Prominent researcher Fariba Adelkhah was arrested in June, reports say
France has demanded immediate consular access to a senior French-Iranian academic who has been arrested in Iran.
Fariba Adelkhah, a prominent researcher in anthropology and social sciences based at the Paris political institute Sciences Po, is believed to have been arrested in June.
Continue reading...Arriving in Brussels on Monday, the UK’s foreign secretary said there was still time to save the Iran nuclear deal. European powers are trying to preserve the landmark deal, which the US abandoned unilaterally a year ago. Iran recently announced it would start enriching uranium beyond agreed limits
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt tries to reinforce nuclear deal abandoned by US
Tensions in the Middle East could pose an existential threat to mankind unless the Iran nuclear deal is maintained, Jeremy Hunt will say on Monday in his starkest warning since the regional crisis escalated two months ago.
Speaking ahead of an EU meeting in Brussels, the UK foreign secretary will try to underline the importance of the deal, which was abandoned unilaterally by the US a year ago, leading to an accelerating reciprocal withdrawal by Iran.
Continue reading...“This is a dangerous game,” an Iranian foreign ministry official warned on Friday. He was urging the UK to release the Iranian tanker which the British navy helped authorities in Gibraltar to seize last week. But the context, as he made clear, is the intensifying struggle between Washington and Tehran, in which the main players appear overconfident they know the rules and understand the stakes, while minor players fret about outcomes they have limited power to change.
Mohamed ElBaradei, who headed the UN nuclear watchdog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, has offered one of the sharpest warnings of the potential consequences: “All that I hear basically [brings] to mind the days before the Iraq war,” he told the BBC. The Iranian regime’s record at home and in the region is a grim one. But this crisis was created by the US president’s determination to destroy an international nuclear deal – which Iran was abiding by – and throttle the economy. It cornered Tehran and empowered its hardliners, who seized on the proof that America could never be trusted.
Continue reading...MoD says destroyer will be deployed within days to protect British commercial oil tankers
The UK is stepping up its military presence in the Gulf by sending a second warship to the region to protect British commercial oil tankers, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The HMS Duncan, a Type 45 destroyer, will be deployed within days after it completed a course of Nato exercises in the Baltic Sea with the aim to be in the Gulf region by next week.
Continue reading...Fears commercial vessels at risk from gunboats following HMS Montrose’s intervention
British ships operating in the Gulf have been put on the highest state of alert amid fears that UK-flagged commercial vessels are vulnerable to attack by Iranian gunboats.
The change in guidance from the British government, changing the alert to level 3, was made on Tuesday, a day before a Royal Navy warship trained its guns on Iranian gunboats that tried to disrupt the passage of an Isle of Man-flagged vessel. Level 3 is described as equivalent to the domestic security classification of critical in which there is an imminent risk of an incident.
Continue reading...UK government spokesman says three Iranian boats were warned off by HMS Montrose, but Tehran denies involvement
Three Iranian boats tried to intercept a British oil tanker in the Gulf before being driven off by a Royal Navy warship, the UK said, in a major escalation of tensions in the vital shipping channel off Iran.
The incident took place in the strait of Hormuz through which the commercial vessel British Heritage was attempting to pass on Wednesday.
Continue reading...French envoy visits Tehran as Rouhani warns UK tanker seizure will have repercussions
Iran has told Europe it will not reverse its decision to increase uranium enrichment beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear accord until it achieves its “full rights” to an economic relationship with the EU under the deal.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior security official and representative of Iran’s supreme leader, made his remarks as he met a senior French diplomat sent to Tehran by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Continue reading...Pentagon’s top general says group of nations would ensure freedom of navigation in Straits of Hormuz
The United States hopes to enlist allies in the coming weeks for a military coalition to safeguard strategic waters in the Persian Gulf where Washington blames Iran and Iran-aligned fighters for attacks, the Penatgon’s most senior general has said.
Under the plan, which has only been finalised in recent days, the US would provide command ships and lead surveillance efforts for the military coalition in seaas off Iran and Yemen. Allies would patrol waters near those US command ships and escort commercial vessels with their nation’s flags.
Continue reading...Tehran breaches agreed 3.67% limit and hints it could soon start enriching to 20%
Iran has enriched uranium beyond the key limit dictated in its 2015 deal with major powers, in the latest escalation of the crisis between Washington and Tehran.
The move, confirmed by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, came amid hints from Iran that it could start enriching to 20% later in the year unless it secured European help in the face of crippling US sanctions.
Continue reading...Tehran defiant in face of condemnation by European signatories to joint comprehensive plan of action
The Iran nuclear deal was put on life support on Sunday after Iran took a further step to breach its rules by taking its low-enriched uranium limit over the agreed threshold.
It was the second Iranian breach of the agreement in a matter of weeks, although Iran took only a relatively modest step by increasing enrichment from the agreed 3.7% level – enough to generate to civil nuclear power – to 5%, still well below the 20% threshold that is seen as putting Iran on course to developing a nuclear bomb.
Continue reading...Singer says authorities did not believe she would not be playing a public show
The British singer Joss Stone says she has been deported from Iran, claiming the authorities believed she would play an unsanctioned concert in the country, where there are strict restrictions on female musicians performing in public.
In a video posted on Instagram, the 32-year-old said: “We got detained and then we got deported,” while dressed in a white headscarf, adding that she was on a “blacklist” and that the authorities “don’t believe we wouldn’t be playing a public show” on what would have been the final leg of her world tour.
Continue reading...Iran summons UK ambassador over incident off Gibraltar as tensions escalate over nuclear deal
Royal Marines have helped seize an Iranian supertanker suspected of carrying oil to Syria off the coast of Gibraltar, escalating tensions between the UK and Tehran as the agreement aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear programme unravels.
A detachment of nearly 30 British troops working with the Gibraltarian police intercepted the vessel, believed to be carrying 2m barrels of oil, in a dramatic manoeuvre Spain said had been conducted at the request of the US.
Continue reading...Focus is on averting further breaches and UK says it remains committed to 2015 deal
European leaders have resisted calls to start reimposing sanctions on Iran after the country said it had for the first time broken the terms of the nuclear deal it signed with foreign powers in 2015.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Monday it had allowed its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to exceed 300kg. The move is a carefully calibrated and reversible step intended to put pressure on Europe to do more to help mitigate the effect of crippling US sanctions.
Continue reading...Husband also ends strike outside Iranian embassy in London after wife takes food
The imprisoned British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has ended her hunger strike after 15 days.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who had been holding his own hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London in solidarity, said on Saturday his wife had eaten some porridge and fruit.
Continue reading...Expectations are not being met in discussions with world powers, claims Iranian envoy
Iran said some progress had been made at a meeting with world powers on its nuclear accord – but probably “still not enough” to keep the landmark 2015 deal alive.
“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations,” said Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, after the talks on Friday. “I don’t think the progress made today will be enough to stop our process – but the decision will be made in Tehran.”
Continue reading...Jeremy Hunt says Britain would stand with the US in the case of military intervention. How has Iraq been forgotten so quickly?
The imperial city of Persepolis, ruined capital of Persia’s kings, rises from the desert north-east of Shiraz like a rebuke to invaders, ancient and modern. Its marble columns, many still standing, were erected about 500BC when inhabitants of the British Isles were capering around in animal skins and it was Greeks who posed the biggest military threat. Donald Trump’s America was a bad idea whose time had not yet come.
Britain’s recent history with Iran is, for the most part, shaming. Nineteenth-century imperialists and traders exploited and bullied, redrawing its borders with the Raj. British armies invaded and occupied and, in the 1920s, helped to elevate Reza Shah to the peacock throne. The ensuing era of autocratic rule sowed the seeds of the anti-western 1979 Islamic revolution. At Persepolis, graffiti left by Victorian army officers still defaces its pillars.
Continue reading...Country may be waiting on outcome of talks setting out plans to kickstart trade with EU
Iran has held back on its threat to make its first breach of the nuclear deal and may be waiting for the outcome of talks with EU powers, China and Russia in Vienna.
At the talks on Friday the EU countries will set out plans to kickstart trade between Tehran and the bloc, one of the Iranian preconditions for sticking with the deal.
Continue reading...Foreign ministry spokesman accuses Trump administration of destroying peace and security
Iran says the US decision to impose sanctions on its supreme leader and other top officials is “idiotic” and has permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
Donald Trump imposed new sanctions on Monday against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and top military chiefs, in an unprecedented step designed to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned American drone. Khamenei is Iran’s utmost authority who has the last say on all state matters.
Continue reading...President at the White House signs executive order that he says will hurt Iran’s economy – follow the latest live
The article on journalist and advice columnist E Jean Carroll’s sexual assault allegations against President Trump mysteriously disappeared on the New York Post website on Friday afternoon; the wire story by the Associated Press was also scrubbed.
Today, CNN is reporting that former editor-in-chief Col Allan - a longtime Trump supporter and “old lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch who returned to the conservative tabloid as an adviser in early 2019” - ordered that the story be removed.
Some news: Murdoch lieutenant Col Allan ordered the removal of the New York Post's story on Jean Carroll's sexual assault allegation against Trump, sources tell me and @garveyshuffle https://t.co/GTh4z7N2eZ
Hundreds of children were moved out of a Texas Border Patrol station where they were held with inadequate food, water and sanitation for weeks. At this station, a legal team interviewed 60 children and documented kids forced to take care of kids, no clean clothing, weeks of no baths and poor nutrition.
This morning, my office was informed that only 30 children remain in the Clint Border Patrol station in El Paso County.
Last week, @hrw lawyers found 255 children in beyond alarming conditions in the same station. pic.twitter.com/tmBC3M0aqP
JUST IN: 249 of the children are now in the ORR shelter system according to Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the agency. https://t.co/gdhsc2GgkH
Continue reading...