The EU High Representative for European Foreign Policy, Joseph Borrell, said at a press conference in Brussels after a meeting of European foreign ministers that the list of individual sanctions had been agreed by twenty-seven, therefore expecting a final decision “this week” and that the EU would ratify it “in a few hours”. A “severe package” is being imposed on Russia in response to an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.
The ninth set of sanctions, which have been discussed by EU member states for several weeks, include measures against the export of Iranian drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) to Russia and restrictions in the financial sector.
All European sources consulted indicated that approval could come before the European Council next Thursday.
“Not 100% agree. Some member states disagreed. I am sure that we will reach an agreement, the problem is not a member state, but what kind of exemptions we use to ensure that there is no collateral damage and, at the same time, we do not lose their sanctions. impact”, said the head of EU diplomacy.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Alvarez said at a press conference after a meeting with his European counterparts that the sanctions apply to 144 individuals and 48 entities involved in the aggression against Ukraine.
The meeting took place in a tense atmosphere due to Hungary’s threat to block the approval of sanctions against Russia, Budapest’s approach to expand to other initiatives such as 18,000 million euros of macro-financial assistance to Ukraine for 2023.
The Spanish MFA criticized the fact that aid to Kiev had not already been approved, saying that the country needed it “a lot”.
“We do not accept the position of those who are preventing it from being approved,” he said, stressing that support for this macro-financial aid package was “overwhelming.”
Regarding the situation in Iran, the EU today adopted decisions such as allowing a high-ranking religious figure and Iranian state radio and television officials. In the protests that shook the country for almost three months.
“Iranian authorities continue to repress demonstrations and execute demonstrators. We are targeting those involved in this repression,” Borrell explained in his press conference after the meeting of the social bloc MNE.
The European Union has added a senior Shiite cleric, Seyed Ahmad Khatami, 15 military officers and four members of Iran’s state radio and television broadcaster IRIB to a ‘blacklist’ of people banned from entering EU territory.
Today, Iran hanged a criminal who participated in the demonstrations held in Iran for more than 3 months. This is the second execution related to the protest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman in Tehran on September 13, after she was arrested by the morality police for leaving because she was not wearing a well-fitting ‘hijab’. See section of hair.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbach said the executions were a “blatant attempt to intimidate” demonstrators into “expressing themselves in the streets and demanding to live freely”.
The European Union has added four more people to its ‘blacklist’ for supplying Russia with Iranian ‘drones’ used to attack Ukraine, including the director of MADO, the ‘drone’ maker and two companies: DAMA. , a maker of ‘drones’, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps specializes in developing ballistic missiles.
Joseph Borrell is said to have informed the Iranian foreign minister about the new sanctions approved by the European Union: “Despite our differences we must continue to talk and maintain channels of communication.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that its country was showing “great restraint over the riots” in response to an angry reaction from European countries following the first execution of a 23-year-old boy in connection with the riots. A protest movement against the theocratic rule prevailing in the country since 1979.
According to the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights, Iranian authorities killed more than 500 people and arrested more than 15,000 people — 11 of whom were sentenced to death — during the protests that began on September 16, the day Mahsa Amini died. In a hospital in the Iranian capital, three days earlier, he was already in a coma, violently assaulted and detained on the street by the morality police.
The European Union is trying to save the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program signed with Tehran in 2015, about which the head of European diplomacy said: “The situation is difficult, but there is no better chance to prevent Iran’s nuclear weapons”.
“Sanctions and nuclear power are two separate documents,” the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy stressed.
Iran spent about 18 months negotiating with Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and presumably the United States — the signatories of the original text — to save the 2015 nuclear deal that limited Iran’s civilian nuclear program. Objectives in exchange for the removal of economic sanctions.
The deal was unilaterally abandoned in 2018 by then-US President Donald Trump, who reimposed sanctions on Iran, making it unable to gradually fulfill its commitments.
In late November, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed that an underground fuel plant in Iran was enriching uranium to 60% (90% enriched uranium would make a nuclear bomb) – a far cry from the 3.67% agreed upon in the 2015 text.
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