US, Pakistan Discuss ‘Durable Peace' between Israel, Iran
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio explored the ways of ensuring 'a durable peace between Israel and Iran,' with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during a call on Thursday, according to Al Arabiya.
'The two leaders acknowledged the importance of working together to promote a durable peace between Israel and Iran,' the US State Department said in a statement.
During the call, Rubio stressed that Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump unveiled a ceasefire between Israel and Iran to put an end to a war that began on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran.
Trump also held a meeting last week with Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir at the White House to discuss the latest tensions between Israel and Iran.
Since Tehran does not have diplomatic relations with the US, a section of Pakistan's embassy in Washington represents Iran's interests in the US. Escalating Tensions
On June 13, Israel launched a wave of airstrikes on Iran under the name of Operation Rising Lion. The military campaign targeted Iran's nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders and nuclear scientists.
As a response, Iran launched a retaliatory wave of missiles against Israel and targeted Tel Aviv. Israel also killed several Iranian nuclear scientists in line with its goal to eliminate Iran's nuclear program. US Achieved No Gains
In his first public statement since the announcement of the ceasefire, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared victory over Israel that targeted Iran's nuclear facilities on June 13, according to The Associated Press.
The Supreme Leader also stated that Iran has 'delivered a hand slap to America's face' on Thursday by attacking the US base in Qatar.
He revealed that the US intervention in the war was basically driven by its feeling 'that if it did not intervene, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed.' However, the US had not achieved any gains from this war, he added.
Related Topics:
Erdogan Urges Permanent Iran-Israel Ceasefire, Calls for Gaza Truce
US-Iran Talks to Take Place Next Week: Trump
Israel Accuses Iran of Ceasefire Breach, Tehran Denies
Short link :
Post Views: 6
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Trump hopeful for Gaza ceasefire, possibly 'next week'
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump voiced optimism Friday about a new ceasefire in Gaza, as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the territory. Asked by reporters how close a ceasefire was between Israel and Hamas, Trump said: 'We think within the next week, we're going to get a ceasefire.' The United States brokered a ceasefire in the devastating conflict in the waning days of former president Joe Biden's administration, with support from Trump's incoming team. Israel broke the ceasefire in March, launching new devastating attacks on Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel also stopped all food and other supplies from entering Gaza for more than two months, drawing warnings of famine. Israel has since allowed a resumption of food through the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which involves US security contractors with Israeli troops at the periphery. United Nations officials on Friday said the GHF system was leading to mass killings of people seeking aid, drawing accusations from Israel that the UN was 'aligning itself with Hamas.' Eyewitnesses and local officials have reported repeated killings of Palestinians at distribution centers over recent weeks in the war-stricken territory, where Israeli forces are battling Hamas militants. The Israeli military has denied targeting people and GHF has denied any deadly incidents were linked to its sites. But following weeks of reports, UN officials and other aid providers on Friday denounced what they said was a wave of killings of hungry people seeking aid. 'The new aid distribution system has become a killing field,' with people 'shot at while trying to access food for themselves and their families,' said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian affairs (UNWRA). 'This abomination must end through a return to humanitarian deliveries from the UN including @UNRWA,' he wrote on X. The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies. The country's civil defense agency has also repeatedly reported people being killed while seeking aid. 'People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families,' said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. 'The search for food must never be a death sentence.' Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) branded the GHF relief effort 'slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.' That drew an angry response from Israel, which said GHF had provided 46 million meals in Gaza. 'The UN is doing everything it can to oppose this effort. In doing so, the UN is aligning itself with Hamas, which is also trying to sabotage the GHF's humanitarian operations,' the foreign ministry said. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a report in left-leaning daily Haaretz that military commanders had ordered troops to shoot at crowds near aid distribution sites to disperse them even when they posed no threat. Haaretz said the military advocate general, the army's top legal authority, had instructed the military to investigate 'suspected war crimes' at aid sites. The Israeli military declined to comment to AFP on the claim. Netanyahu said in a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz that their country 'absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels' and 'malicious falsehoods' in the Haaretz article. Gaza's civil defense agency told AFP 80 Palestinians had been killed on Friday by Israeli strikes or fire across the Palestinian territory, including 10 who were waiting for aid. The Israeli military told AFP it was looking into the incidents, and denied its troops fired in one of the locations in central Gaza where rescuers said one aid seeker was killed. Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP six people were killed in southern Gaza near one of the distribution sites operated by GHF, and one more in a separate incident in the center of the territory, where the army denied shooting 'at all.' Another three people were killed by a strike while waiting for aid southwest of Gaza City, Bassal said. Elsewhere, eight people were killed 'after an Israeli air strike hit Osama Bin Zaid School, which was housing displaced persons' in northern Gaza. Meanwhile, Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said they shelled an Israeli vehicle east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Friday. The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas-ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said they attacked Israeli soldiers in at least two other locations near Khan Yunis in coordination with the Al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,331 people, also mostly civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Rwanda, Congo sign peace deal in US to end fighting, attract investment
WASHINGTON/PARIS/KINSHASA: Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo signed a US-brokered peace agreement on Friday, raising hopes for an end to fighting that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more this year. The agreement marks a breakthrough in talks held by US President Donald Trump's administration and aims to attract billions of dollars of Western investment to a region rich in tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper, lithium and other minerals. At a ceremony with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, the two African countries' foreign ministers signed the agreement pledging to implement a 2024 deal that would see Rwandan troops withdraw from eastern Congo within 90 days, according to a copy seen by Reuters. Kinshasa and Kigali will also launch a regional economic integration framework within 90 days, the agreement said. 'They were going at it for many years, and with machetes — it is one of the worst, one of the worst wars that anyone has ever seen. And I just happened to have somebody that was able to get it settled,' Trump said on Friday, ahead of the signing of the deal in Washington. 'We're getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it. They're so honored to be here. They never thought they'd be coming.' Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe called the agreement a turning point. Congo Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner said it must be followed by disengagement. Trump later met both officials in the Oval Office, where he presented them with letters inviting Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame to Washington to sign a package of agreements that Massad Boulos, Trump's senior adviser for Africa, dubbed the 'Washington Accord.' Nduhungirehe told Trump that past deals had not been implemented and urged Trump to stay engaged. Trump warned of 'very severe penalties, financial and otherwise,' if the agreement is violated. Rwanda has sent at least 7,000 soldiers over the border, according to analysts and diplomats, in support of the M23 rebels, who seized eastern Congo's two largest cities and lucrative mining areas in a lightning advance earlier this year. The gains by M23, the latest cycle in a decades-old conflict with roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, sparked fears that a wider war could draw in Congo's neighbors. Economic deals Boulos told Reuters in May that Washington wanted the peace agreement and accompanying minerals deals to be signed simultaneously this summer. Rubio said on Friday that heads of state would be 'here in Washington in a few weeks to finalize the complete protocol and agreement.' However, the agreement signed on Friday gives Congo and Rwanda three months to launch a framework 'to expand foreign trade and investment derived from regional critical mineral supply chains.' A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday that another agreement on the framework would be signed by the heads of state at a separate White House event at an unspecified time. There is an understanding that progress in ongoing talks in Doha — a separate but parallel mediation effort with delegations from the Congolese government and M23 — is essential before the signing of the economic framework, the source said. The agreement signed on Friday voiced 'full support' for the Qatar-hosted talks. It also says Congo and Rwanda will form a joint security coordination mechanism within 30 days and implement a plan agreed last year to monitor and verify the withdrawal of Rwandan soldiers within three months. Congolese military operations targeting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Congo-based armed group that includes remnants of Rwanda's former army and militias that carried out the 1994 genocide, are meant to conclude over the same timeframe. Reuters reported on Thursday that Congolese negotiators had dropped an earlier demand that Rwandan troops immediately leave eastern Congo, paving the way for the signing ceremony on Friday. Congo, the United Nations and Western powers say Rwanda is supporting M23 by sending troops and arms. Rwanda has long denied helping M23, saying its forces are acting in self-defense against Congo's army and ethnic Hutu militiamen linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, including the FDLR. 'This is the best chance we have at a peace process for the moment despite all the challenges and flaws,' said Jason Stearns, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University in Canada who specializes in Africa's Great Lakes region. Similar formulas have been attempted before, Stearns added, and 'it will be up to the US, as they are the godfather of this deal, to make sure both sides abide by the terms.' The agreement signed on Friday says Rwanda and Congo will de-risk mineral supply chains and establish value chains 'that link both countries, in partnership, as appropriate, with the US and US investors.' The terms carry 'a strategic message: securing the east also means securing investments,' said Tresor Kibangula, a political analyst at Congo's Ebuteli research institute. 'It remains to be seen whether this economic logic will suffice' to end the fighting, he added.
Asharq Al-Awsat
3 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Trump Calls Being President a ‘Very Dangerous Profession'
US President Donald Trump on Friday reflected on threats to his life as he celebrated a court ruling that handed his administration sweeping power to pursue his policy agenda. Asked by a reporter about such threats, the Republican suggested that he is occasionally reminded of when he was grazed in the ear by a bullet at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on July 13, 2024. "I get that throbbing feeling every once in a while," Trump said. "But you know what? That's okay. This is a dangerous business." He made the comments during a wide-ranging, impromptu White House press conference scheduled to celebrate the US Supreme Court decision that handed him a major victory by curbing federal judges' power to impose nationwide rulings that block his policies. On Friday, the businessman-turned-politician described the presidency as riskier than some of the most perilous professions. "You have race car drivers as an example, 1/10 of 1% die. Bull riders, 1/10 of 1%. That's not a lot, but it's - people die. When you're president, it's about 5%. If somebody would have told me that, maybe I wouldn't have run. Okay? This is, this is a very dangerous profession." Four of the 45 US presidents have been assassinated. Several more presidents and candidates for the office have been shot. There have been several threats on Trump's life. Law enforcement officials said Trump also survived a September 15, 2024, assassination attempt while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspect in that incident faces five federal charges and has pleaded not guilty. The July shooting suspect was shot to death by Secret Service agents. One person at the Pennsylvania rally was killed; two others were wounded. The United States has also separately said Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps at one point attempted to assassinate Trump. Iran, whose nuclear facilities were bombed by US forces last weekend, has denied the allegation. Trump, serving his second term in office, has pushed an expansive vision of presidential power, sharply attacked his political foes and vowed retribution against them. The United States is experiencing its most sustained period of political violence since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts since Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
