The BBC, Financial Times and Guardian report on the resignation of Iran’s Foreign Minister. The BBC reports that according to a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Iran’s President has not accepted the resignation of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Hassan Rouhani’s Chief-of-Staff said earlier that he was “satisfied” with Zarif’s record in the role. Zarif offered to resign on Monday, saying he hoped to allow his ministry to reclaim its “proper statutory role”. The Financial Times reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has rejected the offer of resignation. On Wednesday, Presiden Hassan Rouhani urged Zarif to remain in his position as the country’s top diplomat. “I will not agree with your [offer of] resignation and see it against the country’s expediency,” Rouhani said in a public statement addressed to the Foreign Minister. “Borrowing the words of the Supreme Leader, I see you ‘trustworthy, valiant, brave, pious’ and in the front-line of standing against sweeping US pressure.” The Guardian reports that according to a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, a majority of Iranian Parliamentarians signed a petition calling for him to stay in office. There were also reports that Iranian diplomats internationally were threatening to resign in solidarity with Zarif and provoke a wider foreign policy crisis.

The Times reports that Iran’s ruling regime was plunged into an extraordinary public row after its Foreign Minister tried to resign, saying hardliners had poisoned his dealings with the outside world. Zarif went public after Monday’s unexpected late-night offer of resignation, making his statement by the unprecedented means of a post on the social media site Instagram. He said that official photographs of President Bashar al Assad of Syria, who was shown in Tehran earlier on Monday with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Rouhani, but with Zarif conspicuously absent, were the last straw in a series of crises caused by factional infighting. “After the photos of today’s meetings, Javad Zarif no longer has any credibility in the world as the Foreign Minister,” he said in a message to a journalist. Earlier he was quoted in an interview with the Jomhoori Eslami newspaper as saying: “A deadly poison for foreign policy is that it becomes the subject of factionalism and parties’ quarrel.” Rouhani and Zarif have been subjected to sniping from regime hardliners since they negotiated the nuclear deal, and in particular since President Donald Trump withdrew from it last year. After Zarif announced his resignation, some were delighted. One said that Zarif was running away from confronting America over the failure of the deal; another said he should be subjected to a travel ban and his entourage investigated to see if it contained western spies.

In the Times, Richard Spencer writes that Javad Zarif’s resignation is a telling moment in Iran’s battle between moderates and hardliners. Spencer writes that one result of the resignation could be an “even more hostile stance by the regime, perhaps involving a decisive rejection of the nuclear deal now the US has pulled out”. A compromise, he argues, is more likely, “with Zarif replaced by a similar figure such as Vaezi or his Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.” He adds that this would leave President Rouhani a “lame duck presidency for his last two years in office, and encourage further attacks by the conservatives on ‘moderate’ positions”.

The BBC reports that UN aid officials have for the first time in six months reached a vast store of desperately-needed food on the frontline in Yemen’s Hudaydah port. The Red Sea Mills facility holds enough grain to feed 3.7 million people for a month, but the UN had warned the grain was at risk of rotting. The Yemeni government and the rebel Houthi movement agreed a ceasefire around Hudaydah in December. But they have yet to implement a UN-brokered plan to pull out of the port. UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that a World Food Programme evaluation mission had been able to reach the Red Sea Mills at the start of an aid pledging conference in Geneva on Tuesday.

The Guardian  and the Times report that the UK Labour Party has accepted Parliament’s ban on Hezbollah, but have queried the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid’s motives in instigating it. In the Times, Kate Devlin, writes that the Labour Party’s criticism of the Hezbollah ban has stoked an antisemitism row. The Labour leadership was accused of inflaming the row over antisemitism in the party yesterday by criticising a decision to declare Hezbollah’s political wing a terrorist organisation. Labour suggested that the declaration was motivated by the leadership ambitions of Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, and called for new evidence of why the group should be outlawed. Britain had previously drawn a distinction between the military and political branches of the Lebanese Shia group and outlawed only the former, but Downing Street said that the links between them meant separating the two was “untenable”. Labour did not oppose the move to ban Hezbollah in the Commons. Peers are due to debate the plan tomorrow and by Friday membership of the organisation could be a criminal offence. The Guardian reports that a Labour spokesman said the party would not oppose the measure overall, but argued that there did not seem to be sufficient evidence for the move, noting also that Hezbollah was part of the Lebanese government. “The Home Office has previously ruled that there was not sufficient evidence that the political wing of Hezbollah fell foul of proscription criteria, a position confirmed by ministers in the House of Commons last year. Ministers have not yet provided any clear evidence to suggest this has changed,” he said.

The BBC reports that Argentina’s Chief Rabbi has been taken to hospital after being beaten in a night-time attack at his home in the capital Buenos Aires. Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich said his wife was restrained during the break-in while he was attacked. In a statement, Amia – a Jewish cultural centre – said the attackers stole money and told Davidovich: “We know that you are the Amia Rabbi.” The organisation said comments made by his attackers were “a cause for alarm”. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack saying “Anti-Semitism must not be allowed to rear its head”.

The BBC has published a feature, written by Security Correspondent Frank Gardner regarding Saudi Arabia’s “global charm offensive”. Gardner concludes that: “What matters to Saudi Arabia’s critics… is whether any of this will make any difference to the way in which all political dissent has been suppressed at home, something that continues to embarrass those Western governments doing business with Riyadh.”

The Guardian reports that Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has said the industry faces a “crisis of perception” because society believes it has no future, which it says could threaten world energy security. Amin Nasser, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, said financiers at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month had told him the sector had only a few years left because of trends such as the rise of electric cars. Policymakers, regulators, investors and NGOs increasingly believed that oil and gas firms have little or no future, he said. “My encounters in Davos showed me that fewer and fewer of our stakeholders accept logic and facts, least of all from us. We are therefore facing what I would call a crisis of perception,” he told an industry audience in London.

The Independent reports that, according to a new report published by Amnesty International, the international community’s “chilling complacency” towards human rights abuses in the Middle East last year gave authorities “free rein” to crackdown on dissent. In Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran, the repression of civil society and targeting of peaceful activists “intensified significantly” in 2018. These states were “emblematic” of the international community’s inadequate response to government abuses, according to the group’s annual report on human rights in the Middle East and North Africa region. “Virtually all human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia are now behind bars or have been forced to flee the country,” Amnesty reported.

The Telegraph reports that the Kurdish government in Syria has told the newspaper that the Islamic State’s foreign fighters could be tried in a Nuremberg-style international tribunal if Britain and other countries refuse to bring them home. While the military campaign against the caliphate is nearing an end, Western countries and their Kurdish allies are locked in a standoff over the fate of thousands of foreign fighters and wives who are now in Kurdish custody. The Kurds have demanded foreign countries repatriate their citizens and imprison them at home, but Britain and other states have been resisting the call because of the legal difficulties in prosecuting them. In an effort to break the impasse, Kurdish authorities are now suggesting setting up an international tribunal like the one that tried senior Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. “If Europe and the coalition countries don’t want to take back their citizens, then one alternative is the establishment of an internationally-sponsored tribunal like Nuremberg,” said Abdulkarim Omar, the head of the foreign affairs commission for the Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria.

Yediot Ahronot and Maariv report criticism of the latest Likud election campaign advert. The film’s backdrop is the military cemetery at Mount Herzl and it argues that a vote for Blue and White under Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid is a vote for the left wing, and a vote for the left wing will cost lives. The film also includes images from terrorist attacks, including the attack at the Solomon family home in Halamish that took place in July 2017. After the film was heavily criticised, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered that the advert not be screened again and said he would investigate what happened even though it was posted on his own Facebook page. The Blue and White Party said that fallen IDF soldiers and bereaved families never imagined that a prime minister would use them for political propaganda videos. Bereaved families condemned the film and said that a red line had been crossed. According to Yediot Ahronot, many bereaved families were livid. “When I saw this shameful sight I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t utter a sound,” said Roni Hirschensohn, who lost his two sons Amir and Elad. “Using soldiers’ graves to bash another candidate? How much lower can we go?” It quotes other bereaved families, “I was outraged to the depths of my soul, I got the chills,” said Ilan Sagi, whose son Erez was killed in Operation Protective Edge. “No citizen can let this slide.” “My heart goes out to the bereaved families whose children are buried there,” said Zehava Shaul, mother of Oron, whose body is still being held by Hamas. “That’s crossing a line! Exploiting the blood of our soldiers? Our country is getting worse and worse.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Moscow today to meet with President Putin, before departing he said: “The focus of our talks will be the Iranian entrenchment in Syria. We will continue to act until we get the Iranians to leave Syria because Iran is threatening to destroy Israel and we will not allow it a base close to our border.” Haaretz reports that he is likely to return to Israel tonight, cutting his visit short, as he anticipates the announcement of the Attorney General on the various corruption charges he is facing. Israel Hayom notes in a final attempt to influence the decision, a letter was sent to the Attorney General on Netanyahu’s behalf from the eminent American lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who believes that positive media coverage does not constitute grounds for prosecution. Furthermore, indicting the Prime Minister for connections with media endangers democracy.

All the papers report the brutal attack on the chief rabbi of Argentina, Gabriel Davidovich. He was assaulted when several men broke into his home at 2am local time and severely beat him. Israel Hayom notes the assailants shouted, “We know you’re the Rabbi.” According to Haaretz, the local Jewish community demanded an immediate investigation into the incident. It said that Davidovich suffered severe wounds due the beating and that he is now hospitalised. Davidovich’s wife was in the house during the incident, and valuable items and money were stolen.

Kan news reports that Palestinian Authority (PA) official Hussein al-Sheikh said the PA would cut salaries for Palestinian security organisations. He said that the PA would refuse to accept money from Israel and that an economic crisis in the PA would ensue if Israel persisted in its decision to deduct funds from the tax money that it collects for the Palestinians. He said that Israel had no right to demand that the Palestinians stop paying prisoners and the families of martyrs.

Maariv notes the Central Elections Committee, headed by Justice Hanan Melcer, will meet next week to hear the request to disqualify Dr Michael Ben-Ari and Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir, the Jewish Power candidates, from running for Knesset. The move to disqualify them came from Meretz along with the Labour Party, the Joint List and as of last night, Yesh Atid.  The paper quotes Meretz MK Michal Rozin: “This is what a centre-left bloc looks like when we energise it—it is not silent in the face of racism, it is not silent toward Jewish terrorism and it does not grant legitimacy to people who advocate a Halachic (Jewish Law) state for Jews only.”  The petition that Meretz will submit today says that the goals, the actions and the statements (both explicitly and implicitly) of Ben-Ari and Ben Gvir constitute incitement to racism. Various forms of proof will be appended to the petition, which states, among other things, “Members of Jewish Power took steps to agitate, and after terror attacks, incited to attack the Arab population.” It also contends that their members exploited their seats at football matches and other places to systematically and deliberately shame the Arab population and tried, again and again, to revive the teachings of Rabbi Kahane, whose Kach movement was declared a terror organisation.

Channel 12 news broadcast footage from an election event at a high school in Netanya in which Labour party candidate Emilie Moatti walked out and encouraged students to walk out too in protest at Jewish Power’s Itamar Ben Gvir’s inclusion on the panel of candidates. Moatti is heard telling the students, “I can’t find a reason to stay on a panel on which sits a representative who shared in the incitement that led to Prime Minister Rabin’s murder.” Ben Gvir calls her a “hypocrite” who he said would sit in a government with Arab MKs Hanin Zoabi and Ahmad Tibi. He added: “This is the best lesson in democracy, as some of the students leave the hall, while others cheer.”