Month: June 2022

It comes after the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board censured Iran for not answering questions about uranium traces found at three undeclared sites.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said 40 cameras would remain, but that the move posed a “serious challenge”.

Unless it was reversed within three to four weeks, he warned, it would deal a “fatal blow” to the Iran nuclear deal.

Under the 2015 agreement with world powers, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities and allow continuous and robust monitoring by the IAEA’s inspectors in return for relief from economic sanctions.

However, it has been close to collapse since the US pulled out unilaterally and reinstated sanctions four years ago and Iran responded by breaching key commitments.

The US now wants to rejoin the deal if Iran returns to compliance, but indirect negotiations in Vienna have stalled since March.

On Wednesday, the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors approved a resolution that expressed “profound concern that the safeguards issues” related to the undeclared sites “remain outstanding due to insufficient substantive co-operation by Iran”. It also urged the country to “act on an urgent basis to fulfil its legal obligations”.

The US, UK, France and Germany, which drafted the text, said in a joint statement that they welcomed “the overwhelming majority vote” in favour of the resolution, which they said sent “an unambiguous message to Iran”.

But the Iranian foreign ministry denounced it as a “political, unconstructive and incorrect action”.

Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh tweeted that the Western powers had “put their short-sighted agenda ahead of [the] IAEA’s credibility” and that they were “responsible for the consequences”.

“Iran’s response is firm & proportionate,” he added.

Russia’s mission to the IAEA, which voted against the resolution along with China, tweeted that the US and its European allies did “not get the sensitivity of the moment”, adding: “Clearly #ViennaTalks taught them nothing: pressuring Tehran entails escalation.”

Iran has been withholding footage from the IAEA’s cameras for the past year in an attempt to increase pressure on the US at the negotiating table.

On Thursday, Mr Grossi said he had been informed that Iran was removing “basically all” of the cameras and other monitoring equipment that were installed under a 2003 agreement on inspections, implemented months after Iran’s secret nuclear sites were exposed.

“This, of course, poses a serious challenge to our ability to continue working there and to confirm the correctness of Iran’s declaration under the [deal],” he told reporters.

The 40 cameras remaining were installed under a safeguards agreement that was completed by Iran after it signed the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970

Mr Grossi warned that the removal of the cameras would deal a “fatal blow” to the nuclear deal unless it was reversed in the next three to four weeks because the IAEA would no longer be able to maintain a “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s nuclear activities and material.

He invited Iran to engage with him urgently, adding: “Does this mean it’s the end of the line? I think this shouldn’t be the case. Not yet… Let’s hope that emotions go down a little bit.”

Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and that it has never sought nuclear weapons, but evidence collected by the IAEA suggests that until 2003 it conducted activities relevant to the development of a nuclear bomb.

The IAEA’s board voted to censure Iran after the director general told a meeting on Monday that he was still unable to confirm the correctness and completeness of Iran’s declarations under the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (1974) and Additional Protocol (2003).

He said that was because Iran had “not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the agency’s findings at three undeclared locations”, which he named as Turquzabad, Varamin and Marivan.

According to the IAEA’s latest report, environmental samples taken by inspectors at the three locations in 2019 or 2020 indicated the presence of “multiple natural uranium particles of anthropogenic [man-made] origin”.

Mr Grossi said Iran had also not informed the IAEA “of the current location, or locations, of the nuclear material and/or of the equipment contaminated with nuclear material, that was moved from Turquzabad in 2018”.

The director of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, insisted on Wednesday that his country had “no hidden or undocumented nuclear activities or undisclosed sites”.

Iran had maintained “maximum co-operation” with the IAEA, he said, adding that “fake documents” had been passed to the watchdog as part of a “maximum pressure” strategy provoked by Israel, its arch-enemy.

An AEOI spokesman confirmed it had told the IAEA the three locations could have been deliberately contaminated as an act of sabotage by a third party.

Mr Grossi also warned on Monday that Iran was “just a few weeks” away from having stockpiled enough enriched uranium to create a nuclear bomb. Enriched uranium is used to make reactor fuel, but also nuclear weapons.

The IAEA’s latest report said Iran had 43.1kg (95lb) of uranium enriched to 60% purity, which Kelsey Davenport of the US-based Arms Control Association said could be enriched to 90%, or weapons-grade, in under 10 days. However, Ms Davenport noted that “weaponization” – manufacturing a nuclear warhead for a missile – would still take one to two years.

Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair of the committee, said Mr Trump had “lit the flame of this attack”.

Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said the riot endangered American democracy.

Trump supporters stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

After almost a year of investigation, the Democratic-led US House of Representatives select committee opened on Thursday evening by showing clips from interviews it conducted with members of Mr Trump’s inner circle.

Footage was aired of testimony by former US Attorney General Bill Barr saying the former president’s claims that the election was stolen were baseless.

“We can’t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election,” said the former attorney general.

The hearing also featured a recording of testimony by Ivanka Trump, the ex-president’s daughter, saying she “accepted” Mr Barr’s rejection of her father’s conspiracy theory.

Before the House inquiry opened on Thursday evening – the first of six hearings expected this month – Mr Trump dismissed it as a “political HOAX”.

The former president has been publicly hinting about another White House run in 2024. He continues to peddle unsubstantiated claims that the last election was rigged by mass voter fraud.

Mr Thompson, the committee’s chairman and a Mississippi lawmaker, told the hearing: “Jan 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one writer put it shortly after Jan 6, to overthrow the government.

“The violence was no accident. It was Trump’s last stand.”

Ms Cheney, the vice-chair of the committee and a Wyoming congresswoman, said: “Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president.

“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

Running just over two hours, the unprecedented prime-time congressional hearing on the Capitol attack was a decidedly mixed bag.

The video evidence of the 6 January events, and the dramatic personal testimony of officer Caroline Edwards, were powerful reminders of the pain and suffering that day.

The extended statement by Liz Cheney – who has put her career in jeopardy with her criticism of the former president – was full of allegations and accusations but overly dense.

An American sitting down to watch the proceedings instead of their regular Thursday night entertainment may have not received the slickly packaged production that was promised.

But if they had forgotten what it was like on 6 January – the desperation and the drama – there was plenty to remind them.

What they do with that reminder, however, remains to be seen.

Caroline Edwards, the first police officer injured in the attack, testified that she was called a “traitor” and a “dog” by the rioters before she was knocked unconscious.

She described later encountering amid the melee a “ghostly pale” Officer Brian Sicknick, who died a day following the attack after suffering two strokes.

“I was slipping in people’s blood,” Officer Edwards told lawmakers of the “war scene” and “hand-to-hand combat”.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle,” she added.

A British documentary filmmaker, Nick Quested, who was tracking the Proud Boys, a far-right group, on the day of the attack, also gave evidence.

He described his surprise at the anger and violence of the rampaging “insurrectionists”.

Four people died on the day of the US Capitol riot: an unarmed woman shot by police and the others of natural causes.

More than 100 police officers were injured. Four other officers later died by suicide.

Republicans have dismissed the televised inquiry as a ploy to distract Americans from the political headwinds Democrats face with five months to go until the US mid-term elections.

Opinion polls suggest Democrats may lose control of the House and even potentially the Senate when the nation votes in November.

As Americans grapple with galloping inflation, soaring petrol prices and a baby-formula crisis, US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has seen his popularity with voters dip below Mr Trump’s approval rating at the same point in his tenure.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy – who was initially critical of Mr Trump in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, but has since shifted his tone – called the committee a “smokescreen” for Democrats to overhaul voting laws.

House Democrats impeached Mr Trump following the riot, with barely a week left in his presidency. They accused him of inciting insurrection, but he was acquitted in the Senate.

The first minister was responding to reports that a woman has been given a cardiology appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in July 2024.

Figures released two weeks ago showed that more than 10,000 people in Scotland have been waiting more than two years for NHS treatment.

Ms Surgeon said Covid had significantly impacted on waiting times.

But opposition leaders said the problem was getting worse, with Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross saying only 648 patients had waited more than two years for treatment this time last year, but the figure was now more than 10,000.

He highlighted a report in the Scottish Sun that a woman with a heart condition was issued with a telephone appointment with a hospital consultant for July 2024.

Mr Ross also raised the case of Kelso pensioner Alan Turner, who was referred for a knee replacement last autumn. He said Mr Turner was told he would have to wait up to three years to be seen, and was instead offered private treatment in England that was paid for by the NHS in Scotland.

Mr Turner “reluctantly” agreed to travel south for treatment, but then had to wait months for essential aftercare and physiotherapy when he returned to Scotland, Mr Ross said, which had left the 70-year-old “back at square one – he can’t even bend his knee”.

Mr Ross added: “Right now 10,613 Scots have waited more than two years for treatment in Scotland’s NHS – that’s a 16-fold increase on last year. It’s completely unacceptable.

“This isn’t the NHS recovery the SNP promised. Things are getting far worse, not better. Now we’re hearing of heart patients being given appointments two years away.

“These longer and longer waiting times are a problem across every level of Scotland’s NHS. Twice as many Scots are waiting over three months for key diagnostics tests compared to last year.”

Ms Sturgeon said the case highlighted in the Scottish Sun was “not acceptable” and that a review was being undertaken into the patient’s case.

She acknowledged waiting times had gone up, adding: “It is the case that waiting times generally and those waiting an unacceptably long time for treatment has increased over the past year.

“I’m afraid that is the impact of a global pandemic.

“We have, over the past year, seen further waves of Covid that have had a big impact on the number of treatments that can be done in our National Health Service as infection control measures have had to be tightened up and, of course, as a number of staff have themselves had Covid and been off sick.”

The first minister said there was “not a health service literally on the planet” which had not been impacted by the pandemic, and that the government were investing heavily in NHS recovery with record numbers of staff working in the health service.

She went on to say there have been “tentative signs” of improvement in the health service and that “through the efforts of staff” Scotland’s NHS was performing better than those in the rest of the UK on waiting times.

Recent figures for NHS England have shown slightly higher rate of patients on waiting lists than in Scotland, while Wales and Northern Ireland have much longer waiting lists than Scotland and England.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar also raised NHS waiting times with the first minister, saying that that there were now 10,000 young people waiting for mental health treatment.

He said he had been contacted by a woman whose son had been diagnosed with autism 10 months ago, but was told he would have to wait to see a psychiatrist before medication could be prescribed.

Mr Sarwar said: “He is still waiting. In that time his condition has become worse, and he is begging for the medication – in his words – to “sort out my head.”

“He is eight years old.”

Ms Sturgeon acknowledged that the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) faced “tough challenges” with more and more young people coming forward for treatment.

She insisted there were “signs of improvement” which showed “the highest ever recorded number” start treatment in CAMHS services in the most recent quarter, a 20% increase on the same quarter last year and added that an extra £80m had been invested in the service since 2019/20.

The latest Public Health Scotland (PHS) data showed that 9,672 patients were referred to CAMHS between January and March – 22% more than the same period last year.

About three quarters – 73.2% – were seen within 18 weeks, with the government target being for 90% of patients beginning treatment within that timescale.