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EU reassures Ukraine of unwavering support following Trump victory

By
IFP Media Wire
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Russia Ukraine War

“We need faster deliveries and fewer self-imposed red lines,” Borrell said referring to his support of allowing Ukraine to strike deep inside Russian with Western-provided long range weaponry.

Borrell arrived in Kyiv on Saturday for his fifth trip to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Ahead of talks with Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Borrell vowed that the EU’s support for Ukraine has always been his “personal priority” and should remain on top of the bloc’s agenda.

“This support remains unwavering. This support is absolutely needed for you to continue defending yourself against Russia’s aggression,” Borrell stated during a news conference with Sybiha after the meeting.

Borrell’s latest visit to Kyiv as the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy comes a few days after Republican candidate and former US President Donald Trump secured victory in the 2024 US presidential election.

Although Trump has remained vague about his foreign policy plans, his sweeping victory added further uncertainty for Ukraine regarding the future of Western military aid in its defense against the ongoing Russian invasion.

During the news conference in Kyiv alongside Borrell, Sybiha said President Volodymyr Zelensky will begin preparations for a meeting with Trump.

Borrell added that EU defense ministers will meet next week to discuss “boosting support at this critical hour,” including both military and diplomatic support for Kyiv.

A staunch supporter of Ukraine, Borrell’s visit to Kyiv follows a visit to South Korea earlier in November, where he encouraged Seoul to step up its support for Ukraine amid rising concerns over North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian troops in the war against Ukraine.

Qatar says suspended mediation efforts on Gaza

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Gaza War

In a statement on X on Saturday, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Qatar had informed the relevant parties 10 days ago of its intentions.

Earlier on Saturday, The Associated Press reported a diplomatic source as saying that Hamas’s political office in Qatar “no longer serves its purpose”.

However, al-Ansari said that reports regarding the Hamas political office in Doha were inaccurate, “stating that the main goal of the office in Qatar is to be a channel of communication between the concerned parties”.

A senior Hamas official said they were aware of Qatar’s decision to suspend mediation efforts, “but no one told us to leave”.

In Washington, DC, a US official said that the administration of United States President Joe Biden had informed Qatar two weeks ago that the continued operation of the Hamas office in Doha was no longer useful and the Hamas delegation should be expelled.

“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, [Hamas] leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” a US senior administration official said.

Qatar’s announcement comes after growing frustration with the lack of progress on a ceasefire deal.

Dozens of hostages taken from Israel during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks are still being held in the besieged enclave. There are 101 hostages still held in the blockaded strip, Israeli authorities say, but as many as one-third of them are thought to be dead.

Israel has continued its military onslaught on Gaza following the attack by Hamas, despite a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 102,000 injured, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli offensive has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.

Daily: Gasoline price in Iran hits ‘catastrophic’ lows of three cents per liter

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Petrol Station

Etemad wrote in its Sunday edition that the low price, compared to the free market exchange rates, has been unchanged for five years, despite inflation rising to about 40 percent and harsh sanctions imposed on the country.

Historically, the highest dollar price of gasoline in Iran occurred between 2007 and 2010, coinciding with abundant oil revenues. However, intensified sanctions and rising exchange rates have since reduced the dollar value of a liter of gasoline to its lowest in three decades, Etemad noted.

The unrealistic energy prices in Iran have led to numerous challenges, creating lucrative opportunities for profiteers to smuggle Iranian fuel to neighboring countries at multiple times the domestic price, with estimates suggesting it costs the country around $5 billion annually.

Experts argue that to address the budget deficit and gasoline issues, a proposal to allocate gasoline quotas to individuals should be included in the next year’s budget.

The strategy is expected to reduce personal consumption, eliminate smuggling, and cease gasoline imports.

Currently, each vehicle in Iran is allocated 60 liters of gasoline per month at a subsidized rate, approximately three cents per liter. The government-set price for unsubsidized gasoline is 3,000 tomans per liter, which is roughly six cents.

Iran FM urges confidence-building with US

By
IFP Media Wire
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Abbas Araghchi

Araghchi made the remarks in a post on X on Saturday, a day after the US Justice Department claimed that Iran backed a plot to kill Trump just weeks before the November 5 election.

“The American people have made their choice and Iran respects their right to elect the president of their choice. The path forward is also a choice. It begins with respect,” the minister said.

Pointing to the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran just hours after he attended the inauguration of new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Araghchi suggested that the accusation against Iran of plotting to assassinate Trump right before he is elected has been made to serve the same purpose.

“Remember the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran right after our President’s inauguration? Everyone knows who did it and why,” he continued, adding, “Now, with another election, a new scenario is fabricated with the same goal.”

“As a killer does not exist in reality, scriptwriters are brought in to manufacture a third-rate comedy. Who can in their right mind believe that a supposed assassin sits in Iran and talks online to the FBI?!”

The top Iranian diplomat further noted that Iran has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons, adding that this is a policy based on Islamic principles.

He went on to say that both sides need to build confidence, emphasizing that “this is not a one-way street.”

On Friday, the US Justice Department unsealed criminal charges that include details of a plot allegedly backed by Iran to kill Trump before Tuesday’s election. Iran rejected the allegations as “completely baseless and unsubstantiated.”

This came after Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election on Wednesday. On July 13, Trump survived an assassination attempt, suffering only minor injury to his ear.

In August, Iran dismissed having any connection with a Pakistani individual allegedly arrested in the United States and charged with being behind a foiled plot to assassinate US politicians.

The US, under then-president Trump, unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear accord signed in 2015 with Iran and imposed a series of draconian sanctions on Tehran.

Trump also admitted having ordered the assassination of Iran’s legendary anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in January 2020.

Number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza nears 190

By
IFP Media Wire
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Journalist Gaza

While Israel killed on Saturday two journalists in Gaza City, another two targeted earlier were identified by the authorities, the media office said in a statement.

Al-Zahraa Abu Sukheil and Ahmed Abu Sukheil, who worked for the News Media Network, were killed on Saturday in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a school sheltering the displaced in Gaza City.

The other two were identified as Mustafa Bahar and Abdulrahman Bahar, who worked for local news agency Ajel Palestine. Mustafa, a reporter was killed on March 31 near the Kuwait Roundabout south of Gaza City, while Abdulrahman, a photographer, was killed on Oct. 6 in the Al-Karama neighborhood, northwest of Gaza City.

The media office condemned the targeting of Palestinian journalists, holding Israel fully responsible. It urged the international community to pressure Israel to stop the killing of media personnel.

Journalists in Gaza face particularly high risks as they try to cover the conflict, including devastating Israeli airstrikes, famine, displacement of population and destruction of buildings.

According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the Israeli war on Gaza has killed more journalists over the past year than any other conflict over the past three decades.

Overall, Israel has killed more than 43,000 people since the Hamas attacks last October, and rendered the enclave almost uninhabitable. It faces charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice for its actions in the territory.

Aide to Iranian pres.: Filtering of social media has no benefits 

By
IFP Editorial Staff
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Iran Internet Mobile

Ali Rabiei, an aide on social affairs to President Masoud Pezeshkian, said on X: “I have no idea what’s the benefit of filtering? Show a harmful movie or piece of news you have blocked through filtering.”

Rabiei also referred to the economic impact of filtering, saying people suffer 1 billion dollars in losses annually from filtering.

He also criticized the decision to filter the social media as “irresponsible”.

The aide to the Iranian president had earlier said that some measures were being put in place to end the filtering of the internet and that people would soon see the results.

Rabiei’s comments on the issue come as Pezeshkian had promised to end the filtering during his presidential campaign several months ago among other issues.

Zarif: Resistance a result of Israeli regime occupation

By
IFP Editorial Staff
-
Javad Zarif

Zarif was speaking on the sidelines of the School of Nasrallah International Conference in Tehran on Saturday.

Zarif said the Zionists must understand that the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements are not dependent on foreign assistance.

He added that Hezbollah kicked the Zionists out of Lebanon in 2000 and the Israel regime always held a grudge against the resistance movement.

Zarif urged the Israeli regime to understand that it’s only further strengthening the resistance by continuing its crimes.

He noted that Israel will never be able to destroy the axis of resistance.

In other remarks the Iranian vice president spoke about US President-elect Donald Trump’s possible policy on Iran, saying he must first prove that the past policies of Washington were wrong.

He underlined that Trump definitely knows that after he started his so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran during his first term, Tehran raised its uranium enrichment grade from 3.5 percent to 60 and increased the number of its centrifuges.

Zarif also said Trump is a businessman and he must take into consideration the cost-and-benefit impacts of his actions and see if he wants to press ahead with the past destructive policies.

UNIFIL: Israel ‘deliberately and directly’ attacking UN positions in Lebanon

By
IFP Media Wire
-
UNIFIL

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said on Friday that two Israeli military excavators and one bulldozer had destroyed part of a fence and a concrete structure at a UN base in Ras Naqoura a day earlier.

The Israeli military denied any activity after UN forces contacted it to protest, despite UNIFIL publishing footage of the incident online.

The Israeli military’s “deliberate and direct destruction of clearly identifiable UNIFIL property is a flagrant violation of international law and resolution 1701”, UNIFIL added, referring to the UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Since September 30, Israel has repeatedly demanded that UN peacekeepers vacate their internationally mandated premises so it can more freely advance with its ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

The peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon has been targeted 40 times since then, UNIFIL’s deputy spokesperson Kandice Ardiel told Al Jazeera on Friday.

Ardiel stated that eight of those attacks were confirmed to have originated from the Israeli army. Peacekeepers have been wounded and property destroyed in previous attacks.

Israel also requested that UNIFIL evacuate 29 sites near the Blue Line, the UN-delineated line of withdrawal between Israel and Lebanon, Ardiel said. Earlier, UNIFIL said Israeli forces have been destroying and removing blue barrels that mark the Blue Line.

“Yesterday’s incident, like seven other similar incidents, is not a matter of peacekeepers getting caught in the crossfire, but of deliberate and direct actions” by the Israeli military, UNIFIL added.

The Israeli military continues to push ahead with its military operation in Lebanon as Hezbollah fires rockets and launches drones into Israel.

Since October last year, at least 3,117 people have been killed and 13,888 wounded by Israeli attacks in Lebanon, the ministry said. Among them, 617 are women and 192 children.

The casualties include 180 health workers. The ministry added hospitals have been attacked 65 times.

EU trying to persuade Trump to keep funding Ukraine: Report

By
IFP Media Wire
-
Trump

Trump soundly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s presidential election, with Republicans also taking control of the Senate and on track to keep the House majority. Since then, several EU leaders have called to congratulate him.

“Trump has been noncommittal on Ukraine in the calls, mainly listening and asking questions,” the WSJ reported on Friday, citing anonymous officials briefed on the conversations.

EU leaders taking part in the European Political Community summit in Hungary this week appear to be divided on Ukraine, according to the newspaper. At a dinner on Thursday at the parliament in Budapest, leaders from the Baltic states and Scandinavia urged the bloc to step up their support for Kiev if Washington pulls back. French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seemed less enthusiastic.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the host of the summit, has urged Trump to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine as soon as possible. Slovakian PM Robert Fico has spoken out in favor of peace as well.

Speaking to reporters after the dinner, European Council President Charles Michel told reporters that the bloc has tried to persuade Trump that being “weak with Russia” would send a wrong signal to China and the rest of the world. The day before, Macron reportedly asked Trump to secure “real concessions” from Russia in any talks over Ukraine.

On Thursday, Macron told the summit that “our interest is that Russia doesn’t win this war… Because if it wins, that means that there will be an imperialist power lined up on our borders.”

Finnish PM Petteri Orpo said the summit needed to “give a clear message” to Trump that “we support Ukraine as long and as much is needed.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the EPC summit that he did not yet know Trump’s plans, but that Kiev should “decide what should and should not be on the agenda for ending this war.” He also demanded from the EU the roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets if the US cuts him off, claiming the money “rightfully belongs” to Ukraine.

As the WSJ acknowledged, however, Ukraine is “overwhelmingly dependent on foreign military assistance and budgetary support” from the West.

The US has given the Ukrainian government $106 billion since the conflict escalated in February 2022, including $70 billion in military aid, and spent another $70 billion funding “various US activities associated” with Ukraine. The EU has contributed a total of $133 billion in financial, humanitarian, refugee, and military assistance. Norway and the UK, which are in NATO but outside the EU, have also spent billions.

Biden allows deploying US military contractors to Ukraine

By
IFP Media Wire
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Joe Biden

The “small numbers” of contractors will not participate in combat operations and will be stationed far from the front line, one of the sources told Reuters.

Such a move comes in the final months of Joe Biden’s presidency before Donald Trump returns to the White House after the victory in the US presidential election.

This policy would help the Ukrainian military maintain and repair weapons systems provided by Washington much more quickly.

Washington will also send Kyiv the full $6 billion military aid before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the Pentagon has confirmed. Politico reported that Biden was rushing to deliver the remaining funds by the end of his term out of fear that a Trump administration might halt weapons shipments to Kyiv.

Trump’s electoral victory triggered fears that US aid to Ukraine might soon draw to a close. His comments on Ukraine have emphasized speedy results over long-term support, and he has refrained from saying he wants Kyiv to prevail over Moscow.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said after a recent phone call with President-elect Trump that the two had agreed “to maintain close dialogue and strengthen our cooperation”.

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