📰 Epic Fury, Epic Invoice: Iran Turns Reapers Into Scrap Metal

Iran hasn’t “challenged” US airpower; it’s been grinding it down wholesale. Since the start of the Iran war, Iranian fire and strikes have destroyed more than two dozen US MQ‑9 Reaper drones — at least 24 and possibly up to 30 — wiping out roughly 20 percent of the Pentagon’s prewar Reaper inventory in a few months.

At about 30 million dollars apiece and no active production line for US forces, that’s nearly 1 billion dollars in high‑end hardware that Washington used to call “attritable,” suddenly revealed as very much not expendable.

Bloomberg’s reporting makes the picture even uglier: some Reapers were shot down in flight, others were blown up on the ground by missile strikes, others damaged badly enough to be written off later — all while US commanders leaned on drones to keep human aircrews out of Iranian airspace they still describe as “dangerous.” And the Reapers are just one line on the bill. The US has already lost crewed aircraft over Iran — an F‑15E Strike Eagle, an A‑10, support platforms like an E‑3 AWACS, KC‑135 tankers, MC‑130Js — plus key radar and missile‑defense assets, pushing war‑related replacement and repair estimates into the tens of billions of dollars.

“Prosecuting war from a distance still comes with a cost,” as one defense analyst quoted by Bloomberg put it. Translation: remote war is safe for pilots, not for balance sheets.

The US and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury” believing they could pound Iran while shielding their own people and spreading the financial pain over time. Iran answered by turning some of the Pentagon’s most iconic unmanned systems into very expensive, very small pieces — and by quietly reminding everyone that even a “short, successful” war can eat through drones faster than Washington can manufacture new talking points.

In other words, the Reapers are doing exactly what the war is doing to US power: flying in confident and coming back as wreckage.

#Iran #US #Reaper #drones #EpicFury #war #military #costs #fakePeace

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📰 The GOP’s One‑Night Stand With a Spine

For once, Trump’s own party didn’t just roll over. Senate Republicans hit the brakes on two of his favorite vanity projects at the same time: a billion‑dollar security package with a golden ballroom folded into it, and that $1.8 billion “Anti‑Weaponization Fund” designed to shower cash and moral rehab on Jan. 6 rioters and other “persecuted patriots.”

It’s not that they suddenly grew a conscience. It’s that Trump picked a fight with the very senators he now needs. He tried to primary Bill Cassidy, backed a challenger against John Cornyn, and has spent years ruling the party by public humiliation and the threat of MAGA retribution. Now gas prices are high, the Iran war is unpopular, and vulnerable Republicans don’t want to go home and explain why they funded a gilded ballroom and a slush fund for cop‑beaters while their voters are counting grocery bills.

So you get Mitch McConnell asking, on the Senate record, why the “nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops,” calling it “utterly stupid” and “morally wrong.” Susan Collins says the fund is “in real trouble, and it should be,” while John Thune politely admits everything is now soaked in Trump’s revenge politics, including this rebellion.

Democrats, of course, are thrilled to discover a GOP “ethical bridge too far” as long as it’s wrapped in gold leaf and labeled TRUMP. But nobody in this story is defending institutions; they’re just defending themselves. Trump has made loyalty to him more important than party majorities. Senate Republicans are briefly reminding him that even a cult leader sometimes needs the cult’s votes.

Tomorrow, most of them will be back in line. Tonight, for a moment, they remembered they’re supposed to be a legislature, not an applause track for a man who wants a taxpayer‑funded ballroom and a victim‑compensation plan for his own shock troops.

#Trump #Republicans #Senate #Jan6 #slushFund #IranWar #USpolitics #fakeDemocracy

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“Putin Doesn't Want a Nuclear War (...) But Is Ready to Withstand”


The top story in Russian news last week was Moscow’s successful test launch of its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. The nuclear-capable ICBM is, according to Putin, four times as powerful as the most advanced Western missiles.

The test came just days after Putin’s remark that the war in Ukraine would soon be “coming to an end,” an offhand comment some analysts read as a signal that the Kremlin intended to escalate the conflict to force a swift conclusion.

The launch also follows the expiration of the New START treaty in February, which ended over three decades of joint U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductions.

This show of force unfolded against the backdrop of an intensifying Ukrainian drone campaign, including strikes on Moscow itself that have hit industrial sites and oil facilities.

Ukraine has been striking targets inside Russia for months, but operations reaching the capital are especially notable: Moscow is ringed by air defenses meant to make it the country’s most fortified city.

The attacks underscore the depth of Russia’s difficulties in the war, as it struggles to blunt increasingly frequent and aggressive strikes deep into its territory while continuing to absorb heavy casualties at the front.

Also last week, American journalist Tucker Carlson released an interview with Yulia Mendel, Zelensky’s former press secretary, in which she sharply criticized the Ukrainian president, calling him corrupt and casting him as one of the main obstacles to peace.

Mendel proved several Russian statements, among them the claim that Zelensky had earlier agreed to cede the Donbas to Russia and that former British Prime Minister Johnson scuttled an early peace deal.

The interview has stirred controversy in Ukraine, given Carlson’s well-known sympathies toward Moscow, and has been amplified by Russian state media seeking to discredit Zelensky.

Trump’s long-awaited meeting with Xi Jinping took place in Beijing last week and proved largely a dud, with no agreements reached or deals signed.

The two governments’ post-summit messaging talked past each other: Washington emphasizing economic cooperation, Beijing emphasizing Taiwan, with neither side engaging the other’s priorities.

Is Russia’s latest missile test merely more saber-rattling, or a serious threat that the West should heed? And can Putin’s meeting with Xi yield new energy or military agreements between Russia and China?

One quote: “Let me be precise, Putin doesn't want a nuclear war with the West, he is too much of a life-loving person, I know that for sure, but he is ready to withstand...,” said David Sanger, a NYT journalist and former political adviser to George Bush Jr.

#putin #russia #trump #zelensky #nuclear

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Europe Goes to War Against Russia

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France is seeking to join a German-British plan to produce new long-range missiles as Europe races to strengthen its ability to strike deep inside Russia without the help of the US. 

Paris has declared its interest in becoming part of Berlin and London’s deep precision strike programme, according to five people familiar with the discussions, in a move that forms part of a wider Franco-German dialogue on defence.

The three nations are hoping to hold three-way talks in early June. 

The programme, announced by the UK and Germany in 2024 as the flagship of their Trinity House defence agreement, aims to produce a family of advanced ground-launched missiles with a range of more than 2,000km that could strike military targets within Russia.

It has gained new urgency after Trump cancelled a plan to deploy a battalion equipped with Tomahawk missiles and other long-range weapons to a US base in western Germany. The Biden-era concept had been intended as a stopgap solution while Europe developed its own deep precision strike capabilities.

European nations have some conventional missiles with a range of around 300km or more, but these are almost exclusively air (or sea) launched.

That means that European fighter jets, warships or submarines would have to enter contested waters or airspace to strike targets deep inside Russia.

Moscow’s widespread use of ground-launched missiles in Ukraine — in addition to stationing long-range weapons in the Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad — has spurred European nations to develop their own similar capabilities in a move they hope will help deter Russian aggression. 

The interest from Paris also reflects President Emmanuel Macron’s growing view that developing advanced conventional weapons would be a valuable complement to the French nuclear deterrent.

While France was initially involved in talks with Germany and the UK about teaming up to develop a long-range strike capability, Paris later held back as a debate unfolded about its nuclear doctrine, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

In a landmark speech in March, Macron laid out how France could implicitly protect its neighbours with its nuclear deterrent, announcing talks with six willing countries including Germany.

But he also stressed the importance of long-range missiles, air defences and surveillance for managing escalation “before the nuclear threshold is crossed”.

#macron #france #nuclear #europe #missiles

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French officials concluded that joining the UK-German programme would help “narrow the gap” between conventional and nuclear deterrence, another of the people familiar with the talks said.

The German-British deep precision strike proposal, which is part of the six-country project known as ELSA, still remains in the conceptual stage. But the two countries have agreed that they want the weapons to include stealth cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons that travel at ultra-high speeds on unpredictable trajectories, making them hard to track.

Companies involved in the discussions include the pan-European missile maker MBDA and the German-British start-up Hypersonica, which in February said that it had become the first privately funded European defence company to complete a successful hypersonic test flight. 

Paris is proposing that ArianeGroup, which is jointly owned by the European aerospace group Airbus and France’s Safran, could join the programme to supply rocket boosters capable of launching hypersonic weapons into the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Ariane currently makes the ballistic missile M51 for the French nuclear programme.

French officials believe that their involvement in the programme could speed up the development of the new deep-strike missiles, which the UK and Germany have said are expected to enter service in the early 2030s and will be among the most advanced missile systems ever designed.

Macron hinted in the March speech that he could be interested in joining the UK-German programme, singling out the two countries by name as partners that he wanted to collaborate with on advanced long-range weapons.

“This will give new options to conventionally manage escalation, at a time when adversaries are deploying new technologies and weapons,” he said. A joint French-German statement published after the speech also pledged to develop capabilities including deep precision strikes. 

German defence minister Boris Pistorius gave the first explicit acknowledgment of the French interest in the British-German programme earlier this month, saying: “Now the French want to join us — and to do so as quickly as possible.”

Berlin is enthusiastic about Paris joining. But in London, there is unease among some officials about allowing the French to join a project that they have been discussing with Berlin for more than 18 months.

Some fear it could be unbalanced by the entrance of a new partner with its own conceptions for the weapon as well as its own defence industrial interests.

A string of Franco-German defence collaborations have fallen apart due to political and industrial tensions, including a plan to build a joint fighter jet under a programme called FCAS, which is on the brink of collapse.

But the UK and France together successfully developed the Storm Shadow/Scalp missile, which entered service in the 2000s.

Together with Germany, the three nations represent Europe’s largest economic and military powers and have a history of working together in the E3 format on national security issues including Ukraine, Iran and the conflict in Gaza.

Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose country is the other European nation to possess nuclear weapons, committed to an unprecedented level of co-operation on nuclear policy in a joint declaration in July 2025.

#macron #france #nuclear #europe #missiles

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Gabbard “Was So Angry With the President And Told Him Off” 🗣

Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday she was resigning from her job as Trump's director of national intelligence, saying her husband had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and she was leaving her role to help him.

Gabbard advised Trump of her intention to step down during an Oval Office meeting on Friday, Fox News Digital reported earlier. The resignation is effective June 30, it said.

In her resignation letter posted on X, Gabbard told Trump she was “deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half.”

She cited her husband Abraham Williams' recent diagnosis of bone cancer. “I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming post,” she said.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform that Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas would become acting director.

Lukas is a former CIA officer and analyst who served on the National Security Council during Trump's first term.

Trump said Gabbard had done “a great job” but with her husband's cancer diagnosis, “she, rightfully, wants to be with him, bringing him back to good health as they currently fight a tough battle together.”

However, according to a source close to Gabbard, the real reason for her resignation is a conflict with Trump over the war in Iran. Gabbard, being a total Israel stan, was desperately trying to coax Trump into a full-scale war against the rule of the Ayatollahs. Trump opted for a light version, which resulted in a neither war nor peace state. The source said, Gabbard “was so angry with the president and told him off.”

#gabbard #trump #resignment #iran #war

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📰 From Co‑Pilot to Baggage: Netanyahu on Trump’s Iran Flight

Trump sold the Iran war as a joint mission: the footage from February showed Netanyahu in the Situation Room, talking like a co‑pilot who would finally “finish” the Islamic Republic. A few weeks later, the regime in Tehran is wounded but alive, oil has spiked, a ceasefire is on the table — and Israel is learning about US‑Iran talks the way everyone else does: through regional gossip and whatever its spies can overhear.

For Netanyahu, this is political humiliation with a security price tag. He walked into the war promising three historic goals: topple the regime, destroy the nuclear program, eliminate the missile threat.

None of that happened. Washington now floats time‑limited nuclear moratoriums that look suspiciously like the 2015 deal he spent years attacking, while Iran’s missiles may not even be fully on the table.

In the meantime, the same sanctions relief Trump is dangling as an incentive would send fresh money into the exact networks — Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah, regional proxies — that just finished firing on Israel.

Operationally, Israel has been treated like a high‑risk subcontractor. It carried out some of the dirtiest work — including the killing of Iran’s top leadership figures and strikes on oil and gas infrastructure — and then watched Trump publicly deny advance knowledge, scold Israel for “overreacting,” and order a halt once Gulf capitals started panicking about their own refineries.

Even the campaign against Hezbollah was cut short on Washington’s timetable, not Jerusalem’s, as Trump forced Israel to accept limits on fighting an enemy sitting right on its border.

The symbolism is lethal to Netanyahu’s brand. For decades he sold Israelis the image of a leader who could manage American presidents and keep Israel strategically independent: “we defend ourselves by ourselves,” but with a direct line to the Oval Office.

This war flipped the hierarchy. Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly says Israel is “only waiting for the green light from the US,” and Netanyahu spends his briefings quietly downgrading the war’s original goals while talking up the “alliance like no other.” In the eyes of friends and enemies, that sounds less like partnership and more like dependency.

So the headline writes itself: Iran survives and negotiates, Trump controls the throttle, and Israel’s prime minister — the self‑styled architect of maximum pressure — looks less like a co‑pilot and more like a passenger insisting over the intercom that he’s still part of the crew.

#Israel #Iran #Trump #Netanyahu #war #ceasefire #nuclear #Hezbollah #USforeignpolicy #fakePeace

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📰 Trump’s War Week: When the Cult Briefly Talked Back

On Capitol Hill, Trump just discovered the limit of ruling by tantrum: you can’t bomb Iran, build a golden ballroom and pay your own shock troops out of the Treasury while gas is at 5 bucks and your senators are staring at midterms.

This week Republicans quietly tried to hand him three gifts: a party‑line immigration bill stuffed with 70 billion dollars for enforcement and 1 billion in “security” money for his East Wing ballroom project, a Congress that wouldn’t dare restrain his Iran war, and silence about the 1.8 billion dollar “anti‑weaponization” payout fund born from his sweetheart settlement with the Justice Department.

Then the math changed. One Trump‑critical senator, Bill Cassidy, was just scalped in a primary. Trump immediately endorsed Ken Paxton — an “ethically challenged” Texas attorney general dragged through impeachment and scandal — against John Cornyn, a party fixture who has spent three years proving his loyalty.

That was the moment the conference snapped. Cornyn’s humiliation signaled that no act of obedience is ever enough; Trump will still feed you to the base if it amuses him. Within days, Senate Republicans were helping advance a resolution to block further strikes on Iran, House leaders shelved a vote when it became clear a similar measure would pass, and the ballroom’s billion‑dollar security line quietly died after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it out of order — leading Trump to demand she be fired, and John Thune to issue a rare public rebuke.

At the same time, the 1.8 billion fund suddenly looked radioactive even to the faithful: senators from Susan Collins to Thom Tillis asked why the “nation’s top law enforcement official” is flogging a slush fund that could cut checks to people convicted of beating cops on January 6.

Economics did the rest. The Iran war is unpopular, oil shocks are visible at every pump, and polling shows confidence in the economy falling off a cliff while Trump obsesses over his ballroom, his fund, and his revenge endorsements.

For rank‑and‑file Republicans, the optics are lethal: instead of funding ICE and Border Patrol “and that’s it,” as one senator put it, they’re being asked to explain to furious voters why they backed money for Trump’s pet construction project and a payout pipeline for “politically persecuted” allies, from Jan. 6 defendants to pardoned cronies.

Nobody should confuse this with a moral awakening. The same people who now complain about “communication problems” have swallowed far worse for years, and veteran operatives are already warning that if Trump comes back from recess and “goes all in” — demands his ballroom and his fund as loyalty tests — most of them will fold.

But the week exposed something Trump hates to admit: when he openly chooses loyalty to himself over the party’s chances of keeping Congress, some Republicans will start choosing their own survival over him.

For now, it’s just a bad week: no ballroom, no clean path for the 1.8 billion, visible resistance to an endless Iran war. The real test comes when Trump stops sulking and decides what matters more — the architecture of his palace, or the architecture of his power.

#Trump #Republicans #Congress #IranWar #ballroom #slushFund #Jan6 #USpolitics #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Trump’s War Week: When the Cult Briefly Talked Back

On Capitol Hill, Trump just discovered the limit of ruling by tantrum: you can’t bomb Iran, build a golden ballroom and pay your own shock troops out of the Treasury while gas is at 5 bucks and your senators are staring at midterms.

This week Republicans quietly tried to hand him three gifts: a party‑line immigration bill stuffed with 70 billion dollars for enforcement and 1 billion in “security” money for his East Wing ballroom project, a Congress that wouldn’t dare restrain his Iran war, and silence about the 1.8 billion dollar “anti‑weaponization” payout fund born from his sweetheart settlement with the Justice Department.

Then the math changed. One Trump‑critical senator, Bill Cassidy, was just scalped in a primary. Trump immediately endorsed Ken Paxton — an “ethically challenged” Texas attorney general dragged through impeachment and scandal — against John Cornyn, a party fixture who has spent three years proving his loyalty.

That was the moment the conference snapped. Cornyn’s humiliation signaled that no act of obedience is ever enough; Trump will still feed you to the base if it amuses him. Within days, Senate Republicans were helping advance a resolution to block further strikes on Iran, House leaders shelved a vote when it became clear a similar measure would pass, and the ballroom’s billion‑dollar security line quietly died after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it out of order — leading Trump to demand she be fired, and John Thune to issue a rare public rebuke.

At the same time, the 1.8 billion fund suddenly looked radioactive even to the faithful: senators from Susan Collins to Thom Tillis asked why the “nation’s top law enforcement official” is flogging a slush fund that could cut checks to people convicted of beating cops on January 6.

Economics did the rest. The Iran war is unpopular, oil shocks are visible at every pump, and polling shows confidence in the economy falling off a cliff while Trump obsesses over his ballroom, his fund, and his revenge endorsements.

For rank‑and‑file Republicans, the optics are lethal: instead of funding ICE and Border Patrol “and that’s it,” as one senator put it, they’re being asked to explain to furious voters why they backed money for Trump’s pet construction project and a payout pipeline for “politically persecuted” allies, from Jan. 6 defendants to pardoned cronies.

Nobody should confuse this with a moral awakening. The same people who now complain about “communication problems” have swallowed far worse for years, and veteran operatives are already warning that if Trump comes back from recess and “goes all in” — demands his ballroom and his fund as loyalty tests — most of them will fold.

But the week exposed something Trump hates to admit: when he openly chooses loyalty to himself over the party’s chances of keeping Congress, some Republicans will start choosing their own survival over him.

For now, it’s just a bad week: no ballroom, no clean path for the 1.8 billion, visible resistance to an endless Iran war. The real test comes when Trump stops sulking and decides what matters more — the architecture of his palace, or the architecture of his power.

#Trump #Republicans #Congress #IranWar #ballroom #slushFund #Jan6 #USpolitics #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Epic Fury, Strategic Flop: Three Months Into Trump’s Iran Adventure

On paper, Trump is winning everything. In reality, he’s bleeding leverage and time. Three months after launching “Operation Epic Fury,” the U.S. has hammered Iran’s missile sites, navy and leadership and still has nothing resembling a clean win to show for it. Tehran’s theocracy is intact, its grip on the Strait of Hormuz is proven, and its nuclear and proxy cards are still on the table.

Analysts quoted by Reuters say out loud what the White House refuses to admit: this was designed as a short, chest‑thumping romp and is curdling into a long‑term strategic failure.

Trump promised to close Iran’s path to a bomb, end its ability to threaten the region and “help” Iranians overthrow their rulers.

Instead, Iran has demonstrated it can choke a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows, ride out sanctions longer than U.S. politicians can ride out high gas prices, and survive a U.S.–Israeli onslaught while claiming victory simply for not collapsing.

Militarily, Washington can brag: CENTCOM says Iran’s conventional missile capacity and navy are gutted, and 90 percent of its defense industry for drones and missiles is destroyed.

But strategy is about what remains, not what’s been blown up. A stockpile of near‑weapons‑grade uranium is still buried; Iran’s supreme leader has reportedly ordered it not to be shipped abroad; and Tehran is openly insisting on its “right” to enrichment while hinting, like every battered regime before it, that maybe the lesson is to become more like North Korea, not less.

Politically, Trump is boxed in by his own myth‑making. A president who built his brand on never being a “loser” now faces a binary choice: accept a messy deal that looks suspiciously like the 2015 Obama‑era accord he torched, or escalate again and risk a longer, more expensive crisis he can’t control.

His aides are already floating fantasies about “shifting focus” to an easier target like Cuba, as if he can rebrand defeat in one theater by starting a fresh drama in another.

Meanwhile, the war has doubled the six‑week timeline Trump himself set, driven up fuel prices, and helped crater his approval ratings just as midterms loom.

European allies want nothing to do with a conflict they weren’t seriously consulted on; China and Russia are quietly studying every exposed weakness in U.S. logistics, stockpiles and air defenses; Gulf partners have learned that Washington can’t keep the strait open on command.

Neocon hawks like Robert Kagan now describe the outcome as “checkmate in Iran”: not a bad week or a fixable setback, but a visible, irreversible loss of U.S. ability to dictate terms in the main theater of global energy. In that frame, Trump’s problem is bigger than his ego.

Epic Fury didn’t just fail to eliminate the Iranian threat. It advertised to the whole world that even when the U.S. wins every battle, it can still lose the war.

#Trump #Iran #EpicFury #Hormuz #nuclear #war #USforeignpolicy #fakePeace #geopolitics

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The End of Trump.
How He Bogged Down Amid His Failures

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Trump may have won just about every battle against Iran, but three months after attacking the Islamic Republic he now faces a bigger question: Is he losing the war?

With Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, its resistance to nuclear concessions and its theocratic government largely intact, doubts are growing that Trump can translate the U.S. military’s tactical successes into an outcome he can frame convincingly as a geopolitical ​win.

His repeated claims of complete victory ring hollow, some analysts say, as the two sides teeter between uncertain diplomacy and his on-again-off-again threats to resume strikes, which would be sure to draw Iranian retaliation across the region.

Trump is now at risk of seeing the U.S. ‌and its Gulf Arab allies emerge from the conflict worse off while Iran, though battered militarily and economically, could end up with greater leverage, having shown it can throttle one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies.

The crisis is not yet over, and some experts leave open the possibility Trump might still find a face-saving way out if negotiations break in his favor.

“We’re three months in, and it’s looking like a war that was designed to be a short-term romp for Trump is turning into a long-term strategic failure,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations.

For Trump, that matters, especially given his famous sensitivity to being perceived as a loser, an insult he ​has often lobbed at opponents.

In the Iran crisis, he finds himself commander-in-chief of the world’s mightiest military pitted against a second-tier power seemingly convinced it has the upper hand.

And this predicament could make Trump, who has yet to define a clear endgame, more likely to resist any compromise ​that looks like a retreat from his maximalist positions or a repetition of the 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran that he scrapped in his first term, analysts say.

Trump campaigned for a second term promising no unnecessary military interventions but has brought the U.S. into an entanglement that could do lasting damage to his foreign policy record and credibility ​abroad.

The continuing standoff comes as he faces domestic pressure over high U.S. gasoline prices and low approval ratings after he embarked on the unpopular war ahead of November’s midterm elections. His Republican Party is struggling to maintain control of Congress.

As a result, more than six weeks into a ceasefire, some analysts believe Trump faces a ​stark choice: to accept a potentially flawed deal as an off-ramp or escalate militarily and risk an even longer crisis.

#trump #iran #war #gulf #end

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Among his options if diplomacy collapses, they say, would be to launch a round of sharp but limited strikes, frame it as a final victory and move on.

Another possibility, analysts say, is that Trump could attempt to shift focus to Cuba, as he has suggested, in hopes of changing the subject and trying to score a potentially easier win.

If so, he might end up misjudging the challenges posed by Havana, much as some Trump aides privately acknowledge that he mistakenly thought the Iran operation would resemble the January 3 raid that captured Venezuela's president and led to his replacement.

Alexander ​Gray, a former senior adviser in Trump’s first term and now chief executive officer of the American Global Strategies consultancy, rejected the notion that the president's Iran campaign was on the ropes.

He said that the heavy blow to Iranian military capabilities was in itself a “strategic success,” that the war had drawn Gulf states closer ​to the U.S. and away from China, and that the fate of Iran’s nuclear program was still to be determined.

There are signs, however, of Trump's frustration with his inability to control the narrative. He has torn into his critics and accused the news media of “treason.”

Jonathan Panikoff, a ​former deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said that ⁠while Iran has taken devastating hits, its rulers consider it a success simply to have survived the U.S. assault and learned how much control they can exert over Gulf shipping.

“What they discovered is they can exercise that leverage and with few consequences for them," said Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think tank, adding that Iran appeared confident it could tolerate more economic pain than Trump and outlast him.

Trump’s main stated war aim – Iran’s denuclearization – also remains unfulfilled, and Tehran has shown little ​willingness to significantly rein in its program.

A stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed to remain buried following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes last June and could be recovered and further processed to bomb grade. Iran says it wants ​the U.S. to recognize its right to enrich ⁠uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes.

Some analysts have suggested that the war could make Iran more, not less, likely to ramp up efforts to develop a nuclear weapon to shield itself like nuclear-armed North Korea.
Another of Trump’s declared goals – forcing Iran to halt support for armed proxy groups – also remains unmet.

Adding to Trump’s challenges, he is now dealing with new Iranian leaders considered even more hardline than their slain predecessors. Post-war, they are widely expected still to have enough remaining missiles and drones to pose a continued danger to their neighbors.

He is ⁠also facing fallout with ​further erosion of relations with traditional European allies, which have mostly refused his calls for assistance in a war they were not consulted about.

China and Russia, meanwhile, have drawn lessons about the ​U.S. military’s shortcomings against asymmetric Iranian tactics and how some of its weapons supplies have become depleted, analysts said.

Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, has argued that the outcome will be even more of a decisive setback to U.S. standing than its humiliating withdrawals from much longer, bloodier conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan because those countries “were far from the main theaters of ​global competition.”

#trump #iran #war #gulf #end

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📰 Hormuz on Layaway: Trump Wants Cheap Gas, Iran Wants a Cover Charge

The Iran war is technically on pause, but everyone is acting like it’s a pricing negotiation, not a ceasefire. Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir lands in Tehran as the favorite go‑between, shuttling between Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, President Masoud Pezeshkian and Speaker Ghalibaf, while Gulf monarchies beg Trump not to hit “resume” on the airstrikes that sent oil over $100 and voters into full rage at the pump.

The six‑week truce hasn’t brought real peace, just a holding pattern where Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz half‑choked, the US keeps a port blockade in place, and both sides trade proposals through Pakistan.

Trump goes to rallies promising the war will be over “soon” and that oil prices will “tumble as soon as I finish up with Iran,” while his own officials admit only “slight progress” and outlets like Axios and CBS leak that a new round of strikes is sitting ready on the shelf.

Underneath the spin, there are two real fights: enriched uranium and the tollbooth called Hormuz.

Washington wants at least a decade‑long cap on enrichment and language that looks like a 2.0 version of the Obama nuclear deal; Tehran publicly rejects any long freeze, insists on its “rights,” and flirts with the idea of a permanent Iranian‑Omani “fees for passage” system through the strait that Trump brands unacceptable.

Every time Iran announces that “25 ships crossed Hormuz in the last day with permission,” it isn’t transparency — it’s advertising leverage.

So the ceasefire has become a kind of global hostage note. Gulf states and Europe are terrified of another spike. India is rationing its outrage to match its diesel prices.

The ECB quietly admits inflation risks rise every day the war drags on without a real deal. Eurasia Group’s line — a deal is “more likely than escalation, but only by a narrow margin,” and at best would extend the ceasefire another 30 days — sounds less like diplomacy and more like rolling over a bad loan.

Everyone wants peace in the headline and leverage in the fine print. Trump wants to walk away claiming victory and cheaper gas. Iran wants written respect for its nuclear “rights” and de facto recognition that it can throttle the world’s energy lifeline. Pakistan wants to turn mediation into a strategic asset.

Nobody wants to pay the full price of an actual settlement.

Until that changes, Hormuz isn’t a shipping lane. It’s a meter, running 24/7, clocking the cost of this “almost peace” for the rest of the planet.

#Iran #US #Trump #Hormuz #Pakistan #oil #ceasefire #war #fakePeace #geopolitics

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📰 “Welcome to Israel”: Beatings, Tasers and a Minister on Camera

The Global Sumud Flotilla set out to break the Gaza blockade with 50 boats and a very 2010 idea of “peace activism.” It ended in a very 2026 reality show: beatings in containers, tasers in the ribs, dogs, and a far‑right minister filming himself over the bodies.

Activists and journalists describe a conveyor belt of punishment once Israeli forces intercepted them in international waters and dragged them toward Ashdod. Knees on rough decks, blindfolds tightened again and again, wrists zip‑tied to metal so low you travel half‑curled over concrete.

A narrow hatch into a detention ship where, they say, everyone passed through the same “welcome tunnel”: six or seven men waiting in a container to kick, punch and tase you from one door to the other. No politics, no nuance — just a production line of “you will remember this.”

The quotes are almost too on‑the‑nose. “We were dragged by our hair.” “Dogs were released on us.” “Welcome to Israel,” followed by punches to the face. An Italian journalist says he was strip‑searched, his glasses and wallet tossed.

A Greek activist describes tasers, insults, and a minister entering the room surrounded by guards aiming rifles and laser sights at a handcuffed man from Greece who says he came with humanitarian aid. The question from the minister: “Are you a friend of Hamas?”

That minister, of course, is Itamar Ben‑Gvir — the same national security chief who then posted triumphant clips of detainees on the floor, zip‑tied and helpless, like props in his personal sovereignty trailer. Foreign capitals summoned Israeli ambassadors; Israel officially denied any abuse and called the allegations “entirely baseless.”

On one side: bruises, black eyes, numb hands, emptied wallets. On the other: a press release and a man who built his career on turning other people’s restraint into a weakness to be mocked.

For Trump’s “Board of Peace” narrative, this is the worst possible split screen. On paper Gaza gets roadmaps and technocrats; in practice, prisoners in containers and a minister doing humiliation content for his base. Israel can say “false accusations” all it wants.

The problem isn’t just what happened in that ship. The problem is that the state’s own security chief chose to turn the alleged cruelty into a set piece — and hit publish.

Who exactly is supposed to believe in “stability” after that: the activists who went home in gray sweatsuits, or the audiences who just learned what “Welcome to Israel” looks like when the cameras aren’t from the tourism ministry?

#Israel #Gaza #BenGvir #SumudFlotilla #humanrights #war #fakePeace

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#fukuyama #xijinping #america #democracy #trump

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Vance's Clash With Kushner. He May Withdraw From the Presidential Race in 2028


Vance is thinking over dropping out of the 2028 presidential race after Gabbard resigned as Director of National Intelligence.

According to sources, Gabbard has been one of Vance's few allies “in containing US President Donald Trump's military ambitions“. The vice president's “soft foreign policy“ has set him on a path to confrontation with Trump, the sources said.

With Vance's influence waning, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has become the dominant foreign policy voice in the US leader's inner circle.

“Rubio has more power than Vance. The president listens to him. Vance doesn't fit the big picture and has for a long time“ (quote a White House source).

It is reported that Vance's withdrawal from the upcoming elections could be a tactical move and would allow him to avoid “taking responsibility for everything that has happened over the last few years“.

The newspaper notes that to win the 2032 and 2036 elections, Vance will have to maintain his political influence for nearly a decade.

On August 5, 2025, Trump named Vance as his likely successor in the November 2028 presidential election. At the same time, the American leader practically made it clear that he sees Rubio as Vance's vice presidential candidate, that is, his vice presidential candidate.

Another source close to the White House said that the real reason could be different: Vance “has a slow but long-standing conflict with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has taken an openly pro-Israeli position, Vance, on the contrary, is often going on a rampage against Israel in the situation room,” said the source.

In addition, Vance advised Trump “not to kill Ayatollah Khamenei, with whom his wife, Usha, had good relations. ”

#rubio #vance #gabbard #white #house

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📰 Peace, Schrödinger‑Style: Trump and Iran Both Claim a Deal, Neither Shows the Paper

Trump says the Iran peace deal is “largely negotiated.” Tehran says it signed a memorandum. Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif is already offering to host the “next round.” And yet nobody will publish the text, and the two sides can’t even agree on what they just agreed to.

According to U.S. officials talking off the record, the framework includes an Iranian commitment to give up its stockpile of enriched uranium — the core justification Trump used for starting the war — with the mechanics pushed to a later round of talks.

Iranian officials, also anonymous, tell the same paper that the memo says nothing about the nuclear program beyond a vague promise to talk about it within 30–60 days. Both positions can’t be true. In classic Middle East fashion, they may both be “true” in different capitals until someone is forced to choose.

On the public stage, each side is busy selling its own version of victory. Trump promises a reopened Strait of Hormuz and an end to the blockade that helped blow up oil prices and his approval ratings at home. Iranian officials brief that Hormuz will reopen without tolls, that the U.S. naval blockade will be lifted, that fighting will stop “on all fronts” — including between Israel and Hezbollah — and that $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets will be released.

One president wants to look like he tamed the strait; the other wants to look like he got paid to reopen it.

Then there is Lebanon, forever the collateral clause in everyone else’s deal. Hezbollah joined the war in March “in solidarity” with Tehran and has kept trading fire with Israel despite a U.S.‑brokered ceasefire.

Now three senior Iranian officials are telling reporters that the emerging agreement would halt the fighting there as well. Israel signals the opposite: Netanyahu tells Trump he won’t give up Israel’s “freedom to act” against threats in Lebanon, even as his army sits six miles deep on the other side of the border.

If the ceasefire holds, Hezbollah will sell it as proof that only Iran can force the U.S. to rein Israel in. If it doesn’t, the Lebanese get yet another lesson in what it means when your sovereignty is negotiable line‑item in somebody else’s memorandum.

What’s consistent across all these contradictions is the power geometry. The real talks are between Washington and Tehran, with Pakistan and the Gulf as facilitators. Israel, which helped start the war, is finding out about key terms from the news. Lebanon — bombed, shelled, displaced — waits to see how outside powers redraw its reality this time.

Everyone invokes “ending the war.” Almost no one addresses the hard parts: what actually happens to Iran’s uranium, to Hezbollah’s arsenal, to Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, to Hormuz the next time a president somewhere needs a ratings boost.

So yes, there is “significant progress.” There is also no text, no shared narrative, and no answer to the core question: is this an off‑ramp, or just another temporary pause dressed up as peace so Trump, Tehran, and their friends can tell their own publics they didn’t blink first?

#Iran #US #Trump #Hormuz #Hezbollah #Lebanon #ceasefire #nuclear #war #fakePeace #geopolitics

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📰 Live From the Security State: One Dead Outside the White House, One Billion-Dollar Ballroom Back in the Pitch Deck

A 21‑year‑old man walked up to the edge of the White House complex, pulled a gun from his bag and opened fire on Secret Service officers. He’s now dead. A bystander is wounded. The president is safe, untouched, inside.

Nasire Best was not an organized assassin, not a cell leader, not a mastermind. According to court records, his last big attempt to breach the perimeter was in 2025, when he walked into a restricted exit lane, told agents he was Jesus Christ, and asked to be arrested.

Law enforcement officials describe him as emotionally disturbed and already “known” to them. This weekend he became something else: the latest data point in a string of gunfire incidents orbiting Trump’s physical presence — from Butler, Pennsylvania, to the Washington Hilton, to this intersection at 17th and Pennsylvania.

And Trump knows exactly how to use that. In his Truth Social post after the shooting, he thanks the Secret Service, references the recent gunfire outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and pivots straight to his favorite capital‑P Project: a “most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.”

The East Wing ballroom and bunker complex that he and his allies swear is about security, and his critics note just happens to combine donor hospitality, prestige architecture and a fresh round of government money directed at a building he controls.

The choreography is grimly consistent. Shots ring out; reporters are told to sprint to the briefing room; FBI, National Guard and D.C. police flood the streets around a presidency that already operates under permanent lockdown theater.

Within hours, the incident is folded into a narrative where rising political violence proves not that the system is sick, but that Trump is uniquely important — important enough to justify a new fortress, looser oversight, broader “security perimeters,” more power for the protective bubble and less access for everyone else.

So you get a White House that increasingly treats public space as a threat vector, the press as a liability to be herded and restricted, and every deranged gunman as Exhibit A in the argument for turning the president’s working environment into a privatized stronghold.

It’s not that the danger isn’t real; the bullets are very real. It’s what gets built on top of that danger — politically, architecturally, financially — that should worry anyone who still thinks “security” and “democracy” are supposed to be in tension, not in merger talks.

When every shot near the White House becomes another brick in the case for Trump’s billion‑dollar safe room, you have to ask: are we protecting a presidency, or entrenching a throne?

#Trump #WhiteHouse #SecretService #security #ballroom #USpolitics #violence #fakeDemocracy

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