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      in US Politics

      Sudan and Israel agree US-brokered deal on normalising relations

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      Donald Trump seeks to score points from deal; Palestinians call it ‘a new stab in the back’Israel and Sudan have agreed to work towards normalising relations in a deal brokered by the US that would make Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past two months.Donald Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call on Friday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Sudanese counterpart, Abdalla Hamdok, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional military council. Continue reading… More

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      in Elections

      Trump First now drives US foreign policy. Even if it leads to war… | Simon Tisdall

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      It’s clear Donald Trump will do almost anything to cling to office. Lie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dying wish? Go for it. Label Joe Biden a radical socialist? Silly, but worth a punt. Start a war with China or Iran? Pause right there. This is not beyond the realms of possibility, given his pathological need to win.As November’s poll nears, Trump is weaponising foreign policy – not to defend US security and national interests, but to help him grab a second term. It’s not about putting “America First”. It’s all about putting “Trump First” – by any dangerous means, and at any cost.Trump has no big international successes to his name. On the contrary, he has trashed America’s global reputation and alienated its friends. His North Korea jamboree was all hot air. His Afghan policy is retreat without honour. Israel’s shabby deals with Gulf dictatorships, stitched up by the White House, undermine the quest for Middle East peace.Scornful of traditional diplomacy and lacking significant achievements, Trump chooses confrontation. He exploits visceral fears, just like he does when campaigning at home: fear of nefarious foreign foes, fear of the other, fear of difference.His China-baiting at the UN last week was typical scaremongering. He characterised the pandemic as a global war triggered by Beijing. Covid-19 was the “invisible enemy”, a “plague” and the “China virus” – terms intended to frighten and divide. Just in case Xi Jinping and the other watching Johnny Foreigners did not get the message, the US, he said, had spent $2.5tn on defence since 2016. “We have the most powerful military anywhere in the world.”Was this a threat? Maybe the entire planet should put its hands up and surrender. More

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      in US Politics

      Bahrain to normalise ties with Israel, Donald Trump announces

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      Arab country is latest to make agreement as part of US president’s diplomatic pushBahrain has agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will join the United Arab Emirates in signing an agreement at the White House on Tuesday.“Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, portraying the deals as peace agreements, although neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Bahrain has long advocated Israel’s integration in the region. Continue reading… More

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      in US Politics

      Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in 'childish' Trump's foreign policy

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      Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.Graham warned Trump he would be raising the stakes from “playing $10 blackjack to $10,000-a-hand blackjack”.“This is over the top,” the senator said. “How about hitting someone a level below Suleimani, which would be much easier for everyone to absorb?”Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, also begged Graham to help change Trump’s mind.Trump would not be persuaded, pointing to Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, which he said were masterminded by the Iranian general, the leader of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.Suleimani was killed in Baghdad on 3 January, triggering a retaliatory Iranian missile strike against a US base in Iraq, but so far not the large-scale conflict Graham and others warned the president about.The golf course exchange is described in a forthcoming book, Rage, a second volume on the Trump presidency by Woodward, a veteran investigative reporter famous for covering the Watergate affair and the consequent fall of an earlier scandal-ridden president, Richard Nixon. More

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      in US Politics

      Iran sanctions: nearly all UN security council unites against 'unpleasant' US

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      The extent of US isolation at the UNhas been driven home by formal letters from 13 of the 15 security council members opposing Trump administration attempts to extend the economic embargo on Iran.The letters by the council members were all issued in the 24 hours since the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, came to the UN’s New York headquarters to declare Iran in non-compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal.Under that deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), comprehensive UN sanctions on Iran would be restored 30 days after the declaration. But almost every other council member has issued letters saying that the US has no standing to trigger this sanctions “snapback” because it left the JCPOA in May 2018.The US has said it is still technically a participant because it is named as one in a 2015 security council resolution endorsing the JCPOA. The argument was rejected by France, the UK and Germany even before Pompeo made his declaration.Since then, Reuters reported that it had seen letters from Russia, China, Germany, Belgium, Vietnam, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Indonesia, Estonia and Tunisia, all rejecting the US position.Only the Dominican Republic has yet to issue a formal letter on the subject. Last week the Caribbean state was the only security council member to back the USwhen it tried to extend an arms embargo on Iran. Pompeo visited the island two days after that vote.Council members who normally consider themselves US allies on most issues said they would have supported Washington if a compromise had been found, in which the arms embargo could have been extended for a limited time period. The defeat of the US resolution on the embargo led directly to Pompeo’s legal gambit to try to snap back UN sanctions.Diplomats at the UN said the depth of US isolation was in part a reflection of the abrasive style used by Pompeo, who accused Europeans of choosing to “side with the ayatollahs”, and the US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, a political appointee.“The Americans were actually being over the top in their ridiculousness,” one diplomat said.“The underlying point here is that most countries on the security council basically agree with the US that Iran is not a nice country and it having nuclear weapons and more arms is not a good thing,” the diplomat said. “But the Americans misplayed their hand so often, so aggressively, that they isolated themselves from people not on policy, but on just being unpleasant.” More