[IsraelTimes] Backlash against Jewish authors post-Oct. 7 inspires new initiatives, as many in the industry believe the situation is so dire that Jews need their own distribution pathways
How we got Hollywood, a bunch of Jewish hospitals and universities, and a Jewish ambulance service in England.
[NYPost] Go AWAY, you POS
They gave him the Zo-ld shoulder.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani was snubbed from eulogizing Army Sgt. Angel Sarah Rampersad at the fallen soldier’s Queens funeral Friday — and the embarrassing scene unfolded in real time as he fumed while waiting in vain to give his speech, sources revealed.
Mamdani, who was relegated to the fourth row in the Ozone Park church, appeared to be reviewing his planned remarks on an iPad while Gov. Kathy Hochul and other dignitaries, including Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, were called to speak, a source in attendance said.
"They kept calling names and then he was never called," the source said.
"Then he looked over at his staff, frustrated and seemed angry that he didn’t speak. When he realized his name wasn’t being called, he looked at his staff angrily and then eventually put his tablet away.
City Hall ignored multiple requests for comment over the humiliating turn of events.
The diss came as Mamdani — an avowed democratic socialist who’s harshly critical of Israel and the US war against Iran — remains a divisive political figure both within New York City and across the nation.
Another source involved with the funeral’s planning said Rampersad’s family is pro-President Trump and didn’t want Mamdani to speak.
Yet another insider confirmed that Mamdani’s outspoken lefty politics ultimately led him to lose his customary mayoral role as a speaker during a hometown soldier’s funeral.
"The family is more conservative and wanted to limit any political distractions," the insider said.
Rampersad, 28, was among three US soldiers killed July 17 during an Iranian missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Rampersad grew up in an Ozone Park family, graduated from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and joined the Army, following in the footsteps of her uncle.
It’s unclear whether the young mayor visited Rampersad’s kin in the days following her death as is customary for Big Apple leaders to do. Nothing about a visit prior to Friday’s funeral appeared on his official public schedule or his indefatigable social media accounts.
Hizzoner did, however, fill his past week "siteseeing" in double-decker bus as part of a housing press stunt and sat for a few interviews with national publications in an attempt to further raise his public profile.
Mamdani — who in recent days has been slammed for ignoring everyday New Yorker’s problems, including the seven residents who’ve died from Legionnaire’s disease — also found time to tout his far-off city-run grocery stores, even fundraising off the efforts.
In lieu of actually speaking at Rampersad’s funeral, Mamdani’s press team blasted out his planned speech, identifying it as "remarks as prepared." "Keep her name outta yer wh0re mouf!"
"It is often said that our fallen ’gave their tomorrows for our today,'" Mamdani planned to say. "Sergeant Rampersad had tomorrows waiting for her: birthdays, ordinary mornings, evenings spent with her loved ones. But she gave every one of them up so that we could have ours — so that we could stand here today, safe and protected."
Hundreds of family members, neighbors, fellow soldiers and even strangers attended Rampersad’s funeral in Calvary Assembly of God, where they brushed away tears as the fallen hero’s favorite gospel songs loudly echoed through the halls of the pristine church.
"She could talk to people in her rank, above her rank, and they would accept it since it was the way she did it," Daisy Davis-Credle, president of the Queens Sunday School Association, said after the funeral.
"It’s not what you do, it’s how you do what you do. And she knew how to do that — they listened to her."
Hochul gave remarks during the service, followed by Ozone Park Residents Block Association President Sam Esposito, state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr. (D-Queens) and Richards.
"I feel after reading and admiring this woman from a distance, I feel like she could be one of my daughters," said Hochul.
Mamdani, whose less-than-prime seat was near first-term City Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island), fumed in silence after his snub became apparent.
"I was surprised the mayor didn’t speak," said Morano, who is far from a Mamdani ally. "I didn’t understand why they would have lower-level officials speak and not the mayor."
Because the family likes the other officials and loathes Hizzoner, perhaps. Or perhaps because they really, really wanted to give him the cut direct.
After the sendoff, NYPD cops carried Rampersad’s coffin from the church and into a hearse, which joined a blocks-long police procession to her eventual resting place in Long Island.
Pakistan is a very weak reed to rest your defense on, guys, about as weak as Egypt. Mostly they’re good for marching in parades and beating up rioting peasants, as far as I can tell. And sending jihadis over the border into India. But controlling the jihadis who attack their own people is not in their skill set, if that helps you calibrate.
[RFERL] The prolonged US-Iran war has prompted many Persian Gulf nations to reassess their defense needs. For Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator in negotiations between Tehran and Washington, the conflict has created an opportunity to stabilize its fragile economy and improve its diplomatic outreach.
But the emerging partnerships between Islamabad and Middle East capitals are also reshaping the region's security dynamics, pushing the militarily weaker Gulf states closer to larger and better-armed neighbors -- Pakistan and India.
"The newly emerging security arrangements in the region are more like overlapping partnerships rather than fixed blocs," Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told RFE/RL while referring to Saudi-Pakistan, UAE-India, and China-Pakistan relations.
These arrangements give "states more room to maneuver, but also make regional crises more complex and harder to manage," he added.
Kuwait, like other Gulf states, came under repeated Iranian missile and drone attacks before ratifying the agreement, causing damage to infrastructure and casualties. The country hosts at least three US military bases with an estimated 13,000 personnel.
With that target on its territory, Kuwait became the second Gulf state to ratify a defense agreement with Pakistan that provides for military training, personnel exchanges, and intelligence sharing. Although signed in June 2023, the agreement only received final approval from the Kuwaiti cabinet last week, Kuwait's official Gazette Al-Kuwait Al-Youm announced on July 26.
Kuwait's neighbor, Saudi Arabia, signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Pakistan last year that includes a clause along the lines of NATO's Article 5 that states "any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both."
Meanwhile, Pakistani officials say a draft of a separate defense arrangement between Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia has already been prepared and is awaiting a final consensus from the three sides.
On top of that, leaders of the "regional four," or R4 -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey -- have been discussing closer security cooperation since the 12-day US-Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025.
'CENTER OF GRAVITY'
Analysts say the urgency among rich Gulf states to seek defense agreements with Pakistan and forge alliances has been driven by the vulnerabilities of their defenses in the face of Iranian missile and drone strikes, despite being allies of the world's most powerful country, the United States.
Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a former Pakistani senator and an Islamabad-based defense analyst, said there has been a rethinking among Middle Eastern countries as "approximately 16 [US] bases could not save them from the Iranian missile and drone strikes."
You lot are swimming in money. What about spending some of it for a proper missile defense? As the host countries, it’s your job to defend the bases on your territory along with defending your territory.
Sayed said Pakistan had become the "center of gravity" because it acts as a bridge between Tehran and Washington regarding peace and has an outreach with China.
Vatanka said Pakistan combines military capability with strategic flexibility.
"It maintains ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, and the US without fully joining any one camp, making it a useful security partner in a more multipolar region."
As Pakistan expands its outreach in the Middle East, its much larger neighbor, India, has already forged strong ties with Israel and the United Arab Emirates, which was once counted among Pakistan's closest allies.
Apparently unhappy over Pakistan's expanding defense ties with Saudi Arabia and the country's mediatory role in the Iran-US conflict, in April, Abu Dhabi asked Pakistan to repay a $3.5 billion loan immediately.
For decades, nuclear-armed Pakistan has remained dependent on loans and financial support from the rich Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Pakistan's fragile economy mostly remained dependent on aid from the United States, especially during the Afghan war from 2001 to 2021, as well as loans from the International Monetary Fund.
"For Pakistan, the driving factors are its fragile economy and the persistent risk of isolation by its much larger South Asian neighbor, India. For the Gulf states, the motivation lies in strengthening their defense capabilities through indigenous military development and technological advancement which have drawn them closer together," said Feroz H. Khan, a retired brigadier of the Pakistani Army and research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California.
Khan told RFE/RL that Gulf countries have lost faith in the previous security architecture under the US umbrella because they were attacked both by Iran and Israel.
"They are now more interested in an indigenous security apparatus instead of relying on outside forces," Khan said.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India have fought several wars since their independence from the British in 1947. Being much larger in size, population, economy, and defense capabilities, India has traditionally been considered the regional power in South Asia.
"As part of its Strategic Relevance, Pakistan has carved out a role for itself in the Middle East by presenting itself as the eastern fortress of the Muslim world," said Khan. "Rather than trying to compete with a much larger India in South Asia, Pakistan has successfully leveraged the US-Iran conflict to position itself as a Middle Eastern power."
#1
Some other things driving the Gulf countries closer to Pakistan (and Turkey) is the perceived instability of US politics.
How will US midterms this year & the 2028 Presidential elections affect US Mideast policy?
If I were a leader in one of the Gulf States I would be concerned about the US elections, if/when the US will put Israel's interests ahead of the Gulf States and how far Trump can be trusted to make a deal good for the Gulf States as well as the US
#4
Israel has a pretty significant weapons manufacturing capability. We, the US, buy a lot from them.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/01/2026 9:50 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Then why isn't Israel producing more of them herself?
Year after year, post 1967, America made Israel a deal: we’ll give you some money for weapons, but you have to buy them from American companies instead of elsewhere or making them yourself. It was a deliberate move to make Israel more dependent on America, giving America a lever to control Israel’s actions.
The operations director of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign and his longest-serving aide previously peddled sham brain pills for a multi-level marketing company that customers and federal regulators called a pyramid scheme. The aide, Tara Terpstra, would go on to work for El-Sayed, who calls himself a doctor and has railed against "snake oil salesmen" who "sell people shit they don’t need."
Terpstra, whom El-Sayed first hired in 2016 at the Detroit Health Department, previously worked as an independent distributor for Nerium, the alleged "pyramid scheme." Terpstra, who now works for El-Sayed’s Senate campaign, promoted Nerium’s products, including a coffee extract called EHT that she billed in a July 2015 post as a "cutting edge…age-defying supplement" that could be used as an "Alzheimer’s treatment" and other neurocognitive conditions.
El-Sayed promoted the $100-a-head events on his Facebook page, writing that he was "proud to be joining Islamic Relief USA" for a "cruise" to "celebrate and help support their work." He spoke at the New York City and Washington, D.C., cruises alongside the Dearborn-based activist Amer Zahr, who expressed solidarity with Hamas and Hezbollah during a 2017 rally, telling residents of Dearborn, Mich., "whether it's called Hamas, whether it's called Hezbollah, we stand with everybody who stands against the Israeli occupation." Four years later, in a social media video, Zahr took aim at "all the activists and leaders out there that are condemning antisemitism and condemning terrorism right now," saying, "Stop it! Stop! You are not helping."
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
An interesting choice. Yesh Atid is the centrist party of Yair Lapid, former tv journalist, who has wonderful hair. Why would someone from that party support the Muslim Brotherhood in these troubled times?
[IsraelTimes] Yoav Segalovitz, Jewish lawmaker who won trust among Arab public for fighting violent crime, will reportedly meet Abbas to join revamped, historically Islamist party next week
[IsraelTimes] Singapore police open probe, issue stern warning to group members for displaying foreign flag at show without permission, in violation of the country’s strict rules
Two members of Massive Attack were issued with stern warnings and barred from re-entering Singapore after the British trip-hop band ended its performance on Wednesday with a display of the Paleostinian flag, according to local media reports.
Authorities said the band was investigated for their "actions of support for a political cause and unfurling of a foreign flag," during the band’s concert, reports said.
The Infocomm Media Development Authority also said it is investigating the possible breach of a number of license conditions and will take "necessary action" when investigations are completed, reports added.
Singapore does not allow the public display of foreign national emblems without a permit or exemption, and the Paleostinian flag is especially sensitive given the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... and Singapore’s Moslem population.
In 2023, shortly after the Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... -led October 7, 2023, onslaught that began the war, Singapore’s home affairs ministry said: "The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict is an emotive issue. We would like to advise against the public display and wearing of articles in relation to the conflict, given the heightened sensitivities."
"The peace and harmony between different races and religions in Singapore should not be taken for granted, and we must not let events happening externally affect this peace and harmony we have in Singapore," the statement added.
Singapore’s resident population is 74 percent Chinese, 13.6% Malay, and 9% Indian, with 3.3% classified as others. Around 15% are Moslem.
Massive Attack, formed in Bristol in the west of England in 1988, are known for their outspoken political stances, with videos during their concert highlighting conflicts from the UD-Israeli war on Iran, to Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... , Gaza and Ukraine.
It has particularly been outspoken in its anti-Israel politics for years, including by joining an initiative last year to block its music in Israel and to have its songs removed from Spotify over investments in a European defense start-up by the streaming platform’s founder.
Neither the concert organizer Lushington nor the band immediately responded to a request for comment.
This isn’t the first time a United Kingdom-based band has faced legal action over anti-Israel activism.
One of the members of Northern Ireland’s Kneecap faced a terrorism charge in the UK over allegedly displaying a flag of the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah at a concert in November 2024.
However,
there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened... in March, London’s High Court upheld a decision to dismiss the case over procedural errors by prosecutors.
Canada barred Kneecap last year from entering the country, citing the group’s alleged support for Hezbollah and for the Hamas terror group.
As long as they can’t reach out to touch our side…
[NationalContext] The war has passed through three phases since February. The American and Israeli campaign that opened it failed to produce the collapse of the Islamic Republic, and the ceasefire of 8 April converted the confrontation into something slower: a full blockade, negotiations under siege, and recurring threats of renewed attack. The one-page memorandum agreed in June appeared to stabilise that arrangement. The attacks on shipping in early July destroyed it, and the weeks since have produced the widest fighting of the war: a surprise Iranian missile launch against American forces in Jordan on 28 July, Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi cities and tankers, Iraqi armed groups joining the attacks on Saudi Arabia, joint Saudi-American retaliation inside Iraq, simultaneous pressure on the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, and a drone attack on gas shipping as far away as Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
This escalation becomes easier to understand once the war is described by its strategies rather than by its incidents. Two campaigns are now running against each other. Washington, having lost confidence in regime change by military means, is attempting to fracture the Iranian regime from within, through a coordinated mixture of public statements, intelligence leaks, episodic threats and a blockade whose pressure compounds over time. Iran, having concluded that the temporal structure of the war is destroying it, is attempting to fracture the regional coalition around the United States, through pre-emption, horizontal escalation and a deliberately cultivated image of recklessness designed to make continued confrontation intolerable for Washington’s partners. Each side has chosen fracture over conquest, and each is using time as an active instrument rather than treating it as a neutral background condition.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
08/01/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[213 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
Iran is threatening to retaliate against U.S. or Israeli strikes by targeting critical energy infrastructure, according to comments published Friday by Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency.
A senior security official told Tasnim that reports in U.S. media about possible American and Israeli attacks on Iranian infrastructure amounted to “a kind of madness,” warning Tehran has prepared “extensive response plans.”
According to Tasnim, the official said those plans include strikes targeting Israeli critical infrastructure and U.S. energy infrastructure across the region, adding Iran’s armed forces have both “the capability and the will” to carry them out.
The threat comes hours after the White House told Fox News Digital that President Donald Trump “is not going to stand by and allow this terrorist behavior to occur” and that “Iran will continue to pay until they come to the table in, what President Trump deems, a meaningful way.”
The White House statement came in response to reports of a possible expansion of U.S. military operations against Iran.
#3
Maybe targeting some of the Iranian news agencies might be a good idea. Best case it has a negative impact on the IRGC's ability to 'control' domestic and foreign news. Worst case at least we can get them to shut up with their delusional threats.
[Reuters] One of the world’s largest illegal gambling networks sends millions of dollars worth of crypto through an office in Dubai, part of a $4 billion Iranian sanctions evasion operation.
The office, above a budget hotel in an unfashionable neighbourhood, is the listed address of Shelbit, an unlicensed crypto exchange run by an expatriate Iranian, according to data shared by two crypto investigative firms and an independent analyst, and reviewed by Reuters.
Among Shelbit’s main customers is a Farsi-language gambling network of more than 2,000 websites, fronted by two flashy Iranian influencers with high-level government connections – one operating from an expensive villa in Madrid and the other, until recently, from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong.
The two men and the Iranian running Shelbit were convicted as partners in crime in an illegal gambling case in Iran in 2023.
Gambling is outlawed in the Islamic Republic, punishable by lashing and prison. Yet, the gambling network identified by Reuters has access to Iran's online payments system, which is closely overseen by the country’s central bank.
Shelbit is the hub of the Iranian money-moving operation, through which the gambling network, the central bank and other sanctioned Iranian entities have access to global crypto markets.
This is by far the biggest Iranian illegal gambling network ever discovered and one of the biggest in the world.
The data on the Shelbit money flows, including the total of at least $4 billion that the exchange has processed since May 2024, were analysed by the two crypto investigative firms and Rich Sanders, an independent blockchain researcher and investigator focused on Iran. The two companies requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive data, which was reviewed by Reuters. Tens of millions of dollars of the gambling network’s crypto can be traced through blockchain records to Shelbit.
Shelbit has moved hundreds of millions in currency to some of the most prominent players in crypto, including the world’s biggest exchange, Binance.
Shelbit also interacts directly with Iran’s central bank; with wallets the Israeli government has linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; and with Nobitex, an Iranian exchange which the U.S. government sanctioned earlier this year after a Reuters investigation revealed its ties to the government. Some of the crypto that has flowed to Shelbit came from what the two crypto investigative companies say is an Iranian bitcoin mining operation, which mints new digital coins.
“It’s an IRGC operation, and that’s plain as day,” Sanders said of Shelbit.
The flows into Shelbit continued in the buildup to the war with the U.S. and Israel in February. The crypto kept coming even after the Islamic Republic repeatedly bombed the United Arab Emirates, including a drone that hit less than a kilometre from the exchange’s offices.
The revelation of the money-moving network shows the ingenuity behind Iran’s ability to weather years of punishing trade and banking sanctions. The IRGC has played a pivotal role in keeping the economy afloat during its on-again off-again war with the United States and Israel, emerging more powerful than ever.
The Reuters investigation also found that, years ago, the IRGC took control of the largest gambling websites accessible inside Iran and has since used them to move money abroad.
When it comes to gambling, the IRGC learned the Islamic Republic's most lucrative lesson early: declare something illegal, then control both the prohibition and the black market.
Reuters spoke to more than 30 people to uncover the sanctions evasion network, including two formerly affiliated with the Guards, a former government official, two senior Iranian insiders with knowledge of the scheme, and people with direct knowledge of ongoing UAE government investigations into the operation. The gambling websites were identified and their relationships mapped in collaboration with the cybersecurity company Infoblox.
“This is by far the biggest Iranian illegal gambling network ever discovered and one of the biggest in the world,” said John Wojcik, a former researcher at Infoblox who spent seven years investigating illegal gambling for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Wojcik is now a senior analyst at TRM Labs.
It’s also one of the biggest Iranian sanctions evasion networks discovered since 2016, when the United States broke up a roughly $20 billion IRGC gold-for-oil operation based out of Turkey.
These screenshots show two of the gambling sites from the vast Farsi-language network promoted by two Iranian influencers. Iran's law forbidding gambling was updated in 2023 to include online games of chance.
Reuters could not determine whether the IRGC had direct control of the gambling network and Shelbit, or who specifically in the Iranian state controlled the sanctions evasion operation. Reuters also could not determine where much of the crypto ultimately ended up.
Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, or VARA, is investigating Shelbit’s alleged role in helping Iran launder money and evade sanctions, according to a person with direct knowledge of the case. The exchange’s founder Siavash Kayvanpour, and the wider network of Iranians involved in crypto-based illegal gambling are also being scrutinised by the agency, the person said.
VARA confirmed that both it and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism had taken enforcement action in 2025 against Shelbit for operating without a license. On July 24, soon after Reuters requested comment from the authority, VARA issued a notice saying Shelbit was in violation of money-laundering and terrorism financing laws, ordering it to “cease and desist immediately from all unlicensed Virtual Asset activities.”
“The exposure identified by VARA extends beyond consumer protection to more egregious cross-border transactions with the propension to impact the integrity of the UAE financial system,” according to the notice issued on VARA's website.
One of the men fronting the gambling operation, Sasha Sobhani, is the son of a former senior Iranian diplomat and government minister whose father has publicly disavowed him for what he described as un-Islamic behaviour.
Another, Pooyan Mokhtari, is an influencer and singer who moved between luxury hotels in Hong Kong after being expelled in late April from Dubai, where he was arrested and accused by the authorities of financing Iranian terrorist organisations.
The pair flaunt their lavish lifestyles on social media, posting videos of luxury sports cars, yacht parties, and private jets.
Mokhtari denied the allegations leveled against him in Dubai and said he was not part of the IRGC or any Iranian military groups. He did not say whether he had done business with them.
“I’m not part of them, but I wish, I hope one day that I become like them – not to attack anyone, (but) to defend people,” he said in an interview in Hong Kong. “I’ve never used my power and my money and my status on social media to disturb anyone, to damage something for humanity.”
Mokhtari told his social media followers in late June that he planned to attend the funeral of the assassinated supreme leader in Iran in early July. Over several days of buildup, Mokhtari posted images of himself with newly bleached hair, in the gym, packing, and shopping for gifts.
“It’s a strange feeling. I’m going to the homeland,” he wrote on July 4, alongside a teary-eyed emoji.
Both he and Sobhani denied that the gambling sites they promote were connected to each other. But though many of the domains “were registered at different times, using different names, and exhibiting different brands,” they share software and other technical characteristics that link them, Infoblox said.
The two men said they had no knowledge of any Iranian state involvement in their activities, that they did not know Kayvanpour, and that they were unfamiliar with Shelbit.
“I categorically deny any involvement in money laundering, sanctions evasion, terrorism financing or moving funds on behalf of the Iranian government, the Central Bank of Iran, the IRGC or any other Iranian state institution,” Sobhani said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Neither Kayvanpour nor the Iranian government responded to requests for comment. The Dubai police and general prosecutor’s office also did not respond to requests for comment. The VARA statement did not mention Sobhani or Mokhtari.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control “is aware of these allegations and is taking them very seriously,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said. “Since President Trump resumed office, Treasury has aggressively targeted Iranian-regime linked digital assets.”
The data reviewed by Reuters showed Shelbit has processed at least $130 million for just one of the gambling sites linked to the wider network since May 2024, when the exchange appears to have started operations.
“Ideology is the IRGC’s branding while profit is its business model,” said Miad Maleki, who helped design the U.S. Treasury Department’s Iran sanctions evasion policy when he was associate director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a post he held until last year. “When it comes to gambling, the IRGC learned the Islamic Republic’s most lucrative lesson early: declare something illegal, then control both the prohibition and the black market.”
The IRGC is the branch of the Iranian state that safeguards the Islamic Revolution and oversees commercial enterprises worth billions.
Despite the billions that have moved through Shelbit, there is currently no identifiable way for a member of the public to use the exchange. Three people at the address registered as Shelbit’s office in the Deira neighbourhood of Dubai told a visiting Reuters reporter they had never heard of the company and had nothing to do with crypto. Online transactions are also impossible, because Shelbit no longer has a website.
Asked about its interactions with Shelbit, Binance said Shelbit had never had a Binance account nor been sanctioned. Binance did not dispute processing hundreds of millions of dollars for Shelbit, saying those transactions were not considered to be high risk.
“When users associated with Shelbit interacted with our platform, our compliance program operated as it should have: it investigated, froze the relevant accounts, and reported them to law enforcement,” Binance said in a statement. The company provided no further details.
THE TAKEOVER
The IRGC’s embrace of online gambling is an extension of the stranglehold that it increasingly exerts over the country’s economy, both legal and illegal. While suspicions of state involvement in gambling were raised in a 2021 Washington Institute report, among others, Reuters is the first news organisation to detail the IRGC takeover of the lucrative sector.
When online gambling took off in Iran around a decade ago, the IRGC saw an opportunity and took control of it, said Reza Gheibi, a former Iranian government official who left Iran in 2022 and now lives in Britain.
Online gambling also required the collaboration of Iran’s central bank, which controls the domestic electronic payments infrastructure, including bank cards and money transfers, Gheibi said.
The IRGC’s takeover of gambling in Iran was confirmed by Hamid Nikou, who once advised the Guards as a policy strategist; Mohammad Hossein Torkaman, a former member of an IRGC unit that served as personal protection for the supreme leader and his family; and two other Iranians with direct knowledge of the matter.
“When financial enterprises grow large and operate independently of the ruling establishment and security institutions, the IRGC moves to oversee them,” Nikou said. “They used gambling websites as a way to connect financial systems inside and outside the country.”
The IRGC co-opted famous Iranian performers and social media influencers to market the websites to their millions of followers, according to Gheibi, Nikou and Torkaman. Their displays of wealth and excess appealed to Iranians suffering through a slumping economy, they said.
Nikou left Iran in 2015 – and his job as a senior strategist at the Andishesh Sazan Noor Strategic Studies Institute, which advises the IRGC on policy. Torkaman left in 2010. Gheibi, Nikou and Torkaman said they maintain state connections inside Iran and speak to them frequently.
Torkaman was arrested in Iran as a security threat and said he fled soon after he was released from prison. Nikou said he left Iran to get a doctorate but dropped out of the program. Gheibi, who worked for years as an economic journalist in addition to his government post, left after repeated interrogations following interviews he gave to foreign news organisations.
Reuters has identified more than 60 Iranian influencers promoting the gambling websites, about half of whom have more than 1 million followers. Three have audiences exceeding 10 million.
‘CLICK AND HAVE FUN’
With his extensive tattoos and taste for designer labels, Sasha Sobhani, whose given name is Mohammad Javad, is among the most recognisable figures in Iran's online gambling world.
The son of a former ambassador, he has 3.7 million followers on Instagram, where he promotes his music alongside gambling sites. He told Reuters he no longer had contact with his father.
In a 2025 TikTok post by his Spanish girlfriend, he is seen giving her a bright-pink Rolls-Royce for her 18th birthday. Featured prominently at the top of his Instagram profile is a link to one of the gambling websites. Between emojis of winged stacks of cash is a simple instruction: “Click and have fun.”
Sobhani posts photos of his multimillion-dollar villa in Madrid, previously owned by a Real Madrid player. In one Instagram video that was reposted dozens of times, Sobhani peels bills off what appears to be a stack of bank notes so they flutter across his hotel suite.
Pooyan Mokhtari built an even larger Instagram following before his account was taken down earlier this year. Now he’s on Vatan, a mostly Farsi-language gambling-based social network he says he built, and has a far smaller following. Reuters could not establish why his Instagram account was disabled. Meta, which owns Instagram, did not provide a reason when contacted for comment.
Mokhtari’s posts frequently mixed displays of wealth – including a collection of supercars and expensive watches – with music videos and content supportive of the Islamic Republic. One Instagram post showed him meeting former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In a joint live Instagram chat involving Mokhtari and another Iranian, Ahmad Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic's founder Ruhollah Khomeini, joined the conversation briefly. Mokhtari displayed photos of his Koenigsegg Jesko Attack car worth $3.5 million, showing its transformation from shiny gold into bright pink.
Mokhtari and Sobhani have been working together since at least 2020, when they were prosecuted for starting a network of illegal gambling sites including abt90 and Hazarat, according to Iranian legal filings reviewed by Reuters. They were living abroad at the time and convicted by Iran in absentia three years later and sentenced to two years in prison. Siavash Kayvanpour, the Shelbit founder, received a three-month sentence for assisting them.
Iran issued Interpol red notices for Mokhtari and Sobhani, according to an Iranian court document and a person familiar with the matter. Both were detained in Spain, where they were then living. Mokhtari said he was held for more than a month. The notices were later cancelled by Interpol following a request from the individuals, the person said. Interpol can withdraw red notices if governments fail to provide additional information when they are contested.
[IsraelTimes] US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells reporters the United States is searching for Iranian assets “all around the world, and that money will go to the Iranian people.”
Posted by: Skidmark ||
08/01/2026 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
