Without diplomacy, the world’s major powers risk a renewed nuclear arms race, The Hill, BY DR. VIATCHESLAV MOSHE KANTOR, 07/01/19 The reaction to the airing of the HBO series “Chernobyl,” dramatizing the most disastrous nuclear power plant accident in history, and to the news of
President Trump’s
aborted strike on Iran, amply shows the potential for horrific widescale nuclear catastrophe and the public’s desire to know the true extent of the risk.
Elsewhere, the eyes of the world are trained on the clock that is ticking down to the expiration of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) in August 2019 and the potential end of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 2021.
These are troubling times. Despite the weekend’s high-profile foray into North Korean territory by President Trump – the first such visit by a sitting U.S. president – substantive progress between the United States and North Korea over the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is at a standstill. ……
The prospects of a multilateral treaty with China are looking slim. In the background, heightening tensions between the U.S., Europe and Russia risks undermining global stability. …..
This instability coincides with a crisis in diplomacy and a discernible lack of dialogue between the world’s major powers. This could not come at a worse time, when for the first time in nearly 50 years the demise of key international treaties means there will be no agreed limits on nuclear weapons. In the absence of substantive bilateral talks, there are no prospects of setting such limits in place. …….
Talks are apparently underway to secure the extension of the New START Treaty by a further five years, although this outcome is by no means certain.
Any future nuclear catastrophic event would not necessarily be the result of the actions of an established government intentionally deploying a nuclear weapon but could occur through a tragic accident like the disaster at Chernobyl…….
Organizations such as The International Luxembourg Forum are important mainstays of dialogue, promoting nuclear nonproliferation and working to reduce the risks of nuclear conflict. Nuclear experts have a key role to play in rebuilding a culture of trust and understanding in our political life. ……. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/451125-without-diplomacy-the-worlds-major-powers-risk-a-renewed-nuclear
July 2, 2019
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2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war |
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Nuclear arsenal must be on Australia’s agenda, argues defence expert, SMH, By Harriet Alexander, July 1, 2019 Australia can no longer rely on the United States to protect it in Asia and should consider developing its own nuclear weapons for the event that China becomes hostile, former defence strategist and security analyst Hugh White argues in a controversial new book.
Professor White argues in How to Defend Australia the assumption that the United States would protect the nation against any attack by a major power, which has underpinned Australian defence policy since the Cold War, is no longer true as China emerges as the dominant power in Asia.
For Australia to be self-reliant, it would need to boost defence spending from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent of GDP – or $30 billion – and consider the “difficult and uncomfortable” question of developing its own nuclear capability, said Professor White, a professor in strategic studies at the Australian National University……..
Although most think tanks and strategic policy institutes in the United States continued to assert that dominance in Asia was a strategic priority, America’s global leadership has not figured as a priority for President Donald Trump nor for the contenders to the Democrat nomination, Professor White said. ……
Professor White said Australia should only consider defensive weapons such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
“We need to be extremely careful about how we talk about this and very conscious of the extraordinary cost to us of acquiring nuclear weapons,” Professor White said.
“It would make us less secure in some ways, that’s why in some ways I think it’s appalling.”
The last prime minister to canvass the development of nuclear weapons in Australia was Robert Menzies in the 1960s.
Professor White, a former deputy secretary for strategy and intelligence with the Department of Defence, was dismissed as alarmist when he first foreshadowed in 2010 the demise of American influence in Asia. But the Lowy Institute’s international security program director Sam Roggeveen said he had since been proved correct.
Mr Roggeveen said the regional complications of Australia developing nuclear weapons would be huge, with Indonesia probably having to follow suit, but the logic was inescapable.
“If we ever completely decouple from the [US] alliance then it’s hard to see how we could essentially maintain our independence against China’s coercion if we didn’t have nuclear weapons,” Mr Roggeveen said.
The bipartisan political consensus on Australian defence policy is opposed to the development of nuclear weapons, and the domestic shipbuilding program would leave Australia “hopelessly vulnerable” if it ever came to a fight with China, Mr Roggeveen said.
“According to White, we are locking in a defence force for a generation that will be totally unsuited to the world we are entering,” he wrote in a book review for The Interpreter. “That’s the scandal.”
The Minister for Defence, Linda Reynolds, said: “Australia stands by its Non-Proliferation Treaty pledge, as a non-nuclear weapon state, not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons.”
La Trobe Asia executive director Euan Graham said the US alliance was more resilient than Professor White described and China had shown no signs of aggression, but he agreed Australia should think about developing its nuclear capability.
“We’re talking about 15 to 20 years acquisition timeframe and the security environment that we’re facing will almost certainly be more severe then that it is now,” Dr Graham said.
“I think Australia has to be thinking about what will be be required to move to a nuclear weapon posture because that can’t happen overnight.” https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nuclear-arsenal-must-be-on-australia-s-agenda-argues-defence-expert-20190701-p52306.html
July 2, 2019
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European Talks With Iran End, Leaving Nuclear Issue Unsettled, NYT, By David E. Sanger, June 28, 2019 WASHINGTON — A last-minute effort by European powers to persuade Iran not to breach limits on its stockpile of nuclear fuel ended inconclusively on Friday, with the Iranians saying that Britain, France and Germany had made only modest progress in developing a system to get around tight American sanctions on trade with Tehran.
As he left the talks in Vienna, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, said he expected Iran would go ahead with its plan to break the ceiling on how much low-enriched uranium it was allowed to possess. That breach could come as early as this weekend, potentially setting off another confrontation with the Trump administration, after a week of recriminations and military threats following the downing of an American drone and attacks on tankers.
“It is still not enough, and it is still not meeting Iran’s expectations,” Mr. Araghchi told reporters, according to news reports from Vienna. …….
Breaking the stockpile limit would not, by itself, give Iran enough fuel to produce a nuclear weapon. But the European participants in the 2015 agreement have been urging the Iranians not to dispense with the accord, for fear that the Trump administration might react with a military or cyberstrike against the Iranians…….
The United States’ special envoy for Iran, Brian H. Hook, said this week that the sanctions have already cost Iran more than $50 billion…….https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/us/politics/europe-iran-nuclear-deal.html
July 1, 2019
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No Intention to Quit JCPOA Despite Nuclear Rollbacks Financial Tribune, 29 June 19, Europe should take further measures to ensure that the special trade channel set up to keep trade with Iran afloat satisfies Tehran’s demands, a senior diplomat said on Saturday, while stressing that the country does not intend to leave the nuclear agreement.
“I personally believe that INSTEX, in its current condition, isn’t enough. This mechanism without money is like a beautiful car without fuel,” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, told the media in New York, IRNA reported.
In early May, a year after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, Tehran announced a decision to abandon some of its commitments under the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Iran would resume higher uranium enrichment in 60 days if the remaining signatories fail to make good on promises to shield its oil and banking sectors from the reimposed and tightened US sanctions.
On Friday, the European Union announced in a statement that the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges or INSTEX, the financial mechanism set up by France, Britain and Germany to facilitate some trade with Iran, is now operational and the first transactions are being processed. ….. (subscribers only) https://financialtribune.com/articles/national/98697/no-intention-to-quit-jcpoa-despite-nuclear-rollbacks
July 1, 2019
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Iran, politics international |
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Putin says Russia, US looking into new nuclear talks https://www.dw.com/en/putin-says-russia-us-looking-into-new-nuclear-talks/a-49416356–
30 June 19, American and Russian diplomats are preparing the ground for possible nuclear disarmament talks, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has said at a G20 summit in Osaka. The two sides suspended the key INF treaty earlier this year.Moscow and Washington are mulling new talks on limiting their nuclear arsenals, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka on Saturday.
Putin was commenting on his meeting with US President Donald Trump the day before, most of which took place behind closed doors.
“We have tasked our respective foreign minister to start lower-level talks on [nuclear disarmament],” Putin said.
The talks, according to Putin’s comments carried by the Russian Interfax news agency, would be related to extending the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which went into force in 2011 after talks between Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama and Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev.
Fears of restarting nuclear race
The New START limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads ready to use on intercontinental missiles and heavy bomber bases to 1,550. The treaty also imposes various other restrictions to US and Russian nuclear capabilities. It is set to expire in 2021.
According to 2019 data provided by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, both the US and Russia currently have about 1,600 deployed strategic nuclear heads at their disposal. Russia has a total of 6,500 nuclear warheads, compared to 6,185 on the US side.
Russia’s Putin has repeatedly warned that the New START expiry date could signal a new nuclear arms race.
INF on the brink
On Saturday, he refused to give a timeline for the talks and said it was “too early to talk about” the likelihood of getting to an agreement.
Putin’s remarks come after the US accused Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by developing a new missile system.
The document, signed in 1987 between the US and the now defunct Soviet Union, prohibits the possessing and testing of short- and medium-range nuclear weapons.
Both Russia and the US have since suspended their participation in the accord. The US has pledged to pull out of the agreement if Russia is not in compliance by August 2 this year.
July 1, 2019
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Russia threatens military response to any NATO action over nuclear-ready missile
CNBC, JUN 26 2019 David Reid
- NATO has said Russia’s SSC-8 missile violates terms of a 1987 missile treaty.
- The alliance has said it will act to mitigate the Russian threat.
- Russia has in turn said it would take “countervailing military measures.”
- Moscow has said it will take “countervailing military measures” should NATO fulfil any threat related to Russia’s nuclear-ready cruise missile system.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Russia must dismantle the short-range system, or the alliance will be forced to respond, adding that NATO-member defense ministers would now look at next steps “in the event that Russia does not comply.”
No detail is yet known over what NATO might do although Stoltenberg said the alliance would not engage in any arms race.
According to the Kremlin-owned news agency TASS, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters Wednesday that NATO’s comments “reek of propaganda” and were falsely attempting to portray NATO’s threat as a “military and political response to Russia’s actions.”
The translation of Ryabkov, provided by TASS, added that Russia would respond to any military action from the 29-nation alliance.
“When these threats begin to materialize into real action, we will have to take countervailing military measures,” he said……… https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/russia-threatens-response-to-nato-over-nuclear-ready-ssc-8-missile.html?recirc=taboolainternal
July 1, 2019
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NATO says it will act unless Russia destroys nuclear-ready missile, CNBC, JUN 26 2019
KEY POINTS
- NATO has said Russia’s SSC-8 missile violates terms of a 1987 missile treaty.
- The U.S. says it will exit the treaty unless Russia stops their production.
- But Russia has continued to develop and site the missiles within range of Europe.
- NATO said Russia must destroy its short-range nuclear-ready cruise missile system, or the alliance will be forced to respond.
The U.S. has previously said it will quit a decades-old missile treaty with Russia if the latter fails to destroy the missile, labeled the SSC-8 by NATO.
The 1987 INF Treaty between the U.S. and Russia sought to eliminate nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with short ranges (310–620 miles) and intermediate ranges (620–3,420 miles).
NATO has said the SSC-8 violates those terms and that Russia has been deploying the system at locations which could threaten countries across Europe.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia had just five weeks to scrap the system and save the treaty…….. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/nato-says-russia-must-end-nuclear-ready-missile-ssc-program.html
July 1, 2019
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Acting on Iran has painful shades of joining the US in Iraq The Age, Tony Walker, 1 July 19, Here’s a word of advice to Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Unless he wants to risk a smudge on his reputation of the sort that accompanies John Howard to this day: don’t get involved in conflict with Iran beyond limited naval engagement in a Gulf peace-keeping role.
When we read that Canberra is open to joining an international effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran “in consultation with our allies and partners”, this invites disquieting questions.
If Morrison is talking about involvement in a “global coalition”, as described by the hawkish US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then he might remind himself of what happened when Australia last lent itself to a so-called “Coalition of the Willing”.
That was 17 years ago in 2002 when John Howard – as one of the “three amigos” with Britain’s Tony Blair and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar – joined George W. Bush in promoting a disastrous invasion of Iraq.
Only World War II, which absorbed one-third of American GDP, or $4 trillion in today’s dollars, has cost more than the Iraq debacle at $1 trillion (a total $2 trillion if Afghanistan is included).
These are the measurable costs in people, materiel and nation building. Incalculable are the ongoing costs of the destabilisation of the entire Middle East, and the empowerment of Iran…..
In a multi-year assignment in the Middle East I reported the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88); the first Gulf War (1990-1991), in which the US and its allies routed the Iraqi military; and the invasion of Iraq (2003). If I learned anything from those experiences it is that wars are easier to start than to finish. …..
Morrison is surrounded by a weak national security team. The national security committee of cabinet does not include one individual with credible security experience. …….
Morrison might remind himself that Canada’s then-prime minister, Jean Chretien, kept his country out of the Iraq war. The sky did not subsequently fall in on Ottawa.
All this is relevant today given that Morrison found himself last week in the presence over dinner of the two most hawkish members of the Trump administration. Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton both advocated air strikes against Iranian targets in retaliation for suspected Iranian attacks on gulf oil facilities before the President, at the 11th hour, called off military action.
Bolton has been an intemperate advocate of regime change in Tehran. In an interview with The Australian newspaper, Pompeo said Australia had a key role in a “global coalition”. What that means is anyone’s guess.
Morrison would be well advised not to be suckered into joining a counter-punch against Iran. His response to requests for any significant Australian military involvement should be emphatically: No. https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/acting-on-iran-has-painful-shades-of-joining-the-us-in-iraq-20190628-p5227h.html
July 1, 2019
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AUSTRALIA, politics international, weapons and war |
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Japan hopes latest Trump-Kim meeting will help get nuclear, abduction talks moving again, Japan Times , 29 June
KYODO, Japan hopes the third meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday will reinvigorate stalled denuclearization talks and help resolve the issue of past abductions of Japanese citizens.
“The meeting could serve as an opportunity for North Korea to come out of its shell,” a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.
Trump and Kim held talks in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas and agreed to restart denuclearization talks within weeks following the rupture of their last summit in Hanoi in February.
Tokyo is closely monitoring whether the two countries will move forward negotiations on the denuclearization of North Korea and improve their ties, which could help the U.S. government set up a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Kim, as the Japanese leader is hoping for……….https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/30/national/japan-hopes-latest-trump-kim-meeting-will-help-get-nuclear-abduction-talks-moving/#.XRkibT8zbGg
July 1, 2019
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Nuclear talks progress ‘not enough’ for Iran to change course, INSTEX payment system now operational, but Iran says needs to be used for oil purchases to be useful. Aljazeera, 29 June 19
Diplomats meeting in Vienna in a bid to save a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers made progress but it was “not enough” to stop Tehran scaling back compliance with the accord, according to the Iranian deputy foreign minister.
Officials from the deal’s remaining signatories – China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Iran – as well as the European Union, held talks in the Austrian capital on Friday after Tehran warned that it would soon breach a limit on the amount of enriched uranium set out in the agreement.
“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters. “I don’t think the progress made today will be enough to stop our process but the decision will be made in Tehran.”…….https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/nuclear-talks-progress-iran-change-190628160308104.html
June 29, 2019
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The Guardian view of the Osaka G20 summit: bad as he is, Trump is not the only problem, Editorial, Guardian 268 June 19 The climate crisis underlines the need for effective global economic leadership. The US president makes this harder, but so do China and several others.Ever since the G20 of leading global economies was founded, its summits have mostly been convergent occasions, marked by attempts to find common ground and remembered for nothing more unseemly than a bit of jostling among the heads of government to be on the front row of the group photograph. Japan’s prime minister Shinzō Abe clearly takes this traditional view about the G20 summi twhich he will host in Osaka on Friday and Saturday. “We want to make it a meeting that focuses on where we can agree and cooperate rather than highlighting differences,” he said recently.
But there is a balloon-puncturing problem with Mr Abe’s approach, and it answers to the name of Donald Trump. If there is one issue on which this year’s summit clearly ought to be showing global leadership, it is the climate crisis. The subject is indeed on the Osaka agenda but, in spite of efforts by countries including France, there is no prospect of serious or effective action. That is no surprise from a group of nations which almost tripled the subsidies they gave to coal-fired power plants between 2013 and 2017, with China, India and Japan itself leading the way. But it is Mr Trump’s decision to walk away from climate accords and to back fossil fuels that creates the wider permission for these other terrible derelictions.
Mr Trump’s disruptions do not end there. The US president uses these gatherings not to build alliances to solve common problems but to knock his adversaries – and sometimes his supposed allies – off their stride. He is not looking for general agreement, which he thinks is for wimps. He is looking for American advantage over friend and foe. That’s the reason why the summit is already overshadowed by the increasingly serious trade war between the United States and China (Mr Trump will have an all-smiles bilateral with Xi Jinping on Saturday). And it is certainly the reason why Mr Trump has used the run-up to Osaka to have a pop at his hosts, whom he claimed would respond to an attack on the US by watching it “on a Sony television”, attacking India for raising tariffs and then, inventing false figures, berating Germany as a “security freeloader”.
Since Mr Trump’s Friday schedule involves one-on-ones with Mr Abe, India’s Narendra Modi and Germany’s Angela Merkel, it seems these mind games are part of a deliberate strategy of disruption. This is not a novel conclusion. Mr Trump used the same approach before his recent visit to Britain, when he praised Boris Johnson and attacked Sadiq Khan and the Duchess of Sussex. If Mr Johnson becomes prime minister and Britain were to back off from supporting European opposition to the White House’s Iran strategy, Mr Trump would count this a job well done.
Mr Trump’s bullying is also selective. Among the world leaders whom Mr Trump has not attacked in advance – but with whom he will also be meeting in Osaka bilaterals – are Vladimir Putin of Russia, whose country systematically interfered in the 2016 US election, and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who has just been accused by the United Nations of orchestrating the murder and dismemberment of the opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi……… https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/27/the-guardian-view-of-the-osaka-g20-summit-bad-as-he-is-trump-is-not-the-only-problem
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June 29, 2019
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Iran Is About To Exceed Uranium Limits. Is The Nuclear Deal Dying? NPR, 26, 2019 , Heard on All Things Considered, GEOFF BRUMFIEL
Iran is on the verge of crossing a key line included in the nuclear deal it reached with the U.S. and other powers in 2015. As soon as Thursday, it’s expected to announce that its uranium stockpiles have exceeded limits set by the deal.
“I think it’s a major bridge for them to go across,” says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which monitors Iran’s nuclear program. Albright and other experts believe that breaching the limit could spell the beginning of the end for the nuclear agreement, which the U.S. exited in May 2018.
The nuclear deal is full of numbers and figures, but its purpose is simple: to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. Before the deal, Iran was within a few weeks of getting enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb if it chose to. The deal pushed that timeline back from weeks to about a year.
Under the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran was forced to get rid of lots of low-enriched uranium. Low-enriched uranium is kept at levels far below the 90% level considered suitable for building nuclear weapons. But large quantities of low-enriched uranium can be refined to bomb-grade relatively quickly. So the deal capped Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched material to just 300 kilograms, or 661 lbs.
But that was then. Last year, President Trump pulled out of the deal. Without the economic benefits Iran was promised in exchange for limiting its nuclear program, it has begun going back on the agreement. In May, it announced it would begin accumulating more low-enriched uranium. ……..
European companies had hoped to do business with Iran. But in the face of U.S. sanctions, “We’ve seen those companies have to step back and say, ‘We can’t afford to lose the U.S. market,’ ” Hinderstein says.
Iran is now stepping across one line in the deal at a time, in an effort to pressure European nations to provide promised economic relief. European negotiators are racing to complete a package of humanitarian aid by early July, says Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi with Great Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
“They are working towards that end goal, to showcase to the Iranians that they are actually working in practical terms to address some of these issues,” Tabrizi says.
If that aid — which includes things like medical supplies — can be delivered without U.S. objection, then it may open the possibility of more economic benefits flowing to Iran. But Tabrizi says it remains to be seen whether it will be enough.
“Iran has made it clear that it needs also to be able to continue to export its oil, to see the incentive of remaining a party of the nuclear deal,” she says.
For now, Hinderstein says, Iran is still about a year away from getting material together for a bomb — should it decide to do so. “We still have some time to work with,” she says.
But with each line that Iran crosses, the timeline shrinks, and the nuclear deal fades further. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/736008919/iran-is-about-to-exceed-uranium-limits-is-the-nuclear-deal-dying
June 27, 2019
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Iran says it will never build a nuclear weapon, Minister says Islam forbids such a move as country prepares to breach nuclear deal, Guardian Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor, 26 June 2019
Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon, its foreign minister has claimed, saying Islam prevented the country from doing so.
Iran has previously said it is ideologically opposed to acquiring nuclear weapons and seeks nuclear power only for civilian purposes. But in the current unpredictable climate it is possible Donald Trump could pick up Javad Zarif’s remarks as a signal to talk.
The White House is pursuing a twin-track strategy of seeking talks while trying to throttle the Iranian economy through sanctions that block trade with Europe and oil sales, and freeze the assets of political and diplomatic leaders.
Iran has said it will breach the uranium enrichment limits set out in the 2015 nuclear deal on Thursday, but that does not imply the country is on the path to building a nuclear weapon…….
The US president again threatened Iran with “obliteration” in a Twitter tirade in which he also accused the country’s leaders of killing 2,000 Americans. …..
The angry tweets came after Iran said the US’s decision to impose sanctionson its supreme leader and other top officials was “idiotic” and had permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
Trump imposed fresh sanctions on Monday against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and military chiefs, in an unprecedented step designed to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned American drone. Khamenei is Iran’s utmost authority, who has the last say on all state matters.
Washington said it would also impose sanctions this week on Zarif, who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, described the White House as “afflicted by a mental disability” and said the sanctions against Khamenei were “outrageous and idiotic”, especially as the 80-year-old cleric has no overseas assets and no plans to ever travel to the US.
Tehran said the US had spent weeks demanding that Iran match America’s diplomacy with its own diplomacy, rather than military responses, but was now trying to immobilise its chief diplomat.
“Imposing useless sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader and the commander of Iran’s diplomacy is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy,” the foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet on Tuesday. “Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”…….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/25/iran-says-us-sanctions-on-supreme-leader-means-permanent-closure-of-diplomacy
June 27, 2019
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