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Writing for the conservative Washington Examiner newspaper, a scholar specializing in Middle East policy tore into President Donald Trump's new Iran deal, saying that it "takes Americans for fools" and calling it the "gravest blunder" of Trump's political career.

After much hype and numerous failed starts, the U.S. and Iran signed a deal on Sunday to pause their ongoing conflict, reopening the Strait of Hormuz for oil shipments and giving the nations two more months to negotiate a final deal. While the actual full text of the deal has not yet been released, some of the details have already been reported to heavy criticism, including Iran potentially getting as much as $24 million in frozen assets returned to them. This particular stipulation led Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security Chief of Staff in Trump's first term turned whistleblower, to say that the deal was "on track to be the worst deal in American diplomatic history."

Further scathing criticism came on Monday from Jose Lev Alvarez, an American-Israeli policy scholar specializing in Middle Eastern security, who wrote about the deal for the Washington Examiner and pulled no punches, calling the deal "Obama 2.0, but more humiliating."

"When President Donald Trump accepted the April 2026 ceasefire, I knew he had committed the gravest political blunder of his career," Alvarez wrote. "America and Israel had cornered Iran, shattered its leverage, and battered its proxies. Instead of forcing permanent concessions, the White House now appears ready to rescue Tehran and rebrand retreat as a 'peace crusade.'”

He added: "This craven virtual surrender to the ayatollahs confirms my worst fears. Under this deal, Washington would reopen the Strait of Hormuz (now subject to Omani and Iranian supervision and tolls), lift the blockade on Iranian ports, grant temporary oil waivers, extend the ceasefire for 60 days, and defer the decisive nuclear questions to technical negotiations echoing Obama’s failed 2015 Vienna diplomacy."

In exchange for those American wins, Alvarez noted that Iran will "supposedly" pledge not to build a nuclear bomb and halt further nuclear developments, with "deadlines, inspections, and enforcement mechanisms — the provisions separating a binding agreement from diplomatic theater," to be worked out later.

All of this, he argued, amounted to "an American surrender by installment," instead of an Iranian "capitulation." He also reserved particular scorn for Vice President JD Vance and his part in negotiating the deal.

"Vice President JD Vance — the true architect of this disastrous agreement — initially dismissed reports of an Iranian payday as 'fake information,' insisting Tehran would receive no money merely for signing," he wrote. "That denial is semantic camouflage. The United States ⁠agrees to release $25 billion of Iran’s frozen assets in Qatar, including through direct cash transfers. Separately, the United Arab Emirates agreed to unlock — although it denies it publicly — up to $20 billion for Iran, with approximately $3 billion already delivered to Tehran. The route is irrelevant. The result is not. Through unfrozen assets, Gulf transfers, restored oil revenues, and renewed market access, Tehran will receive billions to replenish the regime that attacks Americans, bankrolls terrorists, and destabilizes the Middle East."

He added later: "This would not be a battlefield defeat. It would be a defeat by choice — the pathology that converted tactical dominance in Vietnam and Afghanistan into strategic failure. Iran needs three things: time, money, and Western self-deception. This framework flawlessly delivers all three."

On her new morning show, "Money Power Politics" — which debated Monday morning, June 15 following the popular "Morning Joe" program — MS NOW's Stephanie Ruhle brought on former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor for a reaction to President Donald Trump's new Iran agreement. And the Never Trump conservative was downright scathing in his assessment.

Taylor told Ruhle, "I'm going to go out there on a limb, Steph, and say I think that this is on track to be the worst deal in American diplomatic history. And look, I say that, recognizing…. that we don't have the text yet. But it's very, very hard to imagine there is a deal here that's any better than the deal we already had. In fact, if the initial reporting is to be believed, the Iranians think they're on a pathway to get $24 billion in assets unfrozen. That would be more than ten times what the Obama administration helped unlock for the Iranians."

The former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official added, "So, put it another way: We're paying ten times — potentially ten times — what we did before to get the same promise from the Iranians. And in international law, there's nothing that you can say about their commitment to not pursue nuclear weapons that's stronger than a promise. There's no global police force to require the Iranians to not pursue a bomb."

Trump has been highly critical of the Iran deal that former President Barack Obama agreed to during his second term. But Taylor noted that when he was serving in DHS during Trump's first presidency, the president "threw out" the Obama administration's agreement without having "any plan to replace the Obama deal with."

Taylor told Ruhle, "Again, the devil will be in the details, but I have a feeling we're going to see the devil."

Taylor was serving as DHS chief of staff during Trump's first presidency when he anonymously wrote a widely read New York Times op-ed headlined, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." The op-ed detailed Taylor's efforts to dissuade Trump from following through on his worst ideas.

The conservative Taylor subsequently came out as the author of that op-ed and became openly critical of Trump, supporting Kamala Harris in 2024.

Ruhle formerly hosted MS NOW's late-night show "The Final Hour," and "Money Power Politics" — which now airs after "Morning Joe," hosted by conservative Joe Scarborough and liberal Mika Brzezinski — marks her debut as a morning host on the liberal-leaning cable news channel.

Although the United States has been at war with Iran since late February, U.S. President Donald Trump has so far favored airstrikes and avoided a ground war. But early Friday afternoon, CNN's Zachary Cohen reported that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had "made a secret, rushed visit to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Florida" in late May "to be briefed in person on plans for the military to send ground troops into Iran to forcibly seize its highly enriched uranium."

On X, Cohen reported that according to CNN sources, "Trump hit pause after being warned it would likely prompt severe Iranian retaliation, extending the war and plunging the global economy into further turmoil, the sources said. But the high-level and pressing nature of the briefings underscores how close the Trump administration came to greenlighting the high-risk ground operation, sources said."

Reporting for CNN, Cohen and his colleague Natasha Bertrand explained, "The briefings were so urgent and sensitive that they required Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to rush from a meeting of senior NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) officials in Brussels back across the Atlantic to Tampa, Florida, on May 19, the sources said. The high-level and pressing nature of the briefings underscores how close the administration came to greenlighting the high-risk ground operation, sources said."

According to Bertrand and Cohen, a Joint Staff spokesperson "declined to comment about the preparations for a potential operation."

Trump has not explicitly or publicly expressed interest in putting American "boots on the ground" in Iran, saying, at times, that he didn't think it would be necessary. But he hasn't totally ruled out the possibility either. And the CNN reporters stress that "the discussions around sending ground troops into Iran just last month show how close the U.S. has come to massive escalation of the conflict."

"Tehran has also been plotting an economic 'nuclear option' if negotiations with the U.S. fail and the war resumes, three people familiar with the matter told CNN: getting the Houthis, the Iranians' chief proxy force in Yemen, to close the Bab-al-Mandab strait — a key waterway and global trade chokepoint that has served as a shipping lifeline as the entrance to the Red Sea amid Iran's months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz," Bertrand and Cohen report. "A senior administration official responded to a request for comment from CNN on Friday with a list of terms that Iran had allegedly agreed to as part of negotiations, including that its nuclear material be destroyed and removed, its nuclear program dismantled, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a halt to Iran's funding of terrorist proxy groups — and only afterward would it get sanctions relief."

Experts tore into President Donald Trump while discussing his botched handling of Iran peace talks with The Hill, with one lambasting him as "one of the worst negotiators in the world."

In a Wednesday morning report, The Hill said that Trump's much-hyped brand as a "master negotiator" and "dealmaker-in-chief" is imperiled, as the Iran war plods along after recently hitting the 100-day mark and peace talks continue to sputter. While Trump and his allies claim that a meaningful deal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is right around the corner, one never materializes, with new hostilities appearing to set things back regularly. Most recently, the U.S. carried out a new round of strikes against Iran on Tuesday after it was reported that Iranian forces had shot down an American Apache helicopter.

"The war, which Trump said would last between four to five weeks, hit its 100th day over the weekend," The Hill explained. "The president said Tuesday that a peace deal could be reached with Iran within the week, but Americans have heard similar comments dozens of times since the start of the operation."

Experts in foreign policy and diplomacy spoke with the outlet for its report, tearing into the Trump administration's woeful handling of the peace talks.

"Donald Trump is one of the worst negotiators in the world, and the public image of him is built completely on self-promotion of the idea that he knows how to make a deal,” Joe Cirincione, vice chair for the Center for International Policy’s board of directors, told The Hill. “What he does know is how to use power and intimidation to compel people to follow his will... I am hard pressed to think of any agreement where Trump has actually negotiated that has had a lasting impact."

"The real trick is to get something that is good enough to satisfy enough people that you can call it a success, in a sense, and I think that’s extraordinarily difficult,” Michael Singh, managing director and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, added in his own statement to the outlet, noting that Trump is "setting expectations too high for what he can accomplish in a short amount of time."

He continued: “I don’t think President Trump’s sort of self-described status as a master negotiator actually makes one whit of difference, I think that this is just objectively quite difficult, and it’s not really about negotiation skill, it’s about how you balance all those interests of parties who frankly aren’t even at the table negotiating."

Even with new military strikes against Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming that the war is drawing to a conclusion. But Trump's critics are skeptical, arguing that it is a major contradiction to claim that peace is at hand while new strikes are being carried out.

CNN, early Wednesday morning, reported, "Iran targets US bases: Iran said it launched retaliatory strikes on American bases in Jordan and Kuwait after the US military said it struck Iran in response to the downing of an Army helicopter. ... Status of negotiations: U.S. President Donald Trump said that Iran will 'pay the price' for taking 'too long to negotiate a deal,' without specifying further."

Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, declared, "Iran's Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn't even exist anyone."

CNN's Alayna Treene noted the contradictions, posting, on X, "POTUS weighs in this morning with tough talk for Iran, claiming their military 'doesn't even exist anymore' and that 'they've taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!' This is despite the U.S. accusing Iran of downing an Apache on Monday and Tehran having the capabilities to retaliate to U.S. attacks yesterday with strikes on U.S. military targets in the Middle East."

Treene, in a separate tweet, wrote, "Meanwhile, a US official told me yesterday that the new strikes were intended as a warning shot at Iran and that the US believed Washington's retaliatory strikes on Tehran wouldn't upend negotiations to end the war."

Other X users are expressing strong skepticism over Trump's claims about the Iran war.

CNN's Aaron Blake, a former Washington Post columnist, posted, "With any normal president, this would be seen as a declaration that the ceasefire is over and the war will resume. But we can't take anything Trump says about the Iran war at face value anymore."

Journalist Chris Cillizza tweeted, "Ceasefire over?"

The Daily Beast tweeted, "The president just reignited the same conflict he insisted he was 'very close' to ending."

University of Chicago political science professor Robert A. Pape wrote, "Prepare for major escalation Trump just abandoned promises of a deal and now Threatens to make Iran 'pay the price' The real price may be Gulf oil infrastructure and a historic global energy crisis."

Conservationist/economist B. Dan Berger wrote, "Was there ever a ceasefire?"

Progressive Anne Cresswell tweeted, "Trump says Tehran will 'pay the price' as peace talks collapse. ... America and the world are paying the price for this needless and nonsensical war."

A meeting between American and Canadian officials has been put on ice, and according to sources who spoke with The Globe and Mail newspaper, it came after the Trump White House made complaints about the event featuring his biggest conservative enemy in Canada.

"The White House had voiced complaints about Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Washington reception with Ross Perot Jr., board chair at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, before it was abruptly cancelled, according to two American industry sources," the report explained. "The reception, which was scheduled for Monday, was one of the most high-profile events that Mr. Ford was set to attend during his two-day visit to the U.S. capital. But a spokesperson for the chamber said it had been called off because of 'scheduling conflicts.' However, a source familiar with the reception said the White House expressed concerns about Mr. Ford to Mr. Perot Jr. before the event was cancelled."

Ford, a conservative politician and head of the Ontario provincial government, has been amongst the most defiant and combative Canadian leaders towards President Donald Trump, despite their political alignments, taking major issue with his tariff threats and his talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state. Ford and his government were notably involved in the anti-tariff ad campaign featuring sound bites from Ronald Reagan attacking them as an economic policy, which angered Trump so much that he halted trade talks with Canada.

According to The Globe and Mail, a source close to the situation said that Ford is "viewed as a major problem by the Trump administration," and claimed that the White House had "complained to business figures in Washington" about his various appearances during his visit.

"A White House official denied that there had been any communication with the Chamber of Commerce itself about the Monday event, but used the opportunity to take a shot at Mr. Ford," the report noted. "The Globe agreed not to name the official in order to learn the administration’s perspective on Mr. Ford’s visit."

Speaking with the press about the situation, Ford said the meeting was cancelled because of "a little conflict of scheduling" and stressed that his delegation had been "well-received."

"We have been jammed meeting everyone down here," Ford said. "They rolled out the red carpet for us. They treat us so well."

"The Premier, who was once an admitted supporter of the U.S. President, has been one of his loudest critics since Mr. Trump began hammering Canada in his global trade war last year," the report added. "Mr. Ford told reporters that he didn’t meet with any members of the Trump administration during his visit, despite his office telling reporters in advance that he would."

After Venezuelan then-President Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in Caracas and the Trump administration installed leftist Delcy Rodríguez as interim president, opposition leader María Corina Machado tried to curry favor with Trump by offering him her Nobel Peace Prize (which was merely symbolic, as it cannot be transferred under Peace Prize rules).

But Machado wasn't the first person to offer Trump a symbolic "peace prize": before that, in December 2025, FIFA President Gianni Infantino offered Trump the inaugural "FIFA Peace Prize." In the Daily Beast, reporter Leigh Kimmins details FIFA's "embarrassing" campaign to "sooth Trump" with a made-up peace prize.

Trump isn't shy about claiming that he deserves to win the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2025, he was disappointed when that award went to Machado.

"Gianni Infantino, the president of soccer's global governing body, FIFA, sensed an opportunity and cooked up the 'FIFA Peace Prize' to soothe Trump," Kimmins explains in the Daily Beast. "He did so because a closer relationship with the U.S. president would mean a smoother World Cup, which, in turn, would help repair his organization's image after years of fraud and neglect. Infantino, a former lawyer from Switzerland, had lobbied for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but quickly devised a plan when he was overlooked, according to The New York Times."

Kimmins continues, "Just weeks after the snub, senior officials at the organization, a nonprofit with billions of dollars in its coffers, were informed of the plan. According to the Times, they asked how much time they would have to pull off the ingenious stroke of bootlickery. They also needed to know what the criteria for the award would be and how the nomination committee would be structured."

The Daily Beast reporter notes that according to a FIFA insider interviewed by the Times, the "plan was to stage a charade to please" Trump.

The World Cup draw was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in December 2025. According to the Times, FIFA originally had Las Vegas in mind. But that was before "Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump ally serving as a presidential envoy, forced Infantino to reconsider," according to Kimmins.

"Some soccer officials were angered by the circus, saying it blew up FIFA's claims of political neutrality," Kimmins notes. "The president of Norway's soccer federation, who is a human rights lawyer, declared that the prize breached FIFA's rules on political neutrality and announced that Norway would back an ethics complaint against Infantino and his shilling."

When President Donald Trump is accused of having a belligerent tone with longtime allies of the United States, he often responds that he is merely standing up for a country that has been disrespected and taken advantage of. Trump views himself as a symbol of American strength, but according to British journalist and i Paper reporter James Ball, the U.S. president is looking "weak" and "humiliated" in front of other countries.

"Trump's maniacal self-confidence has endured beyond the first year of his second term in no small part thanks to the constant flattery of his subordinates and a friendly online media ecosystem," Ball explains in the UK-based i Paper. "He seems to genuinely believe that he has 'ended 10 wars,' or that he is constantly breaking record highs in his approval ratings among Republicans. Neither is true."

Trump's "overweening self-confidence," according to Ball, "seems to" be the thing that "propelled" him "into his war with Iran" — a war that, Ball emphasizes, isn't going well for the United States.

"One of the founding principles of the MAGA movement was getting the U.S. out of its endless entanglements overseas, and instead putting 'America First,'" Ball notes. "But the pull of proving himself superior to his predecessors on Iran and the Middle East — Trump has spent a decade endlessly criticizing President (Barack) Obama's deal to curb Iranian nuclear enrichment — seemed to prove irresistible. On a high after kidnapping President (Nicolás) Maduro from Venezuela, and having received a flattering briefing from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming U.S. airstrikes could lead to regime change in Iran, Trump launched his own Middle Eastern adventure."

Ball continues, "Trump never set out a clear aim for the war, not least because he never bothered making much of a case for it, either to the public or to Congress. But it is impossible to claim the current situation as a win against any kind of goal. The world's economy remains on the brink of disaster, with the Strait of Hormuz blocked. Peace negotiations are in deadlock. The Iranian regime's hold on the country is more secure now than it was before US operations began."

Trump, the British journalist laments, is in way over his head with Iran — much to the detriment of the U.S. as well as its allies in other countries.

"Trump is a petty and vindictive man," Ball warns. "He has spent much of his second term trying to bring the power of the federal government to bear against his political enemies, for real and imagined slights. He has pursued vendettas for weeks, months and years against those he feels criticized him unfairly. Now, he is being publicly humiliated on the world stage, while every world leader watches on. What might a man like Donald Trump do in such a situation? Trump has made himself look foolish, and weak. That could make him more dangerous than ever."

Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has pinpointed a series of events that have led to the rest of the world seeing America as “inessential.”

Just weeks after President Donald Trump was sworn into his second term in office, he held a televised Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which he and his top administration officials berated the leader fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war.

“You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Zelenskyy. But according to Krugman, Zelenskyy has “quite a few cards, while Trump has far fewer cards than he imagined.”

Krugman calls that Oval Office dressing-down “a spectacle that shamed America,” with Trump “engaging in petty bullying of the leader of a nation fighting for its life against tyranny.”

The Oval Office attack was just the start of what would make the world start to rethink its relationship to the U.S.

Trump then cut off all financial aid to Ukraine and blocked weapons sales to the battered nation — even when other nations were paying the bill.

Trump later met with Putin, where, “as the Russians see it, he offered to broker a deal that would give Russia control of a crucial fortress belt on Ukrainian soil.”

Krugman calls that “a shocking betrayal of a democracy fighting for its freedom — and, in so doing, fighting for the freedom of Europe as a whole.”

And while 18 GOP senators Thursday voted to restore aid to Ukraine, against the will of their leadership, should that bill come to Trump’s desk, it is doubtful he would sign it.

Despite Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine, Ukraine turned the war in its favor, and by doing so, taught the world a lesson.

“Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential,” writes Krugman. “Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves.”

“But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust.”

Trump “failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power,” has also “dispelled much of the world’s fear,” Krugman says.

The world is “managing economically” despite Trump’s tariffs and his abandonment of Ukraine — and Ukraine is “surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees,” says Krugman, revealing that America is “much less essential than everyone assumed.”

Relations between the United States and its European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have deteriorated considerably during Donald Trump's second presidency, with strong disagreements over everything from the Iran war to tariffs to Greenland. Trump's push for U.S. annexation of Greenland, a Danish colony, drew vehement criticism from European NATO countries. But Andrew Puzder, Trump's ambassador to the European Union (EU), is claiming that the U.S. president's remarks were misinterpreted.

At the 2026 Brussels Economic Security Forum in Belgium, Puzder told attendees, "It got interpreted that we were somehow threatening Greenland's territorial integrity…. (but) the president never said we were going to invade."

In early March, Trump argued that acquiring Greenland was essential to the U.S. from a national security standpoint and said that the U.S. will take the Arctic island "one way or another."

Politico reporters Jonas Loesel and Koen Verhelst note, "During his second term in office, Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of annexing Greenland, without excluding the use of military force, which caused consternation in Europe. Puzder said the president's statements were useful to bring attention to Greenland's strategic importance, but should not have been taken seriously."

Loesel and Verhelst add, "The ambassador's comments came just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Arctic island is part of Denmark — 'for now.' Trump eventually ruled out a military invasion of Greenland in January, setting up talks between the U.S. and Denmark on increasing the American military presence on the Arctic island."

At the 2026 Brussels Economic Security Forum, Puzder — who worked as a restaurateur in the past — made a cappuccino analogy while discussing Trump's comments on Greenland. Puzder hoped to convince Europeans that they were overreacting.

Trump's ambassador to the EU told attendees, "You get a cappuccino, you get it for the coffee — you don't get it for the froth. So, let's focus on the coffee and not on the froth. And a lot of this is the froth."

But EU and NATO officials took Trump's comments on Greenland earlier this year quite seriously.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that if the U.S. tried to take Greenland by force, it would trigger the end of NATO — a warning that European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius echoed in January, telling Reuters, "I agree with the Danish prime minister that it will be the end of NATO, but also, among people, it will be also very, very negative."

After World War 2, the term "Pax Americana" was used to describe the United States' alliance with European countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). "Pax" is Latin for "peace" (similar to "paz" in Spanish or "pace" in Italian), and the idea behind the term was that together, the United States, Canada and Europe were preventing the type of widespread carnage that occurred during two world wars. But according to Never Trump conservative Paul Rosenzweig, U.S. President Donald Trump has undermined the "American Peace" so badly that longtime allies now "distrust" and even "fear" the U.S.

Writing for the conservative website The Bulwark, Rosenzweig — an attorney who served in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under former President George W. Bush — lays out a variety of reasons why longtime allies are growing increasingly distrustful of the U.S. during Trump's second presidency.

"For more than 80 years," Rosenzweig explains in his Bulwark article, "the Pax Americana has protected the world. Imperfect and incomplete as it was, American reliability was a pillar of Cold War stability. NATO membership and the American nuclear umbrella were, to a large degree, the reason for European safety from Russian threats. American alliances — including mutual defense treaties — plus American pressure also allowed Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines to democratize. Our strategic support, albeit in a more ambiguous way, was also the basis for Taiwanese security."

Rosenzweig continues, "But the underpinning for all of that was American trustworthiness — the faith and confidence our allies had in America's promise that we would come to their aid when needed. That faith and confidence is fading."

Signs that "faith" in the U.S. is "diminishing" among longtime allies, Rosenzweig warns, "are large and obvious."

"Recently, Norway, a NATO founding member, became the ninth European country to sign up for French nuclear protection," the former DHS official observes. "Given the Russian threats and the broadly faltering trust in U.S. reliability, France has offered to extend its nuclear umbrella — with its roughly 290 nuclear warheads — to protect all of Europe as a replacement for American promises. But our allies are not only less willing to rely on and trust America. They are also coming to see America as a threat. Association with America is now a risk that needs to be taken into account and, if possible, reduced."

Rosenzweig continues, "Here's one example: Increasingly European governments are moving away from U.S. tech giants as service providers…. But the more insidious and troubling problem is that the belligerence of the Trump administration towards the continent has generated fears that bellicose language will be translated into hostile action. After Trump's sanctions against the International Criminal Court cut off six judges from their banks, credit cards, and even e-mail addresses, Europeans have a legitimate fear that that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access to critical services for a whole government or even a whole country. It's no wonder that Europe is, increasingly, seeking to reduce its digital dependence on the United States."

President Donald Trump's war with Iran seems to be causing a seismic change in the Middle East, but according to a new break down from The i Paper, it is happening in just about the exact opposite way he intended.

Writing for the outlet on Thursday, foreign affairs reporter Kieron Monks relayed the news of the recent address given by Iran's Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. There, he claimed that the country's war with the U.S. and Israel was bringing about a change in the region that the Iranian government has long been working towards.

"The nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases,” Khamenei said. “America will no longer have a secure foothold for its mischief or military presence in the region.”

"For decades, Iran’s clerical regime has made the expulsion of US forces from the Middle East a central aim," Monks explained. "Tehran believes that Trump’s war is bringing that vision closer to reality."

The U.S. has so far balked at peace demands from Iran requiring it to withdraw military forces from the region. Now, however, with Iran targeting numerous U.S. military bases in the region, Monks said that Middle Eastern nations "are wondering if they have become liabilities rather than assets."

Dina Esfandiary, an Iran specialist and Middle East lead for Bloomberg Economics, told The i Paper that the nation "100 percent" sees an opening with this war to try and force the U.S. out. Andreas Krieg, a Gulf security expert at King’s College London, added that the current political dynamics in the U.S. might actually bear out in Iran's favor.

“As a lot of people in the MAGA world are saying do we actually need to be there, a lot of voices in the Gulf are saying, why are we paying for the Americans to be here?” Krieg observed.

“I think it’s obvious that the war in Iran has not gone well,” Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East scholar with a focus on the Persian Gulf at Baker University’s Rice Institute, told the outlet, concurring with Krieg's observations. “The objectives were not achieved and it has created a situation where the US cannot force a decisive breakthrough. That may give talking points to the groups in D.C. who make the argument that actually we should leave the region.”

"It is extremely unlikely that the US military would pull out entirely," Monks explained. "But the Trump administration is under increasing domestic and international pressure over its role in the region."

Federal funding for President Donald Trump's massive ballroom was on the line before Congress on Wednesday, but the chief of the project was readying for an annual Russian economic conference, which some are calling "Putin's Davos." This is the first time the U.S. has attended since Russia attacked Ukraine.

Rodney Mims Cook told the Russian press that Trump and the State Department permitted him to travel to Russia for the economic forum in St Petersburg. BBC News Moscow reporter posted on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was "unaware" that Cook was attending the forum.

Cook was nominated by Trump to take over the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. All of the members of the board were fired in 2025 and Trump appointed their replacements. They then voted to approve the ballroom project and Trump immediately bulldozed the East Wing of the White House during 2025's government shutdown.

According to his conversation with Russian media, Cook said that his presence at the forum had nothing to do with his position in the Trump government; rather, he was there as a Christian to help restore churches in Russia, Reuters reported.

Yet, according to Max Seddon, Moscow Bureau chief for the Financial Times, Cook brought graphics showing off the ballroom.

"Cook, it turns out, is an ardent Russophile. He has been involved [in] restoring medieval Russian churches for decades. His own house in Georgia is designed in the Russian style. He says he is friends with many senior Russian elite figures. He seems absolutely thrilled to be there," added Seddon.

He was also photographed with Russian religious leaders.

Others who attended the forum include Andrew Tate and his brother, along with far-right streamer Candace Owens. Tate is facing criminal charges in Romania for sexual assault, human trafficking and establishing an organized crime group to exploit women.

At a time when voters are ready to hand Republicans a midterm revolt over the economy, Politico reported this week that top executives warned President Donald Trump that prices are about to get much worse if he does not solve the war in Iran.

Trump remains embroiled in negotiations for a lasting ceasefire and resolution to the war, which he started, with Iran's new hardline leadership refusing his demands. As that situation continues to spiral, the Strait of Hormuz remains either closed off or dangerous, depending on the day, sending global oil prices surging as a result.

According to a Thursday report from Politico, oil executives have warned Trump and his administration that, as bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse if the Strait is not reopened in a matter of weeks, citing sources close to the discussions. Without the oil that gets shipped through the body of water, global oil reserves will start to dwindle to a dangerous degree, sending prices to new heights.

"Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said," the report detailed. "The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were increasingly relying on oil and fuel from their storage tanks to replace products no longer arriving from the Middle East."

It added later: "Some of the conversations have been general warnings while others have focused on tight inventories of specific fuel types in particular locations, such as jet fuel on the West Coast, a second person involved in the conversations said."

In response to Politico's query about the supposed warnings, the White House gave only a terse response blasting the outlet for citing anonymous sources.

“We’re at dangerously low levels already,” one of those sources, an anonymous industry executive, told Politico. “We have shared those concerns at the highest levels of government about what’s coming in mid-to-late June. … I hope they are paying attention to inventories right now. You’re hitting tank bottom.”

Exxon executive Neil Chapman recently told investors that crude barrels could reach $150-160 in two or three weeks. Another anonymous executive told Politico that the White House has already been made aware of that and warned of the crunch coming for consumers during the big holiday travel rush.

“Don’t think that an open strait is going to mean your July 4 gasoline bill isn’t going to be higher than what it is today," they said. "It’s going to be.”

President Donald Trump has found himself in an unwinnable scenario with his Iran peace negotiations, according to one retired army colonel, as he is stuck dealing with hardline leadership that "refuses" to accept his own rules.

Jonathan Sweet is a retired lieutenant colonel who had three decades of service as a military intelligence officer. Alongside his frequent collaborations, national security reporter Mark Toth, published a new op-ed for The Hill on Thursday outlining the circumstances that have led Trump into the intractable quagmire he now finds himself stuck in with Iran.

"A stubbornly determined Trump insists that 'Iran really wants to make a deal' with the U.S.," the pair wrote. "At least that is what they tell his negotiating team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner behind closed doors. Iran’s actions — especially those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, under the leadership of Ahmad Vahidi — suggest otherwise. And this led Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to submit his resignation to the Office of the Supreme Leader last weekend."

As Sweet and Toth argued, Pezeshkian understood the situation better than Trump when he admitted that the IRGC was fully in control of Iran and preventing him from taking part in its governance. With "armed hard-liners" now in charge, "a deal that compromises their power in the Middle East is not in the cards," meaning that any eventual deal will almost certainly not be the one Trump is demanding.

"Trump is now demanding that Tehran put specific nuclear concessions down in writing as part of a preliminary agreement aimed at pushing past the drawn-out deadlock between the two countries," the pair continued. "Iran responded in part by firing missiles and drones Tuesday evening at Kuwait, the U.S. Fifth Fleet Headquarters at Bahrain, and a U.S. air base in the region."

They added later: "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the retaliatory strikes' should serve as a lesson' for the U.S. Esmail Kowsari, a hardline member of the Iranian Parliament, called for Iran’s armed forces to confront the U.S. 'much more strongly,' saying Americans' understand nothing except the language of force and power.'”

Those attacks from Iran, they argued, should make it clear to Trump and his allies that "an emboldened Iran is not going to back down," and that their only meaningful response left would be to end the ceasefire and resume active strikes, a move that would inevitably go down poorly with voters in the U.S.

"The White House is going to have to follow through on its threats to resume Operation Epic Fury — only this time, it must finish the job and defeat the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s center of gravity," they concluded. "Unconditional surrender is now the only acceptable outcome for the White House to obtain the objectives the President laid out on March 2, which will lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz."

The UK has long been one of the United States' closest allies, from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchhill during World War 2 to President Ronald Reagan and Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s to President George W. Bush and Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But according to the UK-based i Paper, King Charles III was privately "jittery" about U.S. President Donald Trump's most recent trip to the UK.

Trump visited the UK in September 2025, meeting with King Charles, Queen Camila and Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. And King Charles, visiting Washington, DC in late April 2026, gave an historic speech during a joint session of Congress.

Journalist Caroline Wheeler, Jane Merrick and Arj Singh, reporting for the i Paper, explain, "The King raised serious concerns about Donald Trump's state visit to the UK in the wake of the U.S. president's infamous bust-up with (Ukrainian President) Volodymyr Zelensky, the i Paper understands. The monarch's private reservations over the visit left officials scrambling, fearful that a royal snub of President Trump could detonate into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Multiple senior Whitehall sources have told this newspaper that the King was reticent about hosting Trump at this time because of his treatment of Zelensky."

An i Paper source told the British publication that King Charles was "jittery" about meeting with Trump, and another source said that he "did not want to do it."

This "revelation," according to Wheeler, Merrick and Singh, "illustrates how fraught UK-U.S. diplomatic relations have been during Trump's time in office" and also underscores King Charles' "unique role as the bridge between No. 10 (Downing Street) and the White House."

"A flurry of e-mails and texts exchanged between Peter Mandelson, then U.S. ambassador, and officials in March 2025 reveal a behind-the-scenes diplomatic scramble to alleviate Charles' concerns over the visit," the i Paper reporters note. "In one message, the peer thanks the most senior civil servant in Foreign Office for his 'cool handling of the last 48 hours on the SV (state visit)' — and in another exchange five days later, Mandelson discusses how he is awaiting an update following the weekly audience between the King and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. It highlights the diplomatic tightrope being walked by the UK amid fears that the U.S. president could pull America's support for Ukraine completely following his clash with Zelensky in the Oval Office at the end of February last year."

Wheeler, Merrick and Singh continue, "The King's concerns are understood to be included in a number of heavily redacted documents released in the so-called Mandelson files, which contained hundreds of private WhatsApp messages and e-mail exchanges between the peer and current and former Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and advisers…. The messages which have been published indicate that officials and diplomats were working intensively behind the scenes to allay the King's concerns, and suggest that Starmer was due to discuss them with Charles at their weekly audience."

In Albania, U.S. President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are involved in a major coastal development project that, if completed, will include new hotels, apartments and villas. But according to The Independent, the project is getting a major pushback from environmentalists and activists in the East European country.

"Albania's government champions the Adriatic Coast development as a transformative venture for the nation, aiming to boost its high-end tourism sector and support its bid for European Union membership," explains reporter Zana Cimili in the UK-based Independent. "However, the project, which encompasses an abandoned island and a stretch of seafront on Albania's southern coast, has sparked criticism from environmental groups and detractors of the long-serving Socialist Prime Minister, Edi Rama."

According to Cimili, an investment firm "linked to Kushner" has "been granted special investor status by Albanian authorities."

That coastal area of Albania, Cimili notes, "remained largely underdeveloped" when the country was under a communist dictatorship during the Cold War. Albania was invaded by Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist forces in 1939 and was later occupied by Nazi Germany, but communists took control of the country after World War 2 in 1946.

For many years, Albania had one of the most repressive communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. But it transitioned to democracy after the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

In Tirana, Albania's capital city, environmentalists have been holding large protests against the coastal project associated with Ivanka Trump and Kushner.

"Since late May," Cimili reports, "excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area, opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing, Environmental groups from Albania and elsewhere in Europe condemned the work, with one prominent local group charging that long-protected habitats are being 'irreversibly destroyed'…. Albania's state anti-corruption agency has confirmed it opened an investigation related to the project but has not disclosed details."

The Independent reporter adds, "The government says the land earmarked for the project is privately owned. But competing claims have emerged questioning the privatization — a common type of legal dispute."

Prime Minister Rama, according to Cimili, remains committed to project — which he described as "extraordinary," telling The Independent, "There is no chance for this investment to stop as long as I am here."

Interviewed by American podcaster David Senra, Ivanka Trump said of the coastal area of Albania, "We were on a friend's boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that's how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated."

President Donald Trump is panicking, The Atlantic's Vivian Salama, Jonathan Lemire and Nancy Youssef wrote on Wednesday.

According to the report, talks between the U.S. and Iran are on hold while Trump tries to build up to a kind of war "grand finale."

Trump decided that he wanted to combine the Iran deal with the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries to normalize relations.

Trump wanted "those countries that hadn’t yet joined the Abraham Accords [to] get on board." The various leaders gave him a "less than lukewarm response."

One U.S. official told the reporters that a leader spoke up, calling the idea interesting, but then there was silence. During the 90-minute call, there were several times that Trump asked, “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?”

The story explains why there have been so many reports of an agreement with Iran, only for nothing to come to light. Trump reportedly became "irritated" about those comparing his deal to the one established under former President Barack Obama. Trump's was being mocked as "weaker." He wanted to find a way to make his agreement better than Obama's.

There was also the matter of Iran's demand for sanctions relief. Trump has spent years claiming that Obama sent "pallets of cash" to Iran. Fact-checkers have made clear that none of the money was from the U.S. It was Iran's own money that was inaccessible due to sanctions.

The deal from last month would "usher in the first 60-day negotiating period," the report said. "Iran would relinquish its highly enriched uranium stockpile. Sanctions relief would arrive gradually. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz would reopen in phases."

Instead, all Trump could accomplish now is a ceasefire. As of Monday, Iran has walked away from the talks altogether.

"Critics of Trump’s decision to go to war contend that his impulse to go big masks the weakness of his negotiating position despite the U.S. military’s dominance," the report said. Still, Iran managed to survive. It gained further power by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz.

"None of his original war goals has been met, and the pressure to get a deal done is arguably now greater for Trump than it is for Iran, given the war’s broad unpopularity in the United States and the approaching midterm elections," said the report.

The report also noted that Israel's bombing of Lebanon, targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, has made any expansion of the Abraham Accords "unlikely."

Trump later had a private call with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who said he was open to normalizing relations with Israel but only if there were the formation of a Palestinian state.

Last week, Trump spent a lot of time in intelligence meetings. "Behind the scenes, administration officials were signaling that a breakthrough was at hand. A tentative agreement was ready and all that remained, they suggested, was Trump’s sign-off," The Atlantic reports.

Several reports revealed that Trump assumed the war would be over in a few weeks and would be an easy "win" for him.

"That explains Trump’s impatience," the report said.

The president is now complaining to CNBC that the war has "started to get very boring." When he was quoted as saying that to someone who leaked it to the press, Trump denied it, saying, "I don't get bored. There's nothing boring about this."

"Privately, Trump has grown eager to move on" because he has other issues to deal with and still wants to shift focus to Cuba.

The report closed, saying that while Trump is desperate for a deal, he's also content to "wimply wait rather than do a deal that invites unflattering comparisons to one that already existed — and which didn’t come at the cost of 13 U.S. service members and at least 1,700 Iranian civilians, tens of billions of dollars, the depletion of U.S. munitions stockpiles and a global energy crisis."