JERUSALEM, Israel – While the war with Iran is on pause, Democrats in Congress are pushing back against the conflict, as President Trump cited progress and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended U.S. troops on Capitol Hill.
The president praised the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, declaring, “The blockade is genius, okay? The blockade has been 100 percent foolproof. It shows how good our Navy is. I can tell you, nobody’s going to play games.”
Trump indicated that negotiations are continuing with Iran by telephone, and he doesn’t know if another round of fighting will be necessary.
“They’ve come a long way,” he said of the Tehran regime. “The question is whether or not they’re gonna go far enough, so at this moment there will never be a deal unless they agree that there will be no nuclear weapons.”
However, there are reports that CENTCOM will brief the president on potential “short and powerful” strikes on Iran as well as a plan to take over parts of the Strait of Hormuz to open it to commercial shipping.
Trump revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed his offer to help the U.S deal with Iran’s 970 pounds of enriched uranium. The White House has demanded that Tehran surrender the uranium.
“He told me he’d like to be involved with the enrichment if he can help us get it. I said I’d much rather have you be involved with ending the war with Ukraine,” Trump remarked.
The Pentagon announced that the war is estimated to have cost $25 billiion so far, mostly in munitions.
Testifying at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said, “President Trump, unlike other presidents, has had the courage to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, and he’s ironclad in that.”
Hegseth defended the need for the war against Democrats’ accusations that the conflict had drawn the U.S. into a “quagmire.”
“Don’t say I support the troops on one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire. That’s a false equivalence. Who are you cheering for here? Who are you pulling for? Our troops are doing incredible work. They’ve done incredible things for the entirety of this mission and achieved incredible battlefield successes.”
Meanwhile, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford is due to leave the Middle East and set sail for home soon, U.S. officials were quoted as saying.
The carrier group has been deployed for more than 300 days, having been sent first to Europe, then Venezuela, and finally, to the Red Sea.
The move represents a significant loss of firepower in the region at a time when tensions are still high.
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In London, the Metropolitan Police said that a stabbing attack on two men in a Jewish neighborhood “has now formally been declared a terrorist incident.”
London area resident Anthony Silber observed, “There’s been a series of incidents over the last four or five weeks: an attack against an ambulance, a Jewish charity, two or three attacks against Jewish synagogues. But today is somewhat worse, because it’s a physical attack against two human beings. So it’s a completely different ball game at the moment, you know, it is much worse.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog posted on X that he is “horrified by yet another violent attack on Jews in broad daylight on the streets of London.”
Herzog added, “Let me be clear: no Jew anywhere in the world should be a target because of their faith. In one of the great capital cities of the West, it has become dangerous to openly walk the streets as a Jew. This is an unacceptable situation.”
