Three European signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as Iran nuclear deal, initiated the accord's dispute mechanism on 14 January thus threatening to put an end to the agreement's existence following the US withdrawal from it in 2018. German Defence Minister and head of a governing coalition party, the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has confirmed that the US indeed thr [...]
France, Britain and Germany have betrayed the 2015 nuclear deal after being threatened with US tariffs, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has claimed, noting that Europe has lost the moral high ground. The three European states accused Tehran of non-compliance with the accord after buckling under pressure from the United Sates, Zarif wrote in a tweet, citing a Washington Post report de [...]
Europe could have saved the Iran nuclear agreement. Instead, it abused the rule of law by inappropriately triggering its dispute mechanism, all but ensuring the agreement’s demise. On January 5, 2020, Tehran announced that it would no longer comply with its obligations under the Iran nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA). Iran’s actions are in [...]
In December, US President Donald Trump signed the National Defence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, which, among other things, stipulates sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The US also threatened to sanction any company or individual involved in providing services on the project. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg has lashed out at the US over its push for sanct [...]
Libya's internationally recognized prime minister, Fayez Sarraj, and Khalifa Haftar, who leads the Libyan National Army (LNA) in eastern Libya, held on Monday talks in Moscow on the Libyan crisis mediated by Russia and Turkey. Russian President Vladimir Putin informed later in the day in phone talks German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the recent negotiations and discussed preparations for the up [...]
Iran is thousands of miles away from Britain, yet because the power elites support them, anti-government protests in Tehran receive much wider coverage in the UK than the ones in France, just across the Channel. How many British people have ever visited Iran? How many have lived there or have second homes there? I suspect the figures are very small. It’s quite a contrast with France. In 2018, [...]
According to NATO's nuclear weapons obligations, dating back to the Cold War, German planes are to carry US bombs in the event of an atomic strike. Although the country’s Tornado fighter jets are close to the end of their operational life and already cost millions of dollars to taxpayers, it remains unclear which aircraft will replace them. [...]
Europe’s total dependence on Washington would lead it nowhere other than to its own demise, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has alleged, calling on Europeans to break free from America’s grip. Europe is a major political force on the international arena, yet it prefers to “quietly follow the policy imposed” by Washington, Ali Akbar Velayati told RT Arabic. [...]
On Friday, US President Donald Trump signed the FY2020 National Defence Authorisation Act into law, with its provisions including sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. A day later, the Treasury confirmed that the restrictions had snapped into place. [...]
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is going to be completed despite the latest US sanctions, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT, adding that the last-ditch attempt to derail its launch is a gesture of despair by Washington. [...]
Allseas, a Swiss-Dutch company laying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the Danish coast, has announced it is suspending its work and will pull out of the project after being faced with an avalanche of sanctions by the US. The company, which operates two vessels installing deep-sea pipes for Nord Stream 2 on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, released its statement just before US President Donald Trump si [...]
‘A Hidden Life’ by Terrence Malick celebrates an Austrian farmer’s Christian principled opposition to Hitler, and any attempts to draw a parallel between the movie and anti-Trump resistance are myopic at best. The new film is the true story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic farmer in Austria who is conscripted into the German Army during WWII and must choose between his conscience, and pledg [...]
Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that Berlin will not give into pressure from Washington after the US Senate approved a bill sanctioning German companies working on a pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Russia. During Wednesday’s Q&A session in parliament, lawmakers asked Merkel about the possibility of the US slapping sanctions on German companies building the Nord Stream 2 pip [...]
As the US braces to slap sanctions on European firms building the last leg of the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a senior MP in Berlin argues that formal protests don’t work anymore – but a strong response could. [...]
In mid-October, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported that fresh security requirements for telecommunications networks in Germany does not contain a clause to keep Huawei from taking part in the construction of 5G infrastructure. Washington has repeatedly warned Berlin over Huawei taking part in developing Germany’s 5G infrastructure. [...]
Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl was left impressed with Russian President Vladimir Putin's gallant behavior after the two waltzed at Kneissl's headline-grabbing wedding last year. "President Putin is an old-school gentleman. He has a special kind of manners that we don't see enough today, including in Central Europe," the diplomat told TASS on Monday. [...]
Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the symbols of the Cold War, Europe remains divided because it chose confrontation over a common future, Willy Wimmer, Germany’s former State Secretary for Defense believes. [...]
The United States maintains nearly three dozen military bases in Germany, with troops stationed in the country since the end of the Second World War, and long after the end of the Cold War and the withdrawal of Soviet/Russian troops from the country in the early 1990s. [...]
The US-made fifth-generation F-35 warplane reportedly continues to face a raft of mechanical issues, although it has been developed for several decades with a budget of over $1 trillion. The German radar-maker Hensoldt has claimed that it managed to track two US stealth fighter jets F-35 from a pony farm for almost 100 miles (about 150 kilometres) during an air show, the website C4ISRNet reports. [...]
Investigative journalist Jurij Kofner is a German citizen. To question the extent to which his country’s policy decisions are influenced by America’s agenda, he explores Germany’s post-war history to understand how relations with the US were formed. He also looks into the dynamics of the two countries’ cooperation under the umbrella of NATO [...]
Mikhail Galperin, Russia's deputy justice minister and representative in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and UK lawyer Michael Swainston have been added to the database of the notorious website that lists Ukraine’s public enemies, but the court has nothing to say about it. [...]
The psychological condition known as Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages irrationally sympathize with their captors, could well be applied to European leaders when it comes to US bullying. [...]