Tag: iran

Huh? Who On Earth Is Trump Talking To?

President Donald Trump says he has paused strikes on Iran, claiming to have had significant direct communications with Iranian figures amid the ongoing military escalation, describing the exchanges as productive, yet Israel appears to be continuing airstrikes at the same time.

Trump framed the talks as a potential path to de-escalation through verifiable compliance rather than prolonged conflict, and characterized the negotiations positively during recent comments.

“We have had very, very strong talks,” he said. “We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement… They went, I would say perfectly.”

He specified the involvement of U.S. representatives. “Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner had them.”

Addressing Iranian denials broadcast on Iranian state television, Trump responded, “Well, they’re going to have to get themselves better public relations people!”

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The Donald Gets a Double-Whammy

It sure looks like the Donald is on the receiving end of a double-whammy. His victory declaration in Iran looks to rank right up there with George Dubya Bush’s “mission accomplished” pratfall on the deck of a US aircraft carrier in 2003; and that also means that his SOTU boasting about defeating “Joe Biden’s” inflation and getting the gas pump price under $2 per gallon is out the window, too.

What’s back in play front and center, therefore, is the AFFORDABILITY issue come November. The Dems have no clue about how to fix it, of course, but they sure as hell will be brutally pounding the GOP candidates and the Donald with the latter’s own bogus hot air on the matter.

For want of doubt, consider the conflagration in the global oil markets at this very moment. At ground zero in the Persian Gulf, the major crude oil from the region have already shot the moon.

Thus, Oman crude prices are up to $154/barrel, crossing $150 for the first time ever. At the same time, Dubai crude is up to $130/barrel, while Brent is trading at $110.

This means, in turn, that the gap between Oman and world prices is off-the-charts wide, and now stands at 30% or $44 per barrel. By comparison, before the Iran War, the difference between all benchmarks was just $5 per barrel during January and February.

In very short-run, of course, Brent and WTI are priced based on US and European supply conditions, while the actual disruption is concentrated in the Middle East, meaning they do not fully capture the severity of the physical shortage. YET.

On the other hand, global crude oil markets everywhere and always eventually get arbitraged, causing the major marker grades to fully reflect worldwide supply, demand and inventory conditions. So unless the Gulf is re-opened within a matter of days, the marker grades will soon rise toward these Gulf prices as global inventories continue to be liquidated.

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Pakistan says talks imminent: Trump’s vice president to meet Iranian officials as Israel fears concessions

A Pakistani source said Tuesday that U.S. Vice President JD Vance, along with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are expected to meet Iranian officials in Islamabad as early as this week, according to Reuters.

The source said the summit would follow a call between President Donald Trump and Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Asim Munir.

Earlier, the Financial Times reported that Pakistan is seeking to position itself as a central mediator to help end the war. Pakistani officials have also passed messages between Tehran and both Witkoff and Kushner, the newspaper said.

The report noted that Pakistan — which does not host U.S. military bases — is one of the few U.S. allies in the region that was not targeted by Iran during the war. Three sources told the Financial Times that this helped Islamabad present itself as a neutral intermediary between the sides.

Israeli concerns over US stance

Israeli officials are increasingly concerned that Trump may not insist on Washington’s stated red lines in talks with Iran and could accept any outcome that allows him to declare victory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke earlier Tuesday with Vance and was briefed on the contacts between Washington and Tehran. The U.S. message to Israel, according to Israeli officials, is that Washington intends to uphold red lines largely aligned with Israel’s: removal of enriched uranium from Iran, halting its nuclear program, restoring intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, limiting Iran’s ballistic missile program — with a U.S. demand for a five-year freeze — and ending support for militant groups.

Trump is also insisting on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and having a role in overseeing it.

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Lindsey Graham on Iran’s Kharg Island: ‘We Did Iwo Jima. We Can Do This.’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday called for the US to capture Iran’s Kharg Island, where most of the country’s oil exports pass, comparing the potential operation to the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

“Here’s what I’d tell President Trump: Keep it up for a few more weeks, take Kharg Island … control that island. Let this regime die on the vine,” Graham said in an appearance on Fox News.

When pressed on the fact that US troops involved in the operation would face significant missile and drone attacks, Graham said, “I’m sort of tired of all this armchair quarterbacking. This has been an amazing military operation — God bless the fallen.”

The South Carolina senator said that he “trusted the Marines” and noted that two Marine Expeditionary Units are heading to the region. “We did Iwo Jima. We can do this,” Graham said. “My money is always on the Marines. I don’t know if you take the island or you blockade the island, but I know this: the day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, will die on the vine.”

The Battle of Iwo Jima is known as one of the most brutal battles in World War II, involving US troops, and resulted in about 26,000 US casualties, including more than 6,000 deaths. On the Japanese side, more than 18,000 defenders of the island were killed.

Graham’s comments come after NBC News reported that President Trump is considering whether to send thousands of troops into Iran for potential operations aimed at opening up the Strait of Hormuz. The report said ground operations could involve attempts to seize control of Iranian ports, small islands, or oil infrastructure.

Another option being considered is launching a raid to capture Iran’s stockpile of uranium that’s enriched at the 60% level, though it’s believed to be buried under rubble following the June 2025 US airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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Did Iran launch missiles at US-UK base on Diego Garcia? Here’s what to know

The United Kingdom has slammed “reckless Iranian threats” after missiles targeted a joint United States-UK military base located on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

However, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday denied the allegations that it was behind the launch of what US media reports said were two ballistic missiles.

The US has not commented officially on the firing of the missiles at Diego Garcia, which is approximately 4,000km (2,500 miles) from Iran.

The incident over the weekend came three weeks into the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on February 28. One of the goals of the war, they have said, is to degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.

Tehran has maintained its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. The United Nations nuclear watchdog and US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard have said Iran was not on the verge of making nuclear bombs. Contrary assertions were invoked to launch the current war.

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Iran threatens to ‘completely’ close Strait of Hormuz and hit power plants after Trump ultimatum

 The United States and Iran threatened to target critical infrastructure Sunday as the war in the Middle East, now in its fourth week, puts lives and livelihoods at risk throughout the region.

Iran said the Strait of Hormuz, crucial to oil and other exports, would be “completely closed” immediately if the U.S. follows up on President Donald Trump’s threat to attack its power plants. Trump late Saturday set a 48-hour deadline to open the strait.

Israeli leaders visited one of two southern communities near a secretive nuclear research site struck by Iranian missiles late Saturday, with scores of people wounded. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “miracle” no one was killed.

Netanyahu claimed Israel and the U.S. were well on their way to achieving their war goals. The aims have ranged from weakening Iran’s nuclear program, missile program and support for armed proxies to enabling the Iranian people to overthrow the theocracy.

There has been no sign of an uprising, nor of an end to the fighting that has shaken the global economy, sent oil prices surging and endangered some of the world’s busiest air corridors. The war, which the U.S. and Israel launched Feb. 28, has killed over 2,000 people.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an airstrike that killed a man in northern Israel, while Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called Israel’s new targeting of bridges in the south “a prelude to a ground invasion.”

“More weeks of fighting against Iran and Hezbollah are expected for us,” said Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin.

Meanwhile, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said early Monday their air defenses were dealing with missile and drone attacks as air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain.

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‘Punish Iran’: Saudi Arabia & UAE Inch Closer To Joining US-Israeli War

Earlier this month, Elbridge Colby, a senior official in the US Department of War, held a call with Saudi Arabian Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, who is also the brother and top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Iran’s attacks on US bases in the Gulf were heating up, and the US needed expanded access and overflight permissions. Saudi Arabia agreed to open King Fahd Air Base in Taif, in Western Saudi Arabia, to the Americans, multiple US and western officials familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.

The base is important because it is farther from Iranian Shahed drones than Prince Sultan Air Base, which has come under repeated Iranian attacks. Taif is also close to Jeddah, the Red Sea port that has become a critical logistics hub since Iran effectively took control of the Strait of Hormuz. Current and former US officials tell MEE that if the Trump administration is preparing for a longer war on Iran, Jeddah may be critical for sustaining US armed forces. Thousands of US ground troops are en route to the region from East Asia. 

Saudi Arabia’s decision to expand base access, current and former officials say, underscores a shift in how the kingdom and some other Gulf states are responding to the US-Israeli war on Iran. “The attitude in Riyadh has shifted towards supporting the US war as a way to punish Iran for strikes,” a western official in the Gulf told MEE.

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Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely US-operated, analysis finds

An American-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and tore through homes in U.S.-ally Bahrain 10 days into the war on Iran, according to an analysis by academic researchers examined by Reuters.

Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighbourhood in Bahrain.

In response to questions from Reuters, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery.

In the statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives.

“The damage and injuries sustained were not a result of a direct impact to the ground of either the Patriot interceptor or the Iranian drone,” the spokesperson said.

Neither Bahrain or Washington has provided evidence that an Iranian drone was involved in the Mahazza incident.

The use of costly, advanced weaponry to defend against attacks by far cheaper drones has been a defining feature of the war. The incident points to the risks and limitations of this strategy: The blast from the powerful Patriot, whether or not it intercepted a drone, contributed to widespread damage and casualties, while Bahrain’s air defenses were unable to prevent strikes that night on the nearby oil refinery, which declared force majeure hours later.

When asked for comment, the Pentagon referred Reuters to Central Command, which did not immediately reply to questions.

In response to questions sent to the White House, a senior U.S. official said the United States was “crushing” Iran’s ability to shoot or produce drones and missiles. “We will continue to address these threats to our country and our allies,” the official said, adding that the U.S. military “never targets civilians.” The official did not answer specific questions about the Patriot attack.

On February 28, the first day of U.S. strikes on Iran, an Iranian girls school took a direct hit. Investigators at the U.S. Defense Department believe U.S. forces were likely responsible, Reuters first reported, possibly because of outdated targeting data, two U.S. sources previously told the news agency.

Video of the aftermath of the Mahazza blast in Bahrain verified by Reuters shows rubble around houses, a thick layer of dust in the streets, an injured man and screaming residents.

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War Becomes Spectacle in Trump’s Horrific Propaganda Promoting War in Iran

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to be an antiwar candidate, boasting that, unlike his predecessors, he would end endless wars and keep the United States out of new military conflicts. Yet the trajectory of his presidency has unfolded in the opposite direction. From expanding military confrontations in the Caribbean to the escalating war with Iran, launched through large-scale strikes that risk igniting a wider regional catastrophe, Trump’s rule has increasingly relied on the language and machinery of war. As Zachary Basu points out in Axios, “he has attacked seven nations [and] authorized more individual air strikes in 2025 than President Biden did in four years.”

What makes this moment particularly disturbing is not only the violence itself, but also the way it is staged and celebrated. As the conflict with Iran intensified, the White House circulated promotional videos that fused real footage of bombing raids with visuals drawn from video games and action films, transforming acts of destruction into a spectacle of national triumph. In such images, war appears not as tragedy or political catastrophe but as thrilling display, inviting viewers to admire the technological performance of power while remaining detached from the human suffering it produces. These spectacles are more than crude propaganda. They reveal a deeper shift in political culture in which violence is aestheticized, cruelty normalized, and militarism staged as entertainment, training the public to experience domination not as a catastrophe but as an exhilarating display of power.

We live in an age of monsters. More than two centuries ago, Francisco Goya captured such a moment in his haunting 1799 etching, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” an image that now reads less like a relic of the Enlightenment than a prophecy of our own time. The Italian political thinker Antonio Gramsci described moments like this as periods of historical crisis, writing that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Our present moment bears all the marks of such an interregnum.

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Trump is strategizing means to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpiles, sources say

The Trump administration has been strategizing methods and options to secure or extract Iran’s nuclear materials, according to multiple people briefed on the discussions, as a U.S.-Israel-led military campaign against Tehran enters a more uncertain phase. 

The timing of any such an operation — if President Trump were to order it — remained unclear Friday night. One source said he has made no decision yet. 

But planning has centered on the possible deployment of forces from the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, the elite military unit often tasked with the most sensitive counter-proliferation missions, two of the sources told CBS News. 

A White House spokeswoman said it’s the Pentagon’s job to make preparations.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon didn’t immediately comment. 

Mr. Trump in a Truth Social post Friday evening said: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”

The private deliberations on the nuclear material come amid an evolving conflict that in its opening focused on degrading Iran’s conventional military capabilities — including air defenses, missile systems and key infrastructure tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

That initial wave of strikes carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces was intended to blunt Iran’s ability to retaliate across the region. However, despite the onslaught from the air, Iran has been able to counterstrike on Israel and U.S.-allied countries in the Gulf region, and has halted most oil shipments by threatening ships. 

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