Iran Drops Plan to Send Human Into Space, Citing Cost New York Times In January 2013, when Iran said it had successfully launched a monkey named Pishgam Persian for pioneer more than 70 miles into the edge of space and then retrieved the animal alive, the experiment was regarded by Iranian scientists as a prelude ... |
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Iran Drops Plan to Send Human Into Space, Citing Cost - New York Times
Islamic States self-declared caliphate in eastern Syria is surrounded by some of the worlds strongest military powers. Their forces are advancing on several fronts. The battlefield odds arent even close.
Thats why the commanders of those armies in Washington, Moscow and Tehran, as well as Damascus and Ankara are looking beyond the coming showdown with the jihadists. When theyre killed or driven out, wholl take over?
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If Trump wants to fight Iran, he'll soon get the chance in Syria - Santa Fe New Mexican
DUBAI/DOHA Just 10 days after President Donald Trump called on Muslim countries to stand united against Iran, a public feud between Qatar and some of its Gulf Arab neighbours is jolting his attempt to tip the regional balance of power against Tehran.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are incensed by Qatar's conciliatory line on Iran, their regional archrival, and its support for Islamist groups, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, which they regard as a dangerous political enemy.
The bickering among the Sunni states erupted after Trump attended a summit of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia where he denounced Shi'ite Iran's "destablizing interventions" in Arab lands, where Tehran is locked in a tussle with Riyadh for influence.
The spat shows no sign of abating, raising the prospect of a long breach between Doha and its closest allies that could have repercussions around the Middle East.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani arrived in Kuwait on Wednesday for talks with his counterpart Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah that are expected to address the rift. Kuwait, a past mediator between Gulf states, has offered to help ease tensions.
But few expect an early end to what is not their first feud. Three years ago Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew their ambassadors from Doha for similar reasons, although they returned after less than a year.
Analysts point to the unusual willingness of Qatari state-backed media on one side, and Saudi and Emirati media on the other, to trade rhetorical broadsides in public.
This suggests that point-scoring is taking priority over displays of unity among some members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a Saudi-dominated club of states that presents itself as an outpost of stability in a turbulent region.
In the Gulf's tightly-controlled media scene, attacks made by news outlets tend to be authorised by governments.
"The GCC could harm it own interests in this fight and is at risk of becoming more vulnerable to Iranian encroachment," said a Western diplomat based in Doha.
EMBOLDENED BY TRUMP
The spat's immediate cause was a purported Qatari state media report that the emir had cautioned against confrontation with Iran, as well as defending the Palestinian group Hamas and Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite movement allied to Tehran.
Qatar denied the report, saying its news agency had been hacked, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE allowed their state-backed media to continue running it, angering Doha.
The squabble revives old accusations that Qatar backs the Brotherhood, which is present across most of the Muslim world and whose political ideology challenges the principle of dynastic rule. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi also suspect Doha is complacent about Iranian expansionism.
Qatar has said it is "always in favour of maintaining strong and brotherly relations with GCC countries", and denies it has ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some analysts speculate Riyadh and Abu Dhabi felt confident to authorise criticisms of Qatar by their deepening friendship with Trump, confident that his opposition to Iran and all Islamist armed groups reflects their views more than Qatar's.
"When Trump gave fulsome support in Riyadh and said, 'let's isolate Iran' that sent a signal to the UAE and Saudi, which felt emboldened and said: let's let loose everything we have on Qatar," said Gerd Nonneman, professor of International Relations and Gulf Studies at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Acknowledging the tensions, the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that the GCC countries "are passing through a new sharp crisis that carries within it a great danger".
Gulf officials and commentators outside Qatar said it did not matter whether the remarks were fake because they reflected Qatar's sympathies anyway.
"Doha's insistence in denying the issue is marginal because in reality, on the ground, Qatar confirms it adopts the policies that it is now trying to deny," an editorial in Saudi-owned newspaper Al-Hayat on Monday said.
RIFTS HAVE RAMIFICATIONS
A Gulf Arab official said patience had run out. "What is certain is the Gulf states led by Riyadh are not likely to tolerate such a deviation, if intentional, especially at this junction in our relationship with our hostile neighbour Iran."
Al Raya, a government-owned Qatari daily, hit back at Emirati reports on Friday by publishing pictures on its front page of UAE journalists it called "mercenaries".
Such animosities can have ramifications across the Middle East, where Gulf states have used their financial and political clout to influence events in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen amid upheaval caused by the Arab Spring.
Nonneman said Kuwait and Oman clearly did not want a major rift. "It's not in the interests of anyone for this to grow into a clash beyond a media campaign - but sometimes these things take on a life of their own," he said.
Iran, which denies Arab accusations that it is engaged in subversion of Arab countries, appears to be gloating. Kayhan, a newspaper closely associated with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Tuesday the rift reflected Saudi Arabia's inability to "form an alliance against Tehran".
(Additional reporting by Katie Paul in Riyadh, Sami Aboudi and Noah Browning in Dubai, Ahmed Hagagy in Kuwait, Borzorgmehr Sharafedin in London, Editing by William Maclean and David Stamp)
SEOUL South Korean President Moon Jae-in's top security aide left for Washington on Thursday as the new leader tries to reassure Seoul's main ally he won't scrap a deal to host a missile defense system that has angered China.
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said he would announce on Thursday his decision whether to keep the United States in a global pact to fight climate change, as a source close to the matter said he was preparing to pull out of the Paris accord.
WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump talked trade with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during a White House visit on Wednesday and welcomed the signing of business deals worth billions of dollars and the jobs they would create.
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Gulf Arab row rattles Trump's anti-Iran axis - Reuters
Iran will reportedly resume financial assistance to the Palestinian militant group Hamas following a freeze in relations, caused by Hamas refusal to support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Tehran, and the groups unwillingness to take Irans side in its rivalry with regional enemy, Saudi Arabia.
Iran appears to have backed down on these demands and ties have warmed in recent weeks after the election of Ismail Haniyeh as Hamass new political leader on May 6 over former deputy head Moussa Abu Marzouk, who Tehran reportedly did not want to work with.
For the past two weeks, senior Hamas figures have been meeting officials from Irans military arm, the Revolutionary Guards, and Shiite militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian sources told London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat on Tuesday.
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Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime all view Israel as its primary enemy. Hezbollah waged a war with Israel in 2006, Hamas has fought three conflicts with Israel in the Gaza Strip since 2008, and Irans conservative religious rulers routinely calls for Israels destruction.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reviews an honor guard during an official welcoming ceremony in Tehran February 10, 2012. Iran is set to renew funding for the Palestinian militant group, according to officials. Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl
The Syrian conflict, which began in 2011, caused an apparent split between the two as Hamas refused to pledge its support to the Assad regime, which is largely made up of members of the Alawite minority Shia sect of Islam. Hamas backed the Saudi-backed Sunni rebels fighting Assad instead. Both Iran and Hezbollah adhere to the Shia strand of Islam, while Hamas is a Sunni Islamist faction.
Read more: Another war between Israel and Hezbollah is inevitable
Israel maintains that Iran has continued to fund Hamas to allow it to rebuilt its tunnel network and rocket armory, both of which it has used against Israel in three conflicts since 2008.
As part of the deal to renew ties, Haniyeh will soon travel to Tehran to meet with regime officials in an attempt rebuild damaged relations, the report says.
The rapprochement comes after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a speech to Sunni leaders in the Saudi capital Riyadh earlier this month, in which he called Iran the most prominent exporter of terrorism in the Middle East. Iran funds Hezbollah as well as Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen fighting pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition.
"For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror," Trump said. "It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this very room."
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded to Trump, tweeting that he had attacked the Islamic Republic in "that bastion of democracy & moderation" of Saudi Arabia. He said Trump had milked the Saudi government for billions of dollars in deals, overlooking human rights abuses and a lack of democracy. Iran held elections this month which moderate President Hassan Rouhani won, securing a second term.
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Iran To 'Renew Funding' For Hamas, Despite Trump's Riyadh Speech - Newsweek
During his trip to the Middle East last week, President Donald Trump had one consistent theme and he never wavered from it: The region needs to unite to stop Iran. Mutual antipathy for Tehran has driven Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia to make common cause with Israel. It was also the motivation for the massive $110 billion arms deal Trump struck with the Saudis, who believe that President Obamas nuclear agreement with Iran has endangered their security.
But while Trump talks tough about the Iranians, the normally bellicose Islamist regime has been restrained, at least by its standards, in response. Why? The Iranians may be unhappy with Trumps effort to orchestrate the creation of a Middle East NATO that would oppose their dream of regional hegemony, but they are actually quite pleased with other elements of his administrations Iran policy. For all of Trumps bluster, his decision not only to leave the nuclear agreement in place but to erect no obstacles to a major U.S. commercial deal with Iran may have convinced the ayatollahs that the president isnt quite as hostile as he wants to seem.
One of the least noticed aspects of the nuclear deal was a provision that granted Tehran an exception to U.S. sanctions that remained in place after it was signed. That provision allowed U.S. companies to sell commercial passenger aircraft and related parts and services to Iran, and Boeing took advantage of it, joining European businesses in a race to secure Iranian business.
It was a clever strategy that enabled Obama to undermine the remaining resistance to the deal. If, as Obama hoped, a major U.S. firm such as Boeing were to conclude a massive deal of its own with Iran, the jobs created by the sale would build a strong new constituency opposed to retightening the screws on Tehran no matter the regimes subsequent actions.
Boeings deal with Iran was concluded in June 2016, and the Obama administration subsequently issued the requisite licenses for it to move forward. But the Trump administration still has a chance to raise objections and to block the delivery of the planes to Tehran.
The grounds for objection were already clear last year, when Boeing was celebrating the deal: Many of the companies with which it would be doing business have strong connections to or are owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which coordinates Irans international terrorist network. Yet so far, the Trump administration has remained suspiciously silent about the deal, leading Iran to the not unreasonable conclusion that while the president may be willing to talk about its role as the worlds leading state sponsor of terror, he is as reluctant to do something about it as his predecessor was.
Trump has no good options when it comes to tearing up the nuclear deal that he spent so much of the 2016 campaign denouncing as a betrayal of U.S. interests. Walking away from the pact at a moment when neither Americas European allies nor Russia and China are willing to re-impose sanctions would simply give the Iranians permission to move quickly toward a bomb without providing a means short of war to stop them. But Trump does have options that can start the process of rebuilding an international quarantine against Iranian terror and punishing the regime for its illegal missile tests.
Earlier this month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a sweeping set of measures designed to impose new restrictions on trade with Iran because of its human-rights violations and support for terror. The point of such efforts is to expand the list of Iranian individuals and companies affected by the sanctions that still remain in place, so as to hamper the ability of the IRGC and other agents of the regime to profit from foreign trade. Moreover, even if other nations wont re-impose their own sanctions on Iran, U.S. measures that bar foreign banks from the American financial system if they do business with terror-connected Iranian entities can still have a devastating impact on the regime.
President Trump mocked John Kerry as the worst negotiator in history for his disastrous role in making the nuclear pact possible. But if he doesnt move to support the Senate bill and to do something about the Boeing deal, then he will effectively be throwing in his lot with Obamas secretary of state, who remains a public opponent of increased sanctions on Iran.
The reason for Trumps reluctance to move against Boeing is obvious: Promises to create American jobs were as important to the success of his campaign as were his criticisms of Obama. Putting any further obstacles in the way of the transaction would have a devastating impact on the company and the thousands of workers it employs. Moreover, Boeing is looking to expand its ties with Iran and has applied for another license to sell 30 more planes to entities within the country. But Iran uses commercial planes such as the ones Boeing sells to ferry supplies, munitions, and volunteers to Syria, where they have helped preserve the rule of the barbarous Assad regime. No one in the White House can pretend that Boeings budding business relationship with the Islamic Republic is unrelated to the security concerns that Trump discussed with the Saudis and Israelis last week.
All of which is to say that theres a glaring contradiction between Trumps indulgence of Boeings desire to profit from its dealings with Iran and his efforts to rein in a dangerous foe of U.S. interests. If he stays silent and/or allows the planes to be delivered, it may preserve jobs for some of the working-class voters who backed him. But it will also validate Tehrans belief that he is as much a paper tiger as Obama was. And an Iran unfettered by fear of U.S. power, hard and soft, would be an even bigger threat to global security.
READ MORE: The Iran Deal, the Paris Agreement, & Trumps Choice to Move Away from Them The Obama Administrations Iran Deal Duplicity Donald Trumps Iran Flip-Flopping is Nothing of the Kind
Jonathan S. Tobin is the opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review Online.
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