Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Iran’s foreign minister heckled and called a liar in parliament

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Display of anger likely to encourage US to believe sanctions are creating tensions

Hardline Iranian MPs heckled the country’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, and denounced him as a liar in parliament on Sunday, in a display of division and anger that is likely to encourage Washington to believe that its tough sanctions policy is creating deep tensions.

Zarif was speaking to the newly elected and conservative-dominated parliament for the first time and had to wait for the speaker to restore order as he was accused of selling the country out by negotiating with the US administration over the nuclear deal in 2015. The row, which lasted several minutes, shows how conservatives will use the failure of the nuclear deal to boost the Iranian economy to isolate any reformist candidate in next year’s presidential election.

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Fire breaks out at power station in Iran

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Fire follows several other incidents at facilities across the country, including some at sensitive sites

A fire broke out at a power station in south-western Iran on Saturday, Iranian media reported, the latest in a string of fires and explosions, some of which have hit sensitive sites.

The blaze, which affected a transformer in the power station in the city of Ahvaz, was put out by firefighters and electricity was restored after partial outages, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, a spokesman for state-run power company Tavanir, told the semi-official news agency Tasnim.

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Heatwaves have become longer in most of the world since 1950s – study

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Frequency of heatwaves and cumulative intensity has risen through the decades, research finds

Heatwaves have increased in both length and frequency in nearly every part of the world since the 1950s, according to what is described as the first study to look at the issue at a regional level.

The study found the escalation in heatwaves varied around the planet, with the Amazon, north-eastern Brazil, west Asia (including parts of the subcontinent and central Asia) and the Mediterranean all experiencing more rapid change than, for example, southern Australia and north Asia. The only inhabited region where there was not a trend was in the central United States.

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Twenty Saudi officials go on trial in absentia over Khashoggi killing

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Fiancee of late journalist hopes Istanbul trial will reveal circumstances of death and location of remains

Twenty Saudi officials are on trial in absentia in Turkey accused of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, almost two years after his disappearance in Istanbul shocked the world and irreparably tarnished the image of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman as a liberal reformer.

Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and the UN special rapporteur Agnès Callamard waited for the judges to arrive in a courtroom at the imposing courthouse complex in Istanbul’s Çağlayan neighbourhood before the trial began on Friday. Both women are hoping it will shed more light on the grim circumstances of the journalist’s death and reveal what happened to his remains.

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Khashoggi fiancee calls for justice as 20 Saudi officials go on trial in Turkey

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Hatice Cengiz hopes trial in absentia will reveal circumstances of journalist’s death and location of remains

The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi has told a Turkish court that all avenues for justice must be explored as 20 Saudi officials went on trial in absentia over the journalist’s gruesome killing and dismemberment in Istanbul in 2018.

Taking the witness stand on Friday morning at Istanbul’s Çağlayan courthouse complex, Hatice Cengiz had to pause several times to stop her voice from breaking. The absence of the 20 defendants, as well as Khashoggi’s still missing remains, weighed heavily over the proceedings.

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Refugee victims of Tajoura bombing still lie in unmarked graves one year on

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Coronavirus thwarts plan by survivors to light candles for dozens of detainees who died in airstrike on detention centre during Tripoli fighting

One year on from the migrant detention centre bombing in Tajoura, eastern Tripoli, dozens of refugees and migrants who died have never been formally identified.

At least 53 people were killed and 130 injured on the night of 2 July 2019, according to the UN, after an airstrike by a foreign aircraft supporting eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces hit a hall where migrants and refugees were locked up.

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Coronavirus live news: Sweden’s cases pass 70,000; Tokyo confirms highest new case tally in two months

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Sweden records 947 new cases in a day; Russia cases pass 660,000; Indonesia reports record daily infections rise; Middle East at ‘critical threshold’ says WHO

US president Donald Trump celebrated a government report showing the country gained 4.8m jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 11.1% last month, when states began allowing businesses to reopen from strict shutdowns aimed at containing the coronavirus pandemic.

“Today’s announcement proves that our economy is roaring back,” Trump said, rattling off different sectors that saw job gains according to the monthly report.

Oman’s health minister said the sultanate has witnessed a “scary” surge in Covid-19 cases that required boosting hospital capacity, especially for intensive care units.

The country reported another 1,361 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday and three deaths in the last 24 hours, to take its total count to 42,555 cases with 188 deaths.

In the last six weeks there has been a radical change which is very disturbing and scary.

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Jordan bans smoking and vaping in indoor public spaces

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Decision follows recent revelation country has highest rates of tobacco use in the world

The Jordanian government has banned smoking and vaping in all indoor public spaces a week after a Guardian investigation revealed tobacco use in the country had become the highest in the world.

The country’s health ministry said on Wednesday all enclosed public areas would now be “100% smoke-free environments”, building on an existing but widely flouted ban on smoking inside government buildings, and ending an exemption for hotels, cafes and restaurants provided they separated smokers from non-smokers.

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‘Annexation will suffocate us’: Jericho’s Palestinians fear being cut off

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Residents await Israel’s next move, concerned they could be isolated from the rest of the West Bank

The future of Palestinians in the city of Jericho is suspended in uncertainty and fear as they wait for Israel to decide when and how it will annex vast swathes of the land that surrounding them, a step outlined in a US peace initiative which could leave residents isolated from other parts of the West Bank.

“Annexation will suffocate us,” said Aisha Subeh, selling grape leaves on a street in Jericho.

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Boris Johnson warns against annexation in Israeli newspaper article

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International pressure on Israel escalates as Netanyahu misses self-imposed target date

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has missed his self-imposed target date for annexation of occupied Palestinian territories, as France warned of “consequences” and Boris Johnson made an appeal to Israel to reconsider the move in an article in the Hebrew media.

Johnson, who described himself in the opinion piece as a “passionate defender of Israel”, said any annexation would be a “violation of international law”, adding the UK would not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders in the West Bank that were not agreed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

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‘Decolonise and rename’ streets of Uganda and Sudan, activists urge

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Campaigners target statues of slave owners and roads named after imperial armies as protests spread to Africa

Campaigners have asked Uganda’s parliament to order the removal of monuments to British colonialists and to rename streets commemorating imperial military forces.

Uganda gained independence in 1962 after almost 70 years as a British protectorate, and more than 5,000 people have signed a petition to “decolonise and rename” the dozens of statues and street names which remain.

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US urges allies to maintain UN embargo on arms sales to Iran

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Mike Pompeo opposes lifting embargo, which is due to end in October, citing risk to stability

A US attempt to destroy the Iran nuclear deal, reimpose sanctions and extend a UN embargo on arms sales to Iran risks a “generational setback for the cause of multilateralism and international law”, Iran’s foreign minister has told the UN security council.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN also said the latest US moves to isolate Tehran was like “putting its knee to the neck of the Iranian people”. Vassily Nebenzia described the policy as “a maximum suffocation policy” and said the US’s goal was to make Iran the scapegoat for an uncontrollable escalation in the Middle East.

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Netanyahu hints at delay to plans to annex the West Bank

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Israeli PM’s suggestion that deadline may be missed follows Benny Gantz saying Covid-19 is more urgent than annexation

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is struggling to push through his West Bank annexation plans, slated to start as soon as Wednesday, facing opposition from Palestinians, the international community and even his own government.

Netanyahu had pledged to begin the process of annexing Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley from 1 July, as part of a peace plan devised by Donald Trump’s US administration. But he hinted at a delay on Tuesday, saying annexation talks would continue “in the coming days” with US officials.

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Iranian authorities move to block release of female rights activists

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New charges brought to circumvent Covid-19 prison release scheme, say human rights groups

Female human rights activists imprisoned in Iran are facing a slew of new charges to prevent them from being temporarily released because of the Covid-19 epidemic, rights groups say.

Since Covid-19 spread rapidly through the country in early March, Iranian authorities have been under pressure to release all prisoners who pose no risk to society. Around 85,000 prisoners were temporarily released under a furlough scheme earlier this year in response to the coronavirus outbreak, half of whom were believed to be political detainees.

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Covid-19 intensifies elder abuse globally as hospitals prioritise young

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Older patients turned away or left untreated, while domestic abuse is also rising, leading charity reports

When Souzi Bondeko’s grandfather started showing symptoms of Covid-19 and was struggling to breathe, she took him to a hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where he was put on a ventilator.

She dashed home to get some food and returned to be told by a member of staff that he had been taken off the machine as it it was needed elsewhere.

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Netanyahu’s annexation plan in disarray as Gantz calls for delay

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Alternate PM says planned 1 July date not ‘sacred’ and Israel should deal with Covid-19 crisis first

Plans by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to begin annexing parts of the occupied Palestinian territories from as early as Wednesday appeared in disarray as the country’s alternate prime minister, Benny Gantz, suggested annexation would have to wait while the country dealt with its coronavirus crisis.

Gantz told a White House envoy, Avi Berkowitz – who is in Israel for talks on the issue – that a 1 July deadline was neither “sacred” nor urgent in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. Israeli media widely suggested that the timing could slip beyond Wednesday.

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Talks may lead to end of blockade of Libyan oilfields

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Oil money could be split between banks in different regions, opening way for ceasefire

Forces loyal to the Libyan warlord Gen Khalifa Haftar may be willing to end their blockade of the country’s oilfields, opening the way for a ceasefire, as a result of talks between the UN, US, France and Egypt.

Under a deal under discussion for the past two weeks, the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) – one of the few institutions that has avoided a split between the country’s east and west – would restart production and exports, but the oil revenue would not be sent immediately to the Tripoli-based Central Bank of Libya, which Haftar’s eastern faction has accused of failing to hand over its fair share.

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Iran issues arrest warrant for Donald Trump over Qassem Suleimani killing

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The leader of the Quds Force was killed in a drone strike in Iraq on 3 January

Iran has issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump and 35 others over the killing of top general Qassem Suleimani and has asked Interpol for help, Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr said on Monday.

The US killed Suleimani with a drone strike in Iraq on 3 January, accusing him of masterminding attacks by Iranian-aligned militias on US forces across the middle east. The move caused unease in Europe, but the US claims that Suleimani’s death has weakened Iran’s grip on Iraq.

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Everyone loses from Netanyahu’s territorial ambitions

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The land grab in the West Bank will damage the region, the international community and Israel itself

It was always about land. Arabs possessed it, Jews claimed it. Both believed they were in the right. Since the 1930s, when the flight from fascism in Europe trebled the Jewish population of Palestine to 33%, this elemental, foundational struggle has intensified inexorably – with Israelis gaining ground time after time. Now Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister and co-leader of a powerful 74% Jewish majority state, wants to finish the job.

Netanyahu’s plan is to annex large parts of the West Bank and the Jordan valley, but his starting date of 1 July may slip amid disagreements with the US and internally over its scope and pace. Last week, Jordan’s King Abdullah described annexation as “unacceptable” and threatened to slash diplomatic ties. Hamas militants in Gaza called the plan a “declaration of war”.

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