U.S. President Donald Trump’s fresh sanctions on Iran are a “symbolic act” and may leave Washington with no room to exert further pressure on the nuclear power, a former U.S. diplomat said Tuesday. “What else do you have to do that will actually have to affect the Iranians’ calculus?” said Amos Hochstein, who served as […] Read more
As tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalate, President Donald Trump approved military strikes on several Iranian targets — but abruptly pulled back from launching them on Thursday night, The New York Times reported. The Times report, published late Thursday, cited multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations of the strikes. […] Read more
The trade war is “manageable”, Egyptian billionaire and CEO of OCI N.V, Nassef Sawiris, told CNBC on Monday. OCI N.V produces and exports natural gas-based fertilizers and industrial chemicals to customers across agriculture and industry sectors. President Donald Trump has now said he’s ready to hit the remaining $300 billion of Chinese imports with tariffs […] Read more
Israel officially names a new town in the Golan Heights after President Trump. “Trump Heights” sits within the Golan Heights, which had been occupied for decades by Israel but was not seen as Israeli territory by the U.S. until last March, when Trump officially recognized Israel’s annexation of the region. Trump’s full-throated endorsement of Israel’s […] Read more
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is leaving the administration at the end of the month. President Donald Trump says she is returning to her home state of Arkansas and does not immediately name a replacement. Sanders was press secretary since July 2017 and had an adversarial relationship with the media. “A good editor […] Read more
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refuses to say at what point she would support impeaching President Donald Trump. “Everybody in the country should be totally appalled by what the president said,” Pelosi says. “But he has a habit of making appalling statements,” she added. Even if Trump was found to have accepted a foreign government’s […] Read more
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that he would support German Chancellor Angela Merkel if she were to seek to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. The German leader has said she will retire from politics when her fourth term runs out in 2021. But some in the bloc hope she […] Read more
Markets have been reeling in recent weeks over Donald Trump’s tariff threats against Mexico and China. In an interview with CNBC, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defends Trump’s use of tariffs as a way to gain leverage on issues that aren’t directly tied to trade. Trump retains the ability to impose new tariffs on Mexico […] Read more
Saudi Arabian foreign policy in the reign of King Salman bin Abdulaziz is emanating from a number of strategic objectives, some of which are: enhancing the position of the Kingdom at the Gulf, Arab, regional, Islamic and international levels; emphasizing its “spiritual” significance and its historical mission; and keeping pace with the questions raised by […] Read more
On Sunday morning, four tourists were injured as giant cruise ship MSC Opera crashed into a dock and a tourist riverboat on the Giudecca Canal, one of Venice’s main waterways. The ship’s owner, MSC Cruises, said the cruiser vessel was about to dock at a passenger terminal when it encountered a mechanical problem. Slowly but […] Read more
