Iran reserves the right to avenge the US' killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani, with dozens of potential targets already on the list, a senior commander within the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says. "Vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran a long time ago, " General Gholamali Abuhamzeh, who leads the IRGC in Iran's southern Kerman Province, said on Friday evening, as quoted by Tasnim News Agency. 35 US targets in the region as well as Tel Aviv are within our reach. The commander did not name any specific targets but mentioned that US warships have been operating in the Strait of Hormuz, an important shipping route, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. Abuhamzeh made the comments after Soleimani, the leader of the IRGC's Quds Force – a special unit tasked with operations abroad – was killed in a US drone strike at a Baghdad airport. He died along with several high-ranking officials from the Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militias, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).
Chris Sweeney Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines. Follow him on Twitter @Writes_Sweeney Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines. Follow him on Twitter @Writes_Sweeney A small legal challenge has turned into a precedent-setting case about whether someone in today's Britain can be prioritised or denied housing on the basis of their religion. The law isn't always right and it's not just people who can be taken hostage. In a disgraceful decision deemed legitimate by the UK's highest court, a single mother with four children was refused social housing – because she wasn't a Jew. It's that simple. The charity Agudas Israel Housing Association (AIHA) owns 470 houses in the London borough of Hackney. Local authorities promised, in October 2017, the next available home to the woman and her kids, two of whom are autistic.
Read more AIHA refused to hand over the keys to any of its SIX four-bedroom, unoccupied flats. Their argument was it makes offers " only to members of the Orthodox Jewish community. " As Britain is a secular nation, the woman's legal team found this claim astonishing and argued it had the same sentiment as the 'No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish' signs that were once displayed in some pubs. Lord Sales stated the charity's use of positive discrimination was lawful, under the Equality Act 2010, in order to correct the disadvantage faced by the community. The issue apparently was not racism, but discrimination on the grounds of religious observance. The court considered the " widespread and increasing overt antisemitism in our society. " Intolerance or hate speech of any form is unacceptable. But it's hard to believe the courts and public reaction would have been the same, if this had been Islam or a group of Pashtuns from the Iranian border region. Jewish affairs are treated differently. There's a 'kid gloves' approach and they're deemed to be culturally valuable, while other communities are sometimes dismissed as interlopers.