"Imagine with [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad in control of this place, the risk of the harm to the West and to Israel," he said.

The new policy involves separate labeling for goods made in areas of the West Bank administered by the Palestinian Authority and for goods made in Gaza according to Pompeo. The new State Department guidance is expected to apply to goods made in areas "where Israel exercises the relevant authority" to be labelled as "Israeli", "Product of Israel" or "Made in Israel" when exported to the US.

Pompeo also noted that products made on the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority will be recognised as products of the "West Bank", and goods made in Gaza will have a different label, since the new policy "recognises that the territories are separately administered by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

This move by the White House will likely elicit backlash from European governments and human rights groups who argue that Israeli settlements in the West Bank "contribute to human rights abuses against Palestinians and harm efforts to reach a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", the media outlet adds.

And in 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that "foodstuffs originating in the territories occupied by the State of Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by an indication of that provenance", so the new measure effectively puts the United States at odds with the European Union.

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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Armenia pays compensation for damage to infrastructure and buildings in territories re-acquired by Baku, after the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The president has accused Yerevan of destroying property before withdrawing from the areas under the terms of the armistice brokered by Moscow last week.

"We are in the center of the city of Jabrayil. There is not a single complete building, not a single one!" Aliyev explained on Monday. "Only the military part was built, the rest of the infrastructure - houses, buildings, schools - everything was destroyed."

Aliyev promised that Yerevan would be held responsible for the destroyed property "in international courts," noting that the Armenians also felled forests on their way out.

"I want to repeat again that international structures and experts will be involved, all the damage will be calculated, and we will demand compensation for 30 years," he said.

Azerbaijani Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Vugar Kerimov also joined in, accusing the Armenians of "genocide against nature" in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In the days after the agreement to retreat, videos emerged on social media of Nagorno-Karabakh residents burning their property to stop it from falling into Azeri hands.

The Russia-brokered truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan helped stop the violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. Its status remains unresolved but a way to 'normalization' is open, he added.

"The final status of Nagorno-Karabakh is unresolved; we agreed to maintain the existing status quo," Putin told journalists on Tuesday, speaking about the fate of the disputed region that has since September become an arena of a fierce military conflict between the two neighbors.

Stopping tragedy

The Moscow-brokered armistice helped stop the bloodshed, the Russian president said, calling it one of the most important results of the talks with the Armenian and the Azerbaijani leadership. He called the recently reignited conflict a real "tragedy" that affected many families on both sides.

"More than 4,000 people died, according to the official estimates. I believe the number of casualties is higher. Tens of thousands have been injured or maimed," Putin said.

The armistice ceded control over some areas in the disputed region to Azerbaijan, leaving a 6-kilometer long mountain pass as the only remaining route connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia proper. Still, Putin said that maintaining the balance of power in the region was just as important as putting an end to the conflict.

Preserving balance

"We believed that a balance of forces should be maintained even in the face of such serious developments," he said, adding that Russia took "every effort" that Armenia did not feel "abandoned."

He noted that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) - a military alliance of several former Soviet states, which Russia and Armenia both belong to - could not interfere into the conflict on Yerevan's side.

"According to the international law, Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent areas are indisputable Azerbaijani territories," Putin said, adding that the CSTO could only intervene in case of an aggression against one of its members but "no one encroached on Armenia's territory."

Under the armistice, Russian peacekeepers will protect the remaining route linking Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian territory, which is also known as the Lachin corridor.

Speaking about Turkey's "open support" of Baku in the recent conflict, Putin said that, although one could give various assessments of it, Ankara could hardly be accused of violating the international law. Moscow managed to convince Azerbaijan and Turkey to limit Ankara's involvement in the truce monitoring to avoid a potentially negative reaction from Yerevan, he noted.

[...]

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Iranian government spokesperson Ali Rabiei vowed to punish any unprovoked US aggression in a streamed broadcast on Tuesday, following reports of a calculated attack by the Trump administration.

"Any action against the Iranian nation would certainly face a crushing response."

The remarks were a reaction to reports in the New York Times (NYT) on Monday. The paper claimed that US President Donald Trump had asked his senior advisers last Thursday whether there was scope to take out Iranian nuclear sites.

© West Asia News Agency via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: An Iranian flag is pictured near in a missile during a military drill, Iran.

According to the report, Trump is frustrated that his sanctions and tough rhetoric haven't been enough to bring Iran back to the negotiating table and surrender its nuclear program once and for all.

The president was dissuaded from moving ahead with the military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites but may still be considering options against other Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq.

It is unclear whether any consideration was given to a missile or cyber-attack.

Last Wednesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran's uranium stockpile at Natanz was 12 times larger than the limits set by the previous nuclear agreement, which Trump abandoned in 2018.

The Trump administration has been pursuing a "maximum pressure campaign" against the Persian state in the form of crippling economic sanctions.