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Iran on Monday ruled out suspending uranium enrichment as part of any nuclear deal with the United States — a key demand from Washington in successive rounds of talks between the foes.The issue has come into focus in recent weeks, with Iran staunchly defending its right to enrich uranium as part of what it says is a civilian nuclear programme, while the United States wants it to stop.The negotiations, which began in April, are the highest-level contact between the two sides since the United States quit a landmark 2015 nuclear accord during US President Donald Trump’s first term.Trump described the latest round of discussions in Rome as “very, very good”, while Iran’s foreign minister described it as “complicated”.Since returning to office, Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on the Islamic republic, backing diplomacy but warning of military action if it fails.Tehran wants a new deal that would ease sanctions battering its economy.Western governments and Israel suspect Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons — a charge it strongly denies.US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who is leading the talks for Washington, said the United States “could not authorise even one percent” of enrichment by Iran.- ‘Totally false’ -On Monday, Iran ruled out suspending its uranium enrichment.”This information is a figment of the imagination and totally false,” said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, asked about the possibility during a press briefing in Tehran.Iran insists it has the right to a civilian nuclear programme, including for energy, and considers the US demand a red line that violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory.Following the latest round of Omani-mediated talks in Rome, Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator Abbas Araghchi downplayed the progress, stressing “the negotiations are too complicated to be resolved in two or three meetings”.Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said the fifth round concluded “with some but not conclusive progress”, adding he hoped “the remaining issues” would be clarified in the coming days.But on Sunday Trump said the ongoing discussions had been “very, very good”.”I think we could have some good news on the Iran front,” he said, adding that an announcement could come “over the next two days.”No date has yet been set for the next talks, according to Iran’s foreign ministry.The talks came ahead of a June meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, during which Iran’s nuclear activities will be reviewed.They also come before the October expiry of the 2015 accord, which aimed to allay US and European Union suspicions that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons capability, an ambition that Tehran has consistently denied.Iran has ramped up its nuclear activities since the collapse of the 2015 deal, and is now enriching uranium to 60 percent — far above the deal’s 3.67 percent cap but below the 90 percent needed for weapons-grade material.Experts say that uranium enriched beyond 20 percent can be further enriched to a weapons-grade level quickly.Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to visit Oman this week.

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was given a hero’s welcome by supporters on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed.After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the French festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d’Or for his latest movie, “It Was Just an Accident”.With some fans concerned that Panahi could face trouble on his return to Iran, he arrived without incident in the early hours of Monday at Tehran’s main international airport, named after the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.Panahi was cheered by supporters waiting in the public area as he descended the escalator from passport control to baggage collection, footage posted by the Dadban legal monitor showed on social media.One person could be heard shouting “Woman. Life. Freedom!” — the slogan of the 2022-2023 protest movement that shook the Iranian authorities. On exiting, he was greeted by around a dozen supporters who had stayed up to welcome him, according to footage posted on Instagram by the Iranian director Mehdi Naderi and broadcast by the Iran International Channel, which is based outside Iran.Smiling broadly and waving, he was cheered, applauded, hugged and presented with flowers. “Fresh blood in the veins of Iranian independent cinema,” Naderi wrote.”He arrived in Tehran early this morning” and “has returned home,” French film producer Philippe Martin told AFP, citing his entourage.”He has even learned that he has obtained a visa to go to a festival in Sydney in about ten days’ time,” he said. The Sydney Film Festival has a retrospective of his work called “Cinema in Rebellion”.- ‘Gesture of resistance’ -The warm welcome at the airport contrasted with the lukewarm reaction from Iranian state media and officials to the first Palme d’Or for an Iranian filmmaker since “The Taste of Cherry” by the late Abbas Kiarostami in 1997.While evoked by state media including the IRNA news agency, Panahi’s triumph has received only thin coverage inside Iran and has also sparked a diplomatic row with France.French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called his victory “a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime’s oppression” in a post on X, prompting Tehran to summon France’s charge d’affaires to protest the “insulting” comments.”I am not an art expert, but we believe that artistic events and art in general should not be exploited to pursue political objectives,” said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei.The film is politically charged, showing five Iranians confronting a man they believe tortured them in prison, a story inspired by Panahi’s own time in detention.After winning the prize, Panahi made a call for freedom in Iran. “Let’s set aside all problems, all differences. What matters most right now is our country and the freedom of our country.”Fellow Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who presented his politically-charged latest film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” at the 2024 festival after fleeing Iran, paid tribute to Panahi.”It won’t be long before ‘It Was Just an Accident’ reaches its primary audience: the people of Iran,” Rasoulof wrote on Instagram, adding that “the decayed and hollow machinery of censorship under the Islamic Republic has been pushed back”.

European stock markets rallied Monday after US President Donald Trump delayed 50-percent tariffs on the European Union until July 9 to give more time for negotiations.Trump sent the markets into a tailspin again on Friday when he threatened to hit EU goods with the huge tariff from June 1 as talks were “going nowhere”.Along with …

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Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was given a hero’s welcome by supporters on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed.After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the French festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d’Or for his latest movie, “It Was Just an Accident”.With some fans concerned that Panahi could face trouble on his return to Iran, he arrived without incident at Tehran’s main international airport, named after the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the early hours of Monday.”He arrived in Tehran early this morning” and “has returned home,” French film producer Philippe Martin told AFP, citing his entourage.”He has even learned that he has obtained a visa to go to a festival in Sydney in about ten days’ time,” he said.Panahi was cheered by supporters waiting in the public area as he descended the escalator from passport control to baggage collection, footage posted by the Dadban legal monitor showed on social media.One person could be heard shouting “Woman. Life. Freedom!” — the slogan of the 2022-2023 protest movement that shook the Iranian authorities. On exiting, he was greeted by around a dozen supporters who had stayed up to welcome him, according to footage posted on Instagram by the Iranian director Mehdi Naderi and broadcast by the Iran International Channel, which is based outside Iran.Smiling broadly and waving, he was cheered, applauded, hugged and presented with flowers. “Fresh blood in the veins of Iranian independent cinema,” Naderi wrote.- ‘Gesture of resistance’ -The warm welcome at the airport contrasted with the lukewarm reaction from Iranian state media and officials to the first Palme d’Or for an Iranian filmmaker since “The Taste of Cherry” by the late Abbas Kiarostami in 1997.While evoked by state media including the IRNA news agency, Panahi’s triumph has received only thin coverage inside Iran and has also sparked a diplomatic row with France.French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called his victory “a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime’s oppression” in a post on X, prompting Tehran to summon France’s charge d’affaires to protest the “insulting” comments.”I am not an art expert, but we believe that artistic events and art in general should not be exploited to pursue political objectives,” said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei.The film is politically charged, showing five Iranians confronting a man they believe tortured them in prison, a story inspired by Panahi’s own time in detention.After winning the prize, Panahi made a call for freedom in Iran. “Let’s set aside all problems, all differences. What matters most right now is our country and the freedom of our country.”

Rescuers said Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them in a school-turned-shelter, as European allies ramped up their criticism of Israel.While the war raged on, mediators presented a proposal for a 70-day ceasefire and hostage-release deal to Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian source said.The territory’s civil defence agency said many of the casualties at the school in Gaza City were children, while the Israeli military said the site was housing “key terrorists”. Israel has stepped up a renewed offensive to destroy Hamas, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a blockade since early March that has sparked severe food and medical shortages.It has also triggered international criticism, with European and Arab leaders meeting in Spain calling for an end to the “inhumane” and “senseless” war, while humanitarian groups said the trickle of aid was not nearly enough.In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: “I no longer understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal.”The impact on Gazan civilians “can no longer be justified”, he added.Nevertheless, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin would continue selling weapons to Israel.In Gaza City, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed “at least 33, with dozens injured, mostly children”.The Israeli military said it had “struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre embedded in an area”, adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.Another strike killed at least 19 people in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Bassal said.- Truce proposal -A Palestinian source meanwhile said that mediators proposed a 70-day ceasefire and the release of 10 Israeli hostages alongside some Palestinian prisoners.A Hamas source said shortly after that the group had accepted the proposal for what would be the war’s third truce, saying it came from US envoy Steve Witkoff.The Israeli military said on Monday that over “the past 48 hours, the (air force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip”.It also said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward communities in Israel Monday, as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city’s eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.”Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted,” it said.Later on Monday, it issued an evacuation order for areas of Khan Yunis, saying they had been the site of rocket launches.The same day, as Arab and European nations gathered to seek an end to the war, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel.He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel”, describing the territory as humanity’s “open wound”.- ‘Hunger, desperation’ -Israel last week partially eased an aid blockade on Gaza that had exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine.COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that “107 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid… were transferred” into Gaza on Sunday.But aid agencies insist that is nowhere near enough, at just a fraction of what was allowed in during a two-month ceasefire.While Israel has restricted aid into Gaza, the war has made growing food next to impossible, with the UN saying on Monday just five percent of Gaza’s farmland was now useable.Meanwhile, Jake Wood, the head of a US-backed group preparing to move aid into Gaza, announced his resignation, saying it was impossible to do his job in line with principles of neutrality and independence.The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has vowed to distribute about 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation, and said in a statement it would begin “direct aid delivery” on Monday.The UN and international aid agencies have said they will not cooperate with GHF and have heavily criticised its plans.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 3,822 people had been killed in the territory since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,977, mostly civilians.Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.

Southeast Asian leaders met Monday in Kuala Lumpur for their first summit since US President Donald Trump’s tariffs upended global economic norms, with the trade-dependent nations expected to issue a joint message of deep concern.The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN’s) strategy of nurturing diverse economic alliances was on full display as Chinese Premier Li …

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Israeli police deployed near the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City on Monday ahead of annual celebrations marking Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem, held this year under the shadow of the war in Gaza.Jerusalem Day commemorates what Israel considers the reunification of the city under its control following the Arab-Israeli war.Every year, thousands of Israeli nationalists, many of them religious Jews, march through Jerusalem and its annexed Old City, including in predominantly Palestinian neighbourhoods, waving Israeli flags, dancing and sometimes shouting inflammatory slogans.The route ends at the Western Wall — the last remnant of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD — the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray.”After so many years that the people of Israel were not here in Jerusalem and in the land of Israel, we arrived here and conquered Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall,” said 21-year-old Yeshiva student Yosef Azoulai.”So we celebrate this day in which we won over all our enemies, and we’re here now thanking God for this great miracle.”Events began Sunday evening, as is customary with Jewish holidays, with crowds unfurling a giant Israeli flag in the plaza facing the Western Wall.On Monday morning, far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which Palestinians see as a provocation.The site is Islam’s third-holiest and a symbol of Palestinian national identity. Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, it is also Judaism’s holiest place, though Jews are forbidden from praying there.In a video from the site, Ben Gvir said he had “ascended to the Temple Mount for Jerusalem Day, and prayed for victory in the war” in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack.It is the second Jerusalem Day since the war began, amid renewed calls by some Israeli right-wing figures to annex Palestinian territory.In 2021, Hamas launched rockets towards Jerusalem as marchers approached the Old City, sparking a 12-day war and outbreaks of violence in Israel between Jews and Arabs.On Monday, the Israeli army said three projectiles were launched from Gaza, two falling inside the territory and one intercepted.- Flowers of peace -Skirmishes are common during the event, especially in the streets of the Old City, where some marchers have been known to chant racist slogans.Last year, two journalists — including a Palestinian photographer — were assaulted by teenage marchers.Many Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, view the march as a provocation. Authorities sometimes order Palestinian shops in the Old City to shut.This year, shopkeepers told AFP police had warned them not to speak to journalists.In a counter-event, peace activists staged a “march of flowers” to challenge what they see as the flag march’s divisive message.”We will give flowers of peace to residents of Jerusalem, especially, Muslims, Christians,” said organiser Gadi Gvaryahu of Tag Meir, an umbrella group promoting coexistence.Orly Likhovski of the Israel Religious Action Center said those taking part were “not willing to accept that this day is marked by violence and racism”, adding they hoped to represent “a Jewish voice for a different kind of Jerusalem”.Some Palestinians accepted the flowers.One elderly man near Damascus Gate politely refused, saying: “Do you see what is happening in Gaza? I’m sorry, but I cannot accept.”Later, teenage marchers were seen tearing up flowers and tossing them into the air.- Police out in force -Police said Sunday they were deploying “thousands” of officers to ensure security.In a rare move, the Israeli cabinet was set to meet nearby in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, home to an archaeological site known as the City of David — believed to mark the location of ancient Jerusalem during biblical times.Since June 1967, Israeli settlement in the eastern part of the city — considered illegal under international law — has expanded, drawing regular international criticism.Israel considers Jerusalem its indivisible capital, though the international community does not recognise this.During his first term, however, President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem after declaring the city Israel’s capital.On Sunday evening, his ambassador to the country, Mike Huckabee, and visiting US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem briefly attended the commemorations at the Western Wall.