Like most things Trump, it’s difficult to keep up with Iran negotations.
This week, Axios reported that the United States would potentially allow Iran to enrich limited low-level uranium for a “to-be-determined period of time,” despite public statements to the contrary. The proposal was made by White House envoy Steve Witkoff.
A short time later, Trump seemingly undercut his administration’s own plan and declared that he wouldn’t allow the enrichment to happen.
“The AUTOPEN should have stopped Iran a long time ago from ‘enriching.’ Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Despite the post, the Trump administration isn’t denying that Witkoff made the proposal and the White House isn’t discussing details of the negotiations with reporters.
In a speech, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that abandoning uranium enrichment “100%” against Iran’s interest, calling the demand “nonsense.”
“The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear program,” said Khamenei. “They cannot do anything about this.”
The mainstream has framed this as Iran “rejecting” the U.S. offer, but is that accurate?
On social media, Center for International Policy Senior Fellow Sina Toossi criticized the narrative, pointing out that the speech contained red lines but didn’t halt further diplomatic efforts.
“In reality, there’s space for negotiation, even if Iran’s bottom line is enrichment on Iranian soil,” tweeted Toosi. “That doesn’t necessarily preclude a regional enrichment consortium, if it includes Iranian territory, or even potentially if Iran retains a pilot enrichment program for research and development.”
“Bottom line: Khamenei’s speech reasserted Iran’s principles, but it didn’t foreclose diplomacy. There are still workable paths forward that could meet both sides’ stated goals,” he continued. “The question is whether the US is prepared to adjust its proposal to align with what Iran frames as sovereignty, not surrender. This was negotiation positioning—not a hard ‘no.’ Let’s not mistake posturing for finality.”
Into these developments steps Senator Chuck Schumer, who evidently believes that the Democrats’s best strategy is attacking the Trump administration from the right on this issue.
“When it comes to negotiating with the terrorist government of Iran, Trump’s all over the lot. One day he sounds tough, the next day he’s backing off,” declares Schumer in a video posted to Twitter on Monday. The Senate Minority Leader goes on to criticize Witkoff for his “secret side deal” and tells a joke about TACO Trump, as in, “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Is this stuff resonating with anyone? Last month, a University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll published a showed that a majority of Americans support a negotiated nuclear deal over a war with Iran. 69% want a deal, and that number includes 64% of Republicans. Just14% of respondents said they’d prefer U.S. military intervention, including 24% of Republicans. 78% of Democrats are more likely to support a negotiated deal.
Schumer can’t formulate a winning strategy on this issue because he’s an Iran hawk, attempting to oppose a cabinet full of them. He voted against Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), then criticized Trump for destroying the deal during his first term. Now he’s attacking Trump officials for allegedly proposing a deal that sure looks a lot like JCPOA.
There’s another important factor here, by Schumer’s own admission. Earlier this year, he told the New York Times, “My job is to keep the left pro-Israel.”
He hasn’t had much success on that front lately.
Boulder attack reactions
Mohamed Sabry Soliman is accused of attacking Boulder’s weekly “Run for Their Lives” demonstration with a makeshift flamethrower, injuring 12 people.
According to an FBI affidavit released on Monday, Soliman told authorities that he wanted to kill all Zionists. As a result of this declaration, the attack is being charged as a hate crime.
Further conflation of Zionism and Judaism is great for the pro-Israel crowd, which has been pushing that narrative for decades in an effort to shield the country and its backers from accountability and criticism.
Unsurprisingly, lawmakers and Israel advocates are using the attack to strengthen the crackdown on Palestine activism, while the Trump administration gets the added bonus of stoking its immigration agenda. Soliman’s family has already been detained by ICE, and they’re set for “expedited removal.”
Newsday ran an op-ed by American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO Ted Deutch connecting the attack directly to Palestine advocacy and smearing the movement as antisemitic.
“Stop telling us that these are just the latest protest chants of a well-meaning movement when these so-called social justice warriors are waging war against Jews,” wrote Deutch. “Stop telling us to be less defensive, to be less alarmed, when the people on offense want us dead.”
National Council of Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz is in the New York Times declaring that “Jews are afraid right now.”
Katz starts her editorial by referencing the Boulder attack and the Israel embassy killings, before claiming that antisemitism has festered in progressive spaces, “cloaked in the language of justice.”
She laments calls to ban Zionists from the New York Dyke March, as Zionism is simply “the basic belief in Jewish self-determination.”
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt went on Fox News to draw a direct parallel between the Boulder attack and the “moral rot” on college campuses.
Greenblatt singled out left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, and social media influencer Guy Christensen as “promoters of hate.” In his rant, he also targeted Megha Vemuri, the MIT class president who brought up the Gaza genocide in her recent graduation speech.
“These speakers at these graduations — it just happened the other day at MIT — spreading blood libels about the Jewish people or the Jewish state, it creates conditions in which this kind of act is happening with increasing frequency,” Greenblatt explained.
“We got to to stop it once and for all,” he continued. “I hope the Trump administration will do just that.”
“As scientists, engineers, academics and leaders, we have a commitment to support life, support aid efforts and call for an arms embargo and keep demanding now as alumni, that MIT cuts the ties,” Vemuri told the crowd at the MIT graduation. “We are watching Israel try to wipe out Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.”
Where’s the lie, or the Blood Libel?
Odds & Ends
🙄 Former Biden spokesperson admits Israel was committing war crimes, it just wasn’t his job to say so
🚓. Leqaa Kordia: The forgotten prisoner
⚕️ Whither Medical Ethics?: The failure of the U.S. medical establishment on Gaza
🗽 We are going on hunger strike at the City University of New York. Here’s why.
🇸🇾 Responsible Statecraft: Ambassador: US to reduce military bases in Syria “to one”
🏫 Electronic Intifada: Students achieve Israeli divestment victories on US college campuses
❗ Counterpunch: “But Hamas!”
🤔 Middle East Eye: Trump fires slew of pro-Israel officials in America First ‘course correction’
🇵🇸 Common Dreams: The Gaza Genocide Is Biden’s True ‘Original Sin’
🏃 Truthout: US Firm BCG Pulls Out of US’s Gaza “Humanitarian” Scheme as Casualties Rack Up
🇺🇸 AP: Trump announces travel ban affecting a dozen countries set to go into effect Monday
📱 The Intercept: How the FBI Sought a Warrant to Search Instagram of Columbia Student Protesters
🇮🇱 Drop Site News: Hamas Responds to Witkoff Gaza Proposal, Demands Trump Guarantee Israel Won’t Resume Genocide
🎓 Trinity News: Trinity College votes to fully divest from Israeli institutions
📄 Jewish Insider: 22 House progressives push unprecedented new restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel
📺 Zeteo: ‘An Ongoing Nakba’: How Israel, the Media, and the West Set the Stage for Gaza’s Genocide
🇬🇧 Times of Israel: BBC defends Gaza coverage after White House criticism it takes ‘the word of Hamas’
Stay safe out there,
“Further conflation of Zionism and Judaism is great for the pro-Israel crowd, which has been pushing that narrative for decades in an effort to shield the country and its backers from accountability and criticism….”
Disagree. The problem is worse, it’s the conflation of Israel and Judaism.
The ICJ claimed it had no jurisdiction to enforce Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that the UK and other countries with weapons have always violated with impunity. None of them have ever taken any action on their obligations to eliminate their own nuclear weapons under the terms of the treaty agreement. The Marshall Islands complained the UK had always maintained, modernized, and upgraded theirs instead. See: Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament (Marshall Islands v. United Kingdom)
In the case of the USA, it has violated Article I for decades by giving Turkey control of some of its deployed nuclear weapons. Israel is in violation of Chapter 7 UN resolutions to place its nuclear weapons under IAEA control. It is the only state that refuses to conclude an Article VII regional treaty in order to assure the total absence of nuclear weapons in the territory. The USA and Israel have conducted assasinations, sabotage, and constantly discuss plans to sanction or bomb Iran, while ignoring that violates the Article X right for non-weapons states to withdraw from the agreement and acquire nuclear weapons for its own defense. See Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)