Iran announced yesterday it will resume certain nuclear activities suspended as part of a deal with the EU but stick to a freeze on uranium enrichment and continue talks with the EU.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the clerical regime was determined to press on with its controversial nuclear fuel drive despite fresh UN efforts to limit the spread of sensitive technology.
"Very certainly we will resume some of our activities," Asefi said.
"We are in the process of discussing among ourselves which activities, but this does not concern enrichment," he said, adding the Islamic republic's leadership would make a decision within seven or eight days.
"The negotiations are continuing, and as long as they continue the suspension of enrichment will continue," Asefi said of the talks with EU states Britain, France and Germany.
The latest move by Iran is the most serious threat yet to its November deal with the EU-3 to freeze its fuel cycle work -- the focus of international fears the country may be seeking the bomb -- and open talks on finding a solution.
Last week the clerical regime said it was unhappy with the progress of the negotiations, in which the EU are promising trade, political and other benefits in return for "objective guarantees" from Iran that it will not develop the capacity to make nuclear weapons.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS