TEHRAN (Iran News) Britain on Tuesday put a halt to free trade negotiations with Israel after Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed shock over the escalating military assault and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

London also called in its ambassador from Tel Aviv and imposed additional sanctions on West Bank settlers.

The Israeli military launched a new offensive last week, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that Israel intended to take full control of Gaza.

Since March, Israel has blocked the entry of medical supplies, food, and fuel into Gaza, prompting warnings from international experts about the looming threat of famine.

British Foreign Minister David Lammy said that the military offensive was not a solution for securing the release of Israeli prisoners, urging Tel Aviv to lift the blockade on aid, and criticized “extremism” in the Israeli cabinet.

“We cannot stand by in the face of this new deterioration. It is incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship,” Lammy told members of Parliament.

“Frankly, it’s an affront to the values of the British people. Therefore, today, I’m announcing that we have suspended negotiations with this Israeli government on a new free trade agreement.”

In a joint statement with France and Canada on Monday, Britain condemned Israel’s expanding military attacks in Gaza and called for the immediate lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid.

The three countries also warned that they would take “further concrete actions” if Israel’s new offensive continues.

The British government has faced growing public pressure over its support for Israel. Protesters have held near-weekly rallies, denouncing the government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide and demanding an end to Britain’s arms sales to Israel.

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Since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, Iranians have thwarted any plot engineered by the British and many of their spies have been fallen in the trap of the Iranian intelligence services  and for this reason the British have turned to the media challenge with Iran and spreading different baseless accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to paint a negative picture of the Islamic Revolution and create a rift among Iranians on what the official source of Iran announces.

We know some anti-revolutionary media outlets are placed in the UK and they are actually supported by the London government and even many anti-revolutionary persons are also living in the UK.

In recent months London tried to paint a negative and dreadful picture of the Islamic Revolution of Iran during the riots that were massively covered by the London-based anti-Islamic Revolution media and since their efforts were in vain and London failed to reap from what it had planted, it has returned to the same old story of spreading false accusations against Iran.

The British navy on Thursday claimed about the seizure of a boat smuggling Iranian weapons, including anti-tank missiles, off the coast of the Gulf of Oman in a joint operation with U.S. forces and this claim was strongly rejected by Tehran.

“The countries that have caused the death of [the Yemeni] people and the destruction of Yemen by sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to the [Saudi-led] war coalition cannot exonerate themselves by accusing others,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.

He said the main warmongering countries and the biggest exporters of weapons and equipment to critical zones in the world are “making false claims and spreading fake news” to mislead the global public opinion.

The Iranian spokesperson urged these countries to end their “opportunistic” approaches in the Saudi-led war on Yemen instead of shirking their responsibility in the “imposed war against the defenseless and oppressed people of Yemen.”

Britain’s Royal Navy claimed on Thursday that an Iranian boat, traveling south from Iran at high speed during the hours of darkness, was intercepted by forces from British frigate HMS Lancaster before it could navigate back to Iranian territorial waters on February 23.

According to the Bahrain-based United States Fifth Fleet, the seizure took place along a route historically used to smuggle weapons to Yemen.

Iran has on several occasions dismissed Western claims of smuggling arms to Yemen, reaffirming its support for a political solution not a military one to the conflict in the Arab country.

In a statement on Thursday, Kanaani rejected the claims that in January French naval forces had seized thousands of Iranian-supplied weapons and ammunition headed to Yemen as politically-motivated.

A report by the Oxfam charity revealed in January that weapons supplied by the United Kingdom and the United States to the Saudi-led coalition in war-torn Yemen killed at least 839 civilians and wounded 1,775 others in just over a year.

The report revealed that the Saudi-led coalition used weapons supplied solely by the UK and the US in hundreds of attacks targeting civilians in the Arab country between January 2021 and the end of February 2022.

There have been many reports even by the British media about the UK’s weapons supply to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen but London has never accepted it despite clear crystal evidences and now it has tried to play the blame game with Iran and blame Iran for arms supply to Yemen while everybody knows it well that this is the British and even other Western countries that provide the Saudi-led coalition forces with arms.

Of course Iranians historically are aware of this game of the Old Fox and will give no damn to such baseless accusations because when the West is in weaker position against the Islamic Revolution of Iran, it resorts to such funny blame games.

If we have a glance at the recent political developments regarding Iran, whenever Iran’s nuclear issue reaches a decisive moment, such accusations are intensified and this is not a new thing. As the board of governors of the IAEA is preparing for it crucial meeting about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, once again such baseless accusation is raised against Tehran. Of course each time one of the Western states or their allies raises such claim and this time it is the UK’s turn while before the past meeting of the BOG of IAEA, it was the U.S. and Israel which raised claims of discovering arms supply and other accusations.

So Tehran is ready for any false accusation on the eve of any critical and decisive moment and it will not be affected by such baseless claims and this type of accusation has become old and threadbare and the West should know that Tehran will not retreat from its right in having peaceful nuclear program and they have better to come to terms with Tehran rather than tabling such stupid claims and the British should also know that Iranians know them too well to think much of them.

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The moment has been long coming, as well as demanded by Barbadians to hold power and elect or nominate their own representative rather than a monarch ruling over the Island sitting some 6,700 kilometers away. The terms “royal” and “crown” will be removed from official terminology. The Royal Barbados Police Force will be the Barbados Police Service; “crown lands” will become “state lands.” No more crowns here anymore. The people had enough of colonialism. The moment was marked by a 21-gun salute and the playing of the Barbadian national anthem.

The ceremony may have been more symbolic than actual changes. The event was held 55 years to the day since Barbados gained full independence but kept the monarch in the ceremonial role. On the ground, this push for independence began back in the 1950’s by Errol Walton Barrow, elected as a member of the Barbados Parliament in 1951. Frustrated by lack of concrete action among officials for sovereignty, he began the movement for the Island’s independence and Barrow later became the nation’s first Prime Minister in the 1960’s and would go on to accomplish his mission of gaining independence from Britain. He was also a strong critic of any interference in the internal affairs of the Caribbean. Barrow spoke out fiercely against the U.S. invasion of Grenada Island in 1983 and he strongly condemned some Caribbean leaders who he accused of acting subserviently to foreign powers. Today he is viewed with high regard and respect among Barbadians (and the wider region) who say there would have been no independence had it not been for their late premier’s determination and will power and courage to change the status quo.

In attendance at the ceremony to become a republic around 400 years later, was none other than Prince Charles, representing the Queen. That itself has stirred a lot of emotion among Barbadians who protested the move, while others saw it as an opportunity for the country’s authorities to raise the issue of compensation. The first English ship arrived on the shores of Barbados in 1625 during the era of the British empire; and then came the terror.

In 1625, just two years after Barbados became a new English colony, the foreign invaders wiped away any traces of the original inhabitants who had resided for centuries and commonly referred to as the Arawaks. Their land was stolen and allocated to those with wealthy backgrounds and connections back in England. But the worst was yet to come; the English turned Barbados into their wider commercial world of slavery. Historian and Professor, Hilary Beckles says “Barbados was the birthplace of British slave society and the most ruthlessly colonized by Britain’s ruling elites.” Beckles is also the vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies and a leading figure in the push by all Caribbean islands to secure reparations from the British, added “[the English] made their fortunes from sugar produced by an enslaved, ‘disposable’ workforce, and this great wealth secured Britain’s place as an imperial superpower and caused untold suffering.” Those enslaved in Barbados were predominantly black and descended from Africans.

Most of the paperwork revolving around the cruel and inhumane English slave trade did not use names, if any of the slaves rebelled or tried to escape, their identity and description would often appear in an advertisement where money would be offered in exchange for information on the whereabouts of the slaves. The atrocities committed by the English lasted for more than 300 years and even continued well beyond the 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

The younger generation in the now Republic of Barbados are aware of the key details of the transatlantic slave trade. Their ancestors worked extremely hard after being kidnapped from their West African homes, stripped of their dignity and forced to work on sugar plantations under backbreaking conditions as the property of the English. This barbaric and brutal form of human trafficking, murder, torture, and rape allowed the wealth of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to grow. They amassed huge fortunes, something that laid the foundations for multi-generational wealth. Young Barbadians are now aware that over time, those fortunes, gained illegally, were viewed as something so glorious by the slaver owners that the island was commonly referred to as “Little England” and regarded as an almost perfect model for the trade.

This painful legacy still haunts the people of Barbados. In 2020, a statue of Admiral Nelson, which had been standing in the Capital, Bridgetown for 208 years was pulled down amidst the Black Lives Matter Movement. It was also the nation’s latest symbolic break from its colonial past. In July this year protesters in Barbados marched on the family home of a British conservative member of parliament, Richard Drax, demanding he hand over his 621-acre sugar plantation to the people of Barbados. The protesters wanted this as compensation for what they say is his family’s 200 years of slave-owning and trading on their Island. Several hundred campaigners attended the protest dubbed “Its time, Mr. Drax.” The March ended at the gates of the Drax family estate where hundreds of campaigners and activists were in attendance. The British MP says he “deeply, deeply” regrets the role of his ancestors but refused the demands for reparations. Not even selling his family estate (one that he gained through the actions of his ancestors) and handing out the money to a reparation institute.

It’s a bit like Prince Charles, representing the Queen at the ceremony where Barbados became a republic and acknowledged “the atrocity of slavery” saying “from the darkest days of our past, and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history.” Yet he refused to offer compensation to the Island for the suffering the English inflicted on the people there. The irony here is the slave trade was endorsed by the British Royal Family. Alongside other rich English families, members of the British Royal Family played a role in this inhumane practice. In 1824, a local newspaper by the name of The Barbadian reported an official declaration by England’s King George that the “Slave Population…will be undeserving of Our Protection if they shall fail to render entire Submission to the Laws, as well as dutiful Obedience to their Masters.”

Christopher Prior is an associate professor in colonial and postcolonial history at the UK’s University of Southampton; he says “It’s a local manifestation of a very global conversation that’s being had about the legacy of the British empire and its colonial exploitation. Barbados’ move is another element of our decolonizing moments.” There is a possibility the changes in Barbados could trigger the start of a wave of realms cutting ties with the British royal family. Prior says “when the queen eventually passes away, there is going to be an emergence of further conversations, particularly in places like Australia, about whether they want to have Charles [the Queen’s son and heir to the throne] as their head of state, I don’t want to suggest there’s any inevitability, but I think it’s extremely likely that the issue of republicanism is not going to be going away anytime soon.”

Barbados’ decision to ditch the queen follows a wave of protests across the world inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. The people of Barbados have welcomed their country’s move to sever ties with its old imperial rulers as a matter of national pride. A more frank evaluation of Britain’s imperial past has helped drive an effort to bring down symbols of racism and colonialism from the city of Bristol in the UK to the Caribbean.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Britain seeks ‘urgent’ talks with Europe to tackle Channel migrant crisis. Britain’s government on Sunday announced plans for its own talks on the Channel migration crisis with European ministers this week as it was frozen out of a crisis meeting in France.

Home Secretary Priti Patel was barred from Sunday’s meeting in Calais, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson published the text of a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron setting out London’s demands for concerted action.

But following the tragic drownings of 27 people in the Channel last Wednesday, she tweeted: “I will be holding urgent talks with my European counterparts this week to prevent further tragedies in the Channel.”

There was no immediate comment from Patel’s interior ministry on the venue or timing of the talks.

But Patel used a commentary piece in the Sun on Sunday newspaper to spell out the need for joint action, and for tougher UK legislation, as she comes under pressure in right-wing media and from her own Conservative party to get a grip on the crisis.

“There is still so much more we can do and I am sorry not to be at a meeting with European ministerial counterparts today to discuss this pressing issue,” she wrote in the tabloid.

“We need to be creative about finding new solutions that will have the maximum possible impact, which is why the prime minister and I stand ready to discuss proposals with our French counterparts at any time,” Patel said.

“And I know from my discussions with my European partners in recent days and weeks that there is more that can be done. Together, we can break up the people-smuggling gangs and save lives — but we must act now.”

Ministers from France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium will meet in the northern French port of Calais on Sunday afternoon, following the deaths of the 27 Iraqi Kurds and others as they attempted to cross from France to England in a fragile dinghy.

Despite the Calais snub, the UK pressed anew for action with France as demanded by Johnson in his letter to Macron, including sending illegal migrants back to France and joint police patrols on the northern French coast.

“Those are exactly the kinds of things we need to do,” Health Secretary Sajid Javid told Sky News.

“Our policy is very clear: these boats must stop. We can’t just do it on our own. We do need the cooperation of the French,” he said.

But ahead of the Calais meeting, Britain and France faced mounting criticism for bickering instead of working together.

“Both countries are engaged in a blame game while children drown in our Channel,” Lisa Nandy, the foreign affairs spokeswoman of Britain’s opposition Labour party, said on Sky.

“It’s simply unconscionable,” she said.

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