Why did Gulf states ask Trump to hold off on Iran strikes? - analysis

Why did Gulf states ask Trump to hold off on Iran strikes? - analysis

AMICHAI STEIN

Fears over a broader regional war and attacks on Gulf infrastructure led the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar to intensify efforts to persuade US President Donald Trump to delay any potential strike on Iran.

Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Monday that he originally planned to strike Iran on Tuesday.

“I have been asked by the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, and the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow, in that serious negotiations are now taking place,” the president tweeted.

He added that “in their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States.”

According to regional analysts, Gulf leaders fear that even a limited American strike on Iranian energy or military infrastructure could provoke retaliatory attacks targeting desalination facilities, electrical grids, oil infrastructure, and shipping lanes throughout the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia concerned over infrastructure strikes, Iranian civil war

“Saudi Arabia is worried that if Trump strikes the energy and electricity infrastructure in Iran, the Iranians still have the capability of striking back and destroying desalination plants, electricity generation plants - the infrastructure of Saudi Arabia - which cannot be fully defended,” Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told The Jerusalem Post.

“In the summer, if you lose water desalination, you’re in deep trouble. It could cause a humanitarian crisis,” Haykel said.

He also added that Saudi leaders’ concerns go beyond immediate retaliation and include fears that military escalation could destabilize Iran itself.

“They don’t want a failed state in Iran because a failed state in Iran could lead to a Libya-like situation with civil war. That’s also something that could very seriously destabilize the region,” he said.

According to Haykel, Riyadh and other Gulf capitals have consistently favored de-escalation and negotiated arrangements with Tehran over military confrontation.

“They would like to come to some sort of detente, a de-escalation agreement with the Iranians,” he said. “This has been their position from the very beginning. They were against the war to start with, and they’ve been trying to reach an accommodation with the Iranians and a negotiated settlement.”

Haykel argued that Gulf governments believe Iran’s regime faces greater long-term danger from internal pressures than from external military action.

“The Saudis believe, like I do, that the real threat to the regime is domestic, not external,” he said. “If you leave the regime in place, the people in Iran will eventually take care of it.”

At the same time, Haykel said Gulf states remain deeply skeptical that Washington would sustain a prolonged campaign against Iran if retaliation intensified.

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Mojtaba Khamenei frames war with US, Israel as 'jihad' in defiant message

Mojtaba Khamenei frames war with US, Israel as 'jihad' in defiant message, analyst says

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei used a series of posts on X Tuesday to frame Iran’s war with the United States and Israel in ideological and religious terms, invoking what one counterterrorism analyst described as “jihad — sacred religious war.”

Khamenei’s defiant remarks came after President Donald Trump called off a planned strike on Iran on May 18, and as Washington indicated it would not soften its stance on Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Among the most valuable achievements of the Third Sacred Defense [against the American and Zionist invasion] is the emergence of Iran at the level of a major, influential power,” Mojtaba said in one post on X.

“Strip the euphemism away, and what Khamenei is invoking here is jihad — sacred religious war,” Dr. Omar Mohammed, a counterterrorism analyst with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Fox News Digital.

“‘Sacred Defense’ is the Islamic Republic’s preferred term for jihad against an aggressor; it carries the full weight of religious obligation in Shia jurisprudence,” he added.

“By framing the war with America and Israel this way, Khamenei is not describing a geopolitical conflict. He is declaring a holy war and casting it as a religious duty,” Mohammed added.

Mohammed also said the messaging explicitly identifies “America and the Zionists” as the enemy.

“That is not loose phrasing. The Islamic Republic, under Mojtaba’s father, made hatred of America and hatred of Jews the twin pillars of its ideology for more than 30 years,” he said.

In another post, Khamenei wrote, “By earnestly pursuing the correct, necessary policy of population growth, the great Iranian nation will be able to play a major role and experience strategic leaps in the future, taking long strides toward building the new Islamic-Iranian civilization.”

“The fact that he is now speaking publicly as supreme leader — and that this substantive message is a call to jihad against America and the Jews — tells you what kind of leader he intends to be,” Mohammed added.

Mohammed also noted the irony that the supreme leader was delivering his message on X — a platform the Iranian government has “blocked inside Iran for nearly two decades” — while ordinary Iranians endure what he described as the country’s longest and most severe internet blackout.

“Over four months now, costing the Iranian economy a quarter of a billion dollars a day,” Mohammed said before stating that the supreme leader is “speaking to the world on a platform his own people are forbidden to read, in a country he has cut off from the outside.” 

Third Iran-Linked 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker Seized By US Navy Off South Asia

Third Iran-Linked 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker Seized By US Navy Off South Asia

TYLER DURDEN

A WSJ report Tuesday afternoon has revealed that the US seized an "Iran-linked ship" in the Indian Ocean overnight, which had not previously been revealed, at a moment President Trump is threatening to resume airstrikes on Iran, but has given a few more 'days' for Tehran to come to the table.

"The tanker, called Skywave, was sanctioned by the US in March for its role in transporting Iranian oil," the report says. These kind of high seas interdictions are happening with semi-regularity at this point, especially in waters of south and southeast Asia. The report details:

Ship-tracking data showed it sailing just west of Malaysia on Tuesday after transiting the Malacca Strait. The ship was likely loaded with more than a million barrels of crude at Iran’s Kharg Island in February, according to brokers and data from Lloyds List Intelligence. 

It marks at least the third time the U.S. has seized an oil tanker in connection with its crackdown of Iran-linked shadow-fleet vessels.

Meanwhile, also on Tuesday VP JD Vance had a meeting with the president related to the Iran crisis, and engaged in another testy exchange with the media:

Update(1140ET): President Trump has on Tuesday while fielding questions from reporters repeated his line that Iran is 'begging' for a deal. "They're begging to make a deal. I hope we don't have to do the war, but we may have to give them another big hit. We may have to give them another big hit. You'll know very soon."

His threat to give them another "big hit" was coupled with the assertion that he was just one hour away from ordering new attacks on Iran Monday, but was asked by Gulf allies to given diplomacy just a little longer:

Trump: "I was an hour away" from striking Iran on Monday.

There was also the below moment where he again talked timeline, saying he's ready to resume military action in a few 'days' if Iran doesn't comply:

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Iran's Floating Oil Stockpile Jumps 65% As U.S. Naval Blockade Bites

Mark Hitchcock: Invisible Battle Raging Behind The Iran War

Invisible Battle Raging Behind The Iran War

Mark Hitchcock

All eyes in the world today are on Iran, the Middle East, and that slender Strait of Hormuz. The world is holding its collective breath, wondering when the oil prices at the pump will begin to fall, and if Iran is willing to give in or stubbornly continue its pursuit of the nuclear finish line.

Iran’s dogged refusal to surrender, even in the face of the threat of catastrophic destruction, is evidence that it values its radical theology above everything else.

What we can see on the surface today in Iran is bad enough, but behind the physical war, the Bible tells us that there is a spiritual war raging in the Middle East, with Iran at the center of the enemy’s strategy to oppose Israel and create chaos in the region.

Iran is Satan’s sinister agent to try to destroy God’s covenant people and drive them from their land.

The book of Daniel tells us about demonic spiritual warfare 2,500 years ago, involving a high-ranking demon called the Prince of “Persia”—the ancient name for modern-day Iran. This dark, demonic overlord was in charge of controlling and influencing Persia and its leaders in Daniel’s day, holding sway over this consequential region.

Daniel’s ancient prophecy helps us gain insight into the invisible spiritual war that’s still raging today in modern Iran. After all, if there was a demonic Prince of Persia in 530 BC, we could be sure that the same territorial demon is behind what’s happening there today. This demonic force in Iran is stimulating and stirring their strategy and stubbornness, inspiring their ideology, aggravating their antisemitism, and activating their anger.

 Ephesians 6:12 pulls back the veil, allowing us to peer into this unseen world, into this invisible army of evil spiritual forces: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The Prince of Persia has not gone away. Forces of good and evil are all around us behind the flimsy facade of this world, enabling, empowering, and energizing everything that’s happening today in Iran.

The Prince of Persia has been working there for the last 2,500 years, but in the last 47 years, he has experienced his greatest success. The people of Iran are imprisoned in the equivalent of a national concentration camp, under the oppressive iron fist of a radical ideology. Joel Rosenberg aptly referred to this Mullah regime in Iran as an “apocalyptic, genocidal death cult.”

This demonic Persian prince is energizing the erroneous eschatology that drives their avowed anti-Semitism and “Mahdi” theology, which thrives on chaos and conflict and drives them to hate the United States and Israel. They seek terror and confusion to hotwire their version of the apocalypse. It’s even turning them against former allies as they shoot missiles into neighboring nations!

Dr. Hormoz Shariat, known as the Billy Graham of Iran, not long ago said something fascinating. He referred to the Prince of Persia as a spirit of delay. And what do we see from Iran today? Tehran has refined a strategy built on violence, delay, and deception. Constant negotiations, never-ending talks, and ceasefires. The Prince of Persia is still a spirit of delay, but it’s also a spirit of destruction and hatred.

I also believe that this Prince of Persia is drawing Iran into an alliance with Russia and Turkey, as described in the prophetic battle of Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39).

The real battle we see today is not what we see with our eyes. There is an invisible battle raging behind the thin facade of this world. Just as in Daniel 10, God and His angelic hosts will win in the end. God’s sovereign plans will prevail as they always do. His will can never be thwarted. No delay can keep Him from bringing His will to pass. That’s true in the Middle East, and it’s true every day in your life and in mine.

Canada Says Critics Don’t Understand Its Surveillance Bill

Canada Says Critics Don’t Understand Its Surveillance Bill

Canada’s Public Safety Minister is telling Apple, Meta, and Signal that they don’t understand his own surveillance bill. They understand it fine. That’s the problem.

• Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, would force telecoms, internet companies, and social media platforms to rebuild their systems so police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) can access user data more easily during investigations.

  It would also require providers to stockpile metadata on every subscriber for up to a year, regardless of whether those people are suspected of anything.

  The bill has the backing of police chiefs across the country and CSIS, who have long argued they are stymied by outdated legislation in a digital world.

  The government describes this as organizing information “like a filing cabinet, where certain types of information would be available with legal authorization.”

  That filing cabinet contains a year’s worth of data showing where every Canadian goes, when they go there, and who they communicate with. On a mobile network, that metadata includes which cell towers each phone connects to and when. Retained at scale, it amounts to a comprehensive surveillance map of the population.

  Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said at a press conference Wednesday that tech companies are “using this as an opportunity to double down.” He added that “Tech giants are misinterpreting some of the safeguards that are already built in, including on ensuring that encryption is not in any way interrupted as part of Bill-22.”

  The bill would also allow the federal government to secretly order companies to weaken encryption or create backdoors and Meta’s Robyn Greene told the committee that if the government quietly mandates changes to a platform’s security architecture, Meta would be legally prohibited from telling its own users. Secret orders to weaken security, with a gag clause preventing disclosure. The government calls this “encryption-neutral.”

  
  

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