President Donald Trump took to social media Saturday to champion the peace deal being negotiated between Washington and Tehran – claiming it was on track to be finalized Sunday – while warning that if talks collapse, the U.S. may resort to an "ultimate alternative."
“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL. Our relationship with Iran is a much different and better one than previous Administrations have had,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
“We look forward to working with Iran, and the entire Middle East, long into the future. Hopefully, this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly. If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!”
While Trump did not specify what the “ultimate alternative” was, his vague threat came just days after senior national security editor for The National Interest Brandon Weichert spoke to claims that the president had strongly considered using nuclear weapons against Iran, citing a report from veteran journalist Seymour Hersh.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's “quest” to help his 26-year-old son-in-law in his bid for Congress has left one prominent podcaster “utterly disgusted,” Republicans “grumbling” and senior White House officials “irritated,” the Daily Mail reported on Saturday.
Duffy’s son-in-law, Michael Alfonso, is running to represent the very same Wisconsin congressional district Duffy once held from 2011 to 2019, and has boosted Alfonso “in his personal capacity,” a Transportation spokesperson told the Daily Mail. Alfonso has also received an endorsement by President Donald Trump.
“But Republicans aligned with Alfonso's rivals have complained that Duffy helped secure an endorsement from President Donald Trump in January for the 26-year-old, who is married to Duffy's daughter, Evita,” the Daily Mail reported.
Furthermore, senior White House officials were left “irritated,” the Daily Mail reported, by Duffy “not giving them a heads-up before pushing the president to endorse Alfonso.”
And Merg Ellefson, a prominent podcaster and former radio host, didn't mince words when sharing her thoughts on Duffy’s involvement in the race.
“[Duffy] is exploiting his Cabinet position and fame to influence an election and hand one of the nation's highest offices to his unqualified, 26-year-old son-in-law,” Ellefson told Axios, adding that she was left “utterly disgusted by this blatant manipulation of voters.”
Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL), who’s been endorsed by President Donald Trump in his bid for U.S. Senate, was accused Saturday by an ex-senior staffer of "intentionally misleading” voters for years regarding his military service, The Daily Mail reported.
Moore’s campaign told The Daily Mail that he had served in the U.S. military for “more than six years,” and his wife, Heather Moore, said recently that her husband had served eight years, according to a local Alabama media outlet, The Daily Mail reported.
However, according to documents recently released by Moore’s campaign, Moore had only served in the National Guard for less than three years before being honorably discharged in mid-1991.
Furthermore, The Daily Mail uncovered new details that put his military service claims further into question.
“Multiple former staffers said that early in his congressional tenure, senior staff took a deliberate decision to avoid the word 'veteran' in all communications – because Moore did not meet the qualifications - substituting 'former service member' instead,” The Daily Mail’s report reads.
“In a further eyebrow-raising revelation, The Daily Mail has learned that Moore was typically accompanied by veteran staffers onto military bases, as he lacked the active-duty or veteran ID card needed for independent access.”
Nevertheless, Moore has continued to tout his military record amid his Senate campaign, including in a Facebook ad published in May in which he “claimed to be a veteran,” The Daily Mail reported.
CBS' firing of Stephen Colbert has seen the Late Show time slot nosedive in ratings — and it's taking the network with it.
Since CBS handed Byron Allen the 11:35 p.m. slot formerly occupied by Colbert's The Late Show — with Allen Media footing all production costs under a "time buy" arrangement — Nielsen data reviewed by Status show nearly two-thirds of the audience Colbert was drawing toward the end of his run has fled.
And media experts say that massive damage won't stay contained to the late night time slot.
"Within the television industry, it was figured out quite quickly that a popular late-night program would provide a lift to a morning show," University of Maine communications and journalism professor Michael Socolow told Status.
"Early audience studies revealed that people habitually left their TVs tuned to a channel, and they wouldn't switch channels the next time they turned on the TV unless they did not like what they were watching."
Late local news is also exposed. "People who wanted to watch Colbert, a lot of them probably watch late local news," said Bill Carter, the veteran New York Times media reporter and author of multiple books on late-night television. By canceling Colbert, Carter said, CBS "diminished itself."
CBS told the Daily Beast, "We're proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost-prohibitive to continue.
"With this 'time buy' model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing."
Ratings data suggest Jimmy Kimmel's ABC program has absorbed a significant share of Colbert's former viewers.
Allen, 65, said from the outset he wasn't chasing Colbert's audience. "At the end of the day, I'm not trying to replace Colbert," he told NPR last month. "I am not trying to hold on to his audience because Comics Unleashed has been around 20 years and has its own audience."
A TrumpWhite House plan to give political appointees more power over federal grant money has sparked alarm among scientists, public health organizations, environmental groups, and others who fear that the proposal amounts to an attempt to subordinate critical funds to the whims of the president and his far-right allies.
More than 300 organizations signed a joint letter on Friday calling on White House budget director Russell Vought, the proposed rule’s architect, to extend the public comment period that’s set to end on July 13, warning that the “scope and impact of [the Office of Management and Budget’s] rule is vast.”
“The rule will impact the entirety of government grant-making across the United States,” the groups warned. “OMB itself says the revisions suggested would relate to over $179 billion of funds to small entities.”
Politico, which exclusively obtained the letter, noted that the “proposed rule has already garnered over 15,000 public comments, with many expressing alarm that the changes could undermine research across fields.”
Under Vought’s rule, federal agencies would be required to perform “pre-issuance reviews” of federal grants—funds appropriated by Congress—to ensure their distribution is consistent with “applicable law, federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”
The rule lays out a number of standards that political appointees at federal agencies must screen for when deciding whether an organization can receive federal grant dollars. For instance, the rule would prohibit the distribution of federal grants to organizations that “promote anti-American values” or support “ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.”
The New York Timesreported that the consequences of Vought’s rule “could fall hardest on health and science, a field in which [President Donald Trump] has pursued some of the steepest cuts in his second term.”
“In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear,” the Times noted. “Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could ‘devastate innovation, science, and research’ in the United States.”
Earlier this month, Lawyers for Good Government and the Environmental Protection Network said that “if finalized, the rule would put senior political appointees in charge of approving and canceling individual grants, while stripping recipients of due process rights” while attaching “ideological conditions to nearly every federal dollar, raising First Amendment and equal-protection concerns.”
The two organizations published a fact sheet warning that the proposed rule has the potential to halt billions of dollars in funding that communities across the US depend on for “health, public education, scientific research, public safety, and economic development projects.”
“This is an executive power grab that would hand presidential political appointees unchecked control over more than a trillion dollars that Congress appropriated in the interests of all Americans,” said Jillian Blanchard, senior vice president for climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government. “Conditioning funding for critical programs on ideology and viewpoint discrimination, while erasing basic due-process protections, violates freedoms of speech, equal protection, and eviscerates Congress’ power of the purse.”
Democratic lawmakers have also sounded the alarm about Vought’s proposal. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday that she has given her Republican colleagues two opportunities to denounce Vought’s rule—and they declined both times.
“Vought continues to attempt to steal from communities across the country. Now, he is trying to set a new political test on grants for a wide swath of the federal government,” said DeLauro. “The test will be a simple one: Are you sufficiently loyal to the president? If the answer is no, it will result in the denial of lifesaving disaster relief, funding for research into cures, the closure of Head Start offices, and more. If you are not loyal enough, if you speak out against this administration, the president and his cronies will take away resources Congress provided.”
President Donald Trump was widely mocked Saturday after video emerged of workers tearing down his name from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. – an operation carried out in the dead of night and behind a large tarp.
After a judge ruled that the Kennedy Center could not be renamed outside of an act of Congress, workers began setting up scaffolding to remove Trump’s name from the historic building on Friday. It wouldn’t be until 3:10 a.m. early Saturday morning, however, that workers actually began tearing down the president’s name, and behind a large tarp “seemingly to block views of Trump’s name disappearing from the venue,” USA Today reported.
“Trump’s name went up on the Kennedy Center in broad daylight,” wrote Democratic strategist Jon Cooper Saturday in a social media post on X to his more than 1.3 million followers. “Removing it? Full scaffolding plus a giant curtain to hide the humiliation from the public. Nothing screams ‘strong leader’ like draping theater curtains over your own petty rejection. Fragile ego on full display.”
Ben Meiselas, co-founder of the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, likened the discreet operation to the Trump administration’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Covering it up like the Epstein Files,” he wrote in a social media post on X to his more than 285,000 followers.
Late Friday night, onlookers could be heard chanting “take it down” as workers prepared to remove Trump’s name from the building, according to a video shared by liberal influencer Ed Krassenstein. They could also be heard booing once workers began moving the tarp in place to shield Trump’s name removal from public view, according to video broadcast by MS NOW.
“The irony of the Trump administration claiming to be the most transparent in history is never lost on me. Kennedy Center workers used a tarp so cameras couldn’t see the removal,” wrote Democratic strategist and writer Christopher Webb. “It’s like playing hide-and-seek with a toddler: if they can’t see you, they think you can’t see them.”
Trump’s name went up on the Kennedy Center in broad daylight.
Removing it? Full scaffolding plus a giant curtain to hide the humiliation from the public.
Nothing screams “strong leader” like draping theater curtains over your own petty rejection. Fragile ego on full display. 😂 https://t.co/N8dbYXrHGt — Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) June 13, 2026
Bari Weiss’ The Free Press was accused Saturday of publishing a “hit piece” designed to “trigger” the deportation of outspoken Iran war critic Trita Parsi, but the alleged effort, Parsi argued, ultimately “backfired” spectacularly.
“I have fought the neocons and warmongers in Washington for more than 25 years. Throughout, they have tried to silence, discredit, slander, and cancel me. Only recently, however, have they tried to deport me. At least, that appears to have been the aim of a hit piece in Bari Weiss’s The Free Press,” wrote Parsi, the co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and fierce critic of the U.S. war against Iran.
The Free Press published an exclusive report last Wednesday claiming that the Trump administration was “weighing whether” to deport Parsi for seeking to “undermine the U.S.” It was written by journalist Jay Solomon, who was fired from The Wall Street Journal in 2017 for having “violated his ethical obligations as a reporter.”
Just hours after the report was published, however, the State Department issued a statement refuting its core claim. The report also triggered an “outpouring of support” for Parsi, he claimed in an analysis published on his Substack Saturday, one that undercut what he believed was the potential effort by The Free Press and rogue elements within the State Department to see him expelled from the United States.
“I don’t believe there was any investigation against me. Rather, some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure could help move things forward,” Parsi wrote.
“The effort to trigger an investigation appears to have backfired. In part, that was due to the broad and organic backlash against deporting me – and against the very idea that people should be deported for exercising free speech.”
Parsi’s own sources within the Trump administration shed further light on what he believed was behind the “hit piece” targeting him.
“At the Quincy Institute, we heard from sources inside the administration that there never was an investigation, that none of the principals were aware of the issue, and that the alleged source for the Free Press story may have been a ‘rogue actor,’” Parsi wrote. “That, presumably, is why the State Department took the highly unusual step of publicly refuting Solomon’s report.”
Solomon was axed from his job with the Journal after it was revealed he had gotten involved in deals “involving arms sales to foreign governments” with “one of his key sources,” NPR reported.
House Speaker Mike Johnson just lit the fuse on Republicans' politically explosive third rail, and a Salon columnist warned Saturday it's a sign the GOP is gearing up to gut Medicare and Social Security.
"The largest spending items, the reason we're in trouble, are because over 74 percent of federal spending is on autopilot — mandatory spending, that is, your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security — they have to be adjusted and fixed," Johnson told conservative radio host Moon Griffon this week. "We have a plan to do that next year."
Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton argued the remarks confirm President Donald Trump's repeated promises to defend the safety-net programs were "another lie."
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint guiding much of Trump's second term, floated raising the retirement age to 69 or 70, altering benefit schedules, cutting disability payments, and pushing toward total Medicare privatization, Parton noted.
She also pointed to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has openly suggested Trump's "Trump baby bonds" could pave the way for the broader Social Security privatization push that failed under George W. Bush.
"There is no article of faith more fundamental to the American conservative creed than the premise that Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs that must be privatized or eliminated altogether," Parton wrote.
"There’s a certain 'boy who cried wolf' quality to the perennial alarms about the GOP’s lust to get rid of these big federal programs that go back to FDR’s New Deal (Social Security) and LBJ’s Great Society (Medicare)," wrote Digby Parton.
She also issued a grim warning.
"But make no mistake: The minute they actually get the chance to take them down, they will," she concluded.
One of Donald Trump's personal lawyers in the E. Jean Carroll case is days away from a lifetime seat on a powerful federal appeals court, and legal experts say his written confirmation responses are riddled with "disturbing" red flags that can't be ignored.
Justin D. Smith serves as the counsel of record in Trump v. Carroll, where the president has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the civil judgment that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll. Trump has consistently denied Carroll's allegations, calling them a "hoax" and "politically motivated." He has continued to appeal both civil verdicts.
Smith was nominated by Trump as an "America First Fighter" in February to serve as a judge for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The Senate advanced Smith by a unanimous consent agreement on Thursday and is set to vote on Monday.
But Smith’s written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questions are “disturbing” and present “a whole host of red flags,” said Nora Demleitner, a legal scholar and former president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.
Notably, Smith continues to misrepresent details about Carroll’s case relating to a “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode in his responses to questions from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
That includes misattributing to Carroll a quote from Trump’s former lawyer Joe Tacopina about an “amazing coincidence” involving a less-than-one-minute plot point from the “Law & Order” episode.
Smith's cert petition to the Supreme Court attributes the phrase "amazing coincidence" to Carroll herself — language Carroll never used.
The phrase was coined by Tacopina, Trump's lawyer at the time, during cross-examination. Carroll used "amazing" to praise the "Law & Order" writers for "keying in to the psyche of their viewers." When Tacopina rephrased her response as "amazing coincidence," Carroll pointedly substituted "astonishing" and immediately denied basing her allegation on the show.
Durbin asked Smith about how he “misrepresented” the details of a “Law & Order” episode in his written questions, which gave Smith “a chance to clear the record,” said Harold Krent, law professor and interim dean at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
“The fact that he would have a misstatement again would be either he's very lazy, stubborn or very careless — or it's material,” Krent said.
Since Smith likely wasn’t under oath answering the Senate Judiciary questions, misstatements in the responses wouldn’t be perjury, but “it would be considered a false statement to Congress if he would ever be investigated and charged with that,” Krent said.
Lawyers can also “get punished under attorney disciplinary rules if you exaggerate too much,” Krent said.
“If you flat out lie, then it is presumably some kind of false statement to an official authority, almost never prosecuted,” Krent said.
The Trump administration “is not going to investigate [Smith], but a subsequent administration could investigate and have to decide whether that was a material misstatement or again just a careless or maddening exaggeration.”
Instead, the Trump administration announced investigations related to the case last month, looking into whether Carroll herself committed perjury, along with investigations into the nonprofit of Democratic billionaire and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who helped fund Carroll’s litigation against Trump.
‘So much lying’
The “Law & Order: SVU” episode called “Theatre Tricks” discusses a consensual “roleplay” with a New York judge and a woman “that took place in the dressing room at Bergdorf’s while she was trying on lingerie,” according to the episode viewed by Raw Story.
Smith’s certiorari petition to the Supreme Court incorrectly describes the episode where “a business mogul fantasizes about raping a victim in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room '[w]hile she was trying on lingerie.'”
Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. Carroll testified at trial that she had not seen the episode and did not make up the allegation based on the show.
A federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023, awarding Carroll $5 million. In January 2024, a second jury found Trump liable for $83.3 million in damages for Carroll’s defamation claims.
The inaccuracies are not likely to rise to the level of stopping Smith’s confirmation, Krent and Demleitner agreed.
“We've seen so much lying — I think perjury — by officials and the administration, and this just doesn't seem to be of the same caliber,” Krent said.
Even the Supreme Court justices themselves are “not quoting accurately anymore,” Demleitner said. Justice Samuel Alito recently came under fire for citing a misleading brief in the Louisiana v. Callais decision, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“There'll be enough of an argument for a GOP senator to make to confirm him, despite those misrepresentations,” Demleitner said.
Lori A. Ringhand, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, has authored several books about judicial confirmations.
“Lawyers sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee are usually pretty careful about their words and good at walking a fine line that prevents outright lying. Instead, they hedge, they add fudge words, or they answer a slightly different question than they were asked,” Ringhand told Raw Story via email.
‘Truly disturbing’
Demleitner said Smith’s impending confirmation is “really troublesome” for his other written responses to Senate Judiciary questions.
When asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, Smith responded by saying President Joe Biden was certified as the winner. The topic of the election was a contentious point in Smith’s hearing last month, where he would not answer the same yes-or-no question.
“The 2020 election question should generally be a red flag to everybody. I think these nominees apparently are trying to strike a balance between staying in the good favor and graces of the person who nominated them, the president, and, on the other hand, obviously trying to get confirmed by the Senate, which is a tightrope to run for some of them,” Demleitner said.
Demleitner was also concerned about Smith’s written responses about Supreme Court precedents. In only two cases — the landmark civil rights cases Brown v. Board of Educationand Loving v. Virginia — he explicitly said “Yes” that the Supreme Court correctly decided cases.
“I thought it truly disturbing to make that kind of distinction between Supreme Court cases, and also only that kind of the most iconic cases that would never be reconsidered … cases that have become a fabric of our society,” Demleitner said.
Advocacy groups have expressed concerns about Smith’s anti-abortion record, and during the confirmation hearing, Durbin questioned Smith about his involvement in political groups.
Demleitner said Smith’s advocacy to the Supreme Court makes her “worry about the claim of unbiased decision-making.”
“We should all be concerned about these types of lawyers being on the federal bench. I think we've certainly seen a number of Trump nominees turning out to be excellent lawyers [who] really weigh the facts and weigh the law and have ruled against the president as much as in favor of the president or the administration, whenever different questions arose,” she said.
“On the other hand, we have seen some, especially appellate court nominees, who do not seem to understand that they're not the advocates for the government, but instead that they are impartial judges.”
Smith did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Richard Wolff, a renowned economics professor, issued a grave prediction recently that not only would the United States ultimately “lose” its war against Iran, but that the loss would bring about an end to the U.S. “global empire” that had stood unrivaled for more than six decades.
“The United States operated for the last 65, 70 years on empire, a global empire,” said Wolff, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in a video interview published this week.
“The U.S. dollar was the currency used everywhere in the world, the U.S. Navy protected shipping and made sure that the United States got what it wanted out of any other country in the world. People like you and me, we lived in a time when the American empire was dominant and it was growing. Here comes the hard part: that part of American history is over! It's not coming back, it's done.”
Iran appears to have emerged from the conflict with the United States as a new “major world power,” having been able to withstand the full military might of the United States and survive largely intact. As such, Wolff argued, the global perception of the United States would likely shift following the war, and to such an extent as to cause great economic damage.
“The damage to the American economy, which is already declining, will be huge. Every small country in the world has had their problems with the United States. Now they can imagine winning,” Wolff said.
“They haven't been able to imagine that for 75 years, and that's a new exciting option. When you put that together with the fact that they can turn to China to buy and sell almost everything, what do they need the United States for?”
And, as noted by Wolff, the decision to launch the U.S. war against Iran was made by President Donald Trump, who he described as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
“Not a good time to be Donald Trump, even in MAGA land, they're having doubts about it,” Wolff said.
Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy may have an unexpected problem: his own campaign captain doesn't fully buy his pitch.
At a recent county GOP Lincoln Day dinner in Piketon, Ohio, Ramaswamy delivered his now-trademark riff on opportunity in America.
"We call it the American dream for a reason, because there is no Canadian dream, there is no British dream, there is no Chinese dream. I understand why many are skeptical, but what I’m talking about tonight is how we are going to turn Ohio into the cradle of the American dream once again," he told the crowd, Politico reported Saturday.
But Setys Kelly, the Ramaswamy campaign's captain in nearby Clark County, wasn't sold on his pitch that anyone can come to the United States and achieve that dream.
She shook her head as he shared his version of the American dream.
"I'm going to be a hard no on that. You need to be an American to do the American dream," Kelly, who is white, told the outlet. "I come from Springfield, land of the Haitians. … I just don't want any more of that kind of immigration where they just dump them on you."
The public break underscores the strain running through Ramaswamy's campaign.
Politico interviewed more than 20 voters and strategists across Ohio, which is 80 percent white and two-thirds Christian, and found that Ramaswamy's background was viewed as a real political hurdle. Few admitted their own uneasiness with Ramaswamy's race, but several said they knew a neighbor who won't vote for him because he is nonwhite. None said they would reject him because of his religion, but several said they know people at church who will.
"Most of us, the only time we've ever been in a room with someone of color like him was when you went to see your doctor," Denny Malloy, a white Trumbull County GOP chair who supports Ramaswamy, told Politico. "When you get to eastern Ohio, they look at him like they don't know how to accept him."
Marco Rubio's comparison that President Donald Trump's White House UFC bash is akin to the Apollo moon landing left an MS NOW panel stunned.
The Secretary of State defended the controversial mixed martial arts event during a Thursday appearance, casting UFC Freedom 250 as a quintessentially American feat on par with one of the nation's greatest achievements.
"You just gotta hear this bizarre comparison he made," quipped host Jonathan Capehart.
"When President Kennedy announced that we were going to put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, no one thought that was possible. And we did it," Rubio said in the clip. "We are a nation founded on doing what no one else dared to do, and no one else aspired to do. And at some level, that's what this whole company, what UFC has been."
MS NOW panelists burst into laughter off camera, as Capehart tried to hold back a chuckle and added, "I'm just gonna leave that alone."
Scrutiny has grown over the spectacle.
Court filings show the $60 million UFC event is being supported by at least seven federal agencies, while D.C. taxpayers will foot an estimated $10 to $12 million in supplemental security costs, per ESPN.
Reuters/Ipsos polling shows just 16 percent of Americans support holding the fights at the White House. Critics — including the Public Integrity Project, which has called the event a "volcano of corruption" — argue the bash is a thinly veiled birthday celebration for Trump, who bought UFC parent company stock before announcing the event.
Laura Barron-Lopez wrote for MS NOW about a $1 million per plate fundraiser for Trump's top super PAC the night before the brawl.
"And Trump 'officially designed' a line of 'Trump x UFC Freedom 250' medallions, which are selling for $250 to $12,000," she wrote.
Sharing an excerpt from her piece, Capehart was left aghast.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif revealed Saturday that a peace deal between the United States and Iran was imminent, and that mediators were already preparing to electronically certify the agreement between the two nations.
“We are closer to a peace deal than ever before,” Sharif said in a statement published on social media. “With finalisation likely expected in the next 24 hours, Pakistan is preparing for the electronic signing of the peace deal immediately after, followed by technical level talks next week.”
The U.S. war against Iran has been waged for more than 100 days as of last Sunday, despite President Donald Trump having insisted the war would end by early April. The conflict has proven to be deeply unpopular among Americans, with 13 U.S. service members killed and 381 injured. The U.S. and Israeli militaries together have killed 3,468 Iranians and injured 26,500 as of June 10.
“We would like to thank United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran for their ongoing commitment during the negotiations, and we extend our sincere appreciation to our brothers in the region for their support,” Sharif continued. “We are confident that this historic peace deal will form a strong foundation for lasting peace.”
