Washington DC:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken isn’t having the best final days in office, with the last 48 hours being particularly unforgiving for the top diplomat facing heat over controversial decisions taken by him during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Far from the farewell he probably hoped for, Antony Blinken’s last press conference as Secretary of State turned out to be a nightmarish experience as he found himself on the receiving end of a verbal lashing by two journalists covering the Gaza war.

Chaos ensued as independent journalist Sam Husseini confronted Mr Blinken while he was defending the Biden administration’s decisions and policies during the 15-month war in Gaza. “Everyone from Amnesty International to the ICJ (International Court of Justice) is saying Israel is doing genocide and extermination, and you’re telling me to respect the process?” Mr Husseini questioned.

Moments later, while he was sitting quiet after the verbal confrontation, security personnel showed up at the journalists desk and started to forcefully lift him up.

Reporter @samhusseini was just physically dragged from Blinken’s briefing. “Why aren’t you at The Hague?” he asked. pic.twitter.com/Nvs10aFjgh

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 16, 2025

“Stop manhandling me,” urged the journalist, but it fell to deaf ears. The security, now surrounding him, picked him up and started dragging him out as others watched in shock. Just before being physically thrown out of the room, the journalist shouted at Mr Blinken in anguish, saying “Criminal! Why aren’t you at The Hague!?” referring to the International Criminal Court which had sentenced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November last year.

An uncomfortable silence engulfed the conference room. Mr Blinken, clam and unmoved by what just happened, continued his defense of United States’ policy in Gaza and support to Israel’s Netanyahu, though, he stressed, “with differences” on many counts.

Just as he was about to continue his briefing, another journalist – Max Blumenthal, news editor of Grayzone, interrupted him in a harsh, accusatory tone. “Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?” he asked, immediately following it with a series of questions accusing Mr Blinken of being a “Zionist”.

“Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism? Why did you allow my friends to be massacred? Why did you ” he shouted.

My final words for Tony Blinken, Secretary of Genocide, and his smirking press secretary, Matt Miller pic.twitter.com/DuLnepSwDl

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 16, 2025

“Your father-in-law was an Israeli lobbyist, your grandfather was an Israeli lobbyist – Are you compromised by Israel? Why did you let the holocaust of our times to happen? How does it feel to have your legacy being genocide? You smirked through the whole thing” he continued in a slanderous tone as State Department officials escorted the journalist out of the conference room.

HECKLED BY A PROTESTER

Just a day earlier, at a farewell address to the public, Secretary Blinken got heckled by a pro-Palestine protester. Blaming him for the “genocide” in Gaza, the woman protester said, “You will forever be known as Bloody Blinken, Secretary of Genocide. The blood of innocent civilians, of children is on your hands.”

The video, which went viral on social media, shows Mr Blinken remaining calm through the insulting rant. He even requested the protester to allow him to respond to those remarks, telling her that he respects her views. But as she continued her shouting, security stepped in, removing her from the venue. He then continued with his speech.

JUST IN: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gets heckled and yelled at by protestors.

“You will forever be known as Bloody Blinken, secretary of genocide.”

“We will never forget” – Yells a lady who is definitely not an dead Arab. pic.twitter.com/yrCg9C9Obd

— Dr Tariq Tramboo (@tariqtramboo) January 14, 2025

Both these occasions – the farewell speech and the last press conference – came immediately after a ceasefire deal was announced between Israel and Hamas, ending the 15-month war, which has left the Palestinian territory of Gaza utterly devastated. The war, which began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 civilians and taking around 250 hostages, has left more than 46,000 Palestinians dead and over 2.3 million others homeless and displaced in Gaza.

While Hamas’s “terrorist” attack has been condemned worldwide, Israel’s vastly disproportionate military response has been widely called a “genocide”, though Israel has rejected these accusations. The International Criminal Court has even sentenced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes” and has demanded his arrest. US and Israel have rejected the order, with the Israeli prime minister defending his actions in the war, calling it “defending the Jewish motherland”.
 

Washington:

Outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday dismissed as bluster President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to seize the Panama Canal, instead anticipating a more traditional strategy of diversifying supply chains.

“On the Panama Canal, we have a treaty, we have a settled policy of many years, and that’s not going to change,” Blinken said at a farewell news conference.

“I think it doesn’t warrant spending a lot of time talking about it,” he said of Trump’s threats.

At a freewheeling news conference this month in Florida, Trump refused to rule out using force to seize the Panama Canal and even Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.

Trump has pointed to rising Chinese influence in the Panama Canal, inaugurated in 1914 and built by the United States, mostly with Afro-Caribbean labor.

Panama took full control of the canal at the end of 1999 under a deal shepherded by late president Jimmy Carter, who saw a moral responsibility to treat Panama more respectfully.

Alluding to concerns about China’s clout in industry around the world, Blinken said that President Joe Biden’s administration has made “extraordinary progress” in seeking “a greater diversity of supply chains.”

“So that’s where the focus should be, and that’s where I expect the focus actually will be,” Blinken said.

But Marco Rubio, tapped by Trump as the next secretary of state, said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday: “This is not a joke. The Panama Canal issue is a very serious one.”

He asked whether Chinese companies could take control of surrounding ports and, under orders of Beijing, decide to “shut it down or impede our transit.”

“This is a legitimate issue that needs to be confronted,” Rubio said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump had a window to negotiate with Iran, saying the development of a nuclear weapon by Tehran was not inevitable.

The outgoing top US diplomat acknowledged that the cleric-run state may be more seriously considering a nuclear weapon after military setbacks in the region.

In the last year, Israel’s military has hit Iranian air defenses and weakened its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, while rebels have toppled its main Arab ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

“I don’t think that a nuclear weapon is inevitable,” Blinken said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

As “they’ve lost different lines of defense, sure, you’re going to see more thinking about that,” Blinken said.

But the US secretary of state said Iran was aware of the consequences of obtaining a nuclear weapon and added: “I think there is the prospect of negotiations.”

Iran denies pursuing a nuclear weapon, saying its contested nuclear work is for peaceful purposes.

In his first term, Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran that was negotiated under former president Barack Obama, and then imposed sweeping sanctions.

“President Trump last time around in pulling out of the deal said that he wanted, as he called it, a better, stronger deal. Fine,” Blinken said.

He said that no US administration would allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

“One way or another, I’m convinced that just as our administration had that policy, the next administration will too,” he said of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

US President Joe Biden’s administration on taking office in 2021 entered indirect talks with Iran to restore the nuclear deal.

Talks collapsed largely over disputes on the scope of US sanctions relief and Biden has backed pressure on Iran over its support for Palestinian armed group Hamas since its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk reportedly met with a senior Iranian official following the US election in a bid to encourage calm.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The United States said Saturday it had made contact with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels, as Western and Arab states along with Turkey jointly voiced support for a united, peaceful Syria.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comment on “direct contact” with the HTS rebels came despite the United States having designated the group as terrorists in 2018.

While Blinken and other diplomats held talks on Syria in Aqaba, Jordan, Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus, nearly a week after the Islamist-led rebels toppled president Bashar al-Assad –and 12 years after Ankara’s diplomatic mission was shuttered early in Syria’s civil war.

“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters, without specifying how the contact took place.

Ankara has been a major player in Syria’s conflict, holding considerable sway in the northwest, financing armed groups there, and maintaining a working relationship with HTS, which spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad.

In a joint statement after the meeting in Jordan, diplomats from the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries “affirmed the full support to the Syrian people at this critical point in their history to build a more hopeful, secure and peaceful future”.

They called for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process”, with respect for human rights.

“Syria finally has the chance to end decades of isolation,” the group said.

The head of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in the country’s northeast, on Saturday appealed on X for Kurds “to adopt a favourable position toward the Syrian dialogue”.

UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged participants in the Jordan talks to provide humanitarian aid and to ensure “that state institutions do not collapse”.

A Qatari diplomat said Friday that a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials for talks on aid and reopening its embassy.

Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in Jordan that the bloc, Syria’s biggest aid provider, is “interested in rebuilding and reconstruction of Syria”.

Assad fled Syria last weekend, hours before rebel forces seized Damascus, five former officials told AFP.

His flight left Syrians in joyous disbelief at the sudden end to an era in which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed.

It capped more than a decade of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

‘So much tragedy’

Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and is designated a “terrorist” organisation by many Western governments.

But the group has sought to moderate its rhetoric. The interim government insists the rights of all Syrians will be protected, as will the rule of law.

“We appreciate some of the positive words we heard in recent days, but what matters is action — and sustained action,” Blinken said.

If a transition moves forward, “we in turn will look at various sanctions and other measures that we have taken”, he added.

Pubs and liquor stores in Damascus initially closed following the rebel victory, but are now tentatively reopening.

“‘You have the right to work and live your life as you did before’,” Safi, the landlord of Papa bar in the Old City, said the rebels had told him.

But in Abu Dhabi, Anwar Gargash, a presidential adviser in the United Arab Emirates, said “we need to be on guard” despite HTS’s talk of unity.

Thousands of Syrians have swarmed the country’s notorious detention centres over the past week, seeking evidence that might lead them to loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s repressive rule.

Some former prisoners, like Mohammed Darwish, are also returning as free men to where they were once incarcerated, trying to find closure.

“When the door closed behind us, we were plunged into the depths of despair. This cell was witness to so much tragedy,” he said, back at his former windowless cell in a Damascus prison.

Syrians also face a struggle for necessities in a country ravaged by war, runaway inflation and years of sanctions.

The country’s situation remains highly volatile.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an ambush Saturday had killed at least four rebel fighters when they were ambushed by “loyalist elements of the former regime” near a villa belonging to an Assad relative on the Mediterranean coast.

‘Dumb politics’

Assad was propped up by Russia — to where a former aide told AFP he had fled — as well as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

The rebels launched their offensive on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, in which Assad’s ally suffered staggering losses.

Naim Qassem, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, admitted on Saturday that, with Assad’s fall, his group could no longer be supplied militarily through Syria.

He also said he hoped Syria’s new rulers saw Israel “as an enemy” and do not normalise ties with the country.

Both Israel and Turkey have carried out military strikes inside Syria since Assad’s fall.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported more than 60 Israeli strikes across Syria in several hours on Saturday.

To Gargash, the UAE adviser, such strikes are “dumb politics”, even though “to structurally degrade Syrian capabilities might be seen as a sensible thing from an Israeli practical point of view”.

Israel has also ordered troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, a move the UN said violated a 1974 armistice.

HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said the Israeli move “threatens a new unjustified escalation in the region”.

But “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts,” he said in an online statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday that Syrian civilians need to be protected after Ankara-backed Islamists overthrew the Damascus government.

The top US diplomat met late Thursday for more than an hour with Erdogan at a lounge at the airport of the capital Ankara, moments after the Turkish leader saw off Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban.

Blinken “reiterated the importance of all actors in Syria respecting human rights, upholding international humanitarian law, and taking all feasible steps to protect civilians, including members of minority groups”, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Turkey has emphasised its security concerns following the upheaval in Syria, where it has been fighting a Kurdish-led force that Washington backs as a key player in the fight against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists.

After years of stalemate, the Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group last weekend toppled Syria’s iron-fisted leader Bashar al-Assad, a secular-oriented member of the minority Alawite community.

Blinken told Erdogan of “the need to ensure the coalition to defeat ISIS (IS) can continue to execute its critical mission”, Miller said.

Speaking before his departure to Turkey on a stop in Jordan, Blinken acknowledged “real and clear interests” by Turkey about the PKK, the Kurdish fighters that Ankara links to Syrian Kurdish guerrillas.

“At the same time, again, we want to avoid sparking any kinds of additional conflicts inside of Syria,” Blinken told reporters in Aqaba, Jordan.

“And part of that also has to be ensuring that ISIS doesn’t rear its ugly head again. And critical to making sure that doesn’t happen is the so-called SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces, that we’ve been supporting,” he said, referring to the Kurdish-led forces.

Blinken, who leaves office next month following Donald Trump’s election victory, has called for an “inclusive” process to form Syria’s next government, with respect for all communities.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Vienna:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his outgoing US counterpart Antony Blinken are due to face off over the war in Ukraine on Thursday at an annual meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta.

While Ukraine will be the dominant political issue, the meeting is due to formally approve last-minute agreements reached on issues including senior staff positions at the security and rights body where Western powers often accuse Russia of flouting human rights and other international norms.

The gathering of foreign ministers and other officials from 57 participating states in North America, Europe and Central Asia is overshadowed this year by the return of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose advisers are floating proposals to end the war that would cede large parts of Ukraine to Russia.

With Trump due to take office in just over a month, Western powers plan to reiterate their support for Ukraine while Russia is likely to renew its criticism of the organisation. Lavrov said last year the OSCE was “essentially being turned into an appendage of NATO and the European Union”.

It is Lavrov’s first trip to the European Union since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The OSCE is the successor to a body set up during the Cold War for the east and west to engage with each other. In recent years, however, and especially since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has used what is effectively a veto each country has to block many key decisions, often crippling the organization.

This year, however, the countries blocking agreement on the OSCE budget are Armenia and Azerbaijan rather than Russia, diplomats say, over issues related to their conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Diplomats say a deal was reached this week to fill four senior OSCE positions including that of secretary general, which will be taken up by Turkey’s Feridun Sinirlioglu, who was foreign minister in a caretaker government in 2015.

The most important annual decision at the OSCE – which country will next hold its annually rotating chairmanship – has long been settled, since Finland will hold it for the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act that lay the foundation for the current OSCE.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The visa wait time for Indians planning a visit to the United States has gone up massively, with Kolkata taking up to 500 days to process B1/B2 visas. The US consulate in Chennai takes up to 486 days, followed by Mumbai at 427 days and Delhi at 432 days, causing frustration among applicants. The wait for the US visa in Hyderabad is 435 days.

These delays persist despite the US government’s efforts to tackle the backlog. According to the US Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, the estimated wait time to receive a non-immigrant visa interview appointment at a US embassy or consulate is based on workload and staffing and it can vary from week to week.

The B1 visa is issued to individuals travelling to the US for business-related purposes, while the B2 visa is for tourism, visiting friends and family, medical treatment, or attending social events without receiving payment. Usually, the B1/B2 visa is issued together, allowing the holder to engage in both business and leisure activities during their stay in the US.

In 2023, the US Consular Team in India set a new record by processing 1.4 million visas, a number that helped reduce visitor visa appointment wait times by 75%, said the US Embassy and Consulates in India. The demand for US visas surged across all categories, with applications rising by 60% compared to the previous year.

However, there is some relief for those seeking Interview Waiver Visitor visas, which have significantly shorter wait times. In Delhi, the wait for this category is just 14 days, and Kolkata offers a slightly quicker wait time of 13 days, reported the Economic Times.

In a statement a few days ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States will add one million more visa appointment slots next year. This expansion aims to address the growing travel demand as the country gears up for major international events, such as the FIFA World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028.

Blinken also met Israeli President Isaac Herzog following talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Antony Blinken’s latest trip comes as the Israeli military has intensified its campaign in the Palestinian enclave as well as in Lebanon against Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia. File
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel on Tuesday (October 22, 2024), the first stop of a wider Middle East tour aimed at reviving Gaza ceasefire talks and discussing the enclave’s future following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, but any breakthrough ahead of the looming U.S. election looks elusive.

The top U.S. diplomat’s latest trip — his eleventh to the region since Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7 triggering the Gaza war — comes as the Israeli military has intensified its campaign in the Palestinian enclave as well as in Lebanon against Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia.

Mr. Blinken’s planned week-long trip, which will include a stop in Jordan on Wednesday (October 23, 2024) and Doha, also comes as the region braces for Israel’s response to Iran’s October 1 ballistic missile attack on Israel. The retaliation could disrupt oil markets and risks igniting a full-blown war between the arch-enemies.

On Gaza, Mr. Blinken will focus discussions on how to end the war, plans for the enclave after the fighting ends and how to improve humanitarian assistance, said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Last week Mr. Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote to Israeli officials demanding concrete measures to address the worsening situation in Gaza, or face potential restrictions on U.S. military aid.

The official said that in his meetings with Israel and Arab countries, Mr. Blinken will drill down on “day after” issues, particularly security, governance and reconstruction. Having detailed plans for each of these has been seen as prerequisites for achieving any lasting resolution to the conflict.

The secretary of state will also discuss with Israel and other countries how to secure a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah, and will continue Washington’s conversation with the Israelis about their expected response to Iran’s missile attack, said the official.

Breakthrough ‘hard to imagine’

Experts say Hamas and Israel remain deeply at odds and are unlikely to make significant concessions before the November 5 U.S. presidential election, which could upend U.S. policy.

“It’s very hard to imagine” that Mr. Blinken would score a breakthrough this week, said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, given that neither Hamas nor Benjamin Netanyahu have any urgency to end the war.

“Taking advantage of the moment is a fundamentally misleading sort of concept in this case because I’m not sure there is a moment,” Mr. Miller said.

The Mr. Biden administration cast the killing of Sinwar by the Israeli military last week as a possible opening that would finally pave the way to end the Gaza war. Still, Israeli Prime Minister Mr. Netanyahu says fighting will continue.

Israel is accelerating military operations to push Hezbollah away from its northern border while thrusting into Gaza’s densely packed Jabalia refugee camp in what Palestinians and U.N. agencies fear could be an attempt to seal off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave.

Analysts say Mr. Netanyahu may prefer to wait out the end of U.S. President Joe Biden’s term, which ends in January, and take his chances with the next President, whether Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or her Republican rival Donald Trump. Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Mr. Trump about the conflict by phone on Saturday (October 19, 2024), both Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Netanyahu’s offices said.

A Gaza ceasefire proposal that the U.S. and mediators Egypt and Qatar have worked on for months is no longer feasible, Mr. Miller said, and the lack of command and control within Hamas also complicates the negotiation process.

“The proposal that would be most realistic would be if Blinken came and said ‘we’ll do an all for all’. You get all the hostages back, and the Israelis will declare a ceasefire,” Mr. Miller said, cautioning that even that formulation would have many questions that needed to be answered.

Speaking to reporters on Monday (October 21, 2024), deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel insisted that U.S. officials feel “there is an opportunity to move the ball forward” on a ceasefire.

“I’m not going to speculate on any immediate end product or outcome (from the trip), but we feel that it is important to engage not just with the Israelis, but also other partners in the region,” he said.

Antony Blinken speaks during a news conference on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit at the American Center in Vientiane, Laos, on Friday (October 11, 2024).
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced hope on Friday (October 12, 2024) for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon and preventing a broader conflict, as he backed efforts by the fragile state to assert itself against Hezbollah.

Mr. Blinken again said that Israel, which has been carrying out deadly strikes on Lebanon, “has a right to defend itself” against Hezbollah, but said he was alarmed by the worsening humanitarian situation.

“We continue to engage intensely to prevent broader conflict in the region,” Mr. Blinken told reporters after an East Asia Summit in Laos.

“We all have a strong interest in trying to help create an environment in which people can go back to their homes, their safety and security and kids can go back to school,” he said.

“So Israel has a clear and very legitimate interest in doing that. The people of Lebanon want the same thing. We believe that the best way to get there is through a diplomatic understanding, one that we’ve been working on for some time, and one that we focus on right now.”

Later in the day, Mr. Blinken spoke by phone with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.

Lebanon’s presidency has been vacant for two years, and Mr. Blinken stressed “the need to empower leadership that reflects the will of the people for a stable, prosperous, and independent Lebanon”.

He said that “Lebanon cannot allow Iran or Hezbollah to stand in the way of Lebanon’s security and stability”.

The statement did not mention discussions on a possible ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed group.

After a year of cross-border fire with Hamas ally Hezbollah over the Gaza war, Israel has expanded its operations in Lebanon.

Mr. Blinken said the United States would work to support the fragile Lebanese state to build itself up after Hezbollah’s long-held sway. “It’s clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest — a strong interest — in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future,” he said.

He also said that the United States was voicing concern directly to Israel on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“I have real concern about the inadequacy of the assistance that’s getting to them,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that the United States has been “very directly engaged with Israel” on the topic.