China Criticizes India for Modi's Birthday Wishes to Dalai Lama
India should 'see clearly the anti-China and separatist nature of the 14th Dalai Lama' and stop interfering in the nation's internal affairs, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Monday.
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Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Iran, US seek to resume back-channel efforts to restart nuclear talks, Iran's foreign ministry says
Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, had said that the US needed to show it had a genuine desire for peace with Iran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that there are 'back-channel efforts' to restart talks for a diplomatic solution on the nuclear issue with the United States, according to a Thursday Sky News interview with an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson. Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, had said that the US needed to show it had a genuine desire for peace with Iran. "Diplomacy must not be abused or used as a tool for deception or for a sort of psychological warfare against their adversaries," he said. He added that diplomacy had been betrayed by the US when Israel attacked during nuclear deal talks with the Trump administration. Baghaei also said that the US had breached international laws by showing support for the 'Zionist aggression.' However, the spokesman continued, 'Diplomacy never ends, there are contacts, indirectly. My minister is talking to Oman, Qatar, and others". The official claimed that Iran had held high hopes for a diplomatic relationship with the US that would end the sanctions and deliver a nuclear deal. However, the official stressed that trust in the US was damaged when the US struck Iranian nuclear sites. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran wants to speak to the US, and that he would meet with representatives of the country "if necessary." "Iran does want to speak, and I think they'd like to speak to me, and it's time that they do," Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews while on his way to a rally in Iowa. "We're not looking to hurt them. We're looking to let them be a country again." Saudi Arabian Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman met with US President Donald Trump and other officials at the White House on Thursday to discuss de-escalation efforts with Iran, Fox News reported on Thursday, citing multiple sources. Reuters contributed to this report.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
The Developing World's G-7 Would Like a Word
It likes to think of itself as the developing world's equivalent of the Group of Seven. Yet unlike the G-7, the BRICS bloc — designed for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but now expanded to 11 members — has sharply diverging interests. It includes energy exporters like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as importers like India; material-hungry manufacturing giants like China, and commodity superpowers like Brazil; moderate democracies like Indonesia, and extremist theocracies like Iran. If there's one thing that almost all of them have in common, however, it's that they want to ensure the grouping's most powerful member, China, doesn't dominate. Beijing might want to use its influence over global trade to increase the use of the yuan; but India has made it clear that replacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency isn't part of the BRICS' mandate. Some of the newer members, such as the UAE, are close US allies.
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
Iran says it can strike the US and Israel for two years. Does it really have that power?
Even amid a fragile ceasefire, Iran continues to warn the United States and Israel that it retains the ability to inflict serious damage if provoked. Iranian officials have declared the country can sustain daily missile strikes for two years — a claim drawing increasing scrutiny from military experts and Western intelligence analysts. "Our armed forces are at the height of their readiness," said Major General Ebrahim Jabbari of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), speaking to the semi-official Mehr News Agency. "The warehouses, underground missile bases, and facilities we have are so enormous that we have yet to demonstrate the majority of our defense capabilities and effective missiles." "In case of a war with Israel and the U.S., our facilities will not run out even if we launch missiles at them every day for two years," he added. Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior military advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, echoed that warning: "The Zionists know that some of our forces, such as the Navy and the Quds Force, have not yet entered into battle," he said. "So far, we have produced several thousand missiles and drones, and their place is secure." But intelligence analysis suggests Iran's claims mask serious losses. Tehran began the conflict with an arsenal of about 3,000 missiles and 500 missile launchers to 600 missile launchers, according to open-source intelligence. By the end of the so-called "12-Day War" — a series of attacks by Israel on its military storage warehouses and production facilities followed by U.S. attacks on nuclear sites and Iran's counterattacks — it was down to between 1,000 missiles and 1,500 missiles and only 150 launchers to 200 launchers. "The regime has increasingly been forced to choose between using or losing these projectiles as Israel targeted missile launchers," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Replacing the missile launchers after Israel degraded their production capabilities will be extremely difficult, according to Danny Citrinowicz, Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies. "Israel attacked every place that the Iranians manufacture missiles," he told Fox News Digital. Iran may have the capacity to attack Israel with its missiles, but "not in the hundreds." Iranian rhetoric occasionally has floated the idea of striking the U.S. directly, but analysts agree that the threat is far more limited. "The theoretical way they can strike the U.S. is just using their capacity in Venezuela," Citrinowicz said, referring to Iran's growing military cooperation with its capital of Caracas. "Strategically, it was one of the main goals that they had — to build their presence in Venezuela. But it's a long shot. It would be very hard to do so, and I'm not sure the Venezuelan government would like that to happen." Instead, any retaliatory strike would likely focus on U.S. assets and personnel in the Middle East. Can Kasapoglu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and Middle East military affairs expert, said Israel's war aims went beyond missile factories, targeting Iran's nuclear infrastructure and advanced weapons development. "We are not 100% sure about the damage to centrifuges, so we cannot say the nuclear program is annihilated," Kasapoglu said. "But we can safely assume the nuclear program had a setback for years." He added that Israel focused heavily on Iran's solid-propellant, medium-range ballistic missiles — many of which have "very high terminal velocity, close to Mach 10," and are capable of evasive maneuvers. "That makes them even more dangerous," he said. Still, despite the setbacks, Iran "is still the largest ballistic missile power in the Middle East," he emphasized. "We saw that during the war, as Iran was able to penetrate Israeli airspace — even when Israeli and American interceptors were firing interceptor after interceptor to stop a single ballistic missile." Comparing "magazine depth," Kasapoglu noted Iran still maintains a deeper stockpile of missiles than Israel, even with U.S. assistance, and has interceptors. The regional threat isn't limited to Iran's mainland arsenal. Iran's proxies, particularly the Houthis in Yemen, remain a potent force. "The Houthis are the one Iranian proxy I am really concerned about." Kasapoglu pointed to new intelligence accusing Chinese satellite companies of providing real-time targeting data to the Houthis, who have resumed maritime attacks in the Red Sea. "Two days ago, they attacked a Liberian-flagged Greek merchant vessel," he said. With advanced Chinese satellite support and hardened anti-ship cruise missiles, the Houthis could destabilize shipping lanes and widen the conflict beyond the Israel-Iran front. "Iran still has significant asymmetric capabilities in the maritime domain and transnational terrorist apparatus, but it's hard to see how deploying these assets would not invite further ruin," said Taleblu. "Bluster and hyperbole have long been elements of Iran's deterrence strategy." The so-called "12-Day War" ended in a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, but the region remains on edge. Iran's leaders continue to boast about untapped military capabilities, but battlefield losses, manufacturing disruptions and previous counter-attack measures have limited its options. While Tehran retains the power to project force and threaten both Israel and U.S. regional assets, experts agree that its ability to launch sustained, high-volume attacks has been meaningfully curtailed. Iran may still be dangerous, but its bark, for now, may be louder than its bite.
