BERLIN: European powers plan fresh talks with Iran on its nuclear program in the coming days, the first since the US attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago, a German diplomatic source told AFP on Sunday.
Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, “are in contact with Iran to schedule further talks for the coming week,” the source said.
The trio had recently warned that international sanctions against Iran could be reactivated if Tehran does not return to the negotiating table.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported that Tehran had agreed to hold talks with the three European countries, citing an unnamed source.
Consultations are ongoing regarding a date and location for the talks, the report said.
“Iran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon,” the German source said.
“That is why Germany, France and the United Kingdom are continuing to work intensively in the E3 format to find a sustainable and verifiable diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program,” the source added.
Israel and Western nations have long accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.
On June 13, Israel launched a wave of surprise strikes on its regional nemesis, targeting key military and nuclear facilities.
The United States launched its own set of strikes against Iran’s nuclear program on June 22, hitting the uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, in Qom province south of Tehran, as well as nuclear sites in Isfahan and Natanz.
Iran and the United States had held several rounds of nuclear negotiations through Omani mediators before Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran.
However, US President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in striking Iranian nuclear facilities effectively ended the talks.
The E3 countries last met with Iranian representatives in Geneva on June 21 — just one day before the US strikes.
Also Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues.
Larijani “conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear program,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the unannounced meeting.
Putin had expressed Russia’s “well-known positions on how to stabilize the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear program,” he added.
Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran but did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the United States joined Israel’s bombing campaign.
Iran and world powers struck a deal in 2015 called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed significant restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
But the hard-won deal began to unravel in 2018, during Trump’s first presidency, when the United States walked away from it and reimposed sanctions on Iran.
European countries have in recent days threatened to trigger the deal’s “snapback” mechanism, which allows the reimposition of sanctions in the event of non-compliance by Iran.
After a call with his European counterparts on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Western allies had “absolutely no moral (or) legal grounds” for reactivating the snapback sanctions.
He elaborated in a post to social media Sunday.
“Through their actions and statements, including providing political and material support to the recent unprovoked and illegal military aggression of the Israeli regime and the US... the E3 have relinquished their role as ‘Participants’ in the JCPOA,” said Araghchi.
That made any attempt to reinstate the terminated UN Security Council resolutions “null and void,” he added.
“Iran has shown that it is capable of defeating any delusional ‘dirty work’ but has always been prepared to reciprocate meaningful diplomacy in good faith,” Araghchi wrote.
However, the German source said Sunday that “if no solution is reached over the summer, snapback remains an option for the E3.”
Ali Velayati, an adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week there would be no new nuclear talks with the United States if they were conditioned on Tehran abandoning its uranium enrichment activities.
European powers plan fresh nuclear talks with Iran
https://arab.news/w7enq
European powers plan fresh nuclear talks with Iran
- Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported that Tehran had agreed to hold talks with the three European countries, citing unnamed source
Sudan drone attack on Darfur market kills 10: rescuers
- According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone attack on a busy market in Sudan’s North Darfur state killed 10 people over the weekend, first responders said on Sunday, without saying who was responsible.
The attack comes as fighting intensified elsewhere in the country, leading aid workers to be evacuated on Sunday from Kadugli, a besieged, famine-hit city in the south.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a conflict which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
The North Darfur Emergency Rooms Council, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan, said a drone strike hit Al-Harra market in the RSF-controlled town of Malha on Saturday.
The attack killed 10 people, it said.
The council did not identify who carried out the attack, which it said had also sparked “fire in shops and caused extensive material damage.”
There was no immediate comment from either the Sudanese army or the RSF.
The war’s current focal point is now South Kordofan and clashes have escalated in Kadugli, the state capital, where a drone attack last week killed eight people as they attempted to flee the army-controlled city.
A source from a humanitarian organization operating in Kadugli told AFP on Sunday that humanitarian groups had “evacuated all their workers” from the city because of the security conditions.
The evacuation followed the United Nations’ decision to relocate its logistics hub from Kadugli, the source said on condition of anonymity, without specifying where the staff had gone.
- Measles outbreak -
Kadugli and nearby Dilling have been besieged by paramilitary forces since the war erupted.
Last week, the RSF claimed control of the Brno area, a key defensive line on the road between Kadugli and Dilling.
After dislodging the army in October from the western city of El-Fasher — its last stronghold in the Darfur region — the RSF has shifted its focus to resource-rich Kordofan, a strategic crossroads linking army-held northern and eastern territories with RSF-held Darfur in the west.
Like Darfur, Kordofan is home to numerous non-Sudanese Arab ethnic groups. Much of the violence that followed the fall of El-Fasher was reportedly ethnically targeted.
Communications in Kordofan have been cut, and the United Nations declared a famine in Kadugli last month.
According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October.
Residents have been forced to forage for food in nearby forests, according to accounts gathered by AFP.
The conflict has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday that measles was spreading in three of the four states in Darfur, a vast region covering much of western Sudan.
“A preventable measles outbreak is spreading across Central, South and West Darfur,” the organization said in a statement.
“Since September 2025, MSF teams have treated more than 1,300 cases. Delays in vaccine transport, approvals and coordination, by authorities and key partners are leaving children unprotected.”
