…As Blast hits Kabul airport on return of exiled Afghan vice president***
US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have traded hostile warnings, amid rising tensions between the two countries.
Mr Trump tweeted that Iran “will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before” if it threatened the US.
Mr Rouhani earlier said that war with Iran would be “the mother of all wars”.
In May, the US left a deal which curbed Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions.
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Washington is now re-imposing the sanctions, despite objections from the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, who all signed the 2015 agreement.
President Rouhani’s comments, made to Iranian diplomats, did leave open the possibility of future good relations with the US.
“America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” he said, according to Iran’s state news agency Irna.
Mr Trump’s angry rhetoric has echoes of his Twitter barrages against North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, whom he branded a “madman” who “will be tested like never before”, before engaging in a testy exchange over whose nuclear button was bigger.
Their verbal hostilities nonetheless evolved into ongoing diplomatic negotiations.
‘More of a mafia than a government’
In a separate development on Sunday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Iranian regime “resembles the mafia more than a government”.
Addressing a group of Iranian Americans in California, Mr Pompeo denounced Mr Rouhani and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who negotiated the nuclear deal, as “merely polished front men for the ayatollahs’ international con artistry”.
Mr Pompeo said he wanted to try to stop countries importing Iranian oil by November as part of continued pressure on Tehran.
The gathering was the first time a top US official had directly addressed such a large number of Iranian Americans, says BBC state department correspondent Barbara Plett Usher. It is being seen as part of the administration’s strategy to increase pressure on Iran’s leadership.
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In May, Mr Trump called the nuclear accord – or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as it is formally known – a “horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”.
Mr Trump alleged that the deal did not restrict Iran’s “destabilising activities” in the region enough, and could not detect or prevent any breaking of the terms of the deal.
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Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, and its compliance with the deal has been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has said Iran is honouring its commitments.
In May, Mr Pompeo outlined 12 conditions for any “new deal” between the US and Iran, including the withdrawal of its forces from Syria and an end to its support for rebels in Yemen.
Others include Tehran:
Giving the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a full account of its former nuclear military programme, and giving up such work forever
Ending its “threatening behaviour” towards its neighbours, including “its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the UAE”
Releasing all US citizens, and those of US partners and allies, “detained on spurious charges or missing in Iran”
The US Treasury has said that there will be wind-down periods of 90 and 180 days before sanctions are implemented.
The first deadline, on 6 August, will affect the purchase of US dollars, trade in gold and certain other metals, as well as aviation and the car industry.
The next, on 4 November, will target Iran’s financial and oil institutions.
Iran is one of the world’s largest oil producers, with exports worth billions of dollars each year. Nonetheless, it is already feeling economic pressures, and has seen large-scale protests over rising prices and a decline in the value of its currency, the rial.
In the meantime, Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum narrowly escaped a suspected suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport as he returned home on Sunday from more than a year in exile in Turkey over allegations of torturing and abusing a political rival.
Dostum, who left Afghanistan last year amid allegations of torture and abuse, had left the airport in a motorcade only minutes before the explosion, which officials said appeared to have been caused by a suicide bomber.
As many as 10 people were killed and wounded in the blast, said Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish.
Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai said the blast went off near the main airport entrance, where supporters had been waiting to greet Dostum as his motorcade passed on its way to the city centre.
“The number of casualties may rise. The blast happened right after Dostum’s convoy left the airport,” he said.
Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek veteran of decades of Afghanistan’s sometimes bloody politics, was unharmed and greeted cheering supporters at a rally in his office compound.
Much of the area around the presidential palace was shut down for the arrival and there was a heavy security presence on the streets, emphasizing the increasingly volatile political climate in Kabul.
Dostum faced outrage from Western donor countries including the United States after reports in 2016 that his guards had seized political rival Ahmad Eshchi and subjected him to beatings, torture and violent sexual abuse.
He denied Eshchi’s accusations but left the country in May last year amid international demands that he be held accountable, ostensibly to seek medical treatment in Turkey, and has not returned since.
Once described by the U.S. State Department as a “quintessential warlord,” Dostum has for years faced accusations of serious human rights abuses, including killing Taliban prisoners by leaving them in sealed cargo containers.
He joined President Ashraf Ghani in the disputed 2014 elections, helping to deliver support from the ethnic Uzbek community in northern Afghanistan and his return from exile comes ahead of the next presidential election in early 2019.
Dostum’s return adds to an already volatile mix ahead of separate parliamentary elections in October that are seen as a dry run for the more important presidential elections next year.
Protestors calling for his return closed a number of voter registration offices and threatened to disrupt the parliamentary ballot, seen as a key test of Afghanistan’s political stability.
BBC with additional report from NBC
