Pompeo briefs Israel, Saudi on Trump plans for Iran deal

Agencies
April 29, 2018

Riyadh, Apr 29: Washington's new chief diplomat was to meet Saudi and Israeli leaders on Sunday to rally coordinated opposition to Tehran and brief them on President Donald Trump's threat to end the Iran nuclear deal.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched down in Riyadh on Saturday shortly after Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired missiles across the Kingdom's border.

US officials travelling with Pompeo told reporters the Houthi missiles had been supplied by Iran, and cited the attacks as evidence that regional powers should work together.

Pompeo had dinner with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and on Sunday he was due to meet the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia.

Trump is due to decide on May 12 whether to reimpose nuclear-related sanctions on Tehran, putting in peril the landmark 2015 nuclear accord, which most world powers see as key to preventing Tehran from getting the bomb.

But Trump and America's Middle East allies argue the deal, approved by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, was too weak and needs to be replaced with a more permanent arrangement and supplemented by controls on Iran's missile program.

Pompeo set off on his first diplomatic trip within two hours of being sworn in on Thursday and on Friday - after talks with the NATO allies in Brussels - he appeared to suggest that Trump plans to nix the deal.

"Absent a substantial fix, absent overcoming the shortcomings, the flaws of the deal, he is unlikely to stay in that deal past this May," Pompeo told reporters in at NATO headquarters.

Perhaps the last chance to fix these supposed shortcomings came from talks between Washington and its European allies Britain, France and Germany on a supplemental agreement to sanction Iran's missile program.

But both President Emmanuel Macron of France and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel left Washington this week after talks with Trump having failed to secure any promise that he might keep the core deal alive.

That may be music to the ears of the Saudi and Israeli leaders, who both support a tougher line on Iran.

"This administration has made it a priority to address Iran's missile programs," a senior US official told reporters in Riyadh, condemning the latest Houthi volley of missiles, themselves in part a response to Saudi air strikes.

"Iran supplies the missiles that the Houthis fire into Saudi Arabia, threatening civilians," he said. "Today alone the Saudis shot down four Houthi missiles, the latest in a string of such attacks."

Prince Salman and King Salman will welcome US solidarity against Iran - just as Israel will want to see greater US support for its efforts against Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon - but Pompeo has come with requests too.

According to US officials, while Riyadh has a right to self-defence, it must come to see that the solution to Yemen's civil war will be a political one and its forces must not exacerbate the massive humanitarian crisis there.

Washington also wants to see an end to the Gulf crisis that has seen Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates impose a diplomatic and trade embargo on fellow US regional ally Qatar.

And, perhaps most importantly for Trump, Pompeo will urge Saudi Arabia to provide personnel and funding to help US efforts to stabilise northeastern Syria in the wake of the expected defeat of the Daesh group.

"The president has made clear that he wants to see meaningful participation from states in the region," another senior US official travelling with Pompeo's party said.

"We want to see the kind of participation, for financial efforts, not just kinetic efforts that would match, parallel, would assist, the US role," he said. The United States has more than 2,000 troops in Syria.

Pompeo will conclude his first diplomatic trip on Monday after talks with senior Jordanian officials and then fly back to Washington to move in to his office in the State Department.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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News Network
November 7,2024

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The Israeli regime has killed at least 40 people during new airstrikes against eastern Lebanese areas, besides targeting the country’s capital Beirut with fresh acts of aggression.

Lebanon’s health ministry announced the fatalities on Wednesday, saying 53 other people had also been wounded during the aerial attacks that targeted the country’s Bekaa Valley, including the city of Baalbek.

In early Thursday, the regime was also reported to have attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs, including a site adjacent to Rafiq Hariri International Airport.

The attacks came after the regime issued short-notice evacuation orders apparently directed at the residents of the areas, claiming that the areas contained facilities belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement.

Tel Aviv has been using similar claims on countless occasions since last October, when it markedly intensified its deadly acts of aggression against Lebanon, in order to try to justify the escalation. Hezbollah has, however, invariably refuted the claims.

Also on Wednesday, the United Nations warned in its most recent flash report on the humanitarian crisis caused by the Israeli atrocities targeting Lebanon that the aggression had “reached a critical point.”

The attacks have claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, which was “58 percent more than the 1,900 fatalities” that were caused by the regime’s 2006 war against Lebanon, the report said.

“Additionally, an estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced, both within Lebanon and into neighboring countries, 33 percent more than the number of people displaced in 2006,” it added.

Women comprised the majority of those who had been rendered homeless within Lebanon as a result of the Israeli attacks, the report noted.

It also regretted that the Israeli attacks had featured 78 assaults on healthcare facilities across the country that had claimed the lives of 130 health workers and injured 111 others.

In response to the aggression, Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of retaliatory strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli forces trying to advance on southern Lebanese areas.

The movement has vowed to sustain its strikes until the regime ends the escalation.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon has warned that the “picture of life in Lebanon remains grim,” highlighting an "alarming" level of human suffering and significant humanitarian consequences due to the ongoing Israeli carnage.

Imran Riza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), provided a stark overview of the Arab country's dire circumstances in a statement released on Monday.

“The current picture of life in Lebanon remains grim. Yesterday, airstrikes reportedly killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Aalmat in Mount Lebanon,” Riza said on X.

An airstrike in the city of Tyre on the same day resulted in the tragic deaths of five siblings from a single family, all of whom had special needs, according to his statement.

He added that in the last week, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 241 individuals and left 642 others injured in Lebanon, as reported by the Ministry of Health.

“In the past month, more than 185,000 people have fled their homes in their search for safety within the country, bringing the total to over 870,000 people internally displaced,” Riza said

The UN official highlighted that numerous individuals, including the elderly and those with health issues, are staying behind while witnessing the ruins of their ancestral homes.

He urged for the swift safeguarding of civilian people and infrastructure, emphasizing the necessity to uphold international humanitarian law and end the ongoing violence.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli forces bombed a house in the town of Maydoun in Bekaa on Monday night, killing three people and destroying the house.

Earlier, Israel bombed the northern town of Ain Yaaqoub, killing at least 14 people.

The killings came as Israeli military continued to pound Lebanon, bombing shops selling electrical appliances in the southern city of Tyre and carrying out air raids on the towns of Shamshtar in eastern Baalbek and Roumine in southern Nabatieh.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks killed at least 54 people across the country on Monday.

Israel’s merciless attacks continue despite calls from the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

In Lebanon, at least 3,243 people have been killed and 14,134 others wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah opened a support front for Palestinians in Gaza only a day after the Israeli regime unleashed its genocidal war on the besieged territory.

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