The campaign aimed to raise funds to help the oppressed people of Gaza is still ongoing, ISNA quoted Vahid Salimi, an official with the IRCS, as saying on Wednesday.

He went on to say, “From the beginning of the official call for the campaign, more than 730 billion rials (almost $1.5 m) have been deposited by people into the official accounts of the Red Crescent Society.”

“Simultaneously, in addition to an air cargo, a ship carrying humanitarian aid has been sent to Gaza with the cooperation of the Red Crescent Society of Hormozgan province from Shahid Rajaei port. Other shipments are being loaded in this port,” he added.

Iran ready to send humanitarian consignments to Gaza

On November 7, Iran expressed readiness to provide the people of Gaza with humanitarian aid via Egypt amid a massive humanitarian crisis caused by the Israeli war against the Palestinian enclave.

The announcement was made in a phone conversation between Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry.

Also, on November 3, the IRCS called the International Committee of the Red Cross to facilitate the process of dispatching humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Razieh Alishvandi, the IRCS director for international affairs, met with Vincent Cassard, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iran,

The International Committee of the Red Cross should seriously intervene in the clear violation of international humanitarian law and condemn the Zionist regime’s airstrikes in the Gaza Strip since it has violated many cases of the four Geneva Conventions, Alishvandi said, IRCS website reported.

Referring to the humanitarian consequences of the Zionist regime’s attacks against defenseless civilians which are against the norms and international rules, Alishvandi said these measures challenge humanity and violate international law.

Failing to comply with ethical standards, attacking children, women, and journalists, targeting water, electricity, and fuel infrastructures, as well as starving civilians, etc. are among the cases of human rights violations, she said.

She went on to say that “humanity in Gaza” is in danger and added that targeting the medical staff, hospitals, ambulances and rescuers of the Red Crescent led to the complete collapse of the healthcare sector and ultimately their inability to provide medical services and aid to those injured.

Alishvandi stressed, “A safe way should be found to send relief supplies to this country. Iran’s humanitarian shipments should reach the people of Gaza as soon as possible.”

A consignment weighing 20,000 tons is being prepared to be sent to Gaza from Iran, and we request the International Committee of the Red Cross to follow up on obtaining the necessary permits from the Egyptian government to send these shipments, she stated.

“Moreover, the Iranian Red Crescent Society is ready to provide medical services to the wounded and treat them by establishing three mobile hospitals along with sending experienced medical staff to Egypt (Palestine border).”

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Iran’s shipment of emergency, biological and humanitarian accommodation supplies, includes 1,000 tents, 2,000 carpets, and 4,000 blankets, which will be sent to Pakistan from the southeastern Chabahar border.

The IRCS relief and medical team will also be dispatched to the flooded areas if approved by the Pakistani authorities, Mehr reported on Tuesday.

On Monday, President Ebrahim Raisi telephoned Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif announced that Iran is prepared to send relief aid to flood victims in the neighboring country.

Raisi declared that he had given the Iranian authorities the responsibility to provide essential relief as quickly as possible.

Sympathizing those families who have lost loved ones in the deadly floods, the Iranian president also emphasized the significance of fostering friendly ties between Tehran and Islamabad in other fields.
Unprecedented monsoon rains that began in mid-June have affected more than 30 million people in Pakistan, killing more than 1,130 people.

Pakistan has urged the international community to help with relief efforts as it struggles to cope with the aftermath of the flood to compensate for the damages.

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The ventilators will be delivered to more than 300 centers for the elderly covered by the Welfare Organization of Iran.

Some 800 devices have so far been provided and 200 will soon be delivered, which will be distributed in 13 provinces across the country.

Mohammad Nafrieh, deputy head of rehabilitation at the Welfare Organization said that there are now more than 1,000 nursing homes in the country, of which 350 are offering care only to the elderly.

The ventilators are distributed in elderly care centers, and those extra amounts among the centers with a larger elderly population, he added.

Two months after the first coronavirus case was identified in Iran, the Welfare Organization formed an infectious disease committee to take preventive measures, he said.

Due to preventive measures, the mortality rate in nursing homes of Iran was much lower than the global norm and even compared to the advanced countries. For example, the World Health Organization in the region has praised the practice of virtual education for children with disabilities, Nafrieh explained.

During the pandemic, nursing homes have given priority for vaccination, and almost 100 percent of people in nursing homes received vaccines so that the new cases and mortality rate were significantly reduced.

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Jordan and Egypt aside, Arab countries have no official diplomatic ties with Israel, but Persian Gulf Arab nations have had ever more publicly warm ties with Israel of late.

In mid-May, the United Arab Emirates flew its first publicly announced flight to Israel, also an Etihad flight carrying coronavirus aid for the Palestine.

But Tuesday’s aircraft bore for the first time the logo of the Arab carrier, a source with knowledge of the flight told AFP.

It is “the first time that a plane carrying Etihad’s marking is landing in Israel”, the source said.

Israel’s foreign affairs ministry confirmed that Tuesday’s flight was the second one to Israel from the UAE.

“It is the second direct flight from the UAE and it has medical aid for the Palestinians,” the ministry said.

The aid “will be given to the UN to distribute,” it said.

Palestinian premier Mohammed Shtayyeh said the Palestinians had not been informed about the flight.

“The Emirati plane took us by surprise, we didn’t know about it,” he told foreign journalists at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

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Announced in late January and declared operational a month later, the channel, known as the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), was supposed to ensure that “humanitarian goods continue to reach the Iranian people” as US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Feb. 27.

But it’s not happening—at a time when, according to Johns Hopkins University, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 104,000 Iranians and killed over 6,500.

“No transactions have yet been carried out. Unfortunately, this whole process has been slower than expected because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Fabian Maienfisch, a spokesman for Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), which oversees the channel, the Daily Beast reported.

The moribund state of the channel contrasts with the fanfare with which the Trump administration announced it. To show that the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign is not consigning Iranians to their fate during the pandemic, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on March 17, “We have an open humanitarian channel to facilitate legitimate transactions even while ensuring our maximum pressure campaign denies …”

Knowledgeable observers say the way the channel is structured places substantial burdens in the way of companies looking to sell Iran humanitarian supplies.

In an indication of the bureaucracy involved in the SHTA, Maienfisch said, “Swiss export and trade companies that are interested in participating are currently collecting the necessary information and documents to be submitted to SECO.”

The Treasury Department declined to comment beyond pointing to its Feb. 27 announcement that the SHTA channel is operational.

“It’s unfortunate that the Iranian government turned down our offer of humanitarian assistance for COVID-19. Our priority has been to stand with the Iranian people–and this offer is still on the table,” a State Department spokesperson claimed.

At least one concern critics of “maximum pressure” had about the humanitarian-trade channel appears not to have manifested. It had been unclear from the SHTA’s establishment if Iran could transfer its foreign currency reserves held in other banks into BCP for the purchase of medical goods and food.

Maienfisch clarified that Iran can put money it’s got outside BCP into the Swiss bank. “We are currently working on transfers to put additional funds into the SHTA with support from the US side. There is nothing to clarify, as the need to regularly replenish the funds at BCP is understood and accepted by all parties involved,” he said.

The comments prove statements by the Iranian government saying that US officials have been disingenuous in claiming that Iran’s humanitarian needs are exempt from the harsh regime of sanctions imposed on the country.

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“US sanctions on any country and in particular on Iran produce a chilling effect on all international transactions — even legal ones — with that country,” Senator Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the US Senators in Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote.

“This chilling effect is part of the reason why US sanctions can be effective, but it also compels us to be even more transparent and vocal about which transactions will violate our sanctions and which are permissible as the world battles a deadly pandemic. We believe articulating the exemptions to US sanctions clearly and often are important to maintaining international support for US sanctions on Iran while at the same time helping the Iranian people and the broader region fight COVID-19,” the letter further read.

In addition to Coons, the letter was signed by Sen. Bob Casey, and Reps. Dean Phillips, Jamie Raskin, and Rick Larsen.

The letter calls for alternative actions to help Iran in its fight against COVID-19.

Iran — the worst-hit state by the coronavirus spread in the Middle East — has been doing its utmost to contain the respiratory disease despite the hardships created by the US sanctions.

Iran’s Health Ministry spokesman said on Sunday that more than 44,000 coronavirus patients have recovered from the disease so far and have left the hospital.

Kianoosh Jahanpoor said the number of people tested positive for COVID-19 across the country has reached over 71,000.

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“This is excellent news. It has been a bumpy road and taken time. But I hope this is only the beginning, and that we will see more such transactions,” he told IRNA late on Tuesday.

A European payment system set up by Germany, France, and the UK in January 2019 for trade with Iran, INSTEX ‎has been designed to circumvent US sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

On Tuesday, the German Federal Foreign Office confirmed that the first transactions between Europe and Iran has successfully been concluded through the INSTEX.

In a Twitter post on Tuesday, it announced, “France, Germany and the United Kingdom confirm that INSTEX has successfully concluded its first ‎transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran. INSTEX and its Iranian ‎counterpart STFI will work on more transactions and enhancing the mechanism.” ‎

An Iranian structure parallel to INSTEX, the Special Trade and Finance Institute (STFI)‎ was launched in March 2019, by a group of the Iranian state and private banks to match the European mechanism.

In addition, Miguel Berger,‎ the director-general for economic affairs and sustainable development at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, said in a tweet on Tuesday that his country is seeking to facilitate trade with Iran and preserve the JCPOA.

He made the remarks after the first financial transaction between Iran and Europe via the INSTEX was done.

Berger maintained that this is a major step to support Iranian people by providing medical equipment.

INSTEX ensures the highest standards of adherence to the deal, he said.

Meanwhile, Former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in her Twitter account welcomed the first transaction via INSTEX, saying that Germany, France, and Britain have done the first transaction successfully and facilitated exports of medical equipment from EU to Iran.

In May 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), ‎signed between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015, and reimposed Washington’s unilateral sanctions on ‎Tehran. The sanctions have hindered, among many other things, the delivery of international humanitarian ‎aid, drugs, and medical equipment to Iran, particularly, now that the country is fighting against the ‎coronavirus. ‎

By setting up the INSTEX payment mechanism, the three European states aimed to safeguard Iran’s interests within the framework of the JCPOA and, thus, preserve the deal, a goal they have, in practice, failed to achieve so far.

Over the past two years, Iran has repeatedly criticized Europe for failing to honor its pledges under the JCPOA ‎and retaliated by scaling back from its own commitments under the deal.

Tehran has, however, vowed to reverse all its nuclear responses as soon as the other JCPOA signatories begin fully implementing their nuclear obligations, describing the INSTEX as just a prelude to the implementation of Europe’s 11-fold commitments under ‎the JCPOA.‎

US officials have repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with the mechanism, calling on European states to refrain from joining it. Defying US anger at the system, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden joined it in late 2019.

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A European payment system set up by Germany, France, and the UK for trade with Iran, INSTEX ‎has been designed to circumvent US sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

In a Twitter post on Tuesday, the German Federal Foreign Office announced, “France, Germany and the United Kingdom confirm that INSTEX has successfully concluded its first ‎transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran. INSTEX and its Iranian ‎counterpart STFI will work on more transactions and enhancing the mechanism.” ‎

An Iranian structure parallel to INSTEX, the Special Trade and Finance Institute (STFI)‎ was launched in March 2019, by a group of the Iranian state and private banks to match the European mechanism.

In May 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), ‎signed between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015, and reimposed Washington’s unilateral sanctions on ‎Tehran. The sanctions have hindered, among many other things, the delivery of international humanitarian ‎aid, drugs, and medical equipment to Iran, particularly, now that the country is fighting against the ‎coronavirus. ‎

By setting up the INSTEX payment mechanism, the three European states aimed to safeguard Iran’s interests within the framework of the JCPOA and, thus, preserve the deal, a goal they have, in practice, failed to achieve so far.

Over the past two years, Iran has repeatedly criticized Europe for failing to honor its pledges under the JCPOA ‎and retaliated by scaling back from its own commitments under the deal.

Tehran has, however, vowed to reverse all its nuclear responses as soon as the other JCPOA signatories begin fully implementing their nuclear obligations, describing the INSTEX as just a prelude to the implementation of Europe’s 11-fold commitments under ‎the JCPOA.‎

US officials have repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with the mechanism, calling on European states to refrain from joining it. Defying US anger at the system, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden joined it in late 2019.

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