I am George Gerbo and welcome to The Washington Times Weekly where we have the opportunity to sit down with reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events.
This week was Vaughn Cockayne, a digital journalist at The Washington Times.
[GERBO] Many foreign affairs topics can be studied in depth and you have provided us with a wide coverage in the times. We will start with Iran and reach an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA to resume inspections on uranium enrichment facilities. These facilities in Iran have suffered a lot of bombing between Israeli bombs and the attacks Iran had faced before the previous deadline, and President Trump has issued a nuclear deal. Now that Iran is going to get inspectors back to the country to view its ruins and review its uranium site, will we be closer? Are we closer? Does this help herald the nuclear agreement on the horizon?
[COCKAYNE] OK, that’s not clear. The details of the agreement between Iran and the Atomic Energy Association are not yet clear. The only thing we really know is that Iran clearly stated is that all nuclear checks will be closed if Iran is attacked, or if snapshot sanctions are made at the end of the 30-day schedule. I’ve seen some analyses saying that no checking will be done until the 30-day schedule expires before the reverse light sanctions are reduced.
So it’s not clear whether it will really create more – it will open more doors for transactions. It is unclear, especially given the two other requirements that Iran has not met yet, namely renegotiating with the United States, reopening negotiations, and taking into account their nuclear stocks, their uranium stocks, which they reported earlier this week that they could not do because they could not do because they could cause three major damage and three major injuries due to rubble.
[GERBO] Let’s stay in the region along with Israel and its recent highly provocative attacks on Hamas officials, but those Hamas officials are in Qatar. This angered the Qataris and the United States, now putting the United States on an unstable stance as it uses Qatar as an ally to help broker some agreements and agreements. In the past, Katar negotiated a way to withdraw from Afghanistan from Afghanistan a few years ago, and now the Qataris are still in this mediationist position. Therefore, Israel attacked them as the senior Hamas leader in Qatar. Hamas said none of their senior leaders were killed, but that still represents a drastic escalation in the tensions in the Israeli-Hamamas war, which has been happening for some time now.
[COCKAYNE] As you mentioned, Qatar enjoys an immunity from strikes, and it enjoys a mediator status between the United States, Israel and Hamas…
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