Rabu, 10 Juli 2019
Kim Darroch, British ambassador to the US, resigns - CNN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOU98DzJRqs
2019-07-10 11:34:55Z
52780329171254
British ambassador to U.S. resigns after leaked memos showed he criticized Trump - NBC News
LONDON — The British ambassador to the United States resigned Wednesday following leaked memos that showed he had called President Donald Trump "insecure" and "incompetent."
Sir Kim Darroch said in a statement that the fallout from the leaked communications — which sparked a series of broadsides from Trump — was "making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like."
After the secret diplomatic communications were published this weekend, the president responded with a series of unprecedented attacks on the British ambassador and prime minister, historically among Washington's closest allies.
Trump called Darroch "wacky," "very stupid" and a "pompous fool," and suggested he would not be able to do his job in Washington because "we will no longer deal with him." The ambassador was uninvited from a dinner Trump was hosting with the Emir of Qatar.
The president expanded his targets to Prime Minister Theresa May, saying he had been "very critical" of her and the "mess" she had made of her Brexit negotiations.
July 9, 201901:38
Darroch was due to stand down at the end of this year, but he said in a statement issued through the U.K. Foreign Office that the leak had made his position untenable.
"The current situation is making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like," he said. "I believe in the current circumstances the responsible course is to allow the appointment of a new ambassador."
He said the support offered on both sides of the Atlantic had "brought home to me the depth of friendship and close ties between our two countries."
He added that "the professionalism and integrity of the British civil service is the envy of the world. I will leave it full of confidence that its values remain in safe hands."
Prime Minister May said that "it is a matter of great regret that he has felt it necessary to leave his position." In a statement to the House of Commons, she stressed it was important for diplomats to be able to speak their minds and to "defend our values and principles, particularly when they are under pressure"
Simon McDonald, the most senior official at the Foreign Office, spoke on behalf of many experienced officials in Britain who believe that Darroch did nothing wrong in expressing his sincerely held belief about Trump's White House.
"You were the target of a malicious leak, you were simply doing your job," he wrote Wednesday.
The leak presented a dilemma for Britain. Some acknowledged that the messages, and Trump's reaction, would make Darroch's last few months near impossible. But many were also cautious of the U.K. being seen to allow other countries to veto the diplomats posted to their embassies.
"We should never allow any country to dictate who we send as ambassador," Charles Parton, who served as a British diplomat for almost four decades, told NBC News before Darroch's resignation. "It would give enormous power to other countries, so you just can't do it."
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for details.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/british-ambassador-u-s-resigns-after-leaked-memos-showed-he-n1028116
2019-07-10 11:05:00Z
52780329171254
Hong Kong families are feuding as China extradition bill exposes generational fall in living standards - CNN
"You're criticizing my friends, saying we're all radicals, saying we're criminal triads," he says, voice raised, as an older relative gestures for him to sit down. "You dare to call us triads?"
It's an inter-generational spat that has played out in many families across Hong Kong over the past month, as violence and unrest rocked the city. Family WhatsApp chat groups have descended into political shouting matches. Friends and relatives have publicly clashed in Facebook posts.
The family feuds began when the government introduced a controversial bill to allow extradition from Hong Kong to China, and spiraled as record-breaking protests swept the city throughout June. The anger boiled over on July 1, when mostly young protesters stormed and trashed the government headquarters.
While a wide spectrum of people oppose or feel conflicted about the bill, and support the broader pro-democracy demands of the July 1 protesters, loose generational lines have emerged.
The more extreme anti-bill, pro-democracy protesters tend to be younger -- millennials and even teenagers -- while the pro-government camp leans toward the older generation.
In some ways, these generational political lines look familiar. Similar divides have been seen regarding the Brexit issue in Britain and the Trump presidency in the United States.
As in those countries, discontent in Hong Kong has been building for years, since the 2014 Umbrella Revolution which called for greater democracy, and perhaps even before.
The extradition bill was simply the last straw, exposing -- and deepening -- a rift in Hong Kong society than runs far deeper than a single piece of law.
The world's most unaffordable housing
Young Hong Kongers belong to one of the most expensive cities in the world, but they can't afford to live in it -- or, at least, not to the same standard they feel their parents' generation could.
Today, Hong Kong is a city where the race for success starts at birth. Top kindergartens and private elementary schools are so competitive that children as young as 3 years old have resumes, padded with artistic and musical achievements, and sports class attendance. Primary and secondary school students spent up to 55 hours a week in class, extra lessons, or studying, according to a 2018 government report.
It doesn't get easier once students hit college. Take 28-year-old Wilson Lau. In 2013, he got his undergraduate degree in quantity surveying from City University of Hong Kong.
Then, while still paying off his student loans, he juggled a Bachelor of Science program, which he felt was vital for future career advancement, and a full-time job as a quantity surveyor. Many days, he didn't get off work until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. -- then it was time to hit the books and study for exams.
That first job as a quantity surveyor had a starting monthly salary of $1,670 (HK$13,000) -- compared to an average base salary of $6,335 a month in New York for the same position, according to Glassdoor.
But despite the comparatively lower graduate wages in Hong Kong, rent is higher here than almost anywhere else in the world, according to public policy firm Demographia. With his student loans and low salary, Lau couldn't afford to move out of his parents' home for four or five years after he began working.
As the city's population expands and developable land runs out, housing prices have skyrocketed -- the median price of a home in 2018 was nearly 21 times the city's median annual household income. Hong Kong has gained a reputation for its luxury real estate with staggering price tags -- one house on The Peak, an exclusive neighborhood, is listed for $448 million.
Housing costs have risen so much faster than annual wages that young people feel priced out.
"This generation of young people in Hong Kong, in their 20s, is facing very high pressures in society," said Lau, who attended this month's protests. "Their living expenses are a huge burden. It takes up a huge part of their salaries."
Chan Ka-yan, a 28-year-old administrator at a non-profit organization, shared a relatively cheap apartment with two flatmates after she graduated and started working. But then, her flatmates left Hong Kong, and she had to find a new place on her own.
She ended up in a subdivided flat -- a small apartment split into even smaller rentable rooms. For nine months, she lived in a 100-square-foot room for $576 (HK$4,500) a month. The air conditioner leaked water. The neighboring room, also 100 square feet, had a newborn baby that cried constantly.
"Living there, there were a lot of problems," she said -- but her plight was "pretty common" for a young Hong Konger. She has since moved back in with her parents.
For young people, buying a house seems like an impossibility -- just renting an apartment is difficult enough. As they watch prices rise around them, unable to keep up with meager salaries, a feeling of being stuck has emerged.
That atmosphere is a stark contrast to their parents' generation, when opportunity and upward mobility seemed almost guaranteed.
The older generation "had hope"
The generation that grew up between the 1970s and '90s could "realize their dreams," said Edmund Cheng, deputy director of the public policy research center at Hong Kong Baptist University.
"When we talk about the Hong Kong Dream, it's another iteration of the American Dream -- they work hard and they can get rewarded," said Cheng.
These dreams were attainable in concrete ways, he added. People in the '70s could buy an apartment after working for three to five years, buy a car, and pay off their mortgage within 10 years, according to Cheng, because wages and property prices were more aligned.
For example, Jimz, a 44-year-old Hong Kong resident who declined to give his full name, bought his first home when he was 28 -- a rare feat today. He had no partner or flatmate, earned about $2,560 (HK$20,000) a month, and bought the apartment for about $128,035 (HK$1 million). That same space is now worth five times more, he said.
"Back then, if you were determined to get a house, whether it was subsidized by the government or in the private sector, it was not that unrealistic compared to these days," Jimz said.
The older generation had a few distinct advantages, said Cheng. Public schools meant good education was easily accessible. The opening up of China's economy in 1978 created new jobs for Hong Kong's lawyers, bankers, and industry experts. The population was smaller, housing was cheaper, and other costs like school fees hadn't yet reached today's exorbitant prices.
Then over the years, China became a superpower economy and relied less on Hong Kongers' expertise. More schools privatized, making elite education a luxury for the wealthy. Job competition became fierce -- for instance, Cheng said, to get a high-paying position in finance or tenure at a university, candidates only have a good shot if they attended top universities in the US or UK.
The older generation "had hope, because they could anticipate rising income over the years," said Cheng -- with new opportunities and a flourishing economy, they could expect promotions and pay raises down the line. "But now, Hong Kong's younger generation basically doesn't have this kind of hope," he added.
The wealth divide has also deepened, with low-income families unable to afford the private schools, tutors, and overseas universities that give graduates an edge in the job market.
"The poverty gap is getting wider and wider, even though the government keep saying they're trying to improve," said Venus Wong, 27, who works in marketing and joined the protests in June.
"They (the government) are launching a lot of different policies, but I don't think it actually helps a lot, and the pricing of housing keeps going up."
A question of identity
Stagnant wages and high housing costs are not unique to Hong Kong, but the generational divide here cuts deeper than economic factors. As a semi-autonomous city, Hong Kong itself has a splintered identity -- it is both China, and not.
When Britain handed sovereignty of Hong Kong back to China in 1997, it was agreed that the city would operate under a "one country, two systems" model. As such, Hong Kong has its own legal system, currency, and police force -- as well as historical, cultural, and lifestyle differences to the mainland.
These differences have created a sense of disconnect with China, particularly among young people. Today, the number of people identifying as Hong Kongers rather than Chinese has hit a record high since 1997, according to the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Program.
For some, this disconnect is irreparable. When protesters stormed the Legislative Council (LegCo) on July 1, they spray-painted slogans on the walls, including the phrase, "HK is not China."
Though some in the older generation also identify as Hong Kongers, many instead identify as Chinese and call China their motherland. After all, a sizable number of their own parents came from China -- in the 1940s, a huge wave of mainland emigrants fled the Chinese Civil War to Hong Kong. From 1946 to 1956, the city's population jumped from 1.55 million to 2.677 million, according to a 1969 report by Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department.
"To me, I feel Hong Kong is part of China," said Tony Lau, 58, who works in real estate investment and development. "You can't choose your fate -- you can't say, 'I want to be American' or 'I want to be British.' Because of Hong Kong's history, you are a part of China."
He also feels closer to the mainland because, in some ways, he and his peers owe their economic success to China. "When China opened up in 1978, Hong Kong's opportunities came," he said.
As China's economy boomed and transformed the country's global image into one of power and wealth, older Hong Kongers may have felt greater pride toward the mainland, according to Cheng.
The dichotomy between being a Hong Konger and Chinese also encompasses the larger conflict between the two generations' values. Hong Kong has protected freedoms of speech, press, and assembly -- which young protesters guard fiercely and see as fundamental to Hong Kong's DNA.
In recent years, they've clung to these freedoms even more tightly amid a growing mistrust of the government and the perception that China is encroaching on Hong Kong's autonomy.
These fears were fueled by a string of controversies -- like the disqualification of several pro-democracy lawmakers in 2017, and now the extradition bill.
"We thought the LegCo system was our last barrier protecting the rule of Hong Kong, on our own," said Wong, the 27-year-old marketing employee who joined the protests. "But during these years, because of the disqualification of the LegCo members, it felt like we were losing our very last barrier. And we have no way to defend ourselves from China."
Older Hong Kongers often respond in one of several ways. Some are ambivalent toward the pro-democracy rhetoric; some are supportive, but disapprove of the protesters' methods; and some feel that China has been unfairly demonized.
Tony Lau also criticized the young protesters' frequent use of a Union Jack or Hong Kong's colonial-era flag as a symbol for the fight for democracy. His generation had actually lived in colonized Hong Kong, he said, arguing that young people are ignorantly romanticizing Britain as a paragon of democracy.
"People didn't start even talking about democracy until after the handover," said Lau. "In those 155 years of colonization, did they talk about universal suffrage? It was totally a colonial administration."
Millennials like Wong and Wilson Lau disagree -- after all, they were also born before the handover, and witnessed the transfer of sovereignty.
The colonial administration "wasn't a complete or perfect government. But Britain and China, their difference is huge," said Wilson Lau, who added that his colonial-era education taught him the importance of "freedom, the right of speech, liberty."
Almost by definition, revolution threatens stability. In Hong Kong, this tension reveals another deep difference in generational values.
Among older Hong Kongers, a common refrain is that the protesters can do what they like as long as they don't infringe on people's right to daily life -- a line they have long crossed by occupying streets, stopping traffic, and blocking entrances to tax and immigration offices.
The young protesters understand why older Hong Kongers resent the chaos -- but these complaints ring hollow for many who say the present social difficulties were absent in their parents' generation.
"We won't blame the older generation for earning more than us, but the older generation will blame us for pursuing democracy," said Wilson Lau. "I think it's very unfair."
A looming deadline
The conflict has permeated daily Hong Kong life. Across the city, you can hear people talking and arguing about it on public transport, hiking trails and social media.
Amid all this uncertainty and division, a clear and concrete deadline looms. In 2047, Hong Kong will be fully reintegrated with mainland China, as per the terms of the handover agreement.
Some older Hong Kongers such as Tony Lau welcome this date, pointing to the rapid economic development of Chinese megacities like Shenzhen and Shanghai. To reintegrate would open up opportunities and boost Hong Kong's growth, they argue.
Even some moderates and millennials agree. A 26-year-old Hong Konger, who declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing her job, empathized with the protesters -- but said reintegration with China was "set in stone."
"You can tell by the infrastructure they built, the bridges that are linking us to the greater Pearl (River) Delta, the high speed rail -- all these transport infrastructure are indicative that it's going to happen," she said. "It's probably time for Hong Kong to really come to terms with that ... We do need to move forward."
It's not that the young protesters don't acknowledge this deadline. On the contrary, the reality of reintegration feels so immediate they say its effects are already visible -- and it scares them on an almost existential level.
"Our generation is feeling like we don't have to wait to 2047 until we're returned to China because, systematically, we're getting closer and closer to China," said Wong.
"We fear that we are becoming part of China, but we don't want to."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/asia/hong-kong-divide-intl-hnk/index.html
2019-07-10 08:57:00Z
52780329263927
Iran's 'goodwill gesture' failed to open talks with Washington: report - Fox News
Iran’s release of a Lebanese businessman with U.S. permanent residency two days before the attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman was meant as a “goodwill gesture” in hopes to open up talks with the U.S., three Western sources told Reuters exclusively.
US-IRAN TENSIONS: A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS
The gesture, however, fell flat with Washington, the report said.
A State Department official told Reuters that if Iran wanted to reduce tension and engage with the U.S., it should have released one of the “innocent American citizens” it is currently holding hostage. That “humanitarian” gesture would have yielded better results, the official said.
Iran released Nizar Zakka, a Washington-based information technology expert, on June 11, four years after he was arrested. His company, IJMA3, is funded by private organizations and governments, including the United States.
Zakka’s release was, therefore, a “missed opportunity,” one source told Reuters. “We should have explored whether there was something there.” Another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Iran released Zakka as a way to deescalate tensions “from their side” and expected the U.S. to reciprocate in some way.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
In the month since his release, tensions between Iran and the West have continued to escalate. Iran downed a U.S. drone, the U.S. upped sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. British forces recently captured an Iranian supertanker headed for Syria.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/irans-good-will-gesture-to-release-lebanese-tech-businessman-failed-to-open-talks-with-washington-report
2019-07-10 08:51:39Z
52780329834369
US wants military coalition to patrol waters off Iran, Yemen - Aljazeera.com
The United States says it is working to form a military coalition to protect commercial shipping off the coast of Iran and Yemen amid heightened tensions in the region following attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf.
Under the proposal, a coalition of nations would safeguard strategic waters in the Gulf area and the sea between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Tuesday.
"We're engaging now with a number of countries to see if we can put together a coalition that would ensure freedom of navigation both in the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab," said Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Dunford said the Pentagon had developed a specific plan, and that he believed it would be clear within a couple of weeks which nations were willing to join the effort.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has blamed Tehran and its proxies for several attacks on tankers in the Gulf in the past few months.
A fifth of the world's oil exports passes through the area.
Al Jazeera's John Hendren, reporting from Washington DC, said that Trump has said "the US should not pay for this, it should be an international military force".
"But the move presents the potential for conflict with Iran. After all it's only weeks after the US almost launched military strikes on Iran," Hendren said.
War of words
The downing of a US surveillance drone by Tehran almost brought the two foes to the brink of war. Trump had authorised military strikes on Iran in retaliation but pulled back from launching them.
Washington slapped new sanctions on top Iranian leaders, including the supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, in the wake of the drone shootdown.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have grown since last year when Trump unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal that put a cap on Tehran's nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief.
The crisis has escalated in recent days as Washington and Tehran have engaged in a war of words over Iran's decision to pass the uranium enrichment limit set by the 2015 accord.
Tehran has asked the other parties to the nuclear deal - France, Britain, China, Russia, the European Union and Germany - to find ways to export its oil, a major source of revenue for its crippled economy that has been choked off by the new sanctions, or it will scale up its nuclear programme.
Trump has said the US will not allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, with its close ally in the region, Israel, threatening to bomb Iran.
"We want to deny this regime the revenue it needs to export revolution, to run an expansionist foreign policy that drives a lot of the sectarian violence that we see in the Middle East," Brian Hook, the US special representative to Iran, told Al Jazeera.
'US position not softened'
Al Jazeera's Hendren said the US position had not softened, as Iran announced it would violate the nuclear enrichment levels it agreed to under the nuclear deal.
"So the standoff intensifies and the potential for conflict only increases," he said.
Mark Esper, the acting secretary of defence, raised the issue last month with allied officials at NATO headquarters, but no nations were ready to commit to participating. Esper said at the time that the plans would have to be further refined.
Dunford said he discussed the matter on Tuesday with Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and that plans were coming together.
"We're getting ready now to move out," Dunford told a small group of reporters at Fort Myer, Virginia. "We have a pretty clear concept of what we want to do."
He suggested that the project could begin with a small coalition.
"This will be scalable. So with a small number of contributors we can have a small mission and we'll expand that as the number of nations that are willing to participate identify themselves," he said.
Iran has denied it was behind the recent attacks on commercial tankers in the Gulf.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday a commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard issued a new threat against US bases and aircraft carriers stationed in the region, saying they would be destroyed if they made a mistake.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/military-coalition-safeguard-waters-iran-yemen-190710020439304.html
2019-07-10 07:03:00Z
CBMiamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFsamF6ZWVyYS5jb20vbmV3cy8yMDE5LzA3L21pbGl0YXJ5LWNvYWxpdGlvbi1zYWZlZ3VhcmQtd2F0ZXJzLWlyYW4teWVtZW4tMTkwNzEwMDIwNDM5MzA0Lmh0bWzSAW5odHRwczovL3d3dy5hbGphemVlcmEuY29tL2FtcC9uZXdzLzIwMTkvMDcvbWlsaXRhcnktY29hbGl0aW9uLXNhZmVndWFyZC13YXRlcnMtaXJhbi15ZW1lbi0xOTA3MTAwMjA0MzkzMDQuaHRtbA
Selasa, 09 Juli 2019
US authorized new arms sales to Taiwan. China isn’t pleased. - Vox.com
The US has approved a potential multibillion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan — the latest signal that the Trump administration is fed up with China’s aggressive foreign policy.
On Monday, the State Department announced that the US could sell $2.2 billion in weapons, including 108 Abrams tanks and around 250 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, to the small island nation and staunch US ally. That paves the way for America to officially deliver those weapons at some point down the line.
But the authorization on its own has added to longstanding tensions between Taiwan and China. They are still considered one country by both governments and by much of the world. But in practice, they have been totally separate since 1949, when China’s Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) leaders fled to the island of Taiwan and started a government there.
Since then, relations between China and Taiwan have been very poor, with periods of low-level conflict and even moments when it looked like there would be a full-blown war.
The US doesn’t officially recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation — it only recognizes China — but this big-ticket arms sale proposal highlights how Washington has long treated Taiwan as a separate, independent country in everything but name.
Which means the decision could increase the China-Taiwan animosity. The Chinese government has already requested that the US cancel the authorization, while Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen — who noted in March that her country requested the weapons — tweeted her appreciation for the Trump administration’s decision.
Pleased that the #US government has approved another arms sale package, boosting #Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities. We’ll continue to speed up investment in national defense, & partner with like-minded countries to defend democracy while promoting regional peace and stability. pic.twitter.com/dw4Rw58hYb
— 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) July 9, 2019
The timing also doesn’t help. The US and China are locked in tense trade negotiations to end a year-long tariff war, and both nations have ramped up patrols in Asian waters, increasing the risk of a maritime confrontation. If there was ever a moment to keep relations calm, some experts say it’s now.
Others are less concerned, though. “It’s important for the US government to sustain its unofficial relationship with Taiwan regardless of the ebbs and flows of relations with Beijing,” Abraham Denmark, a former top Pentagon official focusing on Asia, told me. “We should be able to manage trade tensions or other issues with China while also working with Taiwan.”
It’s a fair point. After all, the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act compels the US to “make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.” Sending tanks and missiles could help Taiwan protect itself against a long-feared land invasion by China to bring it back under Beijing’s control.
So the weapons sales, on one hand, are really about keeping an ally happy and safe. But on the other hand, they’re also about putting Beijing on notice.
June Dreyer, an expert on China and Taiwan at the University of Miami, told me the arms sales are part of a broader message the US is sending to Beijing.
“I see this as a natural outgrowth of signals we’ve been sending to the Chinese for some time,” she said. “The US clearly feels that China has gone too far and that it’s time to stop.”
The list of American grievances against China is long. Among other indiscretions, Beijing has stolen US technological and personnel secrets for its own advantage, antagonized US allies in the South China Sea, killed or imprisoned more than a dozen American informants, and taken millions of US jobs over the past two decades.
On top of that, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed to give Beijing much more control over the citizenry, including crackdowns on democracy in Hong Kong and forcing more than a million Uighur Muslims into reeducation camps. Those actions, in part, have led to increasing fears that he may want to seize Taiwan.
“The only thing that will make him the greatest leader in the Chinese Communist Party’s history is to take Taiwan back,” Shen Dingli, an international relations scholar at Fudan University in China, told Quartz in 2018.
That’s unlikely to happen solely because of the arms sales, said Dreyer, and also because the US has vowed to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. What’s more, Beijing is still dealing with the fallout after big demonstrations in Hong Kong stopped a bill (at least for now) that would’ve given the Chinese central government more control over the city.
But what China could do in response, she noted, is conduct lower-level provocations like holding war games near the island, harass US ships in nearby waters, arrest Taiwanese or US citizens on spying charges, and much, much more. “The retaliation will be carefully calibrated,” she continued, adding that China could respond more forcefully when there’s less attention focused on it.
Which means US-China problems may be relatively subdued now, but they could become a whole lot worse in the months to come.
https://www.vox.com/2019/7/9/20686016/taiwan-arms-sales-missile-tank
2019-07-09 16:40:00Z
52780329014341
Netanyahu warns Iran it is within range of Israeli air strikes, citing Iranian threats - Reuters
FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures during the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem July 7, 2019. Abir Sultan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cautioned Iran on Tuesday that it is within range of Israeli air strikes, citing what he described as Iranian threats to destroy Israel.
“Iran recently has been threatening Israel’s destruction,” Netanyahu said at an Israeli air force base, where he viewed a squadron of advanced U.S.-built F-35 warplanes.
“It should remember that these planes can reach anywhere in the Middle East, including Iran, and certainly Syria,” he said in a YouTube video clip filmed at the base, with an F-35 in the background.
Last week, a senior Iranian parliamentarian was quoted by the semi-official Mehr news agency as saying that if the United States attacked Iran, Israel would be destroyed in half an hour.
Israel has long said that every option is on the table in ensuring that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, and has backed pledges to prevent Iranian military entrenchment in Syria by carrying out air strikes there.
Tehran denies seeking nuclear arms.
Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-iran-israel/netanyahu-warns-iran-it-is-within-range-of-israeli-air-strikes-citing-iranian-threats-idUSKCN1U41LC
2019-07-09 13:58:00Z
52780327063034
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)