No Longer.
Until now.
“News Items is the first thing I read every morning.” — Jack Leslie, former chairman of Weber Shandwick and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown Global Health Institute.
1. President Donald Trump yesterday said the war in Iran has already been won and regime change achieved as more than three weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have killed many of Iran’s senior leaders and destroyed much of its military capability. “We’re talking to the right leaders, and they want to make a deal so badly,” Trump said of nascent U.S.-Iranian talks that were happening “right now,” he said in the Oval Office. Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey have moved to broker a ceasefire amid a new wave of Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf countries and Israel, Iran’s continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz and reports that the U.S. is mobilizing additional ground troops to send to the region. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
2. The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout. It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal. But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries. (Source: nytimes.com)
3. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East, according to people briefed by American officials on the conversations. In a series of conversations over the last week, Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government, the people familiar with the conversations said. Prince Mohammed, the people familiar with the discussions said, has argued that Iran poses a long-term threat to the Gulf that can only be eliminated by getting rid of the government. (Source: nytimes.com)
4. The Pentagon has ordered about 2,000 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to begin moving to the Middle East to give President Trump additional military options even as he weighs a new diplomatic initiative with Iran, two Defense Department officials said on Tuesday. The combat forces would come from the division’s “Immediate Response Force,” a brigade of about 3,000 soldiers capable of deploying anywhere in the world within 18 hours. (Source: nytimes.com)
5. Iranian officials have told the countries trying to mediate peace talks with the U.S. that they have now been tricked twice by President Trump and “we don’t want to be fooled again,” according to a source with direct knowledge of those discussions. The U.S. is pushing for in-person peace talks as soon as Thursday in Islamabad, Pakistan. But during the two previous rounds of U.S.-Iran talks, Trump green lit crippling surprise attacks while still claiming to be seeking a deal…Iranian officials have told the mediators — Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey — that U.S. military movements and Trump’s decision to deploy major troop reinforcements have increased their suspicion that his proposal for peace talks is just a ruse. (Source: axios.com)
