“US Israel Iran War”

ISTANBUL — The two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran cracked on the first day. Israel on Wednesday launched its largest strike on Lebanon since the war began, killing more than 250 people. Iran called it a grave violation and threatened strong responses.

The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. Peace talks are scheduled in Islamabad on Friday.

The Yemen-based Houthis — Iranian proxies waging civil war against their own government while regularly lobbing missiles at Israel — were not party to any of it. They have not said a word.

Vice President JD Vance departed for Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday morning, forecasting “positive” negotiations as he leads the U.S. delegation for peace talks with Iran.

“We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it’s going to be positive,” Vance told reporters as he boarded Air Force Two.

President Donald Trump dispatched Vance to lead the U.S. envoys for this weekend’s negotiations, which aim to find an end to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff will join Vance as part of the U.S. contingent.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said there is “no ceasefire in Lebanon” and Israel would continue “to strike Hezbollah with full force” as the country’s military launched fresh strikes.

The Israeli prime minister’s remarks and latest attacks on what the IDF called “Hezbollah launch sites” came shortly after Donald Trump said he had asked Netanyahu to be more “low-key” in Lebanon.

Despite the latest bombardment, Netanyahu said he had instructed his government to “open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible”. He said the talks should focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah and the establishment of “peace relations” with Lebanon.

Trump’s critics cry “war crimes” while ignoring decades of U.S. precedent—revealing less a legal argument than a reflexive, and deeply selective, political outrage.

The Left and some on the Right went crazy over a recent Trump tweet.

He warned that if the Iranian regime did not cease blocking the international Strait of Hormuz, he would hit its dual military-civilian infrastructure. He promised that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

During World War II, my father served in the South Pacific. Whom did he think he was fighting? I know from reviewing his letters back home that it wasn’t “the Imperial Japanese government.” He was fighting “the Japs.”

GIs deployed to Europe, I’m willing to bet, didn’t identify their enemy as the Wehrmacht or even the Nazis. They were at war with the Germans — or the Jerries, or the Huns, or Fritz.
That instinct, to name the enemy as a whole people, is understandable in wartime. It’s also often wrong. If we get it wrong, then it’s to our detriment.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt faced a mostly liberal, elite media press corps Wednesday afternoon that had a Costco-sized carton of eggs on their face from President Trump’s Truth Social post the night prior unveiling a preliminary peace deal with Iran following declarations “a whole civilization will die,” so it was no surprise some arrived with adversarial question.

This included two questioning whether the U.S. has lost the “moral high ground” in the world and against Iran, which has killed tens of thousands of protesters in the last year, criminalizes homosexuality, oppresses women, and has one of the worst records for press freedom.

Contrary to the hopes of America and Israel, the Islamic Republic still stands. It may be battered and many of its leaders dead, including the supreme leader himself, but those who survive can claim the failure of “regime change” as victory.

Nevertheless, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the late leader’s son and designated successor, and his inner circle will have to make tough choices about the nature of their regime in the next two weeks and beyond.

Imagine calling for the destruction of a civilisation. Imagine dreaming about violently scrubbing an ancient nation from the face of the Earth. Imagine flirting with the idea of obliterating a land with thousands of years of rich history. I am referring, of course, to the activist class and its annihilationist hatred for the Jewish State. For nearly three years, these people have beat the streets and swarmed the digital networks to agitate for the erasure of Israel, all the way ‘from the river to the sea’. President Trump’s juvenile bluster on Iran has nothing on their existential loathing for the Jewish homeland.

The fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran appears to have broken down after Tehran shut the Strait of Hormuz and attacked a Saudi oil pipeline.

Iran stopped oil tankers heading through the critical sea passage in protest at continued Israeli air strikes on Lebanon. The US insisted Lebanon was not covered by the ceasefire agreement.

On Wednesday afternoon, Israel hit 100 targets in 10 minutes during a surprise attack on central Beirut, in what it said was a campaign to root out Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces. Some 112 people died, according to local authorities. Iran also claimed that “enemy” air strikes hit Tehran.

Russia, China and the Middle East are theaters where Western strategic illusions tend to erode too slowly — almost politely — until reality forces its way through.

The rulers of the Middle East learned long ago — from the United States falling for their Charlie Brown football routine every time — how to outwit the West or outlast it.

With the Gaza Strip, US President Donald J. Trump sets up a “Board of Peace” ostensibly to oversee the permanent disarmament of Hamas, only to pack it with Islamists dedicated to waging war, who have no interest in seeing any kind of peace, and then turns his attention elsewhere while Hamas comfortably builds up its power base again.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday bashed leaks and media reports about the terms of a U.S.-Iran ceasefire, as confusion over the agreement threatened to undermine the fragile pause in fighting.

In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “Numerous Agreements, Lists, and Letters” being circulated online are being “sent out by people that have absolutely nothing to do with the U.S.A. / Iran Negotiation, in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE.”