David Hearst – Middle East Eye April 9, 2026
US President Donald Trump has just given the world a masterclass in the art of dealmaking. You threaten armageddon one minute, and cave in to your enemy’s main demands the next. This should go down in the textbooks of diplomacy.
Iranians have good reason to come out into the streets and wave their flag today. Iran is entering two weeks of negotiations, having notched up an impressive list of strategic wins.
This is irrespective of how the 10 points in the ceasefire plan are described. Trump called them a “workable basis” for talks. Iran and Pakistan described them as guarantees for a ceasefire for two weeks only.
Under these terms, Iran will keep enriching uranium. If it has agreed to surrender its stock of highly enriched uranium, this is no great concession; it is what Iran offered in negotiations mediated by Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi before the US and Israel attacked.
Iran will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz, allowing a limited number of ships through during the period of the ceasefire. And it will continue to collect transit fees, along with Oman.
Trump retweeted the statement of Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in which he said that for two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be possible “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces”. This means that reopening the strait comes with Washington’s recognition of Iran’s authority over it.
But that is not all. The price of peace with Iran is a binding pledge not to attack it again, the removal of all sanctions – both primary and secondary – and compensation for war damage.
Of the 10 points, Iran’s demand for the withdrawal of all US combat forces from the region is the most speculative. A withdrawal of US forces from Iraq has been demanded by successive prime ministers in Baghdad for the best part of a decade, and it still has yet to happen.
Netanyahu loses
Whatever happens in Islamabad over the next two weeks, the fact that Trump pulled the rug out from under an intense campaign of US and Israeli air strikes is a major blow to the authority of the man who led him into this war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If his genocidal campaign in Gaza spelt the end of Israel’s moral authority over Europe, the war on Iran could have the same effect on Israel’s monopoly over Washington’s policymaking in the Middle East. No longer will issues be seen in DC exclusively through Israel’s lens.
Every one of the predictions that Netanyahu pitched to Trump for over an hour in the situation room of the White House – a room rarely used for meetings with foreign leaders – on 11 February proved to be false.
That Iran’s ballistic missile programme could be destroyed in a few weeks: Iran continued to fire ballistic missiles into the sixth week.
That the regime would be so weakened it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz: no ship has passed without Iranian permission and/or payment.
That the danger of Iran landing blows against US interests in neighbouring countries was minimal: Iran landed blows on US aircraft, radar systems and troops continuously in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.
That street protests inside Iran would begin again, and with impetus provided by Mossad and an intense bombing campaign, conditions could be fostered for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime: there has not been one defection either at home or abroad from the regime, and popular rage against the bombing has consolidated, not diminished, support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The New York Times reported that Netanyahu delivered his presentation in a confident monotone, as if he knew in advance that Trump had made up his mind.
But the Israeli prime minister, who had campaigned for decades for a US strike on Iran and who saw Iran’s hand in every act of Palestinian resistance, cannot be so confident today that Trump has his back.
Fates intertwined
There is no dispute that Netanyahu was the man who led Trump into this war. If the war goes wrong, he is the man upon whose shoulders the entire Washington establishment – Republican and Democrat – will place the blame.
Then there is Trump, whose erratic social media posts have stoked calls by members of Congress for his impeachment. His Republican base remains silent, as they, too, can see the direction in which this president is leading them ahead of the midterm elections in November.
The joint venture in Iran means that Trump has tied his fate politically to that of Netanyahu, and yet the polls for both men in the US are nosediving.
The latest evidence is a Pew Research poll conducted at the end of March. It found that 60 percent of US adults have an unfavourable view of Israel, up from 53 percent last year. A total of 59 percent have little or no confidence in Netanyahu to do the right thing, up from 52 percent last year, and the majority of adults under 50 in both parties rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively.
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If the experience of the last two sets of negotiations with the Iranians is anything to go by, there is a good chance that Trump will say Iran is not upholding its side of the deal and restart the campaign.
Certainly Netanyahu will strain every sinew to engineer such a situation. He does not even need false-flag drone strikes against Iran’s Gulf neighbours. He can simply keep on bombing Lebanon, as he did on Wednesday.
But what if Trump does restart the war? What is there to do to Iran that he has not already tried? What new cards does Trump have to play?
Iran has plenty. It can close Hormuz again, and start working on doing to the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of Red Sea what it has done to the Gulf.
The Houthis in northern Yemen have the air-to-sea missiles to attack shipping in the Red Sea. They had just joined Iran’s campaign. The global price of oil and basic commodities would shoot up in the event of a resumption of an air war that has already failed to bring Iran to heel once.
Trump further weakened
Unlike the first or second Gulf wars, Trump does not have the backing of Europe. He could threaten European states by pulling out of Nato, but Trump is not strong enough now to continue a war that makes no sense either to his allies or to his own party.
The third Gulf war has distilled all the mistakes of the first two. They were made by former President George HW Bush in Iraq, and his son, George W Bush, in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by the blunders of the Obama administration in Libya and Syria, and the Biden administration in Gaza.
Trump’s campaign became one expletive-laden, racist, colonial rant, topped by his version of Apocalypse Now – his threat to end 3,000 years of Iranian civilisation.
In the world order that is forming in the ashes of American exceptionalism, Trump’s inchoate ramblings are seen as weakness. The US under Trump has lost all sense of the utility of force – and that is a big thing for the world’s strongest army to lose.
Trump’s lack of cards, and his weakness on the world stage, has already been marked by China and Russia. They did not just abstain from a Bahraini resolution calling for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened; they vetoed it.
Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, described the resolution as “unbalanced” and stated that it “only accuses Iran”.
“We don’t think the resolution is balanced. It doesn’t even touch upon the root cause of the situation,” he said. “I want to emphasise, in particular, the timing is very bad. We all heard what the US president has said [about targeting a whole civilisation].”
Fragile ceasefire
So what happens next? Two factors will determine the fate of the ceasefire: what happens in Hormuz, and whether transit can be formalised in an arrangement that Iran and Oman can live with. What happens in Lebanon will also be crucial.
A major item in Iran’s 10 demands was that the ceasefire should apply across the region, particularly in Lebanon. Yet hours after the chief mediator, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, said the ceasefire should include Lebanon, he was contradicted by Netanyahu, who vowed the campaign in southern Lebanon would continue.
Will this hold? Will Iran allow Israel to continue to pulverise Lebanon as if nothing has happened?
A Hezbollah official said the group would not accept the continuation of Israeli strikes in Lebanon as it had done before the attack on Iran, but it is “giving a chance” to the countries that reached the agreement to obligate Israel to follow it.
Already, the ceasefire was struggling on Wednesday, as Israel carried out a blitzkrieg in Lebanon that hit 100 targets in 10 minutes, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. In addition, a major Saudi oil pipeline running east to west was hit by Iran.
Hormuz and Lebanon will decide whether there is another round to this war on Iran – but Trump and Netanyahu know exactly what to expect if they plunge back in.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was the Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.
This is ceasefire? Israel’s biggest massacre yet in Lebanon, another journalist killed in Gaza – Daily Update
It has now been 915 days since Israel began its 2023 genocide on the Palestinian people. Below is a roundup of news from Wednesday, April 8, 2026.
Although Israel signed a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon in November 2024, Israel has attacked Lebanon almost every day since, committing over 10,000 air and ground violations – the most violated ceasefire deal in recorded history – and killing at least 397. Additionally, Israel continues to occupy five Lebanese hilltops seized during the latest war, and other Lebanese areas it has held for decades. (Read about UNIFIL, the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, here.)
At least 254 killed after Israel hits Lebanon with massive wave of airstrikes
ISRAEL’S WAR ON LEBANON – NEWS & HEADLINES:
Israeli air raids have torn through densely populated commercial and residential districts in central Beirut without warning. Residents and local officials insisted that the buildings struck were not military sites.
READ MORE:
https://israelpalestinenews.org/this-is-ceasefire-israels-biggest-massacre-yet-in-lebanon-another-journalist-killed-in-gaza-daily-update/
israel is near to destruction
this will make europe free
something very precious
Today’s newsletter from Redacted mentions US plans to enlist for training those US citizens aged 18 to 40+. Also mentioned is the news the U.S. Army just bumped the enlistment age from 34 to 42. They’re clearly struggling to recruit if they’re looking to snatch men approaching middle-age, but maybe they’re doing what parasites do and are taking advantage of economically-weakened breadwinners in the jobs apocalypse that’s just starting over there.
They haven’t mentioned drafting women yet but at this stage they don’t have to. But as soon as they need them they’ll draft ordinary women. Men can go to Canada or Mexico to avoid the draft and maybe women can avoid it if they have young children so I would expect the birthrate to rise, which is kind of the opposite of what they’re wanting.
police in London and Manchester given extra £5m to back up the jewish shomrin police
following Golders Green reprisal for Gaza attack
Story by Will Meakin-Durrant and Ellie Ng, Press Association
Police in London and Manchester are to be given an extra £5 million to pay for more patrols around jewish places, the Home Office has said.
Security minister Dan Jarvis said the money would help “keep jewish people safe in the places where they live, work and worship”.
Jewush people are known to be afraid after the israeli acts of terrorism in gaza lebanon syria and iraq
The funding uplift follows an alleged arson attack in Golders Green, north-west London, where four Jewish community ambulances were set alight last month, and a revenge attack on a synagogue in Manchester last October. It will go towards Project Servator deployments, involving specialist officers who are trained to spot suspects who might be preparing to commit serious crimes.
More than 20 people have already been arrested on suspicion of antisemitic hate crimes, as part of a separate Metropolitan Police effort to crack down on hate crimes after the incident in Golders Green.
Funny how starving the people of gaza to death of the twin towers bombing is not considered a hate crime
Don’t know about the East to West pipeline in Saudi Arabia being bombed by Iran.
Someone was trying to blame Iran for attacking Kuwait today, which Iran has denied.
Iranians are all-in, determined to save their country. May Allah keep her strong enough to overcome the Yanks and the Yikes today and forever.
A video from Times of India explains how a large unmanned US drone, a Triton (that’s a new one to me) disappeared on a mission, and from this video it seems quite possible the Iranians captured it. It turned almost 90° towards Iran, lost a lot of altitude, curved round the Strait of Hormuz then disappeared, perhaps into the Strait to be recovered?
If the Iranians took control of it they’ve got some top-shelf electronic abilities and the intel they’d get from this drone – frequencies for these bits of kit; ranges and parameters for those etc – would be incalculable. This could be a major loss for US intel, and maybe it was brought down in the Strait to stop the US trying to locate and bomb it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD9A3ySCJLo
NATO = ZOG
BRICS = ZOG
If you haven’t figured it out yet, the West/NATO & BRICS are surreptitiously governed by the same transnational syndicate of Jewish bankers/oligarchs/rabbis. The setup is similar to the configuration from Orwells 1984–where the major blocs pretend they’re ‘enemies’ to keep their populations conditioned, confused & enslaved to their global techno-Communist government/system. The Israel Overlords are simply phasing out the white race now & transitioning their seat of global power to China vis a vis their new all non-white world they’re forming.
Actually, both of these gangsters in suits are very happy with the outcome so far. Israel has seized a part of Lebanon and does not intend to give it up. More ethnic cleansing is already taking place along with more Nakba being perpetrated on Lebanese people and their homes. The Iranian government, despite its religious rigidity, was the only nation on the entire planet supporting the resistance of Palestinians to the Israeli genocide and land clearances. All we heard were empty denunciations and slogans from other nations. With the US backing Israel in all of its crimes, its only excuse for its support for all of the blatant crimes is that it is no longer a Christian nation because it is owned by the Jews. As a result it has lost its moral compass along with the rest of the West.
Any real resolve for justice from Muslim nations such as Turkey and Pakistan, together with some real Christian leadership in the West, would force Israel and the US to comply with the 1945 and 1948 international conventions and would end Israeli apartheid and expansion. Also, that alone would stop the US in its tracks from attacking Iran.
As for the US, it also wanted this war. Increasing hostilities to the point of shutting down all shipping from the Gulf is not something which either side wants, but it is a sure way of defeating Iran, and giving the US the upper hand in the long run. The trade which Iran allows through the Straight is necessary to sustain its economy, and regardless of which nation to blame, shutting it down completely only strengthens the strangling Rothschild hands on the throat of Iran and also cuts off the crucial crucial circulation of oil to the nations which need it most, such as China and India. Unfortunately, their equally corrupt establishments do not care a rats ass about Israeli atrocities and land grabs, and only care about their oil supplies regardless of what nation is in control the Straight.
The US may not be able to claim ownership now of Iranian oil or even after a war to be able to use or develop it very easily, but the price will be very high in terms of American lives and dollars. The war sill likely stimulate the economy, and the US military can get updated with battle experience, but the US will have to print trillions and trillions more adding to the inflation problem, right at the time their demography spell the death of demand, making the dollar so debased there will be no real demand for it. In the meantime, with the continued uncertainty, the dollar will likely lose its stature as the world’s leading reserve and trading currency anyway, and out of sheer popular disgust more and more nations will boycott or turn away from Israel and the US, hiving off their trade in other circles, currencies, and commodities. In the process the US will have to make Iran a failed nation, just like they did to Iraq and Libya, and are doing to Syria, with the usual suspects herding millions of people into camps, and forcing millions more into the West. We are bound to see more militant Muslims arrive on our shores with any “victory”, which is something which the Rothschild-backed Kalergi-globalist DEI movement apparently are forcing upon us anyway. Notice how the Rothschild favorite prodigy nation gets a pass on all of the DEI stuff, while our nations are being systematically dismantled by DEI extremes going way, way beyond the 1945 and 1948 international conventions.
Just maybe the un-thinkable could happen:
Those who control and those who benefit from Amerika love a winner. You can mess up bigtime but so long as you keep the markets happy you’re untouchable. Trump and his family are currently raking in billions by his strategy of one lie today another tomorrow, threats, absurd statements, hypnotic ignorance. But if the wheels come off this juggernaut of deceit then both Trump and Netanyahoo may be removed as liabilities. After all, both are old, narcissistic, without conscience or imagination and prison is but a step away. So far, they’ve been winners but the photo of them at the head of his article is revealing . The Chosen PM sits awkwardly, grinning with complacent self love, when he actually looks like a shrunken Chimpanzee ill suited to a suit- planning more sickness and monkey rage. Whereas the colossus of lies and Epstein’s point-man rages on, a ludicrous finger pointing Agent Orange. Oblivious to anything other than himself.
Yet if Iran can drag the war out still further and lure Amerika into an invasion or really impact supply of oil and degrade more US allied assets then these two war jockeys could mysteriously vanish. The US markets will be aghast and they show no mercy to those leaders who stumble into a murky business of uncertain returns. Kennedy assassinated for many reasons, LBJ didn’t dare to seek re-election, Nixon driven from office, Carter failed in Iran and not re-elected, Bush Baby and his moronic evil causes the bank crisis. These men were all a lot younger than the two ghouls in the photo and America was a lot richer and stronger during their regimes than now. It simply cannot afford or support these wars and especially the endless bankrolling of Zion-no matter if the Lobby likes it or not.
Watch and wait for ye know not at what hour the market collapseth…..
That festering shit wad Nuttyahjoo deserves to get chased through the streets, worked over with claw hammers and brass knuckles, stripped naked, his tongue nailed to a tree stump, his mouth stuffed with wads of pig shit while a hardbound copy of the Talmud gets forced up his ass. Then rip him from the stump, bash his teeth out, flog him raw, roll him in salt and pig shit, then nail the demon to a rail and set it adrift out to sea.
Same with Zion Don the Con except make Zion Don watch his whole family get the ever living piss beaten out of them and violently sodomized by a mob of slobbering chabadnik yids soaked to the gills on viagra and manischewitz while his tongue is nailed to the stump and his asshole ripped open by that satanic book of bullshit.
if i had my way i would would hand trump nutenyahu and starmer over to umbra bellator for his special treatments
“But the Israeli prime minister, who had campaigned for decades for a US strike on Iran and who saw Iran’s hand in every act of Palestinian resistance, cannot be so confident today that Trump has his back.”
He will do as he is told or else. Why did Netanyahu give Trump a golden pager? What is that if not a threat?
“The latest evidence is a Pew Research poll conducted at the end of March. It found that 60 percent of US adults have an unfavourable view of Israel, ”
Amazing how 40% of Americans still support Pissrael. What a dumb morally bankrupt people.