Trump is shouting “all aboard” for a war convoy — and the countries he’s naming are politely staring at their shoes.

📰 Trump Wants a Hormuz Armada. Everyone Else Wants an Exit.

Trump has publicly urged China, Britain, France, Japan and South Korea to send warships to help “reopen” the Strait of Hormuz, even though none of them took part in the U.S.–Israeli strikes that triggered Iran’s retaliation and the de facto blockade.

The strait carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, but so far every capital he named is answering with caveats, conditions or silence rather than frigates.

London says it is looking at “any options” and talking to allies, but Ed Miliband is clear that the “best and simplest way” to reopen Hormuz is de‑escalation, not a bigger armada.

Tokyo warns of “high hurdles” under its pacifist constitution for sending warships and promises only caution and consultations before Sanae Takaichi even sits down with Trump. Seoul limits itself to a line about “communicating closely with the United States,” with no commitment attached.
​
Beijing, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, doesn’t respond to Trump at all, beyond its stock call for hostilities to cease. Paris stays formally non‑committal: Macron has talked about possible French naval escorts only “if the conflict stabilized,” while telling Iran’s president that Tehran must ensure freedom of navigation — a way of blaming Iran in public without signing up for Trump’s war plan.
​
Net result: the U.S. president is trying to turn a war of choice into a collective security mission, while the countries he’s summoning are busy drafting statements, not deployment orders.

Underneath the diplomatic language, the message back to Washington is simple: you broke Hormuz with your Iran campaign, you don’t get to send us the bill in destroyers.

#iran #trump #hormuz #allies #war #oil #fakeCoalition

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#america #strait #china #japan

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📰 Tactical Wins, Strategic Trap

Trump is already talking like he “won” the Iran war. The problem is that Iran still controls the timing, the oil, and a buried nuclear chip — and that means he doesn’t control the ending.

After two weeks of strikes, U.S. officials boast that most of Iran’s navy, much of its missile arsenal, and key commanders have been taken out. Yet Tehran has kept three levers intact: it has strangled traffic through Hormuz enough to yank millions of barrels a day off the market, pushed oil back above $100, and preserved roughly 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium under the rubble of bombed sites.

Those facts are exactly why experts like Suzanne Maloney at Brookings warn that piling up battlefield gains while Iran can still dictate when the war ends and keep a path to nuclear capability is a “strategic catastrophe.”

The economic fallout shows how deep the trap already is. To keep prices from exploding further, IEA members are releasing 400 million barrels from emergency reserves, including 172 million from U.S. stockpiles, and the Trump administration has suspended sanctions on Russian oil exports to get more barrels into the system.

That delivers a direct windfall to the Kremlin and undercuts Trump’s own Ukraine policy, turning his Iran adventure into a subsidy for Moscow on top of a global energy shock.
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Domestically, the pressure is building without a clear payoff he can sell. Gasoline is up about 25 percent since the bombing began, farmers are staring at rising fertilizer costs, and U.S. troop deaths are mounting just months before midterms Trump wanted to fight on the economy.

He still insists the war will end “when I feel it, feel it in my bones,” and says the U.S. is “way ahead of schedule,” but those lines sit next to a reality in which Iran can keep shooting at shipping in a 21‑mile‑wide chokepoint the U.S. military has not yet managed to stabilize.

And the uranium problem is not going away. Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed to be buried and “inaccessible” for now, not eliminated. As former officials and analysts point out, unless Washington is willing to send forces in to physically seize or render that material unusable, Tehran’s nuclear option survives this war — possibly in the hands of an even more hard‑line leadership around Mojtaba Khamenei.

Trump can declare victory any day he likes; the structure of the conflict means Iran still has ways to keep the crisis going, or to cash out later, on terms that will not look like a win for Washington.

#iran #trump #hormuz #oil #nuclear #war #fakeVictory

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📰 Allies Shopping for a New Superpower

U.S. allies aren’t “drifting” toward China. They’re walking there on purpose — and Trump is holding the door.

A new POLITICO–Public First poll in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. finds people in all four countries now say it’s better to depend on China than on the U.S. after Trump’s return to office.

Majorities in Canada and Germany, and large pluralities in France and Britain, say they’re looking to Beijing not because China got more trustworthy, but because America became harder to rely on.
​
Trump’s “America First” foreign policy made that shift feel rational. Allies watched Washington slow walk Ukraine aid, threaten NATO partners with economic punishment, and pull out of institutions from the WHO to the U.N. Human Rights Council — while floating stunts like “liberation day” tariffs, annexing Greenland, or turning Canada into the 51st state.

Beijing filled the space: hosting investment forums with Europeans, branding EU–China ties as “partnership not rivalry,” and positioning itself as the predictable player in a world where the U.S. behaves like a tariff‑addicted landlord.

Governments are already cashing that in. Canada’s Mark Carney talked about a “rupture” with Washington, then flew to Beijing to launch a new strategic partnership that slashes tariffs and resets trade ties.

The U.K. signed multi‑billion export deals in China; Macron and Merz came home from Beijing with purchase orders and photo‑ops, not lectures. It’s not love for Xi — it’s hedging against a White House they increasingly treat as a risk factor, not an anchor.

That elite recalibration is reinforced from below. Younger Europeans are far more open to China than their parents and are more supportive of closer ties, and a big share get their idea of China from social media rather than traditional news.

Studies cited in the piece show that nearly 70 percent of 18‑ to 25‑year‑olds say they rely on platforms like TikTok and other short‑form video for information about China, which means Beijing‑friendly narratives and curated images of Chinese “modernity” land in a space already primed by frustration with U.S. politics.

At the same time, pluralities in key allied countries now think China is ahead in critical technologies — batteries, robotics, EVs, AI — and see decoupling from China as harder than loosening the tie to the U.S. The paradox is simple: Washington still sees itself as indispensable, but its own behavior is helping make Beijing look inevitable.

If European leaders start acting as though China’s rise and America’s decline are facts of nature, that perception can easily turn into policy — and then into reality.

#trump #china #europe #allies #geopolitics #fakeLeadership

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#vance #biden #economy

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After Oscar. A Most Full Report on the Oscar Contest This Year

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖

Paul Thomas Anderson’s counter-culture caper One Battle After Another has won the Oscars war, taking home six awards after a hotly contested season.

The big-budget comedy thriller, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, was named best picture and also won director, supporting actor for Sean Penn, adapted screenplay, editing and the first ever Oscar for casting, a category long petitioned for within the industry.

Previously nominated for films including Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, tonight marks Anderson’s first ever Oscar wins.

Penn beat out his co-star Benicio del Toro for his third Oscar win but wasn’t in attendance to accept his award. “Sean Penn couldn’t be here tonight or didn’t want to,” presenter Kieran Culkin joked.

The season had became a two-horse race between One Battle After Another and Sinners, which entered the night as the most-nominated film ever with a record 16 nominations.

The period vampire blockbuster won four awards: actor for Michael B Jordan, original screenplay, original score and cinematography, which makes Autumn Durald Arkapaw the first ever female winner and first Black winner of the award.

Jordan won his first Oscar for his lead performance in the film, beating Timothée Chalamet and Leonardo DiCaprio. “I stand here because of the people who came before me,” he said before listing Black Oscar winners in the past. He has become the sixth Black winner in this category.

Jessie Buckley became the first ever Irish winner of the best actress Oscar for her performance in Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare drama Hamnet. The 36-year-old was previously nominated for her role in The Lost Daughter.

She devoted the award to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart” and called it “the greatest honour”.

Amy Madigan was named best supporting actress for her villainous role in the hit horror Weapons, beating Teyana Taylor and Wunmi Mosaku. It was the first time the award was won by an actor who was the only nominee from their film since Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

The 75-year-old actor, who was previously nominated in 1986, set a new record for the longest gap between nominations before a win.

The award was co-presented by Javier Bardem, who said “no to war and free Palestine” onstage, while wearing prominent badges expressing the same messaging.

The Oscar for best documentary went to Mr Nobody Against Putin, which tells of a teacher fighting against oppressive rules being introduced in his Russian school, a film which co-director David Borenstein said was “about how you lose your country”.

He added: “When a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we could produce it and consume it, we all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.”

#oscar #competion #film #director #won

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Macron: France's Role In the Middle East Would Remain Defensive

Macron insisted Friday that France's role in the Middle East would remain defensive after a French soldier was killed in a drone attack in Iraq.

"France's position is purely defensive, in support of its allies, and can in no way justify any attack against it," Macron said in a press conference standing alongside Zelensky, who was in Paris to discuss support for Kyiv.

Overnight Thursday into Friday, a French soldier was killed and several others were wounded in a strike on troops participating in a counterterrorism training exercise in northern Iraq.

Macron has linked the attack to the war in the Middle East but declined to assign blame for the killing. Instead he said he would remain "prudent," wait to speak to the Iraqi prime minister and receive more details from the France's own armed forces.

The incident, however, comes as a pro-Iranian armed group called Ashab Al-Kahf announced on Friday that it would target "all French interests in Iraq and the region," according to French media reports.

Amid the rising tensions in the region, Macron said that France would remain "calm, composed and determined" and continue to "be reliable with our allies, protect our citizens and defend our interests and our security."

The French president also called the attack "unacceptable," adding that the soldiers were in Iraq as part of an ongoing effort against the Islamic State group.

Macron last week said the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was being deployed to the Mediterranean along with fighter jets and air defense systems to protect French interests in the Middle East.

#macron #france #middle #east

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Kharg Island: Trump Plays With the World’s Oil Valve

Trump just turned Iran’s main oil terminal into a reality show cliffhanger — bombed the military, spared the oil, and now wants everyone to know the sequel might hit the global fuel line itself.

“President Trump’s not going to take any options off the table.”

— Mike Waltz on CNN.

Kharg Island isn’t some random desert rock; it’s where roughly 90% of Iran’s crude exports pass through, with capacity for about 7 million barrels a day. Last week, Trump ordered strikes on its military sites “only, for now,” while bragging that the oil infrastructure was left intact like a hostage with good lighting. Now his envoy is openly floating the option to “take down their energy infrastructure,” which is diplomat-speak for “we know exactly where the global economy’s jugular is.”

Meanwhile, Tehran is doing its own PR cosplay: Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posts on Telegram that Iran is “ready to form a committee” with regional countries to investigate what was hit, promises its attacks only target “American bases and interests,” and insists it hasn’t hit civilians. That’s the Middle East version of “we’re very concerned” — said right before the next missile launch. They also warn that occupying Kharg would be “a bigger mistake than attacking it,” as if the idea of a U.S. beach landing on an oil terminal is just another item on the menu.

On the other front, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard goes full mafia, vowing to hunt down and kill “child-killer” Netanyahu “if he is still alive.” Israel answers with airstrikes that “eliminate” two senior Iranian intelligence officials and hit Iran’s space research center and an air-defense factory, while emergency services in Israel report fresh missile barrages. So one side talks about committees, the other about revenge killings, and both keep saying they’re “defending security.” Security for whom, exactly, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Trump, of course, wants a coalition — not for peace, but to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz so the war can be livestreamed in 4K while the oil still flows. On Truth Social he begs China, France, Japan, South Korea, the U.K. and others to send ships to secure what he calls an “artificial constraint,” then demands that any country that needs the strait should help in U.S.-Israeli operations. Germany politely says “no thanks, we prefer negotiations,” Britain says it’s “intensively” looking at options, South Korea will “carefully review,” and Japan is rumored to get the hard sell when its prime minister visits Washington. Translation: everyone wants the oil, no one wants the blame, and they all hope someone else’s navy stands in front of the missiles.

Oil prices are already back above 100 dollars a barrel as markets react to the idea that the guy threatening Iran’s export lifeline also promises that prices will “come tumbling down once it’s all over.” Over for whom is, again, not specified: for Iranians, for Gulf residents, for crews on those tankers, or for voters watching gas prices like a national religion. Every side claims they’re avoiding escalation while openly targeting “critical infrastructure,” threatening leaders by name, and quietly gaming out what happens if Kharg Island — the cash register of Iran’s economy — goes dark.

So here’s the real question: if nearly every government involved insists this is about “stability” and “security,” what does actual instability even look like — and would any of them admit it if they saw it?

#war #Iran #Israel #Trump #KhargIsland #oil #energy #StraitOfHormuz #USA #EU #MiddleEast #geopolitics #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy #nuclearcrisis

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Israel’s Missile Shield Is Running On Fumes

Israel just told Washington it’s running critically low on ballistic missile interceptors, while officially denying to its own public that there’s any problem at all. The war with Iran already started with depleted stocks after last summer’s barrage, and Iran has upgraded to missiles with cluster munitions — great for saturating defenses, terrible for anyone under the sky.

“It’s something we expected and anticipated,”

a US official said — translation: they watched the ammo meter hit red and kept the tab open.
​
Washington insists its own interceptor supply is fine, totally fine, “not like Israel,” even as think tanks and leaks warn that a long war with Iran is exactly how you hollow out your missile defense on layaway. The US blew through over 150 high-end THAAD interceptors in a 12‑day Iran fight last June — roughly a quarter of the inventory — and is believed to have burned about 2.4 billion dollars’ worth of Patriot missiles in the first five days of this new round. Trump calls the stockpile “virtually unlimited,” while the Pentagon quietly signs emergency production deals and budget lines scream the opposite.

Israel’s foreign minister publicly denies they’re low on interceptors, but the same week the State Department rushes through an “emergency” sale of 12,000 BLU‑110 bomb bodies to Israel and waives congressional review, because apparently there’s always enough time to argue about pronouns but no time to vote on a thousand‑pound shipment. Missiles for defense are running out, but the pipeline for more offensive bombs is wide open — the arsenal might be shrinking, but the business model is booming.

The White House swears US stockpiles are “more than enough” for Trump’s goals “and beyond,” the Pentagon says it can execute any mission “at the time and place” of his choosing, and a defense secretary boasts that Iran’s ballistic missile production is “functionally defeated.” At the same time, Iran openly says there’s no room for diplomacy and that it’s ready for a long war, while Trump describes the whole thing as a “short-term excursion” that will last “as long as it’s necessary” because the enemy is “decimated” and “collapsing.” So either everyone’s winning or everyone’s lying — and the interceptors don’t care, they just run out.

If the shield is thinning, the political armor is still thick: US officials insist they have “all that we need to protect our bases,” Israel is “coming up with solutions,” and defense contractors are praised for being called upon to “quickly build US-made weapons.” The only real emergency, judging by who gets fast‑tracked, is making sure the factories never sleep — because in this version of “collective security,” the only thing that must not be intercepted is the cash flow.

#war #Israel #Iran #USA #Trump #missileDefense #IronDome #THAAD #Patriot #militaryindustrialcomplex #fakeDemocracy #geopolitics #MiddleEast #nuclearcrisis #weaponsDeal

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Druzhba™: Europe Wants Oil, Zelensky Wants Cash, Russia Wants the Drama

Brussels just discovered that its “values-based foreign policy” runs on Soviet-era steel pipes called Druzhba — “Friendship” — that don’t work, don’t belong to it, and don’t even pump its own oil.

Hungary and Slovakia are screaming that Ukraine is blocking Russian crude, Budapest is vetoing a 90‑billion‑euro EU loan to Kyiv, and the Commission is politely asking Zelensky to fix the pipeline that Moscow “repeatedly destroyed.” Friendship, but make it extortion.

According to Kyiv, the Druzhba section in Lviv was hammered by a Russian drone strike in January and is too dangerous to repair; according to Hungary and Slovakia, Ukraine is deliberately dragging its feet to weaponize the oil flow.

Zelensky calls the EU pressure “blackmail,” says sending technicians under Russian missiles is “too high a price,” and reminds everyone that Russian oil, which finances the war, “has no place” on the European market. Translation: you want cheap Russian crude, you fix the war first.

Brussels, stuck between Orbán’s veto and Zelensky’s war logic, suddenly wants inspectors on Ukrainian soil to check the damage — something the Commission has literally never done before. EU leaders hint at financial sweeteners to speed up repairs, while insisting Ukraine already has enough foreign cash to cover regular spending until April. In other words: here’s your credit line, now turn the faucet back on.

Hungary openly says it will block the 90‑billion‑euro loan to Ukraine until oil starts flowing again through Druzhba, all while tapping its strategic reserves and shouting that it is the victim of extortion.

Kyiv counters that Budapest and Bratislava are effectively freezing Ukrainians in winter while demanding that the country repair a Russian-targeted pipeline under fire so EU refineries can keep processing Kremlin crude. Everybody accuses everybody of blackmail — and for once, everybody’s right.

So you get a perfect late‑imperial scene: the EU posing in blue‑and‑yellow outfits, pledging “unwavering support,” while quietly telling Kyiv to patch up the Russian oil artery; Hungary and Slovakia waving the 90‑billion loan like a baseball bat; and Ukraine trying to turn a broken pipeline into leverage in a war that’s literally funded by the product inside it.

The only principle that really holds this together is that no one wants to stop the war badly enough to stop the oil.

#Ukraine #EU #Druzhba #oil #Hungary #Slovakia #Zelensky #Orbán #Russia #energy #war #blackmail #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy

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Hormuz: High-Tech Drones, Stone-Age Problem

The West is selling a sci‑fi solution to a very old scam: Iran hints it’s mining the Strait of Hormuz, tanker traffic freezes, oil spikes — and suddenly everyone remembers that a 25‑mile-wide chokepoint owns the global economy. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer talks up fancy Thales mine‑hunting drones, but the fine print is brutal: they’ve got limited batteries, need to beam data back to motherships sitting inside range of Iranian anti‑ship missiles, and can’t “prove” the one thing that matters — that nothing is left in the water.

“The number of mines you need for a minefield is actually zero,”

says retired US Navy officer Ben Cipperley.
​
Britain’s defense secretary John Healey says it’s getting “clearer and clearer” that Iran is laying explosives in Hormuz, while US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shrugs that there’s “no clear evidence” yet — one NATO ally yelling “mines,” another pretending this is still a think‑tank panel. Trump brags that the US has “hit all their minelaying ships” and bombs Iranian navy vessels, then immediately admits Iran can just toss mines off other boats anyway and nobody really knows what’s on the seabed. This is what “freedom of navigation” looks like in 2026: everyone claims control of the sea, nobody controls the rumor that shuts it down.

Militaries do have mine warfare toys — crewed minesweepers with wooden hulls, littoral combat ships, helicopters towing sonars, uncrewed underwater vehicles, and now autonomous drone systems from companies like Thales — but they all share one handicap: they have to crawl, in predictable patterns, through waters that Iran can blanket with missiles, drones, and explosive boats. Clearing mines is up to a thousand times more expensive and slower than laying them, and the US doesn’t even keep dedicated Avenger‑class minesweepers in the Gulf anymore. So the “high‑tech” answer is basically to send robots first, then hope insurers and shipping CEOs are dumb or desperate enough to believe a PowerPoint that says “safe corridor.”

Iran, whose regular military has been hammered by US‑Israeli strikes, doesn’t need a blue‑water navy as long as it can threaten Hormuz with a couple of dhows, some midget subs, and a stockpile of cheap mines detonated by contact or a ship’s magnetic field. Just the suspicion of a few dozen mines makes the strait “too dangerous to transit” for tankers from any country — including Iran’s — turning a third‑rate regional power into the de facto moderator of world energy prices. The US and UK can talk all they want about “reopening” Hormuz, but as long as a rumor and a rusty sphere can shut it down, the only guaranteed safe passage belongs to defense contractors’ earnings calls.

#Hormuz #Iran #Trump #UK #Starmer #oil #shipping #mines #drones #StraitOfHormuz #war #energy #geopolitics #militaryindustrialcomplex #fakeSecurity

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Is Trump Close To Wring Promises Of a Nuclear Decrease in Iranian Program

🔠🅰️🔠🔠1️⃣

Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final talks between the US and Iran and judged that the offer made by Tehran on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent a rush to war, the Guardian can reveal.

Powell thought progress had been made in Geneva and that the deal proposed by Iran was “surprising”, according to sources.

Two days after the talks ended, and after a date had been agreed for a further round of technical talks in Vienna, the US and Israel launched the attack on Iran.

Powell’s presence at the talks, and his close knowledge of how they were progressing, was confirmed by three sources.

One source said he was in the building at Oman’s ambassadorial residence in Cologny acting as an adviser, reflecting widespread concern about the US expertise on the talks represented by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy on several issues.

Kushner and Witkoff had invited Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the Geneva talks, to provide technical expertise, though Kushner would later claim that he and Witkoff had “a pretty deep understanding of the issues that matter in this”.

Nuclear experts would later say that Witkoff’s pronouncements on the Iran nuclear programme were riddled with basic errors.

Powell has long experience as a mediator, and one source said Powell brought an expert from the UK Cabinet Office with him. One western diplomat said:

“Jonathan thought there was a deal to be done, but Iran were not quite there yet, especially on the issue of UN inspections of its nuclear sites.”

A former official who was briefed on the Geneva talks by some of the participants said: “Witkoff and Kushner did not bring a US technical team with them. They used Grossi as their technical expert, but that is not his job. So Jonathan Powell took his own team.

“The UK team were surprised by what the Iranians put on the table,” the former official added. “It was not a complete deal, but it was progress and was unlikely to be the Iranians’ final offer. The British team expected the next round of negotiations to go ahead on the basis of the progress in Geneva.”

#trump #iran #witkoff #kushner #iran #nuclear

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🔠🅰️🔠🔠2️⃣

That next round of talks was due to take place in Vienna on Monday 2 March, but never happened. The US and Israel had launched their all-out attack two days earlier.

Powell’s attendance at the Geneva talks, as well as a previous set of meetings earlier in the month in the Swiss city, helps in part to explain the UK government’s reluctance to back the US attack on Iran, a reluctance that has put the UK-US relationship under unprecedented strain.

The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of a Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon.

This is the first time it has become clear that Britain was so closely involved in the talks, and so had good reason to decide whether diplomatic options had been exhausted and a US attack was necessary.

Instead the UK regarded the attack as unlawful and premature since Powell believed the path remained open to a negotiated solution to the long-running issue of how Iran could reassure the US that it was not seeking a nuclear weapon.

Starmer has been repeatedly lambasted by Trump for not doing more to support the US attack, including by initially refusing to let America use British military bases, and only allowing them to be used later for defensive purposes after Iran started attacking UK Gulf allies.

Trump has warned it could be bad for Nato if its European member states do not answer his call to help open the strait of Hormuz, a demand that has been declined.

The indirect talks in Geneva between Iran and the US were being mediated by Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi.

Gulf diplomats did not specify on what basis Powell had been given access to the talks, but it may reflect the relationship he has managed to build with the US over the years, including previously as chief of staff to Tony Blair.

UK officials have subsequently explained they were impressed that Iran was prepared for the deal to be permanent and, unlike the 2015 nuclear agreement, would not have cut-off dates, or sunset clauses ending the restrictions on its programme.

Iran had also agreed to down-blend the 400kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium under the supervision of the IAEA inside Iran.

It agreed no stockpiles of highly enriched uranium would be built up in the future.

In the final session of the talks, Iran agreed to a three- to-five-year pause on domestic enrichment, but the US in the afternoon session, after consultations with Trump, demanded a 10-year pause. In practice, Iran had no means to enrich domestically because of the bombing of its enrichment plants in 2015.

Iran had also made an offer of what the mediators described as an economic bonanza, with the US being given the chance to participate in a future civil nuclear programme.

In return, nearly 80% of the economic sanctions on Iran would have been lifted, including assets frozen in Qatar, a demand Iran made in the 2025 talks.

The Oman mediator believed the offer of zero stockpiling of highly enriched uranium was a breakthrough that meant an agreement was within reach.

Accounts differ on whether Kushner left the talks giving the impression Trump would welcome what had been agreed, or that the US negotiators knew it would take something massive to persuade Trump that war was not the best option. One diplomat with knowledge of the talks said:

“We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”

#trump #iran #witkoff #kushner #iran #nuclear

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📰 Israel Says Larijani Is Dead. Tehran Hasn’t Cashed the Receipt Yet.

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz says Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani were killed overnight, framing it as another step in the hunt for Iran’s leadership. Reuters reports the claim marks a major escalation, but also notes that Iran has not yet confirmed Larijani’s death. That matters. In this war, assassination claims are also information operations until the other side is forced to bury the body.

If true, this is not just another decapitation strike. Larijani is not a field commander or a disposable militia face. He has been one of the regime’s senior political-security brains — a man who lived at the intersection of nuclear doctrine, elite bargaining, and state continuity. The Basij chief is a different kind of scalp: not strategic theory, but domestic repression. Put together, the target set says Israel is not only trying to break Iran’s war machine. It is trying to thin out the people who keep the regime coherent at home and legible to itself.

Katz’s phrasing is revealing too. He did not present the strike as a military necessity alone. He presented it as part of a political extermination list — “the leadership of the terror and repression regime.” That is the language of a campaign moving beyond counterforce into regime attrition. Once you are openly hunting the top layer, the war is no longer about degrading capabilities. It is about making state succession itself unstable.

The only missing piece this morning is Tehran’s answer. If Iran confirms Larijani’s death, the regime will have to prove continuity under fire one more time. If it stays silent, that silence will still cost something, because uncertainty at the top is its own form of damage. Either way, Israel is sending the same message again: missiles hit infrastructure, but assassinations hit confidence.

#BabylonBurning #Iran #Larijani #Israel #FollowTheMoney

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Trump went to war with Iran and discovered his real enemy was the math.

According to AP, two weeks after the first US–Israeli strikes, he’s angrier at the media than at Tehran, still can’t explain why the war started or how it ends, and his approval numbers are sliding while oil and fear go up. Americans see dead service members, $100 oil, red stock screens — and hear a president ranting about “unfair coverage” instead of giving them a story that isn’t pure chaos.

Budget analysts now peg the war cost at roughly 1 billion dollars a day when you add operations, munitions, deployments, and replenishment — before interest on the debt and long-term care for the wounded. Iran’s regime is still standing, still controlling the streets, still firing back, while Trump manages to look weak at home and reckless abroad: the worst of both worlds for a guy who sells himself as “America First” and “a winner.”

So the political headline writes itself: every 24 hours, Washington burns another billion dollars on a war the president can’t explain and can’t win fast — and the only thing collapsing on schedule is his approval rating.

#IranWar #Trump #USA #elections #oil #markets #warCost #taxpayers #fakeLeadership #geopolitics

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Europe’s “Peace Plan”: Surrender for Cheap Gas

Belgium’s prime minister just said the quiet part out loud: Europe can’t scare Russia, can’t choke it economically without Washington, and should go cut a deal with Moscow anyway.

Bart De Wever openly argues the EU needs a formal mandate to negotiate over Ukraine because the current strategy — drip‑feeding weapons and sanctions while hoping Putin “collapses” — is fantasy marketing, not policy.

“Since we are not capable of threatening Putin by sending weapons to Ukraine, and we cannot suffocate him economically without US support, only one method remains: making a deal.”

— Bart De Wever.

Behind closed doors, De Wever says other European leaders agree with him, they just don’t dare say it on camera. In public, they repeat the script about “bringing Russia to its knees”; in private, they watch Trump flirt with Putin, count on cheap Russian oil and gas to keep their economies breathing, and fear being left out when Washington eventually forces Kyiv into a settlement. Europe, in his version, is not a co‑author of the endgame — it’s a nervous extra waiting in the corridor while the real deal gets done elsewhere.

De Wever isn’t even pretending this is about justice first; he talks openly about “normalising” relations and “regaining access to cheap energy” as common sense. He warns that without a mandate to negotiate in Moscow, the EU won’t even be at the table “where the Americans will push Ukraine to accept a deal,” and that whatever emerges will be “a bad agreement for us.” Translation: Europe wants out — but on its terms, with gas flowing and a moral alibi intact.

And that’s the joke: for two years, Brussels sold “no business as usual with Putin,” “victory for Ukraine,” and “strategic autonomy.” Now one prime minister says Europe can’t win the war, can’t pay the bill, can’t even fake unity without the US — so the only “strategy” left is to crawl back to the same Kremlin it swore to isolate, and call it peace.

#Ukraine #EU #Belgium #DeWever #Russia #Putin #energy #war #geopolitics #fakeAutonomy #cheapGas

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Israel just got “nudged” under the nuclear bus — by Washington’s own tech-whisperer.

Trump’s AI and crypto adviser David Sacks is openly warning that if the Israel–Iran war drags on for weeks or months, Israel could face “destruction or very large parts of it” and might then consider using nuclear weapons — the classic “doomsday” option everyone pretends doesn’t exist.

He calls such a move “truly catastrophic,” but the framing is neat: the scenario is laid out, the fear is injected, and the actor of last resort is not the United States, but Israel.

This isn’t some random pundit; it’s a presidential adviser floating, on a popular podcast, the idea that Israel under existential pressure could cross the nuclear line — while the U.S. still claims to be in control of escalation.

At the same time, Sacks says it’s “a good time to declare victory and get out,” warning of disastrous retaliation options on the Iranian side and a region that could become uninhabitable if things spiral. In other words: Washington knows it’s playing with matches in a dynamite warehouse, and is already rehearsing who will be blamed if the roof goes.

The signal to the world is brutal: the U.S. can’t guarantee a clean win, can’t rule out nuclear use in a war it helped start, and is pre‑narrating the story where Israel becomes the one that “went too far.”

If a “doomsday weapon” ever leaves the silo, the script is ready: America was worried, warned, wanted an off‑ramp — and its closest ally simply lost control.

#Israel #Iran #Trump #nuclear #doomsdayWeapon #USA #MiddleEast #war #geopolitics #fakeInnocence

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