William Hague says diplomatic base in Tehran to be restored as west looks to Iran to help tackle Isis-led insurgency in Iraq

William Hague has announced that the British embassy in Iran will be reopened as jihadist gains in northern Iraq have forced the west to reassess its relations with Tehran.

The foreign secretary said the circumstances were right to restore the diplomatic mission after a significant thawing in relations in recent months.

"Our two primary concerns when considering whether to reopen our embassy in Tehran have been assurance that our staff would be safe and secure, and confidence that they would be able to carry out their functions without hindrance," Hague told MPs in a written statement.

Hague's announcement came amid reports of clashes in the city of Baquba less than 40 miles north of Baghdad, the closest the fighting has come to the Iraqi capital since jihadists led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) took over most of the northern part of the country last week.

Insurgents took control of parts of Baquba overnight but were pushed back, army and police officers told Agence France-Presse. The attack took place in the centre of the capital of Diyala province and, according to the officers, militants temporarily occupied several neighbourhoods.

Fighting also took place in the village of Basheer, nine miles south of the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, where an attack by militants was repelled after an hour of clashes.

Isis fighters supported by disaffected Sunnis have swept through towns in the north but appeared to have halted their advance on Baghdad. The swift advance has faced little opposition from US-trained Iraqi forces, triggering fears that extremists will end up controlling a swath of territory from eastern Syria to northern Iraq.

The prospect of Iraq breaking up has forced the US and Britain to look to Iran. Hague said on Tuesday that the circumstances were right to reopen the British embassy in Tehran once "a range of practical issues" had been resolved. The embassy closed in 2011 after being ransacked by a mob protesting against sanctions.

The other day I was handed the translation of a paper written by Israeli journalist Oded Yinon as far back as 1982. Ah! Old news, I thought. I'll get around to browsing through it one of these days. When later, the person who proffered the document, asked me about my conclusions, I grabbed my spectacles and sat down for what I thought would be a dull read. How wrong I was!

Yinon, who was attached to Israel's Foreign Ministry, published his paper, titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," in Kivunim (Directions) a "journal for Judaism and Zionism," and if the Association of Arab-American University graduates hadn't widely distributed the article, it might have disappeared down the memory hole.

Unfortunately, as the document is 11 pages long, I can only give you the gist but it can be found in its entirety on the Internet.

The basic premises of the plan are these: In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might.

Yinon described the Arab-Muslim world as "a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners and arbitrarily divided into states, all made up of combinations of minorities and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another."

Powers once granted are almost impossible to take back.

After 13.5 years, there is more than enough evidence for reasonable people to conclude that the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama are easily the most destructive in U.S. history.

When historians speak of failed presidencies or weak presidencies, they are typically referring to presidencies characterized by uneven leadership, petty corruption by self-serving cronies or in extreme cases such as the Nixon presidency, abuses of executive power.

But weak or failed presidencies are not destructive to the rule of law and the foundations of the nation. The failed president leaves office and the basic structure of the nation continues: the rule of law, the balance of powers and a free-market economy.

France World Cup coach Didier Deschamps says world football's governing body, FIFA, is conducting an official investigation on the UAV spotted taping the team's training session from above earlier this week.

"Apparently, drones are used more and more. We don't want an intrusion into our privacy but it's very hard to fight this these days," Deschamps told the media in Porto Alegre, ahead of Sunday's opening match of its Brazil 2014 campaign against Honduras.

Un drone survole les Bleus lors de l'entraînement, enquête du service de sécurité. Image captée par @nicopaillardpic.twitter.com/UwEzCdrHrJ
- infosport+ (@infosportplus) June 10, 2014

A multi-rotor unmanned vehicle was observed and photographed just as the French team ran out on to the pitch for a closed practice at the team's Ribeirao Preto base on Tuesday. Italian news agency ANSA reported that while many of the players made light of the inanimate observer hovering in the air, the coaching staff was sent into a fury, and immediately lodged a complaint.

One of Africa's last 'great tuskers', elephants with ivory weighing over 100lbs, has been poisoned to death by poachers in Kenya after years of adapting his behaviour to hide himself from humans.

The bull, named Satao and likely born in the late 1960s, succumbed to wounds from poison darts in a remote corner of Tsavo National Park where he had migrated to find fresh water after recent storms.

His carcass yesterday lay with its face and great tusks hacked off, four legs splayed where he fell with his last breath, left only for the vultures and the scavengers.

Conservationists told how he moved from bush to bush always keeping his ivory hidden amongst the foliage.

"I'm convinced he did that to hide his tusks from humans, he had an awareness that they were a danger to him," said Mark Deeble, a British documentary filmmaker who has spent long periods of time filming Satao.

The Phantom of the (tragic) Middle East Opera is back. A killer without a clue, he can't be blamed for not being consistent.

His most recent opus speaks for itself; like a Kabuki mask high on Earl Grey tea, the Phantom is eviscerated by his own mighty pen, actually sword.

The fact that the Phantom keeps getting away with his vast desert of convoluted lies - instead of languishing in some rotten, extraordinary rendition hotel - spells out all we need to know about so-called Western "elites", of which he's been a faithful, and handsomely rewarded, servant.

So Western "inaction" in Syria has led to the latest Iraq tragedy? Sorry, Tony; it was yours and "Dubya's" 2003 Shock and Awe "action" that set the whole Shakespearean tragedy in motion.

The Phantom always wanted the Obama administration to bomb Syria, as much as he labored for "Dubya" to destroy Iraq. Phantom logic never considered that would have installed in Damascus the same Islamic State of Iraqi and the Levant (ISIL) that is now making a push towards Baghdad.

The United States may have hoped that swapping five Guantanamo Bay prison detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl would have sparked talks between the Taliban and Afghan government, but so far the deal has yet to result in movement towards reconciliation.

According to a report by the Associated Press, American officials, along with their Afghan counterparts, believe the prisoner exchange is evidence that both sides can cooperate to reach some sort of peace deal. By successfully completing the deal, some officials think moderate forces within the Taliban will gain the leverage needed to initiate negotiations.


Yet any concrete movement toward such a scenario could take months, if it happens at all. With the Afghan presidential campaign underway, peace talks would likely not take place until after July, when it is clear who the country's next president will be. Even then, the process could be dragged out by the fact that any incoming leader would need time to organize his administration.

In case you were wondering why, despite the sterling efforts of the Bush and Obama governments to bring 'freedom and democracy' to Iraq, life there appears to be worse than ever, a brief review of the nature of American and European largesse that has been bestowed on the Iraqi people over the past twenty-odd years may be instructive.

First there was the 1991 Iraq War turkey shoot that killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and killed or wounded over 100,000 Iraqi soldiers; then followed the 10 years of regular US bombing runs and the willful genocide of Iraqis, especially children, via the 'food for oil' sanctions. Then came the second Gulf War turkey shoot, justified (not 'officially', but it wouldn't have happened otherwise) by the self-inflicted wound that was the 9/11 attacks, that involved a 10-year occupation by the US military and the further direct slaughter of at least 1.5 million Iraqis by the US military and the displacement of 4 million more.

By 2011, with the country in ruins and the the bulk of US troops preparing to leave, US military 'advisers' hastily cobbled together an 'Iraqi army'. Unfortunately, the tribal nature of Iraqi society, the serious divisions between Sunni and Shia that had been provoked by 10 years of bloody foreign occupation, including the use of US-sponsored death squads (aka 'al-qaeda'), and the installation of a Shia-led government in a country previously dominated by the minority Sunnis under Saddam, made the very idea of a united Iraqi army a fantasy. But those details were of little concern to the occupiers. A few major weapons and oil deals and the US was outta there. Thanks for the memories... for a while.

Next Stop - Syria

Then came the (Israeli-sponsored) plan to 'remake' Syria. But when it was decided that a US invasion and occupation of that country was too problematic in the sense that it might set the entire Middle East alight and threaten Israeli sensitivities, plan B was to use the same fundamentalist jihadi nut-jobs from Iraq to start a 'revolution' that the majority of the Syrian people wanted nothing to do with. But after three years of direct and indirect funding and arming of the jihadis by the USA, Saudi Arabia Qatar and Turkey, and massive bloodshed, with several Syrian cities reduced almost to rubble, Assad was still there, the Syrian army were prevailing against the nut-jobs, and the psychopaths at the US state department, the CIA and in Tel Aviv, were getting antsy. 'Can't we just have NATO bomb the crap out of the place?' A pretext was needed, and last year the Saudis were used to supply sarin gas to the jihadis (or a Saudi black op team did it themselves), who happily sacrificed the lives of 1,000 Syrian civilians in Ghouta in an effort to blame the Assad government for 'war crimes' and justify NATO (i.e. USA) bombing.

The EU is exploring alternative gas sources for Ukraine, the European Commission said on Tuesday, a day after Russia cut off a key energy flow that also feeds Europe.

With the Russian gas supply to Ukraine now halted, the EU is considering ways to replenish Kiev with imports from neighbouring Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

Moscow is strongly opposed to so-called "reverse flows", but the European Commission on Tuesday said the process was perfectly legal.

"The option of the reverse flows ... is legally perfectly sound," said the EU's Energy Commission spokeswoman Sabine Berger.


"There are possibilities (for Ukraine) to buy gas from European companies," she said.

Russia's lower house has voted against a proposed bill that would ban the promotion of all sexual material aimed at minors, with which its authors planned to amend the already existing law banning gay propaganda.

The bill containing the radical restrictions was drafted by MP Maria Maksakova-Ingebergs of the centrist conservative United Russia party, which currently holds the majority of seats in the parliament. It suggested a change in the federal law on children's rights and the one protecting children against potentially harmful information.

In particular, the MP wanted to recognize "any information that promotes the priority of sexual relations before life values, spiritual and intellectual development" as harmful for the children's health and development. The measures would be backed by fines for those publishing such concepts in the mass media, cinema and internet sites.

The Lower House committee for family women and children opposed the draft claiming that Russian legislation already had bans on distributing information products containing sexual references among minors. The committee's members also said that if the bill was passed it would practically replace the recently introduced ban on gay propaganda towards children which is undesirable as the ban was protecting the foundations of the family institution.