Iran’s Foreign Ministry insisted on Thursday that the missile tests carried out by the country’s Revolutionary Guard this week do not violate Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers or a U.N. Security Council resolution.
According to ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari, the missiles were “conventional defensive instruments and they were merely for legitimate defense,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard test-launched two ballistic missiles on Wednesday emblazoned with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” in Hebrew — a show of power by the Shiite nation, long an opponent of Israel.
Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday told U.S. troops who are training the Jordanian military that Islamic State extremists are “already on their heels” but defeating them will take a long time.
Biden also told the U.S. military instructors that Islamic State militants don’t pose an existential threat to the United States.
Washington has scaled up military aid to Jordan in recent months in line with the kingdom’s central role in the fight against Islamic State, which controls large areas of neighboring Syria and Iraq.
Heads of state from across the Muslim world are gathered in Saudi Arabia for the conclusion of a three-week-long counter-terrorism military exercise that included 20 participating countries.
The training focused on how to coordinate combat operations and guerrilla warfare tactics among the Muslim-majority countries that are members of a larger counter-terrorism alliance announced by the kingdom in December.
The German Embassy in Tirana says that 806 Albanians were repatriated from Germany last week after their asylum requests were rejected.
Last year, Albanians were the fourth-biggest group of asylum-seekers in Germany after Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, in search of better living standards and jobs.
The Organization of American States expressed concern Thursday over the timing of the disqualification of candidates from Peru’s presidential race and said it was sending an observer mission for the election, in which the daughter of jailed strongman Alberto Fujimori is the front-runner.
The decision by Peru’s electoral board to bar Keiko Fujimori’s main rival on a technicality just one month ahead of the April 10 vote has sparked charges of political chicanery and a vow by economist Julio Guzman to fight his disqualification.
The board voided Guzman’s candidacy, claiming the mechanism by which his party chose him violated its own internal rules.
