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New statement from the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament
The Trump Administration, true to form, doubled down on lying, with JD Vance and others maintaining that having Israel cease operations in Lebanon was never part of the deal. The Janta Ka clip below not only recounts how Israel launched its most savage air strikes against Lebanon ever, of 100 missiles in 10 minutes, killing over 182 as of recent reports, but also has none other than the White House’s pet Middle East stenographer, Barak Ravid, effectively calling out the falsehood. [...]This section from Ravid in a CNN video starts at about 8:20:
"Well, I think it’s not only the Iranians. problem is that the Pakistani prime minister when he announced the ceasefire he made it clear that Lebanon was part of the deal, which raises the question of what happened there in the negotiations if the main mediator says that Lebanon is part of the deal. I know that the Egyptian mediators and the Turkish mediators see it the same way, that Lebanon is part of this deal.
Yesterday uh shortly before Trump announced a ceasefire he called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu who sort of lost control of the process and was very nervous about this ceasefire and during that call when Trump told him listen I’m going to agree to a ceasefire with Iran, Netanyahu told him but what about Lebanon we want to continue fighting. And Trump told Netanyahu, no problem you can continue fighting Lebanon is not part of this deal. So this was something that was agreed upon before the announcement of the ceasefire, it was agreed upon between Israel and the US. I heard it from both Israeli officials and US officials.
And US officials told me today that they’re not concerned about this those Iranian threats to withdraw from the negotiations or to uh close again the straight of Hormuz because of the situation in Lebanon. They think it will be solved and and it’s not going to be a reason for the agreement to collapse."Other sources confirm the Iranian view:
The press is amplifying market-soothing Trump claims that he has cemented a ceasefire “deal” with Iran and is on a path to a resolution of the war. But there are serious differences between what Iran has said it has agreed to, which is a US capitulation. The only concession Iran appears to have made is to somewhat reduce its Strait of Hormuz transit fee. By contrast, Trump depicts the two week ceasefire as a pause in his threat to end Iran as a civilization over a four-hour period, contingent on Iran fully opening the Strait…to which Iran has not agreed.
In addition, the Iran terms call for all hostile action to end, including of Israel against Lebanon. But Israel was not a party to this (non-convergent) agreement and is making minimally compliant noises while also reaffirming its intent to continue ethnic cleansing in Lebanon.
Now this turn of events is admittedly a lot better than where we were 24 hours ago, which was Trump threatening a bombing campaign against Iran that would have produced Iranian retaliation across the Gulf State which was certain, whatever form it took, to damage energy-related infrastructure so severely as to reduce energy output for many many years, risking as many warned, a global deep depression and even potentially a large rollback of living standards across the globe. If nothing else, this seems to signal that Trump is on a path to a durable TACO, as in he really has decided that he needs to find the most face-saving exit he can muster. Perhaps the same way only Nixon could go to China, perhaps only Susie Wiles could produce this shift
But just as Ukraine has agency in ending the war with Russia, so to does Israel in this conflict. This not-really-an-agreement was done over Israel’s head. Israel like Ukraine has ample means to sabotage. And that is before getting to the fact that Israel has never honored ceasefires it actually did agree to, save when it used one to make a short pause for its military to regroup before resuming fighting...
And we also do not know where the Gulf States stand on this development. The UAE, Kuwait and the Saudis has been on board with escalation, even by some accounts, egging Trump on.
And this view charitably assumes Trump really wants out, as opposed to is simply trying to buy time after the fiasco of what looks like a failed raid on Iran nuclear operations to figure out what to do next. Trump’s default is to try to keep options open and buy for time. He likely still thinks if he can contain paper oil prices and thus hopefully gas and diesel prices in the US, that he can keep pressure of various sorts on to open up anther path. He may not understand that anything less than going back to pretty close to the old normal levels of transit through the Strait of Hormuz very soon means compounding real economy damage. More but less than a high level of traffic would only reduce the rate of intensification of harm.
by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism | Read more:
(previous day's report from April 8: here).
Images: Iran/X
[ed. Much more. Also this (Trump got played by Israel). And, why are we attacking Iraq again?!]
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Here is the non-news news flash up front — The alleged ceasefire between the United States and Iran is kaput. While there has been no official announcement stipulating that it is over, trust me, it is over. The copium in the Trump administration in particular, and in Washington, DC in general, is ridiculous… Proclamations of a great military victory over Iran, without one shred of evidence that the US achieved any strategic objectives other than inspiring Iran to take control of the Strait of Hormuz and place the world economy in a supply-chain chokehold.Both Iran and Pakistan, the intermediary in the ceasefire, insist that the Trump administration accepted Iran’s 10-point as a workable basis for negotiation:
The initial reaction among Trump’s Zionist supporters and the Netanyahu government was a combination of shock and fury. The push back started immediately on Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning, the Trump administration insisted that it agreed to a different — yet undefined — set of 10-points. Israel made certain that the negotiations would fail by launching a vicious, murderous bombing of central and southern Lebanon.
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In the shadow of its wars in Iran and Lebanon, the U.S. has conducted devastating attacks on the security forces of its Iraqi ally.The March 25 assault was the sixth American attack on the Iraqi army since the launch of the war on Iran. As of April 7, there had been a total of 138 U.S. attacks on Iraq—including two additional strikes on the Iraqi army—resulting in the deaths of more than 73 PMF fighters, 10 Iraqi army soldiers, three dead from the Interior Ministry, and six dead civilians, according to Iraqi officials. For many in the country, it was starting to feel as if the U.S. has declared war on Iraq as well.
The U.S. attacks continued until the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was announced on April 8. On April 8, as Israel struck Lebanon at least 100 times and killed hundreds, Iran refused to implement the ceasefire agreement until Israel halted its aggression against Lebanon...
“There was a political, economic, and social effect to this last war,” said an official with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Who is striking Iraq today? America, right? What is America striking in Iraq? Bases of security forces, the PMF, the army. America is destroying the Iraq it built.”
Joe Kent, former director of the Trump administration’s National Counterterrorism Center, worked closely with the Iraqi government before resigning in March in protest over the U.S. war on Iran. He said he was at a loss to explain why the U.S. military was going after such a wide variety of targets in Iraq.
“For the life of me I don’t know,” Kent told Drop Site on March 28, “a lot of targeting inside Iran comes from Israelis. I’m assuming they have done some targeting in Iraq. They didn’t invest much. It seems like blind American ignorance. Someone convinced us that everything that is PMF is an Iranian proxy. It’s people who didn’t understand the history of Iraq in the last 20 years.”
“There’s definitely no strategy there. The charge d’affaires [at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad] and his team are not this fucking dumb, there’s no way they’re advocating this, they would know the difference between the militias,” he added. “You have guys who didn’t spend that long in Iraq, or senior leaders who spent time in Iraq during the ‘surge’ and think this is their chance to settle scores.” [via: “It Seems Like Blind American Ignorance”: The New U.S. War on Iraq (Drop Site).]
The U.S. attacks continued until the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was announced on April 8. On April 8, as Israel struck Lebanon at least 100 times and killed hundreds, Iran refused to implement the ceasefire agreement until Israel halted its aggression against Lebanon...
“There was a political, economic, and social effect to this last war,” said an official with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Who is striking Iraq today? America, right? What is America striking in Iraq? Bases of security forces, the PMF, the army. America is destroying the Iraq it built.”
Joe Kent, former director of the Trump administration’s National Counterterrorism Center, worked closely with the Iraqi government before resigning in March in protest over the U.S. war on Iran. He said he was at a loss to explain why the U.S. military was going after such a wide variety of targets in Iraq.
“For the life of me I don’t know,” Kent told Drop Site on March 28, “a lot of targeting inside Iran comes from Israelis. I’m assuming they have done some targeting in Iraq. They didn’t invest much. It seems like blind American ignorance. Someone convinced us that everything that is PMF is an Iranian proxy. It’s people who didn’t understand the history of Iraq in the last 20 years.”
“There’s definitely no strategy there. The charge d’affaires [at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad] and his team are not this fucking dumb, there’s no way they’re advocating this, they would know the difference between the militias,” he added. “You have guys who didn’t spend that long in Iraq, or senior leaders who spent time in Iraq during the ‘surge’ and think this is their chance to settle scores.” [via: “It Seems Like Blind American Ignorance”: The New U.S. War on Iraq (Drop Site).]
