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      The Guardian view on the Iranian nuclear deal: hopes grow for the JCPOA, but time is tight | Editorial

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      Good news does not always arrive in obvious forms. Six years ago, the Iran nuclear deal was a diplomatic triumph earned by a long and painful process. This weekend saw a much more modest but equally necessary victory. Though Iran has reduced the International Atomic Energy Agency’s access for ensuring compliance with the deal, a three-month agreement reached on Sunday will allow continued monitoring. As the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, observed, it “salvages the situation for now”. The fear has been that though Tehran’s non-compliance has been carefully calibrated to date, its next steps might be irreversible.After four years of havoc wrought by the Trump administration, which abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and did its best – or worst – to kill the deal, this is welcome news. It indicates new political will and flexibility on the part of Iran as well as the US. There is now a real prospect of informal talks, brokered by the EU. Tehran appears reassured that the Biden administration does not plan to leverage Donald Trump’s sanctions to gain more concessions, as it had suspected. So there is more time on the clock – but not much. The supreme leader’s speech on Monday, saying that Iran could enrich uranium up to 60% if needed is a reassurance to hardliners internally as well as a reminder to the US. A short-term fix must pave the way for a longer-term solution. On the US side, the Biden administration’s rhetoric and appointments, alongside its coordination with the “E3” – Germany, France and the UK – indicate an eagerness to make progress. Both governments face formidable domestic opposition. Joe Biden has a huge agenda and limited political capital. In Iran, the short term IAEA deal was bitterly attacked in parliament. Elections in June are likely to see hardliners more hostile to the US prosper, though a more unified political establishment might in some ways simplify matters. In moving before President Hassan Rouhani leaves office in August, the two sides will be dealing with familiar faces and the US can draw on his attachment to the deal. The longer diplomacy takes, the more progress Iran will make on its nuclear programme.Credit is due to the E3 for shoring up the JCPOA against the odds, despite intense pressure from the Trump administration and its inability to find an effective economic mechanism for support. That commitment has paid off. But much more still needs to be done to save the deal. The US does not want to look like it is going easy on Tehran. But it could quietly end its obstruction of Iran’s $5bn (£3.5bn) IMF request for Covid relief, or give the nod to the release of frozen funds in other countries under arrangements ensuring they are used for humanitarian purposes.The ultimate obstacle is the credibility deficit left by Mr Trump. Iran is all too aware that a new administration may not only discard but trample on its existing commitments. That means that a “more for more” process to go beyond the deal and resolve outstanding issues regarding missiles and regional relations will be ultimately be more necessary than ever. The Trump years have shown that a narrow deal like the JCPOA cannot be stable in the current environment. But there can be no progress without a return to it. More

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      Biden will not lift sanctions to get Iran back to negotiating table

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      Joe Biden has said the United States will not lift its economic sanctions on Iran in order to get Tehran back to the negotiating table to discuss how to revive the Iran nuclear deal.Asked if the United States will lift sanctions first to get Iran back to the negotiating table, Biden replied: “no” in an interview with CBS News, which was recorded on Friday but released on Sunday ahead of the Super Bowl.Former president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US in 2018 from the atomic deal, which saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Biden has said he will seek to revive the deal, but insisted that Iran must first reverse its nuclear steps, creating a contest of wills between the nations.Asked if Iran had to stop enriching uranium first, Biden nodded. It was not clear exactly what he meant, as Iran is permitted to enrich uranium under the 2015 nuclear deal within certain limits.“Will the US lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table?” CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell asked.“No,” Biden responded.“They have to stop enriching uranium first?” O’Donnell asked. Biden nodded.Earlier on Sunday Iran’s supreme leader urged the US to lift all sanctions if it wants the country to live up to commitments under its nuclear deal with world powers, according to state TV.In his first comments on the matter since Biden took office, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying: “If (the US) wants Iran to return to its commitments, it must lift all sanctions in practice, then we will do verification then we will return to our commitments.”“This is the definitive and irreversible policy of the Islamic Republic, and all of the country’s officials are unanimous on this, and no one will deviate from it,” Khamenei added Sunday, reiterating Iranian leaders’ previous remarks that the US must ease its sanctions before Iran comes back into compliance.The supreme leader, 81, has the final say on all matters of state in Iran and approved the efforts at reaching the nuclear deal in 2015.In response to Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, the country began to gradually violate its atomic commitments, and threatened further provocations in a bid to increase its leverage and get Biden to prioritize a return to the deal as he moves to dismantle Trump’s legacy. Biden has signed a series of executive actions that reverse course on a wide range of issues, including climate change and immigration.Following the killing last December of an Iranian scientist credited with spearheading the country’s disbanded military nuclear program, Iran’s parliament approved a law to block international nuclear inspectors later this month – a serious violation of the accord.Iran also has begun enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels and said it would experiment with uranium metals, a key component of a nuclear warhead. The country has announced its moves and insisted that all breaches of the pact are easily reversible. Tehran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Biden presidency 'may herald new start for Saudi-Iranian relations'

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      An opportunity for a new beginning between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been presented by Joe Biden’s presidency, two leading Saudi and Iranians close to their diplomatic leaderships are proposing in an article in the Guardian today.The article is co-written by Abdulaziz Sager, the Saudi Arabian chairman and founder of the Gulf Research Center, and Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat and now a nuclear specialist based at Princeton University.Their proposals are the fruit of a track 2, or backchannel initiative that has been under way privately for months.Their discussions are one of the few forms of private dialogue under way between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and to the extent that their discussions have been approved by serving diplomats in both capitals the initiative may signal a new willingness on both sides to the use the advent of the Biden presidency to explore an end to the years long enmity between the two countries.In an interview with the reformist Iranian newspaper Etemaad last week, the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, hinted at a new approach. He also accepted that opportunities for dialogue with Riyadh had been missed, adding that it was imperative that Iran was the pioneer in this enterprise.He said that “we have no territorial claim or interest in accessing the natural resources of other regional countries; therefore, it is Iran that can initiate this effort from a position of wealth. We shouldn’t wait for others.”Sager and Mousavian warn of the consequences if Saudi Arabia and Iran remain in conflict, writing that “we remain at the mercy of a single miscalculation that could turn the protracted cold war between our states hot, potentially ushering in disastrous consequences for the entire region”.They claim that both countries perceive the other as seeking to dominate in the region, with Riyadh convinced that Iran is trying to encircle the kingdom with its allied proxy supporters while Tehran views Saudi Arabia as in alliance with the US to undermine the Islamic Republic.“Riyadh charges Iran with interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Iraq; Tehran sees Saudi Arabia doing the same in these very countries.”They urge both sides to agree – perhaps with the help of the UN – a set of principles around non-interference, the inviolability of national boundaries, rejection of violence, respecting the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, respect for religious minorities and abandonment of the use of proxy forces to advance national interests. The principles also support the free flow of oil and navigation, and rejection of the procurement of weapons of mass destruction.The authors stress: “Postponing de-escalation would be a grave mistake, as the region has proved time and again that on the rare occasion that opportunities for constructive dialogue present themselves, they must be grasped swiftly before they vanish.”They admit that the task may seem impossible, but claim that both sides have taken steps to show they are willing to avoid an inescapable zero-sum confrontation, for instance by quiet cooperation over facilitating Iranian Muslim participation in the hajj pilgrimage.
On Thursday the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was reported as saying Saudi Arabia may need to be involved in any follow on to the Iran nuclear deal signed by Iran, the US, three European powers, China and Russia. There is a widespread expectation that if the US and Iran could get back into mutual compliance with the deal discussions about Iran’s relations with its regional neighbours would have to follow. More

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      We can escape a zero-sum struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia – if we act now | Abdulaziz Sager and Hossein Mousavian

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      Back in May 2019, we – an Iranian former diplomat and a Saudi chair of the Gulf Research Center – called for dialogue between our countries’ respective leaders. We warned that the alternative would increase tensions that could boil over into a catastrophic confrontation.Since then we have witnessed a string of attacks on Saudi and Iranian oil tankers in international waters; a major strike on Saudi Aramco facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais; a close brush with conflict between Iran and the United States in the aftermath of General Qassem Soleimani’s killing by a US drone; and then, late last year, the killing of a top nuclear scientist in Iran. While tempers seem to have cooled since then, we remain at the mercy of a single miscalculation that could turn the protracted cold war between our states hot, potentially ushering in disastrous consequences for the entire region. With the arrival of a new administration in Washington, the time has come to move from confrontation to dialogue.During the past four decades, relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran have oscillated between confrontation and competition but also cooperation. Today, we are at the bottom of a cycle. Yet we share a sense that while our governments stand at odds on a range of regional issues, there is nothing inevitable about this enmity – nor is it condemned to be permanent.The first step toward a tolerable modus vivendi would be for each side to recognise the other’s threat perceptions – real or imagined – and embrace a set of foundational principles upon which to build.Both Iran and Saudi Arabia perceive the other to be keen on dominating the region. Riyadh views Iran as intent on encircling the kingdom with its allied non-state actors; Tehran views Riyadh as a key facilitator of US efforts to contain and undermine the Islamic Republic. Each country believes that the other is determined to spread its own Islamic jurisprudence at the expense of the other. Riyadh considers Iran’s ballistic missiles arsenal to be a threat to its national security, especially its critical infrastructure. Tehran regards the Kingdom’s purchase of large quantities of sophisticated western arms as exacerbating the conventional weapons asymmetry in the region. Riyadh charges Iran with interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states such as Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Iraq; Tehran sees Saudi Arabia doing the same in these very countries.To break this vicious cycle and move beyond the blame game, our leaders need to engage in direct discussions guided by the following fundamentals: i) conducting relations based on mutual respect, according to mutual interest and on an equal footing; ii) preserving and respecting sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and the inviolability of international boundaries of all states in the region; iii) non-interference in internal affairs of states; iv) rejecting the threat or use of force and committing to peaceful settlement of all disputes; v) rejecting the policy of supporting sectarian divisions, employing sectarianism for political objectives, and supporting and arming militias in the regional states; vi) respecting the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, and in particular inviolability of diplomatic facilities; vii) strengthening Islamic solidarity and avoiding conflict, violence, extremism and sectarian tension; viii) full cooperation on counterterrorism measures; ix) treating the religious minority in the other’s country as citizens of that country, not primarily as co-religionists with transnational loyalties; x) rejecting the pursuit of hegemony by any state in the region; xi) ensuring freedom of navigation and the free flow of oil and other resources to and from the region, and the protection of critical infrastructure; and xii) prohibiting the development or procurement of all forms of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).Mutually acceptable guiding principles are a critical starting point. But action is needed to build confidence after decades of antagonism and mistrust. Diplomacy requires dialogue while direct discussions will require a roadmap, which includes a set of reciprocal confidence-building measures and pursues a clear vision for a mutually acceptable regional security arrangement. The United Nations can play an important role in leading or supporting such a regional dialogue process.All this may seem an impossible task for two governments apparently locked in an escalatory cycle. Yet it is important to recognise that both countries have successfully maintained quiet channels of cooperation and dialogue all along. Even amid escalating tensions, Iran and Saudi Arabia engaged in fruitful dialogue over facilitating Iranian Muslim participation in the hajj pilgrimage.Saudi Arabia and Iran have already taken actions that belie the notion of an inescapable, zero-sum struggle. Our two nations can and should build on these positive examples of tentative cooperation to reduce tensions in our volatile region at a time when any spark could set alight the entire region. Joe Biden’s presidency now offers an opportunity for a new beginning. But time is of the essence. Postponing de-escalation would be a grave mistake, as the region has proved time and again that on the rare occasion that opportunities for constructive dialogue present themselves, they must be grasped swiftly before they vanish.Abdulaziz Sager is the chair and founder of the Gulf Research Center. Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat, is a Middle East security and nuclear specialist at Princeton University. More

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      Iran disappointed over Biden administration's refusal to lift sanctions

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      Iran has responded with anger and disappointment to the new US secretary of state saying American sanctions against Tehran will not be lifted until it comes back into verifiable “full compliance” with its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.Antony Blinken said Iranian compliance would take some time, indicating there is unlikely to be any major movement in negotiations until after the Iranian presidential elections in June.Blinken made his remarks at a press briefing, prompting some Iranians to claim the Biden administration was using the same failed bargaining tactics as Donald Trump.Hesameddin Ashena, adviser to the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, told Blinken on Twitter if this kind of approach had been effective, then “Donald Trump would not have left the White House waiting for a phone call from Iran”.The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has in a series of interviews and articles over the past fortnight set out a plan whereby Iran would come back into compliance with the deal as soon as the US lifted its panoply of sanctions. He also insisted Iran was not willing to renegotiate the existing deal, or to discuss its missile programme.Rouhani has highlighted the pain continued US sanctions has caused his country and himself personally. He said: “I testify to God that in these three years, there has not been a night that I can go to bed with peace of mind. During these three years, I felt responsible for the period of the imposed war and I felt that we were in the imposed war. People persevered, endured and suffered a lot.”Iran has moved away from the nuclear deal commitments, including by breaching agreed uranium enrichment limits and threatening from February to minimise the access UN inspectors have to its nuclear sites.The Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, went to the Fordow nuclear site near Qom on Thursday to be briefed on uranium enrichment stockpiles and preparations for changes to the nuclear inspection regime. On the sidelines of the visit, Iranian officials said they intended to install more IR2m gas centrifuges in the next three months. They said Iran had 17kg of stockpiles of 20% enriched uranium, well above the limits set out in the agreement.Blinken has assembled a team with experience of negotiating with Iran, and it may be he is setting out a maximalist bargaining position before the start of any talks. He also has to ensure he takes a sceptical Congress with him.He said: “President Biden has been very clear in saying that if Iran comes back into full compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], the United States would do the same thing and then we would use that as a platform to build, with our allies and partners, what we called a longer and stronger agreement and to deal with a number of other issues that are deeply problematic in the relationship with Iran.“But we are a long ways from that point. Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts. And it would take some time, should it make the decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance in time for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations. So we’re not – we’re not there yet, to say the least.”Blinken made the comments on the same day as speaking with his foreign minister counterparts in Germany, France and the UK to gauge their thinking. EU diplomats have also just returned from a visit to the Gulf states to discuss how to handle Iran.Blinken also said the US was suspending arms sales deals to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.The US stance had been prefigured in briefings by French officials earlier in the week, prompting Zarif to tweet on Tuesday: “Why on earth should Iran – a country that stood firm & defeated 4 years of a brutal US economic terrorism imposed in violation of JCPOA & UNSC Resolution – show goodwill gesture first? It was the US that broke the deal – for no reason. It must remedy its wrong; then Iran will respond.”Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, writing in the New York Times, said: “Iran, for its part, has declared on numerous occasions that it is ready to return to the obligations initially agreed under the nuclear deal and expeditiously reverse the measures we have taken since, if all of the sanctions are withdrawn that were imposed and reimposed by the Trump administration after its illegal withdrawal from the accord.”Israeli military officials have broken protocol before Israel’s elections to warn against a US return to the nuclear deal.One issue for any negotiations is the precise US sanctions that Iran wants lifted, since some predate the signing of the nuclear deal in 2015. More

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      European leaders hail 'new dawn' for ties with US under Biden

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      European leaders have voiced relief at Joe Biden’s inauguration, hailing a “new dawn” for Europe and the US, but warned that the world has changed after four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and transatlantic ties will be different in future.“This new dawn in America is the moment we’ve been awaiting for so long,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, told MEPs. “Once again, after four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House.”The head of the EU’s executive arm said Biden’s swearing-in was “a demonstration of the resilience of American democracy”, and the bloc stood “ready to reconnect with an old and trusted partner to breathe new life into our cherished alliance”.But Von der Leyen said relief should not lead to illusion, since while “Trump may soon be consigned to history, his followers remain”.Charles Michel, the president of the European council, also said the US had changed. Transatlantic relations had “greatly suffered” and the world had grown “more complex, less stable and less predictable”, said Michel, who chairs summits between the EU’s 27 heads of state and government.“We have our differences and they will not magically disappear. America seems to have changed, and how it’s perceived in Europe and the rest of the world has also changed,” he said. Europeans “must take our fate firmly into our own hands”.A study this week showed that while many Europeans welcomed Biden’s election victory, more people than not felt that after four years of Trump the US could not be trusted, and a majority believed Biden would not be able to mend a “broken” country or reverse its decline on the world stage.The EU has invited Biden to a summit and top-level Nato meeting when he is ready, with Michel called for “a new founding pact” to boost multilateral cooperation, combat Covid, tackle climate change and aid economic recovery.The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said he was “greatly relieved” at Biden’s inauguration, hailing “a good day for democracy”. He said democracy under the Trump administration had faced “tremendous challenges and endured … and proved strong”.Steinmeier said the transfer of power to Biden brought with it “the hope that the international community can work together more closely”, and he said Germany was looking forward “to knowing we once more have the US at our side as an indispensable partner”.However, he said that “despite the joy of this day”, the last four years had shown that “we must resolutely stand up to polarisation, protect and strengthen our democracies, and make policy on the basis of reason and facts.”Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said his country was “looking forward to the Biden presidency, with which we will start working immediately.” He said the two countries had a strong common agenda, including “effective multilateralism, climate change, green and digital transition and social inclusion.”The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said Biden’s victory represented “the victory of democracy over the ultra-right and its three methods – massive deception, national division, and abuse, sometimes violent, of democratic institutions.”Five years ago, Sánchez said, the world had believed Trump to be “a bad joke. But five years later we realised he jeopardised nothing less than the world’s most powerful democracy.”Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has faced criticism for his close relationship with Trump, said he was looking forward to working closely with Biden, citing a host of policy areas in which he hoped to collaborate.“In our fight against Covid and across climate change, defence, security, and in promoting and defending democracy, our goals are the same and our nations will work hand in hand to achieve them,” Johnson said in a statement.The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for Russia and the US to repair their strained ties. “The current condition of relations between Russia and the US is of great concern,” he said in an interview with the state-run news agency Tass. “But this also means that something has to be done about it in order to normalise relations. We cannot fence ourselves off from each other.”Among the US’s more outspoken foes, Iran, which has repeatedly called on Washington to lift sanctions imposed over its nuclear drive, did not miss the chance to celebrate Trump’s departure.“A tyrant’s era came to an end and today is the final day of his ominous reign,” said the president, Hassan Rouhani. “We expect the Biden administration to return to law and to commitments, and try in the next four years, if they can, to remove the stains of the past four years.”Biden’s administration has said it wants the US back in the landmark Iran nuclear accord from which Trump withdrew, providing Tehran returns to strict compliance.The Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said the military alliance hoped to strengthen transatlantic ties under the new president, adding that the world faced “global challenges that none of us can tackle alone”. More

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      Unscrupulous and aggressive, Pompeo plans to be the next Trump – but smarter

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      While all eyes are on Donald Trump and his Capitol Hill mob, a would-be heir and successor is running riot all by himself, storming citadels, wagging the flag and breaking china. No, it’s not Donald Jr, or Ivanka, or Ted Cruz, and certainly not poor, conflicted Mike Pence.Mike Pompeo may not strike many people as presidential material. But Trump lowered the bar. Make no mistake. America’s snarly, bully-boy secretary of state is focusing not on Joe Biden’s inauguration this week but on how to beat him or any other Democrat in 2024.Pompeo, the man who would be king, is playing political hunger games – and, looking ahead, he aims to win.In a display of extraordinary chutzpah, Pompeo has spent the time since Trump lost the election setting booby traps and laying diplomatic minefields in global conflict zones. Partly he aims to secure his own and Trump’s “legacy”. Partly it’s to screw Biden. But mostly it’s about winning the White House.Pompeo has upended established policies, adopted ultra-hardline positions, and claimed imaginary successes to advance his personal standing with the Trump rump. In fact, he’s trying to out-Trump Trump. Like him, he’s unscrupulous and aggressive, but here’s the difference: he’s not stupid.That potentially makes the former Kansas Tea party congressman and CIA chief more dangerous to the Biden presidency, and the progressive cause, than a disgraced Trump may ever be. He showed his political savvy by steering clear of the impeachment fracas. Instead, Pompeo is busy setting future agendas.Speaking in Washington last Tuesday, for example, he declared – without new evidence but drawing from a dust-heap of recycled, unproven claims – that “al-Qaida has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran”.The American right has been trying to make the Iran connection ever since Dick Cheney falsely fingered Saddam Hussein for 9/11. But Pompeo does not get hung up on facts. He prefers assertions, tweets and slogans. Thus, he claimed, “they [Iran and al-Qaida] are partners in terrorism, partners in hate… This axis poses a grave threat to the security of nations and to the American homeland”.There’s no doubting where Pompeo and his re-purposed axis of evil are headed with this sort of talk. “We ignore this Iran-al-Qaida nexus at our peril,” he said. “We must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it.” Message to Biden: when dealing with Iran, make war, not peace – or be accused of coddling terrorists.Raw bellicosity plays well on the right, especially with Christian Zionists and evangelical born-againers, of whom Pompeo is ostentatiously proud to be one. Such voters now seek a less toxic Republican standard-bearer. His new designation of Yemen’s Tehran-supported Houthis as terrorists is yet more grist to this mill, regardless of the civilian suffering he admits it will cause.Pompeo also arbitrarily returned Cuba to the US list of terrorist sponsors last week. Cuba accused him, reasonably enough, of “political opportunism” to obstruct improved relations under Biden. Pompeo is notably less vocal about Havana’s ally, Venezuela, where he and John Bolton risked Bay of Pigs II with failed regime change plots.Pompeo loves baiting China, the new “evil empire”, no matter that “Wuhan virus” insults, sanctions, and sabre-rattling are plainly counter-productive. He gratuitously goaded Beijing again last week by strengthening contacts with Taiwan. Decades of delicate east Asian diplomatic balancing flew out the window.This last-gasp diplomatic blitzkrieg does not fatally tie Biden’s hands but coupled with past policy blunders, it makes sensible policymaking more difficult. In truth, the Pompeo-Trump legacy is best defined in negatives: not achieving North Korean disarmament, wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, quitting the Paris climate accord, alienating allies, undermining the UN. In this sense, Biden just needs to act positive.Pompeo’s last big push for a trademark achievement – persuading Saudi Arabia to join Gulf states in cutting highly-questionable “peace deals” with Israel – ran into the sand. The Trump administration leaves office with the Middle East in greater disarray than when it arrived, whether it’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, or the western Sahara.Unabashed, Pompeo is zealously re-writing this record of failure as a fake narrative of success. “If Pompeo’s efforts [to promote his legacy] look comical… if they are a bloated mess of obsequious praise for Trump, empty sloganeering, and half-truths, well, they are also a fair reflection of the man himself,” wrote analyst Jeffrey Lewis.As he not so stealthily lays the groundwork for a 2024 run, Pompeo has controversially exploited his position to deliver partisan speeches, hold exclusive dinners for wealthy backers, woo Christian groups, tour key domestic battlefields such as Iowa, get chummy with authoritarian foreign leaders – and tailor US foreign policy to his hawkishly regressive views.His politicised machinations have not gone unnoticed. Pompeo’s professional conduct has been investigated by his own state department. He was accused of lying about the Ukraine phone call that got Trump impeached the first time. For a while, he abetted Trump’s election denialism with talk of a “second term”.“Selfishness at the expense of the national interest isn’t the mark of an honourable diplomat or a patriot,” a New York Times editorial scathingly remarked on Friday.Many abroad are wary. After Pompeo, anxious to get out of Dodge during last week’s Trump showdown, invited himself to Brussels, he was roundly snubbed. EU politicians who have smarted at past insults, served up one of their own. They did not have time for him. The trip was cancelled.Many in Europe hope finally to have seen the back of him. Fat chance. If he gets his way, Pompeo will be the next Trump. It’s an alarming prospect for America and the world. More

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      Classifying Houthis as terrorists will worsen famine in Yemen, Trump is warned

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      The Trump administration is facing mounting calls to abandon threats to sanction Houthi rebels in northern Yemen to avoid an imminent danger of extreme famine in the country, where almost two-thirds of the population are in need of food aid.US state department officials are considering designating the Houthis as a terrorist group before the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden, a move that would complicate the delivery of essential aid in large parts of the country, senior UN officials and NGOs have said.The widely predicted move would be alongside a raft of flagged sanctions against Iran and its interests over the final five weeks of Trump’s rule, in which squeezing Tehran and its allies looms as a central plank of Washington’s foreign policy.The Labour party in the UK added its voice to the concerns on Sunday, saying the expected move against the Houthis, whom Iran supports in Yemen, would result in aid being unable to reach much of the country’s north. The shadow minister for international development, Anna McMorrin, said this would deprive millions of people who had no choice but to remain under Houthi control of much-needed assistance.In a letter to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, imploring the UK not to follow the US’s lead, McMorrin wrote: “We are concerned that a blanket definition for the Houthis would create a near insurmountable hurdle to the delivery of essential humanitarian relief, with those providing material relief or economic support to agencies and multilateral programmes at risk of legal or financial sanctions.“Humanitarian organisations would also be denied practical contact with much of the Houthis’ administrative infrastructure and would be barred from using local civilian contractors to deliver programmes.”Human Rights Watch has also warned of the consequences of US designation. “Many Yemenis are already on the brink of starvation, and US actions that would interfere with the work of aid organisations could have catastrophic consequences,” said the organisation’s Yemen researcher, Afrah Nasser, in a report released on Friday. “Any designation of the Houthis should at a minimum provide clear and immediate exemptions for humanitarian aid, but millions of lives should not have to depend on that.”Yemen, one of the region’s most impoverished states, has been in turmoil over most of the past decade. Instability worsened when the Houthis overthrew the Yemeni government in early 2015. That was followed by a military intervention led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which has further destabilised the country and led to soaring humanitarian needs. Despite temporary lulls in fighting, calls for a permanent ceasefire have not been met.The United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, said last month: “Yemen is now in imminent danger of the worst famine the world has seen for decades. In the absence of immediate action, millions of lives may be lost.”Calls to support humanitarian efforts have repeatedly met funding difficulties. Humanitarian needs have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has ravaged much of the country. However, a dysfunctional bureaucracy has made understanding the scale of the spread of disease almost impossible.Iran has provided support to Houthi rebels throughout the conflict with Saudi Arabia, which has led to mass displacement and disease and at least 12,000 civilian casualties. Riyadh insists Tehran’s level of backing is far higher than it acknowledges and amounts to a strategic threat against its eastern border. Ballistic missiles fired from Yemen have sporadically hit Saudi cities throughout the war, which has also been marked by repeated Saudi airstrikes inside the country.McMorrin and Human Rights Watch both say attempts to secure a negotiated ceasefire would be much more complicated if the US moves ahead with a designation of the Houthis.The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has told regional allies that he is determined to tighten pressure on Iran’s allies elsewhere in the region in the waning days of the administration, with proxies in Iraq and the powerful Lebanese militia and political bloc also in Washington’s crosshairs.A senior regional source said designating the Houthis and escalating pressure on Tehran over the next five weeks had been agreed between Washington and Riyadh during Pompeo’s most recent visit to the Middle East. More