TEHRAN: Iran will respond to the European Union’s “final” draft text to save a 2015 nuclear deal by midnight on Monday, its foreign minister said, calling on the United States to show flexibility to resolve three remaining issues.
After 16 months of fitful, indirect US-Iranian talks, with the EU shuttling between the parties, a senior EU official said on Aug. 8 it had laid down a “final” offer and expected a response within a “very, very few weeks.”
While Washington has said it is ready to quickly seal a deal to restore the 2015 accord on the basis of the EU proposals, Iranian negotiators said Tehran’s “additional views and considerations” to the EU text would be conveyed later.
“Our answer will be given to the EU tonight at 12 midnight...There are three issues that if resolved, we can reach an agreement in the coming days,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said, suggesting Tehran’s response would not be a final acceptance or rejection of the EU proposal.
“We have told them that our red lines should be respected...We have shown enough flexibility...We do not want to reach a deal that after 40 days, two months or three months fails to be materialized on the ground.”
Diplomats and officials told Reuters that whether or not Tehran and Washington accept the EU’s “final” offer, neither is likely to declare the pact dead because keeping it alive serves both sides’ interests.
Amirabdollahian said that “the coming days are very important” to see whether the United States will show flexibility over the remaining three issues.
“It would not be end of the world if they fail to show flexibility...Then we will need more efforts and talks...to resolve the remaining issues,” he said.
The stakes are high, since failure in the nuclear negotiations would carry the risk of a fresh regional war with Israel threatening military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to prevent Tehran develop a nuclear weapons capability.
Tehran, which has long denied having such ambition, has warned of a “crushing” response to any Israeli attack.
“Like Washington, we have our own plan B if the talks fail,” Amirabdollahian said.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump reneged on the deal reached before he took office, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh US sanctions, spurring the Islamic Republic to begin breaching its limits on uranium enrichment.
The 2015 agreement appeared on the verge of revival in March after 11 months of indirect talks between Tehran and US President Joe Biden’s administration in Vienna.
But talks broke down over obstacles including Tehran’s demand that Washington provide guarantees that no US president would abandon the deal as Trump did.
Biden cannot promise this because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally binding treaty.
“They need to adopt a realistic approach about guarantees. Regarding the two other remaining issues, they have shown some relative flexibility verbally, but it needs to be mentioned in the text,” Amirabdollahian said.
Iran says to deliver ‘final’ nuclear talks proposal Monday
https://arab.news/2ushd
Iran says to deliver ‘final’ nuclear talks proposal Monday
- Iran may accept a final compromise worked out in Vienna to save the landmark 2015 deal
- Tehran said US agreed to two of its demands
Israeli ultra-Orthodox party leaves government over conscription bill
- Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that a bill to exempt yeshiva students was a key promise in their agreement to join the coalition in late 2022
JERUSALEM: One of Israel's ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism, said it was quitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition due to a long-running dispute over failure to draft a bill to exempt yeshiva students from military service.
Six of the remaining seven members of UTJ, which is comprised of the Degel Hatorah and Agudat Yisrael factions, wrote letters of resignation. Yitzhak Goldknopf, chairman of UTJ, had resigned a month ago.
That would leave Netanyahu with a razor thin majority of 61 seats in the 120 seat Knesset, or parliament.
It was not clear whether Shas, another ultra-Orthodox party, would follow suit.
Degel Hatorah said in a statement that after conferring with its head rabbis, "and following repeated violations by the government to its commitments to ensure the status of holy yeshiva students who diligently engage in their studies ... (its MKs) have announced their resignation from the coalition and the government."
Ultra-Orthodox parties have argued that a bill to exempt yeshiva students was a key promise in their agreement to join the coalition in late 2022.
A spokesperson for Goldknopf confirmed that in all, seven UTJ Knesset members are leaving the government.
Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have long threatened to leave the coalition over the conscription bill.
Some religious parties in Netanyahu's coalition are seeking exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students from military service that is mandatory in Israel, while other lawmakers want to scrap any such exemptions altogether.
The ultra-Orthodox have long been exempt from military service, which applies to most other young Israelis, but last year the Supreme Court ordered the defence ministry to end that practice and start conscripting seminary students.
Netanyahu had been pushing hard to resolve a deadlock in his coalition over a new military conscription bill, which has led to the present crisis.
The exemption, in place for decades and which over the years has spared an increasingly large number of people, has become a heated topic in Israel with the military still embroiled in a war in Gaza.
More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say
- As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May
BENGHAZI: More than 100 migrants, including five women, have been freed from captivity after being held for ransom by a gang in eastern Libya, the country’s attorney general said on Monday.
“A criminal group involved in organizing the smuggling of migrants, depriving them of their freedom, trafficking them, and torturing them to force their families to pay ransoms for their release,” a statement from the attorney general said.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via the dangerous route across the desert and over the Mediterranean following the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Many migrants desperate to make the crossing have fallen into the hands of traffickers. The freed migrants had been held in Ajdabiya, some 160 km (100 miles) from Libya’s second city Benghazi.
Five suspected traffickers from Libya, Sudan and Egypt, have been arrested, officials said.
The attorney general and Ajdabiya security directorate posted pictures of the migrants on their Facebook pages which they said had been retrieved from the suspects’ mobile phones.
They showed migrants with hands and legs cuffed with signs that they had been beaten.
In February, at least 28 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in the desert north of Kufra city. Officials said a gang had subjected the migrants to torture and inhumane treatment.
That followed another 19 bodies being found in a mass grave in the Jikharra area, also in southeastern Libya, a security directorate said, blaming a known smuggling network.
As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May.
Last week, the EU migration commissioner and ministers from Italy, Malta and Greece met with the internationally recognized prime minister of the national unity government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and discussed the migration crisis.
Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks
- Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP
- US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Stuttering Gaza ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with meditators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas, as more than 20 people were killed across the Palestinian territory.
The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of hostages and a 60-day ceasefire after 21 months of fighting.
An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, telling AFP: “Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza.”
“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.
Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who wants to see the Palestinian militant group destroyed — of being the main obstacle.
“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said at least 22 people were killed Monday in the latest Israeli strikes in and around Gaza City and in Khan Yunis in the south.
An Israeli military statement said troops had destroyed “buildings and terrorist infrastructure” used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas.
The Al-Quds Brigades — the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas — released footage on Monday that it said showed its fighters firing missiles at an Israeli army command and control center near Shujaiya.
The military later on Monday said three soldiers — aged 19, 20 and 21 — “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip” and died in hospital on Monday. Another from the same battalion was severely injured.
US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week.”
Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.
“Egyptian, Qatari and American mediators continue their efforts that make Israel present a modified withdrawal map that would be acceptable,” they added.
On Saturday, the same source said Hamas rejected Israeli proposals to keep troops in more than 40 percent of Gaza, as well as plans to move Palestinians into an enclave on the border with Egypt.
A senior Israeli political official countered by accusing Hamas of inflexibility and trying to deliberately scupper the talks by “clinging to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement.”
Netanyahu has said he would be ready to enter talks for a more lasting ceasefire once a deal for a temporary truce is agreed, but only when Hamas lays down its arms.
He is under pressure to wrap up the war, with military casualties rising and with public frustration mounting at both the continued captivity of the hostages taken on October 7 and a perceived lack of progress in the conflict.
Politically, Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition is holding, for now, but he denies being beholden to a minority of far-right ministers in prolonging an increasingly unpopular conflict.
He also faces a backlash over the feasibility, cost and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch in southern Gaza to house Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.
Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert have described as a “concentration camp.”
“If they (Palestinians) will be deported there into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper late on Sunday.
Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
A total of 251 hostages were taken that day, of whom 49 are still being held, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military reprisals have killed 58,386 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor
- Over 4 million refugees have fled Sudan’s more than two-year civil war to seven neighboring countries where shelter conditions are widely viewed as inadequate due to chronic funding shortages
PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 48 civilians in an attack on a village in the center of the war-torn country, a monitoring group reported Monday.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the two-year conflict between the regular army and the RSF, reported civilians were killed en masse Sunday when paramilitary fighters stormed the village of Um Garfa in North Kordofan state, razing houses and looting property.
Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says
- An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan
BAGHDAD: Two drones fell in the Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement on Monday.
Khurmala oilfield is located near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.
The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement that no casualties were reported and only material damage was recorded.
An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan, it added.
