The White House has aggressively stepped up its campaign for secret agent Gina Haspel to run the CIA, directly challenging Democratic leaders over "enhanced interrogation" of terrorists in claiming they were responsible for the policy, not those who implemented it.

In a new statement defending Haspel against expected charges she had a role in waterboarding al Qaeda's killers, the White House said instead that it was policymakers like then-House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who were briefed and gave nod of approval.

From the White House statement:

• Policymakers who set up, approved, and were briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques are the ones who were responsible for the program, not the CIA's dedicated and professional officers like Haspel who served honorably.
• Congressional leadership, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), were briefed as early as 2002 on the CIA's interrogation program according to unclassified documents by the agency.
• In 2009, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed this, stating that CIA officers had briefed certain Members of Congress in 2002.
• The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which signed off on the CIA's interrogation program in 2002, determined the program's legality, not career officers at the agency.

President Donald Trump has come under fire from both his political opponents and fellow Republicans for pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, with lawmakers arguing the move will embolden Iran and make the US less secure.

As the international community is reeling in the aftermath of Trump's decision to tear up the landmark nuclear agreement with Iran, the controversial move did not sit well with US lawmakers at home either. Besides being castigated by Democrats, Trump has puzzled some Republicans, who believe that the withdrawal risks alienating US allies in Europe and adds nothing to American security.

The Senate's second-ranking Democrat, Dick Durbin, went as far as calling the decision a "mistake of historic proportions" that will allow Iran to resume its nuclear program and lead to self-isolation.

"It isolates the United States from the world at a time when we need our allies to come together to address nuclear threats elsewhere, particularly in Korea. This is a mistake of historic proportions," Durbin said in a statement, adding that "the last thing America and the world need right now is a new nuclear threat."

Other lawmakers have also voiced concern that Trump's decision to dismantle the deal, despite vocal opposition from its closest allies, except Israel, will ultimately undermine relations between them.

Increased US pressure on Iran is politically motivated and has nothing to do with the nuclear deal, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said.

Donald Trump has promised to announce his decision on the future of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accord on Tuesday ahead of the May 12 deadline.

Sources told The New York Times that he's planning to withdraw from the accord, reinstating the old restrictions and imposing new ones against Tehran. Trump has previously slammed JCPOA as "the worst deal ever" and threatened to quit the landmark agreement if it's not amended to also include Iran's ballistic missile program and activities in the Middle East.

The US and Israel have claimed that Tehran has been developing missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Washington's calls to broaden the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal in order for it to include the country's ballistic missile program are unjustified, Ryabkov told in an interview with RBC.

President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is a result of a lobbying effort by American Jewish billionaires and recycled, cooked-up intelligence touted by the Israeli PM, journalist Max Blumenthal told RT.

Trump's decision to pull the US out of the deal, which capped Iran's uranium enrichment in return for economic sanctions relief, has drawn widespread criticism from Washington's European allies and Moscow, but it was lauded in Israel, which has long pushed for dismantling of the 2015 accord.

If this doesn't speak for itself, Blumenthal told RT that the roots of Trump's decision to scrap the deal can be easily traced back to Israel.

"Israeli influence is absolutely key here. At least, Trump sided [cited] Netanyahu's kind of used car salesman style of presentation in order to justify withdrawing from the Iran deal and his new policy of rollback," the journalist said.

Taking aim at the bizarre PowerPoint presentation delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last month, Blumenthal pointed out the Israeli leader essentially "introduced nothing new in his presentation," adding that "much of the intelligence" appears to be "cooked" and stem from the early 2000s.

The US withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Tehran on Tuesday is the first step in the American plan for a regime change in Iran carried out in accordance with the Iraqi scenario, Middle East expert Sami Ramadani told RT.

"If one listens carefully to what Trump was saying, really, the US is not only withdrawing from this multilateral international agreement unilaterally - scrapping it, but it's also, actually, threatening a regime change in Iran," Ramadani said. "The tone of his [Trump's] speech; the words he used are reminiscent of George Bush Jr's speech" before the US-led the invasion in 2003 when "lies were used to launch a genocidal war against the people of Iraq," he said.

The expert noted that not only was the Iraqi regime overthrown due to the US' military involvement, but the whole country was "destroyed." The US has been trying to destabilize Iran for decades, he said.

New US sanctions on Venezuela are part of a campaign aimed at overthrowing the government and have nothing to do with drug trafficking, democracy or electoral fraud, professor of Latin American studies William Robinson told RT.

US Vice President Mike Pence in his speech to the Organization of American States on Monday called for other nations to increase pressure on Venezuela, slamming the country's upcoming election as illegitimate. He called on Venezuela to suspend its presidential election scheduled for May 20.

The US also announced sanctions on three Venezuelans and 20 companies with ties to socialist President Nicolas Maduro for alleged narcotics trafficking.

Robinson, professor of sociology and global and Latin American Studies at the University of California, told RT the new sanctions are a blatant form of election meddling intended to bring about regime change.

RT: Apart from imposing new sanctions on Venezuela, Mike Pence has called on Nicolas Maduro to suspend presidential elections scheduled for May 20. What do you think of this demand from the US Vice President?

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley says she "just started yelling at everybody" when she saw how UN members were constantly "bullying" Israel for things like its settlement push into Palestine and crackdown on Gaza protesters.

"It was abusive, how bad the international community was to Israel. It reminded me of a kid being bullied in the playground," Haley told the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) annual conference, which was held on Tuesday at the State Department.

"I just wasn't going to have it. It was just so upsetting to see, that I just started yelling at everybody," she added. Haley told everyone at the UN that "we had the back of Israel, and if they were going to mess with Israel they had to mess with the US."

Iran has proven to be one of the staunchest anti-US hegemony states in the world. Since the 1979 revolution Tehran has fought bitter US/Isreali-induced wars in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Syria, Lebanon and occupied Palestine, either directly or indirectly, while also facing harsh economic sanctions from the West. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a capable and shrewd regional power that will always affect the fate of the Middle east as history has shown for centuries past. The country occupies a geostrategic position that straddles the Middle east, the Persian Gulf region/Arabian sea, Central Asia, South Asia and the Caucus/Caspian region. Those key regions will be a crucial ''pivot'' for the 21st century great power geopolitical competition.

The Unipolar US will try to isolate the Eurasian great powers, Russia and China, by controlling "the rimlands'' of Eurasia and by destabilizing the above mentioned regions with its preferred hybrid wars. Iran will be a key node that the US will need to connect its NATO/Turkey military bases with its Iraq/GCC/Afghanistan/Pakistan military presence through potential actual military presence in India, and all the way to Mynamar and into its Asia Pacific military hubs. If Washington gets its way in having military presence in Iran and as it seems in India, then "the Great Geopolitical Wall" against Eurasian great powers will be completed from the European/NATO theater, through the Middle east and South Asia and all the way to the Asia Pacific theater. Only Iran and a potential Pakistani strategic re-alignment with Multipolarity could be the obstacle of such a "Great Geopolitical Wall". The US defense secretary Ash Cater's terming of ''strategic handshake" between the US's Asia pivot and India's act east policy is another name of this Wall.

Geopolitically

Iran is key for the multipolar world: Tehran's influence in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Syria, Lebanon and potentially in Yemen and its geographic location in the Persian Gulf region and the Arabian sea/Indian ocean, will help the Multipolar leading states to break free into the rimlands of the Mediterranean sea and Indian ocean. In deed, the country is on the crossroads between the Eurasian heartland and the Middle eastern rimlands.

Iran's strategic thinking

US President Donald Trump said he will renew sanctions on Iran, bringing them to the "highest level," following his announcement that the US will leave the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Obama administration in 2015.

In his announcement, Trump promised to create "bigger problems than it has ever had before" for Iran if the country develops nuclear weapons. But what are the sanctions and how do they affect other countries?

The Russian Lower House has approved Vladimir Putin's longtime ally Dmitry Medvedev as cabinet chairman for a new term, despite opposition from leftist parliamentary caucuses.

Of 433 lawmakers, present at the Tuesday session of the State Duma, 374 voted in favor of Medvedev's candidacy and 56 voted against. There were no abstentions. Earlier, representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the center-left party Fair Russia said they would not support Medvedev's nomination for the post as they considered the cabinet's performance over the past years as 'extremely poor'.

Less than an hour after the Duma vote, Vladimir Putin signed a decree that appointed Dmitry Medvedev as the head of the government.

In accordance with Russian law, Medvedev's government was dismissed after Vladimir Putin was sworn in as president on Monday, but all of its members continue to work until the new cabinet is formed. Also on Monday, Putin nominated Medvedev as prime minister, and the State Duma set the vote for Tuesday.

Dmitry Medvedev, 52, chaired the Russian government for the duration of Putin's previous presidential term, from 2012. Before that, he served as Russian president for four years while Putin headed the government.