{"id":172833,"date":"2020-01-08T22:26:15","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T19:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whaj24.com\/?p=172833"},"modified":"2020-01-08T22:26:15","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T19:26:15","slug":"us-iran-step-back-from-the-brink-trump-opts-for-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mennews.net\/?p=172833","title":{"rendered":"US, Iran step back from the brink; Trump opts for sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Whaj 24 – WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The U.S. and Iran stepped back from the brink of possible war Wednesday, as President Donald Trump indicated he would not respond militarily after no one was harmed in Iran\u2019s missile strike on two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on deescalating the crisis, which reached a new height after he authorized the targeted killing last week of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran\u2019s elite Quds Force. Iran retaliated overnight with its most direct assault on America since the 1979 seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, firing more than a dozen missiles from its territory at the installations in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Trump credited an early warning system \u201cthat worked very well\u201d for the fact that no Americans or Iraqis were killed. He added that Americans should be \u201cextremely grateful and happy\u201d with the outcome.<\/p>\n

Trump, facing one of the greatest tests of his presidency, said Wednesday that Iran appeared to be \u201cstanding down\u201d and said the U.S. response would be to put in place new economic sanctions \u201cuntil Iran changes its behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strikes had\u00a0pushed Tehran and Washington perilously close to all-out conflict<\/a>\u00a0and put the world\u2019s attention on Trump as he weighed whether to respond with more military force. The Republican president delivered his remarks surrounded by his national security advisers in the foyer of the White House. It came after a late-night tweet in which he insisted \u201cAll is well!\u201d after the strikes.<\/p>\n

Iran, for days, had promised to respond forcefully to Soleimani\u2019s killing, but its limited strike on two bases \u2014 one in the northern Iraqi city in Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad in western Iraq \u2014 appeared to signal that it was also uninterested in a wider clash with the U.S. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had \u201cconcluded proportionate measures in self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Trump, who is facing reelection in November, campaigned for president on a promise to keep the United States from engaging in \u201cendless war.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday he said the United States is \u201cready to embrace peace with all who seek it.\u201d That marked a change in tone from his Tuesday warning, \u201cIf Iran does anything that they shouldn\u2019t be doing, they\u2019re going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump opened his remarks by reiterating his promise that \u201cIran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,\u201d even as that country announced in the wake of Soleimani\u2019s killing that it would no longer comply with any of the 2015 nuclear agreement\u2019s limits on enrichment that had been put in place to prevent it from building a nuclear device.<\/p>\n

He seized on the moment of calm to call for new negotiations to replace the deal from which he withdrew the U.S., objecting that it didn\u2019t limit Iran\u2019s ballistic missile programs or constrain its regional proxy campaigns like those led by Soleimani.<\/p>\n

The president spoke directly to Iran, saying, \u201cWe want you to have a future and a great future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump also announced he would ask NATO to become \u201cmuch more involved in the Middle East process.\u201d While he has frequently criticized NATO as obsolete and has encouraged participants to increase their military spending, Trump has sought to have the military alliance refocus its efforts on modern threats.<\/p>\n

Like U.S. troops in the region, NATO forces have temporarily halted their training of Iraqi forces\u00a0and their counter-Islamic State efforts,<\/a>\u00a0and re-positioned some forces due to the current instability.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader\u00a0Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking on Wednesday, said the overnight strike was not necessarily the totality<\/a>\u00a0of Iran\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast night they received a slap,\u201d Khamenei said. \u201cThese military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soleimani\u2019s death last<\/a>\u00a0week in an American drone strike in Baghdad prompted angry calls for vengeance and drew massive crowds of Iranians to the streets to mourn him. Khamenei himself\u00a0wept at the funeral<\/a>\u00a0in a sign of his bond with the commander.<\/p>\n

The Iranians fired a total of 15 missiles in the latest strikes, two U.S. officials said. Ten hit the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq\u2019s western Anbar province and one targeted a base in Irbil in Iraq\u2019s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Four failed, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about a military operation.<\/p>\n

According to a U.S. official, early warning systems detected the missile launches and alarms sounded, giving personnel at the bases time to get to shelter. Officials also said that the U.S. was aware of preparations for the attack. It\u2019s unclear if any intelligence identified specific targets or was more general.<\/p>\n

Two Iraqi security officials said a missile appeared to have struck a plane at Ain al-Asad, igniting a fire.<\/p>\n

Ain al-Asad was first used by American forces after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, and it later was used by American troops in the fight against the Islamic State group. It houses about 1,500 U.S. and coalition forces. Trump visited it in December 2018, making his first presidential visit to troops in the region. Vice President Mike Pence visited both Ain al-Asad and Irbil in November.<\/p>\n

Trump spoke of new sanctions on Iran, but it was not immediately clear what those would be. The primary agencies involved in implementing such penalties \u2013 the departments of Commerce, State and Treasury \u2013 do not preview those actions to prevent the targets from taking steps to evade them.<\/p>\n

Since withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, the administration has already imposed harsh sanctions on nearly every significant portion of Iran\u2019s economic, energy, shipping and military sectors. However, it retains broad authority to expand their scope and also to target individual Iranian officials and their families with penalties, including asset freezes and travel bans. It can also threaten foreign individuals and companies with U.S. sanctions if they do business with designated Iranians.<\/p>\n

The effort to deescalate the conflict comes after world leaders appealed to both sides for restraint. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and\u00a0Russian President Vladimir Putin in a joint statement<\/a>\u00a0after a closed-door meeting on Mideast security warned that the further use of force \u201cwould lead to a new cycle of instability and would eventually damage everyone\u2019s interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Washington, Democrats called on Trump avoid military escalation.<\/p>\n

Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the administration needs to quickly \u201cextricate us from what could lead into a full-fledged war with terrible casualties.\u201d Engel said he feared the situation \u201dspirals out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fallout for\u00a0Trump\u2019s order to kill Soleimani<\/a>\u00a0had been swift.<\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s Parliament voted to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, which would undermine efforts to fight Islamic State militants in the region and would strengthen Iran\u2019s influence in the Mideast.<\/p>\n

The counterattack by Iran came as Trump and his top advisers were under pressure to disclose more details about the intelligence that led to the American strike that killed Soleimani.<\/p>\n

Top Senate Democrats, citing \u201cdeep concern\u201d about the lack of information coming from the Trump administration about the Iran operation, called on Defense Department officials to provide \u201cregular briefings and documents\u201d to Congress.<\/p>\n

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the senators said in a letter Wednesday that the White House\u2019s classified War Powers notification to Congress was \u201cgeneric, vague, and entirely inconsistent in its level of detail\u201d compared with the norm.<\/p>\n

They also registered their \u201cgrave concern\u201d with Trump\u2019s comments on targeting Iranian cultural sites and asked for clarification. Members of Congress were to be briefed on the strike Wednesday afternoon in closed-door sessions on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

Trump and top national security officials have justified the airstrike with general statements about the threat posed by Soleimani, who commanded proxy forces outside Iran and was responsible for the deaths of American troops in Iraq.<\/p>\n

One lawmaker who has read the classified notification that Trump sent Congress after the U.S. air strike that killed Soleimani said the two-page document did not describe any imminent planned attacks or contain any new information. The lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the classified document, said the letter gave a historic account of attacks that have been reported publicly.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Lolita Baldor, Darlene Superville Alan Fram and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report<\/p>\n

AP NEWS *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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