King congratulates New Zealand PM on election win

10/18/2020

AMMONNEWS - His Majesty King Abdullah has sent a cable to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, expressing congratulations on her party’s election victory.

In the cable, King Abdullah stressed Jordan’s keenness to bolster its partnership with New Zealand, to serve the shared interests of the two peoples and advance global prosperity and peace.

His Majesty wished Prime Minister Ardern continued success, and the people of New Zealand further prosperity and progress.

Source: Ammon News.

Link: http://en.ammonnews.net/article.aspx?articleno=44228.

As Russia tensions simmer, NATO conducts massive war games

May 28, 2021

ABOARD HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH (AP) — As tensions with Russia simmer, thousands of NATO troops, several warships and dozens of aircraft are taking part in military exercises stretching across the Atlantic, through Europe and into the Black Sea region.

The war games, dubbed Steadfast Defender 21, are aimed at simulating the 30-nation military organization’s response to an attack on any one of its members. It will test NATO’s ability to deploy troops from America and keep supply lines open.

Already in recent years, the United States and its allies have deployed troops and equipment in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to try to reassure those members neighboring Russia that their partners will ride to the rescue should they come under attack.

Russia’s decision last month to send thousands of troops to the border area with Ukraine has raised concern at the military alliance, which launched one of its biggest ever defense spending initiatives after Russian troops annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Top NATO brass insist that the military exercises, involving some 9,000 troops from 20 nations, are not aimed at Russia specifically, but they focus on the Black Sea region, where Russia stands accused of blocking the free navigation of ships.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the exercises send an important message to any potential adversary: “NATO is ready.” “NATO is there to defend all our allies, and this exercise sends a message about our ability to transport a large number of troops, equipment across the Atlantic, across Europe and also to project maritime power,” Stoltenberg told The Associated Press aboard a British aircraft carrier off the coast of Portugal.

The ship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, is the pride of the British Navy. It’s making its maiden voyage and carrying 18 F-35 jets: the first ever deployment of so many of the 5th generation planes aboard an aircraft carrier.

The ship’s presence, part of a 6-7 month deployment that will take it south past India, through Southeast Asia to the Philippines Sea, is aimed in part at restoring Britain’s tarnished image as a major global power since it left the European Union.

Adorned with high-tech U.S. jets and flanked by warships from other NATO countries, the carrier strike force also stands as an important symbol of unity as the world’s biggest security organization tries to recover from four tumultuous years under the Trump administration.

Stoltenberg will chair a NATO summit in Brussels on June 14 with current U.S. President Joe Biden and his counterparts keen to usher in a new era of trans-Atlantic cooperation, as troops leave its longest-ever mission in Afghanistan while tensions with Russia, and increasingly China, mount.

The war games tie in two new NATO command centers, one in Norfolk, Virginia; the other in Ulm, Germany. Part of the focus of its first phase was to protect the undersea cables that carry masses of commercial and communications data between the U.S. and Europe.

NATO says Russia is mapping the cables’ routing and might have darker intentions. “We all lulled ourselves into thinking that the Atlantic was a benign region in which there was not anything bad going on, and we could just use it as a free highway,” Norfolk’s commander, U.S. Navy Vice-Admiral Andrew Lewis said.

“There are nations are out there mapping those cables. They may be doing something else bad. We have to be aware of that and answer that,” he told reporters. NATO says its policy toward Russia is based on two pillars: strong military deterrence and dialogue. But high-level meetings between the two historic foes are rare, and European officials insist that President Vladimir Putin is turning increasingly authoritarian and distancing himself from the West.

“We’re ready to sit down with Russia, because we think it’s important to talk, especially when times are difficult,” Stoltenberg said. “The main challenge now is that Russia has not responded positively to our invitation, or our initiative, for a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council,” their top consultative forum.

Iran says ready to work with China, Russia on Afghanistan 'peace'

Tehran (AFP)

Aug 18, 2021

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday told his Russian and Chinese counterparts that Tehran is ready to cooperate with the two countries to establish "stability and peace" in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have capped a staggeringly fast rout of Afghanistan's major cities in just 10 days, achieved with relatively little bloodshed, following two decades of war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

The collapse came as US President Joe Biden moved to complete the withdrawal of US troops.

"Iran is ready to cooperate with China to establish security, stability and peace in Afghanistan and strive for its people's development, progress and prosperity," Raisi told China's Xi Jinping in a phone call initiated from Beijing, Raisi's official website said.

He also expressed Iran's readiness for "any cooperation for establishing peace and calm in Afghanistan" in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We believe all Afghan groups should work together... and turn the US withdrawal into a turning point for lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan," he said.

Analysts say the Taliban's advances have put neighboring Iran on edge, but the majority Shiite Islamic republic is taking a pragmatic stance on the hardline Sunni group's resurgence.

Iran had tense relations with the Taliban between 1996 when they took power and 2001 when they were toppled in an American-led invasion over their links to Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.

Iran never recognized the Taliban's rule, but has stressed in recent months that they must be "part of a future solution" in Afghanistan.

The ultraconservative Raisi on Monday said the "defeat" and US withdrawal should "offer an opportunity to restore life, security, and lasting peace" in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Iran's foreign ministry said it had reduced its diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, but has kept its embassy open in Kabul.

Raisi also called on China and Russia to increase Covid-19 vaccine deliveries to Iran.

He hoped that Beijing would "accelerate procurement of millions of doses purchased" and told Putin that Tehran requests "more shipments" over its current "special circumstances".

The Middle East country worst hit by the pandemic, Iran is going through a new wave of Covid deaths and infections amid an inoculation campaign that has progressed slower than authorities had planned.

It has officially recorded more than 99,000 deaths and nearly 4.6 million infections, according to the health ministry.

Source: Space War.

Link: https://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_says_ready_to_work_with_Russia_China_on_Afghanistan_peace_999.html.

Iran nuclear talks resume in Vienna amid new complications

April 27, 2021

BERLIN (AP) — World powers resumed high-level talks in Vienna on Tuesday focused on bringing the United States back into the nuclear deal with Iran, in their first session since comments surfaced from the Iranian foreign minister alleging that Russia once tried to scupper the pact.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has not responded to requests for comment on the remarks from Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, made in a seven-hour interview with a think tank associated with the Iranian presidency that leaked over the weekend.

Ahead of the main talks, Russia's top representative Mikhail Ulyanov said he'd met on the side together with officials from Iran and China, but did not mention anything about Zarif's comments. “We compared notes and exchanged views on the way ahead towards full restoration of the nuclear deal,” he tweeted. “It was a very fruitful meeting.”

Following the main meeting with his counterparts from China, Germany, France, and Britain — the other parties to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — Ulyanov tweeted that they were “guided by the unity of purpose.”

“Which is full restoration of the nuclear deal in its original form,” he wrote. “It was decided to expedite the process.” China’s delegate Wang Qun told reporters on his way out of the talks that discussions would continue on Wednesday.

Asked in Berlin about Zarif's remarks, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that the talks in Vienna are “anything but easy" but have been constructive so far. “My impression from the talks is that irrespective of (how) things developed in the past, everyone seems to be working to keep the JCPOA alive,” he said.

The U.S. is not at the table because it unilaterally pulled out of the deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, who restored and augmented American sanctions in a campaign of “maximum pressure” to try and force Iran into renegotiating the pact with more concessions. President Joe Biden wants to rejoin the deal, however, and there is a U.S. delegation in Vienna taking part in indirect talks with Iran, with diplomats from the other world powers acting as go-betweens.

The deal promises Iran economic incentives in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. The reimposition of American sanctions has left the country's economy reeling, and Tehran has reacted by steadily increasing its violations of the restrictions of the deal, such as increasing the purity of uranium it enriches and its stockpiles, in a thus-far unsuccessful effort to pressure the other countries to provide relief.

The ultimate goal of the deal is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, something it insists it doesn’t want to do. Iran now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb, but nowhere near the amount it had before the nuclear deal was signed.

The comments from Zarif, who himself helped negotiate the original 2015 nuclear deal, have the potential to complicate the Vienna talks, which are currently focused on how the U.S. would roll back its sanctions — and which ones — and how Iran would return to compliance.

In the interview, reviewed by The Associated Press, Zarif describes Russia as wanting to stop the nuclear deal before it was struck under the Obama administration in 2015, suggesting Moscow wanted to keep Iran at odds with the West.

Iran's Foreign Ministry has called the leak of the recording “illegal,” but hasn't disputed its authenticity. The Vienna talks began in early April, and there have been several rounds of high-level discussions, while expert groups have been working on proposals on how to resolve the issues around American sanctions and Iranian compliance, as well as the “possible sequencing” of the U.S. return.

The comments from Zarif are just the latest complication that the diplomats have to deal with. Among other things, an attack suspected to have been carried out by Israel recently struck Iran’s Natanz nuclear site, causing an unknown amount of damage.

Tehran retaliated by beginning to enrich a small amount of uranium up to 60% purity, its highest level ever.

Philipp Jenne in Vienna, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Daria Litvinova in Moscow contributed to this story.

Iran frees South Korean ship it held amid dispute over funds

April 09, 2021

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A South Korean oil tanker held for months by Iran amid a dispute over billions of dollars seized by Seoul was freed and sailed away early Friday, just hours ahead of further talks between Tehran and world powers over its tattered nuclear deal.

MarineTraffic.com data showed the MT Hankuk Chemi leaving Bandar Abbas in the early morning hours. By Friday afternoon, it was off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates, having passed safely through the Strait of Hormuz.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Iran released the tanker and its captain after seizing the vessel in January. The ministry says the Hankuk Chemi left an Iranian port at around 6 a.m. local time after completing an administrative process.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, later confirmed that Iran had released the vessel. “At the request of the owner and the Korean government, the order to release the ship was issued by the prosecutor," Khatibzadeh was quoted as saying by the state-run IRNA news agency.

The ship's owner, DM Shipping Co. Ltd. of Busan, South Korea, could not be immediately reached for comment. The Hankuk Chemi had been traveling from a petrochemicals facility in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates when armed Revolutionary Guard troops stormed the vessel in January and forced the ship to change course and travel to Iran.

Iran had accused the MT Hankuk Chemi of polluting the waters in the crucial Strait of Hormuz. But the seizure was widely seen as an attempt to pressure Seoul to release some $7 billion in Iranian assets tied up in South Korean banks amid heavy American sanctions on Iran. Iran released the 20-member crew in February, but continued to detain the ship and its captain while demanding that South Korea unlock frozen Iranian assets.

Iran's Foreign Ministry did not acknowledge the fund dispute when announcing the ship's release, with Khatibzadeh saying only that the captain and tanker had a clean record in the region. But an official from South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations, said Seoul's willingness to resolve the issue of Iranian assets tied up in South Korea “possibly had a positive influence” in Iran’s decision to release the vessel.

The official said Iran had acknowledged South Korea’s attempts to resolve the dispute as it became clear the issue was “not just about South Korea’s ability and efforts alone" and was “intertwined” with negotiations over the return to Tehran's foundering nuclear deal.

Unfreezing the funds involves the consent of various countries including the U.S., which in 2018 imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran's oil and banking sectors. The official said South Korea has been closely communicating with other countries over the frozen Iranian assets.

In January, the U.N. said Iran topped a list of countries owing money to the world body with a minimum bill of over $16 million. If unpaid, Iran could lose its voting rights as required under the U.N. Charter.

“We’re expecting to make a considerable progress in terms of paying the U.N. dues,” an unnamed South Korean Foreign Ministry official was quoted by the country's Yonhap news agency. “We have also exported some $30 million worth of medical equipment since we resumed the humanitarian trade with Iran last April.”

Iran later announced it expected South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun to travel to Tehran for a two-day visit beginning Sunday. Yonhap said the trip would be the first visit of a South Korean premier to Iran in 44 years — before Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Chung previously visited Iran in August 2017 as the then-speaker of the National Assembly.

The development came as Iran and world powers were set to resume negotiations in Vienna on Friday to break the standoff over U.S. sanctions against Iran and Iranian breaches of the nuclear agreement. The 2015 nuclear accord, which then-President Donald Trump abandoned three years later, offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

Iran prosecutor says 10 indicted for Ukraine plane shootdown

April 06, 2021

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Ten officials have been indicted in Iran over the 2020 military shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed 176 people, a prosecutor said Tuesday, an announcement coming just as Tehran begins indirect negotiations with the West over its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers.

The timing of the announcement comes after Iran faced withering international criticism last month for releasing a final report into the shootdown of Ukraine International Airlines flight No. PS752 that blamed human error but named no one responsible for the incident.

Tehran military prosecutor Gholamabbas Torki similarly avoided naming those responsible when he announced the indictments Tuesday while handing over his office to Nasser Seraj. The semiofficial ISNA news agency and the Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency both reported his remarks.

“The indictment of the case of the Ukrainian plane was also issued and a serious and accurate investigation was carried out and indictments were issued for 10 people who were at fault,” Mizan quoted Torki as saying, without elaborating.

Following three days of denial in January 2020 in the face of mounting evidence, Iran finally acknowledged that its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard mistakenly downed the Ukrainian jetliner with two surface-to-air missiles. In preliminary reports on the disaster last year, Iranian authorities blamed an air defense operator who they said mistook the Boeing 737-800 for an American cruise missile.

The shootdown happened the same day Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for an American drone strike that killed a top Iranian general. While Guard officials publicly apologized for the incident, the hesitancy of Iran to elaborate on what happened in the incident shows the power the force wields.

Following the release of Iran’s final investigative report, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba lambasted the findings as a “cynical attempt to hide the true causes of the downing of our passenger aircraft.” He accused Iran of conducting a “biased” probe into the disaster that resulted in “deceptive” conclusions.

Many on the flight planned to connect in Kyiv to fly onto Canada, which is home to a large Iranian population. Canada’s foreign and transport ministers similarly criticized the report, saying that it “has no hard facts or evidence” and “makes no attempt to answer critical questions about what truly happened.”

The announcement came just hours before Iran and the five world powers remaining in its atomic accord meet in Vienna, where the U.S. is due to start indirect talks with Tehran.

Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Rouhani: Iran ready to take steps when US lifts sanctions

March 07, 2021

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday his country was prepared to take steps to live up to measures in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as soon as the United States lifts economic sanctions on Iran.

In a meeting with Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney, Rouhani said: “Iran is ready to immediately take compensatory measures based on the nuclear deal and fulfill its commitments just after the U.S. illegal sanctions are lifted and it abandons its policy of threats and pressure.”

Rouhani criticized the European signatories of the historic nuclear deal for what he said was their inaction on their commitments to the agreement. He said Iran is the only country that kept its side of the bargain.

Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Iranian nuclear accord, in which Tehran had agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. When the U.S. then reimposed some sanctions and added others, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned the deal’s limits on its nuclear development.

The Republic of Ireland has the role of facilitator in the implementation of the nuclear deal. Coveney said the withdrawal of former President Donald Trump was a mistake and noted that the new U.S. administration is determined to return to the deal.

In December, Iran’s parliament approved a bill that calls for the suspension of part of U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities if European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal do not provide relief from oil and banking sanctions.