week, with nearly 4.99 million newly reported from Dec. 20-26. New cases in Europe — which accounted for more than half of the total — were up 3% while those in the Americas rose 39% and there was a 7% increase in Africa. The global gain followed a gradual increase since October.
“I’m highly concerned that Omicron, being more transmissible (and) circulating at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases,” Tedros said at an online news conference. That, he said, will put “immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems of the brink of collapse.”
WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report that the “overall risk” related to Omicron “remains very high.” It cited “consistent evidence” that it has a growth advantage over the Delta variant.
It noted that a decline in case incidence has been seen in South Africa, and that early data from that country, the UK and Denmark suggest a reduced risk of hospitalization with Omicron, but said that more data is needed.
WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, underlined that note of caution. He said it will be important in coming weeks to “suppress transmission of both variants to the minimum that we can.”
Ryan said that Omicron infections began largely among young people, “but what we haven’t seen is the Omicron wave fully established in the broader population. And I’m a little nervous to make positive predictions until we see how well the vaccine protection is going to work in those older and more vulnerable populations.”
WHO officials didn’t offer specific comments on decisions by the US and other countries to reduce self-isolation periods. Ryan said “these are judgement calls that countries make” — taking into account scientific, economic and other factors. He noted that the average incubation period to date has been around five to six days.
“We need to be careful about changing tactics and strategies immediately on the basis of what we’re seeing” about Omicron, Ryan said.
Tedros renewed longstanding warnings that “ending health inequity remains the key to ending the pandemic.” He said that missing the target of getting 40% of populations vaccinated this year “is not only a moral shame — it cost lives and provided the virus with opportunities to circulate unchecked and mutate.”
Countries largely missed the target because of limited supply to low-income countries for most of the year and then vaccines arriving close to their expiry date, without things such as syringes, he said.
All the same, “I still remain optimistic that this can be the year we can not only end the acute stage of the pandemic, but we also chart a path to stronger health security,” Tedros said.
 

By Mohammad Memarian*

The UN Charter explicitly prohibits using force against member states except the cases authorized by the UN Security Council or in self-defense. Within the last two decades or so, however, a conception of humanitarian intervention has been developed and promoted which justifies a state’s use of military force against another for ending alleged human rights violations in that state. As noble as the abstract idea behind it might be construed to be, it run against the very wisdom upon which the UN was established and paved the way for serious violations of international laws and principles of self-determination in wars waged against other countries, most notably by the US. And in retrospect, such acts of war have damaged both the target nations and the US.
“The imperial arrogance of the US has led them to create many enemies,” said Jean Bricmont in an exclusive interview with Iran Daily. A theoretical physicist and philosopher of science at the Catholic University of Louvain, Bricmont has earned a reputation for his speaking out against nonsense, whether in academia by criticizing postmodern scholars’ abuse of scientific concepts, or in public sphere by taking position against the imperialistic adventures of the US on the pretext of humanitarian intervention in his book, ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War’, published in 2005, which offered a sharp political and ethical critique of the US-led wars after 9/11. More than 15 years later, he still stands by the views he expressed in his book. A certain conception of the “right” of humanitarian intervention is legitimized which practically amounts to “a rehabilitation of imperialism and neocolonialism,” he told me.

* Mohammad Memarian is a staff writer at Iran Daily.


Quote from the Book:

The ideology of our times, at least when it comes to legitimizing war, is no longer Christianity, nor Kipling’s “white man’s burden” or the “civilizing mission” of the French Republic, but is a certain discourse on human rights and democracy, mixed in with a particular representation of the Second World War. This discourse justifies Western interventions in the Third World in the name of the defense of democracy and human rights or against the “new Hitlers.” This is the discourse and the representation that must be challenged in order to build a radical and self-confident opposition to current and future wars.
Inasmuch as the intervention discourse is ostensibly an ethical one, it is mainly on ethical grounds that it must be combated. This does not mean that facts are of no importance – they are enormously important – or that the debate is situated on the level of ‘Values,” it means that the principal purpose here is not to provide new facts. Facts about US foreign policy are increasingly available, especially thanks to the work of American authors. What is lacking is a systematic reflection about what those facts imply in regard to our own moral and political responsibilities.

It is often said that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Reading your book, my impression was that you argued for a more sensible definition of “responsibility,” perhaps a decolonized version of it, with “a bit more modesty and less arrogance” in your words. Is that an accurate enough reading of your work?

I certainly think that the West could use more modesty in its relation with the rest of the world. But that is not my main point and I do not believe that power will lead to great responsibility, unless it is forced to behave that way. The whole point of international law, embodied in the UN Charter, is to prevent great powers to behave irresponsibly by interfering in the internal affairs of other states.

Your book was originally published in 2005. In the years since then, have you come to reconsider any of your arguments against “humanitarian intervention” in general? A case in point is ISIL, aka Daesh, and an internationally agreed-upon, though mostly informal, consensus to fight and eliminate it at all costs.

Well, first of all, I only criticize interventions that violate international law, namely those where one state intervenes in another one without the consent of the latter. When Syria asks for the help of Iran or Russia to combat Daesh, it does not violate international law. The same thing is true when Mali asks France for help in order to combat jihadists. Besides, I am not sure which internationally agreed-upon consensus you are talking about. The US and other Western countries have actually helped Daesh in Syria (although they called them “moderate rebels”) before fighting them. They did the same thing in Afghanistan with the predecessors of the Taliban and of course, their invasion of Iraq is largely responsible for the rise of terrorism in the region.


Would you agree that the hypocrisy with which the US chose its targets of “humanitarian intervention” might constitute a “strong argument,” a moral one for that matter, against such interventions? After all, some observers believe that the US tolerated, supported, or even allied itself with perpetrators of humanitarian catastrophes when they happened to serve some national interests of the US.

Of course, my book is full of denunciations of such hypocrisies. But if one sets up rules whose goal is to limit the abuses of power, as was done with the UN after WW2 (the abuses considered then were those of Germany and Japan) but there is no real mechanism to enforce those rules, what can one expect? During the cold war, a balance of forces limited to some extent the imperial ambitions of the US But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no longer such a counter-force and the US did not feel constrained by any rule and certainly not by those of international law.
However, things are changing. The imperial arrogance of the US has led them to create many enemies. Russia for example, was quite friendly to the US after the fall of communism, but after being looted by the West in the 1990’s, it elected Putin who changed radically the economic and geopolitical orientation of his country. Syria was supposed to be the last Arab nationalist regime to be overthrown in the Middle East, but thanks to Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, it resisted. In Latin America, far from being able to destroy the Maduro government, the US has now to face similar governments in Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua and Honduras. Finally, and that is the most important factor, the rise of China, not only economically, but also technologically and diplomatically (through the Belt and Road initiative) does constitute a new bulwark against US hegemony, and a much stronger one that the old Soviet Union. The China-Russia alliance of course makes the situation only more difficult if not impossible for the US, although they don’t seem to realize that.

The very institution of the UN was initiated to prevent another world war, and was subsequently authorized to deal with human catastrophes. Do you agree with the assessment that it has lost at least a significant part of its influence and credibility over the last two decades? And, if yes, do you think it’s a lost cause which is perhaps going to take a seat next to its predecessor, League of Nations, in history books?

I am not sure what you mean when you say that the UN was subsequently authorized to deal with human catastrophes. If you refer to the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), it does not change anything fundamental to international law, since the use of force still depends on the authorization of the Security Council. It was used in Libya, but that did not allow the US to transform the R2P mission into a regime change one. Once they did that, Russia and China realized that their vote at the UN in favor of R2P had been abused and it is unlikely that this mechanism to permit military interventions will be allowed again.
The problem of the League of Nations was that it didn’t have any means to impose the respect of its decisions. The UN was supposed to solve this problem because the Security Council could authorize the use of force. Because of the veto power of the five permanent members of that Council, the use of this authorization was in fact rather limited. But the real problem is: what to do when one of those permanent members violates the rules? While Russia and China self-impose the respect of international law, the US violates it constantly, not only through military interventions, but also through sanctions, embargoes, blockades, and subversions of electoral processes. And, as I said above, the only way to resist such violations does not reside in the UN itself, but in a coalition of countries, including strong ones like Russia and China, that gives itself the mission of defending the UN Charter. Of course, they have to do it indirectly, by helping the resistance of the countries targeted by the US, in order to avoid a direct and suicidal confrontation with the US.
I may add that my book was mostly a criticism of the Western Left for having abandoned during the war against Yugoslavia in 1999 any pacifist or anti-imperialist position. Although there was some opposition to the Iraq war, there was essentially none to the Libyan war, to the support for the rebellion in Syria, to the coup in Ukraine in 2014 or in Bolivia in 2019, to sanctions against several countries, including Iran, and there is almost no criticism of the contemporary military buildup against Russia and China. That is because the vast majority of the Western Left has accepted a certain view of “human rights” that legitimizes the “right” of humanitarian intervention, which amounts in practice to a rehabilitation of imperialism and neocolonialism.

What is your impression of recent developments in regards to the outcomes of US military interventions, most notably the withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan and subsequent takeover of the country by Taliban? Have the Americans learned a lesson and, in the words of your Italian friend in your book, no longer think that “democracy can be exported”?

Well, there is a sense in which democracy, or at least what the West calls democracy, can be exported: for example, in Germany and Japan after WW2. But that was not the goal of the war (then, the US had been attacked by those countries) and the specific form of democracy (tying these countries by all sorts of links to the American empire) that was “exported” was to a large extent motivated by the US desire to fight the Soviet Union. In the case of Afghanistan, I don’t think exporting democracy was ever a goal of the US there. The initial goal was to fight terrorism, something that Taliban agreed with, provided that the US gives a proof of Bin Laden responsibility in the events of 9/11, which of course the US refused to do.
After the overthrow of the Taliban and, later, the killing of Bin Laden, the goals of the war became uncertain: continue to fill up the coffers of the military-industrial complex, control a strategic region, or what? But there was no more a desire to install a democracy in Afghanistan than there was such a desire when Mosaddeq was overthrown in Iran. The US wants subservient regimes everywhere. If they can be formally democratic (as in Germany and Japan) democracy is fine; if they cannot be so, as in Iran, Guatemala, Chile and many other places, autocracy is fine too.


 

Sports Desk

Four Iranian overseas players – Mehdi Taremi, Allahyar Sayyadmanesh, Sardar Azmoun, and Ali Qolizadeh – were picked among AFC International Players of the Year.
On a weekly basis throughout 2021, the Asian football’s governing body highlighted the 10 best performers outside the continent, asking fans from around the world to cast their votes for the most outstanding display over the seven-day period.
On Tuesday, the AFC official website released a list of players “whose exemplary consistency [on the list] deserves recognition.”
Porto striker Taremi was the most featured player on the weekly list with 20 nominations.
“Taremi began 2021 in blistering touch, scoring six times in January, and earning nominations for seven weeks in a row from January 9 to February 24, helping him feature in our weekly list no less than 13 times before the end of May,” the-AFC.com wrote of the Iranian international.
“His 27 goals in the calendar year included strikes against Juventus, Liverpool and Chelsea, the latter being voted the UEFA Champions League Goal of the Season, and the 29-year-old now sits comfortably among Asia’s very finest players.”
“In 2022, Taremi can likely look forward to a FIFA World Cup, which may yet be the crowning moment of what has become a superb career.”
Fourth on the list was Zorya Luhansk prodigy Sayyadmanesh, who was nominated on 11 occasions.
“On loan from Fenerbahce, the youngster consistently thrived for the Ukrainian outfit, regularly contributing goals and assists, including a UEFA Conference League winner against CSKA Sofia, to announce himself as a potential star of the future for Team Melli,” wrote the webpage.
Zenit St. Petersburg talisman Azmoun stood eighth on the list.
“Another Russian Premier League title came Sardar Azmoun’s way, and the star Zenit striker was rewarded for another great year with nine AFC International Player of the Week nominations.”
“The timing of the Russian winter break meant he wasn’t featured in our list until March, and he scored five goals – one of his best periods of the year – while the weekly poll remained on hiatus until July and early August,” the-AFC.com wrote of the striker, who has been on the score sheet 10 times – registering four assists – in 21 appearances across all competitions this season.
Qolizadeh, “who enjoyed an outstanding year with RSC Charleroi”, shared the ninth spot with the Japanese trio – Saki Kumagai, Wataru Endo, Takehiro Tomiyasu – who all found their place on the weekly nominations eight times.
In one of his most prolific seasons for the Belgian top-flight club, Qolizadeh has scored seven goals – plus three assists – in 21 games, having got eight strikes into his name thorough the previous campaign.
In total, 115 male and female players from 17 AFC nations were featured at least once in the weekly list.
Following Taremi on the annual list were Chelsea Women’s Australian Sam Kerr (16 nominations) and Tottenham Hotspur’s South Korean star Son Heung-min (12 nominations).
Junya Ito (Japan), Eldor Shomurodov (Uzbekistan), Hwang Ui-jo (Korea Republic) shared the fifth place with 10 nominations apiece.
Japan was the most represented country in the weekly lists with no less than 31 players, 24 of which were men.
Australia had 23 players featured, a continent-leading 12 of whom were from the women’s game, while Iran supplied 19 players.

 

Iranian filmmaker and film distributor Ali-Mohammad Eqbaldar was selected to judge the films at the second edition of the Jammu Film Festival in India from March 19-20.
Eqbaldar has so far directed eight short films including ‘Self’, ‘The Castle of Life’, ‘Choice’, ‘Me in the Mirror’, and ‘The Memory of That Man’, ifilmtv.ir reported.
Eqbaldar’s films have participated in various international festivals such as Ouarzazate Film Festival in Morocco that hosted his short film ‘The Memory of That Man’.
His ‘Utopia’ was screened at the Kolkata International Film Festival and his ‘Leprosy’ at Zimbabwe International Female Film Festival.
He has already evaluated the films at Muslim Film Festival in Australia.
According to the official website of the festival, “It is an attempt to provide a platform to bridge the gap between the industry and the resources available in Jammu.”
In 2019, over 160 entries from 17 countries submitted their films and 37 shortlisted entries from 11 countries were screened over two days.

 

Sudanese authorities said Wednesday rescue workers retrieved at least 31 bodies from a collapsed gold mine in West Kordofan province.
The country’s state-run mining company said workers and villagers were still searching the Darsaya mine for more bodies or possible survivors. The mine is located in the Fuja village, around 700 kilometers (435 miles) south of the capital of Khartoum, AP reported.
The defunct mine collapsed earlier this week, killing at least 38 people, the company said Tuesday. It posted images on Facebook showing villagers gathering at the site as at least two dredgers worked to find possible survivors and bodies.
The Sudanese Mineral Resources Limited Company said the mine was not functional but local miners returned to work there after security forces guarding the site left the area.
Collapses are common in Sudan’s gold mines, where safety standards are not widely in effect.
Sudan is a major gold producer with numerous mines scattered across the country. The industry, however, suffered from years of mismanagement and corruption.
The transitional government has begun regulating the industry during the past two years.
In nearby North Darfur province, an unidentified armed group late Tuesday attacked and looted a warehouse for the World Food Program in the provincial capital of al-Fasher, said Khardiata Lo Ndiaye, UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. Local authorities in North Darfur imposed a curfew across the province starting Wednesday.
As many as 1,900 metric tons of food had been stored at the warehouse, meant to be distributed to people in need in the area, the WFP said.