Headline

Bully – Iran’s Supreme Leader Declines Nuclear Talks With Trump

Published

3 months ago

March 9, 2025

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday slammed what he described as bullying tactics a day after US President Donald Trump threatened military action.

“Some bully governments — I really don’t know of any more appropriate term for some foreign figures and leaders than the word bullying — insist on negotiations,” Khamenei told officials after Trump threatened military action if Iran refuses to engage in talks on its nuclear programme.

“Their negotiations are not aimed at solving problems, they aim at domination,” Khamenei said.

On Friday, Trump said he had written to Iran’s supreme leader, urging new talks on the country’s nuclear programme but warning of possible military action if it refuses.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran had yet to receive any letter from the US president by Saturday.

“We have heard of it (the letter) but we haven’t received anything,” he told state television.

Khamenei accused the bullying powers of deliberately setting new conditions they did not expect Iran to meet.

“They are setting new expectations that they think will definitely not be met by Iran,” he said, without naming the United States or referring to Trump’s comments.

On Friday, Araghchi told AFP in an interview that Iran would not negotiate under “maximum pressure”.

The policy, reinstated by Trump on his return to the White House in January, saw him reimpose sweeping sanctions on Tehran during his first term after abandoning the nuclear accord formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Struck between Tehran and major powers in 2015, the deal had offered relief from sanctions in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear activities.

Tehran has in recent months engaged in diplomatic efforts with the three European parties to the deal — Britain, France and Germany — aimed at resolving issues surrounding its nuclear ambitions.

However on Saturday, Khamenei condemned the three governments for “declaring that Iran has not fulfilled its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA”.

“You say that Iran has not fulfilled its commitments under the JCPOA. Okay, have you fulfilled your commitments under the JCPOA?” he asked.

– Peaceful nature –

Khamenei recalled that Tehran had abided by the terms of the JCPOA for a whole year after Trump abandoned it in 2018 before beginning to roll back on its own commitments.

He said there had been “no other way” following legislation by the Iranian parliament.

Iran has since sharply ramped up its enrichment of uranium far beyond the limits set by the JCPOA.

US officials now estimate that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon within weeks if it chose to do so.

Tehran has consistently denied pursuing a nuclear arsenal, emphasising the peaceful nature of its programme.

Officials have always cited a religious decree issued by Khamenei that prohibits the development of such weapons.

Last month, Khamenei reiterated his opposition to negotiations with the United States, calling the idea “unwise” after Trump called for a new nuclear deal.

Khamenei charged that Washington “ruined, violated, and tore up” the 2015 agreement.

In 2019, more than a year after Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, Japan’s then prime minister Shinzo Abe visited Iran in an attempt to mediate.

But Khamenei firmly rejected the possibility of talks with Washington, saying he did not “consider Trump as a person worthy of exchanging messages with”.

Headline

Trouble Looms As Trump Gives Iran Two Weeks To Avoid US Airstrikes

Published

6 hours ago

June 21, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran had a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could make a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier.

Trump added that he was not inclined to stop Israel attacking Iran because it was “winning,” and was dismissive of European efforts to mediate an end to the conflict.

“I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump told reporters when asked if he could decide to strike Iran before that.

He added that the aim was to “see whether or not people come to their senses.”

Trump had said in a statement on Thursday that he would “make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks” because there was a “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran.

Those comments had been widely seen as opening a two-week window for negotiations to end the war between Israel and Iran, with the European powers rushing to talks with Tehran.

But his latest remarks indicated Trump could still make his decision before that if he feels that there has been no progress towards dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump meanwhile dismissed talks that European powers Britain, France, Germany and the EU had with Iran’s foreign minister in Geneva on Friday.

Europe ‘didn’t help’

“They didn’t help,” he said as he arrived in Morristown, New Jersey, ahead of a fundraising dinner at his nearby golf club.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the talks in Geneva that Tehran would not resume negotiations with the United States until Israel stopped its attacks.

But Trump was reluctant.

“It’s very hard to make that request right now,” Trump said.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody’s losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”

Trump meanwhile doubled down on his claims that Iran is weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb, despite divisions in his own administration about the intelligence behind his assessment.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, said in a report in March that Iran was not close to having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

“She’s wrong,” Trump said of Gabbard, a longtime opponent of US foreign intervention whom Trump tapped to coordinate the sprawling US spy community.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

AFP

Headline

Trump Orders Mass Layoffs At Voice Of America, Other US-funded Media

Published

6 hours ago

June 21, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday ordered mass layoffs at Voice of America and other government-funded media, moving ahead with gutting the outlets despite legal disputes and criticism that US adversaries will benefit.

Kari Lake, a fervent Trump supporter named to a senior role at the US Agency for Global Media, said the notices were a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

Lake said in a statement that she would work with the State Department and Congress to “make sure the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”

Trump issued an order in March that froze Voice of America (VOA) for the first time since it was founded in 1942.

Termination notices were sent to 639 employees on Friday, after previous offers of voluntary departures and dismissals of contractors.

Some 1,400 positions have been eliminated, with only 250 remaining, Lake said.

Voice of America layoffs included journalists from its Persian service who had briefly been brought back to work after Israel attacked Iran a week ago.

Employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, which come even though Congress had already appropriated funding.

The mass firing decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds the US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” the three plaintiffs wrote in a statement.

“Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice,” said the three complainants, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the “decimation of US broadcasting leaves authoritarian propaganda unchecked by US backed independent media and is a perversion of the law and congressional intent.”

“It is a dark day for the truth,” she wrote on X.

Trump frequently attacks media outlets and has scoffed at the so-called editorial firewall at VOA which prevents the government from intervening in its coverage, something he at times has considered too critical of his administration.

One outlet preserved by the mass cuts has been Radio Marti, which broadcasts into Cuba and enjoys support from anti-communist Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.

Other outlets funded by the US government have included Radio Free Asia, which was set up to provide news to Asian countries without a free press and is now operating in a limited capacity.

Radio Free Europe, formed with a similar mission for Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.

AFP

Headline

Thousands Protest In Tehran Against Israel

Published

11 hours ago

June 20, 2025

Editor

Thousands of people joined a protest against Israel in the Iranian capital on Friday after weekly prayers, chanting slogans in support of their leaders, images on state television showed.

“This is the Friday of the Iranian nation’s solidarity and resistance across the country,” the news anchor said.

Footage showed protesters in Tehran holding up photographs of commanders killed since the start of the war with Israel, while others waved the flags of Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“I will sacrifice my life for my leader,” read a protester’s banner, a reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to state television, protests took place in other cities around the country, including in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south.

AFP