Category Archives: Iran

US threatens severe sanctions against countries with economic ties to Iran

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Washington launches campaign to isolate Tehran but it is unclear whether it will apply measures to China

The US has threatened to impose severe sanctions against any country or entity maintaining economic ties with Iran, hoping to achieve with economic measures what military means have so far failed to do.

It is unclear, however, how far the Trump administration is prepared to go in confronting China, Iran’s biggest trading partner, which has signalled its resistance to US economic pressure to cut off links with an ally.

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Iran vows to retaliate against countries that cooperate with fresh US sanctions

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Test of US rhetoric will rest on whether nations such as India, China and Russia view economic threats as credible

Tehran has vowed to retaliate against any country that cooperates with the US attempt to impose fresh sanctions against Iran in what the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has billed as “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary”.

In advance of the US announcement, the United Arab Emirates, Iran’s single biggest trading partner in the Middle East, announced it was ending all trade with Iran, a move Tehran believes was coordinated between Washington and the UAE.

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Iran-linked hackers blamed for cyber-attack that shut down UK power plant

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Incident marks apparent escalation by Tehran in its in retaliation against UK over allowing US to use British bases

Hackers linked to Iran have been blamed for a cyber-attack that caused a British power plant to be temporarily shut down.

The incident involved a small-scale energy generator, according to the UK government, which said that at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system.

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Iran’s foreign minister calls threat of new US economic sanctions ‘desperate’

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Abbas Araghchi says country is unbowed but president Masoud Pezeshkian admits its people face ‘many problems’

Iran’s foreign minister has dismissed the threat of a fresh round of US economic sanctions as a “desperate” ploy, even as its president acknowledged that the Iranian people are facing “many problems” amid Washington’s efforts to isolate and debilitate the country’s economy.

Last week, Donald Trump announced a new campaign to increase the pressure on the Iranian economy, calling it “the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country”. The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is expected to announce further punitive economic measures on Iran – which he has described as “the toughest sanctions in history” – on Monday.

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Trump threatens Iran’s trade partners, as military strikes make way for economic pressure

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US president pivots towards ‘crushing’ economic operation against Iran and its trading partners as military strikes fail to bring Tehran to the table

Donald Trump has announced a new campaign to isolate Iran’s economy, threatening “tremendous economic consequences” on any country that helps or does business with Tehran, a move that could set up a fresh confrontation with China if implemented.

“Today, I am announcing the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face tremendous economic consequences.”

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Hamas calls for Trump’s Board of Peace to ‘compel’ Israel over Gaza peace plan – Middle East crisis live

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Jared Kushner set to meet Netanyahu following talks with Hamas

Welcome to our live coverage of the latest in the continuing conflicts in the Middle East.

Donald Trump’s envoys met with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators in Cairo on Sunday, a diplomatic source said, aiming to advance the US president’s Gaza peace plan, even as Israel pressed on with airstrikes ⁠in the territory.

Israel resumed its airstrikes on Gaza in the past few days ‌after scaling back the attacks earlier this month. One of those wounded in the Khan Younis strike died from their wounds, medics at Nasser hospital said later. A separate airstrike, which the Israeli military said targeted another militant, hit an apartment in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, wounding several people, medics said.

A senior Israeli official said on Sunday that Israel was concerned about Washington’s demand to end targeted assassinations of Hamas militants in Gaza as the group rebuilds its forces, Reuters reported. Trump’s peace ⁠plan calls for the immediate cessation of military operations in Gaza and foresees Hamas disarming as Israeli troops withdraw from the territory and Gaza is rebuilt.

Several regional powers including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Sunday condemned Israel’s rejection of the peace road map, saying the country is obstructing peace efforts.

The top US military commander in the Middle East visited the USS Lincoln in the Arabian Sea amid reports of mental health and supply issues onboard. Adm Brad Cooper praised the leadership of the long-deployed aircraft carrier.

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Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon kill 11 in worst toll since June truce

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Rescue services search for survivors and bodies after airstrikes hit homes in Ansar and Deir al-Zahrani

Eleven people have been killed, including three children, and 19 injured in two Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon, the worst toll since deals in June brought a lull in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israeli warplanes bombed a home on the outskirts of the village of Ansar, killing seven people and flattening the building early on Saturday morning. Rescue services were working at the site to try to find survivors and locate bodies.

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Concerns grow over increased global ties with Taliban in Afghanistan

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Campaigners fear deeper diplomatic contacts are undermining demands for improvements in human rights

The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses.

Five years after the Taliban took power, an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare.

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Trump threatens to declare strait of Hormuz ‘territory of the United States’

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Seriousness of remark made in New York on Friday, and whether it signaled new policy ​position, not clear

Donald Trump has threatened to declare the strait of Hormuz as “a territory of the United States” as his administration struggles to conclude the war with Iran.

During a speech at a police academy on Long Island, New York, on Friday, the US president said he would “pretty soon” designate the waterway – a crucial chokepoint for global trade, through which about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil supplies typically pass – a US territory.

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Trump plays down Air Force One plane switch as criticism grows over ‘decoy’ passengers – US politics live

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President says Secret Service wanted him on ‘different plane’ due to threat as Democrats call for congressional briefing

President Donald Trump’s administration is to spend ⁠at least $900m ​for construction projects on the White House grounds, ⁠the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing records.

Instead of ⁠securing money directly from ​Congress, the administration ‌has gathered ‌funding from other agencies and private ‌donors and directed it to an account that holds a few million dollars for routine maintenance of the ‌White House, the report said.

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Trump’s secret flight switch indicates severity of assassination threat by Iran

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Iran lost top leaders in the war and US ‘humiliation ... a form of revenge’, say experts, after administration’s flight ruse

Since the joint US-Israeli strikes in February that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and scores of other senior Iranian officials on the first day of the war, a revenge plot to kill Donald Trump should not have appeared far-fetched.

But the US administration’s elaborate ruse to spirit Trump off of Air Force One in Turkey last month indicates a credibility to the Iranian threat that has surprised many in Washington – including the Trump aides and journalists left on the jet that may have remained the target of an Iranian missile strike.

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Trump reportedly hid in catering container to board secret flight in Turkey amid Iran threat

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Elaborate ruse was used to transport president to military flight from Air Force One in July

Donald Trump departed on a secret military flight from Turkey to Britain last month when the White House said he was flying aboard ⁠Air Force One, in an extraordinary ruse – prompted by an Iranian assassination threat – that involved hiding the president in an airport catering container, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The operation took place when Trump was in Ankara for a Nato summit with world leaders, according to the Post. The president reportedly boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras, and then was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, a US official told the Post.

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Trump demands Iran pay compensation for decades of US soldier deaths

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US president’s statement is latest sign that negotations to end war and reopen strait of Hormuz have stalled

Donald Trump has said he will demand that Iran pay compensation for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and Iran’s own civilians killed in recent decades in the latest sign his negotiations to end the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz have reached an impasse.

The US president is trying to end conflicts in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, and his additional demands of Iran are likely to provoke anger in Tehran at the same time as Israel has rejected Trump’s terms for a 15-point roadmap to end the war in Gaza.

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Iran issues tough demands to reopen strait of Hormuz as deal still out of reach

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Tehran urges US to ‘correct its behaviour’ as UAE says one of its ships targeted by Iranian missile

Iran has issued tough new demands for reopening the strait of Hormuz, while the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile, as a deal to open the strategic waterway remained out of reach on Saturday.

Iran’s politburo-like body known as the supreme national security council said the strait of Hormuz will not open until the United States “corrects its behaviour”, and its state broadcaster published a statement from the council’s secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

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Bluster and backdown have turned Iran war into Trump’s own Groundhog Day

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The US president’s profound ignorance of his enemy has led to an impotent cycle of empty threats, analysts say

Being the subject of mockery may be the most intense of all Donald Trump’s known aversions.

Yet more than five months after embarking on a war of choice against Iran, the US president risks attracting ridicule as he struggles to secure a military victory – while repeatedly threatening devastating bombardment against the Tehran regime, only to back down on the pretext of renewed negotiations.

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Iran plots to deal Trump a blow in midterms by keeping him entangled in war

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By dragging out talks, Tehran aims to damage the US president politically – but some fear a bruised and weakened Trump could lash back

Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.

For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous.

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Two Iranian female footballers granted Australian citizenship after protest

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  • Players stayed in country after Asian Cup in March

  • Duo condemned as traitors in Iran for not singing anthem

Two former Iranian footballers said on Thursday they were proud to have been granted Australian citizenship after being called traitors at home for refusing to sing the national anthem before a game.

Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh were members of a group of seven from Iran’s delegation who asked for Australia’s protection after the protest during the women’s Asian Cup in March.

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Understanding reached on coordinates for shipping route through Hormuz, Iran says

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Joint statement with Oman is being finalised, but Tehran says deal alone would not guarantee waterway’s security

Iran and Oman have reached an understanding on ⁠the geographic coordinates for a shipping route through the strait of Hormuz, and ⁠a joint announcement ⁠is ​being finalised provided certain third parties do not interfere, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail ⁠Baghaei said on Wednesday.

Baghaei added that any such agreement between Iran and Oman would not, by ⁠itself, guarantee security in the strategic waterway.

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Understanding reached on coordinates for shipping route through Hormuz, Iran says

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Joint statement with Oman is being finalised, but Tehran says deal alone would not guarantee waterway’s security

Iran and Oman have reached an understanding on ⁠the geographic coordinates for a shipping route through the strait of Hormuz, and ⁠a joint announcement ⁠is ​being finalised provided certain third parties do not interfere, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail ⁠Baghaei said on Wednesday.

Baghaei added that any such agreement between Iran and Oman would not, by ⁠itself, guarantee security in the strategic waterway.

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Iran’s president denies threatening to resign during talks over strait of Hormuz

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Masoud Pezeshkian dismisses talk of internal rift as hardline Assembly of Experts call US negotiations ‘futile’

Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, has been forced to deny claims that he has repeatedly threatened to resign as he battles hardline factions opposed to reaching a settlement with the US over the strait of Hormuz.

The US and Europe hope a deal is imminent to reopen the strait and they are putting pressure on Oman to accept a temporary agreement that officials in Muscat fear will leave Iran retaining near permanent dominance of the vital oil shipping channel. Ships would enter the strait in a route close to Iran, but leave on a route that passes through Iranian and Omani waters.

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