Category Archives: Iran

Iran: Trump announces new, ‘hard-hitting’ sanctions – live

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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

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Donald Trump orders fresh sanctions against Iran’s Ali Khamenei

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Sanctions target supreme leader and eight commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guard

Donald Trump has ordered new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other officials including eight Revolutionary Guard commanders in the latest step of an escalating pressure campaign.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will also face fresh sanctions in a few days, US officials said. He negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers, and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.

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Iran may pull further away from nuclear deal after latest sanctions

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Comments follow US warning not to ‘mistake prudence and discretion for weakness’

Iran has announced it may take further steps to pull away from its nuclear deal with international powers as John Bolton, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, said a fresh round of sanctions against Tehran would serve as a warning not to “mistake US prudence and discretion for weakness”.

The comments on Sunday followed reports that Washington had mounted a sophisticated and crippling cyber-attack on the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards after the US president decided against a more conventional airstrike in response to Tehran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.

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US launched cyber attack on Iranian rockets and missiles – reports

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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.

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Trump: I’ll be Iran’s ‘best friend’ if it acquires no nuclear weapons

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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.

Related: Will he? Won't he? How Trump's impulses are driving his Iran policy

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Foreign Office minister to visit Iran to call for ‘urgent de-escalation’

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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.

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Trump orders Ice to target migrant families in pre-dawn Sunday raids – live

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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:

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Trump says he stopped airstrike on Iran in latest escalation of tensions – video report

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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

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Will he? Won’t he? How Trump’s impulses are driving his Iran policy

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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.

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Trump says he stopped airstrike on Iran because 150 would have died

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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.

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Donald Trump ‘cancelled Iran strikes with planes in the air’

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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.

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Trump suggests a ‘loose and stupid’ Iranian officer shot down US drone – video

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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.

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Trump on whether US will strike Iran: ‘You will soon find out’ – live

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President says ‘stay tuned for next week’ when asked if he will authorize strike against Tehran in retaliation for attack on US drone

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.

From The Hill:

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.

No other candidate leads Trump in the poll.

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Trump’s dangerous brinkmanship on Iran | Letters

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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.

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Donald Trump calls Iran attack on US drone a ‘big mistake’

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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.

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‘Does the president have the power to declare war?’: Democrats question Trump official – video

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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'

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US joins four rogue countries seen as likely forces for bad, poll finds

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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.

Related: ‘Credible evidence’ Saudi crown prince liable for Khashoggi killing – UN report

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UK settles £1.3bn claim by Iranian bank over trade ban damages

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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.

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Method of attack on tankers remains key evidence against Iran

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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.

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