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Italy’s ruling League party would seek tax cuts in the 2020 budget by rising the country’s deficit a little bit, its economics spokesman said on Monday.League chief Matteo Salvini pulled the plug last week on its coalition government with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, starting a potential countdown to elections, which the country may need to tackle alongside preparing its budget in the fall.”We need to pursue a tax cut and it is obvious that a small proportion will be funded with the deficit”, League’s economics chief Claudio Borghi said in an interview with state-owned television RAI.
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Secret British government documents have warned of serious disruptions across the country in the event that the U.K. leaves the European Union without a trade deal on Oct. 31, according to a report.The Sunday Times newspaper published what it said was what the British government expects in the case of a sudden, “no-deal” Brexit. Among the most serious: “significant” disruptions to the supply of drugs and medicine, a decrease in the availability of fresh food and even potential fresh water shortages due to possible interruptions of imported water treatment chemicals.Although the grim scenarios reportedly outlined in the government documents have long been floated by academics and economists, they’ve been repeatedly dismissed as scaremongering by Brexit proponents.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is ready to leave the EU regardless of whether he is able to renegotiate the Brexit deal struck with Brussels by his predecessor, Theresa May.His own officials, however, have warned that with a no-deal Brexit, the sharing of law enforcement data and the health of Britain’s crucial financial services industry could be in jeopardy after Oct. 31.The documents published by the Times also quote officials as warning that up to 85% of all trucks wouldn’t be ready for French customs at the critical English Channel crossing that day, causing lines that could stretch out for days. Some 75% of all drugs coming into Britain arrive via that crossing, the memos warned, “making them particularly vulnerable to severe delays.”The officials foresee “critical elements” of the food supply chain being affected that would “reduce availability and choice and increase the price, which will affect vulnerable groups.”Britain’s Cabinet Office didn’t return a message seeking comment on the documents, but Michael Gove, the British minister in charge of no-deal preparations, insisted that the files represented a “worst case scenario.”Very “significant steps have been taken in the last 3 weeks to accelerate Brexit planning,” he said in a message posted to Twitter.But the documents, which are titled “planning assumptions,” mention a “base scenario,” not a “worst case” one. The Times quoted an unnamed Cabinet Office source as saying the memos were simply realistic assessments of what was most likely to happen.The opposition Labour Party, which is trying to delay Brexit and organize a government of national unity, held up the report as another sign that no-deal must be avoided.“It seems to me is what we’ve seen is a hard-headed assessment of reality, that sets out in really stark terms what a calamitous outcome of no-deal Brexit would mean for the United Kingdom,” lawmaker Nick Thomas-Symonds told Sky News television. “The government is reckless in the way it’s been pushing forward with no-deal planning in this way.”In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the country is ready for Brexit, even without a deal to smooth the transition.Merkel said Sunday during an open house at the chancellery in Berlin that she would “try everything in my power to find solutions” and that “I believe that it would be better to leave with an agreement than without one.”But she added that “should it come to that we are prepared for this eventuality too.”
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Several migrants jumped into the sea from a Spanish rescue boat Sunday in a thwarted bid to reach shore in Italy, where the government’s hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has refused to let the 107 passengers disembark.“We have been warning for days, desperation has its limits,” said Open Arms founder Oscar Camps, who released a video showing four migrants wearing orange life vests swimming toward Lampedusa island. Crew members from the humanitarian group’s ship swam quickly toward them so they could be brought back aboard.In the evening, Open Arms urgently requested permission to enter Lampedusa’s port so the migrants, aboard for 17 days, could finally get off. It said their psychological and physical conditions are “at risk.”“If the worst happens, Europe and Salvini will be responsible,” the charity said in a tweet.In its formal request made by the boat’s captain, Marc Reig Creus, Open Arms also offered an alternative solution: to transfer the 107 onto another, “adequate” ship that could swiftly reach the Spanish port of Algeciras, where Spain has said the migrants could disembark, given the dramatic situation of passengers and crew.Open Arms told Italian authorities including prosecutors that the situation aboard “has become unmanageable,” adding that the migrants are “prey to frequent anxiety and panic attacks.”Salvini has denied docking permission because he contends charity rescue boats essentially facilitate the smuggling of migrants from the traffickers’ base in Libya. Salvini’s resolve has seen previous similar standoffs end with disembarkation either ultimately taking place in Italy or elsewhere in Europe.On Sunday, Spain offered one of its ports for the migrants to come ashore, but Open Arms said it would be absurd to undertake a journey, that could take perhaps a week, with the migrants.For days, Open Arms has been anchored off Lampedusa, a fishing and vacation island between Sicily and northern Africa. The boat initially had 147 migrants aboard when it reached Italian waters. In the last few days, 40 migrants have transferred by Italian coast guard vessels to Lampedusa, including a few who were ailing and 27 believed to be minors.After the migrants who had jumped from the ship were back aboard, several female migrants wailed or pressed their hands to their head as if in disbelief. A few of the male migrants could be seen gesturing and shouting angrily, while crew members tried to calm tempers.With Salvini challenging the survival of Italy’s populist government in a push for an early election he hopes will give him the premiership, the minister is hardening his already-stiff resolve to keep humanitarian ships from bringing rescued migrants to Italy. His League’s party blames migrants for crime, and its popularity among voters has been soaring.A Norwegian-flagged ship, Ocean Viking, operated by two French humanitarian groups, has been sailing for days with 356 rescued migrants aboard between Malta and Lampedusa and other tiny Italian island, Linosa, awaiting assignment of a safe port. Salvini vowed to block that ship, too.“Whoever hangs tough wins,” Salvini said. “In Italy there’s no place for traffickers.”Open Arms carried out its first rescue of this group 17 days earlier, plucking migrants to safety from smugglers’ unseaworthy dinghies off Libya.Seeking to break the standoff, Spain on Sunday offered a far southern port, Algeciras, just west of Gibraltar, to Open Arms, even while acknowledging that the harbor is distant and unsuitable to disembark so many migrants.The office of Spain’s caretaker prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the offer reflected the “emergency situation” on the boat and Salvini’s “unconceivable response” in refusing docking.“But right now, Spain is the only country ready to receive (the boat),” Sanchez’ office said.But a spokeswoman for the Spanish NGO, Laura Lanuza, said undertaking such a long voyage to Spain would be “crazy.”“There is anxiety, bouts of violence, control is becoming increasingly difficult,” she said. “To embark on a six-day sailing with these people on board who are at the very limit of their possibilities would be crazy. We can’t put their health and lives at risk.”Salvini earlier on Sunday told the ship to go to Spain, and, in a tweet, contended that Open Arms was staying anchored off Lampedusa “just to provoke me and Italy.”Spain and five other countries have offered to take the migrants, dividing them among themselves, but that didn’t change Salvini’s mind against docking.Open Arms contended that Salvini is using the 107 migrants for “xenophobic and racist propaganda.”In a separate tweet, Camps blasted Salvini of exploiting the lives of migrants for political gain. “What more does @matteosalvinimi need for his political campaign? Deaths?”On Tuesday, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte addresses the Senate, where Salvini’s party has submitted a no-confidence vote against him, even though the League is the 14-month-old, government’s junior coalition partner. Conte could resign, possibly paving the way for an election in a couple of months just as Salvini’s popularity is soaring in opinion polls.
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Last update: 11:30 a.m.A Spanish humanitarian group on Sunday rejected Spain’s offer to take in more than 100 mostly African migrants aboard a charity rescue ship that Italy had refused to let dock, saying it was too dangerous to sail that far.”We are in a state of extreme humanitarian emergency,” a spokeswoman for the Open Arms charity said. “What they need is to be disembarked now. It is unthinkable to navigate for six days; that is what it would takes for us to arrive at Algeciras,” a Spanish port.The migrants were picked up by the Open Arms boat off the coast of Libya, but have been stranded off the shores of Italy for two weeks. Anti-immigrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has refused to let the migrants disembark on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, part of his crackdown on charity rescue boats he claims facilitate the smuggling of migrants by human traffickers based in Libya.Spain said it was “inconceivable” that Italy refused to accept the migrants, ordering its port of Algeciras to be ready to receive the Open Arms boat.Open Arms, a Spanish-based charity that undertakes sea rescues of those trying to reach Europe as they flee from war, persecution or poverty, accused Salvini of using the 107 migrants for “xenophobic and racist propaganda.” FILE – Migrants are evacuated by Italian Coast guards from the Open Arms Spanish humanitarian boat at the coasts of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, southern Italy, Aug. 17, 2019.The office of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the situation aboard the vessel was “urgent” and “untenable” for the 107 migrants on board, including two children.The rescue charity said, “Spanish ports are not the closest or the safest for Open Arms… but for now Spain is the only country willing to accept it.” But then it turned down Madrid’s offer.Desperate to reach Europe, four migrants in orange life vests jumped into the waters off Lampedusa and tried to swim ashore, but crew members quickly caught up with them and brought them back to the ship.The rescue boat originally had 147 migrants aboard, but Italy allowed 40 to come ashore, including a few who were sick and 27 who said they were minors.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday that she would meet British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday evening to discuss Britain’s planned departure from the European Union, adding that Berlin was also prepared for a disorderly Brexit.Johnson is seeking to persuade European Union leaders to
reopen Brexit talks or face the prospect of its second-largest
member leaving abruptly on Oct. 31 with no deal in place to
mitigate the economic shock — a move that businesses expect
would cause major disruption.
“We are glad of every visit, and you have to talk, and you
have to find good solutions,” Merkel said during a panel
discussion at the Chancellery.
“We are prepared for any outcome, we can say that, even if
we do not get an agreement. But at all events I will make an
effort to find solutions — up until the last day of
negotiations,” she added.
“I think it’s always better to leave with an agreement than
without one. But if that’s not possible, we’ll be prepared for
the alternative as well.”The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that Johnson would
tell Merkel that the British parliament could not stop Brexit. 
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Authorities in Gibraltar on Sunday rejected the United States’ latest request not to release a seized Iranian supertanker, clearing the way for the vessel to set sail after being detained last month for allegedly attempting to breach European Union sanctions on Syria.The ship was expected to leave Sunday night, according to a statement on Twitter by Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to Britain.
 
The tanker’s release comes amid a growing confrontation between Iran and the West after President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers over a year ago.
 
Shortly after the tanker’s detention in early July near Gibraltar — a British overseas territory  — Iran seized the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero, which remains held by the Islamic Republic. Analysts had said the Iranian ship’s release by Gibraltar could see the Stena Impero go free.
 
Gibraltar’s government said Sunday it was allowing the Iranian tanker’s release because “The EU sanctions regime against Iran  — which is applicable in Gibraltar  — is much narrower than that applicable in the US.”
In a last-ditch effort to stop the release, the U.S. unsealed a warrant Friday to seize the vessel and its cargo of 2.1 million barrels of light crude oil, citing violations of U.S. sanctions as well as money laundering and terrorism statutes.
 
U.S. officials told reporters that the oil aboard the ship was worth some $130 million and that it was destined for a designated terror organization to conduct more terrorism.
 
The unsealed court documents argued that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are the ship’s true owners through a network of front companies.
 
Authorities in Gibraltar said Sunday that, unlike in the U.S., the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not designated a terrorist organization under EU, U.K. or Gibraltar law.
 
The Iranian ship was detained while sailing under a Panamanian flag with the name Grace 1. As of Sunday, it had been renamed the Adrian Darya 1 and had hoisted an Iranian flag. Workers were seen painting the new name on the side of the ship Saturday.
 
Iran has not disclosed the Adrian Darya 1’s intended destination and has denied it was ever sailing for Syria.
 
The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, said he had been assured in writing by the Iranian government that the tanker wouldn’t unload its cargo in Syria.
 
Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to Britain, said in a series of tweets that “round-the-clock efforts to carry out port formalities and deploy the full crew onto the ship” had taken place since Gibraltar lifted the vessel’s detention Thursday.
 
The Astralship shipping agency in Gibraltar, which has been hired to handle paperwork and arrange logistics for the Adrian Darya 1, had told The Associated Press that a new crew of Indian and Ukrainian nationals were replacing the sailors on board.
 
Astralship managing director Richard De la Rosa said his company had not been informed about the vessel’s next destination.
 
Messages seeking comment from the Iranian Embassy in London were not immediately returned.
  
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Britain will face shortages of fuel, food and medicine if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland, official government documents leaked to the Sunday Times show.The Times said the forecasts compiled by the Cabinet Office set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than the worst case scenarios.They said up to 85% of lorries using the main channel crossings “may not be ready” for French customs, meaning disruption at ports would potentially last up to three months before the flow of traffic improves.The government believes a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic will be likely as current plans to avoid widespread checks will prove unsustainable, the Times said.
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LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that his nation’s Parliament cannot stop Brexit and a new deal must be agreed if Britain is to avoid leaving the EU without one. In his first trip abroad as leader, Johnson is due to meet his European counterparts ahead of a G-7 summit on Aug. 24-26 in Biarritz, France. He will say that Britain is leaving the European Union on Oct. 31, with or without a deal, and that Parliament cannot block that, according to a Downing Street source. The United Kingdom is heading toward a constitutional crisis at home and a showdown with the EU as Johnson has repeatedly vowed to leave the bloc on Oct. 31 without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate the Brexit divorce. Refusing to reconsiderAfter more than three years of Brexit dominating EU affairs, the bloc has repeatedly refused to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, which includes an Irish border insurance policy that Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, agreed to in November. The prime minister is coming under pressure from politicians across the political spectrum to prevent a disorderly departure, with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn vowing to bring down Johnson’s government in early September to delay Brexit. It is, however, unclear if lawmakers have the unity or power to use the British Parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit on Oct. 31 — likely to be the United Kingdom’s most significant move since World War II. Opponents of no-deal say it would be a disaster for what was once one of the West’s most stable democracies. A disorderly divorce, they say, would hurt global growth, send shock waves through financial markets and weaken London’s claim to be the world’s preeminent financial center. Brexit supporters say there may be short-term disruption from a no-deal exit but that the economy will thrive if cut free from what they cast as a doomed experiment in integration that has led to Europe falling behind China and the United States. 
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TEJEDA, SPAIN – A wildfire in the Canary Islands led to the evacuation of a small town in Gran Canaria island on Saturday, and officials said the blaze had a “great potential” to spread. The wildfire started in the town of Valleseco, and an emergency area was also declared for the municipalities of Moya and Tejeda. In the latter, most parts of the town of 1,900 inhabitants were evacuated for precautionary reasons and roads were closed, the regional government said. Seven helicopters, as well as firefighters on the ground, were battling the blaze. Tejeda had been evacuated last week when another wildfire affected the area. 
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About 4,000 people have held a rally in Moscow to demand fairness in upcoming city council elections, and solo pickets protesting the exclusion of some opposition and independent candidates are taking place at prominent monuments.The actions Saturday have been much smaller and less heated than recent weekend protests over the issue. Two unauthorized demonstrations were previously harshly broken up by police, with more than 2,000 people detained altogether; a sanctioned demonstration last week attracted as many as 60,000 people, the largest protest in several years.
 
The authorized rally on Saturday was organized by the Communist Party. The solo pickets are following a law that demonstrations by a single person do not require official permission.
 
No detentions have been reported.
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The shipping agent for an Iranian supertanker caught in a diplomatic standoff says the vessel is ready to depart Gibraltar on Sunday or Monday, as the U.S. made a last-minute effort to seize it again.The head of the company sorting paperwork and procuring for the Grace 1 oil tanker in the British overseas territory said the vessel could be sailing away in the next “24 to 48 hours,” once new crews dispatched to the territory take over command of the ship.“The vessel is ongoing some logistical changes and requirements that have delayed the departure,” Astralship managing director Richard De la Rosa told The Associated Press.De la Rosa’s comments came a day after the U.S. obtained a warrant to seize the vessel over violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran. It was unclear if that could happen within a 24-hour time frame as Gibraltar officials have said any request to seize the vessel would have to make its way through the territory’s courts.He said the new crews were Indian and Ukrainian nationals hired by the Indian managers of the ship and that his company had not been informed about the supertanker’s next destination.The tanker, which carries 2.1 million barrels of Iranian light crude oil, had been detained for over a month in Gibraltar for allegedly attempting to breach European Union sanctions on Syria. The arrest fueled tension between London and Tehran, which seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz in apparent retaliation.Analysts had said the release of the Grace 1 by Gibraltar could see Britain’s Stena Impero go free.But late on Friday, a day after the tanker was released from detention, the U.S. obtained a warrant to seize the vessel over violations of U.S. sanctions, money laundering and terrorism statutes. Washington is seeking to take control of the oil tanker, all of the petroleum aboard and $995,000, unsealed court documents showed.The latest turn of events come as tensions continue to rise in the Persian Gulf since President Donald Trump last year unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal signed by Iran and other world powers. In recent weeks, oil tankers in the region have been the subject of attacks and seizures, dragging among others London and Tehran into a bitter diplomatic row.The Gibraltar Supreme Court didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on whether the U.S. request had been filed there. Britain’s Foreign Office deferred questions to the government of Gibraltar, but calls and emails to its offices on how authorities planned to respond to Washington’s move went unanswered.Messages left with the U.S. Embassy in London were not immediately returned.The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, had warned the U.S. that a new legal case would need to be examined by the territory’s courts following the end of the tanker’s detention this week. Picardo said he had been assured in writing by the Iranian government that the tanker wouldn’t unload its cargo in Syria.Richard Wilkinson, a lawyer representing three crew members of the Grace 1 oil tanker, including its Indian captain, said he was “not aware of any reason why the ship won’t sail on Sunday, as it is to be planned.”“As far as Europe is concerned, and it’s common ground, there’s been no criticism or complaints that this vessel is carrying oil from Iran, the only problem from the European point of view was the destination of the vessel and that has been sorted,” Wilkinson said.He also said that he doubted that the U.S. had any jurisdiction to enforce its own sanctions in Gibraltar, where he saw “little political will” to re-seize the tanker.The time window for a new seizure was also rapidly closing, as workers were seen by an AP crew hanging on a ladder to repaint the vessel’s bow with the name “Adrian Darya 1” over the place where “Grace 1″ had already been blackened out.The ship was reportedly no longer sailing under a Panamanian flag, but no signs of a new one could be seen on Saturday.The shipping agent, De la Rosa, said that “if the Americans came forth with some kind of request or specific order, it would have to be looked into by the judges, but I don’t think that’s materialized.”Sanam Vakil, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, said the Iran policies of the U.K. and the U.S. governments overlapped in some aspects but differed on the 2015 nuclear deal, which London wants to maintain despite the Trump administration’s efforts to scrap it.The British, Vakil said, “think it’s de-escalation that’s going to result in the release of the Stena Impero and preserve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” as the nuclear deal is officially known.“The Americans are trying to provoke Iran,” she added. “If they do manage to seize the ship, it’s all about provoking the Islamic Republic. They’re trying to create a new cycle of tensions.”
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Italy’s hard-line interior minister appeared to buckle under pressure Saturday to ease the political standoff over a migrant rescue ship with 134 people aboard, saying he would allow minors to disembark after being at sea for two weeks.Premier Giuseppe Conte had written a second letter to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini demanding that minors be allowed off the boat. Salvini wrote back Saturday with a three-page missive of his own saying he would do so but made clear it was Conte’s choice and that it didn’t set a precedent.It wasn’t clear how many youngsters were aboard, or when the disembarkation might begin.The standoff laid bare the split between Salvini’s anti-migrant League and the 5-Star Movement, which together govern Italy. Salvini is seeking to end Conte’s populist coalition with a no-confidence vote and early election that Salvini hopes will give him the premiership.Spanish aid group Open Arms had rescued the migrants in the Mediterranean near Libya two weeks ago, and won a legal battle to enter Italy’s territorial waters despite a ban by Salvini preventing humanitarian aid groups from docking.The ship has been off Italy’s coast waiting to disembark after Spain and five other European Union nations agreed to take them in.Open Arms chief Oscar Camps warned Saturday that the group couldn’t guarantee the safety of the migrants anymore, as tensions were rising and fights breaking out.He warned European leaders that as of Saturday “we cannot be responsible nor guarantee the security of the people on board Open Arms.”Amid the standoff, the aid group filed a formal complaint with prosecutors in Sicily alleging that both the migrants and the crew were being held hostage. Salvini and other ministers have been investigated in the past for alleged kidnapping stemming from previous standoffs, but no charges have ever been brought.
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Updated at 9:36 p.m. Aug. 16.VOA Persian’s Katherine Ahn contributed to this report.The U.S. government said Friday that it had a warrant to seize an Iranian supertanker caught in a diplomatic standoff off the coast of the British overseas territory Gibraltar. 
 
A court document released Friday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington showed the court had issued the warrant to seize the vessel.  
  
The United States is seeking to take control of the Iranian oil tanker Grace 1, along with the oil it carries and $995,000, on the ground on that the ship has links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization. 
 
The Supreme Court in Gibraltar ruled Thursday that the tanker could be released from detention, shortly after the United States launched a last-minute legal bid to hold it.  
 
However, despite the ruling, the tanker remained off the coast of Gibraltar on Friday. And a lawyer for the ship’s Indian captain told the Associated Press that the captain no longer wanted to maintain command of the vessel.A view of the Grace 1 supertanker is seen backdropped by Gibraltar’s Rock, as it stands at anchor in the British territory of Gibraltar, Aug. 15, 2019.The Grace 1 was carrying 2.1 million barrels of Iranian oil when Gibraltar police and British Special Forces seized it on July 4. It was believed to be transporting the oil to Syria in violation of both European Union and U.S. sanctions. 
 
On Thursday, Gibraltar’s government said it had received assurances from Tehran that it would not send the crude oil cargo to Syria.  An Iranian official, however, later disputed that any assurances had been given. Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi was quoted by Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency as saying that “Iran has given no assurances over the Grace 1 not going to Syria to secure its release,” and that Gibraltar was only seeking to “save face.” FILE – The Stena Impero, a British-flagged vessel owned by Stena Bulk, is seen at Bandar Abbas port, July 21, 2019.After the Iranian tanker was seized, Tehran retaliated by taking control of a British tanker, the Stena Impero, on July 19 in the strategic Strait of Hormuz — the shipping lane for about a fifth of the world’s crude — for breaking “international maritime rules.” Iran still holds the Stena Impero. 
 
Iran had repeatedly called for the release of the Grace 1, saying it had been in international waters and was not headed to Syria. 
 
Tehran condemned Thursday’s U.S. bid to block the release of the ship. 
 
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter, “Having failed to accomplish its objectives through its #EconomicTerrorism — including depriving cancer patients of medicine — the U.S. attempted to abuse the legal system to steal our property on the high seas. This piracy attempt is indicative of Trump admin’s contempt for the law.” 
 
In a Thursday interview with VOA Persian, Brookings Institution foreign policy research director Michael O’Hanlon said he did not see Gibraltar’s decision on the tanker as a significant failure for U.S. policy.  
 
“I think this is in the category of ‘win a few, lose a few.’ We decided to make a run at [the tanker]. Apparently, we have been unsuccessful,” O’Hanlon said. “It doesn’t change the overall situation, which is that we are squeezing Iran harder and harder economically. They are getting less and less oil out, even as they get some sanctions evasion and avoidance. You don’t have to necessarily win every single engagement of this type for the overall strategy to succeed.”U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he boards Air Force One for travel to New Hampshire from Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, Aug. 15, 2019.The dispute over the tanker is part of the ongoing confrontation between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Iranian government over its nuclear program, ballistic missile development and involvement in regional conflicts. The confrontation escalated last year when Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 international agreement in which Iran agreed to curb activities that could be diverted to making nuclear weapons in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions.  
 
Trump said the 2015 deal did not do enough to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons or engaging in other perceived malign behaviors. By withdrawing from it, he unilaterally reimposed U.S. sanctions against Iran, hobbling its economy in a so far unsuccessful effort to force Iran to negotiate a new deal.  
 
Trump has said such a deal should cover not just Iran’s nuclear program but also its activities related to ballistic missiles and support for Islamist militant groups hostile toward the U.S. and U.S. allies. 
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Thirty years ago, the Iron Curtain dividing Europe lifted.  Next week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Hungary to commemorate the anniversary of a peace protest on the border with Austria that helped pave the way for the mass flight of East German citizens to the West. The Berlin Wall was torn down three months later, and 1989 went down as an era-changing year that ended the three-decade-long Soviet occupation of the countries of Central Europe.The commemoration on Aug. 19 will include an ecumenical service in the Lutheran church of Sopron, and is to be held near where 600 East Germans plowed through the border gates to enter the West. Hungarian authorities had announced the border would be opened symbolically later for three hours, but the crowd was too impatient to wait for freedom — and in no mood to receive it as a gift from increasingly superannuated Communist bosses. FILE – An East German refugee shows off a newly acquired West German passport just before crossing the Hungarian border into Austria, Sept. 10, 1989.Three years later, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his triumphalist book The End of History and the Last Man, celebrating the ascendency of Western-style liberal democracy. Humanity, he argued, was reaching “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”But history did not end in 1989. Hungary only ‘partly free’For some, the awkward pairing next week of Germany’s Merkel and Hungary’s authoritarian-inclined prime minister, Viktor Orban, will be symbolic of the return of history, of a new, unfolding east-west cleavage. The pair will be celebrating the rebirth of democracy, but Orban has been accused of backsliding on democracy by systematically dismantling the Western-style institutions his country has struggled to establish since the crumbling of Communism. This year, Freedom House, a U.S.-based research group, described Hungary as only “partly free,” the first time it has withheld from a European Union member state the designation “free.” It has accused Orban’s government of having “moved to institute policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.”FILE – German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a news conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, Feb. 7, 2019.Hungary’s firebrand populist, an anti-Communist liberal-turned-conservative who’s enjoying a burgeoning friendship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, has remained undeterred in shaping what he likes to call an “illiberal democracy.”His warming relationship with Putin is seen by some as an alliance between two emblematic nationalistic strongmen.Other populist leaders in the Central European states of Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have also been accused of seeking to erode democratic checks and balances, of curbing judicial independence, politicizing the civil service and seeking to expand state control over the media and civil society, prompting protests and liberal outrage at their linking of Christianity with patriotism.Their current populist governments have been the strongest critics of the migrant policies coming out of Brussels, refusing to accept migrants under an EU burden-sharing refugee resettlement plan. They have strained and bellyached at the restrictions and strictures placed on them by EU membership and what they see as an overbearing Brussels.Growing EU divisionsAll four members of the so-called Visegrad group of nations have been labeled in some ways as “flawed” democracies by rights monitors as their governments surf a powerful wave of Central European populism that they hope will reshape the regional bloc by reducing the power of EU institutions and returning it to national governments. The drumbeat of populism has been heard in the neighboring former Communist states in the Balkans and the Baltics.Their clashes are seen by some liberal critics as tempting geopolitical fate. “It’s hard to deny that divisions between so-called old and new [EU] member states are growing,” according to Jakub Wisniewski, a Polish political analyst and director of the Slovakia-based GlobSec Policy Institute, a research organization. He places the political differences now between east and west as having their origins in the past. “Central Europe is still markedly different from the rest of the EU — politically, economically and, most of all, culturally,” he argues.National electorates in Central Europe are “more conservative, and more preoccupied with health care and local corruption than melting ice-caps or #MeToo. They are also less self-assured, hence their anxieties about Muslim immigration or leftist internationalism,” he adds.The populists of Central Europe say their critics make the mistake of equating “liberal democracy” only with versions espoused by the political left or center and that there are quite legitimate conservative and nationalist varieties, too. Liberal pessimists lament the rise of the nationalist populism, but optimists highlight the rambunctious politics of the region, which, this year, has seen liberal gains in electoral politics. FILE – Slovakia’s President Zuzana Caputova reviews the guard of honor at the Presidential Palace after her swearing-in ceremony in Bratislava, Slovakia, June 15, 2019.In March, an environmental activist, Zuzana Caputova, became the first woman to be elected president of Slovakia. Her election followed massive anti-government street protests last year triggered by the slayings of an investigative reporter and his fiancee that led to the fall of Robert Fico’s conservative coalition government. Farther south, April saw nationalists defeated in the presidential election in North Macedonia and pro-European moderates winning elections in Latvia and Lithuania. Street protests have been mounted in the Czech Republic against Andrej Babis, the prime minister, who’s been charged with fraud. They have been the largest seen since 1989.For all of the rise of nationalist populism, pollsters and analysts say the voters of Central Europe remain firm adherents to the EU.Populists have to be careful not to push too far on the anti-EU front. Julius Horvath, an economic professor at the Central European University told VOA earlier this year, “Populations would not like a rupture with Europe.”
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