• US demands Iran give up stockpile enriched up to 60% purity.
• Iran insists sanctions relief key to any nuclear compromise.
• Khamenei adviser to visit Oman after US-Iran nuclear talks.
  

Iran could agree to dilute its most highly enriched uranium in exchange for all financial sanctions being lifted, its atomic chief said on Monday, one of the most direct indications so far of its position at talks with Washington.

US and Iranian diplomats held talks through Omani mediators in Oman last week in an effort to revive diplomacy, after US President Donald Trump positioned a naval flotilla in the region, raising fears of new military action.

The talks follow anti-government demonstrations in Iran last month, the biggest domestic unrest since the 1979 Revolution.

Trump joined an Israeli bombing campaign last year and hit Iranian nuclear sites. He also threatened last month to intervene militarily during the protests but ultimately held off.

Washington has demanded Iran relinquish its stockpile — estimated last year by the UN nuclear agency at more than 440 kg — of uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile purity, a small step away from the 90% that is considered weapons grade.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Eslami, said on Monday: “The possibility of diluting 60% enriched uranium … depends on whether, in return, all sanctions are lifted or not”.

Eslami, whose remarks were reported by Iran’s ISNA news agency, said however, that another proposal, sending Iran’s highly enriched uranium abroad to another country, had not been discussed at the talks with US officials.

Khamenei adviser to visit Oman

Ali Larijani, a close adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and secretary of its national security council, will visit Oman on Tuesday following the US-Iranian talks there, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

“During this trip, (Larijani) will meet with high-ranking officials of the Sultanate of Oman and discuss the latest regional and international developments and bilateral cooperation at various levels,” Tasnim said.

The date and venue of the next round of talks have yet to be announced. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that a new round of talks would be “an appropriate opportunity for a fair and balanced resolution of this case,” and that a desired outcome could be reached if the US avoids maximalist positions and respects its commitments.

Iran would continue to demand the lifting of sanctions and insist on its nuclear rights, including enrichment, he said.

Iran and the US held five rounds of talks last year on curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme, with the process breaking down mainly due to disputes over uranium enrichment inside Iran.

Since Trump struck Iran’s facilities, Tehran has said it has halted enrichment activity. It has always said its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

The United States wants to include Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal in negotiations, but Tehran has ruled this out.

In a televised statement aired on Monday, Khamenei called on Iranians to participate in the coming anniversary of the 1979 Revolution.

“The presence of the people in the march and their expression of loyalty to the Islamic Republic will cause the enemy to stop coveting Iran,” Khamenei said.

• Beijing urges Washington to stop irresponsible actions.
• US proposed three-way talks with Russia and China.
• China rejected disarmament negotiations “at this stage”.

China on Monday denied US allegations it had conducted secret nuclear explosive tests, calling them “outright lies” and accusing Washington of making excuses to start up its own trials.

At the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Friday, Thomas DiNanno, US under secretary of state for arms control accused China of conducting the tests, including one on 22nd June 2020, and of preparing for more tests with massive yields.

“The US allegations are completely groundless and are outright lies. China firmly opposes the US attempt to fabricate excuses for its own restarting of nuclear tests,” China’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement to AFP on Monday.

It also urged the United States to “immediately stop its irresponsible actions”.

US President Donald Trump said in October that Washington would start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Moscow and Beijing, but without elaborating or explaining what kind of nuclear testing he wanted to resume.

DiNanno’s comments came as he was presenting a new US plan calling for three-way talks with Russia and China to set new limits on nuclear weapons, after the expiration of New START — the last treaty between top nuclear powers Washington and Moscow, which expired last Thursday.

China has already rejected joining disarmament negotiations “at this stage”.

Voters in Bangladesh elect a new government on February 12, but analysts warn their choice is threatened by a coordinated surge of disinformation, much of which originates from neighbouring India.

The Muslim-majority nation of around 170 million people is preparing for its first election since a 2024 student-led uprising toppled Sheikh Hasina — who fled to neighbouring India, where she has been hosted since by the Hindu-nationalist government.

Authorities say the scale of online manipulation — including sophisticated AI-generated images — has become so severe that a special unit has been created to curb false content.

Interim leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said in January that there had been a “flood of misinformation surrounding the elections” when he called UN rights chief Volker Turk seeking help.

“It is coming from both foreign media and local sources,” he said.

Much of that centres around claims of attacks against Bangladesh’s minorities — around 10% of Bangladesh’s population is non-Muslim, most of them Hindu.

That has seen a mass posting of claims online that Hindus are under attack, using the hashtag “Hindu genocide”.

According to police figures released in January, out of 645 incidents involving members of minority groups in 2025 — only 12% were classified as having a sectarian motive.

‘Coordinated Indian disinformation’

The US-based Centre for the Study of Organised Hate said it had tracked more than 700,000 posts — generated by more than 170,000 accounts on X, that made claims of a “Hindu genocide” between August 2024 and January 2026.

“We have tracked coordinated Indian disinformation online, falsely alleging large-scale violence against Hindus in Bangladesh,” said Raqib Naik, head of the think tank.

“More than 90% of this content originated from India, with the remainder linked to associated Hindu nationalist networks in the UK, US, and Canada,” he told AFP.

Examples debunked by AFP Fact Check, some of them shared tens of thousands of times, include an AI-created video of a woman who had lost her arm, appealing not to vote for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), seen by many as a frontrunner.

In another computer-generated video, a Hindu woman alleges that people who follow the same religion have been told to vote for Jamaat-e-Islami, or they will be exiled to India.

Of the hundreds of AI-generated videos documented by AFP Fact Check teams on social media platforms — YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram — few are marked with an AI disclaimer.

The surge has also come after years of repression under Hasina, when opposition was crushed and outspoken voices silenced.

“We are noticing a huge amount of fake information compared to other times,” said Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, head of the Dhaka-based research organisation Digitally Right, saying free AI tools made creating sophisticated fakes easier.

In another AI-generated video, Bangladeshis appear to praise Hasina — now a fugitive who was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity.

In India, social media outrage by Hindu fundamentalists about the lone Bangladeshi cricket player in India’s domestic IPL league resulted in his club cancelling his contract — a furore that escalated to Bangladesh’s national team pulling out of this month’s T20 World Cup in India.

But while analysts say much of the disinformation originates from India, there is no evidence that the large-scale media posts were organised by the government.

New Delhi’s foreign ministry says they have recorded a “disturbing pattern of recurring attacks on minorities” by “extremists in Bangladesh”, but also emphasise they have “consistently reiterated our position in favour of free, fair, inclusive and credible elections”.

‘Big threat’

Bangladesh Election Commission spokesman Md Ruhul Amin Mallik said they were working with Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and set up a unit to monitor social media posts — but coping with the sheer volume online is a never-ending task.

“If our team detects any content as harmful and misleading, we instantly announce it as fake information,” Mallik said.

Election expert Jasmine Tuli, a former election commission official, said that AI-generated images carried an extra risk for Bangladesh.

More than 80% of urban households have at least one smartphone, and nearly 70% of rural areas, according to government statistics — but many people are still relatively new to the technology.

“It is a big threat for a country like Bangladesh, since people don’t have much awareness to check the information,” Tuli said.

“Due to AI-generated fake visuals, voters get misguided in their decision.”