Reported response comes hours after Trump announced delegation to Islamabad, having earlier threatened to raze Iran’s infrastructure
Tehran is not currently planning to take part in new talks with the US, Iran state media reported on Sunday evening, hours after Donald Trump said he was dispatching negotiators to Islamabad.
“There are currently no plans to participate in the next round of Iran-US talks,” state broadcaster IRIB said, citing Iranian sources.
Continue reading...Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a long supporter of Trump, says president’s feud with the pope is a ‘distraction’
A Republican lawmaker has condemned what he refers to as Donald Trump’s “holy war” against Pope Leo XIV.
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a long supporter of Trump and the ultraconservative Maga movement, condemned the president’s attacks on the pope during a Fox News interview on Saturday.
Continue reading...Orbán is out in Hungary and talks have failed to end the war in Iran – ill-fated road trip has been setback for Maga aims
Shortly before JD Vance’s ill-fated week crisscrossing the world, Donald Trump asked him during a private Easter brunch about how the Iran negotiations were shaping up. “If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” Trump said to laughs in the room. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”
The joke at Vance’s expense contained an unfortunate nugget of truth: this is not an administration that rewards failure.
Continue reading...The two sides turned up to test one another’s resolve. It was probably unrealistic to expect a dispute that has taken up years of discussion to be settled in one marathon session
It was if the two delegations in the Iran-US peace talks in Islamabad hoped that the sheer number of negotiators flown into Pakistan could overcome the handicap of having only a finite number of hours in which to settle a 20-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, now overlaid by complex new issues such as future control of the strait of Hormuz and US compensation for its attack on Iran.
Iran sent two planeloads of negotiators. They included many members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), present to ensure that no gains made in the field were relinquished at the diplomatic table. Diplomats fanned out across political, legal, security, economic and military files. One Iranian-drafted technical explanation on nuclear facility safety ran to more than 100 pages.
Continue reading...Oil prices and borrowing costs are expected to rise this week as tankers remain stranded in the Gulf
The failure of the US and Iran to reach a peace deal after marathon negotiations has put markets on alert for further oil and gas price rises.
With large numbers of oil tankers remaining stuck in the Gulf, the US vice-president, JD Vance, blamed the collapse of the talks on Tehran’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, while Iranian sources hit back at “excessive” demands from Washington.
Continue reading...Iranian delegates in Islamabad say Washington needs to do more to win their trust if talks to resolve US-Iran conflict are to be successful
The US vice-president, JD Vance, has blamed the failure of marathon negotiations with Iran on the country’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, while Iranian delegates have claimed Washington needs to do more to win their trust.
Vance, who left Islamabad on Sunday morning after 21 hours of talks with Iranian officials in the Pakistani capital, said his team had been very clear on its red lines, as hopes faded of a quick end to the conflict that began on 28 February.
Continue reading...Britain’s standing in the world was never the same after its assault on Egypt in 1956. Now the US risks repeating history in the Middle East
Donald Trump’s addiction to framing every event in the most apocalyptic terms is what allows conservative commentators such as Mark Levin to praise him as “a once-in-a-century president”.
But Trump cannot play out his entire presidency on a reckless high wire without eventually falling off – potentially taking America with him into a steep decline into the unknown.
Continue reading...Vice-president’s war doubts and his boss’s desperation to reopen the Hormuz strait constitute a weak deck against bolstered opponents
As JD Vance arrives in Islamabad to negotiate a peace deal with Iran, his first high-profile assignment of the war looks to be a poisoned chalice.
Vance, a vocal opponent of US wars in the Middle East gone quiet since the beginning of the current military campaign, will now face off with Iranian negotiators who feel emboldened by their new control of the Hormuz strait and their resilience in the face of the largest US-Israeli onslaught in history. Vance’s presence at the talks as vice-president will make it the highest-level meeting since the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Continue reading...US vice-president said bloc tried to ‘destroy’ country’s economy, despite it being a net recipient of EU funds
During his visit to Budapest, where he heaped praise on the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, days before the country’s decisive election, JD Vance claimed the EU was responsible for “one of the worst examples of election interference” he had ever seen.
Standing alongside Orbán on Tuesday, the US vice-president said: “The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried to make Hungary less energy-independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers. And they’ve done it all because they hate this guy.”
Continue reading...Vice-president promises ‘to get to the bottom of’ reports of US government files about unidentified flying objects
JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, said this weekend that he considers aliens to be “demons”.
As the war in Iran continues, petrol and grocery prices soar and chaos continues at US airports as a partial government shutdown endures, Vance appeared on the conservative Benny Show podcast, released Saturday, to promise that he would spend time looking into what he called his “obsession” with UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors.
Continue reading...Tehran puts forward five-point counter-proposal and says war will end when it decides and on its terms
Iran dismissed a US ceasefire proposal on Wednesday and countered with a negotiation plan of its own as intermediaries sought to keep diplomatic channels between the warring countries open.
Iranian state TV quoted an anonymous official as saying Tehran had rejected the plan it had received via Pakistan, saying it would “end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met”, and until then would continue fighting across the region.
Continue reading...Pair attempt to strike united front amid reports vice-president skeptical over US-Israeli attack on Iran
Donald Trump revealed that he had asked China to delay his forthcoming visit to Beijing while the war with Iran was continuing, as he attempted to strike a united front on Monday with his vice-president JD Vance, who is believed to have been skeptical over attacking Tehran’s regime.
Appearing together with Vance for the first time in two weeks, Trump said he did not think the conflict – which started on 28 February after the US and Israel opened hostilities – would be over this week but predicted victory would be achieved soon.
Continue reading...Vice-president makes announcement with Mehmet Oz, who says other states will be next after Minnesota
JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump’s newly announced “war on fraud”.
Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax money”, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.
Continue reading...Army secretary Daniel Driscoll presented a Russian wishlist, highlighting differences with the administration
The US army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration’s newest proposal to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but his ties to JD Vance have put a close ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president on the frontlines of Donald Trump’s latest push to end the war.
Before his trip to Kyiv last week, Driscoll was not known for his role as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts at selling the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.
Continue reading...Mark Kelly, a veteran and Democrat targeted by Trump over military comments, says he is ‘not going to be intimidated’
Senator Mark Kelly on Sunday urged congressional Republicans to publicly reject Trump’s threats against him and five other Democratic lawmakers who stated that military personnel are not obligated to follow illegal commands.
“We’ve heard very little, basically crickets, from Republicans in the United States Congress about what the president has said about hanging members of Congress,” Kelly, of Arizona, said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Continue reading...US vice-president announces to 10,000 attenders of Turning Point USA that he prefers wife, who is Hindu, to be Christian
JD Vance is doubling down on comments he made about wanting his wife, Usha Vance, to convert to Christianity – remarks that drew political backlash from some quarters.
At an event with Turning Point USA at the University of Mississippi to honor the conservative group’s slain founder Charlie Kirk, an audience member questioned the US vice-president about how he sees the links between American patriotism and Christianity.
Continue reading...US vice-president suggests votes were ‘stupid political stunt’ as Israeli PM orders a stop to any further work on bills
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ordered a halt to the advancement of parliamentary bills linked to the annexation of the West Bank after the US vice-president, JD Vance, described a vote on two bills in the Knesset as an “insult”.
The bills applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, which would be tantamount to the annexation of land Palestinians want for a state, won preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, barely a week after Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Continue reading...Shrapnel fragments rained on vehicles parked on Interstate 5 including highway patrol and JD Vance’s detail
A live artillery shell exploded prematurely during a marines live-fire demonstration that launched over a southern California freeway in celebration of the military branch’s 250th anniversary, raining shrapnel down on a California Highway Patrol vehicle and a motorcycle that was part of JD Vance’s detail, according to a police report.
The New York Times reported that fragments that fell from the 155mm shell landed on vehicles parked on a ramp on Interstate 5 – a major artery through southern California – which governor Gavin Newsom had ordered closed after learning that military officials had no plans to close the freeway.
Continue reading...Outside of typical remarks from Donald Trump, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and a Fox News report, party stayed mum
Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.
Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.
Continue reading...Vice-president calls crime ‘out of control’ in US cities as Trump faces legal battles for use of federal forces
The White House is talking about invoking the Insurrection Act that would allow the deployment of military troops on US soil to quell domestic unrest amid legal challenges over the moves, JD Vance confirmed on Sunday.
Vance was asked on NBC News’s Meet the Press whether Donald Trump was seriously considering invoking the emergency power to deploy national guard forces and even the US military in domestic settings.
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