Even though President Donald Trump held fire earlier this month on auto tariffs that have the potential to further roil Europe’s struggling economy, a litany of domestic dilemmas on both sides of the Atlantic threaten to frustrate efforts at a trade pact before they’ve even begun.
New satellite images indicate Iran is building a border crossing at the Syrian-Iraqi border, which would open up a coveted land route from Iran to Lebanon, according to Western intelligence sources.
Iran has resumed its enrichment of uranium, quadrupling its enrichment capacity, the Iranian state-run IRNA news agency reports.
Half of all Americans believe that the United States will go to war with Iran ‘within the next few years,’ according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released on Tuesday amid increased tensions between the two countries.
Saudi Arabia said on Monday that it had intercepted two missiles in Mecca province fired by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, who earlier denied having targeted Islam’s holiest site.
Saudi Arabia has called for two urgent meetings of its Arab allies later this month to discuss recent attacks on shipping and oil-production sites amid rising tensions with bitter regional rival Iran.
“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,” warned US President Donald Trump on Monday following rocket attacks near the US embassy in Baghdad Sunday night suggestive of Iranian Shi’ite proxy activity.
President Trump promised a deal with China will come “when the time is right” Tuesday, calling the current atmosphere of mistrust between the two countries, which has produced an increase in tariffs on both nations’ goods, “a little squabble.”
Four oil tankers were attacked in the Middle East Sunday, leaving no casualties but significant structural damage to the vessels, and possibly confirming reports on Israeli television Friday that had warned of Iran’s intentions to strike back at Saudi oil assets.
France, Britain, and Germany, the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, held the Islamic Republic to its commitments as outlined in the deal this week in spite of recent threats from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to resume high-level enrichment of uranium.
Saudi Arabia said Monday two of its oil tankers were sabotaged off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in attacks that caused ‘significant damage’ to the vessels, one of them as it was en route to pick up Saudi oil to take to the U.S.
A U.S. aircraft carrier strike group rushes toward the Persian Gulf. Decades-old B-52 bombers rumble down runways at desert air bases. The Pentagon, meanwhile, routes a Patriot missile battery and an amphibious supply ship to return to the region.
Iranian President Hassan Rouani threatened Wednesday to resume enrichment of uranium if the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord, from which the U.S. withdrew this time last year, were not renegotiated within 60 days among the powers that remain signatories to it.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani has said Tehran will resume high-level enrichment of uranium if world powers do not protect its interests against U.S. sanctions.
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton says a carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln recently deployed to the Persian Gulf is “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran.
The United States’ allies in Europe have criticized its recent decisions to restrict oil trade with Iran and to limit the extension of waivers for nuclear non-proliferation projects.
The new head of Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Monday said the country wouldn’t negotiate with the United States while it maintains economic sanctions on his country.
Iran said on Sunday it could quit a treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons after the United States tightens sanctions, while an Iranian general said the U.S. Navy was interacting as before with an elite military unit blacklisted by Washington.
Iran’s economy is expected to shrink by six percent this year and inflation could reach 40 percent, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts, as the country copes with the impact of tighter U.S. sanctions.
From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to waste piling up in plants from the US to Australia, China’s ban on accepting the world’s used plastic has plunged global recycling into turmoil.