#trump #hegseth #whitehouse #updates #patriot

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#trump #greenland #phone

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Now in Spokane, people are leaving the city, a horror movie (Washington, USA)

#spokane #washington #USA

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🕊 A Turning Point: Talks With Iran Are Taking Place Today

President Donald Trump said that talks with Iran are taking place today, but declined to set a deadline for reaching an agreement. He previously stated that he had canceled an imminent military strike in hopes of quickly securing a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resolve the standoff over Tehran's nuclear capabilities.

For its part, Iran said it is close to reaching an agreement with Oman on a new route through the Strait of Hormuz. The announcement comes after an oil tanker reported an explosion nearby on Sunday, underscoring the continued volatility of the strategic waterway.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said that both the vessel and its crew were safe.

Maritime tracking data showed that traffic through the strait slowed on Monday following reports of attacks on commercial shipping.

Further south, however, two tankers carrying Saudi oil successfully passed through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait despite threats by the Houthis against oil exports in the Red Sea.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told state television that Tehran and Oman were close to agreeing on a new maritime route.

“We will now reach an agreement on a route acceptable to both sides — neither the northern route nor the southern route — but one that respects the sovereign rights of both sides and protects our national interests and security.”

However, he stressed that such an agreement would not mean the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and that it “will in no way return to the status it had before February 28,” the day the war began.

On Saturday, President Trump wrote on social media that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had requested additional time to finalize an agreement that would lead to the “immediate, complete and total reopening” of the Strait of Hormuz and “the end of the Iranian nuclear threat.” He urged Tehran to reach an agreement quickly.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said he decided against ordering new US strikes on Iran after consultations with Gulf allies, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, as well as a phone call with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“I said to the Crown Prince, ‘What would you prefer? Would you rather we did that or not?’”

“They said they would much prefer an agreement rather than an attack, because you don't know where these attacks lead.”

Trump has repeatedly warned that the conflict could escalate, while simultaneously allowing more time for diplomacy. His latest decision marked another shift after several days of threats from both sides.

The conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and even affected parts of Egypt.
Iran largely closed the Strait of Hormuz — a route through which around 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes — contributing to higher energy prices and broader inflationary pressure.

Following Trump's comments, Brent crude fell by more than 4% during the opening of Asian trading, dropping to around $83 per barrel.

Trump has argued that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons justifies short-term increases in fuel prices, but the economic impact has increased political pressure to find a diplomatic solution.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also held telephone talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Pakistan's Army Chief Asim Munir regarding diplomatic efforts, according to Iranian state media.

Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said Israel and the United States maintain close security and intelligence coordination regarding developments across the region.

He added:

“With or without an agreement, and regardless of external commitments, if Iran tries to revive its nuclear program or advance its ballistic missile industries, we will be there. We will act, and we will strike.”

#Trump #Iran #Hormuz #Israel #Diplomacy

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A Deal With Mediators and No Second Party

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reportedly agreed overnight to a compromise drafted by Qatari and US mediators for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, according to two diplomats cited by Israel's Channel 12.

His approval was framed as one of the reasons Trump called off the weekend strike,

The technical detail sells it: ships enter the Gulf through Iranian waters, and exit through Omani waters. That's oddly specific for something that might not exist.

Oman signed off too, but with a catch. Muscat wants confirmation that Araghchi's yes actually speaks for the Revolutionary Guards, not just the foreign ministry, and Qatari mediators are still working the phones to secure that buy-in.

In other words, the deal celebrated in Washington is still waiting on approval from the people who actually hold the keys to the strait. Al Jazeera's Mehjoob Zweiri, director of the Gulf studies center at Qatar University, added the more cautious framing: "Iran received a proposal from the United States that could lead to a reduction in current tensions, and Tehran is studying it seriously." Studying. Not signing.

And then Tehran's own state media pulled the rug out entirely. Iran's semi-official Fars News quoted a member of the negotiating team calling the Israeli media report "false," with a military source insisting the strait stays closed to any vessel that doesn't coordinate with the Revolutionary Guards.

So within hours of Trump citing this agreement as his reason for standing down, Iran's own press denied the agreement exists.

A deal that has mediators, diplomats, and a press release, but apparently no confirmed signature from either government involved. Trump built a strike cancellation on top of it anyway.

What exactly did Washington agree to stop bombing over?

#Iran #StraitOfHormuz #Trump #Araghchi #MiddleEastWar

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Tehran: We Never Asked, We Never Agreed, Hormuz Isn't Opening

Iran spent Sunday demolishing every sentence of Trump's Saturday night announcement, one clause at a time.

Mohammad Marandi, a former adviser to Iran's negotiating team, put it in five words on X: "By now everyone knows this is fake news. Trump backed down." No hedging, no diplomatic softening.

Iranian military officials went further. They called Trump's version of events "merely another lie and a desperate attempt to blackmail Gulf rulers and pressure them through threats," according to Mehr News Agency.

A source close to Iran's negotiating team told Fars News flatly: "No agreement has been reached on reopening the Strait of Hormuz."

Iran's Kayhan newspaper, a mouthpiece for the regime, mocked the whole spectacle: "The U.S. president backed down after a week of fabricated statements. The same repeated script," as reported by Yeshiva World News.

So Trump announced a deal. Iran announced the deal doesn't exist. Both statements can't be true, and only one side gets to control the strait.

Here's the part that actually explains everything: Trump has pulled this exact move before, in May, in July, and now again in August, always with Gulf states or Iran supposedly begging him to stand down at the last minute.

Every single time, the pattern is identical: threaten total force, then discover a miraculous last-minute request for restraint. Iran doesn't even bother denying the strikes were coming. It just denies that it was the one who asked for a pause, and it denies that a favor was owed in return.

Trump gets to look magnanimous. Iran gets to look undefeated. Nobody has to admit what actually happened, because nobody agrees on what actually happened. That's not a ceasefire. That's two governments negotiating the story, not the strait.

#Iran #Trump #StraitOfHormuz #Marandi #MiddleEastWar

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Who Actually Made the Call

The request that got dressed up as an Iranian olive branch actually came from Riyadh. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump on Saturday.

He raised concerns about the plan for massive new strikes on Iran, and he asked for clarity on what exactly Washington intended to hit, according to Axios.

A second source told Axios he went further and "urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes."

The Saudi Press Agency's official version was more diplomatic: bin Salman stressed "the necessity of prioritizing the language of dialogue to de-escalate, and the importance of exerting all possible efforts to achieve a calmness that paves the way for diplomatic solutions," per SPA.

Qatar and the other Gulf states have their own reason to lean on Washington: their oil and gas facilities sit exactly where Iran has threatened to strike back.

Iran didn't call. Tehran spent the same 24 hours calling Trump's version of events a lie. The country that actually picked up the phone and got results was the one whose oil fields are within range of Iranian missiles, not the one supposedly begging for a ceasefire.

This is the same choreography that played out in May, when Trump credited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE with talking him out of a strike, only for Gulf officials to tell the Wall Street Journal they hadn't even been briefed on any imminent attack.

Whether the Gulf call happens before or after the decision seems almost beside the point. What matters is that a call happened, and Trump needed one to happen, because "I got talked out of it by powerful allies" plays a lot better than "the Pentagon doesn't want to burn through more Patriot interceptors."

Saudi Arabia flew combat missions alongside American jets days ago. Now it's telling the same White House not to pull the trigger again.

That's not friendship. That's a landlord telling a tenant to stop lighting fires in a building they both own.

#Iran #Trump #SaudiArabia #MBS #StraitOfHormuz

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Who Cashed In on Minute 99

Wall Street has a name for this now: TACO Trade, short for Trump Always Chickens Out.

Every single time he's threatened Iran with annihilation and then called it off, the market pattern has been identical, stocks jump, oil drops, and someone makes money on the whiplash.

When Trump scrapped strikes back in June, the Dow gained nearly a thousand points and the Nasdaq jumped over 3% in a single session, Yahoo Finance reported. Interactive Brokers strategist Steve Sosnick summed up why: "We've heard something like this at least 30 times before without any obvious progress, but stock traders reliably rally whenever that carrot is dangled before them. It is a sign that traders are still more fearful of missing a rally than they are of a sustained pullback."

Saturday night's cancellation was reportedly the third time a strike got pulled at the literal last minute, and Israeli commentators online noted it landed close to the deadline once again.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Israeli officials and commentators pushed back hard against Telegram channels distributing unverified reports of hospital readiness alerts, arguing such leaks serve no purpose except handing the enemy a free intelligence gift, since official emergency updates already come through the Home Front Command and the IDF spokesperson.

So, Trump threatens apocalypse, then cancels it. Markets don't ask why. They just buy the dip, because thirty false alarms in, the only rational move left is to treat the fake war like a recurring, profitable weather pattern.

Reservists get mobilized on rumor. Traders get rich on repetition. Guess which group actually reads the fine print before the next false alarm.

#Iran #Trump #TACO #Israel #StockMarket

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Pressure From Three Directions At Once

Everyone agrees Gaza's ceasefire roadmap is fragile. Nobody agrees on who's breaking it. American officials went first, sharply criticizing Israel for continuing targeted killings just as Hamas agreed to disarm. "These are the fruits of eight months of negotiations intended to demilitarize Gaza.

Why continue the killings now and give them an excuse to back out?" the sources said, according to World Israel News. Then came the line that dropped all pretense of diplomacy: "He killed three innocent children, making Israelis look like bloodthirsty savages."

Hamas moved fast to cash in. Politburo member Ghazi Hamad told AFP, "Israel's escalation in Gaza today confirms that Israel doesn't want to reach an agreement," per the Malay Mail.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace's own high representative, didn't pick a side by name but didn't need to: "Two days of strikes across Gaza have killed civilians and destroyed medical supplies that people depend on," coming right after "intense efforts by the Board of Peace and the mediators… to bring the Palestinian factions in Gaza to agree to a Roadmap," he wrote, cited by Anadolu Agency.

And then the fourth voice flips the entire script. Netanyahu's own spokesperson, Doron Spielman, told Reuters that Israel has shared "serious security concerns" with Washington about the disarmament plan itself, insisting "disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less," per the Independent.

While all that diplomatic maneuvering played out, Defense Minister Israel Katz went on Channel 14 and skipped the diplomacy entirely. On Iran, he offered a threat and a scoreboard in the same breath: "If Iran attacks Israel, it will suffer a crushing blow," he said, adding that Israel has already "prepared Iran and all its proxies to 80 to 90 percent," in the interview aired Sunday night.

On the security zones, he recycled the line his ministry has repeated for months: the IDF "will not withdraw from the security zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza," as JNS reported.

And on Lebanon, he read off the receipts like a man closing a quarterly report: "Twenty-four Lebanese villages that were hundreds of years old… we destroyed all of the buildings," he said of communities he claims served Hezbollah.

So while Washington accuses Jerusalem of sabotaging the deal, and Jerusalem tells Washington the deal itself worries them, Israel's own defense minister is on live TV citing a village count and a percentage score against Iran, no ceasefire talk required. Four institutions, four messages, zero coordination. Who's actually negotiating peace here, and who's just keeping score?

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #Iran #Lebanon #Netanyahu

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The Post That Canceled Itself

Trump's Saturday night announcement opened with maximum bravado. The US, he wrote, is "locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II."

Two sentences later, the same post walked the whole thing back. "We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to," he wrote on Truth Social.

The deal, per Trump, would deliver "the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT" and an end to Iran's nuclear threat.

Trump framed the climbdown as generosity. He said he was canceling the strike "for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran," so long as the deal comes together fast.

Nice of him to worry about Iran's prosperity in the same post where he threatened it with WWII-level terror thirty seconds earlier. Then came the part that actually mattered: "The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment." Israel never said a word.

Trump simply signed it up, and the announcement landed on Israeli soil at five in the morning.

This is not new behavior. Trump has threatened and then paused escalation against Iran several times over this five-month war, and last week his own advisers reportedly warned that a bigger offensive would drain the Pentagon's already depleted stock of Patriot interceptors.

So the bravado about levels of terror unseen since 1945 is doing a very specific job here: it lets the walk-back look like restraint chosen from strength, rather than restraint chosen because the warehouse is running low.

Israel gets committed to a ceasefire it never agreed to, in a post that spends its own opening lines threatening obliteration, closed out with "Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE."

Who exactly is Israel's foreign policy being written by at this point, its own government, or someone else's Truth Social account?

#Iran #Trump #Israel #StraitOfHormuz #MiddleEastWar

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⚠️ Trump Backs Down Once Again From a Threatened Military Escalation

Trump appeared to back down once again from a threatened military escalation against Tehran, offering fresh fodder to the narrative Iranian officials are eager to promote: they are not the ones who fear war — Trump is.

Iran’s leadership believes it has found the world’s Achilles’ heel. With the help of regional militia allies, Tehran spent the past week underscoring its ability to threaten several of the world’s most critical energy facilities and waterways.

It has continued to raise the stakes in its confrontation with Washington over when and how to stop the renewed hostilities and return to a short-lived agreement to begin peace negotiations, which collapsed last month.

When Trump signaled in recent days that a major escalation was imminent if no concessions were made, two former Iranian officials said Tehran’s leadership told him to go right ahead.

“They are ready for war, and they won’t back down,”

said Amir al-Mousawi, a former Iranian diplomat, who said he had met over the weekend with the team surrounding Iran’s chief negotiator and Speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Al-Mousawi described an exchange of messages between U.S. and Iranian officials sent over the weekend through Pakistani and Qatari officials. He said Trump vowed a severe attack on civilian infrastructure, such as power plants, if Iran did not restart negotiations.

The Iranians refused, he said, unless Washington returned to the previously agreed “memorandum of understanding,”

which many experts say was favorable to Iran.

“We have no problem with war at all, and we are ready for the big confrontation,”

al-Mousawi said the Iranians told the Americans.

“Trump told the Iranians: ‘I will hit the power in Iran.’ So, the Iranians said: ‘If you strike, we strike.’”

The official Saudi news channel said on Sunday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had recently spoken with Trump to stress “the necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions” and “prevent a wider conflict.”

“One, it’s not clear that the limited and time-bound military escalation Trump is willing to undertake at this point will be enough to change Iran’s calculus,”

he said.

“Two, it’s hard to imagine these options can degrade Iran’s missile and drone capacity to the point that it cannot effectively close the Strait of Hormuz or further damage the Gulf’s critical energy infrastructure.”

#Trump #Escalation #Iran #Hormuz

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Trump Against Oil Companies. Did They Stick a Knife bin His Back?


Trump has hammered oil companies for “making too much money” from the global energy market disruption caused by his war on Iran.

Brent crude had been trading at about $70 a barrel before the first US-Israeli strikes at the end of February, but by the end of April it had soared as high as $126 and is now trading at about $85 a barrel.

The US president took aim at the windfall profits revealed last week by ExxonMobil and Chevron, and said the companies would “give some of that back to the public”.

They’re making too much money based on a shortage,” he told reporters at the White House on Monday evening. “I don’t like it.”

Trump was speaking just hours before BP reported its profits had doubled in the last quarter, to $5.7bn.

The US oil companies made profits totalling more than $26bn for the three months to the end of June by taking advantage of the energy market disruption triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Chevron reported its highest ever quarterly profit of $12.2bn, a fivefold increase on the same period last year.

ExxonMobil reported a profit of $14.5bn in the second quarter, double what it made in the same period a year ago and its highest quarterly profit since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“Chevron: too much money. ExxonMobil: too much money,” Trump said. “They’re going to give some of that back to the public and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price.”

Asked about Trump’s comments, the BP chief executive, Meg O’Neill, told CNBC that she understood the pressures on households. “The reality is, we produce a global commodity, and the product we sell hangs off that global commodity price,” she added.

Climate campaigners have also attacked big oil’s bumper quarterly earnings, condemning them as “obscene”.

Clémence Dubois, a campaigns director at 350.org, an international environmental group, said: “Chevron and Exxon are profiteering from a model of distraction, leaving ordinary people to pay the price with higher bills and devastating impacts such as these fires. These profits feel almost criminal.”

Trump criticised oil company profits weeks after warning energy retailers to cut their prices as he nears the November midterm elections with flagging approval ratings. He also ordered the US justice department to investigate potential price gouging in the retail energy sector.

“Gasoline Retailers must get ​their Prices down, IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote on his Truth ​Social platform in late June. “If Retailers don’t do this, big problems lie ​ahead!”

The president told journalists that the fall in oil and gas prices during the administration’s June peace talks with Iran should have caused petrol prices to fall to $2.25 a gallon.

“Oil prices have come down so much and we are not seeing anything at the pump by comparison the way they should be,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

US gasoline prices currently average $4.11 a gallon, according to data from the AAA motoring group.

The Trump administration has repeatedly said it has no plans to introduce an export ban on oil or petroleum products, but some analysts say this could be revisited if prices at the pump continue to rise.

#trump #oil #companies #money #war

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A Pentagon Internal Report: “the U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of long-range missiles”

🔠🔠🔠🔠1️⃣

According to an internal report illegally released by one of the Pentagon's executives, “the U.S. Army has used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran.”

The missiles are principally the Army's surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.

The ‌degree to which the military is running out of ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles has not been previously reported.
The long-range munitions are an important part the military's arsenal, allowing accurate strikes from a safe distance.

U.S.-supplied ATACMS have played a key role in the war in Ukraine, allowing Ukrainian forces to attack targets inside Russia. The PrSM is a newer, more advanced generation that will replace the ATACMS, which have a shorter range.

Analysts say such weapons – which cost over $1 million each – would also be important in any conflict with China (the source declined to say how many of each munition the U.S. ​had left).

Trump launched the Iran war jointly with Israel in February, predicting that the conflict would last a short time.

But as the war drags on, the three people familiar with the matter expressed worry that the ​falling missile supplies could limit the U.S. ability to deter adversaries, including Russia and China.

A fourth person familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in ⁠the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the world.

Asked for ​comment on the stockpile data, the White House issued a statement from Trump, saying the U.S. had “far more munitions than anyone in the world” and “far more than we need.”

“Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, ​in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels,” Trump said.

#pentagon #report #army #missiles

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Analysts agree that certain munitions, including artillery shells and several types of missiles, are being produced at record levels but caution that supplies might far short of what is needed for a prolonged war.

Lockheed Martin, which makes the ATACMs and PrSMs, along with the anti-ballistic missile THAAD system, did not immediately respond to questions about Trump's statements or about supply levels. Raytheon, which makes Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors, two important U.S. weapons, also did not immediately respond.

Responding to a request for comment, chief Pentagon spokesperson ​Sean Parnell said: “America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing. We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses ​a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”

The supply figures have circulated inside the federal government over the last week during tense conversations inside the Trump administration about how much longer the U.S. can continue striking Iran without drawing down the stockpile to ‌levels that would ⁠limit the military's ability to respond to crises elsewhere.

One of the sources said the drawdown of the ATACMS and PrSM stockpiles reflected a decision by the Trump administration to avoid riskier ways of attacking Iranian targets, such as by using piloted aircraft to drop bombs.

Because these weapons allow the military to attack targets from a distance, analysts say they would be valuable in a war against an adversary with strong air defenses, such as China. They have been used to strike targets inside Iran, according to a March report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Military ⁠leaders have for weeks warned the president that stockpiles of defensive weapons — including Patriot interceptors, which are effective against ballistic missiles — were dwindling, said two of the sources.

Last week, several media outlets reported Trump had decided not to launch another massive offensive inside Iran in part because his military advisers had warned about the U.S. stockpile.

A U.S. official disputed those accounts, saying Trump chose ​not to move forward with another attack because of pressure from Gulf states.

The Middle East conflict has sparked intense debate about Trump's authority to prosecute hostilities against Iran without congressional ​authorization. No request for a declaration ⁠of war or an authorization to use military force has been submitted to Congress.

The U.S. also burned through a little less than half of its global supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are ​generally launched from ships, since the start of the war, one of the sources said.

The Tomahawk is a Navy weapon, launched from destroyers, cruisers and submarines, and has long served as the sea service's principal means of striking heavily defended targets without risking pilots.

#pentagon #report #army #missiles

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Spokane havoc... 85,000 people remain homeless

#spokane #people #homeless

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How Mr. Trump Went to the Iran War And Botched Up Big Time This Weekend

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The war in Iran, along with a cycle of threats and walk-backs, has upended Trump’s domestic agenda at a dire political moment.

Americans are facing rising gas prices; Republicans in Congress are being forced to fund and defend an unpopular war that they never voted to approve; and with the midterm elections looming, polls show cratering support for a war that has no end in sight.

Trump will hit the road this week for a swing through the West Coast to talk about the economy and sell his agenda to the American people. Here are three domestic hurdles Trump is facing because of the war.

Trump’s war in Iran has driven up the cost of oil around the world, and Americans are paying, on average, more for gas than they have since 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Gas prices on Monday were at a national average of $4.10 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by more than 37 percent since the war began at the end of February.

And it compounds a cost-of-living crisis caused by persistently high inflation that Trump struggled to address before the war even started.

Trump has asserted that oil prices per barrel have been far lower than expected because of the conflict, and that gas prices will “drop like a rock” when the war ends.

On Monday, Trump tried to pass the blame on to oil companies, boasting in a social media post that they had grown much more profitable as a result of his policies.

In a social media post, and in an Oval Office appearance, he cited Chevron and Exxon for record profits, and suggested they should ease prices for the public.

“That goes for other Oil Companies as well,”

he wrote,

“and get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!”

Trump has been the only president in the modern era to take the country to war without the support of the American public.

In the most recent Quinnipiac University poll, 60 percent of voters said they opposed military action against Iran, a slight uptick since May. And in a recent CNN/SSRS poll, 74 percent of Americans — including about 43 percent of Republicans — said the war in Iran had not been worth the cost in terms of the financial burden or American casualties.

#war #trump #us #republicans #deaths

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Despite the fact that Trump ran on getting and keeping America out of wars, the conflict has now lasted far longer than his promise of “four to five weeks,” and it has killed 18 U.S. service members.

Trump has dismissed the pains being experienced from the war, saying they are temporary. And he has downplayed the number of American troops’ deaths by comparing them to casualty counts of past wars like Vietnam.

On Monday, Trump wrote that he believed that any polling showing discontent was “the Radical Left’s Fake Poll numbers.”

As Republicans face a tough midterm in a matter of months, even Trump’s closest allies have intensified their calls for a clear end to the conflict.

“We got to wrap it up,”

Speaker Mike Johnson said last month, as the United States launched a fresh barrage against Iran, signaling the collapse of a temporary cease-fire.

Trump went to war without the authorization of Congress, an issue that came to a head in recent weeks as members have been asked for billions more in funding.

Last week, Senate Republicans declined to limit Trump’s power to continue the war, but days later many complained that they were unsure where the conflict was headed.

“I don’t know whether the president should start a new bombing campaign again, because I don’t have the military intelligence,”

Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said on Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Now, that’s a problem, too, because it’ll cause a lot of pain. It’ll cause energy prices to go up, and a lot of inflation for the American people. They’re all hellish choices.”

Democrats are already employing their strategy to use Republicans’ support of the war against their opponents in upcoming races.

In Maine, Majority Forward, a major Democratic group, has spent more than $1.5 million on ads accusing Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, of giving Trump a “blank check” for the war, according to an analysis by the media tracking firm AdImpact.

#war #trump #us #republicans #deaths

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Trump's War Against Iran Has Brought Trillions To the Biggest Oil Companies

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Eight of the biggest oil companies amassed profits of more than $290bn in just three months as the Iran conflict sent energy prices soaring and the emissions-fuelled climate crisis caused deadly heatwaves.

The windfall war profits have reignited calls for oil and gas supermajors such as Saudi Aramco and BP to pay for the environmental damage caused by “cashing in on human misery” and fund a rapid transition to renewable energy.

The analysis found that the eight listed oil producers made almost $93bn in the three months to the end of June – the first full financial quarter after the US-Israeli war on Iran triggered a surge in global oil prices to highs above $126 a barrel.

The companies have used the biggest disruption of fossil fuel supplies in the market’s history to almost double their combined profits from just under $50bn in the same period last year, with campaigners warning that millions of households are left paying the price in higher bills and climate chaos.

The data suggests the eight oil companies – Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron and ExxonMobil – made more than $700,000 of profit every minute over the spring quarter.

While their market valuations were swelling by about $600bn to above $3tn, temperatures built towards a run of deadly heatwaves, all made more likely and more severe by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms were directly linked to fatal spells of hot weather for the first time by scientific analysis published last September. It found the emissions from any one of the 14 biggest companies were each enough to cause more than 50 heatwaves that would otherwise have been virtually impossible.

The biggest oil profits in the spring quarter were raked in by Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Aramco, which reported a 34% increase in its quarterly net income to more than $33bn, even as its infrastructure was damaged by drone and missile strikes from Iranian and Houthi forces.

Saudi Aramco’s fossil fuel production has made it responsible for more carbon emissions than any company in history, according to the database Carbon Majors, followed by Chevron and ExxonMobil and with Shell and BP in the top 10. Saudi Arabia has for decades led successful efforts to block and delay international climate action.

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