Iran parliament ‘burning' American flag, chanting ‘Death to America' amid Israel conflict? Truth behind video
The video, from 2018, shows Iranian lawmakers demonstrating against President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the 2015 international nuclear deal. The MPs had staged a protest, chanting 'Death to America'. At the time, Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, said: 'If Europe and important countries like Russia and China fill this international vacuum (in the deal), perhaps there will be a way to continue. Otherwise, the Islamic Republic of Iran will bring them (US) to their senses with its nuclear actions.'
Read More: Who will succeed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if Israel takes him down? Here are top 5 contenders
"They have to know that under such circumstances, Iran has no commitment to remain in the nuclear position it was in before."
Re-sharing the video on social media, one person wrote: 'In Iranian Parliament, MPs burn the American flag while chanting 'Death to America,' and threaten to use a nuclear bomb against the American homeland. Iran is a BIGGER PROBLEM FOR US.'
'In #Iran Parliament, Mullah MPs burnt the #USA flag while chanting 'Death to America,' & also threaten to use a nuclear bomb against the American homeland,' a second one said on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said Wednesday he doesn't want to carry out a US strike on Iran but suggested he stands ready to act. The 78-year-old further warned Tehran about American troops joining Tel Aviv.
'I'm not looking to fight," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "But if it's a choice between fighting and having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do.'
Read More: Whoopi Goldberg compares US to Iran in fiery clash with Alyssa Farah Griffin; 'They just keep hanging Black people'
Trump earlier on Wednesday told reporters that it's not 'too late' for Iran to give up its nuclear program.
'I may do it, I may not do it,' Trump said of a potential U.S. strike in another exchange with reporters at the White House on Wednesday. 'I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.'
'Nothing is finished until it is finished,' he added, signaling a decision could soon. 'The next week is going to be very big — maybe less than a week."
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Indian Express
24 minutes ago
- Indian Express
How right-wing outcry influenced US pausing visitor visas for Gazans
Written by Hamed Aleaziz and Ken Bensinger The Trump administration announced Saturday that it had paused approvals of visitor visas for people from the Gaza Strip, a key pathway for those seeking medical care in the United States, including young children who arrived in recent weeks with serious conditions. The State Department said it would assess the process behind those visas. 'All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review,' the department said in a statement on the social platform X on Saturday morning. Palestinians coming to the US The move came after an intense lobbying campaign by right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who called the incoming flights a 'national security threat' in a flurry of social media posts starting Friday that targeted a nonprofit aiding in medical evacuations. Just weeks ago, the nonprofit, HEAL Palestine, an Ohio-based group that helps Palestinian families and children, began orchestrating what it called the 'largest single medical evacuation of injured children from Gaza to the U.S.,' bringing injured and ill children from Gaza to the United States for care. To date, the group says it has evacuated 63 injured children for treatment, including 11, from age 6 to 15, who were flown to hospitals in nine U.S. cities this month. Many of the children had lost limbs during the conflict in Gaza. They are expected to travel to Egypt to rejoin their families once their medical care is completed, according to HEAL Palestine. The group, which was founded last year and also operates food kitchens in Gaza, did not respond to requests for comment. Earlier this month, Dr. Zeena Salman, a co-founder of HEAL Palestine, said in a statement that the medical evacuation flights were a matter of life or death. 'These children could not wait,' Salman said. 'Their lives are at stake, and this mission is about giving them a future.' Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, said that more than 9,000 people with travel documents from the Palestinian Authority had entered the United States on visitor visas in the 2024 fiscal year. 'This move is consistent with the Trump administration's overall treatment of immigrants as constituting a threat to U.S. public safety,' Gelatt said. 'But it is extremely hard to imagine how someone coming to the U.S. for lifesaving medical treatment would present a national security risk.' Loomer, who wields extraordinary power in shaping Trump administration decisions over personnel and policy despite not having an official role in government, said she first learned of the flights earlier this month. 'I felt like this is something that needs attention,' she said in an interview. 'Under the Trump administration, they are actively importing Gazans into the U.S. Clearly this is not what we voted for.' On social media, Loomer called attention to a video posted Aug. 6 by HEAL Palestine, showing Palestinian children arriving at the San Francisco airport. She subsequently posted about flights to St. Louis, San Antonio and Houston and claimed without providing evidence that the nonprofit was connected to Hamas, tagging state and federal officials in her posts. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, responded to her late Friday on X that he was 'deeply concerned about the incoming flights' and was making inquiries. Loomer said she spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday night to alert him to the flights and what she called the threat of an Islamic invasion. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Those impacted the most Loomer has a long history of anti-Islam activism. In 2017, she wrote a social media post that cheered the drowning deaths of 2,000 refugees who were trying to flee violence in Syria and other countries with large Muslim populations by crossing the Mediterranean. For years, she has pushed for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sunni Islamist movement, to be designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, lobbying both members of Congress and the administration. Last week, Rubio said such a designation from the State Department was 'in the works.' Medical flights for children affected by the conflict in Gaza have been occurring for well over a year, organized by a variety of charities. Dr. Mohammad Subeh, an emergency room physician who volunteers for HEAL Palestine, said that he had previously treated some of the children who recently arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area during his time in Gaza. He said that the injuries included orthopedic trauma and severe burns and that they were exacerbated by malnutrition. 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Hindustan Times
27 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Reading the outcome of the Alaska summit
The Alaska summit between American President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ended inconclusively, but it clearly indicated that if the Ukraine war ends during Trump's presidency, Ukraine will likely have to sacrifice a part of its territory. The usual aggression that Trump displays when meeting other world leaders was hardly present when he met Putin; if anything, there was a great deal of chemistry between them. In the run-up to the summit, Trump had warned of 'severe consequences' if Putin continued the Ukraine war after the summit, but that appears to be an empty threat now. As a matter of fact, Trump seems to have gone in the opposite direction. After the summit, Trump agreed with Putin that the best way to end the war was through a peace settlement — not a ceasefire, which Ukraine, Europe, and even the US had preferred prior to the summit, but not Russia. The apparent rapport between the two leaders and Trump's reversal on the ceasefire issue suggest that Trump is likely to, going forward, show more understanding of the Russian position than the Ukrainian one. Apart from the growing certainty, underscored by this summit, that the war is likely to end on Russia's terms, the rest is just noise and drama — including, it seems, Trump's recent threat to impose an additional 25% duty on Indian goods for buying Russian oil. A key reason Russia is unlikely to give up the captured Ukrainian territory is not only its military strength but also that, under Trump, Washington lacks the political will to enforce such a change. Even if the US had the political will to do so, as it did under the Biden administration, it might still have been unable to dislodge Russia from the occupied territories. At best, the US could have made it tough for Russia to hold onto the captured territory and generally made life difficult for Moscow. Trump is not keen on doing so; he appears to have decided to abandon Ukraine. America's lack of commitment to this war is hardly born out of a realistic assessment of the balance of forces on the battlefield or due to Russian staying power in the occupied territories; it is simply a function of Trump's personal proclivities. Trump is simply not convinced of the need to push back against Russia because he doesn't believe in that cause: He wants a great power rapprochement with Russia. Trump's war termination talks with Russia without Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the table, America's reduced military assistance to Ukraine, and the summit with Putin are all part of the American president's attempts at controlling the narrative, something Trump enjoys immensely. Europe is deeply worried but has limited capacity to help Ukraine. Its security predicament stems from its deep reliance on American security guarantees. If it doesn't have the wherewithal to look after its own security, its ability to help Ukraine without the US is far less certain. Notwithstanding Europe's good intentions and its constant assurances to Ukraine, it will eventually have to swallow the bitter pill and walk the line dictated by Washington. Good intentions are not enough to win wars. Russia is now acting from a position of strength — militarily, diplomatically and geopolitically. The Alaska summit has further strengthened Moscow's position regarding the war. By agreeing to a peace settlement to end the war, as opposed to a ceasefire, Trump has effectively agreed to the Russian position. Even if we are not sure what Trump has in mind when he refers to a peace settlement, we do know what Putin means by it. The Russian view of a settlement has the following four key elements. One, international legal recognition of Crimea, captured in 2014, as part of Russia, as well as Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions; two, Ukraine must become neutral, outside any military alliance, host no foreign forces, and make a commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons; three, major limits on Ukraine's armed forces; four, ending the sanctions on Russia. Even if Russia is able to get some, if not all, of these demands met — which doesn't seem impossible at this point— it is likely to walk away from this war victorious. Russia is on its way back into the ranks of great powers and the global balance of power, and Putin has much to thank Trump for creating that shift. Even though Ukraine is the most important, and aggrieved, party in this conflict, unfortunately, it appears to be the least consequential one at the negotiating table, at least for the moment. It neither has the military power to push back against Russia on its own nor does it have the geopolitical standing to convince Trump to come to its aid. Kyiv's best friends, the European States, are finding it harder to do for Ukraine any more than what they are already doing. Ukraine's fate is a grave wake-up call for small and medium powers worldwide, especially those bordering ambitious great powers. If so, the eventual outcomes of the Ukraine war are broadly clear; unless of course, there are major shifts in geopolitics in the months to come. We are likely to witness a great power détente between the US and Russia. The chemistry between the two leaders left us in no doubt that the world is headed that way. Such a US-Russia détente will leave Europe insecure, which will seek to build its defence outside of Nato. Ukraine is caught between having to make concessions it detests and being embroiled in a long war with Russia without any US military assistance. It can afford neither, nor can it avoid a choice. Happymon Jacob is the founder and director of the Council for Strategic and Defense Research and the editor of INDIA'S WORLD magazine. The views expressed are personal.
Hindustan Times
27 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Putin, Trump break the ice, Kyiv feels the chill
It was a meeting of the two titans. On the morning of August 15, Russian president Vladimir Putin landed at Anchorage Airport in Alaska. US president Donald Trump stood on the carpet awaiting his guest's arrival, and Putin, alighting from the plane, set the tone and tempo for the summit with his 'dear neighbour'. So far, Trump hasn't accorded the honour of a personal welcome to even any of his Western allies. Many started drawing positive conclusions about the summit from the body language of the two leaders. But the Alaska summit, of which expectations had been high, failed to reach a conclusion and has left behind a fog of new concerns. There's a host of reasons for such a conclusion. The summit was expected to last for five to six hours, but it ended within three hours. A day earlier, Trump had said he wouldn't be happy if a ceasefire (in the Ukraine war) didn't materialise from the summit. He had even threatened Russia with harsher sanctions if there was no ceasefire. However, his threats proved ineffective. During the press conference, he grudgingly accepted that while they made some progress, many important issues remained unresolved. Putin said he hoped both the countries could work together on key concerns. The summit should be seen as a diplomatic thaw with little concrete outcomes. At most, Alaska can pave the way for another discussion. Trump said as much when he announced that he would be talking to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Nato allies to fix a date and venue for further talks. In an interview to Fox News just before the summit, Trump hinted that now it's up to Zelensky to take a call on the future of his nation. Could Zelensky end up isolated? Remember how Trump and his deputy, JD Vance, bullied Zelensky in full media glare at the White House? Experts argue that last year in Istanbul, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of a deal but Zelensky stopped short of it on the assurance of full US support. Ukraine is surviving with the help of European nations, but as the conflict slides into an endless morass, Europe will find it difficult to keep supporting. Putin understands this and is in no hurry for peace. During the Alaska summit, Trump interestingly seemed to have controlled his usual urge to hog the limelight by offering the opening address to Putin. In a 12-minute presser, Putin spoke for a little over eight minutes while Trump took less than four minutes. He ended in his characteristic style saying, 'Vladimir, I hope we meet soon'. Not missing the opportunity, Putin quickly replied in English: 'This time, in Moscow'. The statement caught Trump off guard. No media questions were allowed. It was clear both the leaders did not have much to say. The summit did not reach any conclusion because Putin isn't budging from his four core demands: A large portion of land annexed by Russia from Ukraine be recognised as Russian territory; annexed Crimea be recognised similarly; immediate ban on Nato's expansion; and urgent lifting of sanctions on Russia. Trump can neither accept these demands nor does he have the political capital to force Ukraine or his Western allies to accept these. Contrary to his claims, Trump is not bothered about lives being lost in Ukraine or in any conflict areas. His eyes are set on Ukrainian minerals and agricultural products, and he's wary of the increasing closeness between Moscow and Beijing. He also perceives a new threat in Brics. If the group keeps gaining heft, it may end up being a threat to the US in future. The combined economic strength of China, India, Brazil and Russia is almost twice that of Europe. These statistics don't favour the US in a changing global scenario. Trump knows that tariffs and economic sanctions alone can't contain Russia. Many of his predecessors failed in their attempts to tame Russia. This is the reason the US maintains the façade of sanctions on Russia but uses back-channel diplomacy to increase trade with it. Since Trump's second presidency, Russia-America trade has witnessed a 20% surge. As for India, after the Alaska summit, Trump said he may not impose 'additional tariffs' as a penalty or punishment on countries buying Russian oil. It's not clear whether he was talking about the 25% penalty he imposed or any new tariff that he was working on. With the Alaska meeting having ended as a damp squib, New Delhi is keenly watching. Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan. The views expressed are personal
