LIVE: Saudis push Trump to resume Iran strikes

by Jon Michael Raasch, US Political Reporter

Saudi Arabia’s leader has urged Donald Trump to deploy ground troops in Iran and believes the war is a ‘historic opportunity’ for regime change.

Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) urged Trump in several calls over the past week to keep fighting Iran, attempting to persuade the President that the job could not be left half finished, sources told the New York Times.

The Saudi Crown Prince made the case that Iran’s government will pose a long-term threat to the region if it isn’t completely wiped out, the officials said.

MBS urged Trump to send troops into Iran to take over the country’s energy infrastructure and to force the current government out of power, the sources added.

Trump expressed concerns that escalating further could push oil prices even higher, with the national average gas price hitting $4.00 on Monday, up from $2.90 per gallon when the war began on February 28.

MBS’s private views contrast with Saudi’s public statements that highlight the kingdom’s desire for a diplomatic end to the war, which has led to retaliatory strikes on its energy sites and strangled its oil exports.

Here are the latest developments on day 25 of the US-Israel war with Iran:

• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is urging Donald Trump to continue the US war with Iran, according to The New York Times
• Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad stands ‘ready and honoured’ to host peace talks between the US and Iran with Donald Trump sharing his annnouncement on Truth Social
• Iran named a former Revolutionary Guards commander, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, as head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to succeed the assassinated Ali Larijani
• The Gulf states will need to re-evaluate their shared security after the war, which has resulted in a ‘breakdown of the security system’, a Qatar foreign ministry spokesman said
• Israel said its military will seize control of a ‘security zone’ around 20 miles into southern Lebanon as it presses its fight against Iran-backed Hezbollah
• Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has declared a state of ​national energy emergency in response to the Middle ‌East conflict and what he called an ‘imminent danger’ posed to the country’s energy supply
• A British Special Forces base in northern Iraq repelled a record 14 Iranian suicide drones last night in a dramatic escalation of the conflict
• New Zealand has announced it will provide cash handouts to help families afford petrol in response to the energy crisis
• European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has declared the time has come for negotiations with Iran to reopen the blocked Strait of Hormuz with the crisis now ‘critical’ for countries
• Vietnam’s national air carrier will suspend nearly two dozen domestic flights a week starting next month because of limited fuel supplies caused by the Iran war

Trump said at a press conference at the White House: ‘We have, really, regime change… it’s a change in the regime.

‘The leaders are all very different than the ones we started off with that created all those problems. I think we can say, this is regime change.’

Trump claimed today that Iranian leaders have handed the US ‘a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money’.

He declined to say what the ‘present’ was, or who gave it to him, only stating it was ‘oil and gas-related’.

He added: ‘What it showed me was that we’re dealing with the right people’.

Donald Trump has claimed that Iran has agreed to never have a nuclear weapon.

He told reporters in the White House: ‘They’ve agreed they’ll never have a nuclear weapon.’

Iran had so far not commented on whether this claim is true.

Trump additionally said: ‘The other side, I can tell you, they’d like to make a deal. Who wouldn’t if you were them? Their navy’s gone, their airforce is gone, their communications… all of their anti-aircraft, their missiles.

‘Can you name a single thing that’s not gone? Or one thing that’s doing well?’

Trump added: ‘We are roaming free over Tehran. We can do whatever we want.’

Speaking at the White House, Trump today claimed that Iran ‘wants to make a deal’, adding: ‘We’re talking to the right people’.

He added: ‘You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal, and we’ll see what happens’.

But he also said: ‘Iran has no leaders left’.

Axios is reporting the US and a group of regional mediators are discussing the possibility of holding high level peace talks with Iran.

Qatar has so far denied taking part in any mediation between the US and Iran.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon today said he is ‘a little optimistic’ about the long-term prospects for stability in the Middle East despite the short-term risks created by the war in the Gulf.

The conflict has upended markets, sent oil prices soaring, furled global inflation fears and convulsed the post-war Western alliance.

Dimon, however, said the conflict had highlighted a shift in mentality within the region that could now create conditions for the durable resolution of long-standing tensions.

‘Here’s why I’m a little optimistic,’ he said during the Hill & Valley Forum – a politics and tech conference in Washington – pointing to what he said was a desire among Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the U.S., and Israel for ‘permanent peace in the Middle East’.

‘It’s probably riskier in the short run, because we don’t know the outcome of it,’ he added.

The IDF says it hit Iran’s main facility for the production of explosives.

The military said the facility in Isfahan ‘developed and produced explosive materials for various of weapons’.

It added: ‘This site had previously been targeted during Operation Rising Lion. In recent months, activity by the Iranian regime to restore its capabilities at the site was identified’.

Hackers linked to the Iranian government attempted to hit a US medical institution in late February, Axios reported.

Pay2Key, a ransomware group that has been hacking since 2020, appeared to have gained access to the as-yet-unnamed organisation.

The hackers waited several days before deploying malware and encrypting files.

No data was stolen during the attack, and the gang did not make a demand for ransom.

It comes just a week after the FBI accused Iranian intelligence of targeting US medical device firm Stryker via a pro-Iran hacktivist group.

A spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry has today denied the nation is taking part in trying to mediate the US and Iran.

Majed al-Ansari said at a weekly news briefing in Doha: ‘Our focus at this time is entirely dedicated to defending our country and addressing the losses resulting from the various attacks that the State of Qatar has endured.’

He added that there had been no new communication between his nation’s government and Tehran since the early stages of the war.

Qatar’s position stands in stark contrast to the role it took in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, when it was one of the main nations trying to broker peace in the Middle East.