US intelligence fears vessel could have been hijacked by Revolutionary Guards
US officials suspect that a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker that stopped transmitting its location after straying into Iranian waters may have been hijacked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA said on Tuesday that the country’s navy came to the assistance of the Panamanian ship MT Riah after it had mechanical problems.
Continue reading...Arriving in Brussels on Monday, the UK’s foreign secretary said there was still time to save the Iran nuclear deal. European powers are trying to preserve the landmark deal, which the US abandoned unilaterally a year ago. Iran recently announced it would start enriching uranium beyond agreed limits
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt tries to reinforce nuclear deal abandoned by US
Tensions in the Middle East could pose an existential threat to mankind unless the Iran nuclear deal is maintained, Jeremy Hunt will say on Monday in his starkest warning since the regional crisis escalated two months ago.
Speaking ahead of an EU meeting in Brussels, the UK foreign secretary will try to underline the importance of the deal, which was abandoned unilaterally by the US a year ago, leading to an accelerating reciprocal withdrawal by Iran.
Continue reading...French envoy visits Tehran as Rouhani warns UK tanker seizure will have repercussions
Iran has told Europe it will not reverse its decision to increase uranium enrichment beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear accord until it achieves its “full rights” to an economic relationship with the EU under the deal.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior security official and representative of Iran’s supreme leader, made his remarks as he met a senior French diplomat sent to Tehran by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Continue reading...Tehran breaches agreed 3.67% limit and hints it could soon start enriching to 20%
Iran has enriched uranium beyond the key limit dictated in its 2015 deal with major powers, in the latest escalation of the crisis between Washington and Tehran.
The move, confirmed by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, came amid hints from Iran that it could start enriching to 20% later in the year unless it secured European help in the face of crippling US sanctions.
Continue reading...Tehran defiant in face of condemnation by European signatories to joint comprehensive plan of action
The Iran nuclear deal was put on life support on Sunday after Iran took a further step to breach its rules by taking its low-enriched uranium limit over the agreed threshold.
It was the second Iranian breach of the agreement in a matter of weeks, although Iran took only a relatively modest step by increasing enrichment from the agreed 3.7% level – enough to generate to civil nuclear power – to 5%, still well below the 20% threshold that is seen as putting Iran on course to developing a nuclear bomb.
Continue reading...Focus is on averting further breaches and UK says it remains committed to 2015 deal
European leaders have resisted calls to start reimposing sanctions on Iran after the country said it had for the first time broken the terms of the nuclear deal it signed with foreign powers in 2015.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Monday it had allowed its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to exceed 300kg. The move is a carefully calibrated and reversible step intended to put pressure on Europe to do more to help mitigate the effect of crippling US sanctions.
Continue reading...Expectations are not being met in discussions with world powers, claims Iranian envoy
Iran said some progress had been made at a meeting with world powers on its nuclear accord – but probably “still not enough” to keep the landmark 2015 deal alive.
“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations,” said Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, after the talks on Friday. “I don’t think the progress made today will be enough to stop our process – but the decision will be made in Tehran.”
Continue reading...Country may be waiting on outcome of talks setting out plans to kickstart trade with EU
Iran has held back on its threat to make its first breach of the nuclear deal and may be waiting for the outcome of talks with EU powers, China and Russia in Vienna.
At the talks on Friday the EU countries will set out plans to kickstart trade between Tehran and the bloc, one of the Iranian preconditions for sticking with the deal.
Continue reading...Sanctions target supreme leader and eight commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Donald Trump has ordered new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other officials including eight Revolutionary Guard commanders in the latest step of an escalating pressure campaign.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will also face fresh sanctions in a few days, US officials said. He negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers, and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.
Continue reading...Comments follow US warning not to ‘mistake prudence and discretion for weakness’
Iran has announced it may take further steps to pull away from its nuclear deal with international powers as John Bolton, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, said a fresh round of sanctions against Tehran would serve as a warning not to “mistake US prudence and discretion for weakness”.
The comments on Sunday followed reports that Washington had mounted a sophisticated and crippling cyber-attack on the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards after the US president decided against a more conventional airstrike in response to Tehran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.
Continue reading...US president tweets that he intervened 10 minutes before planned retaliatory attack
Donald Trump has said the US air force was “cocked and loaded” to attack three Iranian targets, but he withdrew the order with 10 minutes to spare after being told the airstrike might kill as many as 150 people.
Trump said in a series of revelatory 9am tweets that he decided late on Thursday that the death toll was not a proportionate response to the Iranian shooting down of a US spy drone off the Iranian coast 24 hours earlier.
Continue reading...The US is prepared to engage with Iran about its nuclear program without pre-conditions but needs to see the country behaving like “a normal nation”, secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani suggested on Saturday that Iran may be willing to hold talks if Washington shows it respect, but said Tehran would not be pressured into talks.
Continue reading...Jeremy Hunt warns of conflict erupting in the Gulf by accident after Saudi ships sabotaged
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has been urged by European leaders to show maximum restraint towards Iran after Saudi Arabia confirmed that two of its vessels had been mysteriously sabotaged on Sunday in the waters off Oman by an unidentified assailant.
Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, warned Pompeo in a hastily arranged meeting in Brussels: “We are living in crucial delicate moments where the most responsible attitude to take and should be is maximum restraint and avoiding any escalation on the military side.”
Continue reading...President suggests US could help revive Iran’s economy in return for no-nuclear weapons pledge
Donald Trump has offered Iran direct talks, saying its leaders should “call me” and suggested the US would help revive the country’s economy as long as Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons.
The impromptu offer by the US president, if serious, represents a dramatic lowering of the bar set by his administration for lifting extensive sanctions, including an oil embargo. Iran is already party to a 2015 agreement that strictly limits its nuclear programme and places it under close scrutiny. Trump withdrew the US from the Obama-era treaty a year ago.
Continue reading...UK told ‘not to soothe the ayatollahs angry’ at US decision to abandon nuclear deal
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has urged the UK to stand with Washington in reining in Iran’s “bloodletting and lawlessness”, as Tehran took the first conditional steps to extricate itself from the landmark nuclear deal it had signed with the west, Russia and China in 2015.
Iran said it was acting in response to Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to withdraw the US from the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, imposing a wave of sanctions not just on Iran but on any company that seeks to trade with it.
Continue reading...Iran is now giving them 60 days to take significant strides or face a potentially severe new crisis in the Middle East
By taking a couple of small, carefully calibrated steps towards the exit from the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran has given Europe and China a two-month ultimatum to stand up to the US on the world stage, or risk a slide towards a new Middle East conflict.
The erosion of that multilateral agreement and the return to military posturing in the Persian Gulf, has been driven by a small number of radical players in the Trump administration, the Israeli government, and the Saudi and Emirati monarchies. In the US and Israel, this has happened in the face of resistance from the defence establishment.
Continue reading...A year after Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 agreement, Iran takes ‘reciprocal measures’
Iran has announced its partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal signed with world powers in 2015, a year after Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement.
President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran will stop exporting enriched uranium stocks as stipulated by the 2015 agreement and warned it would resume higher uranium enrichment in 60 days if the remaining signatories did not make good on promises to shield its oil and banking sectors from sanctions.
Continue reading...Election victory gives Israeli PM confidence he will get his way on Iran and Palestine
His supporters call him a magician. And there is truly something uncanny about how Benjamin Netanyahu has conjured up three-way US, Russian and Arab support for his hardline security and nationalist agenda. For a small country, Israel packs an ever bigger punch – and pugnacious Bibi’s likely fifth term presages a new era of escalating confrontation.
First in line for the Netanyahu treatment is Iran. He claimed credit on Monday for Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, including its al-Quds force, a foreign terrorist organisation. The provocative move, akin to singling out the US marine corps for punishment, bought a vengeful riposte from Tehran.
Continue reading...Almost 36 hours after the apparent resignation of Iran’s foreign minister, there are finally some answers to the many questions it raised. For instance, his superior, president Hassan Rouhani, has not accepted his resignation, which is required under Iranian law. Neither has the top decision-maker in the country, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – if one is to believe cryptic rumours of a “high-ranking official” having told the diplomat that his exit is not “expedient”. Mohammad Javad Zarif is back at work, joining Rouhani in greeting a visiting Armenian delegation early on Wednesday.
But there is still the question of why Zarif suddenly decided to go on Instagram at midnight on Monday, expressing gratitude to “the dear and honourable Iranian people for the last 67 months” and apologising for his “incapacity” to continue serving in his post. Being under fire from all sides is certainly not a novelty for the ever-smiling Iranian chief diplomat. For years, he has been adored and despised for essentially the same thing: his ability to convincingly make Iran’s case to the world in fluent English, with a strong grasp of how western media works.
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