China says it opposes European sanctions over Iran nuclear programme
European sanctions on Iran were eased after a 2015 deal in return for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme.
But on Wednesday, foreign ministers from the E3 group — Britain, France and Germany — threatened to reimpose them in a joint letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council.
China said Friday it 'opposes invoking' sanctions and 'believes that it does not help parties build trust'.
Reimposing sanctions was 'not conducive to the diplomatic effort for the early resumption of talks', Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a statement.
Iran said Thursday it was working with China and Russia to stop the return of the sanctions.
European countries have stepped up warnings to Iran about its suspension of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
That came after Israel launched a 12-day war with Iran in June, partly seeking to destroy its nuclear capability. The United States staged its own bombing raid during the war.
Wednesday's E3 letter sets out engagements that the ministers say Iran has breached, including building up a uranium stock to more than 40 times the permitted level under the 2015 deal.
'The E3 remain fully committed to a diplomatic resolution to the crisis caused by Iran's nuclear programme and will continue to engage with a view to reaching a negotiated solution,' the ministers said.
'Tools to respond'
The 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, effectively collapsed after US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 during his first term and restored sanctions.
European countries attempted to keep the deal alive.
The agreement, which terminates in October, includes a 'snapback mechanism' allowing sanctions to be restored.
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the return of sanctions would be 'negative' but that the predicted economic effects 'have been exaggerated'.
'We will try to prevent it,' he told state TV on Thursday.
'If this does not work and they apply it, we have tools to respond. We will discuss them in due course.'
Last month, Araghchi sent a letter to the UN saying the European countries did not have the legal right to restore sanctions.
The European ministers called the claim 'unfounded'.
'Any moves taken by the Security Council now should help reach new agreements in talks, instead of the opposite,' China's Lin added on Friday.
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AllAfrica
30 minutes ago
- AllAfrica
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A good result, in this estimation, would be for Russia to surrender or for Putin's government to collapse. Even under dire circumstances, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the ruble, with massive unemployment, shut-down factories and crazy-high inflation, Boris Yeltsin, then president, found a way forward, and Russia did not have a civil war, and government institutions started to restore their authority. Yeltsin's administration lasted eight years and was replaced by a more conservative and authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. It is very hard to accurately read sentiment in Russia. Generally speaking, the Russians like order and certainty, and dislike war. If there was a hard sense in the Russian public, especially the top echelons of Russian society, that the Ukraine war was a disaster, then one would expect to see evidence that this was the case. When the Russian invasion of Afghanistan went sour, the Russian people, especially the nomenklatura, demanded that Russia's military involvement come to an end. After nearly ten years of war in Afghanistan, the Russian army began to pull out in May 1988, and all the Russian troops were gone by February 1989. Russians objected to the Afghan war mainly because of casualties. Russia suffered some 26,000 killed and 35,000 wounded, far less than the casualties in Ukraine. In the Chechen wars, on Russia's territory, the Russian army perhaps lost 15,000 troops, although official numbers are not available. Regarding Chechnya, research outfits such as the Jamestown Foundation argue that the Russian public supported a negotiated settlement and were against continuation of the fighting. In the end, the Russian army flattened the Chechen resistance and the Russian public remained mostly passive. One of the asymmetries of the Ukraine conflict is the political impact of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian territory. These attacks presumably are designed to answer Russia's relentless aerial strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure, on military targets and in limited cases on civilian targets. But the other side of the coin is the impact of Ukraine's drone and missile strikes in garnering public support for the Russian 'Special Military Operation' in Ukraine. Ukraine's attacks reinforce public opinion in favor of the SMO. It is noteworthy, as illustrated by a recent Gallup poll in Ukraine, that despite the Russian drone and missile strikes, public opinion in Ukraine is turning decisively against continuing the war without a political settlement. Young men and women, in large numbers, are leaving Ukraine to escape the war and military conscription. According to the London Telegraph, at least 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022. This number does not include the thousands who are currently hiding from the authorities or paying bribes to stay out of the Ukrainian army. A Ukrainian soldier and a militia man help a fleeing family. Image: Emilio Morenatti / AAP Zelensky hews to a tough no-compromises line on any settlement with Russia. He rejects any territorial deal. So when he bargains with Washington, he likely will do two things: try and get his supporters here in Washington to back up his position on no territorial concessions; and attempt to refocus Trump on providing security guarantees for Ukraine, demanding a Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. He will most certainly ask Trump for more weapons and money, and for heavy sanctions on Russia. It isn't clear after the summit with Putin how Trump will respond. 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Moreover, the use of a military base, explained as a 'security measure,' was inappropriate, but the Russians, anxious to state their case to Trump and intent on showing deep respect for the United States, accepted the venue and the conditions, even the escort of Putin's presidential aircraft by US fighter jets. The view from Putin's window. The bottom line is, at least for now, US policy has shifted. The US and Trump no longer support a ceasefire but want to settle the Ukraine war through negotiations. How long that will take, and even if it is possible, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the war continues, and for the most part, Russia will continue pushing to take Pokrovsk and to expand the contact line further to the west. Ukraine, already stretched and now with uncertainties on military supplies, is facing a crisis. Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. 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RTHK
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- RTHK
European leaders back three-way meeting
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AllAfrica
5 hours ago
- AllAfrica
Trump-Putin shake but no deal in Alaska
Hours before meeting Russia's leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Donald Trump said he wanted to see a ceasefire in Ukraine and was 'not going to be happy' if it wasn't agreed today. The US president appears to have left Alaska with no such agreement in place. 'We didn't get there,' Trump told reporters, before later vaguely asserting that he and Putin had 'made great progress.' Trump is likely to return to the idea of engaging Putin in the coming weeks and months, with the Russian leader jokingly suggesting their next meeting could be held in Moscow. A land-for-ceasefire arrangement, an idea Trump has repeatedly raised as an almost inevitable part of a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine, could still reemerge as a possible outcome. In fact, in an interview with Fox News after the summit, where Trump was asked how the war in Ukraine might end and if there would be a land swap, Trump said: 'Those are points that we largely agreed on.' Securing territorial concessions from Ukraine has long been one of Moscow's preconditions for any negotiations on a peace deal. Putin is likely betting that insisting on these concessions, while keeping Ukraine under sustained military pressure, plays to his advantage. Public fatigue over the war is growing in Ukraine, and Putin will be hoping that a weary population may eventually see such a deal as acceptable and even attractive. Russia launched a barrage of fresh attacks against Ukrainian cities overnight, involving more than 300 drones and 30 missiles. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who was excluded from the Alaska summit, has maintained that Kyiv will not agree to territorial concessions. Such a move would be illegal under Ukraine's constitution, which requires a nationwide referendum to approve changes to the country's territorial borders. The assumption behind a land-for-ceasefire deal is that it would enhance Ukrainian and European security. Trump sees it as the first step in bringing Putin to the negotiation table for a broader peace deal, as well as unlocking opportunities for reconstruction. In reality, such a deal would do little to diminish the longer-term Russian threat. Moscow's efforts to shore up and modernize its defense capabilities and neo-imperial ambitions would remain intact. Its hybrid attacks on Europe would also continue, and Ukraine's capacity to secure meaningful reconstruction would be weakened. Russia currently occupies almost one-fifth of Ukraine's land. Institute for the Study of War Whether or not Russia ever opts for a direct military strike on a European Nato member state, it has no need to do so to weaken the continent. Its hybrid operations, which extend well beyond the battlefield, are more than sufficient to erode European resilience over time. Russia's disinformation campaigns and sabotage of infrastructure, including railways in Poland and Germany and undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland and Baltic Sea, are well documented. Its strategic objectives have focused on deterring action on Ukraine and sowing disagreement between its allies, as well as attempting to undermine democratic values in the West. Europe is under pressure on multiple fronts: meeting new defence spending targets of 5% of GDP while economic growth is slowing, reducing the dependence of its supply chains on China and managing demographic challenges. These vulnerabilities make it susceptible to disinformation and have deepened divisions along political and socioeconomic fault lines – all of which Moscow has repeatedly exploited. A land-for-ceasefire deal would not address these threats. For Ukraine, the danger of such a deal is clear. Russia might pause large-scale physical warfare in Ukraine under a deal, but it would almost certainly continue destabilising the country from within. Having never been punished for violating past agreements to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity, such as when it annexed Crimea in 2014, Moscow would have little incentive to honour new ones. The government in Kyiv, and Ukrainian society more broadly, would see any accompanying security guarantees as fragile at best and temporary at worst. The result would probably be a deepening of Ukraine's vulnerabilities. Some Ukrainians might support doubling down on militarisation and investment in defense technologies. Others, losing faith in national security and reconstruction, could disengage or leave the country. Either way, in the absence of national unity, reconstruction would become far more difficult. Ukraine's reconstruction will be costly, to the tune of US$524 billion, according to the World Bank. It will also require managing a web of interconnected security, financial, social and political risks. These include displacement and economic challenges brought on by the war, as well as the need to secure capital flows across different regions. It will also need to continue addressing governance and corruption challenges. A permanent territorial concession would make addressing these risks even more difficult. Such a deal is likely to split public opinion in Ukraine, with those heavily involved in the war effort asking: 'What exactly have we been fighting for?' Recriminations would almost certainly follow during the next presidential and parliamentary elections, deepening divisions and undermining Ukraine's ability to pursue the systemic approach needed for reconstruction. Ongoing security concerns in border regions, particularly near Russia, would be likely to prompt further population flight. And how many of the over 5 million Ukrainians currently living abroad would return to help reconstruct the country under these conditions is far from certain. Financing reconstruction would also be more challenging. Public funds from donors and international institutions have helped sustain emergency energy and transport infrastructure repairs in the short term and will continue to play a role. But private investment will be critical moving forward. Investors will be looking not only at Ukraine's geopolitical risk profile, but also its political stability and social cohesion. Few investors would be willing to commit capital in a country that cannot guarantee a stable security and political environment. Taken together, these factors would make large-scale reconstruction in Ukraine nearly impossible. Beyond fundamental issues of accountability and just peace, a land-for-ceasefire deal would be simply a bad bargain. It will almost certainly sow deeper, more intractable problems for Ukraine, Europe and the West. It would undermine security, stall reconstruction and hand Moscow both time and a strategic advantage to come back stronger against a Ukraine that may be ill-prepared to respond. Trump would do well to avoid committing Ukraine to such an arrangement in further talks with Putin over the coming months. Olena Borodyna is senior geopolitical risks advisor, ODI Global This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
