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UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations and the European Union praised Iran on Thursday for implementing the landmark nuclear deal with six major powers, but U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Tehran of "destructive and destabilizing" actions from ballistic missile launches to arms smuggling.

The speeches at a Security Council meeting on implementation of a U.N. resolution endorsing the July 2015 nuclear agreement showed the deep division over Iran between the five major powers who view the deal as a major achievement and the Trump administration, which is reviewing it.

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President Donald Trump, congressional Republicans and Israel have assailed the agreement as a windfall to Iran that only delayed its pursuit of nuclear weapons. GOP lawmakers say it saved Iran's economy by lifting economic penalties and allowed the country to funnel more money to terrorist groups.

Haley said only that the U.S. would adhere to the deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program while conducting the comprehensive review.

She focused on what the U.S. views as Iran's repeated violations of the 2015 resolution, which she accused the Security Council of ignoring. She cited ballistic missile launches and illicit procurement of missile technology as well as "proven arms smuggling."

"Iran's destructive and destabilizing role in the Middle East goes far beyond its illicit missile launches," Haley said. "From Syria to Yemen and Iraq to Lebanon, Iran's support for terrorist groups continued unabated. Iran's weapons, military advisers and arms smugglers stoke regional conflicts and make them harder to solve."

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By contrast, the focus of U.N. political chief Jeffrey Feltman, EU Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida and ambassadors from Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany was on Iran's adherence to the nuclear agreement, though there were also expressions of concern about its missile tests and smuggling.

Feltman told the council that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres "is deeply encouraged by the continued commitment by all participants to the agreement," calling it "the embodiment of successful multilateral diplomacy, political will and perseverance."

He noted the International Atomic Energy Agency has issued seven reports, the latest in early June, documenting Iran's continued implementation of its nuclear-related commitments and said Guterres believes sustained implementation of the deal "will guarantee that Iran's nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful."

The diplomatic achievement, Feltman said, "gives us all hope that even the most difficult issues among states can be addressed through dialogue, understanding and reciprocity."

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Vale de Almeida, speaking on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini who coordinates the nuclear deal, said, "The initial results are clear and speak for themselves: Iran's nuclear program has been rolled back and placed under tight inspections."

At a time when the world is again faced "with the threat of unchecked nuclear capabilities" -- a reference to the threat from North Korea -- he said the Iran deal known as the JCPOA is "a pillar of the international non-proliferation agenda" that needs to be fully implemented.

In an apparent reference to the U.S. debate over the deal, Vale de Almeida stressed: "We would not be in a better position to address all the other non-nuclear matters (with Iran) without the JCPOA in place."

Britain's deputy U.N. ambassador, Peter Wilson, called the Iran agreement "one of the most important diplomatic achievements in recent memory."

He said the United Kingdom encourages all countries and parties to the agreement -- a message that appeared especially aimed at the U.S. -- "to uphold their commitments, including ensuring that the Iranian people gain further tangible benefits from sanctions relief."

But Wilson also said "some less positive issues" raised in Guterres' latest report need to be addressed. He cited Iran's Jan. 29 launch of a medium-range ballistic missile, reported violations of a ban on conventional arms transfers, including new evidence of an attempted arms shipment from Iran to Somalia, and multiple violations of a travel ban, including by Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force.

Haley stressed that the United States won't "turn a blind eye" to such violations and will interdict cargo prohibited under the U.N. resolution and continue to impose sanctions on Iran.

"The continuance of the Iranian regime's destructive, destabilizing behavior will prevent it from ever having a normal relationship with the United States and the rest of the world," she said. "And the regime's continued oppression of its own people speaks volumes about its true nature."

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US, allies disagree about Iran's nuke deal compliance - CBS News

Elated after his pilgrimage, Mr. Amin returned to Iran but couldnt find any work for three months. As often happens with Afghan refugees in Iran, Mr. Amin was humiliated and discriminated against. He lived with the constant fear of being deported. Iran isnt our country. It belongs to strangers, Mr. Amin said. Either you suffer and try to make some money or you die.

Last winter Iranian authorities presented Mr. Amin with an interesting proposition. He could gain legal status in Iran and be free of the fear of deportation. The Iranians offered him a 10-year residency permit and a monthly salary of $800 if he would go to Syria to fight to protect the shrine of Sayyida Zainab, a granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad.

Around 2013, when Mr. Assads military was losing ground to the rebels, Iran poured billions of dollars into Syria, brought in Hezbollah fighters and began raising Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places with significant Shiite populations. Iran does want to protect the major Shiite shrines in Damascus, Aleppo and Raqqa, but the use of foreign Shia militias in the Syria war was simply another fork in the larger battle for control and influence in the Middle East run by Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps elite Quds Force.

The relationship between Iran and Syria goes back to the Syrian support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, their shared enmity toward Israel, and Syrias being the essential axis of transit between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Most of the weapons in the Hezbollah inventory are sent by Iran through Syria. Mr. Assads control over Syria allows Tehran to resupply Hezbollah and work toward building a connection to the Mediterranean Sea.

A few months after Iran asked Hezbollah to join the fighting in Syria alongside Mr. Assads forces, it began raising other Shiite militias. Fatemiyoun Division (formerly Brigade), a militia of Shia Afghan refugees, was formed around early 2014 and trained by both the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah veterans. Its strength has been estimated to be between 8,000 and 14,000 men. The Iranian authorities maintain the fighters are volunteers.

The recruits to the Fatemiyoun Division were initially from among the Shia Hazara Afghans, who settled in Iran after the Soviet occupation, after the civil war in the early 1990s and the subsequent Taliban rule. Their recruitment had echoes of how Pakistan the other major host of the Afghan refugee population recruited the Pashtun Sunni Afghan refugees and their children to form the Taliban in the mid-1990s.

In the past few years, Iranians have expanded the recruitment to undocumented Afghans, like Mr. Amin, recently arrived from Afghanistan in search of economic opportunity. Apart from the refugees economic anxiety and precarious legal status, the Iranians exploit the Shia faith of Afghan refugees to recruit them to fight for the Assad regime in Syria.

Iranian propaganda framed the Syrian war to these refugees as a Shia struggle for the defense and protection of the faith and its holy sites. The fighters have little or no knowledge of the political-security context into which they are marching, said Ahmad Shuja, a former researcher with Human Rights Watch. They do not speak Arabic, most of them have never been beyond Afghanistan or Iran, many are barely literate, most are devout Shiites.

Mr. Amin believed that the Syrian war dated back to a dispute between Jabhat al-Nusra (which was officially founded in 2012) and Mr. Assad. He had been made to believe that the war broke out after the leader of Nusra (who, he said, was related to Mr. Assad) wanted to build a store over a mosque. Mr. Assad, an Alawite, rushed to defend the mosque and protect all religious sites, especially the Shia shrines, in the country. In turn, in Mr. Amins telling, Nusra called for Mr. Assads downfall and the destruction of the countrys shrines.

Irans Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah fighters trained Mr. Amin and various Afghan recruits of the Fatemiyoun Division in using weapons and tactical movement for a month. Some were trained as snipers; some were trained in tank warfare. After the training they were flown to Syria and sent to the front lines in Damascus and Aleppo.

Iranians and Mr. Assads forces used the Afghan recruits as the first-wave shock troops. We would be the first in any operation, Mr. Amin recalled. Several short memoirs by current and former Afghan fighters in Syria published on the Telegram app, which Mr. Shuja studied, recount the Afghans being sent to fight the most difficult battles and speak about heavy casualties among Afghan fighters and the eventual victory after multiple assaults.

Afghan fighters have fought in Damascus, Hama, Lattakia, Deir al-Zor, Homs, Palmyra and Aleppo. In November and December, Mr. Amin was stationed in Aleppo, where the Fatemiyoun Division was tasked with helping the Syrian Army retake the eastern part of the city from rebel groups. He and hundreds of other young Afghans fought under the orders of the Revolutionary Guard.

The foreign Shiite militias, which included fighters like Mr. Amin, played a crucial role in supporting Mr. Assads regime and provided the key ground forces in the decisive battle of Aleppo. The victory in Aleppo turned the tide for Mr. Assad and for Iran, bringing it closer to, as the Syria scholar Joshua Landis put it, the consolidation of this Iranian security arc, stretching from Lebanon to Iran.

Several hundred Afghans have died fighting Mr. Assads and Irans war in Syria. The bodies of slain Afghan fighters were paraded around the streets of Tehran and in Qom, in northern Iran, in elaborate ceremonies before their burials. Both Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and General Suleimani have visited the families of Afghan militiamen killed in Syria and expressed gratitude for the sacrifices their sons made for defending the holy shrines and Islam.

In January, I met Murtaza, a 21-year-old Afghan at the Elliniko Airport refugee camp in Athens. He had lived in Qom. They never make a show of the Iranian fighters who die in Syria, only the Afghans, said Murtaza, who claimed to have seen graves of hundreds of Afghans killed in Syria in Qom. It is their way of trying to convince the Iranian people that only Afghans, and not Iranians, are dying in Syria.

In June 2016, Haitham Maleh, a Syrian opposition leader, addressed a letter to President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan requesting an end to the influx of Afghan fighters. Afghan deaths in Mr. Assads war have forced several Afghan clerics to speak out against the Iranian strategy. Even Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the warlord who recently made a peace deal with the Afghan government, spoke about it on his return to Kabul. Some estimates put the number of Afghans killed in Syria around 600. Mr. Amin said 15 of his friends were killed in Syria.

After being wounded in Aleppo, Mr. Amin returned to Bamyan two months ago with a 10-year Iranian residency in hand and promise of a home in Iran, or in postwar Syria, if he would like to live there. A majority of the Afghans who fought with him in Syria have stayed in Iran. He keeps in touch with them on the Telegram app.

Bamyan remains peaceful and poor; the roads leading to the province are still dangerous. Mr. Amin has returned to his old life as a subsistence farmer. I came back because I wanted to see what would work out better, Mr. Amin told me. If things are good here, I will stay. If they get worse, then I will go back to Iran, but now I dont have to worry about deportation.

Ali M. Latifi is a journalist based in Kabul.

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How Iran Recruited Afghan Refugees to Fight Assad's War - New York Times

The new US policy will ban all arrivals from Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia for 90 days, if the new arrivals have no relationship with a person or entity in the United States.

"At the time when Iraq was being overrun by Daesh, by ISIS, did the United States make the slightest move in defense of it? Or was it the Iranian nation that rendered aid to the Iraqi nation and Iraq government?" Larijani told CNN in an exclusive interview.

"Had we not assisted them, Baghdad would have been occupied by ISIS. It is with the help of Iran that Daesh, ISIS, is on its last breath in Iraq (and Syria)," Larijani said.

Larijani said "numerous Iranians" live in the United States, and called on the American administration to provide proof that any of them has been involved in terrorism.

"I have spoken about this before, so many Iranians live in the United States, study in the United States, engage in business in the United States, which one of them have engaged in terrorism?" he asked.

The Parliamentary speaker argued the ban was unlikely to work, because terrorists "seldom to never" enter a country under their own names or nationalities.

"President Trump and American officials are aware of this. The terrorists must be defeated at the source. Where are their sources? Where are they? They are in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq," he said.

Larijani questioned whether Saudi Arabia had the right to "dictate" conditions to another independent nation.

"Is it logical, is it mature for one country to dictate to another and say you must do as I say? Well you must cease relations, for example, with Iran?" he said. "I do not believe that ... the Saudis carry this sort of weight to say these sort of things."

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ISIS would own Baghdad without our help, Iran official says - CNN

The U.S. government said it's ready to seize a Manhattan skyscraper from an Iranian-American charity to benefit victims of terrorism after a jury found Thursday that the charity's majority ownership was derived from financial dealings that violated sanctions against Iran.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said the owners of the office tower near Rockefeller Center "gave the Iranian government a critical foothold in the very heart of Manhattan through which Iran successfully circumvented U.S. economic sanctions."

"For over a decade, hiding in plain sight, this 36-story Manhattan office tower secretly served as a front for the Iranian government and as a gateway for millions of dollars to be funneled to Iran in clear violation of U.S. sanctions laws," Kim said in a statement. "In this trial, 650 Fifth Avenue's secret was laid bare for all to see, and today's jury verdict affirms what we have been alleging since 2008."

The verdict in the civil case was sure to be appealed. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier ordered the case to go to trial after U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled in favor of the United States.

Over the last month, lawyers for the Alavi Foundation argued that the charity was unaware if Iran was secretly benefiting from a partner who owned 40 percent of the building. The Alavi Foundation owns 60 percent.

Kim said the building was worth at least a half billion dollars, though some estimates put its worth closer to a billion dollars.

Kim said the sale of the building, combined with several other properties around the country, would represent the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in U.S. history.

The prosecutor said the verdict "allows for substantial recovery for victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism."

The government is seeking to turn over proceeds of a sale to holders of over $5 billion in terrorism-related judgments against the government of Iran, including claims brought by the estates of victims killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Forrest aided that effort Thursday by issuing a written opinion finding the Alavi Foundation liable for the turnover of its real estate properties to the benefit of its creditors, including terrorism victims.

"We are gratified to win this victory for the victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism, some of whom have waited more than two decades for this day," attorney James Bernard said in a statement.

In another statement, Alavi Foundation attorney John Gleeson said: "The Alavi Foundation is disappointed by today's verdict and by the court's decision in the related cases and is considering its options."

It was unclear what effect the verdict will have on the Alavi Foundation, which supports a Queens school among other charity works.

The verdict seemed to spare a Catharpin, Virginia, property after jurors concluded its funds did not violate sanctions and were not used in money laundering activities. The government said the verdict should allow it to seize properties in Houston; Carmichael, California; and Rockville, Maryland.

The Fifth Avenue building was erected in the 1970s on property acquired by the not-for-profit corporation. It was valued at $83 million in 1989 and has steadily risen in value.

Government lawyers said Iran has secretly controlled the building for years as millions of dollars in rent payments are funneled to it from a partnership made up of Alavi and a shell company fronting for a secret interest held by the state-owned bank of Iran, Bank Melli.

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Jury finds that NYC skyscraper owner violated Iran sanctions - Chicago Tribune

Updated |An Iranian official said Thursday hecould confirm the death of the elusive leader of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), but provided little details surrounding the claim.

Ali Shirazi, a representative of the foreign branch of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary GuardCorps, known as the Quds Force, said he was sure Baghdadi was dead, but declined to elaborate on how or when the elusive cleric had been killed. The claim comesafter Russia announced on June 16 it believed it had killed Baghdadi during a May 28 airstrike on what it called a meeting of hundreds of ISIS militants and officials outside of the jihadists' de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria. It's uncertain whether Shirazi's claim Thursday was related to Russia's. Previous rumors of Baghdadi's death have proven to be false or mistaken on numerous occasions.

Related: What happens without an ISIS leader? If Russia killed Baghdadi, Islamic State could collapse

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"Terrorist Baghdadi is definitely dead," Shirazi told Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency, which later retracted the quote, according to Reuters.

Islamic State militant group (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi makes his first and only known public appearance at the Grand al-Nuri mosque in the center of Iraq's second city, Mosul, July 5, 2014. Iran, which has actively fought ISIS abroad for years, said it confirmed Baghdadi's death, weeks after Russia said it likely killed the cleric in an airstrike in Syria's Raqqa. Social Media/Reuters TV

Iran and Russia have partnered with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the fight against ISIS in Syria and all three factions have made lightning advances nationwide against the jihadists. The U.S. is also heavily involved in the fight against ISIS and is sponsoring a majority-Kurd coalition of Arabs and ethnic minorities known as the Syrian Democratic Forces as they surround and storm Raqqa city. The U.S. has increasingly targeted forces supportive of Assad and has attacked Iran-backed forces in Syria's southeastern Badiya region at least three times. Despite the U.S.'s efforts to curb Iranian influence in the country, pro-government forces have secured large parts of the country's border with Iraq, where Iran also plays a major role in battling ISIS.

In neighboring Iraq, Iranbacks majority-Shiite Muslim militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. After a major offensive by the Iraqi military, Kurdish militants, the Popular Mobilization Forces and a U.S.-led coalition, only remnants of the group remain in the country, mostly in Iraq's second city of Mosul. Iraqi government forces reclaimed Thursday the historic Grand al-Nuri mosque where Baghdadi declared his so-called caliphate in 2014 and local military officials forecasted the upcoming demise of the group in the near future.

"Their fictitious state has fallen," Brigadier General Yahya Rasool. spokesperson for Iraq's Joint Operations Command, told state TV,according to Reuters.

This story has been updated to reflect the exact dates of the Russian Defense Ministry's announcement that Baghdadi had likely been killed and of the airstrike that Moscow said appeared to havestruckhim and his supporters in Raqqa, Syria.

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Iran: ISIS Leader 'Baghdadi is Definitely Dead' - Newsweek