Tehran seems to have at least temporarily halted the uranium enrichment program at the heart of its standoff with the UN Security Council, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.
The pause could represent an attempt to de-escalate Iran's conflict with the Security Council, which is deliberating a new set of harsher sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran has enriched small quantities of uranium to the low level suitable for nuclear fuel generation. The US and its allies fear that Iran could build nuclear weapons with larger amounts of more highly enriched uranium.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been expected to announce last month that Iran had started installing 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at a facility in the desert outside the central city of Natanz, where it has about 500 centrifuges above and below ground. But the announcement never materialized, an apparent step back that ElBaradei appeared to confirm on Monday.
"I do not believe that the number of centrifuges has increased, nor do I believe that [new] nuclear material has been introduced to the centrifuges at Natanz," he said.
But ElBaradei warned that, despite the new bit of positive news, lack of Iranian cooperation left the IAEA unable to establish that Tehran's nuclear activities were purely peaceful.
Unless Tehran takes "the long overdue decision" to cooperate with the IAEA, it "will have no option but to reserve its judgment about Iran's nuclear program," he told reporters.
And a senior Iranian official dashed hopes that any short-term pause could translate into Tehran accepting a UN Security Council demand to freeze its enrichment activities. Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief IAEA delegate, said his country would "never give up its inalienable right" to enrich uranium in exchange for economic aid and security assurances.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS