If the purpose of trolling — the posting of offensive or inflammatory messages about an individual on social media — is to produce an overreaction, Donald Trump is a grandmaster of the genre.
He lashed out at Pope Leo XIV for opposing the Iran war. “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
When officials from the United States and Iran walked away from negotiations in Pakistan this weekend with no deal on the Strait of Hormuz, markets didn’t wait for clarity. They reacted. The subsequent announcement by United States Central Command of a naval blockade targeting Iranian ports was meant to reassure. Instead, it raised more questions than answers.
Markets, as they often do, may be reading this correctly.
h/t handy n handsome
Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Greece have all ruled out sending naval forces to support the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, exposing a growing rift inside NATO at the very moment global energy routes are under threat. Within hours of Washington’s request, European governments had distanced themselves from the operation and insisted that NATO has neither the mandate nor the interest to enter a war with Iran.
The refusal has triggered another dispute inside the Atlantic alliance. President Donald Trump has linked European participation in Hormuz to the future of NATO, warning that the United States cannot continue guaranteeing Europe’s security if Europeans refuse to support American operations abroad.
President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. military would blockade the Strait of Hormuz sets up a risky new showdown that could draw American forces into a prolonged struggle to control the strategic chokepoint while compounding the global economic damage caused by the conflict.
Hours after U.S. peace talks with Iran broke down in Pakistan, Trump said that the Navy would begin the blockade, “seek and interdict” vessels that had paid Iran to get through the strait, and then start clearing the waterway of sea mines. “He added that any Iranian forces that fired on U.S. troops or commercial shipping would be “BLOWN TO HELL.”
U.S. Forces Start Mine Clearance Mission in Strait of Hormuz
The UK will not be involved in enforcing the US military blockade of Iran, the BBC understands.
British naval ships and soldiers will not be used to block Iranian ports, while UK minesweepers and anti-drone capabilities will continue operating in the region.
A spokesperson for the UK government said: “We continue to support freedom of navigation and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which is urgently needed to support the global economy and the cost of living back home.”
What now after the collapse in peace talks between America and Iran in Pakistan? The gap between the two sides on the two critical issues – Iran’s nuclear programme and the Strait of Hormuz – proved too big in the end. Is it back to war? What does the failure to reach a deal mean for the fragile, two-week ceasefire the two sides agreed? Whose fault is it that the discussions, which lasted for a marathon 21 hours, broke down? So far, there is little in the way of concrete facts about what exactly happened in Islamabad but the blame game is already under way.
There is, in Washington, a recurring temptation: that the Middle East can be managed, contained, adjusted at the margins through economic pressure, surgical strikes, and the careful selection of supposedly “acceptable” figures drawn from within the very systems that generated the chaos. US President Donald Trump, whose instincts have often broken with this practice, now appears perilously close to reproducing it. The issue is not a lack of clarity— he understands the nature of the threat far better than most Western leaders — but the potential failure of an operation halted midway. Regimes are destabilized but left standing, Jihadist ecosystems are weakened but not dismantled. Recycled figures from the same ideological mold are repackaged as partners. This sadly makes for half-finished wars presented as advisability.
U.S. intelligence reportedly indicates China is looking to send shipments of weapons to Iran amid the Middle Eastern country’s conflict with the United States.
Beijing is delivering new air defense systems to Iran within the next few weeks and is working to route the shipments through third countries to mask their true origin, according to CNN. If true, the development would constitute a provocative statement by Beijing just weeks ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and would mark a significant escalation of support to Iran.
The U.S. has destroyed most of Iran’s navy. But not the one Tehran uses to control the Strait of Hormuz.
The regular navy operated Iran’s big battleships largely for prestige and occasional long-range deployments. The paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, on the other hand, has its own extensive fleet of more nimble boats designed to control the crucial waterway with missiles, mines and harassment of commercial ships—and they are much harder to reach.
The energy fallout of the U.S. and Israel-Iran war is a reminder that life is often unfair.
The United States, which started the war with a surprise attack on Iran in the middle of negotiations, could escape largely unscathed in terms of its energy supply — even as its international reputation takes a hit and U.S. inflation spikes as a result of oil prices.
But U.S. allies in Asia and Europe, who were neither consulted nor warned about the U.S.-Israeli attack, are facing sustained shortages.
At first glance they look like they could be scenes out of a Lego movie, although more vivid and fast-paced.
But these viral AI videos inspired by the instantly recognisable Lego aesthetic feature dying children, fighter jets and US President Donald Trump – and are in fact pro-Iran propaganda.
For our new BBC podcast, Top Comment, we spoke to a representative of Explosive Media, one of the key accounts generating these clips. He wanted us to refer to him as Mr Explosive.
Iran’s new Lego video is characterically impressive propaganda. Epstein, oil politics, antisemitic tropes – all delivered through an iconic Western brand.
As ever, the goal is to exploit Western cultural divisions. As ever, it succeeds. pic.twitter.com/VVRYkjwvCY
— David Patrikarakos (@dpatrikarakos) April 10, 2026
“Experts”
US President Donald Trump says that the US is going to start “BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz”.
In a lengthy new post on Truth Social, he says that “the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not”.
The colonel, one of a two-man crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle shot down by an Iranian shoulder-launched missile, had spent two days trying to conceal his location from enemy search parties, while letting his would-be rescuers know where he was.
Apart from intermittent radio contact, all he had was his personal “come-and-get-me” beacon signal. And he dared switch that on only occasionally, for the Iranians would surely be monitoring the conventional means of rescuing him.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Vice President JD Vance said an agreement was not reached with Iran to end the six-week war that has rocked the Middle East following marathon peace talks in Pakistan.
Throughout the roughly 21 hours of talks, very few details were made available — leaving the world to speculate about what would come from the past six weeks of war.
“We have been at it now for 21 hours, and we’ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That’s the good news,” Vance told reporters in Islamabad.
Iran has ostensibly agreed to a two-week ceasefire — which, intentionally or not, it broke within minutes — and to negotiations. At first glance, an agreement may seem a meaningful step. With the Islamic Republic of Iran, however, a ceasefire does not necessarily indicate a genuine shift in intent. As US President Donald J. Trump and his negotiators undoubtedly know, it more likely functions as a tactical pause to relieve pressure, rebuild capabilities, and buy time under the cover of diplomacy.
