Published date: 15 April 2026 09:04 BST | Last update:2 hours 10 mins ago
Israeli prison guards have violently assaulted Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti three times over the past month, according to his lawyer.
A campaign calling for Barghouti’s release on Tuesday described the incidents as “brutal attacks”. It said they took place while he was in solitary confinement in Megiddo and Ramon prisons, in northern and southern Israel respectively.
Barghouti was tortured “using various tools of repression and beatings, causing multiple injuries and bleeding across his body without medical treatment,” the campaign said.
It added that the prominent political figure has faced a “systematic series” of attacks that have continued since the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
Israeli human rights lawyer Ben Marmarelli, who said he visited Barghouti on Sunday, detailed the alleged abuse in a post on X, describing the situation as “deeply alarming”.
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He said that on 24 March, prison guards entered Barghouti’s cell with a dog, forced him to the ground, and set the dog on him repeatedly.
Barghouti was also assaulted during his transfer from Megiddo to Ganot prison the following day.
‘These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse’
– Ben Marmarelli, Human rights lawyer
On 8 April, he was severely beaten in Ganot and left bleeding for more than two hours. A subsequent request for medical treatment was denied.
“These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse: violence, medical neglect, and treatment that places him at immediate risk,” Marmarelli said.
He added that his most recent legal visit took place “under absurd conditions”, with the two forced to shout through glass to hear each other because prison phones were not working.
“This is what a legal visit looks like today: basic conditions denied, communication obstructed, and even the most elementary human and professional standards ignored.”
According to Marmarelli, despite the conditions, Barghouti remained mentally sharp and engaged with events outside prison.
“He had a great deal to say. Above all, he wanted to know more about his family and the Palestinian people, What is happening in Palestinian and Israeli scene I tried to tell him everything I know.”
Prominent figure
Barghouti, a senior figure in Fatah, has been imprisoned since 2004.
Israel targeted him for his leading role in the 2000–2005 Second Intifada.
He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years after being convicted over attacks that killed five Israelis. Barghouti refused to mount a defence during his trial, saying he did not recognise the court’s legitimacy.
Opinion polls have consistently suggested that Barghouti would win the Palestinian presidency if elections were held and he were permitted to run.
He is widely viewed as one of the few remaining unifying Palestinian leaders, despite Fatah’s deep association with the unpopular Palestinian Authority.
The 66-year-old has long been held in solitary confinement and has faced intensified assaults alongside other prominent Palestinian detainees since October 2023.
On 12 April 2026, I was on the “Switzerland” podcast with Josh Landis, one of the world’s leading experts on Syria, and the host Tom Switzer. In the wake of the failed negotiations in Islamabad, President Trump announced that the US was going to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which means that Iranian oil will no longer flow out of the Persian Gulf into world oil markets. No more oil profits for Tehran.
The underlying assumption is that this policy will inflict massive punishment on Iran, causing it to surrender to US and Israeli demands. I made the case that not only will it not work as planned, but it will work against the US because that Iranian oil is essential for limiting the economic damage being done to the world economy. Of course, this is why the US has allowed Iranian oil to flow into the global market up until now. As I have emphasized many times, the Trump administration is playing a losing hand.
Palestinian testimonies reveal how sexual violence, including rape using objects and dogs, is approved by ‘highest levels’ of Israeli leadership
Soldiers lock a gate at Sde Teiman detention facility after Israeli military police arrived as part of an investigation into the suspected abuse of a Palestinian detainee on 29 July 2025 (Reuters)
Published date: 11 April 2026 11:53 BST | Last update:1 day 21 hours ago
Sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons is an “organised state policy”, endorsed by the “highest, political, military, and judicial authorities”, a new report has revealed.
The report, seen exclusively by Middle East Eye, is based on testimonies from Palestinian former prisoners gathered by the rights watchdog Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
It reveals how the scope of sexual violence of Palestinian prisoners, including rape using objects and trained military dogs, constitutes an “organised state policy”, aided and abetted by Israeli institutions and leadership.
One former detainee, a 42-year-old woman from north Gaza who was held in the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre, said she was bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped by two masked soldiers over the course of two days.
She recalled that she was left shackled, naked and bleeding throughout the night before the soldiers returned the next day to continue raping her.
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She said she wished for death and likened her experience to “another genocide behind walls”.
Throughout her ordeal, she was filmed. Soldiers later showed her the footage while she was hung by her wrists under interrogation, threatening to publish the videos if she did not “cooperate”.
Amir, a 35-year-old Palestinian man also held at Sde Teiman, recounted how soldiers forced him to strip naked, before their dogs urinated on him and raped him.
He described how the dog “penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten”.
“This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.”
Khaled Mahajna, an attorney with the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, described how a soldier in Sde Teiman inserted a fire extinguisher nozzle into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and then discharged its contents into his body, resulting in severe internal injuries and intense pain.
‘Etched into their memory’
Another former prisoner, 43-year-old Wajdi, recounted being shackled to a metal bed and repeatedly raped by soldiers and a trained dog.
“I felt severe pain in my anus and screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me, Wajdi said.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding.”
He said he was then untied and raped by the dog. Later, another soldier forced his penis into the victim’s mouth and urinated on him. Over the following days, the abuse continued, with repeated rapes carried out by multiple soldiers.
“This case is particularly devastating because it reflects an accumulation of almost every form of torture, physical, psychological, and moral, layered with systematic humiliation,” Khaled Ahmed, a Euro-Med field researcher, told MEE.
“It also includes the deliberate use of multiple perpetrators and trained dogs as instruments of sexual violence. The result is not a single act of abuse, but an extended pattern of cruelty designed to destroy dignity, bodily integrity, and any sense of safety. These are acts that defy comprehension.”
Victims said the attacks were filmed and often conducted in “well-equipped institutional logistical settings… intentionally designed to enable torture and sexual violence”. The report said this evidenced the institutionalised nature of the violence.
Ahmed, who conducted some of the interviews with the victims, said the process was “by no means an easy task”.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding”
-Wajdi, former prisoner
“The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” Ahmed told MEE.
He described how some interviewees broke down in crying fits while recounting their stories, noting that the participants’ fear of reprisals and social stigmas around sexual abuse stopped some of them from speaking altogether.
“But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed told MEE.
“They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”
Ahmed said that most of the victims he spoke to were men, as women who experience sexual violence face a much deeper and more complex stigma in Palestinian society, “making it nearly impossible for a woman or her family to disclose that she has been assaulted”.
He noted that, while the sexual violence used against men and women is largely similar, women’s bodies in particular were used as a means to blackmail men.
“We documented several cases of sexual assault against women due to their familial ties to wanted individuals,” Ahmed said.
‘A complex crime’
Euro-Med monitor concluded that the testimonies are not isolated incidents but stand as evidence “of a policy supported by senior civilian and military leaders, either through direct orders or by tacit approval and a climate of impunity”.
It said that the scale of the abuse was made possible by legislation, military directives and emergency regulations, such as the “Unlawful Combatants Law”, which vastly expanded detention powers without judicial oversight and stripped detainees of any legal protections.
These legal mechanisms turbocharged enforced disappearances of Palestinian detainees and transformed Israeli detention centres into unaccountable “black holes” in the aftermath of 7 October 2023. Notable among them is Sde Teiman prison, where multiple reports have found torture, rape and murder to be rife, while the Red Cross and lawyers are denied access.
The report insists that responsibility for the abuse does not stop with its perpetrators; it is facilitated by the collusion of medical and legal personnel and the Israeli judicial system.
Euro-Med reported that doctors have helped to obscure incidents of torture by hiding the perpetrators’ identities, burying the victims’ injuries in medical records and issuing them “fit for interrogation” certificates.
Meanwhile, the Israeli justice system has shielded perpetrators by restricting evidence given by victims and witnesses, and reclassifying serious incidents as minor offences, resulting in the dismissal of charges.
In Israel, raping Palestinian prisoners is justified. Leaking the footage is betrayal
In March, the Israeli military announced it was dropping charges against five soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, despite leaked CCTV footage showing soldiers surrounding the detainee as he was pinned against a wall.
The report said that these abuses breach the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as they have caused serious harm to group members and are aimed at preventing births within the group – “all within a larger objective of partially or fully destroying the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip”.
It emphasised that responsibility for these crimes extends “beyond the direct perpetrators, encompassing leadership and institutions that shelter them”.
Numerous reports by rights groups and investigations by news sites, including MEE, have extensively documented the widespread use of sexual violence and rape of Palestinian detainees across the Israeli prison system.
A United Nations inquiry accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people”.
Ahmed emphasised that the proliferation of sexual violence in Israeli prisons serves a specific purpose, “because it encompasses almost all types of torture”.
“It keeps the victim trapped in a cycle of violence, unable to escape it, even after the violence has practically stopped,” Ahmed said.
“It continues to accompany the victim throughout their life. The survivor keeps experiencing both physical and psychological pain, and in many cases feelings of shame, humiliation, self-blame, inferiority, loss of dignity, and a lack of safety.”
He noted that the trauma does not stop with the victim, but spreads to their family and community.
“Especially in a conservative society where anything related to sexual assault is seen as an attack on the dignity of the entire family. It is a complex crime that deeply impacts and fractures the very fabric of society.”
John Mearsheimer: President Trump’s decision to attack Iran on 28 February 2026 was irrational because it was based on a noncredible or flawed theory of victory. He assumed that independent air power alone could cause regime change in Iran, which would lead to a new regime that would surrender to US and Israeli demands.
Highly recommended video on President Trump’s war on Iran and its consequences for the region, America and the world.
Israel denies withholding supplies for Gaza’s more than 2 million residents
MADRID, April 12 (Reuters) – A second flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza was due to set sail on Sunday from the Spanish port of Barcelona to try to break the Israeli blockade.
About 30 boats planned to leave the Mediterranean port city laden with medical aid and other supplies on the Global Sumud Flotilla, and more vessels are expected to join along the route towards Palestine.
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The Israeli military halted the roughly 40 boats assembled by the same organisation last October as they attempted to reach blockaded Gaza, arresting Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and more than 450 other participants.
MISSION TO ‘OPEN HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR’
Israel, which controls all access to the Gaza Strip, denies withholding supplies for its more than 2 million residents. Yet Palestinians and international aid bodies say supplies reaching the territory are still insufficient, despite a ceasefire reached in October which included guarantees of increased aid.
Liam Cunningham, an actor who starred in the Game of Thrones television series who is supporting the flotilla but not taking part, told Reuters: “Every kilogram of aid that is on these ships is a failure because all these people on these ships giving up their time to help their fellow human beings are doing what their governments are legally obliged to do.”
The World Health Organization has said that even during armed conflicts, states are obligated under international humanitarian law to ensure that people are able to reach medical care in safety.
“This is a mission that aims to open a humanitarian corridor so the aid delivery organisations can arrive,” Saif Abukeshak, a Palestinian activist and member of the flotilla’s organising committee, told Reuters.
Swiss and Spanish activists on last year’s flotilla said they were subjected to inhumane conditions during their detention by Israeli forces – an allegation that was rejected by an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson.
Reporting by Graham Keeley; Additional reporting by Silvio Castellanos, Horaci Garcia, Nacho Doce, Albert Gea, Michele Spatari and Amy McConaghy; Editing by David Holmes
Residents gather near charred cars and buildings, at the site of Wednesday’s Israeli airstrike, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 10, 2026. [AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti]
On Friday, during a phone interview with the New York Post, President Trump said US warships were being reloaded with weapons to be used against Iran in anticipation of a failure of the ceasefire talks taking place in Pakistan.
When asked if he thought the negotiations would be successful, he said, “We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon.” Trump’s remarks are an unmistakable indication that the two-week pause in the US air assault on Iran he announced on Tuesday has resolved nothing and is being used to prepare the next stage of the war.
Trump made clear that the Pentagon is replenishing its weaponry during the pause in the air assault. He said, “We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made—even better than what we did previously, and we blew them apart.”
Emphasizing that a return to warfare was on the agenda, Trump repeated himself, “But we’re loading up the ships. We’re loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we used to do a complete decimation. And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.”
Reports from multiple outlets since Tuesday show that Iran retains control over the passage through the Strait of Hormuz, with shipping still restricted and, in some accounts, subject to Iranian oversight or tolling arrangements. Disturbed by Iran’s control of the strait and the fact that this is being reported widely by the corporate media, Trump posted on Truth Social at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, “The Iranians are better at handling the Fake News Media, and ‘Public Relations,’ than they are at fighting!”
A report by CBS News said data compiled by MarineTraffic shows that only 22 ships have passed through the strait since Tuesday. Estimates of shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf indicate a significant bottleneck of over 600 total commercial vessels at a standstill, approximately 400 of which are oil tankers, and not moving through the strait.
A few minutes later, Trump escalated his threats against Iran, writing, “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”
There are major conflicts within the US ruling establishment over whether the talks will produce any results because of Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon. Iranian officials have warned that time is running out, while US officials are trying to preserve the ceasefire before it expires on April 22.
However, based on Trump’s comments to the New York Post, it is likely the Israeli attacks on Lebanon are being used to deliberately sabotage talks that function as a cover for preparations to restart the war on a far higher level.
The truce discussions are taking place in Islamabad, with Pakistan mediating and a large US delegation involved, including Vice President JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio and Adm. Brad Cooper, alongside officials from the National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon.
On the Iranian side, reports say the delegation arrived in Islamabad and is headed by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other senior officials also included. Reuters described the meeting as “make-or-break,” and other reports say the two sides remain far apart on core issues.
The official line is that the talks are meant to translate the ceasefire into a longer standing arrangement, but there is no agreement over whether Lebanon is covered. Pakistan and Iran have said that the ceasefire framework includes Lebanon, while the White House and Israel have denied it.
Iran’s position is tied to Israel’s continued expansion of the war in Lebanon. Iranian state-linked comments reported in the press have framed the Lebanese front as inseparable from Iran’s own security, with Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi warning that “Aggression towards Lebanon is aggression towards Iran,” and promising a “heavy response.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who previously said there is “no cease-fire in Lebanon,” agreed on Thursday to start direct negotiations with Lebanon after Trump urged restraint by Israel, and the European imperialist leaders warned that the attacks on Lebanon threatened to collapse the ceasefire with Iran.
Recent reporting says that more than 1.2 million people have been displaced since the beginning of the conflict, with the UN citing evacuation orders covering 14 percent of the country. On Wednesday, Israeli strikes killed at least 303 people and injured more than 1,000, the deadliest day so far in the war that began on March 2.
The scale of destruction is also being measured in infrastructure collapse. Reports cite strikes on roads, bridges, hospitals and commercial districts, with aid delivery badly disrupted and parts of the south rendered non-functional. Like the Gaza genocide, this is not a limited border operation; It is a systematic campaign to make areas of Lebanon uninhabitable.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones
The correspondence of interests between Washington and Tel Aviv were expressed when Trump said on Wednesday that he had spoken with Netanyahu and that Israel would “tone it down” in Lebanon. Knowing full well the Iranian position on the Lebanon, Trump added, “I just think we need to be a bit more low-key,” and claimed Netanyahu would “ease up” and be “totally fine” on the Lebanon issue.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s latest statements make clear that Israel’s objective is not a pause but a political-military restructuring of Lebanon. He has said the talks with Lebanon will focus on “disarming Hezbollah” and establishing “peaceful relations” on Israeli terms, while also insisting that Israel will keep striking until its security conditions are met.
These remarks should be understood alongside the fact that the bombing of Lebanon continues. Israel is using negotiations as a cover to press its military campaign, not as a genuine path to de-escalation. Israeli strikes continued Thursday killing dozens more, with between 17 and 24 killed in specific strikes by Israel.
This is in fact the same modus operandi of the Trump administration itself. The “talks” in Islamabad are but a respite as the White House considers its next move to militarily impose the requirements of US imperialism onto the Iranian people.
The WSWS has consistently maintained that this war is part of the imperialist effort by Washington to subordinate the region to American interests. The US is pursuing “the obliteration of Iran as a state and a campaign of terror against the population,” and that the assault on Iran is tied to control over energy resources and preparation for wider a conflict, including against China and Russia.
As an anonymous senior defense official told Politico in March, “Iran is not the end. It’s the first test of a broader geopolitical reorientation. We’re rebuilding the capacity to project power simultaneously in multiple theaters—Eurasia, the Pacific, and the Middle East.”
This analysis identifies the present war as a warning of what is coming next. The aim of US imperialism is the domination of Iran as a major opening act in a broader global escalation. The Middle East war is the sharpest expression of the world crisis of capitalism.
The ceasefire talks in Islamabad cannot resolve a conflict rooted in imperialist strategy, Israeli expansionism and the drive of the US ruling class to redivide the region by force. With these objectives intact, the present truce will be unstable, and the threat of a far broader war will continue to hang over the region and the world.
We know that the Iranian delegation is going there to stop the war and that the war is putting a huge amount of pressure on civilians living inside the country.
For 40 days, they were experiencing attacks after attacks targeting civilians and infrastructure, and the naming of the delegation as Minab 168 symbolises one of the first attacks on the very first day, when an elementary school was targeted in the city of Minab, where over 168 student girls and teachers were killed.
We know that more than 800 schools, more than 30 universities, healthcare facilities, and a long list of other infrastructural facilities were targeted as a result of this campaign of strikes.
So, the message or the interpretation is that first, Iran is trying to put an end to this suffering and pain that civilians have been witnessing over the past weeks as a result of war, but it also symbolises a diplomatic opportunity that Iran is trying to settle down the issue.
That is more than crystal clear when it comes to the delegation that you see in Islamabad, showing how serious Iran tries to be when it comes to the potential for diplomatic settlement.
Published date: 10 April 2026 13:35 BST | Last update:39 mins 32 secs ago
Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Asif, called Israel “evil” and a “curse for humanity” in an X post on Thursday, just hours before US and Iranian delegations were due to arrive in Islamabad for peace talks mediated by Pakistan.
In the post, which has since been deleted, Asif wrote: “While peace talks are underway in Islamabad, genocide is being committed in Lebanon. Innocent citizens are being killed by Israel, first Gaza, then Iran and now Lebanon, bloodletting continues unabated. I hope and pray people who created this cancerous state on Palestinians land to get rid of European jews burn in hell.”
The statement followed a wave of Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday that killed over 200 people and wounded over 1,000 in the heaviest day of bombing on the Lebanese capital in decades.
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The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office called Asif’s comments “outrageous” in a post on X.
“This is not a statement that can be tolerated from any government, especially not from one that claims to be a neutral arbiter for peace,” it said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in a post on X that Israel “views very gravely these blatant antisemitic blood libels from a government claiming to mediate peace”.
“Calling the Jewish state ‘cancerous’ is effectively calling for its annihilation,” he added.
A screenshot of the deleted tweet on 9 April by Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif describing Israel as ‘cancerous’ and ‘evil’
Islamabad is set to host delegations from the US and Iran from Friday, with talks scheduled to begin on Saturday. They are aimed at ending the US-Israeli war on Iran, which reached a tentative ceasefire agreement on Wednesday.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said on Friday that Iranian delegates would not attend peace talks unless the ceasefire agreement is extended to Lebanon.
One Pakistani official involved in the mediation talks told The Guardian on Friday: “Our priority is that the talks go smoothly.”
“We don’t want to be seen as a spoiler. Our role is as a facilitator and mediator. We will leave it to both parties, Iran and the US, to share any developments with the media if they want.”
Pakistan, which has positioned itself at the centre of global conflict mediation during the war, has also been mired in its own conflict with Afghanistan since declaring “open war” on 27 February.
Hundreds have been killed and nearly 100,000 displaced by cross-border shelling and air strikes during the conflict, which China is simultaneously mediating.
Asif, a veteran member of the conservative Pakistan Muslim League party that has governed Pakistan since 2024 and during several previous administrations, has long been vocal in his criticism of Israel.
On 3 March, he described Zionism as “a threat to humanity” in a post on X.
“From the establishment of Israel on the land of Palestine until today, every catastrophe that has befallen the Islamic world, every war imposed upon it, will show the direct or indirect hand of Zionist ideology and the state,” he wrote.
US officials were aware that a statement from Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the US-Iran ceasefire that was issued on Tuesday included a truce in Lebanon as part of the deal, according to media reports.
The New York Times reported that the US had already seen and signed off on Sharif’s statement before he posted it. The initial post included a header that said “Draft – Pakistan’s PM Message on X,” causing speculation that the statement was actually written by the US, though a White House official denied that President Trump drafted it.
A diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations leading up to the ceasefire announcement told ITV News that Iranian and Pakistani officials ended the talks with the understanding that the US was aware that the truce also applied to Lebanon, contradicting claims from Trump and Vice President JD Vance that it did not.
Vance claimed it was a “misunderstanding” on the part of the Iranians that the ceasefire included Lebanon and said it would be “dumb” for Tehran to allow the negotiations to collapse over the issue, though he also insisted the deal includes a halt to Iranian attacks on Israel and the US’s Gulf allies in the region.
Israel not only continued its attacks on Lebanon, but it also dramatically escalated the bombardment, launching a new military operation dubbed “Operation Eternal Darkness” and killing hundreds of people across the country. According to NBC News, Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale down the attack, but heavy Israeli strikes continued on Thursday.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Thursday that he instructed his government to open negotiations with the Lebanese government, though there’s no sign he plans to halt the bombing campaign.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi affirmed in a statement on Wednesday that the ceasefire must include Lebanon or the deal will be off. “The Iran-US Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the US must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
US threats against Iran and ongoing Israeli attacks in Lebanon cast doubt on fragile ceasefire efforts.
By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP and AP
Published On 9 Apr 2026
United States President Donald Trump has warned that US forces will remain deployed around Iran and threatened overwhelming military action if Tehran fails to meet Washington’s demands, casting doubt over a fragile ceasefire.
Writing on social media late on Wednesday, Trump said US troops, aircraft and naval forces would stay in position until what he described as the “REAL AGREEMENT” is fully implemented.
“All US ships, aircraft, and military personnel … will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“If for any reason it is not … the ‘Shootin’ Starts,′ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before.”
The remarks came just a day after a two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, brokered by Pakistan, paused six weeks of fighting and briefly calmed global markets worried about disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet Trump’s language underscored how quickly the truce could unravel. He reiterated US demands that Iran abandon any nuclear weapons ambitions and ensure safe passage through the vital shipping lane, while boasting that US forces were “Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest”.
Meanwhile, in Iran on Thursday, the semiofficial ISNA and Tasnim news agencies published a chart suggesting the country’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had put sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz during the war.
The chart showed a large circle marked “danger zone” in Farsi over the Traffic Separation Scheme, which was the route ships take through the strait. The chart suggested ships travel further north through waters closer to Iran’s mainland near Larak Island, a route that some ships were observed taking during the war. It was dated from February 28 until April 9, and it was unclear if the IRGC had cleared any mining on the route since then.
Peace and Justice Post 