Tag: InternationalNews

{Final results show incumbent president emphatingly beating rival Ebrahim Raisi to extend his time in office.}

Iran’s reformist President Hassan Rouhani has decisively won the country’s presidential election, according to official results, fending off a challenge by principlist rival, Ebrahim Raisi.

With all of votes in Friday’s poll counted, Rouhani was re-elected with 57 percent, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmanifazli said on Saturday.

“Of some 41.2 million total votes cast, Rouhani got 23.5 … and won the election,” Rahmanifazli said in remarks carried live by state TV.

Raisi, Rouhani’s closest rival, got 15.8 million votes, he added.

A big turnout on Friday led to the vote being extended by several hours to deal with long queues.

{{Campaign pledges}}

The election was seen by many as a verdict on Rouhani’s policy of opening up Iran to the world and his efforts to rebuild its stagnant economy.

Rouhani swept into office four years ago on a promise to reduce Iran’s international isolation.

Friday poll was the first since he negotiated a historic deal with world powers in 2015 to curb the country’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

In the campaign trail, Rouhani sought to frame the vote as a choice between greater civil liberties and “extremism”, criticising the continued arrest of reformist leaders and activists.

Raisi, for his part, accused Rouhani of mismanaging the economy and positioned himself as a defender of the poor and calling for a much tougher line with the West.

Political commentator Mostafa Khoshcheshm said that in contrast to the 2013 election campaign, when Rouhani spoke about the removal of sanctions and the improvement of the economy, this time his message was different.

“He resorted to other campaign slogans, like [calling for] social and political freedom, and he pushed the boundaries in order to gather public support, especially in large cities,” Khoshcheshm told Al Jazeera.

“If he has secured this result, it’s because of the large cities and the middle class society living there – they have voted for him and made him a president and they expect him to do his promises.”

{{Obstacles ahead}}

Rouhani’s re-election is likely to safeguard the 2015 agreement, under which most international sanctions have been lifted in return for Iran curbing its nuclear programme.

Rouhani has vowed to work towards removing the remaining non-nuclear sanctions, but critics argue that will be hard with Donald Trump as US president – Trump has repeatedly described it as “one of the worst deals ever signed”, although his administration re-authorised waivers from sanctions this week.

Rouhani is also expected to face the same restrictions that prevented him from delivering substantial social change in his first term.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has veto power over all policies and ultimate control of the security forces. while Rouhani has been unable to secure the release of reformist leaders from house arrest.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Iran’s capital, Tehran, said that Rouhani, during an “increasingly acrimonious election campaign, alienated a lot of Iran’s significant state institutions who may be in no mood to cooperate with him going forward”.

{{Slow pace of change}}

While the nuclear deal was at the forefront of the election, the campaign was dominated by the issues of poverty and unemployment.

Rouhani has brought inflation down from around 40 percent when he took over in 2013, but prices are still rising by over seven percent a year.

Oil sales have rebounded since the nuclear deal took effect in January 2016, but growth in the rest of the economy has been limited, leaving unemployment at 12.5 percent overall – close to 30 percent for the young – and many more are under-employed or struggling to get by.

“Rouhani now gets his second term, and will be able to continue the work that he started in his first four-year term trying to reform Iran,” Hull said.

“And moving on, crucially, from the nuclear deal to try and bring much more economic progress to satisfy the people who have found themselves extremely disappointed with the very slow pace of change since that agreement was signed.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{US president receives warm welcome by King Salman as he seeks to repair ties with Washington’s closest Arab ally.}

US President Donald Trump has arrived in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of his first foreign trip since taking office, in a crucial test abroad as political scandals mount at home.

In a red-carpet airport welcome, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud greeted Trump, his wife Melania and his entourage shortly after they landed in the capital, Riyadh, around 06:50 GMT on Saturday.

Trump will hold a series of meetings with the king and other Arab and Muslim leaders on Saturday and Sunday, before jetting off to Israel, the occupied Palestinian Territories, the Vatican, Belgium and Italy in a nine-day tour across the Middle East and Europe.

During the two-day visit to the kingdom, Trump is expected to sign a major weapons deal, give a speech on Islam and discuss the battle against “terrorism” with more than 50 leaders.

It is the first time a US president has chosen Saudi Arabia as the first stop on a maiden trip.

Trump’s visit is seen as highly symbolic, as he looks to repair Washington’s ties with its closest Arab ally.

During the final years of Barack Obama’s US presidency, “relations had undergone a period of difference of opinion”, according to Saudi officials. These differences were largely centred around the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the Obama administration’s cautions to the kingdom about the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.

Al Jazeera’s Washington editor James Bays, reporting from Riyadh, said the Saudis were very “proud and excited” that the US president chose the Gulf country as his first stop.

“They want a reset of the relationship with the US. They were not happy with Obama, and they were not happy with the US policy in Yemen and in Syria,” Bays said.

Ahmed Alibrahim, a Saudi political analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Saudis see this as a “great day” for relations with the US.

“We think President Trump’s cabinet does understand the Saudi challenges and does understand the challenges the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] faces.”

He added that the kingdom would like to see more “decisive statements, actions and sanctions on the Iranian regime”.

Prior to the trip, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, said the visit will “bolster the strategic partnership between the two countries”.

He added, that “several agreements will be signed, including political agreements … and big economic agreements”.

Marwan Kabalan, an analyst at the Doha Institute’s Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, told Al Jazeera the US and Saudi Arabia will discuss a strategic plan aimed at countering “extremism” as an ideological battle.

“I think both sides have high expectations of this summit, as they are expected to discuss the most pressing issues for both of them like the conflict in Yemen, the war in Syria and the war on ISIL,” Kabalan said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant armed group, also known as ISIS.

“Trump is expected to address the entire Islamic world while trying to establish this sort of a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia, particularly concerning groups like ISIL.”

{{Arms deal}}

On Saturday, Trump is expected to announce an arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth more than $100bn, in what could be the biggest such agreement in history.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, US officials familiar with the package told The Associated Press news agency that the deal would include Abrams tanks, combat ships, missile defence systems, radar and communications and cyber security technology.

Much of the package builds on commitments made before Trump took office, although some elements are new, including weapons designed to help Saudi Arabia in an air campaign it has led in war-torn Yemen, officials said.

The Trump administration separately informed Congress on Friday that it will sell some $500m in precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia. These include laser-guided Paveway II bombs and JDAM kits for converting unguided bombs into “smart bombs”.

{{‘Historic summit’}}

Also on the agenda in Riyadh is a summit of more than 50 Arab and Muslim leaders, including those from the six nations that form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), to discuss the fight against “extremism”.

Announcing the meeting, the Saudi foreign ministry said the “historic summit” should be the start to “building a partnership between the Arab and Muslim worlds and the United States at various levels”.

Trump is expected to give a speech on Islam, calling for unity in the fight against “radicalism” and characterising the effort as a “battle between good and evil”, the AP reported, citing a draft of his speech.

The US president will avoid tough anti-Muslim rhetoric from his presidential campaign, as well as mentions of democracy and human rights, according to the draft of the speech, which remains subject to revision, AP said.

According Al Jazeera’s James Bays, the meeting will also include talks on Trump’s promise to restart peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

“Everyone agrees that a fresh approach could be helpful in solving this long-running conflict and President Trump certainly brings that – but Arab leaders will want to hear more than optimism, they’ll want to know the US president’s plan to move forward,” Bays said.

After the visit in Saudi Arabia, Trump will head to Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories where he will meet his “friend” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem.

There are no plans for Trump to bring the two leaders together, a senior US official told the Reuters news agency, saying the administration does not believe it is the “right time just yet”.

Trump will then fly to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis, who has said he will give the US president an open-minded hearing, despite differences in belief on everything from climate change to policies towards refugees.

Trump will later meet members of NATO in Brussels and attend a G7 summit in Italy.

The foreign trip comes as Trump faces growing criticism at home.

As the US president jetted off to Saudi Arabia, reports by US media emerged that a senior adviser to Trump was a “person of interest” in a probe of possible collusion with Russia during last year’s election campaign and that the US president had boasted to Russian officials after firing former FBI Director James Comey earlier this month.

On Thursday, Trump also denounced the announcement of special counsel to conduct an independent investigation into the alleged Russia meddling in the election and possible collusion with Trump’s team.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Suicide bombers kill more than 50 people in separate attacks in Baghdad and Basra, police say.}

More than 50 people have been killed in a string of suicide car bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, and the southern province of Basra, police have told Al Jazeera.

At least 33 people were killed on Friday in two separate blasts at checkpoints on a highway near oilfields in Basra, according to police.

The first explosion took place at the Rumeila checkpoint, and the second around one kilometre away at another checkpoint called al-Sadra.

Iraq’s South Oil Company said there was no disruption to operations but oil police were put on maximum alert in response to the attack, officials told the Reuters news agency.

Baghdad attacks

Separately, two more attacks late on Friday killed at least 19 people, including security forces, and wounded 25 others in southern Baghdad.

Police sources said a suicide car bomber detonated explosives at the entrance of a checkpoint, just as another attacker blew himself up near a police station located about a 100 metres away.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group claimed responsibility for the Baghdad attacks.

ISIL is under assault in both Iraq – in the country’s second city of Mosul – and in neighbouring Syria.

The armed group took vast swaths of Iraqi territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014.

Iraqi government forces backed by a US-led international coalition have since retaken many cities, including Tikrit and Fallujah.

But as ISIL has lost ground in Iraq, it has also retained the ability to stage regular attacks in areas it does not control.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Fighter jets carry out what US describes as ‘unprofessional’ intercept of radiation detection plane over East China Sea.}

Two Chinese fighter jets have carried out what the US military described as an “unprofessional” intercept of a US aircraft designed to detect radiation while it was flying over the East China Sea.

US officials told CNN that one of the Sukhoi Su-30 jets that approached the WC-135 plane on Wednesday was flying upside down, coming as close as 46 metres.

“The issue is being addressed with China through appropriate diplomatic and military channels,” air force spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Lori Hodge said on Thursday.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying declined to comment on the specific incident and referred questions to the defence ministry which has yet to comment.

“For a long time US ships and aircraft have been carrying out close up surveillance of China which can really easily cause misunderstandings or misjudgments or cause unexpected incidents at sea or in the air,” she told the Reuters news agency.

“We hope that the US side can respect China’s reasonable security concerns.”

US television network NBC reported that the US aircraft was conducting a routine mission in international airspace when it was intercepted over the East China Sea.

The WC-135 is a so-called “sniffer plane” designed to scan the atmosphere for signs of nuclear activity.

US broadcaster NBC said the WC-135’s crew described the encounter as “unprofessional”, although not necessarily dangerous.

It said military officials insist the US plane was operating in accordance with international law.

A similar incident occurred in 2014, when then-President Barack Obama said that Chinese fighter jets conducted an “unprofessional” intercept of a US navy spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea.

Washington and Beijing have differing views about the legality of US military overflights in much of the region, a result of differing interpretations of rights conveyed under the Law of the Sea treaty.

In April 2001, another intercept of a US EP-3E spy plane by a Chinese F-8 fighter in the same area resulted in a collision that killed the Chinese pilot and forced the US plane to make an emergency landing at a base on Hainan.

The 24 US crew members were held for 11 days until Washington apologised for the incident, which soured US-Chinese relations in the early days of President George W Bush’s first administration.

The US and Chinese militaries have boosted their contacts in recent years amid recognition that – as China’s economic interests continue to expand – it will play a bigger security role in the world and have more interactions with the US military.

But even as US and Chinese military contacts have increased, tensions between China and its neighbours, some of them US treaty allies, have heightened over competing territorial claims in the South China and East China seas.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Deadly US-led coalition air raid against pro-Syrian government forces denounced as ‘brazen’ and ‘unacceptable’.}

Syria and its Russian ally have condemned a deadly US-led coalition air raid against pro-Syrian government forces in a desert area near the country’s border with Jordan and Iraq.

Coalition fighter jets on Thursday struck a convoy of militiamen advancing inside a protected “deconfliction zone” north-west of the southern town of At Tanf, the military alliance said in a statement.

Syrians’ suffering persists after returning to former ISIL-held town
The US, which is leading an air campaign in Syria targeting groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), said the convoy’s advance had posed a threat to US and US-backed Syrian rebel forces in the area.

“This brazen attack by the so-called international coalition exposes the falseness of its claims to be fighting terrorism,” a Syrian military source told state media on Friday, confirming that the bombing had killed “a number of people” and caused material damage.

Russia, which launched its own air campaign in September 2015 in support of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, called the strike “a breach of Syrian sovereignty”.

“Such actions that were carried out against the Syrian armed forces … [are] completely unacceptable,” Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, was quoted as saying by state-run RIA Novosti on Friday.

A member of the US-backed Syrian rebel forces told the Reuters news agency that the convoy comprised Syrian and Iranian-backed militias and was headed towards the Tanf base, where US special forces operate and train Free Syrian Army rebels.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said at least eight people had been killed in the attack.

“Most of the killed belong to militias loyal to the Syrian regime and are not Syrians,” he told the DPA news agency.

SOHR, a UK-based monitor tracking developments in Syria’s long-running conflict via a network of contacts on the ground, also said that four military vehicles carrying pro-government forces and their allies were destroyed in the strike.

Tanf is part of a region known as the Badia, which consists of vast, sparsely populated desert territory that stretches all the way to the Jordanian and Iraqi borders and was declared a military priority by Syria’s foreign minister earlier in May.

Two months of US-backed rebel advances against ISIL fighters have allowed them to secure swaths of territory in the Badia, alarming the Syrian government and its allies.

But rebel sources had warned last week that the Syrian army and Iranian-backed militia moved hundreds of troops with tanks to the town of Sabaa Biyar, which is in the Badia, and is near the strategic Damascus-Baghdad highway.

Syrians talks resume in Geneva on de-escalation zones
That highway was once a major weapons supply route for Iranian weapons into Syria.

A Western intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Thursday’s strike sent a strong message to Iranian-backed militias that have been spearheading the advance that they would not be allowed to reach the Iraq border from Syria.

The US-led coalition did not signal it would cede ground around Tanf.

“Coalition forces have been operating in the At Tanf area for many months training and advising vetted partner forces engaged in the fight against ISIS,” according to a statement by the US-led military alliance.

US officials said an agreement existed with Russia on a so-called “deconfliction” area around Tanf, meant to avoid an accidental clash of forces.

The statement by the US-led coalition acknowledged a zone but did not offer any details about it, other than to say it was still active.

“The agreed upon deconfliction zone agreement remains in effect,” the statement said.

In April, the US army fired dozens of cruise missile strikes at the Syrian government-held Shayrat airbase a Syria’s Shayrat airbase, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed scores of civilians.

At the time, the strikes were described as a one-off measure to deter any future chemical weapons use.

Syria’s civil war began in 2011 after mass protests against Assad’s rule and has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half the country’s population from their homes.

Source:Al Jazeera

{UK police say Assange will still be arrested for ‘minor offence’ if he left Ecuadorian embassy where he is holed up.}

Swedish prosecutors have dropped a rape investigation into Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, bringing to an end a seven-year legal stand-off.

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after taking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden amid fears that he would have been handed over to the US to face prosecution over the publication of classified documents by WikiLeaks.

“Director of Public Prosecution, Marianne Ny, has today decided to discontinue the investigation regarding suspected rape by Julian Assange,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Friday.

Christophe Marchand, a member of Assange’s legal team, welcomed Ny’s decision as “the end of his nightmare”.

“We have been waiting a long time for this decision,” he said, adding: “Julian Assange has been a victim of a huge abuse of procedure. We are very pleased and very moved”.

Shortly after the announcement, Assange posted a picture of himself smiling broadly, without comment.

After the Swedish prosecutors’ decision, British police said they will arrest Assange as soon as he walks out of the embassy because he has broken his conditions for bail by failing to surrender on June 29, 2012 for extradition to Sweden.

“Now that the situation has changed and the Swedish authorities have discontinued their investigation into that matter, Mr Assange remains wanted for a much less serious offence,” it said in a statement.

“The Metropolitan Police Service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the Embassy.”

In a Twitter post, WikiLeaks said the UK has refused to comment whether it has received a US warrant to extradite Assange, and added: “Focus now moves to UK”.

UK refuses to confirm or deny whether it has already received a US extradition warrant for Julian Assange. Focus now moves to UK.

The rape accusation against Assange dates from August 2010 when an alleged victim, who says she met him at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm a few days earlier, filed a complaint.

Assange has repeatedly reiterated his innocence and said the sex was consensual, insisting that the accusations are “politically motivated”.

Assange’s Swedish lawyer last month filed a new motion demanding that the arrest warrant be lifted after US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in April that arresting Assange would be “a priority”.

The probe has suffered from endless procedural complications since it began in 2010.

In a letter sent to the Swedish government on May 8, Ecuador condemned “the obvious lack of progress” despite Swedish officials questioning Assange at the embassy in November 2016.

“The Ecuadorian government have been putting pressure on the Swedes to bring about some sort of solution to this long-running standoff,” Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from London, said.

Barker added that the US was preparing to press charges against Assange.

“We believe the sealed indictment has been prepared. Although we don’t know what is in it,” he said.

“The Obama administration felt charges couldn’t be brought and things were very much in flux and they seem to be in flux even now.”

A UN panel has said that Assange had been “arbitrarily detained” and should be able to claim compensation from Britain and Sweden. The two countries have dismissed the report.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Sanctions imposed on chief judge Maikel Moreno and seven others for usurping powers of opposition-led parliament.}

The United States has imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s chief judge and seven other members of the country’s Supreme Court as punishment for seizing powers from the opposition-led congress earlier this year.

Those sanctioned will have their assets frozen within US jurisdiction, and US citizens will be barred from doing business with them, the US treasury department said on Thursday.

The new sanctions package was aimed at stepping up pressure on supporters of President Nicolas Maduro amid growing international concern over a crackdown on mass street protests.

“The Venezuelan people are suffering from a collapsing economy brought about by their government’s mismanagement and corruption,” Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary, said in a statement.

“Members of the country’s Supreme Court of Justice have exacerbated the situation by consistently interfering with the legislative branch’s authority,” he said.

“By imposing these targeted sanctions, the United States is supporting the Venezuelan people in their efforts to protect and advance democratic governance in their country.”

Venezuela’s latest wave of anti-government unrest, which has left at least 44 people dead in the last six weeks, began when the Supreme Court assumed the powers of the National Assembly in March.

The de facto annulment of the congress drew widespread international condemnation, and the decision was later partially reversed.

Among those hit with sanctions was Maikel Moreno, a Maduro ally who became president of the 32-judge court in February.

The sanctions came shortly after US President Donald Trump called the situation in Venezuela a “disgrace to humanity”.

“People don’t have enough to eat. People have no food. There’s great violence,” Trump told a press conference with visiting Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

He added: “And we will do whatever is necessary and we will work together to do whatever is necessary to help with fixing that.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets against the Maduro’s government, demanding elections, freedom for jailed activists, foreign aid and autonomy for the opposition-led legislature.

Despite its vast oil reserves, Venezuela is suffering chronic shortages of food, medicine and other basic supplies. The centre-right opposition blames it all on mismanagement and corruption in the Socialist government.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Thursday that authorities confiscated his passport and prevented him from travelling to New York to discuss the country’s crisis with United Nations officials.

Maduro’s government, however, accuses the opposition of seeking a violent coup and says many of the protesters are no more than “terrorists”.

The US treasury department has in the past sanctioned Venezuelan officials or former officials, charging them with trafficking or corruption, a designation that allows their assets in the US to be frozen and bars them from conducting financial transactions through the US.

The officials have denied the charges and called them a pretext as part of an effort to topple Maduro’s government.

The Trump administration has threatened further measures against Caracas, but sanctions so far have stopped short of hitting the oil sector in Venezuela, which is a major US oil supplier.

Source:Al Jazeera

{He called it the ‘worst deal ever’ while campaigning, but Donald Trump will extend nuclear deal at least 120 more days.}

Washington, DC – US President Donald Trump passed up a chance to derail the nuclear deal with Iran on Wednesday, a move analysts said reflected business interests at home and diplomatic relations abroad.

During Trump’s election campaign he vowed to “rip up” the nuclear agreement with Tehran if elected, calling it “the worst deal ever”.

Trump had until Thursday to extend a sanctions waiver on Iran, and the US state department announced a day earlier it would be signed, meaning old sanctions wouldn’t be re-imposed and the nuclear deal will continue – at least for now.

“We are communicating to the US Congress that the United States continues to waive sanctions as required to continue implementing US sanctions-lifting commitments,” a State Department statement said.

However, the department also announced the imposition of new unrelated sanctions against Iranian defence officials and an Iranian “entity”. It also pledged to continue reviewing the nuclear deal with withdrawal still possible.

{{Iran nuclear deal, a year on}}

“This ongoing review does not diminish the United States’ resolve to continue countering Iran’s destabilising activity in the region, whether it be supporting the Assad regime [in Syria], backing terrorist organisations like Hezbollah [in Lebanon], or supporting violent militias that undermine governments in Iraq and Yemen.

“And above all, the United States will never allow the regime in Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” the statement said.

Iran agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal to curtail its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions that had crippled its economy.

Along with the P5+1 (five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany), the Obama administration touted the nuclear deal as a crucial move towards detente with Iran and regional peace.

The US president must review and sign the sanctions relief waiver every 120 days. After taking office in January, Thursday was Trump’s first opportunity to roll it back.

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former US assistant secretary of defence, said the Trump administration’s continuation of the nuclear deal is similar to the situation with China.

Trump slammed China’s “unfair” trade policies throughout his election campaign, but once in office he quickly smoothed things over with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

On Iran, Korb noted the importance of the $6bn Boeing deal with Tehran that could mean the creation of 18,000 American jobs.

“Trump is a businessman after all,” Korb told Al Jazeera. “Again its rhetoric verses policy. I was the assistant secretary of defence under Ronald Reagan who denounced the ‘evil Soviet Empire’ – and then was ready to give up our nuclear weapons.”

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Washington DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, said the danger threatening the nuclear deal is the imposition of new sanctions and the US government’s belligerent language towards Iran.

“That kind of language fuels the hardliners. It is a gift to the hardline elements in the Iranian political scene,” Bennis told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE: Obama: Abandoning Iran nuclear deal could mean war

Europe’s leaders are quickly moving forward on economic normalisation with Iran, and scuttling the nuclear deal would have wide-ranging diplomatic repercussions with major allies, she said.

“No question Europe would be furious. This is not a bilateral deal between Tehran and Washington, it’s with five other countries along with the US… So this kind of unilateralism will infuriate every European country,” said Bennis.

Since its implementation, the nuclear deal has brought positive results, she added.

“It has reduced the threat of war … and it improves the lives of Iranians by reducing at least some of the economic sanctions that have crippled so much of the country’s economy.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Enda Kenny will step down as Fine Gael leader after almost 15 years and not lead party into election.}

The prime minister of Ireland has said he is stepping down as leader of the Fine Gael party, kicking off a succession contest between two younger ministers.

Enda Kenny – who had already announced he would not lead Fine Gael into the election – said on Wednesday he would remain prime minister during the contest, due to be concluded on June 2, and subsequent talks with government officials backing the government.

“I would like to stress the huge honour and privilege that it has been for me to lead our party for the past 15 years, in opposition and into government on two successive occasions,” Kenny said in a statement.

Kenny, prime minister since 2011 and leader of his party for almost 15 years, is expected to be replaced by either Leo Varadkar, the social protection minister, or Simon Coveney, the housing minister.

Kenny was due to step down at midnight to become acting party leader until a successor is chosen.

{{Voter backlash}}

He has overseen Ireland’s turnaround from entering a humiliating three-year state bailout, just months before he came to power, to becoming Europe’s fastest-growing economy for the past three years.

But at a parliamentary election last year, Fine Gael suffered a backlash from voters who felt the recovery was passing them by.

It lost a quarter of its seats, only returning to power as the senior party in a fragile minority government.

Colleagues are counting on a new leader reviving their fortunes after falling marginally behind rivals Fianna Fail in most surveys.

The race is set to be dominated the two declared candidates: Varadkar, 38, and Coveney, 44.

Whoever wins will take over as prime minister, subject to a parliamentary vote, at least until the election.

Fianna Fail agreed last year to abstain in key votes to let the minority government run until late 2018.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Kremlin offer comes amid row over US president’s disclosure of ISIL-related information to top Russian diplomats.}

Vladimir Putin has said that his government could provide a recording of the exchange between Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, and Donald Trump that has stirred up a political storm in the capital.

The Russian president’s comments on Wednesday were the first since accusations first surfaced that the US president shared secrets while meeting Lavrov at the White House.

The Washington Post newspaper has reported that Trump shared intelligence with Lavrov regarding an ISIL threat related to the use of laptop computers on airplanes.

The controversy comes amid existing investigations into whether Trump’s aides colluded with Russia during the election campaign.

Putin said he was pleased with Lavrov’s visit to the US capital last week but mocked the idea that Trump had shared secrets during the meeting on May 10, calling the allegations “political schizophrenia” and saying people spreading them are either “dumb” or “corrupt”.

“We can see that political schizophrenia is developing in the United States,” Putin said after talks with Paolo Gentiloni, Italian prime minister, in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Wednesday.

“I cannot otherwise explain the accusations of the president that he handed Lavrov some sort of secrets.”

“If the US administration finds it possible, we are ready to provide a recording of the conversation between Lavrov and Trump to the US Congress and Senate.”

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said: “It’s basically power projecting from Putin.

“He is projecting it to Donald Trump, the US Congress and the wider politial establishment there. Vladimir Putin is having a lot of fun at the moment.”

Putin used the Russian word for audio recording at the press conference, but Yuri Ushakov, his foreign policy aide, said that “audio is not made” at meetings like the one at the Oval Office.

“There is a recording kept by a special person present at conversations,” Ushakov clarified to Russian news agencies.

{{Democrats’ demand
}}

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, “Democrats are calling on Republicans to join them in calling for an independent investigation”, said Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC.

For Democrats but also for some moderate Republicans, there is growing concern that the Trump White House refused to hand over transcripts or tapes, with “three separate congressional investigations ongoing into Russian meddlings or ties between Russian officials and Trump’s staff”, she said.

According to sources cited in the report, that intelligence that Trump reportedly leaked came from a US ally which had not authorised the US to pass it on to Russia.

The New York Times reported later that Israel was the source that shared with US spy agencies the sensitive intelligence materials.

A US administration official confirmed to AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that the original intelligence came from Israel.

However, HR McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, denied that Trump caused any security lapses.

Trump himself insisted he had the “absolute right” to share “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety” with Russia.

Source:Al Jazeera