Israel-Iran conflict: US will hold nuclear talks with Iran next week; Trump says, 'We blew it up to kingdom come'
US President Donald Trump speaks during a media conference at the end of the Nato summit as foreign secretary Marco Rubio, right, and defence secretary Pete Hegseth listen, in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP)
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that American and Iranian officials will hold talks next week about Tehran's nuclear program. The announcement comes days after a 12-day war between Israel and Iran ended with a ceasefire that appears, for now, to be holding.
"I'll tell you what, we're going to talk with them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement, I don't know," Trump said during a press conference at the Nato summit in the Netherlands.
He said he was not very interested in restarting talks, saying that the US had already destroyed Iran's nuclear program through airstrikes.
"The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done," Trump said.
He also said that the US would ask for the same commitments from Iran that it had demanded before the recent conflict.
"The only thing would be asking for is what we were asking for before," Trump said. He repeated his claim that the nuclear threat from Iran had been eliminated.
"We want no nuclear, but we destroyed the nuclear. In other words, it's destroyed. I said 'Iran will not have nuclear.' Well, we blew it up. It's blown up to kingdom come, and so I don't feel very strongly about it. If we got a document, it wouldn't be bad. We're going to meet with them," Trump said.
Iran has not confirmed that any talks will take place. However, US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff said there has been both direct and indirect communication with Iranian officials, news agency Associated Press reported.
The ceasefire, which began on Tuesday, has led to discussions about possible peace efforts. But Iran has continued to say it will not abandon its nuclear program.
Trump earlier said the ceasefire was going 'very well.'
He also said Iran would not be allowed to have nuclear weapons or enrich uranium.
Meanwhile, Iran's parliament has moved to fast-track a proposal to stop cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors its nuclear sites.
Iran parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said the agency did not condemn the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
"For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran's peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace," Qalibaf told lawmakers as cited by AP.
IAEA director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he had contacted Iran about restarting inspections. He also said Iran claims it moved its highly enriched uranium before the US strikes.
"We need to return," he said. "We need to engage."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
21 minutes ago
- Time of India
'Uranium...': CIA Makes Big Reveal On Iranian Nuclear Sites After U.S. Intel Shocks Trump
CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed that recent U.S. airstrikes inflicted severe and long-term damage on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, aligning with President Donald Trump's claim that the strikes were devastating. Speaking from the NATO summit, Trump dismissed earlier intelligence assessments as incomplete and promised the release of evidence supporting his version. Israeli sources and U.S. officials echoed the president's claims, suggesting Iran's nuclear program has been set back by years. Meanwhile, Iran acknowledged damage but denied total destruction. Questions remain about the fate of enriched uranium stockpiles, and international monitors have lost access due to the ongoing conflict.#CIA #trump #israelirannuclearwar #israelirannuclearsite #iranretaliatorystrikes #ayatollahalikhameneitrump Read More
The Wire
22 minutes ago
- The Wire
Piloo Mody, a Parliamentarian Who Left a Mark With His Wit and Humour
This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ' The Early Parliamentarians ', exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building. Piloo Mody was an architect, politician, one of the founding members of the Swatantra Party and a veteran parliamentarian. He was elected to the 4th and 5th Lok Sabhas and served in the Rajya Sabha from 1978 until his death in 1983. As a parliamentarian he left his imprint, complete with humour. Born into an affluent Parsi family on November 14, 1926, Mody was one of the sons of Sir Homi Mody. He had two brothers, Kali Mody, a pioneer of credit card operations in India and Russi Mody, a former chairman of TISCO Limited. Piloo studied at the Doon School, Dehradun. After that, he studied architecture at Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Bombay (now Mumbai), and completed his Bachelor of Architecture. To pursue his master's degree in architecture, Mody attended the University of California, Berkeley, US. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who went on to become prime minister of Pakistan in the 1970s, was his college roommate as well as a close friend. After completing his studies, he married Lavina (Vina) Colgan, a Swiss-born-American and his classmate at Berkeley, on January 3, 1953. After his stint at Berkeley he returned to India. He worked for two years on the Chandigarh Capital Project with Le Corbusier. Another significant building that Mody designed in collaboration with Durga Bajpai is the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi. He also designed the Chennai headquarters of Engineering Construction Corporation, a former subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd. It won the Federation Internationale de la Precontrainte prize for excellence in pre-stressed concrete from India. The couple set up an architecture firm, Mody and Colgan, in 1953 at Stadium House, Churchgate. Their first project was a residential apartment at Marine Lines for senior officials of TISCO. They also designed the front casing of one model of the Voltas Air conditioner. Mody's other projects include residential project Olympus, three TELCO offices, the headquarters of Bharat Bijlee, Mukand Iron and Steel, Sandoz, Voltas and Diners Club and Business Service centres. In political life, Mody was an advocate of liberalism and freedom. He was associated with the Swatantra Party as its founding member and was executive vice-president of the party. As parliamentarian In the 1967 general election, Mody was elected to the 4th Lok Sabha, representing the Godhra constituency in Gujarat. In 1971 he was re-elected and served in the 5th Lok Sabha until March 1977 but lost with a narrow margin in 1977. Mody merged his Swatantra Party with Charan Singh's Bhartiya Kranti Dal in 1974, which eventually merged with Janata Party in 1977. After an absence of a year from parliament, on April 10, 1978 Mody joined the Rajya Sabha and served there until his death in 1983. Besides his professional pursuits, Mody was known for his constant use of wit and humour in his parliamentary speeches. Due to his conservative and pro-US views, Mody was often accused by the members of the ruling Congress party of being a 'Washington parrot'. To counter that, once he came to the House wearing a placard reading, 'I am a CIA agent.' The chairman ordered him to remove it. He did so, remarking, 'I am no longer a CIA agent.' Once, during a debate, J.C. Jain, a member of the ruling party, started needling Mody. He lost his temper and shouted at Jain, 'Stop barking.' Jain was up, yelling and pleading with the chair, 'Sir, he is calling me a dog. It is an unparliamentary language.' Chairman Hidayatullah agreed and ordered, 'This will not go on record.' Not to be outdone, Mody corrected himself by saying, 'All right then, stop braying.' Jain did not know what the word implied, and it stayed on record. Once, a minister, during a heated argument, said, 'I am not supposed to respond to every barking dog.' Then Mody rose to speak and said, 'Speaker, Sir, on the treasury benches, we have great people sitting, pillars of the government, pillars of democracy. And, we are dogs, and everyone knows how a dog treats a pillar.' The House burst out in laughter. Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty When Giani Zail Singh, as Home Minister, was piloting a bill in the Rajya Sabha, Mody participated in the debate. While replying to the debate, Gianiji, referring to Mody's comments on the Bill, stated in Hindi, ' Piloo Mody to bade seasonal member hain.' The whole House started laughing. Another minister, sitting next to Gianiji, whispered to him to say that the word is 'seasoned'. Thereupon Gianiji again said, ' Mujhe to angrezi thodi aati hai. Inko to inki biwi ne angrezi padhai hai.' Mody thumped his desk and raised a point of order. The whole House was looking at Mody. The Deputy Chairman asked, 'What is your point of order?' Mody stated, 'Gianiji is grossly misinformed. My wife did not teach me English. I taught her English.' The whole House burst into laughter again. Mody's wife was Swiss. Similarly, once, there was a debate in Parliament about the import of railway tracks and wagons for quick replacement. Indradeep Sinha, an opposition member, believed these should be manufactured locally instead of importing because it caused delays. Mody interrupted to say that the delay was caused not by importing it but by manufacturing it. Sinha replied to Mody, 'You are not the sole importing agent. There are so many others.' The Chairman corrected Sinha, 'No, he is not an importing agent. He is an exporting agent.' Mody added, 'I export ideas in a barren market.' When Shyam Lal Yadav was elected as the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, members of various political parties in the House started extending their congratulations to him. Mody congratulated and warned the newly appointed Deputy Chairman, 'I beg to move a vote of congratulations to my friend, Shri Shyam Lal Yadav. I have no doubt in my mind that my good friend will continue to be as partisan as he was in the past. I want to assure my friend, neighbour, and colleague that I wish him very happy times in the Chair with the least amount of acrimony and warn him that if he does not behave when he returns to this Chair, I will sit on him.' The Deputy Chairman, when not presiding, sits next to the Leader of the Opposition. Mody's sense of humour was not only in his speeches but in his writings too. He was known to address Indira Gandhi as IG in his letters and sign off as PM (Piloo Mody). He often told Indira Gandhi, 'I am the permanent PM; you are temporary.' In 1975, at the time of the Emergency in India, Mody was arrested on the orders of the Indira Gandhi government, using the controversial powers granted by the MISA and was in Delhi's Tihar Jail and Rohtak Jail for 16 long months. Apart from being a humorous parliamentarian and brilliant architect, Mody was a renowned author, having two books to his credit. His first book, Zulfi, My Friend (1973), was penned on the life and times of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Mody's second book was Democracy Means BREAD AND FREEDOM (1979), which he wrote during his 16 months in jail. The book was an attempt to trace the genesis of democracy and search for the origins of the attitudes and institutions that sustain it. Mody also served as editor of an English weekly, March of the Nation, published from Bombay, and wrote numerous articles for the national and international newspapers and magazines. A few days before he died in his sleep, Piloo Mody, the irrepressibly buoyant MP who for over a decade brought to Indian politics a special flavour of wit, wacky humour and wisdom, told India Today that "The world revolves around an idea. Every problem has its solution, given a clean heart, good intention and determination." He also explained his plans to start a new political party. But he passed away on January 29, 1983. He was 57. Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India's major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India's freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.
Indian Express
23 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Against the narrowing definition of womanhood
It takes courage to write — especially stories that challenge the status quo. It takes even more courage to stand on a global platform and speak your truth. When Dutch author Yael van der Wouden stepped up to accept the Women's Prize for Fiction on a balmy June night in London, she demonstrated bravery in spades. 'Please be gentle and kind,' she murmured, bracing for her audience's reaction, before coming out as intersex. That she had to make the plea at all is the real indictment. 'I was a girl until I turned 13,' she told the 800 people gathered. 'And then, as I hit puberty, all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen. And if it did happen, it happened too much. And all at once, my girlhood became an uncertain fact… hormonally, I am intersex.' She need not have worried about how her revelation would be received. The cheer that followed was louder than the one that greeted her name. In that moment, van der Wouden, who had just been awarded a prize that celebrates 'women's voices,' redefined what the term could mean. 'In the few precious moments here on stage, I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this women's prize,' she said. 'And that is because of every single trans person who's fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards themselves. I stand on their shoulders.' The timing of her words and the stage she chose to say them from lend her words particular weight. Just two months ago, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the definition of 'woman' refers strictly to biological sex. The case, brought by campaign group For Women Scotland, argued that sex-based protections must apply only to those 'born female.' The ruling, though framed by the court as not being a victory for one side over another, has major implications for how sex and gender are treated across public life, and for who gets counted as a woman under the law. It is not just the UK. In the US, the rollback of transgender rights is gaining speed under a second Trump administration. This week, the US Supreme Court ruled that states can constitutionally restrict gender-transition care for minors, the latest blow in a coordinated, nationwide effort to curtail trans rights in education, healthcare, sport, and public life. More than two dozen Republican-led states have already passed laws restricting care or limiting trans people's participation in public life. Trump has aligned federal policy with a rigid 'biological sex' framework, barred trans people from serving in the military, and ordered that passports reflect sex assigned at birth. Though there have been some legal victories against these moves, the political momentum has shifted in the West. In a world where womanhood is increasingly being policed by legal and cultural gatekeepers, van der Wouden's declaration is powerful and political. 'Won't thrill you too much with the specifics,' she said, 'but the long and the short of it is that hormonally I am intersex. This little fact defined my life throughout my teens until I advocated for the healthcare that I needed, the surgery and the hormones that I needed, which not all intersex people need. Not all intersex people feel at odds with their gender presentation.' The statement is telling. She reminded the audience that intersex persons are not a theoretical category. They exist with real needs and identities. More importantly, not everyone has homogeneous needs, wants, and identities. The point is not conformity, but autonomy. Her prize-winning debut novel, The Safekeep, is about many things: Female relationships and rivalries, repression, queer love, the Second World War, the lingering legacy of war, memory and forgetfulness, and the meaning of home. However, for Wouden it is a story of collective compliance and redemption: 'The conversation [my novel] has entered into felt all the more important to me in the face of violence in Gaza, in the West Bank, and… the violence my own queer and trans community faces worldwide,' she said. However, there is a silver lining, much like her protagonist, Isabel, it is never too late to see the collective error of our ways and make amends.
