The threat from Katz comes on the same day that President Trump amplified calls to kill Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands for a deal. Katz’s rhetoric also echoes President Trump, who has previously threatened to send Iran back to the “stone age” by destroying all of its power plants.
Trump has also threatened to unleash “hell” on Iran, “blow up” the entire country, and at one point said an “entire civilization would die” if he escalated his bombing campaign.
President Trump on Thursday shared a post calling for the killing of Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands, ramping up his threats against the country amid a very fragile ceasefire.
The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.
„This budget was formulated, honestly, before we went into conflict with Iran,“ Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon‘s acting chief financial officer, told reporters at a briefing April 21.
In addition, the Trump administration separately plans to ask Congress for more than $200 billion in supplemental funding for the Iran war, according to reports.
„We‘re enforcing the blockade across the board against any ship of any nationality that is transiting to or from an Iranian port or territory,“ Caine said.
„We‘re closely tracking vessels of interest headed towards Iran and those moving away from Iran that were outside the blockade area when this blockade was ordered and … we‘re prepared and postured to intercept them,“ he said.
The U.S. naval blockade on Iran began on April 13.
Watch the full news conference in the video player above.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Hegseth said the U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping will continue „as long as it takes“ to accomplish America‘s „bold and dangerous“ mission to end Iran‘s threat to global security.
Among the consequences of the war was the Syrian occupation of Lebanon until 2005; the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon until 2000; the creation of the Hezbollah, a Shiʿi militia formed to confront Israel and later adapted into a political party and social welfare network; the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon; and the rebuilding of Lebanon by a handful of businessmen, including the two-time prime minister (1992–98; 2000–04) Rafic al-Hariri. (…)
With Palestinian forces continuing to conduct cross-border raids into Israel, Israel launched a major reprisal attack in March 1978, sending troops into the south of Lebanon as far as the Litani River. The resulting conflict led to the establishment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—a peacekeeping force meant to secure Israeli withdrawal and support the return of Lebanese authority in the south—as well as to the creation of the South Lebanese Army (SLA)—a militia led by Saad Haddad and armed and financed by Israel to function as a proxy militia under Lebanese Christian command.
(October 1, 2024)
Israel has launched its sixth incursion into Lebanese territory since 1978. Here’s a timeline of how this seemingly unending conflict has evolved.
(June, 1979)
Israel on the night of March 14–15, 1978, launched a major invasion of southern Lebanon with 20,000-25,000 ground troops backed by tanks, artillery, fighter planes and gunboats. The operation was mounted notwithstanding a number of diplomatic moves to forestall an anticipated reprisal attack in reply to the March 11 guerrilla raid on Israel and despite assurances by the Lebanese Government that it was in no way responsible for the Palestinian action[see above].
“Any presumed truce that grants the occupying enemy in Lebanon a special exception to open fire or carry out any movement or field action in confrontation areas and within Lebanese territory—whether to secure a position, plant a mine, carry out an assassination, blow up a house or facility, bulldoze land, or the like—is not a truce at all. Rather, it is cunning deception and an insult to others’ intelligence, entailing cover for Israeli aggression and turning a blind eye to the enemy’s continued violations and breaches,” the statement read.
“The authority should be ashamed before its people and withdraw from what has been called direct negotiations with the Zionist enemy. What we fear most from the insistence on this sin is that the country will fall into something worse than what it was dragged into on the ominous May 17 in the early 1980s.”
With Rico’s death, Indonesia has lost four soldiers serving with UNIFIL in southern Lebanon over the past month.
Among them was Private First Class Farizal Rhomadhon, who died in an artillery attack on March 29 in the same incident that initially left Rico wounded.
On March 30, two Indonesian soldiers, Captain Zulmi Aditya Iskandar and Sergeant Muhammad Nur Ikhwan, were killed when the convoy they were escorting came under attack.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health has said the death toll since fighting between the Israeli army and Hezbollah broke out on March 2 has risen to 2,491 people killed and 7,719 wounded.
Human Rights Watch has called on the government of Lebanon to “accede to the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute” and submit a declaration allowing the Court to “investigate and prosecute crimes committed in Lebanon since October 2023,” according to the organisation’s post on X.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, is expected to head to Islamabad on Friday night to discuss the next steps in stalled peace negotiations with the U.S., a Pakistani official involved in the matter told MS NOW.
Araghchi and a small team are expected to talk with Pakistani mediators about a potential second round of negotiations with the U.S., said the official, who spoke anonymously due to sensitivities around the topic, according to MS NOW.
Iran‘s Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi has held phone conversations with Pakistan‘s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar as well as army chief Asim Munir, amid heightened diplomatic activity around a possible ceasefire and renewed US-Iran engagement, according to Al Jazeera report.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported that the discussions focused on regional developments and issues related to the ceasefire.
In a separate call, Araghchi also spoke with Nechirvan Barzani, president of Iraq‘s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
An email has circulated within the United States Department of Defense laying out potential measures Washington could take against NATO allies it believes have not sufficiently supported its war on Iran, such as Spain and the United Kingdom, according to a US official quoted by the Reuters news agency.
What to know
– Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States will continue its blockade of Iranian ports and ships near theStrait of Hormuz for “as long as it takes” during a press conference at the Pentagon this morning. Iran and the U.S. have seized vessels along the key oil route in recent days amid a ceasefire extension announced earlier this week.
– President Donald Trump said Lebanon and Israel agreed to extend their ceasefire by three weeks following negotiations at the White House yesterday. Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia Israel is at war with in Lebanon, was not represented at the talks. A Hezbollah politician called the ceasefire extension “meaningless” this morning as Israel continued its strikes in southern Lebanon.
– Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to travel to Islamabad tonight with a small team to discuss next steps in peace negotiations with the U.S., a Pakistani government official told MS NOW. A second round of peace talks is expected to take place after discussions with the Pakistani mediating team, the official said.
NNA – Public Health Ministry‘s Emergency Operations Center on Friday issued a statement, announcing that an Israeli enemy airstrike on the town of Touline, Marjeyoun District, at dawn today, resulted in the martyrdom of two people.