alapakala

🗃️

Leaders seek a diplomatic solution despite US president’s threat of ‘a very bad future’ for NATO unless it provides warships

European countries have ruled out sending warships to the strait of Hormuz, despite threats from Donald Trump that NATO faces “a very bad future” if members fail to help reopen the vital waterway.

Germany ruled out participation in any military activity, including efforts to reopen the strait. “There was never a joint decision on whether to intervene. That is why the question of how Germany might contribute militarily does not arise. We will not do so,” the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said.

He added: “This Iranian regime must come to an end,” but that “based on all the experience we have gained in previous years and decades, bombing it into submission is, in all likelihood, not the right approach.”

In the opening days of his war against Iran, Donald Trump had a message for members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Surrender and get “total immunity”—or face “absolutely guaranteed death.”

An elite armed force that exists outside Iran’s normal military structure, the IRGC began as the ayatollah’s personal strike force. But during the country’s reconstruction in the 1980s after the Iran-Iraq War, it also became a major economic force. The construction companies that the Guard organized became spectacularly lucrative, expanding their work abroad.

The Guard is now both the spine of Iran’s military and a driving force in its economy. And this isn’t the first time Trump has crossed paths with people with alleged IRGC connections.

Back in 2012, long before he ever was the GOP’s dark-horse presidential candidate, Donald Trump signed a deal to put his name on a sail-shaped tower in Baku, Azerbaijan—a notoriously corrupt, oil-rich city on the shores of the Caspian Sea. His partners in the deal were suspect: the family of then-transportation minister Ziya Mammadov, a man with a $12,000 annual salary but an estimated net worth in the billions.

For a year, the Trump Justice Department has been on an odd mission: to assist a mysterious former FBI informant with ties to Russian intelligence who ended up in prison for passing disinformation about Joe Biden to the bureau. His crime deeply affected American politics. The false claim he slipped to the FBI—that Biden and his son Hunter each were paid a $5 million bribe by a Ukrainian energy company—became the main evidence in the House Republicans’ reckless and ill-fated impeachment drive against the 46th president.

For pushing this phony tale, Alexander Smirnov, who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI, was sentenced a year ago to six years of incarceration. (The punishment also covered failing to pay taxes on more than $2 million in income.) But for some strange reason, Trump’s DOJ has been helping him to get out of prison. On March 4, in a move that has drawn no media attention, the department quietly filed an unusual brief—submitted by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—supporting Smirnov’s attempt to throw out his sentence and withdraw his guilty plea.

This was not the first time the Trump Justice Department sided with Smirnov in his ongoing legal battle. It has forged a curious alliance with this convicted Russia-connected fabricator whose lies were embraced by Trump, MAGA Republicans, and right-wing media and cited as smoking-gun evidence for Biden’s impeachment.

Barred from publishing details of Iranian missile impacts or interceptions, local and international journalists are struggling to tell the full story.

🗃️

Amazon Japan has notified its package delivery drivers that it is lowering compensation rates from April 5 and stated it will terminate contracts if employees do not accept the changes.

For many drivers, the rate changes the company notified them of meant a pay cut, and a number of workers have since reached out to Japan's Fair Trade Commission.

Among them is a 33‑year‑old man working as a delivery driver in the Kansai region. The job pays him about 100,000 yen ($628) per month, accounting for roughly half of his monthly earnings.

Geneva (AFP) – Iran vowed at the United Nations on Monday that it would not submit to "lawless aggression", saying its citizens were in "grave danger" from US and Israeli strikes. At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where countries were discussing the rights situation in Iran -- notably following its deadly crackdown on protesters in recent months -- Tehran said the focus instead should be on the Middle East war.
"The most urgent and fundamental human rights issue concerning Iran is the imminent threat to the lives of 90 million people whose lives are in immediate and grave danger under the shadow of reckless military aggression," said Ali Bahreini, Iran's ambassador to the UN in Geneva.
"An aggression that is carried out by some of the most lawless and unscrupulous actors on the international stage."
Bahreini said that if such "reckless militarism" was met with indifference, "Iran will most certainly not be the last country to suffer such treatment."
[...]
During a session on Iran's record, Bahreini urged the UN's top rights body to instead discuss the Iranian cultural heritage under "indiscriminate" attack and "the innocent children massacred at their school desks".
Iran has accused the United States and Israel of conducting a deadly missile attack on a school in the southern city of Minab. Washington has said it is investigating the incident. AFP does not have access to the site.
The ambassador said more than 1,300 people had been killed in Iran and more than 7,000 injured since the US-Israeli strikes began.
"Under such circumstances, what exactly is Iran expected to do?" he asked, insisting: "Iran is not a nation that submits to coercion, intimidation or lawless aggression."
The six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, plus Jordan, condemned Iran's attacks on their territories, saying they endangered regional security and civilian lives, and "cannot be justified under any pretext".
The Human Rights Council was holding an interactive dialogue between nations and the council's special rapporteur on rights in Iran and its fact-finding mission on the country.

The Trump administration likes to promote its immigration enforcement agenda through numbers, with ambitious goals to deport 1 million people, report zero releases at the U.S.-Mexico border and arrest thousands of alleged gang members.

For all the boasting, the administration has been releasing less reliable, carefully vetted data than its predecessors on a signature policy that has become one of the most contentious of Trump’s second term.

The gap in information and a loss of figures from an office that has tracked immigration data back to the 1800s have left researchers, advocates, lawyers and journalists without important statistics to hold the Republican administration to account.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has said that Iranians are “wary” of fresh talks with the US amid ongoing conflict, which has spread to regional nations, according to a media report on Sunday, Anadolu reports.

🗃️

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

🗃️

🗃️⛓️‍💥

UK and Japan among countries that are considering options but yet to commit warships to blockaded shipping route

Countries including the UK, Japan, China and South Korea have said they are still considering their options but without making commitments after the US president, Donald Trump, urged them to send warships to the strait of Hormuz to secure the vital shipping route.

The effective closure of the strait of Hormuz by Tehran, in retaliation for airstrikes by the US and Israel, has proved catastrophic for global energy and trade flows, causing the largest oil supply disruption in history and soaring global oil prices.

However, the international response to Trump’s call for the dispatch of warships has so far proved vague and reluctant, with countries unwilling to commit to a military response that could prove treacherous for their navies.