The US and their allies are damaging security in the Persian Gulf by "flooding" the region with arms, and sending a US-led naval force there will make the situation worse, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

US foreign policy undermines the security of the countries around the Persian Gulf, Zarif said on Monday during a trip to Qatar. "The region has become a matchbox ready to ignite because America and its allies are flooding it with weapons."

Iranian officials have been accusing Washington and its key overseas partners like Saudi Arabia of destabilizing the situation in the Middle East by training and arming various anti-government militant groups in Syria.

Zarif argued that the presence of the US-led task force will only exacerbate the situation. The narrow Gulf waterway "will become less safe as foreign [navy] vessels increase their presence in it," he said.

The diplomat stressed that the security in the region must be maintained by littoral countries, not outside powers.

US officers on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, deployed at an American naval base in Bahrain along with some smaller vessels, claimed in an interview with Sky News that their mission is to deter Iran from striking US targets, but added that they were also ready to launch offensive strikes if ordered.

"A large part of deterrence is the readiness that backs that deterrence up. We are ready to defend the US and the US interests if called upon... My job is to be here, to be ready, to deter and to defend if required", Rear Admiral Michael Boyle, commander of Carrier Strike Group 12, said.

Despite the highly publicised deployment, the aircraft carrier has not passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway linking Mideast crude producers to crucial world markets.

"For our mission here, which is deterrence, we are in the place we need to be. The people in the know in Iran know that we are more of a deterrent here than we are in the Arabian Gulf because from this position we can reach them and they can't reach us. In a boxer's analogy we have got overreach from the spot where we are right now", Boyle added.

Iraq rejects the participation of Israel in the US-led maritime security mission in the Persian Gulf, Foreign Minister Mohamad Alhakim stated, stressing that it might further increase tensions in the region.

"Iraq is against the participation of the Zionist regime's forces in any kind of patrolling to ensure the save passage of ships in the Persian Gulf", Alhakim said on Twitter.

He added that Iraq was "seeking to reduce tensions in the region through negotiations, while the presence of Western forces in the region is increasing them".

"The safe zone in Syria should extend 30-40 kilometres depthward from the Turkish border. This is exactly in this direction that we expect steps to be made [by the United States]", Akar said, as aired by NTV broadcaster.

He added that Turkey was ready to create the safe zone solo as well.

"We have plans B and C", Akar stressed.

Ankara and Washington have recently reached agreement on creating the safe zone at Syria's border with Turkey and a centre to coordinate joint operations. Turkey stated that it wanted a safe zone an average 30-40 km to the south of its border with Syria, east of the Euphrates River, that would be controlled by Turkey in coordination with the United States and be completely cleared of the PKK and YPG, whom it views as a single organisation and regards as terrorists. Ankara warned that that should the two sides fail to reach an understanding on the matter, Turkey will establish the safe zone unilaterally.

Last week, President Erdogan warned that Turkey will launch an operation east of the Euphrates River in Syria 'very soon', despite the US calls to avoid any unilateral action.

Meanwhile, Damascus opposes the decision, qualifying this as a violation both of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and of international law.

The territory in the east of the Euphrates is currently controlled by the self-defence forces, which mainly include Kurdish-led militants.

For years, Turkey has launched operations against the Kurds in the south-east of the country as well as in the northern parts of Iraq and Syria. The major crackdown on the Kurdish militias started in Turkey in 2015 and resulted in massive casualties, including the death of civilians.

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These accounts from Michael Gross' 1995 book Model describe Brunel's activities in Paris from the late 1970s onwards, when he worked for, and eventually owned, the modeling agency Karins, now known as Karin Paris:

"Jean-Luc is considered a danger," says Jérôme Bonnouvrier. "Owning Karins was a dream for a playboy. His problem is that he knows exactly what girls in trouble are looking for. He's always been on the edge of the system. John Casablancas gets with girls the healthy way. Girls would be with him if he was the butcher. They're with Jean-Luc because he's the boss. Jean-Luc likes drugs and silent rape. It excites him."

"I really despise Jean-Luc as a human being for the way he's cheapened the business," says John Casablancas. "There is no justice. This is a guy who should be behind bars. There was a little group, Jean-Luc, Patrick Gilles, and Varsano...They were very well-known in Paris for roaming the clubs. They would invite girls and put drugs in their drinks. Everybody knew they were creeps."

It should be noted that aside from being a professional rival, Casablancas, the founder of the agency Elite, was eventually drubbed out of the industry for his own modelizing. How pervy do you have to be for John Casablancas to call you a perv?

Pervy enough to drug and rape numerous teenagers, according to 60 Minutes and Diane Sawyer, who investigated Brunel in 1988. The program interviewed nearly two dozen models who said they had been sexually assaulted by Brunel and/or by his fellow agent, Claude Haddad. Even at that time, Brunel had a reputation as a man one could go to to procure a "date" with a young model. CBS spoke to five models who said that Brunel and/or his friends had drugged and raped them. Said producer Craig Pyes, "Hundreds of girls were not only harassed, but molested."

When Gross interviewed Brunel, this is what he had to say for himself:

"You get laid tonight with a model, is that a crime? I don't understand why people go into your personal life, what you do yourself, and to yourself, and they don't look at things that are really important."

Since then, Brunel has been involved with a succession of agencies in New York and Paris. Although the 60 Minutes scandal eventually led Eileen Ford to stop working with him, he continued his involvement with Karins. In 1988, when powerhouse agency Next opened its doors, Brunel took an ownership stake. He also "discovered" Christy Turlington when she was 14. MC2 is only his latest venture. Because no criminal charges were ever filed by any of his accusers, and because the industry has a short memory — most models working today weren't even born when Sawyer and Pyes started looking into Brunel's activities — Brunel has been free to continue as he pleases. A French citizen, he even avoided testifying in his friend Epstein's trial.

And so Brunel is still criss-crossing the globe, trawling for 5'10" 13-year-olds from Eastern Europe and (the whiter parts of) South America. And apparently taking the occasional ride with them on Epstein's private jet. Is there any better argument for the regulation of the modeling industry?

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