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Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting

FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaks as he meets with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, in Baghdad, Iraq October 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad/File Photo

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will visit Russia this week ahead of a planned second round of talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at resolving Iran’s decades-long nuclear stand-off with the West.

Araqchi and US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Oman on Saturday, during which Omani envoy Badr al-Busaidi shuttled between the two delegations sitting in different rooms at his palace in Muscat.

Both sides described the talks in Oman as “positive,” although a senior Iranian official told Reuters the meeting “was only aimed at setting the terms of possible future negotiations.”

Italian news agency ANSA reported that Italy had agreed to host the talks’ second round, and Iraq’s state news agency said Araqchi told his Iraqi counterpart that talks would be held “soon” in the Italian capital under Omani mediation.

Tehran has approached the talks warily, doubting the likelihood of an agreement and suspicious of Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iran if there is no deal.

Washington aims to halt Tehran’s sensitive uranium enrichment work – regarded by the United States, Israel and European powers as a path to nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy production.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Araqchi will “discuss the latest developments related to the Muscat talks” with Russian officials.

Moscow, a party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, has supported Tehran’s right to have a civilian nuclear program.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on vital state matters, distrusts the United States, and Trump in particular.

But Khamenei has been forced to engage with Washington in search of a nuclear deal due to fears that public anger at home over economic hardship could erupt into mass protests and endanger the existence of the clerical establishment, four Iranian officials told Reuters in March.

Tehran’s concerns were exacerbated by Trump’s speedy revival of his “maximum pressure” campaign when he returned to the White House in January.

During his first term, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic regime.

Since 2019, Iran has far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on uranium enrichment, producing stocks at a high level of fissile purity, well above what Western powers say is justifiable for a civilian energy program and close to that required for nuclear warheads.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised the alarm regarding Iran’s growing stock of 60% enriched uranium, and reported no real progress on resolving long-running issues, including the unexplained presence of uranium traces at undeclared sites.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi will visit Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, in an attempt to narrow gaps between Tehran and the agency over unresolved issues.

“Continued engagement and cooperation with the agency is essential at a time when diplomatic solutions are urgently needed,” Grossi said on X on Monday.

The post Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Eurovision Director Dismisses Pressure by Former Contestants to Ban Israel From Song Contest

Logos of the Eurovision Song Contest are seen in front of the St. Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland, May 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

The director of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest is ignoring pressure by dozens of former contestants to have the international competition ban Israel because of its military actions in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.

Martin Green said in a statement to the British publication Metro on Tuesday that the Eurovision Song Contest “promotes connections, diversity, and inclusion through music.”

“We all aspire to keep the Eurovision Song Contest positive and inclusive and aspire to show the world as it could be, rather than how it necessarily is,” he added. “The EBU remains aligned with other international organizations that have similarly maintained their inclusive stance towards Israeli participants in major competitions at this time.”

Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan, is a member of the Eurovision Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the song contest. Yuval Raphael will represent Israel in this year’s competition with the heartfelt ballad “New Day Will Rise.” The contest will take place this year in Basel, Switzerland, and Raphael – a survivor of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel – will perform in the second semi-final on May 15. If she advances, she will compete in the grand final on May 17. Switzerland will host the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time since 1989.

More than 70 former contestants of the Eurovision Song Contest demanded in an open letter on Monday that Kan be banned from the competition this year, claiming that the broadcaster is “complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the decades-long regime of apartheid and military occupation against the entire Palestinian people.” The open letter was signed by singers, songwriters, musicians, lyricists, and others from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, France, Iceland, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. The national broadcasters in Iceland, Slovenia, and Spain have also criticized the EBU’s decision to allow Israel to participate in the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest.

Green’s comments defending Israel’s participation in this year’s competition echo similar sentiments recently expressed by an EBU spokesperson. Speaking to HuffPost UK, the EBU representative said the independent media organization makes decisions about the Eurovision based on rules of the song contest, and Kan’s application to join “met all the competition rules.” The spokesperson further noted that the EBU “remains aligned with other international organizations that have similarly maintained their inclusive stance towards Israeli participants in major competitions at this time.”

“The EBU is an association of public service broadcasters who are all eligible to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest every year,” the spokesperson added. “We are not immune to global events but, together, it is our role to ensure the contest remains – at its heart – a universal event that promotes connections, diversity and inclusion through music.”

Israel’s participation in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, was also highly criticized because of the Israel-Hamas war. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets of Malmo to protest Israel’s involvement and Israel’s representative, Eden Golan, experienced intense backlash during the competition, including death threats and boos from audience members. One Eurovision jury member even admitted that he refused to give Golan a single point merely because of his own anti-Israel views. Singers who participated in the contest last year also faced pressure to pull out of the event because of Israel’s involvement.

At the time, Jean Philip de Tender — the deputy director-general of the EBU – said the Eurovision contest is “a music event, which is organized and co-produced by 37 public broadcasters, so it’s not a competition between nations or governments.” He noted that Eurovision does not make decisions based on politics and if the EBU would ban Kan because of something other than competition rules, “that would have been a political decision.”

The post Eurovision Director Dismisses Pressure by Former Contestants to Ban Israel From Song Contest first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Netherlands to Oppose Extension of EU-Israel Cooperation Deal Over Gaza Concerns

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp revealed on Wednesday that the Netherlands would oppose any extension of the EU-Israel Action Plan, which aims to implement an agreement that provides the basis for political and economic cooperation between the two sides, without a formal review first, citing concerns over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

In a letter to the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, the Dutch top diplomat accused Israel of breaching the 2000 EU-Israel Association Agreement, which stipulates that ties between the Jewish state and the 27-member bloc must be “based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.”

“The situation in the Gaza Strip is rapidly deteriorating — it is dramatic, catastrophic,” Veldkamp told the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad. “Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid is in violation of the laws of war.”

Israel has vehemently denied such claims and accusations, noting that, until its recently imposed blockade, it had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians.

“Meanwhile, the [Israeli] War Cabinet is announcing a reoccupation of Gaza. Taken together, this is reason to draw a line in the sand,” the top Dutch diplomat continued, referring to Israel’s expanded offensive against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which may involve seizing control of the Gaza Strip and overseeing aid distribution.

In his letter, Veldkamp also argued that Israel’s newly proposed system for aid distribution, designed to bypass Hamas, seemed inconsistent with the “principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”

Veldkamp, a former ambassador to Israel, informed Kallas that the Netherlands would block European cooperation with Jerusalem until these alleged human rights abuses are thoroughly investigated. He also mentioned that he would bring up these issues during the upcoming two-day EU meeting in Poland.

Israeli officials argue they have gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

The EU-Israel Action Plan, which requires unanimous approval from all EU foreign ministers, underpins cooperation in areas such as climate policy, policing, scientific research, and global poverty relief.

On Wednesday, far-right politician Geert Wilders — whose Party for Freedom is part of the Dutch government — criticized Veldkamp, calling him a “weak minister who sides with anti-Israel protesters” in a post on X.

Earlier this week, Wilders announced he met with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Defense Minister Israel Katz, assuring them of “the support of millions of our people” for the war against “Islamic terror, whether from Hamas, Iran, or the Houthis.”

Last month, Veldkamp requested a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Modi Ephraim to raise concerns over Israel’s expanding ground operations in the war-torn enclave.

“At my request, the Israeli ambassador was summoned this morning to provide clarification on the worrying developments in the Gaza Strip, including the attack on the aid convoy,” the top Dutch diplomat said at the time, referring to a March incident in which several aid workers were reportedly killed along with six Hamas terrorist traveling in a convoy of Palestinian ambulances.

During the meeting, Ephraim “emphasized the expectation that the Netherlands, as a friend of Israel, will support our efforts to dismantle the Hamas threat in Gaza — a terrorist organization that uses civilians as human shields,” the Israeli Embassy said in a statement.

The post Netherlands to Oppose Extension of EU-Israel Cooperation Deal Over Gaza Concerns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Biden’s Gaza Humanitarian Aid Pier Injured Far More US Service Members Than Previously Reported

A US soldier leaves a cordoned-off area as other troops work on a beached vessel, used for delivering aid to Palestinians via a new US-built pier in Gaza, after it got stuck trying to help another vessel behind it, on the Mediterranean coast in Ashdod, Israel, May 25, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Over 60 US military personnel were injured during the construction and deployment of former President Joe Biden’s humanitarian aid pier off the coast of Gaza, indicating that the failed project was more dangerous than previously believed, according to a new report released by the Pentagon Inspector General on Tuesday. 

The new figures are substantially higher than the previously reported figures, which claimed three US service members were injured while working on the pier. 

The investigation was also unable to discern how many of the injuries occurred while actually working on the humanitarian aid pier. 

“Based on the information provided, we were not able to determine which of these 62 injuries occurred during the performance of duties or resulted off duty or from pre-existing medical conditions,” the report said.

In May 2024, Army Sgt. Quandarius Stanley incurred a severe injury from a forklift incident while working on the pier. Stanley eventually succumbed to his injuries and died at a Veterans Affair hospital five months later.

Moreover, the report alleges that inadequate materials were used in the construction of the pier, potentially contributing to its eventual structural failures. 

US forces constructed the pier off the Gaza coast in April 2024 to streamline and accelerate transportation of humanitarian aid. The Biden administration ordered the construction in response to allegations that the Israeli government had not done enough to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the US Defense Department’s press secretary under the Biden administration, subsequently acknowledged that none of the 569 metric tons of aid delivered across the pier actually made it into the hands of Gaza residents. Ryder told reporters that the Biden administration’s “humanitarian partners” had not been able to distribute the aid to Palestinian civilians. Moreover, Ryder explained that some of the trucks delivering aid to warehouses in Gaza were “intercepted.”

The project was eventually scrapped after rough seas caused four transportation vessels to detach from their moorings and drift away from the pier. Two of the vessels subsequently beached near the pier and another two landed on the shore of Ashkelon, a city in southern Israel. 

The failed project became a contentious issue in the US Congress, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) advancing a War Powers Resolution to force the Biden administration to abandon the humanitarian aid pier.

“The Biden White House’s foreign policy is utterly backwards,” Cruz told Punchbowl News in May 2024. “He is blocking weapons to Israel … and he has just recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars building this pier in Gaza to continue providing aid to Gaza that will go directly to Hamas.”

The post Biden’s Gaza Humanitarian Aid Pier Injured Far More US Service Members Than Previously Reported first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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