TEHRAN: Iran is set to detail its latest cut to commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal on Saturday, in response to US sanctions and perceived inaction by other parties to save the accord.
Iran’s atomic energy organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi will hold a news conference to detail Tehran’s third round of cuts in its nuclear commitments since May, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Thursday.
Iran and three European countries — Britain, France and Germany — have been engaged in talks to reduce tensions and rescue the multi-party deal, which has been unraveling since the US withdrew in May last year.
But with no apparent agreement in sight, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday made good on a promise to take another step away from the deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council powers, plus Germany (P5+1).
“The atomic energy organization (of Iran) is ordered to immediately start whatever is needed in the field of research and development, and abandon all the commitments that were in place regarding research and development,” said Rouhani, without elaborating.
Iran’s arch-enemy Israel responded by calling for more international pressure on Iran.
“This is not the time to hold talks with Iran; this is the time to increase the pressure on Iran,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The EU on Thursday urged Iran to backtrack on moves to drop its commitments under the deal, known as the JCPOA.
“These activities we consider are inconsistent with the JCPOA,” said European Commission spokesman Carlos Martin Ruiz de Gordejuela.
“We urge Iran to reverse these steps and refrain from further measures that undermine the nuclear deal.”
French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muehll echoed this saying: “Iran must abstain from any concrete action that does not conform with its commitments (and which) could impede de-escalation moves.”
A senior US official on Wednesday ruled out any sanctions exemptions that would permit a French-proposed credit line, which Tehran says could bring it back to full compliance with the deal.
“We can’t make it any more clear that we are committed to this campaign of maximum pressure and we are not looking to grant any exceptions or waivers,” Brian Hook, the State Department coordinator on Iran, told reporters.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded by tweeting that the US Treasury was “nothing more than a JAIL WARDEN.”
“Ask for reprieve (waiver), get thrown in solitary for the audacity. Ask again and you might end up in the gallows,” he tweeted.
Iran has expressed mounting frustration at Europe’s failure to offset the effects of renewed US sanctions in return for its continued compliance with the agreement.
It had already hit back twice with countermeasures in response to the US withdrawal from the deal.
On July 1, Iran said it had increased its stockpile of enriched uranium to beyond the 300-kilogramme limit set by the agreement.
A week later, it announced it had exceeded the deal’s uranium enrichment limit of 3.67 percent.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on August 30 that Iran’s uranium stockpile stood at about 360 kilogrammes, of which just over 10 percent was enriched to 4.5 percent.
Rouhani has stressed that the countermeasures Iran has adopted are all readily reversible if the remaining parties to the deal honor their undertakings to provide sanctions relief.
The Iranian president on Wednesday gave Europe a 60-day ultimatum before Iran drops another commitment.
Francois Nicoullaud, a French former ambassador to Iran, said the moves to be detailed Saturday would likely focus on bringing on line new centrifuges for enriching uranium — and would be “only partially reversible.”
“Even if research is stopped, the intellectual gains are forever,” he said.
But analyst Henry Rome argued that the appeared to be “provocative but reversible.”
“Tehran is building leverage, not a bomb,” said Rome, a specialist on Iran for the Washington-based Eurasia Group consultancy.
He added that the French initiative, meant to provide Iran with a multi-billion-dollar line of credit in exchange for returning to deal compliance, is “likely to wither away” because it requires Washington’s approval.
Iran to unveil details on cuts to nuclear commitments
Iran to unveil details on cuts to nuclear commitments
- Atomic energy organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi to announce details of Iran’s third cut in its nuclear commitments since May
Foreign women linked to Daesh group in Syrian camp hope for amnesty after government offensive
- Many of the women are either wives or widows of Daesh fighters who were defeated in Syria
- “There were changes in the behavior of children and women. They became more hostile,” the camp’s director said
ROJ CAMP, Syria: Foreign women linked to the Daesh group and living in a Syrian camp housing more than 2,000 people near the border with Iraq are hoping that an amnesty may be on the horizon after a government offensive weakened the Kurdish-led force that guards the camp.
The women spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday in northeast Syria’s Roj camp, where hundreds of mostly women and children linked to Daesh have been held for nearly a decade.
The camp remains under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which until recently controlled much of northeastern Syria. A government offensive this month captured most of the territory the group previously held, including the much larger Al-Hol camp, which is holding nearly 24,000 mostly women and children linked to Daesh.
Many of the women are either wives or widows of Daesh fighters who were defeated in Syria in March 2019, marking the end of what was once a self-declared caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The most well-known resident of the Roj camp, Shamima Begum, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in 2015 to marry Daesh fighters in Syria. Begum married a Dutch man fighting for Daesh and had three children, who all died.
Last month, Begum lost her appeal against the British government’s decision to revoke her UK citizenship. Begum refused to speak to AP journalists at the camp.
The director of the Roj camp, Hakmiyeh Ibrahim, said that the government’s offensive on northeast Syria has emboldened the camp residents, who now tell guards that soon they will be free and Kurdish guards will be jailed in the camp instead.
“There were changes in the behavior of children and women. They became more hostile,” the camp’s director said. “It gave them hope that the Daesh group is coming back strongly.”
Since former Syrian President Bashar Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, the country’s new army is made up of a patchwork of former insurgent groups, many of them with Islamist ideologies.
The group led by now-interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa was once linked to Al-Qaeda although Al-Sharaa’s group and Daesh were rivals and fought for years. Since becoming president, Al-Sharaa — formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — has joined the global coalition against Daesh.
Camp residents hope for amnesty
One woman from Tunisia who identified herself only as Buthaina, pointed out that Al-Sharaa was removed from the UN and US lists of terrorists.
“People used to say that Al-Golani was the biggest terrorist. What happened to him later? He became the president of Syria. He is not a terrorist any more,” she said. “The international community gave Al-Golani amnesty. I should be given amnesty too.”
She added, “I did not kill anyone or do anything.”
The camp director said more than 2,300 people are housed in the Roj camp. They include a small number of Syrians and Iraqis, but the vast majority of them — 742 families — come from nearly 50 other countries, the bulk of them from states in the former Soviet Union.
That is in contrast to Al-Hol camp, where most residents are Syrians and Iraqis who can be more easily repatriated. Other countries have largely been unwilling to take back their citizens. Human rights groups have for years cited poor living conditions and pervasive violence in the camps.
The US military has begun moving male Daesh detainees from Syrian prisons to detention centers in Iraq, but there is no clear plan for the repatriation of women and children at the Roj Camp.
“What is happening now is exactly what we have been warning about for years. It is the foreseeable result of international inaction,” said Beatrice Eriksson, the cofounder of the children rights organization Repatriate the Children in Sweden. “The continued existence of these camps is not an unfortunate by-product of conflict, it is a political decision.”
Some women don’t want to go home
Some of the women interviewed by the AP said they want to go back home, while others want to stay in Syria.
“I did not come for tourism. Syria is a Muslim country. Germany is all infidels,” said a German woman who identified herself only as Aysha, saying that she plans to stay.
Another woman, a Belgian who identified herself as Cassandra, said she wants to get out of the camp but would like to stay in the Kurdish-controlled area of Syria.
She said that her French husband was an Daesh fighter killed in the northern city of Raqqa, once considered the de facto capital by Daesh. She said Belgium has only repatriated women who had children, unlike her. She was 18 when she came to Syria, she said.
Cassandra added that when fighting broke out between government forces and Kurdish fighters, she started receiving threats from other camp residents because she had good relations with the Kurdish guards.
Future of the camps in limbo
The government push into northeast Syria led to chaos in some of the more than a dozen detention centers where nearly 9,000 members of Daesh have been held for years.
Syrian government forces are now in control of Al-Aqtan prison near Raqqa as well as the Shaddadeh prison near the border with Iraq, where more than 120 detainees managed to flee amid the chaos before most of them were captured again.
Part of an initial ceasefire agreement between Damascus and the SDF included the Kurdish-led group handing over management of the camps and detention centers to the Syrian government.
Buthaina, the Tunisian citizen, said her husband and her son are held in a prison. She said her husband worked in cleaning and did not fight, while her son fought with the extremists.
She has been in Roj for nine years and saw her other children grow up without proper education or a childhood like other children.
“All we want is freedom. Find a solution for us,” Buthaina said.
She said the Tunisian government never checked on them, but now she hopes that “if Al-Golani takes us there will be a solution.”
She said those accused of crimes should stand trial and others should be set free.
“I am not a terrorist. The mistake I made is that I left my country and came here,” she said. “We were punished for nine years that were more like 90 years.”
