Middle East ‘first to suffer’ if escalation continues
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a livestreamed news conference in Beijing that China “is deeply concerned about Israel’s attacks on Iran which cause abrupt escalation of military conflict”.
“We call on parties to immediately take measures to ease the tensions as soon as possible … prevent the region from falling into greater turmoil, and create conditions for returning to right track for solving through dialogue and consultation,” Guo said.
“If the conflict between Israel and Iran continues to escalate, or even enlarge, the Middle Eastern countries will be the first to suffer.”
World on the cusp of a new nuclear arms race: Monitor
The world is becoming more unstable, and the likelihood that nuclear weapons may one day be used is increasing. That is the broad conclusion of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) Yearbook, published on Monday.
“We are at a step change, which has been going on since just before the pandemic,” SIPRI director Dan Smith told Al Jazeera.
“It’s not just little bits and pieces here and there. It’s everybody moving in that direction of upgrading, including the new nuclear weapon state of North Korea and the relatively new ones of Pakistan and India, who went nuclear in the ’90s.”
World military spending rose by 37 percent in the past decade, and by 9.4 percent last year alone, to $2.7 trillion, said SIPRI.
Israeli official and UN nuclear watchdog differ on damage assessments of Iran’s main enrichment facility
An Israeli official and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog on Monday gave differing assessments of the damage sustained by the Natanz nuclear facility, Iran’s main enrichment plant.
An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told CNN that there are “signs” that the underground part of Iran’s Natanz facility has collapsed.
The facility includes two large underground halls believed to hold centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium, according to a 2003 report from the Institute for Science and International Security.
Israel targeted the facility when it launched its attack on Iran on Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, said on Friday that the facility had only sustained surface-level damage.
In an update Monday, Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said there has been “no additional damage” at the plant since the initial attack, and that there is “no indication” of an attack on the underground cascade hall.
“However, the loss of power to the cascade hall may have damaged the centrifuges there,” Grossi said.
