Bibi Tearing Up the Deal
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Is the deal blowing up? "Planned U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland on Friday were cancelled as fighting flared in Lebanon, creating new uncertainty about the timing of negotiations on turning an interim agreement into a more permanent Middle East peace deal," reports Reuters. "The flareup in Lebanon, in which 18 people were killed in airstrikes and four Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah militants, could weigh heavily on negotiations because ending fighting there is a condition for the broader U.S.-Iran accord."
"Trump's agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subject to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign nation!" wrote Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's far-right national security minister, on X yesterday, referring to the memorandum of understanding that the U.S. and Iran just signed to end the war. "Every time we succumbed to international pressure at the expense of Israel's security, we paid a blood price with interest. It was true in the Oslo Accords, it was true in the Lebanon agreement in 2006, and it was true in every period of containment in Gaza that exploded in our faces. We emphasize: We love the USA and are grateful to President Trump. And yet, the State of Israel is not a banana republic."
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"We are not partners to this agreement that does not ensure our security," he continued, "and it does not bind us in any way. We must not compromise on anything less than the dismantling of Hezbollah, we must not withdraw from any territory that our fighters have captured and cleared of terror infrastructure, we must not return to a situation where thousands of terrorists sit on the fences of northern settlements, and certainly we must not remain silent for a moment in the face of fire directed at the State of Israel."
"A senior Hezbollah lawmaker said Iran had told the group that talks with the United States could not continue without a comprehensive ceasefire and that Washington was responsible for ensuring Israel halts its attacks," reports Reuters. This puts President Donald Trump in quite a bind, and his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is having quite a week—has been rather tense lately.
"Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower," Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters yesterday, in a reprise of his "say thank you!" shtick he used with Ukraine last year. "If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world." Vance then added, speaking to Israelis, that "two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars."
"The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump," continued Vance, "and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the U.S. needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in." Netanyahu, of course, had ensured his country "total victory" over Iran; the deal brokered by Trump is nothing of the sort, and Hezbollah's presence right over the border continues to present security risks for Israel that many see as intolerable. Of course Netanyahu is pissed. But Vance's comments aren't totally wrong, reminding Netanyahu that he doesn't have as much leverage as he might desire.
Scenes from New York: The kid-friendly Knicks
Karl-Anthony Towns brings the trophy around so kids inside City Hall can touch it pic.twitter.com/VcoGnPg9db
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QUICK HITS
- "Black smoke from a burning oil refinery filled the Moscow sky. The city's four airports were urgently closed. And part of the busy highway that rings the Russian capital, a metropolis of 13 million people, was shut down," reports The New York Times. "As Ukraine escalated its effort to bring the war home for Russians, the strikes on Thursday appeared to be the largest drone attack on the Russian capital since President Vladimir V. Putin launched the war more than four years ago." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made clear he's escalating: "If Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well," he said earlier this week.
- You've heard of SAAS (software as a service). But have you heard of Objection, which provides…justice as a service? This Hollywood Reporter article—"A Peter Thiel-Backed Tribunal Is Putting Journalists on Trial. I'm Its First Target"—goes into the weeds.
- Inside the switchover from artificial to natural dyes to color M&Ms (per Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign against red dye 40).
- "Contemporary cannabis research is increasingly converging on three big variables: How often? How young? How strong is the drug?" notes The Washington Post. News you can use: "One of the more surprising shifts in cannabis research is that moderate use in adulthood may not impair cognition nearly as much as scientists once feared. A widely discussed 2024 study published in JAMA Network Open, which examined middle-aged and older adults, found no major association between moderate cannabis use and cognitive decline across several domains after a year of use. But the researchers noted participants generally used lower-potency products and consumed them less than daily."
