Middle East and North Africa

Subterms

    More stories

    • 238 Shares90 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: president tells Iran’s supreme leader he is ‘an easy target’ as US weighs options

      by

      Donald Trump boosted speculation over whether the US could become involved in Israel’s conflict with Tehran on Tuesday, warning Iran’s supreme leader that he was “an easy target” and that America’s “patience is wearing thin”.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president wrote:“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.” Trump added: “But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”The president followed up the post by bluntly calling for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender”.Here are the key stories of the day:Trump demands ‘unconditional surrender’ from IranIsrael’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options.Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign in Iran.He told journalists in the morning that he expected the Iranian nuclear programme to be “wiped out” long before US intervention would be necessary. Later he took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to suggest that the US had Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in its sights, and could make an imminent decision to take offensive action.Read the full storyRepublicans and Democrats try to block US involvement in IranAn unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval.Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.Read the full storyTrump G7 exit leaves Ukraine in lurchUkrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump’s refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.Read the full storyStarmer says he picked up Trump’s dropped papers to avoid security scareKeir Starmer said he rushed to pick up papers dropped by Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Canada mainly to avoid anyone else stepping forward to do so and being tackled by the US president’s security team.Speaking to reporters in Kananaskis a day after Trump fumbled some of the documents about a UK-US trade deal, letting a sheaf of papers tumble to the ground, Starmer said he had little choice but to bend down and help out.Read the full storyTrump orders Ice raids on farms and hotels after pausing them days earlierDonald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency’s raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Brad Lander, a top New York City official and a mayoral candidate, was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.

      A journalist who lost his job at ABC News over his comments about about Trump adviser Stephen Miller said he posted it on social media because he felt it was “true”.

      Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 16 June 2025. More

    • 163 Shares140 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump brushes off US intel reports on Iran to align himself with Israel

      by

      Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, delivered a concise verdict during congressional testimony this March: the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”.As he rushed back to Washington on Tuesday morning, Donald Trump swatted aside the assessment from the official that he handpicked to deliver him information from 18 US intelligence agencies. “I don’t care what she said,” said Trump. “I think they were very close to having one.”Trump’s assessment aligned him with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who has warned that Iran’s “imminent” plans to produce nuclear weapons required a pre-emptive strike from Israel – and, he hopes, from the United States – in order to shut down the Iranian uranium enrichment program for good.It also isolates Trump’s spy chief, whom he nominated specifically because of her skepticism for past US interventions in the Middle East and of the broader intelligence community, which he has described as a “deep state”.Gabbard sought to tamp down on a schism with Trump, telling CNN that Trump “was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March. Unfortunately too many people in the media don’t care to actually read what I said.”But as the Trump administration now appears closer than ever before to a strike on Iran, Gabbard has been left out of key decision-making discussions and her assessments that Iran is not close to a nuclear breakout has become decidedly inconvenient for an administration now mulling a pre-emptive strike.“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. The US has dispatched another carrier group, KC-135 refueling tankers and additional fighter jets to the region. Those assets have been sent to give Trump “more options” for a direct intervention in the conflict, US media have reported.Deliberations over the intelligence regarding Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear weapon will be pored over if the US moves forward with a strike that initiates a new foreign conflict for the US that could potentially reshape the Middle East and redefine a Trump presidency that was supposed to end the US era of “forever wars”.Israel launched airstrikes last week in the wake of an International Atomic Energy Agency report that formally declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years and said the country had enriched enough uranium to near weapons grade to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.Gen Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of US Central Command who has forcefully campaigned for a tougher stance on Iran, told members of the armed services committee in the House of Representatives last week that Iran could have enough weapons-grade uranium for “up to 10 nuclear weapons in three weeks”.Yet a CNN report on Tuesday challenged that claim. Four sources familiar with a US intelligence assessment said that Iran was “not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon” and that the country was “up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing”.The skepticism over Iran’s potential for a nuclear breakout has also been reflected in Gabbard’s distancing from Trump’s inner circle. People often represent policy in the Trump administration and those with unpopular views find themselves on the outside looking in.Trump last Sunday held a policy discussion with all the top members of his cabinet on national security. But Gabbard was not there. Her absence was taken as a sign that US policy was shifting in a direction against Iran.“Why was Gabbard not invited to the Camp David meeting all day?” asked Steve Bannon, a member of Trump’s Maga isolationist wing that has pushed against the US launching a direct strike against Iran.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You know why,” responded Tucker Carlson, an influential pundit in Trump’s America First coalition who had slammed “warmongers” in the administration including popular Fox News hosts like Mark Levin.Days after the Camp David meeting, Gabbard released a bizarre video in which she warned about the threat of nuclear war, saying that this is the “reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now”.“Because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she said.The remarks could have referred to US involvement in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. But it is with Iran that US policy appears to be changing rapidly and avowed opponents of foreign interventions appear to be falling in line in order to avoid losing clout in the Trump administration.Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment”, said the vice-president, JD Vance, who has publicly called on the US to avoid costly overseas interventions but has remained muted over Iran. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president.“But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue,” he continued. “And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.” More

    • 175 Shares170 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump to leave G7 summit early and return to Washington – as it happened

      by

      Donald Trump will leave the G7 summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday, the White House said about an hour after the president said people in Iran’s capital Tehran should evacuate immediately.Trump’s evacuation warning on Truth Social followed a warning from the Israeli defense forces issued a formal evacuation order to residents of Tehran warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure”.Trump was originally supposed to arrive back in the US in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to people familiar with the matter.That’s it for today. My colleagues are continuing coverage of the developments in the Middle East here.Here’s what happened today:

      Donald Trump is leaving the G7 Summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday. “You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can,” Trump said in an apparent nod to the intensifying conflict in the Middle East.

      President Trump has directed national security staff to convene in the situation room, both CNN and Fox News are reporting.

      Trump says ‘everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran’ and that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’”.

      The Republican-run Senate Finance Committee published a modified text of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that proposes Medicaid reforms and a new federal deduction for state and local taxes.

      Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting on Monday to discuss import auto tariffs Washington imposed on Japan, Reuters is reporting.

      European leaders at G7 trying to bring Iran back to negotiating table. But Iran is demanding a joint ceasefire with Israel, while Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is resisting the move, and Donald Trump praised the Israeli campaign, suggesting he did not yet believe it was time to relieve the pressure on Iran.

      Britain and the United States should finalize “very soon” the implementation of a trade deal agreed last month, Keir Starmer has said ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump in Canada.

      The US justice department has asked a federal appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the US Naval Academy after the elite military school said it changed its policy under Donald Trump. The Naval Academy disclosed in March that it was no longer considering race or ethnicity in its admissions decisions following directives from Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth

      US House speaker Mike Johnson said he has postponed his planned 22 June trip to Israel to address its parliament, as an escalating battle between Israel and Iran has raised fears of a broader conflict.

      The American Bar Association has sued the Trump administration, seeking an order that would bar the White House from pursuing what the ABA called a campaign of intimidation against major law firms. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington DC, said the administration violated the US Constitution in a series of executive orders targeting law firms over their past clients and lawyers they hired.

      Minnesota shooting suspect had more than 45 names of elected officials, prosecutors say. Reuters reports that notebooks recovered from Boelter’s car, as well as the home where he had been staying, showed that he had meticulously planned the attacks for some time. He had the names and, in some cases, home addresses for more than 45 elected officials – “mostly or all Democrats” – according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.

      The suspect in the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband this weekend drove to the homes of two other state politicians before he succeeded in killing one of the targets of his carefully planned attack, federal authorities said today.

      A federal judge has said she would issue a brief extension of an order temporarily blocking Donald Trump’s plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the US to study at Harvard University while she decides whether to issue a longer-term injunction.

      Trump once again complained about removing Russia from what was once the G8. Russia used to be a part of the exclusive club of major economies but was kicked out following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

      Trump says Iran wants to talk about de-escalating hostilities with Israel, and he advises that they should do so immediately “before it’s too late”.

      Iran has been urgently signaling that it seeks an end to hostilities and resumption of talks over its nuclear programs, sending messages to Israel and the US via Arab intermediaries, the Wall Street Journal reports.

      The Trump Organization has launched a self-branded mobile service and a $499 smartphone, dubbed Trump Mobile, signaling a new effort to court conservative consumers with a wireless service positioned as an alternative to major telecom providers. The new mobile venture will include call centers based in the United States and phones made in America, the organization said.
      Trump aide Alex Pfeiffer said Israeli news reports that indicate US fighter jets are participating in airstrikes on Iran are not true.“This is not true,” Pfeiffer posted on X. “American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests.”“You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can,” Trump said in an apparent nod to the intensifying conflict in the Middle East, when asked why he’s cutting short his G7 trip and heading back to Washington tonight.President Trump has directed national security staff to convene in the situation room, both CNN and Fox News are reporting, citing a White House official. Trump will be leaving the G7 Summit in Canada early.There are few other details available.Donald Trump will leave the G7 summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday, the White House said about an hour after the president said people in Iran’s capital Tehran should evacuate immediately.Trump’s evacuation warning on Truth Social followed a warning from the Israeli defense forces issued a formal evacuation order to residents of Tehran warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure”.Trump was originally supposed to arrive back in the US in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to people familiar with the matter.The scientist responsible for overseeing the CDC team that collects data on COVID-19 and RSV hospitalizations resigned on Monday.Dr. Fiona Havers told colleagues in an email that she no longer had confidence the data would be used “objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions,” according to Reuters.She resigned before a planned meeting of a new vaccine panel put in place by Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. after he fired all 17 members of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel. Kennedy also dropped a recommendation to get the Covid shot for healthy children and pregnant women.A Health and Human Services spokesperson told Reuters that the agency is committed to “gold standard science.”Trump says everyone should evacuate Tehran and that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’”.“I told them to sign,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “What a shame, and waste of human life. IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he thinks he and Trump will be able to wrap up a new economic and security deal between the US and Canada within 30 days. His office did not say whether that means he had accepted Trump’s earlier emphasis on tariffs.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he ordered the deployment of additional defensive capabilities to the Middle East over the weekend “to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” according to a statement he posted on X on Monday. He did not disclose what military capabilities he sent to the region.“Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth posted.The Republican-run Senate Finance Committee published a modified text of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that proposes Medicaid reforms and a new federal deduction for state and local taxes.The proposed changes will now be debated by Senate Republicans.Among the proposed changes are:

      An end to the $7,500 tax credit on new electric vehicles 180 days after the law is enacted. And an end to the $4,000 used-vehicle EV tax credit 90 days after the law is passed.

      A full phase-out of solar and wind energy tax credits by 2028, but an extension of the incentive for Trump administration-favored hydropower, nuclear and geothermal energy to 2036.
      Minnesota senator Ann Rest says she is “so grateful” for the work of law enforcement after learning that the shooting suspect, Vance Boelter, was allegedly parked outside her home before going to former Rep. Melissa Hortman’s home.“I have been made aware that the shooting suspect was parked near my home early Saturday morning,” Rest said in a statement. “I am so grateful for the heroic work of the New Hope Police Department and its officers. Their quick action saved my life.I am also thankful for the work of state and local law enforcement to apprehend the suspect before he could take any more lives.While I am thankful the suspect has been apprehended, I grieve for the loss of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and I am praying for the recovery of John and Yvette Hoffman.”At the G7 summit, Trump said a new economic deal with Canada was possible but that he wanted tariffs to be a part of it, according to Reuters.“I have a tariff concept. [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark [Carney] has a different concept … we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it,” Trump said when meeting Carney on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Alberta. “I’m a tariff person.”Canada is the top supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States and currently faces tariffs imposed by Trump on both metals as well as on auto exports.“We are in the middle of a discussion – we are not at the end of the discussion. Our position is that we should have no tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States,” Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to Washington, told reporters after Carney met Trump.“We will continue to talk until we find a deal that is the best deal we can achieve for Canada,” Hillman said.Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting on Monday to discuss import auto tariffs Washington imposed on Japan, Reuters is reporting.Tokyo is urging Washington to drop the tariffs because they threaten to slow Japan’s economy, the Japanese government said.Ishiba wants Trump to end the 25% auto tariff he imposed on Japanese cars and a 24% reciprocal tariff paused until July 9. More

    • 138 Shares175 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump vetoed Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader – report

      by

      President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership,” said one of the sources, a senior US administration official.The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said top US officials have been in constant communications with Israeli officials in the days since Israel launched a massive attack on Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear program.They said the Israelis reported that they had an opportunity to kill the top Iranian leader, but Trump waved them off of the plan.The officials would not say whether Trump himself delivered the message. But Trump has been in frequent communications with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.When asked about Reuters report, Netanyahu, in an interview on Sunday with Fox News Channel’s Special Report With Bret Baier, said: “There’s so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that.”“But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do, we’ll do what we need to do. And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States,” Netanyahu said.Trump has been holding out hope for a resumption of US-Iranian negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Talks that had been scheduled for Sunday in Oman were canceled as a result of the strikes.Trump told Reuters on Friday that “we knew everything” about the Israeli strikes. More

    • 225 Shares147 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Israel’s shock attack on Iran: confusing US signals add to the peril | Editorial

      by

      US presidents who thought they could easily restrain Benjamin Netanyahu have quickly learned their lesson. “Who’s the fucking superpower?” Bill Clinton reportedly exploded after his first meeting with the Israeli prime minister.Did Donald Trump make the same mistake? The state department quickly declared that the devastating overnight Israeli attack on Iran – which killed key military commanders and nuclear scientists as well as striking its missile capacity and a nuclear enrichment site – was unilateral. Mr Trump had reportedly urged Mr Netanyahu to hold off in a call on Monday, pending US talks with Iran over its nuclear programme due this weekend. The suspicion is that Israel feared that a deal might be reached and wanted to strike first. But Israeli officials have briefed that they had a secret green light from the US, with Mr Trump only claiming to oppose it.Iran, reeling from the attack but afraid of looking too weak to retaliate, is unlikely to believe that the US did not acquiesce to the offensive, if unenthusiastically. It might suit it better to pretend otherwise – in the short term, it is not clear what ability it has to hit back at Israel, never mind taking on the US. But Mr Trump has made that hard by threatening “even more brutal attacks” ahead, urging Iran to “make a deal, before there’s nothing left” and claiming that “we knew everything”. Whether Israel really convinced Mr Trump that this was the way to cut a deal, or he is offering a post-hoc justification after being outflanked by Mr Netanyahu, may no longer matter.Israel has become increasingly and dangerously confident of its ability to reshape the Middle East without pushing it over the brink. It believes that its previous pummellings of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s air defences have created a brief opportunity to destroy the existential threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme before it is too late. Russia is not about to ride to Tehran’s rescue, and while Gulf states don’t want instability, they are not distraught to see an old rival weakened.But not least in the reckoning is surely that Mr Netanyahu, who survives politically through military action, only narrowly survived a Knesset vote this week. The government also faces mounting international condemnation over its war crimes in Gaza – though the US and others allow those crimes to continue. It is destroying the nation’s international reputation, yet may bolster domestic support through this campaign.The obvious question is the future of a key Iranian enrichment site deep underground at Fordo, which many believe Israel could not destroy without US “bunker busters”. If Israel believes that taking out personnel and some infrastructure is sufficient to preclude Iran’s nuclear threat, that is a huge and perilous gamble. This attack may well trigger a rush to full nuclear-armed status by Tehran – and ultimately others – and risks spurring more desperate measures in the meantime. Surely more likely is that Israel hopes to draw in Washington, by persuading it that Iran is a paper tiger or baiting Tehran into attacking US targets.“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” Mr Trump claimed in his inaugural speech. Yet on Friday he said was not concerned about a regional war breaking out due to Israel’s strikes. Few will feel so sanguine. The current incoherence and incomprehensibility of US foreign policy fuels instability and risks drawing adversaries towards fateful miscalculations.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 175 Shares183 Views

      in US Politics

      US ambassador to Israel says US no longer pursuing goal of independent Palestinian state

      by

      Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has said that the US is no longer pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state, marking what analysts describe as the most explicit abandonment yet of a cornerstone of US Middle East diplomacy.Asked during an interview with Bloomberg News if a Palestinian state remains a goal of US policy, he replied: “I don’t think so.”The former Arkansas governor chosen by Donald Trump as his envoy to Israel went further by suggesting that any future Palestinian entity could be carved out of “a Muslim country” rather than requiring Israel to cede territory.“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Huckabee was quoted as saying. Those probably won’t happen “in our lifetime”, he told the news agency.When pressed on Palestinian aspirations in the West Bank, where 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, Huckabee employed Israeli government terminology, asking: “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?”Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of US Middle East policy, and he has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.The state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Middle East analysts said the comments made explicit a shift that has been broadly expected.“This is not at all surprising given what we’ve seen in the last four-plus months, including the administration’s open support for expelling the population of Gaza, the legitimization of Israeli settlement and annexation policies,” said Khaled Elgindy, a scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and former adviser to Palestinian negotiators.“This is an administration that is committed to Palestinian erasure, both physical and political,” Elgindy said. “The signs were there even in the first Trump term, which nominally supported a Palestinian ‘state’ that was shorn of all sovereignty and under permanent Israeli control. At least now they’ve abandoned the pretense.”Yousef Munayyer, head of Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center Washington DC, said Huckabee was merely articulating what US policy has long demonstrated in practice. “Mike Huckabee is saying out loud what US actions have been saying for decades and across different administrations,” he said. “Whatever commitments have been made in statements about a Palestinian state over time, US policy has never matched those stated commitments and only undercut them.”The ambassador’s position has deep roots in his evangelical Christian beliefs and longstanding support for Israeli settlement expansion. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Huckabee said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian.” In a 2017 visit to the occupied West Bank, he rejected the concept of Israeli occupation entirely.“I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” said Huckabee at the time. “There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”What distinguishes Huckabee, Munayyer argued, has been his willingness to be explicit about objectives that previous officials had kept veiled. “What makes Huckabee unique is that he is shameless enough to admit out loud the goal of erasing the Palestinian people.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe analysts add that Huckabee’s explicit rejection of Palestinian statehood, which comes as the war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced most of the territory’s more than 2 million residents, would also create diplomatic complications for US allies.“This will put European and Arab states in a bind, since they are still strongly committed to two states but have always deferred to Washington,” Elgindy said.Hours after Huckabee’s comments were reported, the US imposed sanctions on a leading Palestinian human rights organization, Addameer, as well as five charity groups in the Middle East and Europe, claiming that they support Palestinian militants.The US treasury department alleged that Addameer, which provides legal services to Palestinians detained by Israel or the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, “has long supported and is affiliated” with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a militant group classified as a terrorist organization by the US and EU.Israel raided the West Bank offices of Addameer and other groups in 2022 over their alleged PFLP links. The United Nations condemned that raid at the time, saying that Israeli authorities had not presented to the UN any credible evidence to justify their declarations.The Guardian later reported that a classified CIA report showed the agency had been unable to find any evidence to support Israel’s description of the group as a “terrorist organization”. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Iran blasts Trump for ‘racist mentality’ and hostility to Muslims over travel ban

      by

      Tehran has denounced the US travel ban on Iranians and citizens of 11 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries, saying Washington’s decision was a sign of a “racist mentality”.Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday reviving sweeping restrictions that echo the US president’s first-term travel ban, justified on national security grounds after a firebomb attack at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado.Alireza Hashemi-Raja, the foreign ministry’s director general for the affairs of Iranians abroad, called the measure – which takes effect on 9 June – “a clear sign of the dominance of a supremacist and racist mentality among American policymakers”.The decision “indicates the deep hostility of American decision-makers towards the Iranian and Muslim people”, he added in a statement the ministry released on Saturday.Apart from Iran, the US ban targets nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. A partial ban was imposed on travellers from seven other countries.Hashemi-Raja said the policy “violates fundamental principles of international law” and deprives “hundreds of millions of people of the right to travel based solely on their nationality or religion”.The foreign ministry official said the ban was discriminatory and would “entail international responsibility for the US government”, without elaborating.Iran and the US severed diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and relations have remained deeply strained since.The US is home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran. According to figures from Tehran’s foreign ministry, in 2020 there were about 1.5 million Iranians in the US.Trump’s executive order came days after Sunday’s attack at the Colorado rally, in which authorities said more than a dozen people were hurt. The suspect is an Egyptian man who had overstayed a tourist visa. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      BBC accuses White House of misrepresenting fatal Gaza attack report

      by

      The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site.Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.Leavitt launched her attack on the BBC after being asked about reports that Israeli forces opened fire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah. Brandishing a print-out of images taken from the BBC’s website, she accused the corporation of having to “correct and take down” its story about the fatalities and injuries involved in the attack.The Hamas-run health ministry had said at least 31 people were killed in the gunfire. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) later said at least 21 Palestinians were killed by IDF troops.In a briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt said: “The administration is aware of those reports and we are currently looking into the veracity of them because, unfortunately, unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth. We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.“And then, oh, wait, they had to correct and take down their entire story, saying: ‘We reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything.’”The BBC swiftly issued a robust statement. It said that casualty numbers were updated throughout the day from multiple sources, as is the case of any incident of the kind in a chaotic war zone. It also clarified that the accusation from Leavitt that the BBC had removed a story was false.“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong,” it said. “We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism.View image in fullscreen“Our news stories and headlines about Sunday’s aid distribution centre incident were updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources … This is totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story.”It said the White House had conflated that incident with a “completely separate” report by BBC Verify, the corporation’s factchecking team, which found a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show. “This video did not run on BBC news channels and had not informed our reporting,” it said. “Conflating these two stories is simply misleading.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe BBC called on the White House to join forces with its calls for “immediate access” to Gaza. International journalists are prevented from entering by Israel.Jonathan Munro, the deputy director of the BBC News, said the claims were wrong, adding: “It’s important that accurate journalism is respected, and that governments call for free access to Gaza.”Jeremy Bowen, the corporation’s international editor, accused the White House of launching a political attack. “To be quite frank, the Trump administration does not have a good record when it comes to telling the truth itself,” he said. “She’s making a political point, basically.“Israel doesn’t let us in because it’s doing things there, clearly I think, that they don’t want us to see otherwise they would allow free reporting.“I’ve reported on wars for the best part of 40 years. I’ve reported on more than 20 wars. And I’m telling you, even when you get full access, it is really difficult to report them. When you can’t get in, it’s even harder.” More