Trump says Israel agrees terms for ceasefire, urges Hamas to accept
President Donald Trump says Israel has accepted a 60-day Gaza ceasefire deal, but he gave no details of the plan. Hamas has previously said it wants full Israeli troop withdrawal and security guarantees. Trump is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week.
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Al Jazeera
6 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
US says its strikes degraded Iran's nuclear programme by one to two years
Washington, DC – The Pentagon has announced that United States military strikes against Iran set back the country's nuclear programme by one to two years, an assessment that follows President Donald Trump's claims that the programme was 'obliterated'. Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Wednesday that the three Iranian nuclear facilities targeted by Washington were destroyed, echoing the president's remarks. He praised the strikes as a 'bold operation'. 'We have degraded their programme by one to two years at least,' Parnell told reporters. 'Intel assessments inside the department assess that.' Since the US sent a group of B-2 stealth bombers to Iran on June 21, Trump has consistently lashed out at any suggestions that the attacks did not wreck the country's nuclear facilities. He has maintained that Iran's nuclear programme has been 'obliterated like nobody's ever seen before'. An initial US intelligence assessment, leaked to several media outlets last month, said the strikes failed to destroy key components of Iran's nuclear programme and only delayed its work by months. For its part, Tehran has been coy about providing details about the state of its nuclear sites. Some Iranian officials have said that the facilities sustained significant damage from US and Israeli attacks. But Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said last week that Trump had 'exaggerated' the impact of the strikes. There has been no independent assessment of the aftermath of the US attacks, which came as part of a 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Visual analyses via satellite images cannot fully capture the scope of the damage at the underground sites, especially the country's largest enrichment facility, Fordow. Another persistent mystery is the location and state of the stockpiles containing Iran's highly enriched uranium. Iran's nuclear agency and regulators in neighbouring states have said they did not detect a spike in radioactivity after the bombings, as might be expected from such strikes. But Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not rule out that the containers holding the uranium may have been damaged in the attacks. 'We don't know where this material could be or if part of it could have been under the attack during those 12 days,' Grossi told CBS News last week. 'So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved.' Satellite images showed trucks moving out of Fordow before the US strikes. Grossi also said that Iran could be enriching uranium again in a 'matter of months'. Enrichment is the process of enhancing the purity of radioactive uranium atoms to produce nuclear fuel. The facilities targeted in the US strikes had been under constant IAEA surveillance. But now, Iran's nuclear programme is in the dark, away from the scrutiny of international inspectors. After the war, the Iranian parliament passed a law suspending cooperation with the IAEA, citing the agency's failure to condemn the US and Israeli attacks on the country's nuclear facilities. The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on 'installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations'. Before the war started on June 13, Tehran claimed to have obtained Israeli documents that show that the IAEA was passing off information to Israel about Iran's nuclear programme – allegations that the agency denied. Earlier on Wednesday, the US State Department called on Iran to allow the IAEA access to its nuclear programme. 'It is … unacceptable that Iran chose to suspend cooperation with the IAEA at a time when it has a window of opportunity to reverse course and choose a path of peace and prosperity,' State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement. Israel launched a massive attack against Iran on June 13 without direct provocation, claiming that it was preemptively targeting Iran's push towards a nuclear weapon. Tehran denies seeking a nuclear bomb. Israel, meanwhile, is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal. Israeli air strikes during the conflict killed hundreds of Iranian civilians, including nuclear scientists and their family members, as well as top military officials. Iran responded with barrages of missiles that left widespread destruction and killed 29 people in Israel. Ten days into the war, the US joined the Israeli campaign and bombed Iran's nuclear facilities. Tehran, in turn, launched a missile strike against a US air base in Qatar, an attack that resulted in no casualties. Hours later, Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Officials in both countries have described the outcome of the war as a 'historic victory'. Israel has similarly claimed that Iran's nuclear programme was destroyed. But Iran has insisted it foiled Israel's goals by maintaining the stability of its government as well as its nuclear and missile programmes.
Qatar Tribune
9 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
UN rights rapporteur accuses Israel of apartheid, genocide
dpa Geneva A UN official tasked with monitoring the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday accused Israel of using companies to pursue a 'settler-colonial' displacement project aimed at apartheid and genocide. Francesca Albanese, an Italian legal and human rights academic, said that while political leaders and governments shirked their obligations, 'far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide.' Albanese, who was appointed UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories in 2022, has published a report entitled 'From economy of occupation to economy of genocide.' Israel has long accused Albanese of lacking fairness, neutrality and impartiality. The Israeli government rejects cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council and its organs. The Israeli diplomatic representation in Geneva described her report as being 'motivated by her obsessive hate-driven agenda to delegitimize the existence of the State of Israel' and as a flagrant abuse of her office. Albanese's report investigates what it terms 'the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.' It goes on to describe 'the role of corporate entities in sustaining the illegal Israeli occupation and its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza' and says that corporate interests underpin the Israeli settler-colonial logic of the displacement, replacement and dispossession of Palestinians. It adds that corporate actors have contributed to the acceleration of this displacement-replacement process since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel mounted from the Gaza Strip that has led to the current war. On Tuesday, at least 95 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks throughout Gaza, including more than a dozen desperate people seeking food at US-Israel-backed aid distribution sites.
Qatar Tribune
9 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Hamas says studying new Gaza ceasefire proposals
Agencies Gaza The Palestinian group Hamas says it is studying new proposals for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, but insisted it is seeking an agreement that would bring an end to Israel's war. Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday that it had received proposals from the mediators and is holding talks with them to 'bridge gaps' to return to the negotiating table and try to reach a ceasefire agreement. The group said it was aiming for an agreement that would end the Gaza war and ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave. The announcement comes a day after United States President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed to a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. Trump has been increasing pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas to broker a ceasefire and an agreement for the group to release the Israeli captives held in Gaza. Trump said the 60-day period would be used to work towards ending the war – something Israel says it will not accept until Hamas is defeated. Trump is due to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week. But Hamas's announcement, which emphasised its demand that the war end, raised questions about whether the latest offer could materialise into an actual pause in fighting. Israeli officials have warned that the country's military will escalate its operations in Gaza if ceasefire negotiations do not advance soon, according to the US-based Axios news outlet. 'We'll do to Gaza City and the central camps what we did to Rafah. Everything will turn to dust,' the outlet quoted a senior Israeli official as saying. 'It's not our preferred option, but if there's no movement towards a hostage deal, we won't have any other choice.' Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said any opportunity to free captives held in Gaza should not be missed, adding that there is a lot of support, both in the cabinet and within the public at large, for the US-backed proposal. The proposal, though, has not been publicly backed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Palestinians mistrust Trump and have been disappointed several times by mooted ceasefires that have failed to materialise. 'There are headlines that are talking about a potential agreement and an end to the genocide, but what we're seeing on the ground, the reality tells a different story. An average of 100 to 120 Palestinians are killed every single day,' he said. In Gaza, Israeli forces killed at least 78 people on Wednesday, according to Palestinian health authorities. Hospital officials said four children and seven women were among the dead.
