Politics

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has said that anybody who opposes the nuclear deal with world powers are “zionists and warmongers … American hardliners and extremists”, on Sunday.  Rouhani hailed the nuclear deal as a “golden page” in Iran’s history, and he said that he looks forward to an economic future less dependant on oil. Jpost.com reports: The Islamic Republic emerged from years of economic isolation on Saturday when world powers lifted crippling sanctions after confirming that Tehran had curbed its nuclear program as part of a deal agreed last year.

One of the great ironies of the Obama administration’s foreign policy record is the extent to which Washington started 2009 with designs on normalizing frosty relations with Russia and started 2015 with the worst US-Russo dynamic since the Cold War.

To be sure, not all of that was Washington’s fault - but most of it was.

Libertarian Ron Paul from the Voice of Liberty believes that the Neocons are warmongers. The former presidential nominee and two-time Republican presidential candidate is very impressed with the way the U.S. administration dealt with the Iran/US sailors crisis, and gives Iran credit for releasing the captured US sailors in just one day. Dr. Paul shows signs of sympathy for the Iranian predicament of finding itself besieged by terror and future threats of war and terror.

Just one day after international sanctions against Iran were lifted, the United States has imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals over a recent ballistic missile test. U.S. officials said that the Treasury planned to announce the penalties in late December, but held off after the Iranian foreign minister said they could have derailed the prisoner exchange that took place over weekend. The BBC reports: The new sanctions prevent 11 entities and individuals linked to the missile programme from using the US banking system.

Vienna has cancelled the Schengen agreement with Europe (which allows for the free movement of European’s within the borderless Schengen Area) amid an escalating migrant and refugee crisis.  Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has said that the whole notion of Europe “is in question” and announced that the country would be taking immigration matters into its own hands after Europe’s failure to deal with the crisis. “All refugees must be controlled, economic migrants must be sent to the countries of their origin,” Faymann said in an interview with Austria’s Oesterreich newspaper.