1h ago
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Trump claims that Israel never 'talked' him into launching a war on Iran
In a new post anto Truth Social, Donald Trump has said that Israel never “talked” him into the war with Iran, after reports that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, put pressure on him into launching their joint assault on Iran in late February.
Justifying
his military action, widely seen as being launched illegally, the US president
claimed that the “results of Oct. 7th” added to his “lifelong opinion” that
Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.
As my
colleague Julian Borger notes in this story, Trump has repeatedly claimed,
since starting the war, that Iran had been two to four weeks from making a
nuclear weapon and firing it at the US and Israel, a claim rejected as absurd
by most experts.
Trump
signed off his Truth Social post by saying if Iran’s new leaders are “smart”
then the country can have a “great and prosperous” future.
He has
previously said the US has been negotiating with figures inside of Iran other
than the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has reportedly been
recovering from severe facial and leg injuries suffered in the airstrike that
killed his father at the beginning of the war.
Updated
at
15.54 BST
1h ago
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Reuters
is reporting that Israeli and Lebanese representatives will hold talks in
Washington on Thursday. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to the US,
Yechiel Leiter, the source told the news agency.
Joseph
Aoun, the Lebanese president, has expressed optimism over future negotiations,
which he hopes will bring an end to the war and achieve a complete Israeli
withdrawal from the southern parts of his country.
Hezbollah,
which operates independently of the Lebanese state, has said it opposes direct
talks with Israel and its lawmakers have criticised the government for agreeing
to hold such negotiations.
The
Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, which came into effect on 16 April, is set to last
ten days. In an outline issued by the US state department, it said both
parties, having met for face-to-face talks in Washington last week, “affirm
that the two countries are not at war and commit to engaging in good-faith
direct negotiations, facilitated by the United States”.
The
ceasefire is described as “a gesture of goodwill by the government of Israel,
intended to enable good-faith negotiations toward a permanent security and
peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon”.
However,
it reiterates Israel’s right “to take all necessary measures in self-defense,
at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks”.
Crucially
though, the 10-day ceasefire agreement does not demand Israel withdraw soldiers
occupying parts of southern Lebanon, where Israel’s defence minister, Israel
Katz, said Israeli troops would continue to demolish homes he claimed, without
evidence, were being used by Hezbollah.
Israel on
Monday told residents of south Lebanon to stay out of a belt of territory
running the length of the border and not to approach the area of the Litani
river, about 30km from the border with Israel.
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