A resolution by Russia and China that would have delayed the lifting of sanctions against Iran by six months has received a vote in the UN Security Council.
World leaders on Friday voted to reimpose sanctions due to Iran’s nuclear program, 4 to 9, with 2 abstentions. As of 8 p.m. on Saturday in New York (00:00 GMT on Sunday), the sanctions will resume.
Russian and Chinese diplomats pushed for the Security Council to halt the lifting of sanctions, but they were unable to sway enough other members.
Iran has been accused of violating the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, which was intended to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as the E3. In 2018, Donald Trump resigned from the JCPOA without authorization.
Iran has repeatedly disputed its nuclear weapons’ right to pursue nuclear energy peacefully.
Iran and the world’s leaders, including the US, signed the JCPOA, which lifted sanctions and put an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, described the imminent lifting of UN sanctions on Friday as “legally void.”
According to Araghchi, the “pursuit of the so-called “snapback” is clear and consistent, but it is legally void, politically reckless, and has procedural flaws.
He continued, “E3 has buried diplomacy, but the United States has betrayed it.”
They have actively and intently opened the door to a dangerous escalation by disobeying facts, spreading false claims, disproven Iran’s peaceful program, and blocking diplomacy.
No more negotiations, please.
Before the vote, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy UN envoy, stated in the chamber that while Western powers had tried to avoid any compromise, Iran had done everything.
However, Jerome Bonnafont, France’s permanent representative at the UN in New York, refuted that and claimed Iran had not taken any serious steps to prevent the sanctions from being renewed.
However, Bonnafont added that negotiations should continue and that a negotiated resolution should not be reached at the end of the day.
According to James Bays, a journalist for the UN, “It doesn’t seem like there will be any further negotiation.” All week long, negotiations took place in New York.
However, Bays noted that Iran was aware of the possibility of a new round of sanctions. The Iranian supreme leader said he didn’t believe there would be any progress and that snapback was likely. “I don’t believe there is much more effort being put forth in terms of negotiations right now.”
The already stringent Western sanctions against Iran will be layered on top of them.
“All the international sanctions and UN sanctions that were in place before 2015 are what we are talking about here.”
Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran in June, with Israeli and US forces striking a number of nuclear facilities, escalating regional tensions. The UN nuclear watchdog board declared the Israeli-US bombing a day after Iran violated international nuclear safeguards.
Vancouver, Canada – After a major slowdown in Canada’s high-priced housing market, real estate sales in the country appear to be gradually inching up again.
That is cause for optimism across the country’s sector — hopes buoyed even more after the central bank dropped its key interest rate to its lowest in three years.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
The Bank of Canada’s 0.25 percent rate cut on September 17 — mirroring its US counterpart’s move the same day — has experts hopeful it might help lift home sales and prices, which had left thousands of properties sitting unsold.
Mortgage broker Mary Sialtsis, in Toronto, where sales have been slowest, said she saw homes taking longer to sell this year, as many of her clients held off buying amid economic anxieties.
“It’s a little bit slower right now than it has been in the past”, she told Al Jazeera before the rate announcement. “During the pandemic, prices really spiked — there was almost like a buying frenzy.
“Things have tempered quite a bit since then.”
Many would-be homebuyers had been reluctant to invest amid United States President Donald Trump’s chaotic imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports, she said.
As a result, many sellers were pressured to settle for less.
“There’s just been, I think, a general hesitancy,” Sialtsis said.
But last month, national home sales rose just more than 1 percent, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), the fifth consecutive month of small increases, as average house prices climbed nearly 2 percent from last year.
Real estate is one of Canada’s most lucrative sectors. It makes up nearly 400 billion Canadian dollars (US$287bn) of the country’s gross domestic product, representing 13 percent of Canada’s economy.
‘Rates should have come down a lot faster’
Last week, the Bank of Canada reduced its federally set key interest rate to 2.5 percent, down by a quarter-point.
The central bank’s governor, Tiff Macklem, told reporters the Crown corporation’s council had a “clear consensus” that dropping the rate would “help the economy adjust while maintaining well-controlled inflation”.
“Obviously, tariffs are weakening the Canadian economy”, he said at a news conference after the rate cut. “We are proceeding carefully … We don’t want Canadians to have to worry about big increases in the cost of living.”
Despite what the bank described in a statement as “a lot of job losses” and a weakening economy, increased housing activity was among the few “signs of resilience”.
The central bank’s key interest rate influences private banks’ own lending rates, including mortgages. Lower rates mean more people can afford to take out house loans — and also many mortgage-holders can get some relief on their costs.
The bank’s rate started climbing in early 2022, skyrocketing from just 0.25 percent in early 2022 up to 5 percent the next year, its highest since 2001.
Real estate is one of Canada’s most lucrative sectors [David P Ball/Al Jazeera]
According to Sialtsis, keeping the rate high so long “caused some people to pull back”.
She said some of her would-be clients did not buy houses, despite it having become a buyers’ market. They were “holding off because of the uncertainty due to the trade tariffs and the potential impact”.
But since April last year, the nationally set interest rate has been gradually declining as the country battled post-pandemic inflation, which drove up the cost of living for Canadians.
Shaun Cathcart, senior economist with CREA, said the historically high interest rates kept the market “mostly asleep” for three years.
“We thought that 2025 was going to be a rebound year,” he said. “And then, of course, what happened was this total tariff chaos just completely derailed that.
“People just pulled right back and said, ‘We’re not going to make any big decisions like this, I don’t know if I’m going to have a job.’”
But recent improved house sales, he said, suggest the initial “dread” from the trade war may have “sort of calmed down”.
And he believes there’s a good chance “that trend could accelerate this fall.”
For University of British Columbia economics professor Andrey Pavlov, holding the rates high as long as the central bank did “was a mistake”.
“Interest rates should have come down a lot faster and a lot further than they did,” he told Al Jazeera prior to the latest rate cut.
“Income per capita has been flat or declining in Canada for the past two years — allowing that to happen [was] a policy mistake.”
Pavlov said he would like to see more “substantial” reductions in the central bank’s rates to get the housing market moving again.
“It’s a very early trend of recovery”, he said. “High interest rates obviously present a major headwind to real estate.
“Some substantial interest rate cuts will then establish the trend of normal recovery and going back to a normal or seller’s market.”
Ottawa launches new housing agency
Before the rate cut, the country’s minister of housing and infrastructure, Gregor Robertson, acknowledged slower-than-expected real estate sales, but added some regions fared better than others.
For instance, Canada’s most populated metropolis, the Greater Toronto Area, actually saw its house sales drop last month.
“Generally, the market is challenged by the US tariffs and the threats we face across the global economy with wars and uncertainties”, Robertson told Al Jazeera.
“Housing and infrastructure are right at the core of Canada’s economy … It’s critical that we leverage that overall investment and create more jobs — create more homes.”
On September 15, Ottawa unveiled Build Canada Homes, a new agency with a 13 billion Canadian dollars (US$9.3bn) mission to ramp up construction of up to 50,000 “factory-made” housing units on federally owned land.
In a statement, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the new agency will “partner with private market developers to build affordable homes” for middle-class Canadians.
Ottawa’s plan would see the private sector offer “construction capacity, innovation, supply chains, and financing” — with the government bringing to the table “federal lands, faster approvals, and strong incentives”.
And in a nod to industries worst-hit by US tariffs, Carney said the initiative will follow a “buy Canadian” policy, to “channel demand through Canadian industries” such as lumber, aluminium and steel.
Private developers can be ‘very speculative’, experts warn [David P Ball/Al Jazeera]
Economist Jim Stanford, with the Centre for Future Work, said federal promises to expand the housing supply were “ambitious”.
“A big expansion of housing activity would help Canada weather the Trump tariffs,” he said.
But he cautioned against relying too much on private developers, which he described as “very speculative and very financialised”.
“If it’s just left to the private housing industry … we could see one of the ramifications of a Trump recession would be a further decline in housing prices,” he warned, “and a decline in housing construction.”
Although falling home prices can stimulate demand and construction, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation notes that in some cases “falling prices and tighter credit” can create “risks for buyers,” and too many unsold homes on the market can lead to projects being delayed or cancelled.
‘Strength of the real estate market’
The housing minister said the affordability crisis has created urgency around building more homes for middle-income earners, as well as non-market homes for lower-income and homeless people.
“We need to really scale up the number of homes being built below market,” Robertson said, “and make it more affordable for Canadians.”
According to mortgage broker Sialtsis, many Canadians — including renters and first-time homeowners — have been deeply challenged by a lack of affordable housing.
While close to two-thirds of Canadians own their primary home, affordability remains a major barrier, she noted.
But despite the housing sector’s slow recovery this year, Sialtsis remains a “firm believer in the strength” of Canada’s real estate market overall.
A report from the UN has revealed that more than 150 businesses, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, are profiting from Israel’s illegal settlement operation in the occupied West Bank.
158 businesses that are alleged to be in abusive settlements were updated by the UN human rights office on Friday, according to a new database update.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The list includes multinationals with offices in the United States, Canada, China, France, and Germany, despite the majority being Israeli.
Businesses have a duty to avoid causing abuses, according to the report.
According to the statement, “Business enterprises that have identified their causes or contributed to negative human rights impacts should provide for or cooperate in remediation through appropriate processes.”
Since the last update, which included British-registered online travel agencies Opodo and eDreams, was added to the list of 68 businesses since June 2023.
The construction, real estate, mining, and quarrying industries, which are essential to Israel’s efforts to expand its settlements, had a large presence among the other businesses. Over 300 additional businesses are still being looked at.
Volker Turk, the UN’s human rights representative, praised the findings as evidence of corporate responsibility in conflict areas.
This report emphasizes the due diligence responsibility of businesses engaged in conflict to ensure that their activities don’t lead to human rights violations, he said.
Israeli strategy for displacement of Palestinians
The review comes as Israel’s ongoing genocide against Gaza and its occupation in the West Bank are being closely watched more than ever.
Armed Jewish settlers have terrorized Palestinian communities in the West Bank, killing civilians, forcing families to relocate, and grabbing land in what human rights groups call ethnic cleansing.
Since Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 war, settlements have been strewn up, carving up the region with checkpoints, walls, and roads to encircle Palestinians who are now under military rule.
Israel allegedly employs a deliberate strategy to forcibly relocate Palestinians, establish Jewish-only settlements, and advance toward full annexation of the West Bank, according to a separate UN Commission of Inquiry this week.
The database, which the Human Rights Council mandated in 2016, is a crucial tool for influencing companies’ decisions to leave settlements, according to civil society organizations. According to rights advocates, international companies that Israel’s occupation are involved in violating international law.
Donald Trump makes hints about lifting the sanctions against Ankara purchasing F-35 jets during a meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, has returned to the White House for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump in an effort to repair strained relations for the first time in six years.
The two leaders had a lot to talk about, from upcoming agreements involving Ankara purchasing fighter jets to deep rifts between Russia and Gaza.
Trump stated his desire to have Turkiye’s sanctions lifted soon, but he also stated that some steps must be taken first. Both leaders were brief on details, despite their disagreements.
Can this result in a closer relationship between Washington and Ankara, then?
Presenter: Neave Barker
Guests:
Alan Makovsky, a senior policy analyst and former US House Foreign Affairs Committee staff member
Ahmad Shahidov is a political analyst, regional affairs analyst, and Caucasus region expert.
Sonam Wangchuk, a well-known activist from Ladakh, has been detained by Indian police after being charged with facilitating violent demonstrations that resulted in the deaths of four people and injuring dozens more.
Wangchuk was detained on Friday before his scheduled news briefing, according to officials.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
As youth reportedly tore up the regional office of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Leh, the Himalayan territory’s main city, Leh, on Wednesday, causing unrest in Gen Z-led protests. As demonstrators gathered at a site where Wangchuk had conducted a 14-day hunger strike, police cars were also lit up.
Police claimed they were acting in self-defense, so they launched live fire. In response to the tensions, they also imposed a curfew in a number of districts and shut down Leh’s mobile internet.
Since 2019, when Modi’s administration severed Ladakh from Jammu and Kashmir and placed it under federal rule, the region, which is home to both Buddhist and Muslim communities, has experienced political uncertainty.
Protesters want locals to have jobs, protected by the constitution, and statehood. Since last year, Ladakhi leaders and the government have been speaking informally, with the upcoming round set for October 6.
Following additional deployment of the armed forces, protest coordinators reported to Al Jazeera that at least four of the protesters had died and dozens had been injured in Leh, the regional capital, during the incident.
Prior to now, Wangchuk’s government had accused him of provocation and of robbing Ladakh’s Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement, citing alleged violations, and revoked his non-governmental organization’s license. Wangchuk, who ended his hunger strike following the clashes, refuted the accusations and claimed that New Delhi’s violence was a result of local hostility.
