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Last month Russia said that according to interim results, its domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine was 92% effective at protecting the coronavirus infection.

The country will have produced two million doses of the vaccine within the next few days, Putin said, noting that teachers and medics will be the first to receive shots.

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US President Donald Trump has recently been considering an attack on Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Trump made the request during an Oval Office meeting on Thursday with his top national security aides, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, new acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a US official said.

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The meeting was held a day after a UN watchdog report showed that Iran continued to violate the 2015 nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew in 2018, by moving advanced centrifuges from an above-ground site to one located underground.

"He asked for options. They gave him the scenarios and he ultimately decided not to go forward," the official said. The White House declined comment.

According to the NYT, Trump decided to back off from the idea for fear that a strike would lead to a wider conflict in the weeks before his term in office was due to end.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has urged an aggressive policy against Iran, and in 2018 withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York, said Iran's nuclear program was purely for peaceful purposes and civilian use and Trump's policies have not changed that. "However, Iran has proven to be capable of using its legitimate military might to prevent or respond to any melancholy adventure from any aggressor," he added.

Iran's 2.4-ton stock of low-enriched uranium is now far above the deal's 202.8 kg limit. It produced 337.5 kg in the quarter, less than the more than 500 kg recorded in the previous two quarters by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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According to the report, Gadot has earned $31.5 million this year. She was paid $20 million for her role in the Netflix film Red Notice, on which production recently resumed after having been cut off in the first wave of coronavirus.

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Gadot shot to stardom for her title role in the latest Wonder Woman franchise. The second film in the Wonder Woman series was scheduled to premiere this past summer, but was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. There is no firm release date for the film.

Another film starring Gadot that was originally slated to come out at the end of the year is Death on the Nile, based on the novel by Agatha Christie and directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also plays the detective Hercule Poirot.

Ahead of Gadot in the Forbes rankings were Modern Family star Sofía Vergara, whose earnings this year added up to $43 million, and Angela Jolie, who earned a reported $35 million.

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The 2,000-year-old mikveh, which was discovered during salvage archaeological excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) at the National Transport Infrastructure Company site, was placed next to a modern functioning ritual bath on the kibbutz, the IAA reported on Wednesday.

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"The discovery of the mikveh in the farmstead changes what we knew about the lifestyle of the Jews in the Second Temple period," stated Abd Elghani Ibrahim and Dr. Walid Atrash, directors of the excavation on behalf of the IAA.

"Until now, we hadn't discovered Jewish farms in the Galilee. It was considered that the Jews in the Roman period didn't live in farms outside the villages or towns. The discovery of the farmstead at some distance from the village of the Shikhin and the large Jewish town of Sepphoris, showed that Jews also settled in farmsteads, that perhaps functioned as the rural hinterland of Sepphoris," they explained.

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Furthermore, they added, the "existence of a mikveh … unequivocally indicates that the residents of the ancient farm were Jewish, who led a religious and traditional way of life, and maintained [ritual] purity as a Torah commandment."

According to the IAA, some 1,700 years have passed since the farm was destroyed in an earthquake, and about 1,400 years since the site was finally abandoned.

The mikveh was discovered while construction crews were digging foundation trenches necessary for anchoring one of the supporting bridge columns erected to secure the major interchange that crosses over the Jezreel Valley, according to the IAA.

The IAA explained that since the mikveh could not be preserved on the site of the interchange, the idea arose to transplant it elsewhere for public display. The IAA, members of Kibbutz Hannaton, Israel's Jerusalem and Heritage Ministry, the National Transport Infrastructure Company and the Jezreel Valley Regional Council and residents cooperated to raise the funds to move the 57-ton mikveh.

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For the past week, work was carried out to detach the mikveh from the bedrock—by sawing on all sides—and place it in a steel cage, which was finally airlifted to its new home on the kibbutz on Wednesday.

The IAA excavations that uncovered the mikveh were conducted with the help of workers from the village of Kfar Manda, students of pre-military preparatory programs and volunteers from the vicinity, including residents of Kibbutz Hannaton.

JNS.org. contributed to this report.

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In an interview with Al-Arabiya, Craft hedged that the announcement was mere days away.

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A potential third Israel-Arab accord will follow the recent normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Since the three signed the Abraham Accord, there has been speculation that the next state to normalize relations with Israel could be Oman or Sudan.

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The official said Iran could have enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of the year and that Tehran has resumed long-range missile cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea. He did not provide detailed evidence regarding either assertion.

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The new sanctions fit into US President Donald Trump's effort to limit Iran's regional influence and come a week after US-brokered deals for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel, pacts that may coalesce a wider coalition against Iran while appealing to pro-Israel US voters ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

The new sanctions also put European allies, China and Russia on notice that while their inclination may be to ignore the US drive to maintain the UN sanctions on Iran, companies based in their nations would feel the bite for violating them.

A major part of the new US push is an executive order targeting those who buy or sell Iran conventional arms that was previously reported by Reuters and will also be unveiled by the Trump administration on Monday, the official said.

The Trump administration suspects Iran of seeking nuclear weapons - something Tehran denies - and Monday's punitive steps are the latest in a series seeking to stymie Iran's atomic program, which US ally Israel views as an existential threat.

"Iran is clearly doing everything it can to keep in existence a virtual turnkey capability to get back into the weaponization business at a moment's notice should it choose to do so," the US official told Reuters.

The official argued Iran wants a nuclear weapons capability and the means to deliver it despite the 2015 deal that sought to prevent this by restraining Iran's atomic program in return for access to the world market.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has said Iran only began significantly breaching the 2015 deal's limits after the US withdrawal and it is still enriching uranium only up to 4.5%, well below the 20% it had achieved before that agreement, let alone the roughly 90% purity that is considered weapons-grade, suitable for an atomic bomb.

"Iran and North Korea have resumed cooperation on a long-range missile project, including the transfer of critical parts," he added, declining to say when such joint work first began, stopped, and then started again.

Asked to comment on the impending new US sanctions and the US official's other statements, a spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations dismissed them as propaganda and said they would further isolate the United States.

"The US' 'maximum pressure' show, which includes new propaganda measures almost every week, has clearly failed miserably, and announcing new measures will not change this fact," the mission's spokesman, Alireza Miryousefi, said.

"The entire world understands that these are a part of (the) next US election campaign, and they are ignoring the US' preposterous claims at the UN today. It will only make (the) US more isolated in world affairs," he said.

Meanwhile, Britain, France and Germany told the UN Security Council on Friday that UN sanctions relief for Iran, as detailed in the 2015 nuclear deal, would continue beyond Sept. 20, when the United States asserts that all the measures should be reimposed.

In a letter to the 15-member body, the three European parties to the nuclear deal and long-time US allies said any decision or action taken to reimpose UN sanctions "would be incapable of legal effect." The United States quit the nuclear deal in 2018.

"We have worked tirelessly to preserve the nuclear agreement and remain committed to do so," said the UN envoys for Britain, France and Germany, adding that they remain committed to "fully implementing" a 2015 Security Council resolution that enshrines the pact, which also included Russia and China.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Saturday he cannot take any action on a US declaration that all UN sanctions on Iran had been reimposed because "there would appear to be uncertainty" on the issue.

But 13 of the 15 Security Council members say Washington's move is void because Pompeo used a mechanism agreed under a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which the United States quit in 2018.

"There would appear to be uncertainty whether or not the process ... was indeed initiated and concomitantly whether or not the (sanctions) terminations ... continue in effect," Guterres wrote in a letter to the council, seen by Reuters.

"It is not for the Secretary-General to proceed as if no such uncertainty exists," he said.

Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy responded on Twitter, "We all clearly said in August that US claims to trigger snapback are illegitimate. Is Washington deaf?"

Iran's UN Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi said on Twitter on Saturday, "US illegal and false 'deadline' has come and gone ... Swimming against international currents will only bring it more isolation."

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Speaking just days before the former vice president is set to get the official nod from the party to challenge President Donald Trump, his liaison to Jewish voters Aaron Keyak told the paper that a Biden administration would undo the steps taken in the wake of the unilateral withdrawal from the deal from 2015.

According to Keyak, Biden will try to curtail the Islamic republic's nuclear program by working with allies and by "re-engaging Iran in a diplomatic solution."

Although he did not specifically say the US would re-enter the nuclear framework as it is, Keyak noted that a would-be Biden administration would seek to follow the path the deal had charted so that Iran abides by it.

Keyak said "Trump tore up a deal with Iran that was working to prevent that country from obtaining nuclear weapons. He actually proved that in the short life of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [the official name of the deal] it achieved its goals. As president, Joe Biden will hold Iran accountable for its destabilizing activities throughout the region."

Keyak lamented by adding that Trump "went out of his way to actively infuriate our allies in Europe and throughout the world ... Trump looked at a deal that was working under president [Barack] Obama, and he couldn't stand it. So he tore it up. It's hard to drop the best way to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran."

Keyak stressed that Biden was not going to impose conditions in US aid to Israel if he were elected president, despite calls on the Left to do so.

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Ghaani's remarks broke the Iranian regime's silence on a series of explosions that have recently occurred at Iranian industrial facilities.

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"Tough times lie ahead for the United States and the Zionist regime. Major events are about to strike you," Ghaani said, as quoted by the Tasnim news agency.

The Quds Force commander hinted that a fire that broke out on the US aircraft carrier Richard Bonham in San Diego was Iranian retaliation for the recent blasts.

"The Americans should not look for who is responsible for what is happening to them. The fire they see now is a fire they themselves set. It is a response to the crimes your people have committed," Ghaani said.

On Monday, Iranian media outlets reported that the IRGC planned to deliver cutting-edge anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. According to the Nour news agency, Tehran intends to send Khordad 3 and Bavar-373 missiles, both surface-to-air models, to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. 

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The United States has circulated a draft resolution to the 15-member council that would indefinitely extend the arms embargo on Tehran, but council veto-powers Russia and China have already signaled their opposition to the move.

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"Don't just take it from the United States, listen to countries in the region. From Israel to the Gulf, countries in the Middle East – which are most exposed to Iran's predations – are speaking with one voice: Extend the arms embargo," Pompeo told a virtual Security Council meeting.

"The arms embargo on the world's foremost terrorist regime is scheduled to expire in October 2020," he warned, saying that Iran "would be free to improve its military capabilities.

"Iran is not a responsible democracy and will do its best to buy more weapons. Tehran is already violating the embargo, even before it has expired. Imagine if we lifted the sanctions, what it would do," he cautioned.

"Iran supplies the Houthis and Hezbollah with weapons, they launch missiles against American and coalition forces, under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State. We have alarming reports from the Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia and Israel, who speak with one voice and request the extension of the embargo, which was put in place 13 years ago" he added.

"We must continue to press Iran to behave like a normal country, the suffering of the Iranian people should not take place," Pompeo concluded.

US President Donald Trump's administration has long argued that the arms embargo on Iran should not be lifted. The arms embargo is set to end in mid-October under Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with Britain, Germany, France, China, Russia and the administration of Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.

Since Trump took office in 2017, his administration has quit the nuclear deal and steadily ramped up sanctions on Iran in what Washington describes as a maximum-pressure approach.

Addressing the council, Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia described the policy as "a maximum suffocation policy."

"The task is to achieve regime change or create a situation where Iran literally wouldn't be able to breathe. This is like putting a knee to one's neck," he said in a veiled reference to the death of George Floyd, which sparked protests across the United States and around the world.

The Security Council was meeting on Tuesday to discuss a report by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that determined that cruise missiles used in several attacks on oil facilities and an international airport in Saudi Arabia last year were of "Iranian origin."

Saudi Arabia's UN Ambassador Abdullah Al Mouallimi said Russia and China had been "sympathetic" to Riyadh's situation, but when it came to the proposal to extend the arms embargo on Iran they "presumably had scores to settle with the United States."

"We're trying to separate the two issues in our discussions with them, which ... are open, are friendly discussions, are based on the good relations that we enjoy with both countries," he told a news conference later on Tuesday.

If Washington is unsuccessful in extending the arms embargo, it has threatened to trigger at the Security Council a return of all UN sanctions on Iran under the nuclear deal, even though it left the accord in 2018. Diplomats say Washington would face a tough, messy battle.

Iran has breached parts of the nuclear deal in response to the US withdrawal and Washington's reimposition of sanctions.

UN political affairs and peace-building chief Rosemary DiCarlo said the nuclear deal was crucial to regional and international security, adding: "It is therefore regrettable that the future of this agreement is in doubt."

Britain, France and Germany all expressed concern to the council that lifting the arms embargo on Iran would have major implications for regional security and stability. However, they also said they would not back US efforts to unilaterally trigger a return of all UN sanctions on Iran.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, "The international community in general – and the UN Security Council in particular – are facing an important decision: Do we maintain respect for the rule of law, or do we return to the law of the jungle by surrendering to the whims of an outlaw bully?"

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Oren Liebermann, the Jerusalem correspondent for CNN, reported live from the vicinity of the courthouse and tried explaining Netanyahu's various indictments to his viewers. In his words, Sunday was a "significant" day in the annals of Israeli history. The correspondent from Sky News noted that Netanyahu was considered a "magician" in Israeli politics and could still pull a rabbit out of his hat to extricate himself from his legal predicament. The Bloomberg website highlighted the prime minister's claims with the headline: "Netanyahu Alleges Overthrow Attempt at Start of Graft Trial."

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 The New York Times' headline ran the following headline: "Netanyahu Corruption Trial Begins, Taking Israel Into Uncharted Territory." The story itself said, "One thing still threatens to end Mr. Netanyahu's career as Israel's longest-serving prime minister: his trial on felony corruption charges... The prime minister's trial is expected to last a year or more, with the first witnesses not expected to testify for months." 

The Fox News website didn't report on the trial on Sunday, rather ran a story from Saturday.

The British Sunday Times said, "Netanyahu runs out of options and steps into the dock."

"Surrounded by bodyguards, [Benjamin] Netanyahu will enter a Jerusalem court through a back door this afternoon to take his place on the bench where the accused sit. This is the moment he fought for years to prevent, but is finally here," the article said.

According to the Washington Post, "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat alone on a courtroom bench Sunday as a three-judge panel heard arguments in the mostly procedural opening session of his long-awaited criminal trial."

Qatar's Al-Jazeera also highlighted Netanyahu's argument that the trial was an attempt to "depose a strong PM."

Turkish news agency Anadolu noted that "the Israeli and international media were out in full force to cover the event."

"Israeli prime minister faces Jerusalem court," the BBC's headline read, with a rundown of the cases in which Netanyahu is charged.

Spain's popular daily El Pais ran the headline "Netanyahu challenges the court at the start of his corruption trial," referring to the speech given by the prime minister, in which he claimed the investigations against him "were tainted and stitched-up."

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