President Trump hasn’t made up his mind yet on whether he wants to send American forces into Iran and seize the country’s nuclear material, which would be a very dangerous operation, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.
In private conversations, he has told people close to him: “I have a lot of decisions to make.”
The Pentagon has prepared multiple options for the president as potential next steps in the Iran war.
After the U.S. military strikes on three nuclear sites last summer, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a nuclear watchdog, said it could not account for an estimated 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium Iran had before the strikes.
Mr. Trump believes Iran’s military assets are dramatically degraded — with their navy and air force essentially gone — but he is concerned about Iran’s capability to plant mines, two of the sources told CBS News. He thinks Iranians can gum up oil shipping in the Strait of Hormuz because the mine-laying operations take only three or so people.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said it was unclear if Iran had begun laying mines or not. He told reporters, “We don’t even know if there are any mines there, but if there are, you know, we’d like to have a little help in finding them.”
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan announced on Wednesday a pause in strikes against Afghanistan, saying the decision was made ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
In a statement, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the pause in strikes on “terrorists and their support infrastructure in Afghanistan” in neighboring Afghanistan will take effect at midnight Wednesday and remain in place until midnight Monday.
He said: “Pakistan offers this gesture in good faith and in keeping with the Islamic norms”.
WASHINGTON — The Iranian government remains “intact but largely degraded,” National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard told Congress on Wednesday, as Israel continued to hunt down the Islamic Republic’s leadership with an overnight airstrike that killed the nation’s spy chief.
The death of Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, announced Wednesday by Israel, was the third high-level assassination in roughly 24 hours in a series of strikes that have hollowed out Tehran’s leadership ranks.
Israel ordered strikes Tuesday that killed Iranian security chief Ali Larijani and Basij paramilitary commander Gholamreza Soleimani.
Additional senior Iranian figures could be targeted, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday. “Israel’s policy is clear and unequivocal: No one in Iran has immunity — everyone is a target,” Katz said.
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, issued a rare statement Wednesday addressing Larijani’s assassination.
“Undoubtedly, the assassination of such a person shows the extent of his importance and the hatred of the enemies of Islam towards him,” he wrote, according to the Associated Press. “All blood has its price that the criminal murderers of the martyrs must pay soon.”
On the evening of March 17, the last Wednesday of the year before Nowruz, Iranians in various cities celebrated the long-standing tradition of Chaharshanbe Suri by jumping over fires and enjoying festivities, despite the war and the painful memory of the January massacres fresh in their minds.
from www.euronews.com
China is making a big push for widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, and the nation’s tech powerhouses are holding public events to help everyday people get OpenClaw, the viral personal digital assistant.
“It seems everyone around me – my colleagues and friends — has it,” new user Gong Sheng said as he waited to get set up. “I don’t want to be left behind.”
At a gathering in Beijing hosted on Tuesday by internet giant Baidu, Gong was one of hundreds of people lined up to get OpenClaw installed onto their laptops and phones.
Diesel fuel, the lifeblood of U.S. industry, crossed an alarming and historic benchmark Tuesday.
Amid the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the U.S. average retail diesel prices have crossed $5 a gallon, the highest since December 2022.
This marks only the second time diesel prices have hit the historic 5-dollar benchmark, according to Reuters. Tuesday’s new average of $5.04 is now a record high, according to analysts at GasBuddy.
Meanwhile, gas prices across the country have surged 74 cents a gallon. This reportedly marks nearly a 30% increase over the past month, the highest monthly spike since Hurricane Katrina.
“The problem is, is we’re so strained financially coming into this issue,” explained Littleton, a third-generation farmer from Gibson County in the state’s northwest.
“We have had a couple of record losses over the last couple of years, so everyone’s kind of grabbing at straws anyway, and then to have input prices increase yet again, it just really couldn’t happen at a worse time.”
Littleton, who cultivates corn, soybeans, and wheat, is one of thousands of farmers nationwide who will pay significantly more this spring for the essential nutrients their crops require.
Nitrogen-based fertilizer is particularly crucial for corn, typically the largest crop in the U.S., which feeds the nation’s livestock and is converted into fuel for most U.S. vehicles.
This action has caused a significant slowdown in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical choke point for 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas.
A shooting at a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico on Tuesday left one person dead and another wounded, according to military officials.
from www.washingtontimes.com
High-profile attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz have epitomized Iran’s hit-and-run response to superior American and Israeli firepower, but analysts warn that Tehran’s asymmetric strategy isn’t limited to guns, bombs or the physical geography of the battlefield.
from www.washingtontimes.com
Pittsburgh police officers did not intervene as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents struggled to detain a suspect near a police station, and claims circulated that officers were told to stand down.
Pittsburgh Police Chief Jason Lando said he is not aware of any order directing officers not to act and has launched an administrative review into the incident.
“To that end, I was recently made aware of an incident that occurred in front of the Zone 3 police station where ICE agents were struggling to take someone into custody,” Lando said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital.
KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh reported that the incident unfolded as ICE agents attempted to detain a suspect near the Zone 3 station, when the individual began fighting and kicking ICE agents.
LIMA, Peru — Peru’s prime minister resigned Tuesday ahead of a mandatory vote in the nation’s Congress, where she needed a majority of legislators to confirm her recent appointment.
Denisse Miralles was appointed as prime minister in late February, after Interim President José Jerí was removed from his post following corruption allegations and replaced by congressman Jose María Balcázar.
In Peru, prime ministers coordinate the implementation of government policies, but they are not elected into office and do not lead the executive branch, which is headed by the president.
Miralles, the former economy minister under Jerí, did not say why she resigned. However, she informed journalists that she was uncertain she could secure the congressional majority required for her confirmation on Wednesday.
The House oversight commitee subpoenaed attorney general Pam Bondi on Tuesday, requesting her to appear for a deposition on the Department of Justice’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, and compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act – the legislation which resulted in the justice department releasing millions of pages of documents related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s cases.
In a letter, chair James Comer requested Bondi’s appearance before the committee on 14 April.
Earlier this month, five oversight Republicans voted with Democrats and approved a motion to subpoena Bondi.
Separately, Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, will provide a private briefing for committee members on Wednesday.
An asteroid just exploded above Ohio with the force of 250 tons of TNT
Eyewitness accounts and videos taken from across the Midwest reveal the streak of a large fireball across the daytime sky
A flashy fireball streaked across the skies above the Midwest on Tuesday, falling to Earth near Lake Erie and Ohio at around 9:00 AM EDT. Some reported hearing a boom loud enough to shake their houses.
The object appears to have been a seven-ton asteroid that spanned nearly six feet in diameter, according to NASA. When it fell, it was traveling at around 40,000 miles per hour in a southeasterly direction before “fragmenting”—blowing up—over Valley City in Ohio. The explosion had the equivalent force of 250 tons of TNT, the agency said, and “may have also shook houses north of Medina.”
Joe Kent, who led the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned Tuesday, saying he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter to Mr. Trump.
Kent accused high-ranking Israeli officials and some in the media of waging a “misinformation campaign” that was “used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.”
“This was a lie,” he said, urging Mr. Trump to “reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”
In a post on X, Gabbard appeared to respond to Kent’s letter, saying the president “is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.”
From March 5 to 12, China held its annual Two Sessions — the National People’s Congress meeting and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. These gatherings provide yearly insights into China’s economic and political priorities and plans. Additionally, this year, the government presented its 15th Five-Year Plan, laying out key policies to 2030. We asked four experts to offer their key takeaways from the National People’s Congress.
Ling ChenWilliam L. Clayton Associate Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins UniversityA key takeaway from China’s most recent National People’s Congress is that Beijing is trying to respond to its economic slowdown by pursuing two goals that sit uneasily together. On the one hand, the government emphasized the need to boost domestic demand and household consumption, acknowledging that weak consumer confidence and spending have become major drags on growth.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday that the commander of Iran’s feared Basij paramilitary force was among the senior leaders killed in overnight strikes in Tehran, and the Israeli defense minister Israel Katz later confirmed that Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was also “eliminated.”
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have instructed the IDF to c
Oil tankers are crossing the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s actions to choke traffic through the shipping route have not hurt the U.S. economy, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Tuesday, reiterating the Trump administration’s position that the war should be over in weeks, not months.
“Already you’re seeing tankers are starting to dribble through the straits, and I think it’s a sign of how little Iran has left,” he said.
“We’re very optimistic that this is going to be over in the short run, and then there will be price repercussions when it is over for a few weeks, as the ships make it to the refineries.”
Beijing said on Monday it has “lodged representations” and urged Washington to “correct its erroneous ways” after the US launched new trade probes last week, with negotiators from both countries meeting in Paris.
Washington’s trade investigations target 60 economies including China and will look into “failures to take action on forced labor” and whether these burden or restrict US commerce.
Those investigations came a day after a separate set of US probes centred on excess industrial capacity that target 16 trading partners including China, which Beijing’s foreign ministry criticised as “political manipulation”.
“We urge the US side to immediately correct its erroneous ways, meet China halfway… and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiations,” Beijing’s commerce ministry said in a statement.