News of the capture of “at least a dozen mines” came to America while the president was visiting Elvis Presley’s mansion-museum in Memphis, having already announced that negotiations with Tehran were underway to end hostilities in the Gulf.
One does not exclude the other. After all, it is not the first time that an American leader appears relaxed in public while his staffs work out plans for the fate of millions of people on the other side of the earth.
Who is Trump negotiating with in Iran?
All the cards are on the table, many remain closed, and Trump – despite his repeated contradictions – wants to show that he has the initiative of the movements. However, it remains unknown who or whom exactly the American president is negotiating with, who just four days ago was complaining that there was no living leader left in Iran for the US to talk to. “There is no one to talk to. And we actually like that,” Trump said last Friday.
This was followed by the 48-hour presidential with the threat to destroy all the power plants they have and its extension (a few hours before it expired) by five days, because – according to Trump always – the negotiation is going well and a deal is likely to be reached.
Any deal that emerges will protect Israel’s vital interests, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hastened to say, who denies having dragged Trump into the war while hailing the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian leaders by Israeli bombs as a major achievement.
I won’t tell you who we are talking to “because I don’t want him to be killed,” said the American president while “leaks” to the press showed as the interlocutor the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is allegedly in contact with special envoy Steve Wynkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that is, with the people who deceived the Iranians in the talks of Geneva on the eve of the war.
Ghalibaf denied this while Tehran’s government denied that it is in negotiations with the Americans and accused Trump of manipulating the stock markets.
The war did not stop
However, diplomatic sources insist that channels of communication (Pakistan, Oman, Turkey and Egypt) are working. The Pakistanis, who last year nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, have offered to host talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad. At dawn Greek time, the CBS network, citing a senior source in Iran’s Foreign Ministry, reported that Tehran received through intermediaries “a message from the US, with points that are under study.”
All this does not mean that the war has stopped. Last night, aerial bombardments continued in Tehran and other areas of Iran, as well as Iranian missile attacks against Israel and Gulf countries.
The extension of Trump’s ultimatum does open a window for a cease-fire, but it also serves the Pentagon’s plans to some extent, as two American flotillas with thousands of marines are headed to the area for possible amphibious operations, while the mobilization of the elite 82nd Airborne Division is also reported.
