Middle East Experience

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "The geometric growth does not afford us a chance to wait"
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Coronavirus cabinet likely to end with no decisions

A 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers is being eroded and efforts to revive the pact face a new challenge with the killing of Tehran’s top nuclear scientist.The accord’s restrictions on Iran’s atomic work had one objective: to extend the “breakout time” for Tehran to produce enough fissile material for a bomb, if it decided to make one, to at least a year from about two to three months.Iran maintains that it has never sought nuclear weapons and never would. It says its nuclear work only has civilian aims.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the appTehran began breaching the deal’s curbs last year in a step-by-step response to President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the deal in May 2018 and the reimposition of US sanctions.This has shortened the breakout time but reports by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which polices the deal, indicate that Iran is not moving ahead with its nuclear work as fast as it could.European states have sought to save the nuclear deal, pressing Tehran to comply even as Washington has tightened sanctions, and holding out hopes of a change in US policy once President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20.Biden was part of the US administration under Barack Obama that negotiated the 2015 deal.What has Iran done till now?Iran has contravened many of the deal’s restrictions but is still cooperating with the IAEA and granting inspectors access under one of the most intrusive nuclear verification regimes imposed on any nation.* Enriched uranium - The deal limits Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium to 202.8 kilograms, a fraction of the more than eight tons it possessed before the deal. The limit was breached last year. The IAEA report in November put the stockpile at 2,442.9 kilograms.* Enrichment level - The deal caps the fissile purity to which Iran can refine uranium at 3.67 percent, far below the 20 percent achieved before the deal and below the weapons-grade level of 90 percent. Iran breached the 3.67 percent cap in July 2019 and the enrichment level has remained steady at up to 4.5 percent since then.* Centrifuges - The deal allows Iran to produce enriched uranium using about 5,000 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at its underground Natanz plant, which was built to house more than 50,000. It can operate small numbers of more advanced models above ground without accumulating enriched uranium. Iran had roughly 19,000 installed centrifuges before the deal.In 2019, the IAEA said Iran had begun enrichment with advanced centrifuges at an above-ground pilot plant at Natanz. Since then, Iran started moving three cascades, or clusters, of advanced centrifuges to the underground plant. In November, the IAEA said Iran had fed uranium hexafluoride gas feedstock into the first of those underground cascades.* Fordow - The deal bans enrichment at Fordow, a site Iran secretly built inside a mountain and that was exposed by Western intelligence services in 2009. Centrifuges are allowed there for other purposes, like producing stable isotopes. Iran now has 1,044 IR-1 centrifuges enriching there.How close is Iran ?The breaches lengthened the breakout time but estimates still vary. Many diplomats and nuclear experts say the starting point of one year is conservative and Iran would need longer.David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who tends to have a hawkish position on Iran, estimated in November that Iran’s breakout time could be “as short as 3.5 months”, although this presumes Iran would use 1,000 advanced centrifuges that were removed under the deal.What more would Iran need to do?If Iran accumulated sufficient fissile material, it would need to assemble a bomb and probably one small enough to be carried by its ballistic missiles. How long that would take exactly is unclear, but stockpiling enough fissile material is widely seen as the biggest hurdle in producing a weapon.US intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe Iran once had a nuclear weapons program that it halted. There is evidence suggesting Iran obtained a design for a nuclear weapon and carried out various types of work relevant to making one.Tehran continues to grant the IAEA access to its declared nuclear facilities and allow snap inspections elsewhere.Iran and the IAEA resolved a standoff this year that had lasted several months over access to two suspected former sites.Read more:Pakistan blocks TikTok app for failure to filter out ‘immoral’ contentUS Commerce Department will ‘vigorously defend’ TikTok executive order
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: All you need to know about Iran's nuclear program

Turkey condemned on Saturday the “heinous assassination” of Iran’s top nuclear scientist and called for the perpetrators of the attack to be held accountable.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.The foreign ministry also urged “all sides to act with common sense and restraint” in the wake of the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who Western and Israeli governments believe was the architect of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.Earlier, Iran’s supreme leader promised to retaliate for the killing, raising the threat of a new confrontation with the West and Israel in the remaining weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.Read more:UN calls for restraint after assassination of Iran's nuclear scientistIsraeli minister says ‘has no clue’ who killed Iranian nuclear scientistBelgium court charges Iranian diplomat with 20-year prison term over terrorism
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Turkey condemns killing of Iranian nuclear scientist, urges restraint

Abu Dhabi Ports on Saturday said it will store and distribute over 70 million coronavirus vaccines, adding that it is “playing a vital role in the global fight against COVID-19 with enhanced logistics capabilities.”Read the latest updates in our dedicated coronavirus section.“As part of its commitment to this immunization drive, Abu Dhabi Ports has dedicated a 19,000 square meter temperature-controlled warehouse facility in Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (KIZAD), which already houses more than 1 million vials of the vaccine,” Abu Dhabi Ports said in a press release.The press release added that the facility has the capability to store vaccines and other pharmaceutical products at a range of 2 to 8 degrees as well as the more extreme range of -80 degrees. “The facility is equipped with temperature and humidity systems monitored digitally via a control dashboard,” according to Abu Dhabi Ports.“Abu Dhabi Ports is ready to play a leading role in the end-to-end supply chain including storing, processing, and distributing this extremely sensitive product,” said Captain Mohammed Juma al-Shamisi, Grouo CEO of Abu Dhbai Ports.Last week, Abu Dhabi Media Office announced passengers returning to Abu Dhabi from abroad who have received the coronavirus vaccine are no longer required to quarantine upon entry to the emirate.The UAE hosted the world’s first Phase III trials of a coronavirus vaccine candidate produced by Chinese drug maker Sinopharm, with over 30,000 participants volunteering. It has since approved limited emergency use of the vaccine under the National Vaccination Program, with priority given to medical and essential workers.Read more: Coronavirus: Abu Dhabi vaccine trial participants not required to quarantine
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Coronavirus: Abu Dhabi Ports to store and distribute 70 mln COVID-19 vaccines

Israel is concerned over growing Iranian entrenchment in Yemen, not unlike the way Iran operates in Syria.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Israel, Gulf rapprochement could worry Yemen, Iran

Lebanon’s political elite have yet to form a government despite the urgency as the country slides further into economic collapse.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Lebanon’s PM struggles to form Cabinet amid economic crisis

An opinion piece published by a hard-line Iranian newspaper on Sunday suggested Iran should attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if Israel carried out the killing of a scientist linked to its disbanded military nuclear program.Though the hard-line Kayhan newspaper has long argued for aggressive retaliation for operations targeting Iran, Sunday’s opinion piece went further, suggesting any assault be carried out in a way that destroys facilities and “also causes heavy human casualties.”Israel, suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade, has not commented on Friday’s slaying of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.Iranian officials roundly have blamed Israel for the attack, raising the specter of renewed tensions that could engulf the region, including US troops stationed in the Persian Gulf and beyond.Read more: Who was Mohsin Fakhrizadeh, the assassinated ‘father of Iran’s nuclear bomb’Iran’s IRGC chief vows to avenge slain nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh, accuses IsraelTrump retweets Israeli journalist saying nuclear scientist killing a ‘blow for Iran’Kayhan published the piece written by Iranian analyst Sadollah Zarei, who argued Iran’s previous reactions to suspected Israeli airstrikes that killed Revolutionary Guard forces in Syria didn’t go far enough to deter Israel.Striking Haifa and killing a large number of people “will definitely lead to deterrence, because the US and the Israeli regime and its agents are by no means ready to take part in a war and a military confrontation,” Zarei wrote. He said an assault on Haifa needed to be greater than Iran’s ballistic missile attack against American troops in Iraq following the US drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in January.Haifa, on the Mediterranean Sea, has been threatened in the past by both Iran and one of its proxies, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently suggested striking Haifa’s stores of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive fertilizer that fueled the deadly Beirut port blast in August that killed 193 people and wounded 6,500 others.While Kayhan is a small circulation newspaper in Iran, its editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari was appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and has been described as an adviser to him in the past.Read more: Israeli embassies on high alert following Iranian retaliation threats: ReportsA “strong reaction”The Iranian parliament on Sunday held a closed-door hearing about Fakhrizadeh’s killing. Afterward, parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf said Iran’s enemies must be made to regret killing him.“The criminal enemy does not regret it except with a strong reaction,” he said in a broadcast on Iranian state radio.State television broadcast images of Fakhrizadeh’s casket being flown to Mashhad, a holy Shia city in Iran’s east home to the shrine of Imam Reza.Read more: Iran’s Zarif: Israel had a ‘role’ in nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh’s assassinationFather of nuclear bombAnalysts have compared Fakhrizadeh to being on par with Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led America’s Manhattan Project in World War II that created the atom bomb.Fakhrizadeh headed Iran’s so-called AMAD program that Israel and the West have alleged was a military operation looking at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that “structured program” ended in 2003. Iran long has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful.His killing likely complicates the plans of President-elect Joe Biden, who has said his administration will consider reentering Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. It also raises the risk of an open conflict in the remaining weeks in office for President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew the US from the atomic accord in 2018, beginning a series of escalating incidents between Tehran and Washington.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Iranian newspaper: Iran should attack Haifa if Israel killed scientist Fakhrizadeh

Saudi Arabia is the sixth safest country to travel to based on coronavirus criteria, according to Wego Travel’s COVID-19 Country Risk Assessment.The travel company Wego compiles a frequently updated coronavirus risk assessment chart that ranks countries based on their safety of travel.Read the latest updates in our dedicated coronavirus section.The list applies the European Union’s COVID-19 safety criteria to data taken from Our World in Data and ranks countries from “Safe” to “High Cases & Positivity.”Of the 70 countries with sufficient data and testing, only six were ranked as “Safe” for travel.Saudi Arabia ranked sixth with 8.8 cases per million, test positivity of 0.6 percent, and 1,549 tests per million.The safest country was Australia (0.5 new cases per million, no test positivity, and 1,693 tests per million), followed by New Zealand, Singapore, Zambia, and Cuba.Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates were among the second safest category of “Elevated Cases.”Palestine and Jordan joined the US and UK as having “High New Cases,” while Qatar, Iraq, and Iran were in the most dangerous category of “High Cases & Positivity.”The Wego data had last been updated on November 27 at the time this article was published.Saudi Arabia currently remains closed to most international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic, with air routes expected to reopen to the public in January.Read more:Coronavirus: Saudi Arabia confirms 220 new COVID-19 cases, 13 deathsSaudi Arabia temporarily suspends travel to 9 coronavirus-hit countriesSaudi Arabia arrests 226 people involved in 158 criminal corruption cases
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Coronavirus: Saudi Arabia ranked sixth safest country in COVID-19 risk assessment

5.0-magnitude earthquake hits south Iran..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: No tremors felt in UAE after earthquake rocks Iran

Fresh allegations of corruption against Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu have intensified protests across the country..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Thousands protest as former security chief accuses Netanyahu of 'endangering Israel'