Trump says Iran has 'second chance' to come to nuclear deal as Israel and Iran exchange blows
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday (June 13) urged Iran to quickly reach an agreement on curbing its nuclear programme as Israel vowed to continue its bombardment of the country.
Trump framed the volatile moment in the Middle East as a possible "second chance' for Iran's leadership to avoid further destruction "before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.'
The Republican president pressed on Iran as he met his national security team in the Situation Room to discuss the tricky path forward following Israel's devastating strikes, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to keep up for "as many days as it takes' to decapitate Iran's nuclear programme.
The White House said it had no involvement in the strikes, but Trump highlighted that Israel used its deep arsenal of weaponry provided by the United States to target Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz and the country's ballistic missile programme, as well as top nuclear scientists and officials.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he had warned Iran's leaders that "it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it."
Just hours before Israel launched its strikes on Iran early Friday, Trump was still holding onto tattered threads of hope that the long-simmering dispute could be resolved without military action.
Now, he'll be tested anew on his ability to make good on a campaign promise to disentangle the United States from foreign conflicts.
In the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, the United States is shifting its military resources, including ships, in the Middle East as it looks to guard against possible retaliatory attacks by Tehran, according to two US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The Navy has directed the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner to begin sailing toward the Eastern Mediterranean and has directed a second destroyer to begin moving forward, so it can be available if requested by the White House.
As Israel stepped up planning for strikes in recent weeks, Iran had signaled the United States would be held responsible in the event of an Israeli attack. The warning was issued by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even as he engaged in talks with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear programme.
Friday's strikes came as Trump planned to dispatch Witkoff to Oman on Sunday for the next round of talks with the Iranian foreign minister.
Witkoff still plans to go to Oman this weekend for talks on Tehran's nuclear programme, but it's unclear if the Iranians will participate, according to US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic discussions.
The president made a series of phone calls Friday to US television news anchors to renew his calls on Iran to curb its nuclear programme.
CNN's Dana Bash said Trump told her the Iranians "should now come to the table" and get a deal done. And Trump told NBC News that Iranian officials are "calling me to speak" but didn't provide further detail.
Trump also spoke Friday with British Prime Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron about the evolving situation, as well as Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, oil prices leapt and stocks fell on worries that the escalating violence could impact the flow of crude around the world, along with the global economy.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., offered rare words of Democratic praise for the Trump administration after the attack "for prioritising diplomacy' and "refraining from participating" in the military strikes. But he also expressed deep concern about what the Israeli strikes could mean for US personnel in the region.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who's on Democrats' shortlist for top 2028 White House contenders, said if Israel can set back Iran's nuclear programme with the strikes "it's probably a good day for the world.'
"But make no mistake: We do not want an all-out war in the Middle East," Shapiro said. "That's not only bad for the Middle East, it's destabilising for the globe, and it's something that I hope will not occur.'
Israel launched blistering attacks on the heart of Iran's nuclear and military structure Friday, deploying warplanes and drones previously smuggled into the country to assault key facilities and kill top generals and scientists - a barrage it said was necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon.
Iran retaliated by unleashing scores of ballistic missiles on Israel, where explosions flared in the skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and shook the buildings below. The US military assisted Israel intercept the missiles fired by Iran in the retaliatory attack.
Trump, in the hours before the Israeli attack on Iran, still appeared hopeful in public comments that there would be more time for diplomacy.
But it was clear to the administration that Israel was edging toward taking military action against Iran. The State Department and US military on Wednesday directed a voluntary evacuation of nonessential personnel and their loved ones from some US diplomatic outposts in the Middle East.
Before Israel launched the strikes, some of Trump's strongest supporters were raising concerns about what another expansive conflict in the Mideast could mean for the Republican president, who ran on a promise to quickly end the brutal wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Trump has struggled to find an endgame to either of those conflicts and to make good on two of his biggest foreign policy campaign promises.
And after criticising President Joe Biden during last year's campaign for preventing Israel from carrying out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Trump found himself making the case to the Israelis to give diplomacy a chance.
The push by the Trump administration to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear program came after the United States and other world powers in 2015 reached a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
But Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Obama administration-brokered agreement in 2018, calling it the "worst deal ever.'
The way forward is even more clouded now.
"No issue currently divides the right as much as foreign policy,' Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and an ally of the Trump White House, posted on X on Thursday.
"I'm very concerned based on (everything) I've seen in the grassroots the last few months that this will cause a massive schism in MAGA and potentially disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful Presidency.' - AP
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Straits Times
4 hours ago
- New Straits Times
NST Leader: Israel's banditry
ISRAEL is its own enemy. And the enemy of the United States, too, as once pointed out by prominent Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy: "With friends like Israel, the US needs no enemy". The expansionist ambition of the Zionist regime led by Benjamin Netanyahu is taking Tel Aviv on a warpath with any nation it chooses to call its enemy. On Friday, it chose Iran, bombing nuclear sites and residential areas, killing several generals, nuclear scientists and children. Earlier, it was Iraq, and lately Lebanon and Syria. Who else is next is anybody's guess. Being a hubristic rogue state, it cares nothing for international law. We witnessed this in its disrespect for resolution after resolution of the United Nations Security Council, the law-making arm of the world body. It has equal disrespect for the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, ignoring the arrest warrants of the former and the rulings of the latter. There is no basis in international law for Israel's airstrikes on Iran, a sovereign country. Israel needs the approval of the UNSC in the absence of a clear and immediate threat from Iran. Clearly, there was none, though Tel Aviv says Iran had a plan to destroy Israel. When did a plan, even if it is true, become a "clear and immediate threat"? If the international community allows a sovereign nation to be attacked on such flimsy grounds, it must stand ready to host a free-for-all world order. Calling the strikes as a declaration of war, Iran is already raining ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv. Israel is under fire. No one knows where it will all end. Puzzlingly, no Western nations, which rush to say "Israel has a right to defend itself" with practised hypocrisy, chose not to say the same for Iran. Hypocrisy rules, not okay. Who attacked whom? Call it a replay of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, with Israel playing the victim ad nauseam. We now know that the US was informed of the planned illegal attack and yet it didn't stop Netanyahu. Now the already muddled Middle East is facing the possibility of a regional war that will have a ripple effect on the rest of the world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rightly called Israel's airstrikes on Iran "banditry". He warned that Israel's aggressive behaviour could drag the world into disaster and urged the international community to put an end to Israel's lawless actions. Speaking in the context of Gaza, Levy told the Turkish news agency, Anadolu Agency, two years ago that peace will not come from Israelis; they must be made to pay the price of occupation. Who will make them pay? Clearly, the international community. But therein lies a problem. To borrow the words of former European Union top official Josep Borrell, again spoken in the context of Gaza, the international community is suffering from political and moral failure. It is crippled by one country — the US — which can end Israel's impunity, if it wanted to. The UN will do well to revisit Erdogan's suggestion to the 79th UN General Assembly that it recommend the use of force against Israel if the UNSC fails to act.
The Star
4 hours ago
- The Star
Trump reports more than $600 million in income from crypto, golf, licensing fees
(Reuters) -Donald Trump reported more than $600 million in income from crypto, golf clubs, licensing and other ventures in a public financial disclosure report released on Friday that provided a glimpse of the vast business holdings of America's billionaire president. The annual financial disclosure form, which appeared to cover the 2024 calendar year, shows the president's push into crypto added substantially to his wealth but he also reported large fees from developments and revenues from his other businesses. Overall, the president reported assets worth at least $1.6 billion, a Reuters calculation shows. While Trump has said he has put his businesses into a trust managed by his children, the disclosures show how income from those sources still ultimately accrue to the president - something that has opened him to accusations of conflicts of interest. Some of his businesses in areas such as crypto, for example, benefit from U.S. policy shifts under him and have become a source of criticism. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The financial disclosure was signed on June 13 and did not state the time period it covered. The details of the cryptocurrency listings, as well as other information in the disclosure, suggest it was through the end of December 2024, which would exclude most of the money raised by the family's cryptocurrency ventures. Given the speed at which the Trump family has made deals during his ascent to the presidency, the filing is already a time capsule of sorts, capturing a period when the family was just starting to get into crypto but was largely still in the world of real estate deals and golf clubs. A meme coin released earlier this year by the president - $TRUMP - alone has earned an estimated $320 million in fees, although it's not publicly known how that amount has been divided between a Trump-controlled entity and its partners. In addition to the meme coin fees, the Trump family has raked in more than $400 million from World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance company. The Trump family is involved, also, with a bitcoin mining operation and digital asset exchange-traded funds. In the disclosures, Trump reported $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty. He also reported holding 15.75 billion governance tokens in the venture. TRUMP MEDIA The wealth of the Republican businessman-turned-politician ranges from crypto to real estate, and a large part on paper is tied up in his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of social media platform Truth Social. Besides assets and revenues from his business ventures, the president reported at least $12 million in income, including through interest and dividends, from passive investments totaling at least $211 million, a Reuters calculation shows. His biggest investments were in alternative fund manager Blue Owl Capital Corp and in government bond funds managed by Charles Schwab and Invesco. The disclosure often only gave ranges for the value of his assets and income; Reuters used the lower amount listed, meaning the total value of his assets and income was almost certainly higher. The disclosure showed income from various assets including Trump's properties in Florida. Trump's three golf-focused resorts in the state - Jupiter, Doral and West Palm Beach - plus his nearby private members' club at Mar-a-Lago generated at least $217.7 million in income, according to the filing. Trump National Doral, the expansive Miami-area golf hub known for its Blue Monster course, was the family's single largest income source at $110.4 million. The income figures provided are essentially revenues, not net profits after subtracting costs. The disclosure underlined the global nature of the Trump family business, listing income of $5 million in license fees from a development in Vietnam, $10 million in development fees from a project in India and almost $16 million in licensing fees for a Dubai project. Trump collected royalty money, also, from a variety of deals - $1.3 million from the Greenwood Bible (its website describes it as "the only Bible officially endorsed by Lee Greenwood and President Trump"); $2.8 million from Trump Watches, and $2.5 million from Trump Sneakers and Fragrances. Trump listed $1.16 million in income from his NFTs - digital trading cards in his likeness - while First Lady Melania Trump earned around $216,700 from license fees on her own NFT collection. (Reporting by Lawrence Delevingne, Tom Bergin, Tom Lasseter, Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Jim Oliphant; Editing by Sandra Maler, Paritosh Bansal, Megan Davies, Will Dunham and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
New Straits Times
4 hours ago
- New Straits Times
Netanyahu's obsession with Iran goes back a long way
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nearly 20-year-old threat to strike Iran came true on Friday, as US President Donald Trump warned Teheran of further "brutal" attacks if it refuses to negotiate. In its largest military action against Iran to date, Israel's strikes hit about 100 targets, including nuclear facilities and military command centres, and killed the armed forces' chief, top nuclear scientists and other senior figures. The strikes came as the United States and Iran were due to meet in Oman today to pick up negotiations towards an agreement on the Islamic republic's nuclear programme. "We are fairly close to a pretty good agreement," Trump said on Thursday, hours before news broke of the Israeli attacks. "I don't want them going in, because I think it would blow it," Trump added, speaking of the Israelis. But on Friday, Trump seemed unbothered by Israel's action, and on his Truth Social platform urged Iran to make a deal. "There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end," he wrote. Netanyahu, who has always scorned talks with Iran, paid no heed to Trump's original warning and took advantage of the seismic changes in the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023. "I doubt Israel would do this if the US told it not to," Menachem Merhavy, an Iran expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said. Merhavy said the timing of the attack "makes sense because Israel has been clipping the wings of Iran for the last year and a half", in actions against Tehran-aligned groups and proxies in the region, many of whom Israel has significantly weakened. Netanyahu said he had "ordered" the attack on Iran's nuclear programme months ago. "It was necessary to act and I set the implementation date for the end of April 2025," Netanyahu said. "For various reasons, it did not work out." But his obsession with Iran goes back much further than the ongoing Gaza war, sparked by an unprecedented attack by Tehran-backed Hamas. After Iran's former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused international uproar in 2005 when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", Netanyahu — then an opposition leader following his first term as premier in 1996-1999 — called Tehran's nuclear programme "a serious threat for the future". At the time, he said Israel "must do everything" to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, even if it meant striking the country's nuclear facilities as Israel had in Iraq in 1981. Iran has consistently denied seeking atomic weapons, but after his return to power in 2009, Netanyahu repeatedly dismissed Tehran's assurances that its nuclear programme was meant for civilian purpose only, and advocated a "military option". Netanyahu called the United Nations Security Council's 2015 approval of an agreement with world powers lifting sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear activities a "historic mistake". In 2018, he applauded Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the agreement, effectively scrapping it. Iran's reaction was to gradually abandon its commitments, enriching uranium to levels close to weapons-grade material and in unprecedented quantities. This gave Netanyahu a justification to keep up the fight against Iran's nuclear programme. All the while, Israel's Mossad spy agency worked in secret to undermine Iran's nuclear programme. Since the start of the Gaza war, Netanyahu has said on several occasions he was seeking to "reshape the Middle East". Late last year, Israel dealt a hard blow to Iran's so-called "axis of resistance" by crippling Lebanese armed group Hizbollah. The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, another Iranian ally, helped cement the regional dominance of Israel — the Middle East's only, if undeclared, nuclear power. But it was an Israeli response to 200 Iranian missiles last October that "changed the balance of power" between the two foes, according to statements at the time by then defence minister Yoav Gallant, after a series of Israeli strikes inside Iran — a rare direct confrontation.
