Spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, most regional powers seek to avoid a devastating new conflict once the US-Israeli war on Tehran ends, the report says Saudi Arabia has floated the idea of a landmark non-aggression pact between the Gulf states and Iran after the end of the US-Israeli war on Tehran, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing diplomatic sources. Western diplomats told the newspaper that Riyadh is studying a model loosely inspired by the Helsinki Process, the Cold War-era talks that produced the 1975 Helsinki Accords on security and European cooperation, and succeeded in defusing tensions between the Soviet Union and Western nations led by the US. The idea is reportedly being weighed as Gulf states fear that Iran – outraged by the devastating US-Israeli strikes but still a potent military power – will remain dangerous, especially if the US agrees to reduce its large regional footpr...
Posts
Residents say settlement expansion and military operations are forcing more communities from their homes Palestinians mark 78 years since the Nakba on Friday – one of the largest refugee crises in modern history – as expanding Israeli settlements and military operations are again forcing communities from their homes, RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij reports. The Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, was triggered by the mass displacement of Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. A 1947 UN partition plan, adopted with backing from the Soviet Union, called for the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states, but only Israel was established. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in competing territorial claims, has fueled decades of unrest and wars in the Middle East. Read more Lavrov names overlooked agenda behind Ira...
US policies under President Donald Trump are becoming more “confrontational and unpredictable,” Mario Draghi has warned US President Donald Trump’s increasingly “confrontational and unpredictable” policies have left Europe “truly alone together” and unable to rely on Washington as its main security guarantor, former Italian prime minister and ex-ECB chief Mario Draghi has warned. Draghi made the remarks in Aachen, Germany, on Thursday while receiving the Charlemagne Prize for his “historic services” to European integration and competitiveness. Using his speech to outline how Europe can survive the “new realities,” Draghi warned the bloc could no longer depend on the US. “The world that once helped Europe generate prosperity no longer exists. It has become harder, more fragmented and more mercantilist… The central external fact of our t...
Beijing has used the conflict to reach out to the Gulf and Indo-Pacific nations while gaining a better understanding of the US military, the newspaper says The US-Israeli war against Iran has handed China a strategic opening to chip away at US influence on every major front, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a classified intelligence analysis. Two US officials familiar with the matter told the newspaper that the document was produced by the Joint Staff’s intelligence directorate for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine. It is said to focus on four main dimensions: Diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. This comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s high-stakes talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing. Since the US and Israel started the war in late February, China has reportedly sold weapons to Persian Gulf countries, which...
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait reportedly struck militia targets after attacks linked to the Iran conflict Saudi Arabia and Kuwait conducted covert strikes on targets in Iraq linked to Iranian-backed paramilitary groups during the Middle East war, Reuters reported on Wednesday. According to the outlet, the strikes marked an independent response to attacks on Gulf states’ territory amid fading trust in the US security umbrella. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – both hosting major US military bases – came under missile and drone attacks as Iran retaliated against the US-Israeli campaign launched in late February. However, hundreds of the drones targeting the nations reportedly originated from Iraq , including from Kataib Hezbollah – a Tehran-linked paramilitary group operating in the south of the country. Saudi fighter jets struck Iranian-linked militia targets in Iraq in the run-up to the US-Iran ...
Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina has announced her resignation amid the threat of a no-confidence vote Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina has announced her resignation amid a government crisis caused by an incident involving Ukrainian kamikaze drones hitting an oil depot near the Russian border. Silina announced the decision at a press briefing on Thursday. Just hours earlier, Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis, a member of Silina’s liberal-conservative Unity party, stated that the prime minister has no intention of leaving office. Meanwhile, the opposition was planning a procedural maneuver to circumvent the five-day pause required under Latvian law before a request for a no-confidence vote is granted. The crisis in the Baltic state was triggered by an incident last week in which two Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones hit an empty oil depot near the town of Rezekne, around 40 km from the Russi...