The United States on Tuesday condemned South Africa’s decision to expel Israel’s top diplomat last week, a State Department spokesperson said, calling the African nation’s step a part of prioritizing “grievance politics.”

“Expelling a diplomat for calling out the African National Congress party’s ties to Hamas and other antisemitic radicals prioritizes grievance politics over the good of South Africa and its citizens,” Tommy Pigott, the State Department’s deputy spokesperson, said on X.

South Africa’s embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.

On Friday, South Africa declared the top diplomat at Israel’s embassy persona non grata and ordered him out within 72 hours.

It accused him of “unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice,” including insulting South Africa’s president.

Israel responded by expelling South Africa’s senior diplomatic representative to its country.

Relations between the countries have been strained since South Africa brought a genocide case over Israel’s defensive military campaign against Hamas in Gaza at the International Court of Justice. Israel has rejected the case as baseless, calling it an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention and noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.

The genocide case has also contributed to US President Donald Trump’s attacks on Pretoria, including verbal scolding, trade sanctions, and an executive order last year cutting all US funding.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics, actively confronting the Jewish state on the international stage.

Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Hamas, hosting officials from the Palestinian terrorist group and expressing solidarity with their “cause.”

In one instance, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led a crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Russia‘s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that a proposal to remove uranium from Iran as part of a deal to ease US concerns was still on the table, but that it was for Tehran to decide whether or not to remove it.

“Russia once offered to export Iran‘s enriched uranium reserves to its territory. This initiative is still on the table,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.

“Only Iranians have the right to dispose of them, including deciding whether to export them outside the territory of Iran and, in case of a positive decision, where to export them to or not,” she said.

The US and Iran are due to hold talks in Oman on Friday after Tehran requested a change of venue to limit negotiations to its nuclear program, a regional official said, with a build-up of US forces in the Middle East raising fears of a confrontation.

Iran wanted the meeting to take place in Oman as a continuation of previous rounds of talks held in the Gulf Arab country on its nuclear program, asking for a change of location from Turkey to avoid any expansion of the discussions to issues such as Tehran’s ballistic missiles, the regional official said.

Iran has said it will not make concessions on its formidable ballistic missile program — one of the biggest in the Middle East — calling that a red line in negotiations.

Tehran, which says it replenished its stockpile of ballistic missiles since coming under attack from Israel last year, has warned that it will unleash its missiles to defend the Islamic Republic if its security is under threat.

The regional official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iran had since the beginning stressed that it would only discuss its nuclear program, while Washington wanted other issues on the agenda.

Oil prices extended gains on Wednesday after the US shot down an Iranian drone and armed Iranian boats approached a US-flagged vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, rekindling fears of an escalation between Washington and Tehran.

IRAN SOUGHT BILATERAL TALKS

Trump has warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of air strikes and stirred fears of a wider war.

On Tuesday, the US military shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, the US military said, in an incident first reported by Reuters.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday: “We are negotiating with them right now.” He did not elaborate and declined to say where he expected talks to take place.

A source familiar with the situation said Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was due to take part in the talks, along with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.

Ministers from several other countries in the region including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates had also been expected to attend, but the regional source told Reuters that Tehran wanted only bilateral talks with the US.

In June, the United States struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in at the close of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign.

More recently, the US navy built up forces in the region following Iran‘s violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest since Iran‘s 1979 revolution.

Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene, has since demanded nuclear concessions from Iran, sending a flotilla to its coast.

Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried a US strike could break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back onto the streets, according to six current and former Iranian officials.

The priority of the diplomatic effort is to avoid conflict and de-escalate tension, a regional official told Reuters earlier.

TANKER INCIDENT

Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for the resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and an end to its support for regional proxies.

Iran has long said all three demands are unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile program, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.

Since the US strikes in June, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work – which it says is for peaceful, not military purposes – has stopped.

In another incident on Tuesday, this one in the Strait of Hormuz, the US Central Command said Iran‘s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces had approached a US-flagged tanker at speed and threatened to board and seize it.

Maritime risk management group Vanguard said the Iranian boats ordered the tanker to stop its engine and prepare to be boarded. Instead, the tanker sped up and continued its voyage.