Nikki Haley Wins District of Columbia’s Republican Primary and Gets Her First 2024 Victory 

US Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley reaches out to embraces Retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc before speaking during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on March 3, 2024. (AFP)
US Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley reaches out to embraces Retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc before speaking during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on March 3, 2024. (AFP)
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Nikki Haley Wins District of Columbia’s Republican Primary and Gets Her First 2024 Victory 

US Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley reaches out to embraces Retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc before speaking during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on March 3, 2024. (AFP)
US Republican presidential hopeful and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley reaches out to embraces Retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc before speaking during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on March 3, 2024. (AFP)

Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign.

Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, although the former president is likely to pick up several hundred more delegates in this week’s Super Tuesday races.

Despite her early losses, Haley has said she would remain in the race at least through those contests, although she has declined to name any primary she felt confident she would win. Following her loss in her home state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters in the places that followed deserved an alternative to Trump despite his dominance thus far in the campaign.

The Associated Press declared Haley the winner Sunday night after DC Republican Party officials released the results. She won all 19 delegates at stake.

“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, noting that Haley became the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.

Washington is one of the most heavily Democratic jurisdictions in the nation, with only about 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Democrat Joe Biden won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the vote.

Trump's campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s victory sarcastically congratulating her on being named “Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”

Haley held a rally in the nation’s capital on Friday before heading back to North Carolina and a series of states holding Super Tuesday primaries. She joked with more than 100 supporters inside a hotel ballroom, “Who says there’s no Republicans in DC, come on.”

“We’re trying to make sure that we touch every hand that we can and speak to every person,” Haley said.

As she gave her standard campaign speech, criticizing Trump for running up federal deficit, one rallygoer bellowed, “He cannot win a general election. It’s madness.” That prompted agreement from Haley, who argues that she can deny Biden a second term, but Trump can't.

While campaigning as an avowed conservative, Haley has tended to perform better among more moderate and independent-leaning voters.

Four in 10 Haley supporters in South Carolina’s GOP primary were self-described moderates, compared with 15% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,400 voters taking part in the Republican primary in South Carolina, conducted for AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. On the other hand, 8 in 10 Trump supporters identified as conservatives, compared to about half of Haley’s backers.

Trump won an uncontested DC primary during his 2020 reelection bid but placed a distant third four years earlier behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Rubio’s win was one of only three in his unsuccessful 2016 bid. Other more centrist Republicans, including Mitt Romney and John McCain, won the city’s primaries in 2012 and 2008 on their way to winning the GOP nomination.



Grossi Wants to Meet with Iran’s Pezeshkian ‘at Earliest Convenience’

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to the media at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, US, March 15, 2023. (Reuters)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to the media at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, US, March 15, 2023. (Reuters)
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Grossi Wants to Meet with Iran’s Pezeshkian ‘at Earliest Convenience’

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to the media at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, US, March 15, 2023. (Reuters)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to the media at the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington, US, March 15, 2023. (Reuters)

Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi announced he intends to visit Tehran through a letter he addressed to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Iranian Mehr Agency reported that Grossi sent a congratulatory message to the Iranian president-elect, which stated: “I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to you on your election win as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“Cooperation between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been at the focal attention of the international circles for many years. I am confident that, together, we will be able to make decisive progress on this crucial matter.”

“To that effect, I wish to express my readiness to travel to Iran to meet with you at the earliest convenience,” Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted Grossi as saying.

The meeting – should it take place - will be the first for Pezeshkian, who had pledged during his election campaign to be open to the West to resolve outstanding issues through dialogue.

Last week, American and Israeli officials told the Axios news site that Washington sent a secret warning to Tehran last month regarding its fears of Iranian research and development activities that might be used to produce nuclear weapons.

In May, Grossi expressed his dissatisfaction with the course of the talks he held over two days in Iran in an effort to resolve outstanding matters.

Since the death of the former Iranian president, Ibrahim Raisi, the IAEA chief refrained from raising the Iranian nuclear file, while European sources said that Tehran had asked to “freeze discussions” until the internal situation was arranged and a new president was elected.