Iran Nuclear

A senior aide to Iran’s supreme leader warned on Monday that any new aggression would draw a harsher response, following comments by US President Donald Trump about possible further attacks on Iran.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday he would support possible Israeli strikes on Iran if the Islamic Republic develops its ballistic missile or nuclear programs, warning Tehran against rebuilding military capabilities destroyed in a brief June war.

Iraq is seeking to broker a face-to-face meeting between Iranian and US officials in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said on Saturday, more than six months after Israeli and US attacks on Iran put bilateral talks on hold.

Western hostility toward Tehran stems from its challenge to the global order rather than its nuclear program, Iran’s supreme leader said, arguing that the core dispute is ideological.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President George W. Bush in 2001 that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons but that Moscow would not assist Tehran in acquiring sensitive technologies, according to a newly released memorandum of their first face-to-face meeting.

Iran will not yield to international pressure to allow renewed inspections of nuclear sites hit by the United States in June, the head of the country’s atomic agency said on Wednesday.

Mohammad Javad Zarif’s latest Foreign Affairs article follows a familiar pattern in his narrative: recasting Tehran’s militarization and domestic repression as reactive responses to external pressure rather than deliberate internal choices.

The United States and Iran traded sharply worded accusations on Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council, with Washington offering conditional talks while Tehran blamed the standoff on US withdrawal from the nuclear deal and strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June.

Veto-holding powers clashed at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday over Iran’s nuclear program, with China and Russia denouncing Western efforts to revive UN sanctions as legally invalid.

Iran has halted contacts with Steve Witkoff, the United States’ senior negotiator, for several months, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, while signaling that Tehran remains open to a negotiated agreement it describes as fair and balanced.

Israeli officials are preparing to brief Donald Trump on options for possible new military strikes on Iran, citing concerns that Tehran is expanding its ballistic missile program, NBC News reported on Saturday.

The spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said the country has made significant nuclear advances, and that developing an atomic bomb would be very easy if Tehran chose to pursue it.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by phone with UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Friday, saying Tehran is open to diplomacy based on respect.

Russia's foreign minister on Friday urged UN nuclear watchdog chief to keep what he called a neutral, non-politicized approach to Iran’s nuclear file, adding any renewed cooperation must be on terms Tehran considers fair.

Former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi suggested Iran and the United States could resume talks by changing the framing of negotiations to a shared goal that Tehran should not have nuclear weapons.

Iran explored advanced nuclear weapon concepts based on pure fusion before its war with Israel, an Israeli media report said, describing research into a theoretical approach that does not require uranium or plutonium.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he hopes there will be no war with Iran and urged Tehran to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, Israeli media outlet Ynet reported early Friday.

Satellite imagery shows new activity at an Iranian uranium enrichment facility damaged during a brief June war, a US-based think tank said on Thursday, raising the possibility that Iran is seeking to recover stocks of its highly enriched uranium.