Arab and Islamic governments issue statement denouncing comments made on Tucker Carlson podcast
Governments from across the Islamic world have condemned remarks by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, suggesting it would “be fine” for Israel to claim a broad swath of the Middle East.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian pastor and former Arkansas governor, has long been an outspoken supporter of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.
Continue reading...Proposal will be at heart of offer to US as Trump considers whether to attack Iran
Iran is refusing to export its 300kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but is willing to dilute the purity of the stockpile it holds under the supervision of UN nuclear inspectorate the IAEA, Iranian sources have said.
The proposal will be at the heart of the offer Iran is due to make to the US in the next few days, as the US president, Donald Trump, weighs whether to use his vast naval buildup in the Middle East to attack the country.
Continue reading...Parts of Maga view Israel with suspicion, but US ambassador continues to believe in its divine right to much of the Middle East
Parts of the Maga right may be souring on Israel – but a hardline form of Christian Zionism seems to remain unofficial Trump administration policy, if a heated debate between Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, is any indication.
On Friday, Carlson released a confrontational video interview with Huckabee, conducted at Ben Gurion airport in Israel, that vividly illustrated a gaping divide between two factions of the Republican party. On one side is a Christian nationalist stream of the Maga movement, which views the United States’s close relationship with Israel with increasing suspicion. On the other is an older Christian conservative establishment that views that alliance as a totem of US foreign policy – and in some cases believes that Israeli Jews possess a divine right to a large swathe of the Middle East, US public opinion be damned.
Continue reading...Trump orders massive buildup of naval forces in Middle East, leading to fears of an imminent war
Iran’s foreign minister has said he expects to have a draft counterproposal ready within days after nuclear talks with the US this week, while Donald Trump said he was considering limited military strikes.
The US president has ordered a massive buildup of naval forces in the Middle East, including repositioning aircraft carriers and other warships, leading to fears of an imminent war. But it is not clear if the military movements are intended as an intimidation tactic to put pressure on Iran to make concessions on its nuclear programme.
Continue reading...Hezbollah leader among dead as Israel says it hit militant command centres
At least 10 people have been killed and 24 wounded – including three children – in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley, the Lebanese health ministry has said.
Israel said it had hit “command centres” of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the Bekaa valley. Two security sources told Reuters that senior Hezbollah leader Hussein Yaghi was killed in the attacks.
Continue reading...Rightwing Trump ally tells Tucker Carlson Israel has biblical right to land from ‘wadi of Egypt to the great river’
The US’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has contended to the podcaster Tucker Carlson that Israel has a biblical right to take over the entire Middle East – or at least the lion’s share of it.
“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said to Carlson during an interview posted on Friday. The Trump administration appointee and former Arkansas governor discussed with Carlson interpretations of Old Testament scripture within the US Christian nationalist movement.
Continue reading...Nasrallah Abu Siyam shot dead in occupied West Bank as UN human rights office accuses Israel of war crimes
Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian American man during an attack on a village, the Palestinian health ministry and a witness have said.
Raed Abu Ali, a resident of Mukhmas, said a group of settlers came to the village on Wednesday afternoon where they attacked a farmer, prompting clashes after residents intervened.
Continue reading...Second carrier strike group heads for region as US waits for Iran to respond after talks in Geneva
Donald Trump has said it will be clear within “probably 10 days” whether he can reach a nuclear deal with Iran, as the US military buildup in the Middle East intensifies with the impending arrival of a second carrier strike group.
The US president, speaking at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington DC, insisted Iran could not have a nuclear weapon and emphasised that “bad things will happen” if the country continued “to threaten regional stability”.
Continue reading...US president links deal with military strikes against Iran in connection with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions
Donald Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran, the Guardian has been told.
In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.
Continue reading...Tehran may claim it will not negotiate under duress, but that is precisely what it is being required to do
Although much attention will be given to the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington, it is the “arsenal of war” that Donald Trump has assembled in the Middle East, and what it implies for the stately pace of Washington’s negotiations with Iran, that deserves more.
The well-connected Axios reporter Barak Ravid is hated in Iran – one news site on Thursday described him as a one-man psychological war operation against Tehran. But he is widely read, as was his report that the US viewed the talks in Geneva on Tuesday as a “nothing burger”, and that a full-scale attack on Iran was far closer than most Americans realised. The story led to a spike in oil prices and front-page pieces in US newspapers saying Trump’s military preparations would be complete by the weekend, with the president hinting a decision would be made “probably over the next 10 days”.
Continue reading...Report details harrowing 18-month occupation of North Darfur capital, showing destruction aimed at ethnic communities
The siege and capture of the Sudanese city of El Fasher by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group last October bore “the hallmarks of genocide”, a UN-mandated fact-finding mission has said.
In a report detailing the harrowing 18-month occupation of the capital of North Darfur, investigators concluded that the RSF and allied militias deliberately inflicted conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Zaghawa and Fur ethnic communities.
Continue reading...Research suggests more than 75,000 killed in the first 16 months of conflict, 25,000 more than announced at the time
More than 75,000 people were killed in the first 16 months of the two-year war in Gaza, at least 25,000 more than the death toll announced by local authorities at the time, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Lancet medical journal.
The research also found that reporting by the Gaza health ministry about the proportion of women, children and elderly people among those killed was accurate.
Continue reading...Mehdi Mahmoudian released 17 days after arrest for signing a statement condemning Iran’s supreme leader and regime’s protest crackdown
Mehdi Mahmoudian, the Oscar-nominated cowriter of It Was Just an Accident, has been released from an Iranian prison 17 days after his arrest, according to local media reports.
Mahmoudian was arrested in Tehran shortly after signing a statement condemning Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the regime’s violent crackdown on demonstrators. On Tuesday, he was released from the Nowshahr prison, along with two other signatories of the statement, Vida Rabbani and Abdollah Momeni.
Continue reading...At least 80 film-makers and stars sign open letter after German festival jury president Wim Wenders says they should keep out of politics
More than 80 current and former participants of the Berlinale, including Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton and Adam McKay have signed an open letter condemning the festival’s “silence” on Gaza.
It comes after the film festival was swept up in what it called a “media storm” over the alleged sidelining of political discourse at the event.
Continue reading...Discussions through Omani intermediaries may pave way for further meeting on nuclear programme, Iran says
Iran has described the latest round of indirect talks with the US as “more constructive” than the previous set earlier this month, and said agreement had been reached on “general guiding principles” that could lead to a further meeting to discuss its nuclear programme.
The talks – held in Geneva through Omani intermediaries – were to discuss the terms for Tehran constraining its nuclear programme under the supervision of the UN nuclear weapons inspectorate. They ended after three and a half hours.
Continue reading...Israel accused of denying doctors re-entry into territory after they gave first-hand testimony on conflict
Medics in the UK and US believe they have been denied re-entry to Gaza after speaking out on the conflict.
Following reports of rising refusal rates, medical workers and organisationswho have provided humanitarian aid in Gaza have described what they see as arbitrary denials.
Continue reading...Abbas Araghchi is steeped in more than a decade of nuclear dealmaking with a book on the art of negotiations
If the US and Iran are to avoid a regional war, both sides need to start to make concessions at talks in Geneva on Tuesday, and also to accommodate one another’s very different bargaining styles.
The Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, steeped in almost 15 years of Iranian nuclear talks, is a near lifelong diplomat who has written a book on the art of negotiations that reveals the secrets of the Iranian diplomatic trade – the feints, the patience, the poker faces.
Continue reading...Experts say the detention centres were a breeding ground for extremism and a new generation of IS members
Humanitarians warned for years that the camps in north-east Syria holding tens of thousands of family members of suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters would have to be dealt with. Calling them a “ticking time bomb”, relief groups said the women and children could not just be left to rot in squalid desert camps indefinitely, because eventually they would come home.
Despite the warnings, most states ignored the problem, refusing to repatriate their citizens. At least 8,000 women and children from more than 40 countries have been stranded in the camps of north-east Syria since 2019.
Continue reading...Museum revises labelling on maps and panels, saying term used inaccurately and no longer historically neutral
The British Museum has removed the word “Palestine” from some of its displays, saying the term was used inaccurately and is no longer historically neutral.
Maps and information panels in the museum’s ancient Middle East galleries had referred to the eastern Mediterranean coast as Palestine, with some people described as being “of Palestinian descent”.
Continue reading...Israel says strikes were in response to Hamas violations of ceasefire as Hamas calls attacks ‘massacre’ of displaced people
At least 12 Palestinians were killed and several more injured across the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the Israeli military said it carried out airstrikes in response to ceasefire violations by Hamas.
The Gaza civil defence agency said five people were killed and several others hurt when an airstrike targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in the northern city of Jabaliya.
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