US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is “setting the stage for a war with Iran,” says a Bush-era official, claiming he sees the same pattern that developed ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as chief of staff for former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, made the comments in an interview with nonprofit news organization The Real News Network.

“I’m looking at the same kind of trail, as it were, that happened just prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the same characters with a few new additions actually laying that trail down,” he said.

Pompeo was recently warned about going to war with Iran by Republican Senator Rand Paul, reminding him that he has no “permission” to do so without Congress approval.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is “setting the stage for a war with Iran,” says a Bush-era official, claiming he sees the same pattern that developed ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as chief of staff for former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, made the comments in an interview with nonprofit news organization The Real News Network.

“I’m looking at the same kind of trail, as it were, that happened just prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the same characters with a few new additions actually laying that trail down,” he said.

Pompeo was recently warned about going to war with Iran by Republican Senator Rand Paul, reminding him that he has no “permission” to do so without Congress approval.

Following Monday's formal US listing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO, Iran was quick to hit back as previously promised.

Iranian lawmakers voted Tuesday to in turn list US Central Command, or CENTCOM, as a terrorist organization, which means that any support given CENTCOM will be treated as an act of terrorism. It essentially means all American troops in the Middle East will be treated as terrorists, according to the newly passed law.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested that the Trump administration would not rule out going to war with Iran even though there is no explicit authorization from Congress to do so. Pompeo said this in the context of being asked whether the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) could be used to attack Iran on the basis that Iran supported the 9/11 attacks and is connected to Al Qaeda, which carried out the 9/11 attack.

it’s clear that the US desires to dismantle Iran and Venezuela’s supposedly interconnected influence networks in Latin America as the next step in fortifying “Fortress America“, and while “deep state” wars such as this one have been going on for decades, it’s hitherto unprecedented for any country to make such a crusade public since the end of the Old Cold War when the US used to make similar claims about the USSR and its communist proxies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif issued a “reminder” Monday to European powers that Tehran is allowed to enrich uranium under its nuclear deal, after a senior French diplomat claimed otherwise.

“There is no prohibition on the enrichment of uranium by Iran,” Zarif tweeted.

His comments were addressed to France, Germany and Britain, signatories to the landmark 2015 accord with Tehran under which uranium enrichment is curtailed but not banned.

Zarif’s remark follows France’s ambassador to Washington declaring: “It’s false to say that at the expiration of the JCPOA (nuclear deal), Iran will be allowed to enriching uranium.”

Plans to link the railway networks of Iran, Iraq and Syria have been revealed by a source at the Syrian Ministry of Transport.

“Now, the countries are working on the resumption of the project connecting the railways of Syria, Iran and Iraq,” the source told Al-Watan newspaper yesterday.

“[They] are determining the date of the meeting between the representatives of the countries to develop the points of view.”

The strategic project seeks to link Tehran and Baghdad to the ports in Syria’s north-western city of Latakia. Before the war, 97 per cent of construction of the project on the Syrian side was complete but, large tracts of the railways were bombed during the eight-year conflict.

Israel is in the process of plunging America into a war with Iran that could destroy what’s left of the Middle East and ignite a third world war, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned in Washington approximately a week ago.

Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who now teaches at Washington-area universities, didn’t hold back in his critique of where the status quo is leading the United States via its client state, Israel.

At the annual Israel lobby conference at the National Press Club, sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, Wilkerson explained that Israel is headed toward “a massive confrontation with the various powers arrayed against it, a confrontation that will suck America in and perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become.”

European subsidiaries of Italy’s biggest bank UniCredit have pleaded guilty to US charges of violating sanctions against Iran and other countries. The lender has agreed to pay $1.3 billion to settle the six-year probe.

UniCredit’s units in Germany, Austria and Italy admitted to illegally moving of hundreds millions of dollars via the US financial system on behalf of sanctioned entities, according to the US Treasury Department. The violations reportedly included sanctions programs against weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Trump administration would designate a branch of Iran’s military as a foreign terrorist organization Monday, he said, “The Trump administration is simply recognizing a basic reality.”

But critics say they are concerned that it may also be part of an effort to bend reality enough to provide legal justification for armed conflict with Iran.

“I am troubled that the administration can’t unequivocally say that you haven’t been given power. I can tell you explicitly, you have not been given power or authority by Congress to have war with Iran,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Pompeo on Wednesday.

Overnight on April 13, warplanes of the Israeli Air Force delivered strikes on targets near the town of Masyaf in the Syrian province of Homs from Lebanese airspace.

According to the Syrian version of the events, most of Israeli missiles were intercepted, but the rest of them destroyed several buildings and injured at least 20 people, including 3 service members. Fragments of at least one Israeli missile were found near the Lebanese border.

The College of Management, the Scientific Research center and the Accounting School were among the targets inside Masyaf itself.

Russia is joining world countries to send humanitarian relief to Iranian floods survivors as inundations continue to cause heavy damage in large parts of the country.

“Responding to Iran’s request and in joint cooperation with Armenia’s Emergency Situations Ministry, humanitarian aid for the people hit by the floods has been sent,” reads Russia's Emergency Situation Ministry statement.

The ministry has dispatched four thousand tents, blankets and folding beds to its regional station in the Armenian capital Yerevan. The Russian government created the centre in 2015 in the city in a bid to serve as a regional basis for humanitarian aid for Armenia and surrounding countries.

President Donald Trump has declared on more than one occasion that he’s smarter than America’s military leaders.

And with his unprecedented decision Monday to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist group, he’s setting up another test of that thesis.

Trump chose to overrule the Pentagon after National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo advised that the top brass' warnings about risks to U.S. troops are overblown, several officials with direct knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO.

The president’s move came despite Pentagon officials’ warnings that it could lead to retaliatory attacks against U.S. troops by Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East and threats from Iranian leaders that U.S. troops could face “consequences.”

During remarks early this week in a Fox News interview following Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) being formally designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that the US will view Iran's elite force just as it does ISIS.

Specifically Pompeo agreed that the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, is a "terrorist" on the level of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a Fox News interview on Monday.

The foreign collusion story is mainstream. Not Russia. Israel. On NPR this morning, the host asked a State Department official whether Donald Trump designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization so as to make an offering to Benjamin Netanyahu on the eve of the Israeli election.

“I want to ask you about the timing of this,” David Greene said. “The response from from Israel was quick and I should say pretty jubilant. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu… wrote on twitter in Hebrew that President Trump was ‘answering another of my important requests.’ Is that what’s happening here?

Brian Hook of State said Israel will benefit from the decision, but it was made in the U.S. interest.

While terrorism is a phenomenon most of us have come in touch with during our lifetime, much of the coverage is shadowed by terrorism in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, where US backed terrorist groups have wreaked havoc in devastating the wars that have plagued these countries.

Nonetheless, terrorism is widespread across the region, even in Iran. Due to Iran’s relatively strong internal stability, terrorist groups have been unable to catch major headlines in the Islamic Republic as terrorist groups often conduct hit and run attacks or the occasional kidnappings of young drafted border guards and soldiers near the Pakistan/Afghanistan border areas as well as across Iran’s western borders towards Iraq. Some groups are motivated by separatist goals, while others are driven by religious extremism. In this first part I will cover terrorism across Iran’s eastern borders, one that is driven by the Salafist ideology.

An Iranian delegation landed in Venezuela on Monday to discuss launching direct flights between the two countries, Venezuela's foreign minister said, as Tehran voices support for President Nicolas Maduro against the opposition backed by most Western countries.

A plane belonging to Mahan Air, a private Iranian airline accused by the West of transporting military equipment to Middle East war zones, landed in Caracas on Monday, and the two countries will discuss launching a direct flight "in the coming months," Minister Jorge Arreaza told reporters.

A White House official said the U.S. government viewed the launch of direct flights as a "politically motivated gesture."

"From our standpoint, there's clearly no commercial reason to establish this flight at this time," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The notion is illogical because the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is a state actor, not a non-state actor. Terrorists are civilians who commit violence against other civilians to achieve some political goal.

The IRGC is sort of like the US national guard. It isn’t the formal army, but it is an adjunct to it.

If the US has a problem with IRGC actions, they should accuse the Iranian government of war crimes. States commit war crimes. There are international laws and institutions for dealing with war crimes.

But the practical side of the issue is that Iraqi Shiite militias close to the IRGC are essentially the hosts and protectors of the some 5,000 US troops in Iraq.

In a Monday Tweet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked President Trump for declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, saying that he had personally requested Trump’s move.

Netanyahu said that the move would keep the world safe from Iran, and would also serve the interests of Israel, saying he was glad Trump “acceeded to another one of my important requests.”

Netanyahu’s emphasis that this is all his idea, and Trump is giving him everything he wants, is clearly being done with an eye toward Tuesday’s election, as he attempts to convince voters that he is able to get concessions out of Trump no one else could.

Following President Trump decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization, Iran has responded in kind, declaring US Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terror group on their own list.

The US move, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says was his request, is meant to allow the US to further target the Iranian military and those with ties to it. How much this will mean is unclear, as decades of US sanctions have cut such contact substantially.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council issued a statement saying the US declaration was illegal and a major threat to regional stability. They did so in the context of their own retaliatory declaration.

The Trump administration designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite group of that country’s military, as a foreign terrorist organization early Monday, confirming a report published last Friday in the Wall Street Journal that suggested that such a move was likely to occur in a matter of days. In a statement released Monday, the White House stated:

This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

The situation in Syria is remaining relatively stable amid the continued limited ISIS attacks on the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and ceasefire violations in the Idlib de-militarized zone.

Over the past few days, pro-militant sources have repeatedly claimed that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and even the Russian Aerospace Forces have delivered strikes on so-called “opposition targets” in northern Hama and southern Idlib. While these reports are mostly propaganda exaggerations, the situation there is in fact complicated with both sides attacking each other on more or less constant basis.

When the Pentagon starts throwing around estimates of who got killed and how in its assorted wars in the Middle East, they are often wildly inaccurate. Nowhere was this more apparent than a new briefing this week on estimates in the 2003-2011 Iraq War.

Designed for Special Envoy Brian Hook to give hawkish speeches on Iran, the briefing estimated that Iran was "responsible" for the deaths of 608 US troopsduring the Iraq War. This was an upward revision from a 2015 estimate of 500, and seemingly was only done to allow Hook to bring it up now.

A more accurate estimate would, of course, be zero deaths. Despite years of anti-Iran rhetoric, the US has never conclusively pinned a single death on the Iranian government or its forces. Rather, these deaths are all loosely attributable to Iraqi Shi’ite factions.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on the Iraqi prime minister to expel US forces as Washington continues to seek excuses to remain there after a 16-year devastating presence and hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

“The US goal in Iraq is beyond mere military presence – they are behind long-term interests as well as establishing a government like the military governments that formed after the occupation of Iraq,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi during their meeting in Tehran.

“The Iraqi government must do something [for] the US military to leave Iraq as soon as possible,” he said, quoted by the television channel Press TV.

U.S. sanctions have prevented the Iranian Red Crescent from obtaining any foreign financial aid to assist victims of flooding that has killed at least 70 people and inundated some 1,900 communities, the group said on Sunday.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says the “ruthless” policies adopted by US President Donald Trump during his term in office have created a tense situation in the world, undermining the global order and international peace.

The top lawmaker made the remarks in a Sunday address to the General Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) held in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Larijani referred to the US withdrawal from its INF treaty with Russia, its trade war on China and the European countries, its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, and its ruthless behaviors in Jerusalem al-Quds and the occupied Palestinian territories, and said such behaviors by American statesmen have undermined peace and security in the world.

Iran has strongly condemned the latest deadly airstrikes by Saudi warplanes in Yemen that killed more than a dozen civilians, most of them schoolchildren, saying countries that are arming the aggressors are complicit in the crimes.

"Countries that have caused the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen by providing arms to the aggressors are accomplices in these crimes and must be held accountable for their support," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Monday.

He criticized the international community for remaining silent and indifferent to the atrocities committed by the Saudi-led coalition in its military campaign against Yemen and expressed sympathy with the families of victims.

The Iranian spokesperson called on the United Nations and countries involved in the Yemeni crisis to ramp up their efforts in order to put an immediate end to the attacks and adopt necessary measures to protect civilians, particularly women and children.

Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

Turkish troops and armored units are massed along Turkey’s southern border awaiting orders to invade northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to clear a ten mile-deep swath of land east of the Euphrates River in order to remove terrorist-linked militants (YPG) currently occupying the territory. The proposed offensive would put US Special Forces in the line of fire which significantly increases the likelihood of US casualties. If American troops are killed or wounded by the Turkish operation, Washington will respond in force leading to a potentially catastrophic face-off between the two NATO allies. The possibility of a violent clash between Turkey and the United States has never been greater than it is today.

Iran military units have fled the facilities the Islamic regime established near the Damascus airport due to fears of an Israeli attack, according to reports in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

“According to the source, the evacuated positions included more than nine large depots of weapons, ammunition, and long-range missiles. Additionally, an intelligence center near the airport, facing Eastern Ghouta, was evacuated, as were a center spying on wireless communications and an operational command center,” reported the Lebanese publication Al-Modon.

hen Russia was invited to set up a fortified base in Hmeimim, in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia, and another in the port city of Tartus, it was under the assumption it would have the sole foreign military presence along Syria’s Mediterranean coast.

The Hmeimim tenure was open-ended, while the use of Tartus naval facility was granted until 2065 and renewable by mutual consent. However, from next October the Russians will no longer have the neighborhood to themselves – as Iran has leased parts of the port of Latakia.

Iran’s arrival on the scene raises serious political and security concerns for Moscow.

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing sources in the administration.

The move could be announced as early as Monday, April 8, according to WSJ. If carried out, it will mark the first time another country's military has been branded as a terrorist group. Reuters reports that three sources close to the matter confirmed the WSJ account to them, and that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been pushing for the new designation.

Saudi Arabia has opened a consulate in Baghdad for the first time in nearly 30 years in a sign of improving ties, Iraq said. The new consulate, which will issue visas to Iraqis, was opened during a two-day visit by a delegation headed by the Saudi minister of commerce and investment, AP reported. Riyadh seeks closer ties to Baghdad in an effort to counter Iran’s growing regional influence.

While diplomacy seems to be slowing down in recent weeks, there are still high hopes that a peace deal with North Korea is possible, and that this may include denuclearization, even if it isn’t the US version which requires Kim to give the US all the weapons directly.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is all for that idea, and said on Tuesday that they are fully prepared to act as the monitor for any nuclear deal that might get reached.

IAEA Director Amano Yukiya tod the UN Security Council that the agency could have inspectors back in North Korea within a matter of weeks if a deal came into effect that would allow them to go there.

Amano said he believes the IAEA is the only body equipped to carry out the job at all. This may not sit well with the Trump Administration, as the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed Iran is in compliance with that nuclear deal, despite the US withdrawing from the pact and falsely accusing Iran of non-compliance.

Two weeks of heavy rain has led to mass flooding in Iran, and humanitarian aid from abroad has been severely limited. According to Iranian FM Javad Zarif, and some other officials, that aid is being slowed by US sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims that is just the Iran regime “blaming outside entities” when he believes that Iran is fully to blame “for this disaster.” In theory, US sanctions aren’t supposed to limit humanitarian aid.

In practice, however, US sanctions have routinely limited humanitarian aid, and even if Pompeo dismisses Zarif as a liar, he’s also going to have to explain how many other nations, including France and Britain, were openly offering assistance before concerns about the sanctions were risen, and then all such offers started to dry up.

The Trump administration’s recent recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights territory is part of a larger effort by the White House to open new fronts in efforts to combat Iranian militants and terror proxies in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the decision.

President Donald Trump won plaudits from the pro-Israel community and allies on Capitol Hill when he announced that America would officially recognize the Golan territory on Israel’s northern border as belonging to the Jewish state, which annexed the area following war with Syria several decades ago.

U.S. officials last week faced down critics of this decision at the United Nations, a forum unfriendly to the Jewish state, telling member countries that the Trump administration will take every step necessary to protect Israel’s right to self defense against Iranian militants and Hezbollah fighters who have used the Golan area to launch terrorist attacks on Israel.

On March 28, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came with a new statement claiming that his country will continue working against Iranian presence in Syria. The statement shows that the Israeli military is set to continue its military campaign in Syria.

In own turn, the US did not limit its recent actions in support of Tel Aviv to recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. It also demanded the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to withdraw from the separation line area established in the framework of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. US-Israeli efforts to force the SAA to do so could easily turn the Golan Heights into a new hot point and fuel the Syrian conflict further.

Iranian authorities have issued new emergency alerts and travel advisories as heavy rain and snowfall continue to cause flooding and disruptions in most parts of the country.

Morteza Salimi, the head of the Relief and Rescue Organization of the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS), said Monday morning that floods have affected at least 23 of the country’s 31 provinces since heavy downpours began on March 19.

Estimates by government agencies suggest that the floods have taken the lives of at least 42 people and destroyed over 25,000 homes around the country.

Major floods have been reported in the provinces of Golestan, Mazandaran, Gilan, Kordestan, Fars, Northern Khorasan, Kermanshah, Khouzestan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad as well as Sistan and Baluchestan.

It was reported on Monday morning that fresh floods are expected in at least nine provinces.

When the Trump Administration withdrew from the P5+1 nuclear deal last year, they moved to reimpose all sanctions eased by the deal. It was broadly assumed among US officials that everyone would go along with that, and while they haven’t, there is particular non-compliance among Iranians, who never intended to go along with unilateral US sanctions to begin with.

On Tuesday, the Treasury Department announced new sanctions against what they described as a “vast network” of Iranians defying existing sanctions, but which would more accurately be called about 25 people and a handful of foreign subsidiaries of Iran’s Ansar Bank.

US sanctions broadly intend to deny Iran any access to international banking, but with subsidiaries in Turkey and the UAE, Ansar Bank was able to move money around in defiance of US intentions, albeit not in violation of any actual laws in the jurisdictions where the transactions took place.

That Washington has been slowly tightening the screws on Iran is undeniable, starting with the withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement last year, which has led to a level of economic warfare initiated by Washington that is unprecedented between two countries that are not actually at war. Ironically and inevitably, though the suffering of the Iranian people is real, the elites who run the country are largely immune to the hardships being experienced.

As there has been no sign that the Iranian people will overthrow their government, which is the White House’s stated objective, more pressure is being contemplated. New sanctions were initiated last Friday and a move that mighty actually bring about an armed confrontation is being considered by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is clearly favoring declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to be a foreign terrorist group.

The situation that is developing around both this year’s Israeli election and next year’s ballot in the United States smacks of something like a developing conspiracy to renew the mandates of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump somewhat reminiscent of the October Surprise that helped bring Ronald Reagan to the White House.

Back then, the Reagan campaign team led by William Casey secretly negotiated with Iranian representatives to prolong the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis past the 1980 election, enabling Reagan to use the continuing stand-off as a wedge issue to attack the “weakness” of Carter foreign policy. If Carter had been able to bring the hostages home, he might have won reelection. In exchange for a Reagan offer of considerable military hardware, the Iranians agreed to release the U.S. hostages after the new president took office, which they did. And Reagan provided the hardware in an exchange that eventually morphed into Iran-Contra.

The situation that is developing around both this year’s Israeli election and next year’s ballot in the United States smacks of something like a developing conspiracy to renew the mandates of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump somewhat reminiscent of the October Surprise that helped bring Ronald Reagan to the White House. Back then, the Reagan campaign team led by William Casey secretly negotiated with Iranian representatives to prolong the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis past the 1980 election, enabling Reagan to use the continuing stand-off as a wedge issue to attack the “weakness” of Carter foreign policy. If Carter had been able to bring the hostages home, he might have won reelection. In exchange for a Reagan offer of considerable military hardware, the Iranians agreed to release the U.S. hostages after the new president took office, which they did. And Reagan provided the hardware in an exchange that eventually morphed into Iran-Contra.

Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, spoke on Sunday at the AIPAC Policy Conference.

He began by thanking President Donald Trump for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

“It’s so significant in historical terms because 52 years ago we acquired that territory in a defensive war. But it’s one thing to achieve a military victory and it’s another thing to achieve a diplomatic victory,” said Dermer, who added that America's recognition of the Golan Heights will be made official on Monday.

Asked by i24NEWS anchor Michelle Makori what Israel is looking to achieve in Syria, the Ambassador replied, “We want Iran out.”

The United States clinched a strategic port deal with Oman on Sunday which U.S. officials say will allow the U.S. military better access the Gulf region and reduce the need to send ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime choke point off Iran.

The United States clinched a strategic port deal with Oman on Sunday which US officials say will allow the US military better access the Gulf region and reduce the need to send ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime choke point off Iran.

The US embassy in Oman said in a statement that the agreement governed US access to facilities and ports in Duqm as well as in Salalah and “reaffirms the commitment of both countries to promoting mutual security goals.”

The accord is viewed through an economic prism by Oman, which wants to develop Duqm while preserving its Switzerland-like neutral role in Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy.

But it comes as the United States grows increasingly concerned about Iran’s expanding missile programs, which have improved in recent years despite sanctions and diplomatic pressure by the United States.

In a bizarre interview, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has suggested that US President Donald Trump was sent by God to save Israel from Iran.

During his visit to Israel on Thursday, Pompeo gave an exclusive interview to the Christian Broadcasting Network, described as “part policy, part politics, and part spiritual”.

Asked whether or not President Trump was a modern day equivalent to biblical figure Queen Esther, who persuaded the King of Persia not to murder the Jews, Pompeo said that he was “confident” the Lord was at work.

The US Treasury Department announced a new round of anti-Iran sanctions on Friday, hitting 14 individuals and 17 companies, all of them who have some link to Iran’s Organization for Defense Innovation and Research (SPND).

It is unclear if these targets are generally accused of having done anything illegal, in and of themselves, though officials claimed some of the companies were “front companies” who might be used to avoid sanctions.

The individual scientists being targeted are another matter, as some of them are being “former nuclear weapons scientists,” and the sanctions are intended to harm their ability to work on any such activity in the future, if they were ever so inclined.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has returned from his first-ever trip to Iraq with a raft of agreements for expanded trade, cross-border infrastructure, and pledges of greater cooperation with Baghdad.

Leaders of both countries embraced strengthening ties — something Washington has been watching closely.

Iran is upping its game in Iraq as U.S. influence recedes, deepening ties with its war-weary neighbor and betting on bilateral economic activity to help offset tough sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

The UK has denied asylum to an Iranian man because he said on his application that he converted from Islam to the "peaceful" religion of Christianity, according to The Independent.

The Home Office quoted excerpts from the bible in the man's rejection letter - saying the book of Revelations is "filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence," and concluded that "These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge."

When Washington announced the return of economic sanctions against Iran, the main idea was pretty clear: cut exports of vital oil to zero to paralyze the economy and prompt a change in government. Waivers followed, however, as well as reports that, despite the sanctions, Iran was shipping more oil abroad than the amounts allowed under the waivers.

Oil data provider TankerTrackers.com first reported last year that Iranian tankers were turning off their transponders to hide the destination of their journeys. At the time, most tanker tracking data came precisely from transponders and port authorities, which made most Iranian tanker movement reports unreliable. This, in turn, contributed to the October-December oil price drop when it emerged that Iran was shipping more crude abroad than previously believed.

No wonder, then, that the United States is now targeting vessels transporting Iranian crude oil in violation of sanctions, a senior State Department official told VOA this week.

Iranian leaders vowed on Thursday to control soaring prices, bring stability to the national currency and create jobs as the nation marked the end of a year of economic crisis fueled by renewed U.S. sanctions.

The US granted Iraq a 90-day waiver exempting it from sanctions to buy energy from Iran, a State Department official said on Wednesday. The latest extension allows Baghdad to keep importing Iranian gas that is critical for Iraqi power production. “Iraq was granted a 90-day waiver to purchase energy imports from Iran,” Reuters quoted the official as saying. The last sanctions waiver for Iraq was granted by Washington on December 21. The Trump administration re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s energy exports in November, citing its nuclear program and meddling in the Middle East.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sought on Wednesday to bolster a united front against Iran during a Middle East tour, AFP reported. The top US diplomat kicked off his regional tour in Kuwait where he met Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah on the first stop of a trip that will also take him to Israel and Lebanon.

Turkey and Iran have launched a joint military operation against Kurdish rebels along Turkey's eastern border, according to an official.

Suleyman Soylu, Turkey's interior minister, said the offensive on Monday targeted the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"As of 8:00 this morning, we started an operation with Iran aimed at the PKK on our eastern border," he told a crowd in the Mediterranean city of Antalya. "We will announce the outcome [later]."

China's Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan underlined that Iran is the strategic partner of his country in the region, saying that Beijing is interested in the further development of economic and trade ties with Tehran.

"Iran is China's strategic partner in the Middle-East and China is the biggest trade partner and importer of oil from Iran," Zhong said, addressing the 17th joint commission of economic cooperation between Iran and China in Beijing on Tuesday.

He underscored China's preparedness to use the mechanism of the joint commission to strengthen bilateral economic and trade relations.

Zhong expressed the hope that strategic relations between the two countries would further expand after holding the joint economic commission meeting in Beijing.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

Lebanon is readying to receive US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week in his first ever visit at a time when the Lebanese economic-political map is being redrawn and while Lebanon is suffering its most serious economic downturn in recent history.

Reasons for the deterioration of the local economy include not only the corruption of Lebanon’s political leadership and lower level administration but also US sanctions imposed on Iran. The latest sanctions are the harshest ever imposed. They will also dramatically affect Lebanon so long as President Donald Trump is in power if Lebanon does not follow US policy and dictates.

An AIPAC affiliate paid $60,000 during its campaign to thwart the Iran nuclear deal to a group that engages in anti-Muslim extremism.

Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which was launched in the summer of 2015 to rally opposition to the Iran deal, paid the money to the Center for Security Policy, according to a report Wednesday by LobeLog, a Middle East policy news and analysis site.

While in Jerusalem, Pompeo is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in spite of the close proximity of his visit to Israel’s April 9th election.

Arrest comes amid commemorations for 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires.

Argentinian intelligence officers arrested two Iranian nationals in Buenos Aires suspected of traveling on forged Israeli passports, local media reported.The pair, identified by local reports as Sajjad Samiel Naserani, 27, and Mashoreh Sabzali, 30, were arrested on Tuesday travelling on forged Israeli passports under the fake names of Netanel and Rivka Toledano.

I thought neocons were gone, but the most bombastic of them all has Trump's ear. Let's learn from Iraq mistakes and avoid a devastating war with Iran.

The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that it had launched a massive drone military drill involving tens of unmanned aerial vehicles Thursday.

The drill involved a fleet of 50 drones modeled after the US' RQ-170 Sentinel, one of which was captured by Iran in 2011, as well as a number of other UAVs, which were launched from bases as far as 1,000 kilometers away from the target located at Bani Farur island in the Persian Gulf. It was the largest Iranian military exercise of this kind to date, the IRGC said in a statement.

All drones involved in the drill successfully bombed the designated target at the same time, Mehr News reports.

Tehran dismisses the Iran section of the US administration's annual "human rights" report as untrue and politically motivated, saying Washington has turned into the "biggest violator" of the Iranian people's human rights by slapping the nation with unlawful economic sanctions.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi was referring to the so-called Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018, in which the US State Department has once again leveled a host of unfounded accusations of rights abuses against the Islamic Republic.

The report, which was released on March 13, claimed that Iran's human rights record had "remained extremely poor and worsened in several key areas." The report also singled out Washington's other adversaries, including China, Russia and North Korea like in previous years.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reportedly met with top oil executives to press them on following the Trump administration’s policy of reducing Iran’s oil exports to zero.

The outreach represents a significant new campaign to sway industry executives to Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda that seeks to advance diplomatic and policy objectives through rapidly expanding US oil and gas exports, Reuters said.

According to the news agency, executives from major companies including Chevron, Total, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum had been invited to the closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

The agreements sealed during the visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Iraq mark the start of the largest economic cooperation project between the two neighboring states in the region.

In the 1990s, when the US decided after Operation Desert Storm and annihilation of 70 percent of Iraq’s Army to re-instate Saddam Hussain rather than conquering Baghdad, there was only one thing revolving in the mind of Washington’s politicians: to prevent the Shiite revolutionary movement, which was gaining momentum after the Intifada (uprisings) in Southern Iraq and becoming an independent powerhouse, from getting strengthened.

Despite the fact that in 1991 the Iraqi army had lost control of all Shiite regions, the scale was tipped in favor of Saddam’s regime when the US-led coalition allowed the dictator to fly his Mil Mi-24 helicopters which led to the largest massacre of the Shiite population in Iraq.

Iran unveiled that it launched a massive drone exercise to showcase its military and technological prowess on Thursday. Given that it involves some 50 Iranian-made drones and is officially named "Way to Jerusalem" exercises (or "Towards al-Quds 1"), it has been met with alarm in Israel especially considering many were armed drones operating along key choke points in the Persian Gulf.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) described the military drills as Iran's largest exercise of its kind to date, and occurred mostly near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. State-run Fars and Tasnim news agencies described the operation as including, “for the first time, 50 Iranian drones on the RQ-170 [US Sentinel] model operated with a number of assault and combat drones."

I begged him to let me write this story, but he was very nervous and declined. Over the next year or two, I pushed some more and he gave me further information, but wouldn’t budge on its publication.

Here’s what he revealed: The State Department guys had since approached him a second time. They offered him further details about the job. They wanted him to disable Tehran’s power grid in exchange for the $250k. They needed someone with technical skills, but said the job was a simple one. He would have to go to a specific location in the Tehran area with a laptop or similar communication device and punch in a code.

Here’s the foreign policy question of questions in 2019: Are President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, all severely weakened at home and with few allies abroad, reckless enough to set off a war with Iran? Could military actions designed to be limited -- say, a heightening of the Israeli bombing of Iranian forces inside Syria, or possible U.S. cross-border attacks from Iraq, or a clash between American and Iranian naval ships in the Persian Gulf -- trigger a wider war?

Worryingly, the answers are: yes and yes. Even though Western Europe has lined up in opposition to any future conflict with Iran, even though Russia and China would rail against it, even though most Washington foreign policy experts would be horrified by the outbreak of such a war, it could happen.

While the US has had a strategy to contain and isolate Iran, Iran continues to seek and build friendships with its regional neighbors. There are many indications that the US will not tolerate this for much longer.

As an aspiring journalist, it is hard to keep up with which country is at the top of Donald Trump’s “to-bomb” list, given the target appears to change every week or so. Since the infamous days of his campaign trail up until the present day, the US president has held a deep animosity towards Tehran. However, the government’s focus appears to shift away from the Islamic Republic periodically – one minute it’s North Korea, every April since his election he also decides he briefly wants to bomb Assad in Syria, and most recently, his entire administration has raved incessantly about Venezuela.

Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami yesterday warned that his country will respond “firmly” if the Israeli navy targeted Iranian oil shipments.

“Iran has the military capabilities to counter any Israeli intervention,” Iran’s IRNA news agency quoted Hatami as saying, adding that the international community would not accept this either.

Hatami said any confrontation would be considered “piracy”, warning that “the Iranian armed forces have the necessary capability to protect the country’s shipping lines in the best way against any possible threat.”

Earlier, Israeli media claimed that Iran, the Syrian government and Hezbollah were building a secret "precision missile factory" in western Syria.

Israeli satellite intelligence firm ImageSat International has released satellite images of what it says are "probably" indications of a missile production facility outside Safita, a Syrian town in southeast Tartous about 100 km from the Lebanese border.

According to the company, an analysis of "the construction patterns, the compound location and the activity" at the site signal "the probability that this is a missiles manufacturing site."

The tragic Ethiopian Airline plane crash recalls another passenger plane crash some 30 years ago. The latter, however, was not due to a mechanical malfunction but to U.S. missiles. And while very few Americans remember this incident, it still weighs heavy on the hearts of many Iranians–as we discovered on our recent trip there.

The tragic downing of the commercial passenger airline, Iran Air Flight 655, happened on July 3, 1988. A U.S. Navy ship called the Vincennes was stationed in the Persian Gulf to protect oil trade routes. The plane had just taken off from nearby Bandar Abbas International Airport in southern Iran when U.S. personnel on the warship fired two surface-to-air missiles. The flight was still in Iranian airspace, climbing on its regularly scheduled flight to Dubai, when it was hit. The plane disintegrated immediately and crashed into the water, killing all 290 onboard–274 passengers and 16 crew members.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reportedly met with top oil executives to press them on following the Trump administration’s policy of reducing Iran’s oil exports to zero.

The outreach represents a significant new campaign to sway industry executives to Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda that seeks to advance diplomatic and policy objectives through rapidly expanding US oil and gas exports, Reuters said.

According to the news agency, executives from major companies including Chevron, Total, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum had been invited to the closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

Ali Rahbari, the prominent Iranian composer and conductor, who has worked with more than 120 European orchestras underlined his interest in cooperating with Tehran Symphony Orchestra without any conditions to voice opposition against the US unfair sanctions against Iran.

"Now that we are facing such an economic situation for the unfair sanctions imposed against my country, I like any patriot and compassionate Iranian have no expectations and, hence, have no condition (for conducting Tehran Symphony Orchestra)," Rahbari told FNA on Monday.

Rahbari was trained in Vienna as a pupil of Gottfried von Einem, Hans Swarowsky, and Karl Osterreicher.

He was the recipient of several major awards in his early conducting career. In 1977, he won the prestigious Gold Medal at the Besancon International Conductors' Competition following a silver medal at the Geneva Competition.