World

Hungary lists two demands in exchange for lifting veto on Ukraine aid

Published

2 years ago

January 10, 2024

Hungary lists two demands in exchange for lifting veto on Ukraine aid

After derailing December’s summit, Hungary has made fresh demands to Brussels in exchange for a lift on its veto on the European Union’s proposed €50-billion fund for Ukraine.

The envelope, known as the Ukraine Facility, is meant to provide Kyiv with financial assistance between 2024 and 2027 to plug its ballooning public deficit, sustain essential services and pay for reconstruction efforts.

Under the original plan, the Facility was supposed to be already up and running, as Brussels has run out of financial aid for the war-torn nation.

But during a dramatic meeting of the European Council last month, Viktor Orbán waged his veto power to strike down the proposal, which is pegged to a wider review of the bloc’s common budget.

It stalled the EU’s support at a critical time, as Washington also struggled to overcome Republican opposition to approve a new package of military aid. The impasse on both sides of the Atlantic has put Kyiv in an increasingly precarious situation, with Russia stepping up its brutal barrage of air strikes.

However, there’s a glimmer of hope: EU leaders are set to convene again on 1 February to give the Facility a second chance.

Hungary’s two demands

Ahead of the make-or-break date, Hungary has touted an idea to split the package into four annual envelopes, worth €12.5 billion each, according to diplomats with knowledge of the negotiations.

In practice, the divvy-up means that EU leaders would need to give their unanimous approval every year until the cash pot is exhausted. Doing so would run counter to the Facility’s aim to provide long-term, predictable assistance, as it would allow Orbán, or any other head of government, to block the aid as early as next year.

Hungary has also made an unrelated demand about the bloc’s COVID-19 recovery funds, the diplomatic sources said speaking on condition of anonymity.

Under current rules, member states have until the end of August 2026 to complete the milestones and targets necessary to access all the grants and loans they have been allocated. Otherwise, the money that remains unused will be lost.

Budapest is demanding an extra two years be added to this deadline, something that would require re-opening the extraordinary legislation that set up the recovery fund. The reason for this particular request lies in the fact that Hungary has been denied access to its national plan over rule-of-law concerns and could be left with a narrow timetable to spend the funds – if it ever manages to unblock them.

Hungary’s recovery and resilience plan is worth €10.4 billion, of which only €920 million have been released. Separately, the country has €11.5 billion in cohesion funds in the freezer due to a wide array of concerns over public procurement, conflicts of interests, academic freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.

Orbán has repeatedly denounced the situation as “financial blackmail” and his deputies have publicly said the more than €20 billion should be unfrozen – in their entirety – before a decision on the Ukraine Facility can be made.

The quid-pro-quo has intensified since December’s catastrophic summit, resulting in what one diplomat called a “very transactional” attitude, an undisguised “trade-off.”

Another diplomat noted that Hungary was “completely alone” on both the division of the Ukraine Facility and the two-year extension of the recovery funds. Germany was especially critical regarding this second demand.

Hope still alive

Nevertheless, the fact that Budapest is at least floating ideas, rather than inflexibly sticking to its veto, suggests the atmosphere has become more constructive, even if it remains fraught, and there might be limited space for a compromise of sorts.

Ambassadors approved on Wednesday a “partial negotiating mandate” to allow Belgium, the country that currently holds the EU Council’s rotating presidency, to start formal talks with the European Parliament as soon as a solution on the Facility is found.

The mandate, as the name says, is “partial” because it does not include the specific details of the special fund, namely the financial figures. These gaps can only be filled once leaders meet in February and discuss the topic vis-à-vis.

If the 27 member states fail – again – to achieve a breakthrough, Brussels will be forced to design an alternative scheme outside the EU budget with the buy-in of 26 countries only to keep money flowing to Kyiv.

In a recent social media post, Orbán appeared to welcome the so-called Plan B.

“It’s good to see that the European Commission is preparing a plan B for the 1st of February, according to which financial support given to Ukraine could be managed outside the EU budget,” the Hungarian leader wrote. “This is a good decision! The Commission’s plan B is the Hungarian plan A!”

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World

Video: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site

Published

7 hours ago

March 20, 2026

Press Room

Video: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site

new video loaded: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site

transcript

What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site

Satellite images show how Iran has tried to bolster its defenses at parts of the Isfahan nuclear facility.

: What you’re seeing here are buried tunnel entrances at a nuclear facility in Iran. It’s one of the most important sites in the country for U.S. and Israeli forces. U.N. inspectors think that roughly half of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is buried here. And these three entrances are the only known ways to access it. If you think about nuclear sites in Iran, three main sites come to mind. They’re pretty well known: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Natanz and Fordo, They were largely taken out in U.S. strikes last year. So I’ve been focusing on Isfahan. The uranium here is still relatively accessible. It’s actually a pretty large complex. This area here was very important for uranium processing, but it was heavily hit by the U.S. and Israel last June. If you go a little bit further north, that is underground and that requires tunnels to enter. In a terrain view, it gets quite interesting. There are three roads that lead to these tunnel entrances, and these tunnel entrances have become very important, both last year, but also right now. They lead to the underground facility where U.N. inspectors say uranium is stored and a new enrichment site could be located. If this falls into the wrong hands, that would be a problem in the long term. Here’s a great example of how very recent satellite imagery gives us new insights. This is from late January of this year, and what you see here is a line of trucks. And they’re filled with soil, and they’re lining up to go to some of these tunnel entrances. If you look a little bit closer here, you see another one of these trucks that’s just unloading some of the soil and some earthmoving equipment. Iran in preparation for any possible attacks at that point. They try to protect this facility a little bit more. So this is Jan. 29. And if you just look a few days later, we go to Feb. 2. This is the completely buried tunnel entrance, completely covered in soil to protect from any attack. And this is how it still looks in mid-March. The U.S. and Israel have basically two options here: The first one is to heavily bombard the entrances to this underground complex that would block any access, at least in the near future. They haven’t done that yet. So that’s very, very interesting — a little bit surprising. And it might point towards a second option: That would be to go in with ground forces and to extract the uranium. But that would require a really large amount of troops to secure the vast area, bringing in earthmoving equipment to clear the tunnels and a lot of time in hostile territory.
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Satellite images show how Iran has tried to bolster its defenses at parts of the Isfahan nuclear facility.

By Christoph Koettl and Alexander Cardia

March 20, 2026

World

Iranian man, 2nd person arrested after allegedly trying to enter UK nuclear missile base: report

Published

8 hours ago

March 20, 2026

Press Room

Iranian man, 2nd person arrested after allegedly trying to enter UK nuclear missile base: report

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Two people were arrested after allegedly unsuccessfully attempting to enter HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland on Thursday, authorities confirmed to Fox News Digital.

One suspect was an Iranian man, while the other was a woman of unknown nationality, The Telegraph reported.

“Around 5pm on Thursday, 19 March, 2026, we were made aware of two people attempting to enter HM Naval Base Clyde,” Police Scotland said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “A 34-year-old man and 31-year-old woman have been arrested in connection and enquiries are ongoing.”

The Telegraph reported that the man was Iranian, while the woman’s nationality was not immediately known. Citing the Times, the Telegraph said the suspects were turned away from the base because they lacked the correct passes and were later arrested nearby for allegedly “acting suspiciously in the vicinity.”

IRAN’S NEW SUPREME LEADER LINKED TO PROPERTIES WITH ‘LINE OF SIGHT’ INTO ISRAELI UK EMBASSY

HMS Artful, an Astute-class nuclear-powered fleet submarine, is shown at His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde on March 4, 2025, in Faslane, Scotland. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

A Royal Navy spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital, “Police Scotland have arrested two people who unsuccessfully attempted to enter HM Naval Base Clyde on Thursday 19 March. As the matter is subject to an ongoing investigation, we will not comment further.”

HM Naval Base Clyde — commonly known as Faslane — is considered the primary base for the United Kingdom’s missile fleet.

PENCE BACKS TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKES, SAYS PRESIDENT ‘IGNORED’ GOP ISOLATIONISTS

A general view of His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde on March 4, 2025, in Faslane, Scotland. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The Royal Navy says the base is home “to the core of the Submarine Service, including the nation’s nuclear deterrent, and the new generation of hunter-killer submarines.”

The U.K. Parliament says the Royal Navy currently operates a fleet of nine submarines, with the entire fleet based at HM Naval Base Clyde.

His Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde, also known as Faslane, hosts the U.K.’s nuclear submarines, which are armed with Trident missiles and serve as the U.K.’s nuclear deterrent. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

“Five of those are conventionally-armed nuclear-powered attack submarines of the Astute class. A further four are ballistic missiles submarines (SSBN) of the Vanguard class that comprise the UK’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent,” it added.

Greg Norman is a reporter at Fox News Digital.

World

Iran’s Khamenei says enemy ‘defeated’ in written Nowruz message

Published

9 hours ago

March 20, 2026

Press Room

Iran’s Khamenei says enemy ‘defeated’ in written Nowruz message

Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since he replaced his slain father as Iran’s supreme leader.

Published On 20 Mar 2026

Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said Iran’s enemies were being “defeated” in a written message for the Persian New Year, as the US and Israel continue to pound the country with attacks.

In a statement read on Iranian television on Friday, Khamenei praised the steadfastness of the Iranian people marking Nowruz, which he said ushered in ‌the year of a “resistance economy under national unity and national security”.

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“At the moment, due to the particular unity that has been created between you, our compatriots – despite all the differences in religious, intellectual, cultural and political origins – the enemy has been defeated,” he said.

Khamenei has not been seen in public since he became supreme leader, following the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war on February 28.

Iran’s supreme leader said that while the US and Israel believed that after one or two days of attacks, the Iranian people would overthrow the government, but this was a “gross miscalculation”.

The war was launched under “the delusion that if the pinnacle of the regime and certain influential military figures were to attain martyrdom, it would instil fear and despair in our dear people … and through this means, the dream of dominating Iran and subsequently dismembering it would be realised”, he said.

Instead, “a fracture has emerged in the enemy,” he added.

Analysts have observed that the Iranian constitution itself was drafted with the spectre of a power vacuum in mind, a “survival protocol” designed to give the system the capacity to continue even at a moment of maximum shock.

Khamenei also denied that Iran or its ‌allied forces were responsible for attacks ⁠against Turkiye and ⁠Oman.

Those were “false flag” incidents used by Iran’s enemy to “sow discord among neighbours, and it may occur in other countries as well”, he claimed.

The Turkish Ministry of National Defence last week said NATO air defences intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Iran. Two people were killed in Oman after drones came down in the Sohar province.

The supreme leader also called on Afghanistan and Pakistan to end their fighting and said he stood ready to assist.

“We consider our eastern neighbours to be very close to us”, the supreme leader said. “I appeal to our two brotherly countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to establish better relations with each other … and I myself am ready to take the necessary actions.”

The neighbouring countries agreed to a temporary “pause” in hostilities during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr this week, after weeks of deadly violence.