Kyoumars Heydari, the commander of the ground forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, claimed its country has designed an advanced long-range suicide drone "specifically for attacking Haifa and Tel Aviv", two important cities in Israel.

“We have specially designed this drone for Haifa and Tel Aviv. This is a unique drone that was developed for this task,” state media quoted Koumars Heydari.

Iran “will unveil this drone’s capabilities in future exercises,” he said.

Israel has usually called out Iran's drone program, and calls it a threat to the region's security. Recently Iran concluded a deal with Russia to provide Moscow with Iranian-made drones.

Iran does not recognize Israel and Iranian military commanders have repeatedly threatened to attack the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Iran and US came close to revive the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump administration left in 2018, the talks were backed by most parties except Israel that openly worked to undermine a potential deal between the two.

The 2015 deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Israel believes the deal is too generous to Tehran and is opposed to efforts by the US and the EU to restore it.

On Saturday, Britain, France and Germany – who are parties to deal alongside the US, Russia and China – said they had “serious doubts” about Iran’s intentions to revive the agreement.

Tehran said the statement by the three European countries was “unconstructive,” and Moscow’s envoy to the talks called it “untimely.”

Iran says that its nuclear program is directed to peaceful means, while the UN atomic watch dog has questioned the military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program, and was the main obstacle in reviving the deal.

In his first public speech since taking office last June, he added that the Mossad had thwarted dozens of Iranian attempts to target Israelis in the recent period, stressing that the Israeli response would be painful and inside Iran, if it touched Israelis.

He also indicated preventing 3 Iranian cells in Turkey from killing Israelis, and thwarting other attacks against businessmen and diplomats in Cyprus, Colombia and many other places.

"Once the agreement is signed, there will be no restrictions on Iranian terrorism," he said, referring to the "huge sums of money that will be given to Iran," according to the Jerusalem Post.

Barnea also said that Iran's leadership must understand that any direct or indirect attack against Israel or against Israeli citizens will be answered with "a painful retaliation" against those responsible, Axios reported.

Barnea explained that the investigations opened by the International Atomic Energy Agency at uranium enrichment sites cannot be closed despite Iran's demands, because this will only lead to a nuclear escalation.

"If Iran's proxies come for us, we will hit them directly," he added.

Israel accused Iranian agents of planning to target its citizens in Turkey last June, which Tehran denied.

At that time, the Turkish police arrested a cell comprising 5 Iranians, which had planned to kidnap and target Israelis in Istanbul.

Israel urged its citizens to exercise caution after credible threats of Iranian agents planning to kill or kidnap Israelis, especially after the escalation of tension with Tehran, after the latter accused Tel Aviv of carrying out assassinations and sabotage on its soil.

During the past months, Iran witnessed the killing of a number of Revolutionary Guards officers and nuclear workers. Fingers were pointed at Israel, and as usual,  Israel remained silent on the issue.

He explained that all data indicate that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium by is up to 60 percent, which it maintains in the form of uranium hexafluoride, the gas enriched in centrifuges, has grown by 12.5 kilograms to 55.6 kilograms since the last quarterly report issued on May 30.

In addition, the quarterly report confirmed what the United Nations agency has repeatedly stated in the past, that Tehran has not yet provided clear and honest answers to the origin of uranium particles found in three old nuclear sites that were not previously known.

The Director-General of the Agency, Rafael Grossi, also expressed his growing concern about Iran's handling of the requests of international inspectors on this file, explaining that no progress was made in this context, according to Reuters.

This report comes at a sensitive time, amid pessimism surrounding the talks to revive the nuclear agreement signed in 2015, after long rounds of consultations between Tehran and Western countries.

Iran's stipulation that the agency's investigations should be closed to return to the agreement ended the hopes that had surfaced weeks ago.

It prompted the European Coordinator, Joseph Borrell, to express his disappointment two days ago, noting that the Iranian response to the European text he presented to the negotiators was not constructive or encouraging and set things back.

It is noteworthy that the European Union submitted on August 8, after long and complex rounds and negotiations that started last April (2021) in Vienna, and lasted 16 months, a final text to overcome the impasse to revive this agreement.

Borrell received the first Iranian response in mid-August 2022, followed by the American reaction to Iranian observations and demands. Finally, Tehran's response came and dashed the hopes of reviving the nuclear agreement.

To watch a video version of this story on YouTube click here.

To be sure, albeit fragile, Turkey has smoothed feathers with the Gulf states ruffled when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan effectively abandoned the policy by supporting the 2011 Arab popular revolts and the Muslim Brotherhood, coming to Qatar's aid during the 3.5-year-long UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state, and taking Saudi Arabia to task for the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.

Most recently, Turkey re-established diplomatic relations with Israel after more than a decade of tensions that erupted in 2010 when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a Turkish aid vessel, the Mavi Marmara, attempting to break the Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza.

Yet, with fears mounting of an escalation of the violence on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the unresolved Palestinian issue constitutes a ticking time bomb in relations between Israel and Turkey. Turkey has insisted that restoring ties with Israel does not mean it has abandoned its support for the Palestinians.

Turkey's problem is that it has improved relations with regional powers, none of which border Turkey.

By contrast, relations with four of its eight neighbors with which it shares land borders – Iraq, Syria, the Kurds, and Greece – are on a downward spiral, with the specter of armed conflict hanging in the air.

At the same time, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has turned the Black Sea into a war zone.

Similarly, a potential Turkish offensive in northern Syria would create another war zone in which Turkey risks fighting Kurdish rebels, Syrian troops, and Iranian-backed militias.

So far, Turkey has insisted on its right to intervene militarily yet again in northern Syria but has held off launching a new offensive because of Russian and Iranian opposition.

Instead, Turkey is exploring under Russian auspices a modus vivendi with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose political demise Erdogan has demanded since the beginning of the Syrian civil war 11 years ago.

However, reconciliation on terms acceptable to Erdogan may amount to pulling a rabbit out of a hat, given the wide gap in Turkish and Syrian approaches towards control of Kurdish and other rebel groups in northern Syria.

Add to Turkey’s strained relations with its neighbors a so far carefully managed dispute between Turkey and NATO over Swedish and Finnish membership of the trans-Atlantic alliance that threatens already troubled relations with the United States.

Turkey is demanding the extradition by the Nordic states of scores of ethnic Kurds and alleged followers of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen in exchange for ratification of Swedish and Finnish membership by the Turkish parliament. Turkey holds Gulen responsible for a failed 2016 military coup.

Rather than easing tension, Erdogan and his associates have been fueling the fires.

In the latest forthright statement, Erdogan's interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, sounded like he was echoing Iran, that for decades has sought to force a withdrawal of the United States from the Middle East.

Soylu charged that Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP), whose leader is behind bars on terrorism charges, along with the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) that has been waging a four decades-long low intensity war in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of the country, are creatures of the United States.

This week, the PKK and the Turkish defense ministry differed on the reason for the loss of a Turkish Sikorsky helicopter in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Turkish military has been targeting Kurdish rebel bases. The Turkish operations have strained relations with the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

The PKK claimed it had downed the helicopter in retaliation for the killing by Turkey of one of its commanders, while Turkey asserted that it had crashed “due to technical issues.”

To complicate things, Turkey, Iran, and Israel are fighting a low-level covert war in northern Iraq over the backs of Iraqi Kurds.

“We do not need the United States. We do not need a Europe that wants us divided and is indifferent to our religion, culture, and beliefs…. As we dismantle the terrorist organization, you should know that we also want to wipe out the USA from here,” Soylu said, referring to the PKK and its offshoots in Syria as well as the US military presence in the war-torn country.

It was unclear whether Soylu was referring to the European Union as a whole or just Sweden and Finland which, according to Turkey, are stalling on agreements made on the eve of NATO’s acceptance of the Nordic states’ membership application.

In a similar vein, Erdogan last week lashed out at fellow NATO member Greece after Turkey accused Greece of harassing Turkish jets on a reconnaissance mission with a Russian-made S-300 air defense system.

“Hey Greece, take a look at history. If you go further, you will pay a heavy price,” Erdogan said, apparently referring to the ethnic cleansing in 1923 when Greeks were forced to leave Turkey and Turks were expelled from Greece in what is euphemistically described as a “population exchange.”

Those in Turkey willing to risk the wrath of an increasingly autocratic Erdogan joke that, if he had been president during World War Two, Turkey would be fighting the Germans, British, and Russians all at the same time.

Iran needs stronger guarantees from Washington for the revival of a 2015 nuclear deal, its foreign minister said in Moscow on Wednesday, adding that the U.N. atomic watchdog should drop its "politically motivated probes" of Tehran's nuclear work.

Earlier in the day, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, said that if the International Atomic Energy Agency did not close the investigation into Tehran's undeclared activities, "there will be no implementation of the agreement."

And the website "Iran International" quoted Eslami as saying that Iran "does not possess undeclared nuclear sites... The IAEA's questions must be closed before all parties return to the JCPOA, otherwise there will be no day of re-implementation."

Islami considered that the IAEA's questions "come in continuation of those alleged military readings", expressing his rejection of the documents submitted against Iran about three sites. "Iran does not have an undeclared nuclear site in principle," he said.

He continued, "Negotiation is a give and take, not a construction article decision, where you can say nice things."

"The nuclear deal to happen the global nuclear watchdog must put an end to its probing of Iran nuclear sites, "Raisi asserted at a news conference in Tehran on Monday, marking a year as president.

Yesterday, the Iranian Tasnim Agency quoted a spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization as saying that Tehran would not accept the "excessive" demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations.

"We consider the demands of the IAEA to be excessive because their implementation is impossible because of the sanctions. If they lift the sanctions, Iran will respond in kind," Tasnim news agency quoted Behrouz Kamalvandi as saying.

After months of indirect talks, Tehran and Washington are struggling to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. The main sticking point is Tehran's insistence that the Atomic Energy Agency close its investigations into uranium traces found at three undisclosed sites before the nuclear deal was revived.

On Monday, Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi announced that reviving the agreement on his country's nuclear program is linked to the International Atomic Energy Agency's closing of the file of Iranian sites suspected of witnessing unauthorized activities, with the negotiations between Tehran and major powers reaching critical stages.

The issue of previously finding traces of nuclear materials at three sites, which Tehran did not claim to have witnessed such activities, raises tension between Iran on the one hand, and Western powers and the United Nations agency. The amount of Uranium traces found at the sites prompted the head of the IAEA to warn that “only countries making bombs” are exhibiting this level of activity.    

While Iran considers this file "political", Western countries, particularly the United States, are calling on it to cooperate with the agency to put an end to these suspicions.

Raisi's comments came while Tehran is studying the US response to Iran's proposals in response to a "final" draft presented by the European Union with the aim of completing indirect talks between the two parties that began last year with the aim of reviving the 2015 agreement, from which Washington withdrew in 2018.

If the US and Iran do not reach an agreement, Iran could become a nuclear state within days, experts warn.

The deal could also supply over 1 million daily barrels to the global market, offsetting high energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine. The European countries are pushing Washington to reach a deal soon, otherwise the US allies at the forefront of the Russian war in Ukraine could face disaster in the coming months.

 Yet it is Perincek, a man with a world of contacts in Russia, China, Iran, and Syria whose conspiratorial worldview identifies the United States as the core of all evil, that Erdogan at times turns to help resolve delicate geopolitical issues.

Seven years ago, Perincek mediated a reconciliation between Russia and Turkey after relations soured following the Turkish air force’s downing of a Russian fighter.

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Now, Perincek is headed for Damascus to engineer a Russian-backed rapprochement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose overthrow Erdogan had encouraged for the past 11 years since the eruption of mass Arab Spring-era anti-government demonstrations that morphed into a bloody civil war.

Chances are that Perincek’s effort will be more successful than when he last tried in 2016 to patch up differences between Erdogan and Al-Assad but ultimately stumbled over the Turkish leader’s refusal to drop his insistence that the Syrian president must go.

Erdogan has suggested as much in recent days, insisting that Turkey needed to maintain a dialogue with the government of Al-Assad.
“We don’t have such an issue whether to defeat Assad or not… You have to accept that you cannot cut the political dialogue and diplomacy between the states. There should always be such dialogues,” Erdogan said.

He went on to say that “we do not eye Syrian territory… The integrity of their territory is important to us. The regime must be aware of this.” Erdogan’s willingness to bury the war hatchet follows his failure to garner Russian and Iranian acquiescence in a renewed Turkish military operation in northern Syria. The operation was intended to ensure that US-backed Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey views as terrorists, do not create a self-ruling Kurdish region on Turkey’s border like the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.

Turkey hoped the operation would allow it to create a 30-kilometer buffer zone controlled by its forces and its Syrian proxies on the border of the two countries.

Russia and Iran’s refusal to back the scheme, which would have undermined the authority of their ally, Al-Assad, has forced Turkey to limit its operation to shelling Kurdish and Syrian military positions.

The United States seeming unwillingness to offer the Kurds anything more than verbal support, and only that sparsely, has driven the Kurds closer to Damascus and, by extension, Russia and Iran as Syria quietly expand its military presence in the region. The US has long relied on the Kurds to counter the Islamic State in northern Syria.

The rejiggering of relationships and alliances in Syria occurs on the diplomatic and military battlefield.

The Turkish attacks and responses by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) at its core appear to be as much a military as a political drawing of battle lines in anticipation of changing Turkish and Kurdish relations with the Al-Assad government.

By targeting Syrian military forces, Turkey is signalling that it will not stand idly by if Syria supports the Kurds or provides them cover, while unprecedented Kurdish targeting of Turkish forces suggests that the Kurds have adopted new rules of engagement. Turkey is further messaging that it retains the right to target Kurdish forces at will, much like it does in northern Iraq.

Both Erdogan and the Kurds are placing risky bets

The Kurds hope against all odds that Al-Assad will repay the favor of allowing the president to advance his goal of gaining control of parts of Syria held by rebel forces and forcing a withdrawal of US forces from the area by granting the Kurds a measure of autonomy.

With elections in Turkey next year, Erdogan hopes that Al-Assad will help him cater to nationalist anti-Kurdish and anti-migrant sentiment by taking control of Kurdish areas.

Turkey wants to start repatriating some of the four million predominantly Syrian refugees it hosts. In early August, Turkey’s interior ministry announced that it had completed the construction of more than 60,000 homes for returning refugees to northeastern Syria.

Concern about a potential deal with Al-Assad and a call by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusloglu for reconciliation between opposition groups and Damascus sparked anti-Turkish protests in Turkish-controlled areas of northern Syria as well as rebel-held Idlib.

Turkey also expects Al-Assad, keen to regain territorial control and maintain centralized power, to ultimately crack down on armed Kurdish groups and efforts to sustain autonomously governed Kurdish areas.

As a result, Perincek, alongside Turkish-Syrian intelligence contacts, has his work cut out for him. The gap between Turkish and Syrian aspirations is wide.

Al-Assad wants a complete withdrawal of Turkish forces and the return of Syrian control of Kurdish and rebel-held areas. He is unlikely willing or able to provide the kind of security guarantees that Turkey would demand.

Both the Kurds and Erdogan are caught in Catch-22s of their own that do not bode well for either. The Kurds may be left with no options if a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement succeeds or face a Turkish onslaught if it fails. Similarly, reconciliation on terms acceptable to Erdogan may amount to pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Whether he agrees with Al-Assad or violence in northern Syria escalates, Erdogan risks sparking a new wave of refugees making its way to Turkey at a time that he can economically and politically least afford it.

In the words of analyst Kamal Alam, Erdogan’s problem is that the Turkish president “is running out of time before the next election to solve Syria's Gordian knot. For his part, Assad can wait this out – because after Turkey again fails to bomb its way out of the northeastern problem, Erdogan will need Assad far more than the reverse.”

Today, Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a press conference that the current text of the nuclear agreement is bad and cannot be accepted. He added the deal would not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bomb. 

He also asked, "How can an agreement be signed with the Iranians that gives them a hundred billion dollars annually as a reward for violating all their obligations?"

He also noted that the current text does not fit the criteria set by US President Joe Biden himself and pledged to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state.

He pointed out that "the Israeli government is conducting an open dialogue with the US administration on all disputed issues, especially since Washington was and still is the closest ally," as he put it.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz confirmed yesterday, Tuesday, that his country will do everything in its power to influence the nuclear agreement, warning the Biden administration that this agreement will allow the transfer of 250 billion dollars to the militias.

Over the past few days, Israel has intensified its meetings with US officials, with the nuclear negotiations approaching a final stage, and it has reiterated its position on refusing to agree with Tehran.

It is noteworthy that the nuclear agreement reached its final stages, after marathon rounds of talks that started last April in Vienna.  A final draft was submitted to Washington and Tehran by the Europeans, early this month.

Currently, the remaining parties to the agreement that Washington withdrew from in 2015, (France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia), are waiting for the American response, in order to conclude long months of talks, and announce a new nuclear agreement or perhaps another round of negotiations.

So far Israel has been the only state that is opposed to the nuclear agreement. Many Gulf states embrace the deal. Kuwait and United Arab Emirates are in the process of reopening their embassies in Tehran.

Despite health problems, 1,517 sick inmates remain in prison due to medical reports that state their conditions to be fit to serve in prison. In the first eight months of this year, 43 political inmates have passed away in Turkish prisons due to various diseases.

Cases of human rights violations in Turkey in March included 148 deaths and 281 incidents of torture or maltreatment, with 51 of them taking place in prisons, where five inmates also died, according to the monthly Rights Violations Report prepared by human rights defender and opposition deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Turkish media reported.

“Turkey’s prisons continue to be centres of ill-treatment and torture. According to the statement made by the Turkish Human Rights Association (İHD) on 29 April 2022, as of April 2022, there are 1517 ill prisoners, 651 of whom are seriously ill,” People’s Democratic Party official website reported.

After the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, the Turkish government has imprisoned thousands of activists, journalists, and politicians on various charges.

Sheikh Hussein Hama Salih, the representative of the Sulaimani-based Summit Foundation, dedicated to migrant and refugee affairs Agency for Refugee Affairs in Greece, told Kurdsat News that "there is no new information about the fate of the migrants whose yacht sank in the Aegean Sea."

"No one from the Kurdistan region has contacted them to say that they are relatives of the migrants," a Summit Foundation representative in Greece noted.

"He said the search for the migrants has been suspended because the Greek government would usually stop the search after 48 to 72 hours of an incident," Hama Salih explained. 

He said, "the exact number of missing migrants is unknown and the search requires special divers because the depth of the water at the scene is unknown."

Asked whether any Kurdish citizens were among the missing, the foundation's representative said that there is no information, but no one from the Kurdistan Region has contacted to say that the relatives of the migrants, but among the 29 migrants rescued, there are no Kurds or Iraqis. 

Ari Jalal, director of Summit Foundation, said that "they had contacted relevant embassies and authorities regarding the identity of the missing migrants, and they are positive that there are no Kurd or Iraqi nationals among the missing."

A migrant yacht with over 80 passengers on board capsized near the Aegean Island of Karpathos on November 9. Twenty-nine migrants were rescued from drowning, and over 50 others are still missing.

The Mediterranean has become the main route to Europe, and almost all migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia pass through the Mediterranean to get to Europe. The war in Ukraine has made the other routes from Ukraine and Belarus risky for immigrants.

A US State Department spokesman said that the United States is exchanging its views on Iran's response with the European Union, Middle Eastern allies, and Israel after receiving Iran's comments on the nuclear deal proposal to save the 2015 agreement. 

The spokeswoman added that removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard from the terrorist list is outside the Vienna negotiations.

"At the moment, we are studying the 'final proposal' for the deal, and we are consulting with other JCPOA participants and the United States on the way forward," an EU spokeswoman told reporters Tuesday in Brussels.

She refused to give a time frame for any reaction from the European Union, coordinating the negotiations in Vienna.

After 16 months of intermittent and indirect talks between the United States and Iran, during which the European Union shuttled the two sides, a senior EU official said on August 8 that the bloc had made a "final" offer and expected a response within "a few weeks." 

Iran responded to the proposal late on Monday, but neither Tehran nor the European Union provided any details on the response's content. Although Iran's foreign ministry hinted at a possible breakthrough. 

The Iranian foreign minister called on the United States to show flexibility in resolving the three remaining issues, indicating that Tehran's response would not be final acceptance or rejection.

Washington has said it is ready to agree immediately to restore the one concluded in 2015 based on European Union proposals.

Diplomats and officials told Reuters news agency that whether Tehran and Washington accept the "final" offer from the European Union, it is unlikely that either will declare the agreement a failure because reviving it serves the interests of both parties.

There are significant risks, as failure in the nuclear negotiations risks the outbreak of a new regional war. Iran has warned of a "crushing" response to any Israeli attack if the nuclear deal fails.

Israel and Gulf states have proposed a new deal that curtails Iran's foreign activities in the Middle East and deprives it of its regional hegemony. 

In 2018, US President Donald Trump backed away from the nuclear deal he had concluded before he took office, calling it a loss, and re-imposed harsh US sanctions, prompting Iran to start violating restrictions on uranium enrichment.

The recent comments from EU officials regarding a possible agreement between the US and Iran led to decreased oil prices. The EU hopes to bring Iran closer to the West to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, which has caused significant economic prices on the continent. 

Iranian Foreign Ministry stated, "Only three issues remain between the US and Iran before reaching an agreement, and the US has accommodated two of them, and only guarantees remain.

These developments came as Russia's representative in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, on Sunday hinted at the possibility of reviving the nuclear agreement with Iran.

The Russian official pointed to the possibility of positive developments soon, noting that a consensus on the Iranian nuclear deal is scheduled to be reached early next week.

He also indicated that the European Union coordinators made several amendments to the text presented to Iran and the US, according to the Russian "TASS" agency.

Ulyanov stressed that the final agreement on restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program might be reached as early as next week in the event of positive events.

After a months-long stalemate, talks resumed last Thursday in the Austrian capital between Iran and the parties to the agreement (Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany).

The talks are being coordinated by the European Union, with the United States indirectly participating.

Iran and the powers affiliated with the agreement began talks to revive it in April 2021, which were suspended for the first time in June. However, after its resumption in November, it was suspended again in mid-March, with points of disagreement remaining between Washington and Tehran, despite significant progress towards achieving the understanding, to return and resume in August.

The European Union has stepped up its efforts to bring Iran and the US closer together to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement as Russia continues to punish the Union by reducing energy flow to the continent. The EU sees Iran as a possible energy alternative for Russia as the war in Ukraine prolongs.

He said, "Excavations in Turkish waters will continue, and we do not need anyone's permission," TRT reported.

He added that the ship would operate 55 kilometers off the Turkish coast in an area outside the waters that Cyprus also claims.

Erdogan also said that "many conspiracies were hatched against our energy exploration projects," stressing Ankara's intention to reduce energy dependence abroad.

He stressed that the new ship, which bears the name "Abdul Hamid Khan," symbolizes Turkey's unique vision in the energy field.

He also indicated that "in the field of energy search, we are present with four exploration ships and two geological survey ships," noting that "the exploration work in Turkish waters will continue, and we do not need anyone's permission."

He announced that "Abdul Hamid Khan's ship will head to the Urukler-1 well, 55 kilometers off the coast of Gazipasa, Antalya," adding that "Uroklar 1 well is the first step in our comprehensive business plan in the Eastern Mediterranean."

The mission of the new ship "Abdul Hamid Khan" may ignite Greece's dispute over gas rights again. 

"Athens is monitoring the situation carefully," Reuters reported. "We need to be vigilant ...We've always been doing what we have to do to have stability in our region and to defend international law and our sovereign rights fully," a Greek government spokesperson told Reuters. 

As NATO partners Turkey and Greece have long been at odds over gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean.

Athens accuses Ankara of illegally drilling for gas deposits off the Greek islands. The Turkish government rejects these accusations and considers gas exploration legal as it is disputed with Cyprus.

The War in Ukraine has once again encouraged Turkey to explore energy reserves in the Mediterranean. 

According to Bloomberg, residents in popular neighborhoods are now forced to agree to pay rents that are 40% higher for contractual periods of two years. Faced with rents they can no longer afford, some residents say they have had to move away even years after the tournament ended.

Many hotels have also been forced to evict long-term residents and make way for teams and officials, leaving residents with few options in a country where the expatriate population represents 88% of the total population amid low homeownership rates.

This helped transform the property market after more than seven years of sluggish demand when entire buildings remained vacant as new residential, commercial, and hospitality supplies flooded the market.

Rents in the first quarter rose 3.3%, buoyed by a recent surge in demand, according to data compiled by ValuStrat, while average prices on The Pearl - an artificial island popular with white-collar expats - rose 19%. Housing was also the second largest contributor to the June inflation rate of 5.4% in Qatar, where costs rose faster than in any other Gulf country.

FIFA alone has booked thousands of hotel rooms and ancillary buildings for players, staff, and other officials. Local organizers also struck deals with property owners to allocate about 60,000 apartments to the masses.

Most one-bedroom apartments in The Pearl are being offered for rent for more than $1,000 per night during the tournament. These apartments are currently rented for an average of 9,500 riyals ($2,580) per month, according to ValuStrat, up from 8,000 riyals in the fourth quarter.

A Qatari government official said the country's rental property market "satisfies a range of preferences and budgets, and that as the" demand for accommodation increases during the World Cup, landlords and tenants are required by law to observe the terms and conditions of their rental agreement.

For his part, the CEO of Commercial Bank of Qatar, Joseph Abraham, said last month, "The recent rises in rents are transient and relatively temporary due to the World Cup and its associated effects." After the World Cup, he said, "the pressure from rents on the inflation index will go down as supply is outnumbered again."

Despite the recent rise, the Qatar Central Bank's real estate price index is 30% lower than in 2015.