US President Donald Trump on Tuesday expressed frustration with Iran and Israel, saying that they had fought “for so long and so hard” that they do not know what they are doing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had brought Iran’s nuclear program “to ruin,” while Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmail Baghaei said US strikes on Sunday had caused significant damage to them, although a US intelligence report found that the program had been set back only a few months.
“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” Baghaei said yesterday, according to an al-Jazeera report.
Photo: AFP
The report issued on Monday by the US Defense Intelligence Agency was described to reporters by two people who were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong.”
After the truce was supposed to take effect, Israel accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace, while it struck targets in Iran, although Netanyahu’s office said he held off on tougher strikes after speaking to Trump.
Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a NATO summit that, in his view, both sides had contravened the nascent ceasefire agreement.
He said both sides had violated the agreement and used an expletive to hammer home his point.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,” he said.
He later said that the deal was saved.
“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly “Plane Wave” to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In Tehran yesterday, Iranian lawmakers voted in favor of suspending cooperation with the UN’s nuclear watchdog, state TV reported.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency, which refused to even marginally condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, put its international credibility up for auction,” Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, according to state TV.
The decision still requires the approval of the Guardian Council, a body empowered to vet legislation.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Rainfall is expected to become more widespread and persistent across central and southern Taiwan over the next few days, with the effects of the weather patterns becoming most prominent between last night and tomorrow, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said that based on the latest forecast models of the combination of a low-pressure system and southwesterly winds, rainfall and flooding are expected to continue in central and southern Taiwan from today to Sunday. The CWA also warned of flash floods, thunder and lightning, and strong gusts in these areas, as well as landslides and fallen
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
SOUTH CHINA SEA? The Philippine president spoke of adding more classrooms and power plants, while skipping tensions with China over disputed areas Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday blasted “useless and crumbling” flood control projects in a state of the nation address that focused on domestic issues after a months-long feud with his vice president. Addressing a joint session of congress after days of rain that left at least 31 dead, Marcos repeated his recent warning that the nation faced a climate change-driven “new normal,” while pledging to investigate publicly funded projects that had failed. “Let’s not pretend, the people know that these projects can breed corruption. Kickbacks ... for the boys,” he said, citing houses that were “swept away” by the floods. “Someone has
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole