On the Drop Site live stream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim speak to Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.Media, about the state of diplomacy and war, as well as Israel’s covert operations in Iran and whether Tehran will continue to define a ceasefire in Lebanon as a red line for any deal. Then, international law expert Maryam Jamshidi and political analyst Negar Mortazavi discuss the future of Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and how international law has been attacked since the Gaza genocide began.

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At the same time, Israel is pursuing a systematic campaign to empty entire communities across southern Lebanon and has destroyed approximately 60 villages near the southern border. Amnesty International warns the displacement orders “don’t constitute lawful advance warnings” and amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer.

• Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Maysa Mustafa kicked off this week’s livestream speaking with Dr. Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and U.S. veteran who performed surgeries in Gaza, and is now the frontrunner in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district in a primary where U.S. support for Israel’s wars in the Middle East have been defining issues.

• Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute joined to break down whether the Iran deal is collapsing in real time.

• Sean Vitka of Demand Progress discussed Rashida Tlaib’s Lebanon War Powers Resolution and Democratic Party inaction on the war.

• And Drop Site contributor Lylla Younes also joined live from Beirut, speaking on her reporting of the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon—including her latest report on the Ain Arab village, where soldiers went door to door telling residents: “You either leave right now or you die.”

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Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati traveled to Doha on Monday evening for continued talks with mediators.

A senior Iranian official told Drop Site on Friday that Tehran had put forward a set of terms as a framework for a deal, including the provisional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz—contingent on an end to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, and a plan to compensate Iran for damages incurred in the war. The official also stated that the Iranian framework would require an agreement to permanently end the war first, followed by immediate negotiations to reach a deal over the nuclear program.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill speaks with Dr. Foad Izadi, professor of American studies and international relations at University of Tehran, about the latest. Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jeremy also speak with Eyad Amawi of the Gaza Relief Committee in Deir al-Balah about the escalating Israeli assault on Gaza and the growing hunger crisis. Sharif also discusses the latest in Lebanon as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalates Israeli attacks, and Jeremy outlines how President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has unilaterally rewritten the Gaza ceasefire agreement in an effort to compel Palestinians to surrender their liberation cause and institutionalize Israeli domination over the future of the Gaza Strip.

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Trump announced Monday that a planned military strike on Iran had been postponed at the personal request of the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, because “serious negotiations are now taking place, and that, in their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America, as well as all Countries in the Middle East, and beyond.”

While Iranian leaders said they are engaged in good faith negotiations, they have also said they have their own red lines and are prepared for a resumption of the war. Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Negar Mortazavi of the Center for International Policy discuss the latest developments.

Then, Ryan Grim discusses how the war in Sudan has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis while receiving far less global attention than Gaza or Ukraine.

Researcher Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, said the conflict has entered a new phase defined by drone warfare, with both the Sudanese army and the RSF increasingly targeting civilian infrastructure as the rainy season begins. He also warned that the RSF is militarily fragile and heavily dependent on UAE supply lines, arguing that pressure campaigns targeting the UAE’s business ties—especially through the NBA and Manchester City—could have more impact than diplomacy.

Humanitarian and world-renowned photographer Misan Harriman stressed the need for athletes, celebrities, and protest movements to connect Sudan to broader anti-war and anti-colonial struggles alongside Gaza and Congo.

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Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain, Maysa Mustafa and Julian Andreone discuss the impacts of the shutdown and the current outlook on the Iran-U.S. standoff.

At the same time, Israel is pursuing an aggressive military campaign across southern Lebanon, destroying entire communities as the country’s leaders openly threaten to replicate the tactics of wholesale destruction employed in the Gaza Strip against the Lebanese people. Journalist Courtney Bonneau joins the stream live from south Lebanon amid an ongoing wave of Israeli strikes in the region.

Additionally, a new story on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to the U.S. Treasury Department and its Iran sanctions program published in Drop Site sheds light on his quiet role in helping shape the political and economic landscape that gave rise to the current crisis.

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A senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran believes a resumption of the war is highly likely and that it would include operations along Iran’s coastline and potentially strikes aimed at assassinating Iranian military and political leadership. Iranian military officials say they have been preparing to resume their retaliatory attacks across the Persian Gulf and attacks against Israel. Indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are ongoing, but Trump has denounced recent Iranian proposals, saying, “they have not yet paid a big enough price.” Tehran charges that the U.S. is issuing maximalist demands and Iran has no intention of capitulating. “Project Freedom is Project Deadlock,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X on Monday, referring to the new U.S. military operations in the Strait. “Events in Hormuz make clear that there’s no military solution to a political crisis. As talks are making progress with Pakistan’s gracious effort, the U.S. should be wary of being dragged back into [a] quagmire by ill-wishers.”

On the Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim speak to Abas Aslani, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran about the latest developments. Aslani describes Iran’s position on negotiations, the future of the Strait of Hormuz, the current decision making process in Tehran and the economic realities facing both Iran and the U.S.

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Drop Site’s Ryan Grim, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, and Maysa Mustafa discuss the implications of the move.

They are also joined by Jacquline Sweet to discuss her latest investigation revealing the highest paid employees of the Israeli group running the infamous doxxing site Canary Mission.

And as Israeli attacks on Lebanon continue with daily airstrikes, shelling and demolition in the south, NYU journalism professor Mohamad Bazzi joins to discuss Israel’s 50-year war on Lebanon, Hezbollah’s increasing use of fiber optic FPV drones as a tactic of asymmetric warfare, Israel’s campaign of destruction and erasure in southern Lebanon, and more.

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Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill discuss the current state of play, President Donald Trump’s comments, Iran’s view of the negotiations, and how developments in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend exacerbated tensions. They also play clips of Jeremy’s interview with prominent Iranian analyst Hassan Ahmadian, Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at Tehran University.

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The war against Iran launched by the U.S. and Israel on February 28 has not gone according to plan. What was initially portrayed as a quick regime change action that would destroy the Islamic Republic and spark a domestic uprising soon morphed into a war of attrition in which Iran stunned the U.S., Israel, and international observers. Six weeks after the opening strikes that assassinated much of Iran’s leadership, it is President Donald Trump who appears desperate to find an exit. The Iran war is now at a definitive crossroads and the coming days will prove decisive.

While the U.S. and Israel have pounded Iran with massive airstrikes, killing more than 3,300 people, Tehran has inflicted unprecedented damage on U.S. military infrastructure across the Persian Gulf. It forced the evacuation of more than a dozen military bases and other facilities and repeatedly hit Israel with ballistic missile and drone strikes, despite daily claims by the U.S. and Israel that its weapons capacity had been all but wiped out. Iran’s consolidation of control over the strategically-vital Strait of Hormuz has proven a potent symbol of its ability to impact not only the global economy, but to accentuate the political and strategic crisis Trump faces.

The two-week ceasefire agreed between the U.S. and Iran on April 7 is set to expire on Wednesday. Tehran was deeply skeptical of accepting a temporary agreement with the U.S. Twice in one year, the U.S. and Israel launched massive military attacks against Iran in the middle of supposed negotiations. Iranian officials and analysts have consistently said they believe that scenario is likely to be repeated. But Iran ultimately moved forward with the Islamabad talks, after concluding that it had a stronger negotiating position than at any point since the 2015 nuclear agreement was voided in 2018 by Trump during his first term as president.

In a wide-ranging interview, Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill spoke with Iranian analyst Dr. Hassan Ahmadian, Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at Tehran University. Since the war began, Ahmadian has become one of the most prominent Iranian commentators in the Islamic world because of his viral appearances on Al Jazeera Arabic. He is frequently placed on debate shows where he battles as many as seven other guests and hosts. Scahill and Ahmadian talk about what Iran would be willing to accept as part of a deal with the U.S., how it could ensure that the U.S. and Israel do not renege on an agreement and restart the war, and how Iran will approach the issue of its enriched uranium stockpiles.

“Iranians do not trust the Trump administration at all. But what they’re banking on is the fact that they stood against an aggression and forced them out of this aggression, short of achieving any of their goals,” Ahmadian said. “The Iranians see that they can balance asymmetrically the power of the United States and can push it back.”

Ahmadian and Scahill discuss the internal decision-making process in Iran, debates among the political, religious and military echelons, and the role of Parliament Speaker Mohammed Baghar-Ghalibaf, Tehran’s lead negotiator in the current talks with the U.S. Ahmadian also offers a comprehensive overview of Iranian strategy and its perspective on reestablishing deterrence and regional balance in the aftermath of the U.S.-Israeli wars.

“Iran wanted to push back in a way that forces its foes to think twice and thrice before attacking Iran once more. And I think they did that. The United States will think more than once before attacking Iran,” Ahmadian said. “Name another system whose top echelon are assassinated and is capable of continuing and also waging a retaliatory war effort against two big foes. I don’t see any historical parallel to this—that speaks volumes to the institutional, institutionalized level of the [Iranian] system.”

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Meanwhile, as Israel continued to bombard Lebanon on Tuesday and Hezbollah conducted retaliatory attacks, Israeli and Lebanese government officials met in Washington, DC, for their highest-level direct talks in decades. In the run-up to the meeting, Lebanon’s presidency said the talks would focus on announcing a ceasefire and setting a start date for bilateral talks. However, Israel has said it would not discuss a ceasefire during the talks and instead would focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem in a televised address Monday rejected the planned meeting, calling the talks “futile” and urging the Lebanese government to take “a historic and heroic stance” by refusing to attend.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss the latest with Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri , a distinguished public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut and nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC.

Jeremy and Sharif also discuss the case of American born Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who was arrested six weeks ago in Kuwait where he remains in detention and faces prosecution in a special tribunal over social media posts related to the Iran war.

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Meanwhile, Iran’s speaker of parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf will reportedly join Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in leading talks in Islamabad with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Ghalibaf reiterated that “Lebanon and the entire Resistance Axis, as Iran’s allies, form an inseparable part of the ceasefire,” following Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon on Wednesday just hours after the ceasefire was announced, which left more than 300 people dead and over 1,150 wounded.

Drop Site’s Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous unpack the context around the ceasefire agreement, the attack on Lebanon, and what it all portends for the U.S. and the region. Lebanese journalist Lylla Younes talks about witnessing Wednesday’s brutal bombardment of Beirut, and Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed remembers his colleague Mohammed Samir Washah, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher who was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike near Gaza City on Wednesday.

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Iran’s revolutionary guard warned on Tuesday that it would “deprive the U.S and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” if Trump carried out his threat. “We have exercised great restraint and had considerations in choosing retaliatory targets, but from now on all these considerations have been removed,” the IRGC said.

Last-ditch diplomatic efforts are under way to avert a further escalation of the war. The Iranian government has repeatedly and consistently laid out its own demands for an agreement setting out a permanent end to the war—trading concessions on its nuclear program for sanctions relief and recognition of its ability to exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain discuss the latest with Sina Azodi, Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

And as the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon continues, Beirut-based Drop Site contributor Lylla Younes discusses Israel’s ongoing scorched earth campaign, its deliberate targeting of journalists and emergency workers, and its use of tactics to foment sectarianism in Lebanon.

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Story by a correspondent in Tehran who asked to remain anonymous for security

TEHRAN—Like many fathers in Iran, Nariman, a 57-year old teacher, is trying to protect his family from a war that feels closer than ever. On Monday, he arranged with his two daughters to pack their things immediately and flee Tehran for the relative safety of the northern region of the country near the Caspian Sea where U.S. and Israeli strikes have been less frequent.

Nariman, who did not want to share his last name for safety, made the fraught decision to leave after U.S. President Donald Trump posted an ultimatum on TruthSocial on Sunday: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump wrote.

In a separate post, Trump later added a specific deadline: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time.”

Most Iranians don’t have access to the global internet because of blackouts, but news travels fast through domestic intranet platforms. Nariman saw the updates and realized the scale of the threat.

“I panicked when I saw this. He wants to ‘blow everything up’ and ‘take the oil?’ He is gonna hit bridges?” Nariman told Drop Site News over the phone, his voice shaking. “I must get my family to safety before things go wrong.” The family is packing to prepare for a long drive up north, bracing for huge traffic from Tehran of people who have made a similar calculation to flee the capital in the face of Trump’s threat of widespread destruction. When they will return is unclear. But their car is packed with enough clothes and other supplies for what may be an extended time away from home.

Several neighborhoods of Tehran have transformed into scenes of devastation after over a month of Israeli and U.S. airstrikes targeting major public buildings and residential areas of the city. The terrifying rumble of airstrikes has become a regular feature of life in major cities like Tehran, Shiraz, and Isfahan. At least 2,076 people have been killed by US-Israeli attacks since the war began according to the country’s Health Ministry. Figures from the Human Rights Activist News Agency, a monitoring group funded in part by the U.S. government, put the number at over 3,500 killed, including 1,600 civilians, and several hundred children.

According to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as many as 3.2 million Iranians had already been internally displaced by the conflict as of mid-March. That number is believed to have risen significantly as the U.S. and Israel have continued to heavily target urban centers in the country.

The war against Iranian infrastructure has already been going on for weeks. Last week, a major bridge connecting the cities of Karaj and Tehran was destroyed in U.S. aerial attacks. The attack killed at least 8 people and wounded dozens more, including in “double tap” attacks after the original bombing that killed several rescuers. Trump later posted footage of the bombing on social media, stating that there would be “much more to follow.” Israel has also carried numerous strikes targeting steel, petrochemical, and energy targets, as well as pharmaceutical companies and medical centers across Iran—attacks aimed at destroying the country’s substantial industrial base and limiting its ability to recover after a conflict.

Major universities and hospitals across Tehran and other parts of the country have been hit in Israeli and U.S. attacks, raising the fear—even among Iranians opposed to the government—that the war is really about destroying Iranian society rather than achieving its stated aim of stopping the Iranian nuclear program, or diminishing the capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. On Sunday night, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes targeted Sharif University of Technology, one of the most famous engineering schools in the country, in an attack that drew condemnation not just from the government but anti-government activists both in the country and abroad,

”We are caught between two evils: a vengeful Islamic Republic and a deranged, war-loving president,” Nariman said. “I am responsible for my family’s safety, I cannot let them live in peril. I have no choice but to flee Tehran.”

The recent comments by Trump about destroying Iranian power plants and bridges come amid a steady stream of volatile comments by the U.S. president about his intentions for Iran and its people. By now, many Iranians have noticed a pattern: Trump often issues threats while the markets are closed, only to pull back just before they open. There is a widespread hope that his latest ultimatum is simply another bluff.

But for some the situation feels different, owing to recent events. Tehran has been hit increasingly hard by U.S. and Israeli strikes in recent weeks, as the targeting priorities of the two countries shifts from police stations or military sites on the periphery of the city to famous landmarks and infrastructure familiar to all Tehran residents.

The attack on the Tehran-Karaj bridge has alarmed many that fleeing the city may even become impossible if attacks on civilian infrastructure escalate as Trump has promised. While some like Nariman and his family have taken to the road in the wake of his threat, others, however, have no way out even as the air war against Iranian civilians escalates. For those without family outside the capital or the means to travel, the only option is to wait.

“We’ve been sitting in our room just staring at the phone,” said Parisa, a 21-year-old university student living with her roommate in central Tehran to Drop Site News. “My roommate is from a small village in southern Iran and her city is under continuous bombardment; there is no way for us to leave. We don’t have a car, and we don’t have anywhere to shelter. We just have to stay here and hope the Tuesday deadline is another market day bluff.”

“I am not panicking because we might lose electricity. We are very well-prepared for that,” she added. “We bought canned food and hygiene supplies in the first days of the war, and we have been refilling our stocks since.”

When asked what she is concerned over, however, she said: “The infrastructure. So many years and countless efforts went into building these things for us. I am afraid we will suffer a major setback. I am young; I don’t want to spend the next five or ten years of my life struggling just to take a hot shower.”

Last-ditch diplomatic efforts are under way to avert further escalation. On Monday, following a Pakistani-mediated proposal for a temporary ceasefire, Iran reiterated its own demands for an agreement setting out a permanent end to the war—trading concessions on its nuclear program for sanctions relief and recognition of its ability to exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz. The current talks have not resulted in any brisk progress to a final diplomatic agreement that could end the war before Trump’s threat comes into effect.

Parisa, like many of her friends, believes that a negotiated solution is unlikely, Iranians are in this for the long haul, and that she must keep her morale high as she stays in Tehran. Other Iranians who are weighing whether to flee or tough out the war at home are making similar calculations.

“I don’t even look at my suitcases anymore,” Elnaz, a 34-year-old painter in Tehran, told Drop Site News. “To flee, you need a destination and the money to get there. I have my brushes and my canvases, and that’s about it. I’m staying because I have nowhere else to go.”

While many are focused on the Tuesday deadline laid out by Trump, Elnaz is also bracing for a longer war. “People act like the world ends or resets on Wednesday morning, but this isn’t going to be over in a weekend,” she said. “Looking at how things are escalating, I think we’re looking at another month or two of this.”

“It’s going to be a long, slow process,” she added, referring to the course of the war. “We’re just stuck here waiting.”

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Grim and Hussain are also joined by journalist Alexis Daloumis on the ground in Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq’s Kurdistan region near the Iranian border. Daloumis is the director of the documentary “Belkî Sibê,” that follows leftist Western fighters—of which he was one—who fought alongside the Kurdish-led, American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in their battle against ISIS. 

Analyst Trita Parsi, the executive Vice President of Quincy Institute, also joins to discuss the latest geopolitical developments around the war on Iran.

Grim also discusses his recent trip to Cuba which is suffering from severe power shortages as a result of the Trump administration’s oil blockade which is affecting everything from hospitals to water systems.

And Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks about Palestinian journalist and Drop Site contributor Hossam Shabat on the one-year anniversary of his assassination by the Israeli military.

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On Drop Site’s weekly livestream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss the latest developments on the 18th day of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, including yesterday’s reporting on how special envoy Steve Witkoff has been texting Iranian officials asking to resume talks, messages Iranian officials told Scahill they have ignored. The White House responded angrily to Scahill’s report, calling Drop Site “abhorrent,” and denouncing the publication as engaging in “America Last behavior.”

Scahill then speaks to Dr. Foad Izadi of the University of Tehran about Larijani’s reported assassination, Iran’s current position in the war and the prospects for civil unrest or armed battles inside Iran.

Finally, Grim speaks to Emran Feroz, a journalist and contributor to Drop Site, about the growing conflict on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and last night’s raid on a hospital in Kabul that killed 400 people and wounded about 250 others. Residents in the area told Drop Site News contributor Feroz that the hospital itself was struck during the attack. Pakistan has not immediately commented on the allegation.

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“There was no intention on the part of Iran to attack the United States,” he said. “They claim that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” Baghaei added. “Did we come to the Gulf of Mexico to target Los Angeles and other U.S. cities? Or did they come 6,500 miles away to Iranian shores?”

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. decided to preemptively attack Iran because the White House knew Israel was going to begin bombing Iran and that Iran would strike back. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

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On Tuesday, Trump sought to recast the U.S. rationale and said that he believed Iran was going to launch an attack first. “They were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first—I felt strongly about that,” Trump said, charging that the Iranians “were getting ready to attack Israel. They were gonna attack others.”

Rubio subsequently tried to walk his initial remarks back, saying that the media had mischaracterized his comments and—regardless of whether Israel was going to strike—Trump had already made a decision to attack Iran’s ballistic missile capability and go to war. “We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way,” Rubio said. “If you tell the president of the United States that if we don’t go first, we’re going to have more people killed and more people injured, the president’s going to go first. That’s what he did.”

Baghaei called all of these claims by U.S. officials, “Lies after lies.”

“I think the American people deserve to know, to understand what their government is doing,” Baghaie, who is also the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said. “How their government is abusing their money, their tax money, their image in the Middle East, in the Islamic world, just in furtherance of the whims of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is by the way, wanted by the ICC [International Criminal Court], who is a genocidal killer in Palestine.”

Baghaei denied claims by some U.S. officials, including Trump, that Iran had asked to resume talks with the U.S. “They are killing our citizens. Municipalities, schools, hospitals, medical centers, sports clubs—everywhere is being bombarded and targeted by missiles by [the] Israeli and American war machine. Do you think any Iranian with common sense would be really in a position to reach out to the United States under these circumstances?” Baghaei asked. “We were negotiating with the United States,” he said, pointing out that another round of talks was scheduled for Monday, March 2. “Just two days before that, the United States and Israel attacked Iran,” he added. “We were betrayed. Diplomacy was betrayed.”

Follow Drop Site on X for breaking news updates.

The Gulf Arab states that host U.S. military facilities have been targeted by barrages of Iranian retaliatory strikes. Satellite imagery and recent news reports suggest that billions of dollars of sensitive U.S. reconnaissance equipment have been destroyed or damaged during these attacks. The CIA station in Saudi Arabia and U.S. embassies have also been hit, while six U.S. servicemembers were killed in missile strikes on a makeshift operations center at a civilian port in Kuwait.

Gulf Arab states have universally condemned Iran for its strikes on civilian airports and hotels they say are not related to the U.S.-Israeli war. Along with attacks on maritime shipping, oil and gas production facilities in multiple states have also been struck during the fighting in attacks that have already led to a disruption of global energy flows.

Baghaei stated that Iran’s attacks in the Gulf were retaliatory due to the presence of U.S. troops organizing the war based in these countries, in some cases while reportedly embedded in civilian infrastructure like commercial hotels.

“Iran is surrounded by American military bases across the region. And they are using those bases for logistics, for preparation and for conducting this act of aggression against Iran. And under international law, Iran is entitled to defend itself. We are entitled to target the origin of those attacks against Iran,” Baghaei said. He disputed the characterization of Iran as the aggressor and emphatically denied Tehran is intentionally targeting oil infrastructure or civilian sites in the Gulf. “Our armed forces, they attack only those installations, those military bases that are being used, or in fact abused, by the United States to attack Iran.”

Baghaei also claimed Israel was engaging in “false flag” attacks in the Gulf in an effort to further draw Arab nations into the war against Iran. “Israel has already used this during the past eight decades in many cases,” he said. He also referenced Tucker Carlson’s recent claim that Saudi Arabia and Qatar recently arrested Mossad agents plotting to bomb sites in those countries. “Right now, the situation is very complicated and the probability, the likelihood of abuse by such actors is very high,” he said. “During a situation of war, other actors may abuse the situation.” Majed Al-Ansari, spokesperson for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Tuesday that there is currently “no information” about alleged Mossad cells operating inside Qatar. Iran has not produced any evidence that Israel has been responsible for any of the recent attacks inside Arab countries.

Amid claims by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. and Israel have been systematically killing any potential successors to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated on Saturday in the opening attack of the war, Baghaei said that Iran will soon announce a new Supreme Leader. “The process is going on in accordance with the constitution. Right now we have an interim leadership council that is charged with governing the everyday affairs of the state. The Supreme Leader should be elected quite soon, but until then this interim council is in charge of the state,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military struck the offices of the Assembly of Experts in the Iranian city of Qom—the body tasked with electing a new Supreme Leader. Israeli sources also claimed that they had struck the building while dozens of assembly members were holding a vote for Khamenei’s replacement.

Baghaei did not provide any details on the Qom strike. Asked about the bombing another senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran denied Israeli claims that council members charged with electing the new leader were killed in that strike while meeting. “The original report was not accurate. In reality, one of their buildings located in the city of Qom was targeted. Some administrative staff members who were inside were martyred, but the Assembly of Experts main meeting was not being held at that time,” the official said.

Trump has reportedly been speaking to Kurdish leaders in the region, and CNN and other media outlets have reported that the CIA has been working to arm and support Kurdish forces to potentially be used in ground operations as part of a regime change campaign. The U.S. and Israel have also been attacking domestic security forces in Iran, the police, and paramilitary Basij units as part of what has been described as a precursor to fomenting or encouraging domestic uprisings and civil disorder inside of Iran.

“If you see the pattern of their behavior, the United States and Israel during the past three or four decades, they love to create failed states. They love to create bloodshed. They [have] so much appetite for turning the states into chaos,” Baghaei said. He charged that this was part of a U.S.-Israeli plan for “regime change,” saying, “At the end of the day they do not care about the human rights of the Iranians. Because if they cared even a bit, they would not target innocent girls in their school.”

READ MORE IN DROP SITE DAILY: Death toll in Iran tops 1,000, while Trump weighs arming Kurdish forces to attack Iran

Baghaei also disputed the recent characterizations offered by Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff that Iran was days away from obtaining “weapons grade bomb making material,” calling it, “Absolutely false. That’s simply a big lie.”

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Witkoff also claimed that Iranian negotiators boasted that they had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs. “They were proud of it,” Witkoff said. “They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”

Baghaei pointed to statements made by the Omani mediator that Iran was showing flexibility and that a deal was within reach. “We negotiated in all good faith, in all seriousness in Geneva,” Baghaei said.

MS NOW reported that a Persian Gulf diplomat also disputed Witkoff’s characterization of Iran’s negotiating position and the alleged comments about boasting that it had enough enriched uranium to make 11 bombs. “I can categorically state that this is inaccurate,” said the diplomat, referring to Witkoff’s account, saying that it was a mischaracterization of Iran’s efforts to offer an overview of the materials it was willing to give up as part of a deal.

As to whether there will be a diplomatic solution between the U.S. and the current Iranian government, Baghaei again returned to the Trump administration using the “pretext” of negotiations as a tool of war. “I think this is an existential war because this is what they have imposed on Iran for the past two years. We tried our best. We tried to remove all the excuses that they provided,” he said.

Baghaei invoked the decades of U.S. interference in Iran that began with the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. “Now we are in the middle of a historic moment and I think the United States administration, instead of trying to somehow take care of the old wound that they created in 1953, they are recreating that,” he said.“They are reminding Iranians of the betrayal of 1953 when they tried to plant a dictatorship in Iran. Right now, they are repeating the same.”

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“If you go back to the question of resistance, if you go to the question of Hezbollah, I think their calculation now is to say, look, if Iran falls, we’re doomed, Hezbollah’s doomed, Lebanon is doomed,” Makdisi said. “So this is a situation where we need to enter in whatever capacity possible and support this particular attack or do whatever they can do in order to support this larger regional war, because otherwise the Israelis with the Americas are going to just pick off each of these entities one at a time in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, etc.... This is for them an existential situation, as it is in Iran.”

Attempting to weaken or overthrow Iran, they note, is a means to support Israel’s campaign of annihilation in Palestine and beyond.

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In this special Drop Site News broadcast, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim speak with Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American analyst and author who served as an advisor to former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, and Ali Abunimah, one of the founders of Electronic Intifada, who is in Amman, Jordan.

Read all of Drop Site’s coverage of Iran here.

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Iranian officials tell Drop Site they are showing an “almost unbelievable level of flexibility” in talks with the U.S. to avert war, saying Tehran has “decided to exercise maximum flexibility on the nuclear issue, but only on the strict condition that it would genuinely prevent the outbreak of war.”

Officials said Iran is directly addressing U.S. concerns on the nuclear issue with concrete proposals, and asserting a willingness to expand talks to other issues once a deal to avert imminent conflict has been concluded. Although talks are scheduled for Thursday, the prospects for a deal that would halt the U.S. drive to war remain fragile.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain join Ryan Grim to discuss the latest.

In the second half of the broadcast, Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous discusses a new joint investigation by the independent research groups Earshot and Forensic Architecture on the Israeli military’s massacre of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza on March 23, 2025. The report, based on eyewitness testimony and audio and visual analysis, found that Israeli soldiers fired nearly a thousand bullets at the aid workers—with at least eight shots fired at point blank range in execution-style killings.

Read all of Drop Site’s coverage of Iran here.

Read about the 2025 massacre of Palestinian aid workers here.

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President Donald Trump has publicly said that diplomatic channels with Iran remain open and Iranian diplomats say they are in the process of drafting a document responding to U.S. demands recently presented in the indirect talks in Geneva, Switzerland. But several former senior U.S. officials have told Drop Site that the size and scope of the military deployment indicate a high likelihood of a U.S. attack. One former senior intelligence official who informally advises the Trump administration put the chances of a strike at 80-90 percent.

Drop Site News’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to former senior U.S. Middle East diplomat Robert Malley, a lead negotiator of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Malley has served under three U.S. presidents and has extensive experience negotiating with Iranian officials. He is currently a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and author, with Hussein Agha, of “Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.” Scahill and Malley also discuss the first meeting of the so-called Board of Peace and the ongoing Israeli war against Gaza.

Read Drop Site’s coverage of the U.S. buildup here.

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