Nuclear Weapons

The E3 nations meeting marks the first since Israel targeted Iran’s key nuclear and military sites in a 12-day war last month.

Iran has reaffirmed its right to enrich uranium on the eve of a key meeting with European powers threatening to reimpose nuclear sanctions.

Friday’s meeting, set to take place in Istanbul, will bring Iranian officials together with officials from Britain, France and Germany – known as the E3 nations – and will include the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.

It will be the first since Israel’s mid-June attack targeting key Iranian nuclear and military sites led to a 12-day war that ended in a ceasefire on June 24.

“Especially after the recent war, it is important for them [European countries] to understand that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s position remains unshakable, and that our uranium enrichment will continue,” the Tasnim news agency quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying on Thursday.

The United States joined its ally Israel in the offensive, striking three Iranian nuclear facilities overnight between June 21 and 22.

Israel launched its attack on Iran just two days before Tehran and Washington were set to resume negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Thursday that Tehran would be prepared to engage in further talks on its nuclear programme with the US if Washington takes meaningful steps to rebuild trust.

In a social media post, Gharibabadi also said that for talks to take place with the US, Tehran would seek “several key principles” to be upheld.

These include “rebuilding Iran’s trust – as Iran has absolutely no trust in the United States”, he said, adding there could be no room “for hidden agendas such as military action, though Iran remains fully prepared for any scenario”.

Britain, France and Germany – alongside China, Russia and the US – are parties to a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which placed major restrictions on its atomic activities in return for the gradual lifting of United Nations sanctions.

However, in 2018, the US unilaterally withdrew from the agreement during Donald Trump’s first term as president and reimposed its own sanctions.

Britain, France and Germany maintained their support for the 2015 accord and sought to continue trade with Iran.

But they have since accused Tehran of failing to uphold its commitments and are threatening to reimpose sanctions under a clause in the agreement that expires in October – something Iran is eager to avoid.

The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, says Iran is the only non-nuclear-armed country currently enriching uranium to 60 percent – far beyond the 3.67 percent cap set by the 2015 accord. Ninety percent enrichment is required for a nuclear weapon.

Western powers, led by the US and backed by Israel, have long accused Tehran of secretly seeking nuclear weapons.

Iran has repeatedly denied this, insisting its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes such as energy production.

Tehran and Washington had held five rounds of nuclear talks starting in April, but a planned meeting on June 15 was cancelled after Israel launched its strikes on Iran.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi has said that Tehran cannot give up on its uranium enrichment programme, which was severely damaged by waves of US and Israeli air strikes last month.

“It is now stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe, but obviously, we cannot give up our enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists, and now, more than that, it is a question of national pride,” Araghchi told the US broadcaster Fox News in an interview aired on Monday.

Araghchi said at the beginning of the interview that Iran is “open to talks” with the United States, but that they would not be direct talks “for the time being”.

“If they [the US] are coming for a win-win solution, I am ready to engage with them,” he said.

“We are ready to do any confidence-building measure needed to prove that Iran’s nuclear programme is peaceful and would remain peaceful forever, and Iran would never go for nuclear weapons, and in return, we expect them to lift their sanctions,” the foreign minister added.

“So, my message to the United States is that let’s go for a negotiated solution for Iran’s nuclear programme.”

Araghchi’s comments were part of a 16-minute interview aired on Fox News, a broadcaster known to be closely watched by US President Donald Trump.

“There is a negotiated solution for our nuclear programme. We have done it once in the past. We are ready to do it once again,” Araghchi said.

Tehran and Washington had been holding talks on the nuclear programme earlier this year, seven years after Trump pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Tehran signed with several world powers in 2015. Under the pact, Iran opened the country’s nuclear sites to comprehensive international inspection in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the deal came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of pursuing a “secret nuclear programme“.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear enrichment programme is strictly for civilian purposes.

The US and Iran engaged in talks as recently as May to reach a new deal, but those negotiations broke down when Israel launched surprise bombing raids across Iran on June 13, targeting military and nuclear sites.

More than 900 people were killed in Iran, and at least 28 people were killed in Israel before a ceasefire took hold on June 24.

The US also joined Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, with the Pentagon later claiming it had set back the country’s nuclear programme by one to two years.

Araghchi said on Monday that Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation is still evaluating how the attacks had affected Iran’s enriched material, adding that they will “soon inform” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of its findings.

He said any request for the IAEA to send inspectors would be “carefully considered”.

“We have not stopped our cooperation with the agency,” he claimed.

IAEA inspectors left Iran after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a law suspending cooperation with the IAEA earlier this month.

Tehran had sharply criticised the IAEA and its chief, Rafael Grossi, over a June 12 resolution passed by the IAEA board accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations.

Iranian officials said the resolution was among the “excuses” that Israel used as a pretext to launch its attacks, which began on June 13 and lasted for 12 days.

Speaking to journalists earlier on Monday, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general, said that the UN welcomed renewed “dialogue between the Europeans and the Iranians”, referring to talks set to take place between Iran, France, Germany and the United Kingdom in Turkiye on Friday.

The three European parties to the former JCPOA agreement have said that Tehran’s failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Iran.

China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran.

Iran, France, Germany and the United Kingdom will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Tehran.

The talks scheduled for Friday come after foreign ministers of the E3 nations, as those European countries are known, as well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief, held their first call on Thursday with Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi since Israel and the United States attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago.

The three European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran, from which the US withdrew in 2018, that had lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear programme.

“The meeting between Iran, Britain, France and Germany will take place at the deputy foreign minister level,” Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, was quoted by Iranian state media as saying.

The E3 have said they would restore United Nations sanctions on Tehran by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the US, before Israel launched a surprise attack, do not resume or fail to produce concrete results.

Iran has accused the US of complicity in the Israeli attack, which killed top Iranian military officials, nuclear scientists and hundreds of civilians. The US also launched strikes on three major Iranian nuclear sites, claiming to have “obliterated” them. A ceasefire took effect on June 24.

“If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the ‘snap-back’ for which they lack absolutely moral and legal ground,” Araghchi said last week.

Before the Israel-Iran war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks mediated by Oman but faced major stumbling blocks such as uranium enrichment in Iran, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimise any risk of weaponisation.

Tehran maintains that its nuclear programme is solely meant for civilian purposes.

Middle East assessments

Also on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, the top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues.

Larijani “conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear programme”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the unannounced meeting.

Putin expressed Russia’s “well-known positions on how to stabilise the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear programme”, he added.

Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran, but it did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the US joined Israel’s bombing campaign.

BRITAIN faces war with Russia within the next five years, the previous head of the British Army has warned.

Former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Patrick Sanders, 59, said the UK must accept that armed conflict with Vladimir Putin by 2030 is a “realistic possibility”.

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Gen Sir Patrick, who retired from the military last year, cautioned that the Army is currently too small to survive more than the first few months of such a war.

And he added that he did not know how many more “signals” ministers needed to realise it must strengthen the nation’s defences.

He said: “If Russia stops fighting in Ukraine, you get to a position where within a matter of months they will have the capability to conduct a limited attack on a Nato member that we will be responsible for supporting, and that happens by 2030.

“I don’t know what more signals we need for us to realise that if we don’t act now and we don’t act in the next five years to increase our resilience … I don’t know what more is needed.”

The former rifleman fell out of favour with the Government while leading the Army for being seen as too outspoken against troop cuts.

It was announced under the previous government that the Army would be reduced from just over 80,000 personnel as of October 2020 to 72,500 by 2025.

Gen Sir Patrick said: “At the moment, the British Army is too small to survive more than the first few months of an intensive engagement, and we’re going to need more.

“Now the first place you go to are the reserves, but the reserves are also too small.

“Thirty thousand reserves still only takes you to an army of 100,000.

“You know, I joined an Army in the Cold War that was about 140,000 regulars, and on top of that, a much larger reserve.”

Gen Sir Patrick said he was disappointed the Strategic Defence Review published last month “didn’t touch on this at all”.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves last month committed to the defence budget rising to 2.6 per cent of the UK’s GDP by April 2027.

And PM Sir Keir Starmer pledged the UK would spend 5 per cent of GDP on national security within 10 years, with 3.5 per cent of that amount going to core defence matters.

But Sir Gen Patrick said that during his time at the head of the Army there had been unsuccessful “conversations” with the government about building bomb shelters for civilians and underground command centres for the military to prepare for an attack.

He said: “It always came down to a conversation of it being too costly and not a high enough priority and the threat didn’t feel sufficiently imminent or serious to make it worth it.

“Finland has bomb shelters for 4.5 million people. It can survive as a government and as a society under direct missile and air attacks from Russia. We don’t have that.”

Despite the biggest threat coming from Russia, Gen Sir Patrick also warned that Iran could act through proxies “to attack British interests in the UK”.

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Abbas Araghchi also says that Tehran is reviewing the details of a possible resumption of nuclear talks with the US.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned that any snapback of United Nations sanctions on the country “would signify the end of Europe’s role in the Iranian nuclear dossier“.

A clause in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and world powers, which United States President Donald Trump torpedoed in 2018 during his first term, allows for UN sanctions to be reimposed if Tehran breaches the deal.

Araghchi also said on Saturday that Tehran was reviewing the details of a possible resumption of nuclear talks with the US. “We are examining its timing, its location, its form, its ingredients, the assurances it requires” from Iran for possible negotiations.”

Separately, Araghchi said any talks with major powers would focus only on Iran’s nuclear activities, not its military capability.

“If negotiations are held … the subject of the negotiations will be only nuclear and creating confidence in Iran’s nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions,” Araghchi told diplomats in Tehran.

“No other issues will be subject to negotiation.”

Last month, Israel unleashed large-scale strikes on Tehran’s nuclear sites, its military leaders, nuclear scientists and residential areas, killing hundreds.

Israel claimed its assault on June 13 was undertaken to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival”, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But Iran said the war was an unprovoked aggression in violation of the UN Charter.

In the frenetic days that followed, Iran retaliated, and the two countries exchanged daily barrages of missiles.

The US later intervened on Israel’s behalf, deploying so-called “bunker buster” bombs and missiles to target the heavily fortified Fordow facility, as well as Natanz and Isfahan.

The final act in the 12-day conflict came when Iran responded by targeting a key US base in Qatar, with Trump announcing a ceasefire in the hours that followed.

After the conflict, Iran announced that it was suspending cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the  IAEA, amid a deep distrust for the organisation.

Araghchi said on Saturday that cooperation with the nuclear agency “will take on a new form” after President Masoud Pezeshkian last week signed a law suspending Iran’s collaboration with the IAEA.

“Our cooperation with the agency has not stopped, but will take on a new form,” said Araghchi.

The new law outlines that any future inspection of Iran’s nuclear sites by the IAEA needs approval by the Supreme National Council.

On Thursday, Pezeshkian warned that the IAEA had to drop its “double standards” if it wanted to restore cooperation with Tehran.

The president added that “any repeated aggression against Iran will be met with a more decisive and regrettable response”.

North Korean officials have “reaffirmed their support for all objectives” in the Russia-Ukraine war, says Russian FM.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has met with Kim Jong Un in North Korea, during which Pyongyang reaffirmed its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine in which thousands of its soldiers have been killed.

Lavrov “was received” by Kim, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Telegram on Saturday, posting a video of the two men shaking hands and embracing in Wonsan. Russian and North Korean state media had announced the visit earlier, saying Lavrov would stay until Sunday.

It is the latest in a series of high-profile trips by top Moscow officials to North Korea as the countries deepen military and political ties with a focus on Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.

Pyongyang has become one of Moscow’s main allies during its more than three-year-long war in Ukraine, sending thousands of troops and conventional weapons to help the Kremlin remove Ukrainian forces from Kursk in Russia.

More than 6,000 North Korean soldiers have died in the Russia-Ukraine war, according to British Defence Intelligence.

North Korea has also agreed to dispatch 6,000 military engineers and builders to help reconstruction efforts there.

The South Korean intelligence service has said North Korea may be preparing to deploy additional troops in July or August.

The United States and South Korea have expressed concern that, in return, Kim may seek Russian technology transfers that could enhance the threat posed by his nuclear-armed military.

Earlier on Saturday, Lavrov met with his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui in Wonsan, a city on the country’s east coast, where a huge resort was opened earlier this month.

“We exchanged views on the situation surrounding the Ukrainian crisis … Our Korean friends confirmed their firm support for all the objectives of the special military operation, as well as for the actions of the Russian leadership and armed forces,” Russian news agency TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

He also thanked the “heroic” North Korean soldiers, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

In April, the two countries officially confirmed the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia for the first time, saying these troops had helped Russia to recapture the Kursk region – a claim contested by Ukraine.

Since then, Kim has been shown in state media paying tribute in front of flag-draped coffins of North Korean soldiers.

Russia’s Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu has visited Pyongyang multiple times this year.

The two heavily sanctioned nations signed a sweeping military deal last November, including a mutual defence clause, during a rare visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea. Pyongyang has reportedly been directly arming Moscow to support its war in Ukraine.

In the meantime, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Friday that US weapons shipments to his country had resumed, following the Pentagon’s decision to briefly halt the delivery of certain weapons to Kyiv over fears that US stockpiles were dwindling.

The US will deliver military supplies and send its envoy Keith Kellogg to Kyiv early next week, said Zelenskyy.

China has agreed to sign a Southeast Asian treaty banning nuclear weapons, Malaysia’s and China’s foreign ministers confirmed, in a move that seeks to shield the area from rising global security tensions amid the threat of imminent United States tariffs.

The pledge from Beijing was welcomed as diplomats gathered for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also due to meet regional counterparts and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

Malaysia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Hasan told reporters on Thursday that China had confirmed its willingness to sign the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) treaty – an agreement in force since 1997 that restricts nuclear activity in the region to peaceful purposes such as energy generation.

“China made a commitment to ensure that they will sign the treaty without reservation,” Hasan said, adding that the formal signing will take place once all relevant documentation is completed.

ASEAN has long pushed for the world’s five recognised nuclear powers – China, the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – to sign the pact and respect the region’s non-nuclear status, including within its exclusive economic zones and continental shelves.

Last week, Beijing signalled its readiness to support the treaty and lead by example among nuclear-armed states.

Rubio, who is on his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday amid a cloud of uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, which includes new levies on six ASEAN nations as well as key traditional allies Japan and South Korea.

The tariffs, set to take effect on August 1, include a 25 percent duty on Malaysia, 32 percent on Indonesia, 36 percent on Cambodia and Thailand, and 40 percent on Laos and Myanmar.

Japan and South Korea have each been hit with 25 percent tariffs, while Australia – another significant Asia Pacific ally – has reacted angrily to threats of a 200 percent duty on pharmaceutical exports to the US.

Vietnam, an ASEAN nation, along with the UK, are the only two countries to have signed separate trade deals with the US, whose administration had boasted they would have 90 deals in 90 days.

The US will place a lower-than-promised 20 percent tariff on many Vietnamese exports, Trump has said, cooling tensions with its 10th-biggest trading partner days before he could raise levies on most imports. Any transshipments from third countries through Vietnam will face a 40 percent levy, Trump said, announcing the trade deal on Wednesday. Vietnam would accept US products with a zero percent tariff, he added.

Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride says Southeast Asian nations are finding themselves at the centre of intensifying diplomatic competition, as global powers look to strengthen their influence in the region.

“The ASEAN countries are facing some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration,” McBride said. “They were also among the first to receive new letters announcing yet another delay in the imposition of these tariffs, now pushed to 1 August.”

The uncertainty has pushed ASEAN states to seek alternative trade partners, most notably China. “These tariffs have provided an impetus for all of these ASEAN nations to seek out closer trade links with other parts of the world,” McBride added.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been in Kuala Lumpur for meetings with ASEAN counterparts, underscoring Beijing’s growing engagement.

Meanwhile, Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, has also been holding talks in Malaysia, advancing Moscow’s vision of a “multipolar world order” – a concept backed by China that challenges what they see as a Western-led global system dominated by the US.

“Lavrov might be shunned in other parts of the world,” McBride noted, “but he is here in Malaysia, meeting with ASEAN members and promoting this alternative global structure.”

At the same time, Rubio is aiming to counter that narrative and ease tensions. “Many ASEAN members are traditional allies of the United States,” McBride said. “But they are somewhat nervous about the tariffs and recent US foreign policy moves. Rubio is here to reassure them that all is well in trans-Pacific relations.”

As geopolitical rivalry intensifies, ASEAN finds itself courted from all directions, with the power to influence the future shape of international alliances.

US seeks to rebuild confidence in ASEAN

Rubio’s presence in Kuala Lumpur signals Washington, DC’s intention to revive its Asia Pacific focus following years of prioritising conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.

The last meeting between Rubio and Russia’s top diplomats took place in Saudi Arabia in February as part of the Trump administration’s effort to re-establish bilateral relations and help negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Analysts say Rubio faces a difficult task of rebuilding confidence with Southeast Asian countries unnerved by the US’s trade policies. Despite the economic fallout, he is expected to try and promote the US as a more dependable alternative to China in terms of both security and long-term investment.

According to a draft communique obtained by Reuters, ASEAN foreign ministers will express “concern over rising global trade tensions and growing uncertainties in the international economic landscape, particularly the unilateral actions relating to tariffs”.

Separately, a meeting involving top diplomats from Southeast Asia, China, Russia and the United States will condemn violence against civilians in war-torn Myanmar, according to a draft statement seen Thursday by AFP.

ASEAN has led diplomatic efforts to end Myanmar’s many-sided civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.

TYRANNICAL leaders in Iran have demanded citizens act as undercover informants to turn in anyone who dares oppose the regime, insiders say.

Panicked mullahs have also ordered “telecom cages” be installed around prisons as the regime wages war against its own people.

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Political prisoners – largely banished to death row on trumped-up charges – have been subject to extreme torture and a disturbing rate of executions in the face of growing tensions in the Middle East.

Insiders say their treatment is being weaponised to deter opposition.

The fight against repression has loomed large for decades in the rogue state – but the so-called 12-day war last month has made the barbaric Ayatollah more fearful than ever of being toppled.

Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, CEO and Founder of United Against Nuclear Iran, said the Ayatollah is “on his heels” and is “engaging in a purification campaign”.

He told The Sun: “The Ayatollah is incredibly weak and I think what he’s doing is out of fear that his regime is going to collapse.

“He’s looking around, most of his generals have been killed. Those that are alive, he is probably suspicious that they are spies.

“There’s no clear succession, and I think the Ayatollah is on his heels.

“He’s doing everything he can to try to find some sort of path to a succession, and the continuation of this revolutionary regime.”

With Ali Khamenei’s grip weakened by the unprecedented Israeli and US blitz, the incapacitated supreme leader has discharged fresh hell on his own people in a corrupt bid to stifle uprising.

Sources inside Iran told The Sun how a direct alert has been issued to the public, urging them to report any activity linked to resistance groups of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

Regime loyalists have been implored to act as informants – compiling detailed reports with photos, times, locations, licence plates and facial features of suspected individuals.

Orders were publicised in an official government news outlet – marking a distinct shift in the paranoid regime’s usual strategy of covert suppression.

Insiders noted it points to the regime’s growing perceived threat posed by the PMOI’s grassroots operations.

The PMOI has long fought for a secular, democratic Iran, and is understood to be gaining traction amid frustration with economic hardship, political repression, and international isolation.

Iranians have lived under the iron-fist rule of fanatics ever since the revolution in 1979 saw the country transformed into an Islamic republic.

The close-knit cadres have attempted to thwart opposition by any means necessary for 46 years – but now lie incredibly vulnerable.

Anxious mullahs forced a complete shutdown of internet access in government offices during the conflict last month to take full control of information flow.

Iran regime massacres inmates

by Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)

IRAN’S ruthless regime massacred defenceless inmates at a prison before blaming their deaths on shrapnel from airstrikes, insiders revealed.

Cold-blooded regime dictators have also ordered the arrest of hundreds after accusing them of having links to arch-foe Israel.

As Israeli missiles rained down on a nearby military site on June 16, panicked inmates at Dizel-Abad Prison in Kermanshah begged to be moved to safety.

But they were instead met with a hail of bullets from the regime’s merciless enforcers in a “deliberate and cold-blooded act”, a witness said.

The source from within the prison said: “The prisoners insisted they be moved from areas where windows had shattered and where they feared further missile strikes.

“The regime’s answer was bullets.

“The special forces opened fire directly at unarmed, defenseless inmates who were merely trying to flee a danger zone.”

Insiders said the prisoners faced live ammunition after guards began beating inmates when they tried to breach internal doors in a bid to get to safety.

At least ten people were killed and a further 30 injured.

Regime authorities are now said to be attempting to cover up the deaths.

One source said: “Officials are planning to falsely attribute the deaths to shrapnel from the airstrike, not their own gunfire.”

READ MORE HERE

Universities were mandated to create “war monitoring rooms” on every campus – which continue to put the personal social media activity of professors and students under surveillance.

Meanwhile, the Supreme National Security Council is installing “telecom cages” at prisons around the state to sever any external communications inmates have.

Jamming devices have been deployed to disrupt messages and calls being made – preventing any contact with the outside world.

It comes as execution numbers have spiralled in recent weeks – with 424 recorded since March 21, according to figures from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

In just three days during the conflict between Israel and Iran, 17 prisoners – including one woman – were executed.

One source said: “This surge is a deliberate tactic to instill fear and crush resistance.”

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Wallace, who served as the US ambassador to the United Nations, said the regime has ramped up its “vicious clampdown” to prevent “people pouring out in opposition in the streets”.

The ex-diplomat added: “You see real Iranians suffering every day in those streets, and we cannot forget about them.

“The only path ultimately for the regime to fall is solely in the control of the Iranian people.

“Sadly, the Iranian people will suffer, and many will likely have to die for that to happen, and they’re being persecuted as we speak today.

“I’m sure there are people being imprisoned and likely will meet their death because of the crackdown of that state security apparatus.

“It’s really essential that we do not forget the people of Iran that are the victims of this regime.”

The NCRI has warned how four political prisoners are facing severe torture as regime enforcers try to extract forced confessions to try and link them to the deaths of two notorious regime judges.

Arghavan Fallahi, Bijan Kazemi, and father and son Mohammad and Amirhossein Akbari Monfared have been subjected to prolonged interrogation and could face the death penalty.

Despite this, defiant campaigners have continued their “No to Execution Tuesdays” movement – uniting activists and the families of inmates.

Zolal Habibi, of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Sun: “Even in the midst of war, the clerical regime in Iran has not paused its machinery of executions and repression for a single day.

“This chilling reality underscores a deeper truth: the primary war in Iran is not external, but internal — a war between the Iranian people and their organised resistance on one side, and the ruling religious dictatorship on the other.

“Yet amid this brutality, the resilience of the Iranian people shines through.

“Last Tuesday, political prisoners across 47 prisons -the most tightly controlled spaces in the country – continued their campaign against the death penalty for the 74th consecutive week.

“Their defiance is a source of pride for every Iranian who dreams of freedom.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran is committed to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), dismissing speculation that Iran would leave the accord in response to major attacks by Israel and the United States on its nuclear and other sites.

Araghchi also said on Thursday that Iran will honour its safeguards agreement with the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite recently passing a law to suspend cooperation with the agency.

Safeguards agreements between the IAEA and NPT signatories allow the UN agency to ensure that the countries’ nuclear programmes remain peaceful.

“Iran remains committed to the NPT and its Safeguards Agreement,” Araghchi wrote in a social media post.

“In accordance with the new legislation by Majlis [parliament], sparked by the unlawful attacks against our nuclear facilities by Israel and the US, our cooperation with [the IAEA] will be channelled through Iran’s Supreme National Security Council for obvious safety and security reasons.”

It is not clear how that cooperation will proceed or when and how IAEA inspectors will be granted access to Iran’s nuclear sites.

Araghchi’s comment was made in response to a German Federal Foreign Office statement decrying the Iranian legislation against the IAEA as a “devastating message”.

The Iranian foreign minister hit out at the criticism by Germany – one of Israel’s most committed allies that backed the attacks against Iran last month.

At the height of Israel’s strikes, which were launched without direct provocation, Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested Germany and the West are benefitting from the war.

“This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us,” he said. The remarks earned him praise from Israeli officials and caused outrage in some other quarters.

On Thursday, Araghchi rebuked “Germany’s explicit support for Israel’s unlawful attack on Iran, including safeguarded nuclear sites, as ‘dirty work’ carried out on behalf of the West”.

He also accused Berlin of repudiating its commitments under the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran by demanding zero enrichment by Iran.

The pact – which US President Donald Trump torpedoed during his first term in 2018 – allows Iran to enrich uranium at a low grade under a strict monitoring regime.

“‘Iranians were already put off by Germany’s Nazi-style backing of Genocide in Gaza, and its support for Saddam’s war on Iran by providing materials for chemical weapons,” Araghchi said in a post on X.

“The explicit German support for the bombing of Iran has obliterated the notion that the German regime harbours anything but malice towards Iranians.”

Companies from the former West Germany have long been accused by Iran of helping late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein develop chemical weapons, which he used against Iranian forces during the war between the two countries in the 1980s.

Iran has been calling on Germany to investigate its ties to Iraq’s chemical weapons, but Berlin has not publicly acknowledged any role in the programme.

Germany and other European countries came out in support of Israel in its recent 12-day war with Iran, which killed hundreds of Iranian civilians, including nuclear scientists and their family members, as well as top military officials.

The US joined the Israeli campaign last month, bombing three Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran retaliated against the US attack with a missile strike against an airbase in Qatar where US soldiers are stationed. Hours later, a ceasefire was reached.

Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of noncompliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked.

International law offers special protection to nuclear sites due to the high risk of an environmental disaster if attacks result in the leak of radioactive material.

The state of the Iranian nuclear programme after the US and Israeli strikes remains unclear.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon said the US bombing operation set back Iran’s nuclear programme by one to two years.

But IAEA chief Rafael Grossi recently said Iran could be enriching uranium again in a “matter of months”. Enrichment is the process of enhancing the purity of radioactive uranium atoms to produce nuclear fuel.

Iran has repeatedly denied seeking a nuclear weapon while Israel is widely believed to possess an undeclared nuclear arsenal of dozens of atomic bombs.

Iran is also considering an entry ban on IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, after rejecting his request to visit nuclear sites.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has signed a law suspending cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), amid growing tensions between Tehran and the UN nuclear watchdog over monitoring access and transparency, after United States and Israeli strikes on its most important nuclear facilities during a 12-day conflict last month.

“Masoud Pezeshkian promulgated the law suspending cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Iranian state TV reported on Wednesday.

The move comes a week after Iran’s parliament passed legislation to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, citing Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran and later strikes by the US on Iranian nuclear facilities.

According to the parliament resolution, IAEA inspectors will not be allowed to visit nuclear sites without approval from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Iran’s foreign minister earlier this week said IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, whom Iranian officials have sharply criticised for failing to condemn Israeli and US strikes during the recent 12-day war, was no longer welcome in the country.

Officials have also criticised Grossi over a June 12 resolution passed by the IAEA board accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations.

Iranian officials said the resolution was among the “excuses” for the Israeli attacks.

Iran has also rejected a request from IAEA chief Grossi to visit nuclear facilities bombed during the war.

“Grossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on X on Monday. “Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.”

Earlier this week, Pezeshkian decried Grossi’s “destructive” conduct, while France, Germany and the United Kingdom have condemned unspecified “threats” made against the IAEA chief.

Iran’s ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper recently claimed that documents showed Grossi was an Israeli spy and should be executed.

Iran has insisted no threats were posed against Grossi or the agency’s inspectors.

The 12-day war began when Israel carried out a surprise bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities and military sites and assassinated several top military commanders and nuclear scientists. Tehran responded with waves of missiles and drones at Israel.

On June 22, Israel’s ally, the US, launched unprecedented strikes of its own on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24.

At least 935 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Iran, according to judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir, citing the latest forensic data. The deceased included 132 women and 38 children, Jahangir added.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks killed 28 people in Israel, according to authorities.

US President Donald Trump said the US attacks had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme, though the extent of the damage was not clear.

Araghchi has admitted that “serious” damage has been inflicted on nuclear sites.

But in a recent interview with US media outlet CBS Evening News, he said: “One cannot obliterate the technology and science… through bombings.”

Israel and some Western countries say Iran has sought nuclear weapons – an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.

Iran has taken an unequivocal stance against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summarily dismissing its chief Rafael Grossi’s request to visit nuclear facilities bombed by Israel and the United States during a 12-day conflict earlier this month.

“Grossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,” said Araghchi on X on Monday. “Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.”

In tandem, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Tehran had halted cooperation with the IAEA due to what he called Grossi’s “destructive” behaviour towards Iran, his office said.

“The action taken by parliament members … is a natural response to the unjustified, unconstructive, and destructive conduct of the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Pezeshkian told Macron in a phone call, according to a presidency statement.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said the Iranian leadership is making it clear that the IAEA is an “international body with defined responsibilities and these responsibilities are not political but technical”. But, he added, Tehran views the nuclear agency as an international body “under immense [political] pressure from Israel and the United States”.

Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favour of a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, citing Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran and later strikes by the US on nuclear facilities.

A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24.

Since the start of the conflict, Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes, but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked.

‘Anger of Iranian public opinion’

In the meantime, France, Germany and Britain have decried “threats” made against Grossi.

“France, Germany and the United Kingdom condemn threats against the director general of the IAEA Rafael Grossi and reiterate our full support to the agency,” Foreign Ministers Jean-Noel Barrot, Johann Wadephul and David Lammy said in a joint statement.

“We call on Iranian authorities to refrain from any steps to cease cooperation with the IAEA,” they added. “We urge Iran to immediately resume full cooperation in line with its legally binding obligations, and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety and security of IAEA personnel.”

While none specified which threats they were referring to, Iran’s ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper recently claimed documents showed Grossi was an Israeli spy and should be executed.

Iran has insisted no threats were posed against Grossi or the agency’s inspectors.

On Monday during his weekly press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the Iranian parliament’s decision to halt cooperation with the IAEA reflected the “concern and anger of the Iranian public opinion”.

He further criticised US and European powers for maintaining what he described as a “political approach” towards Iran’s nuclear programme.

At least 935 people were killed during the recent conflict with Israel, Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said, citing the latest forensic data. The deceased included 132 women and 38 children, Jahangir added.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations said later on Monday they supported the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, and urged that negotiations resume for a deal to address Iran’s nuclear program, according to a joint statement.

“We reaffirm that Iran can never have nuclear weapons, and urge Iran to refrain from reconstituting its unjustified enrichment activities,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the country is involved in efforts to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue and a guarantee against a return to escalation by all parties.

Pezeshkian issued an official apology to the Qatari people in a phone call to Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani after the targeting of Al Udeid Air Base, the biggest US military base in the Middle East, he added.

US president denies multiple reports and accounts that say US strikes did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

United States President Donald Trump has reiterated a vow not to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons following the end of Iran and Israel’s recent 12-day conflict, in which the US militarily intervened, and has stuck closely to his narrative as questions remain about the impact of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

On the Fox News programme Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Trump repeated his claim that Iran was “weeks away” from making the weapons before Israel attacked on June 13. Nine days later, the US targeted Iran’s top three nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

Both US intelligence and the United Nations nuclear watchdog have ascertained that Tehran was not building a nuclear arsenal. Iran has long insisted that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.

While Trump has said that the sites were “obliterated” by the US bombers, in the wake of the attacks, several major news organisations, citing intelligence sources, have reported that the US strikes did not destroy the facilities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday that it was unclear what damage had been sustained at the Fordow plant, which houses the bulk of Iran’s most highly enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear weapon.

On Sunday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said Iran could restart uranium enrichment in a matter of months, while Trump insisted over the weekend that the attacks had set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back “by decades”.

According to an IAEA report last month, Iran has more than 400kg (880lb) of uranium enriched to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90 per cent weapons grade – which is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons.

Trump told Fox News that the news outlets questioning the efficacy of the attacks he ordered and lauded were spreading “fake news”.

“It’s just horrible and I could see it happening, and they [news outlets] tried to build that into a story, but then it turned out, no, it was obliterated like nobody has ever seen before and that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions at least for a period of time,” Trump said.

On whether or not Iran would restart its nuclear programme following the end of the conflict, Trump said, “The last thing they want to do right now is think about nuclear.”

During the attack on the sites, reports emerged that Iran had removed the enriched uranium from Fordow, but Trump claimed that was false.

“It’s a very hard thing to do, plus we didn’t give them much notice because they didn’t know we were coming until just then and nobody thought we would go after that site because everybody said that site was impenetrable… it’s at the bottom of a mountain and it’s granite,” he said.

“[But] the bomb went through it like butter, like it was absolute butter,” he said.

Trade talks

Separately, Trump told Fox that US trade talks with Canada would be stopped “until such time as they drop certain taxes” after Canada pushed ahead with a new digital services tax on foreign and domestic technology companies.

Regarding a trade deal with China, Trump said that while Washington, DC has a large trade deficit with Beijing, the US was currently “getting along” with China.

The president added that he had found a buyer for the social media platform TikTok, by a group of “very wealthy people”, who he will reveal in about two weeks after he extended a ban on the app for the third time, for another 90 days.

Rafael Grossi raises concern over Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, just below weapons grade.

Iran may be able to restart uranium enrichment in a matter of months despite a wave of attacks by the United States and Israel that targeted its nuclear infrastructure, according to the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi.

The remarks came on Saturday, days after US President Donald Trump insisted this month’s attacks had set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back “by decades”.

Speaking to CBS News on Saturday, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said while key facilities had been hit, some are “still standing”.

“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Grossi said, adding that it could even be sooner.

He raised concerns over Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, just below weapons grade, which could theoretically produce more than nine nuclear bombs if refined further.

He acknowledged the IAEA does not know whether this stockpile was moved before the bombings or partially destroyed. “There has to be, at some point, a clarification,” he said.

Israeli attacks

The Israeli assault began on June 13 with strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military sites.

Israel claimed the attacks were designed to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, an accusation Tehran has consistently denied. The US joined the offensive days later, hitting three of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In the wake of the attacks, Iranian lawmakers moved to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and denied Grossi’s request to inspect facilities, including the underground enrichment plant at Fordow.

“We need to be in a position to confirm what is there, where it is, and what happened,” Grossi said.

The Iranian Ministry of Health reported at least 627 civilian deaths across the country during the 12-day assault that also saw 28 people killed in Israel in retaliatory strikes launched by Iran, according to Israeli authorities.

On Saturday, Iran’s judiciary said an Israeli missile strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 23 killed 71 people, including military recruits, detainees and visitors.

US president says Iranian Supreme Leader’s alleged ‘anger, hatred, disgust’ led him to drop work on sanctions relief.

President Donald Trump has hit out at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s claim that Iran won its recent 12-day war with Israel, also saying the United States will “absolutely” bomb the country again if it pursues nuclear weapons.

The US president launched a torrent of abuse at Iran’s Supreme Leader on his Truth Social platform on Friday, claiming he had saved Khamenei from “A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH” and accusing him of “blatantly and foolishly” lying when he claimed “victory” in the war the previous day.

In his first sortie since the Israel-Iran war ended with a ceasefire earlier this week, Khamenei had also said Iran “slapped America in the face” by launching missiles at a major US base in Qatar following US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz.

In Friday’s post, Trump said he had demanded Israel pull back from “the final knockout”.

“His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,” he said.

The question of whether US attacks destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities is moot – a leaked intelligence report contradicted Trump’s account of events, suggesting the military’s strikes had set the country back by mere months.

The US president said that Khamenei’s comments, which he described as “a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust”, had led him to drop work on “the possible removal of sanctions, and other things, which would have given a much better chance to Iran at a full, fast, and complete recovery”.

Future of nuclear programme

Trump’s rant against Khamenei came on the back of bellicose comments earlier that day at a White House news conference. Asked whether he would consider new air strikes if the recent attacks had not succeeded in ending Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, Trump said, “Sure, without question, absolutely.”

He said he would like inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or another respected source to be able to inspect Iran’s nuclear sites.

But Iran has approved a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, a move widely seen as a direct response to the strikes.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi indicated on Friday that Tehran may reject any request by the agency for visits to Iranian nuclear sites.

“[IAEA Director General] Grossi’s insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,” Araghchi said on X. “Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.”

Grossi said on Wednesday that ensuring the resumption of IAEA inspections was his top priority, as none had taken place since Israel began bombing on June 13.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz indicated on Friday that his country might still be on a war footing with Iran, saying he had instructed the military to prepare an enforcement plan against the country.

The plan “includes maintaining Israel’s air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responses to Iran for supporting terrorist activities against Israel”, Katz said.

Katz said on Thursday that Israel had wanted to “eliminate” Khamenei and would not have required US permission to do so.

Barely 72 hours after United States President Donald Trump’s air strikes against Iran, a controversy erupted over the extent of the damage they had done to the country’s uranium enrichment facilities in Fordow and Natanz.

The New York Times and CNN leaked a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that the damage may have been “from moderate to severe”, noting it had “low confidence” in the findings because they were an early assessment.

Trump had claimed the sites were “obliterated”.

The difference in opinion mattered because it goes to the heart of whether the US and Israel had eliminated Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to levels that would allow it to make nuclear weapons, at least for years.

Israel has long claimed – without evidence – that Iran plans to build nuclear bombs. Iran has consistently insisted that its nuclear programme is purely of a civilian nature. And the US has been divided on the question – its intelligence community concluding as recently as March that Tehran was not building a nuclear bomb, but Trump claiming earlier in June that Iran was close to building such a weapon.

Yet amid the conflicting claims and assessments on the damage from the US strikes to Iranian nuclear facilities and whether the country wants atomic weapons, one thing is clear: Tehran says it has no intentions of giving up on its nuclear programme.

So what is the future of that programme? How much damage has it suffered? Will the US and Israel allow Iran to revive its nuclear programme? And can a 2015 diplomatic deal with Iran – that was working well until Trump walked out of it – be brought back to life?

What Iran wants

In his first public comments since the US bombing, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that the attack “did nothing significant” to Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said Khamenei spoke of how “most of the [nuclear] sites are still in place and that Iran is going to continue its nuclear programme”.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on Tuesday said that “preparations for recovery had already been anticipated, and our plan is to prevent any interruption in production or services”.

To be sure, even if they haven’t been destroyed, Natanz and Fordow – Iran’s only known enrichment sites – have suffered significant damage, according to satellite images. Israel has also assassinated several of Iran’s top nuclear scientists in its wave of strikes that began on June 13.

However, the DIA said in the initial assessment that the Trump administration has tried to dismiss, that the attacks had only set Iran’s nuclear programme back by months. It also said that Iran had moved uranium enriched at these facilities away from these sites prior to the strikes. Iranian officials have also made the same claim.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had accused Iran of enriching up to 400kg of uranium to 60 percent – not far below the 90 percent enrichment that is needed to make weapons.

Asked on Wednesday whether he thought the enriched uranium had been smuggled out from the nuclear facilities before the strikes, Trump said, “We think everything nuclear is down there, they didn’t take it out.” Asked again later, he said, “We think we hit them so hard and so fast they didn’t get to move.”

What was the extent of damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities?

Without on-site inspections, nobody can be sure.

Central Intelligence Agency director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday posted a statement saying, “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”. That’s a very different timeline from what the DIA suggested in its early assessment.

But it’s important to remember that the DIA and CIA also disagreed on whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2003.

The DIA sided with the UN’s view that inspections had proven Hussein didn’t have such weapons. The CIA, on the other hand, provided intelligence that backed the position of then-president George W Bush in favour of an invasion – intelligence that was later debunked. In that instance, the CIA proved politically more malleable than the DIA.

Amid the current debate over whether Iranian nuclear sites were destroyed, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has also weighed in favour of the president’s view.

“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she posted on Twitter/X.

But Gabbard has already demonstrably changed her public statements to suit Trump.

In March, she testified before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003”.

On June 20, Trump was asked for his reaction to that assessment. “She’s wrong,” he said.

Gabbard later that day posted that her testimony had been misquoted by “the dishonest media” and that “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly”.

Gabbard’s clarification did not contradict her earlier view, that Iran was not actively trying to build a weapon.

Asked in an interview with a French radio network whether Iran’s nuclear programme had been destroyed, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi replied, “I think ‘destroyed’ is too much. But it suffered enormous damage.”

On Wednesday, Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission concurred with the CIA, saying Iran’s nuclear facilities had been rendered “totally inoperable” and had “set back Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons for many years to come”.

Also on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the destruction of Iran’s surface facilities at Isfahan was proof enough of Iran’s inability to make a bomb.

“The conversion facility, which you can’t do a nuclear weapon without a conversion facility, we can’t even find where it is, where it used to be on the map,” he told reporters.

Can a 2015 diplomatic deal be resuscitated?

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated with Iran by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the US, China, Russia and the European Union in 2015, was the only agreement ever reached governing Iran’s nuclear programme.

The JCPOA allowed Iran to enrich its own uranium, but limited it to the 3.7 percent enrichment levels required for a nuclear reactor to generate electricity. At Israel’s behest, Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 and Iran walked away from it a year later – but before that, it was working.

Even though Trump has said he will never return to the JCPOA, which was negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, he could return to an agreement of his own making that strongly resembles it. The crucial question is, whether Israel will this time back it, and whether Iran will be allowed to have even a peaceful nuclear programme, which it is legally entitled to.

On Wednesday, Trump didn’t sound as though he was moving in this direction. “We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that necessary,” he told reporters at The Hague.

Any JCPOA-like agreement would also require Iran to allow IAEA inspectors to get back to ensuring that Tehran meets its nuclear safeguard commitments.

“IAEA inspectors have remained in Iran throughout the conflict and are ready to start working as soon as possible, going back to the country’s nuclear sites and verifying the inventories of nuclear material,” the IAEA said on Tuesday.

But Iran’s powerful Guardian Council on Thursday approved a parliamentary bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, suggesting that Tehran is at the moment not in the mood to entertain any UN oversight of its nuclear facilities.

What happens if Iran returns to enriching uranium?

“If Iran wants a civil nuclear programme, they can have one, just like many other countries in the world have one, and [the way for] that is, they import enriched material,” Rubio told journalist Bari Weiss on the Podcast, Honestly, in April.

“But if they insist on enriching [themselves], then they will be the only country in the world that doesn’t have a weapons programme, quote unquote, but is enriching. And so I think that’s problematic,” he said.

Ali Ansari, an Iran historian at St. Andrews University in the UK, told Al Jazeera that “there have already been calls to cease uranium enrichment from activists within the country”.

But the defiant statements from Iranian officials since the US strikes – including from Khamenei on Thursday – suggest that Tehran is not ready to give up on enrichment.

Trump has, in recent days, suggested that he wants Iran to give up its nuclear programme altogether.

On Tuesday, Trump posted on TruthSocial, “IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!”

He doubled down on that view on Wednesday.

“Iran has a huge advantage. They have great oil, and they can do things. I don’t see them getting back involved in the nuclear business any more, I think they’ve had it,” he told reporters at the end of the NATO summit in The Hague.

And then he suggested the US would again strike Iran’s facilities, even if it weren’t building a bomb. “If [Iran] does [get involved], we’re always there, we’ll have to do something about it.” If he didn’t, “someone else” would hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, he suggested.

That “someone” would be Israel – which has long tried to kill any diplomatic effort over Iran’s nuclear programme.

At the NATO summit, Trump was asked whether Israel and Iran might start a war again soon.

“I guess some day it can. It could maybe start soon,” he said.

United States President Donald Trump has insisted that the military strikes he ordered on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Sunday morning “completely obliterated” Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities.

And after an initial classified US intelligence report contradicted that assertion, Trump and his administration have lashed out at those who leaked the document and the media that has covered it – throwing out its assessment.

The standoff between Trump and the evaluation of sections of his own intelligence community continued through Wednesday at The Hague, where the US president was attending the NATO summit and was asked several questions about the leaked document.

Yet it was only the latest instance of Trump publicly disagreeing with US intelligence conclusions during his past decade in politics – whether on Russia or North Korea, Venezuela or Iran.

Here’s what the latest spat is about, and Trump’s long history of disputing intelligence assessments:

What is Trump’s latest disagreement with US intelligence about?

On June 21, the US joined Israel in its strikes against Iran. US forces hit Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, three Iranian nuclear sites, with a range of missiles and bunker-buster bombs.

Trump applauded the success of the US attacks on Iran multiple times. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” he said in a televised address from the White House after the attack.

However, a confidential preliminary report by the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), suggested otherwise.

The DIA report said the US attacks had only set Iran’s nuclear programme back by less than six months.

The report added that in the DIA’s assessment, Iran had moved its stockpile of enriched uranium before the strikes, something Tehran has also claimed. As a result, little of the material that Iran could in theory enrich to weapons-grade uranium had been destroyed.

On Tuesday, the White House rejected the findings of the intelligence report. “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, describing the person who leaked the document as a “low-level loser in the intelligence community”.

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,” Leavitt added.

Trump also dismissed the report on Wednesday during the NATO summit in the Netherlands, continuing to claim that the US decimated Iran’s nuclear capabilities and denying claims that Tehran moved its enriched uranium. “I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast,” Trump said, adding “it would have taken two weeks, maybe, but it’s very hard to remove that kind of material… and very dangerous.

“Plus, they knew we were coming,” Trump added. “And if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there [in the underground sections of the nuclear facilities].”

On Wednesday, the White House website published an article titled Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated – and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.

Besides Trump, the article also quotes Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, which has said that “the devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.” Of Iran’s three major nuclear sites, Fordow is the hardest to reach for Israel’s missiles, as it is buried deep under a mountain – which is why Israel successfully convinced the US to hit the facility with bunker-buster bombs.

Additionally, the White House article quotes the Trump-appointed US director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, as saying: “The operation was a resounding success. Our missiles were delivered precisely and accurately, obliterating key Iranian capabilities needed to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.”

John Ratcliffe, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also diverged from the DIA report, saying the US had “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In a statement published on the CIA website on Wednesday, Ratcliffe said: “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Yet Trump’s track record of disputing intelligence assessments and distrusting the intelligence community runs much deeper than Iran.

Did Trump disagree with US intelligence during his first term?

Yes, multiple times, including:

In 2016, on Russian election interference

The US intelligence community, in July 2016, accused Putin of meddling in the US presidential election with the aim of helping Trump defeat Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.

In November of that year, Trump won the election. His transition team rebuked intelligence reports that concluded that Russian hackers had covertly interfered in the election.

In a statement, the Trump transition team said: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

In an interview in December 2016, Trump himself said: “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it.”

He added that: “Nobody really knows. And hacking is very interesting. Once they hack, if you don’t catch them in the act, you’re not going to catch them. They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace. They have no idea.”

In 2018, again on Russian election interference

In July 2018, the US indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers, accusing them of being involved in “active cyber operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections”, according to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This indictment was part of a probe into allegations of collusion between the Trump team and Russia before the 2016 election, being led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

That same month, Trump met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki for a joint summit. During a joint news conference after the two leaders had a one-on-one private discussion, Trump backed Putin on the Russian leader’s insistence that the Kremlin did not meddle in the 2016 election.

“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said.

“He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Trump also said the Mueller investigation was a “disaster for our country” and drove a wedge between Washington and Moscow, the “two largest nuclear powers in the world”.

Former CIA Director John Brennan called Trump’s statements during the news conference “nothing short of treasonous”. Trump later pulled Brennan’s security clearances. Those clearances give select former officials access to classified information and briefings.

In 2019, over Iran, North Korea and ISIL (ISIS)

In 2019, Trump again rebuked the intelligence community, disagreeing with them over multiple issues.

The US intelligence community, on January 29, 2019, told a Senate committee that the nuclear threat from North Korea remained and Iran was not taking steps towards making a nuclear bomb.

Intelligence agencies said they did not believe that Iran violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear deal signed between Iran and a group of countries led by the US in 2015. This, even though Trump had pulled out of the deal in 2018.

“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” Trump wrote on X, then called Twitter.

“Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Trump wrote in another X post.

On the other hand, US intelligence said North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear program.

On January 30, Trump contradicted this in an X post: “North Korea relationship is best it has ever been with US No testing, getting remains, hostages returned. Decent chance of Denuclearization.”

During his first term, Trump engaged directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and in June 2019, met him at the fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas – the first US president to travel there.

Meanwhile, US spy chiefs warned that the ISIL (ISIS) armed group would continue to launch attacks from Syria and Iraq against regional and Western adversaries, including the US.

That assessment was at variance with Trump’s views. In December 2018, he withdraw 2,000 US troops from Syria on grounds that ISIL (ISIS) did not pose a threat any more. “We have won against ISIS,” he said in a video.

What did Trump and US intelligence clash over recently?

During his second term, too, Trump has differed with the intelligence community’s conclusions on multiple occasions, including:

In April, over Venezuela

Trump’s current term has been marked by an aggressive immigration crackdown. In March, he signed a proclamation invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump’s proclamation claimed that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” against US territory.

The proclamation says all Venezuelan citizens aged 14 or older “who are members of” the gang and are not naturalised or lawful permanent US citizens are liable to be restrained and removed as “Alien Enemies”.

In his proclamation, Trump said the Tren de Aragua “is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro regime, including its military and law enforcement apparatus”.

However, in April, a classified assessment from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an arm of the DNI, found there was no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government. The assessment found that the gang was not supported by Venezuela’s government officials, including Maduro.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was the only one, among the 18 organisations that make up the US intelligence community, to disagree with the assessment.

In June, over Iran’s nuclear weapons

On March 25, Trump’s DNI Gabbard unambiguously told US Congress members that Iran was not moving towards building nuclear weapons.

“The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard said.

On June 17, however, Trump told reporters he believed Iran was “very close” to building nuclear weapons, after he made an early exit from the Group of Seven summit in Canada.

Trump’s distrust for his own intelligence community is widely viewed as stemming from what he has described as a “witch-hunt” against him – the allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win.

During the 2018 news conference in Helsinki, Trump said: “It was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily.”

Israel launched an unprecedented strike on Iran’s military and nuclear sites on June 13, a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board passed a resolution saying Tehran was not complying with its commitment to nuclear safeguards.

Though Israel did not use the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s resolution to justify the Iran attack, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the IAEA resolution, calling it “a necessary and overdue step” that confirmed Iran’s “systematic clandestine nuclear weapons programme”.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Atomic Energy Organization in a joint statement condemned the resolution, calling it “politically motivated”. The resolution, the joint statement said, “seriously undermines the credibility and integrity of the IAEA”.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes and that its facilities are monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog.

Here’s what the IAEA said about the Iranian nuclear programe earlier this month, and its criticisms against its past actions.

Did the IAEA think that Iran was building nuclear weapons?

The IAEA cannot fully assess Iran’s nuclear energy programmes, as Tehran halted its implementation of the Additional Protocol in February 2021, which permitted the IAEA enhanced inspection rights – including snap inspections and continuous surveillance.

Iran continued to comply with IAEA’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement after 2021, which permitted access to Iran’s declared nuclear sites (Natanz, Fordow, Bushehr) and also allowed for routine monitoring and verification of declared nuclear material.

At a press event in Vienna on June 9, however, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said Iran’s recent failure to comply with reporting obligations had “led to a significant reduction in the agency’s ability to verify whether Iran’s nuclear programme is entirely peaceful”.

During the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting (which took place from June 9-13), Grossi said Iran had “repeatedly either not answered… the agency’s questions” regarding the presence of man-made uranium particles at three locations – Varamin, Marivan and Turquzabad.

Grossi also described Iran’s “rapid accumulation of highly-enriched uranium” as a “serious concern”, referring to the 60 percent pure uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz.

In 2023, the IAEA had discovered 83.7 percent pure uranium particles at Fordow – close to the 90 percent purity required to make an atomic bomb.

On June 12, one day before Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IAEA board passed a resolution declaring that Tehran was breaching its non-proliferation obligations.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Vienna on June 12, noted it was the first time in almost 20 years that the IAEA, which monitors Iran’s nuclear programme, had accused Tehran of breaching its non-proliferation obligations.

Last week, however, Grossi emphasised that the IAEA had found no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons production.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on June 19, Grossi was emphatic that Iran’s alleged violations of its assurances had not led his agency to conclude that Tehran was building bombs.

“We have not seen elements to allow us, as inspectors, to affirm that there was a nuclear weapon that was being manufactured or produced somewhere in Iran,” he said.

United States Vice President JD Vance invoked the IAEA resolution to make a case for the military action against Iran.

“They’ve been found in violation of their non-proliferation obligations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is hardly a rightwing organization,” he posted on X on June 17.

The US president ordered his military to bomb three Iranian sites on June 22 – a decision welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been making claims for decades that Iran was on the cusp of making nuclear weapons.

Trump has claimed that the nuclear sites have been “obliterated” and Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back by decades.

How has Iran responded?

On June 23, the national security committee of Iran’s parliament approved the outline of a bill designed to suspend Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, committee spokesperson Ebrahim Rezaei told the Tasnim news agency.

Rezaei said that, according to the bill, installing surveillance cameras, allowing inspections, and submitting reports to the IAEA would be suspended as long as the security of nuclear facilities is not guaranteed. Iran joined the IAEA in 1959.

In particular, Rezaei said Iran asserts its right, as a 1968 signatory to the UN’s nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment.

Parliament still has to approve the NPT withdrawal bill in a plenary.

Tehran has long complained that the treaty fails to protect it from attack by a country with a nuclear arsenal, the US, and another widely believed to have one, Israel.

What’s more, Iranian authorities have claimed Grossi is looking to become the next secretary-general of the UN, and is therefore sacrificing the nuclear watchdog’s integrity by adopting pro-Western rhetoric to gain personal favour.

On June 1, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, told state TV: “Rafael Grossi [is] driven by his ambitions and a strong desire to become the UN secretary-general, is seeking to gain the approval of a few specific countries and align himself with their goals.”

Did the IAEA skirt controversy over the Fukushima disaster?

In June 2023, the Japanese government started releasing treated, but still radioactive, water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean.

The IAEA gave the controversial plan the green light following a two-year review.

At the time, Grossi said the agency’s safety review had concluded the plan was “consistent with relevant international safety standards… [and] the controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment”.

More than 1.3 million tonnes of water had built up at the Fukushima plant since a March 2011 tsunami destroyed the power station’s electricity and cooling systems and triggered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chornobyl.

The release of the water, which began in August 2023, encountered fierce resistance from Japan’s neighbours and Pacific island nations as well as fishing and agricultural communities in and around Fukushima, which fear for their livelihoods.

Beijing, in particular, was a fierce critic of the water discharge plan. In a statement following the IAEA’s July 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs chastised its “hasty release”, claiming it “failed to fully reflect views from experts”.

Are there echoes of Iraq in the current debate about Iran?

To several observers, there are.

In the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the US and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), including chemical weapons, in addition to pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

These claims were central in justifying military action under the argument that Iraq posed an imminent threat to regional and global security.

Towards the end of 2002, the IAEA carried out several inspections of Iraqi weapons programmes.

In early 2003, they established the existence of high-tolerance aluminium tubes in Iraq. In theory, these can be used to enrich uranium for use in a nuclear warhead.

The aluminium tubes became a cornerstone in the Bush administration’s Iraq mandate. As the only physical evidence the US could brandish, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President George W Bush and his advisers.

The tubes were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programmes”, Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, explained on CNN on September 8, 2002. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

For its part, the IAEA refuted the theory that the tubes were destined for use in a nuclear programme. And after the invasion, extensive searches found no active WMD programmes in Iraq.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump is attempting a high-risk manoeuvre in bombing Iran and then quickly seeking to de-escalate tensions, analysts told Al Jazeera.

But it remains to be seen whether Washington can navigate a clean exit from the deadly imbroglio, which has the potential to erupt into a large-scale regional confrontation.

Even if Trump avoids a wider war, analysts say troubling questions remain over how worthwhile the US military intervention was.

Early on Sunday, the US joined Israel in its military campaign against Iran, sending B-2 stealth aircraft to drop bombs on three of the country’s nuclear sites.

Trump has framed the military action as part of Washington’s long-term goal of preventing Tehran from building a nuclear weapon. But the bombing provoked a retaliatory strike, with Iran launching missiles at the US’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Monday.

Since then, Trump has announced a ceasefire between all parties and claimed he was able to “stop the war”. He credited the bombing with bringing “everyone together”.

But media outlets have questioned whether Trump was successful in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, as he has claimed. And Trump has denounced both Iran and Israel for early violations of the ceasefire.

“As soon as we made the deal, [Israel] came out and dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” Trump told reporters in an unvarnished moment on the White House lawn on Tuesday.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”

Behind the rhetoric

Despite the rocky first hours after the ceasefire announcement, Israeli and Iranian leaders appear to have fallen in line with Trump’s messaging about peace.

Following a call from the US president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that his country would refrain from further attacks. Israel had “achieved all of the war’s goals”, his office said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meanwhile, hailed his country’s “heroic resistance”. He said Iran would respect the truce and seek to protect its interests through diplomacy.

But experts warn that the talk of peace and diplomacy might conceal greater challenges ahead.

Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a think tank, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s harsh words for the latest attack reveal his increasingly public frustrations with Israel, a longtime US ally.

They might also indicate that extracting the US from Israel’s war with Iran might be more difficult than it seems.

“I think it’s crucial to understand Israel does not want an end to the fighting, and I think Trump is starting to recognise how deeply America and Israel’s interests in all of this diverge,” Parsi told Al Jazeera.

Israeli officials have repeatedly signalled that their military operations against Iran are aimed at prompting wider regime change, a goal Trump appeared to endorse last week but has since disavowed.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, issued a statement to the media confirming that Israel had “concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over”.

That viewpoint may diverge from Trump’s, according to Parsi. Nevertheless, Parsi believes Trump has shown more willingness to tell Israel “no” than many of his presidential predecessors.

“But Trump has not been able to sustain that ‘no’ in an effective way,” Parsi added, pointing to the US president’s interventions in Israel’s war on Gaza.

“He pressured the Israelis into the ceasefire in Gaza, but then he relented and let Netanyahu get out of the ceasefire and never go to phase two of that agreement. If he wants to deal with Iran, he’s going to have to make sure he does not repeat that mistake.”

Still, Parsi noted that Trump has shown “a remarkable nimbleness” in his ability to commit – then withdraw – US military forces from foreign conflicts. Earlier this year, for instance, Trump entered into 45 days of air strikes against the Yemen-based Houthi armed group, but by May, he had unveiled a ceasefire.

Risk of a ‘quagmire’

For its part, Iran has been seen as eager to find an off-ramp to exit the conflict. Several analysts told Al Jazeera that Tehran would likely take pains to avoid any actions that could draw the US back into the fight.

The US and Iran had been in talks to scale back Tehran’s nuclear programme. But Israel’s initial surprise attack on June 13 had derailed the negotiations.

Negar Mortazavi, a non-resident fellow at the nonprofit Center for International Policy, said that Iran still remains open to returning to the negotiating table.

The country has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon and has instead framed its efforts as aimed at developing civilian energy infrastructure.

“Iran wants to have a civilian nuclear programme,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera. “And I think, if Trump accepts that, then there’s a very strong path and possibility for a deal.”

Trump, however, has been vague about what he may accept. He described the US attack on Sunday as the destruction of “all Nuclear facilities & capability” in Iran, in a series of statements that did not appear to distinguish between nuclear enrichment for civilian energy purposes or for weapons.

His statements were also at odds with a classified report leaked to US media, indicating that Iran’s nuclear programme was damaged but not obliterated – and could be rebuilt in a matter of months.

“IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES,” Trump wrote in one of the messages on Tuesday.

Still, Mortazavi believes Iran will likely have no choice but to return to negotiations, even if Trump again takes a maximalist position and opposes all uranium enrichment.

“They might be able to meet somewhere half way,” Mortazavi said of the US and Iran. She added that one possible compromise would be to have a “consortium” of regional countries that would monitor a civilian nuclear programme.

“The alternative, which is military conflict and war, is just going to be devastating for a lot more civilians”, she explained, “and could potentially turn into a quagmire like Iraq or Afghanistan”.

Sina Azodi, an assistant professor of Middle East politics at George Washington University, pointed out that Trump’s ceasefire announcement on Monday could hold clues about his approach to any renewed negotiations.

Trump started his statement by writing, “CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE!” Then, he ended the missive with, “God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!”

Azodi said that the message – which appeared to put Iran in the same standing as Israel – was unprecedented from a US president since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He noted that Trump appeared to be setting a “conciliatory” tone.

That sentiment was also reflected on the economic front. On Tuesday, Trump said that China could continue to buy oil from Iran, despite US sanctions that would otherwise limit such trade.

That, too, was interpreted by many analysts as a goodwill offering to officials in Tehran, as Trump seeks a resolution to the conflict.

“Trump wants to be the one who used military force, showed strength, and then quickly brought an end to the conflict,” Azodi told Al Jazeera.

“He certainly does not want a broader conflict in the region, because then there’s a possibility that he would have to resort to more military intervention.”

Any further military involvement, analysts say, could inflame tensions within Trump’s base, as many of his “America First” followers oppose overseas military action.

Some have speculated that Trump’s strike-and-exit approach allowed him to split the difference, satisfying the war hawks in the Republican Party while mollifying those who disagree with foreign intervention.

“But it’s impossible to know what comes next, given his style,” Azodi said. “One day, he’s on a good side. One day, he’s belligerent and angry.”

Long-term success?

Whether Trump will continue his calls for peace after Sunday’s attack remains unclear.

The US president has been on the defensive, as journalists continue to question the effectiveness of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities like Fordow.

“That place is under rock. That place is demolished,” Trump told journalists on Tuesday.

He called on news outlets to apologise for casting doubt on the success of the mission. “It’s all fake news,” he said. “Those pilots hit their targets. Those targets were obliterated.”

Azodi noted that the US strikes appear to be less successful than the Trump administration has claimed. Evidence has surfaced that Iran relocated much of its uranium stockpile in the lead-up to the attack.

What is clear, Azodi said, is that the US violated international law in striking a facility under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

That could lead Iran to make good on its threat to withdraw from the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), freeing it from international obligations that would limit any weapons development.

“In the short term, yes, Trump can come and brag about [the US strikes] on Truth Social, saying that he ‘obliterated’ the Iranian nuclear programme,” Azodi said.

“But in the long term, you can’t bomb the knowledge. Iran’s fissile material appears to have survived. And now Iranians have a lot of motive for withdrawing from the NPT.”

That, he warned, would mean that “it would be impossible to monitor their nuclear programme”.

Iran launched waves of air strikes at Israel as the deadline approached for a ceasefire to which Tehran is reported to have agreed.

The launches came on Tuesday after 4am local time (7:30 GMT) in Tehran, the time Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would stop its attacks if Israel ended its air strikes.

Waves of missiles sent Israelis to bomb shelters for almost two hours in the morning.

Several people were reported killed in the early morning barrages, but there was no immediate word of further attacks.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue services said at least eight more people were injured.

The Israeli military later said people could leave the shelters but cautioned the public to stay close to protection in the coming hours.

Trump’s announcement that Israel and Iran had agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire” came soon after Iran launched a limited missile attack on Monday on a US military base in Qatar, retaliating for the US bombing of its nuclear sites.

Israel said later on Tuesday that it has agreed to the ceasefire after having “achieved all objectives” in its war with Iran.

Russia called the US strikes on Iran ‘unjustified’ and ‘unprovoked’, while China warned they ‘set a bad precedent’.

Russia and China have strongly condemned US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, warning they could drag the world into a broader war and set a dangerous international precedent.

The reactions came just hours before Iran launched missiles at the US base in Qatar on Monday in response to Sunday’s strikes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday described the American strikes as “unjustified” and said they were pushing the world towards a perilous tipping point.

Speaking after talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the Kremlin, Putin said Moscow would try to help the Iranian people but stopped short of detailing how.

“The absolutely unprovoked aggression against Iran has no basis and no justification,” Putin told Araghchi. “For our part, we are making efforts to assist the Iranian people.”

The Chinese government also weighed in, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemning both the Israeli strikes on Iran and the US bombardment of its nuclear facilities. He said the rationale of attacking over “possible future threats” sent the wrong signal to the world and urged a return to diplomacy.

Wang called for all parties to “immediately resume dialogue and negotiation”, warning the escalation risked destabilising the region.

Bringing the world ‘to a very dangerous line’

Tensions have soared in recent days, with US President Donald Trump and Israeli officials openly discussing the possibility of assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and pushing for regime change – moves the Kremlin warned could plunge the region into a full-blown war.

During the high-level Kremlin meeting on Monday, Araghchi reportedly handed Putin a message from Khamenei, though the contents were not disclosed. A senior Iranian source told the Reuters news agency the letter called for increased Russian support, but Moscow has not confirmed receiving any such appeal.

Later, while addressing a gathering of elite military recruits, Putin spoke more broadly about growing instability. “Extra-regional powers are also being drawn into the conflict,” he said. “All this brings the world to a very dangerous line.”

Despite signing a 20-year strategic pact with Iran earlier this year, Russia has avoided making concrete military commitments to defend Tehran, and the agreement lacks any mutual defence clause.

Iranian frustration

Iranian officials, speaking anonymously to Reuters, expressed frustration with Moscow’s perceived inaction. They said Tehran felt let down by both Russia and China, despite repeated calls for support.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declined to say whether Iran had asked for weapons or military aid but insisted Moscow’s ties with Tehran remained strong. “Our strategic partnership with Iran is unbreakable,” Ryabkov said, adding that Iran had every right to defend itself.

Still, the Kremlin appears wary of any move that might provoke a direct confrontation with Washington, particularly as Trump seeks to ease tensions with Moscow amid the war in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said US-Iran developments would not affect the Russia-US dialogue, calling them “separate processes”.

Memories of US-led wars in the Middle East still linger. At Sunday’s United Nations Security Council session, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia drew comparisons with the 2003 Iraq invasion. He recalled how the US falsely claimed Iraq held weapons of mass destruction.

“Again, we’re being asked to believe the US’s fairytales,” Nebenzia said. “This cements our conviction that history has taught our US colleagues nothing.”

Russia, China and Pakistan have jointly submitted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.