MOSCOW: The Russian Parliament voted on Thursday to extend Russia’s lease of a naval base in Syria for 49 years, following Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a partial pullout of Russian troops from the war-torn country.
Russia’s air campaign in Syria, which began in September 2015, helped turn the tide of the civil war in favor of Moscow’s long-time ally Bashar Assad. Putin earlier this month ordered a partial withdrawal from Syria but said Russia would keep its military presence there.
The State Duma voted to ratify an agreement with Syria, submitted by Putin, for Russia to keep its warships at the Mediterranean base in Tartus for 49 years.
The agreement allows Russia to keep 11 vessels there at a time, including nuclear-powered ships.
Russia also operates an air base in Syria’s coastal region that has been an Assad stronghold since the start of the conflict in March 2011.
The Parliament vote came as the eight round of “technical” talks over Syria that are brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey resumed in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana.
The latest round of talks is expected to discuss the humanitarian crisis in rebel-held parts of the suburb of the Syrian capital known as Eastern Ghouta.
Eastern Ghouta has been witnessing an increase of violence in recent weeks as humanitarian access dropped for the estimated 393,000 people trapped inside the enclave.
The UN and its humanitarian partners have only been allowed to reach 7 percent of those besieged, and food shortages have led to many cases of “severe acute malnutrition,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said this week.
In addition, more than 500 people are waiting for medical evacuation and 16 have already died, including three in the last few days — an infant, a nine-year-old girl, and a quadriplegic.
The opposition’s Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian Civil Defense, volunteer first-responders known as White Helmets, said Thursday’s shelling of Eastern Ghouta wounded several people.
The Observatory said that since the attacks on the suburb resumed on Nov. 14, 213 civilians — including 50 children — have been killed in the region.
Jan Egeland, head of the UN’s humanitarian task force for Syria, said a list put together several months ago of nearly 500 civilians in desperate need of evacuation was rapidly shrinking.
“That number is going down, not because we are evacuating people, but because they are dying,” he told reporters in Geneva.
“I fear there will be many more. During this Christmas and holiday season, there will be more deaths unless we get evacuation going,” he said.
The Eastern Ghouta region, near Damascus, is one of the last strongholds of rebels fighting the forces of Assad.
Egeland said evacuations and efforts to bring aid into the region had been blocked by a lack of authorizations from the Syrian authorities.
“This has to end,” he said.
“How can we take Christmas and holidays in safety and in peace... while the most innocent in this conflict... are dying?”
They are dying, he said, “not because there was not relief, not because there were not people willing to go there... but because they were part of a power play between mostly well-fed men with power and with guns.”
Russian Parliament ratifies naval base agreement with Syria
Russian Parliament ratifies naval base agreement with Syria
UN nuclear watchdog says it’s unable to verify whether Iran has suspended all uranium enrichment
VIENNA: Iran has not allowed the United Nations nuclear watchdog to access nuclear facilities affected by the 12-day war in June, according to a confidential report by the watchdog circulated to member states and seen Friday by The Associated Press.
The report from the International Atomic Energy Agency stressed that therefore it “cannot verify whether Iran has suspended all enrichment-related activities,” or the “size of Iran’s uranium stockpile at the affected nuclear facilities.”
The IAEA report on Friday warned that due to the continued lack of access to any of Iran’s four declared enrichment facilities, the agency “cannot provide any information on the current size, composition or whereabouts of the stockpile of enriched uranium in Iran.”
The report stressed that the “loss of continuity of knowledge over all previously declared nuclear material at affected facilities in Iran needs to be addressed with the utmost urgency.”
Iran long has insisted its program is peaceful, but the IAEA and Western nations say Tehran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003.
Highly enriched material should be verified regularly
According to the IAEA, Iran maintains a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi warned in a recent interview with the AP. He added that it doesn’t mean that Iran has such a weapon.
Such highly enriched nuclear material should normally be verified every month, according to the IAEA’s guidelines.
The IAEA also reported that it had observed, through the analysis of commercially available satellite imagery, “regular vehicular activity around the entrance to the tunnel complex at Isfahan.”
The facility in Isfahan, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) southeast of Tehran, was mainly known for producing the uranium gas that is fed into centrifuges to be spun and purified.
Israel has struck buildings at the Isfahan nuclear site, among them a uranium conversion facility. The US also struck Isfahan with missiles during the war last June.
The IAEA also reported that through the analysis of commercially available satellite imagery, it has observed “activities being conducted at some of the affected nuclear facilities, including the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow,” but it added that “without access to these facilities it is not possible for the Agency to confirm the nature and the purpose of the activities.”
The confidential IAEA report also said Friday that Iran did provide access to IAEA inspectors “to each of the unaffected nuclear facilities at least once since the military attacks of June 2025, with the exception of Karun Nuclear Power Plan, which is in the early stages of construction and does not contain nuclear material.”
IAEA joined Geneva talks between Iran and US
The IAEA reported on Friday that Grossi attended negotiations between the US and Iran on Feb. 17 and Feb. 26 in Geneva at which he “provided advice on issues relevant to the verification of Iran’s nuclear program.” The report said that those negotiations are “ongoing.”
The Trump administration has held three rounds of nuclear talks this year with Iran under Omani mediation. Thursday’s round of talks in Geneva ended without a deal, leaving the danger of another Mideast war on the table as the US has gathered a massive fleet of aircraft and warships in the region.
Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi said technical talks involving lower-level representatives would continue next week in Vienna, the home of the IAEA. The agency is likely to be critical in any deal.
The US is seeking a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program and ensure it does not develop nuclear weapons.
Iran says it is not pursuing weapons and has so far resisted demands that it halt uranium enrichment on its soil or hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Similar talks last year between the US and Iran about Iran’s nuclear program broke down after Israel launched what became a 12-day war on Iran, that included the US bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
Before the June war, Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity.
