The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday that while Iran has largely been complying with agreements on curtailing its nuclear program, it has built an extension to its military facility at Parchin.

A segment of the confidential report seen by the Reuters news agency says the Islamic Republic’s activity at the site since February 2012 has likely undermined the IAEA’s ability to “conduct effective verification.”

“Since [our] previous report [in May], at a particular location at the Parchin site, the agency has continued to observe, through satellite imagery, the presence of vehicles, equipment, and probable construction materials. In addition, a small extension to an existing building appears to have [been] constructed,” the report was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The report covers Iranian activity from before the signing of the long-term nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers in July.

Activities at the site since 2012, during a time Iran stonewalled IAEA requests to visit the site or receive information on it, have undermined the agency’s ability to verify intelligence suggesting that Tehran conducted tests relevant to nuclear bomb detonations at the site in the past, diplomats said Thursday.

Specifically, the IAEA believes Tehran may have experimented there with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms.

On Tuesday, IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said that his agency received large amounts of information from Tehran but it was too early to say whether any of the information is new.

Three weeks ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his country was fixing up roads near the Parchin site, dismissing Western reports based on satellite imagery that Tehran was engaged in a hurried clean-up of the facility.

“We have announced that road construction operations are being carried out at Parchin,” Zarif told reporters in Tehran, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. Claims to the contrary, he said, were “lies,” he said. “All allegations against the Islamic Republic of Iran in this ground have always been baseless,” Zarif added.

The IAEA plans to send inspectors to Parchin soon as part of the nuclear agreement. Access to the site would follow years of refusal by Iran.

http://www.albawaba.com/news/iran-expanded-nuclear-facility-parchin-iaea-736378

The U.S. announced Thursday that its top Syrian envoy will meet with officials in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland during the next few days to find an end to the Syrian conflict based on the Geneva Communique.

Michael Ratney’s visit is considered particularly important as the U.S. and Russia have different views about how to end the crisis in Syria.

Russia supports the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as being part of a solution in Syria, while the U.S. has repeatedly said that it seeks a political transition without Assad.

Political differences notwithstanding, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. hopes an agreement can be reached.

“These discussions are just at their beginning, which is why it’s so important that you know, Mr. Ratney is going,” Kirby said.

Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month in Doha met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to discuss Syria.

Days later, Kerry again met Lavrov in Malaysia during a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Kirby said after Kerry’s last meeting in Doha the U.S. began to believe there was an “opportunity to begin to work with Russia and with Saudi Arabia” on Syria.

The Geneva Communique, introduced in 2012 by U.N. peace envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, is a road map to a political solution in Syria that in part calls for Assad to relinquish power.

http://www.aa.com.tr/en/rss/582805–us-syrian-envoy-to-meet-foreign-officials-to-end-crisis

Iran appears to have built an extension to part of its Parchin military site since May, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report on Thursday delving into a major part of its inquiry into possible military dimensions to Tehran’s past atomic activity.

A resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Parchin file, which includes a demand for IAEA access to the site, is a symbolically important issue that could help make or break Tehran’s July 14 nuclear deal with six world powers.

The confidential IAEA report, obtained by Reuters, said:

“Since (our) previous report (in May), at a particular location at the Parchin site, the agency has continued to observe, through satellite imagery, the presence of vehicles, equipment, and probable construction materials. In addition, a small extension to an existing building appears to have constructed.”

Diplomats say any activities Iran has undertaken at Parchin since 2012 are likely to have undermined the agency’s ability to verify intelligence suggesting Tehran previously conducted tests there relevant to nuclear bomb detonations.

Under a “roadmap” accord Iran reached with the IAEA parallel to its groundbreaking deal with the global powers, the Islamic Republic is required to give the Vienna-based watchdog enough information about its past nuclear activity to allow to write a report on the long vexed issue by year-end.

“Full and timely implementation of the relevant parts of the road-map is essential to clarify issues relating to this location at Parchin,” the new IAEA report said.

Iran has for years been stonewalling the PMD investigation but delivered on a promise under the roadmap to provide more information by Aug. 15.

IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said on Tuesday that the agency had received substantive amounts of information from Iran although it was too early to say whether any of it is new.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Peshmerga has announced an operation has begun to the south of Daquq to liberate the area from Islamic State (IS).

In a statement on Wednesday August 26^th, the Peshmerga Ministry revealed that international coalition jets bombed IS positions in several villages around Daquq.

The airstrikes started overnight Tuesday and lasted until early morning Tuesday.

“The airstrikes supported the Peshmerga, who drove the jihadists back from the area and recaptured IS-held villages in southern Kirkuk,” reads the statement.

Senior Peshmerga Commander, Sheikh Jaafar Mustafa said that strategic positions such as Abu-Najm village are on the main road heading to Kirkuk.

“Insurgents could have threatened Kirkuk at any time when they were in control of the area,” Mustafa added.

Amid rumors of backchannel talks between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organization has reportedly summoned other Palestinian factions to Beirut where the details of a long-term truce with Israel will be discussed.

According to the London-based Arab language newspaper Rai-al-youm, Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas figure, had already met with some of the factions in the Lebanese capital regarding the possibility of a ten-year truce with Israel.

Brokered by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and agreed to by Khaled Mashaal, the terms of the truce would include the freeing of Palestinian militants re-arrested after being released in the Gilad Schalit deal, the construction of a floating port linked to Turkish Cyprus as well as a significant easing of restrictions on Gaza’s entry points.

The skepticism surrounding the possibility of a truce or even the taking place of such talks has come from both camps, with some Hamas figures, including Ismail Haniyeh, denying that Israel has been part of recent negotiations. More militant elements in Hamas, including the military wing of the organization, outright rejected the possibility of a truce, asserting that “our battle with the enemy continues and will increase in ferocity and intensity.”

Among other issues meant to be discussed in the Beirut meeting is the plight of Palestinian in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp. Seeking to consolidate a Palestinian fighting force to roll back the advance of the Islamic State in the area, mediators have supposedly struck an agreement between between Palestinian factions and militants in the Yarmouk camp. The initiative, which would allow the transfer of militants and fighters to affected areas, alleged won the backing of the UN and has the blessing of the Syrian regime whose own four-year fight against rebels has seen its sphere of control shrink dramatically.

Last week the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied claims that it had engaged in any talks with Hamas, “neither directly, through third countries, nor through mediators.”

The Palestinian Authority has also expressed concern regarding any sort of agreement reached between Hamas and Israel, independently from itself. Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf said that, “since Hamas is turning a blind eye to the Palestinians’ national rights and principles,” such an accord would mean consolidating the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Hamas has chosen its narrow interests and winning Israeli recognition at the expense of the higher interests of the Palestinians,” the Fatah spokesman declared.“Hamas’s goal is to rid itself of its crisis without caring about the Israeli scheme to liquidate the Palestinian cause and indefinitely delay the discussion over core issues such as Jerusalem, refugees and settlements.”

Assaf urged Palestinians to thwart the “Hamas-Blair conspiracy to slice off the Gaza Strip and eliminate Palestinian rights.”

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has seized five villages from Syrian rebels in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Aug. 27, advancing in an area where Turkey and the United States are planning to open a new front against the group.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told Reuters on Aug. 24 that the two NATO allies would soon launch “comprehensive” air operations to flush ISIL fighters from the border region.

US drone strike killed five Al-Qaeda suspects in the extremist network’s southeastern stronghold of Mukalla, a government official said Thursday.

“A drone targeted a house where Al-Qaeda militants were gathered for a meeting, destroying it and killing all five inside” late on Wednesday, said the local official, who asked to remain anonymous.

The United States is the only country known to operate armed drones over Yemen, and strikes on militants have continued during months of fighting between pro-government forces and Iran-backed Shiite rebels.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), viewed by Washington as the network’s most dangerous branch, has taken advantage of the chaos to seize Mukalla, capital of the vast desert province of Hadramawt.

Four other suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed in a similar raid on Saturday in Mukalla.

The group said in June that its leader in Yemen, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, had been killed in a drone strike.

Officials said this week that the militants had deployed in force across Mukalla in anticipation of a possible operation by the Saudi-led military coalition to help government loyalists retake the provincial capital.

The coalition of Arab states has been carrying out air strikes against the pro-Iranian Huthi rebels in Yemen since March, but has so far not intervened against Al-Qaeda.