Attacks against Iranian missile sites and mining boats are NOT gonna change Trump’s negotiating postion….
Israel’s continual attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah aren’t either…..
Probably make things worse….
Protection money payments seem to be the ONLY way the few ships have gotten there the Strait of Hormuz…
One doubts Iran will give THAT control and money up something they NEVER had until Trump gave it to them…
Trump looking for Middle Eastern countries to come into the Mix after the Europeans in NATO wouldn’t probably ain’t gonna work either….
We’ll see……
Hours after Iranian negotiators arrived in Qatar for talks on ending the war, U.S. forces struck missile launch sites in Iran and boats trying to emplace mines, American officials said Monday night.
U.S. Central Command characterized the strikes in southern Iranas defensive and said they had been intended “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”
The strikes came on a day when Israel signaled that it planned to intensify its fight against the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
With the two conflicts closely intertwined, escalation in the fighting in Lebanon might make it still harder for negotiators to reach a peace deal. Iran has said that any agreement should cover both the war with the United States and Israel, and the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah.
On Monday evening, after vowing that any agreement reached would be “great and meaningful” or “there will be no deal,” President Trump said he expected Iran either to turn its enriched uranium over to the United States or to destroy it in front of neutral witnesses.
It is unclear if Iran has agreed to this, though a senior U.S. official told reporters on Sunday that the Iranians had, in principle, committed to giving up stockpiles of enriched uranium. On Monday, Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said Iran was not discussing details of its nuclear program.
The fate of Iran’s nuclear program was just one critical aspect of a potential peace deal that remained unclear on Monday. So was the status of Iran’s stockpile of missiles. It was also unclear how an agreement might address Iranian attempts to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway vital to world commerce.
Though Mr. Trump has at various times said a deal was close, he also said that his negotiators were in no rush to close the agreement.
Iran likewise poured cold water on hopes for an imminent deal to end the war and reopen the strait, which Iran has blockaded since the United States and Israel attacked in late February. The blockade has throttled global oil and gas supplies.
“It is true that we have reached conclusions on a large portion of the issues, but no one can claim that the signing of an agreement is imminent,” Mr. Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said on Monday, according to Iran’s state broadcaster.
Mr. Trump has also called on countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Abraham Accords to normalize ties with Israel as part of the initial agreement — to which they are highly unlikely to agree. If more countries sign up to the accords, it could placate some Iran hawks in the Republican Party who have expressed misgivings abouta the potential deal.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, led his country’s delegation in the Qatari capital, Doha, according to Iranian state media. According to two diplomats, the delegation arrived on Monday and also included Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister.
Speaking at a Memorial Day observance at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, Mr. Trump paid tribute to the 13 U.S. service members killed in the war with Iran, saying: “These incredible men and women gave their lives to ensure that the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror will never have a nuclear weapon. Oh, and they won’t. They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Here’s what else we’re covering:
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Oil markets: Oil prices fell sharply on Monday, with Brent crude, the global benchmark, settling for the day below $94 a barrel, down 6.5 percent. The price of oil remains around 30 percent higher than it was before the war.
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Strait of Hormuz: Even if an agreement between the United States and Iran is reached, the flow of oil and gas from the Middle East could take months to return to normal. Read more ›
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Israel’s reaction: In Israel, talk of a potential deal was received with concern, with some politicians warning it would fail to constrain Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Read more ›
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Global diplomacy: The senior leaders of Pakistan, which has been brokering the talks between the United States and Iran, visited China on Monday. China has close commercial ties with Iran and is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil. Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, posted on social media that he and other top officials had met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, and discussed the peace talks…..
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Trump IS trolling for help from Middle Eastern Countries (So he can pull out?)
Circling back to the Abraham Accords, Donald Trump said any deal to end the war with Iran should include a requirement for several additional countries including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to join the agreements aimed at normalising relations with Israel.
The US president pointed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar as countries that should “immediately” sign on, alongside Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan.
Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in 2020 became the first countries to join the accords, which the US brokered during Trump’s first tern.
He has long hoped Saudi Arabia would join, but the kingdom has maintained that any normalisation deal requires first establishing a clear path for Palestinian statehood, the Associated Press reports. That’s also key for Pakistan, which is among the countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
Masood Khan, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, said it remained to be seen how workable the proposal might be for the countries on Trump’s list. Pointing to the domestic pressure Trump is facing to strike a favourable deal with Iran, Khan said:
The invocation of the Abraham Accords at this stage gives an altogether new dimension to the diplomatic and mediatory processes because this issue was not on the agenda.”
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ISW…Iran Update Special Report, May 25, 2026
- The United States and Iran continue to hold fundamentally different positions on most major issues within the US-Iran “agreement.” Iran has not publicly committed to removing its highly enriched uranium (HEU) stockpiles or to halting uranium enrichment in Iran, reinforcing broader uncertainty around the negotiations. US President Donald Trump said on May 25 that any deal with Iran must be “great and meaningful,” and explicitly rejected “anything like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).”
- Iran has continued to claim that it and Oman control the Strait of Hormuz as territorial waters. Iranian officials are attempting to reframe transit tolls as “protection fees” to give Iran’s protection racket the veneer of legality. The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway under international law. Iran is claiming that the strait is territorial waters and under the administration of “coastal” states. It is notable in this context that Iran does not define the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a coastal state, even though the UAE borders the strait.
- US President Donald Trump urged on May 25 the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan to join the Abraham Accords.
- Hezbollah drone operators have likely developed a rudimentary tactical approach to coordinate multiple small first-person view (FPV) drone strikes in a short period of time. The “swarm” attacks appear to employ three or more drones operating in a staggered but near-simultaneous manner. This system is extremely rudimentary and would either require a single commander to coordinate the attack or a preset, prioritized list of strikes that cannot be dynamically changed. Hezbollah will likely attempt to overcome the shortcomings of this tactical approach.
Trump’s War Is Staggering to an Incoherent Defeat
Tom Nichols: “No one yet knows the details of the Iran deal that President Trump has been teasing on social media for the past day or so. The president himself has admonished his followers not to ‘listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about.’”
“But as this war stumbles to a close, it is clear that the president, too, is lost: He didn’t know what he was doing when he began it, and now he doesn’t know how to get out of it.”
Why Trump Lost
David Frum: “The first surprising thing about President Trump’s impending defeat in the 2026 Iran war is that he already fought and won a successful war against Iran last year. In June 2025, U.S. and Israeli air strikes badly damaged the Iranian nuclear program in 12 days of bombardment. Exactly how badly remains controversial. But they didn’t do nothing. If Trump had quit while ahead, he could have banked his gains from last June as a solid if imperfect win.”
“The second surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that he does not seem to have cared at all about the only evident reason to resume fighting in 2026: the Iranian people’s rebellion against their brutal oppressors. Trump has never given any evidence of caring about Iranian democracy or human rights…”
“The third surprising thing about Trump’s impending defeat is that even he himself seems never to have understood why he went back to war against Iran. What exactly did he think he would achieve?”