United Arab Emirates, DUBAI (AP) There is cautious optimism for longer-term peace after U.S. President Donald Trump said that U.S. and Iranian officials will speak next week and Israel and Iran appeared to follow the shaky ceasefire for a second day on Wednesday.
At a NATO conference on Tuesday, the 12th day of the conflict, Trump, who assisted in negotiating the ceasefire, told reporters that he was not especially interested in resuming talks with Iran because U.S. strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. After its attack over the weekend, an Iranian official earlier in the day questioned if the United States could be trusted.
Trump remarked, “I don’t know, we might sign an agreement.” In my opinion, the conflict is over because they fought.
Although U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has stated that direct and indirect communication has occurred between the two nations, Iran has not recognized any discussions scheduled for next week. Israel’s attack on Iran forced the cancellation of a sixth round of U.S.-Iranian talks that were set to take place in Oman earlier this month.
Trump had earlier declared that the truce was going great and that Iran would not get a bomb or enrich itself.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program will not be abandoned. Its parliament voted to expedite a plan that would essentially halt the nation’s collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog that has been keeping an eye on the program for years, highlighting the difficult road ahead.
Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf attacked the IAEA prior to the vote for not even pretending to denounce the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Sunday.
Because of this, Qalibaf informed parliamentarians, Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will proceed more quickly and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will halt collaboration with the IAEA until nuclear facility security is guaranteed.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, claimed that he wrote to Iran about starting nuclear facility inspections again. Iran claims to have transferred its highly enriched uranium before the U.S. strikes, among other things, and Grossi stated that his inspectors must reevaluate the nation’s stocks.
“We must go back,” he said. We must participate.
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, expressed his optimism that Tehran would return to the negotiation. The 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program included France, but it started to fall apart when Trump withdrew the United States during his first term. Throughout the conflict, Macron had several conversations with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Rafael Grossi, the director of the foreign Atomic Energy Agency, told French channel France 2 on Wednesday that Iran needs to get back to working with foreign inspectors as soon as possible. Since the start of the conflict, the IAEA has lost sight of sensitive nuclear items.
According to Grossi, Iran is legally required under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to collaborate with the IAEA.
Inspections are impossible during a war. However, now that the fighting has stopped and considering how delicate this material is, I think it is best for everyone if we get back to work as soon as possible, he remarked.
U.S. intelligence services have determined that Tehran is not actively pursuing a weapon, and Iran has long said that its nuclear program is peaceful. But according to Israeli leaders, Iran could quickly put together a nuclear weapon.
Although Israel has never admitted it, it is generally accepted that it is the sole Middle Eastern nation possessing nuclear weapons.
Questions over effectiveness of the US strikes
Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has been set back by many years, according to the Israel Atomic Energy Commission’s assessment. It provided no proof to support its assertion.
Trump said that the U.S. strikes, which targeted three Iranian nuclear sites, totally and totally destroyed the nation’s nuclear program. Trump sneered and claimed that it would take years to restore Iran’s nuclear program when a U.S. intelligence analysis revealed that it had only been set back a few months.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, acknowledged that the American B-2 bombers’ deployment of bunker-buster bombs had caused substantial damage.
He refused to elaborate when he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that “there’s no doubt that our nuclear installations have been badly damaged.”
Given that the bill in parliament only discusses suspending, not terminating, collaboration with the IAEA, he seemed to imply that Iran might not permanently bar the agency’s inspectors. Additionally, he maintained that Iran had the right to develop a nuclear energy program.
He stated that Iran is committed to protecting that right at all costs.
Witkoff stated late Tuesday on Fox News that Iran’s demand for negotiations that Israel halt its campaign had been met and that Israel and the United States had succeeded in their goal of completely destroying Iran’s enrichment capacity.
“The evidence speaks for itself,” he remarked. Nobody is firing at one another. It’s finished.
Hopes for a long-term peace agreement
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions, an Israeli official said that the ceasefire deal with Iran was only a “quiet for quiet” pact that would not advance any understanding of Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump is now seeking a comprehensive peace deal that goes beyond the truce, Witkoff said Fox News.
Witkoff stated that we are already communicating with one another, not only directly but also through interlocutors, and that the discussions were encouraging.
Although Iran was theoretically open to negotiations, Baghaei, the Iranian spokesman, claimed that Washington’s attacks on nuclear sites had sabotaged diplomacy and that national security came first.
According to him, we must determine whether the other parties are sincere when they discuss diplomacy or if it is just another one of their strategies to cause additional issues for my nation and the area.
According to Grossi, Iran and the international community ought to take advantage of the ceasefire in order to find a lasting diplomatic solution.
He added that despite the negative effects of military combat, there is now a chance, an opportunity. We must not pass up that chance.
A rare video by Mossad
Israel disclosed information on the secret operations and intelligence that it claimed enabled it to successfully target Iranian nuclear scientists, military leaders, and critical infrastructure.
David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence organization, commended the CIA for being a crucial ally and his own officers for working for years to accomplish what was initially unthinkable in a rare video that was made public.
In a Facebook post that included the footage, the agency stated, “We assisted the air force in striking the Iranian nuclear project, establishing aerial superiority in Iranian skies, and reducing the missile threat thanks to accurate intelligence, advanced technologies, and operational capabilities beyond imagination.”
The military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, said that during the conflict, commandos had conducted covert operations far within enemy territory.
Tehran reported 5,332 injuries and 606 fatalities in Iran on Tuesday. According to data provided Wednesday by the Human Rights Activists group in Washington, Israeli strikes on Iran may have killed at least 1,054 people and injured 4,476 more.
According to the group, which has released comprehensive death tolls from Iran’s several uprisings, 318 security forces and 417 civilians were among the dead.
According to officials, at least 28 people were murdered and over 1,000 were injured in Israel.
Iran has put six inmates to death in the last two weeks on suspicion of spying for Israel, including three on Wednesday.
