During a press conference with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the US president offered his condolences to those affected by the Manchester attack and called those responsible ‘evil losers’. He added that the United States stood in ‘absolute solidarity’ with the people of the United Kingdom | * ‘We stand in solidarity’ – Trump leads global reaction to Manchester attack
Hasan Rouhani, whose first round victory in last Friday's election was seen as a win for pragmatists against conservatives, telling a news conference that Iran's "waiting for the new government to find stability and continuity in its policies,” adding that last week's election showed Iranians wanted more democracy and interaction with the world.
Donald Trump's first trip abroad as president was to Saudi Arabia, and the capital Riyadh laid on a grand royal welcome.
A business deal worth 350billion dollars was signed between the United States and Saudi Arabia - about one-third of which was for weapons.
The visit also provided an opportunity to realign perceptions of power in the region. Trump's predecessor Barack Obama seemed to distance himself from Saudi Arabia, by working with Iran as a regional leader. As a long-time critic of Iran, Trump is looking to reverse that policy.
But it was his speech, addressing the Muslim world, at the Arab Islamic American summit, that was most widely anticipated - a world he'd been strongly critical of during his election campaign.
Now he was urging Muslim leaders to share the burden in defeating those he described as Islamist extremists, saying a better future was only possible if they helped "drive out the terrorists".
He stuck to the speech written by his Senior Adviser Stephen Miller. But was the overture from Trump genuine? | Presenter: Richelle Carey | Guests: Robert Jordan, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia: Ahmed Alibrahim, a Saudi affairs specialist; Henri Barkey, Director of the Middle East Program at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Sadegh Zibakalam, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tehran
Last week Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s security detail assaulted a group of peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence. Video from the scene shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan looking on during the assault. It’s not clear if Erdogan gave the order for the attack. The assault came shortly after Erdogan was welcomed to the White House by President Trump. For more, we speak with Seyid Riza Dersimi, who was violently attacked during the protest and rushed by ambulance to the hospital, where he received stitches on his nose and was treated for a head injury. We also speak with Ruken Isik, a Kurdish activist and Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She attended last week’s protest and wrote a piece for The Huffington Post titled "Will Erdogan’s Thugs Face No Consequences for Attacking Us on U.S. Soil?"
President Trump vowed to isolate Iran during his major address to Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia. He accused Iran of funding, arming and training militias and other extremist groups in region while ignoring Saudi Arabia’s role in destabilizing the region. Trump’s remarks came just two days after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was re-elected in a landslide vote Friday. Rouhani’s main challenger, hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi, received only 38 percent. For more on Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and Iran’s election, we speak with Trita Parsi founder and president of the National Iranian American Council. He’s the author of the new book "Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Legacy of Diplomacy," out next week.
In his first foreign trip abroad as president, Donald Trump traveled this weekend to Saudi Arabia, where he signed an arms deals totaling $110 billion. This comes in addition to more than $115 billion offered in arms deals to Saudi Arabia by President Obama during his time in office. The deal also includes precision-guided munitions, which the Obama administration had stopped selling Saudi Arabia out of fear they would be used to bomb civilians amid the ongoing Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. Since 2015, 10,000 people have been killed in the ongoing fighting, which has also decimated the country’s health, water, sewage and sanitation systems. Over 10,000 civilians have died since the Saudi invasion began in 2015. The arms deal includes tanks, artillery, ships, helicopters, a missile defense system and cybersecurity technology. We speak to Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink and author of the book "Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection."
