The president delivered a truck load of red meat to his base – but has he considered what follows the immediate sugar rush?
The only predictable thing about Donald Trump is his unpredictability. Two days into the month of an impeachment trial and an election year, he gave the kaleidoscope a mighty shake with arguably the most consequential decision of his presidency.
Related: Iran crisis: McConnell lauds death of 'master terrorist' as Democrats question Trump strategy – live
Continue reading...The threat to America and its allies is greatest in the Middle East, but Tehran has ample options when it comes to taking revenge
Iran has spent decades preparing for a moment like this, developing methods and networks around the world that give Tehran the widest possible choice when it comes to taking revenge.
Related: Iran crisis: Trump says Suleimani 'should have been taken out years ago' – live updates
Continue reading...Iran has vowed revenge for a US airstrike at Baghdad international airport that killed Gen Qassem Suleimani, the head of the elite Quds force and architect of Iran’s spreading military influence in the Middle East
Continue reading...Killing of powerful Iranian general will have far-reaching consequences for Trump
In his long military career, Qassem Suleimani left the Middle East littered with corpses. Now he has finally joined them. His death has closed one gruesome chapter in the region’s endless conflicts, only to open another, which could well prove even worse.
No one can predict how this will turn out, perhaps least of all the two leading protagonists. Nothing about Donald Trump’s actions in the Middle East until now suggests that Suleimani’s assassination by drone outside Baghdad airport was part of a considered plan.
Continue reading...Man who died alongside Suleimani was important Shia leader in post-Saddam era
A few days before his assassination in an American drone strike, Jamal Jafaar Mohammed Ali Ebrahimi – known more widely by his nom de guerre of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – addressed a crowd of his supporters in Iraq.
“The US ambassador, the Americans and their intelligence agencies must not think that they can sustain their control over their bases in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon,” he said, in the aftermath of US strikes that had killed two dozen members of the militia he founded.
Continue reading...The White House said Donald Trump ordered an airstrike that killed the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The attack came amid Iranian tensions with the US after thousands of Iraqis stormed the US embassy compound in Baghdad this week. The killing of Suleimani presents a dramatic escalation of an already bloody struggle between Washington and Tehran for influence across the region
By 2010, China was beginning to have an impact on the global consciousness in a new way. Prior to the western financial crisis, it had been seen as the new but very junior kid on the block. The financial crash changed all that. Before 2008 the conventional western wisdom had been that sooner or later China would suffer a big economic meltdown. It never did. Instead, the crisis happened in the west, with huge consequences for the latter’s stability and self-confidence.
Related: Europe needs China’s billions. But does it know the price? | Juliet Ferguson
Continue reading...Archives show British PM was warned France may have made secret deal with Bosnian Serbs
Days before the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, John Major was warned France had possibly brokered a secret deal with the Bosnian Serbs to halt airstrikes in return for the release of western military hostages.
This claim, detailed in a secret Foreign Office note to the prime minister, is among documents available to read at the National Archives in Kew fromTuesday that expose the depth of Anglo-French distrust during the Balkans conflict.
Continue reading...The US military carried out airstrikes on Sunday against the Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia in response to the killing of an American civilian contractor in a rocket attack on a US military base in Iraq. An Iraqi militia leader warned of a strong response after airstrikes in Iraq and Syria killed at least 25 people overnight. This footage shows the aftermath of a strike on Kata'ib Hezbollah's headquarters in the Iraqi town of Qaim
Continue reading...With Trump deciding against protecting allies, old rivalries are converging across the region
Throughout the Middle East’s modern history, a constant remained – the US held a prominent stake and would throw its weight around to protect its interests and allies. The maxim held true as ideologies rose and fell, Gulf monarchies, Israel, and Arab nationalist police states took root – and war and insurrection periodically raged.
But it ended during Donald Trump’s third year, a time when an isolationist, unworldly president began to see regional interests through a much narrower lens. The effect has been profound and 2020 will continue the process of recalibration by traditional friends of the US without a country whose clout they used to defer to and whose agenda they could more or less understand.
Continue reading...‘This isn’t good,’ state department official says as Russian mercenaries backing Khalifa Haftar turn conflict into bloodier one
The United States is “very concerned” about the intensification of the conflict in Libya, with a rising number of reported Russian mercenaries supporting warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces on the ground turning the conflict into a bloodier one, a senior state department official said on Saturday.
Related: Libyan government activates cooperation accord with Turkey
Continue reading...The “phase one” US-China trade deal will nearly double US exports to China over the next two years and is “totally done” despite the need for translation and revisions to its text, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer said on Sunday.
Related: 'Amazing deal' or 'capitulation'? Why the US-China trade truce may not last
Continue reading...Ankara ready to defend government in Tripoli in latest policy to inflame tensions with US, EU, Greece and Middle East countries
The threat of a military clash in the Mediterranean has drawn nearer following talks in which Turkey has underlined its willingness to send troops to Libya to defend the country’s UN-recognised government.
Such a move would risk a direct military confrontation with General Khalifa Haftar, the eastern Libyan military warlord who is thought to be planning a decisive assault on the government of national accord in Tripoli, or GNA. Either the UAE or Egypt, which are supporting Haftar’s forces, might also become involved.
Continue reading...The tranche of documents show that in trying to paint the best pictures, those involved delivered the worst
During the Vietnam war, the daily US military briefings were known to journalists as the Five O’ Clock Follies, described by one of the AP reporters who attended them as “the longest-playing tragicomedy in south-east Asia’s theatre of the absurd”.
The Pentagon Papers, the Department of Defense’s secret history of that war, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, only underlined the level of that deception under subsequent US presidents.
Continue reading...Interviews with key insiders reveal damning verdict on conflict that cost 2,300 US lives
Hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the 18-year US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the US public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict.
Transcripts of the interviews, published by the Washington Post after a three-year legal battle, were collected for a Lessons Learned project by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), a federal agency whose main task is eliminating corruption and inefficiency in the US war effort.
Continue reading...Donald Trump said on Sunday North Korean leader Kim Jong-un risks losing “everything” and his country must denuclearize, after the North said it had carried out a “successful test of great significance”.
“Kim Jong-un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way. He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore,” Trump said on Twitter, referring to his first summit with Kim in 2018.
Continue reading...President also told Israeli American Council summit some Jewish people in the US don’t love Israel enough and attacked Ilhan Omar
If Jared Kushner cannot achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Donald Trump claimed on Saturday, “it can’t be done”.
The president also told the Israeli American Council national summit some Jewish people in America don’t love Israel enough, a remark some said was antisemitic, and attacked the Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar for what he called her “despicable rhetoric” about Israel.
Continue reading...President Rouhani claims Iran can manage, but IMF hints oil prices need to be triple current levels to balance budget
Iran’s president has presented a draft state budget of about $39bn (£30bn) to parliament, saying it was designed to resist US sanctions by limiting dependence on oil exports.
Officials have not given figures for the oil price and export volumes used in the calculations, although the International Monetary Fund has indicated Iran would need oil prices to be triple current levels to balance its budget as its crude exports have plunged.
Continue reading...President and chairman of American Chamber of Commerce told to sign statement saying decision not to enter Macau was voluntary
The chairman and president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong were separately denied entry to the neighbouring Chinese-ruled city of Macau after being detained by immigration officials.
Chairman Robert Grieves and president Tara Joseph were travelling to the former Portuguese colony for the chamber’s annual Macau ball on Saturday. They said authorities did not provide a reason for refusing them entry.
Continue reading...If anything demonstrates the interconnectedness of the 21st-century world, it is how a decision made in the Solomon Islands, population 650,000, in the remote South Pacific, can affect the behaviour of powerful countries on the other side of the globe. That, in a way, is exactly what happened last week when Nato leaders met in London. Top of their agenda was Donald Trump’s demand that Europe pay more for its defence. But why is the US so exercised about so-called “burden-sharing”? In part because, these days, it is looking west, not east.
The US has identified China, not Russia, as the biggest strategic, economic and potential military rival to its global leadership. Barack Obama, who was dubbed the “Pacific president”, formalised this shift with his 2011 “pivot to Asia”, which prioritised the region.
Continue reading...