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The number of goals Donald Trump set out on Feb. 28 when he launched the unprovoked attack on Iran was held up to the light by MS NOW’s David Rohde on Tuesday morning, who made clear the president's war so far has been a failure.Well beyond the Strait of Hormuz stalemate that has the Trump administration grasping for an answer, Rohde singled out five claims that the president made when he announced the attack, with only one coming to fruition -- and even that appears doubtful after this weekend's events.Speaking with “Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire, Rohde got right to the point as the producers displayed a graphic showing the administration coming up far short of its goals.“Remind us, please, about the goals that this administration first set out for this conflict and what has actually been achieved,” Lemire prompted his guest.“Look, I want to give credit to all the service members that are out there in particularly the day after Memorial Day, but this has been a disaster for this administration to have the Secretary of State [Marco Rubio], as we just saw him on his plane, trying to play down, almost trying to placate the Iranians and the American public about how this conflict has gone was extraordinary,” he began.“I looked up President Trump's speech on February 28th when he announced the war, so achieved: ‘annihilate their navy.‘ Maybe. I mean, I think that's generally true. But this morning, the New York Times has reported that there are hundreds of these speedboats and this — look, I believe the United States Navy, I don't believe the Iranians at all — if they're laying mines with one of these speedboats. That's why it was part of the attack yesterday; that's extraordinary. That shows how emboldened the Iranians are. So that's maybe achieved or partly achieved.”“And then everything else. 'Destroy their missiles,'” he continued. “The latest assessment is that 70% of Iran's missile capacity remains intact. They have knocked out some of the factories. But again, that is not an achievement. Overall, ensure the region's terrorist proxies no longer destabilize the region — That's not happening at all. That's not even part of these negotiations. And the missiles aren't either.”“Ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he continued. “That's not even part of the current negotiations that will come in this 60-day second round of talks. And then, most tragically, what he said to, as he said to ‘the great people of Iran, take over your government,’ and the regime remains in place.”“So it's astonishing to me that an American president is in this position,” he concluded. “And they just, you know, this administration … just continues to mismanage this war.” - YouTube youtu.be

Middle Eastern nations that were on the receiving end of a threat from Donald Trump over the holiday weekend called his bluff because he no longer carries the weight he thinks he does.That was the claim made by MS NOW host Joe Scarborough and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius on Monday morning after the affected nations balked.Over the weekend, as Trump was boasting that an agreement with Iran was imminent, he then jumped ahead and wrote on Truth Social, “I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords, and that, if Iran signs its Agreement with me, as President of the United States of America, it would be an Honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition.”As the Washington Post reported, “Analysts, however, expressed doubt that the countries would agree to sign on, especially when tensions are running high amid ongoing conflicts in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza. Official Iranian policy also calls for the eradication of Israel, and its replacement by a Palestinian state.”Scarborough jumped into the fray by saying Trump, who has been diminished in the region by the Strait of Hormuz stalemate, doesn’t have the leverage to make such demands.Stating Trump’s new Iran deal pronouncement is “starting to sound like every other BS peace deal,” Scarborough added, “And I say that I know they're talking, they think they're close, but you have the Iranians saying, no, we're never going to give up our nukes. We're going to continue putting tolls on the strait.”“And then you have Donald Trump yesterday basically holding a weak hand, actually going all in, saying, okay, Saudi Arabia, okay, Turkey, all right, all these other countries that are never going to join the Abraham Accords, the only way they're going to work is if all of you join the Abraham Accords. And the Saudis have already said, we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it without a Palestinian state. Is there a peace still? Are they really moving forward to one, or is this just more of the same?”“So, Joe, it is, as your comments suggest, a very confusing and disheartening situation,” Ignatius replied. “It's obvious to me that President Trump badly wants out of this war. He's looking for an exit ramp as hard as he can, he feels that another round of kinetic strikes will be difficult for the U.S. — for the US military it’s unlikely to easily achieve his goals.”“It will lead, inevitably, to some kind of ground invasion of Iran, which is the last thing that I think he wants. And so he has come up with a peace proposal that is so far short of the war aims that he had when he started,” he added. - YouTube youtu.be

Lack of Pfas regulations raised in parliament after Guardian revealed former Miteni plant bought by Indian companyProtests over the production of cancer-linked Pfas chemicals have spread across India, after an investigation revealed that an Italian factory shut down due to an environmental scandal was bought by an Indian company and partly rebuilt.At the end of last year, the Guardian revealed that the former Miteni plant in Vicenza had been acquired by the Indian company Laxmi Organic Industries. The factory produced Pfas and was shut down in 2018 after being linked to one of Italy’s worst environmental contamination scandals. Continue reading...

Steve Schmidt, former Republican operative, had a scathing response to the Trump administration and MAGA on Memorial Day.The co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project described "MAGA's ultimate disgrace" and called President Donald Trump and his White House "America's most despicable men and women."He reflected on Memorial Day, the ultimate sacrifice that Americans have made serving their country around the world — and warned that there were forces trying to infiltrate the military and dishonor its reputation."And it's not abstract and it's not history, not for the families of the Americans killed in action in Iran, not for the families whose loved ones are buried in section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery," Schmidt said."The grief never abates — 26 years of war and the United States has been transformed by it," Schmidt explained. "What it has produced is a soft tyranny, an autocratic man in freedom's chair who desecrates in word, and deed and action, with every breath, the sacrifice we honor and celebrate."Schmidt described Trump's attempts to change the military and MAGA's influence. "He is a contemptuous man and a contemptible one," Schmidt added. "He is a low down, no good man, a liar, a felon, an abuser of women and children, a man who dishonors and disgraces the American military and whose attempts to transform it into a personal pretorian guard are a national obscenity. The military does not belong to Trump, and it does not belong to MAGA. It belongs to the nation. And it is made up of the nation's sons and daughters. It is our most precious resource. It is our most fragile institution. And it is being broken in half by America's most despicable men and women. We should not tolerate it."

Donald Trump took to Truth Social Sunday morning to praise what he called a "much more professional and productive" relationship with Iran — the same country he spent years branding the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism."Our relationship with Iran is becoming a much more professional and productive one," Trump wrote, describing ongoing nuclear negotiations as proceeding in "an orderly and constructive manner."The statement landed with considerable whiplash for anyone who followed Trump's career. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal and launched a "maximum pressure" campaign of crushing economic sanctions against Tehran. In January 2020, he ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, in a drone strike at Baghdad's international airport — an act that brought the two countries to the brink of open war.Now, in his second term, Trump finds himself in the position of negotiating his own nuclear deal with the same government — and praising the relationship in terms his predecessor might have used.The post also contained a swipe at Barack Obama — using his full middle name, a longtime Trump dog whistle — calling the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action "one of the worst deals ever made by our Country" and "a direct path to Iran developing a Nuclear Weapon."But in the very same post, Trump described his own negotiations in terms nearly identical to what Obama-era diplomats might have said: both sides taking their time, getting it right, no rushing, proceeding carefully toward a verifiable agreement.The contradiction did not go unnoticed. Earlier Sunday, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — Trump's own top diplomat during his first term — warned that the deal being floated "seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook," referring to key architects of Obama's Iran deal. White House communications director Steven Cheung responded by telling Pompeo to "shut his stupid mouth."Trump closed his post with a notable flourish, suggesting that Iran might one day consider joining the Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states that Trump brokered in his first term.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Saturday issued a sharp warning about President Donald Trump's emerging Iran peace framework, saying it could "pour gasoline" on regional conflicts and supercharge Iranian-backed militant groups.The South Carolina Republican, who is normally one of Trump's most reliable allies on foreign policy issues, took to X to warn that the reported terms of the deal could be read as a strategic win for Tehran by other players in the region."If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq," Graham wrote.He warned specifically about the impact on two Iranian-aligned forces."A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the Strait in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids," Graham wrote.The senator's remarks land at a politically delicate moment for Trump, who announced earlier in the day from the Oval Office that an agreement involving the United States, Iran, and a coalition of Arab and Muslim nations had been "largely negotiated."Graham's pushback adds to a growing chorus of conservative voices, including former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and conservative commentator David Hookstead, raising alarms about what the reported framework would actually deliver.If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq. A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the…— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 23, 2026

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday publicly attacked the Iran agreement that President Donald Trump is reportedly close to finalizing, comparing it unfavorably to the Obama-era nuclear deal and demanding more aggressive action against Tehran.In a post on X, the former Trump official from term one took direct aim at the framework that Trump announced from the Oval Office earlier in the day, which would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bring in a coalition of Arab and Muslim nations."The deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world," Pompeo wrote, naming three Obama administration officials closely associated with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action."Not remotely America First," Pompeo added.The former secretary of state, who hasn't been a part of the administration for the president's second term, called for a far more aggressive posture toward Tehran."It's straightforward: Open the damned strait. Deny Iran access to money. Take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region," Pompeo wrote."Overdue. Let's go," he concluded.Trump himself confirmed earlier Saturday that a peace framework involving Iran had been "largely negotiated."The deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world.Not remotely America First. It’s straightforward: Open the damned strait. Deny Iran access to money. Take out…— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) May 23, 2026

President Donald Trump confirmed Friday afternoon what set off hours of online speculation, posting to Truth Social with an Oval Office statement about a major foreign policy development.In the post, Trump said he had spoken with a long list of Arab and Muslim world leaders about a possible peace agreement involving Iran."I am in the Oval Office at the White House where we just had a very good call with President Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia," Trump wrote, going on to name the leaders of the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain. The call concerned "the Islamic Republic of Iran, and all things related to a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE."The president said the framework is close to done."An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries, as listed," Trump wrote.He added that he had spoken separately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and that "final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly."Trump closed with one specific detail."In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened," he wrote.