Iran calls on Trump to reject hawkish allies’ thirst for war

DUBAI: Iran’s foreign minister called on Tuesday on U.S. President Donald Trump to reject his hawkish allies’ thirst for war, adding that Iranians had outlasted every aggressor for millennia.“For millennia, Iranians have outlasted every aggressor ...@realDonaldTrump: reject #B_Team’s fake history & its thirst for #ForeverWar. Diplomacy=prudence; never weakness,” Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted. Zarif has in the past said that a so-called “B-team” including Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton, an ardent Iran hawk, and conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could goad Trump into a conflict with Tehran. Trump himself tweeted on Monday: “Just remember, the Iranians never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!”.US says has asked Germany to ‘help secure’ Strait of Hormuz: The United States has asked Germany to join an international naval mission to help secure the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the US embassy in Berlin said Tuesday, as tensions mount between Washington and Iran. The request comes after Britain last week ordered its navy to escort UK-flagged ships in the world’s busiest oil shipping lane in response to Iranian soldiers seizing a tanker in the flashpoint entrance to the Gulf. “We’ve formally asked Germany to join France and the UK to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and combat Iranian aggression,” said a statement by embassy spokeswoman Tamara Sternberg-Greller. “Members of the German government have been clear that freedom of navigation should be protected... Our question is, protected by whom?”Long-simmering tensions have spiked between Tehran and Washington since US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last year and reimposed biting sanctions on the Islamic republic. The US and Gulf powerhouse Saudi Arabia have since accused Iran of being behind multiple mysterious attacks on tankers in the Gulf in June, which Iran denies. Iran also shot down an unmanned US aircraft in June, after which Trump announced that he had called off retaliatory air strikes at the last minute because the resulting death toll would have been too high. Since then a series of incidents involving oil tankers have heightened tensions. The US request to NATO ally Germany is highly controversial in the country, where many politicians fear any naval mission, especially one led by the United States, could heighten the risk of conflict and drag European powers into a war.

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