The American President had been skating on his ‘OWN’ American show….
Right NOW?
He’s begging FOR Help with the Strait of Hormuz…
He has got “Nope’s’ from NATO and the EU…..
No one should be surprised with the way Donald has given EVERYONE else the shitheel….
You might want to look at a map….
Iran IS a BIG country folks….
Conditions IN parts of Iran are still operational…
US and Israeli Intel people agree that regime change in Iran just is N OT gonna happen and the place will be worse for its inhabitant’s when things actually are over…
Iran seems to have stopped attacking ships in the Strait or Hormuz…
But IS attacking other Middle east countries friendly with the US….
Trump’s Vice President JD Vance is stuck in a bit of bad place…
He HAD been against this very thing , The War, ….But he is NOW the Trump VP and must follow that compony line in support of his boss on the War…..
Trump says the war will be over ‘soon’….
Actually?
He has NO Idea about that…..
Oh?
Israel has started a land attack on lebanon…
- Economic conditions in Iran are worsening. A Tehran resident said the streets are busier than at the start of the war because people are getting desperate to earn money. Stores still have food, fuel is available, utilities are running and banks are allowing withdrawals, he said, butpeople are deeply anxious as the attacks persist. While driving, he witnessed an airstrike turn a nearby police station to dust, saying it “felt like the end of the world.”….
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NY Times….
President Trump on Monday afternoon said he had asked to postpone a planned visit to Beijing at the end of the month to meet with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, saying: “We’ve got a war going on. I think it’s important that I be here.”
Mr. Trump had said on Sunday that he might not make the trip if Beijing did not contribute warships to help escort merchant vessels in and out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil route that Iran has largely blockaded. Iran, however, sells oil to China and is allowing Chinese ships to transit the Gulf safely, giving Beijing little incentive to go along.
A number of other countries have declined to meet Mr. Trump’s calls over the past two days to send warships to the escort effort. Earlier Monday, Mr. Trump disparaged U.S. allies that he said had relied for too long — and at too great a cost — on American military capabilities.
Mr. Trump said that he had long believed that “if we ever needed help, they” — meaning U.S. allies — “won’t be there for us,” and that the countries that had rebuffed or reacted coolly to his appeal for help in escorting the ships were proving his point.
“You mean for 40 years we’re protecting you and you don’t want to get involved in something that’s very minor?” he said at the White House, noting that Europe, Japan and others depended on oil from the Gulf far more than the United States did.
“We don’t need anybody; we’re the strongest nation in the world,” Mr. Trump said.
He suggested his request for assistance in reopening the strait — through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes — amounted instead to a loyalty test. “I’m almost doing it in some cases not because we need them but because I want to find out how they react,” he said.
The sharpest refusal to his belated effort to build an international coalition against Iran came Monday from Germany, whose defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said, “This is not our war; we did not start it.” Top officials of Japan, Italy and Australia also said that their countries would not participate in efforts to reopen the strait.
The European Union will not expand maritime operations in the region to protect traffic through the strait, said its top diplomat, Kaja Kallas. “This is not Europe’s war, but Europe’s interests are directly at stake,” she said.
Other responses have been noncommittal, including those from France, South Korea and Britain. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said his country would not be “drawn into wider war.”
Mr. Trump initially called for other nations to join the United States in an escort effort in a social media post on Saturday, his first expression of eagerness to build a broad coalition against Iran. The request was directed at allies he had not consulted ahead of the U.S.-Israeli decision to go to war.
That air war, now in its third week, has killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, and has drawn in much of the Middle East. Iran has launched rockets and drones at neighboring countries, as well as at ships in the Gulf, and global energy prices have skyrocketed. The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, briefly reached $106 on Monday, before falling back to about $100.
The United States appears to have been unprepared for the extent of Iran’s retaliation and the need to protect merchant ships and giant oil tankers from attack. Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, in a video update on Monday, did not offer details on how the United States would reopen the strait.
Here’s what else we are covering:
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Attacks in Iran: U.S.-Israeli airstrikes targeted an electricity distribution center that supplies a large section of Tehran’s eastern neighborhoods, according to Iranian media reports and Iran’s Red Crescent Society. The attack knocked out power for several hours, before electricity was restored.
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Attacks in Lebanon: There are few signs that the conflict is easing. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said that its forces had launched a “ground maneuver” in southern Lebanon, adding to fears that a broader invasion may be coming. More than a million people in Lebanon have fled their homes.
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Death toll: At least 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, Iran’s U.N. representative told the Security Council last Wednesday, the latest figure the country has provided. In Lebanon, officials said that 886 people had been killed. And in Israel at least 12 people have been killed, according to the authorities. The Pentagon has said that 13 American service members have died since the start of the war.
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U.S. intelligence says Iran’s regime is consolidating power
Despite more than two weeks of relentless airstrikes, U.S. intelligence assessments say, Iran’s regime likely will remain in place for now, weakened but more hard-line, with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps security forces exerting greater control….
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Western officials and analysts who study Iran said they see little near-term prospect of a “regime change” end to the 47-year-old Islamic republic or the rise of a more democratic government. The latter is a goal cited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sometimes by President Donald Trump, who has said he’ll know the war is over “when I feel it in my bones.”
U.S. intelligence assessments issued since the war began predict Iran’s regime will remain intact and possibly even emboldened, believing it stood up to Trump and survived, according to two people familiar with the assessments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. U.S. Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, meanwhile, are angered and alarmed at being the targets of retaliatory barrages of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.
One European official said the likeliest postwar scenario is a “rump IRGC regime” in Tehran that will retain some nuclear and missile capability as well as the support of regional proxies, though the regime will be “degraded enough that we’re in a better place than we were.”
Trump has been receiving “very sobering briefings” on the U.S. intelligence, said one of the two people familiar with the assessments. And he was told of the likelihood of a more entrenched IRGC before he gave the go-ahead to jointly launch the war with Israel, this person said……
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ISW…Iran Update Evening Special Report: March 16, 2026
- Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s reported inner circle is dominated by long-standing hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders. Their influence will almost certainly drive Iran toward more hardline, anti-Western policies and deepen existing patterns of regime corruption and securitization. All four of these IRGC commanders worked for decades under former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The first generation of Iranian revolutionaries and long-time IRGC leaders thus remain at the top of the Iranian regime‘s hierarchy despite decapitation strikes in recent years.
- The Iranian regime has taken steps to further restrict the flow of information out of Iran, which will almost certainly limit ISW-CTP’s ability to observe strikes in Iran. Internet monitor NetBlocks reported on March 16 that the regime has further tightened internet restrictions. A BBC reporter stated on March 15 that the regime has reportedly started to target individuals with Starlink access and reduced the availability of VPNs.
- The combined force targeted a likely Iranian drone facility in South Khorasan Province in one of the combined force’s easternmost strikes since the war began. The strike indicates that combined force aircraft can operate deep inside Iranian territory.
- Iran has not attacked any vessels in the Strait of Hormuz since March 12. Anti-regime media also published footage on March 12 that shows a US Navy F/A-18 Hornet engaging targets with its auto cannon at extremely low altitude in Chabahar, Sistan and Baluchistan Province, which is on the Iranian coast on the Gulf of Oman. This suggests that US forces have at least local air dominance along certain segments of the coast, which would enable US aircraft to engage drones and anti-ship cruise missiles at low altitudes to protect shipping if ordered to do so.
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The Guardian…
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Donald Trump said he will “soon” announce countries that have agreed to help the US reopen the strait of Hormuz, as he criticised his many allies, including Nato and the UK, that have so far declined to get involved. He told reporters in the Oval Office that South Korea, Japan, and China, should be helping the US. He warned that Nato faced a “very bad” future if it didn’t help and said he was “not happy” with the UK.
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Meanwhile, allies responded by saying “this is not Nato war”, with the EU insisting it has “no appetite” to expand its naval mission to the strait of Hormuz. German chancellor Friedrich Merz earlier said this war “is not a matter for Nato”, while Nato said “allies have already stepped up to provide additional security in the Mediterranean”. The UK prime minister Keir Starmer had earlier resisted Trump’s call to send warships to the strait, saying the UK “will not be drawn into a wider war” but was working “with allies” on a plan to reopen the strait.
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Trump also said the war would be “wrapped up” soon, saying it wouldn’t be this week but “it won’t be long”. He also suggested he would delay his upcoming trip to China, which was scheduled for the end of March, by “a month or so”. His administration has insisted that this was not to pressure Beijing to help reopen the strait of Hormuz.
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US vice-president JD Vance deflected and attacked the media when he was asked if he supports Trump’s war on Iran, given his prior criticisms of open-ended US foreign interventionism. It followed US media reports that he had privately expressed scepticism and counselled Trump against striking Iran. Vance accused the media of trying to “drive a wedge” between him and his president, and repeated Trump’s claim that Tehran was close to developing a nuclear weapon. “I trust President Trump to get the job done,” he said.
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Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi denied recent contact with US special envoy Steve Witkoff, and said their last contact was prior to the US attack on Iran. He wrote on X: “My last contact with Mr. Witkoff was prior to his employer’s decision to kill diplomacy with another illegal military attack on Iran. Any claim to the contrary appears geared solely to mislead oil traders and the public.” It followed an Axios report that a direct communications channel between Witkoff and Araghchi had been reactivated in recent days, with Araghchi attempting to engage with Witkoff about ending the war.
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The leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Canada, and Italy issued a joint statement expressing “grave concern” after Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon. They called for meaningful engagement by Israeli and Lebanese representatives to negotiate a sustainable political solution. A significant Israeli ground offensive would have devastating humanitarian consequences, they warned, adding that it could lead to a protracted conflict with “devastating humanitarian consequences”.
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Earlier on Monday, the IDF had said its troops had begun what it described as “limited and targeted” ground operations – a ground invasion – against Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon, and told hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians they cannot return to their homes.
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It comes as the latest reports indicate that Israeli strikes have killed at least 850 people in Lebanon, including at least 107 children, and have left more than a million displaced.
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Elsewhere, explosions were reported in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the highly secure section of the Iraqi capital that is home to diplomatic missions including the US embassy, and international organisations.
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Operations at the UAE’s Shah gas and oil field are suspended after a fire that broke out due a drone attack. Abu Dhabi authorities said on Monday night that the fire had been brought under control.
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Qatar said it intercepted a second wave of missiles from Iran following an attack earlier on Monday…..
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