What's Next for the Iran Nuclear Deal?

by Soeren Kern • January 20, 2020 at 5:00 am

"It's unlikely that the parties will be able to reach a serious resolution, and the EU knows it...." — Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner, January 17, 2020.
"Trump has distinguished himself from his predecessor. The world's most famous dealmaker appears not to be angling for a deal, and for good reason — there's no deal to be had because there's nothing left to negotiate. [Former U.S. President Barack] Obama set it up that way." — Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine, January 13, 2020.
"The JCPOA guaranteed that the Iranians would all but have a bomb within 10 years — or by the end of the second term of Obama's successor.... The point of the deal was not to stop Iran from ever building a bomb but to prevent the Iranians from doing so until Obama left office." — Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine, January 13, 2020.
"The nuclear deal with Iran is over — it failed. You cannot and must not continue to negotiate with the Islamic regime, you cannot trust it. Such talks are useless. Governments should stop defending the regime through such talks, keeping it alive." — Mina Ahadi, Chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, Bild, January 14, 2020.

In what would appear to signal a rupture of European unity regarding efforts to preserve the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that he is open to replacing the existing deal with a new agreement negotiated by U.S. President Donald J. Trump. (Photo by Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Britain, France and Germany, the three European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have activated the agreement's dispute mechanism in an effort to force Tehran into compliance with its commitment to curb its nuclear program.

The three European countries — also known as the E3 — triggered the so-called Dispute Resolution Mechanism (DRM) on January 14, a week after Iranian authorities announced that they would no longer be bound by any of the agreement's restrictions in terms of the numbers or type of centrifuges that they can operate or the level of uranium enrichment that they can pursue.

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Christian Couple Kidnapped in Turkey

by Uzay Bulut • January 20, 2020 at 4:00 am

Since January 11, an elderly Assyrian Christian couple, Hurmuz Diril (71) and his wife Şimoni (65), have been missing from the Assyrian village of Mehr, Kovankaya in the province of Şırnak, in Turkey's southeast.
If the kidnapping of the Diril couple were to terrorize the remaining Assyrian community in Turkey into fleeing the country, it would mark the complete annihilation of yet another native community in the region. Such a tragedy should not be allowed to happen.
Western governments should help to find this elderly couple and see to it that those responsible are held to account.

Since January 11, an elderly Assyrian Christian couple, Hurmuz Diril (71) and his wife Şimoni (65), have been missing from the Assyrian village of Mehr, Kovankaya in the province of Sirnak, in Turkey's southeast. A neighbor told their family that "they had been kidnapped by armed men." (Image source: iStock)

Since January 11, an elderly Assyrian Christian couple, Hurmuz Diril (71) and his wife Şimoni (65), have been missing from the Assyrian village of Mehr, Kovankaya in the province of Sirnak, in Turkey's southeast. In wintry, sub-zero conditions, their children, followed by military special units, have been searching for them.

"We found out that my parents were missing when I and my relatives... went to our village on January 12. My father's uncle last saw them in the morning of January 11.... And my brother last spoke to them on January 7," the couple's son, Father Adday Remzi Diril told the newspaper Cumhuriyet.

Father Diril is an Assyrian-Chaldean priest in Istanbul and well known for his life of service to more than 7,000 Iraqi Christian refugees displaced throughout Turkey.

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