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Taliban Says it Controls Most of Afghanistan, Reassures Russia

Members of Taliban political office Abdul Latif Mansoor (L), Shahabuddin Delawar (C) and Suhail Shaheen attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2021. (Reuters)
Members of Taliban political office Abdul Latif Mansoor (L), Shahabuddin Delawar (C) and Suhail Shaheen attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2021. (Reuters)
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Taliban Says it Controls Most of Afghanistan, Reassures Russia

Members of Taliban political office Abdul Latif Mansoor (L), Shahabuddin Delawar (C) and Suhail Shaheen attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2021. (Reuters)
Members of Taliban political office Abdul Latif Mansoor (L), Shahabuddin Delawar (C) and Suhail Shaheen attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2021. (Reuters)

A Taliban delegation in Moscow said on Friday that the group controlled over 85% of territory in Afghanistan and reassured Russia it would not allow the country to be used as a platform to attack others.

Foreign forces, including the United States, are withdrawing after almost 20 years of fighting, a move that has emboldened Taliban insurgents to try to gain fresh territory in Afghanistan.

That has prompted hundreds of Afghan security personnel and refugees to flee across the border into neighboring Tajikistan and raised fears in Moscow and other capitals that extremists could infiltrate Central Asia, a region Russia views as its backyard.

At a news conference in Moscow on Friday, three Taliban officials sought to signal that they did not pose a threat to the wider region however.

The officials said the Taliban would do all it could to prevent ISIS operating on Afghan territory and that it would also seek to wipe out drug production.

“We will take all measures so that Islamic State will not operate on Afghan territory... and our territory will never be used against our neighbors,” Taliban official Shahabuddin Delawar said through a translator.

The same delegation said a day earlier that the group would not attack the Tajik-Afghan border, the fate of which is in focus in Russia and Central Asia.

Moscow has noted a sharp increase in tensions on the same border, two thirds of which the Taliban currently controls, the Interfax news agency cited Russia’s foreign ministry as saying on Friday.

Russia’s foreign ministry called on all sides of the Afghanistan conflict to show restraint and said that Russia and the Moscow-led CSTO military bloc would act decisively to prevent aggression on the border if necessary, RIA reported.

The Taliban delegation told the same news conference that the group would respect the rights of ethnic minorities and all Afghan citizens should have the right to a decent education in the framework of religious law and Afghan traditions.

“We want all representatives of Afghan society ... to take part in creating an Afghan state,” said Delawar.

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World

UN Watchdog Says Projectile Struck Iran Nuclear Power Plant

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Bushehr, Iran, Dec. 7, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Bushehr, Iran, Dec. 7, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
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UN Watchdog Says Projectile Struck Iran Nuclear Power Plant

This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Bushehr, Iran, Dec. 7, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Bushehr, Iran, Dec. 7, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

The UN nuclear watchdog said Wednesday that Iranian authorities had reported projectile impact at the country's only operational nuclear power plant that caused no damage.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has been informed by Iran that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening", the Vienna-based agency posted on social media. "No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported."

Agency head Rafael Grossi "reiterates his call for restraint during the conflict to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident", the statement said.

The Bushehr plant in southwestern Iran has the country's only operational nuclear power reactor and was first connected to the grid in 2011, according to the IAEA.

Tehran has been under biting US sanctions since 2018, when Washington withdrew from a deal that granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear activities designed to prevent it from developing an atomic warhead.

Iran has always denied any ambition to develop nuclear weapons, insisting that its activities are entirely peaceful.

World

Iran Executes Man it Accused of Spying for Mossad

A man walks past an Iranian flag fluttering above the wreckage of a car in central Tehran, on March 4, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
A man walks past an Iranian flag fluttering above the wreckage of a car in central Tehran, on March 4, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
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Iran Executes Man it Accused of Spying for Mossad

A man walks past an Iranian flag fluttering above the wreckage of a car in central Tehran, on March 4, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
A man walks past an Iranian flag fluttering above the wreckage of a car in central Tehran, on March 4, 2026. (Photo by AFP)

Iran’s judiciary said Wednesday it executed a man it accused of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

The judiciary’s Mizan news agency identified the man as Kourosh Keyvani.

It alleged he “provided images and information on sensitive locations” to the Mossad. Keyvani was the first publicly announced execution for spying during the current war.

Activists and rights groups have warned since Iran’s nationwide protests in January that the country could begin conducting mass executions.

Iran violently suppressed the protests through violence that killed thousands and saw tens of thousands detained.

World

Cuba Vows ‘Unbreakable Resistance’ as US Pressure Mounts

A man walks on a street in the rain as Cuba reconnected its electrical grid across much of the island, according to the Energy and Mines Ministry, following a nationwide blackout that left about 10 million people without electricity, in Havana, Cuba, March 17, 2026. (Reuters)
A man walks on a street in the rain as Cuba reconnected its electrical grid across much of the island, according to the Energy and Mines Ministry, following a nationwide blackout that left about 10 million people without electricity, in Havana, Cuba, March 17, 2026. (Reuters)
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Cuba Vows ‘Unbreakable Resistance’ as US Pressure Mounts

A man walks on a street in the rain as Cuba reconnected its electrical grid across much of the island, according to the Energy and Mines Ministry, following a nationwide blackout that left about 10 million people without electricity, in Havana, Cuba, March 17, 2026. (Reuters)
A man walks on a street in the rain as Cuba reconnected its electrical grid across much of the island, according to the Energy and Mines Ministry, following a nationwide blackout that left about 10 million people without electricity, in Havana, Cuba, March 17, 2026. (Reuters)

Cuba's leader on Tuesday said the US would face "unbreakable resistance" if it tries to take over the impoverished island nation, as communist authorities scrambled to fix a nationwide electricity blackout.

Cuba's government is under increasingly crushing pressure, with Washington enforcing an oil blockade and openly stating it wants to end the nearly seven-decade-old US standoff with the one-party communist state.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Cuba's decision announced this week to let exiles invest and own businesses did not go far enough to allow free-market reforms that the Trump administration demands.

"What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It's not going to fix it. So they've got some big decisions to make," Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of the country's ruling party, told reporters at the White House.

President Donald Trump, who has heaped pressure on Cuba's communist government, said Monday he would "take" Cuba, adding: "We'll be doing something with Cuba very soon."

But his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel was defiant in the face of Washington's threats.

"Faced with the worst-case scenario, Cuba has one guarantee: any external aggressor will encounter an unbreakable resistance," he wrote in a statement on X.

Cuba is open to broad talks with Washington and allowing more investment, but it will not discuss changing its political system, an envoy told AFP on Tuesday.

Tanieris Dieguez, Cuba's deputy chief of mission in Washington, said the two neighboring countries "have a lot of things to put on the table" but that neither should ask the other to change its government.

"Nothing related with our political system, nothing with our political model -- our constitutional model -- is part of the negotiations, and never will it be part of that," she said.

"The only thing that Cuba asks for any conversation is respect to our sovereignty and to our right to self-determination."

The New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials, said the Trump administration has called for Cuba to sack Diaz-Canel, who is seen as resistant to change.

Rubio denied the report late Tuesday, writing on X that the article was "fake" and was among media reports that relied on "charlatans and liars claiming to be in the know" as sources.

- 'Taking Cuba' -

A total electricity breakdown Monday underscored the parlous state of Cuba's economy.

The country lost Venezuela as its chief regional ally and oil supplier this January after a US military operation toppled Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.

Power was restored to two-thirds of the country early Tuesday, including to 45 percent of the capital Havana, home to 1.7 million people.

"What we fear all the time is that the blackout will drag on and we will lose the little bit that we have in the fridge, because everything is so expensive," said Olga Suarez, a 64-year-old retiree.

"Otherwise, we are used to it because here almost all the time you go to bed and wake up without electricity," she told AFP.

Adding another scare, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck off Cuba's coast early Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Cuba's ageing electricity generation system is in shambles, with daily power outages of up to 20 hours the norm in parts of the island, which lacks the fuel needed to generate power.

But since Maduro's January 3 ousting, the island's economy has been further hammered by a de facto US oil blockade.

No oil has been imported to Cuba since January 9, hitting the power sector while also forcing airlines to curtail flights to the island, a blow to its all-important tourism sector.

And Trump is explicitly saying he wants the Cuban government to fall.

"You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States do it?" Trump told reporters Monday.

"I do believe I'll be... having the honor of taking Cuba," Trump said.

"Whether I free it, take it -- think I could do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth. They're a very weakened nation right now."