Israel Accuses Turkey of Selling Electronic Equipment to Iran

Moshe Kahlon the Finance Minister of Israel via AAWSAT AR.
Moshe Kahlon the Finance Minister of Israel via AAWSAT AR.
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Israel Accuses Turkey of Selling Electronic Equipment to Iran

Moshe Kahlon the Finance Minister of Israel via AAWSAT AR.
Moshe Kahlon the Finance Minister of Israel via AAWSAT AR.

Political circles in Israel leaked a confidential intelligence report accusing Turkey of selling electronic equipment to Iran, by the time efforts are being made behind the scenes to identify the diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel and to prevent its expansion.

The report is a letter sent by Israeli government to the United Nations, lately, requesting an investigation into "the arrival of sophisticated electronic products in Iran, contrary to UN Security Council resolutions that imposed restrictions on Iranian armament."

The letter said that suspicions revolve around Turkey for allegedly selling electronic equipment to Iran that appears on the list of banned materials for export to the Iran under UN Security Council Resolution 2231 of 2015, prohibiting transfer to Iran of nuclear-related products and technologies.

The UN also contacted Israel seeking it open its own inquiry into the matter after it discovered the equipment sold by Turkey to Iran was manufactured by a Jerusalem-based Israeli company, considered a major manufacturer of electronic capacitors.

The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) led to the investigation being opened after it intercepted a shipment of electronics sent by Turkey to Iran in July, 2017, according to sources.
The UAE's security apparatus noticed the shipment contained the aforementioned capacitors.

In the written missive sent to Israel, the UN's Secretariat noted that the electronic items were made by an Israeli company called Celem Power Capacitors, headquartered in Jerusalem.

The contraband shipment contained CSP 180/300 model capacitors manufactured by the Israeli company.

"We'll be grateful if your government can provide pertinent information on the matter forthwith," the Secretariat's letter said.

The company further maintained that it had no notion of the capacitors being sent on to Iran.

"We will cooperate with any inquiry," Celem's statement said. "We'll prove we sold them to an orderly Turkish company. We don't do business with enemy states."

"While most of our sales are to Europe and the US, Turkey is not an enemy state and there's no reason not to trade with it. In any event, if the shipment did find its way to Iran, the Turkish buyer misled us," the statement concluded.



Pope Hopes to Visit Türkiye in 2025 to Mark 1,700 Years since the Council of Nicaea

Pope Francis asperges the coffing with the body of late Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot during his funeral in St. Peter’s Basilica at The Vatican Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Francis asperges the coffing with the body of late Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot during his funeral in St. Peter’s Basilica at The Vatican Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
TT

Pope Hopes to Visit Türkiye in 2025 to Mark 1,700 Years since the Council of Nicaea

Pope Francis asperges the coffing with the body of late Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot during his funeral in St. Peter’s Basilica at The Vatican Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Francis asperges the coffing with the body of late Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot during his funeral in St. Peter’s Basilica at The Vatican Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Francis said on Thursday that he hopes to travel to Türkiye next year to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council.

The visit to Nicaea, today located in İznik on a lake southeast of Istanbul, would come during Francis’ big Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Christianity, according to The AP.

Francis is likely to use the occasion — the anniversary of a council before the Great Schism of 1054, which divided the church between East and West — to once again reach out to Orthodox Christians. Nicaea is one of seven ecumenical councils that are recognized by the Eastern Orthodox.

The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew I, said in September that he expects Francis would visit to commemorate the anniversary in May 2025.

Under Emperor Constantine I, the 325 Council of Nicaea gathered some 300 bishops, according to the Catholic Almanac. Among the outcomes was the Nicaean Creed, a statement of faith that is still recited by Christians today.

Francis announced his hope to visit Nicaea during an audience Thursday with the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. He told the theologians that the Council of Nicaea was a “milestone in the history of the church but also of humanity as a whole.”

Francis made his first visit to Türkiye in 2014 and met with Bartholomew there, as well as earlier that year in Jerusalem and on several occasions at the Vatican since.