Iran boosts nuclear program in snub to US

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A screen grab from a videoconference shows views of centrifuges and devices at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant and as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. (Handout via AFP)
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Updated 11 April 2021
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Iran boosts nuclear program in snub to US

  • President Hassan Rouhani inaugurates cascades of 164 IR-6 centrifuges and 30 IR-5 devices at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant
  • The new move is a direct challenge to the US, after talks began last week aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal

TEHRAN/JEDDAH: Iran on Saturday started up advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in breach of its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to curb its nuclear program.

The new move is a direct challenge to the US, after talks began last week aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington said it had offered “very serious” ideas on rescuing the agreement, which collapsed in 2018 when the US withdrew, but was waiting for Tehran to reciprocate.

Tehran’s response came on Saturday, when President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated a cascade of 164 IR-6 centrifuges for producing enriched uranium, as well as two test cascades of 30 IR-5 and 30 IR-6S devices at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, in a ceremony broadcast by state television.

Rouhani also launched tests on the “mechanical stability” of its latest-generation IR-9 centrifuges, and remotely opened a centrifuge assembly factory to replace a plant that was badly damaged in a July 2020 explosion widely attributed to Israel.

Rouhani again underlined at the ceremony, which coincided with Iran’s National Nuclear Technology Day, that Tehran’s nuclear program is solely for “peaceful” purposes.

Under the 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers, Iran is permitted to use only “first-generation” IR-1 centrifuges for production, and to test a limited number of IR-4 and IR-5 devices.

When the US withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, Donald Trump reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, which responded by stepping up its nuclear enrichment to levels prohibited under the JCPOA.

Iran’s latest move follows an opening round of talks in Vienna Tuesday with representatives of the remaining parties to the deal on bringing the US back into it.

All sides said the talks, in which Washington is not participating directly but is relying on the EU as an intermediary, got off to a good start.

However, US allies in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, believe any revived deal should also cover Iran’s ballistic missile program and its regional meddling through proxy militias in Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere.

Iran has demanded that the US lift all sanctions imposed by Trump before it resumes compliance with the JCPOA. The US insists that Iran must act first.

“The United States team put forward a very serious idea and demonstrated a seriousness of purpose on coming back into compliance if Iran comes back into compliance,” a US official said.

But the official said the US was waiting for its efforts to be reciprocated by Iran.

Iran is also demanding an end to all US restrictions, but the JCPOA covers only nuclear sanctions and not US measures taken in response to human rights and terrorism issues.

(With AFP)


Israel minister says ‘we will build Jewish Israeli state’ in West Bank

Updated 36 sec ago
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Israel minister says ‘we will build Jewish Israeli state’ in West Bank

“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land,” Katz said
Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank

JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank, a day after the government announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the Palestinian territory.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, seen as a major obstacle to lasting peace, are regularly condemned by the United Nations as illegal under international law, and Thursday’s announcement drew sharp foreign criticism.

“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land — and it is also a clear message to (French President Emmanuel) Macron and his associates: they will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground,” Katz was quoted as saying Friday in a statement from his office.

“The paper will be thrown into the trash bin of history, and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper.”

Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank.

Sa-Nur was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, promoted by then prime minister Ariel Sharon.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

During a visit to Singapore on Friday, French President Macron asserted that recognition of a Palestinian state, with some conditions, was “not only a moral duty, but a political necessity.”

An international conference meant to resurrect the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is set to take place in June at the UN headquarters in New York.

A diplomat in Paris close to preparations for the conference said it should pave the way for more countries to recognize a Palestinian state.

Macron said in April that France could recognize a Palestinian state in June.

Following Israel’s announcement of the new settlements on Thursday, Britain called the move a “deliberate obstacle” to Palestinian statehood, while UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said it pushed efforts toward a two-state solution “in the wrong direction.”

11 Sudanese migrants killed in a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say

Updated 15 min 49 sec ago
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11 Sudanese migrants killed in a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say

  • Authorities say 11 Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed in a car crash in the desert in Libya
  • The dead included three women and two children. A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash
CAIRO: Eleven Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed Friday in a car crash in the desert in Libya, authorities said, the latest tragedy involving Sudanese fleeing a civil war in their home country.
The crash between the migrants’ vehicle and a truck happened early Friday in the desert, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the Libyan town of Kufra, the town’s Ambulance and Emergency Service said in a statement.
The dead included three women and two children, the service’s director Ibrahim Abu Al-Hassan told The Associated Press.
A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash, he added.
It was the latest deadly incident involving Sudanese migrants in the Libyan desert.
Earlier this month, seven Sudanese were found dead after their vehicle broke down in the desert. The vehicle broke down in a path used by traffickers between Chad and Libya, leaving 34 migrants on board stranded for several days in the desert.
Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
It has become a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East to seek better lives in Europe. The country shares borders with six nations and has a long coastline along the Mediterranean.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across Libya’s borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled to Libya since April 2023 after simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into street fighting across the country.
The conflict in Sudan has turned into a civil war that killed thousands people, displaced over 14 million, and pushed parts of the county into famine.

Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

Updated 30 May 2025
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Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

  • A court in Sinai ruled on that the monastery ‘is entitled to use’ the land, which ‘the state owns as public property’
  • Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling ‘scandalous’

CAIRO: Egypt has denied that a controversial court ruling over Sinai’s Saint Catherine monastery threatens the UNESCO world heritage landmark, after Greek and church authorities warned of the sacred site’s status.

A court in Sinai ruled on Wednesday in a land dispute between the monastery and the South Sinai governorate that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land, which “the state owns as public property.”

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s office defended the ruling Thursday, saying it “consolidates” the site’s “unique and sacred religious status,” after the head of the Greek Orthodox church in Greece denounced it.

Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling “scandalous” and an infringement by Egyptian judicial authorities of religious freedoms.

He said the decision means “the oldest Orthodox Christian monument in the world, the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai, now enters a period of severe trial — one that evokes much darker times in history.”

El-Sisi’s office in a statement said it “reiterates its full commitment to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery and preventing its violation.”

The monastery was established in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush in the southern mountains of the Sinai peninsula, and is the world’s oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery.

The Saint Catherine area, which includes the eponymous town and a nature reserve, is undergoing mass development under a controversial government megaproject aimed at bringing in mass tourism.

Observers say the project has harmed the reserve’s ecosystem and threatened both the monastery and the local community.

Archbishop Ieronymos warned that the monastery’s property would now be “seized and confiscated,” despite “recent pledges to the contrary by the Egyptian President to the Greek Prime Minister.”

Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis contacted his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty on Thursday, saying “there was no room for deviation from the agreements between the two parties,” the ministry’s spokesperson said.

In a statement to Egypt’s state news agency, the foreign ministry in Cairo later said rumors of confiscation were “unfounded,” and that the ruling “does not infringe at all” on the monastery’s sites or its religious and spiritual significance.

Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said “Greece will express its official position ... when the official and complete content of the court decision is known and evaluated.”

He confirmed both countries’ commitment to “maintaining the Greek Orthodox religious character of the monastery.”


Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

Updated 30 May 2025
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Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

BERLIN: Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as “the hungriest place on earth.”
Spokesperson Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorized to get to Israel’s border with Gaza, and from there a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.
“What we have been able to bring in is flour,” he told a regular news conference on Friday. “That’s not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked... 100 percent of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine.”
Tommaso della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment.


Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

Updated 30 May 2025
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Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

  • Hamas: Israeli response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands”

DUBAI: Hamas has received Israel’s response to a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal and is thoroughly reviewing it, even though the response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands,” group’s official Basem Naim said on Friday.