As negotiations continue over the highly contested judicial reform, the Coalition offered this week to postpone making changes to the judicial selection committee by a year, Israel Hayom has learned.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Senior Coalition members involved in the talks – led by President Isaac Herzog – said that in exchange, the Opposition were asked to consent to other components of the legislation, such as the one pertaining to the attorney general and reasonableness.

Some of the bills are expected to pass already in the current summer session, and the rest in the next, winter session.

It is unclear whether the proposal will be accepted as the Opposition has asked the Coalition to refrain from making any changes in this regard during the current, 25th Knesset, at all.

According to Knesset rules, the Coalition will announce this week the votes to appoint the Knesset representatives to the judicial selection committee in its old format.

The elections will be held in two weeks, on June 15. The president is said to be working intensively to reach a deal by then.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Coalition offers to postpone changes to judicial selection committee by year appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Iran has used a satellite launch rocket to send three research devices into space, a defense ministry spokesman said on Thursday, as indirect US-Iran talks take place in Austria to try to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal.

He did not clarify whether the devices had reached orbit. Iran, which has one of the biggest missile programs in the Middle East, has suffered several failed satellite launches in the past few years due to technical issues.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Spokesman Ahmad Hosseini said the Simorgh satellite carrier rocket, whose name translates as "Phoenix", had launched the three research devices at an altitude of 470 kilometers (290 miles). He did not give further details.

"The intended research objectives of this launch were achieved," Hosseini said, in comments broadcast on state television. "This was done as a preliminary launch ... God willing, we will have an operational launch soon."

Iranian state television showed footage of what it said was the firing of the launch vehicle. Thursday's reported space launch comes as Tehran and Washington hold indirect talks in Vienna in an attempt to salvage a nuclear accord that Iran reached with world powers and that former US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018.

The United States imposed sanctions on Iran's civilian space agency and two research organizations in 2019, claiming they were being used to advance Tehran's ballistic missile program.

Tehran denies such activity is a cover for ballistic missile development. Iran launched its first satellite Omid (Hope) in 2009 and its Rasad (Observation) satellite was also sent into orbit in June 2011. Tehran said in 2012 that it had successfully put its third domestically-made satellite, Navid (Promise), into orbit.

In April 2020, Iran said it successfully launched the country's first military satellite into orbit, following repeated failed launch attempts in the previous months.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Iran claims it successfully launched rocket with 3 'research payloads' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"No decision has ever been taken to hold talks with the US and there has been a lot of offers for talks but our answer will always be negative," Rouhani told an open session of parliament that was broadcast live on state radio.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

"If America lifts all the sanctions then like before it can join multilateral talks between Tehran and parties to the 2015 deal," he added.

US President Donald Trump, although applying "maximum pressure" on Iran, has offered to meet its leaders and hold bilateral talks with no preconditions to end the confrontation between the two countries.

Last month, Rouhani said that Iran would not talk to its longtime foe until the United States lifted all of the sanctions it re-imposed after it exited the 2015 nuclear deal last year.

European parties to the deal have struggled to calm the deepening confrontation between Iran and the United States and save the deal by shielding Iran's economy from the sanctions.

But the European powers have warned that their support for the deal is dependent on Iran's full commitment to it.

Iran has called on the Europeans to accelerate their efforts and Rouhani stressed on Tuesday that Iran would take a third step in scaling back its nuclear commitments by Thursday unless the Europeans kept their promises to salvage the deal.

"If Europeans can purchase our oil or prepurchase it and we can have access to our money, that will ease the situation and we can fully implement the deal. … Otherwise, we will take our third step," he said.

The post Iranian president rules out bilateral talks with US appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Shaheen told The Associated Press both sides are looking for "tangible results" as they try to hammer out the fine print of agreements that will see the eventual withdrawal of over 20,000 US and NATO troops from Afghanistan, and end America's longest-running war.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The agreements are also expected to provide guarantees that Afghanistan will not again harbor terrorists to carry out attacks worldwide.

The talks began on Saturday and are expected to continue into the next week.

The two sides sat down to negotiate just days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was hopeful of a deal to end Afghanistan's protracted war by Sept. 1.

"Getting a comprehensive peace agreement with the Taliban before Sept. 1 would be nothing short of a miracle," said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the US-based Wilson's Center.

"That said, I could certainly envision a more limited deal being in place by Sept. 1 on a US troop withdrawal, given that there's already been ample progress on this issue."

Pompeo and Khalilzad have both said the final accord will include not only agreements with the Taliban on troop withdrawal and guarantees of a non-threatening Afghanistan but also agreement on intra-Afghan dialogue and a permanent ceasefire.

Until now the Taliban have refused direct talks with the Afghan government while holding two separate meetings with a wide array of prominent Afghans from Kabul, including former president Hamid Karzai, members of the former northern alliance that fought the Taliban during its five-year rule as well as members of the government.

The Taliban have said they will meet government officials but as ordinary Afghans, labeling President Ashraf Ghani's government a US puppet and noting that the US is the final arbiter on their central issue, which is troop withdrawal.

The Taliban have refused a ceasefire until the withdrawal is complete, saying that to restart their insurgency if the US reneges on its promises could be difficult.

But the accelerated pace of negotiations and the sudden announcement of a Sept. 1 target date for an agreement could be linked to Afghan President Ghani's insistence on presidential polls scheduled for Sept. 28 in Afghanistan, say analysts.

The upcoming elections have been criticized by many of his political opponents who often point to last October's parliamentary polls. The voting was so badly mismanaged that Ghani fired the entire Independent Election Commission, and several of the parliamentary seats are still being contested.

A biometric identification system aimed at reducing election fraud was prematurely rolled out for the polls, with the few people trained on the machines not showing up on election day.

While there were incidences of violence during the polling, analysts widely agreed the greatest flaw was the widespread mismanagement and fraud.

Khalilzad has also suggested that presidential elections could hamper reaching a peace agreement.

"I do think the US government recognizes that the election could pose a major obstacle to peace talks, given that it will be a distraction and given that it will accentuate and intensify the fractures and rivalries in the Afghan political environment that undercut reconciliation prospects," said Kugelman.

"Another reason for the focus on Sept. 1 is much simpler: President Trump wants out, and he wants a deal as soon as possible."

The post Taliban say latest round of talks with US 'critical' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.