Iran nuclear deal parties meet as accord nears collapse

Since May, Iran has taken a series of measures, including stepping up uranium enrichment, in breach of the 2015 deal. (File/AFP)
Updated 06 December 2019
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Iran nuclear deal parties meet as accord nears collapse

  • Envoys from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and Iran will take part in the meeting
  • Iran insists that under the agreement it has the right to take measures in retaliation for the US’s withdrawal from the deal

VIENNA: The remaining signatories to the faltering 2015 Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Friday with the survival of the landmark agreement at stake after Tehran vowed to continue to breach the deal’s limits on its nuclear program.
Envoys from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and Iran will take part in the meeting, which is the first time the six parties will have gathered in this format since July.
Since May, Iran has taken a series of measures, including stepping up uranium enrichment, in breach of the 2015 deal, with another such move likely in early January.
Iran insists that under the agreement it has the right to take these measures in retaliation for the US’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and reimposition of crippling sanctions.
Since last month, European members have in turn begun raising the possibility of triggering the so-called “dispute resolution mechanism” foreseen in the accord, which could lead to the resumption of UN sanctions on Iran.
On the eve of what was already likely to be a strained meeting, Britain, France and Germany accused Iran of developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, in a letter to the UN on Thursday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif dismissed the allegation as “desperate falsehood.”
However, despite the mounting tension observers say Britain, France and Germany are unlikely to trigger the dispute resolution mechanism on Friday when their diplomats attend the joint commission meeting chaired by senior EU official Helga-Maria Schmid.
Analysts say if UN sanctions are re-imposed and the deal falls apart, Iran could also withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
“It’s not clear whether that’s worth the benefit,” Ali Vaez from the International Crisis Group told AFP.
But he warned the risk of the deal collapsing was increasing as Iran was “running out of measures that are easy to reverse and non-controversial.”
“Both sides are locked into an escalatory cycle that is just very hard to imagine that they would step away from,” he said.
Francois Nicoullaud, former French ambassador to Iran, also says tensions were expected to continue to rise.
“Maybe it won’t be this time, but (the deal falling apart) will certainly be in the background of the discussions,” Nicoullaud told AFP.

Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani warned Sunday that if European partners triggered the dispute mechanism, Tehran may “seriously reconsider” its commitments to the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors the deal’s implementation.
European efforts to shield Iran from the effects of US sanctions by creating a mechanism to carry on legitimate trade with the Islamic republic have borne little fruit, much to Tehran’s frustration.
The EU is growing increasingly concerned by Tehran rowing back from its commitments.
The dispute resolution mechanism in the deal has numerous stages, but it can eventually culminate in the UN Security Council voting on whether Iran should still have relief from sanctions lifted under the deal.
In such a scenario, says Vaez, “we will have a major non-proliferation crisis on our hands in the sense that the Russians and the Chinese have already declared they would not recognize the return of (sanctions).”
Vaez said in the end the path to a diplomatic solution would depend on Washington’s next moves and whether it would at least be willing to relax its attempts to prevent sales of Iranian oil, a vital source of income for the country.
“The remaining parties to the deal have proved incapable of providing Iran with any kind of breathing space,” Vaez said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Tehran is willing to return to the negotiating table if the United States first drops sanctions.


Gaza rescuers say Israeli forces kill 14, including children

Updated 4 sec ago
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Gaza rescuers say Israeli forces kill 14, including children

  • The Israeli military issued an evacuation order on Sunday for parts of Gaza City and nearby areas in the territory’s north
  • Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,412 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes and gunfire killed at least 14 people including three children in the war-stricken Palestinian territory on Sunday.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that 13 people died in air strikes at four locations around the Gaza Strip, and another from Israeli fire near an aid distribution center.
The Israeli military said it was not able to comment on the reported incidents but said it was fighting “to dismantle Hamas military capabilities” in a campaign launched in 2023 against the Islamist militant group whose attack on Israel triggered the war.
Restrictions on media in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers.
Bassal said two children were killed in an air strike on their home in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood in the early morning, and “the house was completely destroyed.”
A member of the family, Abdel Rahman Azzam, 45, said he was at home and “heard a huge explosion at my relative’s house.”
“I rushed out in panic and saw the house destroyed and on fire,” he added.
“We evacuated more than 20 injured people, including two martyrs — two children from the family. The screams of children and women were non-stop,” Azzam said.
“They bombed the house with a missile without any prior warning. This is a horrific crime. We sleep without knowing if we will wake up.”
Elsewhere, Bassal said a drone strike on a tent housing displaced people near the southern city of Khan Yunis killed five people including a child.
He said that other casualties included a young man killed “by Israeli fire this morning while waiting for aid” near a humanitarian distribution center in the southern city of Rafah.
The Israeli military issued an evacuation order on Sunday for parts of Gaza City and nearby areas in the territory’s north, warning of imminent action there.
The military “will operate with intense force in these areas, and these military operations will intensify and expand... to destroy the capabilities of the terrorist organizations,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a statement posted on X.
He told residents to “evacuate immediately south” to Al-Mawasi area on the coast.
Israel launched its offensive in October 2023 in response to the deadly Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,412 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.
After claiming victory in a 12-day war against Iran that ended with a ceasefire on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it would refocus on its offensive in Gaza, where Palestinian militants still hold Israeli hostages.

Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

Updated 29 June 2025
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Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

  • ‘MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!’ Trump wrote on his social media platform
  • The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza

TEL AVIV: US President Donald Trump on Sunday pleaded for progress in ceasefire talks in the war in Gaza, calling for a deal that would halt the fighting in the 20-monthlong conflict as the sides appeared to be inching closer to an agreement.

An Israeli official said plans were being made for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks, a sign there may be movement on a new deal. The official declined to discuss the focus of the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not yet been finalized.

“MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social early Sunday between posts about a Senate vote on his tax and spending cuts bill.

Trump raised expectations Friday for a deal, saying there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters, he said, “We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.”

Trump has repeatedly called for Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza. Despite an eight-week ceasefire reached just as Trump was taking office earlier this year, attempts since then to bring the sides toward a new agreement have failed.

A top adviser to Netanyahu, Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, was set to travel to Washington this week for talks on a ceasefire.

Trump post slams Netanyahu corruption trial

The Gaza message wasn’t the only Middle East-related post by Trump. On Saturday evening, he doubled down on his criticism of the legal proceedings against Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, calling it “a POLITICAL WITCH HUNT, very similar to the Witch Hunt that I was forced to endure.”

In the post on Truth Social, he said the trial interfered with talks on a Gaza ceasefire.

“(Netanyahu) is right now in the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back. How is it possible that the Prime Minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a Courtroom all day long, over NOTHING,” Trump wrote.

The post echoed similar remarks Trump made last week when he called for the trial to be canceled. It was a dramatic interference by an international ally in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. And it unnerved many in Israel, despite Trump’s popularity in the country.

Israeli military orders new evacuations in northern Gaza

The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza, an early target of the war that has been severely damaged by multiple rounds of fighting.

Col. Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, posted the order on social media. It includes multiple neighborhoods in eastern and northern Gaza City, as well as Jabaliya refugee camp.

The military will expand its escalating attacks to the city’s northern section, calling for people to move southward to the Muwasi area in southern Gaza, Adraee said.

After being all but emptied earlier in the war, hundreds of thousands of people are in northern Gaza following their return during a ceasefire earlier this year.

An Israeli military offensive currently underway aims to move Palestinians to southern Gaza so forces can more freely operate to combat militants. Rights groups say their movement would amount to forcible transfer.

A sticking point over how the war ends

The war in Gaza began with Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in which militants killed 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages, about 50 of whom remain captive with less than half believed to be alive.

Israel’s retaliatory response has killed more than 56,000 people, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between militants and civilians in their count but say more than half of the dead are women and children.

The war has set off a humanitarian catastrophe, displaced most of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, and obliterated much of the territory’s urban landscape.

Talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly faltered over one major sticking point, whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire agreement.

Hamas says it is willing to free all the hostages in exchange for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the war. Israel rejects that offer, saying it will agree to end the war if Hamas disarms and goes into exile, something the group refuses.


Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

Updated 29 June 2025
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Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

  • Former PM Naftali Bennett: Netanyahu ‘has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy’

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must leave office, his predecessor Naftali Bennett has told a televised interview, refusing to say whether he intends to challenge the country’s longest-serving leader in an election.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 that aired on Saturday, former prime minister Bennett said Netanyahu “has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy.”

“He bears... heavy responsibility for the divisions in Israeli society,” Bennett said of growing rifts within Israel under Netanyahu, who has a strong support base but also staunch opponents who have demanded his departure including over his handling of the Gaza war since October 2023.

Netanyahu “must go,” said the former prime minister, a right-wing leader who in 2021 joined forces with Netanyahu critics to form a coalition that ousted him from the premiership after 12 consecutive years at the helm.

But the fragile coalition government Bennett had led along with current opposition chief Yair Lapid collapsed after about a year. Snap elections ensued, and Netanyahu again assumed the premiership with backing from far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.

Bennett, who has taken time off from politics, has been rumored to be planning a comeback, with public opinion polls suggesting he may have enough support to oust Netanyahu again.

No vote is currently planned before late 2026, however, although early elections are common in Israel.

In his Saturday interview, Bennett claimed credit for laying the groundwork for Israel’s bombardment campaign earlier this month against Iranian nuclear and military sites.

The decision to launch attacks against the Islamic republic “was very good” and “needed,” said Bennett, claiming that the offensive would not have been possible without the work of his short-lived government.

In Gaza, where Israel has waged war since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Bennett said the military has displayed “exceptional” performance but “the political management of the country” was “a catastrophe, a disaster.”

Criticizing the Netanyahu government’s “inability to decide,” the former prime minister called for an immediate “comprehensive” agreement that would see all remaining hostages freed from Gaza.

“Leave the task of eliminating Hamas to a future government,” said Bennett, who also evaded several questions about whether he intends to run for office.


Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help

Updated 29 June 2025
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Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help

  • 235,000 Sudanese in a border town
  • Sudanese try to fill aid gaps

ADRE, Chad: Fatima Omas Abdullah wakes up every morning with aches and pains from sleeping on bare ground for almost two years. She did not expect Sudan’s civil war to displace her for so long into neighboring Chad.
“There is nothing here,” she said, crying and shaking the straw door of her makeshift home. Since April 2023, she has been in the Adre transit camp a few hundred meters from the Sudanese border, along with almost a quarter-million others fleeing the fighting.
Now the US- backed aid system that kept hundreds of thousands like Abdullah alive on the edge of one of the world’s most devastating wars is fraying. Under the Trump administration, key foreign aid has been slashed and funding withdrawn from United Nations programs that feed, treat and shelter refugees.
In 2024, the US contributed $39.3 million to the emergency response in Chad. So far this year, it has contributed about $6.8 million, the UN says. Overall, only 13 percent of the requested money to support refugees in Chad this year has come in from all donors, according to UN data.
In Adre, humanitarian services were already limited as refugees are meant to move to more established camps deeper inside Chad.
Many Sudanese, however, choose to stay. Some are heartened by the military’s recent successes against rival paramilitary forces in the capital, Khartoum. They have swelled the population of this remote, arid community that was never meant to hold so many. Prices have shot up. Competition over water is growing.
Adre isn’t alone. As the fighting inside Sudan’s remote Darfur region shifts, the stream of refugees has created a new, more isolated transit camp called Tine. Since late April, 46,000 people have arrived.
With the aid cuts, there is even less to offer them there.

235,000 Sudanese in a border town
Adre has become a fragile frontline for an estimated 235,000 Sudanese. They are among the 1.2 million who have fled into eastern Chad.
Before the civil war, Adre was a town of about 40,000. As Sudanese began to arrive, sympathetic residents with longtime cross-border ties offered them land.
Now there is a sea of markets and shelters, along with signs of Sudanese intending to stay. Some refugees are constructing multi-story buildings.
Sudanese-run businesses form one of Adre’s largest markets. Locals and refugees barter in Sudanese pounds for everything from produce to watches.
“There is respect between the communities,” said resident Asadiq Hamid Abdullah, who runs a donkey cart. “But everyone is complaining that the food is more expensive.”
Chad is one of the world’s poorest countries, with almost 50 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Locals say the price of water has quadrupled since the start of Sudan’s civil war as demand rises. Sudanese women told The Associated Press that fights had broken out at the few water pumps for them, installed by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.
Even food aid could run out shortly. The UN World Food Program says funding to support Sudanese refugees in Adre is guaranteed only until July, as the US aid cuts force a 30 percent reduction in staff worldwide. The UN refugee agency has seen 30 percent of its funding cut for this area, eastern Chad.
Samia Ahmed, who cradled her 3-year-old and was pregnant with her second child, said she has found work cleaning and doing laundry because the WFP rations don’t last the month.
“I see a gloomy future,” she said.

Sudanese try to fill aid gaps
Sudanese are trying to fill gaps in aid, running private schools and their own humanitarian area with a health clinic and women’s center.
Local and UN authorities, however, are increasing the pressure on them to leave Adre. There are too many people here, they say.
“A vast city,” said Hamit Hadjer Abdullai with Chad’s National Commission for the Reception and Reintegration of Refugees.
He said crime was increasing. Police warn of the Colombians, a Sudanese gang. Locals said it operates with impunity, though Abdullai claimed that seven leaders have been jailed.
“People must move,” said Benoit Kayembe Mukendi, the UN refugee agency’s local representative. “For security reasons and for their protection.”
As the Chadian population begins to demand their land back, Mukendi warned of a bigger security issue ahead.
But most Sudanese won’t go. The AP spoke to dozens who said they had been relocated to camps and returned to Adre to be closer to their homeland and the transit camp’s economic opportunities.
There are risks. Zohal Abdullah Hamad was relocated but returned to run a coffee stand. One day, a nearby argument escalated and gunfire broke out. Hamad was shot in the gut.
“I became cold. I was immobile,” she said, crying as she recalled the pain. She said she has closed her business.
The latest Sudanese arrivals to Adre have no chance to establish themselves. On the order of local authorities, they are moved immediately to other camps. The UN said it is transporting 2,000 of them a day.

In Tine, arriving Sudanese find nothing
The new and rapidly growing camp of Tine, around 180 kilometers (111 miles) north of Adre, has seen 46,000 refugees arrive since late April from Northern Darfur.
Their sheer numbers caused a UN refugee representative to gasp.
Thousands jostle for meager portions of food distributed by community kitchens. They sleep on the ground in the open desert, shaded by branches and strips of fabric. They bring witness accounts of attacks in Zamzam and El-Fasher: rape, robbery, relatives shot before their eyes.
With the US aid cuts, the UN and partners cannot respond as before, when people began to pour into Adre after the start of the war, UN representative Jean Paul Habamungu Samvura said.
“If we have another Adre here … it will be a nightmare.”


France offers to help make Gaza food distribution safer

Updated 29 June 2025
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France offers to help make Gaza food distribution safer

  • Barrot expressed anger over "the 500 people who have lost their life in food distribution" in Gaza in recent weeks

PARIS: France “stands ready, Europe as well, to contribute to the safety of food distribution” in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Saturday.
His comments came as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the territory.
Such an initiative, he added, would also deal with Israeli concerns that armed groups such as Hamas were getting hold of the aid.
Barrot expressed anger over “the 500 people who have lost their life in food distribution” in Gaza in recent weeks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu on Friday denounced as a “blood libel” a report in left-leaning daily Haaretz alleging that military commanders had ordered soldiers to fire at Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid in Gaza
Aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday denounced the Israel- and US-backed food distribution effort in Gaza as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”
And UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that hungry people in Gaza seeking food must not face a “death sentence.”
The health ministry in Gaza, a territory controlled by Hamas, says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies.