Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The strike on Suleimani represented a significant victory for Pompeo, his outsize influence on Trump and his Iran fixation
When the US embassy in Baghdad was mobbed on the last day of 2019, a rattled Donald Trump turned to his most hawkish aide, Mike Pompeo, and finally agreed to the extreme measure the secretary of state had long advocated: the assassination of Qassem Suleimani.
The drone strike on the Iranian general a week ago may well turn out to be one of the most consequential decisions of the Trump presidency. It represented a significant victory for Pompeo, reflecting his ascendancy in foreign policy and national security spheres.
There are suspicions in the west, denials in Tehran, grim echoes for Ukraine, and grief spread far and wide
It was still dark when Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 took off on Wednesday from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport. Onboard were 176 people. Most were returning home after holidays spent with families and friends in Iran. They were couples, newlyweds, students.
A mother and a daughter – Sahar Hagjjoo and her eight-year-old child Elsa – posed for a photograph together after taking their seats. A sweet one, with the pair relaxed, smiling, a little tired from the early start. Everyone on the plane would have known of the strained diplomatic circumstances swirling before them.
Secretary of state says US is only willing to discuss future structure of forces in country
Washington is not willing to bow to Iraqi demands to withdraw its troops and any future discussions with Baghdad will be purely confined to the future structure of its forces in the country, the US state department has said.
The recommitment to US troops in Iraq defies an Iraqi parliament vote last week demanding all US forces leave in the wake of the killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani by a drone strike in Baghdad. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said the US was only willing to discuss force reconfiguration with the Iraqis, and a greater contribution by Nato forces.
Canadian officials to travel to Tehran to investigate crash
Iran denies one of its missiles brought down Ukrainian jet
Calls for justice have continued to grow in Canada amid repeated denials from Iran that its missiles brought down a passenger jet which crashed near Tehran, killing 176 people – most of whom were traveling to Canadian cities.
Canadian officials and members of the country’s transportation safety board are due to travel to Tehran to investigate the crash, although it remained unclear how much access they would be granted to the site.
Flight came down shortly after take off from airport in Tehran on 8 January
Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 took off at 6.12am on 8 January after nearly an hour’s delay at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. It gained altitude heading west, reaching nearly 8,000ft, according to flight-tracking data.
The man who used a narwhal tusk to tackle the London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan has accused Donald Trump of “feeding terror” with his belligerent Middle East policy, warning it will breed more murderous attackers like the one he and others faced.
In his first interview since Khan killed two people and injured several more at a criminal justice conference on 29 November, Darryn Frost said the US president’s decision to assassinate General Qassem Suleimani would cost lives and added: “The next generation of terrorists will rise as a direct result of these actions and we must condemn them now.”
The head of Iran’s Civil Aviation body has told reporters that authorities examining the contents of the Flight 752’s black box today at a laboratory at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport.
The will attempt to assess whether it is possible to reconstruct and analyse the information inside the country, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency.
A British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran has had panic attacks since tensions between the country and the US escalated, her husband has said.
As president and foreign minister, we always advocated peace. In war, all victories are pyrrhic ones
The assassination of Qassem Suleimani by drone bombs, at the express request of the president of the United States, has thrown the Middle East – and the world – into the most serious global security crisis since the end of the cold war. By unilaterally ordering the execution of a senior Iranian military on Iraqi soil, Donald Trump violated international law and took a reckless and dangerous step in escalating conflict, with potential impact all over the planet.
Suleimani’s assassination has plunged the Middle East into a crisis that seems likely to lead to further escalation between Washington and Tehran. The Guardian's Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov examines what motivated Donald Trump to order the assassination
US president calls Qassem Suleimani a ‘blood-thirsty terror’ to cheers from crowd in first campaign rally of the year
President Donald Trump made the killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani a theme of his re-election campaign on Thursday, drawing cheers from thousands at a rally when he said the death saved lives and delivered “American justice”.
At the campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, Trump spent a lengthy part of his stump speech defending his order to kill Suleimani and rejecting criticism from Democrats who say he overstepped his authority with the US military’s drone strike against the commander of Iran’s military al-Quds force at Baghdad airport a week ago.
A new video has emerged which appears to show the moment a Ukrainian passenger jet was shot down in Iran. Originally obtained by the New York Times, the phone footage shows a tiny spec suddenly exploding. The light disappears before the sound of impact can be heard just over 20 seconds later. All 176 people on board were killed. The plane crashed hours after Iran targeted US military assets in neighbouring Iraq. The US and other western allies believe the passenger jet was accidentally shot down by an Iranian missile
Iran has admitted that its military unintentionally shot down the passenger jet that crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday. Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 went down minutes into its flight, killing all 176 people onboard.
Experts say debris fragments and sudden loss of fail-safe systems point to missile
To civil aviation professionals, including pilots, engineers and former crash investigators, there was something immediately puzzling about the crash of the Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet that fell burning out of the sky minutes after takeoff from Tehran.
Conversation on forums, and in a risk assessment that was rapidly produced by the organisations OpsGroup, pointed to the sudden and catastrophic nature of the event, including the loss of both communications and tracking systems.
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has confirmed intelligence suggests a Ukrainian jet which crashed in Tehran on Wednesday was downed by an Iranian missile.
Trudeau has demanded there be a thorough investigation into the incident which killed 176 people including around 30 Canadian citizens
Ukraine investigators also cite engine failure and Russian missile among possible causes
A senior Ukrainian security official has said his country’s investigators will explore a range of possible reasons why one of its passenger jets crashed in Iran, including a drone collision, a terrorist bomb and a missile attack, but did not rule out a technical fault was to blame.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, cited unconfirmed reports circulating on social media that debris from a Russian-made missile had been found at the site, on the outskirts of Tehran, where the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 crashed on Wednesday, killing all 176 passengers and staff onboard.
‘Iran appears to be standing down,’ Trump said, in an uncharacteristically sober speech following rising tensions between US and Iran
Donald Trump backed away from further military confrontation with Iran on Wednesday after days of escalating tensions, saying Tehran appeared to be standing down following missile attacks on two Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops.
Flanked by the vice-president, Mike Pence, the defense secretary, Mark Esper, and other high ranking military officials in uniform, Trump delivered remarks in the Grand Foyer of the White House, hours after Iran declared the attack to be retaliation for the US drone strike last week that killed the senior Iranian Gen Qassem Suleimani.
Neither Tehran nor Washington want a war but the campaign of maximum pressure and the impulse for revenge mean they remain on collision course
The safety net that prevented a new Middle East catastrophe overnight has always been there. Neither the US nor Iran wants to go to war with each other. But it is a failsafe that has been tested too fecklessly too many times – and there is no reason to assume it will continue to hold indefinitely.
The fact there have been no confirmed reports of casualties from Iran’s missile strikes on military bases in Iraq may be due to early warning systems or the fact that Iraq’s government was tipped off so Americans and Iraqis had enough time to take cover. But the intention seems to have been to keep the strike limited and proportional.
The US president announced on Wednesday that Iran appeared to be 'standing down' after it launched more than a dozen missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US and coalition troops.
While Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, showed his support for the US president, other world leaders struck a more cautious note. European commission president Ursula von der Leyen called for dialogue to replace the use of weapons.
In Washington, the US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said Americans now feared for their safety.
President flanked by cabinet members and backed by eight military officers sent a clear message
As concern swelled about a potential military confrontation with Iran, Donald Trump appeared at the White House on Wednesday to deliver a notably non-provocative message, emphasizing that no Americans had been killed in Iranian missile strikes the night before.
But the choreography of the announcement, with Trump flanked by cabinet members and backed by eight military officers, communicated a clear subtext: America stood ready to strike.
The quartet of US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the still relatively new defense secretary Mark Esper, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley and the historically-controversialCIA director Gina Haspel strode across Capitol Hill today to brief members of Congress on the Iran issues.
There is some difference of perspective on how effective the briefing was.
Rep Mark Meadows says the briefing for lawmakers was “compelling and decisive” and left “little doubt” that the president made the right call in killing Qasem Soleimani and there was “clear and present danger.”
Meadows says Director Haspel was very “clear and articulate” that there was an “imminent threat” from Qasem Soleimani. “This general’s absence will not be easily replaced,” he adds and says it will take months if not years to fill the gap Qasem Soleimani leaves.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel said the theme of the Iran briefing "was the administration saying trust us."
"I’m not sure who I trust or what I trust. We’ve been told so many different things that really just bother me."
GOP KY Sen Paul: I think sanctions have actually pushed Iran away from the negotiating table and made it less likely to have a diplomatic solution..I did just speak to the President moments ago, I do believe that the President honestly does not want another war in the Middle East
British prime minister Boris Johnson and his Canadian counterpart, Justin Trudeau, had a telephone call with each other earlier in which they discussed the need for urgent de-escalation on all sides in the US-Iran crisis following Iranian missile attacks on military bases housing US troops in Iraq overnight, a spokesperson for Johnson said.
The leaders also discussed working together, and with international partners, to ensure Iran is prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon.