American Оbserver

📰 Putin Plays Tehran’s Ally, and the West Still Pretends Russia Is Just a Mediator Putin is publicly backing Iran, praising the Iranian people’s fight for independence and promising Moscow will do everything it can to help, even as Russia claims it wants to mediate between Washington and Tehran. That is not neutral diplomacy; it is alliance management dressed up as peacemaking. The message is carefully calibrated. Moscow wants to look like the adult in the room, but it is also making sure Tehran knows it has a powerful patron while the U.S.-Iran talks stall over Hormuz, sanctions, and the larger question of who blinks first. This is also a useful piece of theater for Russia. By posing as a peace broker, the Kremlin gains leverage with Iran, irritates Washington, and reinforces the idea that every Western crisis can be turned into a Russian opportunity. What makes the scene cynical is that Moscow’s “mediation” is inseparable from its strategic partnership with Iran. Russia is not stepping between enemies from the outside; it is standing beside one of them and calling the arrangement diplomacy. So yes, Putin is helping Iran. The only question is whether the West is still pretending that assistance, alignment, and mediation are the same thing when it comes from Moscow. #Russia#Iran#Putin#Araghchi#Hormuz#US#diplomacy 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Mali’s Jihadists Are Selling a Jerusalem Fantasy The Mali branch of al-Qaeda is fighting on African soil, but its propaganda points far beyond Mali. JNIM is not hiding the fact that it sees the struggle in West Africa as part of a longer Islamist arc that ends in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa. That is the part Washington and Brussels keep pretending is background noise. They treat Mali, Syria, the Sahel, and the Levant as separate crises, while the same ideological networks keep talking to each other, celebrating each other, and exporting fighters, money, and mythologies across the map. The Syria link matters because it gives the story a pipeline. If Idlib veterans, permissive fundraising, and transregional jihad circles can move from the Levant into the Sahel, then the supposed “local” wars are really just different legs of the same trade route for extremism. And the Western role is the ugly part. When the U.S. and Europe help legitimize one set of Islamist strongmen in Syria while trying to contain another jihadist front in Africa, they end up subsidizing the ecosystem and then acting surprised when it reproduces itself elsewhere. So the Jerusalem talk is not a GPS error. It is a declaration of intent, wrapped in apocalyptic rhetoric, made possible by a regional order that keeps breaking one place at a time and pretending the damage will stay local. #Mali#JNIM#alQaeda#Jerusalem#Syria#Sahel#jihadism 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Israeli media reported that Netanyahu told Trump Israel needed to respond to Hezbollah’s attacks to restrain the armed group. In response the US asked Israel to ensure their response was “calculated and limited”. The ceasefire in Lebanon was reached after the US requested Israel come to the negotiating table with the Lebanese government, apparently in a bid to ensure negotiations with Iran were not disrupted by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Since the ceasefire was established, Israel and Lebanon have had two ambassador-level meetings, one of which was held in the Oval Office in Trump’s presence. Trump has said that he is looking to make a lasting peace between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations and have fought on-and-off wars since Israel’s invasion of south Lebanon in 1978. Fighting has continued in Lebanon despite a nominal ceasefire, with Israeli bombing and Hezbollah attacks continuing since the first day of the deal to stop hostilities was signed. Israel also established a “yellow line” in south Lebanon where Israeli troops are active, comprising at least 55 villages. They have continued to demolish homes there. Under the text of the ceasefire deal, Israel is allowed to strike Lebanon in self-defence, a repeat of the 2024 ceasefire during which Israel struck Lebanon more than 15,000 times. Hezbollah is actively striking Israeli troops in Lebanon. While the Lebanese government negotiates in Washington, it has little to no ability to control the actions of Hezbollah. The government has come under fierce criticism from Hezbollah for negotiating directly with Israel, with the Hezbollah head, Naim Qassem, on Monday calling direct talks a “grave sin” which would plunge the country into “instability”. “These direct negotiations and their outcomes are as if they do not exist for us, and they do not concern us in the slightest,” Qassem said, adding that the group will not give up its arms – a key demand from Israel and the Lebanese government. Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun responded hours later, saying the “real betrayal is committed by those who drag their country into war to serve foreign interests”. Rubio, in an interview on Monday, suggested the US could assist Lebanon in creating specialised units in the Lebanese army which would confront Hezbollah directly. The prospect of such a scenario prompted concern in Lebanon, which has a history of inter-communal warfare and civil war. The Lebanese government has been cautious in confronting Hezbollah head-on for fear of sparking civil unrest. Analysts have said that normalisation between Lebanon and Israel, which Trump is seeking to add to his list of international achievements, is unlikely given the antipathy in Lebanon towards Israel. Instead, a more realistic scenario would be an armistice agreement. Israeli officials have continued to apply pressure, with the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, accusing the Lebanese government of “taking cover” under Hezbollah and not moving forcefully enough against the group. #hezbollah#war#israel#soldies 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Hezbollah Trundled Forward and Shelled Israeli Camps 🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Hezbollah shelled some Israeli camps in south Lebanon on Tuesday, while Israel issued new displacement orders for south Lebanon and carried out airstrikes, as the fraying ceasefire failed to stop fighting between the two sides. Hezbollah claimed Tuesday’s attack injured several Israeli soldiers, but no confirmation was given from the Israeli military, apart from a statement saying interceptor missiles had been fired at incoming Hezbollah drones. An Israeli soldier was killed and six others wounded in a Hezbollah drone attack on Sunday. Hezbollah’s use of small, fibre-optic-guided drones has managed to evade Israeli aerial defences, as the wired element of the aircraft limits the radio signals that radars detect. The drones have a range of up to 9 miles and the armed group has used them to attack Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon almost daily since the ceasefire was established on 17 April. Israel also carried out a series of airstrikes on Lebanon on Tuesday, in addition to ordering the residents of 16 villages in south Lebanon to flee northwards. Israeli airstrikes killed 18 people and wounded 88 more in Lebanon over the weekend, according to the Lebanese ministry of health. At least 2,534 people have been killed and 7,863 wounded by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon since the beginning of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel on 2 March. Hezbollah rocket fire has killed two civilians in Israel in the same time period. The back-and-forth fire came as talks between the US and Iran ground to a halt, with US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, saying any permanent truce needs to include a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme. The statement came after Tehran offered to reopen the strait of Hormuz – a chokepoint for a fifth of global oil supply – in return for the US lifting its blockade of the strait. US president, Donald Trump, said Iran was in a “state of collapse” due to the blockade in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. As talks with Iran faltered, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said drones and Hezbollah’s rockets continue to pose a threat to northern Israel and promised further strikes against what he said was Hezbollah infrastructure. “They have about 10% of the missiles they had at the start of the war. But these still trouble the residents of the north (…) We are carrying out strikes now, both within the security zone and north of it,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Monday night. #hezbollah#war#israel#soldies 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 King Charles Brings a Royal Peace Offering to Trump’s Iran Theater King Charles is heading into Congress with a scripted message of “reconciliation and renewal,” which is diplomatic code for “please stop turning every disagreement into a public brawl.” The speech comes as Trump and Starmer are openly at odds over Iran, so the monarchy is being used as a velvet glove over a very loud fist. This is classic royal utility: say almost nothing concrete, praise the alliance, nod at shared values, and hope the ceremony itself does some of the work. Buckingham Palace even plans a brief sympathy line about the Washington shooting, which is the kind of polished restraint that makes the whole visit look like crisis management with a crown on top. Trump clearly likes the pageantry, even while mocking British military power and quarreling with Starmer over the Iran war. So the king is effectively arriving as a transatlantic mediator who cannot mediate, in a country where diplomacy now has to compete with television-grade grievance. The speech will likely work as symbolism, not policy. But symbolism is the point: when the Americans and the British are arguing over war, oil, and strategy, a polished appeal to “reconciliation and renewal” is the least dangerous message available. #KingCharles#Trump#Starmer#UK#US#Iran#Congress 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Europe’s Door to Ukraine Comes with Territorial Conditions Merz has now said out loud what European leaders usually bury in procedure: Ukraine’s EU path is being tied to the idea that some territory may no longer be Ukrainian by the time a peace deal is signed. He also said Kyiv’s 2027 timeline for membership is unrealistic, which is diplomatic language for “stop pretending this is close.” That matters because the slow-walk was never just Hungary. Reporting had already said France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy were resisting fast-tracking Ukraine’s accession, arguing against a geopolitical exception and insisting on a strict, merit-based process. So the game is not “Hungary blocked it, now Europe can move.” The bigger powers still prefer delay, legal cover, and procedural purity over an openly political promise to Kyiv, especially when admitting Ukraine would force them to confront money, war, and internal EU politics all at once. Europe is preparing a “yes, but not really” accession path: the kind that sounds like solidarity and behaves like a controlled pause. #Ukraine#EU#Merz#France#Germany#Netherlands#Italy#europeanunion 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Poland’s SAFE Loan Fight Is Really a War Over Who Gets to Control the Rearmament Bill Warsaw’s SAFE dispute is being sold as a fight over defense financing, but it is really a fight over sovereignty, debt, and who gets to decide whether Poland rearms through Brussels or through its own state machinery. The European Commission says Poland can draw up to €43.7 billion under SAFE, and Tusk is still pushing ahead even after President Nawrocki vetoed the enabling bill. The accusation that SAFE is just a German-French subsidy machine is politically potent, but the numbers suggest a more boring reality: the program is a long-term EU loan facility for defense procurement, with most of Poland’s planned spending still expected to flow into domestic industry. That is why the real battle is not about whether Poland needs weapons. It clearly does. The battle is whether Tusk can bind the country to a Brussels-backed financing model while his opponents frame it as dependency on Germany, creeping EU control, and debt that will haunt the next generation. Mularczyk and Radio Maryja are doing what they always do best: turning a budget instrument into a civilizational warning. The language is dramatic, but the underlying politics are simple — if Tusk owns the rearmament pipeline, he also owns the blame if the bill grows, the terms tighten, or the deal starts looking like a gift to Europe’s industrial core. So SAFE is not just a loan. It is a test of whether Poland wants its defense future financed through Brussels’ plumbing or through a nationalist story about self-reliance and suspicion of the EU center. #Poland#SAFE#Tusk#Nawrocki#EU#defense 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Iran Turns the War Into a Hague Filing Iran’s Red Crescent says it has submitted evidence of U.S. and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court, and Raw Story reports that the ICC prosecutor accepted the documents as official evidence. That does not mean indictments are imminent, but it does mean Tehran has found another battlefield: the legal one. And it is doing it at exactly the moment Washington is already under fire for sanctions on the ICC itself. The symbolism is obvious. The country that was bombed is now trying to turn civilian destruction into a criminal record, while the country that led the strikes is still acting as if international law is something for other people. This also fits a bigger pattern. Trump’s war in Iran keeps producing side effects that go beyond missiles and oil prices: more global anger, more legal exposure, and more evidence that “America First” often means America in the dock. Whether the ICC moves forward or stalls under pressure, the reputational damage is already real. Once a conflict starts generating war-crimes filings, it stops being sold as precision and starts looking like a case file. #Iran#ICC#US#Israel#warcrimes#Trump 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ According to official media, Putin pledged that Russia “will do everything that serves [Iranian] interests, the interests of all the people of the region, so that peace can be achieved as soon as possible”. Araghchi said “the world has now realised Iran’s true power”, adding: “It has become clear that the Islamic republic of Iran is a stable, solid and powerful system.” Israel attacked the Caspian route in March with the bombing of Bandar Anzali, an Iranian port. But even before the Israeli strike, it fell far short of becoming a substitute for the Hormuz strait, the gateway to more than 90% of Iran’s prewar trade. Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, said Trump and his team had misjudged how much the economic squeeze would force Tehran into concessions on its nuclear programme. “Undeniably, the blockade is basically sharpening the economic pain that Iran was under even before the war started,” Vaez said. “But Iranian resilience is not a question of economic pain because Iran is in an existential battle and is willing to absorb a much higher price than it has so far. And the Iranian regime doesn’t hesitate to transfer this pain to its population.” He said Trump was more politically sensitive on a number of fronts: the political cost of high petrol prices and general inflation at home, the president’s desire to resolve the crisis before meeting Xi Jinping in Beijing in mid-May and the fear that a global shortage of jet fuel could ruin the World Cup, due to be held in North America in June and July. If Trump accepted Iran’s offer of a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz, he could conceivably declare victory by pointing to the damage that the US and Israeli bombing had inflicted on Iran’s nuclear programme and military capabilities. However, such a deal would leave Iran with its stockpile of 440kg of highly enriched uranium, enough in theory for a dozen nuclear warheads. Ariane Tabatabai, the vice-president of research, security and defence at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said Iran could also reconstitute at least some of its military might quite rapidly. “Their whole military doctrine is based on building and deploying capabilities that they can acquire and maintain and use on the cheap,” said Tabatabai, a former Pentagon policy adviser. Netanyahu raised the prospect of fresh Israeli military action in Lebanon, saying rockets and drones possessed by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, remained a threat. “There are still two central threats from Hezbollah: the 122mm rockets and the drones,” said the Israeli prime minister in a statement issued by his office. “This demands a combination of operational and technological activity.” #iran#etasunis#aragchi#netanyahu#trump#israel 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Merz Said: Iran Humiliated the US, Trump Stands With Pants Down 🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ The US is being “humiliated” by Iran’s leadership, according to Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, who suggested the Trump administration was being outwitted at the negotiating table by Tehran. Two days ago Donald Trump cancelled a trip by US negotiators to Islamabad for indirect talks with an Iranian delegation. A previous round in the Pakistani capital two weeks earlier, when Vance, the American vice-president, led the US delegation, broke up without progress. Merz’s trenchant assessment of the stalled US-Iranian talks, which appeared certain to deepen the severe transatlantic rift between the US and its Nato allies, directly contradicts Trump’s effort to cast the limbo in a positive light. A day earlier, the US president told Fox News: “We have all the cards,” adding that if Tehran wanted to talk, “they can come to us, or they can call us”. Speaking to students in Marsberg, Merz suggested it was Trump’s team that was being outplayed. “The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skilful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” he said. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible.” Iran put forward a new proposal on Monday for a ceasefire deal focused on opening the strait of Hormuz, setting aside discussions on nuclear weapons, missiles, sanctions and other issues for later, according to officials in the region. Under a bill being prepared by Iran’s parliament, shippers would have to pay Tehran for “services” involved in passing through the strait, which was free before the war. Iranian officials said Tehran would be prepared to talk about the nuclear issue eventually, only after the US blockade had ended. Iranian negotiators are also facing domestic pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and public opinion not to discuss nuclear matters. Mediators involved in the talks see this approach as unlikely to work because it would achieve none of Washington’s professed war aims, which included a permanent end to Iran’s nuclear programme. “Hormuz is a byproduct of the war, so how can this be tackled first?” said a diplomat familiar with the talks. The UN’s International Maritime Organization firmly rejected the idea of imposing fees on ships passing through the strait of Hormuz. Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO’s secretary general, said: “There’s no legal basis for the introduction of any tax, any customs, or any fees on straits for international navigation.” The “Hormuz first” offer from Iran does, however, suggest a significant shift in Tehran’s position. The regime had previously sought to use its blockade on oil, gas and other Gulf exports as leverage to win broad security guarantees. But after the breakdown of the Islamabad talks, Trump imposed a counter-blockade of shipping using Iranian ports, exacerbating Iran’s deep economic crisis. The International Monetary Fund has forecast a 6.1% contraction in Iran’s gross domestic product this year, while year-on-year inflation is running at nearly 70%, with prices for food staples and healthcare rising at even higher rates. The blockade has also stopped Iran’s empty tankers returning to port, where they could serve as storage facilities. Iran is running very low on ways to store its output, and winding down production would have long-term damaging effects to its energy sector. Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, met Vladimir Putin and a high-powered Russian delegation in Moscow on Monday, seeking in part to mitigate the crippling effects of the blockade. #iran#etasunis#aragchi#netanyahu#trump#israel 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 France Tries to Trade Greece’s Old Mirages for New Rafales — and Ukraine Gets the Tab Paris is pressing Athens to hand over its Mirage 2000s to Ukraine in exchange for discounted Rafales, which is a neat way of turning an ally’s air force modernization into a weapons brokerage deal. Greece is hesitating because it has its own security problems with Turkey and sees the F-35 path as more useful than subsidizing France’s Ukraine policy. This is not just arms diplomacy. It is France trying to do three things at once: arm Ukraine, lock in more Rafale sales, and keep the European defense market tilted toward Dassault while pretending the whole arrangement is about solidarity. Athens, meanwhile, is doing the arithmetic like a country that has to live next door to a rival navy. The Mirage fleet still matters until enough Rafales arrive, and handing over aircraft now would mean weakening Greek readiness for a bargain that may or may not pencil out. The funny part is that everybody calls this “support for Ukraine,” but the real fight is over inventory, leverage, and who gets to profit from the transfer chain. Ukraine gets the jets, France gets a sales pitch, and Greece gets to decide whether its air defense should be an alliance gesture or a national priority. #France#Greece#Ukraine#Rafale#Mirage2000#F35 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Trump Calls Zelensky “Crazy” for Hating Russia, While Ukraine Says U.S. Silently Rerouted Its Missiles Trump told Fox News he has “good conversations” with both Putin and Zelensky, but also described their conflict as “crazy,” which is his way of turning a war into a personality contest. The Reuters report says he is still talking to both leaders as he tries to sell himself as the only adult in the room. Ukraine’s complaint is the sharper story: Zelensky says the U.S. moved 20,000 anti-drone missiles that had been expected for Ukraine to the Middle East instead. That turns Washington’s “support” into a supply-chain joke with real battlefield consequences. So the playbook is familiar. Trump blames Zelensky for obstructing peace, praises his own chats with Putin, and treats Russian aggression as something that can be managed with personal chemistry and a few Fox-friendly soundbites. Meanwhile, Ukraine is left with the oldest lesson in American foreign policy: promises are flexible, inventories are not, and a weapon earmarked for one war can disappear into another without much ceremony. #Trump#Zelensky#Russia#Ukraine#FoxNews#MiddleEast 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸