“As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well.”
“I gave them a 10-day period, they asked for seven.”
“In a certain sense, we have already won.”
Iran Hasn’t Requested Pause on Energy-Site Strikes, Mediators Say
Iran hasn’t requested a 10-day pause on strikes on its energy plants and is yet to deliver a final response to a 15-point plan to end the war, peace talk mediators said.
President Trump said earlier Thursday he was pausing strikes on Iran’s energy sector for 10 more days, to April 6, so peace negotiations can take place. Trump’s previous deadline was Friday. He said the extension was at Iran’s request.
Iranian officials have told the mediators that they are interested in negotiations but the country’s leadership is yet to weigh in and give a final decision, the mediators said.
The U.S. has offered a 15-point plan that essentially would swap an end to crippling sanctions for Iranian concessions on every point of conflict between the two sides, including its nuclear and missile programs and support for regional militias.
Iranian officials already have demanded that the U.S. scale its excessive demands outlined in the 15-point plan before it agrees to meet to discuss a potential cease-fire, the mediators said.
They also ruled out discussing Iran’s missile program as a starting point to the talks and doesn’t want to commit to ending enrichment of uranium forever, they added.
The odds of success for a cease-fire remain low, with Iran and the U.S. staking out maximalist demands that are unacceptable to the other side, the mediators said.
- Saudi Arabia urging US to keep up Iran attacks, intelligence source confirms Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said to view US-Israeli war as ‘historic opportunity’ to remake Middle East
Saudi Arabia has urged the US to ramp up attacks on Iran, a Saudi intelligence source has confirmed, while it is weighing a decision on whether to join the fight directly.
The Saudi source confirmed reporting in the New York Times, which said the kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has urged Donald Trump not to cut short his war against Iran, and that the US-Israeli campaign represented a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East.
The intelligence source said Riyadh was not just calling for the military campaign to be continued, but to be intensified. Trump appeared to confirm the report about the crown prince’s role, telling journalists on Tuesday: “Yeah, he’s a warrior. He’s fighting with us.”
There are no reports of active Saudi military involvement in the nearly four-week-old war so far, but a Saudi political analyst said the kingdom was likely to take that step if current peace efforts led by Pakistan failed.
“What matters now is Iran’s decision,” Mohammed Alhamed, a Saudi geopolitical analyst, said. “If Iran engages seriously, there is still a path to contain escalation. If it rejects the conditions and continues its attacks, the threshold for Saudi action will be crossed.” (…)
Saudi Arabia’s ability to transport its oil exports by pipeline to the Red Sea has meant it is not as vulnerable as its neighbours to Iran’s tactic of imposing a near-total blockade on oil tanker shipments leaving the Gulf through the strait of Hormuz. The attack on Yanbu signalled an Iranian warning that it could also threaten that economic lifeline.
That threat would be multiplied if Iran’s allies in Yemen, the Houthi movement, joined the war with its own missile arsenal.
“I believe that Saudi Arabia still maintains cautious neutrality in the Iran-Israel-US war,” Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi defence expert told Agence France-Presse. But he added: “If the Houthis strike Saudi assets, Riyadh may shift toward defensive coalition support or limited retaliation.”
Saudi Arabia and Iran, claiming leadership roles of the Sunni and Shia Islamic worlds respectively, have long been regional rivals. According to a leaked US state department cable, the crown prince’s paternal uncle King Abdullah urged the US military in 2008 to “cut off the head of the snake”, a reference to the theocratic regime in Tehran. (…)
The policy was don’t start the war, but if you start it, finish the job,” (…)
The crown prince solidified his hold on power by cultivating a close relationship with Trump, but will now have to rethink Saudi reliance on the US for its security, observers have argued.
“MBS [Mohammed bin Salman] has lost the bet on all his investments over the last several years,” Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations said. “He financially invested in Trump and Trump’s family and his corporation and his White House, but at the end of the day the views of the Saudis and of the whole Gulf have been sidelined by the wishes of Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Prince Mohammed had begun to recalibrate his position after a missile attack on a Saudi oil facility in 2019, which Riyadh blamed on Iran. The US, under the first Trump presidency, offered verbal support but did not carry out the reprisals the Saudis were demanding.
Four years later, Saudi Arabia tried detente by signing a surprise agreement with Iran to restore mutual diplomatic relations, a deal brokered by China.
“After the US refused to come to their defence, the Saudis pivoted to hug Iran close, in the hope it wouldn’t lash out against them in a conflict,” Geranmayeh said. “Now the war has started and MBS lost the bet that Iran wouldn’t retaliate, he has reportedly urged the US to end the Iranian threat once and for all. So Saudi Arabia is now facing the conundrum of whether to get more involved.”
The United Arab Emirates has seen its oil exports comprehensively blocked and has openly called for a decisive military defeat of Iran. The UAE ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: “A simple ceasefire isn’t enough. We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats.” (…)
The WSJ Editorial Board also urges to “finish the job”:
Don’t Let Iran’s Hostage-Takers Win Stopping the war weeks short would vindicate their Hormuz strategy.
An official from one of the countries mediating between the US and Iran tells The Times of Israel that US President Donald Trump appears to be leaning toward ordering a US ground operation against Iran, with Washington convinced Tehran will buckle under such military pressure.
The official intimately familiar with the mediation efforts says the US privately recognizes that Iran is not likely to agree to the concessions presented in Washington’s 15-point plan and has dispatched thousands of troops to the region in order to capture Tehran’s Kharg Island on Trump’s orders.
A second official from a mediating country warns that while the US may be able to capture the island, holding onto it for an extended period of time will require many more soldiers and an extended period of fighting — far beyond the four-to-six week window that Washington has told the public that the war would last. While Saturday will be the four-week mark, the US still claims to be well ahead of schedule.
Both officials from mediating countries say that the Islamic Republic is not likely to capitulate, regardless of whether a ground operation moves ahead.
They insist that Iran will not agree to terms now that it wasn’t willing to accept before the US launched the war.
Meanwhile:
The personal consumption expenditures price index is now seen rising 3.1% on average this year, compared a prior estimate of 2.6%, according to the latest Bloomberg monthly survey of economists. While that’s primarily due to higher oil prices, forecasters also expect another metric that strips out food and energy costs to advance more than previously estimated.
Economists see a more limited impact on gross domestic product — projecting growth to average 2.3% this year, softer than the prior estimate of 2.5%. The latest downgrade to GDP estimates partly reflects tamer consumer spending in the first half amid uninspiring job creation.
Respondents also pushed out their forecasts for Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, with the first reduction now seen in September. (…)
Economists in the Bloomberg survey raised the odds of a US recession in the next 12 months to 30% from 25% previously, the survey showed. They cut their forecasts for average monthly job growth this year — to 43,000 from a prior projection of 70,000 — and now see the unemployment rate averaging 4.5%. (…)
- Mortgage Rates Rise for Fourth Straight Week Rates hit 6.38% Thursday, about a month after falling below 6% for the first time in years
- Europe’s Economy Starts to Feel Pain From Trump’s Iran War
(…) “It’s very clearly the energy-intensive sectors that are hurt first and foremost,” said Christian Keller, Barclays’s head of economics research. “But the longer it lasts, it will go into every sector, every input price.” (…)
The German chemical industry — hit hard by the last spike in energy costs in 2022 — has warned of output cuts with the Strait of Hormuz still effectively shut.
Production at the country’s biggest ammonia plant, SKW Piesteritz GmbH, has been scaled back to the technical minimum of 85%, while Evonik Industries, a maker of specialty chemicals, is still surveying the damage it may face. (…)
Container shipper Hapag-Lloyd AG is facing additional weekly costs of $40 million-$50 million for things like fuel, insurance and storage. The company is trying to recover some through “contingency and emergency charges,” CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said.
Such costs are threatening to cascade through the supply chain, making life more expensive for everyone. Consumers are well aware: The share of households expecting faster price growth over the next year has risen “very strongly,” France’s statistics office said. (…)
The current shock “is probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment,” Christine Lagarde said in an Economist podcast released Thursday. This “leads to a sort of a delayed assessment of how serious this current crisis is.” (…)
- The global food crisis unleashed by the war From Minnesota to Punjab, fertiliser costs are up and harvests are set to be hit
Germany Drafts Plan to Hit US Companies in Next Trump Clash
The next time Donald Trump tries to push America’s traditional allies into line, the German government intends to be better prepared.
Officials in Berlin have started mapping vulnerabilities in US supply chains to identify points where Germany and its European Union partners could apply pressure, according to people familiar with the effort. Their goal is to create a consensus among EU nations on how they can use their leverage, if and when they get drawn into another dispute with the White House.
The initial findings suggest ways to target the massive US tech firms with close ties to the White House, the officials said. Other options could aim for the AI investment boom that has helped to drive US stocks to record highs this year or push up drug prices for American voters, an issue the president has already shown he’s sensitive to.
“By sticking together, Europeans can prove to Trump that they are prepared to match him,” said Tobias Gehrke, an expert on economic statecraft at the European Council of Foreign Relations. “If Europe can credibly demonstrate that intimidation tactics don’t work, this could, over time, weaken those forces in Washington that support Trump.”
The German exercise is part of an urgent European effort to build a geopolitical framework to manage the increasing hostility of the US and the growing power of China. Yet it’s also a process that is fraught with jeopardy: across the EU, senior officials are painfully aware of how exposed their companies would be should reprisals with the US spiral out of control.
The officials cautioned that no decisions have been taken on activating the plans and their preferred outcome is to rebuild relations with the White House. (…)
“There will be no going back to the way things were,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tuesday. “The rift is too deep.” (…)
New taxes, fines or operational constraints on Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. or Meta Platforms Inc. could deliver a meaningful economic hit to profits and, in the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, the EU already has legislation on the books that would allow it to target US tech firms, according to Antonio Barroso, a senior geo-economics analyst at Bloomberg Economics.
Another pressure point lies in supply chains running artificial intelligence. US companies — from OpenAI and Anthropic to Microsoft Corp.’s AI units and Elon Musk’s X ventures — depend in part on European industrial inputs for their data center rollout, according to analysis by German officials. Those components include specialized equipment from firms like Siemens AG, the officials said. (…)
Export controls would prove to be even more painful weapons against the US, the German officials said. Washington remains reliant on European firms for chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing and Dutch firm ASML and its German suppliers, Zeiss and Trumpf, produce advanced lithography machines essential for cutting-edge chip production. (…)
European companies supply the active ingredients for nearly half of all brand-name drugs sold in the US and 90% of the insulin that Americans use every day, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Brussels. They also provide over a third of chemical imports that help to supply a range of US industries.
Drilling down into the details of the global supply chain, the Chamber of Commerce identified almost 300 different categories where US firms rely on European suppliers for 100% of their imports. There are more than 700 where the reliance is 90% or more.
The EU is the largest source of foreign direct investment in the US. While governments can’t dictate where European firms choose to allocate their capital, they could adjust regulatory frameworks or withdraw export incentives to steer European money away from the US market. The previous government in Berlin used similar tools in an effort to curb the amount of FDI heading to China. (…)
German officials are also looking at the role that European military bases play in the US’s ability to project power around the world, the people said, and their value has been highlighted during the strikes on Iran. The Chamber of Commerce estimates that it would cost the US $100-$200 billion a year to fill that gap if it wasn’t in NATO. (…)
“This is not about confrontation, but about mutually defining our interests,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said last week, when asked about Berlin looking to exploit US pressure points. “The fact that things are not always 100% aligned is true in every marriage, whether good or bad.”
China to establish nationwide long-term care insurance system
China on Wednesday issued a set of guidelines to accelerate the establishment of a nationwide long-term care insurance system, with the aim of addressing the basic care needs of people who have difficulty in taking care of themselves.
The long-term care insurance system is a form of social insurance designed to provide services or financial support for basic living care and related medical services to individuals who are unable to care for themselves, according to the guidelines issued by the general offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council. (…)
This system is considered a vital component of China’s broader social security framework and a crucial strategy to tackle challenges posed by the country’s aging population, the document noted.
“The Present”
“They’re gonna make a deal. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present, and the present arrived today, and it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money,” Trump said.
“I’m not going to tell you what the present is, but it was a very significant … prize,” he said. “It wasn’t nuclear-related. It was oil- and gas-related, and it was a very nice thing they did. But what it showed me is that we’re dealing with the right people.”
“They said, ‘To show you the fact that we’re real and solid and we’re there, we’re going to let you have eight boats of oil … and they’ll sail up tomorrow,’” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting, referring to Iran.
He added: “They then apologized for something they said, and they said, ‘We’re going to send two more boats.’ And [it] ended up being 10 boats.”
“And I said, well, I guess they were right, and they were real, and I think they were Pakistani-flagged. And I said, well, I guess we’re dealing with the right people,” he said.