Iran could hold nuclear talks with European powers next week, Tasnim reports
"The principle of talks has been agreed upon, but consultations are continuing on the time and place of the talks. The country in which the talks could be held next week has not been finalised," Tasnim reported, quoting a source informed on the matter.
The report on possible talks comes a few days after the foreign ministers of the so-called E3 nations, as well as the European Union's foreign policy chief, held their first call with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi since Israel and the U.S. attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago.
The three European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran - from which the United States withdrew in 2018 - that lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear programme.
The E3 have said they would restore U.N. sanctions on Tehran via the so-called "snapback mechanism" by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the U.S. before the Israel-Iran air war do not resume or fail to produce concrete results.
"If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the 'snap-back' for which they lack absolutely [any] moral and legal ground," Araqchi said earlier this week.
The snapback mechanism can be used to restore U.N. sanctions before the U.N. Security Council resolution enshrining the deal expires on October 18.
Prior to the Israel-Iran war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks mediated by Oman but faced major stumbling blocks such as uranium enrichment in Iran, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimise any risk of weaponisation.
Tehran maintains its nuclear programme is solely meant for civilian purposes.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
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Powerless to change this, we humanitarians have resorted to using our voices – alongside those of Palestinian journalists who risk everything – to describe the appalling, inhuman conditions in Gaza. Speaking out, as I'm doing now, in the face of deliberate, preventable suffering is part of our role to promote respect for international law. But doing so comes at a price. After I held a press briefing in Gaza on 22 June in which I described how starving civilians were being shot while trying to reach food – what I called 'conditions created to kill' – the Israeli minister of foreign affairs announced in a post on X that my visa would not been renewed. The Israeli permanent representative to the UN followed up at the security council announcing that I would be expected to leave by 29 July. This silencing is part of a broader pattern. International NGOs face increasingly restrictive registration requirements, including clauses that prohibit certain criticism of Israel. 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As part of our role to coordinate humanitarian operations, my colleagues and I have helped carry patients out of dark, cat-infested ICU wards in destroyed hospitals overtaken by Israeli forces where the dead were being buried in the courtyard by the last remaining sleep-deprived staff who had witnessed their colleagues being marched away. We helped uncover mass graves in other hospital courtyards where families searched through scattered clothes trying to identify loved ones who had been stripped before being killed or disappeared. We have argued with soldiers who were trying to forcibly remove a screaming spinal cord injury patient from an ambulance while being evacuated from a hospital. We have repatriated the bodies of humanitarian workers killed by drone strikes and tank fire while trying to deliver aid, and collected the bodies of family members of NGO workers who were killed in sites acknowledged by Israeli forces as 'humanitarian' locations. 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Reuters
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Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Chinese independent oil companies in Iraq
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