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S. African Ambassador Gets Huge Welcome After Expulsion by Trump

CrossFireArabia
March 24, 2025

The South African ambassador, expelled and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration, received a hero’s welcome upon his return to Cape Town on Sunday, with hundreds of supporters waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Free Palestine.”

The crowds at Cape Town International Airport surrounded Ebrahim Rasool and his wife as they emerged in the arrivals terminal in their hometown.

[LIVE NOW ] "There is nothing that I will say that I will not say elsewhere and so I will stand by my analysis," explains expelled Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool. Tune in to #eNCA #DStv403 #QuestionThinkAct pic.twitter.com/BR4hbGk87B
— eNCA (@eNCA) March 23, 2025

“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth… like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”

“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets.”

Rasool also said it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the US after President Donald Trump punished the country and accused it of taking an anti-American stance even before the decision to expel Rasool.

Rasool was previously declared persona non grata. His return comes as US President Donald Trump has cut all funding to South Africa, a move widely seen as retaliation for Pretoria’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where it has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.

They were the ex-ambassador’s first public comments since he was declared persona non grata, removed his diplomatic immunities and privileges, and gave him until this Friday to leave the US. It is highly unusual for the US to expel a foreign ambassador.

The South African ambassador, expelled and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration, received a hero’s welcome upon his return to Cape Town on Sunday, with hundreds of supporters waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Free Palestine.”https://t.co/5TA099o8EO
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 24, 2025

Rasool was declared persona non grata by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a post on X on March 14. Rubio said Rasool was a “race-baiting politician” who hates the US and Trump.

Rubio’s post linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site that reported on a talk Rasool gave on a webinar organized by a South African think tank. In his talk, Rasool spoke in academic language of the Trump administration’s crackdowns on diversity and equity programs and immigration and mentioned the possibility of a US where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.

“The supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white,” Rasool said in the talk.

On his return home Sunday, he said he stood by those comments, and characterized them as merely alerting intellectuals and political leaders in South Africa that the US and its politics had changed.

“It is not the US of Obama, it is not the US of Clinton, it is a different US and therefore our language must change,” Rasool said. “I would stand by my analysis because we were analyzing a political phenomenon, not a personality, not a nation, and not even a government.”

He also said that South Africa would resist pressure from the US — and anyone else — to drop its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide. The Trump administration has cited that case against US ally Israel as one of the reasons it alleges South Africa is anti-American.

South Africa filed a case at the ICJ in December 2023, which accuses Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention in its war on the Gaza Strip. More than 10 countries have since joined South Africa in the genocide case.

Some of the supporters welcoming Rasool, who is Muslim, waved Palestinian flags and chanted “free Palestine.”

“As we stand here, the bombing (in Gaza) has continued and the shooting has continued, and if South Africa was not in the (International Court of Justice), Israel would not be exposed, and the Palestinians would have no hope,” Rasool said.

“We cannot sacrifice the Palestinians… but we will also not give up with our relationship with the United States. We must fight for it, but we must keep our dignity,” according to the Quds News Network.

Opinion

Pezeshkian: Iran Will Not be Bullied, Tells Trump to ‘Go to Hell’

CrossFireArabia
March 13, 2025

One couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pleasure in Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian lashing out at Donald Trump. Without mincing his words, and certainly not sticking to diplomatic niceties, no doubt taking his cue from the new boss at the White House, Pezeshkian told the US president a few home truths.

Depending on the translation into English from Persian, he basically told the US president to “go to hell”. This is a phrase that is making great headlines all over the world for its intensity and meaning.

On its part, the social media is having a field day at Pezeshkian, to say the least “forthright” speech at the Iran Entrepreneurs Forum in which he lambasted Trump for the way he is called on Tehran to heed and either go back to the nuclear deal or face the mighty military of the United States.

He didn’t at all like how Trump framed his appeal for Iran to get back to the negotiations table when he spoke nonchalantly that “there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily or make a deal.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian blasted the US government: "It is unacceptable for us that they the US give orders and make threats. I won't even negotiate with you. Do whatever…you want." pic.twitter.com/pbZv18tPKA
— Rhema News (@rhemanewsplus) March 12, 2025

In turn, Pezeshkian and the Iranian leadership starting from Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi became particularly angry at this approach as Trump is now seeking to revive the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal which he muzzled out of in 2018 during his first administration as one of the latest pieces of the US global, foreign and security policies.

Though denied by Iran, Trump said he sent a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei in which he told them to agree to a deal or face the military wrath of the United States with extended crippling sanctions on Iran’s oil sector, its exports and the shutting off of its global financing.

The subsequent utterings on the international media about Trump and his latest obsession in “controlling” the nuclear file of Iran has created a knee-jerk reaction among the country’s leadership which saw what Trump was doing was “coersive diktates” and imposition of maximalists pressure which today, they are in no mood to pay heed to because of so many factors including its ballistic missile attacks on Israel last October where up to 250 missiles landed on different sites of the country.

Pezeshkian, dubbed as a reformist president and one who is willing to listen, was startlingly critical at the way Trump invited, more like dictating, to get back to the nuclear deal under vastly different and stringent negotiating terms, and ones that would strip Iran of its nuclear aspirations and impose an additional and an even tougher monitoring and observation regime than the previously deal allowed for which Pezeshkian and other leaders rejected.

In plain, straight talking, again no doubt like Trump’s abrasive approach Pezeshkian leading a country on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power as many analysts suggest with more than 60 percent uranium enrichment capacity, said Iran would not negotiate with Washington while while being threatened. He essentially delivered the ultimate stab that the US president can “do whatever the hell you want”, as reported by the Iranian state media, Tuesday.

”It is unacceptable for us that they [the U.S.] give orders and make threats. I won’t even negotiate with you. Do whatever the hell you want”, Pezeshkian repeated at the behest of a country long standing up to the United States and to maintain cold and freezing relations with the United States.

Further, and to say the least, this was the ultimate snub delivered by the Iranian president who was in no mood to listen to the antics of the new US president wishing to wield his rhetorical stick around the world and was not afraid of telling him so.

Pezeshkian was especially irked him by the way Trump met the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House recently calling it disgraceful and shameful and Iran would not listen to such talk as a way of moving the negotiations forward.

It was Trump, who initially pulled out of the Iran deal officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed by the then Barack Obama administration with international backing of five major UN powers including Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in 2015.

Then Trump said the deal was a bad one and wanted to re-negotiate. But since taking the USA out of the deal, Tehran no longer found it necessary to continue to observe the strict regime imposed by JCPOA on Iranian nuclear facilities which slowly started to top up its uranium enrichment levels to where it is today.

As well, Pezeshkian was echoing the words of Ayatollah Khamenei who earlier rejected the prospects of direct talks, calling them neither “smart, wise nor honorable” while saying that Iran will not be bullied into negotiations.

This was seconded by Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi who made it perfectly clear on his X account that “we will NOT negotiate under pressure and negotiation, We will NOT even consider it, no matter what the subject might be, whilst emphasizing that dialogue must be rooted in mutual respect, not threats.”

For all the outward talk however, Iranian officials have stressed as they did so in the past that the country’s nuclear program has been always for peaceful purposes and is open about the country’s nuclear reactors and plants as proved in its current consultation with the different world powers of the United Nations Security Council.

The above-analysis is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

Opinion

How Israel Hijacked US Politics

CrossFireArabia
February 25, 2025

A combination of pro-Israel advocacy groups and political action committees, including right-wing Christian fundamentalists, neoconservative hawks and weak-kneed liberals, have not only enabled Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians, they have done so much more.

They have silenced congressional debate on decades of Israel’s illegal policies towards Palestinians. Pro-Israel groups and political action committees cry foul whenever their role in this regard is noted. But the tens of millions they have spent to punish critics and create a climate of fear, and their own gloating over their successes, are too well-documented to ignore. The result has been that too many members of Congress have either been cowed into silence or motivated to pass excessively bizarre legislation singling out Israel for special treatment in budgetary matters or for political favours.

The damage done by pro-Israel forces
@jjz1600
Read the full article https://t.co/GwbxUZLqF0 pic.twitter.com/alCk53bLo3
— The Jordan Times (@jordantimes) February 25, 2025

This same coalition of groups from the right and left of American politics has also pressed successive US administrations not only to turn a blind eye to Israeli actions that violate US laws, but also to take an aggressive posture towards other nations who are critical of Israel. These acts have contributed to dismantling the architecture of international diplomacy, laws and covenants developed in the aftermath of the two world wars and have done grave damage to the stature of the US in the world community.

US presidents from Ford to Obama have been pressured by pro-Israel group-inspired congressional letters calling on them to back away from positions critical of Israeli policies. Successive administrations have thus been cowed into silence in the face of Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories and other well-documented Israeli violations of international law and human rights. Worse still, in recent years this effort to shield Israel from criticism has led the US to seek to punish UN committees and other international bodies, leaving the US increasingly isolated.

• This same collection of groups and the pressures they have created to distort US policies have also done incalculable damage to Palestinians and Israelis and the prospects for Middle East peace.

The State Department Human Rights report on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is ignored, even when it has been accurate in its reporting. As a result, Palestinian rights have been systematically violated in contravention of US laws.

• US acquiescence in the face of Israel’s behavior has also contributed to the decline of Israel’s peace movement. Once fairly vibrant, they used to make the case that settlement expansion or violations of rights would damage Israel’s relationship with the US. After decades of evidence that such repercussions would never occur, this movement has faded into irrelevance. Their absence has left the hard right as the dominant force in Israel, with the only serious divisions in Israeli politics being whether the next coalition government include the Ultra-Orthodox or have Netanyahu in command. Palestinians or matters of peace and justice are not on the agenda.

• Since October 7, the coalition of pro-Israel forces, led by right-wing Christian Ideologues and pro-Israel groups in the US, have accelerated their efforts on the home front using congressional pressure and Presidential Executive Orders to dismantle constitutionally protected free speech and academic freedom on college campuses. The expanded definition of antisemitism, which includes legitimate criticism of Israel, is now being enforced to threaten federal funds to universities who do not punish students and faculty for what are now deemed antisemitic activities. The Department of Justice has launched a task force to identify groups and individuals who participated in anti-Israel actions. And right-wing groups have undertaken to identify foreign students and faculty who have been involved in pro-Palestinian protests or against whom Jewish students have issued complaints for anti-Israel remarks. They are reporting them to authorities for deportation, as per another of President Trump’s Executive Orders.

What is deeply disturbing is that equating “anti-Israel” and “pro-Palestinian” with “antisemitism” has created a climate of fear on campuses, impeding free speech and academic freedoms on campuses and public discourse.

And so, while Palestinians are paying with their lives because pressure from pro-Israel groups has silenced criticism of Israeli policies, the damage done by this pressure grows. It has discredited the structures of the international order, humiliated and isolated the US in the eyes of the world, and is now eating away at many of our much-cherished freedoms.

James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute and he has a contributed this article to The Jordan Times.