The day so far
Donald Trump claimed negotiations to end the Iran war are happening “right now” and that Tehran had agreed to “never” have a nuclear weapon. “We can say this is regime change,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, adding: “We’ve won this war.” He also said members of his administration are negotiating with “the right people” in Iran and claimed that Tehran gave him a “gift” which was “oil and gas related” and related to the strait of Hormuz, without giving any further detail.
A reminder that Trump’s claims come a day after Iranian officials denied that any contact with the US had taken place, and called such claims of talks “fake news” designed to “manipulate” oil markets.
Indeed, Iran’s military today vowed to fight on until it had achieved “complete victory”. Major general Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi mocked the United States as a “hollow” nation that has been “brought down in front of the world”, with Trump left “trying to escape from the war” it started.
Further undermining Trump’s repeated claims that there are talks happening and that they are pointing towards a possible peace, the US is sending more than 1,000 extra troops to the Middle East, multiple outlets reported. Trump approved the deployment last night, and the extra troops, from 82nd Airborne Division, have not yet left the US, but could be sent overseas in the coming days. The elite infantry division specialises in forcible entry parachute assaults.
Meanwhile, Lebanon faces an “existential crisis” after Israel announced plans to seize and occupy swathes of the country’s south to create a so-called “security zone”, officials warned. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, had earlier said he had instructed the IDF to establish control over a so-called “buffer” south of the Litani River, about 20 miles from the current Israel-Lebanon border – and the remaining bridges it hadn’t yet destroyed. Many Lebanese fear that the Israeli occupation of a large part of southern Lebanon could become long-term. Indeed, Katz said the hundreds of thousands of south Lebanon residents who were displaced by the war this month “will not return south of the Litani River until security is guaranteed for the residents of the north” of Israel. On the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people who have had to flee the south, one Lebanese politician said:
For the first time, there is no more life. There’s no more human presence. So, it’s much more dangerous than occupation. It’s really the destruction of an entire area.
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