Israel Criticizes Biden's 'Tolerance' with Iran

Defense Minister Benny Gantz with US secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Jerusalem (Reuters)
Defense Minister Benny Gantz with US secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Jerusalem (Reuters)
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Israel Criticizes Biden's 'Tolerance' with Iran

Defense Minister Benny Gantz with US secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Jerusalem (Reuters)
Defense Minister Benny Gantz with US secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Jerusalem (Reuters)

Officials in Tel Aviv condemned the US silence over Tehran's procrastination, accusing the administration of President Joe Bide of delaying the deadline on the nuclear talks.

Israeli sources said that the US, through its National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, had set a deadline for the talks last December.

Sullivan said that the United States and its partners would not accept continuing negotiations indefinitely and initially set February as the time to halt the talks, and then the deadline was moved to March, which has also passed.

Officials in Israel believe that the Iranians are having difficulty deciding whether to move toward signing the agreement and are also awaiting Biden's announcement on removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its terrorist list.

Israel continues to believe that Iran has taken advantage of the time during which it held talks with the world powers to strengthen its nuclear program.

According to Haaretz, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said earlier this month that while "treading water" in Vienna, Iran has completed the enrichment of about 50 kilograms of uranium to 60 percent and continues to advance its military nuclear program.

The newspaper confirmed conflicting positions within the Israeli government on the agreement.

Several officials in Tel Aviv believe the faltered negotiations are promising for Israel and evidence of the difficulty of reaching an understanding. It may lead the talks to a dead end.

They believe the agreement's failure will put the West, led by the US, in a military alliance that threatens clashes with Tehran, forcing it to reverse its policy.

Yair Golan, a former Deputy Israeli Chief of Staff and Israel's Deputy Minister of Economics and Industry, believes that reaching an agreement is the best option.

He said Washington is not interested in a military solution, as are the allies in Europe. They believe that the 2015 nuclear agreement, despite its many disadvantages, contains monitoring and accountability devices for the Iranians, and its duration is until 2031, which is not very long.

However, it is sufficient to limit Iranian nuclear activity and examine other means of pressure.

Golan says that relying on sanctions isn't right, adding that removing al-Quds Force from the terrorist list is not an issue.

Sources in Tel Aviv indicated that the pressure campaign launched recently by the Israeli government against withdrawing the IRGC from the US terrorist list is bearing fruit.

Biden now supports the Israeli position in this regard, unlike officials in the US State Department, and he will announce his position very soon.

Haaretz quoted high-ranking Israeli officials involved in talks with Washington saying that Israel is currently preparing for two scenarios.

One is an Iranian decision to retract its demand from the negotiating table, mainly to benefit from the skyrocketing global oil price due to the war in Ukraine. In that event, Israel would have a hard time scuttling the US plan to sign a new agreement with Iran within days.

The second scenario is that Iran insists that the Revolutionary Guards be removed from the terrorist organization list, which could delay and complicate signing a new agreement and lead the parties to further confrontation.



Iran's Araghchi, Pakistan Army Chief Discuss Regional Developments as US-Iran Talks Stall

FILED - 16 March 2018, Austria, Vienna: FILE PHOTO - Abbas Araghchi, Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, gives an interview in Vienna. Photo: Farshid-Motahari Bina/dpa
FILED - 16 March 2018, Austria, Vienna: FILE PHOTO - Abbas Araghchi, Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, gives an interview in Vienna. Photo: Farshid-Motahari Bina/dpa
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Iran's Araghchi, Pakistan Army Chief Discuss Regional Developments as US-Iran Talks Stall

FILED - 16 March 2018, Austria, Vienna: FILE PHOTO - Abbas Araghchi, Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, gives an interview in Vienna. Photo: Farshid-Motahari Bina/dpa
FILED - 16 March 2018, Austria, Vienna: FILE PHOTO - Abbas Araghchi, Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, gives an interview in Vienna. Photo: Farshid-Motahari Bina/dpa

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Pakistan's ‌army ‌chief Asim ‌Munir ⁠discussed the latest regional ⁠developments in a phone ⁠call ‌during ‌Araghchi's visit to Beijing ‌on ‌Wednesday, Iranian media ‌reported, as US-Iran negotiations remain ⁠stalled ⁠with no agreement in sight.

The US-Iran war, which began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, has entered its seventh month, with Iranian retaliatory attacks targeting US forces and regional allies. The conflict has disrupted energy and maritime routes, while diplomatic efforts to reach a settlement remain ongoing.


Climate Change Likely to Have Helped Trigger Nepal Glacier Collapse

A man carrying his belongings walks past a damaged house in the aftermath of flash floods at Trishuli in Nepal's Nuwakot district on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)
A man carrying his belongings walks past a damaged house in the aftermath of flash floods at Trishuli in Nepal's Nuwakot district on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)
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Climate Change Likely to Have Helped Trigger Nepal Glacier Collapse

A man carrying his belongings walks past a damaged house in the aftermath of flash floods at Trishuli in Nepal's Nuwakot district on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)
A man carrying his belongings walks past a damaged house in the aftermath of flash floods at Trishuli in Nepal's Nuwakot district on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)

Climate change is highly likely to ‌have contributed to the catastrophic glacier collapse that flooded parts of Nepal and Tibet in late August, killing around 1,400 people and leaving thousands still missing, scientists said on Thursday.

Rapidly warming temperatures in the region have caused glaciers to thin and have melted ice and permafrost buried deep in the bedrock of the Himalayas, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of researchers, Reuters said.

* While it is difficult to ascertain the precise role played by climate change in the collapse of around 2 sq km (0.8 sq miles) of rock ‌wall and glacier ‌ice on the Langtang Lirung mountain last month, ‌soaring ⁠temperatures created the preconditions ⁠that made it more likely, researchers involved in the study said.

* "There's absolutely no doubt that human induced climate change played a role here in the preconditioning of the disaster through permafrost thawing, through thinning of the glaciers, through having more rainfall instead of snow," said Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London.

* WWA uses ⁠peer-reviewed methods to assess the role played by global ‌warming in extreme weather events, ‌according to its website.

* The study said mean temperatures were around 5 ‌degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than normal in the Himalayan region in ‌August, with 1.5 C of the increase coming from climate change.

* Unusually high levels of snowfall in October and November of last year also added to the volume of meltwater once temperatures began to rise, which ‌could have helped trigger the glacier collapse, according to the study.

* Glaciers in the region have ⁠been thinning ⁠by about half a meter per year (about 1.6 feet) since the year 2000, changing stresses on the rock. Melting permafrost is also likely to have weakened the rock wall, the study said.

* A 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the same mountain in 2015 could have played a role by weakening the underlying bedrock as well, but its precise impact is unclear.

* "We conclude that this was a geologically vulnerable slope, potentially weakened by the 2015 earthquake, but it was destabilized further by glacier and permafrost retreat and by the excessive meltwater and exceptional warmth in the final period before the collapse," said Walter Immerzeel, a mountain hydrologist from Utrecht University.


UN Urges Slowing AI Development

An employee replaces a component from the Alps supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Lugano, southern Switzerland, on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Til BUERGY / AFP)
An employee replaces a component from the Alps supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Lugano, southern Switzerland, on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Til BUERGY / AFP)
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UN Urges Slowing AI Development

An employee replaces a component from the Alps supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Lugano, southern Switzerland, on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Til BUERGY / AFP)
An employee replaces a component from the Alps supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Lugano, southern Switzerland, on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Til BUERGY / AFP)

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned world leaders that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence poses risks that cannot be ignored, affirming that global coordination is essential to “slow down AI.”

“We cannot afford to ignore concerns that have been raised, especially by those on the front lines of the development ⁠of AI,” said Guterres. “It’s the first responsibility of any government to protect its citizens – including from the threats of artificial intelligence.”

Speaking on Wednesday ahead of next week's UN General Assembly gathering in New York, Guterres underscored that AI will be “a major topic” in his discussions with world leaders coming to the city.

This comes amid rising calls for stricter control on the technology that is growing at lightning speed and not without dangerous precedents.

In her State of the Union address to the European Parliament on Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for pacing the development of frontier AI models due to their disruptive potential, pledging closer safety cooperation with Canada, the UK and other like-minded countries.

She hailed AI's potential to benefit humanity, provided its risks and opportunities are properly balanced.

Last Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also called for a slowdown in the industry's development, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, xAI's Elon Musk and Hassabis all supporting the sentiment.

The calls have gone unanswered by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Comparing AI development to the Cold War-era arms race between the US and Soviet Union, the UN Secretary-General called for cooperation between countries at the forefront of AI – including the US and China – to slow down AI development while risks continue to be assessed.

“The countries that have the highest capacity in the frontiers of AI – I think they should establish mechanisms of contact, have an exchange of information and (create) some common guardrails in order to avoid a race to the bottom that could one day lead to a gigantic disaster at the global level,” Guterres said.

With the scientific and diplomatic mechanisms now in place, the UN will continue to work to turn that cooperation into concrete action as AI becomes increasingly powerful.