Wanderlust

Tag: Washington

  • Russian cybercrime suspect arrested in Bulgaria on U.S. hacking charges

    Bulgarian police have arrested a Russian citizen wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with a federal cybercrime case, spurring a new custody dispute between Moscow and Washington.

    Bulgarian police have arrested a Russian citizen wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with a federal cybercrime case, spurring a new custody dispute between Moscow and Washington.

    Identified by Russian media as Alexander Zh., 38, the suspected hacker is being held pending extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged with counts of computer fraud and conspiracy to commit computer fraud, the District Court of Varna, Bulgaria, said Thursday in a statement.

    The U.S. Department of Justice, as a matter of policy, “does not comment on extradition-related matters until a defendant is in the United States,” a DOJ spokesperson told The Washington Times Friday, adding: “There is nothing public at this time.”

    “We learnt about the arrest of the Russian citizen by the Bulgarian authorities from his wife,” said Vladimir Klimanov, Russia’s consular general in Varna, Bulgaria’s third largest city.

    “We haven’t received any official information,” Mr. Klimanov said Friday, Russian state media reported. “Under the circumstances, the Consulate General will take all the necessary measures.”

    Bulgarian authorities reported that the Russian is wanted in connection with allegedly causing at least $7 million in damages, and that he risks a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment if extradited to the U.S. and convicted.

    Russia does not have an extradition agreement with the U.S., meaning Moscow will not voluntarily surrender any citizens sought by Washington. Agreements exist between U.S. and other countries, however, and the Justice Department has more than once relied on authorities in allied countries apprehending Russian suspects traveling aboard.

    Yevgeny Nikulin, a Russian national accused of hacking U.S. companies including LinkedIn, was arrested in Prague in 2016 and was subsequently held by Czech authorities for 18 months while Washington and Moscow fought for custody. He was ultimately sent to the U.S. in April.

  • Iran revives black-market oil exports after US sanctions renewed

     

    With President Trump finally pulling the trigger on tough economic and financial sanctions, Iran is gearing up to revive a black-market oil export operation.

    With President Trump finally pulling the trigger on tough economic and financial sanctions, Iran is gearing up to revive a black-market oil export operation that kept the regime afloat the last time Washington engineered an international embargo on Iranian crude.

    The battle of wills could determine a critical piece of the Trump foreign policy as the U.S. seeks to impose its will on Iran and on its leading international partners to force a major change of behavior in Tehran. Iranian leaders said Monday that the pressure campaign won’t work.

    “We have to make the Americans understand that they must not use the language of force, pressure and threats to speak to the great Iranian nation — they must be punished once and for all,” President Hassan Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting in the Iranian capital.

    While the sanctions on Iran’s oil, shipping and banking sectors mark the most aggressive move Mr. Trump has made against the Islamic republic since pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, regional analysts warn that the sanctions may take a smaller bite than the administration predicts.

    Iran, they say, has been subjected to energy-sector sanctions so often over the past three decades that it has developed highly refined techniques to sell bootleg oil and launder the profits — despite Western efforts to stop such activities.

    “They have endured so many years and types of sanctions that they have better coping mechanisms than other countries,” said Ahmad Majidyar, who heads the Washington-based Middle East Institute’s Iran Observed project.

    “While sanctions could hurt them down the road, they do not see this is as an existential threat that will topple the regime,” Mr. Majidyar said in an interview Monday. “They are hoping the Trump administration is a one-term presidency and they can survive this out.”

    Without vigilant global enforcement, including potential ship interdictions on the high seas, the sanctions will fall short of stripping the Iranian regime of its cash.

    “The U.S. now has the legal and economic architecture in place to properly execute its maximum pressure campaign,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a sanctions analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “But as is the case with all coercive policies, follow-through matters, especially when the Iranians are bragging that they will ‘proudly’ bust sanctions,” he said in an analysis Monday.

    With Russia, China and key European allies all saying they remain committed to the 2015 nuclear deal, it remains to be seen whether the U.S. penalties force them to comply or drive their companies away from Iran. Some, including France and Germany, have gone so far as to establish a “special payment vehicle” to finance deals with Iran while bypassing the American financial system.

    Iranian officials, meanwhile, will continue scrambling to prop up a national economy hit badly by an earlier round of U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. Treasury Department’s terrorism and illicit finance enforcement teams will hunt Tehran’s efforts to trick them.

    Dodgy ways to dodge sanctions

    There is already evidence that Iranian oil sector operatives are implementing tried-and-true evasion tactics that allowed some of the country’s oil to move on the global market prior to the Obama-era easing of sanctions under the nuclear deal three years ago.

    One major challenge for the U.S. is the size of the market that must be policed. Worldwide, 4,500 oil tankers carry 2 billion barrels of crude per year over almost 140 million square miles of ocean, according to industry and intelligence agency estimates.

    Monitoring such vast quantities of oil, ships and area is impossible, analysts say, allowing for a wide range of smuggling endeavors, including blending Iranian oil with other liquid exports that are not sanctioned. Tankers are also painted and regularly change their flags.

    Most notoriously, “ghost tankers” turn off their geotransponders and disappear from the world’s satellite tanker tracking matrix, essentially vanishing into the millions of miles of open ocean.

    Ellen R. Wald, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council think tank’s Global Energy Center, noted reports of ghost ships “turning off [their tracking devices] for longer periods” and paving the way for ship-to-ship oil transfers and cash sales on the high seas without international detection.

    Also easing Iran’s burden were eight waivers the Trump administration issued to Iran’s major oil companies Monday, allowing them to temporarily continue reduced oil deals with Iran to ease the shock to global oil markets. U.S. officials said they expect the exempted companies to eventually cut all Iranian deals, but the waivers offer another avenue for Tehran to fight the sanctions.

    Burgeoning black market

    Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has boasted of Iran’s plans to circumvent sanctions by selling oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, but European financiers acknowledge having difficulty sidestepping the American-dominated banking system.

    That leaves the black market, analysts say, with questions over exactly how much money Tehran could make. The answer is murky and depends on multiple factors, including the global price of oil.

    With the price of crude hovering around $80 per barrel, most energy market analysts agree that the total global market value is somewhere in the $3 trillion range. The catch is that some 5 percent is already being siphoned off to the black market. Although the percentage is small, it represents nearly $150 billion worth of illegal sales.

    There is also the matter of the quantity of oil being bootlegged.

    Ms. Wald noted that legal sales of Iranian crude dipped in October to roughly 1.6 million barrels per day, down from just more than 2 million a month earlier.

    Analysts have debated whether the dip was driven by decreased demand on the global market or whether Iran was exporting roughly the same total volume of crude but moving some 400,000 to 500,000 barrels per day to the black market — shifting a massive infusion of cash to its coffers.

    Smugglers’ haven

    One country that U.S. sanctions officials could watch closely is the United Arab Emirates, which occupies a patch of geography vital to Iran’s ability to move oil legally or illegally out of the Persian Gulf. Analysts say the UAE is buying about 100,000 barrels per day from Tehran.

    While the Emirati government so far appears poised to go along with the Trump administration, U.S. officials know that the regional geography makes it a sought-after haven for smugglers seeking to evade Washington’s sanctions.

    That was evident when the Obama administration attempted to hold up a global embargo on Iranian crude prior to the nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

    In 2013, U.S. officials broke up one of their highest-profile sanctions evasions by targeting Sambouk Shipping FZC, a UAE-based company that Washington accused of having ties to a Greek businessman under sanction on suspicions that he operated a clandestine shipping network for Tehran.

    Sambouk Shipping, according to the Treasury Department, was running eight vessels on behalf of the National Iranian Tanker Co. to execute ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian oil in the Persian Gulf intended to obscure the origin of the oil.

  • Donald Trump threatens to pull out of Russia nuclear treaty

    Washington and Moscow returned to Cold War-style rhetoric Monday as President Trump ratcheted up his threat to unilaterally pull the U.S. out of a key agreement that has kept the nuclear arsenals of b

    Washington and Moscow returned to Cold War-style rhetoric Monday as President Trump ratcheted up his threat to unilaterally pull the U.S. out of a key agreement that has kept the nuclear arsenals of both sides in check since the Reagan era, as Russia demanded an explanation and analysts warned that the move could spur nuclear deployments around the globe.

    Mr. Trump revealed to reporters that he felt so strongly Russia was cheating on the deal that he didn’t bother to inform the Kremlin before making his decision.

    “Russia has not adhered to the agreement,” Mr. Trump said. “We have more money than anybody else by far. We’ll build it up until they come to their senses.”

    SEE ALSO: Trump promises nuclear buildup, warns Russia not to ‘play games’

    The high-stakes threats of a revived nuclear arms race were issued as White House National Security Adviser John R. Bolton prepares for a tense meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

    Both sides have publicly declared that they will begin ramping up their missile capabilities. The meeting was scheduled before Mr. Trump said last week that he intended to withdraw the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a deal designed to limit the U.S. and Russia from building or deploying any missiles and launch systems with an “intermediate” range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

    Signed in 1987 by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the INF cooled fears that a “limited” nuclear war short of an all-out exchange could erupt in Europe. Both sides dismantled huge caches of missiles as part of the agreement, which remained in place after the fall of the Soviet Union.

    But the U.S. and international partners such as NATO now say Moscow is in clear violation of the deal, and Mr. Trump on Monday offered a stern warning that Washington won’t allow it.

    The president also stressed that no other nation — including China, which isn’t bound by the treaty and has been building up its own arsenal as its economy modernizes — can compete with the U.S.

    “It’s a threat to whoever you want, and [that] includes China,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he left for a campaign trip to Texas. “It includes anybody else that wants to play that game. You can’t play that game on me.”

    The Kremlin said earlier Monday that if the INF collapses, then Russia will have no choice but to “restore balance” in the global power structure.

    “This is a question of strategic security. Such measures can make the world more dangerous,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    “It means that the United States is not disguising, but is openly starting to develop these systems in the future, and if these systems are being developed, then actions are necessary from other countries, in this case Russia, to restore balance in this sphere,” he added.

    Breaking the deal

    Moscow denies that it violated the deal, but both the Obama and Trump administrations have accused Russia of breaking its promises. U.S. and international observers cite in particular the Russian 9M729 cruise missile system as their chief concern.

    The system — a U.S. assessment of which has not been made available publicly — is rumored to have a range of about 1,250 miles or more — clearly within the limits covered by the INF. The Obama administration first objected to the missile system in 2014 but opted to retain the treaty.

    NATO officials also have said the missile system violates the INF, and Russian aggression in Ukraine in recent years has spurred fears that Moscow once again could be eyeing the deployment of nuclear weapons into Eastern Europe.

    Russia has denied that the missile system violates the deal, but critics say the Kremlin has been unwilling to provide answers about the 9M729, what its purpose is and whether it’s fully operational. Some Russian military strategists have argued that the 1987 deal benefits the U.S. more than Russia because the U.S. faces no real strategic threat from its near neighbors, Canada and Mexico, the way Russia does all along its perimeter.

    “In the absence of any credible answer from Russia on this new missile, allies believe that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty,” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said Monday.

    Key U.S. allies, while divided over Mr. Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal entirely, were united in urging Russia to provide more answers. They said the burden lies with Mr. Putin to cool international tensions.

    “We of course want to see this treaty continue to stand, but it does require two parties to be committed to it, and at the moment you have one party that is ignoring it,” U.K. Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson told The Guardian newspaper. “It is Russia that is in breach, and it is Russia that needs to get its house in order.”

    The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a more cautious stand, saying it regrets the U.S. decision while calling on Moscow to “dispel the serious doubts about its adherence to the treaty that had arisen as a result of a new type of Russian missile.”

    Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Mr. Trump’s move poses “difficult questions for us and for Europe.”

    European Union officials took a more measured approach, urging the U.S. and Russia to negotiate in the hopes of preserving the agreement.

    There is a six-month waiting period after notification before either party can formally exit the deal. Russian officials said Monday afternoon that they had not received formal notification, though that could come Tuesday when Mr. Bolton meets with Mr. Putin.

    Rising China

    While the INF applies only to the U.S. and Russia, Mr. Trump’s comments Monday made clear that the White House sees China as a key part of the equation.

    “China is not included in the agreement. They should be included in the agreement,” the president told reporters.

    Analysts and U.S. officials said there is good reason for questions about China in the context of the INF.

    As Beijing upgrades its military presence, particularly in the South China Sea, the administration fears that the U.S.-Russia deal is giving China a free pass, potentially allowing the rising superpower to get a leg up militarily.

    Retired Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., formerly the head of U.S. forces in the Pacific and now the administration’s ambassador to South Korea, told lawmakers this year that the U.S. and Russia are limited by the deal, while China can essentially do whatever it wants.

    “Over 90 percent of China’s ground-based missiles would violate the treaty,” he told a House committee in February.

    Regional analysts say the Trump administration’s secondary motivation for scrapping the INF could be to give the Pentagon freedom to deploy missile systems to the Pacific to counter China.

    “Should Trump follow through on his threat to leave the INF, it would also open the door to potential nuclear build-up in East Asia, as Washington looks to counter growing Chinese presence. A deployment of missiles to Guam or allies Japan and Australia would not be out of the question, with uncertain consequences for the region,” David A. Wemer, an assistant director at the Atlantic Council, wrote Monday.

    The China state-controlled Global Times wrote a stinging editorial Monday condemning Mr. Trump’s INF decision, which it said was clearly made with Beijing in mind.

    “Although China has exercised restraint in developing strategic weaponry with no intention of nuclear power competition, the U.S. still fixes its eyes on China doubtfully …,” the editorial argued. “Military might and strategic nuclear power have never played an outstanding role in China’s foreign relations. But as the U.S. grows more skeptical about China, we face growing strategic risks and have become the main target of U.S. hegemony.”

    • Dave Boyer contributed to this report.

  • Melania Trump opens Africa tour with a wave and baby in arms

    Melania Trump opened her first big solo international trip as U.S. first lady on Tuesday with a wave, a smile and a baby in her arms, aiming to promote child welfare during a five-day tour of Africa.

    ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Melania Trump opened her first big solo international trip as U.S. first lady on Tuesday with a wave, a smile and a baby in her arms, aiming to promote child welfare during a five-day tour of Africa.

    She arrived in the West African nation of Ghana after an overnight flight from Washington and quickly made her way to the Greater Accra Regional Hospital.

    The first lady saw how babies are weighed — they’re placed in sacks that are then hung from a hook attached to a scale. She also watched a nurse demonstrate how vitamins are administered to babies by mouth and toured the neonatal intensive care unit.

    Mrs. Trump also cradled an infant and declared the baby a “beautiful boy” as she handed him back to his mother.

    Mothers at the hospital for her visit received gifts of teddy bears nestled in white baby blankets, personally handed out by the first lady, according to her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham. The items carried the logo of “Be Best,” the child well-being initiative Mrs. Trump launched last May.

    With the Africa visit, the first lady aims to take “Be Best” and its focus on opioid abuse and online behavior to an international audience.

    The first lady also had a private tea and gift exchange with her Ghanaian counterpart, Rebecca Akufo-Addo. They exchanged gifts: a Chippendale silver tray embossed with an image of the White House inside a leather case signed by “First Lady Melania Trump” for Akufo-Addo, and Kente cloth and artifacts for Mrs. Trump, according to Grisham.

    The first ladies met privately for about a half-hour at Jubilee House, Ghana’s presidential palace. The two first met last week in New York at a reception on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where Mrs. Trump spoke about her upcoming trip.

    Mrs. Trump’s visit opened in low-key fashion. Several Ghanaians interviewed said they knew little about it.

    “Did you say President Trump’s wife just arrived in Accra?” street vendor Awo Yeboah told the AP. “l don’t think l have ever heard her name, Melania.” Other locals said they knew about the visit but didn’t know what Mrs. Trump was doing.

    Mrs. Trump landed in the capital of Accra on Tuesday morning after a more than 12-hour journey from Washington. She was welcomed at the airport with dancing and drumming, schoolchildren waving mini U.S. and Ghanaian flags and the gift of a flower bouquet.

    Akufo-Addo was at the airport to welcome her. Mrs. Trump also plans to visit Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.

  • Beijing accuses White House of trade bullying as new U.S. tariffs take effect

    In the latest escalation of the U.S.-China trade war, Beijing on Monday accused Washington of “economic bullying” just as trade tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese made goods came into effect.

    In the latest escalation of the U.S.-China trade war, Beijing on Monday accused Washington of “economic bullying” just as trade tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese made goods came into effect.

    The hard-hitting attack on President Trump was delivered in an official white paper released by the Xinhua news agency and features Beijing’s argument that the U.S. is intimidating other countries through economic measures, damaging the global economy and using “trade bullyism practices.”

    Considered Beijing’s most comprehensive public statement in the tariff war thus far, the white paper, which runs 36,000 words, keeps with Beijing’s stance of not personalizing the conflict by never mentioning Mr. Trump by name.

    It does, however, lash out at his administration’s “America first” economic policies, criticizing them for threatening the world’s established multilateral free trade agreements and restating Beijing’s position that the only way to stop the battle is through cooperation.

    “Cooperation is the only right option and only win-win cooperation can lead to a better future,” the white paper said.

    To justify the trade war, Mr. Trump has long accused China of stealing technologies from America and unfairly subsidizing Chinese state-owned enterprises.

    To punish them, Mr. Trump has argued for the U.S. to clamp down on Chinese imports and since July, roughly half of all Chinese good shipped to the U.S. have become subject to new duties.

    The latest round of tariffs, which kicked in at 12 p.m. Monday, Beijing time, target almost 6,000 Chinese imports, including bicycles, furniture, handbags, rice and textiles, with smartwatches and high chairs reportedly exempt.

    China, meanwhile, has responded by slapping tariffs on more than 5,000 U.S. goods, from honey to industrial chemicals, worth an estimated $110 billion.

    Over the weekend, China recalled its naval chief from the U.S. to protest sanctions Washington slapped on Chinese entities for procuring Russian-made military equipment.

    Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, who is leading trade talks with the U.S., also cancelled a trip to Washington in protest of the tariffs.

  • Former Yazidi intercourse slave: ‘i used to be so scared i was shaking’

    Video ‘i used to be so scared i was shaking’

    (more…)

  • Syria struggle: ‘IS seized ladies and kids in Suweida attack’

    Druze women. File photo Image copyright Getty Photographs Symbol caption The Druze are the 3rd-greatest religious minority in Syria

    Islamic State (IS) militants are preserving more than 30 ladies and children hostage in south-western Syria, a screen and native media say.

    They are believed to have been seized in closing week’s IS assaults that centered an area dominated by means of the Druze ethnic minority within the Suweida region.

    At least 215 other folks died in a series of suicide bombings.

    The Syrian executive controls most of the region, but IS militants grasp a small track of territory there.

    Syria’s military, backed via Russia, has recently introduced a campaign to retake the rest jihadist- and insurrection-held spaces.

    The Druze are the 3rd-largest non secular minority in Syria and are regarded as by means of IS jihadists as heretics.

    Over the prior year, IS opponents have lost most of the land they as soon as held across Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

    The warfare against ‘Islamic State ’ in maps and charts

    At the peak of the crowd’s power, around 10 million other people lived in IS-controlled spaces, but the US military stated earlier this year that the jihadists had been ousted from 98% in their former territory.

    In Syria, the crowd continues to be present in small pockets in the southern provinces of Suweida and Deraa, in addition as portions of the country’s east.

  • The missing – results of Trump’s immigration crackdown

    Video The lacking – aftermath of Trump’s crackdown

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  • China tries to gauge North Korea nuclear offer

    President Trump praised China for helping drive North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s toward potential denuclearization talks with Washington, but a cautious Beijing has barely even reacted to reports thi

    President Trump praised China for helping drive North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s toward potential denuclearization talks with Washington, but a cautious Beijing has barely even reacted to reports this week that Mr. Kim is offering to halt all nuclear and missile tests while such negotiations play out.

    Despite its status as the North’s ally and main link to the outside world, the Chinese government has not made an official statement on the claim by South Korean officials that Mr. Kim made the offer during talks with them this week, and the newspaper of the ruling Communist party even questioned whether the offer really happened.

    “North Korea still has not confirmed the South’s version of events,” stated an editorial in the Global Times, noting that Pyongyang’s own official state newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, had said Pyongyang’s actual plan is to proceed with the “advance” of the nation’s “nuclear weaponry.”

    U.S. officials said the editorials underscored ongoing “puzzlement” inside the White House over the true nature of the offer South Korean officials claim Mr. Kim made with regard to missile and nuclear tests.

    South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s office said in a statement Tuesday the North in direct talks had expressed a “willingness to hold a heartfelt dialogue with the United States on the issues of denuclearization” and “made it clear that while dialogue is continuing, it will not attempt any strategic provocations, such as nuclear and ballistic missile tests.”

    But Mr. Moon on Wednesday tried to tamp down expectations for the detente and ease fears that the talks could separate Seoul from Washington and other allies urging a hard line on the North’s nuclear and missile programs. He noted many of the sanctions of the North were imposed by the U.S. or through the United Nations, and would only be eased by “substantive progress” on denuclearization.

    “These international efforts cannot be loosened by inter-Korean dialogue,” Mr. Moon told a meeting of South Korean party leaders in Seoul. “We don’t aim for that to happen and it’s also impossible.”

    The issue, according to Michael Pillsbury, a Mandarin-speaking Pentagon consultant and head of Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, is that “that there seems to be no direct message from North Korea to the U.S. government.”

    “This is all being filtered through the South Korean government,” Mr. Pillsbury said, adding that Chinese officials, who are generally regarded as having better sources on the inner workings of the Pyongyang regime, are still unsure about what is on the table.

    According to the Global Times editorial, the Chinese government so far “does not see a major shift in North Korea’s negotiating position,” said Mr. Pillsbury, who warned in an interview that “there is often a price to pay just to learn that North Korea has not made any real concessions.”

    Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA official who served as the State Department’s special envoy to the North Korean talks that broke down in 2009, said the Chinese have appeared to be “as surprised as everyone else” about South Korea’s claim that Mr. Kim has offered to halt tests and discuss denuclearization with Washington.

    “We’ve got to sit down with the North Koreans and not have anything go through filters,” said Mr. DeTrani. “It’s got to be direct so we can figure out what’s going on, what does Kim Jong Un want, and does he know what he’s doing?”

    President Trump has expressed guarded optimism about the prospect for such talks, but it’s not clear when and whether the talks will occur. South Korean officials said they hope details could take shape during a direct meeting slated for late-April between the North and South Korean presidents.

    Some analysts say Beijing is poised to claim credit for any future progress on U.S.-North Korea talks and may even seek concessions from Washington in exchange for influencing the regime in Pyongyang. The North Korean offer came at the same time Mr. Trump was putting the finishing touches on steel and aluminum tariffs that administration officials were primarily sparked by massive Chinese overproduction and dumping abroad.

    Patrick Cronin, who heads the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said Tuesday that if the talks turn out to be successful, “China will then be seeking to extract favors and take credit for it.”

    “The Chinese are all over us on this,” Mr. Cronin said, asserting that Beijing will want concessions from Washington “on trade” relating to everything from “solar panels to aluminum and steel.”

    • Seth McLaughlin contributed to this article.

  • Jerusalem mayor assures Congress city is safe enough to move U.S. Embassy there

    The mayor of Jerusalem has assured U.S. Congress that America faces no additional terrorist threat by moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city despite opposition from Palestinians and the

    The mayor of Jerusalem has assured U.S. Congress that America faces no additional terrorist threat by moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city despite opposition from Palestinians and the greater Muslim world.

    “The importance of the move to Jerusalem is second to nothing else,” Nir Barkat told members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday while visiting Washington. “God forbid if there is a security challenge, I assure you we will not shy away from it.”

    On Monday, President Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he may visit Israel for the opening of the embassy, slated for early May.

    “We’re going to have it built very quickly and very inexpensively,” Mr. Trump said to reporters before a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu. “While not making any specific commitments, we’re looking at coming … If I can, I will.”

    On Tuesday, Mr. Barkat discussed the history of Jerusalem during a roundtable gathering hosted by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform member Rep. Ron DeSantis. The Florida Republican played a key role on Capitol Hill advocating for the move, including scouting possible sites for the new facility while visiting Israel.

    Mr. Barkat also praised Mr. Trump for his “boldness and leadership” on the issue and noted that Israelis deeply appreciate the historical significance of the White House’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as a capital, and move the embassy there, 70 years after President Harry Truman recognized Israel as a sovereign state.

    On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu, who was visiting Washington to address the pro-Israel group AIPAC, sang similar praises for the Trump Administration’s Jerusalem decision.

    “Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people, throughout the ages,” the prime minister said. “And as you just said, others talked about it; you did it.”

    Palestinians, meanwhile, have lashed out the decision and argue that it negates the United States as a credible negotiator in peace talks.

    From a local security standpoint, Mr. Barkat told lawmakers that the Israeli government would dedicate all possible resources to protecting the new embassy. He also pointed out that Washington has a murder rate 15 times higher than Jerusalem.

    “So,” he joked, “whenever I fly to D.C., I pray to come back to Jerusalem safely.