Iran one step closer to cutting cooperation with IAEA
TEHRAN: Iran has taken one further step towards cutting off its cooperation with the United Nations' atomic watchdog, as Tehran takes stock in the aftermath of its brief war with Israel.
The Guardian Council, a key supervisory body, on Thursday approved the temporary suspension of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), state news agency IRNA reported, a day after the measure was passed in parliament.
According to the resolution, Iran will not allow IAEA inspectors into the country until the "safety" of its nuclear facilities is guaranteed.
Tehran is also asking the IAEA to condemn the attacks by the US and Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Without ongoing cooperation with the IAEA, which is mandated to monitor nuclear facilities in countries around the world, there is little prospect of negotiations with the US resuming.
US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that there would be new talks with Iran next week - a comment that has not brought any official response from Tehran so far.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Israel was hit hard by the conflict, in his first public comments since a ceasefire came into force earlier this week.
"Despite all the fanfares and claims, the Zionist regime was nearly destroyed and crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic," Khamenei said in a video message cited by IRNA.
An excavator is used to clear the rubble in front of a building recently hit in Israeli strikes in Tehran following a ceasefire with Israel that ended 12 days of fighting. - AFP
Iran had also achieved "victory over the American regime," he said, arguing that the US had failed to achieve its objectives.
He praised "the extraordinary unity and solidarity of the Iranian people."
Iran suffered major attacks on its nuclear and military facilities during the war which began on June 13, as well as losing many top scientists and military leaders in Israeli strikes. The US also intervened on Israel's behalf with a strike on Iranian nuclear sites at the weekend.
Some two dozen people were killed in Israel. The Iranian authorities say over 600 people were killed in Iran.
The status of Iran's nuclear programme is uncertain after the US strikes.
Despite the ceasefire with Israel, Iranian airspace remains largely closed.
The closure will be extended until 2 pm (1030 GMT) on Friday, IRNA reported, citing a ministry spokesman.
Some exceptions were allowed for the eastern part of the country, but the country's main international hub in the capital remains closed.
Authorities warn of continued Israeli activity
Iran's intelligence services remain on high alert, despite the ceasefire with Israel, according to official reports.
"The cessation of hostile military operations does not mean the end of (Israel's) malicious and hostile actions," the state news agency Tasnim reported. The actions include gathering intelligence about the country, spreading misinformation and weakening national unity, the report said. Suspicious cases must therefore be reported under all circumstances, it added. - dpa
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
an hour ago
- Observer
Another check on Trump's power fades
The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power. The decision will allow Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to undocumented immigrants or foreign visitors without green cards can be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers. But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies. Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr coined the 'imperial presidency'. Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard M Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors-general and sidelining the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorised and appropriated. Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorisation from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, recently told her constituents that 'we are all afraid' of Trump. But while the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing Trump's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. In a rare move that signalled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench on Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. 'Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship,' she wrote. 'Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief.' She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. — The New York Times Charlie Savage The writer has been writing about presidential power and legal policy for more than two decades
Observer
an hour ago
- Observer
Trump cuts off US trade talks with Canada
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump abruptly cut off trade talks with Canada on Friday over its tax targeting US technology firms, saying that it was a "blatant attack" and that he would set a new tariff rate on Canadian goods within the next week. The move plunges US-Canada relations back into chaos after a period of relative calm that included a cordial G7 meeting in mid-June where Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to wrap up a new economic agreement within 30 days. It also came just hours after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent struck an upbeat tone on trade, touting progress had been made with China on reviving the flow of critical minerals for the US manufacturing sector and in other key tariff negotiations. The often-chaotic rollout of Trump's import levies since his return to office this year has frequently whipsawed financial markets, and have begun to weigh on consumer spending, the bedrock of the US economy. US stocks were briefly batted lower by his broadside against Canada, but the S&P 500 and Nasdaq managed to close out the week at record highs. Trump's action comes ahead of Canada's plans to begin collecting on Monday a previously enacted digital services tax on US technology firms, including Amazon, Meta, Alphabet's Google, and Apple, among others. The tax is 3% of the digital services revenue a firm takes in from Canadian users above $20 million in a calendar year, and payments will be retroactive to 2022. Trump, in a post on his Truth Social media platform, called the tax "a direct and blatant attack on our country" and said Canada was a "very difficult country to TRADE with." "Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately," Trump said. "We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven-day period." Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said that the negotiations with Canada would not resume "until they straighten out their act," adding that the US holds "such power over Canada." Canada is the second-largest US trading partner after Mexico, and the largest buyer of US exports. It bought $349.4 billion of US goods last year and exported $412.7 billion to the US, according to US Census Bureau data. Carney's office responded to Trump's announcement by saying: "The Canadian government will continue to engage in these complex negotiations with the United States in the best interests of Canadian workers and businesses." Bessent sought to downplay the U.S.-Canadian dispute in a CNBC interview, saying US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would likely open a Section 301 probe into Canada's digital tax that would clear the way for tariff retaliation in the amount of harm to U.S. firms, which he said was roughly $2 billion. The US has prepared similar retaliation against European countries that have imposed digital taxes. A USTR spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. — Reuters
Observer
an hour ago
- Observer
Maybe in their anthems lies an olive branch?
This week has taken me on a journey, as Of course, this hasn't come just 'out of nowhere,' but out of a concern, a fear, at the tensions between Israel and Iran, the widening involvement of the Americans and a layman's fear of an apocalyptic end to it all. Few of us can reach out and speak for the man on the street and stop this violence; and those that do, appear intent upon using death and destruction to bring peace to the region; and that, far from being oxymoronic, is just moronic! I can be disenchanted, almost disinterested, about the outcome for myself, but what of our youth and our younger generations? Again, I find it incredible that there are those who would use the aforesaid death and destruction, to rain even more death and destruction. There can be no comfort in such pronouncements or actions, there can be no hope and no affirmation of faith in the taking of life; and this widening circle of death does no person, society, or culture, any credit. I know so little of either of the protagonist's way of life. It's not an embarrassment to me, but quite simply I have never felt the need to venture into zones of conflict and uncertainty. I value my skin! There is a part of me that always held the rather juvenile opinion that, 'As long as they're only hurting each other, I shouldn't care.' However, we all mature and the absolute senselessness of war today horrifies and angers me. I don't have the solutions, or the answers, but maybe there is a chink in the nationalistic armoury of the combatant leaders. All countries have their national anthems, stirring songs, hymns, or marches, patriotic and devotional, that exude a national identity, faith, or vision. Maybe, we can make someone in power at least hesitate... before they 'push the button.' I considered both nation's allegiance to their national anthems and ask myself, 'Are they being true to their very public and international devotions? For example, my New Zealand anthem asks God to defend us, from 'the shafts of strife and war,' from 'dissension, envy, hate and corruption,' 'preaching love and truth to man,' as part of 'Thy glorious plan.' Now I ask you, who could not be inspired by and feel an obligation to that vision? The National Anthem of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a short, beautifully melodic offering by Hassan Riyahi and Syed Bagheri which was formally adopted in 1990, which speaks to the 'light in the eyes of the believers in truth' and also the line, 'Bahman,' being good thought, 'is the zenith of our faith.' The truth referred to can only be that one thing that means more to any culture, civilisation, or society, than any other, its faith, which needs the good thoughts of its disciples to achieve the ultimate in faithfulness. Within the wistful Israeli anthem, set to music by Samuel Cohen in 1888, 'Haktivah' and its omnipresent themes of hope, drawn from Naftali Herz Imber's 1877 poem, is the sentence, "As long as a soul still yearns and an eye still watches, our hope is not yet lost, to be a free nation in our land." In such hope, treasuring such pragmatism that prioritises hope over faith, is almost certainly a hesitation, an olive branch recognising that there is more than one faith within their society. As far as the third wheel in this current conflict is concerned, the United States President should perhaps reflect, being a God-fearing individual, the simple phrase from his own anthem, "In God is our trust" and keep his own heavy hand at bay? The protagonists are two nations just trying to survive, when they and their leaders, an Ayatollah and a Prime Minister should be, growing. Their people don't deserve to be pawns in this wanton 'game' of survival they almost certainly just want to live and let live. Each of them is almost certainly no different to me as, selfishly, I want to see my daughter and granddaughter become all they have the potential and opportunities, to be.
