French President Emmanuel Macron and a US envoy said Wednesday that Iran still had a last chance to avoid deep UN sanctions if it addresses concerns on its nuclear program.France, Britain and Germany have set the clock through the UN Security Council to reimpose sweeping sanctions at the end of Saturday on Iran, which they say has not cooperated on the long-running nuclear row.Macron met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and urged him to reverse a series of steps taken by Tehran following an Israeli and US attack in June.Iran must allow full access to UN nuclear inspectors, immediately resume nuclear negotiations and offer transparency on highly enriched uranium whose whereabouts have been the subject of speculation, Macron said.”An agreement remains possible. Only a few hours are left. It’s up to Iran to respond to the legitimate conditions we have raised,” Macron wrote on X after meeting Pezeshkian.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s real-estate friend and roving envoy who had been negotiating with Iran until Israel attacked, said without further elaboration that he was still in touch with Iran.Witkoff said that Iran was in a “tough position” ahead of the return of the so-called snapback sanctions.”I think that we have no desire to hurt them. We have a desire, however, to either realize a permanent solution and negotiate around snapbacks,” Witkoff told the Concordia summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly.”If we can’t, then snapbacks will be what they are. They’re the right medicine,” Witkoff said.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Tuesday with his European counterparts, leading to no clear progress other than an agreement to keep talking.- Iran denies bomb pursuit -Ahead of meeting Macron, Pezeshkian insisted before the annual UN gathering that Iran was not at fault.”I hereby declare once more before this assembly that Iran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb,” he said.”The one disturbing peace and stability in the region is Israel, but Iran is the one that gets punished,” he said.Iran has long contended that it is not seeking nuclear weapons, pointing to an edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and US intelligence has not concluded that the country has decided to build a nuclear weapon.But Israel, the United States and European countries have long been skeptical due to the country’s advanced nuclear work, believing it could quickly pursue a bomb if it so decided.The snapback sanctions would restore wide-ranging UN economic measures that had been suspended under a 2015 nuclear deal that was negotiated by former US president Barack Obama.Trump withdrew from the deal in his first term and imposed major unilateral US sanctions.Pezeshkian accused the Europeans of bad faith, saying that Iran’s lack of cooperation was in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).”They falsely presented themselves as parties of good standing to the agreement, and they disparaged Iran’s sincere efforts as insufficient,” Pezeshkian said.”All of this was in pursuit of nothing less than the destruction of the very JCPOA which they themselves had once held as a foremost achievement.”Standing at the General Assembly rostrum, Pezeshkian showed pictures of people killed in the 12-day Israeli military campaign against Iran in June, which Tehran says killed more than 1,000 people.The United States joined in the campaign on June 22, striking several of Iran’s nuclear facilities.”Aerial assaults of the Zionist regime and the United States of America against Iran’s cities, homes and infrastructure at the very time we were treading the path of diplomatic negotiations constituted a grave betrayal of diplomacy,” he said.

The top US diplomat Marco Rubio issued a blunt call to his Russian counterpart to halt the “killing” in Ukraine Wednesday, as Washington’s stance on Moscow hardens.Rubio “reiterated President (Donald) Trump’s call for the killing to stop and the need for Moscow to take meaningful steps toward a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.Lavrov fired back and “stressed the unacceptability of the schemes promoted by Kyiv and some European capitals aimed at prolonging the conflict,” according to a readout of their conversation supplied by the Russian side.Rubio’s comments came after President Volodymyr Zelensky praised Trump following the US president’s unexpected turn against Russia Tuesday, in which he suggested that Kyiv could not only win the war and re-take its territory — but could even expand it.  But the Ukrainian leader cast doubt Wednesday on NATO’s ability to guarantee Kyiv’s security.”Because international institutions are too weak, this madness continues. Even being part of the long-standing military alliance doesn’t automatically mean you are safe,” Zelensky told the UN General Assembly.Zelensky said he had a “good meeting” with Trump, who has ruled out NATO membership for Kyiv and berated the Ukrainian leader at a February encounter at the White House before warming to him.”Of course we are doing everything to make sure Europe truly helps and of course, we count on the United States,” Zelensky said.Trump’s suggestion Tuesday that Kyiv could win, with support from the European Union and NATO, marked an extraordinary shift after months of saying Ukraine would not get back swaths of territory taken by Russia.Trump said Ukraine could regain all its land and suggested, without elaborating, that Kyiv could “maybe even go further than that!”- ‘Big fat missiles’ -The US leader’s comments marked his latest in a series of policy switches on Ukraine, including a sudden pivot to peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin early this year that stunned allies.Zelensky warned Wednesday that Europe could not afford to lose strategically located Moldova to Russian influence and let it follow Belarus and Georgia into Moscow’s orbit.”Russia’s trying to do to Moldova what Iran once did to Lebanon and the global response again, (is) not enough. We have already lost Georgia in Europe… and for many, many years, Belarus has also been moving toward dependence on Russia. Europe cannot afford to lose Moldova too,” he said at the UN General Assembly.Moldova, a former Soviet republic, goes to the polls on Sunday with pro-EU President Maia Sandu facing a barrage of deepfake videos and other disinformation linked to Russia.Zelensky also sounded the alarm over the development of autonomous drones and unmanned aerial vehicles capable of shooting down other drones and targeting critical infrastructure.”We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history, because this time it includes artificial intelligence,” he said, adding that the only real security guarantees are “friends and weapons.””If the world can’t respond even to all threats, and if there is no strong platform for international security, will there be any peace left on earth?”The wartime leader, who has a packed itinerary of meetings with world leaders while in New York for the UN’s signature diplomatic week, stressed that Ukraine had been forced to ramp up its military production.”Ukraine doesn’t have the big fat missiles dictators love to show off in parades, but we do have drones that can fly up to 2,000, 3,000 kilometers.”We had no choice but to build them to protect our right to life.”

Two detainees were killed and one wounded in a sniper attack Wednesday on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the Texas city of Dallas, officials said.The gunman, who opened fire “indiscriminately” on the ICE field office from the roof of a nearby building, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement.The shooter’s precise motive was still under investigation, but the FBI said he appears to have been directly targeting ICE, the agency chiefly responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump’s pledge to expel millions of undocumented migrants.”Early evidence that we’ve seen from rounds that were found near the suspected shooter contain messages that are anti-ICE in nature,” FBI special agent Joe Rothrock told a press conference.FBI Director Kash Patel published a photo on X of five unspent bullets — one of which was marked with the words “ANTI-ICE” — and denounced what he called “despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement.”DHS said the shooter “fired indiscriminately at the ICE building, including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot.”Two detainees were killed and a third is in critical condition, it said.The ICE facility which came under attack processes detainees before they are transferred to a long-term detention center, according to US media reports.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President JD Vance condemned rhetoric directed at ICE since Trump’s return to office.”For months, we’ve been warning politicians and the media to tone down their rhetoric about ICE law enforcement before someone was killed,” Noem said on X. “These horrendous killings must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about ICE has consequences.”- Other recent attacks -“The obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop,” Vice President JD Vance said on the social media platform.ICE’s prominent role in the Trump immigration crackdown has sparked widespread criticism over its use of armed, masked agents to conduct raids in public places against undocumented migrants.After ICE immigration raids in Los Angeles spurred unrest and protests earlier this year, Trump dispatched the National Guard and US Marines to the California city.Another ICE facility in Texas was the target of an attack in July that left a police officer wounded in the neck.Ten people have been charged for their roles in the attack on the ICE center in the town of Alvarado.According to a criminal complaint, the assailants, dressed in black military-style clothing, shot fireworks at the ICE facility and spray-painted “Traitor” and “ICE Pig” on cars and a guard structure.The Alvarado incident came just days before a man armed with an assault rifle opened fire at a US Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas.The 27-year-old man fired dozens of rounds from an assault rifle at the entrance of the Border Patrol annex before being shot dead.Two police officers and a Border Patrol employee were injured.