Iran's Ghalibaf says Israel is steering the US into an endless war

Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf went on social media Monday with a blunt charge: Israel is working to drag the United States into an endless war against Iran. No president, now or later, Republican or Democrat, could slip out of that scenario, he wrote. And he warned that unless Washington drops its Israel First mindset, America and its allies are headed straight for a dark age.

Timing matters here. Ghalibaf's post followed a media report claiming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed US President Donald Trump to resume strikes on Iran the moment the midterm elections wrap up, according to Breaking The News.

Diplomacy hasn't stopped. Turkish intelligence chief İbrahim Kalin said Monday that US Vice President JD Vance and Iran's Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei are expected to sit down in Doha next week. Regional mediators are shaping a seven-point proposal, Kalin added: sanctions relief and access to frozen assets for Iran, in exchange for a pledge not to acquire nuclear weapons, fresh engagement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

On the nuclear file, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told IRNA that Iran will not send its enriched material abroad under any circumstances, calling that option not on the table at all. He said Tehran's offer to shrink its peace plan's implementation window down to two days, from seven, proved goodwill, while accusing Washington of repeatedly changing its demands and shifting the goals of the talks.

The Strait itself is getting rougher. An IRIB reporter said Monday that Iranian Navy forces blocked four oil tankers from passing through Hormuz in 24 hours, with 11 tankers targeted over the past ten days. The reporter claimed the sailors disabled the vessels and their navigation systems, saying the tankers needed the American military's navigation to use the non-Iranian route. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has pressed Washington to make a decision.

Inside Iran, lawmaker Hamidreza Gudarzi argued Monday that going nuclear could deter future attacks, and that Tehran should rethink its nuclear policy after its conflict with the US and Israel. He claimed Iran faced explicit nuclear threats during the fighting, naming Pickaxe Mountain, and said the way to silence that threat is to acquire nuclear weapons and build deterrence.