🇮🇷 Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has been appointed Vice President for strategic affairs by decree of newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iranian news agency Tasnim reported.

The 64-year-old politician served as foreign minister from 2013-2021.

Pezeshkian won the second round of the snap presidential election in Iran in early July, gaining 16,384,403 votes. His rival, former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili got 13,538,179 votes. Overall, 30,573,931 ballots were counted. Voter turnout was 49.8%.

The election was called after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash in Iran's mountainous north in May.

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◾️Putin gives a personal welcome to the Russians who were released as part of a historic prisoner swap

◾️Americans released from Russian custody also received a high-profile welcome at home

◾️ Iranian ex-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gets a post on newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian’s team

◾️‘Has not helped’: Biden comments on the implications of Hamas chief Haniyeh’s death for Gaza ceasefire talks

◾️How many warships has the US Navy dispatched to the Middle East amid rising tensions in the region?

◾️Is WhatsApp a tool for the IDF to track Hamas members?

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🎥 WATCH: Russian troops prepare for electronic launches under nuclear non-strategic drills

Soldiers from the southern and central military districts have been training to equip missiles with special training ammunition and occupied positional areas for electronic launches during the third stage of non-strategic nuclear forces drills, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.

"During the ongoing third stage of the non-strategic nuclear forces drills the personnel of the missile formations of the southern and central military districts trained equipping launch vehicles with special training ammunition and occupied designated positional areas for electronic launches," the statement said.

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Scott Ritter: Some swapped prisoners were likely ‘on CIA payroll’

All implications are that some of the people involved in the recent prisoner swap between Moscow and several Western countries were CIA espionage assets, Scott Ritter has told Sputnik.

The exchange that occurred on August 1 appears to have been “a deal hashed out between the Russian secret services and the American CIA,” noted the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-UN weapons inspector.

Commenting on what is being called the biggest such swap since the Cold War, Ritter pointed out that among the 16 prisoners released by Russia was Evan Gershkovich, “caught red-handed receiving Russian secrets.” The Walls Street Journal reporter was subsequently charged with espionage, found guilty at trial, and meted out a lengthy sentence.

US Marine veteran Paul Whelan was likewise charged with espionage, while self-described Russian political figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, as it turns out, had a US green card.

“This implies there was a special relationship between him [Kara-Murza] and the US government that maybe the US government doesn't want to talk about in public,” Ritter said. Kara-Murza “appears to have been on the CIA payroll as well,” he noted.

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The Turkish Foreign Ministry has in a press release named Khaled Mashal as “the acting head of the Hamas politburo” following Ismail Haniyeh's assassination.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met with Mashal in Doha.

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Scott Ritter: Prisoner swap may be ‘the best that US-Russia relations will be for some time now’

Among the eight people released by the US in Thursday’s prisoner swap was Vadim Krasikov, the former Russian intelligence officer was arrested in Germany in 2019 and accused by Berlin of terminating Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Khangoshvili on German soil.

In an interview with Sputnik, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter underscored that Krasikov was meted out a life-sentence in German prison for wiping out “somebody who had butchered, murdered Russian prisoners of war during the Chechen conflict and, accordingly, was hunted down and killed in Berlin”.

According to Ritter, the prisoner exchange taking place in the twilight of Joe Biden’s presidency “may be the best that US-Russian relations are gonna be for some time now.”

“I don't think US-Russia relations are going to be in a position where such a prisoner swap could have occurred in the next year, maybe the next two years. So it needed to happen now, and that's why it did. The largest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War. Who knows what the future will hold... Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend of good relations, but probably not,” Ritter concluded.

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Family of former US embassy employee jailed in Russia disappointed by his absence from prisoner swap list

Malfina Fogel, the mother of ex-US embassy employee in Moscow Marc Fogel — jailed in Russia for drug smuggling — told the New York Post that the US government did not "try hard enough" to include her son on the exchange list.

According to her, President Joe Biden’s administration was not interested "because he is a common American citizen.”

Fogel was sentenced to 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony in 2022 after being convicted of smuggling and possession of narcotics.

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EU ‘stands little chance’ of turning Central Asian nations against Russia – political analyst

It is very unlikely that the EU, acting as an “agent of NATO,” will succeed in turning Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan against Russia, Dr. Marco Marsili, a researcher at Cà Foscari University of Venice, told Sputnik.

The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell is visiting the two Central Asian nations from August 1 to 3 as part of an effort to drive a wedge between them and Russia, Marsili stressed.

In Kazakhstan, Borrell “aims to weaken the ties between Astana and Moscow which are deeply rooted, spanning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the common membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization,” said Marsili.

“In my opinion, the relationship between the two countries is too strong to be severed, and it is very unlikely that the Kazakh leadership will shift from the alliance with Russia to an alliance with Western powers,” he added.

Borrell’s trip to Kyrgyzstan is “an attempt to re-attract the country into the Western sphere of influence” after President Sadyr Japarov enacted a law tightening state control over foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs), said Marsili.

“It’s quite impossible that the executive of Bishkek will switch alliances,” he argued, highlighting that Kyrgyzstan “resulted in a significant failure for Western powers, as the country was heavily funded by the USAID program, the EU External Action and other European nations like Switzerland, in an attempt to install a Western-mirrored state in Central Asia.”

Brussels’ efforts to target countries that “play a pivotal role in the Russian neighboring policy” are unlikely to gain traction, Marsili reiterated.

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