Erdogan says Turkey–US defense cooperation will support trade goals
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told U.S. President Donald Trump that strengthening cooperation in the defense industry could help achieve the goal of raising bilateral trade to $100 billion, the Turkish presidency said early Wednesday.
In a statement posted on X, the presidency said Erdogan also highlighted the significant potential for cooperation between the two countries in various sectors, including energy.
Erdogan welcomed the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Iran and Israel and stressed the importance of dialogue to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Reuters
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4 hours ago
- MTV Lebanon
NATO Leaders to Back Trump's Defence Spending Goal at Hague Summit
NATO leaders gather in The Hague on Wednesday for a summit tailor-made for U.S. President Donald Trump, with European allies hoping a pledge to hike defence spending will prompt him to dispel doubts about his commitment to the alliance. The summit is expected to endorse a higher defence spending goal of 5% of GDP - a response to a demand by Trump and to Europeans' fears that Russia poses an increasingly direct threat to their security following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. NATO officials are hoping the conflict between Israel and Iran, and the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites at the weekend, will not overshadow the gathering, hosted by alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte in his home city. Trump has threatened not to protect NATO members if they fail to meet spending targets and he raised doubts about his commitment again on his way to the summit by avoiding directly endorsing the alliance's Article 5 mutual defence clause. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, he said there were "numerous definitions" of the clause. "I'm committed to saving lives. I'm committed to life and safety. And I'm going to give you an exact definition when I get there," he said. The new target - to be achieved over the next 10 years - is a big increase on the current goal of 2% of GDP, although it will be measured differently. It would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in extra annual spending. Countries would spend 3.5% of GDP on core defence - such as troops and weapons - and 1.5% on broader defence-related measures such as cyber security, protecting pipelines and adapting roads and bridges to handle military vehicles. All NATO members have backed a statement enshrining the target, although Spain declared it does not need to meet the goal. Madrid says it can meet its military commitments to NATO by spending much less - a view disputed by Rutte. But Rutte accepted a diplomatic fudge with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez as part of his intense efforts to give Trump a diplomatic victory and make the summit go smoothly. Trump gave an unusual insight into those efforts on Tuesday by posting a private message in which Rutte lavished praise on him and congratulated him on "decisive action in Iran". "You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done," Rutte told Trump. "Europe is going to pay in a BIG way as they should, and it will be your win." To satisfy Trump, Rutte has also kept the summit and its final statement short and focused on the spending pledge. The text is expected to cite Russia as a threat and reaffirm allies' support for Ukraine but not dwell on those issues, given Trump has taken a more conciliatory stance towards Moscow and been less supportive of Kyiv than his predecessor, Joe Biden. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had to settle for a seat at the pre-summit dinner on Tuesday evening rather than a seat at the main meeting on Wednesday, although Trump said he would probably meet with Zelenskiy separately. Zelenskiy's plans for a meeting with Trump in Canada last week were dashed when the U.S. president left a G7 summit early, citing a need to focus on the crisis in the Middle East. Zelenskiy and his aides have said they want to talk to Trump about buying U.S. weapons including Patriot missile defence systems and increasing pressure on Moscow through tougher sanctions. The Kremlin accused NATO of being on a path of rampant militarisation and portraying Russia as a "fiend of hell" in order to justify its big increase in defence spending.
Nahar Net
4 hours ago
- Nahar Net
US-Lebanon ties may benefit from reduced Iranian support for Hezbollah
The whipsaw chain of events involving Iran, Israel and the United States that culminated in a surprise ceasefire has raised many questions about how the Trump administration will approach the Middle East going forward. Yet, the answer to the bottom line question — "what's next?" — remains unknowable and unpredictable. That is because President Donald Trump has essentially sidelined the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and confined advice and decision-making to a very small group of top aides operating from the White House. While there is uncertainty about whether the ceasefire between Iran and Israel will hold, it opens the possibility of renewed talks with Tehran over its nuclear program and reinvigorating stalled negotiations in other conflicts. "Now it's time for us to sit down with the Iranians and get to a comprehensive peace agreement," special envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "The Ingraham Angle." - Watching for next steps on Trump's social media - Outside experts, long consulted by presidential administrations on policy, have been forced like the general public to follow Trump's social media musings and pronouncements for insights on his thinking or the latest turn of events. Even Congress does not appear to be in the loop as top members were provided only cursory notifications of Trump's weekend decision to hit three Iranian nuclear facilities, and briefings on their impact scheduled for Tuesday were abruptly postponed. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce, whose agency has played a key role in formulating Iran policy for decades, repeatedly on Tuesday deferred questions to the White House and Trump's posts. "The secretary of state was in a dynamic with the president that is a private dynamic as that team was addressing a war and the nature of how to stop it," she told reporters. "I can't speak to how that transpired or the decisions that were made." Trump's announcement Monday that Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire took many in the administration by surprise — as did his post Tuesday that China is now free to import Iranian oil. It's an apparent 180-degree shift from Trump's "maximum pressure campaign" on Iran since he withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement during his first term. U.S. officials were left wondering if that meant wide-ranging sanctions aimed at cutting off Iran's energy revenue were being eased or reversed. Assessing the damage to Iran's nuclear program While the extent of the damage from 11 days of Israeli attacks and the weekend strikes by U.S. bunker-buster bombs is not yet fully known, a preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency said the nuclear program had been set back only a few months and was not "completely and fully obliterated" as Trump has said. According to people familiar with the report, it found that while the strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, they were not totally destroyed. Still, most experts believe the facilities will require months or longer to repair or reconstruct if Iran chooses to try to maintain its program at previous levels. Witkoff said the strikes set back Iran's ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade by years. Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, who has been nominated to lead forces in the Middle East, told lawmakers Tuesday that Iran still possesses "significant tactical capability." He pointed to Iran's attempt to retaliate by launching missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar. In response to a question about whether the Iranians still pose a threat to U.S. troops and Americans worldwide, Cooper replied, "They do." Trump, after announcing the ceasefire, boasted that Iran will never again have a nuclear program. However, there are serious questions about whether Iran's leadership, which has placed a high premium on maintaining its nuclear capabilities, will be willing to negotiate them away. - Restarting U.S.-Iran nuclear talks is possible - Another major question is what happens with negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. It is not entirely clear who in Iran has the authority to make a deal or even agree to reenter talks . Ray Takeyh, a former State Department official and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Iranian leadership is at a moment of disarray — making it difficult to return to the table. "The country's leadership and the regime is not cohesive enough to be able to come to some sort of negotiations at this point, especially negotiations from the American perspective, whose conclusion is predetermined, namely, zero enrichment," he said. Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed, saying the biggest challenge right now is who is in charge in Tehran." "Is there an Iranian negotiation team empowered to make consequential decisions?" he said. "The issue is that (Trump) is dealing with an Iranian government whose longtime identity has been based on hostility toward the the United States." Witkoff said the U.S. and Iran are already in early discussions, both directly and through intermediaries, about resuming negotiations. "The conversations are promising. We're hopeful." At the U.N. on Tuesday, Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told the Security Council that "diplomacy and dialogue are the only path to resolving the unnecessary crisis over Iran's peaceful program." In the aftermath of the U.S. strikes, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both stressed that diplomacy is still Trump's preferred method for ending the conflict permanently. "We didn't blow up the diplomacy," Vance told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "The diplomacy never was given a real chance by the Iranians. And our hope … is that this maybe can reset here." Rubio echoed those comments. "We're prepared right now, if they call right now and say we want to meet, let's talk about this, we're prepared to do that," he said. "The president's made that clear from the very beginning: His preference is to deal with this issue diplomatically." The Israel-Iran ceasefire could affect Trump's approach to other conflicts If it holds, the ceasefire could offer insight to the Trump administration as it tries to broker peace in several other significant conflicts with ties to Iran. An end — even a temporary one — to the Iran-Israel hostilities may allow the administration to return to talks with mediators like Egypt and Qatar to seek an end to the war between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas. In Syria, a further shift away from now-weakened Iranian influence — pervasive during ousted leader Bashar Assad's reign — could open new doors for U.S.-Syria cooperation. Trump already has met the leader of the new Syrian government and eased U.S. sanctions. Similarly, tense U.S. relations with Lebanon also could benefit from a reduced Iranian role in supporting the Hezbollah militant group, which has been a force of its own — rivaling if not outperforming the Lebanese Armed Forces, particularly near the Israeli border. If an Iran-Israel ceasefire holds, it also could allow Trump the time and space to return to stalled efforts to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Russia and Iran have substantial economic and military cooperation, including Tehran providing Moscow with drones that the Russian military has relied on heavily in its war against Ukraine. Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine in recent days as Israel attacked sites in Iran, perhaps expecting the world's attention to shift away from its three-year-old invasion.
Nahar Net
4 hours ago
- Nahar Net
Iran-Israel war: latest developments
by Naharnet Newsdesk 25 June 2025, 12:31 U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the ceasefire that ended 12 days of war between ally Israel and Iran was going "very well", while leaked U.S. intelligence cast doubt on the damage caused by U.S. strikes to Tehran's nuclear program. Here are the latest developments on the the second day of the ceasefire: - 'Decades' of damage - Trump insisted on Wednesday that U.S. strikes resulted in the "total obliteration" of Iran's nuclear capabilities, setting the country's atomic program back by "decades". "They're not going to be building bombs for a long time," said Trump, who added that the ceasefire since Tuesday was going "very well". U.S. media earlier cited people familiar with a preliminary U.S. intelligence report as saying that weekend strikes did not fully eliminate Iran's centrifuges or stockpile of enriched uranium. The U.S. bombardments sealed off entrances to some facilities without destroying underground buildings, setting Iran's nuclear program back by several months, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency report. - 'Significant hit' - The Israeli military said it had delivered a "significant hit" to Iran's nuclear program, but added that it was "still early to assess the results of the operation". "I believe we have delivered a significant hit to the nuclear program, and I can also say that we have delayed it by several years," military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in a televised press conference. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday hailed a "historic victory" in the 12-day conflict and vowed to thwart "any attempt" by Iran to rebuild its nuclear program. Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Tuesday the Islamic republic will continue to "assert its legitimate rights" to the peaceful use of atomic power. - State funerals - Iran will hold state funerals on Saturday for senior military commanders and top scientists killed during the war. Hossein Salami, the Revolutionary Guards chief killed by Israel on the war's first day on June 13, will be laid to rest in central Iran on Thursday. According to the Iranian health ministry, Israeli strikes during the war killed at least 610 civilians. Iran's attacks on Israel killed 28 people, according to official Israeli figures. - 'Terror' designation - Israel's defense minister on Wednesday designated Iran's central bank a "terror organization." "Part of Israel's broader campaign against Iran", the move aims "to target the heart of the Iranian regime's terror financing system, which funds, arms and directs terror throughout the Middle East", said a statement from Minister Israel Katz's office. - Iran MPs on IAEA - Iranian lawmakers voted Wednesday in favor of suspending cooperation with the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. "The International Atomic Energy Agency, which refused to even marginally condemn the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, put its international credibility up for auction," Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, according to state TV. The decision still requires the approval of the Guardian Council, a body empowered to vet legislation.
