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FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks live on television after casting his ballot in the Iranian presidential election in Tehran June 12, 2009. REUTERS/Caren Firouz/File Photo
April 21, 2019
By Parisa Hafezi
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran’s top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has replaced the head of the influential Revolutionary Guards Corps, state TV reported on Sunday, days after the United States designated the elite group a foreign terrorist organization.
The TV station did not give a reason for the change when it announced the appointment of Brigadier General Hossein Salami to the position.
“The Supreme Leader has appointed Salami as the new commander-in-chief of the Guards, who will replace Mohammad Ali Jafari,” it said.
Major General Jafari had held the post since September 2007.
President Donald Trump on April 8 designated the Guards a terrorist organization, in an unprecedented step that drew Iranian condemnation and raised concerns about retaliatory attacks on U.S. forces. The designation took effect on April 15.
Tehran retaliated by naming the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terrorist organization and the U.S. government as a sponsor of terrorism.
The IRGC, created by late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, is more than a military force. It is also an industrial empire with political clout and is loyal to the supreme leader.
Comprising an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units, the Guards also command the Basij, a religious volunteer paramilitary force, and control Iran’s missile programs. The Guards’ overseas Quds forces have fought Iran’s proxy wars in the region.
The IRGC is in charge of Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Tehran has warned that it has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 kms (1,242 miles), putting Israel and U.S. military bases in the region within reach.
Salami, born in 1960, said in January that Iran’s strategy was to wipe “the Zionist regime” (Israel) off the political map, Iran’s state TV reported.
“We announce that if Israel takes any action to wage a war against us, it will definitely lead to its own elimination,” Salami said after an Israeli attack on Iranian targets in Syria in January, Iranian media reported.
Israel sees Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs as a threat to its existence. Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes only.
Israel, which Islamic Iran refuses to recognize, backed Trump’s move in May to quit a 2015 international deal on Iran’s nuclear program and welcomed Washington’s reimposition of sanctions on Tehran.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, William Maclean)
Source: OANN


FILE PHOTO: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
April 23, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer will meet with President Donald Trump on April 30 at the White House over the fate of proposals to boost U.S. infrastructure repairs by at least $1 trillion, according to a congressional aide and an administration official.
Pelosi said in New York on Tuesday the meeting will happen next week. Trump, who vowed in 2016 as a candidate to back $1 trillion of infrastructure spending over 10 years, has been vague about his plans in recent months. “Both parties should be able to unite for a great rebuilding of America’s crumbling infrastructure,” Trump said in February during his State of the Union address.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Source: OANN

President Donald Trump is a “cancer” on the office, and Congress should “excise” it, lawyer George Conway charged Thursday.
In a scathing opinion piece for The Washington Post, Conway — an ardent Trump critic and husband of White House counsel Kellyanne Conway, a stalwart Trump defender — argued the president’s impeachable crime was putting his own interests above those of the nation.
“White House counsel John Dean famously told [President Richard] Nixon that there was a cancer within the presidency and that it was growing,” Conway wrote. “What the Mueller report disturbingly shows, with crystal clarity, is that today there is a cancer in the presidency: President Donald J. Trump.
“Congress now bears the solemn constitutional duty to excise that cancer without delay.”
According to Conway, Mueller’s report is “damning.”
“The president may have the raw constitutional power to, say, squelch an investigation or to pardon a close associate,” he wrote. “But if he does so not to serve the public interest, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act.”
He argues Mueller’s investigation “found multiple acts by the president that were capable of executing undue influence over law enforcement investigations” — and compares the effort to that of Nixon.
“[Nixon] was almost certainly to be impeached, and removed from office, after the infamous ‘smoking gun tape’ came out,” Conway wrote, noting Nixon is heard on the tape directing his chief of staff to get the CIA director, Richard Helms, to tell the FBI not to go any further in the Watergate prosecution. Helms ignored the directive.
“The underlying crime in Watergate was a clumsy, third-rate burglary in an election campaign that turned out to be a landslide.
“The investigation that Trump tried to interfere with here, to protect his own personal interests, was in significant part an investigation of how a hostile foreign power interfered with our democracy. If that’s not putting personal interests above a presidential duty to the nation, nothing is.”
Source: NewsMax Politics


FILE PHOTO: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir addresses a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdalla/File Photo
April 16, 2019
By Patrick Werr
CAIRO (Reuters) – The United States will consider new ways to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if it sees a fundamental change in its government and a commitment not to support terrorism, a State Department official said.
The U.S. government added Sudan to its list of terrorism in 1993 over allegations that then-President Omar al-Bashir’s government was supporting terrorism. The Islamist Bashir was toppled last week by the military after three decades in power.
The designation as a state sponsor of terrorism makes Sudan ineligible for desperately needed debt relief and financing from lenders like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
“Sudan remains designated as a state sponsor of terrorism (STT) and a number of foreign assistance and other restrictions remain in place,” said the official, responding to questions sent by email.
The United States agreed in November to talks with Bashir’s government on how to get Sudan removed from the list, but no resolution was reached before his overthrow following weeks of increasing public unrest.
“A different statutory path to SST rescission may be available if there is a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of the government of Sudan,” the U.S. official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
Sudan is currently ruled by a Transitional Military Council (TMC) that says it is working with opposition groups to form a civilian government. But protesters say they will not leave the streets until the TMC cedes power to an interim civilian body.
The State Department officials said any new government must demonstrate it is not “supporting acts of international terrorism” and provide assurances “it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future”.
Former Sudanese Defense Minister General Awad Ibn Auf, who has been under U.S. sanctions since 2007, stepped down as TMC chief on Friday, making way for General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, a career military officer. Ibn Auf remains on the sanctions list, according to the State Department official.
“We are not aware of any person targeted by U.N. or U.S. sanctions in the TMC at present,” the official said. “However, the TMC is still being formed. We believe the presence of a designated individual in the TMC would be problematic.”
Sudan’s economy has been laid low by sanctions, corruption and mismanagement. Consumer prices rose by 73 percent in 2018 and long queues at bakeries, petrol stations and cash machines are now common.
Government finances were also seriously damaged by the loss of oil revenue when South Sudan, which contained most of the country’s oil fields, seceded in 2011, although a near simultaneous increase in gold output helped reduce the blow.
In October 2017, the United States lifted separate trade and economic sanctions it had imposed on Sudan in 1997.
It kept in place the terrorism designation, which is associated with accusations that Bashir-led Sudan backed anti-Israel Islamist militant groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
(Reporting by Patrick Werr; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Source: OANN

Former Vice President Joe Biden hours ahead of launching his presidential campaign urged top donors and supporters to contribute heavily in the first 24 hours and first week following his announcement.
Biden said world leaders had called him, “almost begging me to do this, to save our country, save the world,” according to three sources who spoke with Politico.
“The money’s important. We’re going to be judged by what we can do in the first 24 hours, the first week,” Biden said Wednesday during a conference call with top donors and supporters.
“People think Iowa and New Hampshire are the first test,” Biden said. “It’s not. The first 24 hours. That’s the first test. Those [early states] are way down the road. We’ve got to get through this first.”
Per The Washington Post, Biden, 76, is set to announce his run for president Thursday in a video. He is expected to travel to Pittsburgh, Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina over the next week for campaign events.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., topped Democrats in the fundraising race in the first quarter, bringing in $18.2 million, followed by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. (nearly $12 million), former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke ($9.4 million) and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (nearly $7 million).
Source: NewsMax Politics













































