Live: At NATO summit, Trump says ‘great progress being made on Gaza'
'I think great progress is being made on Gaza, I think because of this attack that we made,' US President Donald Trump says at the NATO meeting in the Netherlands, suggesting the US attacks on Iran could have a positive impact on the Middle East.
NATO members are expected to agree upon a new defence spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
9 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
Iran passes bill to halt IAEA cooperation as fragile Israel ceasefire holds
Iran's parliament has passed a bill that would effectively suspend the country's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as Iran insists it will not give up its civilian nuclear programme in the wake of massive attacks on the country by Israel and the United States. The move on Wednesday comes after a US and Qatar-brokered ceasefire between Iran and Israel ended 12 days of fierce hostilities – including an intensive US military intervention that struck three Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that parliament voted to suspend – but not end – cooperation with the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. He said the US had 'torpedoed diplomacy' and could no longer be trusted, citing extensive damage to nuclear infrastructure. He reaffirmed Iran's right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Addressing the parliamentary bill, Baghaei said it sets conditions for Iran's future engagement with the IAEA, including guarantees for the safety and security of Iranian scientists and nuclear facilities. Ahead of Wednesday's vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf criticised the IAEA for having 'refused to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities' that the US carried out. '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 programme will move forward at a faster pace,' Ghalibaf told lawmakers. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme was peaceful, and both US intelligence agencies and the IAEA had concluded that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said he had already written to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of the country's nuclear facilities. Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the US strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to reassess the country's stockpiles. 'We need to return,' he said. 'We need to engage.' But given that Tehran has castigated Grossi for the IAEA's censure of Iran the day before Israel attacked on June 13, and his subsequent comments during the conflict, that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. Al Jazeera's Ali Hashem, reporting from Tehran, said it is 'clear that Iran's nuclear programme will continue despite everything that has happened'. Hashem said the bill will now go to the Guardian Council, which will study it 'legally and religiously'. 'If there is consensus in the body, the bill will go to the Supreme National Security Council to be approved and finally to the government to become policy,' he added. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described Iran's decision as a direct consequence of the US and Israeli attacks on its nuclear sites. 'Disgraceful, despicable' US intelligence officials have assessed the strikes as a targeted operation with limited effectiveness, saying the US bombings had only set Tehran's nuclear programme back by a few months. The findings are at odds with US President Donald Trump's claims about the strikes. Trump has insisted that the nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were 'obliterated' by a combination of bunker-busting and conventional bombs. Meanwhile, the fragile truce between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding on Wednesday following a rocky start. Trump told reporters at a NATO summit that it was going 'very well', insisting that Iran was 'not going to have a bomb and they're not going to enrich'. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the ceasefire agreement with Iran amounted to 'quiet for quiet', with no further understandings about Iran's nuclear programme going ahead. In Iran, health officials said the number of Iranians killed in Israeli strikes has risen to 627, while the number of those wounded stood at 4,870. Other signs of life returning to relative normality in Iran came as officials said they will ease internet restrictions that were put in place since the conflict began nearly two weeks ago. 'The communication network is gradually returning to its previous state,' said the cybersecurity command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a statement carried by state media. A spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Roads and Urban Development said that Iran's airspace will reopen at 2pm local time (10:30 GMT) on Thursday. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Trump said US and Iranian officials are due to speak next week, continuing a dialogue that was interrupted by Israel's attack and the subsequent conflict. '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 told reporters. Separately, Iran slammed NATO chief Mark Rutte's praise of Trump for the attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities. 'It is disgraceful, despicable and irresponsible for [NATO's secretary-general] to congratulate a 'truly extraordinary' criminal act of aggression against a sovereign state,' Baghaei wrote on the X platform. Separately, Iranian state media reported on Wednesday that the head of the IRGC command centre, Ali Shadmani, died of wounds sustained during Israel's military strikes on the country. The command centre vowed 'harsh revenge' for his killing, state media added. Israel had said on June 17 that it killed Shadmani, who it says it ascertained was Iran's wartime chief of staff and most senior military commander.
Al Jazeera
20 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
Israel (& the US) vs Iran – what just happened?
Making sense of the '12-day war' between Israel and Iran So much has happened since Israel launched strikes on Iran on June 13th, and there are so many questions about what could happen next. So #AJStartHere's Sandra Gathmann has been talking to Mike Fitzpatrick, a former US diplomat and an expert on nuclear issues, to try to make sense of it all.
Al Jazeera
20 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
Mamdani's stunning victory marks the rise of a new American Left
Zohran Mamdani's stunning win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor signals a seismic shift in US politics. The victory of the Ugandan-Indian American state assemblyman confirms what has been quietly building for years: A new working-class immigrant politics, rooted in organising, solidarity, and a sharp critique of inequality, is taking hold within the Democratic Party. Mamdani's campaign – focused on rent freezes, universal childcare, public transit, and green infrastructure – galvanised multiracial working-class coalitions across the city. His win is a repudiation of corporate influence and local corruption, and a powerful endorsement of politics shaped by immigrants with deep ties to global struggles for justice. This movement is not limited to New York. In Congress, Ilhan Omar – refugee, former security guard, and daughter of Somali immigrants – has helped define this new left. Joining her is Rashida Tlaib, the first and only Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress. Tlaib, Omar and Mamdani represent a politics shaped not just by US inequality, but by personal or ancestral experiences of instability, austerity, and repression in the Global South. They have emerged as the public faces of a broader trend: Politicians from immigrant backgrounds forming the backbone of an ascendant, insurgent Democratic Left. That's not the version of immigration Donald Trump has in mind. In October 2019, then-President Trump addressed a campaign rally in Minneapolis – a city with a large Somali population, represented by Ilhan Omar. Drawing on familiar right-wing tropes, Trump warned that immigrants and refugees were changing the United States for the worse. The subtext was clear: This was a dog whistle to MAGA voters, particularly white working- and middle-class Americans who blamed immigration for the country's decline. This rhetoric previewed what is now commonplace – unlawful, often brutal deportations of thousands from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Trump's telling, immigration from 'shithole' countries was responsible for crime, economic stagnation, and the misuse of public benefits. What he didn't say was that many Somali immigrants in Minneapolis had fled violence – some of it triggered or worsened by US foreign policy. But Trump was at least partly right: migrants and their offspring are changing US political life – just not in the way he feared. In fact, just a year before Trump's speech, the outskirts of Minneapolis were the site of the first worker strikes against Amazon's exploitative labour practices. Led mainly by Somali immigrants, these actions helped catalyse a renewed national labour movement. What began in one warehouse soon spread, with other Amazon plants and industries following suit. This is what makes Mamdani's mayoral primary win so significant. Alongside figures like Omar, he exemplifies a new kind of leadership – grounded in lived experience, powered by grassroots organising, and capable of translating complex policy into plainspoken demands for justice. His campaign focused on economic dignity, tenant rights, childcare, climate resilience, and taxing the rich – all anchored in the real conditions of working-class life. Just take African immigrants, where Mamdani and Omar have roots: There are now roughly 2.1 million sub-Saharan African immigrants living in the US, making up about 5 percent of the total foreign-born population. Much coverage emphasises how well-educated or professionally successful African immigrants are – facts often highlighted by middle- and upper-class diasporas. But these narratives obscure the reality for most: Lower average incomes, more precarious work, and higher poverty rates than other immigrant groups. Yet it is from this working-class base that a new politics is emerging – one with the potential to reshape the Democratic Party from the ground up. As the founder of the website Africa Is a Country, I spent nearly a decade and a half tracing how Africans are reinventing democratic politics despite the pressures of neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and militarism. From Nigeria's EndSARS and Uganda's Walk to Work to the Arab Spring and South Africa's Fees Must Fall, African activists have offered bold critiques of injustice. These movements have also influenced global struggles – most clearly in the resonance between them and Black Lives Matter. Many African immigrants in the US draw on these traditions of resistance. Mamdani organised alongside New York City taxi drivers fighting debt. Omar has cleaned offices and worked on assembly lines. Both have built political careers by listening to, and organising with, communities pushed to the margins. In a nation still reeling from Trump-era xenophobia and inequality, these new leaders offer a hopeful alternative. They are building solidarity across divides – between immigrants and the native-born, Muslims and non-Muslims, Black Americans and new African arrivals, and the second-generation offspring of migrants from elsewhere – grounded not in assimilation, but in shared struggle. As political theorist Corey Robin recently noted on social media, Mamdani is a 'happy warrior' in the mould of Franklin Roosevelt: Sharp, grounded, and unafraid to engage in real debate. That he is Muslim and South Asian deepens his significance in a city and nation transformed by global migration. He represents a radically democratic future – one conservatives can neither contain nor comprehend. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
