分类： politics

A new push for a diplomatic resolution to ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran has entered its final phases, according to former U.S. President Donald Trump, even as hardening rhetoric and competing military moves in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz keep regional tensions elevated. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump confirmed that negotiations between Washington and Tehran have advanced to the closing stages, warning that failure to reach a binding agreement could trigger harsh retaliatory measures from the U.S. “We’re in the final stages of Iran. We’ll see what happens. Either have a deal or we’re going to do some things that are a little bit nasty, but hopefully that won’t happen,” he told the press pool.

Iranian officials have formally acknowledged receipt of a new U.S. peace proposal, confirming that Pakistan’s interior minister is currently in Tehran to serve as a neutral intermediary for communications between the two governments. Key regional U.S. partner Saudi Arabia has publicly welcomed Trump’s commitment to exploring diplomatic solutions, issuing a statement urging Iranian leadership to seize the opportunity to reach a negotiated settlement.

In a reveal exclusive to Middle East Eye, Trump last week scrapped a pre-planned military strike on Iran after intense pushback from Gulf regional allies and senior members of his own national security team, who argued that launching an attack during the annual Hajj pilgrimage would carry unacceptable humanitarian and political risks. Trump later confirmed this account to reporters, noting that Gulf leaders had persuaded him to hold off on offensive action, and he would wait several additional days for a formal response from Tehran. The U.S. leader also held a diplomatic call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan; a readout from Erdogan’s office confirmed the Turkish leader backed the extended ceasefire and expressed confidence that a mutually acceptable negotiated solution to the conflict could be achieved.

Trump’s public posture toward Iran has remained inconsistent in recent weeks, shifting sharply between optimistic claims that a breakthrough settlement is imminent and blunt threats to resume large-scale military hostilities. Iranian hardline leaders have pushed back against U.S. overtures, with parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf issuing a stark warning that any renewed U.S. war effort would be met with a forceful Iranian response. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has additionally cautioned that any new conflict would quickly spread far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East. In an audio message carried by multiple Iranian state media outlets, Ghalibaf said, “The enemy’s movements, both overt and clandestine, show that despite economic and political pressure, it has not abandoned its military objectives and is seeking to start a new war.”

Beyond diplomatic posturing, tangible shifts have been observed in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow strategic waterway through which roughly 20% of global oil trade passes. The waterway has become the central point of contention in ongoing peace talks, as Iran and the U.S. have enforced competing blockades in a bid to assert dominance over the route. On Wednesday, three large supertankers carrying a combined 6 million barrels of crude oil from Kuwait and Iraq bound for Asian markets transited the strait. Two of the vessels have reported ties to China, while the third is linked to South Korea.

Data from global shipping intelligence firm Windward confirms the three vessels sailed along the northern corridor of the strait, the route Iran has designated for commercial traffic to allow for cargo inspections and the collection of transit tolls. The resumption of regular commercial transits alongside positive diplomatic developments pushed U.S. crude prices down 6% on Wednesday, settling at roughly $98 per barrel.

Tehran has outlined its core demands for any final peace deal, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei confirming Wednesday that Iran is pushing to establish a joint security mechanism with Oman to guarantee long-term stability in the strait. Iran has long demanded international recognition of its authority over the waterway, including the right to collect transit tolls from commercial shipping.

Despite the progress in talks, the U.S. has continued its long-running campaign of intercepting and seizing Iranian-flagged commercial vessels in international waters. The U.S. military confirmed Wednesday that U.S. Marine forces boarded an Iranian-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman this week. “American forces released the vessel after searching and directing the ship’s crew to alter course,” U.S. Central Command, the military command that oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East, wrote in a post on X.

Baghaei responded that any permanent peace deal would require the U.S. to immediately end what Iran describes as state-sponsored piracy against its commercial shipping. “Despite the negative record of the other side over the past year-and-a-half, Iran is pursuing the path of negotiations with seriousness and good faith, but it has strong and reasonable suspicion over America’s performance,” he added.

In a move that upends nearly half a century of U.S. diplomatic protocol, former and current U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed he intends to hold direct talks with Taiwanese leader Lai Ching-te regarding a proposed $14 billion arms package to the self-governing island, a step that threatens to roil already delicate relations between Washington and Beijing.

No sitting U.S. president has spoken directly with a Taiwanese leader since 1979, when the United States formally cut diplomatic ties with Taipei to recognize the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China. Beijing has consistently claimed Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory, and has repeatedly refused to rule out the use of military force to assert its control over the island. Since Lai took office in 2024, he has overseen one of the most aggressive pushes in recent years to bolster Taiwan’s defensive capabilities amid growing Chinese military pressure.

Washington’s long-standing policy on Taiwan has been rooted in deliberate ambiguity: the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act legally commits the U.S. to provide Taiwan with defensive arms, but successive administrations have worked to balance this commitment with the need to preserve stable diplomatic and economic ties with Beijing. When pressed by reporters on Wednesday whether he planned to speak with Lai before finalizing a decision on the arms deal, which reportedly includes advanced air-defense missile systems and anti-drone technology, Trump offered a straightforward response: “I’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody.. we’ll work on that, the Taiwan problem.”

The announcement comes just one week after Trump wrapped up a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where Trump himself described his personal relationship with Xi as “amazing.” During that summit, Beijing made clear that the Taiwan issue remains the most sensitive and consequential flashpoint in bilateral relations, with Xi warning outright that mishandling the question could lead to open conflict between the two global powers.

Trump has so far declined to take a formal position on whether the $14 billion arms package will move forward, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on the return trip from Beijing that he would “make a determination over the next fairly short period.” He reiterated this week that he had not made any binding commitments to either side on the issue, while acknowledging that Xi holds very strong views on Taiwan’s status. “Xi felt ‘very strongly’ about Taiwan. I made no commitment either way,” he told reporters last week.

In an additional break from long-standing U.S. policy, Trump revealed he had discussed the proposed arms sale “in great detail” with Xi during their Beijing meeting. That revelation contradicts a 1982 U.S. diplomatic commitment to Taiwan that Washington would not consult Beijing on arms sales to the island. When pressed on this decades-old pledge, Trump brushed it off, saying the 1980s were “a long way” away.

This is not the first time Trump has broken with long-standing diplomatic norms around Taiwan. As president-elect in 2016, he held a controversial call with then-Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen, which drew a formal diplomatic complaint from Beijing.

Since the Trump-Xi summit, Lai has doubled down on his position, issuing public statements describing Taiwan as a “sovereign, independent democratic country” and insisting that cross-strait peace will not be “sacrificed or traded away.” He has also framed U.S. arms sales as a “key factor in maintaining regional peace and stability.” Under Lai’s leadership, Taiwan has significantly increased its defense budget to counter growing Chinese military activity near the island. Today, most Taiwanese residents support maintaining the current status quo, which sees the island operate as a de facto independent state without formal declaration of independence or unification with mainland China, though a majority identify as separate from China.

Beijing has already signaled its displeasure with the Trump administration’s trajectory, with multiple sources confirming that China has delayed approval for a planned visit by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, until Trump makes a final decision on the arms deal. The $14 billion proposal follows a $11 billion arms sale approved by the U.S. last December, one of the largest ever to Taiwan, which also sparked fierce condemnation from Beijing.

In a sharp escalation of long-running U.S. pressure on Cuba, the Trump administration has unsealed a sweeping criminal indictment against 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro, levying charges of conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens, aircraft destruction, and four counts of homicide stemming from the 1996 Cuban air force shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by a U.S.-based anti-Castro aid group. The indictment also names five additional Cuban defendants: Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, Emilio Jose Palacio Blanco, Jose Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raul Simanca Cardenas, and Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez.

The legal action opens the door for potential U.S. efforts to extradite or forcibly bring Castro to American soil for trial, with senior officials hinting at the same type of extraordinary law enforcement operation that the Trump administration deployed to seize former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026. President Trump has repeatedly touted that 2026 capture mission as a landmark political win for his administration, even as independent legal experts have widely questioned the operation’s compliance with international law. Trump has also openly acknowledged that the successful extraction of Maduro gave him the confidence to launch the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that began February 28.

Speaking at a Wednesday press briefing in Miami, Florida — a hub for the Cuban exile community — acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense lawyer, rejected claims that the indictment is a hollow political stunt. “We indict men outside of this country all the time, and there are all kinds of different ways that we get them here,” Blanche told reporters. “The reason why we indict somebody is because we want them here to face justice with a jury of their peers. How we go about doing that obviously depends on the circumstances in the case, and I’m not going to go beyond that, but… this isn’t a show indictment. This is an indictment because we expect that there is a warrant issued for his arrest, so that he will appear here by his own will, or by another way.” Blanche added a clear message of remembrance for the victims: “The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens.”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel immediately pushed back against the charges in a post on X, framing the indictment as evidence of U.S. hostility toward the Cuban Revolution. He called the action “a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression.”

The indictment is the latest in a series of aggressive moves by the second Trump administration to force Cuba’s government into concessions, a priority shaped heavily by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a long-time critic of the Cuban regime whose parents emigrated from the island. Just this week, Rubio announced a new round of economic sanctions on Havana, building on decades of U.S. trade and financial restrictions that have been in place since the 1960s. Those long-running sanctions have already gutted Cuba’s financial system and strained its already fragile energy infrastructure. In January 2026, Trump issued an executive order reclassifying Cuba as “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, and imposed secondary tariffs on any third country that sells goods or oil to the island. The president has previously made blunt remarks about his ambitions for Cuba, saying “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it… They’re a very weakened nation right now.”

The charges trace back to the February 24, 1996, incident that claimed four American lives. On that date, Cuban military jets intercepted and shot down two small Cessna aircraft owned by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based organization founded by anti-Castro Cuban exiles that conducted search-and-rescue missions for Cubans attempting to flee the island by boat. The four men killed in the attack were Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr, Mario de la Pena, and Pablo Morales.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Wednesday statement claims that Cuban intelligence agents infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue years before the shootdown, and passed detailed intelligence on the group’s flight plans and operational schedules back to senior Cuban leadership, including Raúl Castro, who served as defense minister at the time of the incident. While successive U.S. administrations have consistently denied any official connection between the group and American intelligence agencies, the Cuban government has long maintained that Brothers to the Rescue’s core mission was to destabilize the communist regime.

If convicted on the conspiracy and murder charges, all defendants face a maximum possible sentence of either the death penalty or life imprisonment. Raúl Castro additionally faces up to five years of prison time for each count of aircraft destruction. Any final sentencing would be determined by a presiding U.S. judge, if the accused are ultimately brought into custody.