Iran Abruptly Shuts Down Peace Talks Due to Trump’s Demands

Iran is no longer entertaining a potential peace deal with U.S. negotiators.

Tehran declared Friday that it would not meet with U.S. officials in Islamabad, adding that the White House’s demands are “unacceptable,” reported The Wall Street Journal’s senior Middle East correspondent, Summer Said.

The country’s regional neighbors are still attempting to mediate the situation, offering Iranian officials other opportunities to settle the conflict with the U.S. Turkey and Egypt have offered new venues for the talks, including Istanbul and the Qatari capital, Doha, as well as new proposals, noted Said.

However, Qatar has so far resisted efforts by its neighbors and the U.S. to play a major role in the peace talks, “complicating efforts to find a way forward for the talks,” mediators told the Journal.

Earlier Friday, Mohammad Javad Zarif—a former Iranian foreign minister who served as Iran’s top diplomat from 2013 to 2021—became the first figure in the country to offer a detailed, “comprehensive peace” plan that he believed Tehran would find attractive. It outlined a nonaggression pact between the U.S. and Iran, as well as “economic interactions” that include the involvement of American companies in Iran’s oil sector.

But Zarif is only on the periphery of power in Iran. The country’s current leadership is fronted by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of previous Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in February by a U.S.-Israeli joint operation. The junior Khamenei is considered even more extreme, and has been described as his father “on steroids.”

Iran’s newly installed leadership refuted claims made by Donald Trump earlier this week that the country was open to a ceasefire, informing state media Wednesday morning that the idea was “false and baseless.” Iranian state media has repeated the idea that Iran is “winning” the war, despite the devastation wrecked by American forces.

The campaign has so far cost the lives of more than 2,000 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, not including the two crew members of an F-15 fighter jet that was downed by Iranian fire earlier Friday. So far, one crew member has been rescued, while the other is still missing. American, Israeli, and Iranian forces are rushing to locate the ejected soldier, reported Axios.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that the conflict would be resolved in the coming weeks, and that the war itself would not take longer than four to six weeks (the conflict is currently in its fifth week). Military officials have not agreed with that estimate, predicting that the war could instead rage for months or even years.

Donald Trump’s so-called fraud crackdown will soon be coming to a (Democrat-led) state near you.

On Friday, the president celebrated the beginning of the crackdown, claiming that fraud is being committed “primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a ‘free for all.’”

Trump added that Vice President JD Vance would become America’s “FRAUD CZAR,” a title that sounds amusingly like Vance is being tapped to commit fraud.

A day earlier, the Justice Department arrested eight people in California allegedly involved in health care fraud schemes netting more than $50 million.

Most of the California fraud consists of hospice centers allegedly filing false Medicare claims to receive federal funds for patients who did not need them. Hospice centers located in Artesia, Glendale, Tarzana, and Simi Valley—all cities and suburbs surrounding Los Angeles—were caught up in the DOJ raid.

The most egregious alleged fraudster is the owner of an Artesia hospice center who paid middlemen to refer fake hospice patients to her. The DOJ claims she submitted more than $9 million in fake Medicare claims and was paid over $8.5 million, and that one couple at the center said they were told they could receive $300 a month each if they signed up for hospice care, though neither needed it.

Two additional detainees are charged with defrauding a California labor union out of health care money, and a final person is accused of forging immigration-related medical documents.

The Trump administration enjoys singling out California when discussing nationwide fraud, frequently equating the alleged fraud with its Democrat leadership, personified by Governor Gavin Newsom (notably not a fan of the president).

Newsom, for his part, signed a law in 2021 that paused new hospice licenses over fraud concerns. He said his state has been cracking down on hospice fraud ever since, rescinding over 280 hospice licenses in two years and investigating 300 further medical centers.

“Glad the federal government is finally stepping up to do their part,” Newsom wrote on X.

Trump has made tackling Social Security and Medicare fraud a focus of his administration, which is great in theory. But the government has not produced many notable results yet, and we are yet to see whether the allegations into these eight Californians will hold up in a legal sense. Trump’s Department of Justice has had an incredible capacity to lie and face-plant in court, perhaps more so than any former iteration of the department.

And of course, the great irony is that there are many instances of massive, provable fraud taking place in Trump’s own Cabinet. The president also likes to pardon and drop investigations into convicted fraudsters who have pledged fealty to him.

James Fishback—the right-wing Groyper currently sitting near the bottom of Florida’s list of GOP gubernatorial candidates—told a Black man he should be “lynched” when asked about allegations he dated an underage girl.

“So Mr. Fishback, what’s with you smashing a 16- or 17-year-old, can you answer about what’s going on with that?” influencer Tajy TV asked Fishback at an event, surrounded by a crowd of supporters, camera in hand.

“What are you talking about?” Fishback responded.

Tajy TV then goes on to reference allegations that Fishback had a romantic relationship with Keinah Fort in 2022, when she was 17 and he was 27. Fishback called the allegations “completely false.”

Tajy TV then moved on to graphically describing Fishback and Fort having sex, setting Fishback and the crowd off. “Why haven’t I been arrested?” Fishback said, not exactly denying the accusations. “You should be lynched. You should be lynched for talking about me like that.”

“I should be lynched?” said Tajy TV.

“Yes, you should be lynched.”

Then Tajy yelled to “lynch all pedophiles,” which Fishback awkwardly agreed with. This brain-dead interaction is just one of Fishback’s many instances of using this shock-and-awe bigotry to try to build momentum among the Nick Fuentes–adjacent crowd. He has frequently used George Floyd as a meme, called GOP front-runner Byron Donalds (who is also Black) “Byrone,” and made tongue-in-cheek references to Italian fascist Benito Mussolini. Disgusting comments like this are all Fishback really has going for him.

Iranian officials are trolling President Donald Trump’s abysmal leadership amid an ongoing search for the pilot of a U.S. F-15 fighter jet that was shot down over Iran.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf took the opportunity Friday to mock the United States for repeatedly declaring victory on its ever-vacillating set of objectives.

“After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’” Ghalibaf wrote on X. “Wow. What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.”

The Iranian Embassy in South Africa also posted a joke about MAGA’s successful “regime change,” including photographs of U.S. military leadership who had been ousted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—most recently Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who was told to step down on Thursday.

Online, Iranian officials in the government and Revolutionary Guard have engaged in an ongoing meme war against the White House.

A pro-Iran account called Explosive News has started posting AI-generated cartoons in the style of Legos to mock Hegseth’s reckless war in Iran and communicate a crude solidarity with the victims of Western aggression. One of the videos posted Thursday attacked Hegseth as a “punk ass rapist bitch,” adding, “Think you a crusader? Nah you just a drunk infidel in a fake uniform.”

Explosive Media shared an AI-generated image Friday of a Lego pilot being chased by Iranian military officers.

“Our team announces that anyone who captures the pilot alive will have their own LEGO-style character made in their honor,” the account wrote in a subsequent post.

The Trump administration is asking Congress for $152 million to transform Alcatraz into a “state-of-the-art secure prison facility,” as part of its 2027 budget proposal.

That would cover just the first-year costs of the redevelopment, which has been roundly criticized as ill conceived and a poor use of federal funds.

“For years, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has housed violent criminals in crumbling detention facilities,” reads the budget item. “Building on a $5 billion investment secured in the President’s [Working Families Tax Cut], the Budget further invests in BOP to ensure competitive pay, safe working conditions, and an end to longstanding correctional officer shortages. Within this level, the Budget also affirms the President’s commitment to rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility, providing $152 million to cover the first year of project costs.”

Donald Trump has seriously floated the possibility for almost a year, and members of his administration—such as former Attorney General Pam Bondi—have claimed that the site could be used to offload pressure from America’s existing prison network, potentially holding the likes of international drug traffickers.

The biggest problem with that plan: Alcatraz can only hold a maximum of 336 prisoners.

Yet several Republicans have already thrown their support behind the initiative, effectively lending credence to the idea that taxpayer funds should actually be used to rehabilitate the island prison. Immediately after Trump initially pitched the idea in May, Senator Eric Schmitt vaunted the plan as “very smart.” Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma senator recently turned homeland security secretary, also endorsed the scheme on X.

Representative Mary E. Miller even got to work itemizing a fantasy list of the most important Alcatraz inductees: “The first person to be sent to Alcatraz should be Anthony Fauci,” she wrote in May, referring to the pandemic-era director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In reality, there is practically zero possibility that the famed prison would reopen to house more prisoners. Alcatraz—which operated for just 29 years—was shut down in 1963 in part due to how expensive it was to operate. Data from the federal Bureau of Prisons shows that housing inmates at Alcatraz was three times more expensive than at other jails thanks to the fact that it is located on a remote island, requiring all of its resources, such as water, food, and fuel, to be shipped from the mainland.

“An estimated $3-5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include daily operating costs,” according to the Bureau of Prisons.

John Martini, an expert on Alcatraz’s history who previously served as an Alcatraz park ranger, told the San Francisco Chronicle in May that the building is “totally inoperable” and has no running water or sewage.

“It was falling apart and needed huge amounts of reconstruction, and that would have only brought it up to 1963 code,” Martini told the paper, noting that the building would need to be torn down and completely rebuilt to house prisoners again. “It was always an extremely expensive place to run.”

Meanwhile, the tourism centering around the former island prison rakes in $60 million in annual revenue. The site hosts 1.6 million annual visitors, according to the National Park Service.

Trump’s attachment to the penitentiary appears to be less practical than it is uncharacteristically romantic. The president has practically waxed poetic about Alcatraz, sentimentalizing it as representing something that’s “both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable.”

Meanwhile, the White House has proposed sweeping cuts to programs that actually would help Americans, such as slashing $5 billion from the National Institute of Health and $4 billion from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, as well as gutting funding to Planned Parenthood and poverty-alleviating community block grants (which the mock budget derogatorily refers to as a “duplicative slush fund for woke Community Action Agencies”).

The Trump administration officially sent Congress its 2027 budget proposal on Friday, and while the largest story that emerged from the mammoth document was that the president is looking to increase defense spending over 40 percent to a staggering $1.5 trillion, there are plenty more budget adjustments to laugh/shudder/weep over.

Among the social and health programs Trump is looking to cut in order to fund his bloodlust is the National Institutes of Health, the government’s main medical research branch. NIH was one of the main targets of DOGE cuts back in 2025; now Trump’s budget proposal looks to wrest $5 billion more from the department, alleging that NIH “broke the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

The NIH has made major breakthroughs in the fields of vaccines, heart disease, and AIDS, and to date 174 researchers funded by the agency have won Nobel Prizes. But because of its willingness to fund research into LGBTQ and minority health, and its unwillingness to break with science to back MAGA’s most ridiculous medical claims, the agency has become a bugbear of the president.

Among the examples the Trump administration cites for its claim that the NIH is “wasteful and radical” are studies on how HIV risk affects the mental and sexual health of young men, and how sexually transmitted infections can occur between transgender women.

Reasoning for the cuts gets downright conspiratorial when the document begins rambling about NIH “funneling millions of dollars to EcoHealth Alliance, which funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, under Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

Studies conducted from both within and outside the NIH have looked into the “lab-leak theory” and found that while the Chinese government has been less than transparent about sharing genome data from the earliest contractors of Covid, there is little credible evidence supporting the idea that Chinese scientists accidentally created the virus, and that it is more likely Covid emerged from general contact between animals and humans.

“The weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover … either directly from bats or through an intermediate host,” the WHO concluded last year.

That hasn’t stopped the White House from running with the more inflammatory theory since the end of Trump’s first term, using it to justify racism against Chinese Americans and lend legitimacy to other unfounded conspiracies (cough, Chinese election fraud, cough).

Congress still holds the power of the purse, and tweaks to Trump’s budget proposal are undoubtedly coming. The bad news is that Republicans still command majorities in the House and the Senate, and will aim to pass the 2027 budget before the midterms, which look increasingly favorable for many Democrat challengers. Anything could happen, but for now, it’s looking grim for America’s premier medical research department.

The White House’s “Ice Maiden” has been unnerved by the lack of information reaching the president regarding the reality of the Iran war.

Three weeks into the conflict—in mid-March—White House chief of staff Susie Wiles forced a meeting of Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers to deliver the bad news. Privately, Wiles had urged the president’s inner circle to stop feeding him a rose-tinted interpretation of the conflict, fearing that Trump was largely unaware of the domestic fallout of the war just months ahead of a contentious midterm season, Time magazine reported Thursday.

Up until that point, Trump had been spoon-fed daily video compilations of various battlefield successes, a senior administration official told the publication. Trump was under the impression that stripping nuclear capabilities from Iran could be one of his greatest legacies as America’s forty-seventh president.

In reality, Americans were irate that Trump was pushing the country into another complicated and seemingly inexplicable Middle East conflict. National surveys have almost unilaterally conveyed as much. When the war began, an NBC News poll indicated that 52 percent of registered voters did not think the U.S. should have taken military action against Iran. That sentiment has only grown more severe in recent weeks: A CNN poll published Wednesday (before Trump’s address) showed that 66 percent of respondents either “somewhat disapprove” or “strongly disapprove” of “the U.S. decision to take military action in Iran.”

In the meantime, attacks on Iran’s oil and gas reserves—and the country’s decision to seal off the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy transit point—have drastically ramped up the cost of gas around the globe.

The combination has struck fear in the Republican Party, whose lawmakers have taken to grumbling about the domestic ramifications of the war and the impact it will have at the ballot box come November.

Wiles urged her colleagues to be “more forthright with the boss” about the political and economic risks of pushing U.S. troops into Iran, according to Time.

Trump has attempted to off-road the conflict in the weeks since the meeting, working to peel America’s presence out of the region while still claiming victory for some of his biggest goals in Iran, such as decapitating Iran’s nuclear capabilities, dismantling Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and replacing Iran’s government with a slew of more U.S.-friendly politicians. Unfortunately for the president, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that he’ll be able to do any of that on the White House’s advertised four-to-six week timeline. (The war is already in its fifth week.)

Former President Obama’s lead Iran negotiator, Wendy Sherman, admitted her X account was hacked Friday after posting a strangely worded message against the Iran war.

“We were promised strength. Instead, we are watching the greatest decline in our nation’s history unfold in real time. Our future is being traded away piece by piece for a war that was never truly ours,” the former U.S. deputy secretary of state posted on X. “Watch the video. Decide for yourself. #AmericaFirst#F35Falling#WarReality.”

Attached is unconfirmed footage shared by Iranian state media of a shot-down U.S. F-15 fighter jet, as well as unconfirmed images of its debris. What has been confirmed is that the Iranian military did shoot down a U.S. fighter jet over Iran, and Iranian officials have since called on civilians to search for and capture the pilot.

“It appears I have been hacked,” Sherman posted almost two hours later. “Recent tweet is not from me.”

It is unclear who the hackers are or where they came from, although they could likely be tied to Iran. For some reason, the post is still up on Sherman’s page.

The Pentagon has been misleading Americans about the destruction of Iran’s military arsenal, casting doubt on Donald Trump’s timeline for ending the war. 

After five weeks of military bombardment from the United States and Israel, roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers and thousands of one-way attack drones are still intact, according to an exclusive CNN report Thursday. Some of these assets may be inaccessible to the Iranian military, having been buried by strikes. 

Speaking on March 19 about the destruction of Iran’s military capabilities, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pointed to the number of Iranian missile strikes, rather than the arsenal itself. He claimed that ballistic missile attacks against U.S. forces were “down 90 percent since the start of the conflict, same with one-way attack UAVS, think kamikaze drones.” 

While the number of strikes may have plunged, Iran’s arsenal has only been halved, according to U.S. intelligence sources.  

Still, while speaking to the nation Wednesday night, Trump emphasized the damage to Iran’s military arsenal. “Their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed, and their weapons factories and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces,” he said. 

“We’ve done all of it,” he continued. “Their navy is gone, their air force is gone, their missiles are just about used up or beaten.”  

One U.S. official who reviewed the intelligence cast doubt on the American military’s ability to resolve the conflict in only two or three weeks, as Trump suggested during his speech. 

“We can keep f**king them up, I don’t doubt it, but you’re out of your mind if you think this will be done in two weeks,” the official said.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell dismissed CNN’s reporting as “completely wrong.”

“The United States military has delivered a crippling series of blows to the Iranian regime,” Parnell said. “We are far ahead of schedule on accomplishing our military objectives: Destroy Iran’s missile arsenal, annihilate their navy, destroy their terrorist proxies, and ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Israeli intelligence estimated that the number of remaining Iranian missiles was closer to 20 or 25 percent of the original arsenal, not including launchers that were inaccessible.

It’s worth noting that this is where Iran’s arsenal stands weeks after Trump announced that the war in Iran was already won. 

A massive overhaul is in the cards among the higher echelons of the Trump administration.

Donald Trump is “very angry” with his Cabinet thus far and is considering “moving” several officials, according to an administration official who spoke with Politico.

Others are at risk of being axed from their jobs entirely. Some of the people that Trump has expressed frustration with include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, both of whom could lose their jobs “imminently,” according to three people “with knowledge” of the president’s thinking, who confirmed the rumors to Politico.

No final decisions have yet been made about Lutnick or Chavez-DeRemer, and it is not clear who would replace them. Publicly, the White House stressed its faith in Trump’s appointees, writing in a statement that ​​both Lutnick and Chavez-DeRemer are “doing a great job standing up for American workers, and they continue to have President Trump’s full support.”

But officials circling the White House have very different opinions when they’re allowed to speak candidly. One senior administration official told Politico that Lutnick is on “thin ice,” though they noted that Trump has considered firing him before and backed off. Pink-slipping Lutnick would give Trump the ability to say, “I’m making changes on the economy,” according to one official—a message that could be enormously valuable to Republicans ahead of a particularly contentious midterm season.

Trump dismissed his attorney general, Pam Bondi, on Thursday, thrusting her out of government and into the private sector. Her dismissal was reportedly supposed to occur Friday but was rushed due to rampant speculation about her replacement that consumed Washington Wednesday night.

An unidentified senior administration source who spoke with The Daily Mail Thursday claimed that Bondi begged Trump to reconsider, pleading to give her more time in the role, but Trump was adamant about her departure. Among the speculated reasons for her sudden exit include her handling of the Epstein files—which remains the president’s most resilient and egregious scandal—and the president’s apparent belief that Bondi tipped off California Representative Eric Swalwell to an FBI smear campaign. Swalwell has denied Bondi gave him any information.

But Bondi’s firing could be the tip of the iceberg. Trump has reportedly also surveyed his advisers about ousting Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who recently irritated Trump by shielding a former deputy who disagreed with the president’s war with Iran.

Another senior official told Politico that the high-level reorg is focused on members of his administration who he believes have either “underperformed or who have generated too much negative attention.”

Trump axed Kristi Noem from her position atop the Department of Homeland Security last month immediately following a string of abysmal appearances before Congress. Her position atop the Trump administration had become increasingly tenuous in recent months due to a series of scandals, though most notably after ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, marring Trump’s immigration agenda—a chief MAGA priority—in the process.