Category: 2. World

Iran said it would continue nuclear talks with European powers after “serious, frank, and detailed” conversations on Friday, the first such face-to-face meeting since Israel and the US bombed Iran last month.

Before the meeting in Istanbul, Iran also pushed back on suggestions of extending the United Nations resolution that ratifies a 2015 deal, nearing expiry, that was designed to curb its nuclear programme.

Delegations from the European Union and so-called E3 group of France, Britain and Germany met Iranian counterparts for about four hours at Iran’s consulate for talks that the UN nuclear watchdog said could provide an opening to resume inspections in Iran.

Iran and Europeans present ideas

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said afterward that both sides had presented specific ideas on sanctions relief and the nuclear issue.

“While seriously criticising their stances regarding the recent war of aggression against our people, we explained our principled positions, including on the so-called snapback mechanism,” he said. “It was agreed that consultations on this matter will continue.”

The European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to the 2015 deal — from which the US withdrew in 2018 — which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for restrictions on its nuclear programme. A deadline of Oct. 18 is fast approaching when the resolution governing that deal expires.

At that point, all UN sanctions on Iran will be lifted unless the “snapback” mechanism is triggered at least 30 days before. This would automatically reimpose those sanctions, which target sectors from hydrocarbons to banking and defence.

To give time for this to happen, the E3 have set a deadline of the end of August to revive diplomacy. Diplomats say they want Iran to take concrete steps to convince them to extend the deadline by up to six months.

Europeans want nuclear commitments from Iran

Iran would need to make commitments on key issues including eventual talks with Washington, full cooperation with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and accounting for 400 kg (880 pounds) of near-weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, whose whereabouts are unknown since last month’s strikes.

Before the talks, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson had said Tehran considered talk of extending UN Security Council Resolution 2231 to be “meaningless and baseless”.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi said he was optimistic that nuclear inspection visits might be able to restart this year and that it was important to discuss the technical details now. “We need to agree on where to go, how to do it. We need to listen to Iran in terms of what they consider should be the precautions to be taken,” he told reporters in Singapore.

The United States held five rounds of talks with Iran prior to its airstrikes in June, which US President Donald Trump said had “obliterated” a programme that Washington and its ally Israel say is aimed at acquiring a nuclear bomb.

However, NBC News has cited current and former US officials as saying a subsequent US assessment found that while the strikes destroyed most of one of three targeted nuclear sites, the other two were not as badly damaged.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and says its nuclear programme is meant solely for civilian purposes.

Thailand and Cambodia are engaged in their worst fighting in over a decade, exchanging heavy artillery fire across their disputed border, with at least 16 people killed and tens of thousands displaced.

Tensions began rising between the Southeast Asian neighbours in May, following the killing of a Cambodian soldier during a brief exchange of gunfire, and have steadily escalated since, triggering diplomatic spats and now, armed clashes.

What is the current situation?

Clashes broke out between the two countries early on Thursday along a disputed area abutting an ancient temple, rapidly spilling over to other areas along the contested frontier and heavy artillery exchanges continuing for a second straight day.

Thailand recalled its ambassador to Phnom Penh on Wednesday and expelled Cambodia’s envoy, in response to a second Thai soldier losing a limb to a landmine that Bangkok alleged had been laid recently by rival troops. Cambodia called that accusation baseless.

Both sides accuse each other of firing the first shots that started the conflict on Thursday, which has so far claimed the lives of at least 15 civilians, most of them on the Thai side.

Cambodia has deployed truck-mounted rocket launchers, which Thailand says have been used to target civilian areas, while the Thai armed forces dispatched US-made F-16 fighter jets, using one to bomb military targets across the border.

Some 130,000 people have been evacuated from border areas in Thailand to safer locations, while some 12,000 families on the Cambodian side have been shifted away from the frontlines, according to local authorities.

Where does the dispute originate?

Thailand and Cambodia have for more than a century contested sovereignty at various undemarcated points along their 817km land border, which was first mapped by France in 1907 when Cambodia was its colony.

That map, which Thailand later contested, was based on an agreement that the border would be demarcated along the natural watershed line between the two countries.

In 2000, the two countries agreed to establish a Joint Boundary Commission to peacefully address overlapping claims, but little progress has been made towards settling disputes.

Claims over ownership of historical sites have raised nationalist tension between the two countries, notably in 2003 when rioters torched the Thai embassy and Thai businesses in Phnom Penh over an alleged remark by a Thai celebrity questioning jurisdiction over Cambodia’s World Heritage-listed Angkor Wat temple.

What were previous flashpoints?

An 11th-century Hindu temple called Preah Vihear, or Khao Phra Viharn in Thailand, has been at the heart of the dispute for decades, with both Bangkok and Phnom Penh claiming historical ownership.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) awarded the temple to Cambodia in 1962, but Thailand has continued to lay claim to the surrounding land.

Tension escalated in 2008 after Cambodia attempted to list the Preah Vihear temple as a Unesco World Heritage site, leading to skirmishes over several years and at least a dozen deaths, including during a weeklong exchange of artillery in 2011.

Two years later, Cambodia sought an interpretation of the 1962 verdict and the ICJ again ruled in its favour, saying the land around the temple was also part of Cambodia and ordering Thai troops to withdraw.

What’s behind the recent troubles?

Despite the historic rivalry, the current governments of Thailand and Cambodia enjoy warm ties, partly due to the close relationship between their influential former leaders, Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra and Cambodia’s Hun Sen.

But nationalist sentiment has risen in Thailand after conservatives last year questioned the government’s plan to negotiate with Cambodia to jointly explore energy resources in undemarcated maritime areas, warning such a move could risk Thailand losing the island of Koh Kood in the Gulf of Thailand.

Tensions also rose in February when a group of Cambodians escorted by troops sang their national anthem at another ancient Hindu temple that both countries claim, Ta Moan Thom, before being stopped by Thai soldiers.

An effort by then-Thai premier Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thaksin’s daughter, to de-escalate the situation in a call last month with Hun Sen spectacularly backfired after a recording of the conversation was initially leaked and later released in full by the Cambodian leader.

In the call, the 38-year-old prime minister appeared to criticise a Thai army commander and kowtow to Hun Sen, drawing public fury and a complaint from a group of senators, which led to her suspension by a court order on July 1.

Have there been any resolution efforts?

After the May 28 clash, both countries quickly promised to ease tension, prevent more conflict and seek dialogue via their joint border commission at a June 14 meeting.

The neighbours have issued diplomatically worded statements committing to peace while vowing to protect sovereignty, but their militaries have been mobilising near the border.

Cambodia, meanwhile, said existing mechanisms were not working and it planned to refer disputes in four border areas to the ICJ to settle “unresolved and sensitive” issues that it said could escalate tensions.

Thailand has not recognised the ICJ’s rulings on the row and wants to settle it bilaterally.

Since Thursday’s clashes, Cambodia has written to the United Nations Security Council, urging the body to convene a meeting to stop what it describes as “unprovoked and premeditated military aggression” by Thailand.

Thailand, on the other hand, wants to resolve the conflict through bilateral negotiations but says talks can only take place after Cambodia ceases violence.

Israel is pursuing an extensive PR effort to remove itself from blame for the starvation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is responsible.

As dozens of governments, UN organisations and other international figures have detailed Israel’s culpability, officials and ministers in Israel have attempted to suggest that there is no hunger in Gaza, that if hunger exists it is not Israel’s fault, or to blame Hamas or the UN and aid organisations for problems with distribution of aid.

The Israeli effort has continued even as one of its own government ministers, the far-right heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, made comments this week describing an unapologetic policy of starvation, genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel has suggested is not official policy.

Amid evidence of a growing number of deaths from starvation in Gaza, including many child deaths, and shocking images and accounts of malnutrition, Israel has tried to deflect blame for what has been described by the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) as “man-made mass starvation”.

That view was endorsed in a joint statement this week by 28 countries – including the UK – which explicitly blamed Israel. “The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the statement said. “The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazan’s of human dignity.

“We condemn the drip-feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”

Some Israeli officials have been marginally more cautious in public statements, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has promised vaguely that there “will be no starvation” in Gaza.

But a recent off-the-record briefing for journalists by a senior Israeli security official has pushed a more uncompromising position, stating that there “is no hunger in Gaza” and claiming that images of starving children on front pages around the world showed children with “underlying diseases”.

David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesperson, told Sky News this week: “There is no famine in Gaza – there is a famine of the truth.”

Contradicting that claim, Médecins Sans Frontières said a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the UN said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.

Israel’s attempts to deflect blame, however, are undermined by its single and overarching responsibility: that as an occupying power in a conflict, it is legally obliged to ensure the provision of means of life for those under occupation.

And while Israel has consistently tried to blame Hamas for intercepting food aid, that claim has been undermined by a leaked US assessment, seen by Reuters, which found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group of US-funded humanitarian supplies.

Examining 156 incidents of theft or loss of US-funded supplies reported by US aid partner organisations between October 2023 and May 2025, it said it found “no reports alleging Hamas” benefited from US-funded supplies.

Israel has also recently intensified efforts to blame the UN for the problems with aid distribution, citing a “lack of cooperation from the international community and international organisations”. Israel’s claims are contradicted by clear evidence of its efforts to undermine aid distribution.

Despite international warnings of the humanitarian risks posed by banning Unrwa, the main UN agency for Palestinians and the organisation with the most experience in Gaza, from Israel, its operations were closed down, complicating aid efforts.

Instead Israel, backed by the US, has relied on the private, inexperienced and controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation; its sites have been the focus of numerous mass killings of desperate Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.

Israel’s attempts to hamper with aid efforts have continued. Last week it said it would not renew the work visa of Jonathan Whittall, the most senior UN aid official in Gaza; and a UN spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, told reporters on Thursday that Israel had rejected eight of the 16 UN requests to transport humanitarian aid in Gaza the previous day.

He added that two other requests, initially approved, led to staff facing obstruction on the ground as he described a pattern of “bureaucratic, logistical, administrative and other operational obstacles imposed by Israeli authorities”.

All of which has injected a new sense of urgency into the catastrophe in Gaza as UN agencies warned that they were on the brink of running out of specialised food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children.

“Most malnutrition treatment supplies have been consumed and what is left at facilities will run out very soon if not replenished,” a WHO spokesperson said on Thursday.

More starvation deaths appear inevitable.

Iranian diplomats have met their counterparts from the UK, Germany, and France for nuclear talks, for the first time since Israel launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.

The strikes triggered a 12-day war, which also saw the US bomb a number of Iran’s nuclear sites, bringing US-Iran nuclear talks to an abrupt end.

The three European powers that attended the talks, known as the E3, have threatened to reimpose sanctions on Iran if no progress is made towards negotiating a new nuclear deal by the end of August.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said they held a “serious, frank, and detailed” discussion, and agreed to continue consultations.

Gharibabadi said earlier this week that triggering sanctions would be “completely illegal”.

Sanctions on Iran’s nuclear programme were previously lifted as a result of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was agreed with the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany.

Its followed years of tensions over Iran’s alleged efforts to develop a nuclear weapon – something Tehran has always denied.

Under the deal’s terms, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities and allow in international inspectors.

The US withdrew from the deal in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term, with the leader saying it did too little to stop Iran from creating a pathway to a nuclear bomb. With its withdrawal, all US sanctions were re-imposed on Iran.

Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions.

The UK, Germany and France have threatened to reimpose severe sanctions on Iran unless it agrees to limit its nuclear programme, with a deadline set for October.

As the talks started on Friday, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had indicated it would be ready to restart conversations at a technical level regarding its nuclear programme.

Rafael Grossi also noted that Iran needed to be transparent about its facilities and activities.

“We need to listen to Iran in terms of what they consider should be the precautions to be taken,” he added.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told Iranian state media that the E3 countries should use the meeting to “compensate for their previous unconstructive policies”.

He also accused the three countries of justifying “law-breaking and aggression” by backing the US-Israeli attacks in June, adding that Iran would formally protest about their stance during the current talks.

In June Iran’s parliament suspended cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog after tensions with Israel and the US came to a head.

It came after Israel launched strikes in Iran on 13 June, which Tehran responded to with missile and drone attacks.

The US, one of Israel’s strongest allies, then gave Iran a two-week window to resume diplomatic relations.

During that time, on 20 June, diplomats from Germany, France and the UK met Iran for talks in Geneva seeking de-escalation.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi then said his country was “prepared” to meet E3 representatives again.

But after the Geneva talks, Washington launched its own attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. President Trump said the operation, known as “Operation Midnight Hammer”, had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

A US intelligence assessment released in June suggested the US’s strikes did not destroy the country’s nuclear programme, however, and probably only set it back by months.

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah had been released from French prison earlier Friday after 40 years in jail.

A pro-Palestinian Lebanese fighter jailed since 1984, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, has returned to Beirut after spending more than four decades in a French prison for his involvement in the killings of two diplomats.

French authorities released Abdallah early on Friday on the condition that he never return to France. Family members welcomed him at the airport’s VIP lounge, while dozens of supporters gathered nearby, waving Palestinian and Lebanese Communist Party flags.

Chants and cheers erupted as Abdallah appeared, with many hailing him as a symbol of resistance, AFP news agency reported. Abdallah’s return marks the end of one of France’s longest detentions involving a political prisoner.

Shortly before 3:40am (01:30 GMT) on Friday, a convoy of six vehicles with flashing lights was seen leaving the Lannemezan prison in southern France, according to journalists with the AFP news agency on the ground. A source confirmed the 74-year-old had been freed and later boarded a flight to Lebanon.

Abdallah, who was convicted in 1987 for his role in the killings of United States military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris, had long been eligible for release. However, repeated applications were rejected, often due to pressure from the US, which was a civil party in Abdallah’s case.

Last month, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in favour of his release, effective on Friday, on the condition that Abdallah leave French territory and never return.

His lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP that the former fighter appeared “very happy” during their final visit “even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations”.

Abdallah, the founder of the now-defunct Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions, had declared during a recent visit by a lawmaker that he remained a “militant with a struggle”. French police uncovered submachine guns and communication equipment in one of his flats at the time of his arrest.

Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions and has always insisted he is a “fighter” who has battled for the rights of Palestinians and is not a “criminal”.

The Paris court described his behaviour in prison as irreproachable and said in November that he posed “no serious risk in terms of committing new terrorism acts”.

The appeals court cited the length of Abdallah’s detention and his advanced age, calling his continued imprisonment “disproportionate”. In France, inmates serving life sentences are typically released after less than 30 years.

Abdallah’s family said they would greet him at Beirut’s airport before travelling to his hometown of Kobayat in northern Lebanon, where a reception has been planned.