EU; U.K. hold talks with Iran as clock ticks down on Trump deadline

UPI

3 hours ago

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot (C-R) arrives for the Europe-Iran summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday morning. Photo by Martial Trezzini/EPA-EFE
June 20 (UPI) -- The European Union and Britain met for crisis talks with Iran on Friday to try to determine a way out of the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel over Tehran's nuclear development program.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Britain and the EU's foreign policy chief sat down with their Iranian counterpart in Geneva with the clock ticking, after President Donald Trump set a 14-day deadline Thursday to him to decide on direct U.S. involvement.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the negotiations with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were "aimed at obtaining from Iran a lasting rollback of its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs."
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who flew in overnight from consultations in Washington on Thursday with U.S. Secretary Marco Rubio, said that despite the perilousness of the situation, "we are determined Iran should never have a nuclear weapon."
However, he called for all sides to seize the window of opportunity that had opened up.
"Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one," Lammy wrote in a post on X.
Trump is considering a plan to join Israeli strikes, which have been underway for seven days, by deploying U.S. bombers to attack underground nuclear facilities using massive bunker-busting guided bombs -- but put the final decision to give diplomacy a chance.
"Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks," Trump said in a statement.
The Geneva summit got underway after another night of back-and-forth attacks between Israel and Iran.
Israel Defense Forces said in a update on X that more than 60 of its fighter-jets struck dozens of military targets with more than 100 pieces of ordnance, including missile production facilities in the Tehran area that it described as a "key industrial" hub serving the Iranian Defense Ministry.
The IDF also claimed it carried out airstrikes on the Tehran headquarters of defense ministry's research and development program, the SPND agency, which works on leveraging emerging technologies for military applications.
Iranian forces struck the southern Israeli city of Beersheeba the second day in a row, injuring seven people and severely damaging buildings after a missile struck a road near high-rise residential blocks, leaving a large crater and setting cars ablaze.
The injured were taken to the city's Soroka Hospital, which itself was struck by an Iranian missile on Thursday, injuring 80 people and causing significant damage.
The BBC reported blazes near the Microsoft building in Beersheba's Gav-Yam technology park, which Tehran had claimed was the intended target of Thursday's missile strike.
An IDF spokesman claimed Iranian forces had planned for Friday's airborne assault on Beersheba to be much larger, but were thwarted after Israeli forces destroyed three missile launchers on the ground in Iran as they were being prepared for use in the attack.
Four attack drones launched from Iran were also intercepted overnight, the IDF said. No information was provided on where they were downed or their intended targets.