NBC News:

Iran has accumulated enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb, according to new findings from the United Nations atomic agency.

The International Atomic Energy Agency also said in a separate report that Iran has failed to provide credible explanations about nuclear material found at several sites in recent years, raising questions about the nature of its nuclear work.

The IAEA’s two reports could set the stage for a showdown at a meeting next week of its 35-nation board of governors, as Iran has demanded the watchdog wrap up its probe into uranium particles found at three undeclared locations in the country since 2019.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent had grown to 43.3 kilograms (95 pounds), which represented an increase of nearly 10 kilograms (22 pounds)compared to three months ago.

Experts said that the stockpile would provide roughly enough material for an atomic bomb if Iran took the additional step of enrichingthe uranium to 90 percent purity. Moving from 60 to 90 percent would not pose a technical challenge for Iran, according to arms control experts.

CBS News:

An unexplained incident struck a major Iranian military and weapons development base east of Tehran, the country’s state TV reported on Thursday, killing an engineer and injuring another employee. Iran’s Defense Ministry said the “accident” occurred on Wednesday afternoon at a research center at the Parchin military complex.

The ministry did not elaborate on the cause of the accident or provide any further details, but said an investigation was underway. It identified the engineer who died as Ehsun Ghadbeigi.
 
Parchin is home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency previously said it suspected Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons. Iran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons, though the IAEA previously said Iran had done work in “support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program” that largely halted in late 2003.

NBC News:

President Joe Biden’s envoy for Iran said Wednesday the prospects of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal were “tenuous” at best as lawmakers demanded the White House come up with a new plan to prevent Tehran from acquiring an atomic bomb.

The envoy, Robert Malley, the lead U.S. negotiator for the revival of the nuclear accord, told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “as I sit here today, the odds of a successful negotiation are lower than the odds of failure,” adding, “And that is because of the excessive Iranian demands and … to which we will not succumb.”

Politico:

President Joe Biden has finalized his decision to keep Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on a terrorist blacklist, according to a senior Western official, further complicating international efforts to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

This decision did not “complicate” the Biden Administration’s efforts to restore the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal, it ended those efforts.

In order for the Globalists to start the nuclear World War into which they have been working and promising so diligently to plunge all of humanity, both the Iran Crisis and the Taiwan Crisis will need to be rolled up into one giant conflict with the Ukraine Crisis. Their water boy, Joe Biden, is making all the right moves to bring about our nuclear holocaust.

Financial Times:

Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has vowed to take revenge on those responsible for the assassination in broad daylight of a senior military figure at the weekend.

On Sunday at about 4pm local time, Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a member of the Quds force, which is the overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards — both designated by the US as terrorist organisations — was killed in front of his house in downtown Tehran.

Pictures published in local media showed the commander’s dead body in his Kia Pride car with his belt fastened. At least two assailants on motorbikes fired five bullets at him, local media said. They later escaped.

The New Arab:

Protests that have spread across Iran over a cut in state subsidies on food have turned political with slogans calling for top leaders to step down, according to posts on social media.

There are also unconfirmed reports that at least four protesters have been killed in the crackdown.

Protests began last week sparked by the government’s decision to cut subsidies, which led to huge price hikes in Iran by as much as 300 percent for a variety of flour-based staples.

The government also raised the prices of some basic goods – such as cooking oil and dairy products – in Iran where almost half of its 85 million population is living under the poverty line, according to official figures.

Now protesters have expanded their demands, calling for more political reforms, an end to the Islamic Republic, and the downfall of its leaders, according to witnesses and social media posts.

Reuters:

The European Union on Friday said it believed it had breathed fresh life into stalled efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but both Iran and the United States put the onus on the other to compromise and there was no date set for new talks.

The EU’s foreign policy chief said he believed there had been enough progress during consultations between his envoy and Iranian officials in Tehran this week to relaunch nuclear negotiations after two months of deadlock.

Talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers have been on hold since March, chiefly over Tehran’s insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the U.S. list of designated terrorist organisations.

What a joke.

Politico:

President Joe Biden’s bid to revive the Iran nuclear deal flunked its first test in the U.S. Senate.

A bipartisan super-majority of senators voted late Wednesday to endorse a Republican-led measure stating that any nuclear agreement with Tehran should also address Iran’s support for terrorism in the region, and that the U.S.should not lift sanctions on an elite branch of the Iranian military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

While the measure itself was non-binding, the vote was hailed as a modest victory for Republicans who have pushed the Biden administration to walk away from the talks in Vienna, where a final deal has eluded negotiators.

Lawmakers from both parties said it was a warning shot to Biden’s negotiating team, who have all but acknowledged in private that an agreement that goes beyond curtailing Iran’s nuclear program is no longer possible, according to multiple people familiar with classified Hill briefings on the subject.

Reuters:

The United States is now preparing equally for both a scenario where there is a mutual return to compliance with Iran on a nuclear deal, as well as one in which there is not an agreement, the State Department said on Wednesday.

“Because a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA is very much an uncertain proposition, we are now preparing equally for either scenario,” Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a briefing.

See also: Gulf Arab Countries Hedge Against U.S. Power To Iran’s Benefit

Reuters:

Western officials have largely lost hope the Iran nuclear deal can be resurrected, sources familiar with the matter said, forcing them to weigh how to limit Iran’s atomic program even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has divided the big powers.

While they have not completely given up on the pact, under which Iran restrained its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions, there is a growing belief it may be beyond salvation.

Politico:

Negotiations to restore the Iran nuclear deal have reached a complete standstill. 

Despite having a roughly 27-page agreement virtually ready to go, diplomats are still hung up over one final sticking point between the U.S. and Iran: The status of a powerful branch of the Iranian military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The U.S. placed the group on its “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list in 2019,part of President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign after pulling out of the nuclear deal, which limited Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. 

Now the issue has been dragged into the final stages of long-running talks to revive the nuclear deal under President Joe Biden. The topic is of such immense political sensitivity in both Washington and Tehran that a compromise has proved impossible and now seems increasingly unrealistic.

See also:
–Are Iran And China Entering Into A New Era Of Relations? – Analysis
–Iran Wants To Expand Strategic Ties With China To Confront US
–Iran Moves Centrifuge-Parts Workshop Underground At Natanz, IAEA Says