Iran Says Strait Of Hormuz Is Open!
Geopolitical Update: Lindsey Graham Wants More War, Iran Deal Incoming, Syria/Turkey Flex, Tom Barrack Returns, Waxes Poetic
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UPDATE: Trump says Iran agreed to stop supporting groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
UPDATE: Iran says Strait of Hormuz is open, oil drops.
Backchannel talks between the U.S. and Iran are showing progress, with a possible memorandum of understanding at an upcoming meeting and a broader deal within 60 days.
“Both sides agree in principle — technical details will follow,” one source said, reported Reuters.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz -- "The IDF holds and will continue to hold all the areas it has cleared and captured. s The ground maneuver into Lebanon and the strikes against Hezbollah throughout Lebanon have achieved many accomplishments, but they are not yet complete." (h/t Clash Report)
Lebanon's 10 Day Ceasefire Begins But Israel Can Strike at Will
A newly announced Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has halted fighting as displaced Lebanese begin returning home, but the terms effectively allow Israel to continue striking inside Lebanon at will, raising questions over whether the truce signals real de-escalation.
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa -- "The Golan is Syrian land. It is not for any state to give away or recognize. More than 134 countries recognize that the Golan is Syrian."
"We were not a party in any conflict against Iran during the war taking place currently with Iran.
"We were pushing in a direction not to spark this war from the start, because Iran is a state that has a population of about 85 million people, and any harm that hits Iran from the inside could affect the region in general.
"We are pushing for the region to be stable and for its problems to be solved via dialogue and diplomacy, not to enter into conflicts and big disputes. We hope this war stops and the region moves to a phase where such wars will not repeat.
"Syria has saved the region from the expansion of some regional countries. They were using Syria as a platform for launching attacks or destabilizing the region. The weapon was loose in Syria, and we started the process of controlling this weapon in a very large way."
A U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone flew a 12+ hour mission near Cuba, monitoring areas around Havana and Guantánamo Bay from international airspace.
Senator Lindsey Graham -- "Iran is on the verge of financial ruin from the blockade.
"I do not trust the Lebanese military to disarm Hezbollah. The commander of the Lebanese military—I think his name is Haykal—I don’t trust, as far as I can throw him.
"He needs to be replaced before there’s a credible plan to disarm Hezbollah. No peace deal in Lebanon until there’s a credible pathway to disarm Hezbollah."
U.S. Ambassador to Syria Tom Barrack:
"If you wake up in Tel Aviv, you read the newspaper, and what do you see? You see a diagram in the paper of the Ottoman Empire 2.0. The Ottoman Empire is Vienna to the Maldives. Right, this is the view that Israel is presenting of what Türkiye should be.
"You wake up in Istanbul, and you read the paper, and it's the Greater Israel, Vienna to the Maldives.
"If you looked at the region—and again, I'll be criticized for saying this because it's anti-democratic—the only thing that's worked, the only thing, are these powerful leadership regimes: either benevolent monarchies, the kind of a monarchical republic. Everything else, this Arab Spring, just faded away and evaporated.
"Countries that have put on this cloak of democracy, or that we've gone after for human rights, have failed.
"Israel aligned with Türkiye, like Israel aligned with Abu Dhabi, like Saudi Arabia could be aligned with Israel—and for the prosperity of the Israeli people, to me, that's the answer.
"So I think this rhetoric is going to go away. Türkiye is not a country to be messed with."
