Incoherent messaging and inconsistent policy positions - Trump’s chaotic Iran gambit.

The United States and Iran made progress in talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme on Thursday, mediator Oman said, but hours of negotiation ended with no sign of a breakthrough that could avert…

The arrest of a Japanese journalist in Iran has puzzled observers and prompted speculation that it is linked to the US threat to attack the country over its nuclear programme. On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe reported the arrest of Shinnosuke Kawashima, the Tehran bureau chief for Japan’s national broadcaster NHK. The US government-funded news outlet reported that Kawashima was first detained on January 20 and later taken to the notorious Evin Prison, which has been used to hold political prison...

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt made her statements during the buildup to Trump's State of the Union address, scheduled for 9 p.m. on Tuesday evening.

Oil Surges On Report Warning US-Iran War Is Far Closer Than Americans Realize Axios' Barak Ravid, a journalist very close to the Israeli government, writes Wednesday that the Trump White House is now "closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon." The sources he spoke to, which could be American or Israeli, say that such an operation would be a "massive" campaign at least weeks in sustained length. If it the campaign goes the way of Iraq or Afghanistan, or Syria, the conflict could eventually be measured in years and not just months. Further, "The sources noted it would likely be a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign that's much broader in scope — and more existential for the regime — than the Israeli-led 12-day war last June, which the U.S. eventually joined to take out Iran's underground nuclear facilities." USAF/CNN All of this looks to be going down with no public or Congressional debate whatsoever: "With the attention of Congress and the public otherwise occupied, there is little public debate about what could be the most consequential U.S. military intervention in the Middle East in at least a decade," notes Axios. Both sides are citing 'progress' in the two rounds of indirect negotiations (in Oman and then Geneva) which have taken place thus far, however, there's been nothing yet in the way of specific agreement. Washington's commitment to see talks through even for weeks at this point is highly in quesiton. The following was the initial Iranian assessment of how the talks led by Witkoff and Kushner in Geneva went this week: Iran has said it has reached an understanding with the US on the main "guiding principles" to resolve their dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme. Speaking after indirect talks in Geneva, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi added that work still needed to be done. The US said "progress was made". Badr Albusaidi, foreign minister of mediator Oman, said the negotiations "concluded with good progress towards identifying common goals and relevant technical issues". The Iranians have asked for two weeks to hammer out a detailed proposal, with an American official stating, "Progress was made, but there are still a lot of details to discuss. The Iranians said they would come back in the next two weeks with detailed proposals to address some of the open gaps in our positions." Given President Trump has ordered a second US carrier group to the region, along with a huge number of support aircraft, does Iran really have two weeks to spare?  Oil reaches HOD Wednesday soon on heels of Axios report, with WTI kissing $64/barrel... To some degree, the Iranians are likely buying time, knowing that a surprise, unprovoked attack could be imminent. This would be similar to the June war, but unlike that scenario this would indeed be much bigger. There's reason to believe Trump may stay restrained, however, and give negotiations time. Fear of higher oil prices could ultimately be the deciding factor here, pushing Trump to settle with Iran and not spark another completely unpredictable, likely disastrous war in the Middle East.  Tyler Durden Wed, 02/18/2026 - 08:36

“Why did you start driving inDrive?” It’s my go-to icebreaker with drivers in Pakistan. Lately, the answers have been unsettlingly similar. “I used to work in the development sector,” one man told me. “Then I lost my job.” I’ve heard that line — or a version of it — too many times to dismiss as coincidence. Since the United States pulled the plug on its aid apparatus, the fallout has been immediate. On the surface, the shutdown of USAID is being framed as just another abrupt policy reversal — a bureaucratic casualty in an era of disruption. But look closer, and it reveals something far more profound: the cumulative weight of domestic and international tensions that have been simmering, both within and beyond the US for decades. Cycles of aid, cycles of distrust The first source of strain lies beyond US borders. From its inception as a Cold War instrument, American foreign aid has been shaped by an enduring tension between its declared objectives of development and altruism and its underlying strategic and political calculations. This duality has long been apparent to the recipient elites and the broader public alike. During the Cold War, many governments acquiesced, in part because Western donors faced little competition and alternative sources of assistance were scarce. That landscape has since changed. As non-traditional donors, most notably China and the Gulf states, have expanded their presence, and as domestic political incentives within recipient countries have shifted, scepticism toward USAID has become more explicit and politically salient. In countries such as Pakistan, where mistrust of American intentions runs deep, US assistance is often perceived less as generosity than as intrusion. What is now framed as a backlash against American aid is better understood as the culmination of a long-simmering tension and a legacy of mutual misperceptions between donor and recipient. Pakistan’s experience with US foreign aid agency illustrates this dynamic with particular clarity. American assistance to Pakistan has never been linear or predictable; instead, it has unfolded in cycles closely attuned to Washington’s shifting strategic priorities. During the Cold War, aid was channelled primarily through a security-alliance framework aimed at containing the Soviet bloc, with economic assistance tightly coupled to military cooperation. These flows declined sharply after the 1965 war, reinforcing perceptions of US aid as conditional, transactional, and reversible. Another peak in this equation followed in the 1980s, when General Ziaul Haq aligned Pakistan with the US in opposing Soviet expansion in Afghanistan. Yet with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent imposition of US sanctions on Pakistan’s nuclear programme under the Pressler Amendment, assistance once again contracted. It was only after 9/11 that the aid surged anew, this time framed around counterterrorism and stabilisation. Even at its height, however, much of this assistance remained shaped by security imperatives, short funding horizons, and heavy reliance on contractors, rather than long-term institution-building. For many Pakistanis, therefore, the shutdown of USAID feels less like an abrupt rupture than the latest turn in a familiar cycle of engagement and disengagement. The second factor is bureaucratic pathologisation. Like many large organisations, aid agencies are susceptible to institutional dysfunction, and USAID has been no exception. In practice, particularly in contexts such as Pakistan, as commissioner on the Afghanistan War Commission Andrew Wilder has noted, its programmes increasingly came to be structured through a security lens rather than a development one. Key decisions were made in Washington, filtered through multiple layers of contractors, and ultimately deployed on the ground with limited scope for local input. At the same time, bureaucratic incentives privileged projects with easily quantifiable indicators, favouring what could be measured over what was substantively effective. These patterns were neither accidental nor new, nor are they unique to the US. Over time, however, they eroded both the legitimacy and the perceived effectiveness of USAID, among recipients abroad and critics at home. These institutional dynamics had tangible consequences on the ground. In Pakistan, USAID funding became heavily concentrated in sectors aligned with stabilisation and security objectives — such as service delivery in so-called “fragile” districts or rapid-impact infrastructure — often at the expense of slower, politically unglamorous investments in local institutional capacity. NGOs and development professionals structured entire career paths around USAID project cycles, only to see those opportunities vanish when priorities shifted or funding was abruptly frozen. The result was a hollowing out of local expertise and institutional memory. When aid was withdrawn, it left behind far fewer durable institutions than its scale and visibility might have led one to expect. The mismatch between stated development objectives and the underlying security logic was further compounded by an overreliance on quantifiable metrics to demonstrate impact. This tendency was reinforced by a development ecosystem shaped by the overproduction of economists and political scientists trained as methodological specialists rather than regional experts. Programmes designed in Washington often prioritised what could be easily counted — number of schools built, clinics refurbished, trainings delivered, or kilometres of roads completed — over whether such interventions meaningfully strengthened local institutions. In Pakistan, this logic was especially evident in sectors such as education, health, and local governance, where projects were assessed primarily through output indicators rather than sustainability or local ownership. Multiple layers of contractors further diluted accountability and blurred responsibility once funding cycles ended. Over time, this produced a paradox: USAID became both omnipresent and poorly understood — associated with large budgets and extensive reporting, but yielding limited and uneven institutional impact. That credibility gap left the agency especially exposed when domestic political support in the US began to erode. The third major factor behind the dismantling of the aid lies in the domestic backlash within the US against international cooperation. Opposition to foreign aid, multilateralism, and international institutions long predates Donald Trump, reflecting decades of polarisation over globalisation and America’s role in the world. By the time Trump entered office, hostility toward international engagement was already deeply embedded in US politics. In this context, shuttering a highly visible aid agency became a potent domestic signal; it becomes a way to demonstrate responsiveness to voters who view global commitments as costly, wasteful, or illegitimate. Dismantling USAID was therefore less a recalibration of foreign policy than an act of domestic political theatre. The US government’s official justification for shutting down USAID frames the move as a response to “China’s exploitative aid model” and a means of advancing American “strategic interests in key regions around the world”. It is true that China has dramatically expanded its development footprint and largely operates outside the traditional Western aid framework. But that explanation doesn’t hold up to deeper scrutiny. If Washington were genuinely seeking to compete with Beijing in the development arena, the more coherent response would have been reform and reinvestment, not withdrawal. Moreover, Chinese and US aid are not direct substitutes. They target different sectors, rely on distinct instruments, and frequently operate alongside one another in the same countries — Pakistan among them — without displacing each other. In Pakistan, Chinese assistance has concentrated on large-scale infrastructure and energy projects, while USAID has focused primarily on education and health. Chinese aid typically flows through bilateral, government-to-government channels, whereas US assistance has often bypassed the Pakistani state, working instead through NGOs and contractors. China’s rise may well be sharpening anxieties in Washington, but it does not, on its own, explain why the US would choose to erode its own institutional capacity in response. A looming domino effect The shutdown of USAID, then, should not be understood as a one-off policy blunder or an idiosyncratic choice tied to a single administration. Rather, it reflects the convergence of long-accumulating tensions: between the professed ideals and strategic deployment of aid abroad; between development objectives and bureaucratic practices within aid agencies; between international commitments and domestic political incentives at home. USAID’s collapse is best understood not as the cause of these pressures, but as their most visible manifestation. The consequences of this decision extend well beyond the fate of a single agency. They reveal the fragility of the broader international aid regime, which ultimately depends on the willingness of a small number of leading powers to absorb the political and financial costs of institutionalised cooperation. When that willingness erodes, institutions lose both credibility and purpose and eventually collapse. Signs of this erosion are already evident, as other major donors, including the United Kingdom and Germany, begin to scale back their own aid commitments. What is at stake, then, is not merely the dismantling of USAID, but the gradual unravelling of an international aid regime built on mutual trust and a sustained commitment to lifting the world’s poorest out of poverty.

US-Israeli onslaught may lead regime to push for bomb or embolden other groups to steal uranium stockpile Middle East crisis – live updates The US-Israeli onslaught against Iran is intended to resolve a 24-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear programme, but it runs the risk of backfiring and driving the regime towards making a secret bomb, proliferation experts have warned. The regime in Tehran has long insisted that the programme is for civilian purposes and it has no intention of making a ...

The United States carried out a major military strike on Iran, pledging to cripple the country's armed forces, dismantle its nuclear programme and push for a change in leadership, US President Donald…

Tehran says deal is possible as long as Washington abides by agreed-on preconditions, but Trump’s view is unclear Iran enters critical talks on its nuclear programme with the US on Thursday, insisting

US President Donald Trump on Friday said he was considering a limited strike on Iran as he sent a major naval buildup to the region with the goal of pressurising Tehran to cut a deal that would curb its nuclear programme. Iran's foreign minister said a draft proposal for an agreement with Washington would be ready in a matter of days.

Washington is threatening military action if nuclear programme talks fail

Iran said on Monday that the United States’s position on Iran’s nuclear programme “has moved towards a more realistic one”, a day ahead of a second round of US-Iranian talks in Geneva. Tehran’s foreign minister arrived in Geneva for the new round of indirect negotiations with the US, as the Revolutionary Guards began military drills in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for oil and gas. The two sides recently resumed indirect talks, mediated by Oman, after US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened military action against Iran over a deadly crackdown on protesters last month. A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. “A cautious assessment is that, from the discussions that have taken place in Muscat to date, at least what we have been told is that the US position on the Iranian nuclear issue has moved towards a more realistic one,” said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, the official IRNA news agency reported. According to Tehran, talks mediated by Oman will be held on Tuesday in Switzerland. Washington has previously pushed for other topics to be discussed, including Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for armed groups in the region. The war games being conducted by the Guards, the ideological arm of the military, aim to prepare it for “potential security and military threats” in the Strait, Iranian state TV said. Iranian politicians have repeatedly threatened to block the strait, a strategic waterway through which about 20 per cent of global oil passes, as both sides ramp up pressure with talks set to resume. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday, “We’re hopeful there’s a deal”. “The president always prefers peaceful outcomes and negotiated outcomes to things.” Meanwhile, Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, wrote on X that he was meeting in Geneva with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, “for deep technical discussion”. Grossi later confirmed the meeting on X, calling the conversation with Araghchi “in-depth” ahead of Tuesday’s “important negotiations”. Protest crackdown Araghchi is also set to hold talks with his Swiss and Omani counterparts as well as other international officials, Iran’s foreign ministry said. “I am in Geneva with real ideas to achieve a fair and equitable deal. What is not on the table: submission before threats,” Araghchi added on X. Washington has dispatched Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the White House confirmed on Sunday. The latest talks follow repeated threats from Trump of military action against Tehran, first over Iran’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protests, and then more recently over the country’s nuclear programme. The West fears the programme is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies. On Friday, Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen”, as he sent a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East to ratchet up military pressure. His remarks came before demonstrations outside Iran against its authorities swept a number of cities, including in the US, over the weekend. ‘Viable’ deal Iran’s deputy foreign minister told the BBC that Tehran would consider compromises on its uranium stockpile if Washington lifts sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy. “If we see the sincerity on their (American) part, I am sure we will be on a road to have an agreement,” said Majid Takht-Ravanchi. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that any deal must involve the removal of all enriched uranium from Iran as well as Tehran’s ability to enrich more. The whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of around 400 kilogrammes of uranium enriched to 60 per cent remains unknown, with inspectors having last seen it in June.

China calls it unacceptable to ‘kill leader of sovereign state’, while South Africa questions ‘pre-emptive’ justification Middle East crisis – live updates The US-Israeli war on Iran has been condemned as illegal across much of the global south, with China saying it was unacceptable to “blatantly kill the leader of a sovereign state”. Many countries objected that negotiations between the US and Iran over its nuclear programme and missile capability were not given a chance to succeed before ...

Washington has raised concerns about Tehran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missiles and allied militant groups

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stated that North Korea and the United States could 'get along' if Washington respects Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Iran and the United States have differing views over the scope and mechanism to lift sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunda

Iran said Tuesday it had agreed with the United States in talks in Geneva on "guiding principles" for a deal to avoid conflict. The Omani-mediated talks were aimed at averting the possibility of US military intervention to curb Iran's nuclear programme, weeks after the cleric-run state killed thousands of people as it crushed mass demonstrations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme as a key demand in any potential deal with the US, ahead of upcoming nuclear talks in Geneva.