#trump #zelensky #peace

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Is an All-Out War in the Middle East Put On Hold?

😀😀😀😀 😀😀😀

Over the weekend, Trump rejected a return to full-scale war. But as he tries to find a way out of a conflict he started, Iran has proved a stubborn enemy.

On Tuesday evening, Iran fired multiple missiles on American bases in Jordan. The U.S. military intercepted the missiles with apparent ease, but the incident has drawn Trump once again back into fighting.

The United States struck back in a “powerful response” against Iran on Wednesday evening, U.S. Central Command said on social media. “We’re going to be hitting them very hard, because it’s our turn to hit them,” Trump told reporters earlier in the day.

The Iranian and U.S. moves come as the war has widened quickly, with Saudi Arabia joining U.S. forces in striking Iranian proxies in Iraq, an American tanker in Egypt set ablaze from an apparent drone strike and tensions rising between Ukraine and Iran.

The war, which Trump has been trying to bring to a diplomatic conclusion since April, is now threatening to grow bigger at the very moment the United States wants to move past it.

“When Trump started the war, he thought he could control it,” said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “The Iranian response is to extend the battlefield much, much wider, so the United States has to defend a broader battlefield.”

Experts said that at this stage in the war, which the United States launched with Israel five months ago, Iran wants to demonstrate the military adage that the enemy always gets a vote.

Iran wanted to demonstrate that they are not going to sit back and wait for the U.S. or Israel to strike at a time of their preference,” said Jason Campbell of the Middle East Institute. “They are trying to seize the initiative, or at the very least keep the U.S. and Israel on their back foot.”

U.S. military commanders prepared a plan for Mr. Trump that would have started another days-long bombing campaign. U.S. forces had moved air assets to Israel in preparation for those attacks, and those planes remain in place should Trump change his mind in the face of the Iranian action.

In the deliberations over that plan, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned privately that resuming major combat operations against Iran was doable but would dangerously deplete interceptors available to the military’s Central Command, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, said that if Trump did not resume major combat operations, the United States should stop the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz because it has reached the limit of its effectiveness, the two officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

#war #middle #east #trump #iran

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

😀😀😀😀 😀😀😀

The U.S. strikes in the strait are aimed at reopening the international waterway, which the conflict effectively closed. As a result, oil prices have increased overall since the start of the war.

A spokesman for Admiral Cooper declined to comment, citing the confidential discussions.

On Wednesday, U.S. Central Command said it struck dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps targets in Iran, “including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites and maritime capabilities.”

Trump had recently seemed intent on bringing Iran back to the negotiating table. Some of the countries that have been mediating talks, including Pakistan and Qatar, are trying to do the preparatory work to restart such discussions.

Officials in the Trump administration now rarely discuss the list of priorities they had at the beginning of the war, which included eliminating Iran’s nuclear program but also eroding Tehran’s missile capability and curbing its proxy forces.

“The justification for the war has fluctuated considerably over the last few months,” Campbell said.

“It has been months since you have heard Trump or any other senior official mention anything other than the nuclear program.”

For Trump, the single most important goal is reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and to do it in a way that does not look like a loss for the United States.

But unless traffic can begin to flow through the waterway, without being cut off by an Iranian attack on a tanker or insurance companies’ doubts about safety, oil prices will rise, not recede.

“As long as issues such as who controls the Strait of Hormuz remain unresolved, let alone concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions and other initial drivers of the war, the cycle of hostilities and temporary pauses will continue,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In an odd way, the Trump administration’s current struggles with Iran are at least partly the result of the U.S. success at the start of the war.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader for nearly 37 years, was killed in the opening strike by an Israeli attack based on American intelligence.

He was quickly succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, a far more hard-line leader who does not share his father’s caution. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed the son is more open to pursuing a nuclear weapon than his father, who had long renounced their use.

#war #middle #east #trump #iran

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Ring, the Paprika, and a Tariff Wall With a Diamond-Sized Hole

Weeks after Antwerp's diamond guild handed Donald Trump an 18-karat gold ring stacked with 321 diamonds for America's 250th birthday, the White House quietly exempted natural diamonds from its newest round of tariffs.

"A very special thank you to my friends from Antwerp for the magnificent Freedom 250 ring," Trump said in a recorded message played at a Brussels party featuring Budweiser, bourbon, and the FBI director's girlfriend singing the anthem. Nobody is alleging a bribe. Everybody noticed the timing anyway, The New York Times reports.

White House spokesman Kush Desai insists the exemption just honors last year's EU trade deal, adding, "the only special interest guiding the Trump administration's decision-making is the best interest of the American people."

The Trade Representative's office says it never even heard about the ring. So the diamond industry spent "months of sustained advocacy" chasing "exactly this outcome," commissioned a custom Superman-logo ring engraved "Crafted in Antwerp for Donald John Trump," and got the outcome, purely on the merits.

Diamonds aren't the only forced-labor flashpoint that walked away clean. Paprika, a MAHA-movement favorite as a red-dye substitute, also got exempted, despite testing showing much of the "Made in USA" supply actually traces back to Xinjiang and a Chinese producer already on the U.S. forced-labor blacklist.

"The exemptions list practically reads like a list of products we know to be made with forced and child labor," says Sheffield Hallam professor Laura Murphy.

Trade analyst Dan Anthony puts it more bluntly: "You can't address forced labor concerns when giving a Get Out of Tariffs Free card to the most problematic areas and products." Meanwhile gold, cobalt, and tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo, also flagged repeatedly for forced labor, sit untouched by tariffs entirely.

So the policy sold as America's toughest-ever stand against forced labor exempts the diamond that got a president a ring and the paprika that seasons his base's ketchup substitute, while leaving the actual mining conflict zones off the list. Whose supply chain gets punished here, and whose just needs better gift-giving?

#Tariffs #Trump #Diamonds #ForcedLabor #Lobbying

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Ukraine's New Pitch Deck: "The Israel of Europe"

Volodymyr Zelensky landed in Washington this week with a fresh sales pitch, days after Ukraine launched a missile strike on an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, Responsible Statecraft reports.

The timing is not a coincidence, it's a cover letter. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute says the goal is to "convince President Trump that Ukraine will be an Israel-type partner for the United States in Eastern Europe," one that's "even more valuable than America's NATO allies," the same allies Trump keeps trashing for going soft on his war with Iran.

Enter Laura Loomer, MAGA's own weathervane, who spent years bashing Ukraine and then reversed course overnight the moment Iran entered the conversation.

"The reality is that the Iranians are using Russian weapons to kill American soldiers and to attack the United States," she told Ukrainian media, before flying home to lobby Trump on Kyiv's behalf.

Zelensky, for his part, has been pushing the claim that Russia is feeding Iran satellite imagery to help kill American troops. Trump's response to that one: "We'll find out if that's true," followed by a plan to just ask Putin directly, presumably the single most reliable fact-checking method available to a sitting US president.

Beebe isn't buying any of it. "I think that's simply false," he says of the intelligence claim, noting Ukraine has no better satellite-tracking capability than the US already possesses.

He calls the whole campaign an effort "aimed largely at convincing the U.S. public and at convincing the White House that Russia is working closely with Iran," with "the end goal" being to drag Washington deeper into Ukraine's war under Iran's cover, a strategy he says doesn't serve America's interests.

Zelensky wants faster missile interceptors and a return to blank-check backing; Loomer wants relevance; Trump wants leverage over everyone simultaneously. Nobody here is fighting for a principle, they're fighting for a seat at Trump's table, and Iran just handed out free invitations.

If the label "Israel of Europe" is what it takes to get American weapons flowing again, what does that make Israel?

#Ukraine #Zelensky #Trump #Iran #Geopolitics

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Last Safe Detour for Oil Just Took a Drone Hit

Nobody has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's drone strike that set two gas tankers ablaze at Egypt's Damietta port, and nobody needs to, the oil market already knows exactly what it's worth.

"The passage through the Red Sea, even via the longer Mediterranean route, could be put at risk, which threatens up to five million barrels per day of oil supply that can currently bypass the Strait of Hormuz," said Saul Kavonic of MST Marquee, Reuters reports.

Hormuz is already effectively closed. Bab el-Mandeb is now half-empty after Houthi threats. Suez and the Sumed pipeline were the last detour left, and someone just put a drone through it.

The scramble is already visible on the water. Roughly 30 ships are now clustered at the Port Said anchorage, up from 20 earlier in the week, and crude moving through Sumed has jumped from 19.5 million barrels in April to nearly 29 million in July.

"We've seen a clear increase in crude/condensate tankers heading north after loading in the Red Sea," said Vortexa's George Morris, attributing the shift directly to Houthi threats.

Some vessels are getting explicit Houthi permission to pass Bab el-Mandeb anyway, including Chinese ships, while a growing number are simply switching off their trackers and hoping.

And yet oil prices fell on Thursday, the same day a chokepoint tanker route got hit by an unclaimed drone, because traders were more interested in Iranian-Omani talks over Hormuz.

"The market isn't pricing in disruption to the canal at this stage," said S&P Global's Aly Blakeway, which is either remarkable discipline or remarkable denial.

The insurance side isn't nearly as relaxed: "Insurers may also command higher Additional War Risk Premiums for Suez in light of the attack, given the increased risk to shipping and energy infrastructure in the region," warned Argus's Martin Senior.

Someone is going to profit off this uncertainty either way, it just won't be the tanker crews rerouting around Africa for an extra month of transit time.

So the last working oil corridor in the region just absorbed a drone strike nobody owns, prices dropped anyway, and the only people moving with real urgency are the insurers calculating the premium. Who exactly is pricing this war, the traders watching diplomacy in Oman, or the underwriters watching the drones?

#OilMarkets #SuezCanal #Egypt #EnergySecurity #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Fourteen for Fourteen: The Sanctions Duel Nobody Actually Wins

On Thursday, the EU adopted its 21st sanctions package against Russia, its biggest in four years, hitting 218 individuals and entities, dozens of banks, crypto platforms, and 51 companies accused of funneling banned tech to Moscow, 14 of them Chinese or Hong Kong-based, Reuters reports.

Brussels barely had time to enjoy the press release. Twenty-four hours later, China's Commerce Ministry answered with a mirror-image list: 14 EU entities banned from receiving Chinese dual-use goods, effective immediately.

The symmetry is the point. Beijing framed it as pure procedure, "to safeguard national security and interests, and to fulfill international obligations such as non-proliferation, in response to the E.U.'s egregious actions," a ministry spokesperson said, per ABC News.

But look at who got hit on each side. The EU's list is mostly logistics and trading firms accused of moving banned chips.

China's list goes straight for the jugular: German defense giant Rheinmetall, Czech military-truck maker Tatra, French drone manufacturer Cavok UAS, and a Dutch naval shipbuilder, Bloomberg reports. Fourteen against fourteen on paper. Middlemen against arms manufacturers in practice.

Polish think tank OSW calls the speed and precision of China's response "unprecedented," and notes the real target isn't this week's sanctions at all, it's the EU's planned autumn rollout of new single-market defense protections against Chinese industrial pressure, OSW's analysis explains.

Beijing has already run this play once, quietly talking Germany out of backing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Meanwhile Brussels keeps announcing record-breaking sanctions rounds while its own defense contractors discover they can't source the rare-earth magnets those sanctions were supposed to protect.

So the EU gets to call this its toughest crackdown yet, and China gets to call this just following the law, and somewhere between those two press releases, Europe's actual defense industry is the one running short on parts.

#EU #China #Sanctions #Russia #Defense

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Iran War Now Runs on Vibes and Depleted Interceptors

Five months into the war on Iran, the US struck "dozens" of IRGC-linked targets Wednesday night, and Washington still can't say whether that's the start of a bigger campaign or the last gasp of one, Bloomberg reports.

Asked what the administration's strategy actually is, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly offered the tautology of the year: "only the Commander-in-Chief knows what he will do next." At least she's honest that nobody else does either.

What's remarkable is who's now openly skeptical. Not the doves, the hawks. John Hannah of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, an organization not exactly known for restraint, said, "I'm skeptical that further escalation has a high chance of achieving US objectives in Hormuz, which for better or worse has become the war's new center of gravity.
Certainly not at a cost that Trump, the American people, or the world economy are prepared to pay."

A former CIA Iran analyst, Jim Lamson, added that the strikes won't stop the IRGC from hitting shipping in Hormuz and won't make Tehran "cry uncle and commit to anything that is not in its national interests." When the people who usually cheer for more bombs start doing the math out loud, that's not caution, that's an exit sign nobody's willing to read.

The real constraint isn't strategy, it's inventory. Commercial crude stockpiles are at their lowest since 2018, and General Dan Caine reportedly warned Trump last week that continued strikes would strain munitions reserves, particularly the air defense interceptors protecting US bases.

Defense analyst Jennifer Kavanagh cut through the euphemisms: "I don't think that there's a shortage of munitions to fight this war. The question is, what strategic costs are you willing to pay to continue this war? Yes, we could escalate, but the gains might be marginal, and the costs might be high."

The war isn't being paused for ethics, it's being paused for supply chain math, with China's rise in the background as the actual bill collector.

So the president who promised no quagmire is now running a war where his own spokeswoman won't predict his next move, his allies are quietly begging him to stop, and the interceptors are running low faster than the rhetoric is.

Is this a war being fought to win, or a war being fought until the warehouse runs empty?

#Iran #Trump #Hormuz #MiddleEastWar #Pentagon

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The AG Nomination on a Layaway Plan

Todd Blanche wants to be attorney general, and Donald Trump has found the cleanest workaround yet for two Republican senators standing in the way: just wait for them to leave office.

"I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office," Trump posted, naming Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, both retiring, as the obstacles, The Washington Post reports. It's less a nomination strategy than a countdown clock.

What Cornyn and Tillis actually want in writing is almost quaint: proof that the president isn't getting a better tax deal than everyone else.

The underlying settlement, resolving Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked returns, includes a nearly $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded payout pool and blanket tax protections shielding Trump, his family, and their businesses from past claims.

A federal judge already called the whole arrangement an attempt to "manipulate" the court, since both sides of the "lawsuit" answer to the same boss.

Cornyn puts the ask plainly: "This is about making sure that even if you're the president of the United States, you don't get favorable terms from the government in the settlement of a lawsuit that ordinary citizens would not get."

Trump's own framing gives the game away. He didn't dispute the senators' concerns, he dismissed the senators, noting he "refused to Endorse" either of them and that their "political careers have been ended by my action."

Translation: their objections don't need answering, just outlasting. Cornyn isn't buying the innocent-bystander act either, telling MS NOW he suspects someone close to Trump is whispering "don't agree to those terms."

His retort to the president: he "is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis."

So the sitting president is publicly floating a plan to shelve his own attorney general nominee until the two senators auditing his tax settlement are gone, and calling that patience rather than what it actually looks like: waiting out the only people currently positioned to ask real questions.

If the deal is as clean as the White House claims, why does it only need two more retirements to pass?

#Trump #Blanche #IRS #Senate #Justice

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Historic Peace Deal That Nobody Actually Signed

Donald Trump announced Thursday that the US had brokered "a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza," calling it "a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY."

One detail undercuts the caps lock: neither Hamas nor Israel has actually confirmed signing anything. An anonymous US official was more candid about the odds, admitting, "We're going to try to do something very, very impossible."

The plan supposedly resolves the chicken-and-egg standoff that's stalled Gaza for years, Israel wants Hamas to disarm first, Hamas wants Israel to withdraw first, by asking Israel to simply honor the 20-point plan it already agreed to last September.

"We're not asking Israel to do anything other than agree to the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we're very confident they will adhere to it. If they don't, obviously, President Trump will be very, very disappointed," the official said.

Disappointment, as a foreign policy enforcement mechanism, has an impressive track record of achieving nothing.

Ilan Goldenberg, who worked Gaza policy under Biden, put the skepticism plainly: "This potential announcement by Hamas on disarmament could be meaningful. The million dollar question will be how Israel responds.

And I would put good money on Bibi … doing absolutely nothing to reciprocate." Netanyahu faces elections in October and has every incentive to avoid anything resembling a concession to Hamas before then, which is its own answer to Goldenberg's question.

Meanwhile the international stabilization force meant to actually police this deal has quietly lost troop commitments from Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania, even as officials insist the US has "commitments for over 5,000 troops now from different countries that are participating."

None of this changes what the World Food Program says is happening on the ground right now, where the humanitarian situation for up to 2 million Gazans "remains brutal" and "families lack water, sanitation and medicine."

Everyone involved gets to call this historic. Nobody involved has to actually do anything yet. Who exactly is supposed to move first when both sides have spent three years proving they won't?

#Gaza #Hamas #Trump #Israel #Netanyahu

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

One Authority, One Law, One Warehouse Key

Israeli Channel 12 laid out the fine print Today on the disarmament deal everyone's been calling the endgame for Gaza: "one authority, one law, one weapon," all guns stored under a technocratic government and watched by an international stabilization force.

Six to eight months, tunnel maps included, Hamas fighters pardoned and allowed to stay put.

A tidy bow on five years of war, assuming anyone actually believes the bow is real.

Buried in that same report is the detail nobody's headline is leading with: it's not just Hamas handing over weapons, it's also the anti-Hamas clan militias, the ones Israel itself armed and equipped to undercut Hamas from within.

The same government that spent the war building a rival militia now gets to demand that militia disarm too, on schedule, no exceptions.

"There will be no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people," a diplomatic source: "One authority, one law, one weapon". Convenient principle, arriving right after the guns already did their job.

An American source was more candid about who actually wins here: "This is a good deal for Israel because it solves the Gaza problem. If Hamas cheats, everything will stop and Israel didn't give anything up."

Meanwhile Israel has made clear it won't pull back from the Yellow Line until every last rifle is accounted for which means the timeline for ending the occupation is set by whoever gets to certify the warehouse is empty.

Cairo and Gaza don't hold that certification. Jerusalem and Washington do.

So the guns move out of Hamas's hands and into a warehouse guarded by the same parties who get to decide, unilaterally, when "complete" actually means complete. Whoever holds the warehouse keys decides when the war is over, not whoever hands over the weapons.

#Gaza #Hamas #Israel #Disarmament #CeasefireDeal

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Iran Struck Two Tankers Trying To Pass Through the Hormuz


Iran said it struck two tankers trying to pass through the strait of Hormuz under the escort of the US military, as Trump gathered his cabinet at to discuss the stalling war and rising prices as midterm election in the US loom.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said they had hit two tankers trying to pass through the strait on Friday.

The IRGC said the “non-compliant oil tankers … were struck and brought to a halt, while four other oil tankers quickly changed course and returned to their previous positions”.

The military body said the ships had tried to pass through the waterway via an “undeclared route” and under US aerial escort.

Iran and the US have said ships should pass through the strait via two competing routes, with Iran bombing ships that take the southern route, close to the coast of Oman, and the US bombing ships that violate its blockade of Iranian ships and ports.

The strait has been almost completely closed to traffic since Iran and the US returned to fighting two weeks ago, sending energy prices soaring.

On Thursday, the price of crude oil pushed past $90 a barrel when the US struck Iran in retaliation for its targeting of US bases in Jordan.

Fighting continued on Friday, with the Kuwaiti defence ministry reporting that it shot down Iranian drones targeting “vital and military facilities” without any casualties.

In Lebanon, the Israeli military carried out a huge detonation overnight near the ancient Beaufort Castle. It said it was targeting Hezbollah tunnels and infrastructure.

The explosions was heard across south Lebanon and covered nearby towns in ash, while photos showed the affected area levelled by the force of the blast.

Lebanese officials accused Israel of violating the ceasefire by carrying out the detonation. The Israeli military said it was ensuring the security of its northern residents.

On Friday, Trump brought his cabinet together at the Camp David retreat in Maryland to try to chart a path forward for the war. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said at a briefing last week that the cabinet meeting would be “a lot of fun and something different for the cabinet to experience together”.

Top of the agenda will be the Iran war, which Trump promised would last a few weeks but has now dragged on for five months.

Support in Congress is also waning, with the US Senate narrowly rejecting a symbolic vote to express disapproval of the war. The war powers resolution asking the president to stop the war failed in a 49-50 vote.

Inflation caused by the war is a boon for Democrats, who are hoping to wrest control of the house from the Republicans.

Energy companies have posted record profits as a result of the conflict, with ExxonMobil’s profits doubling and Chevron reporting more than five times its profits in the same time period last year.

#iran #struck #tankers #hormuz

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Spain's Melting Pot Has a Very Selective Simmer

Thousands of migrants swam or climbed the fence into Ceuta on Thursday, Spain's six-mile foothold on Morocco's coast, forcing Madrid to mobilize its military just to hold the line.

At least 18 people died trying to make the crossing. Ceuta's president, Juan Jesús Vivas, called it "a situation of total humanitarian and social emergency." The Ceuta government went further, describing an "unprecedented situation that is testing our institutional response capacity."

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has spent years marketing Spain as the West's alternative to nativist Europe, rolling out the welcome mat for Latin American migrants who share the language and the religion.

Thursday tested how far that welcome actually extends. His response to tens of thousands of mostly young African men walking onto Spanish soil was a written pledge that the government is "fully committed to providing an immediate response," followed immediately by tanks, drones, and naval patrols. The melting pot, it turns out, comes with a border fence and an asterisk.

The right wasted no time turning tragedy into a campaign ad. Vox leader Santiago Abascal declared "This is an invasion," while Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo called the situation "desperate" and accused the government of shirking responsibility, without offering an alternative that doesn't also end in troops on a beach.

Spain's own interior ministry blames smuggling networks exploiting a Supreme Court ruling that bars summarily returning migrants intercepted at sea, a legal detail nobody on television seems interested in mentioning.

Meanwhile the EU's response to a member state facing an actual emergency was a tweet from Commissioner Magnus Brunner offering Frontex support and reassuring everyone that "the protection of the Union's external borders is a crucial part of our efforts."

So the progressive government sends the army, the far right calls it an invasion, and Brussels sends a statement. Eighteen people are already dead, and somehow every faction still comes out of this insisting it was right all along, about people who never got a vote in any of it.

#Spain #Ceuta #Migration #EU #Morocco

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Patriot Passport: Now With 250,000 Limited Editions

The State Department announced that a commemorative passport featuring Trump leaning over the Resolute Desk will finally go national on August 8, after 250,000 copies were previously rationed out of a single office in Washington, Forbes reports.

It won't replace the standard passport, it's optional, it's scarce, and it's numbered like a trading card. Nothing says national unity like a limited-edition government document with a face on it.

Some travelers weren't thrilled to discover the president might end up in their carry-on by default.

A tip circulating on Reddit advised applicants at the Washington Passport Agency to specifically request the large-format 52-page book if they wanted to dodge the commemorative design, a workaround that exists only because enough people assumed the presidential edition would simply become the new normal.

It says something that the State Department needed users to crowdsource an opt-out.

This is not, notably, a one-off. Trump's portrait already went up on National Parks passes earlier this year, administration officials have floated putting his face and signature on a new $250 bill, and his name was slapped onto the Kennedy Center signage before a federal judge ordered it removed for lacking congressional approval.

The passport is just the latest entry in a slow-motion rebrand of federal paperwork into merchandise, one office, one bill denomination, one building at a time.

None of this requires anyone's vote or a line in a budget bill, just a printing order and a signature the office already has on file.

If the presidency can restyle a passport, a park pass, and eventually maybe a $250 bill without asking anyone, what exactly is left that still needs an act of Congress?

#Trump #PatriotPassport #StateDepartment #Americana

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🚀 Russian Ballistic Missile Reportedly Destroys Drone Factory in Kyiv

A drone manufacturing facility in Kyiv was destroyed in a Russian ballistic missile strike on Friday. According to reports, the factory was owned by Terminal Autonomy, a U.S.-registered company incorporated in Delaware, marking what has been described as the first reported strike on a U.S.-owned company during the conflict.

Terminal Autonomy develops AI-assisted deep-strike drones equipped with guidance systems designed to remain operational despite electronic jamming. The company says its loitering munitions and precision weapons are already being used on the front line.

The company and Ukraine's Ministry of Defense did not comment on the reports.

Former U.S. intelligence official Anthony Vinci said ownership of a manufacturing facility is unlikely to influence Russian targeting decisions if the site is considered to have military significance.
The strike comes amid continued debate over expanding defense production in Ukraine. Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump said the United States would authorize licensed production of Patriot air-defense missiles in Ukraine. Vinci suggested that facilities manufacturing U.S.-designed military systems could also become potential targets.
According to reports, no casualties were recorded in the attack.

#Russia #Ukraine #Defense #Drones #BreakingNews

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Iran Is In No Hurry to Negotiate, Trump Chalked the Delay Up To Personal Animosity

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Iran, in the middle of an escalating five-month war with the US, continues to stumble from one internal crisis to another – whether it is over public executions, the rising cost of living, the alleged bias of the state broadcaster or even the post-midnight destruction of pavements outside liberal-leaning Tehran cafes.

Very little that happens in Iran, cultural or political, momentous or trivial, does so uncontested.

But there is now a growing threat of a long diplomatic deadlock, forged by mutual distrust in which neither side believes the other will stick to any agreement.

That impasse has occurred as the war broadens, drawing in Yemen, Iraq and now Egypt. In Iran, at least, the advocates of escalation are winning. As a result, a convergence of Iran’s conflicts, internal and external, becomes more likely.

Parts of the Trump administration and the Iranian opposition – including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former deposed Shah – have never abandoned the belief that the Iranian government is on the brink of collapse.

What is true is that the picture of cohesive if brittle society presented by the millions attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month revealed only one side of the public mood.

At a recent meeting of the supreme judicial council he argued: “Iran is engaged in a full-scale war. Today’s war is not just a war of missiles; the enemy has come to the conclusion that it cannot force the Iranian nation to surrender through military attacks. The most important battlefield today is the economy and livelihood of the people.

If economic pressures cause social discontent to form and this discontent spreads, the enormous social capital that the people have created in support of the system will be lost.”

Golshan Fathi, a Tehran human rights activist, recently wrote on her social media page: “The same sick cycle repeats (…) morning (…) the call to prayer, news of an execution (…) noon with power cuts, afternoon the water stops (…) dusk, the anxiety of war and renewed attacks on cities, and at midnight, the earth trembles.

Dissent in the form of political protest also exists, whether it is those inside jails or citizens in the squares of Isfahan protesting against the current wave of intimidatory public executions.

#iran #economy #trump #hormuz #khamenei

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

On Monday the political bureau of the Nation’s Union party warned that ignoring the protests over the wave of executions could have “devastating consequences”, and urged academics and religious scholars to intervene to end this state violence.

Similarly a “we do not want war” statement signed by 268 political activists this month said they believed the overwhelming majority opposed war, and this should be tested in a public vote.

Another letter from 1,000 activists linked with the former president Mohammad Khatami warned “the contemporary experience of Iran is that war has no winners. Those who advocate negotiations should not be slandered.”

What unites these initiatives is a fear that diplomats are losing, and Iran is being edged into a forever war that can be portrayed as an Iranian-Arab war, a war that would be to Israel’s advantage.

Yet opposition to the whole principle of negotiation with America – fuelled by Trump’s own erratic behaviour – is being voiced by hardliners, in street rallies and more recently on unofficial billboards.

The sway of the hardliners lies less in their strength in parliament – many were elected on low turnouts and anyway have been deposed from key committees in parliament – but in the belief that a network of deep-state support exists in the military and in the office of the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

The absence of Khamenei from public view makes it harder to resolve the controversy about whether the family sees any purpose in negotiations with America.

The crisis between the government and the broadcaster is now out in the open after interventions by Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief negotiator, were censored.

The government in a statement complained: “Censorship of the president’s speech, unilateral destruction of the government’s performance, and efforts to destroy the memorandum of understanding that was formed to get the country through the crisis and protect national interests are no longer media criticism; they are a stand against national cohesion, empathy, and unity.

“The question is clear: is the Iranian broadcasting system with the people, government, and interests of Iran or with those who benefit from division, tension, and polarisation?

The national media should be the voice of Iranian unity, not a platform for destroying the government and disrupting national understanding.”

There are calls for a complete overhaul of the organisation’s accountability when a new head is appointed this September. At one level the politics of the national broadcaster should not matter, since surveys suggest less than 12% of the country watch it.

The toll of the war on the economy has spread everywhere from the internet to tourism. All 400 hotels on Kish Island in the strait of Hormuz – the site of US bombing on Thursday – have shut. As many as 30,000 Iranians visited medical centres during the two wars in 2025 and 2026.

Civilian facilities such as the Bushehr meteorological centre have been almost destroyed and the Bushehr airport has become unusable.

The Chabahar maritime watchtower has been completely destroyed; 12 bridges and two tunnel openings have been damaged. This will take decades to repair.

#iran #economy #trump #hormuz #khamenei

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Refused To Give Ukraine 300 “Patriot” Missiles


Zelensky asked Trump to influence Muskʼs decision to allow the use of Starlink to control drones during attacks on Russia.

The new proposal would allow the United States not to transfer missiles to Ukraine for Patriot air defense systems, the publication writes. As the media notes, Zelensky previously asked the United States for 300 missiles, but Trump refused.

Until now, Musk has allowed Ukrainians to use Starlink only on their own territory, including Crimea and other regions occupied by Russia.

Ukraine wants to use Starlink to direct drone attacks on small and mobile ballistic missile launchers used by Russia to attack Ukraine.

During his visit to the United States this week, Zelensky asked to meet with Musk to discuss the plan, but the billionaire declined the invitation.

Trump said during his meeting with Zelensky that he would consider this request and talk to Musk, but made no promises.

Meanwhile, sources close to former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov told reporters that a few weeks before his dismissal, the minister was in talks with Musk and other contacts in the United States to get permission to use Starlink for drone strikes on Russia.

According to the sources, Musk assured Fedorov that it would be possible “if Trump says to do it”. The talks broke down, he added, after a government reshuffle.

During talks with Trump, Zelensky suggested that if Musk did not allow Starlink to be used to strike Russia, the Pentagon could give Ukraine access to the Starshield network for the same purpose, two officials said.

However, one of them added that Starshield would not work so well for Ukraine.

“It’s more expensive, more complex, and harder to integrate into our systems. We figured out how to launch drones on Starlink a long time ago. We’ll have no problem sending them across the border. But Starshield is a slightly different system. We’ll need to figure out how to integrate it,” the official said.

Thus, Starlink remains the cheapest and most reliable guidance system available for Ukrainian long-range drones.

#trump #refused #ukraine #patriot #zelensky

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Declares Breakthrough In Negotiations Over the Disarmament of Hamas

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Trump has declared a breakthrough in negotiations over the disarmament of Hamas in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, issues that have so far stalled the implementation of last October’s ceasefire, but Israel has yet to respond officially to the plan and government officials have voiced scepticism over the deal.

Announcing the agreement in a social media post on Thursday night, Trump said it involved the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza and was “a monumental step toward ending the fighting”.

Israel has pointed to Hamas’s failure to disarm as justification for its continued strikes and refusal to allow any reconstruction in Gaza, and for Israeli forces’ steady edging forward from the demarcation line agreed in October.

After months of negotiations in Cairo, the Board of Peace (BoP), set up by Trump last year, managed on Thursday to secure Hamas’s agreement to a “roadmap” for phased disarmament, in parallel with Israeli withdrawal, and alongside a transfer of power in Gaza from Hamas to a Palestinian interim administration of technocrats, supported by specially trained Palestinian police and an international stabilisation force (ISF).

The 14-point plan, posted by the BoP on X on Friday, urges Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian factions to halt all military operations, and calls for an international verification committee (IVC) to be set up.

It outlines a 14-day period after all parties have accepted the roadmap, with a timetable and implementation mechanisms to be worked out.

Control of Gaza would then be handed to a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a panel of Palestinian professionals and experts set up by the BoP in January who have been waiting in Cairo since then to take over.

The NCAG would take over all administrative functions, backed by the new police force and the ISF. That would enable a “process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels”.

The disarming of Hamas and other groups would be “gradual, sequential and time-bound” and would be “linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza”.

#trump #hamas #israel #negotiations

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The ISF would operate between NCAG and Israeli-controlled areas of the territory, while internal security would be the responsibility of the NCAG and its police force.

There was no confirmation from the Israeli government by Friday afternoon that it accepted the agreement. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, dismissed it as “unacceptable”.

“The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of immigration must happen, Israel must win,” Ben-Gvir said on the Telegram messaging platform.

Hours after Trump announced the Hamas agreement, Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza, wounding several people. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the October ceasefire.

Hamas said it agreed to the roadmap on condition that disarmament was carried out at the same time as Israeli withdrawal.

“We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the strip,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team, told ​Al Jazeera.

By agreeing to Mladenov’s roadmap, Hamas has increased the pressure on Israel to fulfil the commitments it made in the October ceasefire.

A US official who briefed the press on Thursday night acknowledged that Israel was “very sceptical that Hamas will ‌disarm” but added that Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel did not meet its obligations under the agreement.

It is unclear how long the agreement would take to implement. The 13 members of the NCAG have so far been barred by Israel from entering Gaza, the special training of Palestinian police has yet to start, and troops from the countries volunteering to support the ISF, such as Morocco and Kosovo, have yet to arrive.

Hamas had previously said it was ready to disarm but had insisted it would not agree to any new deal before Israel had fulfilled Hamas’s obligations under the first phase of the ceasefire: stopping the bombing and pulling back to the agreed demarcation line.

“Hamas is eager to get rid of the governing burden of Gaza, having to pay the salaries of 35,000 employees. They see this as a burden,” Shehada added. Hamas leaders had hoped Iran would make the Gaza ceasefire a condition for its June memorandum of understanding with the US, but this did not happen.

“There is disappointment with Iran, as Gaza was not mentioned explicitly,” Shehada said. “The other reason is the fear that Israel would relaunch the war back to its full might.”

#trump #hamas #israel #negotiations

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸