In a brief statement posted on his Facebook page, “libertarian-ish” GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has come out against the recently signed accord between the P5+1 and Iran, which would restrict Iran’s nuclear program to peaceful uses of nuclear power. Here is his statement in full:

“The proposed agreement with Iran is unacceptable for the following reasons:

“1) Sanctions relief precedes evidence of compliance, 2) Iran is left with significant nuclear capacity, 3) it lifts the ban on selling advanced weapons to Iran

“I will, therefore, vote against the agreement.

“While I continue to believe that negotiations are preferable to war, I would prefer to keep the interim agreement in place instead of accepting a bad deal.”

Israel today launched a blistering attack on Western powers for agreeing a controversial atomic deal with Iran, warning that it gave Tehran 'a sure path to nuclear weapons'.

Under the accord, sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations will be lifted in return for Iran agreeing long-term curbs on a nuclear programme that the West has suspected was aimed at creating an atomic bomb.

The European Union called it a 'sign of hope for the entire world', while President Barack Obama insisted the deal meant 'every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off'.

But this was angrily rejected by Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branding the deal 'a bad mistake of historic proportions'.

And now Israel wants to bomb more nuclear facilities in Iran or infect it with a computer virus to cause a melt-down, so that what happened by accident at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, will be done deliberately to the people of Iran, who have not invaded or threatened anyone.

There are indeed monsters living among us.

And we know them by their deeds.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is not bound by the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, adding that it will always defend itself against Tehran, which “continues to seek its destruction.”

Israeli officials have reacted with fury at the announcement of a historic nuclear deal between Iran and six major world powers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the breakthrough in negotiations, which will curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions, "a bad mistake of historic proportions".

"Iran is going to receive a sure path to nuclear weapons. Many of the restrictions that were supposed to prevent it from getting there will be lifted," Netanyahu said on Tueesday (14 July). "Iran will get a jackpot, a cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars, which will enable it to continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region and in the world."

In an attempt to speak directly to the Iranian public to muster sentiment against the P5+1 talks between world leaders and Iran set to expire tonight, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a Twitter account in Farsi. Yet the move to convince Iranians the potential deal is a bad one has backfired.

Farsi speakers responded in droves by cursing Netanyahu and the state of Israel!

“Suck Iranian ****”– expletive deleted by the Jerusalem Post– “death to Israel,” and “I hate Israel,” was just some of the backtalk Netanyahu’s received to his @IsraeliPM_Farsi handle

After arduous talks that spanned 20 months, negotiators have reached a landmark deal aimed at reining in Iran's nuclear program.

The agreement, a focal point of U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy, appears set to reshape relations between Iran and the West, with its effects likely to ripple across the volatile Middle East.

Representatives of Iran, the United States and the other nations involved in the marathon talks were holding a final meeting in Vienna on Tuesday.

Zarif's announcement indicates that gaps still remain between the two sides and that talks will likely be extended; Netanyahu: World powers' concessions to Iran show they are willing to accept deal at any price.

Negotiators at the Iran nuclear talks plan to announce Monday that they have reached a deal to limit Tehran’s atomic program in return for sanctions relief, as U.S. lawmakers and other critics express concern that the Obama administration has conceded too much in the bid for a historic diplomatic agreement.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri expressed his belief that an Iranian nuclear deal could help pave the way to ending major conflicts in the Middle East, and the presidential vacuum in Lebanon.

The Iran nuclear talks turned Friday from talk of progress to a blame game, with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accusing the United States of shifting its demands. He dismissed a warning that the U.S. is ready to quit the negotiations as counterproductive.

Hours after his comments, Zarif met again U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for another try at resolving differences standing in the way of a landmark deal that offers Iran sanctions relief in exchange for long-term and verifiable curbs on nuclear programs which Tehran could turn to making weapons.

The tougher rhetoric mirrored the frustrations by the sides as the current round of talks entered its 14th day. After blowing past two extensions, negotiators had hoped to wrap up the talks by Friday, but Zarif's comments cast doubts that agreement was near.

The sides had hoped to seal a deal before the end of Thursday in Washington in attempts to avoid delays in implementing their promises.

Washington’s issue with Iran has never been Iran’s nuclear energy program. The notion pushed by the neoconservatives that Iran only had a nuclear energy program (5% uranium enrichment) in order to hide a nuclear weapons program (95+% enrichment) was always a cover for Washington’s real opposition to Iran and Washington’s real agenda.

From the standpoint of Washington’s doctrine of US world hegemony, the problem with Iran is its independence. Like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, North Korea, Russia and China, Iran is not Washington’s vassal.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry threatened Thursday to walk away from nuclear talks as he signaled that diplomats won't conclude an agreement over the coming hours - another delay that this time could complicate American efforts to quickly implement any deal.

"This is not open-ended," Kerry told reporters outside the 19th-century Viennese palace hosting the negotiations. "We can't wait forever for the decision to be made. If the tough decisions don't get made, we are absolutely prepared to call an end to this process."

Tens of thousands of Iranians chanted "Down with America" and "Death to Israel" during annual pro-Palestinian rallies nationwide on July 10, as a top leader said the U.S. would be making a "strategic mistake" if it pulled out of ongoing negotiations on the country's nuclear program.

Like Tsipras, Mosaddegh is famous for a controversial and historic referendum. Mosaddegh’s rule was in turmoil domestically and outside the country, and he knew that the parliament was about to remove him from power soon. That’s why he held a referendum about the dissolution of the parliament, and to give himself temporary power to pass the laws necessary. The referendum was successful with 99% of the votes.

This remains Mosaddegh’s most controversial move to this, which many people including some reformists call undemocratic and unconstitutional. But the truth is that the parliament was handpicked by the Shah, Iran’s dictator, and they were about to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and there is nothing undemocratic about turning to people’s votes, and getting a democratic mandate to push your agenda.

As the negotiations grind on in the Austrian capital, frustrations have boiled over into decidedly undiplomatic confrontations. In one incident on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif could be heard shouting in nearby rooms.

A Kerry aide tip-toed into the room during the evening meeting at the Palais Coburg, a former aristocratic residence converted into a luxury hotel, to warn them that everyone outside could hear their row, according to Iranian state-run news agency IRNA.

Iran and six world powers were close to an historic nuclear agreement on Thursday that could resolve a more than 12-year dispute over Teheran’s nuclear ambitions, but they remained deadlocked on the issue of Iranian arms and missile trade.

Washington obstructionism leaves Iran nuclear talks deadlocked as another deadline approaches for resolving remaining issues. Years of standoff persist.

Obama wants a one-way deal on his terms – demanding unreasonable Iranian concessions, raising the bar continually for more, wanting Iran subjugated and isolated as part of a long term plan to replace its government with a US-controlled puppet regime letting Big Oil plunder its hydrocarbon resources.

The U.S. and Iranian nuclear negotiators have just announced a one week extension of their nuclear talks. If, as expected, there is an agreement next week, it will open a new stage of tension in the process leading to its final formal ratification by all parties. For then, the U.S. Congress will have 30 days to vote the agreement up or down. This vote, forced on an unwilling president by his own party’s Senate members several weeks ago, poses a new threat. For the Israel Lobby, it offers a new opportunity to sabotage the deal.

An advisor to Iran's parliament speaker on international affairs highlighted the dominance of the country’s enemies over the UN nuclear watchdog and said the Islamic Republic has the right to prevent access to its military sites under the pretext of inspection, Al-Alam News Network repots.

"That we do not allow our military and sensitive sites to be inspected or that we refuse to send our (nuclear) scientists under the knife of interrogation is part of Iran's obvious and inalienable rights.”

With communications between Washington and Jerusalem all but severed, Netanyahu is hedging his bets and preparing to fight Obama on Capitol Hill once a nuclear deal is announced.

Iran will continue to face restrictions on its missile program as well as its trade in conventional arms under an emerging nuclear agreement, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, hours after diplomats said that the talks between Tehran and world powers would continue past deadline until July 10.

The six major powers and Iran are still not where they need to be to achieve an agreement under which Iran would restrict its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions, the official added on condition of anonymity.

"There will be an ongoing restriction on arms (if there is a deal), just like there will be ongoing restrictions regarding missiles," the official said. "It will be part of the (United Nations) Security Council resolution."

As the P5+1 push ahead to make a deal with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, the Israeli prime minister has published his latest cartoon to try and stop the deal. This cartoon equates ISIS, the Islamic state, with the “Islamic State of Iran” and suggests that the west is going to allow ISIS to get nukes.

Imagine Islamic State building atomic bombs. Well, maybe it’s not that hard to imagine.

The Islamic State of Iran – like ISIS. Just much bigger.

The cartoon ends with an ISIS fighter who has morphed into an Iranian ayatollah hugging nuclear warheads that are labeled with the US, Israel, Christianity and gay rights.

Access to Iranian sites continues to be a thorny issue and the Americans may be playing a dirty game in the media

A public diplomacy campaign by the Obama administration to convince world opinion that Iran was reneging on the Lausanne framework agreement in April has seriously misrepresented the actual diplomacy of the Iran nuclear talks, as my interviews with Iranian officials here make clear.

President Barack Obama’s threat on Tuesday to walk out of the nuclear talks if Iranian negotiators didn’t return to the Lausanne framework – especially on the issue of IAEA access to Iranian sites — was the climax of that campaign.

The P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran continue apace this weekend, with officials describing Saturday’s talks in Vienna as a “breakthrough,” and one which now has the two sides sitting on an unofficial draft agreement which could end up serving as the basis for a final pact.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif conceding that despite the progress, the final deal still isn’t necessarily clear, and that some difference remain and will require significant effort to move past. Exactly what remains to resolve is unclear.

“I just don’t see it likely that the US Senate is going to allow any kind of a nuclear deal to go through, and all they would have to do is… invoke another round of sanctions on Iran and the deal is off,” said James Morris, editor of America-hijacked.com

In a phone interview with Press TV on Monday, he said, “The demands that have been put on Iran are unreasonable.”

Morris made the remarks when asked to comment on a message tweeted by US foreign policy scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski, encouraging Washington to broker a deal with Iran.

“As the Mideast grows increasingly chaotic, it’s smarter to increase stability, not reduce it. A deal with Iran is better than no deal,” Brzezinski wrote.

Israel is preparing for the next phase of its fierce opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, by lobbying US Congressmen and women to block the emerging comprehensive agreement once it is finalized and goes to lawmakers for approval. But some in Jerusalem fear it is a lost cause given the belief that the potential economic benefits from resuming business with Iran could significantly outweigh political considerations.

Billionaires George Soros and Haim Saban donated a total of $3 million to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, the news site Politico reported.

Saban, an Israeli Hollywood mogul, gave Priorities USA Action, Clinton’s super PAC, $2 million, while Soros, a Jewish, Hungary-born business magnate, donated $1 million, according to Politico’s article published Thursday.

Clinton’s super PAC, which is dedicated to airing ads supporting her presidential bid and attacking her opponents, revealed Thursday that it had raised a total of $15.6 million during the first half of the year.

Other heavy donors included DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and director J.J. Abrams and his wife Katie McGrath, as well as California investor Herb Sandler and Boston philanthropist Barbara Lee.

A recent legislative move by US Senate hawks to extend sanctions against Iran for 10 additional years is nothing but an attempt to “scuttle” an emerging nuclear deal, says an antiwar activist.

“This is an effort to scuttle the negotiated deal between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program,” Joe Iosbaker, a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition, told Press TV on Friday.

Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have filed an amendment to the national defense budget that would extend congressional sanctions against Iran.

If passed, the amendment would extend the Sanctions Act of 1996 until the end of 2026. The current act is set to expire at the end of 2016.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that "Israel now faces two threats: that of ISIS – and that of Iran."

He added in a statement issued yesterday, a copy of which was obtained by Anadolu news agency, that "We need not strengthen one at the expense of the other. We need to weaken both and prevent the aggression and arming of both".

American diplomats currently negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program in Austria have been in constant communication with their Israeli counterparts.

With a 7-day extension hinting at the possibility of a major breakthrough in nuclear negotiations with Iran, CNN turned the tables and instead released a story talking about US bunker-busting bombs being put on standby.

The focus on a “military option” against Iran, the idea that in the middle of key talks the US could just up and attack Iran out of the blue, wasn’t actually based on new anything US officials said. Indeed, the CNN piece relied solely on a single quote from Defense Secretary Ash Carter in an interview from way back in April.

US officials do occasionally make puzzling decisions to threaten to attack Iran, but this was not one of those times, and rather CNN invented this story as a whole cloth exercise in 19th century-style yellow journalism.

The video, just 28 seconds long, was published on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s social media pages Tuesday and argued that allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons would be even worse than giving nukes to the jihadist IS group — also known as ISIS — that has rampaged across Iraq and Syria brutally murdering opponents in its path.

"For this there are three indispensable conditions: a lasting limitation of Iran's research and development capacity, a rigorous inspection of sites, including military if needed, and the third condition is the automatic return of sanctions in case it violates its commitments."

Six world powers and Iran have come to an agreement to extend the interim deal on Tehran’s nuclear program until July 7 to allow more time for talks to reach a final deal, the US State Department said Tuesday.

Tuesday, June 30, had previously been set as the deadline for reaching a final agreement on the nuclear deal.

World powers and Iran prepared to move past Tuesday's deadline for a comprehensive nuclear agreement, with officials suggesting significant backtracking by Tehran's negotiators that may need several more days of discussions to resolve.

Parliamentary officials disclosed on Monday that US President Barack Obama has sent a secret message to Iran in the last few days, adding that the letter focused on the nuclear standoff between the two sides.

The six world powers seeking to negotiate an historic agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear program plan to carry on negotiating beyond a Tuesday deadline, a senior U.S. official said on Sunday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was to leave Vienna and return to Tehran for consultations with the country's leadership on the state of negotiations, Iran said.

Officials from both sides said big differences still remained.

European Union foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini said earlier on Sunday it was not impossible to get an accord by the self-imposed deadline but that a few extra days may be needed.

Foreign ministers from the negotiating countries were gathering in Vienna on Sunday to assess where the talks stood. They expected them to spill over into July.

Contrary to public posturing on the timing and pace of sanctions relief, a framework for handling this critical matter of the nuclear deal has been resolved, according to Iranian sources.

Iranian officials have on numerous occasions insisted that sanctions relief must come immediately upon the signing of an agreement. This has been at direct odds with the position of the U.S. government and its allies, who insist that relief only can come after Iran has taken numerous steps limiting its nuclear activities.

As often times is the case in diplomacy, the solution was found in a combination of a play with words and practical measures.

With the June 30 deadline for the Iran nuclear deal just days away, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), an organization bankrolled in large part by Republican super-hawk Sheldon Adelson, is stepping up in its typical role of spoiler, launching a new media campaign aimed at killed the pact.

UANI and its cohorts center the ads on dubiously-worded allegations of Iranian nuclear plots, and spurious claims of Iran “single-handedly” killing thousands of US ground troops during the Iraq occupation. The group’s latest campaign features demands more or less entirely in line with comments from hawkish Republican Senators in recent days, which are meant to be directly contrary to what Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says he expects out of an acceptable deal.

As U.S. nuclear talks with Iran build to a head, with a June 30 deadline fast approaching to come to an agreement on how Iran will move forward with its nuclear program, the U.S. Air Force has been rehearsing with a 30,000 pound bunker busting bomb in case Iran continues toward developing nuclear weapons.

The bomb is called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, and is the largest non-nuclear weapon in the world. The massive bomb is designed to take on highly fortified and underground targets, with an ability to burrow 200 feet into the ground or through 60 feet of concrete, and then detonating.

Recently, Israeli TV aired an interview (Hebrew, at the 2:00 mark) with a wounded Syrian fighter who was treated in Israel after being evacuated from the combat zone. As I, and many other journalists have reported, Israel, despite the false claim of neutrality in the civil war, has frequently intervened in the conflict on behalf of forces opposed to Bashar al-Assad. It does this less because it opposes Assad himself, than because its arch-enemies, Iran and Hezbollah, are the regime’s strongest allies.

Prime Minister issues last-minute warning to the West as deadline to nuclear talks looms in less than a week.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted Thursday that Israel may attack Iran's nuclear facilities, even if Tehran and the powers nail down a historic deal to curtail Iran's nuclear program next week.

The powerful Israel lobby in the United States is seeking to forestall a nuclear agreement with Iran and ignite another war in the Middle East, a political commentator in Los Angeles says.

“The problem that we have right now in America with people like John Kerry, the secretary of state, of course, is that you have a lot of Zionist influence, said James Morris, editor of America-hijacked.com, a blog charting the influence of the Jewish lobby.

“The Israel lobby is working overtime to try to get a war going with Iran,” Morris told Press TV on Thursday. “It seems that we are on a path to another war for Israel in the Middle East.”

Robert Kraft, the owner of the champion New England Patriots, is a longtime supporter of Israel. Today he led a delegation of 20 former NFL players, many of them in the Hall of Fame, to Israel, where they met with PM Benjamin Netanyahu and he used the visit to inveigh against the Iran deal.