A visit to Israel by U.S. President Donald Trump was supposed to be the winning card for the Likud party in the fall election. In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fantasies, the beloved American leader would give him the kind of "endorsement" that only Trump can – with all the superlatives about Netanyahu being a "wartime prime minister, without whom Israel would have been destroyed, and that there's no one around who could match his stature. Trump would also declare President Isaac Herzog wretched and evil.
And it was all supposed to happen after a complete victory in Iran, the overthrow of the regime and the removal of the enriched uranium.
IDF Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben SimhonCredit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
IDF Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben SimhonCredit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
Four Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon on Friday, including a battalion commander, the Israel Defense Forces reported on Friday, in a strike on a tank.
The military named the commander as Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon and said the details of the other three soldiers killed in the incident will be released later.
Separately, the military reported that an officer was seriously wounded and three other reservists lightly wounded in a drone attack in southern Lebanon.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard has set up secretive new cells in Iraq to carry out attacks on Gulf countries that host American forces, bypassing established militia networks to avoid detection, eight Iraqi sources told Reuters.
Three or four cells, each comprising about 10 elite Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim fighters, launched at least seven drone attacks from desert locations near the southern cities of Basra and Samawa against sites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates between April 20 and May 17, three of the sources said.
Talks that had been planned for Friday between the United States and Iran in Switzerland will not take place, according to a Swiss foreign ministry statement.
The announcement came after a White House spokesperson said overnight that U.S. Vice President JD Vance had pulled out of a planned trip to meet Iranian negotiators in Switzerland on Friday to begin talks on implementing an agreement struck between Tehran and Washington to end the war.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday.Credit: KEN CEDENO/AFPU.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday.Credit: KEN CEDENO/AFPRead the full article
The White House says that Vice President Jordan Vance will not travel overnight to Switzerland, where preparation have been underway for "technical talks" between the United States and Iran over the recently signed memorandum of understanding.
The White House's said that, "the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable," adding that Vance would not be travelling to Switzerland "as of now."
The announcement came hours after a report that the Iranian team put off its own travel to the Friday meetings at the Buergenstock resort, citing Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon.
Tehran reportedly warned that continuing Israeli military operations deeper than 10 kilometers inside Lebanon constitute a blatant violation of the newly signed framework agreement.
U.S. President Donald Trump hit back on Thursday at critics who argue he should have taken a harder line against Iran.
In an appearance on The Axios Show, Trump said that, "The only way I can get tougher is if I go in there for another two or three weeks and continue to bomb the hell out of 'em. Right? But what does that get us? The Strait of Hormuz will not be open."
The president added that, "We wouldn't have oil for months. As long as you're dropping bombs, that thing is automatically closed." He also warned that such this "is the kind of thing that could cause a worldwide depression."
