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An Iranian resident follows developments regarding the talks through news channels as talks between the United States and Iran have begun in Islamabad, Pakistan on April 11, 2026, in the capital Tehran, Iran. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
Israeli ministers on Sunday hinted at a possible resumption of attacks on Iran, with Energy Minister Eli Cohen saying that Tehran could be hit if no agreement is reached, Anadolu reports.
“The nuclear issue is international, and it’s good that (US President Donald) Trump has set the red lines on the issue,” Cohen told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
“If there is no deal, Iran can be hit,” he added.
Regarding Lebanon, where the Israeli army has expanded its attacks, Cohen said Israel should not only strike army forces, but also Lebanon’s facilities and infrastructure.
“I have said this in the cabinet. I do not see a high chance of success for these negotiations,” he said, as Tel Aviv and Beirut agreed to hold their first meeting in Washington on April 14 aimed at securing a ceasefire and launching direct talks.
In an interview with Channel 14, Israel’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat claimed that the US would achieve its objectives from the war with Iran.
“The Iranian officials do not understand the determination of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he argued. “We will return to war and achieve its objectives.”
In a post on the US social media company X, Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zoha said that Washington’s “insistence on preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons reflects coordination with Israel,” claiming they would prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
More than 3,300 people have been killed in US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran since Feb. 28. Tehran launched retaliatory strikes on Israel, Iraq, Jordan and Gulf countries hosting US military assets before a two-week ceasefire was announced earlier this week.
Iranian and US delegations concluded 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, early Sunday without reaching an agreement.
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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A view of a Palestinian flag as the Global Sumud Flotilla, departs once again after one year, to deliver humanitarian aid, and raise global awareness about Gaza, in Barcelona, Spain, on April 11, 2026. [Burak Akbulut – Anadolu Agency]
Global Sumud Flotilla ships were at the docks in Barcelona on Saturday, before setting off for Gaza on Sunday, Anadolu reports.
Formed to break the blockade on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, the flotilla will sail this time with expanded participation, with its largest participation coming from Spain.
Around 70 boats carrying up to 1,000 volunteers from 70 countries are expected to depart on April 12, nearly doubling the size of the previous mission in September 2025.
Flotilla spokesperson Pablo Castilla said the initiative aims to condemn international complicity in Israel’s actions in Gaza, demand accountability, and establish a humanitarian corridor by sea and land.
He said international attention on Gaza has declined due to recent regional developments, adding that Israel has intensified its blockade, restricted aid entry, expanded settlements, and accelerated land seizure. He emphasized that the mission complies with international law. Greenpeace will also participate the mission along with other NGOs.
Last September, the flotilla set sail from Spain, and eventually included 43 boats and 462 people. Before it could reach Gaza, Israeli forces boarded the vessels and took the participants into custody, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
Organizers say this year’s flotilla will be the largest mission yet, including more than 1,000 participants and 100 vessels in parallel with land mobilizations.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu will block peace in Iran however he can | Ronen Zvulun / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Israel’s strikes on Lebanon are a reminder that Netanyahu will do whatever he can to avoid a peace deal with Iran
Within hours of Donald Trump accepting a two-week ceasefire in Iran, walking back on his dire threat that “a whole civilisation will die”, Binyamin Netanyahu did his best to wreck any prospect of peace.
Israel launched an intense bombardment of Beirut and other Lebanese towns and cities, with 100 attacks in the first ten minutes. More than 300 people were killed and more than a thousand wounded, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) also carried out a series of strikes across Gaza, including a precisely targeted armed drone attack on the car of Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Wishah, the 262nd journalist to be killed by Israel since October 2023.
These massacres serve as a reminder that it was Netanyahu, not Trump, who started the war on Iran and that he continues to pull the strings. For as long as that’s true, the prospects of a lasting peace deal are very low.
Provided the Strait of Hormuz remains open, Trump can now claim victory – even if that claim is far from the truth – but Netanyahu could not.
Trump wanted to kill Ayatollah Khamenei and cripple the Iranian military, including its nuclear ambitions, so Iran could not threaten its neighbours, especially Israel. Of course, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has not been crippled, but the US president’s self-belief and capacity to lie mean he would likely get away with saying otherwise.
The Israeli PM, however, needed regime change and the irreversible end of theocratic rule. A win over Iran had to be complete, not least to ensure his success at Israel’s general election later in the year.
But the Iranian regime is still intact; the popular Iranian uprising against the theocracy that the US and Israel expected failed to materialise. As such, a peace deal at this point would be a disaster for Netanyahu. If his devastating IDF Lebanon assault fails, he no doubt has more tricks of persuasion up his sleeve.
The extent of Netanyahu’s control of the war agenda, both its origins and its conduct, has been both disguised by Trump’s bombastic attention-seeking and overshadowed by the actions of the IRGC, which has survived intense bombing and developed a clear strategy: attack the eyes and ears of US and Israeli systems.
As Kelly Grieco, a specialist at the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based foreign affairs think tank, puts it, the IRGC is systematically targeting three “distinct functional categories”: radar and communications infrastructure, aerial tankers and airborne early warning.
“Each is a critical enabler of US air operations,” Grieco told Defense News. “That’s not random. That’s a target set derived from an understanding of how US airpower functions and where it is most exposed. The pattern suggests deliberate doctrine, or something close enough to it, not opportunism.”
The IRGC indeed reports that its US targets have included the Bahrain HQ of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet – the US’s primary hub for coordinating its naval operations in the region – a $1.1bn early warning radar in Qatar, and two radar facilities at sites in the UAE. It also successfully attacked the US’s Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, destroying an E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control plane. Two weeks earlier, it hit and damaged five KC-135 Stratotanker refuelling aircraft at the same base.
It is essential to remember that the IRGC was founded in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and expanded in size and power during the Iran-Iraq War between 1980 and 1988, when as many as half a million young Iranians died resisting Saddam Hussein’s opportunistic invasion of Iran.
Back then, the IRGC managed to prevent Hussein from annexing Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province and gaining total control over the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway. It has evolved into an ideological entity rooted in the defence of the revolution and is much stronger than Iran’s conventional armed forces.
The IRGC’s strength continues to lie in asymmetric defensive warfare. It has training, arsenals and weapons suited to survival and the wearing down of its much stronger opponents. The success of this approach against the US and Israel is clear, despite the thousands of Iranians killed or maimed and the billions of dollars of damage inflicted across the country.
Taking control of the Strait of Hormuz has been an obvious move, and even the repeated attacks on neighbouring states have a purpose. They may have shocked and angered leaders in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, but they sent a clear message: we are facing an existential threat from the US and Israel, and you are either with us or against us.
Iran could now continue the conflict with the US and Israel for weeks, if not months, if it so chooses. Despite the claims of the US president, the IRGC is not running out of missiles and armed drones – far from it.
CNN reports that around half of its missile launchers are still intact, as are thousands of one-way attack drones, while armed drones are being produced in backstreet workshops. Even Israel assesses that Iran still has more than 1,000 missiles capable of reaching it, while Hezbollah’s arsenal in Lebanon includes as many as 10,000 shorter-range rockets, according to military briefings cited by Israeli media last weekend.
Given all of this, can the peace talks succeed? Probably not, meaning the US may embark on a huge bombing campaign against the Iranian infrastructure and its very society, to the relief of Netanyahu.
There are still two avenues for hope, though. One is that Trump or the US public comes to realise that Netanyahu has been pulling the strings all along, which would undoubtedly dent the US president’s ego. The other is through the objection of external agents of influence; superpowers such as China or India could make clear that destroying Iranian society is not acceptable.
Extraordinarily, given its small size, the UK is also an external agent with specific influence. A sustained US bombing campaign of Iran requires the mass use of strategic air power – for the US Air Force, that must include the fleet of B-1B Lancer long-range bombers. Only 21 of those are reported to be “mission ready”, 15 of which are at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, each carrying more than 30 tons of a wide range of ordnance.
The loss of Fairford wouldn’t stop the war, but it would seriously hinder Trump’s plans. No other comparable European bases are available; only Fairford has the necessary and complex equipment to house the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the easy access to a huge munitions depot, which is located at the nearby RAF Welford. In any case, the UK is likely the only European state that would want a US air base like this right now.
A private word from Keir Starmer that the UK may follow Spain and others in closing its airspace to American war planes would have a direct impact. It would certainly help explain Starmer’s unexpected visit this week to the Middle East.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Keir Starmer explains that UK is defensively bombing Iraq in support of Israel’s genocidal expansionism. He explains that while his bombs still kill people that they are especially called defensive for the gullible and to be harder to convict of war crimes.Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer boards a plane at the airport in Doha, Qatar, following his visit to the Gulf region, April 10, 2026
… KEIR STARMER’S claims that he’s “fed up” of Donald Trump’s wars ramping up the cost of living ring hollow until he stops the US using British military bases and arming Israel, anti-war campaigners said yesterday.
The Prime Minister compared the US leader with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he expressed frustration over skyrocketing global oil prices following Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for US-Israeli bombings.
“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy, because of the actions of Putin or Trump,” he told ITV’s Talking Politics Podcast.
A spokeswoman for Stop the War Coalition told the Morning Star: “Keir Starmer continues in his cowardly appeasement of Donald Trump, even in his failure to stand up for working people as the economic crisis caused by the US’s illegal war on Iran hits home.
“He may be ‘fed up’ but he remains complicit until he stops allowing US planes to use British bases and stops arming Israel.”
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Keir Starmer explains that UK is defensively bombing Iraq in support of Israel’s genocidal expansionism. He explains that while his bombs still kill people that they are especially called defensive for the gullible and to be harder to convict of war crimes.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
A view of the destruction after the Israeli military carried out airstrikes on Beirut, Lebanon on April 8, 2026. (Photo by Murat Åengül/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The United States and all other countries need to cut off weapons to Israel immediately.”
Fresh demands for a total arms embargo against Israel emerged Wednesday as the country’s devastating onslaught in Lebanon—leveling apartment buildings and killing more than 250 people—threatened to derail tenuous progress toward a deal to end the US-Israeli war on Iran.
“The United States and all other countries need to cut off weapons to Israel immediately,” said Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the US-based Center for International Policy. “Full arms embargo.”
Avi Lewis, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, wrote on social media that “Canada must bring sanctions against Israel, cancel the Canada-Israel free trade agreement, implement a real two-way arms embargo, and use every diplomatic and economic tool at our disposal to rein in Israel.”
“US-Israeli impunity has shredded the international order,” he added. “Canada should lead in rebuilding it.”
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Wednesday that he “will be offering a resolution to stop US military aid to Israel” when Congress returns to session next week. The US is Israel’s chief arms supplier; recent data shows that 99% of Israel’s weapons imports are from the US and Germany.
Israel launched its barrage of airstrikes on Lebanon, including busy areas in central Beirut, just hours after US President Donald Trump, Iranian leaders, and Pakistani mediators announced a two-week ceasefire agreement aimed at providing space for a lasting resolution to the war that the US and Israel launched in late February.
Pakistan’s prime minister said explicitly that Lebanon was part of the ceasefire agreement, but the Trump White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted the country was excluded, prompting fury in Iran.
“If this isn’t yet another case of the US early reneging, then what is it?” asked Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
US Vice President JD Vanceclaimed Wednesday that there was a “legitimate misunderstanding” about the terms of the ceasefire, saying the Iranians “thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t.”
“That said, the Israelis have actually offered to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful,” Vance said.
More Israeli airstrikes were reported in Beirut as Vance made his comments.
More Israeli airstrikes in Beirut #Lebanon just as VP Vance says Israel will show restraint. “Israelis have actually offered to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon …to make sure that our negotiation is successful.” This is in sheyyah area tonight pic.twitter.com/F4ZFrlKS52
Israel’s assault on Wednesday marked the deadliest day for Lebanon during the latest round of bombing, which began days after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. Lebanon held a national day of mourning on Thursday as rescue efforts continued across the country.
One woman, identified as Haniya Faraj, told The New York Times that nine of her relatives were wounded in an Israeli attack on a neighborhood in central Beirut.
“I don’t know if there are more, my head is about to explode,” she said. “I can’t reach all my family members.”
The Associated Press reported that its journalists “saw charred bodies in vehicles and on the ground at one of Beirut’s busiest intersections in the central Corniche al Mazraa neighborhood, a mixed commercial and residential area. Using forklifts, rescue workers removed smoldering debris and sifted through ruins for survivors.”
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement that the Israeli government “has an appalling track record of carrying out unlawful attacks in Lebanon and displaying a callous disregard for civilian life, fueled by the impunity Israeli officials feel they enjoy.”
“These attacks are a reminder that states must immediately halt the transfer of arms and weapons to Israel, given the overriding risk that they will be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law,” said Morayef.
“We condemn these strikes in the strongest possible terms,” said Macron. “They pose a direct threat to the sustainability of the ceasefire that has just been reached. Lebanon must be fully covered by it.”
Sánchez, who has vocally condemned the Iran war from the start as illegal and immoral, went further, urging the European Union to “suspend its Association Agreement with Israel.”
“There must be no impunity for these criminal acts,” said Sánchez.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer boards a plane at the airport in Doha, Qatar, following his visit to the Gulf region, April 10, 2026
