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U.S. House Speaker: Iran has no intention of giving up nuclear weapon

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner on Friday said he does not think the Iranian regime has any intention of giving up its desire for a nuclear weapon.

Boehner told Fox Business Channel: “I’ve never been optimistic that we’d get to an agreement, a real agreement that would stop the nuclear threat from Iran and I don’t think the Iranians have any intention of giving up their desire for a nuclear weapon.”

Asked whether he’s expecting an agreement, Boehner said: “I would hope not” because he did not believe Iran would ever live up to its side of a bargain that would lift U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

“I don’t think we can get to agreement with people who have no intention of keeping the agreement,” he said.

Meanwhile, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday that he would immediately eliminate any Iranian agreement made under the Obama administration if he were to win the presidency.

Calling the Iranian regime the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Perry said the negotiations between President Barack Obama and Iran legitimized the country’s attempts to obtain or construct a nuclear weapon.

He said his first acts, if voters put him in the Oval Office, would be to reduce Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East and cancel deals put in place by the outgoing Democratic president.

Iran news in brief, 16 April 2015

A deadly day in Iraq: Three car bombs in two cities kill at least 30

Obama Decides to Remove Cuba from Terrorism Sponsor List

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday informed Congress of his intention to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, where that nation has been since 1982 and which comes with the imposition of sanctions.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest announced the move in a communique.

Cuba has been demanding for years that it be removed from the list prepared annually by the State Department. Countries on the list – which currently includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria – are subjected to sanctions such as a prohibition on weapons sales and economic aid.

Congress now has 45 days to study the decision and, if it disagrees with Obama’s action, it can present a bill to try and revoke the presidential order.

Obama’s decision comes just three days after his historic meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro during the 7th Summit of the Americas in Panama, a significant step toward the normalization of bilateral relations announced by the two governments on Dec. 17.

In his message to Congress, Obama certifies that the Cuban government “has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period (and) has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”

Obama made the decision after receiving a recommendation on the matter from Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Tuesday hailed the president’s move.

In a communique, Kerry said that circumstances have changed since 1982, when Cuba was originally included on the list because of its efforts to promote armed revolution in Latin America.

The reasons that Washington had kept Cuba on the list to date include Havana’s alleged welcoming of members of the Basque ETA terrorist organization and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as well as certain fugitives from U.S. justice.

Kerry acknowledged that although the United States has, and will continue to have, significant concerns and disagreements regarding many Cuban policies and actions, those concerns do not meet the criteria established to define a state as a terrorism sponsor.

The review that Kerry made of the matter included contributions from the U.S. intelligence community regarding Cuban actions and guarantees provided by the Cuban government, Earnest said.

Wikileaks Publishes Documents Stolen in 2014 Cyberattack on Sony

WASHINGTON – Wikileaks, the website headed by Julian Assange, on Thursday published online all the documents and emails from Sony Pictures that last year were allegedly stolen by North Korean hackers.

The database published by Wikileaks consists of more than 30,000 documents, 173,000 emails and 2,200 email addresses from Sony Pictures Entertainment, the moviemaking affiliate of the Japanese tech giant.

In a communique, Assange, who founded Wikileaks, wrote in a statement that the information is “newsworthy and at the centre (sic) of a geopolitical conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”

He added that “This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation.”

Sony responded with a statement of its own in which it criticized the publication of the searchable database, which it said was private information obtained through a “criminal act.”

The hacking of Sony began last year and, according to the U.S. government, was the responsibility of North Korean cyber-pirates who were acting in reprisal for the release of a Sony Pictures film – “The Interview” – which makes fun of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The documents made public by Wikileaks contain details of Sony’s relationships with politicians and its business strategies vis-a-vis its competition, among other things.

At the same time, it places at the disposal of Web users personal data collected on the multinational’s employees.

Until the publication of the searchable database by Wikileaks, the information had been made public in phases and the media had edited out sensitive data in their reporting of it.