Minggu, 21 Juli 2019
Analysis: UK and Oman demand Iran to release British oil tanker - Al Jazeera English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei198XfDmuA
2019-07-21 10:11:05Z
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Iran tanker seizure: Radio exchanges reveal Iran-UK confrontation - BBC News - BBC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saWpvklgO0s
2019-07-21 09:19:10Z
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Iran tanker seizure: Radio exchanges reveal Iran-UK confrontation - BBC News
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A recording has emerged of radio exchanges between a Royal Navy frigate and Iranian armed forces vessels, moments before a British-flagged oil tanker was seized in the Gulf.
In the recording, what is thought to be an Iranian vessel tells HMS Montrose it wants to inspect the tanker for security reasons.
The Stena Impero was boarded by Iranian authorities on Friday.
The foreign secretary has urged Iran to reverse the tanker's "illegal" seizure.
In the radio recording the Iranian vessel can be heard telling a ship - thought to be the Stena Impero - to change its course, saying: "If you obey you will be safe."
HMS Montrose identifies itself in the recording, obtained by British maritime security firm Dryad Global.
It tells the Stena Impero: "As you are conducting transit passage in a recognised international strait, under international law your passage must not be impaired, impeded, obstructed or hampered."
The frigate then asks the Iranian vessel to confirm it is not "intending to violate international law" by attempting to board the tanker.
What happened?
On Friday, the Stena Impero was seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route in the Gulf.
Tehran said the vessel was "violating international maritime rules".
Video released by Iran's Revolutionary Guard-affiliated Fars news agency on Saturday appeared to show the moment the tanker was raided.
It shows masked forces dropping down ropes on to the ship from a helicopter after it was surrounded by high-speed vessels.
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HMS Montrose was alerted but it was too far away to stop the seizure.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency said the tanker was captured after it collided with a fishing boat and failed to respond to calls from the smaller craft.
But Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was seized in Omani waters in "clear contravention of international law" and then forced to sail into Iran.
The tanker's owners, Stena Bulk, said it had been complying with regulations and had been in international waters.
It said it had requested access to the port of Bandar Abbas to visit crew members, who are Indian, Russian, Latvian and Filipino, and said to be in good health.
The seizure of the Stena Impero comes two weeks after Royal Marines helped seize Iranian tanker Grace 1 off Gibraltar, because of evidence it was carrying oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions.
Mr Hunt said the Grace 1 was detained legally, but Iran described said this was "piracy" and threatened to seize a British oil tanker in retaliation.
How did the UK react?
Speaking after a call with his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, Mr Hunt said Iran viewed this as a "tit-for-tat situation" but he added that "nothing could be further from the truth".
Ministers have held emergency Cobra meetings and a senior Iranian diplomat was summoned to the Foreign Office.
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Mr Hunt said MPs would be updated on Monday.
"Our priority continues to be to find a way to de-escalate the situation," he said.
The government is advising UK shipping to stay out of the area.
What has Iran said?
Iran's foreign minister Javad Zarif tweeted that the UK "must cease being an accessory to #EconomicTerrorism of the US".
He said Iran guarantees the security of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, and insisted its action were to "uphold international maritime rules".
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Abbasali Kadkhodaei, spokesman of the state watchdog the Guardian Council, said on Twitter that "the law of retaliation is a recognised concept in international law".
What's the background to this?
The latest developments come against a backdrop of deteriorating relations between Iran and the UK and US.
Tensions between the US and Iran have risen since April, when the US tightened sanctions it had reimposed on Iran after unilaterally withdrawing from a 2015 nuclear deal.
The US blamed Iran for attacks on tankers since May, which Tehran denies. On Friday, the US claimed to have destroyed an Iranian drone in the Gulf.
The UK government has remained committed to the deal, which curbs Iran's nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions tensions.
However, the UK's decision to help seize the Iranian tanker Grace 1 earlier this month infuriated Iran.
Last week, Iranian boats attempted to impede a British oil tanker in the region before being warned off by HMS Montrose. Iran denied it was attempting to seize the ship.
International reaction
A White House National Security Council spokesman said Friday's incident was the second time in over a week the UK had been "the target of escalatory violence" by Iran.
And US Central Command said it was developing a multinational maritime effort in response to the situation.
The Pentagon has said US troops are being deployed to Saudi Arabia to defend American interests in the region from "emergent credible threats".
France, Germany, and the European Union called on the Iranian authorities to quickly release the Stena Impero.
The EU's foreign affairs office, which represents 28 member states, expressed "deep concern".
How 'British' is the tanker?
Ships must fly the flag of a nation state, explains Richard Meade, managing editor of maritime intelligence publication Lloyd's List.
But that doesn't need to be the same nation as its owners, its crew, or its cargo, he says.
The Stena Impero is Swedish-owned and those on board are Indian, Russian, Latvian and Filipino.
But it's the UK flag that is important symbolically, he says. "Historically speaking it means that the UK owes protection to the vessel."
"The UK has political responsibilities to anything that is flagged. And that's why it's much more serious than if there just happened to be a British captain on board."
He says the impact on trade in the region had so far been minimal, but warns that if the international community began viewing the Strait of Hormuz as a dangerous place, it could create a "very different" scenario.
Highly volatile
The seizing of a British-flagged tanker in Omani waters, empty and inbound to a Saudi port, marks a serious escalation in a whole catalogue of recent incidents in the Gulf.
It comes on the back of the mysterious mining of tankers, the downing of both US and Iranian drones and the near capture of another British-flagged tanker only a few days ago.
Britain wants its response be two things: Measured and multinational.
The government is trying to send a robust message to Iran that this action is unacceptable, not just to the UK but to the rest of the world, but not so robust that it ends up being part of an avoidable US military strike.
This has become a highly volatile situation where not everyone believes in diplomacy. There are figures in Washington who have been pushing for an ever-tougher line with Iran.
And there are figures in Iran, notably in the Revolutionary Guards Corps and the security apparatus, who are quite prepared to push this right up to the brink of a conflict, yet probably stopping just short of one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49061675
2019-07-21 06:17:25Z
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Sabtu, 20 Juli 2019
British Airways flights to Cairo cancelled - BBC News
British Airways has cancelled all flights to the Egyptian capital Cairo for a week as a security "precaution".
Passengers about to board a BA flight to the city from London's Heathrow Airport were told that it was cancelled - and that there would be no alternative flights for a week.
The airline did not specify what the security issue was.
A spokesman for Cairo airport told the BBC the airport had yet to be notified by BA of any such changes.
A BA spokesman said: "We constantly review our security arrangements at all our airports around the world, and have suspended flights to Cairo for seven days as a precaution to allow for further assessment.
"The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our priority, and we would never operate an aircraft unless it was safe to do so."
'Handled badly'
Christine Shelbourne, 70, from Surrey was due to go to Cairo for a week on Saturday with her 11-year-old grandson. She said she managed to check into the flight at 1500 (1400 GMT). However, her boarding card wouldn't open the barriers.
She said: "The check-in staff reissued my boarding pass and I tried again but that didn't work either and we were told to try again in half an hour.
"Whether they knew anything I don't know but my husband told me the flight had been cancelled before they did. There were no suggestions or help from staff about alternative flights."
"My 11-year-old grandson is heartbroken - he's been looking forward to the trip for months. We're just not going now," she added.
"It was handled badly to be honest. My grandson is currently looking for flights for us - he's devastated."
One passenger named Dan said the airline had given customers £5 food vouchers "meant to last 24 hours".
The UK Foreign Office on Friday updated its advice for Britons travelling to Egypt.
The advice includes the warning: "There's a heightened risk of terrorism against aviation. Additional security measures are in place for flights departing from Egypt to the UK."
BBC Afrique's Pierre-Antoine Denis, in Cairo, reports that all other airlines that use the airport are operating normally.
Following the bomb explosion that destroyed a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai peninsula in October 2015 after it had departed Sharm El Sheikh airport, the UK was one of a number of countries to temporarily suspend flights to and from the country.
The Foreign Office continues to advise against travel to certain parts of Egypt.
Have you been affected by flights to Cairo being cancelled by British Airways? Please get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
- WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803
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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49059700
2019-07-20 19:50:17Z
CBMiJGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy91ay00OTA1OTcwMNIBKGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy9hbXAvdWstNDkwNTk3MDA
British Airways flights to Cairo cancelled - BBC News
British Airways has cancelled all flights to the Egyptian capital Cairo for a week as a security "precaution".
Passengers about to board a BA flight to the city from London's Heathrow Airport were told that it was cancelled - and that there would be no alternative flights for a week.
The airline did not specify what the security issue was.
A spokesman for Cairo airport told the BBC the airport had yet to be notified by BA of any such changes.
A BA spokesman said: "We constantly review our security arrangements at all our airports around the world, and have suspended flights to Cairo for seven days as a precaution to allow for further assessment.
"The safety and security of our customers and crew is always our priority, and we would never operate an aircraft unless it was safe to do so."
'Handled badly'
Christine Shelbourne, 70, from Surrey was due to go to Cairo for a week on Saturday with her 11-year-old grandson. She said she managed to check into the flight at 1500 (1400 GMT). However, her boarding card wouldn't open the barriers.
She said: "The check-in staff reissued my boarding pass and I tried again but that didn't work either and we were told to try again in half an hour.
"Whether they knew anything I don't know but my husband told me the flight had been cancelled before they did. There were no suggestions or help from staff about alternative flights."
"My 11-year-old grandson is heartbroken - he's been looking forward to the trip for months. We're just not going now," she added.
"It was handled badly to be honest. My grandson is currently looking for flights for us - he's devastated."
One passenger named Dan said the airline had given customers £5 food vouchers "meant to last 24 hours".
The UK Foreign Office on Friday updated its advice for Britons travelling to Egypt.
The advice includes the warning: "There's a heightened risk of terrorism against aviation. Additional security measures are in place for flights departing from Egypt to the UK."
BBC Afrique's Pierre-Antoine Denis, in Cairo, reports that all other airlines that use the airport are operating normally.
Following the bomb explosion that destroyed a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai peninsula in October 2015 after it had departed Sharm El Sheikh airport, the UK was one of a number of countries to temporarily suspend flights to and from the country.
The Foreign Office continues to advise against travel to certain parts of Egypt.
Have you been affected by flights to Cairo being cancelled by British Airways? Please get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
- WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803
- Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSay
- Text an SMS or MMS to 61124 or +44 7624 800 100
- Please read our terms of use and privacy policy
T
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49059700
2019-07-20 19:02:00Z
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Boris Johnson, Britain’s likely next prime minister, is a hack — a journalist who has reached the pinnacle of power - The Washington Post
Neville Elder Corbis/Getty Images
LONDON — Boris Johnson, the far-ahead front-runner to become Britain’s prime minister this week, waved a vacuum-packed fish over his head and railed at the European Union.
A kipper smoker on the Isle of Man, Johnson said Wednesday, “has had his costs massively increased by Brussels bureaucrats who have insisted that each herring fillet must be accompanied by” — he paused to reach for another prop — “a plastic ice pillow! Pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging, health and safety.”
The audience roared. Johnson, populist charmer, always gets a laugh.
Did it matter that the ice pillow was actually the result of a British regulation and had nothing to do with the E.U.? Does it matter that the likely future British leader has a loose relationship with the truth?
The key to understanding Johnson, say his biographers, lifelong observers, friends and enemies in a dozen interviews with The Washington Post, is to see him first as a hack — a hack being the self-deprecating but not pejorative Britishism for a working journalist shoveling reams of copy to his masters on deadline.
Johnson was fired from his first job, at the Times of London, for making up a quote about Edward II’s catamite lover and attributing it to his godfather, Oxford historian Colin Lucas.
But he would go on to find his voice, and develop his shtick, during his years as a Brussels-based foreign correspondent — racing around in his lipstick-red Alfa Romeo, speaking intentionally bad French and banging out outrageous and only semi-true dispatches.
Before he was a lawmaker, London mayor or foreign secretary, Johnson made his name as one of Britain’s top columnists. And he has continued as a hack through much of his political career. A possible last column ran just a week ago.
Former London mayor and current member of Parliament, Boris Johnson is Britain’s most nontraditional politician. Here’s why.
It was as a hack, writing for the middlebrow “Tory Telegraph,” that Johnson learned to combine his high and his low. He is an upper-class Oxford-educated classicist who sprinkles his rapid-fire remarks with Latin aphorisms. But he has also cultivated a persona as a populist everyman in frayed trousers who bikes to the office. He is a version of his favorite meal: links of proper British sausage quaffed with a $100-a-bottle Tignanello.
It was as a hack, too, that Johnson stoked the cheeky, slanted, self-pitying euroskepticism that would set the stage for Brexit — and ultimately send him in the direction of 10 Downing Street.
“Beware of newspaper columnists,” Martin Fletcher, a former Times editor, told The Post. “They are paid to be controversial, to be colorful, to be provocative. There are very few consequences to what they write. But those are not attributes you want in your prime minister.”
The ranks of the British political class are full of former journalists. But Johnson — if he bests Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt when the results are announced Tuesday — would be the first hack in the top job in recent times. In this, he is thought to aspire to be like Winston Churchill. Johnson, by all accounts, has never been lacking in ambition.
Hardly anyone had heard of him when 24-year-old Johnson arrived in Brussels in the spring of 1989 to begin life as a foreign correspondent for the Telegraph. He and his new first wife moved into an inauspicious flat above a dentist’s office in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, a bourgeois neighborhood where fussy Flemish residents would scribble anonymous notes complaining about the misplacement of trash bins, according to his biographers.
By the time he left Brussels five years later, Johnson was one of Margaret Thatcher’s favorite commentators — the banner man for a new type of Tory, an irreverent, kind of hip Conservative who would shortly launch his rocket of a political career.
In Brussels — the often dull, bureaucratic capital of the E.U. — the young Johnson found a way to run at the front of the field, ahead of older, more docile correspondents who tended to stick up for the E.U. and stick to the facts.
Johnson hit on a theme: how the European Union was run by the devilish French and rules-obsessed Germans, who were out to pass all sorts of onerous rules designed to clip the wings of a once-great Britain.
Peter Nicholls
Reuters
Boris Johnson’s rant about fish packing regulations this past week was reminiscent of his articles from Brussels.
Skewering European officials at theatrical news conferences, then letting it rip on his Tandy 300, Johnson became the subject of envy and admiration in the British press corps in Brussels.
“His stories about the idiocies of the European Union were received with rapture by an ever-growing circle of fans, and he became the only Brussels correspondent of whom ordinary mortals have heard,” wrote Andrew Gimson, a former colleague and author of a biography, “The Adventures of Boris Johnson.”
But these same stories were viewed, by colleagues and competitors, as deeply dubious.
Peter Guilford, who worked alongside Johnson as a Brussels correspondent for the Times, credited Johnson with turning euroskeptic journalism into “an art form.” But Guilford took issue with Johnson’s willingness “to ham up the story, so there wasn’t much difference between news and entertainment . . . He would write outrageous stories with only slenderest connection of truth in them.”
Fletcher, the former Times editor, has compiled a list of Johnson’s greatest hits from Brussels: Johnson wrote that the E.U. wanted to standardize coffins, the smell of manure and the size of condoms — and had rejected an Italian request to make undersized rubbers. He warned Brits that their prawn-cocktail-flavored chips could be banned, that their sausages were under threat and that their fishermen would be required to wear hairnets.
Further goosing fears of the supranational state, Johnson wrote about the coming of compulsory European identification cards. (They are not coming.) He speculated that French, German and Dutch citizens would be elected to the British House of Commons. (Also not happening.) And he sought to underscore E.U. wastefulness with his description of a “kilometre-high Tower of Babel” to be built in Brussels.
James Landale, who worked with Johnson in Brussels and is the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, wrote a poem to mark Johnson’s departure from the E.U. capital in 1995: “Boris told such dreadful lies / It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes.”
Johnson has acknowledged that there was a bit of a game in all this.
“Everything I wrote from Brussels I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall,” he told BBC’s “Desert Island Discs” in 2005. “And I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England. It really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.”
Simon Dawson
Bloomberg News
Supporters listen to Johnson’s fish story at a campaign event on Wednesday.
Johnson and his spokesman did not respond to The Post’s interview requests.
Bill Newton Dunn, a long-serving British member of the European Parliament, said that, in person, Johnson was like a “puppy dog, anxious to please and get on with everybody.”
But less so in print.
“What was irritating is that he then started coming up with some extraordinary and, it turned out, completely inventive untrue stories about Brussels,” Newton Dunn said, recalling the headline: “Brussels recruits sniffers to ensure that Euro-manure smells the same.”
His former editor at the Telegraph, Max Hastings, has declared Johnson “unfit for national office.”
“There is room for debate about whether he is a scoundrel or mere rogue, but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth,” Hastings wrote in the Guardian.
Conrad Black, who once owned the Telegraph, fired back in the Spectator that Johnson is “more reliable and trustworthy” than Hastings.
Black had his own run-ins with Johnson, but he called his former charge “such an effective correspondent for us in Brussels that he greatly influenced British opinion on this country’s relations with Europe.”
“Boris’s peccadilloes were more absurd, complicated and over-publicized than the shambles of the personal lives of other journalists,” Black said. “But his editorial opinions were sensible and consistent. His shtick grew tiresome, like an over-familiar vaudeville act, but he was at all times a person of goodwill and his foibles were deployed to the benefit of the enterprise.”
Sometimes, when Johnson’s words haven’t been supported by facts, people have excused him with the notion that he’s inattentive to detail. But Guilford emphasized that Johnson isn’t lazy: “He’s a workaholic. I’ve never seen someone so committed at the expense of everything.”
He recalled the two were at a mutual friend’s wedding in Ireland, and Johnson “spent every waking minute talking to Irish people” about their views on an upcoming abortion referendum.
“On Monday, we all woke up with a hangover to see this big center page piece about the referendum. He spent the whole time doing it — irrespective of being there with friends and family,” Guilford said. “In my view, he never stops.”
Sonia Purnell, author of “Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition,” was Johnson’s deputy in the Brussels office.
She told The Post that working alongside Johnson “wasn’t fun and it wasn’t productive. He’s very secretive, he’s really difficult to work with for that reason.” She said that he has a “frightening temper” and there’s “no team playing. He’s very much the solo performer.”
In her biography, she recalls Johnson launching into closed-door rants just before deadline, screaming obscenities at a potted plant, to lather himself up to write another scathing column.
To The Post, she characterized Johnson as ubercompetitive — suggesting that, going back to his childhood, he “competed at everything, including who was the blondest, who was the fastest, who was the cleverest.” In the adult Johnson, she said, that has resulted in a desire for “approval and love of the crowd” and an “incredible drive to be top dog.”
Purnell told the Guardian that she once said something to Johnson — made a joke about an official — in the kitchen of the Telegraph’s Brussels bureau. She saw her remarks in print a few days later. Johnson attributed them to “an E.U. source.”
Read more
Boris Johnson dogged by questions of character
Meet the 0.25 percent of Brits who will pick the next prime minister
Theresa May packs her bags, her legacy dominated by failure
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/boris-johnson-britains-likely-next-prime-minister-is-a-hack--a-journalist-who-has-reached-the-pinnacle-of-power/2019/07/20/0fff5146-a98d-11e9-8733-48c87235f396_story.html
2019-07-20 18:05:55Z
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Live updates: Iran tensions soar after tanker seized - CNN
A Senior Russian lawmaker has claimed that the United States is “taking advantage” of tensions in the Persian Gulf in order to deploy more troops to the region.
“It is already clear who will be the first to take advantage of the escalated situation in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Middle East in general: The Pentagon has just approved the transfer of troops to Saudi Arabia," Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said in a post on Facebook.
The Trump administration is reinforcing its controversial military relationship with Saudi Arabia by preparing to send hundreds of troops to the country amid increasing tensions with Iran, CNN learned Wednesday.
Five hundred troops are expected to go to the Prince Sultan Air Base, located in a desert area east of the Saudi capital of Riyadh, according to US two defense officials. A small number of troops and support personnel are already on site with initial preparations being made for a Patriot missile defense battery as well as runway and airfield improvements, the officials said.
The US has wanted to base troops there for some time because security assessments have shown Iranian missiles would have a difficult time targeting the remote area.
The decision comes as US and Saudi relations remain extremely sensitive amid bipartisan congressional anger how the administration handled the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
But the Trump administration has said it is committed to trying to help protect Saudi Arabia against Iranian aggression.
"Neither Iran nor the United States, by and large, are interested in a real war," Kosachev wrote. "However, the ‘game of nerves’ and the raising of stakes will continue."
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/iran-british-tanker-july-2019/index.html
2019-07-20 17:21:00Z
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