Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian takes the oath of office before Parliament , with dignitaries from more than 80 countries attending the inauguration ceremony.

Before the Holy Quran, Pezeshkian swore to safeguard the official religion of the country, Islam, and the Islamic Republic and the Constitution.

“As president, in the presence of the Holy Quran and before the Iranian nation, I swear to Almighty God that I will safeguard the official religion, the system of the Islamic Republic, and the Constitution of the country,” he stated.

“I will dedicate all my abilities and qualifications to fulfill the responsibilities entrusted to me, and I will devote myself to serving the people and elevating the nation, promoting religion and ethics, supporting righteousness, and expanding justice,” Pezeshkian added.

Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei conducted the swearing-in ceremony.

Pezeshkian formally started his four-year term on Sunday when Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei endorsed him as president following his victory in the July 5 runoff election.

Pezeshkian takes over from his predecessor, the late President Ebrahim Raisi, whose death in a May helicopter crash sparked the early election.

The inauguration ceremony is attended by senior Iranian politicians, military officials, and members of Parliament as well as dignitaries from 88 countries.

Around 600 journalists from Iran and abroad are covering the event.

As stipulated in Article 121 of the Iranian Constitution, the presidential oath must be administered in Parliament, where the president takes the oath of office in the presence of legislators and members of the Constitutional Council alongside the Judiciary chief.

After the inauguration, the president is required by law to submit the final list of his cabinet to Parliament for approval within two weeks.

Source: Presstv

A new poll has revealed that US Vice President Kamala Harris is taking a marginal lead over Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election after current president Joe Biden ended his reelection bid.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, showed Harris led Trump 44% to 42% among registered voters in the national poll, a difference within the 3-percentage-point margin of error.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed Biden trailing Trump by two percentage points before his exit from the race.

The latest poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,241 US adults nationwide, including 1,018 registered voters.

Harris and Trump were tied at 44% in a July 15-16 poll, and Trump led by one percentage point in a July 1-2 poll, both within the same margin of error.

Some 56% of registered voters agreed with a statement that Harris, 59, was “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” compared to 49% who said the same of Trump, 78. Only 22% of voters assessed Biden that way.

Three quarters of Democratic voters said they agreed with a statement that the party and voters should get behind Harris now, with only a quarter saying multiple candidates should compete for the party’s nomination.

On Sunday, Biden, 81, dropped out of the US presidential election and endorsed Harris as the party’s new nominee.

Biden’s endorsement of Harris was swiftly followed by the influential Congressional Black Caucus and various lawmakers, as well as several key donors and super PACs including Priorities USA and Unite the Country.

A pollster with Trump’s campaign has played down any polling showing an increase in Harris’ support, arguing that she was likely to see a temporary rise in popularity because of widespread media coverage of her new candidacy.

Trump’s camp has already started preparing a plan on how he should compete with the younger female Harris in the upcoming election.

Trump’s team started their attacks by linking Harris to the Biden administration’s failures, saying she is complicit in everything that occurred under Biden’s watch.

Culled from Presstv

Vice-President Kamala Harris has attracted the support of enough Democratic delegates to become the party’s nominee for president.

A survey by the Associated Press on Monday evening said Ms Harris had received the endorsement of more than the 1,976 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of voting.

Ms Harris said she was “proud” to have secured “broad support” and looked forward to formally accepting the nomination.

Delegates are people who are selected to represent their electoral area at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the party’s key nominating event.

Such endorsements are non-binding, but if the total holds between now and when delegates cast their votes, scheduled to take place from 1-7 August, Ms Harris would formally clinch the party’s nomination.

Delegations from at least 27 states have issued statements of their full delegations supporting Ms Harris, according to CBS.

The survey is an indication of the groundswell of support for Ms Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.

Since Mr Biden’s announcement, millions of dollars in donations have poured into her campaign and leading Democrats have lined up to support her bid as the Democratic nominee.

Speaking to staff at her campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday evening, Ms Harris told campaign staff: “We have 106 days until Election Day and in that time, we have some hard work to do.”

Ms Harris took the team through her vision of the country and the views that she says separate this campaign from Trump’s, saying she would gladly put her record up against his.

“Our campaign has always been about two different versions of what we see as the future of our country,” she said. “One focuses on the future, the other focuses on the past. Donald Trump wants to take our country backwards… We believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

She also noted Mr Biden’s accomplishments, saying her time serving as his vice-president was “one of the greatest honours of my life”.

Ms Harris noted the “roller coaster” of “mixed emotions” they’ve all been on because “I love Joe Biden, and I know we all do”. She promised she’d work hard to earn the nomination for president and unite both Democrats and the country as a whole.

Source: BBC

Momentum is behind Vice-President Kamala Harris to lock up the bid for White House. More leading Democrats are backing US Vice-President Kamala Harris as the party’s new presidential nominee, as her campaign sees a surge in donations

She is due to appear here on the South Lawn later today with college athletes for a pre-scheduled event. But she arrives out of the shadow of the president, with the most scrutinising of spotlights firmly now on her as a potential presidential candidate.

Of course vice-presidents aren’t handed the nomination on a plate. One historical example is Hubert Humphrey in 1968. He won the contentious Democratic Party presidential nomination at the party’s convention, after Lyndon B. Johnson said he wouldn’t seek a second term. He ultimately lost to Richard Nixon and a united Republican Party.

Harris has said she will earn the nomination and it is increasingly looking like no one significant will challenge her for it.

If she seals it, November’s election will be historic in more ways than one.

America will definitely get a new president – either the astonishing return of the criminally convicted Donald Trump or it its first ever female president.

Source: BBC

US President Joe Biden said Sunday he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election after announcing he was dropping of the race. Biden ended his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election.

 The octogenarian president spent more than three weeks resisting calls to step down following a disastrous debate against Trump on June 27.

Biden said Sunday he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election, saying he was offering Harris his “full support”.

Biden said he would “speak to the nation later this week in more detail” about his decision.

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz on Sunday announced his resignation amid celebrations for the rescue of four hostages from war-torn Gaza in a raid that Palestinians say killed hundreds.

Gantz’s resignation is the latest sign of sharpening domestic dissent over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the eight-month war, and is the first major political blow to him during the conflict.

It came after Special Forces fought gun battles with Palestinian militants on Saturday in central Gaza’s crowded Nuseirat refugee camp area as they swooped in to free the four captives.

The Israeli military said the extraction team and captives came under heavy gun and grenade fire, which killed one police officer, while Israel’s air force launched strikes that reduced nearby buildings to rubble.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said 274 people were killed and 698 wounded, in what it labelled the “Nuseirat massacre”, figures that could not be independently verified.

Among those were at least 64 children, 57 women and 37 elderly people, the ministry said.

“People were screaming — young and old, women and men,” said Nuseirat resident Muhannad Thabet, 35.

“Everyone wanted to flee the place, but the bombing was intense and anyone who moved was at risk of being killed due to the heavy bombardment and gunfire.”

Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, had been abducted from the Nova music festival during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war.

Source: France 24

The White House said Tuesday that key ally Israel must reopen Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, while expressing hope that a ceasefire deal with Hamas was within reach.

Israel sent tanks into the southern Gaza city of Rafah and seized control of the crossing, a key aid passage, while warning it will deepen its operation if truce talks fail to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.

President Joe Biden declined to answer questions on the ceasefire talks and the operation in Rafah as he met his Romanian counterpart in the Oval Office, merely smiling at reporters.

“The crossings that have been closed need to be reopened, it is unacceptable for them to be closed,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing.

“We believe Rafah border crossing should be quickly reopened for the movement of humanitarian assistance,” Jean-Pierre added.

Israel had already committed to reopening another crossing at Kerem Shalom, which was closed after a rocket attack on Sunday killed four Israeli troops, on Wednesday, she added.

The United States, Israel’s main military and diplomatic backer, has repeatedly said it opposes a major offensive in Rafah, where more than 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are living.

But the White House said Israel had told it that the current operation was of “limited scope, scale and duration.”

“What we’ve been told by our Israeli counterparts is that this operation last night was limited and designed to cut off Hamas’s ability to smuggle weapons” into Gaza,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Washington would closely monitor the situation, he added.

‘Remaining gaps’

The Israeli military’s thrust into the eastern sector of the city came shortly after the Palestinian militant group Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire proposal, but Israel demurred.

The talks got back underway on Tuesday amid high hopes and tensions after more than seven months of conflict.

“A close assessment of the two sides’ positions suggests that they should be able to close the remaining gaps, and we’re going to do everything we can to support that process,” Kirby said.

The fact that all parties, including CIA chief Bill Burns, were present at the talks in Cairo indicated they were at an advanced stage, he added.

“Everybody’s coming to the table,” Kirby said. “That’s not insignificant.”

The White House hoped for news “very, very soon” but it would be “foolhardy” to predict when the negotiations might bear fruit, he added.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Source: AFP

US President Joe Biden will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II next week, the White House said Friday, as negotiations continue in the Middle East for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The meeting will be “private” and will be followed by a readout, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, without giving a date for the encounter.

The meeting comes against the backdrop of talks for a deal to release hostages and secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza after nearly seven months of war.

The talks, which come after months of efforts by mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States to broker a new agreement between the combatants, are at a critical juncture.

The United States has urged the Palestinian militant group to accept the “extraordinarily generous” offer.

But Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail the proposed Gaza deal with his threats to launch an operation in Rafah.

King Abdullah II last visited the White House in February when he called for an immediate ceasefire and warned an attack on Rafah would cause a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

In April, Jordan worked alongside the United States and other allies to shoot down Iranian drones that Tehran sent towards Israel, with the kingdom keen to avoid a wider conflict.

Source: AFP