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After threatening a "massive attack," the president said his envoys were talking with Tehran but left open the possibility of a sharp military escalation.
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The fledgling Burnham administration has been seeking to find its feet and make a decent first impression at the same time, the BBC's political editor Chris Mason explains.
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The status of a newly signed U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal is in question after President Trump made the surprise announcement that the deal is off unless Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel. The deal paves the way for Saudi civil nuclear development, although critics warn that it could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the politically volatile Middle East.
Saudi Arabia has long maintained that it would not officially recognize Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-negotiated diplomatic deal between Israel and a number of Arab states, until there is a pathway toward the creation of a Palestinian state. The Abraham Accords provision indicates that "Israel is calling the shots again," when it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East, notes Daniel Levy of the U.S./Middle East Project. Levy says it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia will agree to Trump's new conditions, at a cost to U.S. business interests, which stand to profit handily from the sale of nuclear energy technology to the oil-rich kingdom.
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(First column, 3rd story, link)
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A youth-led protest movement in India is demanding an end to the country's status quo. Sparked by the leak of national exam questions, tens of thousands of young people have taken to the streets. They are protesting under the banner of the Cockroach Janta (People's) Party — a new party named to reflect the words of India's chief justice, who compared unemployed youth to cockroaches and parasites. The movement has only swelled in response to a violent crackdown on protesters. Although the protesters' initial demands were for the resignation of the country's education minister, "everything has shifted to directly attacking [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi," says Indian writer Arundhati Roy, who joins us from New Delhi, the physical center of a movement that first found exponential success online. The erosion of democratic principles under Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata (Indian People's) Party is being contested on a large scale for the first time, says Roy. "It's really a generation whose parents and grandparents wore those Modi masks and chanted 'Modi, Modi, Modi,' and got him into power. It is their children now who are saying the emperor has no clothes."
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Israeli settlers armed with clubs, rocks and a knife attacked a convoy of journalists in the West Bank on Saturday, the latest targeting of foreign journalists documenting the Israeli occupation. Four settlers have reportedly been detained over the attack. The convoy, which included CNN's Jeremy Diamond, were accompanying the father of Palestinian American Saif Musallet to the site where he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers one year ago. To date, no one has been arrested for Musallet's killing.
Independent journalist and Palestine solidarity activist Adele Shoko, who was in one of the cars, says the attack is part of an "unprecedented" escalation of settler activity in the occupied West Bank, taking place in so-called Area A, which is nominally under the full control of the Palestinian Authority. "Area C is almost entirely ethnically cleansed by the settlers backed by the Israeli state, and they moved to Area B, attacking big villages. But Area A is another level."
We also speak with Jasper Nathaniel, who was also in the convoy and has been attacked multiple times while reporting in the occupied West Bank. He says pro-Israel advocates who accuse journalists, activists and other international observers of staging "publicity stunts" are downplaying how routine settler intimidation and violence has become. "If you spend enough time in the West Bank — and by enough time, I mean a couple days — something like that is going to happen to you," says Nathaniel.
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