The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament's upper house, Iliyas Umakhanov, will meet with Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali on January 14, the Federation Council's press service said on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th January, 2020) The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament's upper house, Iliyas Umakhanov, will meet with Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali on January 14, the Federation Council's press service said on Friday.
The meeting is said to be held in the Council's building in Moscow.
Tensions between Iran and the United States flared up after the Pentagon targeted facilities of Kata'ib Hezbollah Shiite militia, which belongs to the Hashd al-Shaabi organization in Iraq and Syria for allegedly launching a rocket attack on a base in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk that killed a US contractor in December.
Hashd al-Shaabi, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, said dozens of its fighters had been killed in the US strikes. An angry mob besieged the US Embassy in Baghdad after a funeral was held for those slain. They torched the fence, forcing US guards to take cover. Tensions in the region escalated further after a US drone strike killed Iran's commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's (IRGC) elite Quds Force on January 3.
Early on Wednesday, IRGC started a revenge operation in response to Washington's assassination of Soleimani. According to the Iraqi military, about 22 missiles struck the country, with 17 of them hitting the US Ain Al Asad air base and five attacked the Iraqi city of Erbil, targeting the US-led coalition headquarters. According to Iranian media reports, 80 US servicemen were killed and around 200 others were injured, while the United States reported no casualties at all.
The news continued to come from the region, when on the same day as Iran's strikes on the US bases in Iraq, Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane crashed near Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport minutes after takeoff. All 176 people on board were killed, among them Iranians, Ukrainians, Afghans, Canadians, Germans, Swedes and Britons.
