Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland. We would like to thank the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran for their commitment to finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict. We would also like to extend our sincere appreciation to our brothers in this mediation effort, the great leadership of State of Qatar, for their support in reaching this agreement. I would also especially thank the visionary leadership of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Republic of Türkiye for their immense contributions in this regard. With the agreement now in place, mediators will facilitate a series of meetings this week. These pre-implementation discussions will lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony. @realDonaldTrump @JDVance @SecRubio @SteveWitkoff @SEPeaceMissions @drpezeshkian @mb_ghalibaf @araghchi

You are a lying, mass murdering war criminal and state terrorist.

Maybe sit this one out

Sen. Lindsey Graham Introduces ‘Save the Kurds’ Act Washington has allowed the Syrian government to take territory from the Kurds, who had been under US protection #Syria #Kurds #LindseyGraham #Trump news.antiwar.com/2026/01/27/…

The Thucydides Trap: Vital lessons from ancient Greece for China and the US … or a load of old claptrap? theconversation.com/the-thuc… via @ConversationUS

Nice to see @nytopinion digging into the details of U.S. national security predicament in their full spread of articles for the 14 Dec weekend edition. If you missed it, I will share just a few gems. My biggest nugget is the extreme irony of using this term "overmatch." It's SO ironic because the new NSS uses the same precise term, explaining (p. 23) that one of key US objectives is "preserving military overmatch" in the Taiwan Strait. Interesting ... so one side must be wrong. Do you not see that? Let's see precisely how NYT deploys this tantalizing term: "...The Overmatch brief ... is a comprehensive review of U.S. military power prepared by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment and delivered most recently to top White House officials in the last year. It catalogs China's ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships and satellites, and identifies the U.S. military's supply chain chokepoints. It's details have not been previously reported." "The picture [the Overmatch brief] paints is consistent and disturbing. Pete Hegseth, now Secretary of Defense, said last year that in the Pentagon's war games against China, 'We lose every time.' When a senior Biden administration official received the Overmatch brief in 2021, he turned pale as he realized that "every trick we had up our sleeve, the Chinese had redundancy after redundancy," according to one official who was present..." Okay, this does suggest that the "overmatch" shoe is on the other foot right? Who is correct: the NSS or the NYT? Another gem: "[America's] formidable firepower is effective if you want to got to war against a relatively poor, weak country like, say , Venezuela. Yet the Ford, which is deployed in the Caribbean, is fatally vulnerable to new forms of attack. China in recent years has amassed an arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons, which can travel at five times the speed of sound and are difficult to intercept. In war games like those depicted in the Overmatch brief, ships like the Ford are often destroyedd. Still, the Navy plans to build at least nine additional Ford-class carriers in the coming decades. So far, the US has yet to deploy a single hypersonic weapon." Another gem: "In the event of a war with China, the US would simply run out of essential munitions, as Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor in the Biden administration has warned." Another gem: "Over the past 35 years the [US] Navy has commissioned more than half a dozen new kinds of ships, from small combat vessels to large destroyers. Nearly all of them have flopped..." Another gem: "The Replicator Program, which sought to buy thousands of cheap aerial and maritime drones within two years, failed to achieve its initial goals." I could go on ... and need to finish reading the whole series of articles, but WHAT IS SO DARN FRUSTRATING is the degree to which the authors stunningly miss the forest for the trees on this issue. Never a single time (at least in what I've read thus far) do they pose the basic question of WHY the US would be foolish enough to try to fight China in China's own immediate backyard over Taiwan. Nor do they ask the next logical question: is there a cheap, feasible way to defense U.S. national security, along with its treaty allies. Yes, emphatically, yes -- stand by for the last paper in my "Target Taiwan" series -- out soon. But this relatively simple strategic solution requires putting aside the "mission impossible" scenario of Taiwan. Sad, that NYT authors cannot conceive of this most obvious and basic fix to US national security. If strategy is reconciling ends and means, sometimes the ends have to be modified.

The Trillion Dollar War Machine listed in the @RalphNader "Highly Recommended Books for Serious Readers" list. Hard to describe how much of an honor this is, but I'll just say that when you commit to a career of fighting the good fight Ralph Nader is who you want to be when you grow up. Thank you for your extraordinary work and for including @WilliamHartung & I's book in such a remarkable list.