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All in News
◢ France, Germany, Britain and the European Union said Monday they are "extremely concerned" by Iran's decision to re-start nuclear activities at one of its key sites, in breach of a landmark 2015 deal with international powers. The IAEA, in its latest report on Iran on Monday, said it has detected uranium particles at an undeclared site in Iran.
◢ UAE state minister of foreign affairs Anwar Gargash on Sunday said Arab Gulf states should take part in negotiations with Iran amid increased tensions between Washington and Tehran. "We strongly believe that there is room for collective diplomacy to succeed," he said, adding that talks with Iran should involve the international community as well as Arab Gulf states.
◢ Iran has discovered a new oil field containing 53 billion barrels of crude, President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday, a find that would increase Iran's proven reserves by over a third. The 80-meter deep field stretches nearly 200 kilometres from Khuzestan's border with Iraq to the city of Omidiyeh.
◢ Iran accused an international atomic monitor of setting off explosives detectors at its main enrichment plant, ratcheting up tensions that threaten to tip the nation into a new nuclear crisis. The IAEA inspector triggered alarms during routine screening on Oct. 28 at Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility, Ambassador Gharib Abadi said at a briefing in Vienna.
◢ Iran has begun the process of enriching uranium at its Fordow research plant, in the most dramatic rollback of its commitments under its unraveling nuclear deal with world powers. About 2,000 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride gas were brought to the facility on Wednesday, under the watch of the IAEA.
◢ President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that Iran would resume uranium enrichment at an underground plant south of Tehran in its latest step back from a troubled 2015 agreement with major powers. The suspension of all enrichment at the Fordow plant in the mountains near the Shiite holy city of Qom was one of the restrictions in the JCPOA.
◢ The U.S. used the 40th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis to sanction key officials reporting to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Mojtaba Khamenei, was targeted “for representing the Supreme Leader in an official capacity despite never being elected or appointed to a government position aside from work in the office of his father.”
◢ Iran announced Monday a more than tenfold increase in enriched uranium production following a series of steps back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the U.S.. Iran has also developed two new advanced centrifuges, one of which is undergoing testing, said Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
◢ Iran's supreme leader on Sunday again ruled out negotiations with Washington, a day before the 40th anniversary of the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. "Those who see negotiations with the US as the solution to every problem are certainly mistaken," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during a speech to mark the anniversary.
◢ Iran said Saturday it has sent Iraq and Arab states of the Persian Gulf the text of its security and cooperation project first unveiled by President Hassan Rouhani at the UN in September. Rouhani "sent the full text (of the initiative) to the heads" of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Iraq and "asked for their cooperation in processing and implementing it,” the foreign ministry said.
◢ Iran said Thursday it hopes the UN nuclear watchdog will act “neutrally” under its new head and vowed to maintain cooperation with its inspectors monitoring a landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Argentina’s Rafael Grossi took the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday following the death of his predecessor, Yukiya Amano of Japan, in July.
◢ The United States on Thursday extended its sanctions on Iran by taking aim at its construction sector, which Washington linked to the country's Revolutionary Guards. The sanctions, it said, would also target "four strategic materials as being used in connection with Iran's nuclear, military, or ballistic missile programs."
◢ Washington's sanctions against Tehran have drastically reduced available channels for humanitarian imports and are threatening the health rights of Iranians, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. Iranian patients have struggled with a foreign medicine shortage and price hikes for over a year both due to reimposed US trade sanctions as well as a battered economy with a free-falling currency.
◢ Argentina’s Rafael Grossi was elected on Tuesday to head the UN's nuclear watchdog, which is tasked in particular with monitoring the implementation of the increasingly shaky Iran nuclear deal. Grossi received 24 votes to Feruta's 10 from the IAEA's 35-member Board of Governors in the third official round of voting.
◢ Two of the U.S. Senate’s staunchest opponents of the Iran nuclear deal drafted legislation that would bar President Donald Trump from renewing waivers allowing Iran to maintain a limited civil nuclear program. The bill from Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz would end three waivers allowing work at a reactor at Arak, an enrichment facility at Fordow, and the Tehran Research Reactor.
◢ Companies still doing business with a U.S.-sanctioned unit of China’s biggest shipping company have less than 60 days to wind down their transactions. The temporary reprieve comes after last month’s surprise announcement of sanctions against the Dalian units of China COSCO Shipping Corp.
◢ When the head of the world’s nuclear watchdog died in July, his death was kept secret for four days. Many people didn’t even know Yukiya Amano was sick. The process that will see his post finally filled this week is shrouded in just as much mystery.
◢ U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against Turkey’s Halkbank, accusing it of fraud, money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, in a case that Turkish President Recep Erdogan had pressed both President Donald Trump and President Barack Obama to dismiss.
◢ The IMF has sharply downgraded growth projections for Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two largest Mideast economies, citing the impact of US sanctions, geopolitical tensions and low oil prices. Iran has "been or continues to be experiencing very severe macroeconomic distress," the IMF said, adding that growth in 2020 will be flat.
◢ A team of British experts arrived in Iran on Monday to begin work to upgrade the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor, the UK embassy in Tehran said. Iran removed the core of the Arak facility and filled part of it with cement as part of a 2015 deal that gave the country relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear program.
