Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Targeted strike on computer-controlled weapons of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard had been planned over weeks
The US military launched a cyber-attack on Iranian weapons systems on Thursday, according to sources, as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional strike in response to Iran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.
The hack disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers, two officials told the Associated Press, and were conducted with approval from Trump. A third official confirmed the broad outlines of the strike. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about the operation.
Donald Trump has said that if Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, it will be prosperous and have the US president as “a best friend” – but also warned that the Islamic Republic would be “obliterated” in any war between the two countries.
Andrew Murrison will raise concerns about country’s conduct amid rising tensions
A Foreign Office minister is to visit Iran on Sunday and call for “urgent de-escalation in the region”, amid heightening tensions between Tehran and Washington after an unmanned American drone was shot down.
Andrew Murrison, the MP for South West Wiltshire who covers the Middle East as part of his brief, will raise UK and international concerns about Iran’s “regional conduct and its threat to cease complying with the nuclear deal to which the UK remains fully committed” during “frank and constructive” talks with the government in Tehran.
Officials say raids intended to target as many as 2,000 families in Houston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles in so-called “mass roundup”
Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard defends Joe Biden in a series of tweets calling out her rivals for criticizing him.
(3/3) …we need to find common ground with each other. That is not possible without civility. We don’t need another president who is going to continue to divide our country. We need a president who will unite us. United we stand, divided we fall.
It’s been a busy day in Washington. Here’s what’s happened so far:
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 airstrikes might kill as many as 150 people. The strikes were planned in retaliation for Iran shooting down an unmanned US surveillance drone
Everything Trump has done in relation to Iran, driven by his duelling impulses, has kept the US on a trajectory towards conflict
Ordering airstrikes and then calling them off at the last minute is one way of working through the contradictions in your Middle East policy, but it is very expensive and highly dangerous way of going about it.
Ever since Donald Trump took office and his conflicting impulses were applied to US foreign policy, a moment like this was all but inevitable.
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.
Military operation was called off, New York Times reports, as Democratic leaders warn the US could ‘bumble into a war’ with Iran
Donald Trump reportedly gave initial approval for the military to launch strikes on Iran in retaliation for Tehran shooting down a US drone, before pulling back at the last minute.
Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down on Thursday night, the New York Times quoted an unnamed official as saying.
President Donald Trump did not escalate Iran's shooting down of an American drone, saying that it might have been a mistake executed by 'a general or somebody' being 'loose and stupid'. Trump told reporters on Thursday that the incident was a 'new wrinkle' in escalating tensions between the US and Iran.
Alabama Republican Roy Moore, whose unsuccessful 2017 campaign for US Senate was marred by allegations he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, is going to try again.
The Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, defeated Moore by a narrow margin in a special election in December 2017 to fill the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became US attorney general. Jones was the first Democrat in a quarter-century to be elected to the US Senate in Alabama.
AP is reporting that Roy Moore will jump into the Alabama Senate race https://t.co/gsALWyjY5v
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders hold narrow leads in a theoretical showdown with President Trump in North Carolina ahead of the 2020 presidential race, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday.
Forty-nine percent of registered voters surveyed said they would back Biden in a match-up against Trump, while 46 percent said they would support the president. Five percent, meanwhile, said they are unsure who they’d back.
In a match-up against Sanders, 48 percent of North Carolina voters said they’d back the Vermont senator, compared with 47 percent who said they would vote for Trump; 5 percent said they were unsure of their pick.
The British government should call for restraint and de-escalation, says a group of campaigners, politicians and leading cultural figures
The threat of war with Iran is terrifying and the behaviour of the US government risks making the danger real. Its categoric claim that Iran was responsible for last week’s attacks on the two tankers in the Straits of Hormuz has been challenged by the Japanese and the German governments. It has served only to make a dangerous situation more serious.
The context to this is Donald Trump’s scrapping of the nuclear deal with Iran last year, which blocked the way to normalising relations and immediately escalated tension. The accompanying sanctions have caused real economic damage and human suffering. In May the Trump administration turned the screw tighter by dropping exemptions for oil exports. These measures are part of the policy of regime change advocated by John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s two senior foreign policy officials, both of whom have called for military attacks on Iran.
US considers response to shooting down of US drone that Tehran claims was flying in Iranian airspace
US security officials have been summoned to the White House to discuss a response to the shooting down of a US spy drone, which Donald Trump has called a “big mistake” by Tehran.
Iran said it shot down the unmanned aircraft in its airspace. The US military has said it was downed over international waters in the strait of Hormuz.
The US state department's expert on Iran, Brian Hook, is repeatedly asked by Democrats how the Trump administration interprets its powers to declare war, following a recent rise in tensions with Iran. Hook repeatedly stressed the US was pursuing diplomacy with Tehran, saying: 'No one should be uncertain about our desire for peace'
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran and the US are also seen as less likely to use their influence for good than they were 10 years ago
The United States has joined Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran in a rogue’s gallery of countries perceived as likely to use their influence for bad. All five countries are also seen as less likely to use their influence for good than they were 10 years ago.
In 2014 supreme court ruled sanctions on Bank Mellat had been unlawful
The UK government has made a last minute out-of-court deal to settle a £1.3bn damages claim made by an Iranian bank over a UK trading ban.
The undisclosed settlement to Bank Mellat on the eve of what was expected to be a five-week trial raises questions about how big the UK taxpayer’s bill is likely to be, as well as how the UK will transfer the payment to circumvent the comprehensive sanctions regime imposed by the US, which affects the bank.
Release of colour images adds more clarity to debate but fails to prove responsibility
The sophistication of the attacks on two shipping tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week had already led most independent analysts to conclude Iran was responsible for the high-profile explosions.
But there has been scepticism from some key countries, including Germany and Japan, after the US initially released a grainy black and white video it said showed Iranian forces removing an unexploded mine from one of the two targeted ships. Iran has denied involvement.
Concerns of a confrontation between the two countries have mounted since two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman
Acting US defense secretary Patrick Shanahan announced on Monday the deployment of about 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East for what he said were “defensive purposes”, citing concerns about a threat from Iran.
“The recent Iranian attacks validate the reliable, credible intelligence we have received on hostile behavior by Iranian forces and their proxy groups that threaten United States personnel and interests across the region,” Shanahan said in a statement.
Atomic agency chief says limit will be breached in 10 days and enrichment could be up to 20%
Tehran has sped up the countdown to its breaching the nuclear deal, announcing it will break the uranium stockpile limit set in the deal in the next 10 days.
The country’s atomic agency also said Tehran could from 7 July start the process of enriching uranium up to 20%, closer to weapons-grade levels.
‘President Trump has done everything he can to avoid war’
US secretary of state claims ‘lots of evidence’ of Iran culpability
The United States does not want to go to war with Iran, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Sunday, following an attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week.
Pompeo reiterated that the US believes it was “unmistakable” that Iran was responsible for the attacks, in an interview with Fox News Sunday. He stressed a need for diplomacy and said American officials are reaching out to their foreign counterparts.
Fast must not go ‘to bitter end’ as they are parents to Gabriella, says Richard Ratcliffe
Richard Ratcliffe will join his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in her hunger strike for as long as he can, he has said, as the couple sought to increase pressure on the Iranian government for her release after three years’ imprisonment in Iran on charges she denies.
But Ratcliffe said it was important the action did not go “to the bitter end” because of their five-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who is also unable to leave Iran and return to the UK.