{"id":214275,"date":"2025-06-25T22:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T22:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/214275\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T22:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T22:28:09","slug":"trump-says-us-and-iranian-officials-will-talk-as-ceasefire-holds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/214275\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says US and Iranian officials will talk as ceasefire holds"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Israel and Iran seemed to honor the fragile ceasefire between them<\/a> for a second day Wednesday and U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> asserted that American and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace.<\/p>\n

Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit<\/a> that he was not particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that U.S. strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may sign an agreement, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations was scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled after Israel attacked Iran.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Trump says US and Iranian officials will talk next week as ceasefire holds\n <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump is insisting that U.S. strikes on Iran delivered a crushing blow to the Islamic Republic\u2019s nuclear program. AP correspondent Donna Warder reports.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going \u201cvery well,\u201d and added that Iran was \u201cnot going to have a bomb, and they\u2019re not going to enrich.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran has insisted that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country\u2019s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency<\/a>, the U.N. watchdog that has monitored the program for years.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized the IAEA for refusing \u201cto even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities\u201d that the U.S. carried out Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran\u2019s peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace,\u201d Qalibaf told lawmakers.<\/p>\n

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi<\/a> said he wrote to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the U.S. strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to reassess the country\u2019s stockpiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to return,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to engage.\u201d<\/p>\n

French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped Tehran would come back to the table. France was part of the 2015 deal with Iran that restricted its nuclear program, but the agreement began unraveling after Trump pulled the U.S. out in his first term. Macron spoke multiple times to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during the war.<\/p>\n

International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi said Wednesday that Iran must quickly resume cooperation with international inspectors, telling French broadcaster France 2 that the IAEA had lost visibility over sensitive nuclear materials since the onset of hostilities.<\/p>\n

Grossi said Iran is legally obligated to cooperate with the IAEA under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring a war, inspections are not possible. But now that hostilities have ceased, and given the sensitivity of this material, I believe it is in everyone\u2019s interest that we resume our activities as soon as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Questions over effectiveness of the US strikes<\/p>\n

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the U.S. and Israeli strikes have \u201cset back Iran\u2019s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.\u201d It did not give evidence to back up its claim.<\/p>\n

The U.S. strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said \u201ccompletely and fully obliterated\u201d the country\u2019s nuclear program. When asked about a U.S. intelligence report that found Iran\u2019s nuclear program has been set back only a few months<\/a>, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take years to rebuild.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed that the strikes by American B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had caused significant damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, refusing to go into detail.<\/p>\n

He seemed to suggest Iran might not shut out IAEA inspectors for good, noting that the bill before parliament only talks of suspending work with the agency, not ending it. He also insisted Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran is determined to preserve that right under any circumstances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Witkoff said late Tuesday on Fox News that Israel and the U.S. had achieved their objective with \u201cthe total destruction of the enrichment capacity\u201d in Iran, and Iran\u2019s prerequisite for talks \u2014 that Israel end its campaign \u2014 had been fulfilled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proof is in the pudding,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one\u2019s shooting at each other. It\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopes for a long-term peace agreement<\/p>\n

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the ceasefire agreement with Iran amounted to \u201cquiet for quiet,\u201d with no further understandings about Iran\u2019s nuclear program going ahead.<\/p>\n

Witkoff told Fox News that Trump is now looking to land \u201ca comprehensive peace agreement that goes beyond even the ceasefire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re already talking to each other, not just directly, but also through interlocutors,\u201d Witkoff said, adding that the conversations were promising.<\/p>\n

However, Baghaei, the Iranian spokesman, said Washington had \u201ctorpedoed diplomacy\u201d with its attacks on nuclear sites, and that while Iran in principle was always open to talks, national security was the priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make sure whether the other parties are really serious when they\u2019re talking about diplomacy, or is it again part of their tactics to make more problems for the region and for my country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Grossi said Iran and the international community should seize the opportunity of the ceasefire for a long-term diplomatic solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the … bad things that military conflict brings, there\u2019s also now a possibility, an opening,\u201d he said. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t miss that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

A rare video by Mossad<\/p>\n

Israel revealed details of the intelligence and covert operations that it said allowed the country to effectively target Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and key facilities.<\/p>\n

In a rare video released by Israel\u2019s Mossad spy agency, chief David Barnea thanked the CIA for being a key partner, and his own agents for work over years to achieve what was \u201cunimaginable at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to accurate intelligence, advanced technologies and operational capabilities beyond imagination, we helped the air force strike the Iranian nuclear project, establish aerial superiority in Iranian skies and reduce the missile threat,\u201d the agency said in a Facebook post alongside the video.<\/p>\n

Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, asserted that commandos had operated secretly \u201cdeep inside enemy territory\u201d during the war.<\/p>\n

Tehran on Tuesday put the death toll in Iran at 606, with 5,332 people wounded. The Washington-based Human Rights Activists group released figures Wednesday suggesting Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 1,054 and wounded 4,476.<\/p>\n

The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from multiple rounds of unrest in Iran, said 417 of those killed were civilians and 318 were security forces.<\/p>\n

At least 28 people were killed in Israel and more than 1,000 wounded, according to officials.<\/p>\n

In the past two weeks, Iran has executed six prisoners accused of spying for Israel, including three on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, Chris Megerian and Sylvie Corbet in The Hague, Netherlands, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Israel and Iran seemed to honor the fragile ceasefire between them for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[12019,19754,32,34,26934,43958,85214,4179,8614,774,14535,837,58138,75715,2585,839,83634,85213,8041,285,19750,7070,49,5213,978,659,7660,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-214275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-ap-top-news","9":"tag-david-barnea","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-emmanuel-macron","12":"tag-energy-industry","13":"tag-esmail-baghaei","14":"tag-eyal-zamir","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-international-agreements","17":"tag-iran","18":"tag-iran-government","19":"tag-israel","20":"tag-israel-government","21":"tag-israel-iran-war","22":"tag-masoud-pezeshkian","23":"tag-middle-east","24":"tag-mideast-wars","25":"tag-mohammad-bagher-qalibaf","26":"tag-nuclear-weapons","27":"tag-politics","28":"tag-rafael-grossi","29":"tag-steve-witkoff","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-united-states-government","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-usa","34":"tag-war-and-unrest","35":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114746366679615445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}