KOENIG

US President Donald Trump revealed on Wednesday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remained out of the Iran war at his request, despite having the motivation to aid Iran during the conflict.

“He was a prime candidate to go into the war with Iran, maybe on the Iran side, because he’s not a big fan of Israel,” Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

However, Trump said that after he had asked Erdogan, whom he described as a friend, to stay out of the war, he did so.

Iran is pushing to generate $40 billion annually by charging for security and environmental services in the Strait of Hormuz as part of negotiations to permanently manage the critical waterway. This is according to officials familiar with the matter who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. The Islamic Republic is pitching the revenue-sharing model to Persian Gulf neighbors and countries, including China and Egypt, as it positions itself to control the global oil artery it blockaded during the recent war with the US.

Iran's negotiations over Hormuz management would give Tehran unprecedented control over a chokepoint through which 20 percent of global oil normally flows. The regime is examining international models, including Turkey's Dardanelles arrangement and the Malacca Straits Patrol, to justify the arrangement.

The U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding was “a declaration of America’s defeat,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Wednesday.

Iran’s armed forces imposed “heavy costs on the United States and the so-called Israeli regime” during the 110-day war, Ghalibaf told a meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Baku, Azerbaijan, Tehran’s IRNA news agency reported.

The Islamic Republic forced Washington to “retreat both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table,” Tehran’s top negotiator claimed.

The Senate on Tuesday voted to cut off the U.S. military campaign against Iran, handing a fresh loss to President Donald Trump despite his attempts to convince lawmakers and the public that a deal to end the war is at hand.

Four Republicans broke ranks to help approve a resolution to block further military action unless it is green-lighted by Congress.

The war powers measure is largely symbolic — the resolution cleared Tuesday doesn’t go to the president to sign or veto — and the White House quickly dismissed the legislation as ineffectual. But the bipartisan 50-48 vote is a damaging milestone for the Trump administration: Both the Senate and House have now weighed in against the Middle East conflict that’s stretched on for more than 100 days. The same measure passed the House in early June after months of close calls.

Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz “will never go back to the way they were before the war,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf vowed on Monday.

“Of course, international regulations will be observed, but Iran will administer the Strait of Hormuz,” Ghalibaf, who leads Tehran’s negotiating team with the United States, told Iranian media as he returned from talks with U.S. representatives in Switzerland.

“We must remain united under the leadership of Ayatollah Seyed Mojtaba Khamenei, and recognize that his word and directives are final,” Ghalibaf said, according to a translation by Iran’s Press TV outlet.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rejected international criticism of Israel’s military presence in Lebanon on Tuesday, saying Hezbollah and Iran are the real violators.

“I hear statements in the international community that Israel is breaching Lebanon’s sovereignty. Listen to the truth. Hezbollah is breaching Lebanon’s sovereignty. Iran is breaching Lebanon’s sovereignty,” Sa’ar said at the JNS 2026 International Policy Summit in Jerusalem.

His remarks came as Israeli and Lebanese delegations met in Washington for a fifth round of U.S.-brokered political and security talks aimed at stabilizing the border and addressing longstanding disputes.

The joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against the Islamic Republic has created the conditions for the regime to fall, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night, addressing the 2026 JNS International Policy Summit at Jerusalem’s Waldorf Astoria.

“Together with our American friends, the American air force, the American military, we carried out the largest airstrike in our history,” Netanyahu said.

“Had we not acted in ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and in ‘Operation Roaring Lion,’ Iran would have had atomic bombs, and ... they would have used them,” he said. “That’s what we prevented.”

Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warns the United States against making threats to the Islamic Republic, vowing that “our armed forces are ready to respond.”

“Don’t they think that if their threats had any effect, they would not have reached today’s state of desperation? We do not take American threats into account,” says Ghalibaf, after President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran over its support for Hezbollah.

“They would do better to be careful with their statements; our armed forces are ready to respond to them in a different manner. No matter what they say, we are the ones who act.”

A quadrilateral meeting between Iran, the United States, Qatar, and Pakistan will be held at the Buergenstock mountaintop resort in Switzerland on Sunday afternoon, Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson told Iranian state media.

Esmaeil Baghaei said that Iran would hold meetings with intermediaries Qatar and Pakistan earlier in the day, adding that the gathering in Switzerland is a follow-up on the implementation of a memorandum of understanding signed with the US this week.

The top command center of the Iran Armed Forces announced on Saturday it is again shutting maritime transit in the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of Israel’s actions in Lebanon, Reuters cited the Islamic Republic’s Mehr state news agency as reporting.

“It is hereby announced that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed to vessel traffic; It is noted that this first step is a response to the enemy’s breach of promise, and if the aggression continues, further steps will be planned and taken to force the enemy to comply with its obligations,” the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said in a recorded message, according to AFP.

The U.S. Central Command said on Saturday that commercial ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz increased throughout the day.

Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire on Friday afternoon, a US official said, after another flare-up in southern Lebanon that saw four Israeli soldiers and dozens of Lebanese casualties.

The renewed truce appeared as fragile as ever, as it didn’t see Israel pull out of the large buffer zone it established in southern Lebanon — one that Hezbollah has used to justify continued attacks on troops stationed there as well as on northern Israeli towns across the border.

The latest deal was brokered by the US and Qatar through talks with Israel and Iran respectively, a senior US official said in a statement to reporters. While Hezbollah sources confirmed the truce, Israel refrained from doing so publicly until Friday evening when its ambassador to the US declared that Jerusalem “remains firmly committed to an immediate ceasefire.”

Mediators in the US-Iran conflict, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, are due to gather for talks in Egypt on Sunday, after a meeting between negotiators slated for Friday in Switzerland was called off, raising uncertainty over the future of talks, as the 60-day clock on hammering out details of a deal was already ticking.

In light of US President Donald Trump's reversal on Iran, Israel is preparing for a period of at least several months in which pressure will be applied on it to limit its military operations.

Israel Hayom has learned that the line adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the demands expected from Trump is to "say 'yes' where possible, and 'no' as much as necessary."

Sources close to Netanyahu further say Israel must "act wisely" in the current situation and respond with its head, not its gut.

(photos: White House / IRNA)

US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a deal on Wednesday meant to end the Middle East war, causing it to go into effect two days earlier than originally envisioned, with Tehran obtaining large-scale economic relief and agreeing in principle to a subsequent dilution of its enriched uranium.

However, the interim deal itself does not resolve any of the war goals declared by the US and Israel on February 28, since it pushes off discussion of Iran’s nuclear program and other core issues to a 60-day negotiation process. Israel was not a party to the negotiations on the terms, and Israeli officials have expressed grave concern over them.

Trump put his signature on the memorandum of understanding during a candlelit dinner at the Palace of Versailles following a G7 summit, as host French President Emmanuel Macron and other guests applauded, a video posted by a Trump aide showed.