Trump spoke to Bloomberg, CBS, Axios and the New York Post in one morning. He claimed Iran agreed to an "unlimited" nuclear suspension, to hand over its enriched uranium, and to a weekend deal.
None of it was true. A near-deal collapsed within hours — CNN. 1/
Trump told Bloomberg Iran agreed to an "unlimited" suspension of enrichment.
He told CBS Tehran "agreed to everything" and would hand over its uranium. He told Axios a deal would come "in the next day or two." Sources said Iran had not agreed to those terms. 2/
Source familiar with the talks, to CNN: "The Iranians didn't appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn't yet agreed to."
Trump officials privately told CNN the commentary damaged the talks. 3/
Iran's foreign ministry: "Enriched uranium is as sacred to us as Iranian soil and will not be transferred anywhere under any circumstances."
Hours earlier, Trump said US personnel would "go down and get it" with the Iranians and bring the stockpile to the United States. 4/
The ceasefire cracked further on Sunday.
The USS Spruance, a US guided-missile destroyer, fired into the engine room of Iranian cargo ship Touska and seized it in the Gulf of Oman. Iran's military vowed to retaliate against "US armed piracy." 5/
Trump demands no enrichment, indefinitely. Iran proposed a 10-year pause followed by a decade of low-level enrichment.
The US earlier offered 20 years. Iran countered with 5. Washington rejected that. 6/
Under discussion: the US unfreezing $20 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for Tehran handing over its 400 kg stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium.
Trump spent years attacking Obama for the same move. He denied the report: "We are not paying 10 cents." 7/
The ceasefire deadline keeps moving.
Trump announced it at 6:32 p.m. ET on April 7. He then told Bloomberg it ends "Wednesday evening Washington time" — an extra 24 hours. Asked five times if he would extend it, he gave three different answers. 8/
Talks are now set for Wednesday morning in Islamabad.
Vance, Witkoff and Kushner lead the US delegation. Trump calls a further extension "highly unlikely." After Wednesday: accept an imperfect deal, or blow up Iranian bridges and power plants — a possible war crime. 9X
Ukraine’s 20-somethings are reshaping its war machine and displacing a Soviet-era old guard in defense.
A Defense Ministry staffer in her early 20s found Denmark had earmarked the wrong shells for Ukraine and secured 15,000 long-range rounds, NYT. 1/
The staffer works under Oleksii Antoniuk, 24, deputy head of the ministry’s cooperation department.
Oleksii: “If not for her, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Young Ukrainians under 30 are gradually displacing a Soviet-era old guard in defense. 2/
The shift runs through Ukraine’s war machine.
Twentysomething engineers design drones, young entrepreneurs turn prototypes into production lines, and recent graduates at the Defense Ministry cut red tape to speed weapons to the front. 3/
Applebaum: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 partly as a direct challenge to NATO and the United States.
Moscow wanted to prove there was no Western alliance, that Ukraine was not a real country, and that Europe and America would not come to its defense. 1/
Applebaum: Russia wanted to show that it alone was the sovereign power in Eastern Europe and would decide what happened there.
Instead, it was surprised: the United States and a united Europe pulled together and proved that a democratic world still exists. 2/
Applebaum: Negotiations will become possible only when Russia decides to stop fighting and accepts that it cannot achieve its main goal—the destruction of Ukraine as a nation.
Russia has not reached that point. Putin has never withdrawn that objective. 3/
Applebaum: The war with Iran was clearly a war of choice. Israel had proposed this kind of action to previous US presidents, and they declined.
They understood the immediate danger to international shipping and especially to the oil and gas industries. 1/
Applebaum: Trump now appears to regret the war, or at least has no interest in continuing it.
He is seeking an agreement that could resemble — or even be slightly worse than — the Obama-era deal, while the claim that Iran was about to get a bomb does not add up. 2/
Applebaum: Trump failed to account for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz or retaliating against Gulf states, and then expressed surprise.
Yet anyone who had studied a war with Iran over the past two decades had already identified both risks as obvious possibilities. 3/
Applebaum: Trump’s relationship with Erdoğan grows out of his business dealings in Turkey.
He invested there, believes those investments went well, and his family company still has interests there — or could. He sees the world in personal, transactional terms. 1/
Applebaum: Trump does not think like a traditional American president representing US interests, the Western alliance, or the democratic world.
He asks what is good for him personally. He likes Erdoğan, and that is the simplest way to understand their closeness. 2/
Applebaum: Trump states his personal view and assumes that it therefore becomes the policy of the United States.
But the American system is more complicated than the president’s preferences: Congress may still restrain the weapons sales he wants to make to Turkey. 3X