International Glance
The Iranian ambassador to Mexico signaled on Friday that his country and the U.S. could have a good relationship in the future, so long as President Trump does not take foreign policy cues from Israel.
“If the U.S. closes its eyes to Israel’s interest, Iran and the U.S. can be very good friends,” Abolfazl Pasandjdeh told Politico via a Spanish translator at a World Cup fan expo in Mexico City, urging Trump to prioritize U.S. interests.
“I also believe that if he puts the interests of the U.S. first, it will yield good results,” he said. “The most important thing is that the Israeli regime does not seek what is good for the U.S.”
Israel has emerged as somewhat of a wildcard as Trump pushes for a peace deal with Tehran. Its military campaign against Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has risked upending the negotiations several times, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have a different end goal than his U.S. counterpart.
Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro described a rift between the U.S. and Israeli perspectives during a recent interview with NPR, wherein he said Israel’s main objective is eliminating Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile threat while the U.S. is largely focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
“So that’s a divergence between U.S. and Israeli interests, which you can see playing out now in the way the prime minister talks about what he wants to achieve – tried to do some additional strikes just over the weekend – and President Trump’s desire to wind this down,” Shapiro said, suggesting Israel’s preference would be to continue the war.
A British judge has sentenced four Palestine Action protesters as terrorists, handing them custodial sentences ranging from four to eight years.
Eight-year-old Jad Suleiman was walking home from school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Monday when the Israeli airstrike hit. A piece of shrapnel lodged in his neck, killing him instantly. Outside Shifa hospital, his body lay on a stretcher wrapped in a loose white sheet. Dressed in jeans and a blue and red checkered shirt, the smallness of his body was accentuated by his oversized backpack, still on his limp shoulders.
The brief exchange of fire between Iran and Israel was a truer statement of the balance of power that now exists between these two countries than the many spurious claims by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about having “smashed”, “destroyed” or “obliterated” the armed forces of the Islamic Republic.
One person has been killed and five others wounded in a series of shooting attacks in central Israel, Israeli police and emergency services reported.
THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Bill will be brought before cabinet for government approval later, with the aim of enacting it before the Dáil summer recess.
