“All options are on the table” to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz said on Sunday. U.S. President Donald Trump is “deadly serious when he says Iran can never have a nuke, and certainly not on President Trump’s watch,” Waltz told Fox News Sundaywhen asked about a potential U.S. military action against Tehran’s nuclear project (Read more at JNS).
In the wake of the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the Jewish state this week, Netanyahu noted that he had cultivated his ties with Republican leaders not in a partisan way, but in “a Zionist way.” (Read more at JNS)
He told Fox News that he had “very productive and constructive” calls on Sunday with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egypt’s director of intelligence. Witkoff said they spoke about “the sequencing of phase two, setting forth positions on both sides, so we can understand ... where we are today, and then continuing talks this week at a location to be determined so that we can figure out how we get to the end of phase two successfully.” (Read more at Arabnews)
Iraq's central bank will ban five more local banks from engaging in U.S. dollar transactions, a move that comes after meetings with U.S. Treasury officials in efforts to combat money laundering, dollar smuggling and other violations (Read more at Market Screener).
Israel and the United States are both determined to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its “aggression” in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Feb 16 following a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (Read more at Strait Times).
Erdogan said he expected President Trump to realize his election campaign promises of taking measures for peace, rather than create new conflicts. Turkish president said he saw no real signs of a ceasefire in Gaza despite a truce deal between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas (Read more at Diplomatic Insight).
“Trump says, 'We want to talk', and then he signs in a memorandum all the conspiracies to bring our revolution to its knees,” Mr Pezeshkian said, referring to Mr Trump's reinstatement of sanctions against Tehran this month. “If the US were sincere about negotiations, why did they sanction us?” he added, saying it was Israel, not Iran, destabilising the Middle East. "They spread propaganda that the country has been weak. We are strong. We never bow to the foreigners." (Read more at The National)
President Trump on Sunday said he was losing patience with the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas after seeing footage of the Palestinian terrorists releasing Israeli hostages over the weekend, whose appearance he compared to Holocaust survivors. “They look like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition. They were emaciated,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. “I don’t know how much longer we can take that … at some point we’re going to lose our patience.” (Read more at AOL)
US president says other countries in the Middle East could be tasked with rebuilding parts of the war-ravaged enclave (Read more at Aljazeera).
The rial plunged to 892,500 to the dollar on the unofficial market on Saturday. Facing an official inflation rate of about 35%, Iranians seeking safe havens for their savings have been buying dollars, other hard currencies, gold or cryptocurrencies, suggesting further headwinds for the rial. The dollar has been gaining against the rial since trading around 690,000 rials at the time of Trump's re-election in November amid concerns that Trump would re-impose his "maximum pressure" policy against Iran with tougher sanctions and empower Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites (Read more at USNews).
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