‘US sanctions relief not enough’
TEHRAN/WASHINGTON: US steps on lifting sanctions are “good but not enough”, Iran’s foreign minister said on Saturday, hours after Washington announced it was waiving some sanctions on Iran’s civilian nuclear programme.
“The lifting of some sanctions can, in the true sense of the word, translate into their good will. Americans talk about it, but it should be known that what happens on paper is good but not enough,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.
The US state department on Friday said it was waiving sanctions on Iran’s civilian nuclear programme in a technical step necessary to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement.
The waiver allows other countries and companies to participate in Iran’s civilian nuclear programme without triggering US sanctions on them, in the name of promoting safety and non-proliferation.
Iran’s civilian programme includes increasing stockpiles of enriched uranium. The step came as talks to restore the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which then president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from in 2018, were at an advanced stage.
‘Single bomber carried out Kabul airport attack’ The US military said on Friday that a single Islamic State bomber killed 13 US troops and at least 170 Afghans at Kabul airport last August, not the complex attack originally suspected, and that it could not have been prevented with the resources on hand.
Briefing reporters on the results of a military inquiry, Marine General Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said the bomb sent 5mm ball bearings ripping through a packed crowd at the airport’s Abbey Gate. The investigation found no definitive proof of any gunfire.
The bombing occurred on August 26 as US troops were trying to help both Americans and Afghans flee in the chaotic aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover, and compounded America’s sense of defeat after 20 years of war. The attack put the US military on a heightened state of alert that may have contributed to a botched US drone strike that mistook civilians for Islamic State militants.
American authorities have recommended releasing a mentally ill inmate from Guantanamo Bay and repatriating him to Saudi Arabia, according to a government document published on Friday.
Suspected of being Al Qaeda’s intended 20th hijacker for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured by interrogators at the US military base in Cuba where he has been detained for nearly two decades.