“I put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever,” Trump said Sunday at a healthcare event, after calls from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The three monarchs asked for “two or three days” to finish quiet diplomacy.

The plea did not arrive in a vacuum. Hours earlier, three drones had crossed into UAE airspace from the west and made for the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in Al Dhafra – the only reactor in the country. Emirati air defenses shot down two. The third struck an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter. No injuries, no radiation leak. No claim of responsibility.

The same Sunday, Saudi Arabia intercepted three more drones inbound from Iraqi airspace.

Iran denied involvement. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not exactly leave the matter there: “The truth is that the UAE was directly involved in the aggression” against Iran during the February 28 US-Israeli bombing campaign, he said. The Wall Street Journal reported during that conflict that Emirati assets had carried out covert strikes on Iranian targets.

The UAE’s only reactor powers Abu Dhabi’s grid. The Gulf monarchies have long counted on American firepower to keep Iran at a safe distance from their oil fields, their cities, their critical infrastructure. The Barakah strike – claimed by no one and denied by Tehran – left that arrangement looking thinner than it had on paper.

Their answer to Washington this week was: please, not yet.

Iran has not been idle elsewhere. Tehran has stood up a “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” to police transit through the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command says it has rerouted eighty-five commercial vessels and disabled four since the blockade began. Through Pakistani mediators, Iran has tabled a fourteen-point proposal for ending the standoff – with no concession on its nuclear program.

Israel, meanwhile, carried out thirty airstrikes in Lebanon over the weekend and killed an Islamic Jihad commander.

Trump’s pause is not a withdrawal. “The clock is ticking,” he warned Iran on Saturday. On Sunday, asked about gasoline prices at a Kentucky rally, he answered: “Gasoline is going to come tumbling down as soon as the war is over.” The war he names is not yet at an end – only on hold, at the request of allies who, for the first time in a long time, are not sure they want it to start.

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“More for public relations than it is for anything else… I would just feel better getting it.”
— Donald Trump

The admission collapses the central justification offered for last year’s U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities in June 2025 — the campaign that was sold to the American public as an existential necessity to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear material.

The stockpile that survived the war

Despite the bombing, the IAEA-tracked stockpile of 400 kg enriched to 60% purity — a step away from weapons-grade — was not destroyed. It remains under the rubble, still in Iranian hands, still monitored from above by U.S. surveillance. Trump described that surveillance as adequate, calling its presence the reason removal isn’t urgent.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes the opposite line. He described removal of the uranium as “terrifically important” and insists the conflict cannot be considered concluded while the material remains on Iranian soil. That gap between the two leaders’ framing matters, because the threat to renew strikes reported by the NYT this week centres on exactly this disagreement.

What Iran has offered, what Iran refuses

Tehran has rejected the U.S.-Israeli demand to dismantle enrichment or hand over the uranium. It has, however, offered a partial concession: down-blending the 60%-purity material to lower-grade reactor fuel. The U.S. and Israel have refused this in favour of full removal.

Iranian parliamentary spokesman Ebrahim Rezaei went further, warning that another strike will move Iran’s enrichment to weapons-grade — the line Tehran has not yet crossed despite holding the material for over a year.

“PR” — what Trump actually said, and what it means

By Trump’s own framing, removing the uranium is not about preventing an Iranian bomb. It is about optics. About being able to claim a clean conclusion to a war that was sold as preventing a bomb but in fact left the bomb material exactly where it was, with the original owner.

That is a striking admission. It implicitly concedes:

• The bombing did not actually achieve its stated military objective
• The follow-on demand for “full removal” exists not because the material is uniquely dangerous, but because without it the war looks unfinished
• The “PR” loss that would come from leaving the uranium in place is what’s driving the renewed pressure

Iran, for its part, has now been told publicly that the uranium is wanted not because of the threat it poses, but because Washington needs the picture to look better. That is a difficult opener for any negotiation.

Source: RT.com

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The reporting lands six weeks after the April 2026 ceasefire that ended the most intense phase of the February-to-April war on Iran — and amid a complete breakdown in indirect U.S.-Iran negotiations.

Talks dead, ceasefire crumbling

Indirect negotiations between Iran and the Trump White House have been stalled since the April ceasefire. Each side has dismissed the other’s terms as unrealistic. Washington insists Iran is in the weaker position; Tehran says the same of Washington. Neither has moved.

President Trump has repeatedly threatened to restart strikes, calling Iran’s negotiating posture a “piece of garbage” and “unbelievably weak.” Two senior Middle East officials told the NYT that preparations for renewed action have accelerated significantly in recent days.

What’s on the target list

According to the NYT’s sources, the options being staged include:

• “More aggressive bombing runs” against Iranian military targets and infrastructure
• A raid to seize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which has been moved deep underground following the June 2025 U.S. bombing of declared Iranian nuclear sites

The second option is the more provocative — a physical incursion onto Iranian soil to physically remove uranium would amount to a ground operation, not the standoff air-and-missile campaign of the first war.

Hormuz still choking world oil

The Strait of Hormuz remains contested. Disruptions are still causing global oil shortages and shipping diversions. Iran has proposed its own maritime traffic management framework for the strait; Washington has rejected the proposal while continuing to enforce a naval blockade on Iranian ports.

That blockade — quietly maintained since the ceasefire — is itself an act of war under classical international law. Iran’s foreign ministry has noted this without escalating, framing the country as still committed to a diplomatic outcome while warning it is ready to respond.

“We have every reason not to trust the Americans. There is no military solution, and the U.S. must understand this reality.”
— Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi

What “next week” really means

NYT-style leaks of an imminent strike are almost always either (a) a signal designed to extract a last-minute concession in stalled talks, or (b) the genuine article. The pattern of the last two months — stalled talks, ceasefire violations on both sides, a sustained blockade, and Trump’s escalating personal language — points toward the latter.

If the second war starts next week, it begins from a tactical posture worse for the U.S. than the first did: depleted stockpiles of Tomahawks, ATACMS, SM-3, THAAD, and Patriot rounds that, by the Pentagon’s own admission, will take years to replenish.

Source: RT.com / The New York Times

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There is one problem with the celebration. The Nigerian Defence Headquarters (DHQ) already announced that it killed Abu Bilal Minuki — listed by that exact name — in April 2024, citing operations conducted between January and March of that year in the Birnin Gwari forest area of Kaduna State.

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa…”
— Donald Trump, Truth Social, 5:31 AM, 5/16/26

Killed twice, two years apart

The earlier 2024 announcement was not vague. The DHQ named Abu Bilal Minuki in its formal quarterly briefing as one of the top terrorist commanders neutralised during the Birnin Gwari operations. The Nigerian press carried the story at the time. The name and the role were the same.

Two years later, an apparently identical figure is being killed again — this time by a U.S.-Nigerian joint operation, and this time announced from the Oval Office.

The official explanation: it’s a different guy with the same name

Pressed for clarification, DHQ’s Director of Defence Information, Somalia Uba, said the 2024 killing and the 2026 killing involved two different men who happened to share the name “Abu Bilal Minuki.”

“The use of similar or identical names, aliases and nom-de-guerres is prevalent among ISWAP and Boko Haram terrorists” as “a deliberate part of their indoctrination strategy.”
— Somalia Uba, DHQ

According to the DHQ, the May 16, 2026 target was “positively identified through human intelligence and technical surveillance as a senior global operative” with “direct connections to international terrorist coordination.”

The Defence Headquarters offered no biometric, photographic, or DNA comparison between the man Nigeria said it killed in 2024 and the man Trump and Tinubu announced was killed in 2026. The explanation rests entirely on the claim that two senior commanders of the same group, in the same theatre, in the same role, happened to be operating under the same name within two years of each other.

Falana: not buying it

Prominent Nigerian human rights lawyer Femi Falana, SAN, publicly faulted both presidents over the announcement, calling on Tinubu to verify Trump’s claim before endorsing it. Falana flagged the contradiction with the 2024 DHQ statement directly and questioned whether the Nigerian government had checked its own kill list before agreeing to share the announcement with Washington.

The pattern

Top Boko Haram and ISWAP leaders being declared dead, then resurfacing — or being declared dead a second time — is not new. Abubakar Shekau, the late Boko Haram leader, was declared killed multiple times by the Nigerian military before reportedly dying by suicide in 2021. Mamman Nur, also of ISWAP, was similarly the subject of conflicting kill announcements.

Each successful “killing” delivers a political dividend — for the announcing government — irrespective of whether the man on the ground is actually the same man who was already declared dead. With Trump now folded into the loop, the dividend now extends to two capitals at once.

Sources: Trump (Truth Social), Sahara Reporters, Daily Post Nigeria, ThisDay, Premium Times, Al Jazeera

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The disclosure follows the January U.S. military operation that captured deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro on narco-terrorism charges. Trump told reporters Washington would “manage” Venezuela during its transitional period, working with acting president Delcy Rodriguez – the same Rodriguez who has now explicitly rejected the annexation plan.

“That would never have been considered, because if there is one thing we Venezuelan men and women have, it is that we love our independence process.”
– Acting President Delcy Rodriguez

The oil math

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves – an estimated $40 trillion at today’s prices. After Hugo Chavez nationalized the industry nearly two decades ago, U.S. majors Exxon and ConocoPhillips were pushed out. Chevron held on through a special licence. The expulsion shaped Washington’s posture toward Caracas for a generation.

Since January, that posture has reversed. White House energy advisors and cabinet officials have held multiple meetings with U.S. oil executives, encouraging investment in Venezuelan production. Output reached over 1 million barrels per day in April – the highest level since 2018.

“As the President has said, relations between Venezuela and the United States have been extraordinary. Oil is starting to flow, and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, will soon be helping the great people of Venezuela.”
– White House spokesperson

A growing wish list

Venezuela joins a lengthening list of territories Trump has publicly expressed interest in folding into the United States – including Greenland, Canada, Cuba, and Panama. Each one offers something specific: Arctic shipping lanes, fresh water, sugar quotas, the canal. Venezuela offers the largest hydrocarbon prize on the planet.

The obstacles, on paper

Statehood requires two things: Congressional approval, and the consent of the territory being absorbed. The acting government in Caracas has rejected the idea publicly. There has been no Congressional bill. The White House has declined to spell out what the plan would actually look like.

Trump’s defense, when pressed, is that the people will sort it out:

“Venezuela loves Trump.”
– Donald Trump

Whatever Caracas’s official answer is, the trajectory is clear. A foreign president was captured by U.S. forces. A successor government was installed. U.S. oil companies are being walked back in. And Washington is now, openly, talking about the country as the 51st state.

Source: Fox News

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Speaking on CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday, the prime minister was asked whether Israel should reexamine its financial relationship with Washington. His answer was unusually direct:

“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have.” The process, he said, should “start now” and be completed “over the next ten years.”
— Benjamin Netanyahu

The size of the dependency

Israel is the single largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II, with over $300 billion in economic and military assistance flowing from Washington since 1948. A ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016 commits the U.S. to $38 billion in military aid through 2028, of which $5 billion is earmarked specifically for the Iron Dome missile defense system. Roughly 16% of Israel’s defense budget is American money.

Cutting that to zero over a decade is not a small claim. Israel’s defense industry would have to absorb a multi-billion-dollar annual gap – and find paying customers, or domestic taxpayers, to fill it.

The “bot farm” excuse for collapsing support

Netanyahu was also pressed on the now-conspicuous fact that six in ten Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel. His explanation skipped Gaza – where the Palestinian death toll has now passed 71,000 – and pointed instead at social media manipulation by unnamed foreign actors.

“Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we’ve not done well on the propaganda war.”
— Netanyahu

“We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms with fake addresses, to break the American sympathy to Israel.”
— Netanyahu

No countries were named. No bot networks were identified. The framing tracks a familiar pattern: when public opinion turns against a long-running military operation, the operation isn’t questioned – the audience is accused of being deceived.

Two messages, one strategy

Read together, the two halves of the interview point the same direction. Netanyahu is signaling to a domestic audience that Israel will become financially self-sufficient – useful as the U.S. Congress grows more skeptical of unconditional aid – while telling the same domestic audience that the foreign skepticism isn’t legitimate, only manufactured.

The promise to end U.S. cash assistance, if real, would mark the largest restructuring of the bilateral relationship in three generations. The bot-farm explanation, if accepted, would also mark something: a refusal to read the simplest available answer for why support is falling.

Source: RT.com

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The systems that ran low

Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Kelly – a former Navy combat pilot now sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee – said it was “shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines” after a Pentagon briefing on the Iran war’s impact on U.S. weapons inventories.

The senator named specific systems hit hard:

• Tomahawk cruise missiles
• Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS)
• RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) ship-based interceptors
• Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) rounds
• Patriot interceptor rounds

These are the high-tier U.S. air-defense and long-range strike assets – and Kelly warned that the gaps could not be filled quickly enough to matter in a hypothetical confrontation with China.

“Did he violate his oath?”

Hegseth fired back on social media, calling Kelly “‘Captain’ Mark Kelly” in scare-quotes and accusing him of “blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a *CLASSIFIED* Pentagon briefing.” He announced Pentagon legal counsel would review the comments.

“‘Captain’ Mark Kelly strikes again. Now he’s blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a CLASSIFIED Pentagon briefing he received. Did he violate his oath… again?”
– Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

Kelly’s reply pointed out that the figures he cited weren’t his own – they were Hegseth’s, given in a public hearing the previous week:

“We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago and you said it would take ‘years’ to replenish some of these stockpiles. That’s not classified, it’s a quote from you. This war is coming at a serious cost and you and the president still haven’t explained to the American people what the goal is.”
– Senator Mark Kelly

Old feud, new front

The classification fight is layered on top of a months-long battle between Hegseth and Kelly. In late 2025, Kelly and five Democratic colleagues – Sens. Elissa Slotkin and Reps. Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, Maggie Goodlander, and Jason Crow – released a video urging service members to refuse illegal orders. The Trump administration opened a DOJ investigation, but a grand jury declined to indict in February. Hegseth then moved to demote Kelly from his retired Navy captain rank; federal courts blocked the move, finding likely First Amendment violations.

What it really says about the Iran war

Strip away the personal feud and Kelly’s actual claim is the more consequential headline. After the February-to-April war on Iran – during which Tehran absorbed and returned over 100 waves of strikes – the most expensive layers of U.S. missile defense and long-range strike are materially depleted. THAAD and Patriot interceptors are not the kind of thing factories can ramp up in months; the SM-3 production rate has historically run at dozens, not hundreds, of rounds per year. ATACMS and Tomahawk replenishment timelines run years, not quarters.

If a Pacific contingency arrives before those stockpiles refill, the bill for one war becomes a constraint on the next.

Source: Fox News

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The Israeli military responded with a statement saying it views the incident “with utmost severity” and that the soldier’s conduct “completely deviates” from its values. The IDF said the photo had been taken several weeks earlier, that a formal investigation was underway, and that “command measures” would follow. It stressed respect for holy sites and religious symbols.

A pattern, not an incident

The cigarette photo is the latest in a documented pattern of Israeli forces’ behaviour toward Lebanon’s Christian community. In April 2026, video circulated of an IDF soldier destroying a statue of Jesus Christ in the same village of Dibil — using a large mallet, during ground operations in southern Lebanon. The damaged crucifix was later photographed and posted to the town’s official page alongside a biblical inscription:

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

The IDF confirmed that two soldiers involved in that vandalism were withdrawn from combat and imprisoned for 30 days after the video went viral.

Christians on the receiving end of “Israeli values”

Christian communities across the region have catalogued repeated incidents involving Israeli forces and Christian sites:

• 2023: Israeli airstrike near Gaza’s Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius killed at least 18 people sheltering inside.
• 2025: Tank-shell shrapnel struck Gaza’s Holy Family Church, killing three.
• March 2026: A Catholic nun was assaulted in Jerusalem.
• April 2026: Jesus statue smashed with a mallet in Dibil, southern Lebanon.
• May 2026: Cigarette placed in Virgin Mary’s mouth — same village.

Israel launched its current combat operation in Lebanon on March 2, 2026. The pattern of religious-site incidents has accelerated since.

For Lebanon’s Christians — who once trusted that an Israeli military “rooted in Judeo-Christian values” would handle their churches with care — the cigarette photograph is a reminder of how that promise reads on the ground.

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The statement accused the UAE of permitting its territory to be used for attacks against Iran during the recent U.S.-Israeli aggression — a war the ministry described as unprovoked.

“The Islamic Republic has exercised maximum restraint, adopting a responsible approach and out of respect for the collective good of the region and the Muslim community.”
— Iran’s Foreign Ministry

The ministry warned the UAE against continuing “destructive actions in collusion with hostile parties,” cautioning that hosting adversary bases and equipment “carries dangerous consequences for regional peace and stability.”

Tehran also pushed back on Emirati accusations that Iran had targeted the Arab nation, clarifying that retaliatory measures hit only hostile foreign assets on Emirati soil — not the UAE itself. The ministry called the accusations baseless and inconsistent with the UN Charter.

“Iran will not hesitate to take any necessary and appropriate measures to defend its national interests and security.”
— Iran’s Foreign Ministry

The wider Gulf alignment problem

Throughout the conflict from February 28 to April 7, several Gulf and Arab states — including Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan — allowed their territory to be used as launch points for U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian soil. Tehran responded with what it described as at least 100 waves of retaliation against American and Israeli strategic targets across the region.

The new statement signals that Tehran considers the post-war Gulf alignment unfinished business, and that complicity by host nations remains on the record — and on the table.

Source: PressTV

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The missile was presented at the SAHA 2026 defense industry expo in Istanbul on Tuesday. Developed by state defense contractor ROKETSAN, the Yildirimhan has an estimated range of around 6,000 km (3,720 miles), putting most of Europe, North Africa, and large parts of Asia within reach.

Defense Minister Yasar Guler described the system as the country’s longest-range missile to date and its first liquid-fuel design capable of hypersonic flight. Speaking at the unveiling, he said the ICBM represents a “major step” in Türkiye’s defense capabilities.

“If we have to use it, no one should doubt that we will do so without hesitation, and in the most effective way.”
— Defense Minister Yasar Guler

Specifications

• Range: 6,000 km (3,720 miles)
• Speed: Mach 9–25 (hypersonic)
• Fuel: Liquid Nitrogen Tetroxide (N₂O₄)
• Propulsion: 4 rocket thrust motors
• Developer: ROKETSAN

A rapidly expanding defense industry

Guler said the national defense industry has sharply increased production capacity, and that Turkish military systems have proven themselves in conflict zones across Syria, Iraq, Libya, and the South Caucasus. He claimed locally built platforms — developed to NATO standards at lower cost — are directly affecting the military capabilities of foreign armies, and that Türkiye has transitioned from an import-dependent buyer to a nation that “designs, produces and exports its own systems.”

In recent years Ankara has fielded combat drones, cruise missiles, and ground-based systems, with Bayraktar TB2 strikes shaping conflicts from eastern Europe to North Africa.

Timing: post-Iran war

The unveiling lands during heightened Middle Eastern tensions following the US-Israeli war on Iran that began in late February. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan reportedly acknowledged that the Iran conflict gave Ankara an added incentive to accelerate domestic weapons and air-defense production — a reading that places the Yildirimhan as much in dialogue with Tel Aviv and Washington as with Tehran or Damascus.

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