Latest news with #Ahmadinejad
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Long, fraught timeline of tensions between Iran and the US as nuclear negotiators to meet again
Iran and the United States will hold a fifth round of talks in Rome on Friday over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program. The negotiations represent a milestone in the fraught relations between the two nations over Iran's program, which is enriching uranium close to weapons-grade levels. Officials are now focused on the details that could make or break any accord. Here's a timeline of the tensions between the two countries over Iran's atomic program. Early days 1967 — Iran takes possession of its Tehran Research Reactor under America's 'Atoms for Peace' program. 1979 — Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fatally ill, flees Iran as popular protests against him surge. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and the Islamic Revolution sweeps him to power. Students seize the United States Embassy in Tehran, beginning the 444-day hostage crisis. Iran's nuclear program goes fallow under international pressure. August 2002 — Western intelligence services and an Iranian opposition group reveal Iran's secret Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. June 2003 — Britain, France and Germany engage Iran in nuclear negotiations. October 2003 — Iran suspends uranium enrichment. February 2006 — Iran announces it will restart uranium enrichment following the election of hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Britain, France and Germany walk out of stalled negotiations. June 2009 — Iran's disputed presidential election sees Ahmadinejad re-elected despite fraud allegations, sparking Green Movement protests and violent government crackdown. October 2009 — Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. and Iran open a secret backchannel for messages in the sultanate of Oman. July 2012 — U.S. and Iranian officials hold face-to-face secret talks in Oman. July 14, 2015 — World powers and Iran announce a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limits Tehran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. The nuclear deal collapses May 2018 — Trump unilaterally withdraws the U.S. from the nuclear agreement, calling it the 'worst deal ever.' He says he'll get better terms in new negotiations to stop Iran's missile development and support for regional militias. Those talks don't happen in his first term. May 8, 2019 — Iran announces it will begin backing away from the accord. A series of regional attacks on land and at sea blamed on Tehran follow. Jan. 3, 2020 — A U.S. drone strike in Baghdad kills Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Tehran's proxy wars in the Middle East. Jan. 8, 2020 — In retaliation for Soleimani's killing, Iran launches a barrage of missiles at military bases in Iraq that are home to thousands of American and Iraqi troops. More than 100 U.S. service members suffer traumatic brain injuries. As Iran braces for a counterattack, the Revolutionary Guard shoots down a Ukrainian passenger plane shortly after takeoff from Tehran's international airport, reportedly mistaking it for a U.S. cruise missile. All 176 people on board are killed. July 2020 — A mysterious explosion tears apart a centrifuge production plant at Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Iran blames the attack on archenemy Israel. April 6, 2021 — Iran and the U.S. under President Joe Biden begin indirect negotiations in Vienna over how to restore the nuclear deal. Those talks, and others between Tehran and European nations, fail to reach any agreement. April 11, 2021 — A second attack within a year targets Iran's Natanz nuclear site, again likely carried out by Israel. April 16, 2021 — Iran begins enriching uranium up to 60% — its highest purity ever and a technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Feb. 24, 2022 – Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow ultimately will come to rely on Iranian bomb-carrying drones in the conflict, as well as missiles. July 17, 2022 — An adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Kamal Kharrazi, says that Iran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb, but has not decided whether to build one. His remarks will be repeated by others in the coming years as tensions grow. Mideast wars rage Oct. 7, 2023 — Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip storm into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. This begins the most intense war ever between Israel and Hamas. Iran, which has armed Hamas, offers support to the militants. Regional tensions spike. Nov. 19, 2023 — Yemen's Houthi rebels, long supported by Iran, seize the ship Galaxy Leader, beginning a monthslong campaign of attacks on shipping through the Red Sea corridor that the U.S. Navy describes as the most intense combat it has seen since World War II. The attacks mirror tactics earlier used by Iran. April 14, 2024 — Iran launches an unprecedented direct attack on Israel, firing over 300 missiles and attack drones. Israel, working with a U.S.-led international coalition, intercepts much of the incoming fire. April 19, 2024 — A suspected Israeli strike hits an air defense system by an airport in Isfahan, Iran. July 31, 2024 – Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, is assassinated apparently by Israel during a visit to Tehran after the inauguration of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian. Sept. 27, 2024 — Israeli airstrike kills Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Oct. 1, 2024 — Iran launches its second direct attack on Israel, though a U.S.-led coalition and Israel shoot down most of the missiles. Oct. 16, 2024 — Israel kills Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip. Oct. 26, 2024 — Israel openly attacks Iran for the first time, striking air defense systems and sites associated with its missile program. Trump returns — and reaches out Jan. 20, 2025 — Trump is inaugurated for his second term as president. Feb. 7, 2025 – Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says proposed talks with the U.S. are 'not intelligent, wise or honorable.' March 7, 2025 – Trump says he sent a letter to Khamenei seeking a new nuclear deal with Tehran. March 15, 2025 — Trump launches intense airstrikes targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the last members of Iran's self-described 'Axis of Resistance' capable of daily attacks. April 7, 2025 — Trump announces the U.S. and Iran will hold direct talks in Oman. Iran says they'll be indirect talks, but confirms the meeting. April 12, 2025 — First round of talks between Iran and the U.S. take place in Oman, ending with a promise to hold more talks after U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi 'briefly spoke' together. April 19, 2025 — Second round of talks between the U.S. and Iran are held in Rome. April 26, 2025 — Iran and the U.S. meet in Oman a third time, but the negotiations include talks at the expert level for the first time. May 11, 2025 — Iran and the U.S. meet in Oman for a fourth round of negotiations ahead of Trump's trip to the Mideast. May 23, 2025 — Iran and the U.S. to meet in Rome for a fifth round of talks.
Associated Press
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Long, fraught timeline of tensions between Iran and the US as nuclear negotiators to meet again
Iran and the United States will hold a fifth round of talks in Rome on Friday over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program. The negotiations represent a milestone in the fraught relations between the two nations over Iran's program, which is enriching uranium close to weapons-grade levels. Officials are now focused on the details that could make or break any accord. Here's a timeline of the tensions between the two countries over Iran's atomic program. Early days 1967 — Iran takes possession of its Tehran Research Reactor under America's 'Atoms for Peace' program. 1979 — Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fatally ill, flees Iran as popular protests against him surge. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and the Islamic Revolution sweeps him to power. Students seize the United States Embassy in Tehran, beginning the 444-day hostage crisis. Iran's nuclear program goes fallow under international pressure. August 2002 — Western intelligence services and an Iranian opposition group reveal Iran's secret Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. June 2003 — Britain, France and Germany engage Iran in nuclear negotiations. October 2003 — Iran suspends uranium enrichment. February 2006 — Iran announces it will restart uranium enrichment following the election of hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Britain, France and Germany walk out of stalled negotiations. June 2009 — Iran's disputed presidential election sees Ahmadinejad re-elected despite fraud allegations, sparking Green Movement protests and violent government crackdown. October 2009 — Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. and Iran open a secret backchannel for messages in the sultanate of Oman. July 2012 — U.S. and Iranian officials hold face-to-face secret talks in Oman. July 14, 2015 — World powers and Iran announce a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limits Tehran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. The nuclear deal collapses May 2018 — Trump unilaterally withdraws the U.S. from the nuclear agreement, calling it the 'worst deal ever.' He says he'll get better terms in new negotiations to stop Iran's missile development and support for regional militias. Those talks don't happen in his first term. May 8, 2019 — Iran announces it will begin backing away from the accord. A series of regional attacks on land and at sea blamed on Tehran follow. Jan. 3, 2020 — A U.S. drone strike in Baghdad kills Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Tehran's proxy wars in the Middle East. Jan. 8, 2020 — In retaliation for Soleimani's killing, Iran launches a barrage of missiles at military bases in Iraq that are home to thousands of American and Iraqi troops. More than 100 U.S. service members suffer traumatic brain injuries. As Iran braces for a counterattack, the Revolutionary Guard shoots down a Ukrainian passenger plane shortly after takeoff from Tehran's international airport, reportedly mistaking it for a U.S. cruise missile. All 176 people on board are killed. July 2020 — A mysterious explosion tears apart a centrifuge production plant at Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Iran blames the attack on archenemy Israel. April 6, 2021 — Iran and the U.S. under President Joe Biden begin indirect negotiations in Vienna over how to restore the nuclear deal. Those talks, and others between Tehran and European nations, fail to reach any agreement. April 11, 2021 — A second attack within a year targets Iran's Natanz nuclear site, again likely carried out by Israel. April 16, 2021 — Iran begins enriching uranium up to 60% — its highest purity ever and a technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Feb. 24, 2022 – Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow ultimately will come to rely on Iranian bomb-carrying drones in the conflict, as well as missiles. July 17, 2022 — An adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Kamal Kharrazi, says that Iran is technically capable of making a nuclear bomb, but has not decided whether to build one. His remarks will be repeated by others in the coming years as tensions grow. Mideast wars rage Oct. 7, 2023 — Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip storm into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. This begins the most intense war ever between Israel and Hamas. Iran, which has armed Hamas, offers support to the militants. Regional tensions spike. Nov. 19, 2023 — Yemen's Houthi rebels, long supported by Iran, seize the ship Galaxy Leader, beginning a monthslong campaign of attacks on shipping through the Red Sea corridor that the U.S. Navy describes as the most intense combat it has seen since World War II. The attacks mirror tactics earlier used by Iran. April 14, 2024 — Iran launches an unprecedented direct attack on Israel, firing over 300 missiles and attack drones. Israel, working with a U.S.-led international coalition, intercepts much of the incoming fire. April 19, 2024 — A suspected Israeli strike hits an air defense system by an airport in Isfahan, Iran. July 31, 2024 – Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, is assassinated apparently by Israel during a visit to Tehran after the inauguration of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian. Sept. 27, 2024 — Israeli airstrike kills Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Oct. 1, 2024 — Iran launches its second direct attack on Israel, though a U.S.-led coalition and Israel shoot down most of the missiles. Oct. 16, 2024 — Israel kills Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip. Oct. 26, 2024 — Israel openly attacks Iran for the first time, striking air defense systems and sites associated with its missile program. Trump returns — and reaches out Jan. 20, 2025 — Trump is inaugurated for his second term as president. Feb. 7, 2025 – Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says proposed talks with the U.S. are 'not intelligent, wise or honorable.' March 7, 2025 – Trump says he sent a letter to Khamenei seeking a new nuclear deal with Tehran. March 15, 2025 — Trump launches intense airstrikes targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the last members of Iran's self-described 'Axis of Resistance' capable of daily attacks. April 7, 2025 — Trump announces the U.S. and Iran will hold direct talks in Oman. Iran says they'll be indirect talks, but confirms the meeting. April 12, 2025 — First round of talks between Iran and the U.S. take place in Oman, ending with a promise to hold more talks after U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi 'briefly spoke' together. April 19, 2025 — Second round of talks between the U.S. and Iran are held in Rome. April 26, 2025 — Iran and the U.S. meet in Oman a third time, but the negotiations include talks at the expert level for the first time. May 11, 2025 — Iran and the U.S. meet in Oman for a fourth round of negotiations ahead of Trump's trip to the Mideast. May 23, 2025 — Iran and the U.S. to meet in Rome for a fifth round of talks.
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Is Trump's authoritarian lurch following the playbook of Iran's Ahmadinejad?
It reads like an inventory of Donald Trump's first two months back in the White House. A newly elected demagogic president, renowned for his rabble-rousing rallies and provocative stunts, makes a whirlwind start on taking office. He upends the country's international relations in a series of undiplomatic demarches. State institutions are gutted or closed in an outburst of radicalism aimed at transforming government. Law enforcement authorities stage performative public roundups of those deemed, accurately or not, to be violent criminals. Critics complain of statutes being routinely broken. Universities and media are targeted in a clampdown on free expression. A widely revered cultural institution undergoes a government takeover and is given a conservative makeover. Wrongfooted opposition politicians try to recover ground by highlighting the rising cost of dietary staples and the failure to address the kitchen-table issues that voters elected the president to solve. Fitting as all this might be as a summary of the helter-skelter opening phase of Trump's second presidency, it also describes events that followed the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran 20 years ago. Ahmadinejad emerged as an arch-nemesis of the west after rising to power from obscurity in 2005. His offensive diatribes against Israel – which he suggested should be erased from the map – and repeated denials of the Holocaust were the stuff of cartoon villainy, sharpened further by his hawkish championing of Iran's nuclear programme. He was also an electoral populist in the Trump mould, as adept at drawing vast crowds with his message of championing the left-behinds and dispossessed as he was at riling his opponents. Iranians have noticed the matching personas. 'There was a joke in Iran during Trump's first term that when he became president, Iran finally managed to export its revolution,' said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born international affairs scholar at Johns Hopkins University. 'Trump was basically Ahmadinejad in the US.' In a striking twist, Ahmadinejad even addressed Columbia University – an institution now threatened with grant cuts by the Trump administration over an alleged failure to combat campus antisemitism by tolerating pro-Palestinian protesters – in a 2007 visit to New York. The university's then president, Lee Bollinger, assailed him to his face for his Holocaust denial and called him a 'cruel and petty dictator', a description that seemed to presage the criticisms of many of Trump's opponents. The parallels, however, are superficial – and the differences just as significant. Ahmadinejad, remembered for his trademark man-of-the-people white jacket, defined himself by his frugality and surrounded himself with like types; Trump flaunts his wealth and seems to have space in his inner circle for billionaires, for whom he favours huge tax cuts. Moreover, any comparison between Iran and the US must come with a health warning. Iran, under the stifling religious regime that seized power after the 1979 revolution that toppled the country's former pro-western monarch, Shah Mohammad Pahlavi, was hardly a flourishing democracy before Ahmadinejad's presidency – even after a period of relatively liberal reform under his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. 'He came to power in an already deeply authoritarian regime,' said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was in Iran when Ahmadinejad became president. 'He took what was already a seven on the repression scale and made it a nine.' Yet the fact that any analogy can be drawn at all attests to the uncharted territory the US has entered under Trump. In recent weeks, as the president and his allies have assailed judges and hinted that they could flout court rulings, commentators and experts have warned of a looming constitutional crisis and lurch towards authoritarianism and even dictatorship. Scholars have touted a variety of global precedents in a quest for a parallel that might act as a guide for where US democracy is headed. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Commonly cited examples are Hungary and its strongman prime minister, Viktor Orbán; Turkey, whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has held power for 22 years and has purged the judges and military general who upheld the secular state structure created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; and Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin. The ascents of all three are often viewed as instances of democracies and once-independent institutions being emasculated and elections gamed to sustain the incumbent. More encouraging portents are seen in Poland and the Czech Republic, where rightwing populist nationalist forces lost power in the most recent elections to parties or presidential candidates committed to the liberal democratic mainstream and to international institutions such as the EU and Nato. Yet none seem to rival the sheer ferocity with which Trump has eviscerated federal agencies, denounced judges and churned out landscape-changing executive orders. The problem was summed up by Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and author of books on democracy's decline and autocracy's rise, who told the New York Times that he had seen nothing like Trump's assault on democratic institutions. The first two months under Trump had been 'much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding', he said. 'Erdoğan, [Venezuelan leader Hugo] Chávez, Orbán – they hid it.' Other observers agree that Trump's moves are of greater magnitude than those seen in other democracies turned autocracies. 'The best parallel that I can see is the collapse of the Soviet Union,' said Nader Hashemi, professor of Middle East and Islamic studies at Georgetown University and another academic of Iranian origin. 'A political order that everyone thought had a long shelf life rapidly collapses, is completely disorienting, and people are trying to figure out what comes next. 'We don't really have precedents similar to this moment where you have a longstanding existing democracy that's a major power that collapses so rapidly and quickly and is moving in the direction of authoritarianism. I think its impact will also be felt globally.' Nasr said Trump confounded comparisons with previous democracy-subverting authoritarians, likening the current White House to the court of King Henry VIII, the 16th-century monarch recalled for his six wives and for triggering the English reformation. 'The way he's setting up authority in the White House looks more like a Tudor monarchy than modern authoritarianism,' he said. 'The White House looks more like an imperial court.' Trump, argued Nasr, 'has a theory of rapid, massive change' that recalled the approach of military coup leaders in the third world who judged that their agenda was incompatible with democracy. The common bond between Trump and Ahmadinejad may be the forces that brought them to power. 'One could say that the very first kind of backlash in our era against what economic liberalisation can do to a society happened in Iran,' said Nasr. Under Ahmadinejad's two presidential predecessors, Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, liberal economic reforms intended to generate prosperity after years of post-revolutionary austerity produced an affluent, consumerist middle class – but left behind a disaffected population group that felt it had lost out. 'It created a class in Iran much like the people who voted for Brexit [in Britain] or people who voted for Trump,' Nasr said. 'So [Ahmadinejad] was anti-establishment in the way Boris Johnson was during Brexit, or Trump was during his two campaigns. There is definitely a parallel there.' Hashemi saw another parallel in Trump's attacks on universities and the media – a trend which Iran witnessed (accompanied with much greater repression) even before Ahmadinejad took power, as hardliners tried to snuff out the freedoms that reformists had introduced. 'Then Ahmadinejad comes and continues in an authoritarian direction,' he said. 'The parallel between that period and now in the United States is that authoritarian regimes hate independent institutions, the press and particularly universities, because they foster free thinking, they hold power to account. That's why we're seeing this attack on Columbia University and other universities.' Ahmadinejad, having stoked inflation with populist cash handouts and facilitated the Revolutionary Guards' takeover of the economy, was ultimately thwarted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader and most powerful cleric, who marginalised him while using Ahmadinejad's authoritarian impulses to accrue more autocratic powers to himself. Trump – having subjugated the Republican-ruled Congress, and who is now limited only by a constitutional bar on seeking a third term that some of his supporters are already clamouring to amend – is subject to no such constraints. 'In a way, Trump's conduct is more sinister because he's trying to turn a democracy into an autocracy,' said Sadjadpour. Given the odium in which Ahmadinejad's detractors once held him, it seems a particularly ominous verdict.
