Category Archives: US foreign policy

What may be included in proposed Iran ceasefire deal?

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Proposed framework hinges on a 60-day truce, reopening strait of Hormuz, and revived talks on limiting Iran nuclear programme

• Middle East crisis: live updates

Donald Trump has said a “memorandum of understanding” in talks to end the US-Israel war on Iran “has been largely negotiated”.

Official details of the deal remain scant and it remains possible some aspects of the memo could change, but here is what we know so far about the potential agreement that could bring an end to the war.

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Marco Rubio: Trump ‘disappointment’ with Nato will be discussed at summit

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Secretary of state suggests July meeting of alliance will be fraught as US demands help in strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump is disappointed that Nato allies refused to become more actively involved in attacking Iran, the US secretary of state has said, setting up what could become a fraught summit of the alliance in July.

Marco Rubio, meeting with foreign ministers of the military alliance, emphasised that he expected the rift would be discussed at the July meeting in Ankara, making the summit “one of the more important” in Nato’s 77-year history.

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Protests at new US consulate after Trump envoy says time for US ‘to put its footprint back’ on Greenland

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Prime minister says he will boycott opening, as protesters hold signs saying ‘stop USA’ and shout ‘go home’

Hundreds of people protested against the opening of a new US consulate in Nuuk after comments by the US special envoy to Greenland that it was time for Washington “to put its footprint back” on the Arctic territory.

Many Greenlandic politicians, including the prime minister, said they would not attend the official opening on Thursday.

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Cubans outraged at US charges against Raúl Castro as fears of military strikes grow

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It’s a nerve-racking time for Havana neighbours of top Cuban officials as fears of US attack mount

A new question in being asked in Havana as people digest the news that the US has brought criminal charges against Cuba’s 94-year-old former president, Raúl Castro: who’s your neighbour?

If you happen to live near a senior figure in Cuba’s government or armed forces, others suck their teeth in an expression of concerned sympathy. For the first time, US military strikes on the island are being considered a serious possibility.

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Oil markets nearing ‘red zone’ as Iran crisis continues, warns IEA chief

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Surging demand, low reserves and reduced Middle East exports predicted to cause global crunch by August

Oil markets will enter the “red zone” by July and August as stocks dwindle before the summer travel season amid a shortage of fresh oil exports from the Middle East, the executive director of the International Energy Agency warned on Thursday.

Fatih Birol added that the most important solution to the Iran war energy shock was a full and unconditional reopening of the strait of Hormuz.

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US indicts former Cuban president Raúl Castro as it seeks to oust regime

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Charges filed in Miami against 94-year-old for allegedly shooting down exiles’ planes in 1996

The United States issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, and five others on Wednesday in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.

The 94-year-old political figurehead was charged in Miami, Florida, with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.

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Trump may see himself in Ahmadinejad but having him lead Iran was a perplexing idea

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Former Iranian president has a populist, headline-grabbing communication style but is an avowed anti-Zionist. How could Israel see him as a man to do business with?

For all their outward differences, there always seemed to be things that linked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Donald Trump.

A visit to the then Iranian president’s rather humble Tehran neighbourhood nearly 20 years ago highlighted cost of living problems that prefigured those facing Trump now.

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US and Israel ‘hoped to install Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader’

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Airstrike at the start of the war was aimed at freeing populist ex-president from house arrest, US newspaper claims

Fresh questions have been raised over the US and Israeli effort to depose the Iranian regime after it was claimed that Israel wanted to put the populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.

Ahmadinejad’s turbulent presidency, from 2005 to 2013, was marked by incendiary attacks on Israel but he recast himself as a critic of the regime and champion of the poor after falling out with the supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

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Trump turns to Middle East allies as deal to end Iran war proves elusive

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President claims planned Tehran attack postponed to allow talks to continue – but no indication peace plan is imminent

As he seeks an exit from the Iran war, Donald Trump is increasingly outsourcing his policymaking to US allies in the Middle East, while the White House appears unable to find a simple way to end the fighting and reopen global shipping lanes held by Tehran.

In Trump’s telling, the “dealmaker-in-chief” has maintained a consistent policy toward Iran aimed at preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, leveling threats and incentives to reach a new deal that would also open the strait of Hormuz.

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Threatened indictment of Raúl Castro ratchets up US pressure on Cuba

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Trump administration move echoes indictment of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro as fuel crisis racks Cuba

Tensions between Cuba and US seem set to rise further amid reports that
Raúl Castro, the country’s 94-year-old former president, may soon face the type of indictment that led to the US abduction of the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January.

Although Raúl is officially retired, he remains the most potent figure in Cuban politics following the death of his brother Fidel in 2016, and by targeting him Washington appears to be heaping pressure on Cuba’s communist leadership at the end of an already extraordinarily intense week.

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Oman caught between US and Iran after Tehran’s claims of joint strait of Hormuz plan

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Muscat silent about plans – opposed by US – to charge fee and demand details on nationality of all transiting ships

Oman has been caught in geopolitical crossfire after Iran said it was coordinating with the Gulf state over the future management of the strait of Hormuz, including Tehran’s plans to impose fees on commercial shipping.

The Omani exclave of Musandam lies to the south of the contested waterway, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil traffic but has been blockaded for 10 weeks since the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February.

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What was actually achieved at Trump and Xi’s ‘stalemate summit’ in Beijing?

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US president has said he and Chinese leader ‘settled a lot of different problems’ but has given little detail on solutions

Donald Trump’s whirlwind trip to Beijing – the first US presidential visit in nearly a decade – wrapped up with much fanfare but little clarity about what was actually achieved.

Trump said on Friday he and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, “settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve”. But he didn’t provide much detail on what those solutions were.

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Trump-Xi summit live: US president preparing to meet China’s leader with trade, Taiwan and the Iran war set to dominate talks

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Ahead of the crucial talks, security has been heightened in Beijing, with the US president set to meet Xi at the Great Hall of the People

I’m now sitting in the press filing centre at the China World Hotel in Beijing. Two American flags and a wooden lectern bearing a “United States embassy Beijing” seal stand on a black podium against a black curtain beneath a giant crystal chandelier.

There are TVs on either side of the podium: one showing CNN, the other Fox News. Sadly, that is as close as many reporters will get to seeing Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in action today.

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Trump says ceasefire with Iran on ‘life support’ after rejecting peace proposals

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US president says he is considering restarting naval escorts in strait of Hormuz in attempt to end Iranian blockade

Donald Trump has said the ceasefire with Iran is on “life support” and that he is considering restarting US navy military escorts of ships through the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to end the Iranian blockade of the vital waterway.

The US president dismissed Iran’s peace proposals as stupid, and denied he was under any domestic pressure to reach a deal.

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Trump calls Iran’s response to peace plan ‘totally unacceptable’ as ceasefire frays

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US president expresses ire at Tehran’s reported demands, as drones strike Gulf nations and Israel warns war ‘not over’

Donald Trump has rejected an Iranian response to a US peace proposal as “totally unacceptable”, on a day the month-old ceasefire showed signs of fraying as drone strikes were reported around the region and Benjamin Netanyahu warned the war was “not over”.

The Iranian counter-proposal was passed to Washington through Pakistani mediators.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threaten US sites in Middle East if tankers come under fire

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Revolutionary Guards issue warning as Trump awaits Iran’s response to Washington’s latest proposal for peace deal

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened to target US sites in the Middle East if its tankers come under fire, Iranian media reported on Saturday, as Washington was left waiting for Tehran’s response to its latest negotiating position.

“Any attack on Iranian tankers and commercial vessels will result in a heavy attack on one of the American centres in the region and enemy ships,” the force said, a day after US strikes on two Iranian tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

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Neither US nor Iran can sustain strait of Hormuz standoff indefinitely

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Simply hanging on could be a disaster for Iranians, while Trump needs to resolve this economic crisis he created

Exchanges of fire between Iran and the US demonstrate the serious instability of the situation in the Middle East. Though the US strikes late on Thursday were just “a love tap”, according to the US president, Donald Trump, the reality is that neither side can continue the high-stakes standoff in the strait of Hormuz indefinitely.

The US and its ally Israel demonstrated a comprehensive military superiority over Iran – taking minimal casualties in the 38-day war – but Washington has both failed to translate that into strategic dominance and allowed Iran to take control of the strait, driving up the oil price.

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‘They have screwed each other pretty badly’: tensions emerge in Netanyahu-Trump alliance

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Israeli PM says he has ‘full coordination’ with US president amid reports that Washington no longer consults him

Benjamin Netanyahu interrupted an uncharacteristically long silence over the Iran conflict this week with a video commentary insisting he had “full coordination” with Donald Trump, with whom he spoke “almost daily”.

The insistence that all was rosy in the US-Israeli relationship followed weeks of reports in the domestic press that Israel was no longer being consulted over the Iran conflict, and even less over Pakistani-brokered peace talks. Such is the scepticism over Netanyahu’s trustworthiness among the general public and independent press that the immediate reaction among observers to his video statement was speculation that the reality could be even worse than they had imagined.

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Frustrated by Iran, Trump at last seizes enriched uranium – but from Venezuela

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US energy department says 13.5kg of uranium taken from reactor in Caracas – a fraction of the 408kg held by Tehran

Donald Trump has succeeded in removing a country’s stash of highly enriched uranium – although that country is not Iran.

On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that “thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership” 13.5kg (about 30 pounds) of uranium had been removed from a legacy research reactor in Venezuela.

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Trump gives EU until 4 July to ratify trade deal or face ‘much higher’ tariffs

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Trump sets Fourth of July deadline as he vents impatience at speed of EU’s implementation

Donald Trump has said the EU must ratify its trade deal with the US by 4 July or face “much higher” tariffs, after European officials fell short of agreement on the pact.

Trump said he spoke to the EU chief, Ursula von der Leyen, about the issue and, he posted on his Truth Social platform, “agreed to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday or, unfortunately, their Tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels”.

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