Follow us on social

Shutterstock_1240899265-scaled

Iranian activists slam Natanz attack, call for diplomatic response

Nearly 300 Iranian artists, authors, and academics urged their government to stay on course for JCPOA reimplementation.

Reporting | Middle East

Hundreds of Iranian civility society activists have condemned the recent attack on the country’s nuclear facility, which they say was aimed at derailing talks in Vienna on reviving the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA.

Diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran, and Russia are currently meeting in Vienna to reach an agreement on the necessary steps for bring the United States and Iran into compliance with the 2015 accord. A U.S. delegation is also in Vienna but not talking directly to Iranian diplomats.

In a collective statement, nearly 300 prominent Iranian academics, artists, authors, and pro-democracy activists described the recent sabotage at the country’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility as “nuclear terrorism.”

Accusing Israel of being behind the attack, the activists say that the operation’s ultimate goal was to scuttle diplomacy between Iran and world powers on how to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, which former President Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018. After withdrawing from the deal, the United States reimposed stringent economic sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the JCPOA in return for the country scaling back its nuclear program.

Many in Iran’s pro-democracy movement believe that U.S. sanctions have taken a particularly heavy toll on the country.

Both before and after the JCPOA’s finalization in July 2015, many leading Iranian dissidents, activists, and political prisoners wrote letters to former President Obama and Congress expressing their support for diplomacy and the removal of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

According to the recent civil society statement, there are strong signs that the recent attack on the Natanz facility may have been an attempt to provoke Iran into withdrawing from the talks in Vienna. The activists urged their government to exercise caution in response to the attack on the Natanz facility and to pursue the matter through the U.N. Security Council. The “most logical and powerful response” to such an attack, they insist, is progress in talks on the JCPOA’s revival. They also call on the United Nations to launch a probe in order to prevent similar attacks from taking place in the future.

Despite the support of prominent civil society groups for the lifting of sanctions and the revival of the JCPOA, proponents of hawkish policies continue to point to Iran’s human rights record and democratic deficit as justification for more sanctions on Iran.


Ali Akbar Salehi, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (Photo: Alexandros Michailidis via shutterstock.com)
Reporting | Middle East
Daniel Noboa, Xi Jinping
Top photo credit: Beijing, China.- In the photos, Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa (left), during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the venue for the main protocol events of the Chinese government on June 26, 2025 (Isaac Castillo/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)

Why Ecuador went straight to China for relief

Latin America

Marco Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, his third visit as Secretary of State to Latin America.

While his sojourn in Mexico is likely to grab the most headlines given all the attention the Trump administration has devoted to immigration and Mexican drug cartels, the one to Ecuador is primarily designed to “counter malign extra continental actors,” according to a State Department press release.The reference appears to be China, an increasingly important trading and investment partner for Ecuador.

keep readingShow less
US Capitol
Top image credit: Lucky-photographer via shutterstock.com

Why does peace cost a trillion dollars?

Washington Politics

As Congress returns from its summer recess, Washington’s attention is turning towards a possible government shutdown.

While much of the focus will be on a showdown between Senate Democrats and Donald Trump, a subplot is brewing as the House and Senate, led by Republicans but supported by far too many Democrats, fight over how big the Pentagon’s budget should be. The House voted to give Trump his requested trillion dollar budget, while the Senate is demanding $22 billion more.

keep readingShow less
Yemen Ahmed al-Rahawi
Top image credit: Funeral in Sana a for senior Houthi officials killed in Israeli strikes Honor guard hold up a portraits of Houthi government s the Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and other officials killed in Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, during a funeral ceremony at the Shaab Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, 01 September 2025. IMAGO/ via REUTERS

Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Middle East

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

The chessboard was dangerously rearranged in May, when the Trump administration, eager for an off-ramp from a costly and ineffective air campaign, brokered a surprise truce with the Houthis. Mediated by Oman, the deal was simple: the U.S. would stop bombing Houthi targets, and the Houthis would stop attacking American ships. President Trump, in his characteristic style, claimed the Houthis had “capitulated” while also praising their “bravery.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.