Category Archives: Iran

Trump’s week of dithering over Iran makes America look weak and foolish

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The president’s misconceived Middle East policy has been laid bare, and few allies will rush to the rescue

They must be laughing their socks off in Tehran. The days following last weekend’s attacks on Saudi oil facilities, blamed by the US on Iran, have seen an almost comical display of indecision, confusion and bluster by the leader of the world’s most powerful country. As a result, Iran looks stronger … and Donald Trump looks like a clown.

If Iranian leaders intended to call Trump’s bluff, they have succeeded – for now at least. The president’s immediate reaction to the attacks was to declare the US “locked and loaded” for retaliatory strikes. Then he remembered he’s opposed to fighting wars in the Middle East and hopes to be re-elected next year.

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US to deploy more troops to Saudi Arabia after attack on oil industry

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Trump has for now decided not to authorize an immediate military strike on Iran in response to attack

The Pentagon on Friday announced it will deploy additional US troops and missile defense equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as Donald Trump has at least for now put off any immediate military strike on Iran in response to the attack on the Saudi oil industry.

The US defense secretary, Mark Esper, told Pentagon reporters this is a first step to beef up security and he would not rule out additional moves down the road. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more details about the deployment will be determined in the coming days, but it would not involve thousands of US troops.

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Iran threatens ‘all-out war’ if action taken over Saudi oil strike

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Foreign minister’s comments further inflame tensions in Persian Gulf after oil attacks

Iran’s foreign minister has warned that any attack on his country after a series of missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry would result in “all-out war”.

Javad Zarif also demanded that Riyadh hand over the evidence that it claimed proved the attack came from Iran, and not from Houthi-occupied Yemen.

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Saudi oil attack shines light on geopolitical truth and lies

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Disentangling responsibility has been made so much harder by casual peacetime mendacity

Truth is notoriously the first casualty in war, but even more so in the run-up to a war.

The Middle East finds itself in the strange position at the moment where an undoubted crime has been committed, an apparent perpetrator has come forward providing elaborate supporting details of the weapon used, the motive and timing, but the victim refuses to believe the confessor, and instead accuses a third party.

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How did attack breach Saudi defences and what will happen next?

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Escalation is dangerous because infrastructure could be exposed to retaliation

Saudi Arabia’s state-of-the-art missile defence systems could do nothing to stop the swarm of drones and cruise missiles that struck some of its most important oil infrastructure at the weekend. They were designed to deal with different threats – and they were looking in the wrong direction.

The audacious strike against the Abqaiq petroleum processing facilities and Khurais oil field on Saturday morning – which the Saudis say was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” – has exposed the limits of the defences of the world’s largest military spender per capita.

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Saudi offers ‘proof’ of Iran’s role in oil attack and urges US response

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Defence spokesman calls on ‘international community to hold Iran responsible’

Saudi Arabia has ramped up the pressure on Donald Trump to respond to a devastating strike on two major oil installations, displaying drone and missile technology it insisted showed the attack was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran”.

At a press conference in Riyadh a Saudi defence spokesman claimed that 25 drones and cruise missiles were used in the attack on the Aramco facilities on Saturday, saying repeatedly they had been fired from the north, the direction of Iran.

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Iran confirms it has detained three Australian citizens

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Cases of British-Australians Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Jolie King, and King’s Australian partner, Mark Firkin, were revealed last week

Iran’s judiciary has confirmed it has detained three Australian citizens, alleging they were arrested for spying and taking images from sensitive areas.

Judiciary spokesman Gholam Hossein Esmaeili confirmed the arrests in a press conference in Tehran.

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Iran will not hold talks with the US ‘at any level’, says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – video

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The supreme leader of Iran has said that the US must return to the 2015 nuclear deal or 'there will be no talks at any level between Iranian officials and Americans'.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also dispelled any possibility of a meeting between Donald Trump and the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, during the UN general assembly in New York this month 

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‘Nobody can stop it’: Saudi oil attack signals an escalating crisis

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Trump is letting Riyadh decide about whether to retaliate against Iran – and if that happens, Iranians would likely raise the stakes

The attack on Saudi oil facilities is the latest, most violent, example of an escalating series of gambits rival powers in the Gulf aimed at achieving their objectives by all measures short of all-out war.

But the chances of avoiding such a devastating conflict diminish each time the stakes are raised.

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Everything you need to know about the Saudi Arabia oil attacks

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Saturday’s drone attacks severely disrupted global energy infrastructure and sent oil price soaring

Saudi pipelines, oil installations and tankers have occasionally been attacked over the past two years, but analysts say what happened in eastern Saudi Arabia in the early hours of Saturday morning is a much larger escalation: a hit to the jugular of the kingdom’s oil industry.

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Saudi Arabia oil attack: Trump hints at action as US points finger at Iran

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US president says he has ‘reason to believe we know the culprit’, as oil prices rise

Everything you need to know about the Saudi Arabia oil attacks

Donald Trump has said the US is “locked and loaded” and ready to respond to attacks on a petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia, as US officials said the evidence pointed to Iranian involvement.

The US president did not mention Iran, but wrote on Twitter that he had “reason to believe that we know the culprit” behind the series of attacks on the Abqaiq facility, which is the world’s largest petroleum processing plant. The attacks disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil output and will affect global supplies.

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Iran denies launching drone attacks on Saudi oil facility

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Foreign ministry counters accusations from US secretary of state with threats to US bases

Iran has dismissed US accusations that it was responsible for a series of explosive drone attacks on the world’s largest petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia that disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil output and could affect global supplies.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group claimed responsibility for launching waves of drones at state-owned Saudi Aramco facilities early on Saturday morning. But the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said there was no evidence the drones were launched in Yemen and accused Iran of “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply”.

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Drone attacks on Saudi plant could hit global oil supplies

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Explosions halve Saudi output and reduce global production by 5%

Global supplies of oil are likely to suffer a “major jolt” following Saturday’s attack by a swarm of explosive drones on the world’s biggest oil processing plant in Saudia Arabia.

Major fires engulfed the Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field after the attack, for which Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility. They said they launched 10 drones with “intelligence cooperation from people inside Saudi Arabia”, according to the rebel-run Saba news agency. The rebels’ spokesman Yahya Saree said their operations “will expand and would be more painful as long as the Saudi regime continues its aggression and blockade” on Yemen, he said.The fires are now under control at both facilities, Saudi state media said.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert named as Australian-British academic jailed in Iran since 2018

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Cambridge-educated lecturer in Islamic Studies at Melbourne University has been in prison in Tehran for almost a year

The third foreign national revealed this week to be imprisoned in Iran has been named by the Australian government as Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Melbourne academic who has published work on the 2011 Arab uprisings and on authoritarian governments.

Moore-Gilbert, a dual UK-Australian national, is Cambridge educated and worked as a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Melbourne University. She has been in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for almost a year.

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Australia left with few diplomatic levers after three citizens detained in Iran

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Canberra’s adherence to a hawkish US policy has undermined its ability to negotiate with the paranoid and sanctions-squeezed regime in Tehran

It was the trip of a lifetime, a globe-trotting adventure halfway across the world, chronicled online for family and friends back home and for followers online.

But in the eyes of the regime in Tehran – squeezed by sanctions and paranoid about the motives of outsiders – the act of flying a drone near a military installation on the outskirts of the Iranian capital appeared as an act of espionage.

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Australian and British bloggers arrested in Iran named as Jolie King and Mark Firkin

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Couple left Perth in 2017 and had been documenting their travels as they drove to London before being detained in Tehran’s Evin prison

The Australian couple being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison have been named as Jolie King and Mark Firkin, who were reportedly arrested 10 weeks ago near the Iranian capital.

Firkin and King, who also holds a British passport, have been blogging a globe-trotting adventure since 2017 as they endeavoured to drive from Australia to London. Despite diplomatic efforts to keep their cases from public attention, the pair was named overnight on social media.

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Britain-Iran relationship caught up in mutual blame game

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No progress in cases of dual-nationals arrested but catalogue of British failings is also long

The summoning of the Iranian ambassador to the British Foreign Office on Wednesday over broken assurances about the destination of an Iranian oil tanker, and now the arrest of two British-Australian nationals, marks yet another stage in the mutual blame game between Britain and Iran that leaves the relationship stuck deeper in a frustrating rut.

From the British perspective, well articulated by the former Middle East minister Alistair Burt, those in the UK government who would have liked to build a new relationship with Iran in the wake of the 2015 nuclear deal feel very badly let down by Tehran.

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Rouhani says US ‘warmongering’ against Iran will fail

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President Hassan Rouhani signals approval of firing of national security adviser

Iran’s president has urged the US to “put warmongers aside” as tensions roil the Persian Gulf amid an escalating crisis between Washington and Tehran after the collapsing nuclear deal with world powers.

Hassan Rouhani’s remarks signalled approval of Donald Trump’s abrupt dismissal of John Bolton as national security adviser. Bolton had been hawkish on Iran and other global challenges.

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Three Australians, two of them dual British citizens, held in Iran

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Two British-Australian women believed to be in prison, while location of Australian man is unknown

Three Australian citizens – two of whom also hold British passports – have been arrested and detained in Iran.

A female British-Australian academic who has been teaching at a university in Australia was arrested several months ago, sources confirmed to the Guardian.

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How will John Bolton’s dismissal affect US foreign policy?

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Trump’s anti-interventionist instincts likely to come to the fore in flashpoint countries

Donald Trump’s abrupt dismissal of John Bolton, his national security adviser, may reflect the near breakdown in personal relations between the two men, as well as Bolton’s rivalry with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, but it will also have implications for US foreign policy in a range of flashpoints.

Related: John Bolton fired as Trump's national security adviser – live news

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