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Author: Vijeta Uniyal

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Vijeta Uniyal

Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian journalist based in Germany. He is Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Israeli security services have arrested a Hamas bomb-maker who entered the country on humanitarian grounds for medical treatment. Israel's domestic security agency the Shin Bet caught the 35-year-old explosives expert, Fadi Abu al-Sabah, who was in possession of forged medical documents claiming he couldn't receive proper treatment in Hamas-held Gaza.

As Iran breaches the limit on its enriched uranium stockpile set under the 2015 nuclear deal, European powers scramble to appease the regime. The European Union has started processing payments to Iran under a new trading mechanism, German media reports confirmed. While French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to rush to Tehran in an attempt to coax the regime into the Obama-era deal.

Iran tried to procure weapons technology to build up its nuclear program in 2018, Germany's federal intelligence service BfV disclosed in its annual report published on Thursday. The intelligence agency found "clear rise in evidence" that Tehran has been working to acquire technical capabilities to enhance its nuclear weapons delivery systems.

The number of individuals classified as Islamists by Germany's domestic intelligence service has crossed 26,000, German newspapers reported. The threat from Islamic terrorism in Germany "remains at a high level," the spy service disclosed. The Islamic State is "restructuring itself into an underground terrorist group" following its military defeat in the Middle East. The terrorist organization was particularly shifting towards a strategy of hitting soft targets, the intelligence report said.

Iran will never build nuclear weapons because Islam forbids such a move, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Tuesday. "It is us who, because of our religious views, will never pursue a nuclear weapon," Zarif remarked. The comments come as Iran speeds up its enrichment of uranium, bringing the Islamic Republic closer to building a nuclear bomb.

In a rare showing of bipartisan consensus, several U.S. lawmakers have called upon Germany to reconsider the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. "For once, Democrats and Republicans in the US agree on something: The project is a really bad idea," the public broadcaster added. In February, the European Union had revised its energy guidelines to approve the Nord Stream 2 project, a 760-mile Baltic Sea pipeline that upon completion will link Russia to Germany. Close to 60 percent of the project has already been realized, the oil and gas journal Offshore reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is visiting Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India, Japan and South Korea in an effort to build a "global coalition" against Iran. The Secretary of State wants these five Asian powers to get behind the United States in its campaign of "maximum pressure" on Tehran, but he didn't not rule out a U.S. military response if Tehran were to engage in further acts of aggression.

President Donald Trump is continuing with his policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran, promising "major" sanctions on the regime. "We're putting additional sanctions on [Iran]," he told reporters before leaving for the Camp David. His administration was "moving rapidly" towards rolling out new sanctions, he added.

The UK junior Foreign Office Minister has been suspended after a scuffle with a 'climate' protester. The altercation took place when close to forty Greenpeace activists, most of them women, stormed a black-tie dinner in Central London.

In a major shift, Germany has acknowledged Iran's involvement in the last week's attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that their was "strong evidence" that Tehran was responsible for the attacks on the tankers.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has sided with U.S. President Donald Trump in his ongoing Twitter spat with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Hunt said he "150 per cent" agreed with the U.S. President's comments on Khan. Present Trump had shared a tweet by the conservative British columnist Katie Hopkins highlighting rampant knife crime in London. "London needs a new mayor ASAP. Khan is a disaster -- will only get worse!" he commented on the tweet.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a new community in the Golan Heights named after U.S. President Donald Trump. The Israeli Prime Minister convened a cabinet meeting at the site on Sunday as part of the formal inauguration. U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, along with officials from the Golan region attended the ceremony renaming the neighborhood of Bruchim to "Ramat Trump," or "Trump Heights" in English.

Germany's leading national student associations have joined forces to fight the anti-Israel boycott movement—Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)—on college campuses. Perhaps the first academic initiative of its kind in Europe, the alliance comprises student groups from across the political spectrum.

In a historic move, India has voted in favor of Israel at the United Nations. Syed Akbaruddin, the Indian representative at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), supported an Israeli motion against granting observer status to a Palestinian non-governmental organization linked to jihadi terrorist groups Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The British intelligence agency MI5 foiled a significant bomb plot linked to Iran-backed Hezbollah terror outfit, London-based Daily Telegraph disclosed. The British intelligence service and the Metropolitan Police uncovered a secret bomb factory in North West London in the autumn of 2015. They recovered thousands of packets containing ammonium nitrate, an explosive ingredient often used in homemade bombs.

The United States has sanctioned Iran's biggest oil company because of its links to the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), a designated terrorist group. Tehran's Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (PGPIC) and its 39 subsidiaries have been providing "financial lifelines to the IRGC," the U.S. Treasury Department said.