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IAEA Chief Says Iran Could Be Enriching Uranium Within Months
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi was quoted as saying on Sunday, raising doubts about how effective US strikes to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program have been.
US officials have stated that their strikes obliterated key nuclear sites in Iran, although US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran is enriching uranium to worrisome levels.
“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi told CBS News in an interview.
“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he added, according to the transcript of an interview on “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan due to air on Sunday.
Saying it wanted to remove any chance of Tehran developing nuclear weapons, Israel launched attacks on Iran earlier this month, igniting a 12-day air war that the US eventually joined.
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Grossi, who heads the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the strikes on sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan had significantly set back Iran’s ability to convert and enrich uranium.
However, Western powers stress that Iran’s nuclear advances provide it with an irreversible knowledge gain, suggesting that while losing experts or facilities may slow progress, the advances are permanent.
“Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology,” Grossi said. “So you cannot disinvent this. You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”
Grossi was also asked about reports of Iran moving its stock of highly enriched uranium in the run-up to the US strikes and said it was not clear where that material was.
“So some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved,” he said.
The post IAEA Chief Says Iran Could Be Enriching Uranium Within Months first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK Police Arrest 55 at Parliament Rally for Banned Palestine Action Group
A detained demonstrator sits inside a police van, following a protest in support of the Palestine Action group in Parliament Square in London, Britain, July 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
Fifty-five people were arrested at a rally for the banned Palestine Action group outside Britain’s parliament on Saturday, London’s Metropolitan Police said.
The crowd in Parliament Square had been waving placards supporting the group that was banned this month under anti-terrorism legislation, the force said in a post on X.
People from the rally, some wearing black and white Palestinian scarves, were taken away in police vans.
British lawmakers proscribed the group earlier this month after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes in protest against Britain’s support for Israel.
Membership of Palestine Action now carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
The group has called the decision “authoritarian,” and a challenge to the ban will be heard at London’s High Court on Monday.
Palestine Action is among groups that have regularly targeted defense firms and other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza.
Police have arrested scores of the group’s supporters at rallies across Britain since the ban came in
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US Says Attack on West Bank Palestinian Church Was ‘Act of Terror’
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called on Saturday for the perpetrators of an attack on a Palestinian church in the West Bank blamed on Israeli settlers to be prosecuted, calling it an “act of terror.”
Huckabee said he had visited the Christian town of Taybeh, where clerics said Israeli settlers had started a fire near a cemetery and a 5th-century church on July 8.
“It is an act of terror, and it is a crime,” Huckabee said in a statement, “Those who carry out acts of terror and violence in Taybeh – or anywhere – (should) be found and be prosecuted. Not just reprimanded, that’s not enough.”
Israel’s government has not commented on the incident, but has previously denounced such acts.
On Tuesday, Huckabee said he had asked Israel to “aggressively investigate” the killing of a Palestinian American beaten by settlers in the West Bank, similarly describing it as a “criminal and terrorist act.”
Huckabee is a staunch supporter of Israeli settlements and his comments are a rare and pointed public intervention by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Trump in January rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Settler attacks on Palestinians and Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank have risen since the start of Israel’s war on the Hamas terror group in Gaza in October 2023, though violence has long simmered there.
The United Nations’ highest court said last year that Israel’s settlements in territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war, including the West Bank, were illegal.
Israel disputes this, citing biblical and historical ties to the land as well as security needs.
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Israel and Syria Agree to Ceasefire, US Envoy Tom Barrack Announces
US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Special Envoy Keith Kellogg attend the Turkey-US-Ukraine trilateral talks in Istanbul, Turkey, May 16, 2025. Photo: Arda Kucukkaya/Turkish Foreign Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli and Syrian leaders have agreed to a ceasefire, US envoy to Turkey and Syria Tom Barrack announced on the X platform.
Earlier in the week Israel launched an air campaign in Syria aimed to protect Syrian Druze — part of a minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.
Barrack said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, with the mediation of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, agreed to a ceasefire “embraced” by Turkey, Jordan and other unidentified neighbors.
There is no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office or the Syrian Presidency.
The post Israel and Syria Agree to Ceasefire, US Envoy Tom Barrack Announces first appeared on Algemeiner.com.