From the president before he left the NATO meeting in Turkey:
David: There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over…. They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re a bunch of lying guys. My whole life, that’s all I do is deals. My whole life is, that’s how I became president, I guess. That’s a deal too, right? But I made a lot of money. I had a lot of great success. Tremendous success. Everything I did, I was successful. And I deal with these guys and I say, this is from a different school. They’re liars, they’re cheats, they’re sick people. They’ve hurt their people. They killed 54,000 people as of now that were protesting. When people say, how come they haven’t taken over? They can’t take over because they’re dead. They killed them. Nobody’s going to take over. They have no guns and the other side has machine guns and they’re killing them. The press doesn’t report it. But they’re bad people. They’re bad people. And frankly, I don’t want to waste my time with them.… I don’t like these people. You know that?And Vance should be sidelined.
By Mark Dubowitz, NY post, July 8, 2026, 9:53 p.m. ET
Just three weeks after it was signed, the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran is on life support.
Tehran’s promise to keep the Strait of Hormuz open for international shipping turned out to be about as trustworthy as every other major promise the Islamic Republic has ever made.
As the regime was busy staging the lavish funeral for its recently eliminated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian forces went ahead and attacked three commercial vessels transiting the strait.
The United States struck nearly 100 military targets across Iran in response.
Now President Trump has dismissed the negotiations as a “waste of time,” casting aside any diplomatic niceties by describing Iran’s rulers in stark terms: “liars,” “cuckoo,” “sick people,” “scum.”
And he’s right. Unlike much of Washington, Trump has long grasped that the Islamic Republic negotiates only to keep itself afloat.
During his first term, Trump pulled the plug on former President Barack Obama’s deeply flawed nuclear deal, imposed severe sanctions, and ordered the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, the mastermind behind Iran’s global terrorist network.
In his second term, he twice deployed American military power against the regime — first in June 2025 and again this year.
Yet Tehran seemed convinced it could simply recycle the same playbook that had worked for decades.
The strategy? Offer negotiations. Buy time. Secure sanctions relief. Drive a wedge between the United States and its allies. Rebuild military capabilities. Fund terrorist proxies.
Ramp up missile production.
And, of course, preserve the nuclear program until the next opportune moment.
For years, this strategy worked because Western governments were genuinely desperate for diplomacy to succeed.
This time, however, Iran badly miscalculated. To be fair, mixed signals emanating from Washington might have contributed to that mistake.
On the one hand, the Trump administration promised Iran major sanctions relief. At other moments, it’s issued warnings of devastating military consequences should Iran fail to comply.
These contradictory messages apparently convinced Tehran that it could once again manipulate the process to its advantage.
That requires reinstating maximum pressure across every single front. We need to reimpose the blockade on Iranian ports.
Iran’s ability to export oil must be permanently revoked. Frozen assets should remain frozen, rather than being used to finance the regime’s next bout of aggression.
Crushing sanctions need to be enforced, with no loopholes. The president should direct the US military to win the Battle of Hormuz. He should establish an maritime insurance organization, backed by billions from countries vulnerable to the closure of Hormuz and other critical maritime chokepoints.
Worth the risks
Washington also shouldn’t tolerate Tehran using proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen to bully negotiators.
The regime has shown economic incentives do not stop its revolutionary ambitions.
Yes, renewed confrontation carries risks. Oil prices could spike, and political calendars may become more complicated. But those are manageable costs.
Allowing the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to rebuild its power under the guise of yet another failed negotiation is far more dangerous.
Lasting change will have to come from the Iranian people themselves, who have consistently demonstrated extraordinary courage in confronting their oppressors.
Trump should direct his intelligence community to develop a plan to provide maximum support to the Iranian people, aimed at crippling the regime.
Trump has recognized that the Islamic Republic exploits diplomacy as a strategy of delay, deception and, ultimately, survival. The mistake now would be giving Tehran another opportunity to prove that point.
President Donald Trump described Iranian leadership as “sick people” and “scum” and declared the ceasefire “over” after the U.S. pounded struck 80 Iranian targets following attacks in Hormuz.
President Donald Trump said the tentative ceasefire with Iran is “over” after an intense bombing campaign overnight that followed Iranian attacks on commercial shipping.
“For me? I think it’s over,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore, they’re scum.”
He said talks with Iran could continue, but they’re a waste of time. “They’re liars, they’re cheats. They’re sick people.”
The comments may signal an end to weeks of talks that followed both sides signing a memorandum of understanding, in which they agreed to allow traffic to resume in the Strait of Hormuz and spend 60 days negotiating a long-term peace deal.
But Iran struck at least three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Monday and Tuesday, and the U.S. military responded with strikes on more than 80 targets in Iran.
On Wednesday the Kuwaiti military said it intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles and 13 drones.
“We attacked very powerfully last night the very dangerous people from Iran,” Trump said.
He noted that the U.S. had given Iranians a week off from negotiations for the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“We said, go and do your funeral stuff,” he said. “And instead of that, they started shooting rockets at ships yesterday.”
He continued to insist the U.S. would “denuclearize” Iran and likened the country’s leadership to cancer. “You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. clawed back oil sanctions waivers — a key concession offered to Iran as part of the memorandum of understanding.
A view of commercial cargo vessels and crude oil tankers are anchored in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Muscat, Oman, on June 21, 2026, as they prepare to transit through the critical Strait of Hormuz. Maritime traffic along this vital global trade corridor experienced severe disruptions following heightened geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran that escalated earlier in February. Following a diplomatic memorandum of understanding reached in mid-June, the strategic waterway is expected to fully reopen to international shipping and energy transit.
Of course, it was the number one state sponsor of terrorism all while Trump was promising to shower billions upon Tehran’s Islamic regime. In the strange Jekyll-and-Hyde act that is the Trump presidency, we seem to be seeing the return of the good Trump who is strong against Iran. Will he remember that Qatar is also a leading sponsor of terrorism and Muslim Brotherhood activity? No sign of that at this point.
“Iran remains ‘the number one state sponsor of terrorism’ — Trump,”
U.S. President Donald Trump stated that Iran is “the main sponsor of terrorism” and threatens international security. He also mentioned the elimination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
U.S. President Donald Trump called Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and stated that the regime poses a serious threat to international security. He told journalists on the sidelines of the NATO summit, reports UNN.
Details
According to Trump, Iran is responsible for numerous attacks against American military personnel.
Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism. They have been killing our military and hundreds of thousands of innocent people for years. This is a very dangerous regime, and we must get rid of this threat…
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Trump-Iran-is-still-the-number-one-state-sponsor-of-terrorism.jpg360640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2026-07-09 06:03:312026-07-09 15:19:20Trump: Iran is still ‘the number one state sponsor of terrorism’
Axios: U.S. Central Command forces have begun launching a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway. The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.
Command Center, Air Defense Systems, Radar, Drone Storage facility, IRGC boats and missile launchers have been targeted in ongoing joint ops by the US forces in Iran. IRGC positions in Qeshm Island, Bandar Abbas, Sirik Island and Bandar-e-Jask have been targeted.
Barak Ravid reports: The U.S. military said it conducted airstrikes against Iranian military targets in the area of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday in retaliation for renewed Iranian attacks on commercial ships…. A U.S. official said the targets included Iranian air defense systems, coastal surveillance systems, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship cruise missile sites, drone launch sites and port facilities. Iranian state media reported that explosions were heard in the port cities of Bandar Abbas and Sirik, as well as on Qeshm Island.
Central Command: U.S. Central Command forces have begun launching a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.
Iran claims US restoration of oil sanctions violates MOU ending war
Iran’s foreign ministry condemns a US Treasury move to revoke the temporary suspension of sanctions on Iranian oil sales, saying the decision breaches the Islamabad memorandum on ending the war and holding Washington responsible for the consequences.
The ministry says Iran will take any measure it deems necessary to safeguard its interests and national security.
The United States Central Command said Tuesday it has launched new airstrikes on Iran after it targeted three vessels in the Strait of Hormuz earlier in the day.
The U.S. said the strikes were on commercial vessels that were transiting the strait, which were “crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.”
“U.S. Central Command forces have begun launching a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” CENTCOM said. “Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”
The strikes come after the U.S. and Iran signed a “memorandum of understanding” last month, which said both sides have committed to “negotiating and achieving the final deal in a maximum 60 days, extended with mutual consent.”
The United States reimposed oil sanctions on Iran following reports of unprovoked attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz late Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
A letter from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the license that temporarily lifted oil sanctions on Iran issued June 21 has been “revoked,” with the effective date listed as July 7, 2026. Earlier Tuesday, Reuters reported that the U.S. government was “revoking a general license that authorized the sale of Iranian oil,” with a U.S. official calling the attacks in the Strait of Hormuz “wholly unacceptable.”
The Daily Caller reached out to President Donald Trump’s White House, which confirmed Reuters’ earlier reporting.
A U.S. official explained to the Daily Caller that OFAC is, in fact, revoking GL X, “which authorized the sale of Iranian oil.”
“The MOU in effect with Iran is entirely performance-based,” the official emphasized.
“Iran will only reap benefits if they exhibit good behavior. Iran’s actions in the Strait were wholly unacceptable to the United States and will be met with consequences. Our negotiators continue to work in good faith towards a final deal,” the U.S. official added.
In late June, Trump announced the U.S. would temporarily lift oil sanctions on Iran after the Islamic Republic pledged to open the Strait of Hormuz and allow nuclear inspectors into the country. However, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center reportedly said they obtained three different reports of attacks on vessels traversing the Strait that have caused the sanctions to snap back.
Qatar’s Ministery of Foreign Affairs, in a statement posted to social media, condemned the attacks on vessels, stating, “The State of Qatar expressed its strong condemnation and denunciation of the targeting of the Qatari tanker Al Rekayyat while it was transiting near the Strait of Hormuz, stressing that this attack amounts to a grave violation of the safety of international navigation, a direct threat to global energy supply security, and a clear and flagrant breach of international law.”
Just before 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that the U.S. military had carried out strikes against the Islamic Republic in retaliation for the alleged attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
“U.S. Central Command forces have begun launching a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” CENTCOM stated. “The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”
Editor’s note: This article was updated to note that the U.S. launched strikes on Iran.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/US-Reinstates-Sanctions-On-Iran.jpg344640The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2026-07-08 06:31:162026-07-08 06:34:04U.S. Reinstates Sanctions On Iran After Multiple Ships Reportedly Attacked In Strait Of Hormuz
The Islamic Republic of Iran is continuing to project an image of absolute impunity, as if it had emerged victorious from its war with the United States, and was now going to proceed, Nuremberg Trial-style, to punish those who said publicly that this war was necessary. If public figures in any other country had been targeted, there would be an international outcry. But because most of Iran’s targets are considered “right-wing,” the international left, including its media apparatus, has no problem with these murderous threats at all.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/IRAN-KILL-TRUMP-SIGNS.jpg360640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2026-07-08 06:16:372026-07-09 15:20:30Iranians threaten to murder Trump, Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer, Peter Thiel and others
It’s Ground Hog day again but this movie isn’t funny.
Fox News: Oil prices edged higher in early trading Wednesday as investors reacted to Iran’s decision not to hold direct talks with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on Tuesday in Qatar. Brent crude futures rose 50 cents, or 0.69%, to $73.45 a barrel by 12:08 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude gained 63 cents, or 0.91%, to $70.13 a barrel, Reuters reported. Iranian officials and Qatari mediators said the U.S. delegation would meet with intermediaries rather than hold direct talks with Iranian officials, the outlet said.
Institute for the Study of War: Iranian officials are simultaneously employing diplomatic outreach and military coercion to pressure regional states to support a new “regional security mechanism,” likely to advance Iran’s long-standing objective of expelling the United States from the Middle East.
Trump Weighs Return to All-Out War With Iran; Staying on Diplomatic Path for Now
Wall Street Journal exclusive: President Trump has weighed a return to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine on more strikes, but has decided to stick with diplomatic talks for now, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussion. The conversations have centered on whether the U.S. should abandon negotiations and resume full-scale attacks on Iran, the officials said, a move some of them describe as “finishing the job.” While not making a final decision, Trump has told aides he believes another round of full-scale attacks could derail diplomacy and hurt Washington’s chances of ultimately dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. Trump also has told aides that he is fine if negotiations with Tehran blow past an Aug. 18 deadline for a nuclear deal, the officials said, a decision that gives the talks more time to work. Meanwhile, the president said he is currently satisfied with ordering one-off strikes on Iran when it violates the “memorandum of understanding,” which sparked back-and-forth fighting over the weekend that undermined a fragile ceasefire clinched two weeks ago.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Trump-Iran-War.jpg318640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-07-02 05:32:472026-07-02 05:32:47Iran Refuses More Talks With U.S., Qatar Says No High-Level Meetings Are Taking Place
According to their most religious clerics, it is an Islamic ‘deligious duty’ to kill US president and Israeli PM.
This is Islam.
Hamshahri, a major Iranian newspaper, ran a front page with Mr Trump’s face in the crosshairs of a rifle scope beneath the banner headline “Revenge is certain”.
Iran’s most senior clerics have called for the assassination of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a 10-point statement, the Assembly of Experts said the killing of “the criminal American president” and “the wicked prime minister of the Zionist regime” was a religious duty.
Assassinating the two leaders – whom they described as mahdour al-dam, or deserving of death – “must not be neglected under any circumstances”.
The call to action came despite Washington and Tehran having signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the Middle East war, which broke out on Feb 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
The 14-point pact allowed 60 days to negotiate a permanent truce and to resolve thorny issues including the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.
However, days of tit-for-tat strikes in the Strait of Hormuz and Israel’s military actions in Lebanon have put the interim peace deal under pressure.
In their call for Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu to be assassinated, the clerics wrote that avenging the blood of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who was killed on the first day of the war, remained “paramount”.
“It is obligatory upon any duty-bound person who gains access to these criminals to send them to hell,” they added.
The language read like a religious edict but stopped short of a formal fatwa, which in Shia Islam is issued by an individual cleric in his own name rather than by a group.
On Tuesday, Hamshahri, a major Iranian newspaper, ran a front page with Mr Trump’s face in the crosshairs of a rifle scope beneath the banner headline “Revenge is certain”. It added that “avenging the blood of the martyred imam and the martyrs is at the top of the people’s demands”.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Iranian-Clerics-Call-for-Trumps-Assassination.jpg360640The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2026-07-02 05:08:572026-07-02 05:21:58Iranian Clerics Call for Trump and Netanyahu’s Assassination: “SEND THEM TO HELL”
The track record for another Iran Deal is as bad as it gets.
Nearly 250 years ago, the United States tried negotiating with Islamic pirate states to stop the capture of American ships and the enslavement of Americans. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all learned the painful lesson that the negotiations were a trap.
Treaties would be signed, agreements would be reached and would soon be broken because Muslims could freely lie to ‘infidels’ and had a religious obligation to wage war on them.
“The precept of the Koran is perpetual war against all who deny that Mahomet is the prophet of God,” Adams summed it up. “The command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.”
This isn’t ancient history, it’s current events as the United States once again conducts futile negotiations with an Islamic pirate and terrorist state to stop its attacks on international shipping.
Defenders of the negotiations have taken to hailing a deal with Iran as smart diplomacy while contending that Iran’s regime is moderate and critics of appeasing Jihadists are ‘warmongers’.
But if negotiating with Islamic terrorists is such a good idea, what is its track record?
The Carter administration negotiated the Algiers Accord with Iran to release the hostages. And having seen the success of taking hostages, Iran had Hezbollah and other Shiite Islamic front groups start taking hostages, torturing and killing them, and carrying out terrorist attacks.
That was our reward for negotiating a deal with Iran back then. It was our reward for negotiating a deal with Iran under Obama. And it’ll be our reward for negotiating a deal with Iran now.
Rewarding Iran for its terrorism just led to more terrorism. That’s happening all over again.
Iran’s only real card is closing the Strait of Hormuz so despite the latest agreement, it began opening fire on ships again. And we should expect that to continue until we put a stop to it.
Should we have seen this coming?
In its first term, the Trump administration also negotiated a deal through Qatar with Islamic terrorists. The Taliban quickly began violating the agreement and set out to seize control. While the Afghanistan withdrawal would probably not have been as disastrous under the Trump administration as it was under Biden, the basic outcome would have ended up the same.
In its second term, the Trump administration allowed the same people responsible for the Iran deal, Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to negotiate a deal with Hamas that the terrorist group has repeatedly violated leading to smaller scale fighting and no actual progress. The Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ is set for a ‘reset’ summit in Cyprus after little to show for the last six months.
The Lebanon ceasefire has also been mostly fictional because Hezbollah has refused to stay behind the ceasefire lines (as it’s been doing for two generations) leading to more fighting, and to Iranian demands that the Trump administration provide political cover for Hezbollah attacks.
The fighting in Gaza is itself an outgrowth of the Clinton, Bush and Obama efforts to negotiate between Israel and various Islamic terrorist groups, most prominently the PLO, to create a ‘Palestinian’ terrorist state, but which only led to generations of escalating terrorist attacks.
Even a cursory history of our relationships with supposed Muslim allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan shows them seizing our assets, funding, harboring and planting Islamic terrorists in the United States and around the world while assuring us that they would never do such a thing.
The latest version of the Iran Deal is being negotiated through Qatar and Pakistan. Qatar had harbored 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed while Pakistan harbored Bin Laden.
The United States had been pleading with Pakistan to help with Bin Laden since 1998. In 1999, Pakistani officials assured us that their government was taking the Bin Laden ‘matter very seriously.’ And they were indeed. After 9/11, the United States directed at least billions in aid to Pakistan, hitting a high of over $800 million a year after the attacks, and reaching another high of $2.9 billion the year before the United States found him hiding in a Pakistani military town.
The Pakistani government claimed that we had ‘martyred’ him even while pretending it had no idea he was there. The Obama administration stepped down aid to Pakistan to a mere $1 billion a year.
15 years later, we’re trusting the people who harbored Bin Laden to help us with Iran. After a Pakistani massacre of non-Muslims in India, J.D. Vance pressured India to stand down. At the recent diplomatic meetings, Vance claimed, “we love Pakistan.” But Pakistan doesn’t love us.
No Islamic country does.
The track record of negotiations with Islamic terror states and even nations wouldn’t be so poor if there wasn’t a powerful underlying hostility and any lack of common values to build mutual trust and any lasting relationship around.
Vance may have to learn the same hard lesson that Jefferson and Adams did when they heard from the Tripoli ambassador that the aggression “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that “it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
But the history is already there and we should not need to be constantly relearning it.
Negotiating with Islamic terrorists has never worked. It’s not about to suddenly start working at this late date. The only thing that negotiating with Islamic terrorists leads to is more terrorism.
America’s Founding Fathers learned that nearly 250 years ago. We insist on forgetting it.
BREAKING: Iranian state media says it has now “no choice but to obtain the atomic bomb” to remove “the military option for the occupation and partitioning of Iran” from the table, arguing Iran must “absolutely reach nuclear deterrence” before current negotiations can be conducted “from a correct position,” per Fars.
Iran adds the acquisition is not only driven by negotiation leverage but also by Trump’s two recent nuclear threats against Iran, including his April warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” and his May threat of “one big glow coming out of Iran.”
This is also among the most direct nuclear weapons advocacy published on Iranian state media to date.
They’ve been working toward it all along. Otherwise they never would have enriched uranium to just below weapons-grade level, far beyond what is needed for any civilian purpose. Nevertheless, they lied to the U.S. and the IAEA for years about a nonexistent fatwa from the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei forbidding nuclear weapons, and now they’re trying to frighten Trump into making yet more concessions and sealing his surrender. They would never be talking this way if they weren’t emboldened, and Trump, with his jaw-dropping concessions and endless drawing of meaningless red lines, is the one who has emboldened them.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/IRAN-NUCLEAR-PROGRAM-TIMMERMAN.jpg360640Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2026-06-29 05:53:462026-06-29 06:00:40Iranian state media: ‘No choice but to obtain the atomic bomb’
The United States conducted strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump claimed that the Islamic Republic had violated the ceasefire on Friday.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that American forces put forth a “powerful response” after Iran struck a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz. A U.S. aircraft struck “Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites,” according to CENTCOM.
This comes after Iran is suspected of having struck a Singapore-flagged cargo ship with a one-way attack drone in the strait on Thursday.
“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” a statement from CENTCOM reads. “Furthermore, Iran’s dangerous behavior undermined freedom of navigation as commerce increasingly flows through the vital international trade corridor.”
ARABIAN SEA – APRIL 20: (EDITOR’S NOTE: This Handout image was provided by a third-party organization and may not adhere to Getty Images’ editorial policy.) In this handout photo provided by U.S. Central Command, U.S. forces patrol the Arabian Sea near M/V Touska on April 20, 2026, after firing upon the Iranian-flagged vessel that the U.S. accused of attempting to violate the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz. (Handout Photo by the U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
“The U.S. military remains present and vigilant to ensure all aspects of the agreement with Iran are adhered to, obeyed, and in full force and effect.”
Just hours before the strike, Trump claimed Iran violated the ceasefire in a Truth Social post, calling it a “foolish” violation.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran shot at least four One Way Attack Drones at Ships transversing the Strait of Hormuz. One of the Drones solidly hit the upper deck of a large and very expensive Cargo Carrying Ship,” Trump said. “Damage was done, but the Ship was able to proceed on its way. We knocked down three other Drones. Obviously, this is a foolish violation of our Ceasefire Agreement.”
When asked in the Oval Office just prior to the Friday strikes if Iran would face consequences, Trump said, “You’re gonna find out.”
This comes just days after Iran and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding, advancing peace negotiations. It has now been 118 days since the war with Iran first started on February 28.
Donald Trump and JD Vance are learning what it’s really like to negotiate with the Iranian regime: it’s like wrestling with a squid. In the morning, you think you have gotten them to agree on one thing, and by afternoon they are denying it on state television.
Just take the Strait of Hormuz. The whole purpose of the June 18 Memorandum of Understanding was to get the Iranians to reopen the Strait to commercial traffic. And yet, on Thursday, an Iranian drone reportedly hit a Singaporean cargo ship transiting the Strait, and earlier today, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards claimed they had forced three foreign tankers to turn around as they attempted to leave the Persian Gulf through an “unauthorized” southern route through the Strait.
So is the Strait open, or are the Iranians still blocking traffic? Meh, it seems to be a bit of both.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday, don’t pay attention to Iranian propaganda, pay attention to ships moving. And those ships are indeed moving, and so is the oil.
The President and Secretary of War “Pistol Pete” Hegseth have asked Congress for $672 million to fund IAEA and US nuclear inspectors in Iran. Now what are those inspectors supposed to do? Get what Trump calls the “nuclear dust” and take it out of Iran.
For those of you who think the Iran MoU is a sell-out by Trump, take a look at that appropriation request. It is not intended to support ordinary operations of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, but is aimed specifically at securing Iran’s uranium stockpiles.
This is the clearest indicator we have of the President’s intent. Yes, Virginia, he really means it when he says he will not allow Iran to ever develop a nuclear weapon. That means, they cannot have enriched uranium or the centrifuges or the infrastructure to produce it, as the JCPOA allowed. They have to abandon the entire program.
One can legitimately question whether the administration will achieve that goal. I happen to think the Iranians will never abandon their nuclear program, their uranium stockpiles, or their centrifuges. After all, they have spent upwards of a trillion dollars to develop those assets, and have forgone hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues to keep them. Why would they give up now, especially when their end goal — removal of sanctions, and a pledge by the U.S. to stay out of domestic Iranian politics — seems so close?
I have argued for over thirty years that the nuclear program is one of the regime’s core values. Others include exporting the Islamic Revolution (this is in the Charter of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), and of course, their system of absolute clerical rule.
And pace to JD Vance, I have long argued that Washington graveyards are full of American politicians who believed they could change the behavior of the Iranian regime by offering them enough goodies. You can find some of my scholarly articles on the subject here.
So I am doubling down on my support for this MoU. It calms the oil markets, and buys Trump and the Republicans time to get closer to the mid-terms, without any significant US concessions. On that subject, I am convinced Trump is 100% serious when he says that any released Iranian assets will go into a US and/or Qatari controlled fund to buy U.S. agricultural products, something the Iranians of course are denying.
But knowing my Iranians, I doubt they will let the negotiations drag on much beyond the 60-day clock, because they think Trump will be forced to capitulate as the mid-terms approach. That is when things will get interesting.
Also this week, the Ukraine war became increasingly deadly for Putin, as the Ukes struck a military satellite communications center deep inside Russian territory and blew up oil terminals on both sides of the Kerch Bridge, Russia’s main route into Crimea.
I have predicting for some time now that this war will end badly for Putin, as the dwindling Russian population is simply not capable of absorbing the staggering human losses of the war, now estimated at more than 1.4 million dead and wounded (with Russian dead estimated at between 230,000-430,000).
This week marks the third anniversary of the failed uprising by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s former personal chef and the head of the Wagner Group, Putin’s private mercenary army. Rumblings continue inside the army of uprisings to come should Putin fail to end the war. Just in the past two weeks, two more military commanders and former Putin cronies died by falling from windows in their own apartments. (They are Colonel Oleg Sokolenko, a military commissar in Rostov; and Lt. General sergei Kobylash, the Air Force Commander.)
Really, somebody must do something about those Moscow building codes!
The biggest revelation of the week came, once again, from Donald Trump, who told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he had kept Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan from entering the Iran war — on the side of Iran!
“He was a prime candidate to go into the war with Iran — maybe on the Iran side, because he’s not a big fan of Israel,” Trump said. “I asked him to stay out. He stayed out.”
A NATO ally, which hosts US forces at Incirlik and still wants to buy F-35 fighter jets, threatening to join a war against the United States?
That’s what I call a show-stopper.
I discuss all this on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend. As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday in the Jacksonville, Florida, area on 104.9 FM or 550 AM or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app.
Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue,can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here.
Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Squid.jpg360640Kenneth R. Timmermanhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKenneth R. Timmerman2026-06-26 14:23:482026-06-26 14:25:54Negotiating with Iran is like Wrestling with a Squid
The floated proposal makes no sense. Worse, it is dangerous. It would reward a maniacal regime not for reforming, not for compensating its victims, and not for abandoning terror as an instrument of statecraft. — Christopher Ruddy, CEO, Newsmax Media, June 16, 2026
So, the infamous US-Iran MOU has been signed. As far as Israel is concerned, the deed is done. The betrayal is complete. What remains is but to confront its consequences.”
From “hand-in-glove” to “slap-in-the-face”?
Indeed, perhaps the most apt and accurate way to characterize the dramatic metamorphosis that seems to have taken place in the US relationship with Israel and Donald Trump’s association with Benjamin Netanyahu, is from “hand-in-glove” cooperation to “slap-in-the-face” repudiation.
On the face of things, this breathtaking U-turn seems almost inexplicable. After all, virtually all the factors that precipitated the joint Israeli-US strikes on Iranian military and infrastructure installations are no less valid today than they were when they were launched,
Moreover, for anyone aspiring to attain the stature of a towering global leader, dominating world events, keeping prices at the pump stable is hardly the stuff of which storied presidential legacies are forged. On the other hand, vanquishing the single greatest peril to Western democracy is undoubtedly the stuff of which such legends are crafted.
After all, the Islamic Republic of Iran today is no less ominous than it was before the outbreak of hostilities. It is no less infused with baneful and baleful ill-will towards the non-Islamic world, just as antithetical to the American ethos of individual liberty, equality, and religious freedom as expressed in the US Constitution.
Qatari compliant realtors?
This, of course, raises the trenchant question of how anyone could seriously entertain the childlike belief that a regime that could nonchalantly massacre tens of thousands of its own unarmed citizens can be counted on to fulfill its MOU obligations. Indeed, even senior Administration officials, personally appointed by Trump, have cast grave doubts on the Iranians’ intentions to honor their MOU undertakings. These include such consequential figures as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, all of whom are, prima facie, eminently more qualified than Trump’s more pliant advisors, the Qatar-compliant realtors Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who reportedly favor this perplexing and perturbing memorandum.
Yet, as hard as it is to understand the logic behind the professed strategic rationale underlying the MOU, it is even more difficult to fathom the personal rationale of the US figures, who promoted and permitted its formulation (concoction?)
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
For, as on all the other fronts in this post-2023 conflagration, Trump has imposed a premature cessation of fighting. However, in this case, the stakes are much higher, and the blunder of snatching inexplicable defeat from the jaws of imminent victory, much more abstruse. After all, lower gas prices and mid-term elections, almost six months away, seem a flimsy excuse for a second-term president to abandon the stature of a valiant conqueror for that of a pliant supplicant. Indeed, the deadly defects in the document relate not only to flawed and faulty strategy, but to grievous moral corrosion. It reflects not only an abandonment of a loyal ally, but of the Iranian people, who must now surely despair of ridding themselves of the yoke of the theocratic and tyrannical regime under which they have suffered for decades. For not only does the MOU constitute a renunciation of virtually every previous Trumpian pledge, but perhaps most egregiously, of his wildly premature, and now permanently, unfulfilled promise to the regime’s opponents that “help is on the way”. Tragically, tens of thousands of them were slaughtered while waiting vainly for the promised aid, by the very regime that Trump has now chosen to sustain, despite reports that it conspired to assassinate him !!
A maelstrom of criticism
Indeed, one can only shake one’s head in disbelief at the possibility that the Administration could truly believe that such a renegade regime would not renege on its MOU commitments, rendering the document worthless.
In the maelstrom of criticism across the political spectrum, apologists for the MOU reject the parallel being drawn between it and Obama’s appalling 2015 JCPOA.
In one sense, they are right. The routes by which the two documents were arrived at, are very different. But in another—and more important ways—they are wrong. In terms of their substantive content, they are very similar—if not identical. Indeed. Even if the apologists are right, and the US can revert back to military action if Tehran violates the MOU, why resort to such a circuitous and unlikely route, allowing the enemy time to regroup and improve its capabilities, making any future victory commensurately more costly?
It is not easy to conjure up a persuasive reason for Donald Trump to dramatically morph into an Obama-like clone. In fact, all those that do come to mind—from moral bankruptcy, via craven cowardice, to unbridled avarice—have a distinctly ominous and/or odious ring to them.
“A date which will live in infamy”
The freshly signed MOU has a lamentably familiar ring to it. It evokes sentiments expressed by FDR after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when he proclaimed it “a date which will live in infamy”. Indeed, Trump and his Administration would do well to heed the profound words of warning of Winston Churchill in “The Gathering Storm”, his epic account of events that precipitated WWII: “… if you will not fight…when you can easily win, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure…you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Trump-Iran-War.jpg318640Dr. Martin Shermanhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Martin Sherman2026-06-23 14:15:102026-06-23 14:16:22Et tu, Donald?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be traveling to the Middle East from June 23 to June 25 while Vice President JD Vance leads talks with Iran over the war.
Rubio is set to visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Bahrain, State Department spokesman Thomas Pigott said in a statement Monday. He will also speak with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Bahrain to address common priorities in the area. Vance began talks with Iran on ending the war and intermediaries June 21 after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) June 17.
Pigott said, “The Secretary will discuss a range of priorities including the memorandum of understanding with Iran, efforts to secure full and free safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and the importance of safety in the region.”
The GCC has supported U.S. efforts to end the war with Iran, but they also have concerns over some of the aspects of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) the U.S. made with Iran, Reuters reported. The current MOU includes a $300 billion reconstruction fund to Tehran, which Gulf State leaders worry may allow Iran to rebuild the military capacity the U.S. destroyed. They are also reportedly concerned about potential future dangers from Iranian missiles and drones.
NOW: Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain this week as the Trump administration seeks Gulf support for a preliminary Iran agreement. He is also set to meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council, bringing together key U.S. partners across the region. pic.twitter.com/k4e9G4A3Yq
The MOU between the U.S. and Iran calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” However, U.S. officials said Monday that the agreement does not necessitate Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, according to The Guardian. Lebanon’s National News Agency said Israel struck multiple targets June 20, three days after Iran and the U.S. signed the MOU, although Israel claimed they were retaliating against an attack from Hezbollah, Reuters reported.
Pigott did not name which specific leaders Rubio will be meeting with or which days he is visiting the individual countries. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman are all members of the GCC.
The MOU gives the U.S. and Tehran a 60-day window to reach a more in-depth agreement.
The U.S. began launching strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, prompting the Islamic Republic to effectively halt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Editor’s note: Article updated with additional information. This is a developing story and will be updated.
The so-called Iranian memorandum of understanding involving a 60-day period of negotiations that may or may not lead to an armistice was published just recently, and it’s gotten a lot of storm of criticism.
It’s kind of ironic. All last month and up until the memorandum was published, the Left said that Donald Trump was a warmonger. Now they’re calling him Neville Chamberlain and an abject appeaser.
Some on the right were saying he was the bravest of the last eight presidents, the first to take seriously the Iranian threat. In a sense, he didn’t just talk about it. He tried and did end it, I think. And now they are saying he was had. He’s a fool.
So, what’s going on with this memorandum of understanding?
I think everybody is confusing, first of all, military victory versus strategic victory. In a tactical sense, we have had an overwhelmingly historic victory over the Iranian military. There are no air defenses. The airspace is open to anybody who wants it. The Iranians cannot stop the Americans, the Gulf states, or Israel from entering its airspace. That’s new.
Second, they don’t really have a navy. They have some mosquito boats, but now we’ve learned they have very few of those left. We’ve been attriting them in the evening, and there are about 160 ships we sank.
Their missiles have been 90% destroyed, but we don’t know the denominator. We don’t know how many there were. But even then, we are still aware of where they’re stored, and if there is another war, we could pretty quickly dispense with them.
I could go on. Eighty percent of their leadership—80 of their key leaders—have been taken out, including the supreme leader. So that’s a military victory, but that is different from a strategic victory.
Strategic victory means an unconditional surrender, and you dictate terms unconditionally to the defeated. We did that in World War II. We did that in the Civil War. We sort of, kind of, maybe did it in World War I with the Versailles Treaty that followed the Armistice of 1918.
And we did it with Saddam Hussein, and we initially did it with the Taliban.
But here’s the catch: You usually need ground troops to enter the foreign country, and then you remove the regime that you were fighting and install a new one.
We did that with the Confederacy. We did that with Germany, Italy, and Japan. We did that with the Taliban. We did that with Saddam Hussein.
But the key is, you have to have ground troops. To do that required 7,000 American deaths, 53,000 wounded, $2 trillion, and a combined chronological frame of 30 years—10 in Iraq and 20 in Afghanistan.
And then the regimes we installed completely flipped or were replaced. The Taliban came back to power, and now there’s a consensual government in Iraq, but it’s heavily dominated by our enemies, radical Shia.
Do we really want to do that in Iran? It’s 93 million people. It’s one and a half times the size of Texas. If you want to go in there and remove the regime, then of course you can say, “You are not going to have missiles. You are not going to give subsidies to terrorists. You’re not going to send agents throughout Europe and the United States.” But that would require a strategic victory.
Right now, the American people poll overwhelmingly that they do not want any more ground troops in the Middle East. They feel like [Otto von] Bismarck did about the Balkans when he said it’s not worth the bones of one German grenadier, meaning the Middle East isn’t worth that type of expense.
So, we’re not a colonial power, and Iran is not a protectorate that we’re going to micromanage.
That said, our ability to go in at any time and severely damage it means that we can get the objectives that we talked about, specifically the Strait of Hormuz open and no more nuclear weapons. That would be a fantastic achievement.
So far, we’ve tragically lost 13 soldiers. That’s about the accident rate every two weeks in the military. So, it hasn’t cost a lot of blood and treasure yet.
So, what can we do if they violate the memorandum of understanding, if they send missiles into Kuwait or they try to shut down the strait? We can go to the next level of bombing.
You won’t believe it, but Donald Trump hasn’t bombed like [Barack] Obama did in Libya in 2011. He has not bombed like we did in Vietnam. He has not bombed like Bill Clinton did in Serbia.
All of these Democrats, whether they’re [Lyndon] Johnson, or Clinton, or Obama, hit dual-use targets: docks, TV stations in Libya, schools, hospitals.
Not that we’d ever do that, but we accidentally hit them, including the Chinese Embassy. But we did take out the bridges and the electrical grid in Serbia. In Vietnam, we tried to destroy everything that could be used by the military and civilians.
So, we can do that. If they violate the terms of the agreement, we can say, “OK, you violate it. We’re going to respond disproportionately and take out 10 bridges for every missile.” And I think that would have an enormous effect on them.
But why did Donald Trump and the administration even have a memorandum? Because polls said that the people wanted it over with, because the price of gas had gone up to over $5 a gallon from $3.12 on average, or $3, and because the world was pressuring him to avoid a global recession, and the midterms were coming up.
So, Donald Trump wanted a space in which he could get some of the objectives. He could get the enrichment—it’s under a buried mountain—and he’s got the strait opened, and then the others will be discussed.
In the meantime, the stock market has soared. The price of gas is falling precipitously. And in a generic poll, do you support or reject the negotiations with Iran, the majority support it.
Everybody says he can’t win the midterms. If he were to lose them, he will be impeached. His whole family and associates will be subject to lawfare investigations for two years. So, it’s paramount that he bulk up and break from historical precedent that says he’s going to lose.
Redistricting, whether it’s racial gerrymandering or blue-state gerrymandering, will result in a loss, due to red-state gerrymandering, of probably five to 10 seats.
The Democratic agenda is very unpopular when people hear about it, whether it’s the trans issue, or open borders, or Green New Deal, or DEI, etc.
And, of course, the economy, for all the bad news about the war—record Wall Street highs, good employment, enormous foreign investment, tax cuts, deregulation kicking in—we could have the inflation back to where it was well before the war by November.
People have also mischaracterized the deal itself. This is not the end of the negotiations or the war. This is the very beginning of the problems for Iran.
Once the kinetic part of the war stops, they have to face the people, and the people are angry. We have taken out much of their leadership. The next second- or third-tier are mostly incompetent, and the people are going to say not one dime of reconstruction goes to Arab terrorists—the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah.
Not one dime goes to these crazy nuclear programs. Not one dime to your missile fleet.
You lost them all. You were humiliated. You lost half a trillion dollars and a half century of investment. No more.
So they’re going to have a problem with internal dissension that is rising. We can always, at any time, encourage that. We can even arm it.
More important, time is on Trump’s side. Not only can he react with dual-use targeting any time during the memorandum if they break it, but he can also explain to our allies and our friends that the strait itself will be irrelevant in some sense in two years, maybe one year.
Right now as we speak, the Saudis, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait—all of the Gulf Councils—are saying expand the pipeline to the Arabian Sea outside the Strait of Hormuz, and we can export oil without even getting near it. Expand the pipeline to the Red Sea without even getting near the Gulf.
Expand pipelines or build them, whether with Turkish plans or with the Israelis, to the Mediterranean.
The result of all that is that you may be able to export 10, 12 million barrels without ever going into the strait, which would flip the entire geostrategic reality.
Iran would be vulnerable. We could shut the strait any time we wanted and shut down all of their oil exports and imports. But if they tried to shut down the strait, it would not affect, within two years from now, the vast majority of oil exports to the West, to Asia, to Africa. And the same thing is true of imports.
Finally, geostrategic, I’ve talked about this before, Russia has lost its clients in the Middle East—Syria and Iran. China has lost its clients—Venezuela and Iran.
They both have enormous problems. Both have very low fertility. China has to import 10 to 11 million barrels. They’re big losers in this war.
They are not winners when Elizabeth Warren says everything was going well until the war, and now Iran is much stronger than it was before the war. She should ask 80 or so of their leaders who are now burning in an inferno if they would prefer the present to the past under Obama when they were ascendant.
She should ask the Air Force generals, the head of missile defense, the Iranian admirals: Would you prefer right now having no military, or would you like to go back to the hey days when you were calling the shots under Obama?
The strait, Senator Warren, was closed sometimes, sometimes it was open, because we decided for the first time to disarm them nuclearly. Every other president, all seven of them, said they cannot have a bomb, and then people said, but they might close the strait. OK, we don’t want to get near that.
They closed the Strait because we took away their nuclear option. When you don’t take their nuclear option away and you appease them, the strait is open. It’s that simple.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Why-Trump-Critics-Cant-Make-Up-Their-Minds-on-the-Peace-Deal.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2026-06-23 06:47:372026-06-24 05:11:28Why the Media Called Trump a Warmonger…Then an Appeaser
