Free Republic

The United States on Monday asked judges at the International Court of Justice to throw out a claim by Iran to recover $1.75 billion (€1.5 billion) in national bank assets seized by U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the assets must be turned over to American families of victims of the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, among others. The hearings at the tribunal were separate from Iran’s claim relating to current U.S. sanctions against Tehran. Iran’s claim in both cases is based on a 1955 Amity Treaty, which was signed 24...

""Pompeo Terminates Iran Treaty After UN Court Hands Tehran A Victory In Sanctions Lawsuit Against Washington"" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday the U.S. will terminate a 63-year-old treaty with Iran, hours after a top United Nations court ruled in favor of Tehran in a lawsuit challenging U.S. sanctions. Pompeo said the abrogation of the 1955 Treaty of Amity was “39 years overdue,” referring to the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran that resulted in the overthrow of the U.S.-friendly shah. Until Pompeo’s announcement, the Treaty of Amity had remained in force even though Washington and Tehran have not had...

The U.N. nuclear watchdog has said its independence is paramount and it does not take intelligence presented to it at face value, in an apparent response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of a “secret atomic warehouse” in Iran. Netanyahu — who opposes the nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that the International Atomic Energy Agency is policing — made the statement in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. He urged the IAEA to visit the site in Tehran. A U.S. State Department official later seconded that call. “The agency sends inspectors to sites...

France’s leaders proposed a new alliance of “goodwill powers” on Friday in an attempt to revive the type of global diplomacy that they say is being jeopardized by the United States, Russia and other countries that favor unilateralism over cooperation. French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced the plan during a speech at Harvard University, suggesting that Europe should align itself with countries like India, Australia, Mexico and other “powerful democracies” that share a commitment to multilateralism. His speech described an erosion of the brand of diplomacy that brought nations together following World War II and led to the...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has vowed Russia will do "everything possible" to preserve the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal despite the U.S. withdrawal. Speaking to the UN General Assembly on September 28, Lavrov denounced U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the deal that curbs Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Lavrov called the U.S. move a violation of UN resolutions and a threat to regional stability. Lavrov also denounced what he said were "baseless accusations" of Russian interference in foreign affairs and criticized U.S. policies in Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. Lavrov accused...

Nations that struck the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, except for the United States, meet on Monday in what many diplomats fear may prove a quixotic effort to keep the agreement alive after U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports resume in November. Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran will gather in New York at 8 p.m. EDT on Monday (0000 GMT Tuesday) to grapple with U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 8 decision to withdraw from the deal and restore the full force of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Their delicate, and perhaps unrealistic, task is to build a case...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday accused the administration of US President Donald Trump of being a threat to the Middle East and to the international community. “It is true that there is a real threat to our region and to international peace and security: That threat is the Trump Administration’s sense of entitlement to destabilize the world along with rogue accomplices in our region,” Zarif wrote on Twitter. “The US must start acting like a normal state,” he added. …

In a significant symbolic blow to the Iranian regime, the Volkswagen Group — the world’s biggest selling car manufacturer last year — has reportedly agreed to end almost all of its operations in Iran, in line with the restoration of U.S. sanctions on Tehran. The news was disclosed by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who since taking up his Berlin posting in May — he presented his credentials on the same day President Trump announced the U.S. was exiting the Iran nuclear deal — has been encouraging the host government to isolate Iran and urging German companies to stop...

In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

A few new books are coming out as Fall releases and I fully expect headlines like the one above to be frequent as the authors head out on book tours. Case in point: former Secretary of State John Kerry. Both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to Kerry’s admission of meeting with leaders of other countries and advising them to wait out Trump’s time in office. Needless to say, they rightfully called out Kerry for unprecedented behavior. So, Kerry has begun to personally attack President Trump in a schoolyard bully type of way.Though it may be...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday blasted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s meetings with Iranian officials since leaving office. "What Secretary Kerry has done is unseemly and unprecedented," Pompeo told reporters at the State Department, according to CNN. "This is a former secretary of state engaged with the world's largest state sponsor of terror and according to him, he was talking to them, he was telling them to wait out this administration," Pompeo added. "You can't find precedent for this in US history and the secretary ought not engage in this kind of behavior," Pompeo continued. "It's...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry is being slammed for conducting shadow diplomacy with Iran after admitting to multiple meetings with Iranian officials behind the backs of Trump administration officials -- including over the scrapped nuclear deal. An administration official on Thursday told Fox News Kerry’s meetings are "shameful," pointing out what Iranian-backed militias are doing to kill and injure people in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Other Republicans suggested it may not even be legal. “John Kerry is out giving advice to Iran about how to maneuver around what Donald Trump is doing; it's insidious,” Ari Fleischer, the former White...

Earlier, the former US Secretary of State said that President Trump’s decision in May to leave the 2015 Iran nuclear deal “weakens our security, breaks America’s word [and] isolates us from our European allies.” In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation”, former US Secretary of State John Kerry berated President Donald Trump for having described the Iran nuclear accord, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as the “worst deal ever.” “Unfortunately — and I say this sadly — more often than not, he really just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He makes things up. And he’s...

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said preserving European Union unity was more important than forging a close relationship with post-Brexit Britain, and hit out at what he called U.S. President Donald Trump’s “aggressive” isolationism. As pressure mounts on Prime Minister Theresa May to agree terms for Britain’s divorce from the EU and the shape of their future trade relationship, Macron showed no sign of breaking ranks with other EU capitals. “France wants to maintain a strong, special relationship with London but not if the cost is the European Union’s unraveling,” he told a gathering of French ambassadors. Brexit, Macron said,...

Iran went to the United Nations’ highest court Monday in a bid to have U.S. sanctions lifted following President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to re-impose them, calling the move “naked economic aggression.” Iran filed the case with the International Court of Justice in July, claiming that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on May 8 breach a 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity that regulates economic and consular ties between the two countries. At hearings that started Monday at the court’s headquarters in The Hague, Tehran asked judges at the world court to urgently suspend the...

Iran awaiting European guarantees on the sale of Iranian oil and banking relations, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA). […] “We are still waiting for Europe to take action on the sale of Iranian oil and the preservation of banking channels,” the Iranian foreign minister said. Zarif also defended the European Union’s decision on Thursday to provide €18 million ($21 million) in aid to Iran to offset the impact of U.S. sanctions, part of efforts to salvage the 2015 deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. […] The top U.S. envoy...

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said that Europe should form a “counterweight” to the United States whenever Washington “crosses red lines.” In a guest article for German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Maas said Germany wants a “balanced partnership” with the United States, in which it “brings its weight where the US withdraws.” “Single-handedly, we will fail in this task. The main goal of our foreign policy is therefore to build a sovereign, strong Europe,” Maas wrote. […] Maas said Europe needs to set up payment systems independent of the US if it wants to save the nuclear deal. “That’s why...

Total, France’s largest energy company, announced on Monday it was pulling out of a $4.8 billion (€4.1 billion) Iranian gas field project, after admitting it was extremely vulnerable to the threat of US penalties against those doing business with Iran. The French group was one of three major energy companies set to help supply the state-of-the-art technology needed to tap into South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field shared by Iran and Qatar. However, after abandoning the 2015 Iran nuclear accord in May this year, the United States has said it will reimpose sanctions on Iran in two phases,...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said on Sunday that a new Iran Action Group in the U.S. State Department aimed to overthrow the Islamic Republic, but would fail. He was speaking on the 65th anniversary of a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian prime minister, an occasion when anti-American sentiment runs particularly high in the Islamic Republic. Comparing fresh U.S. sanctions on Tehran imposed by President Donald Trump with the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, Zarif said Tehran will not let history repeat itself. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday...

Russia cannot compel Iranian forces to quit Syria, Moscow's ambassador to Tel Aviv said on Monday, rebuffing Israel's long-standing demand that it should work to ensure their total withdrawal from the country. "They are playing a very, very important role in our common and joint effort to eliminate terrorists in Syria," Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov told Israel's Channel 10 television in an interview. "That is why, for this period of time, we see as non-realistic any demands to expel any foreign troops from the entirety of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said. "We can talk with our Iranian partners very frankly...