While the carnage continued in Syria, with Russian-backed Syrian government forces killing at least 45 people in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday expressed concern over the country’s humanitarian situation and renewed calls for the implementation of a nationwide ceasefire.

The sitting president of the body for the month of March, Dutch Ambassador Karel van Oosterom, said after the closed-door session: “The cessation of hostilities was discussed. The Security Council reiterated its call for the implementation of Resolution 2401.”

That resolution called for a 30-day nationwide ceasefire and was passed by all 15 members of the Security Council on February 24.

The Security Council special session was called by France and the United Kingdom in an effort to persuade Syria and Russia to comply with the resolution.

Death from the skies

As the Council met, however, Syrian forces continued to pound the rebel-held suburb of eastern Ghouta with a massive bombing campaign. Government forces besieged the enclave four years ago but the last 18 days have seen intense bombing that has killed some 850 people and displaced more than 10,000 of the area’s 400,000 residents.

The gruesome spectacle has outraged the international community and, above all, humanitarian organizations attempting to bring assistance to trapped residents. Although Russia enacted daily, five-hour bombing pauses starting on February 26, little aid has reached residents.

Impossible to deliver aid

On Monday, when a UN aid convoy arrived in eastern Ghouta, it was the second of 2018 and the first since the Assad-regime initiated its current bombing campaign. According to a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), Syrian authorities removed medical supplies such as surgical items and trauma treatment kits from the convoy, claiming they could be used to treat rebels.

Not all of the supplies could be unloaded by aid workers due to ongoing airstrikes, which forced a hasty withdrawal from the area.

Residents have been hiding in basements for weeks to improve their chances of survival. Aid workers said, “A lot of children told us they have not seen daylight in 20 days, they haven’t left the basements because it is too dangerous to go outside.”

The UN says 12 percent of children under the age of 5 in eastern Ghouta suffer from acute malnutrition.

Collective punishment

Rather than honoring the calls for a ceasefire, Syrian government forces have stepped up their campaign in an effort to cut the city in half and isolate the rebels.

There is still no end in sight to the Syrian war, which started nearly seven years ago. As unclear as the roster of belligerents and their alliances may be, the one thing that is clear is who is bearing the brunt of the violence: more than 340,000 people have been killed since 2011 and millions more have been displaced.

Courtesy: DW News

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NUCLEAR SECURITY CULTURE: THE CASE OF RUSSIA

By Carol Morello and Anne Gearan

The Treasury Department placed new sanctions Friday on Iran, the first move by the Trump administration in response to a ballistic missile test that led the White House to announce it was putting Iran “on notice.”

The sanctions were imposed on 25 people and entities involved in helping develop Iran’s ballistic missile program, or assisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force in supporting groups that the United States considers terrorist, such as Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militant group. The administration said the sanctions are not a breach of U.S. commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, that was negotiated by Iran and six world powers, including the United States.

“Iran’s continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States,” said John Smith, acting director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Today’s action is part of Treasury’s ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA. We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior.”

Earlier Friday, Iranian officials responded to the Trump administration by calling the warnings and reports of new sanctions “provocative.” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, posted on Twitter that Iran is “unmoved by threats.”

“We are living in a world full of wolves, like the United States, and in such a world we need arms to defend ourselves,” Khatami said, according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The sanctions are the first concrete evidence of the Trump administration’s intention to take a more aggressive and confrontational approach with Iran. The action was triggered by the Jan. 29 test of a medium-range ballistic missile, in what is widely considered to be Tehran’s probing of how far the new administration is prepared to go. Tehran denies that its missile tests violate a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Iran to abstain from testing weapons systems designed to be nuclear-capable.

But the sanctions could undermine the nuclear agreement and goad Tehran into declaring it dead. It would be difficult for the United States to walk away from the deal, as President Trump once vowed to do, without isolating itself from allies that want to do business with Iran.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly slammed the nuclear agreement, which restricts Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of nuclear-related international sanctions.

Trump has said the Obama administration turned a blind eye toward Tehran’s continued ballistic missile tests and destabilizing activities, so as not to derail an agreement that was an important part of President Barack Obama’s legacy. Iran has insisted it is not violating the nuclear agreement by conducting tests of missiles that it claims are purely for defensive purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

A senior administration official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity under its ground rules, characterized Friday’s sanctions as an “initial” step in an ongoing effort to force the government in Tehran to act differently and stop being a threat to U.S. allies in the region.

“Iran has to determine its response to our actions,” the official said. “Iran has a choice to make. We are going to continue to respond to their behavior in an ongoing way, at an appropriate level, to continue to pressure them to change their behavior.”

The sanctions targeted several individuals allegedly involved in laundering money for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The administration official also criticized Iranian-armed Houthi forces in Yemen for attacking Emirati and Saudi ships and acting aggressively toward U.S. ships transiting the Red Sea.

“They continue to threaten U.S. friends and allies in the region,” the official said.

The sanctions won immediate praise from opponents and skeptics of the nuclear agreement.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called them “long overdue.”

“This announcement makes clear that it is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Iran’s destabilizing behavior,” he said. “A coordinated, multi-faceted effort to push back against a range of illicit Iranian behavior is long overdue.”

The sanctions followed a tit-for-tat exchange of threats between the United States and Iran on Thursday as both nations sought new footing in a power struggle that could jeopardize the landmark international nuclear accord, which Trump has called “the worst deal ever negotiated.”

When asked whether his administration’s tough new posture could mean a military strike, Trump answered, “Nothing’s off the table.”

That followed the White House broadside Wednesday in which national security adviser Michael Flynn warned that Iran is “on notice” over the test launch. He also cited Iran’s support of the Houthi rebels, who are battling a U.S.-backed government in Yemen.

“This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying Thursday. “Iran does not need permission from any country to defend itself.”

Speaking to reporters, Velayati brushed off what he called Trump’s “baseless ranting” and pledged that missile tests would continue as Iran sees fit.

The exchange surrounding the missile test is the most substantive between the two countries since Trump took office two weeks ago and suggests that each nation is willing to escalate tension at the outset.

The posturing on the U.S. side appears to be mostly an attempt to seize the upper hand in what Trump officials have said will be a far tougher, less forgiving relationship with Tehran. Flynn directly accused the Obama administration of emboldening Iranian aggression and regional ambitions, and Trump has ridiculed his predecessor for seeking more cordial, if wary, relations.

Trump is under political pressure to make good on campaign pledges to get tough on Iran, while Iran has a history of testing the resolve of new U.S. leaders. The Iranian leadership also faces domestic political pressures with a presidential election due this spring.

“It will take him a long time and will cost the United States a lot, until he learns what is happening in the world,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address Wednesday, in which he also accused Trump of discrimination and recklessness.

Rouhani, considered a cautious political reformer, presided over the partial warming of the three-decade freeze in U.S.-Iranian relations under Obama.

Rouhani said that Trump, in temporarily halting travel to the United States from Iran and six other Muslim-majority nations, is “trampling on all international principles and commitments.”

Iran had earlier vowed “reciprocal measures” for the ban, and the missile launch Sunday was widely seen as a test of the new U.S. administration.

It is not clear whether the launch violates a U.N. Security Council edict, but the Trump administration maintains that it does. The United States called an emergency Security Council review of what it called a “provocative” breach.

Courtesy: The Washington Post