Iran expects delivery of Russian S-300 air defense missiles by end of the year

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia said Tuesday that it would be at least six months before it could deliver the S-300 air defense missile system to Iran, but the Kremlin confirmed that a barter deal to supply Russian goods in exchange for Iranian oil was already being implemented.

The United States criticized President Vladimir Putin's decision on Monday to lift a five-year ban on delivery of the missile system, which would give the Islamic republic's military a strong deterrent against any air attack.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest also expressed concerns about a Russian-Iranian barter deal, which he said had been under discussion for months but had not yet been implemented. If it were to move forward, he said, such a deal would raise serious concerns and could interfere with sanctions that the United States and other Western nations imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

On Tuesday, Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed statements by a Russian diplomat that Russia already was supplying Iran with various goods in exchange for oil. Peskov said this trade was not barred under the sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

Back in 2010, Russia had linked its decision to freeze the S-300 delivery to the U.N. sanctions, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued on Monday that the decision was taken voluntarily as part of efforts to encourage progress in talks.

After Russia suspended delivery, Iran accused Russia of breach of contract and filed a lawsuit with a court in Geneva seeking $4 billion in damages.

Ali Shamkhani, who heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Tuesday in Moscow that the lawsuit would be withdrawn only after delivery of the S-300s, which he said Iran expected to happen by the end of the year, Russian news agencies reported.

His Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, said delivery would take time. "It will depend on our manufacturers," he told the Interfax news agency. "I believe they will need at least six months to complete this work."

Lavrov said the preliminary agreement on settling the Iranian nuclear standoff struck earlier this month made the S-300 ban unnecessary.

The framework agreement reached by Iran and six world powers is intended to significantly restrict its ability to produce nuclear weapons while giving it relief from international sanctions. The agreement is supposed to be finalized by June 30. There is no firm agreement yet on how or when to lift the international sanctions on Iran.

Dohuk (Iraq) (AFP) - A jihadist fighter slits a man's throat, another brandishes a severed head spiked on his rifle while more militants dump bodies into a trench overflowing with corpses.

This is how painter Ammar Salim depicts the massacres the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group perpetrated against his Yazidi minority in northern Iraq last summer.

In his tiny apartment in the city of Dohuk in Iraq's Kurdish region, Salim has attempted to put the collective memories of his community to canvas in a series entitled "The Yazidi Genocide".

This particular piece, his most recent, includes more than 100 characters and was inspired by mass graves found in the Sinjar area.

"Most people fight through weapons, writing, or the press. I said I'd fight through art," Salim says. "I want people to see what they haven't seen."

The paintings, including many crowded and colourful scenes reminiscent of Renaissance depictions of hell, are intentionally shocking.

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Painter Ammar Salim fled the town of Bashiqa when IS fighters took over Mosul in June 2014 in an ons …

One work depicting the fall of Sinjar shows women being raped, killed, and carried away. Another presents cackling jihadists buying and selling Yazidi women in the city of Mosul, their main northern Iraqi hub.

Salim fled the town of Bashiqa when IS fighters took over Mosul in June 2014 in an onslaught that overran large areas of Iraq.

During a second offensive in August, the jihadists targeted areas in the north that were home to many of Iraq's minorities.

The Yazidis, who are neither Muslims nor Arabs and practice a unique faith that makes them infidels for the jihadists, were hit harder than others.

They looked in danger of being wiped out of their ancestral land until a US-led air campaign turned the tide on IS advances in northern Iraq.

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The unique faith of the Yazidis makes them infidels for jihadists and they are hit harder than other …

Salim has been painting since he was a child and had his own workshop in Bashiqa, where he says he left tens of thousands of dollars worth of work when he fled and which has since been destroyed.

- 'Forest of hell' -

Much of his oeuvre includes innocent statues depicting cartoon characters such as Popeye and Mickey Mouse, and work he did as a set designer for children's plays.

But there are also darker pieces, such as the one he painted in 2007 about former president Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign against the Kurds that left tens of thousands dead.

It features a face, burnt almost to a crisp, looking to the heavens as a beam of light streams down through a hole in the clouds. On the ground lies a mound of skulls.

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Iraqi painter Ammar Salim says his next piece will depict a woman picking the bones of her dead daug …

Portrayals of trauma have been part of Iraqi visual arts for some time, says Nada Shabout, an expert in modern Iraqi art at the University of North Texas.

"Iraqi art from the beginning of (UN) sanctions through the 1990s and the 2003 (US-led) invasion has often dealt with current issues that expressed anger and pain," she says.

"When you have a stable life you can give beauty," Salim says. "When you are in such a miserable life, you have to talk about what's inside you."

The culmination of this trauma has led not only to Salim's portrayals of IS militants but also more fantastical manifestations of suffering.

In one painting, which he describes as "a forest of hell," he depicts a road leading to the Yazidi holy site of Lalish.

The trees lining the road, linked to each other by chains, are shaped like women crying out to the heavens. The background is a blood-red sunset mixed with burnt oranges and yellows.

Asked if the pain and suffering in his paintings has become a key part of Yazidi life, Salim says: "It has become all of our life."

The series so far consists of seven paintings, but Salim hopes it will eventually grow to include 20 pieces.

Salim says the next piece will depict a woman picking the bones of her dead daughter out of a mass grave, while her other daughter picks jewelry off the body.

"I'm talking about the rights of Yazidis and the killing of Yazidis and the genocide of Yazidis," he says. "In the future, they'll never forget what has happened to them."

ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector.

The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm.

During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.

Law enforcement and intelligence sources report the area around Anapra is dominated by the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Cartel (“Juárez Cartel”), La Línea (the enforcement arm of the cartel) and the Barrio Azteca (a gang originally formed in the jails of El Paso). Cartel control of the Anapra area make it an extremely dangerous and hostile operating environment for Mexican Army and Federal Police operations.

According to these same sources, “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling – and working for Juárez Cartel – help move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico. To the east of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, cartel-backed “coyotes” are also smuggling ISIS terrorists through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. These specific areas were targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing.

Paris (AFP) - Six months after donors pledged billions for devastated Gaza, only a quarter of the funds have materialised and not one destroyed home has been rebuilt, a coalition of aid groups said in a report Monday.

The report, "Charting a New Course: Overcoming the Stalemate in Gaza", warns that further conflict is likely unless the world takes a fresh approach to the battered Palestinian enclave, by releasing the promised funds, pushing for a permanent ceasefire and pressuring Israel to end its nine-year blockade.

"If we do not change course now to address these core issues the situation in Gaza will only continue to worsen," said the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA).

The report was published six months after international donors gathered in Cairo to pledge $3.5 billion (3.3 billion euros) in aid for Gaza which was devastated by a 50-day war with Israel in summer 2014 that left 2,200 Palestinians dead and 73 on the Israeli side.

But so far, only around a quarter of the funds have been released and not a single home has been rebuilt, the report found.

"Six months later, reconstruction and rehabilitation have barely kicked off," said the report, written by major charities including CARE International, Oxfam, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

During the war, more than 160,000 homes were hit, displacing around a quarter of Gaza's population of 1.8 million, some 100,000 of whom were still homeless, it said.

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A Palestinian sits amid the rubble of buildings that were destroyed during the 50-day war between Is …

But since the donors' conference "not a single one of the 19,000 destroyed (or severely damaged) homes has been rebuilt," the agencies said.

"Donors should make good on the pledges made at the Cairo conference and move forward with reconstruction and recovery projects for Gaza," it said.

World Bank figures cited in the report show that only $945 million (895 million euros) -- or 26.8 percent of the promised funds -- have been disbursed with some donors expressing reluctance to release the money until the Palestinian Authority resumes a presence within Gaza.

- 'Empty words' -

"The paradox is that the lack of reconstruction is exacerbating the potential for conflict. By refraining from releasing funds due to fear of political instability in Gaza, donors are entrenching divides that heighten instability," it said.

It also accused the international community of accepting the status quo in Gaza and failing to challenge Israel's years-long blockade on the tiny territory.

And it denounced the lack of efforts to put in a place a permanent ceasefire arrangement.

"The international community, in particular the (Middle East diplomatic) Quartet of the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, should propose a time-bound plan to support an end to the blockade," the agencies said.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam, said the speeches at the conference had "turned into empty words".

"There has been little rebuilding, no permanent ceasefire agreement and no plan to end the blockade," she said in a statement.

"The international community is walking with eyes wide open into the next avoidable conflict, by upholding the status quo they themselves said must change."

The authors also called for Israel to allow free movement between the occupied West Bank and Gaza "in line with (its) obligations as an occupying power".

The report also said the two sides must be held legally accountable for all "violations of international law" with accountability "an important measure for deterring and limiting future violence."

Al Qaeda’s most lethal branch said today that its top cleric, a man with a $5 million American bounty on his head, has been killed in Yemen, as the Arab nation falls deeper into chaos.

The group said in a statement posted online that former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, also spelled al-Rubaish, was killed in a “crusader strike” over the weekend “after he spent almost two decades carrying out jihad against America and its agents.” The statement did not say who exactly AQAP believed carried out the purported strike.

The U.S. has killed a number of high ranking AQAP leaders in recent years through targeted drone strikes, as part of its sustained counter-terrorism operations in the area. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this report.

Al-Rubaysh is described by the U.S. as a senior “sharia” official in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) who “provides the justification for attacks conducted by AQAP.” He is also accused of being the group’s “senior advisor for AQAP operational planning, and is involved in the planning of attacks.”

Al-Rubaysh was held in Guantanamo Bay prison from 2002 to 2006. AQAP said after he was released he “quickly joined his brethren at AQAP.”

The spiritual leader appears to have played a similar role in AQAP as Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was a top cleric and recruiter in AQAP before he was killed in a CIA drone strike in September 2011. After his death, the U.S. said al-Awlaki too was involved in the terror group’s external operations.

Al-Rubaysh’s alleged death comes amid widespread violence in Yemen where Saudi Arabia is now leading an Arab coalition effort, supported by U.S. intelligence and logistical support, to repel a Houthi rebel assault against the remnants of Yemeni government forces. Last week the United Nations said the crisis was “getting worse by the hour.” In February, all U.S. government personnel left Yemen as the security situation deteriorated and the American embassy was closed.

AQAP, the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda, has been previously described by U.S. officials as the affiliate that posed the greatest threat to the American homeland.