TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s foreign minister took to YouTube on Thursday to criticize President Donald Trump’s threat to withdraw from the nuclear deal, saying Iran will not “renegotiate or add onto” the atomic accord.
Mohammad Javad Zarif’s video, which was also posted to Trump’s favorite social media platform, Twitter, appeared to be taking his message to the masses after earlier speaking to news outlets across the United States to defend the deal.
It comes as Trump has signaled he will withdraw from the agreement by May 12 if it is not renegotiated and changed. Those changes have included proposals to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program, which Tehran says it has as a defensive deterrent.
The five-minute video shows Zarif behind his desk, delivering his message on the deal. He offers background first about the deal before laying into Trump and criticizing Europe for offering “the United States more concessions from our pocket.”
“On 11 occasions since, the U.N. nuclear watchdog has confirmed that Iran has implemented all of its obligations,” Zarif, who studied in the U.S., says in American-accented English. “In contrast, the U.S. has consistently violated the agreement, especially by bullying others from doing business with Iran.”
PHOENIX — The Arizona governor signed a plan Thursday to give striking teachers a 20 percent pay raise, ending their six-day walkout after a dramatic all-night legislative session and sending more than a million public school students back to the classroom.
Gov. Doug Ducey’s signature awarded teachers a 9 percent raise in the fall and 5 percent in each of the next two years. Those increases are in addition to a 1 percent raise granted last year.
Teachers did not get everything they wanted, but they won substantial gains from reluctant lawmakers.
“The educators have solved the education crisis! They’ve changed the course of Arizona” Noah Karvelis of Arizona Educators United shouted to several thousand cheering teachers. “The change happens with us!”
Hours after Ducey acted, strike organizers called for an end to the walkout. Most schools stayed closed Thursday, except for a handful that managed to reopen shortly after the pay raises passed. Some districts planned to reopen Friday, with others likely to resume classes next week.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The mother of two Native American teenagers who campus police pulled from a college tour in Colorado after a parent reported feeling nervous about them said she believes her sons were victims of racial profiling and she feared for their safety after learning about the encounter.
In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Lorraine Kahneratokwas Gray described receiving a frantic phone call from her son, 19-year-old Thomas Kanewakeron Gray, about the incident at Colorado State University.
He and his 17-year-old brother, Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, had saved enough money to drive roughly seven hours from the family’s home in Santa Cruz, New Mexico, to Fort Collins to tour the campus, she told the AP.
“I felt they had been the victim of racism and that they weren’t safe there,” she said in a post this week on Facebook.
She later told the AP, “I don’t think they even grasped the magnitude of what happened to them until we talked.”
From Associated Press