UNITED NATIONS (AP) — France, Germany and the United Kingdom moved Thursday to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, further isolating Tehran after its atomic sites were repeatedly bombed during a 12-day war with Israel.
The process, termed a “snapback” by the diplomats who negotiated it into Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, was designed to be veto-proof at the U.N. and could take effect in a month.
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FILE -Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attends the 17th annual BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)
A street money exchanger holds Iranian banknotes at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iranian and foreign banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
File - A national flag of Iran waves in front of the building of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in Vienna, Austria, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Gruber, File)
FILE -An Iranian flag flutters in front of the reactor building of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - In this file photo released on Nov. 30, 2009 by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the reactor building of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is seen, just outside the port city of Bushehr 750 miles (1245 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/ISNA, Mehdi Ghasemi, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2010 file photo, an Iranian security officer directs media at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, with the reactor building seen in the background, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A street money exchanger poses for a photo without showing his face as he counts Iranian banknotes at a commercial district in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
It would again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran's ballistic missile program, among other measures, further squeezing the country’s reeling economy.
The move starts a 30-day clock for sanctions to return, a period that likely will see intensified diplomacy from Iran, whose refusal to cooperate with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, started the crisis. Iran will also probably emerge as a top focus of the U.N. General Assembly when it meets next month in New York.
The British, French and German foreign ministers suggested that they viewed the snapback as a way to spur negotiations with Tehran.
"This measure does not signal the end of diplomacy: we are determined to make the most of the 30-day period that is now opening to engage in dialogue with Iran,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on the social platform X.
But Iran immediately decried the move, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying it was “unjustified" and "lacking any legal basis" in a call with his European counterparts.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will respond appropriately to this unlawful and unwarranted measure,” he said. Hours later, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the move by the European countries will “gravely undermine” its ongoing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
In the past, Iran has threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, potentially following North Korea, which abandoned the treaty in 2003 and then built atomic weapons.
The three European nations warned Aug. 8 that Iran could trigger the snapback when it halted inspections by the IAEA after Israeli strikes at the start of the two countries’ 12-day war in June. The Israeli attacks killed Tehran’s top military leaders and chased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei into hiding.
The European nations triggered the sanctions process through a letter to the U.N. Security Council. France and the U.K. also requested that the 15-member council hold closed consultations Friday to discuss Iran’s noncompliance, according to a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss still-private information.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the Europeans' decision and said America “remains available for direct engagement with Iran.” “Snapback does not contradict our earnest readiness for diplomacy; it only enhances it,” Rubio said in a statement.
Using the snapback mechanism will likely heighten tensions between Iran and the West in a region still burning over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. As the measure was announced, Israel launched strikes targeting Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
“Iranian leaders perceive a sanctions ‘snapback’ as a Western effort to weaken Iran’s economy indefinitely and perhaps stimulate sufficient popular unrest to unseat Iran’s regime,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said Thursday.
After Europe’s warning, Iran initially downplayed the threat of renewed sanctions and engaged in little visible diplomacy for weeks, but it did take part in a brief diplomatic push in recent days, highlighting the chaos gripping its theocracy.
In Tehran on Thursday, Iran’s rial currency traded at over 1 million to $1. At the time of the 2015 accord, it traded at 32,000 to $1, showing the currency’s precipitous collapse over the last decade.
Outside a currency shop in Tehran, resident Arman Vasheghani Farahani told The Associated Press that “many of us feel a deep sense of uncertainty and desperation” over the currency collapse sparked by the nuclear tensions.
“Should we keep trying, or is it time to give up? And how long will this situation last?” he asked. “No official seems willing to take responsibility for what’s happening.”
Before the war in June, Iran was enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. It also built a stockpile containing enough highly enriched uranium to build multiple atomic bombs, should it choose to do so.
Iran has long insisted its program is peaceful, though Western nations and the IAEA assess that Tehran had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003. It remains unclear just how much the Israeli and U.S. strikes on nuclear sites during the war disrupted Iran’s program.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to allow the IAEA even greater access to its nuclear program than the agency has in other member nations. That included permanently installing cameras and sensors at nuclear sites.
But IAEA inspectors, who faced increasing restrictions on their activities since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018, have yet to access those sites. Meanwhile, Iran has said it moved uranium and other equipment out before the strikes — possibly to new, undeclared sites that raise the risk that monitors could lose track of the program’s status.
On Wednesday, IAEA inspectors were on hand to watch a fuel replacement at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, which is run with Russian technical assistance.
Despite inspectors returning to Iran, the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that regaining access to crucial nuclear facilities is still “a work in progress."
The snapback mechanism will expire Oct. 18. After that, any sanctions effort would face a veto from U.N. Security Council members China and Russia — nations that have provided some support to Iran in the past but stayed out of the June war. China has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, something that could be affected if snapback happens.
Russia announced Thursday that Moscow and Beijing introduced a draft resolution to the Security Council, offering a six-month extension of the U.N. sanctions relief. Russia is also due to take the presidency of the council in October, which is likely to put additional pressure on the Europeans to act.
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Liechtenstein reported from Vienna. Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/
FILE -Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attends the 17th annual BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)
A street money exchanger holds Iranian banknotes at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iranian and foreign banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
File - A national flag of Iran waves in front of the building of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in Vienna, Austria, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Gruber, File)
FILE -An Iranian flag flutters in front of the reactor building of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - In this file photo released on Nov. 30, 2009 by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the reactor building of Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is seen, just outside the port city of Bushehr 750 miles (1245 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/ISNA, Mehdi Ghasemi, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2010 file photo, an Iranian security officer directs media at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, with the reactor building seen in the background, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A street money exchanger poses for a photo without showing his face as he counts Iranian banknotes at a commercial district in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
Several Middle Eastern allies of the United States have urged the Trump administration to hold off on strikes against Iran for the government’s deadly crackdown on protesters, according to an Arab diplomat familiar with the matter.
Top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have raised concerns in the last 48 hours that a U.S. military intervention would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region, said the diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive conversations.
Oil prices fell Thursday as the markets appeared to take note of President Donald Trump’s shifting tone as a sign that he’s leaning away from attacking Iran after days of launching blistering threats at Tehran for its brutal crackdown.
Nevertheless, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday maintained that “all options remain on the table” for Trump as he deals with Iran.
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The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on 21 people and firms accused of procuring weapons and financial services for the Houthi militant group Friday.
The sanctions also target front companies and people in Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates that are part of the Houthis’ revenue generation and smuggling networks, according to the Treasury Department.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department “will use all tools at its disposal to expose the networks and individuals enabling Houthi terrorism.”
Calling acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez “a communist,” Machado said she was “profoundly confident that we will have an orderly transition” from the former Maduro-led government to her own.
Afterward, Machado said she would pledge that Venezuela would be among the United States’ closest allies.
“I didn’t come here to seek anything for myself,” Machado said in Spanish, in response to a journalist’s query as to why she had come to the U.S. “I came as a representative of the people of Venezuela.”
Saying “we are facing challenging times ahead,” Machado said she wanted to assure Venezuelans that their country “is going to be free, and that’s going to be achieved with the support of the people of the United States and the president, Donald Trump.”
Machado said she understood “that there are many concerns regarding the transition in Venezuela,” and that part of the Washington trip she’s making is intended to make her case to U.S. leaders.
Saying it “seems like a miracle to be sitting here in a free country” during her U.S. visit, Machado cast ahead for her home country, which she said she felt was now seeing the “first steps of a true transition to democracy” after Maduro.
Machado said the process ahead is “very complex and difficult” and said she was “absolutely grateful” for Trump.
“It took a lot of courage to do what he did,” she said, in Trump’s move to arrest Maduro and bring him to the U.S. to face charges.
She’s begun her remarks to a crowd at the conservative Washington think tank. A Heritage executive said the group was “honored to host history.”
Machado met Thursday with Trump at the White House, where she later said she had “presented” him with her Nobel Peace Prize. The White House later posted a photo of Machado standing next to Trump in the Oval Office as he holds the medal in a large frame.
Machado also held meetings with senators on Capitol Hill.
Trump interrupted Sen. Dan Sullivan, seemingly pressuring him to bring his fellow Alaskan Lisa Murkowski in line with the president.
Sullivan was bragging on Trump’s health care agenda, especially rural health spending.
“Will you get Lisa Murkowski to vote for it?” Trump broke in.
Sullivan explained that Murkowski did back the “Big Beautiful Bill” that included rural health money. Trump clarified he meant upcoming votes on the GOP’s proposed health savings accounts to replace Affordable Care Act insurance premium subsidies.
“Are you gonna get her to vote for it?” Trump asked several times.
Sullivan finally relented: “We’ll work on it, sir. We’ll work on it.”
Murkowski has voted with Democrats to extend ACA subsidies. Neither Trump nor Sullivan mentioned that Sullivan also voted to extend the subsidies.
Separately, Murkowski resisted Trump’s pressure this week and voted to restrict his war powers in Venezuela. Sullivan stuck with Trump.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that efforts to crack down on Mexican cartels and slow migration north were showing “compelling results” in an effort to head off intervention talk by the Trump administration.
The comments come after Trump threatened that U.S. forces “will now start hitting land” in Mexico targeting drug cartels, after the dramatic United States military raid on Venezuela that deposed then-President Nicolás Maduro.
Sheinbaum, a leftist who boasts of taking on chaos with a “cool head,” has sought to placate Trump and, unlike Maduro, has worked to build out a strong relationship between the Mexican and U.S. governments. The early January raid in Venezuela set much of Latin America on edge, fueling concern that Trump could soon turn American forces on other nations, particularly Cuba and Mexico.
▶ Read more about relations between Mexico and the U.S.
A senior embassy official says there’s been “no outreach from Saudi Arabia to the White House regarding potential military strikes against Iran.” The official wasn’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The embassy denial comes after several news outlets, including The Associated Press, reported Thursday that the kingdom was among several Middle Eastern allies of the United States that have urged the Trump administration to hold off on strikes against Iran for the government’s deadly crackdown on protesters.
Top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar had raised concerns that U.S. military action against Iran would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region, according to an Arab diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive conversations.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Ambassador Mike Waltz, the chief U.S. envoy to the United Nations, on Thursday said all options remain on the table even as Trump highlighted that Iran has stopped the killing of protesters and backed away from plans to execute hundreds of protesters.
— Aamer Madhani
He’s pushing for bipartisan support for the GOP proposal to replace expanded Affordable Care Act premium subsidies with individual health savings accounts.
Trump said he hopes to get votes from Democrats but said Republicans can own the issue without them.
Recent AP-NORC polls have shown why Trump is concerned. Approval of Trump’s handling of health care was 34% in November. It slipped to 29% in December.
Most of the decrease came from Republicans. In November, 68% of Republicans had a positive view of Trump’s handling of health care. In December, while still a majority, it was down to 59%.
Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi told reporters Friday in Washington that he still believes Trump’s promise that “help is on the way” for the Iranian people still stands despite lack of action by the U.S.
Asked if he’s lost faith in the U.S. president, Pahlavi said, “I believe the president is a man of his word. As I said before, how many days it may take? Who knows? Hopefully sooner than later. But as I said before, regardless of whether action is taken or not, we as Iranians have no choice to carry on the fight.”
There had been reports that Pahlavi met over the weekend with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, but Pahlavi refused to discuss any meetings with U.S. officials, including whether he’ll directly meet Trump.
“I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland,” the president said, without providing details. “We need Greenland for national security.”
Trump for months has insisted the U.S. should control Greenland, a self-governing territory that’s part of the kingdom of Denmark.
But he’d not previously mentioned using tariffs to try and force the issue.
European leaders have joined Denmark in saying the U.S. can’t control the world’s largest island.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened fewer than 10 sexual violence investigations nationwide since it was hit by mass layoffs last March, according to internal data obtained by The Associated Press.
Previously, it had been opening dozens of such investigations a year.
The layoffs last year left half as many lawyers to investigate complaints of discrimination based on race, sex or disability in schools.
At the same time, the administration has doubled down on sexual discrimination cases of another kind. Trump officials have used Title IX, a 1972 gender-equality law, against schools that make accommodations for transgender students and athletes. The Office for Civil Rights has opened nearly 50 such investigations since Trump took office.
▶ Read more about Education Department sexual violence investigations
The president quickly turned his health care forum into a grievance session against Democrats and a bragging session on the votes he’s gotten in rural America.
“I’m all about the rural community. … We’re taking care of those great people,” he said, arguing that former President Barack Obama “didn’t care about the rural community, to be totally blunt.”
“The Democrats are so horrible toward the rural community,” Trump added. He asked voters to “remember ... in the midterms” that Democrats did not back his “Big Beautiful Bill” that included $10 billion for rural healthcare this year.
Trump effectively blamed Obama’s “Un-Affordable Care Act” for rural hospital closures and financial struggles. In truth, KFF has found that rural hospitals closed at a higher rate in states that did not expand Medicaid under Democrats’ 2010 health care overhaul than in states that did expand to take in more federal money.
“I actually want to keep you where you are, if you know the truth,” Trump told Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council.
Trump made the comment at a White House event on rural health, drawing laughter in the room. But it wasn’t clear the president himself was joking.
It comes as Trump is believed to be in final interviews with potential replacements for the Fed’s current chair, Jerome Powell, a frequently target of Trump’s public attacks.
“We don’t want to lose him Susie,” Trump said of Hassett to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who also at the health event. “We’ll see how it all works out.”
The White House is touting health care spending across small-town America intended to transform how care is delivered in places that have lost many hospitals and providers.
A look at some numbers:
That makes him the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the country following the U.S. military strike which captured former leader Nicolás Maduro.
Thursday’s meeting, first reported by The New York Times, was confirmed Friday by a U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The official said the meeting in Caracas came at President Trump’s direction and was intended to demonstrate the U.S. desire for a better relationship with Venezuela. The official said Ratcliffe discussed potential economic collaboration with the U.S. and warned that Venezuela can never again allow the presence of American adversaries, including drug traffickers.
— David Klepper
As Attorney General Pam Bondi approaches her first year on the job, the firings of Justice Department attorneys have defined her turbulent tenure. The terminations and a larger voluntary exodus of lawyers have erased centuries of combined experience and left the department with fewer career employees to act as a bulwark for the rule of law at a time when President Trump, a Republican, is testing the limits of executive power by demanding prosecutions of his political enemies.
Interviews by The Associated Press of more than a half-dozen fired employees offer a snapshot of the toll throughout the department. The departures include lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers, counterterrorism prosecutors, immigration judges and attorneys who defend administration policies. They continued this week, when several prosecutors in Minnesota moved to resign amid turmoil over an investigation into the shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
▶ Read more about firings at the Justice Department
The White House and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the operator of the mid-Atlantic power grid to take urgent steps to boost energy supply and curb price hikes, holding a Friday event aimed at addressing a rising concern among voters about the enormous amount of power used for artificial intelligence ahead of elections later this year.
The White House said its National Energy Dominance Council and the governors of several states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, want to try to compel PJM Interconnection to hold a power auction for tech companies to bid on contracts to build new power plants.
The Trump administration and governors will sign a statement of principles toward that end Friday.
▶ Read more about the administration and AI-driven power shortages
The Justice Department’s investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has brought heightened attention to a key drama that will play out at the central bank in the coming months: Will Powell leave the Fed when his term as chair ends, or will he take the unusual step of remaining a governor?
Powell’s term as Fed chair ends May 15, but because of the central bank’s complex structure, he has a separate term as one of seven members of its governing board that lasts until January 31, 2028. Historically, nearly all Fed chairs have stepped down from the board when they’re no longer chair. But Powell could be the first in nearly 50 years to stay on as a governor.
Many Fed-watchers believe the criminal investigation into Powell’s testimony about cost overruns for Fed building renovations was intended to intimidate him out of taking that step. If Powell stays on the board, it would deny the White House a chance to gain a majority, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to seize greater control over what has for decades been an institution largely insulated from day-to-day politics.
▶ Read more about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell
Trump on Thursday announced the outlines of a health care plan he wants Congress to take up as Republicans have faced increasing pressure to address rising health costs after lawmakers let subsidies expire.
The cornerstone is his proposal to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can handle insurance and health costs as they see fit. Democrats have rejected the idea as a paltry substitute for the tax credits that had helped lower monthly premiums for many people.
Trump’s plan also focuses on lowering drug prices and requiring insurers to be more upfront with the public about costs, revenues, rejected claims and wait times for care.
Trump has long been dogged by his lack of a comprehensive health care plan as he and Republicans have sought to unwind former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. Trump was thwarted during his first term in trying to repeal and replace the law.
▶ Read more about Trump’s health care plan
Most American presidents aspire to the kind of greatness that prompts future generations to name important things in their honor.
Donald Trump isn’t leaving it to future generations.
As the first year of his second term wraps up, his Republican administration and allies have put his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center performing arts venue and a new class of battleships.
That’s on top of the “Trump Accounts” for tax-deferred investments, the TrumpRx government website soon to offer direct sales of prescription drugs, the “Trump Gold Card” visa that costs at least $1 million and the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, a transit corridor included in a deal his administration brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
On Friday, he plans to attend a ceremony in Florida where local officials will dedicate a 4-mile (6-kilometer) stretch of road from the airport to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach as President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.
▶ Read more about Trump’s renaming efforts
Nearly a year into his second term, Trump’s work on the economy hasn’t lived up to the expectations of many people in his own party, according to a new AP-NORC survey.
The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a significant gap between the economic leadership Americans remembered from Trump’s first term and what they’ve gotten so far as he creates a stunning level of turmoil at home and abroad.
Just 16% of Republicans say Trump has helped “a lot” in addressing the cost of living, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.
At the same time, Republicans are overwhelmingly supportive of the president’s leadership on immigration — even if some don’t like his tactics.
There is little sign overall, though, that the Republican base is abandoning Trump. The vast majority of Republicans, about 8 in 10, approve of his job performance, compared with 4 in 10 for adults overall.
▶ Read more about the poll’s findings
Several Middle Eastern allies of the United States have urged the Trump administration to hold off on strikes against Iran for the government’s deadly crackdown on protesters, according to an Arab diplomat familiar with the matter.
Top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have raised concerns in the last 48 hours that a U.S. military intervention would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region, said the diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive conversations.
Oil prices fell on Thursday as the markets appeared to take note of President Donald Trump’s shifting tone as a sign that he’s leaning away from attacking Iran after days of launching blistering threats at Tehran for its brutal crackdown.
Nevertheless, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday maintained that “all options remain on the table” for Trump as he deals with Iran.
▶ Read more about Trump and Iran
— Matthew Lee, Aamer Madhani and Ben Finley
President Donald Trump speaks during an event to honor the 2025 Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
