Author: Agencies

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia has provided Iran with information that could help Tehran strike American warships, aircraft and other assets in the region, according to two officials familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

The people, who were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that the U.S. intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information.

Still, it’s the first indication that Moscow has sought to get involved in the war that the U.S. and Israel launched on Iran a week ago. Russia is in the rare club of countries that maintains friendly relations with Tehran, which has faced years of isolation over its nuclear program and its support of proxy groups that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

The White House downplayed reports that Russia was sharing intelligence with Iran about U.S. targets in the region. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told reporters that “it clearly is not making any difference with respect to the military operations in Iran because we are completely decimating them.”

Leavitt declined to say if Trump had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the reported intelligence sharing or whether he believed Russia should face repercussions, saying she would let the president speak to that himself.

Asked whether Russia would go beyond political support and offer military assistance to Iran, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there has been no such request from Tehran.

“We are in dialogue with the Iranian side, with representatives of the Iranian leadership, and will certainly continue this dialogue,” he said Friday.

Pushed on whether Moscow has provided any military or intelligence assistance to Tehran since the Iran war’s start, he refrained from comment.

Russia has tightened its relationship with Iran as it looked for badly needed missiles and drones to utilize in its four-year war Ukraine.

The Biden administration declassified intelligence findings that showed Iran supplies Moscow with attack drones and has assisted the Kremlin with building a drone-manufacturing factory.

The former U.S. administration also accused Iran of transferring short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Details about the U.S. intelligence were first reported by the Washington Post.

Asked whether the revelation had shaken Trump’s faith in Putin’s ability to cut any peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine war, Leavitt said, “I think the president would say that peace is still an achievable objective with respect to the Russia-Ukraine war.”

The Justice Department has posted online three FBI memos describing interviews related to unverified sexual assault allegations against President Donald Trump that had been missing from the massive trove of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice.

A CNN analysis discovered dozens of witness interviews were missing from the online archive of evidence related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, all of which were memorialized in so-called “302” memos laying out what an interviewee told FBI agents. The 302s do not include other corroborating information or agents’ opinions.

Among the missing records were three memos about interviews with a woman who told agents that Epstein had repeatedly abused her physically and sexually decades ago, starting when she was approximately 13 years old, and who also accused Trump of sexually assaulting her.

Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. In a statement Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the claims from the FBI interviews as “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence.” She also questioned the credibility of the accuser, whose name is redacted in the files, pointing to her criminal record.

“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s department of justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them — because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Leavitt added.

FBI agents conducted four interviews with the woman, but only one memo memorializing an interview in July 2019 was available in the DOJ database that was made public earlier this year. In that interview, the woman alleged she was repeatedly abused by Epstein when she was a minor living in South Carolina. She did not make any allegations about Trump in that interview.

The newly released files cover three additional interviews conducted with the woman in August and October 2019.

In the second interview, the woman describedadditional abuse by Epstein and several of his male associates. She said that Epstein “drove her and/or flew her to either New York or New Jersey” sometime when she was between 13 and 15 years old, and she was taken to a “very tall building.” It was there that she said Epstein introduced her to Trump.

Trump asked everyone to leave the room where they met, and “mentioned something to the effect of, ‘Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,’” according to the description of the woman’s comments in the interview. He then unzipped his pants and put her head “down to his penis,” she told agents.

The woman told agents that she bit Trump, who then struck her and said “words to the effect of, ‘get this little bitch the hell out of here.’”

Later in the interview, the woman told agents she heard Trump and Epstein talking about Epstein blackmailing people and also heard Trump “talking about washing money through casinos.”

In the woman’s third FBI interview, about three weeks later, agents wrote that she described receiving threatening telephone calls that she said she believed had to do with Epstein or Trump, as well as several incidents where she was “almost run off of the road” by other cars.

During the fourth interview – about two months after her last meeting with FBI agents – the woman did not have an attorney present, unlike the previous meetings. She told law enforcement agents she was uncomfortable being recorded and asked them, “what’s the point?” of coming forward with allegations after the statute of limitations had likely passed, the agents wrote.

The memo noted that the agents encouraged her “to go home and take as much time as she needed to think about speaking with the agents further.”

It’s unclear what became of the FBI’s investigation into the woman’s claims. An email sent between FBI agents last summer and included in the DOJ files notes that “one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate,” although it doesn’t specify if it’s the same person as the accuser.

A lawsuit against the Epstein estate includes a victim who made claims about the financier – that he had abused her in South Carolina and brought her to gatherings in New York City with “prominent, wealthy men” – that matched some of the claims the woman made in the FBI interviews. She does not name Trump in the lawsuit.

That victim, identified as “Jane Doe 4,” was “deemed ineligible to receive compensation” by the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, a system set up to independently review claims by victims, according to a court record from May 2021. It’s not clear why she was deemed ineligible.

She voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit in December 2021, and her lawyer told The Post and Courier newspaper in January that she received a financial settlement from the estate. Her lawyer declined to comment to CNN last week.

The Justice Department has not explained why the Trump-related witness interview descriptions were not released but said in a statement last week that it had initiated a review to see whether any documents were “improperly tagged in the review process.” If that happened, the department said it would release them, the statement said.

Under the law, the DOJ can withhold files that are duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation.

The department has been fiercely criticized for its redaction process, and has had to repeatedly take down documents, edit redactions, and republish them. Among the most egregious issues reported were victims whose identities, or photos, were made public without their knowledge.

The Justice Department also republished images to the Epstein files library on Wednesday that had been temporarily taken down after being flagged for potential nudity.

There are still several thousand images left to repost, a department official told CNN, which will also be done Thursday.

Three months after their release, Justice Department employees are still spending several hours a week on the files, fixing redaction and posting mistakes, a senior Justice Department official told CNN. About 1% of the 3 million documents had issues with redactions, the official said.

“Normally in life, getting 99% of things right is pretty good, but that’s a lot of mistakes,” the person said.

The Justice Department is not currently investigating any individual connected to Jeffrey Epstein, a senior Justice Department official said Thursday.

At this point, without any new information, the official does not expect anyone will be charged in connection with Epstein.

Trump previously directed the department to open an investigation into Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats. That investigation was opened, under Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton, but it has not resulted in any new cases.

—CNN

US President Donald Trump insisted on Thursday that he have a say in picking Iran’s next supreme leader, as the war triggered by the US-Israeli campaign that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reverberated throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Earlier, Israel issued an unprecedented evacuation warning for the entirety of Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah, sending residents fleeing in a panic from the district of hundreds of thousands of people.

That warning followed a fresh wave of Israeli attacks on Iran, which again lashed out at Gulf nations.

The war has been felt as far as the Sri Lankan coast, where a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship, and Azerbaijan, which threatened retaliation after a drone hit an airport.

Trump on Thursday rejected the possibility of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, replacing his slain father as supreme leader, dismissing the younger man as a “lightweight”.

“I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy,” Trump told Axios in an interview, drawing a comparison to Venezuela, where interim president Delcy Rodriguez has cooperated with him under threat of violence after the United States ousted her boss, Nicolas Maduro.

“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump was quoted as saying, threatening more war in the future if a better alternative was not found.

The remarks suggest a willingness to work with someone from within the Islamic republic rather than toppling the government entirely, despite Trump’s repeated exhortations for Iranians to rise up and take back their country.

– Beirut warning –

Lebanon was dragged into the widening conflict on Monday, when Hezbollah attacked Israel to avenge the killing of Khamenei.

Israel responded with air strikes and sent ground troops into some Lebanese border villages.

In a message on Thursday to the residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, an Israeli military spokesman said: “Save your lives and evacuate your residences immediately.”

Such warnings typically foreshadow large-scale attacks, and massive traffic jams formed on the outskirts of the suburbs, as people fired guns in the air, urging locals to leave as soon as possible.

On a Beirut beach, hundreds of families, many of them scared and angry, milled around after fleeing in haste, having nowhere else to go.

“We fled from the suburbs, we were humiliated,” one man told AFP, refusing to give his name.

“We’ll sleep on the road tonight and God alone knows what will happen to us.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun asked his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to intercede with Israel to prevent the bombing of south Beirut.

“At this moment of great danger, I call on the Israeli Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) not to expand the war to Lebanon,” Macron said after the conversation.

Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir later said strikes were continuing, adding he had “instructed Israeli army forces to move forward and deepen the line of control along the border”.

Lebanese authorities say at least 102 people have been killed, 638 wounded and at least 90,000 displaced since Monday.

– From Sri Lanka to Azerbaijan  –

On Iran’s borders, neighbour Azerbaijan warned a drone attack on an airport “will not go unanswered”, raising fears of another country entering the war.

Iran denied being behind the strike and blamed Israel, but that did not stop Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev from accusing Tehran of “terrorism”.

Australia, meanwhile, deployed two military aircraft to the theatre, and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said he could not rule out his armed forces taking part.

Following fresh strikes on the Iranian capital, AFPTV images showed blackened vehicles and mangled buildings, with smoke still rising from some.

A 30-year-old Tehran resident told AFP: “We’re going through a very important page of our history and I’m not afraid.”

“Hope is the only thing that we have right now.”

An Iranian state-run foundation said the death toll from US and Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic has risen to 1,230, a toll AFP could not independently verify.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sruck a defiant tone, saying Tehran had not sought a ceasefire and did not “see any reason why we should negotiate with the US”.

Regarding the possibility of a ground invasion, he told US broadcaster NBC News: “We are confident that we can confront them and that would be a big disaster for them.”

Israel, meanwhile, said 60 percent of Iran’s missile launchers and 80 percent of its air defence systems had been destroyed.

Announcing a “next phase” in the campaign, army chief Zamir said Israel had “additional surprises ahead”.

AFP reporters in Jerusalem heard explosions following warnings of incoming Iranian missile fire.

– Gulf under fire –

The conflict has not spared the rich Gulf monarchies, usually seen as a safe haven in a volatile region, as Iran has lashed out at cities and energy infrastructure.

Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in countries around the Gulf since the war began, including an 11-year-old girl in Kuwait.

Qatar said Thursday it was intercepting an incoming missile attack as loud blasts, described by AFP journalists as the most intense yet, reverberated across Doha, where a thick column of black smoke billowed across the horizon.

Falling debris from an intercepted drone also injured six people in Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, officials said.

In Bahrain, an Iranian missile strike sparked a blaze at the main state-owned oil refinery, which was later contained, the Gulf country’s communications centre said.

And some Western diplomats in the Saudi capital Riyadh, meanwhile, said they were told on Thursday to shelter in place, while a witness said the diplomatic quarter in the city had been closed off.

Iranian intelligence has sent word to the United States it could be prepared to open talks on how to end the war, according to people familiar with the indirect messages, but US officials say there are no negotiations underway and that potential “off-ramps” are unlikely to materialize in the near term.

The messages were conveyed through a third country to the CIA, the people familiar said. But so far, it does not appear the channel has resulted in any serious discussions on how to bring the war to an end.

Instead, American officials have described entering a new, more intensive phase of the joint operation with Israel to degrade Iran’s missile program and ensure it not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a briefing Wednesday the US was “just getting started.” And lawmakers who were briefed by the administrationTuesday on Iran said they did not hear a distinct endgame, including potential efforts at diplomacy.

Iranian leaders, for their part, haven’t demonstrated public willingness to negotiate as their ranks grow slimmer as a result of Israeli attacks.

Yet the messages, however preliminary, do suggest an eventual pathway exists to brokering an end to the war. CNN has reached out to the CIA for comment. The New York Times first reported on the messages from Iran.

American officials insist they have not been in talks — either directly or through a third party — with the Iranians since nuclear negotiations fell apart days before the war began. They have, however, received messages from other countries offering to help defuse the conflict.

“Since this thing went kinetic, we’ve had a number of reach-outs,” a senior Trump administration official said Tuesday, putting the number of nations at nearly a dozen. “It’s not dissimilar to what we had before, people wanting to see if they can help solve it, and we’ve talked to them.”

To date, that has not resulted in any robust exchange of messages between the United States and Iran. Steve Witkoff, the president’s foreign envoy who led three rounds of negotiations with Iran before Trump ordered strikes, has not been in touch with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who in the past he exchanged text messages with.

Witkoff has also not spoken with Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani, the senior administration official said.

“We’re not using anyone as an interlocutor. This is a military action, and it’s got to run its course,” the official said.

And Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Wednesday that no message is being sent to the US.

“We have not conveyed any message to Americans because we are now defending ourselves,” Majid Takht-Ravanchi said on MS Now. “We are in a defensive mode. And what we are concentrating on is to protect ourselves, to defend ourselves. So, no message is being sent and we haven’t received any message by America or by anybody else.”

Still, behind the scenes, many officials have wondered whether a potential agreement could eventually be struck that would stop the conflict while satisfying all of Trump’s conditions: that Iran dismantle its nuclear and missile programs and end its support for military proxy groups in the Middle East.

Who, exactly, would agree to that on Iran’s part is unclear. The country’s leadership remains in flux after the death over the weekend of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The people we had in mind are dead,” Trump acknowledged bluntly Tuesday about his vision for future Iranian leadership. “Now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports. So I guess you’ll have a third wave coming in. Pretty soon, we’re not going to know anybody.”

While Iranian clerics gather to select a new supreme leader, Israel has vowed to assassinate anyone who replaces Khamenei.

“Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people — will be an unequivocal target for elimination,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on social media.

For his part, Trump has offered mixed views of his willingness to engage with Iran. He told The Atlantic magazine on Sunday he intended to speak with Iran’s new leaders.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said.

A day later, Trump posted that the Iranians “want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!’”

–CNN

President Donald Trump on Monday moved to address criticism that his military campaign against Iran lacked a defined purpose, outlining four specific objectives, including preventing Tehran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Speaking at an event at the White House, Trump described the strikes as the “last, best chance” to confront Iran, which has long been regarded as a principal adversary of the United States.

“Our objectives are clear,” he said, following a period in which US officials had offered varying explanations for the joint US-Israeli offensive.

“First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities… Second, we’re annihilating their navy… Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number-one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon.

“Finally, we are ensuring the Iranian regime can’t continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders,” he stated.

Trump had previously defended the campaign by asserting that Iran was attempting to revive its nuclear programme and could soon develop missiles capable of reaching the United States.

However, this marks the first occasion on which he has formally articulated four distinct goals, including curbing Iran’s backing of regional militant organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

According to officials, US and Israeli forces have carried out strikes on hundreds of sites across Iran, targeting missile infrastructure, naval assets and command-and-control facilities within the Islamic Republic

Former President Bill Clinton told lawmakers that President Donald ​Trump told him he had “some great times” with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before their relationship soured, according to a video released on Monday.

In a videotaped deposition to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, the former Democratic president said under oath that Trump brought up Epstein at a golf tournament ​in 2002 or 2003, ‌after Clinton left office and more than a decade before Trump was elected president.

“Somehow he knew I ⁠had flown in Jeffrey Epstein‘s aircraft,” Clinton told the committee. “He said, ‘You know, we had some great times together over the years, but we fell out all because of a real estate deal.’”

Trump has said ‌the relationship soured after Epstein hired young women who worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Clinton said the exchange did ⁠not lead him to believe Trump was involved with anything improper involving Epstein.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clinton, Trump say they saw no evidence of sex trafficking

Both Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein before ​the well-connected financier pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Both have repeatedly said they did ‌not see any evidence of sex trafficking, and neither has been accused by authorities of criminal activity related to Epstein, who entertained a long list of business and financial leaders at his lavish residences in New York, Florida and the Caribbean.

Epstein was arrested again in 2019 and died in prison while facing ‌federal sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.

Under Trump, the Justice Department has released millions of records from its investigations into Epstein, including photos of Clinton with women whose faces have been redacted.

Clinton ​has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has said he regrets his association with Epstein.

Clinton says he was introduced to Epstein as donor

In last week’s testimony, Clinton said he was introduced to Epstein by his former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who described Epstein as a donor who ​was willing to fly Clinton and his staff around the globe as he set up a charitable AIDS foundation. Clinton said he flew ​on Epstein’s jet on trips to Asia, Africa and Europe, and once from Florida to New ​York, but moved on to other donors after 2003.

“I thought Mr. Epstein was an interesting man, but I didn’t think he was really interested in what I was doing,” Clinton said.

Clinton said he never ​had sexual contact with anyone introduced by the late financier or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, but did receive a neck massage from a flight attendant later identified as an Epstein abuse survivor. Clinton said he did not know that Epstein had abused girls whom he had recruited as masseuses.

“I didn’t think it was anything unusual. I can’t tell you how many airplanes I’ve been on where rich people asked me to go and they had ⁠someone offering massage. All these boats that you go on and all that, they all do that. And usually I don’t do that,” he said.

Clinton said he never ⁠visited Epstein’s Caribbean island and did ​not know that Epstein had visited the White House 17 times during his 1993-2001 presidency.

The Republican-led panel also subpoenaed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who testified last week that she did not recall ever meeting Epstein.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)