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

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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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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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Iran’s Number 2 Confirmed Dead

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Iran’s supreme national security council has confirmed the death of its chief, Ali Larijani, after Israel said it had killed him in an airstrike.

“The pure souls of the martyrs embraced the purified soul of God’s righteous servant, Martyr Dr Ali Larijani,” the council said on Tuesday evening, adding that his son and his bodyguards had died with him.

“After a lifetime of struggle for the advancement of Iran and of the Islamic Revolution, he ultimately attained his long-held aspiration, answered the divine call, and honourably achieved the sweet grace of martyrdom in the trench of service,” it added.

Israel said earlier it had killed Larijani, a linchpin of Iranian politics, in overnight strikes. He is the most senior Iranian figure to die in the war since the supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on its first day.

His death removes a pivotal figure at the heart of the regime’s political and security establishment at a moment of acute crisis and represents a devastating blow.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike had killed the Basij paramilitary force commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures. Soleimani’s death was later confirmed by Iranian state media.

“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation programme, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell,” Katz said on Tuesday.

Trump also hailed Larijani’s reported death, without actually naming him but referring to his supposed role in spearheading the recent crushing of mass protests. “Their leaders are gone,” Trump said of Iran’s clerical regime. “It’s an evil group. I mean, they’ve killed much more than 32,000 people. And the man who was responsible for that was also killed yesterday.”
The twin deaths show Israel still retains intelligence on the movements of Iran’s top leaders inside Tehran, and can use it and the US’s near complete control of Iranian airspace to strike at will.

Larijani had been seen days earlier on the crowded streets of Tehran during the annual Quds day rally.

He was appointed secretary of the supreme national security council in August after the previous US-Israeli attacks on Iran in June 2025, and on Monday issued a statement to Muslims around the world appealing to them to support Iran in its struggle and challenging Gulf leaders to explain why they were still allowing US bases in their countries to be used to attack Iran.

Larijani had also played a key diplomatic role before the war alongside Iran’s foreign minister Araghchi, in trying to persuade the Gulf states to prevent an attack. He forcibly defended Tehran’s tactics in the war, but was seen as a possible transitional figure at the end of the conflict. Israel is sceptical about the concept of a transition from within the regime.

The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said: “The political assassinations perpetrated by Israel, including those of Iranian statesmen and politicians, constitute illegal acts contrary to the laws of war.”

The office of the Israeli prime minister said in a statement that Netanyahu had ordered “the elimination of senior officials of the Iranian regime”.

#larijani #dead #iran #trump #hormuz

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The US-Israeli war on Iran is in its third week, with at least 2,000 people killed and no end in sight. The strait of Hormuz remains largely closed off and US allies have rebuffed calls from the US president, Donald Trump, for them to help to reopen the vital waterway, through which about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.

Probably more than any other Iranian politician, Larijani combined Iran’s military and political strategy. His death will confirm the prime role the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps plays in Iranian politics. On Monday, a former long-time IRGC commander, Mohsen Rezaee, was appointed military adviser to the new supreme leader.

Larijani had been seen as one of the more pragmatic faces of Iran’s establishment – who helped steer nuclear negotiations with the west – but that image later hardened. Hours after US and Israeli strikes killed Khamenei, Larijani delivered a defiant message, warning that Iran would make its enemies “regret” their actions and promising a forceful response.

An Israeli official said a strike on Larijani had originally been planned for the previous night but was postponed at the last minute.

Intelligence received on Monday afternoon indicated that Larijani was due to arrive at one of several apartments he used as a hideout, the official said. He was reportedly there with his son when the strike was carried out.

When news he had been targeted began to circulate early on Tuesday, with his fate remaining unclear, another senior Israeli official said “there was no chance he survived this attack”.

In a handwritten statement issued by Iran state TV, Larijani had praised the bravery of Iranian sailors who were killed when their ship was hit by missiles fired by a US submarine off the Sri Lankan coast.

He had written: “Their memory will always remain in the heart of the Iranian nation and these martyrdoms will strengthen the foundation of the Islamic Republic army for years within the structure of the armed forces.”

Born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1958 he studied in Tehran and after the Islamic revolution rose through the ranks of the state, serving as culture minister, head of state broadcasting and, for more than a decade, as speaker of parliament.

As chief nuclear negotiator, he played a key role in shaping Iran’s engagement with world powers, later backing the 2015 nuclear deal.

Though often regarded as a pragmatist within the system, his stance had hardened in recent months, as tensions with Israel and the US escalated and diplomatic efforts faltered.

The US had offered a reward of up to $10m for information on senior Iranian military and intelligence officials, including Larijani, as part of a list of 10 figures linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

#larijani #dead #iran #trump #hormuz

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Epic Fury: Trump’s War Needs a Fake Ending

Trump’s Iran war has hit the episode where the writers are out of plot but the explosions keep getting more expensive. Two weeks in, the “short, decisive operation” has turned into a regional fire, 100‑dollar oil, spooked markets, dead Americans and zero sign that Tehran is collapsing on cue. The script keeps adding casualties and shocks, but there is still no believable finale.

The choice in Washington is now brutally simple, even if nobody wants to say it that way. Trump can keep pushing toward his original fantasy of crippling Iran, forcing political surrender and “reshaping the Middle East,” and in doing so own every extra casualty, every tanker risk and every new hit to the global economy.

Or he can improvise a “mission accomplished” exit, point at a few bombed bases and dead commanders, rebrand that as a “historic victory” and get out before voters directly connect this war bill to their rent, gas and retirement accounts.

Iran has already made its move: it is refusing to quit, widening the battlefield, threatening the Strait of Hormuz, bleeding regional infrastructure and betting that American patience and political capital will run out long before its own.

The longer this drags on, the less it looks like strength and the more it looks like Trump allowed himself to be pulled into an unwinnable subscription war with US taxpayers paying per episode while allies quietly back away.

In the end, the real question is not victory or defeat in any classic sense, but whether the president can stage a convincing ending to his own narrative. He needs to declare that “the mission” is complete, blame everyone else for the chaos and step off the stage before a third week of war hardens into a third year’s problem.

The main battlefield is no longer the Middle East; it is the moment he has to face the public and explain why this war started, why it spiraled and why, after so much damage, anyone should still believe it was worth it.

#IranWar #Trump #EpicFury #USA #MiddleEast #oil #warCost #geopolitics #fakeVictory

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“Not Our War”: Europe Tests Trump’s Loyalty Test

Trump spent years trashing NATO, and now he’s shocked that the same allies won’t line up to die for his Iran adventure in the Strait of Hormuz. Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius put it in one clean sentence:

“This is not our war; we did not start it.”

From Berlin to London and Rome, leaders are politely, and not so politely, saying no to sending warships to ram open a shipping lane for a conflict Washington and Jerusalem launched without asking them first.
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European officials aren’t even hiding the logic. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas says the bloc has “no appetite” to expand its naval mission to Hormuz and calls it “not Europe’s war,” even while admitting European interests and energy security are directly on the line.

Britain’s Keir Starmer talks about mine-hunting drones and “not being drawn into a wider war,” France and Spain stall, Italy backs away, Japan and Australia openly refuse — everyone wants the oil to move, but no one wants to be the extra in Trump’s coalition stunt.

For Trump, this looks like betrayal; in reality, it’s payback. He told Europe for years that the US was done being their security nanny, mocked their militaries, called NATO “obsolete,” and now demands they rush in to police a strait he says America doesn’t even need because it has its own oil. They answer with a shrug: you said handle your own problems — you first.

​The next logical step for Washington, if it really wants to “mirror” European selfishness, is obvious and brutal: stop burning money on Ukraine, lift sanctions on Russia, and let the Europeans negotiate their own way out of the crisis they helped build.

#IranWar #Trump #NATO #EU #Germany #Hormuz #oil #geopolitics #fakeAllies #Ukraine #Russia

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Zelensky’s “Very Bad Feeling” vs. Europe’s Gas Reality

Zelensky is watching the Iran war swallow Western attention and money, and he’s suddenly begging his two feuding patrons — Trump and Keir Starmer — to sit down and “reset” their relationship before Ukraine disappears from the agenda.

In his BBC interview he warns he has “a very bad feeling” about what the US–Iran conflict means for Kyiv, and urges Trump and Starmer to find “a unified stance” instead of sniping at each other over NATO, Hormuz and ceasefires.

That’s not strategy, that’s a client screaming at the landlords not to forget there’s still an old war running while the new one is trending.

At the same time, Europe’s political class is quietly moving on. Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever says out loud what many only whisper: the EU should normalize relations with Russia and “regain access to cheap energy,” because the dual game of arming Ukraine and sanctioning Moscow is “untenable” without full US backing.

He openly calls for a deal with Russia to end the war and restore cheap oil and gas, while noting that China gets discount fossil fuels and the US makes money selling weapons to Ukraine.

When one side is begging for a “reset” between Trump and Starmer and the other is counting how fast it can get back to Russian gas, you don’t need a think tank to diagnose which project is in agony.

Zelensky still talks about unity and resolve; De Wever talks about common sense and bills. One warns of bad feelings, the other of high energy prices.

Between a nervous president asking to be kept on life support and an EU leader arguing that cheap Russian fuel matters more than Ukrainian heroism, the message is brutal: the war that was sold as the moral core of “the West” is being downgraded to a line item on Europe’s utility bill.

#Ukraine #Zelensky #Trump #Starmer #Belgium #DeWever #Russia #cheapGas #EU #IranWar #geopolitics

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#trump #terroriste #regime

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Gas prices just became the most honest anti-war billboard in America.

Since the Iran war began, the average price at the pump in the US has jumped from about $2.90 to $3.70 a gallon — a nearly $1 surge in a month and the second‑largest four‑week spike in at least 30 years, bigger than the early Ukraine‑war jump and most OPEC crises.

Only Hurricane Katrina did more damage, and that was with refineries literally underwater. For a typical driver doing roughly 1,000 miles a month, that’s up to $50 extra — $16 for a hybrid, $32 for an average car, almost $50 for a truck.

There’s nowhere to hide geographically. Every state is paying at least 50 cents more per gallon, with New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado up by more than a dollar — $1.18, $1.17 and $1.06 respectively — while California flirts with the mid‑$5 range again.

The underlying story is simple: the U.S.–Israel war with Iran has jammed the Strait of Hormuz, choked Gulf exports, pushed crude toward $100 and kept prices rising even after releases from strategic reserves.

Lower‑income households, which spend a bigger share of their income on fuel, are getting hit hardest and will keep paying every week while officials talk about “short‑term volatility.”

On paper, this is “not so bad”: adjusted for inflation, March 2026 gas is still cheaper than the peaks of 2008 or the early 2010s, and lower than at the start of the Ukraine war.

The US economy is also less oil‑addicted than in 1980: almost no electricity is generated from petroleum, cars are more efficient, and EVs are taking a bigger slice of the road.

But those are macro charts. In reality, millions of Americans are driving old, inefficient cars that will see the same stations, the same rising numbers, day after day — a quiet daily referendum on a war they never voted on and a foreign policy they only meet through a credit‑card receipt.

#IranWar #gasprices #oil #USA #Trump #economy #MiddleEast #energy #warCost

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Hezbollah’s “Resistance” Meets Its Own Refugees

Hezbollah just discovered what every “resistance” brand eventually learns: you can’t bomb your own base forever and still call it support.

As Israel pounds south Lebanon and Beirut’s Shiite suburbs, more than a million people have fled — many for the second time in under two years — and even loyal Hezbollah voters are asking the one forbidden question: “For what?”

Families ran in pajamas, slept in cars and tents, watched shelters fill up, and saw hotels and beaches hit because “Hezbollah and Iranian officials” might be among them. Inside the community that once treated Hezbollah as protection and welfare state in one, anger is now open enough that people tell The Washington Post on background that the movement “didn’t think about the people,” not even during Ramadan.
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This time, the cracks are structural. Hezbollah jumped into the war less than a day after Khamenei’s death, not to defend Lebanese soil, but to avenge Iran, and Shiite residents know it.

Amal voted in cabinet for a ban on “military activities,” the government is openly demanding disarmament, and even longtime Shiite supporters say they see no benefit for Tehran or Lebanon — only “displacement, destruction, and devastation.”

The group’s new leader Naim Qassem doesn’t have Nasrallah’s aura or his post‑2006 reconstruction halo, money from Iran is tighter, Syria no longer functions as a safe logistical corridor, and the Lebanese state is too weak to replace Hezbollah but suddenly bold enough to blame it.
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That’s the real existential threat: not Israeli bombs, but a base that starts seeing Hezbollah less as “the resistance” and more as just another faction trading their homes and children for someone else’s regional game.

One academic quoted in the piece says it clearly: a non‑state actor without legitimacy becomes just a self‑interested organization. If Israel keeps bombing and the war drags on, rage could circle back into renewed support; but right now, south Lebanon’s Shiites are trapped between an enemy that flattens their towns and an “ally” that volunteers them for the next round.

When the people living under your flag start saying “enough is enough” on record, that’s not just blowback; that’s your mandate burning out in real time.
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#Hezbollah #Lebanon #Israel #Iran #Shiites #war #MiddleEast #displacement #resistance #fakeLiberation

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Trump Is Threatening to Blow Up the World’s Largest Gasfield

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Trump threatened to “massively blow up” the world’s largest gasfield after Israeli strikes on the Iranian site prompted Tehran to step up attacks on energy facilities across the Middle East.

Israel’s decision to target the South Pars gasfield on Wednesday marked a major escalation of the war, heightening fears of significant disruption to international energy supplies.

Iran promptly retaliated with fresh attacks across the region, including on Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities – infuriating the US president.

Oil and European natural gas prices rose sharply, with Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil – up 6% at $114 a barrel. Gas prices jumped 23%. Leading Asian stock markets came under pressure, with the Nikkei 225 falling 3.4% in Japan.

The US “knew nothing” of the Israeli attack on South Pars, Trump claimed on social media on Wednesday night. US media reported earlier that the US was aware of the attack. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed US officials, that the president approved of it, in a bid to pressure Tehran into unblocking the strait of Hormuz.

Authorities in Abu Dhabi said it had been forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field because of Iranian attacks that it called a “dangerous escalation” of the war.

Ras Laffan in Qatar, the site of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas hub, has now suffered “extensive damage” after strikes by Iran, the state-run QatarEnergy giant said. Early on Thursday, QatarEnergy reported “sizeable fires” and significant damage at several LNG facilities at the hub. The Qatari interior ministry later said that all fires had been contained.

The strike on South Pars amounted to the first targeted attacks on Iranian fossil fuel production since the US and Israel launched the conflict, almost three weeks ago.

#trump #threat #largest #gasfield #blowup

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Qatar, which shares the gasfield with Iran, “was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it [the attack], nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen”, Trump said, adding that Israel would not attack the gasfield again unless Iran attacked Qatari gas facilities again.

If Tehran chose to retaliate, Trump said: “The United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”

Trump’s efforts to deescalate the attacks on energy infrastructure, by threatening to destroy South Pars, did not reassure global markets as concern mounts over the economic impact of the conflict.

Saudi Arabia was also targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles on Wednesday. Any trust with Tehran had been shattered, its foreign minister said. “This pressure from Iran will backfire politically and morally and certainly we reserve the right to take military actions if deemed necessary,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a news conference.

A spokesperson for the Qatari foreign ministry described the Israeli attack on South Pars as “dangerous” and “irresponsible”, urging all sides not to target energy facilities.

The UAE foreign ministry also described the move as a “dangerous escalation”, warning: “Targeting energy infrastructure poses a direct threat to global energy security.”

The Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies and seaborne gas tankers usually pass, meanwhile remains all but closed. Trump’s efforts to build a multinational naval force to reopen the key waterway have yet to bear fruit.

A fire broke out on a vessel near the strait after it was hit by a projectile, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency said, citing a report late on Wednesday. The ship was off the coast of the UAE.

Macron spoke with Trump and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, emir of Qatar, after Wednesday’s strikes on gas facilities. Calling for a moratorium on strikes targeting civilian infrastructure, Macron said:

“Civilian populations and their essential needs, as well as the security of energy supplies, must be protected from military escalation.”

On another day of violence in the Middle East, the Palestinian Red Crescent said three Palestinian women were killed in an Iranian missile attack in the occupied West Bank late on Wednesday – the first deadly Iranian strike there, and the first to kill Palestinians since the start of the war.

The European Union meanwhile urged Israel to “cease its operations” in Lebanon, which French foreign minister Barrot will visit on Thursday.

Lebanon was drawn into the crisis earlier this month, when Hezbollah fighters launched rockets at Israel.

Israel retaliated with strikes that have killed at least 968 people, according to Lebanese authorities, and displaced over a million.

More than a week has passed since Trump first suggested the war could be over “very soon”. With no end in sight, some companies are bracing for at least another month of severe disruption.

The Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific suspended flights to and from Dubai and Riyadh until the end of April on Thursday, a move it attributed to “the developing situation in the Middle East”.

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“Trump Can Eliminate Anyone Who Gets In His Way”

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Trump is now applying the unpredictable style that built his business empire and political brand to a far more complex and sensitive role as a wartime leader.

Supporters love it when Trump breaks things — like the Republican establishment. He tends to preserve room for maneuver by avoiding definitive positions. And while he’s often thin on details and historical context, his personality projects certainty.

Trump’s flair for decisive action yielded success in a daring US raid that spirited Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from his compound to a New York jail cell in January.

But in many of his public statements over the Iran war, he’s yet to project the gravity and clarity of a more traditional wartime president.

Trump is now facing intersecting crises in the conflict. Tehran’s fierce resistance is in danger of creating a lengthy stalemate. An economic crunch is worsening as oil prices soar after Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Domestically, Trump faces a political revolt highlighted Tuesday when a top MAGA-oriented national security official quit.

Trump was surprised by the intensity of Tehran’s reprisal attacks on US allies in the Gulf. He also seemed unprepared for the closure of the Strait — which many experts expected.

And the president’s attempt to bully allies into sending ships to the Strait of Hormuz hit a dead end when they balked at joining a war they’d not been consulted about.

A Red Crescent rescue team works next to a building damaged by a strike amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran on March 17, 2026.

Still, it is too early to properly assess a war in which US and Israeli raids appear to have inflicted devastating damage on Iran’s ability to threaten its region and the United States with its nuclear and ballistic weapons programs.

No one can yet forecast how its political future will unfold following the deaths of so many senior regime figures, including that of longtime de facto political leader Ali Larijani on Tuesday.

Time might show some of Trump’s instincts were shrewd and that his tolerance for risk produced results other presidents failed to achieve.

But it will be hard for him to claim a win if the conflict ends with the Strait of Hormuz jammed, the world economy held hostage and Iranians facing even harsher repression under a recalibrated regime. The same will be true if Iran retains highly enriched uranium it could use in a future nuclear program.

Unpicking these dilemmas may require riskier operations — probably involving ground troops — than have been attempted so far.

Such missions would benefit from meticulous presidential planning, clear goals and careful management of the aftermath and public expectations.

The resignation on Tuesday of Joe Kent, the MAGA-oriented former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, rocked Washington.

It both suggested that Trump is losing control of his own political coalition and highlighted an important issue over the president’s justification for the war.

Kent, a special forces veteran who lost his wife to an ISIS attack in Syria, told Trump in a letter that he’d been misled by an Israeli misinformation campaign into believing a swift victory over Iran was within reach.

He also argued that the Islamic Republic had posed no “imminent” threat to US national security, contrary to the assurances of Trump and senior administration officials.

“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos,” Kent wrote. “You hold the cards.”

#trump #business #empire #eliminate #hormuz

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