Category Archives: Iran

Tehran has held firm in its tussles with Trump

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Iran’s leaders have shown their intent to defend their interests by damaging those of their foes

For much of this year, two beliefs have held firm in the halls of power in Iran: US attempts to strangle its economy cannot be tolerated and Donald Trump has no intention of going to war.

Far from wilting under the barrel of a global superpower’s guns, Iran’s leaders have signalled an intent to defend their interests, by damaging those of their foes. Iran’s anger at the US, and its alleged role in the attacks on six tankers in Gulf waters over the past five weeks did not emerge from a vacuum. US-imposed sanctions have taken a huge toll on its economy, and diminished its ability to service long-lasting commitments across the region – in Syria and Lebanon, in particular.

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Iran-US dispute grows over attacks on oil tankers in Gulf of Oman

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Tensions remain high as Arab League calls for restraint – and Labour warns of UK being drawn into conflict

Divisions over responsibility for last week’s attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman deepened this weekend amid warnings over the danger of a major confrontation in the region, despite hints by Donald Trump about possible negotiations with Iran.

Politicians in Britain traded angry blows over the incident, after the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said there was “no credible evidence” that Iran had attacked the two ships as they passed by its coastline on Thursday morning, rebuffing a Foreign Office assessment that it was “almost certain” that a “branch of the Iranian military” had carried out the strikes.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband joins her hunger strike

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Richard Ratcliffe fasts outside Iranian embassy in London to call for wife’s release

The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has begun a hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London in solidarity with his wife. Richard Ratcliffe called for a meeting with the next prime minister and demanded the incoming government stand up for British citizens unjustly held abroad.

The British-Iranian woman started her third hunger strike against her continued imprisonment in Iran on Saturday. She had vowed to take action if she was still in jail on their daughter Gabriella’s fifth birthday. At the same time, a vigil got under way in front of the country’s embassy in Knightsbridge.

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Jeremy Corbyn: no ‘credible evidence’ of Iran role in tanker attacks

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Labour leader urges UK to ease tensions in Gulf after Foreign Office links blasts to Tehran

Jeremy Corbyn has called for the government to abstain from escalating tensions with Iran without “credible evidence” that Tehran was responsible for attacks on two oil tankers.

The Labour leader said Britain risked increasing the threat of war after the Foreign Office (FCO) said it was “almost certain” in its assessment that “a branch of the Iranian military … attacked the two tankers on 13 June”.

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UK joins US in accusing Iran of tanker attacks as crew held

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Trump says incident involving two vessels in Gulf of Oman has ‘Iran written all over it’

The US has accused Iran of detaining the crew of one of two oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman this week, as the UK also joined in formally blaming the country, saying no other nation or group “could plausibly be responsible”.

Washington claims Iran is behind a succession of recent shipping attacks in the Gulf. It said grainy video published on the US Central Command’s website provided evidence of Iran’s involvement in Thursday’s attacks. The footage purportedly shows an Iranian boat removing an unexploded mine from one of the vessels.

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Trump’s maximum pressure train hits buffers with Abe’s doomed Iran mission

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Japan’s prime minister isn’t the first leader to regret trying to do Trump a favor – but he must have known he was taking a risk

Shinzo Abe’s trip to Tehran this week turned out to be one of the more ill-fated mediation efforts of recent times.

What was billed as a grand gesture – the first Japanese leader to visit Iran in four decades – ended in humiliation, with split-screen television pictures showing Abe being told off by a stern supreme leader, while a thick plume of smoke rose from a burning Japanese tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

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US says video shows Iranian military removing mine from tanker

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  • US secretary of state accuses Tehran of ‘lashing out’
  • Iran denies responsibility for early morning attack

The US military has released video footage it says shows an Iranian military patrol boat approach one of two tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, to support the Trump administration’s claims that Iran was responsible.

The blurry black and white footage, taken from the air, shows a small military boat alongside a tanker and someone stand up on the prow of the boat to remove an object from the tanker’s hull. The small boat then pulls away from the tanker. US officials were quoted as saying the boat was an Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boat approaching the tanker after it was attacked, and the object removed was an unexploded limpet mine.

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Oil tanker attacks will inflame conflict between the US, its allies and Iran

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The explosions, on a vital passageway for the world’s oil supply, may prove Trump’s policy of coercion has backfired

The explosions were bigger and the damage more extensive. But the message and its means of delivery have some similarities.

Thursday’s attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman caused jitters in global markets and unease across a region that has been bracing for conflict throughout much of the year. As with the earlier attacks on 12 May, news of the latest strikes was again broken by media outlets aligned to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, who broadcast images of the attacks within minutes of them taking place.

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Two oil tankers struck in suspected attacks in Gulf of Oman

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Sailors evacuated from two tankers in distress near the strategic strait of Hormuz

Two oil tankers have been hit in suspected attacks in the Gulf of Oman a month after a similar incident in which four tankers in the region were struck.

The US navy’s fifth fleet said it was assisting the tankers, which issued distress calls near the strategic strait of Hormuz. The crew from both tankers were evacuated.

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US resident released after years in Iran prison says he was put on ‘show trial’

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Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese IT expert jailed for espionage, says his release may have served to reduce tensions between US and Iran

A Lebanese man who had been imprisoned in Iran for years on charges of espionage said Tuesday that he was subjected to “kidnapping, arbitrary detention and a show trial”, adding that his release served to de-escalate tensions between the US and Iran.

In his first comments after arriving in his native Lebanon, Nizar Zakka denied reports that his release was part of a wider deal but suggested that it had helped avert further escalation in the region.

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Tehran closes 547 restaurants for breaking ‘Islamic principles’

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Iranian police close venues for crimes ranging from ‘playing illegal music’ to ‘debauchery’

Iranian police have shut down 547 restaurants and cafes in Tehran for not observing “Islamic principles”, the capital’s police chief said Saturday.

“The owners of restaurants and cafes in which Islamic principles were not observed were confronted, and during this operation 547 businesses were closed and 11 offenders arrested,” Hossein Rahimi said in statement on the policeforce website.

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Trump wants to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia. Congress must stop him | Mohamad Bazzi

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The administration wants to sell $8bn of weapons to Saudi Arabia and UAE – and prop up a morally indefensible war

On the Friday before Memorial Day, when few Americans were paying attention, the Trump administration announced that it would circumvent Congress and sell $8bn in new weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It was Donald Trump’s latest attempt to give a blank check to two US allies leading a disastrous war in Yemen.

Related: UK arms exports are still playing a central role in Yemen’s humanitarian crisis | Anna Stavrianakis

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US imposes sanctions on Iran’s largest petrochemical group

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PGPIC hit with economic penalties because of its ties to Revolutionary Guards, US treasury says

The United States has hit Iran’s Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (PGPIC) with economic sanctions due to its ties with the country’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the Treasury department has said.

The move aims to choke off financing to the country’s largest and most profitable petrochemical group and extends to its 39 subsidiaries and “foreign-based sales agents,” Treasury said in a statement.

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Inquiry into oil tanker attacks stops short of blaming Iran

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UN security council hears unidentified state was behind explosions in Gulf last month

An unidentified state actor has been blamed for attacks on four oil tankers in the Gulf last month, according to an inconclusive inquiry that stopped short of explicitly pointing the finger at Iran.

The UAE along with Saudi Arabia and Norway presented the preliminary findings during a private briefing to members of the UN security council, which will also receive the final results of the inquiry and consider a possible response.

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Iranian judiciary should review the case of jailed British Council worker Aras Amiri | Letter

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Edinburgh international book festival director Nick Barley, Hay festival director Peter Florence, 5 x 15 Stories co-director Daisy Leitch and 18 others are dismayed by 10-year sentence given to the arts worker

We write in response to the public statement of the Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili on 13 May regarding the case of Aras Amiri, an arts curator, student and employee at the British Council managing arts programmes to present Iranian contemporary arts and literature in the UK (Report, 14 May).

As artists, arts organisation leaders and academics across the UK and internationally who know Aras through her studies and curatorial work, we are dismayed by this statement and its accompanying 10-year prison sentence.

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Pompeo: US will talk to Iran if it acts like a ‘normal nation’

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  • Secretary of state: ‘We’re prepared … to engage in conversations’
  • Rouhani: Iran would hold talks if Washington shows it respect

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.

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Evidence Iran was behind Gulf attacks to be presented to UN, John Bolton says

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Trump national security adviser says evidence can be shown as early as next week

Evidence that Iran has been behind recent attacks on oil tankers and pipelines in the Gulf is likely to be presented to the UN Security Council as early as next week, John Bolton, the US national security adviser, has revealed.

Bolton has previously said Iran was almost certainly responsible for the attacks, but without presenting evidence. In what is likely to be a showdown over the US’s aggressive Iran strategy, in which Bolton has taken a leading role, much will depend on how credibly the US intelligence agencies can show the Iranian government is directing attacks by proxies.

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Qatari PM to attend Saudi Arabia summit after two-year blockade

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Gulf Cooperation Council will meet to discuss Iran’s alleged role in Gulf drone attacks

A possible US-backed thaw in Qatari-Saudi relations has been signalled by Qatari diplomats travelling to Saudi Arabia to lay the ground for their country’s attendance at a major summit in Mecca on alleged Iranian aggression in the region.

Qatar’s attendance will be seen as the biggest rapprochement between the two countries since the Saudis launched a sweeping economic and political blockade against the gas-rich country two years ago, accusing Doha of trying to undermine Saudi Arabia, fund terrorism and promote the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East.

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Trump says US will send 1,500 troops to Middle East amid Iran tensions – video

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Donald Trump announced on Friday that the US would send 1,500 troops to the Middle East as a protective measure after a breakdown in relations with Iran. ‘Right now, I don’t think Iran wants to fight and I certainly don’t think they want to fight with us,’ the US president said

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