Tag: iran

Obama: Netanyahu presented to me same arguments for war with Iran that he made to Trump

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview with The New Yorker published Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had presented him with the same arguments he later presented to current President Donald Trump to persuade him to launch a war with Iran.

“I think my prognosis was accurate,” he said. It may be that Netanyahu has “gotten what he wanted. Whether that’s what is ultimately best for the Israeli people, I would question that. Whether I think it’s what is good for the United States and America, I would question that. I think there’s an ample record of my differences with Mr. Netanyahu.”

Netanyahu opposed the nuclear deal Obama signed with Iran in 2015, an agreement that Trump ultimately canceled in 2018 during his first term in the White House. Since then, Trump has not succeeded in bringing Iran to a new nuclear deal, and no such agreement was signed during Joe Biden’s presidency either.

Since the agreement was canceled in 2018, Iran has raced toward a nuclear bomb, and its progress eventually led to two wars — the 12-day Operation Rising Lion in June 2025 and Operation Roaring Lion, which began in late February 2026.

In the interview, Obama was asked about threats Trump has made toward Iran in recent months, including that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Obama replied: “believe American leadership, as represented by the American President, has to reflect a basic regard for human dignity and decency, not just within our own borders but beyond. That’s part of the responsibility of leadership. If we are not giving voice to those core values—that there are innocent people in countries with terrible governments and we have to care about those people, that we can make mistakes if we are not guarding against hubris and pure self-interest . . . If we don’t have those things, the world can break in very bad ways.”

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Ceasefire Apparently Over as Iran Fires Missiles at UAE – Fujairah Oil Zone on Fire

UAE claims to have the ‘full and legitimate right to respond to these attacks’.

The ceasefire in the Middle East seems to have been broken today, as the United Arab Emirates reports that Iran fired four missiles toward its territory.

The UAE says that it is actively engaging with a ‘missile and drone attack’.

Axios reported:

“There were also fires reported at a fuel facility in the UAE and on ships off its coast. Iran has not claimed responsibility for any of the apparent attacks.

This would be the first time Iran attacked a Gulf state since the ceasefire was announced nearly a month ago. The U.S. and Iran may now be on the precipice of a return to war.”

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As the War in Iran Drains Stockpiles, US Warns European Allies of Long Delays in Weapons Deliveries

There’s never going to be enough missiles for the number of military conflicts going on.

US officials have informed some European ‘allies’ – including the UK, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Norway – that some contracted weapons deliveries will be ​delayed ⁠as the Iran war continues to deplete weapons ​stocks.

The Pentagon has warned the countries to expect serious delays for several missile systems.

Financial Times reported:

“The delays are partly driven by acute concerns about US inventory levels given the high volume of weapons used in the past two months in Iran. The American military has already been forced to move weapons from other regions, including the Indo-Pacific, to make up for the shortfalls.

But the Iran war has also deepened concerns about whether the US has a sufficient stockpile of weapons to deter Beijing or defeat China in any future conflict over Taiwan.”

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Iran war ‘likely’ to restart, senior Tehran official warns after Trump says US might be ‘better off’ without deal

The war between the US and Iran is “likely” to restart, a senior Iranian official predicted on the heels of comments by President Trump that the US might be “better off” without an agreement.

A “renewed conflict between Iran and the United States is likely,” said Mohammad Jafar Asadi, a high-level officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran wants the US to test its strength, said Ali Rafiei Atani, an IRGC commander in Qazvin province.

“We hope America makes a mistake and tests its power on the ground as well. It was defeated at sea and in the air, and we would like it to test itself on the ground too,” claiming the conflict had “shattered America’s hollow power.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an Iran hawk and a prominent Trump ally, is calling on the president to “finish the job” with more strikes if Tehran continues to be “provocative.”

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Trump: There Could Be a Future Where U.S. Energy Companies Operate in Iran

President Donald Trump said there “could be” a future where American energy companies are operating inside of Iran in response to a question from Breitbart News on Saturday.

Trump spoke to reporters for just over three minutes on the tarmac of Palm Beach International Airport before boarding Air Force One and departing for Miami.

When Breitbart News asked if he envisions a future where American energy companies are operating inside of Iran, much like Venezuela, he said, “Could be.”

“Could be. It could be. I’ll tell you what, we have a lot of ships coming up to Texas and Louisiana. It’s a line of ships,” he said. “You saw the satellite. We have a line of ships; big ones. Two million barrels, and they’re coming up. I mean, literally hundreds of ships are in line to go to Texas. I mean, they’re already started, but we’re selling a lot of oil. A lot of oil.”

Before taking any questions, Trump said that Iran desires a deal.

“[We’re] doing very well with regard to Iran. Again, they want to make a deal. They’re decimated. They’re having a hard time figuring out who their leader is. They don’t know who their leader is because their leader is gone…their former leader,” he told reporters, referring to Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury.

The president’s gaggle with reporters came soon after reports surfaced from Iranian state media that Iran had countered a 9-point U.S. proposal for a deal to end the war with their own 14-point plan.

Trump said he had not yet read the proposal but would do so aboard the short flight on Air Force One to Miami.

“I’ll let you know about it later,” he said.

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Trump Says Not Worried About Depletion of US Arms Stocks Amid Iran Conflict

US President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed concerns about depleting US weapons stocks due to the armed conflict with Iran.

On April 21, Trump said that the ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran was positive as it allowed the US military to replenish its ammunition stocks.

“We have more than double what we had when this started. I am not worried,” Trump told reporters when asked about reports that White House officials are worried about a significant reduction is the US inventory.

On Monday, The Atlantic reported, citing two senior Trump administration officials, that Vice President JD Vance has on several occasions raised questions, behind closed doors, regarding the Department of War’s depiction of the conflict with Iran, and whether the Pentagon has been objective in its assessments of US missile stockpiles.

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Soon Comes The Mother of All Supply Shocks

It’s getting pretty hard to tell who is more delusional: The Donald or the noisy boy band of school-yard incompetents that surround him.

Either way, it’s not surprising that Trump posted this missive earlier today. He apparently actually thinks that his cockamamie Iranian War, which is on the edge of stalemate or actually being lost, is nearly all over except for the shouting.

Of course, it’s no mystery as to where the Donald is getting his utterly misplaced optimism. To wit, almost every POTUS of modern times – financially challenged or solid in his own right – has had a strong Secy of the Treasury to keep him tethered to reality.

After all, Herbert Hoover had the outstanding Andrew Mellon. FDR finally got himself anchored down by the capable Henry Morganthau. And General Eisenhower, who was himself no slouch on fiscal matters, had the rock solid midwestern banker, George Humphreys.

Likewise, economics were not JFK’s strong suit, but all matters financial were second nature to his Treasury Secretary, Douglas Dillon. And even after his screw-ups at Camp David, Nixon turned to the brilliant Bill Simon, while the peanut farmer from Georgia had the world class industrial CEO, Michael Blumenthal at the Treasury post.

Contrary to the main stream stereotype, Ronald Reagan was actually deeply learned on economic matters, but even then he had the exceedingly capable Jim Baker at the Treasury during this second term. Similarly, Clinton had Wall Street titan Bob Rubin and G. Dubya Bush had the exceedingly capable Paul O’Neill.

Not the Donald. The first time around he had a Goldman Sachs nepo baby, Steven Mnuchin, whose economic policy grounding was as razor thin as the Donald’s. And now he’s got former George Soros, trainee, Scott Bessent, who apparently fancies himself to be a big think strategist, who actually doesn’t know shit from shinola on most matters within his brief.

So in even more declarative terms than the Donald, Bessent now tells us that the Iranian’s are literally days away from waving the white flag of surrender because he and the Donald have constipated their oil wells with the naval blockade.

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Hormuz: Who Is Calling The Shots?

I’ve been trying to make sense of what’s going really on with the war on Iran. The US says it is blockading the Straits of Hormuz to destroy Iran’s economy, but it risks destroying the world economy, including its own, in the process. So, let’s have a look and see if we can make any sense out of it. Take it up in the comments.

Picture this: it’s the end of April 2026, and the world is holding its breath over the powder keg in the Persian Gulf. After a whirlwind of airstrikes, naval showdowns, and shadowy proxy battles, it has simmered into an uneasy ceasefire, but the air crackles with the threat of explosion. What kicked off as a thunderous US-Israeli assault on 28 February is now a high-stakes game of chicken, where nobody’s blinking. Western headlines scream of taming a rogue regime, Iranian voices roar defiance, and powers like Russia, India, and China shake their heads at the chaos rippling across the globe. At the epicentre? The Strait of Hormuz, where only about ten ships a day are making the passage through it, way less than a tenth of normal traffic. 

And just what is Donald Trump’s strategy. Is he out to crush Iran? Or China? Is he creating his own new world order based on US hegemony? Or is he handing globalist elites at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and their UN Agenda 2030 playbook a golden opportunity to reshape the world into the Global government tyranny they desire? 

Let’s rewind to the fireworks. The war erupted when Trump, fresh off a 60-day ultimatum for Iran to scrap its nuclear ambitions and ditch its proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis, imitated joint strikes with Israel. Tehran lit up under the bombs and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Trump’s strategy was, he said, crystal clear: regime change, pulverise Iran’s missiles, sink its navy, wipe out its air force, neuter its terror network, and slam the door on any atomic dreams. But Iran didn’t follow the script, fought back effectively, and oh so predictably closed the Straits. By early April, a fragile two-week truce kicked in and on 7 April Iran eased tanker access through Hormuz, the US paused the pounding and Trump stretched it indefinitely on 21 April, bragging that 75% of targets were toast. And then, after calling the Iranian regime a bunch of gangsters for closing the Straits, the US imposed its own, very much reducing traffic and directly ordering around 40 ships to turn back and putting shells into at least one of them. But still, there’s no grand deal in sight. Iran’s rebuffing US demands for ironclad nuclear handcuffs and talks in places like Islamabad have hit the skids after Iran refused to accept America’s demand for capitulation and Trump yanked his envoy at the last minute.

Western sources paint a picture of gritty impasse. “An awkward limbo of ‘no war, no peace’,” as the NYT quips, with diplomacy derailed and both sides digging in like a modern Somme. The Guardian captures the frustration: a “deepening sense of deadlock” despite frantic regional shuttle diplomacy. Trump keeps dangling the phone line to Tehran; “Call if you want to talk” but insists no nukes, period. Casualties? Murky as ever, though US brass concedes Iran’s still got plenty of punch left in its missile and drone arsenals.

In Tehran it’s a tale of grit and grievance. PressTV and IRNA frame this as a brutal US-Israeli bulldozer trampling sovereign soil—day 57 of invasion by 25 April, no less. Iran’s pushing “workable frameworks” for peace, but with teeth: demands for war reparations from Gulf neighbours over wrecked bridges and power grids, like the Karaj-Tehran lifeline. Their 10-point blueprint? Crack open Hormuz, lift the US naval stranglehold, but only if the West coughs up real security pledges. No more nuclear grovelling without it. And the warnings? Chilling. Tehran vows “mayhem” on Israel and the US if the truce snaps, teasing “new surprises” in its arsenal. Even US senators are calling the whole mess “disastrous,” with failed bids to leash Trump’s war powers stacking up.

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Trump presented with RISKY secret Iran plan using US ground troops as oil prices plunge global economy into chaos

Donald Trump may escalate the Iran war by sending ground troops to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and deploying special operations forces to seize the nuclear materials the regime needs to build a bomb.

The President’s top military advisers are set to brief him on new options for military action designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table and end the war.

CENTCOM’s secret plans include using ‘short and powerful’ strikes on Iranian infrastructure to force Tehran to show more flexibility on ending its nuclear program, according to Axios.

It would amount to the most intense US combat activity in Iran since the beginning of the month, when Americans staged a high-stakes rescue of downed crew members. 

One plan Trump is expected to review calls for reopening commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz with US ground troops. The passage, which transits one-fifth of all global oil shipping, has been stalled for seven weeks.

Another strategy the President will hear involves using special forces to enter Iran and recover its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. During prior negotiations, the regime refused to hand over the nuclear material to the US.

After peace talks stalled earlier this month, Trump imposed a naval blockade on all Iranian ports in the Gulf.

Tehran, meanwhile, has shut down oil shipping lanes by attacking tankers with speedboats and laying sea mines in the strait.

Trump’s new pressure campaign to reopen the strait comes as the global oil market has plunged into chaos, driving US gas prices to their highest level per gallon since 2022.

US gas prices rose another 7 cents on Thursday to $4.30 for a gallon of regular, the biggest one-day jump in prices since the start of the war. 

Gas is now at its highest price since the consumer inflation crisis of July 2022, according to the data from AAA. 

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US wants to use hypersonic missile on Iran. Problem is, it may not work.

The U.S. is mulling using its first hypersonic missile against Iran — even though it may not yet be ready for battlefield use.

CENTCOM says it needs to deploy the “Dark Eagle” missile against Iran because it has been forced to move its launchers out of range for Washington’s Precision Strike Missile, which the U.S. is now running low on, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Although it completed some successful tests in 2024, the Dark Eagle repeatedly failed to launch during other tests because of launcher and production quality issues. An unnamed defense official told Fox News that the weapon has reached “initial operational capability,” but the Pentagon testing office says it won’t have enough data to evaluate Dark Eagle’s combat effectiveness until early 2027.

The request comes amid a deadlock in U.S.-Iran talks that could spark a return to all-out war. President Donald Trump has pledged to maintain a blockade of Iranian shipping in the Persian Gulf, but Iran says it will only come to the table if the U.S. lifts the siege.

As Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, told RS, the possible Dark Eagle deployment “suggests that the Pentagon has lost all perspective.”

“Iran is not an existential threat, and the United States should not be expending its highest-end missiles there no matter what,” Kavanagh said. “The unit cost per missile is $41 million or so. Are any targets in Iran worth this much?”

Another expert observed that a deployment soon might help the Dark Eagle get more funding for next year’s defense budget.

“How do you know it is defense budget season in Washington? An unnecessary push to deploy a not-yet-fully-operational hypersonic missile against Iran,” Kelly Grieco, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, wrote on X. “Nothing says ‘fund me’ like first use, I guess.”

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