“US Israel Iran War”

Negotiators from the United States and Iran are set to meet in Islamabad this weekend for talks aimed at turning their current ceasefire into a durable peace.

The truce, announced Tuesday, has been shaky. Israel launched an aerial barrage against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remains snarled. But after nearly six weeks of war, both Washington and Tehran appear motivated to end the conflict, raising hopes that the talks Saturday, to be led by Vice President JD Vance and senior Iranian officials Abbas Araghchi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, might produce a deal.

In just six weeks, the Iran War has shattered a system of global trade that has enriched people and nations for more than a century: the freedom to sail the open seas.

The Strait of Hormuz long functioned as an artery for the world’s maritime economy. But that 30-mile-wide waterway is now a monument to a new global disorder. As some 20,000 sailors effectively held hostage at sea digested President Trump’s cease-fire announcement this week—contingent on the complete opening of the strait—Iranian officials stressed they would determine which ships could leave and at what price.

The “Tehran toll booth” was taking effect, as the U.S. Navy watched on, an admission that, at least here and now in the world’s oil corridor, America no longer rules the waves.

Imagine that! The WSJ is so obsessed with money it publishes absolute rot.

In the middle of an Easter lunch at the White House, President Donald Trump went off script to address speculation about JD Vance’s role in securing a deal to end the war in Iran.

“If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” Trump joked, drawing laughter at last week’s East Room event attended by senior administration officials including the vice-president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. And “if it does happen,” Trump added, “I’m taking full credit.”

The remarks perfectly captured Vance’s predicament as he leads a US delegation holding talks with Iran in Pakistan. It is the most challenging assignment of Vance’s vice-presidency so far – one with a limited upside and plenty to lose if negotiations fail.

For more than five weeks, President Trump bombarded Iran with missiles and bombs — and the American public with contradictory messaging about the aims and duration of this conflict. On Tuesday, having previously threatened to destroy “a whole civilisation”, he agreed instead to a two-week ceasefire.

History provides a useful point of comparison here. Consider an interview given by Vice-President Vance to UnHerd on April 15, 2025. “Just going back through history, I think — frankly — the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal,” he said.

At around 2 a.m. on the last day of Passover in Israel, weary Israelis once again hauled themselves from their beds into air-raid shelters and safe rooms as the sirens started to wail.

Iran had fired yet more barrages of missiles at Israel and the Gulf states. That was its reaction to the announcement that had just been made by U.S. President Donald Trump that Tehran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire. The regime’s response was immediately to break it.

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.