
U.S. Must Show It Genuinely Seeks Negotiations: President Pezeshkian
President Masoud Pezeshkian has reiterated Iran's commitment to dialogue but said the United States must also demonstrate a genuine intent for negotiations.
In remarks on Monday, the president said that while Iran believes in negotiations, it will not engage in talks 'at any cost.'
'We are not seeking war, tensions, or nuclear weapons; we are seeking negotiations. However, the Americans must also prove that they are genuinely pursuing negotiations,' he said.
The president noted that Iran's commitment to not using its nuclear capabilities for 'non-peaceful' purposes is not merely a political declaration but is rooted in a fatwa (religious decree) issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
Iran's nuclear doctrine is based on Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa, which prohibits the production, possession, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called for direct negotiations with Iran to make a new deal to replace the one he unilaterally abandoned during his first term. However he has also threatened to bomb Iran if an agreement is not reached.
Tehran has ruled out direct talks with Washington under threats and pressure but has left the door open for indirect negotiations.

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MTV Lebanon
33 minutes ago
- MTV Lebanon
12 Jun 2025 20:44 PM US Supreme Court bolsters school disability protections
The U.S. Supreme Court sided on Thursday with a severely epileptic girl who is pursuing a disability discrimination lawsuit against a Minnesota public school district in a ruling that bolsters protections for students with disabilities in American schools. The 9-0 ruling threw out a lower court's decision that the Osseo Area Schools district had not discriminated against student Ava Tharpe in violation of two federal disability rights laws, as a lawsuit brought by her parents argued. Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the ruling, wrote that the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erred by requiring students to satisfy a heightened legal standard for disability discrimination claims against schools than is typically required in other contexts. Federal appeals courts had been divided on whether disability discrimination claims arising in school settings require a heightened legal standard, meaning the stricter requirement had applied in some parts of the country but not others. The Supreme Court ruling harmonizes the standard nationally. Claims brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that are "based on educational services should be subject to the same standards that apply in other disability discrimination contexts," Roberts wrote. Roberts added that nothing in the relevant text of those laws suggests that "such claims should be subject to a distinct, more demanding analysis." Roman Martinez, a lawyer for Tharpe, called the ruling "a great win for Ava, and for children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country." "We are grateful to the Supreme Court for its decision holding that these children should enjoy the same rights and protections as all other Americans with disabilities," Martinez said, adding that ruling would "protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all." Tharpe suffers from severe epilepsy that prevents her from attending school before noon due to morning seizures but permits her to engage in school work after that until about 6 p.m. At issue in the case was whether the legal standard applied by the 8th Circuit in rejecting Tharpe's discrimination claims was overly strict, and if a less stringent standard should have applied. When Tharpe and her family lived in Kentucky, her public school district tailored an education plan to her disability that included supplemental evening instruction at home, providing her with the same amount of school time as her peers. In 2015, her family moved to Minnesota, and Tharpe began attending the public schools in the Osseo Area Schools district in the suburbs of Minneapolis. For years, the district refused to accommodate a request by her parents that she receive evening instruction, leading Tharpe to receive fewer hours of education per day compared to her peers, according to court papers. Tharpe and her parents in 2021 filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Osseo district of discrimination under two federal disability laws. The lawsuit sought an accommodation from the district giving the girl the equivalent of a full school day, as well as monetary damages. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis in 2023 ordered the school district to extend Tharpe's instructional day until 6 p.m. and to provide compensatory hours of instruction. But the judge rejected Tharpe's discrimination claims, ruling that her parents had failed to show that the school district satisfied a heightened legal standard of "bad faith or gross misjudgment." The 8th Circuit upheld the judge's ruling, prompting Tharpe and her parents to appeal her disability discrimination claims to the Supreme Court.


Nahar Net
12 hours ago
- Nahar Net
Trump says US personnel moved from Middle East as Iran tensions mount
by Naharnet Newsdesk 12 June 2025, 11:17 The United States is drawing down the presence of staffers who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East and their loved ones due to the potential for regional unrest, the State Department and military said Wednesday. The State Department said it has ordered the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad based on its latest review and a commitment "to keeping Americans safe, both at home and abroad." The embassy already had been on limited staffing, and the order will not affect a large number of personnel. The department, however, also is authorizing the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait. That gives them the option of leaving those countries at government expense and with government assistance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "has authorized the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations" across the region, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. The command "is monitoring the developing tension in the Middle East." Speaking at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump said, "They are being moved out, because it could be a dangerous place, and we'll see what happens. We've given notice to move out, and we'll see what happens." Tensions in the region have been rising in recent days as talks between the U.S. and Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program appear to have hit an impasse. The talks seek to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions that the U.S. has imposed on the Islamic Republic. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful. The next round of talks — the sixth — had been tentatively scheduled for this weekend in Oman, according to two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters. However, those officials said Wednesday that it looked increasingly unlikely that the talks would happen. Trump, who has previously said Israel or the U.S. could carry out airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations failed, gave a less-than-optimistic view about reaching a deal with Iran, telling the New York Post's "Pod Force One" podcast that he was "getting more and more less confident about" a deal. "They seem to be delaying, and I think that's a shame. I'm less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago. Something happened to them," he said in the interview recorded Monday and released Wednesday. Iran's mission to the U.N. posted on social media that "threats of overwhelming force won't change the facts." "Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon, and U.S. militarism only fuels instability," the Iranian mission wrote. Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh separately told journalists Wednesday that he hoped talks with the U.S. would yield results, though Tehran stood ready to respond. "If conflict is imposed on us, the opponent's casualties will certainly be more than ours, and in that case, America must leave the region, because all its bases are within our reach," he said. "We have access to them, and we will target all of them in the host countries without hesitation." Meanwhile, the Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency was potentially set to vote on a measure to censure Iran. That could set in motion an effort to snap back United Nations sanctions on Iran via a measure in Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that's still active until October. Trump withdrew from that agreement in his first term. Earlier Wednesday, a statement from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, a Mideast-based effort overseen by the British navy, issued a warning to ships in the region that it "has been made aware of increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity having a direct impact on mariners." It urged caution in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. It did not name Iran, though those waterways have seen Iranian ship seizures and attacks in the past. The top U.S. military officer for the Middle East, Gen. Erik Kurilla, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, but that testimony has now been postponed, according to the committee's website. The Pentagon has not commented on the postponement. Meanwhile, Iraq's state-run Iraqi News Agency said in a statement attributed to an unnamed government official that the evacuation of some nonessential employees from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was part of "procedures related to the U.S. diplomatic presence in a number of Middle Eastern countries, not just Iraq" and that Iraqi officials "have not recorded any security indicators that warrant an evacuation." "We reiterate that all security indicators and briefings support the escalating assessments of stability and the restoration of internal security," the statement said.


Nahar Net
2 days ago
- Nahar Net
Trump pushes ahead with maximalist immigration campaign in face of LA protests
by Naharnet Newsdesk 10 June 2025, 14:52 Donald Trump made no secret of his willingness to exert a maximalist approach to enforcing immigration laws and keeping order as he campaigned to return to the White House. The fulfillment of that pledge is now on full display in Los Angeles. The president has put hundreds of National Guard troops on the streets to quell protests over his administration's immigration raids, a deployment that state and city officials say has only inflamed tensions. Trump called up the California National Guard over the objections of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — the first time in 60 years a president has done so — and is deploying active-duty troops to support the guard. By overriding Newsom, Trump is already going beyond what he did to respond to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, when he warned he could send troops to contain demonstrations that turned violent if governors in the states did not act to do so themselves. Trump said in September of that year that he "can't call in the National Guard unless we're requested by a governor" and that "we have to go by the laws." But now, the past and current president is moving swiftly, with little internal restraint to test the bounds of his executive authority in order to deliver on his promise of mass deportations. What remains to be seen is whether Americans will stand by him once it's operationalized nationwide, as Trump looks to secure billions from Congress to dramatically expand the country's detention and deportation operations. For now, Trump is betting that they will. "If we didn't do the job, that place would be burning down," Trump told reporters Monday, speaking about California. "I feel we had no choice. ... I don't want to see what happened so many times in this country." 'A crisis of Trump's own making' The protests began to unfold Friday as federal authorities arrested immigrants in several locations throughout the sprawling city, including in the fashion district of Los Angeles and at a Home Depot. The anger over the administration's actions quickly spread, with protests in Chicago and Boston as demonstrations in the southern California city also continued Monday. But Trump and other administration officials remained unbowed, capitalizing on the images of burning cars, graffiti and Mexican flags — which, while not dominant, started to become the defining images of the unrest — to bolster their law-and-order cause. Leaders in the country's most populous state were similarly defiant. California officials sued the Trump administration Monday, with the state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, arguing that the deployment of troops "trampled" on the state's sovereignty and pushing for a restraining order. The initial deployment of 300 National Guard troops was expected to quickly expand to the full 4,000 that has been authorized by Trump. The state's senior Democratic senator, Alex Padilla, said in an interview that "this is absolutely a crisis of Trump's own making." "There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of National Guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation," Padilla told The Associated Press. "It's exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do." Padilla slammed the deployment as "counterproductive" and said the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department was not advised ahead of the federalization of the National Guard. His office has also pushed the Pentagon for a justification on the deployment, and "as far as we're told, the Department of Defense isn't sure what the mission is here," Padilla added. Candidate Trump previewed immigration strategy during campaign Much of this was predictable. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pledged to conduct the largest domestic deportation operation in American history to expel millions of immigrants in the country without legal status. He often praised President Dwight D. Eisenhower's military-style immigration raids, and the candidate and his advisers suggested they would have broad power to deploy troops domestically to enact Trump's far-reaching immigration and public safety goals. Trump's speedy deployment in California of troops against those whom the president has alluded to as "insurrectionists" on social media is a sharp contrast to his decision to issue no order or formal request for National Guard troops during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, despite his repeated and false assertions that he had made such an offer. Trump is now surrounded by officials who have no interest in constraining his power. In 2020, Trump's then-Pentagon chief publicly rebuked Trump's threat to send in troops using the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that empowers the president to use the military within the U.S. and against American citizens. Current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signaled support on his personal X account for deploying troops to California, writing, "The National Guard, and Marines if need be, stand with ICE," referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The Defense Department said Monday it is deploying about 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to support National Guard troops already on the ground to respond to the protests. White House responds to an 'incompetent' governor Protesters over the weekend blocked off a major freeway and burned self-driving cars as police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades in clashes that encompassed several downtown blocks in Los Angeles and led to several dozen arrests. Much of the city saw no violence. But the protests prompted Trump to issue the directive Saturday mobilizing the California National Guard over Newsom's objections. The president and his top immigration aides accused the governor of mismanaging the protests, with border czar Tom Homan asserting in a Fox News interview Monday that Newsom stoked anti-ICE sentiments and waited two days to declare unlawful assembly in the city. Trump told Newsom in a phone call Friday evening to get the situation in Los Angeles under control, a White House official said. It was only when the administration felt Newsom was not restoring order in the city — and after Trump watched the situation escalate for 24 hours and White House officials saw imagery of federal law enforcement officers with lacerations and other injuries — that the president moved to deploy the Guard, according to the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations. "He's an incompetent governor," Trump said Monday. "Look at the job he's doing in California. He's destroying one of our great states." Local law enforcement officials said Los Angeles police responded as quickly as they could once the protests erupted, and Newsom repeatedly asserted that state and city authorities had the situation under control. "Los Angeles is no stranger to demonstrations and protests and rallies and marches," Padilla said. "Local law enforcement knows how to handle this and has a rapport with the community and community leaders to be able to allow for that." The aggressive moves prompted blowback from some of Trump's erstwhile allies. Ileana Garcia, a Florida state senator who in 2016 founded the group Latinas for Trump and was hired to direct Latino outreach, called the recent escalation "unacceptable and inhumane." "I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings — in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims — all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal," said Garcia, referring to Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and key architect of Trump's immigration crackdown. The tactics could be just a preview to what more could come from the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. GOP lawmakers are working to pass a massive tax-and-border package that includes billions to hire thousands of new officers for Border Patrol and for ICE. The goal, under the Trump-backed plan, is to remove 1 million immigrants without status annually and house 100,000 people in immigration detention centers.