The United States announced Friday that it would effectively close its consulate in the Iraqi city of Basra and relocate diplomatic personnel assigned there following increasing threats from Iran and Iran-backed militia, including rocket fire.

The decision added to mounting tension between the United States and Iran, which is the target of increasing U.S. economic sanctions.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as he explained the move, renewed a warning that the United States would hold Iran directly responsible for any attacks on Americans and U.S. diplomatic facilities.

It followed recent rocket attacks that Pompeo said were directed at the consulate in Basra. U.S. officials said the rockets, however, had not impacted the consulate, which is located on the Basra airport compound.

“I have made clear that Iran should understand that the United States will respond promptly and appropriately to any such attacks,” Pompeo said in a statement.

Pompeo did not explicitly say whether a U.S. response was imminent, however, and other U.S. officials did not disclose potential response options.

Still, Pompeo said the threats against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq were “increasing and specific” and added that Washington was working with Iraqi forces and U.S. allies to address them.

“We look to all international parties interested in peace and stability in Iraq and the region to reinforce our message to Iran regarding the unacceptability of their behavior,” he said.

‘Chaos, death and destruction’

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said the consulate was placed on “ordered departure,” which technically involves a drawdown in staff. Although some personnel could remain on the diplomatic compound, the move was believed to effectively close the consulate, at least temporarily.

The decision came days after U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani exchanged taunts at the U.N. General Assembly, with Trump vowing more sanctions and accusing Iran’s leaders of sowing “chaos, death and destruction.”

Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, speaking at a nearby event in New York on Tuesday, warned “there will indeed be hell to pay” if Iran crosses the United States, its allies or harms U.S. citizens.

In May, Trump withdrew the United States from an international deal to put curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.

France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia have stayed in the pact, vowing to save it despite the restoration of U.S. sanctions. The rial has lost 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar since April.

Iran has blamed U.S. sanctions for the currency’s fall, saying the measures amount to a “political, psychological and economic” war on Tehran, and accused the United States and Israel of involvement in a deadly attack at a military parade in southwestern Iran this month.

Basra has already been rocked by violent protests seen by experts as a rejection of the Iraqi political establishment that has held on to power despite failing to improve people’s lives there.

Protesters in Basra ransacked and torched Iraqi government buildings this month and the Iranian consulate was set alight by demonstrators shouting condemnation of what many see as Iran’s sway over Iraq’s affairs.

For the first time in several years, mortar shells also landed this month inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses parliament, government buildings and many foreign embassies.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday Moscow had started delivering the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria and warned Western powers of trying to undermine U.N.-led efforts to end the seven-year conflict.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had said on Monday the system would be delivered to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in two weeks despite strong Israeli and United States objections. A week previously, Moscow had accused Israel of indirectly causing the downing of a Russian military jet in Syria.

“The delivery started already and as President (Vladimir) Putin said, after that incident … the measures that we will take will be devoted to ensuring 100 percent safety and security of our men,” Lavrov told a news conference at the United Nations.

Russia, along with Iran, has helped Assad recover huge amounts of lost territory in Syria without persuading him to agree to any political reforms. It has also pushed its own talks with Iran and Turkey, known as the Astana process, as U.N-led peace negotiations have stalled.

Some diplomats have said the Israeli incident and a Turkish Russian deal to suspend an offensive on the last rebel-held stronghold of Idlib could provide a window to push for the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 2254 that covers ending conflict in Syria.

The U.N. Security Council, which includes Russia and the United States, has mandated U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura to get a deal on a new constitution, new elections and a reform of Syria’s governance.

De Mistura’s first task is the formation of a constitutional committee to decide whom to pick. He has said he will select about 50 people, including supporters of the government, the opposition and independents to participate, but so far the Syrian government has rejected the idea.

Meeting in New York on Thursday, foreign ministers from the United States, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Britain and Saudi Arabia called on de Mistura to convene the constitutional committee and report back on progress by the end of October.

Lavrov accused the group of trying to undermine the Astana efforts and putting pressure on de Mistura so that they could impose their own resolution of the conflict, describing it as “a grave mistake.”

“This is aimed at undermining all that was done at Astana process and not the fact the Syrians decide what country they are going to live in but the architecture agreed on by foreign powers,” Lavrov said.
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Israeli soldiers shot dead seven Palestinians, including two boys, who were among thousands of people who thronged to the fortified Gaza Strip border on Friday as part of weekly protests launched half a year ago, Gaza health

officials said.

Israel’s military said its troops resorted to live fire, and an airstrike, after explosive devices and rocks were thrown at them and to prevent breaches of the border fence from the Islamist Hamas-controlled enclave.

Gaza health officials said 505 people had been wounded, 89 of them by gunshots. They identified the dead as males, two of them aged 12 and 14.

The boys’ families could not immediately be reached for comment.

At least 191 Palestinians have been killed since the Gaza protests began on March 30 to demand the right of return to lands that Palestinian families fled or were driven from upon Israel’s founding in 1948, and the easing of an Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade.

Anniversary of revolt

Hamas said Friday’s protest also marked the 18th anniversary of the launch of the last Palestinian revolt against Israel.

A Gaza sniper has killed one Israeli soldier, and incendiary devices flown over by Palestinians using kites and helium balloons have set off fires that destroyed tracts of forest and farmland in Israel.

Israel accuses Hamas, against which it has fought three wars in the last decade, of having deliberately provoked violence in the protests, a charge Hamas denies.

More than 2 million people are packed into Gaza, whose economic plight is a focus of so-far fruitless U.S.-led efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since 2014.
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Journalists are being jailed in unprecedented numbers across the globe, with 262 detained for their work at the end of 2017, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The jailing of journalists is a brutal form of censorship that is having a profound impact on the flow of information around the world,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon told a press freedom event Friday at the United Nations.

At the end of 2017, the worst offenders were Turkey, with 73 journalists jailed; China with 41; and Egypt with 20.

CPJ says that slightly more than half of all imprisoned journalists were jailed for reporting on human rights violations.

Simon said the United Nations has not been a strong enough voice on the issue because it has a culture of rarely naming and shaming its member states.

The event, organized on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly annual meeting, highlighted the cases of five reporters CPJ says have been unjustly detained. They are nationals of Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Egypt and Myanmar.

The two most high-profile cases are of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in Myanmar. The two men were detained in December 2017 while they were investigating the mass killing of Rohingya Muslim men and boys by Buddhist villagers in the Rakhine state village of Inn Din.

Myanmar’s military launched a crackdown on the minority Rohingya in August 2017 after Rohingya militants attacked several police checkpoints and killed a dozen Myanmar police officers. In a matter of a few months, 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh. Survivors gave accounts of horrific abuses, including widespread rapes, torture, and the looting and burning of their homes. The United Nations has deemed the atrocities a “textbook case” of ethnic cleansing. 

British barrister Amal Clooney is representing the two Reuters reporters. She says the Myanmar authorities did not want their story about the massacre at Inn Din to come out.

“So police planted government documents on the journalists while other officers lay in wait outside to arrest them,” Clooney said of how the two men were set up. “The journalists were arrested and were then prosecuted and subjected to a show trial in which their conviction was guaranteed.”

Earlier this month, the two were sentenced to seven years in prison for violating a law on state secrets. Clooney said they are seeking a presidential pardon in Myanmar for them, as it is the only avenue currently available to win their freedom.

“The attack on them is a chilling warning to other journalists worldwide,” said Reuters President Stephen Adler. “Myanmar is not the only country where attempts are made to deter investigative news gathering, scare sources and whistle-blowers, dim the spotlight of reporting, and thereby allow officials to act in darkness with impunity.”

Other arrests

Azimjon Askarov, a Kyrgyz journalist, has been serving a life sentence since July 2010. CPJ’s Simon says he was covering deadly ethnic clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan in the summer of 2010. During the trial, he and his lawyer were both assaulted.

“CPJ conducted its own investigation into the case in 2012 and found that charges against Askarov were in retaliation for his reporting on corrupt and abusive practices by regional police and prosecutors,” Simon said.

Bangladeshi photojournalist and commentator Shahidul Alam was arrested last month while covering student protests in Bangladesh. A Dhaka court ordered that he be held for seven days to determine if he violated an information law by spreading propaganda and false information.

“When Shahidul was brought into court, he screamed that had been tortured. He was unable to walk without assistance,” Simon told the panel. He remains in detention.

Since 2013, CPJ says, Egypt has been among the world’s worst jailers of journalists, often detaining reporters on politically motivated anti-state charges.

Alaa Abdelfattah, a well-known Egyptian blogger and activist who has written about politics and human rights, is one of them. He is serving a five-year sentence on charges that he organized a protest and assaulted a police officer.

“We believe the charges are trumped up and in retaliation for Alaa’s coverage of alleged human rights abuses by the police and security forces,” Simon said.

“We are witnessing a growing hatred of journalists worldwide, which unfortunately is not limited to authoritarian regimes,” said Margaux Ewen, North America director of Reporters Without Borders. “We are seeing democratically elected regimes also attack the press more and more frequently, which is why we need to continue to address wrongs as they occur.”

U.S. President Donald Trump refers to negative news coverage of him and his administration as “fake news,” and reporters at his rallies and during his campaign reported encountering hostility from his supporters.

Reporters in the United States are facing a more dangerous work environment. CPJ says at least three journalists have been arrested this year and 34 last year. In June, five people were killed in the newsroom of an Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper.

Journalists covering white nationalism and the far-right political movement have reported receiving threats, and at least 24 journalists have been assaulted, shoved or had their equipment damaged while working.

“A free press is not an adversary, but an essential component of democracy,” Ewen said.
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A proposed regional security alliance bringing together the United States, Gulf allies, Egypt and Jordan, is at risk if a Gulf dispute is not resolved, Qatar’s foreign minister said Friday.

Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut off travel and trade ties with Qatar in June 2017, accusing it of backing their archrival, Iran, and supporting terrorism. Qatar denies the charges and says the boycott impinges on its sovereignty.

The United States has tried, without success, to mediate in the dispute. It is an ally of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, and Qatar is home to a major U.S. air base.

The Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) is meant to serve as a bulwark against Iran and extremism, Washington says. But it is unclear how it can get off the ground given the dispute.

“Regarding the alliance and the creation of the alliance, by ignoring the GCC rift, we don’t think that, even if it’s initiated, that it will be initiated effectively,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in New York.

“There is a serious challenge among the states and we need to address this challenge, in order also to prove the credibility of this alliance. And we believe there’s an opportunity over here,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Gulf allies, Egypt and Jordan earlier on Friday where they discussed MESA, in which a “united GCC” was emphasized.

“The secretary and the foreign ministers had productive discussions on establishing a Middle East Strategic Alliance, anchored by a united GCC, to advance prosperity, security, and stability in the region,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

The United States was planning to host a summit in October to discuss the plan, but that has been pushed back several months. A senior administration official has said Washington was still planning to hold the summit at a later date.

Speaking to Reuters earlier this week, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, called the MESA proposal “very encouraging” and one that “indicates American commitment to the region, its allies and it’s extremely important in a very unstable international system.”

But he added that the Gulf dispute was on the “back burner,” suggesting there were not active diplomatic efforts to resolve the rift and that it would not affect MESA.

“Qatar crisis is on the back burner. It has nothing to do with our ability to present a united front and be a pro-active part of a bigger alliance led by the United States,” Gargash told Reuters.
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