JERUSALEM: The United States upgraded its diplomatic mission to the Palestinians on Thursday, reversing a Trump administration move ahead of a planned visit by President Joe Biden.
The “Palestinian Affairs Unit” (PAU) was renamed the “US Office of Palestinian Affairs” (OPA) and will report directly to Washington “on substantive matters.” Prior to becoming the PAU, it had been the US consulate in Jerusalem and a focus of Palestinian statehood goals in the city.
Former President Donald Trump formally closed the consulate and redesignated it as the PAU within the US Embassy that was moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018.
That move outraged Palestinians, who saw it as undermining their aspiration to have East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. Israel, which captured East Jerusalem in 1967, calls Jerusalem its indivisible capital.
“The OPA operates under the auspices of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, and reports on substantive matters directly to the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau in the State Department,” a spokesperson for the mission said.
“The name change was done to better align with State Department nomenclature,” the spokesperson said. “The new OPA operating structure is designed to strengthen our diplomatic reporting and public diplomacy engagement.”
On Thursday, Palestinian officials hosted US State Department envoy Hady Amr in Ramallah, their seat of government in the occupied West Bank. They had no immediate comment at the end of the meeting.
A senior Palestinian official told Reuters that in a call with the US Secretary of State several days ago, President Mahmoud Abbas rejected any alternatives to the reopening of the US consulate in Jerusalem.
Under the Trump-era redesignation, the former consulate’s staff and functions remained largely identical, but were subordinate to the embassy rather than on a strict US-Palestinian bilateral track.
The former consulate building, which now houses the OPA, is in west Jerusalem.
The Biden administration has pledged to reopen the consulate, but Israel has said it would not consent to this and proposed that a consulate be opened in Ramallah instead.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined comment on Thursday’s redesignation of the Jerusalem mission.
US signals a boost in ties with Palestinians ahead of Biden visit
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US signals a boost in ties with Palestinians ahead of Biden visit
- The "Palestinian Affairs Unit" (PAU) was renamed the "US Office of Palestinian Affairs" (OPA) and will report directly to Washington "on substantive matters"
- The OPA operates under the auspices of the US Embassy in Jerusalem
Russia warns US against ‘military intervention’ in Iran-Israel war
Any US military action “would be an extremely dangerous step”
MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday warned the United States not to take military action against Iran, amid speculation over whether Washington will enter the war alongside Israel.
Moscow issued its warning after Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a phone call condemned Israeli attacks on Iran and urged a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Israel launched an unprecedented wave of strikes at Iran last week, to which Tehran responded with missile and drone attacks.
US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he was considering whether to join Israel’s strikes. “I may do it, I may not do it,” he said.
Russian foreign ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters: “We would like to particularly warn Washington against military intervention in the situation.”
Any US military action “would be an extremely dangerous step with truly unpredictable negative consequences,” she added.
Earlier on Thursday, following the leaders’ call, the Kremlin said Putin and Xi “strongly condemn Israel’s actions.”
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Moscow and Beijing believed the end to the hostilities “should be achieved exclusively by political and diplomatic means.”
Iran’s options against foreign aggression include closing Strait of Hormuz, lawmaker says
- “Iran has numerous options to respond to its enemies and uses such options based on what the situation is,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Behnam Saeedi
- “Closing the Strait of Hormuz is one of the potential options for Iran“
DUBAI: Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz as a way of hitting back against its enemies, a senior lawmaker said on Thursday, though a second member of parliament said this would only happen if Tehran’s vital interests were endangered.
Iran has in the past threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to traffic in retaliation for Western pressure, and shipping sources said on Wednesday that commercial ships were avoiding Iran’s waters around the strait.
“Iran has numerous options to respond to its enemies and uses such options based on what the situation is,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Behnam Saeedi, a member of the parliament’s National Security Committee presidium as saying.
“Closing the Strait of Hormuz is one of the potential options for Iran,” he said.
Mehr later quoted another lawmaker, Ali Yazdikhah, as saying Iran would continue to allow free shipping in the Strait and in the Gulf so long as its vital national interests were not at risk.
“If the United States officially and operationally enters the war in support of the Zionists (Israel), it is the legitimate right of Iran in view of pressuring the US and Western countries to disrupt their oil trade’s ease of transit,” Yazdikhah said.
President Donald Trump is keeping the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites.
Tehran has so far refrained from closing the Strait because all regional states and many other countries benefit from it, Yazdikhah added.
“It is better than no country supports Israel to confront Iran. Iran’s enemies know well that we have tens of ways to make the Strait of Hormuz unsafe and this option is feasible for us,” the parliamentarian said.
The Strait of Hormuz lies between Oman and Iran and is the primary export route for Gulf producers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Kuwait.
About 20 percent of the world’s daily oil consumption — around 18 million barrels — passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is only about 33 km (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point.
UN: Two million Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
- The Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011, displaced half of the population internally or abroad
- But Assad’s December 8 ouster at the hands of Islamist forces sparked hopes of return
BEIRUT: Over two million Syrians who had fled their homes during their country’s war have returned since the ouster of Bashar Assad, UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi said Thursday, ahead of a visit to Syria.
The Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011 with Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests, displaced half of the population internally or abroad.
But Assad’s December 8 ouster at the hands of Islamist forces sparked hopes of return.
“Over two million Syrian refugees and displaced have returned home since December,” Grandi wrote on X during a visit to neighboring Lebanon, which hosts about 1.5 million Syrian refugees, according to official estimates.
It is “a sign of hope amid rising regional tensions,” he said.
“This proves that we need political solutions – not another wave of instability and displacement.”
After 14 years of war, many returnees face the reality of finding their homes and property badly damaged or destroyed.
But with the recent lifting of Western sanctions on Syria, new authorities hope for international support to launch reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $400 billion.
Earlier this month, UNHCR estimated that up to 1.5 million Syrians from abroad and two million internally displaced persons may return by the end of 2025.
‘Very bad decision’ if Hezbollah joins Iran-Israel war, says US official
- US special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack meets Lebanese officials in Beirut as Iran and Israel trade more strikes
- Hezbollah has condemned Israel’s strikes on Iran and expressed full solidarity with its leadership
BEIRUT: A top US official visiting the Lebanese capital on Thursday discouraged Tehran-backed armed group Hezbollah from intervening in the war between Iran and Israel, saying it would be a “very bad decision.”
US special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkiye, met Lebanese officials in Beirut as Iran and Israel traded more strikes in their days-long war and as the US continues to press Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah.
After meeting Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a close ally of Hezbollah, Barrack was asked what may happen if Hezbollah joined in the regional conflict.
“I can say on behalf of President (Donald) Trump, which he has been very clear in expressing as has Special Envoy (Steve) Witkoff: that would be a very, very, very bad decision,” Barrack told reporters.
Hezbollah has condemned Israel’s strikes on Iran and expressed full solidarity with its leadership. On Thursday, it said threats against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would have “dire consequences.”
But the group has stopped short of making explicit threats to intervene. After Israel began strikes on Iran last week, a Hezbollah official told Reuters the group would not launch its own attack on Israel in response.
Hezbollah was left badly weakened from last year’s war with Israel, in which the group’s leadership was gutted, thousands of fighters were killed and strongholds in southern Lebanon and near Beirut were severely damaged.
A US-brokered ceasefire deal which ended that war stipulates that the Lebanese government must ensure there are no arms outside state control.
Barrack also met Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Thursday and discussed the state’s monopoly on all arms.
Barrack is a private equity executive who has long advised Trump and chaired his inaugural presidential committee in 2016. He was appointed to his role in Turkiye and, in late May, also assumed the position of special envoy to Syria.
Israel strikes Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, other nuclear sites
- Israeli forces also struck nuclear sites in Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz, and continue to target additional facilities
DUBAI: Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said Thursday.
The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.
Israel had warned earlier it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area. The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that preceded strikes.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter.
A military spokesperson later said Israeli forces struck nuclear sites in Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz, and continue to target additional facilities. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
An Israeli military official said on Thursday that “it was a mistake” for a military spokesperson to have said earlier in the day that Israel had struck the Bushehr nuclear site in Iran.
The official would only confirm that Israel had hit the Natanz, Isfahan and Arak nuclear sites in Iran.
Pressed further on Bushehr, the official said he could neither confirm or deny that Israel had struck the location, where Iran has a reactor.
Hitting Bushehr, which is close to Gulf Arab neighbors and staffed in part by Russian experts, would have been a major escalation.
Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometers southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the US purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from opponents to the deal.
