White House Warns Senate on Iran Legislation
The White House delivered a fresh warning to the Senate late Saturday to stay out of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, asserting that pending legislation would likely have a...
By: wochit General News
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White House Warns Senate on Iran Legislation - Video
U.S., Iran To Return To Negotiating Table For Nuke Talks
In Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to the negotiating table with leaders of Iran, trying to seal a deal to limit Iran #39;s nuclear program. TV 10/55 #39;s Meg Oliver reports.
By: CBS New York
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U.S., Iran To Return To Negotiating Table For Nuke Talks - Video
US - Iran nuclear talks resume in Switzerland
EU High Representative, Catherine Ashton, addressed the press on Sunday after the fourth day of negotiations ended with Iran striking a deal with representat... Nuclear talks resume between...
By: Nakita Waite
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US - Iran nuclear talks resume in Switzerland - Video
Iran has violated the rights of women, Christians and members of other religious groups and ethnic minorities on a massive scale, even as it seeks to negotiate with the West, according to a new UN report that details an explosion of executions, including state-sanctioned killing of juveniles.
Imprisonment and executions of Christians has continued -- even at an accelerated pace -- since the election of self-proclaimed moderate President Hassan Rouhani, according to Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations special rapporteur on Iran. Nearly 100 Christians are currently imprisoned "due to their Christian faith and activities," Shaheed wrote. Christians who converted from Islam and are active in the underground house-church movement often come in for the most severe prosecution, he said.
Authorities reportedly continued to target the leaders of house churches, generally from Muslim backgrounds," Shaheed wrote. "Christian converts also allegedly continue to face restrictions in observing their religious holidays.
In 2014, 753 people were executed in the country, the most state-sanctioned killings since 2002. The grim tally includes the execution of 25 women and 13 juveniles.
Roughly half of the executions were for drug-related crimes and, according to Shaheed, fail to meet the international standard of most serious crimes required for use of the death penalty.
"The report is a sober reminder that Iran's government, which exports terrorism and seeks nuclear weapons, is also an egregious human rights violator," U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told FoxNews.com. "Far from being moderate, the Iranian regime persecutes women, Christians, Baha'is, and other ethnic and religious minorities, and systematically denies its citizen many freedoms that we take for granted."
Shaheed has aggressively chronicled Iran's abysmal human rights record, even as the U.S. and Western nations negotiate with Tehran over its nuclear weapons program.
With every report that Dr. Shaheed releases, it becomes more and more evident how systematic human rights violations are structured under the Iranian dictatorship, said Saba Farzan, executive director of Foreign Policy Circle, a strategy think tank in Berlin. The world community with leadership by the Obama administration has thrown human rights under the Persian rug -- literally. Democracy promotion has been sacrificed for the sake of talking endlessly to those who oppress Iranians terribly."
Farzan said the U.S. and the other members of the P5+1, the global powers negotiating with Iran to remove sanctions in return for assurances about its nuclear program, should put human rights on the table when talks resume.
Morad Mokhtari, an Iranian human rights researcher at the New Haven, Conn.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, told FoxNews.com that Irans regime now presents a smiley face to Christians, but nothing has changed. It has become worse. With Ahmadinejad [Irans former president] you could see the enemy.
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Iran's human rights record worsens as talks with West proceed: UN official
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry takes a break during a bilateral meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif over Iran's nuclear program in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, March 16, 2015. The United States and Iran are plunging back into negotiations in an effort to end a decades-long standoff that has raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, a new atomic arms race in the Middle East and even a U.S. or Israeli military intervention. (AP Photo/Keystone, Jean-Christophe Bott)(The Associated Press)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, listens to Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, right, before resuming talks over Iran's nuclear program in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, March 16, 2015. The United States and Iran are plunging back into negotiations in a bid to end a decades-long standoff that has raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, a new atomic arms race in the Middle East and even a U.S. or Israeli military intervention. (AP Photo/Brian Snyder, Pool)(The Associated Press)
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi, from left to right, pose for a photograph before resuming talks over Iran's nuclear program in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, March 16, 2015. The United States and Iran are plunging back into negotiations in a bid to end a decades-long standoff that has raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, a new atomic arms race in the Middle East and even a U.S. or Israeli military intervention. (AP Photo/Brian Snyder, Pool)(The Associated Press)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, right, pose for a photograph before resuming talks over Iran's nuclear program in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, March 16, 2015. The United States and Iran are plunging back into negotiations in a bid to end a decades-long standoff that has raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, a new atomic arms race in the Middle East and even a U.S. or Israeli military intervention. (AP Photo/Brian Snyder, Pool)(The Associated Press)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, rides his bicycle along the shore of Lake Geneva, after holding meetings with Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif over Iran's nuclear program, in Lausanne, Switzerland, Monday, March 16, 2015. The United States and Iran are plunging back into negotiations in an effort to end a decades-long standoff that has raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, a new atomic arms race in the Middle East and even a U.S. or Israeli military intervention. (AP Photo/Brian Snyder, Pool)(The Associated Press)
LAUSANNE, Switzerland The United States and Iran are plunging back into negotiations in a bid to end a decades-long standoff that has raised the specter of an Iranian nuclear arsenal, a new atomic arms race in the Middle East and even a U.S. or Israeli military intervention.
Two weeks out from a deadline for a framework accord, some officials said persistent differences meant negotiators would likely settle for an announcement that they've made enough progress to justify further talks.
Such a declaration would hardly satisfy American critics of the Obama administration's diplomatic outreach to Iran and hardliners in the Islamic Republic, whose rumblings have grown more vociferous and threatening as the parties have narrowed many of their differences. And, officially, the United States and its partners insist their eyes are on a much bigger prize: "A deal that would protect the world," Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized this past weekend, "from the threat that a nuclear-armed Iran could pose."
Yet as Kerry arrived in Switzerland for several days of discussions with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, no one was promising the breakthrough. One diplomat said new differences surfaced only in the last negotiating round of what has been a 15-month process, including a sudden Iranian demand that a nuclear facility buried deep underground be allowed to keep hundreds of centrifuges that are used for enriching uranium material that can be used in a nuclear warhead. Previously, the Iranians had accepted the plant would be transformed into one solely for scientific research, that diplomat and others have said.
The deal that had been taking shape would see Iran freeze its nuclear program for at least a decade, with restrictions then gradually lifted over a period of perhaps the following five years. Washington and other world powers would similarly scale back sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy in several phases. Iran says it is only interested in peaceful energy generation and medical research, but much of the world has suspected it of maintaining covert nuclear weapons ambitions. And the U.S. and its ally Israel have at various times threatened military action if Iran's program advances too far.
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US, Iran working for nuclear pact; officials suggest a lesser announcement possible