World
Iran dismisses Netanyahu’s nuke remarks at US Congress
Tehran: Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has dismissed the remarks by Israeli prime minister about a potential agreement, saying that his country is ready to show further transparency concerning its nuclear programme.
On Tuesday, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a joint session of the US Congress that “we are better off without a bad deal with Iran,” as per reported.
He claimed that a potential final negotiated deal would make “major concessions” to Iran by leaving it with “a vast nuclear infrastructure” and providing it with “a short break-out time to the bomb,” as well as by lifting all the restrictions on its nuclear programme in about a decade.
To help the advancement of ongoing nuclear talks, Iran is ready to show further transparency concerning its nuclear programme but does not accept conditions beyond that, the Iranian president said.
“If the talks are about further transparency (by Iran over its nuclear programme), Iran would accept it,” Rouhani said, adding, “we would never seal a deal which overlooks the Iranians’ inalienable right to progress scientifically and technologically.”
“We seek a contract which would help Iran, the region and the world,” he said in the administration meeting.
The P5+1 group, namely the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, hope to adopt a logical stance with foresight which respects nations’ interests and is considerate of the stability of the Middle East, he said.
On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Marzieh Afkham, urged both sides engaged in the nuclear talks to seize the opportunity and use best of the time in an attempt to narrow the differences over Tehran’s nuclear issue.
“Intensive negotiations are underway” between Iran and the US, and “the talks are continued at legal, technical and political levels,” Afkham said, adding that the imposed sanctions against the country has also been one of the “serious topics” in the recent talks between the two states.
Iran has called for the “removal of all sanctions from the very beginning of the talks” one year and a half ago, and Iran was still insisting on that, she said.
Commenting on the speech of the Israeli prime minister in the US Congress on Tuesday, Afkham said Wednesday that “the prime minister of the Zionist regime had nothing new in his speech, and he has been immersed in his mistakes and radical stances.”
Netanyahu’s speech was a “show full of deception” and was the sign of “weakness and isolation” of the radicals in Israel and their attempts to influence the international policies, Afkham said.
“There is no doubt that the global public opinion no longer respects the (Israeli) regime of child-killer,” she said alluding to the Israeli attack on Gaza Strip last year.
The repetitive lies of Netanyahu about Iran’s nuclear programme are “boring,” she said, reiterating that Iran has strong will to solve “the fabricated crisis” of the country’s nuclear issue.
Representatives from Iran and the US held a fresh round of bilateral talks in Switzerland over the past three days as part of intensifying efforts by the six major countries to map the outlines of a comprehensive deal by the end of March and a final pact by the end of June.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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