Deadline midnight: Iran on the brink of international isolation

Agencies

November 4, 2018

Jeddah, Nov 4: When the clocks strike midnight on the US east coast on Sunday, Iran will become the world’s economic pariah state.

US President Donald Trump will reintroduce tough sanctions on Iran’s vital oil sales and banking sectors to try to force Tehran into negotiations to scrap its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and end its regional meddling.

Most international sanctions were lifted in 2016 in a deal Iran signed with world powers the year before to curb its uranium enrichment program, widely seen as a disguised effort to develop a nuclear bomb.

But Trump denounced the deal as flawed in Iran’s favor, and withdrew in May. His decision was welcomed throughout the Middle East.

Iran’s “aggressive policies” were “largely responsible” for the reimposition of US sanctions, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, said on Saturday.

In Iran, the sanctions were greeted with boastful defiance. “The world opposes every decision made by Trump,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. “America’s goal has been to re-establish the domination it had before 1979 but it has failed.”

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, which runs the foreign operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responded to a Game of Thrones-inspired tweet by Trump on Friday that warned: “Sanctions are Coming.”

“I will stand against you,” Soleimani said on Instagram.

Iran has been trying for six months with the EU to create a financial mechanism to avoid the sanctions. Diplomats said the new EU mechanism to pay for Iranian exports should be legally in place by Nov. 4, but not operational until next year. In addition, no country has volunteered to host the entity, which is delaying the process.

A senior French diplomat said on Saturday there was no way any trade with the mechanism could be conducted before the end of 2018, and no other countries, including China, would be part of it.

The US has given eight countries — including India, Japan and possibly China —waivers to continue importing Iranian oil to avoid upsetting the global market.

Turkey said on Saturday it had received initial indications from Washington that it would be granted a waiver, but is awaiting clarification on Monday.

The sanctions are “aimed at depriving the Iranian regime of the revenues it uses to spread death and destruction around the world,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.

“Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country.”

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Israeli forces invade southwestern Syria, set up checkpoint in Quneitra

News Network

November 24,2025

Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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