Iran’s president and foreign minister dropped hints on Friday of movement toward a resolution in the fates of Americans imprisoned or missing in Iran. The president, Hassan Rouhani, who was visiting New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering, told guests at an invitation-only meeting in a nearby hotel that he wanted the governments of Iran and the United States “to be helpful” in finding […]
INTERNATIONAL. Gleaming glass skyscrapers, state-of-the-art technology, and wealthy merchant families have replaced the Gulf’s muddy towns and villages populated by traders and pearl fishers that once lacked electricity, running water or modern communications. The region’s modern day projection of a visionary cutting- edge, 21st century urban environment masks however the fact that some things have not changed. Gulf states continue to be ruled by the same families, […]
UAE. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today that although it expects that some corporates and infrastructure issuers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will likely feel the weight of lower oil prices, most of its rated entities show resilient financials for now, in an industry report card published today titled, “Some Gulf Corporates Could Feel The Heat On Low Oil Prices.” Corporate and infrastructure companies in the […]
A senior French economic and political delegation is in Tehran to lay the groundwork for the first business contracts between France and Iran since an accord to curb its nuclear programme in July. France’s main business lobby group, the Medef, is sending a delegation comprising more than 100 firms to Iran, including companies such as oil major Total, planemaker Airbus and car manufacturer Peugeot. “We’re trying to […]
Dubai-based chartered accountants firm Sangani and Company has joined Kudos International Network as a full member auditing and accounting firm, the company announced. Kudos International Network is an international accounting and auditing network and member of Forum of Firms. Forum of Firms is an association of international networks of accounting firms performing audits of financial statements used across borders. The Forum’s objective is to promote consistent and […]
LONDON — Russia’s military buildup in Syria now includes surface-to-air missiles as well as combat aircraft with air-to-air capability, deployments that raise “serious questions” about Moscow’s role in the region, Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday. Russian officials have said that the purpose of the buildup at a base near Latakia, Syria, is to combat the Islamic State. But the deployment of air defense systems and […]
Middle East By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and ERIC SCHMITT September 17, 2015 The government of Iran released five senior members of Al Qaeda earlier this year, including the man who stepped in to serve as the terrorist group’s interim leader immediately after Osama bin Laden’s death, and who is the subject of a $5 million bounty, according to an American official who had been briefed on the matter. Iran’s release of the […]
Middle East Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday of foreign enemy subversions. By THOMAS ERDBRINK September 17, 2015 TEHRAN — Negotiating the nuclear agreement was a torturous, two-year process for Iran’s leaders, but a new kind of struggle is unfolding now in Iran, where the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani have begun to tackle a question Iranians have not thought about much since the revolution […]
|By Matein Khalid| The world’s emerging markets have been savaged by multiple economic, banking, currency and political shocks since 2011. Global emerging markets are far too diverse and nuanced to be analyzed as a single asset class but now trade at a 24% valuation discount to developed markets. The financial markets now price draconian scenarios for earnings, exports, sovereign credit, industrial production and economic growth. The shortage […]
WASHINGTON — President Obama will host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Nov. 9 in their first face-to-face meeting since their rupture over the international nuclear agreement with Iran, the White House said Wednesday. Mr. Obama invited Mr. Netanyahu to talk about the way forward now that the Iran agreement has cleared obstacles in Congress. The president has offered to find ways […]
Middle East By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE September 15, 2015 GENEVA — The brother of a Washington Post journalist imprisoned in Iran for more than a year appealed to a United Nations human rights panel on Tuesday to intercede with the Iranian authorities to obtain his release. Ali Rezaian, whose brother, Jason, was arrested in Tehran in July 2014, made his entreaty at a meeting in Geneva of the United Nations […]
Oil extended its decline below $45 a barrel in New York as a further pullback in US drilling failed to temper expectations that the global oversupply will persist for most of next year. West Texas Intermediate futures slipped 0.5 per cent after declining 2.8 per cent on 11 September when Goldman Sachs said the surprising endurance of the surplus could push prices down to $20 a barrel. The discount […]
HAJJA, Yemen — The airstrike slammed into Al-Sham water-bottling plant at the end of the night shift, killing 13 workers who were minutes away from heading home. Standing among the strewn bottles, smoldering boxes and pulverized machines a few days after the airstrike here, the owner, Ibrahim al-Razoom, searched in vain for any possible reason that warplanes from a Saudi-led military coalition would have attacked the place. […]
ABU DHABI // The last of the Emirati soldiers who sacrificed their lives defending the people of Yemen arrived home on Saturday, bringing the total number killed to 52. The servicemen died alongside Saudi Arabian and Bahraini troops when a missile fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels hit an arms depot in Marib province nine days ago. Their bodies were received in a ceremony at Al Bateen Airport, […]
Middle East News Analysis By PETER BAKER and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS September 11, 2015 WASHINGTON — Having beaten back a congressional campaign to derail his nuclear agreement with Iran, President Obama now faces a panoply of challenges that may be just as daunting: making the deal actually work while repairing relations with disaffected allies and constraining Tehran’s regional ambitions. He got started Friday even as the House was still voting by announcing […]
Middle East By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT September 11, 2015 The United States has confirmed the presence of traces of sulfur mustard, a chemical warfare agent, on fragments of ordnance recently used by the Islamic State in attacks in Syria and Iraq, according to two American officials familiar with the results of laboratory analysis of the samples. The laboratory tests, which were also performed on scraps of clothing from victims, […]
President Obama at a meeting to discuss the Iran nuclear accord at the White House on Thursday. By JENNIFER STEINHAUER September 10, 2015 WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats delivered a major victory to President Obama on Thursday when they blocked a Republican resolution to reject a six-nation nuclear accord with Iran, ensuring that the landmark deal will take effect without a veto showdown between Congress and the White House. A […]
Video The Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton backed the Iran deal in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Wednesday. By DAVID E. SANGER and AMY CHOZICK September 9, 2015 WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday embraced the Iran nuclear deal that she paved the way for as secretary of state, but said it would work only “as part of a larger strategy toward Iran” that contained the […]
Middle East By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN September 9, 2015 WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed debate on President Obama’s landmark nuclear accord with Iran amid a revolt by some Republicans who claimed the White House had not disclosed secret side agreements on the deal. The delay of the historic debate because of Republican infighting opened a new twist in the White House’s effort to move forward with the […]
WASHINGTON — Three Democratic senators announced on Tuesday that they would back President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, bringing to 41 the total number of Senate supporters as critics in Congress prepared to open a historic debate on the accord. With the support of the three senators — Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon — the White House gained additional […]
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday rallied Republican opposition to President Obama’s agreement with Iran, denouncing it as a “shameful deal” that would risk a new Holocaust and possibly lead to the first nuclear attack since Nagasaki. In a full-throated speech to supporters at the American Enterprise Institute here, Mr. Cheney argued that Mr. Obama and his team had abandoned their own criteria for […]
BAGHDAD — Having sold his car for $4,600, and then some of his wife’s jewelry, and having loaded his smartphone with photographs of his five children, all that was left for Haider Abdella to do was say goodbye. “From yesterday to today, we are crying,” he said. His mother sat next to him on the couch, sobbing. “He’s never left me before, from when he was a […]
HAIFA, Israel — THE day after six world powers reached a nuclear agreement with Iran in July, the Israeli Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee called on Israel’s government to “continue to closely follow the precise and strict implementation” of the agreement “to ensure that Iran is not continuing to fool the international community as it did in the past, while strengthening the historic alliance between the […]
WASHINGTON — Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, announced on Sunday that she will support the nuclear agreement with Iran that has roiled many in her Florida district. “I’ll be casting my vote to support the deal and if necessary sustain the president’s veto,” she told Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on CNN. While she called it a “gut wrenching” […]
