Region

ATME, Syria — For years, Abu Ali sold used furniture and home appliances for a living. But he never thought Syria's war would one day make him homeless and force him to sell his own.

His family is one of dozens stranded in olive groves along the Turkish border, who say they have had to sell their basic possessions to ensure survival.

"I sold them to provide food, drink and clothes for my children," said the father of five, who now houses his family in a tent.

An opposition bastion in Syria's northwest has come under heavy regime and Russian bombardment since late April, despite a truce deal intended to protect the enclave's 3 million inhabitants.

The spike in violence in and around Idlib province has killed hundreds of civilians, displaced 330,000 more, and sparked fears of one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the eight-year civil war.

Abu Ali, his wife and their children fled their home in southern Idlib in early May, hitting the road north to seek shelter in the relative safety of the olive groves close to the border.

"I used to have a shop to buy and sell used items," such as fridges and furniture in the village of Maaret Hurma, he told AFP, sitting in the shade of a tree near the border town of Atme.

‘Very low price’ 

A few days after fleeing his home village, he hired two trucks for 50,000 Syrian pounds (over $110) to bring "eight fridges, bedroom furnishings, seven washing machines, and several gas stoves" up to the olive grove.

But under the summer sun in the makeshift camp, the merchandise soon plummeted in value.

"I was forced to get rid of it or sell it — even at a very low price," the 35-year-old said, his chin stubble already greying under a head of thick dark brown hair.

For example, the going price for a fridge originally bought for 25,000 Syrian pounds (more than $55) can be as low as a fifth of that price.

In Atme, some families have stored their fridges and other appliances in a single tent to protect them from the elements.

Outside, a top-loader washing machine sits in the shade of a tree.

Awad Abu Abdu, 35, said he too was forced to part with all his household items for a pittance.

"It was very dear to me. It was all I had accumulated over a lifetime of hard work," said the former construction worker, who fled the village of Tramla with his wife and six children.

"I sold all our home's furniture for just 50,000 Syrian pounds," he said, dressed in a faded grey t-shirt fraying around the collar.

After transport costs, he was left with only half that amount to feed his family, he said.

Abu Abdu accused buyers of "cheating us, exploiting the displaced", but said he had no other choice.

"Everything's so expensive... and there are no organisations looking out for us," he said.

‘Forced to sell’ 

The Idlib region is supposed to be protected by a buffer zone deal signed by Russia and rebel backer Turkey in September.

But the accord was never properly implemented as militants refused to withdraw from the planned cordon.

Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an alliance led by Syria's former Al Qaeda affiliate, took over administrative control of the region in January.

In the town of Atareb — about 30 kilometres from Atme, in Aleppo province — Abu Hussein received a new delivery at his shop of second-hand household appliances and furniture.

"Every day, more than ten cars arrive loaded up with items the displaced try to sell us," said the 35-year-old.

"This means we have to pay relatively low prices, because the supply is so high" and it's hard to then sell them all, he said.

Back in Atme, 50-year-old Waleeda Derwish said she hoped she would find someone to buy her fridge, washing machine and television, to help her provide for her eight children.

The widow transported the electrical items to "save them from bombing or looting" in Maaret Hurma, she said, a bright blue scarf wrapped around her wrinkled face.

Now the appliances represent the family's only lifeline, she said.

"I'm forced to sell them. How else are we supposed to live?"

TEHRAN — Long-hostile relations between the United States and Iran saw a thaw under Barack Obama's presidency culminating with the historic nuclear deal struck between world powers and Tehran in 2015. 

But since President Donald Trump came to power vowing to undo the hard-won deal, relations have deteriorated once more, with the latest escalation coming after Iran shot down a US spy drone.

Here is a recap of key moments in more than two tumultuous years:

‘Isolate’ Iran 

In a landmark address to Middle Eastern leaders in Saudi Arabia, on May 21, 2017, Trump urged nations to work together to isolate Iran "until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace".

"From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region." 

The Iranian government, Trump charged as he addressed the United Nations on September 19, 2017, "has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence bloodshed and chaos".

Nuclear deal walkout 

Trump on May 8, 2018 pulls the United States out of the nuclear pact between world powers and Iran, calling it "defective at its core".

The move heralds the reinstatement of US sanctions on Iran and companies with ties to it. 

Washington warns other countries to end trade and investment in Iran and stop buying its oil, or face punitive measures.

On August 7, Washington reimposes a first set of sanctions that involve freezing financial transactions and imports of raw materials, and penalties on purchases in the car and commercial aviation sectors.

A second wave of US sanctions comes into force on November 5, described by Washington as the "toughest" yet.

‘Terrorist’ 

On April 8, 2019, the US designates Iran's elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist organisation.

The Guards' prized Quds Force, which operates abroad, is also placed on the blacklist.

In response, Iran declares the United States a "state sponsor of terrorism" and its forces in the region "terror groups".

End of waivers 

On April 22, 2019 Trump announces the end of exemptions that had allowed eight countries to purchase Iranian oil without breaching unilateral US sanctions.

Two weeks later, on May 8, Iran says it has decided to suspend some of its commitments under the nuclear deal, some immediately and some after 60 days if no progress is made on sanctions relief.

They include restrictions on the level to which Iran can enrich uranium and modifications to the Arak heavy water reactor designed to prevent the production of plutonium as a byproduct.

Trump announces new measures against Iran's steel and mining sectors.

US drone shot down 

On May 12, two Saudi oil tankers and two other ships are damaged in mysterious "sabotage attacks" in Emirati waters. Washington and Riyadh blame Iran.

In early May, Washington deploys additional troops to the Middle East, accusing Iran of planning "imminent" attacks on US interests.

On June 13, two tankers come under attack in the Gulf of Oman. Trump says the incident has Iran "written all over it" while Tehran denies involvement.

On June 20, 2019 Iran's revolutionary guard shoots down a US "spy drone" which violated Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. The Pentagon denies the drone entered Iranian airspace.

The next day Trump says the US was "cocked & loaded" to strike Iran in retaliation, but pulled back because it would not have been a "proportionate" response.

Sanctions against supreme leader 

On June 24, 2019, the United States imposes sanctions targeting Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior military leaders of the Islamic republic.

The US Treasury says it is targeting eight top commanders from Iran's elite military force, the Revolutionary Guards and would also blacklist Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif — a moderate figure and key architect of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — targeting billions of dollars in assets in all.

RIYADH — A Yemeni rebel attack on a civilian airport in southern Saudi Arabia killed a Syrian national and wounded 21 other civilians Sunday, a Riyadh-led coalition said, in a new escalation following a series of strikes on the site.

The attack on Abha airport, which the coalition said left a McDonalds outlet at the site littered with shattered glass and damaged 18 vehicles, comes amid spiralling regional tensions with Iran.

The escalation of attacks by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels on Saudi cities threatens a hard-won UN-sponsored ceasefire deal for the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, war-ravaged Yemen's main conduit for humanitarian aid.

"A terrorist attack by the Iran-backed Houthi militia on Abha airport... killed a Syrian resident and wounded 21 civilians," the coalition said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The wounded — from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India and Bangladesh — also included three women and two children who had been taken to hospital for treatment, the coalition said.

It did not provide details on how the airport was attacked, but Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have repeatedly struck the civilian facility this month with drones and missiles.

Earlier on Sunday, the rebels’ Al Masirah TV said they had targeted Abha and Jizan airports in the south of the kingdom with drones.

The coalition did not confirm the attack on Jizan airport.

Abha airport authorities said on Twitter that air traffic had resumed and operatons were running normally, without saying how long they were disrupted.

On June 12, a rebel missile attack on Abha airport wounded 26 civilians, drawing promises of “stern action” from the coalition.

Human Rights Watch denounced the strike as an apparent “war crime”, urging the Houthis to immediately stop all attacks on civilian infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

The latest raids come amid spiralling regional tensions after Washington — a key ally of Riyadh — accused Iran of shooting down a US drone and carrying out attacks on oil tankers in the strategic Gulf of Oman.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the US, in a joint statement published on Saudi state media on Sunday, voiced alarm over escalating regional tensions and the “dangers posed by Iranian destabilising activity”.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly accused Iran of supplying sophisticated weapons to Houthi rebels, a charge Tehran denies.

Following recent attacks, Saudi state media have reported an intensification of coalition air raids on rebel positions in the northern Yemeni province of Hajjah and the Houthi-held capital Sanaa. 

The coalition intervened in support of the Yemeni government in 2015 when President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled into Saudi exile as the rebels closed in on his last remaining territory in and around second city Aden.

Since then, the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, relief agencies say.

It has triggered what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 24 million Yemenis — more than two-thirds of the population — in need of aid.

MANAMA — The Palestinians on Monday vowed to reject a US-led peace initiative to be presented in Bahrain that dangles the prospect of $50 billion as an Israeli envoy bluntly told them they should "surrender".

Finance chiefs from the United States, oil-rich Arab states and international development institutions were flying to the kingdom.

Led by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, the Peace to Prosperity economic workshop that begins Tuesday evening is billed as the start of a new approach that will later include political solutions to the long intractable Middle East conflict.

It proposes raising more than $50 billion in fresh investment for the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours with major projects to boost infrastructure, education, tourism and cross-border trade.

The Palestinian Authority is boycotting the workshop, denouncing the plan for saying nothing about ending the Israeli occupation.

"This economic workshop in Bahrain is really going to be nonsense," Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told a Cabinet meeting.

“What Israel and the United States are trying to do now is simply to normalise relations with the Arabs at the expense of the Palestinians,” he added.

President Mahmoud Abbas has said the Palestinians “will not be slaves or servants” of Kushner or other Trump aides.

“For America to turn the whole cause from a political issue into an economic one, we cannot accept this,” he said.

‘Palestinian surrender’ 

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, criticised the Palestinian leadership for declaring that the plan amounted to surrender.

“I ask: What’s wrong with Palestinian surrender?” he wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

“Surrender is the recognition that in a contest, staying the course will prove costlier than submission,” he said.

Trump administration says it will later release political proposals — perhaps as late as November once Israel holds new elections and forms a government.

But Trump officials have hinted their approach will not mention the creation of an independent Palestinian state, a goal of US diplomacy for decades.

The Palestinian Authority is facing growing financial strains as it refuses to accept tax revenue collected on its behalf by Israel because the latter is deducting millions of dollars that went to prisoners in Israeli jails or their families.

Arab League finance ministers on Sunday renewed a pledge to pay $100 million a month to the Palestinian Authority to stabilise its finances.

But in an implicit rebuke to the US approach, they insisted on “complete Arab support to the Palestinian state’s economic, political and financial independence”.

Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel Al Jubeir, said the Bahrain workshop “is not about buying peace”.

“In no way is this about forcing the Palestinians to accept an agreement that they don’t like and to draw a connection — you accept this and you’ll get that,” he told Le Monde on a visit to France.

The promises of massive investment come months after the US Agency for International Development suspended its work in the Palestinian territories due to US legislation that makes US aid recipients liable to anti-terrorism lawsuits.

Trump administration has also ended all funding to the UN agency that provides education, medicine and food to Palestinian refugees and has taken a series of landmark decisions on behalf of Israel.

In December 2017, Trump recognised occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, leading the Palestinians to cut off contact with the United States.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran US negotiator on the Middle East, said the idea of a major economic plan for the Palestinians was not new.

“Had Trump administration not spent the last two years waging an economic/political pressure campaign against the Palestinians and undermined their aspirations on statehood/Jerusalem, the plan would have made sense,” he said.

WASHINGTON — The United States imposed sanctions Monday on Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a string of military chiefs, tightening pressure on the country that President Donald Trump threatened with "obliteration" if it seeks war.

Trump signed the punitive financial measures against Iran in the Oval Office, calling this a "strong and proportionate response to Iran's increasingly provocative actions."

Repeating that "never can Iran have a nuclear weapon," Trump said it was now up to Tehran to negotiate.

“We do not ask for conflict,” he said, adding that depending on Iran’s response the sanctions could end tomorrow — or it “can also be years from now.”

Expanding on the new measures, the Treasury said the United States will blacklist Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and block “billions” more in Iranian assets, with eight top commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards already added to the list.

Tensions are running high after Iran shot down a US spy drone last week and Trump considered, then cancelled, a retaliatory strike.

Iran, crippled by existing US sanctions that include the blocking of most of its crucial oil exports, sought to play down the US move.

“Are there really any sanctions left that the United States has not imposed on our country recently or in the past 40 years?” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said shortly before Trump signed his order.

“We... do not consider them to have any impact,” he said.

Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity, the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates urged “diplomatic solutions” in the standoff, which is playing out in a region crucial to the global economy’s oil supplies.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he would use a meeting with Trump at the G20 summit in Japan to urge “a constructive solution with the aim of ensuring collective regional security.”

The Kremlin, which has longstanding links to Iran’s government, earlier called Monday’s sanctions “illegal”.

US policy clear: Trump 

At home, Trump has taken criticism for sending mixed messages to Iran. However, the US president insists he has a clear strategy that breaks firmly with past US policy in the tinderbox Middle East.

In a pair of tweets Monday, Trump said US aims regarding Iran boil down to “No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror.”

On Sunday, Trump told an NBC television interview that if it came to war, Iran would experience “obliteration like you’ve never seen before.”

Iran insists that it does not have a nuclear weapons programme.

It signed onto an international pact in 2015 meant to ensure that its nuclear industry sticks to civilian uses. Trump, however, pulled the United States out of the deal in 2017, seeking its collapse.

But while some in Washington see the White House’s ultimate goal as regime change in Tehran, Trump says he wants to avoid war and that he’s open to negotiations with Iran’s leaders.

He also insists that Washington’s hands are freer than in the past because its own energy production frees it of dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

This means the United States should no longer be seen as the guarantor of open sea lanes in the Gulf region, which saw two mysterious attacks in mid-June on non-US tankers that Washington claims were carried out by Tehran.

“All of these countries should be protecting their own ships,” Trump Tweeted Monday. “We don’t even need to be there.”

So far, Trump’s carrot-and-stick message does not seem to be getting through to Tehran.

“America’s claim of readiness for unconditional negotiation is not acceptable with the continuation of threats and sanctions,” Hesamodin Ashna, an advisor to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, said Monday on Twitter.

International diplomacy 

The dispute is bound up in a complex web of regional rivalries, with US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel long pushing Washington to act aggressively against Iran.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his country, which is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal, would do “everything” to stop Iran getting such a weapon.

In New York, the UN Security Council was to meet later Monday at the request of the United States to discuss the tensions.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travelled Monday to meet with Saudi leaders to build what he called a “global coalition” against the Islamic republic.

Pompeo met Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Red Sea city of Jeddah and was later due to hold talks in the United Arab Emirates.

The sultanate of Oman, meanwhile, said reports that it had served as a back channel for the United States to Iran in the aftermath of last week’s drone shooting were “not true”.

The foreign ministry called on Iran and the United States via Twitter “to show self-control and to resolve the pending issues through dialogue.”

Although Trump backed away from a bombing strike in retaliation for last week’s drone downing, US media reports said a US cyber attack took place against Iranian missile control systems and a spy network.

On Monday Iranian Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said no cyber attack against his country had ever succeeded.