American News
Trump and Netanyahu’s Bloody Path to “Peace”
Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : These are momentous times, not only for the region but for the shifting power dynamics of the world. On July 7 and 8, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump convened in Washington, D.C., amid a rapidly evolving crisis. At the White House, flanked by their cabinets, both leaders addressed the media following back-to-back meetings where they discussed the ongoing war in Gaza, indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas, and their joint military action against Iran. The press conference that followed was revealing—not just for what was said, but for what was admitted, evaded, and conspicuously ignored.
The Israeli Prime Minister, emboldened by U.S. backing, described recent joint military actions in strikingly clinical language, declaring that Israel and the United States had “removed two tumors”—Iran’s Nuclear Program and its missiles machines. These were not metaphors of diplomacy or deterrence; they were declarations of conquest, affirmations of a doctrine Netanyahu proudly called “peace through strength.” He praised the B-2 American pilots who dropped massive ordnance on Iran’s underground nuclear facility, and the Israeli soldiers who, in his words, “fought like lions” and “struck like lightning.” President Trump echoed these sentiments, confirming that the Atomic Energy Commission had verified the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. “It is obliterated,” he stated, while adding, “They flew for 37 hours with zero problems… carrying the biggest bombs we’ve ever dropped on anybody—non-nuclear, and we want to keep it non-nuclear.” What was presented as victory, however, was also a sobering admission of escalation.
But while both leaders stood united in the language of military strength, they diverged sharply when the conversation turned to Iran’s future. Netanyahu maintained an aggressive stance, affirming that Israel would never tolerate the re-emergence of Iranian power in Syria or the region at large. Trump, however, struck a noticeably different chord. He praised the Iranian people as “very smart, energetic people” and reiterated his desire to lift sanctions “at the right time,” suggesting a path of economic reintegration rather than perpetual war. He spoke of Iran’s “great oil power” and its “potential for peace,” offering a glimpse of a strategy built on diplomacy rather than annihilation. This contrast revealed a fundamental divide between the two leaders: one seeking permanent suppression, the other seeking calculated engagement.
Syria also emerged as a critical part of the broader plan. Netanyahu was clear that prior to their operations, “Iran was essentially running Syria.” Now, he claimed, “Iran is out of the picture.” President Trump reinforced this position, explaining that sanctions were lifted to give the post-Iranian Syrian government a chance to rebuild. “I met the new leader… I was very impressed,” he said, signaling American willingness to reconfigure the region—so long as Iran remained on the sidelines. This transformation of Syria from Iranian stronghold to Western-aligned state was offered as both a strategic victory and a sign of shifting alliances.
But amid the triumphalism, the most conspicuous silence surrounded Gaza. President Trump spoke passionately about the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, lamenting, “These are souls… it’s appalling, it’s unforgivable.” Yet when it came to the civilian deaths in Gaza—where tens of thousands have been killed, injured, or displaced—he said nothing. No mention of the humanitarian catastrophe, the flattened hospitals, the water crisis, or the lost children. Not even a token expression of sorrow. This absence revealed a dangerous truth: that even amid international condemnation of Israel’s actions as collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, or genocide, the President of the United States dared not speak a word of dissent. This wasn’t just political—it was systemic. The silence was deafening.
The contradictions deepened further when the issue of Hamas entered the discussion. On one hand, Netanyahu framed Hamas as a terrorist entity that must be eradicated completely. “We still have to finish the job in Gaza… eliminate and destroy Hamas’s military and governance capabilities,” he declared. And yet, in the same breath, he revealed that negotiations were ongoing. “We accepted a proposal that came from the mediators… I think that we’ve gotten closer to it.” This paradox defies logic. If Hamas has been militarily decapitated, why is Israel still negotiating with it? Why does Hamas still hold hostages? Why is it still dictating terms at the table?
The answer lies in a reality neither leader wanted to fully admit: that despite two years of siege and destruction, despite the combined might of Israeli and American forces, Hamas still remains a central political and military actor. Netanyahu acknowledged that “on the way over here and on the way from here” discussions with Hamas and intermediaries continued. This was not a sign of weakness from Hamas—it was proof of endurance. That even after half of Gaza was reduced to rubble, Hamas still holds hostages, still retains command, and still holds diplomatic leverage, exposes the failure of Israel’s total war doctrine. Far from being eradicated, Hamas has become the de facto representative of the Gazan people in any future settlement.
What’s more telling is that the negotiations themselves are being shaped by the United States, Qatar, and other regional players, all of whom recognize Hamas as a negotiating partner. This tacit legitimacy undermines Netanyahu’s claims of destroying Hamas’s governance capacity. It affirms that any future framework for Gaza and the West Bank will, by necessity, involve Hamas—not just as a spoiler, but as a stakeholder. And if Hamas holds that space now, after facing the wrath of both Israel and the United States, it only underscores its strategic depth and societal roots in the Palestinian landscape.
In the final moments of the press conference, Netanyahu was asked about declining U.S. public support for Israel, especially among Democrats. He blamed it on “vilification and demonization on social media,” insisting, “Nothing defeats lies like the truth.” But the truth remains painfully visible. It is in the refugee camps, in the aerial footage of destroyed neighborhoods, in the buried children and grieving mothers. It is in the contradictions between rhetoric and reality, between the promise of peace and the daily grind of occupation, siege, and military dominance.
The Trump-Netanyahu meeting, though billed as a peace coordination summit, was something altogether different. It was a show of strategic triumphalism built on the ashes of diplomacy. It revealed a dual policy of war and negotiation—bombing one day, talking the next. It praised military supremacy while denying humanitarian suffering. It treated displacement as peace, and coercion as choice. It silenced Gaza while discussing Ukraine. It admitted the centrality of Hamas while vowing its extinction. It was a performance of contradictions, wrapped in ceremony, delivered with pride, and protected by silence.
If there is one thing the summit achieved, it is clarity. The clarity that this is not a war to destroy Hamas. It is a war to redefine Palestine. And in doing so, the United States and Israel have made one thing clear to the world: power is the process, peace is the packaging. And the people—their pain, their dignity, their future—remain secondary to strategic calculus.
American News
President Donald Trump is asking the US Supreme Court to review the $5m (£3.6m) civil case that found he defamed and sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll.
He has repeatedly claimed that the judge who oversaw the civil trial, Lewis Kaplan, improperly allowed evidence to be presented that hurt how the jury viewed Trump.
A federal appeals court agreed with the jury’s verdict last year and said Kaplan did not make errors that would warrant a new trial.
A New York jury awarded Ms Carroll damages over her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media. He denied the allegations.
The Supreme Court is now Trump’s last hope of overturning the unanimous jury’s verdict. Whether the top US court will take the case up is unclear.
A federal appeals court declined to rehear Trump’s challenge to it in June.
Trump’s comments about the jury’s findings in the case led a separate jury to order him to pay Ms Carroll $83m for defaming her. A panel of federal judges denied his appeal of that decision in September, and Trump has now taken the next step in trying to have it overturned by asking the full bench of judges at a federal appeals court to review the case.
In the petition to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued Kaplan should not have let jurors see the 2005 Access Hollywood tape that showed the president saying he groped and kissed women.
“There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation,” they wrote about Ms Carroll’s allegations.
“Instead, Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th president, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself.”
Roberta Kaplan, Ms Carroll’s attorney, told the BBC she had no comment on the Supreme Court appeal.
While Trump was found to have defamed and sexually abused Ms Carroll, the jury rejected her claim of rape as defined in New York’s penal code.
Ms Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 81, sued Trump for attacking her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room in Manhattan. The defamation stemmed from Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform in 2022 denying her claim.
Trump has said Ms Carroll was “not my type” and that she lied.
American News
Four potential obstacles in House vote to end US shutdown
A day after the US Senate passed a spending bill to end the longest-ever government shutdown, the budget fight now moves to the House of Representatives.
The lower chamber of Congress is expected to vote this week on the funding measure.
Unlike in the Senate, if House Republicans stay united, they don’t need any Democrats to pass the budget. But the margin for error is razor thin.
Here are four potential hold-ups for the budget, before it can clear Congress and land on the president’s desk for signing into law.
Will House Republicans budge on healthcare?
A key sticking point throughout the shutdown has been a desire on the part of Democrats to attach to the spending bill a renewal of tax credits that make health insurance less expensive for 24 million Americans.
Senate Republicans instead only agreed to grant Democrats a vote in December on whether to extend the subsidies – something they had already offered weeks ago.
And House Speaker Mike Johnson would not commit on Monday to allowing a vote in his chamber on the tax credits.
This entails a fair degree of political risk for Republicans, however. If they torpedo the subsidies, health coverage premiums could rocket, handing Democrats a ready-made campaign issue for next year’s midterm elections.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conservative Republican congresswoman from Georgia, has broken ranks with President Donald Trump to warn that her party must ensure health insurance premiums do not spike.
As the clock ticks down to the subsidies expiring by the end of December, Republicans are working out their plan.
They want income caps on who can receive the tax credits, and are proposing the tax dollars bypass insurance companies and go straight to individuals – although the details are unclear.
How intense will House Democratic opposition be?
Out of power in Washington, where Trump’s Republicans control the House and Senate, Democrats appeared finally to have some political wind in their sails after a handful of election wins last week in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City.
But those victories, like the shutdown fight, have accentuated strategic tensions between the pragmatic and progressive, or left-wing, factions of the party.
The Democratic left is furious at defectors who voted with Senate Republicans to pass the budget on Monday, seeing this as a capitulation to Trump.
From that wing of the party, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said giving up the fight was a “horrific mistake”. California Governor Gavin Newsom called it “surrender”.
Congressman Greg Casar of Texas, the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, warned: “A deal that doesn’t reduce healthcare costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them.”
However, centrist lawmakers like Jared Golden of Maine, who represents one of the most conservative districts in the nation held by any Democrat, may cross the aisle.
Golden, who recently announced he won’t run for re-election, is likely to vote for the package, his office indicated to Axios, a political outlet, on Monday.
Another moderate Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, could help get the Republicans’ spending plan over the line.
“It’s past time to put country over party and get our government working again for the American people,” he posted on social media on Sunday.
American News
Fight fake news and defeat climate deniers, Brazil’s Lula tells UN talks
The world must “defeat” climate denialism and fight fake news, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the opening meeting of the UN climate talks.
In a rallying cry to COP30, President Lula again made thinly-veiled references to President Donald Trump who branded climate change “a con job” in September.
The two weeks of talks kicked off on Monday in the lush Brazilian city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.
They take place against a fraught political backdrop and the US has sent no senior officials.
On Monday thousands of delegates poured into the COP venue in a heavily air-conditioned former aerodrome, some coming from accommodation in shipping containers and cruise ships moored on the riverside.
Members of the Guajajara indigenous group, in traditional dress, performed a welcome song and dance for assembled diplomats.
Addressing the conference, President Lula said “COP30 will be the COP of truth” in an era of “fake news and misrepresentation” and “rejection of scientific evidence”.
Without naming President Trump, President Lula continued, “they control the algorithms, sew hatred and spread fear”.
“It’s time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers,” he said.
Since President Trump took office in January, he has promised to invest heavily in fossil fuels, saying that this will secure greater economic prosperity for the US.
His administration has cancelled more than $13bn of funding for renewable energy and is taking steps to open up more areas of the US to oil and gas exploration.
That puts the country at odds with the majority of nations still committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investing in green energy.
This backdrop has put the COP talks in a difficult position as nations aim to make progress on tackling climate change without the participation of the world’s biggest economy.
Some delegates fear that the US could still decide to send officials to undermine the talks. Other environmental talks collapsed this year following US pressure, labelled “bully-boy tactics” by some participants.
Addressing officials in Belém, UN climate chief Simon Stiell initially struck an optimistic tone. He said significant progress had been made in the last decade to reduce emissions of planet-warming gases.
But then he took aim at “squabbling” between countries.
“Not one single nation among you can afford this, as climate disasters rip double-digits off GDP,” he said.
Brazil wants to use its presidency of the talks to secure progress on key promises made in previous years.
That includes moving away from the use of planet-warming fossil fuels, finance for developing countries on the frontline of climate change, and protecting nature.
President Lula’s centrepiece is a fund called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) that Brazil hopes will raise $125bn to protect tropical forests globally.
But fund-raising got off to a slow start, particularly after the UK decided at the last minute not to contribute public money.
Nations are yet to agree on the conference agenda.
Countries with competing interests are lobbying for new items to be added, including a plea from a coalition called Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) that includes Caribbean and Pacific countries at most risk from rising seas and rising global temperatures
The group called for the COP to discuss the long-held goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C.
But in recent weeks even the UN has said it accepts that overshooting this temperature is “inevitable”.
Last week UN General Secretary General António Guterres told leaders in Belém that the failure to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C was a “moral failure and deadly negligence”.
-
Europe News9 months agoChaos and unproven theories surround Tates’ release from Romania
-
American News8 months agoTrump Expels Zelensky from the White House
-
American News8 months agoTrump expands exemptions from Canada and Mexico tariffs
-
American News8 months agoZelensky bruised but upbeat after diplomatic whirlwind
-
Art & Culture8 months agoThe Indian film showing the bride’s ‘humiliation’ in arranged marriage
-
Art & Culture8 months agoInternational Agriculture Exhibition held in Paris
-
Politics9 months agoUS cuts send South Africa’s HIV treatment ‘off a cliff’
-
Politics8 months agoWorst violence in Syria since Assad fall as dozens killed in clashes
