Khameni and Trump intensify rhetoric as US mulls Iran involvement
DOES TRUMP EVEN KNOW?
The world continues to wait for Donald Trump to decide whether he is going to order the US to join Israel’s bombardment of Iran as the conflict rages on.
Speaking as he unveiled new flagpoles (yes, seriously) outside the White House on Wednesday, the US president declared “I may do it, I may not do it, nobody knows what I’m going to do” when asked if he had decided to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The 79-year-old added: “Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate. And I said, why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction? I said to people, why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine, you would have had a country. It’s very sad to watch this, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The Trump administration had been claiming for days it was not directly involved in Israel’s attacks on Iran. As mentioned yesterday, observers have noticed Trump has now started using “we” in his references to the conflict (The New York Times’ recent long read on Trump’s wavering back and forth on the issue also alleges his desire to claim some credit for Israel’s attacks after watching them get favourable coverage on Fox News).
Speaking on Wednesday, Trump said of Israel’s initial strike on Iran at the end of last week: “That was one hell of a hit, that first hit, not sustainable to be honest, it ended on the first night”.
Reuters reports Trump added “it’s very late to be talking”, with regards to his claim Iranian officials had reached out to negotiate, including a potential meeting at the White House. “Unconditional surrender, that means I’ve had it,” the US president said.
Speaking later in the Oval Office, he also said: “I have ideas as to what to do”, adding: “I like to make a final decision one second before.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei warned on Wednesday that “any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region”, The Hill reports. Iranian officials have also declared Tehran will attack American bases in the region if the US enters the war, the NYT says.
The paper reports Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had dismissed Trump’s threats and his call for an unconditional surrender. According to Iranian state media, Khamenei said in a televised statement: “Intelligent people who know Iran, the nation and the history of Iran, will never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because the Iranian nation cannot be surrendered. The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage.”
The Australian Financial Review points out Khamenei is posting regularly on X (although one assumes it is not the 86-year-old sending the messages himself). Over the past few hours, his account has posted messages such as: “The US president threatens us. With his absurd rhetoric, he demands that the Iranian people surrender to him. They should make threats against those who are afraid of being threatened. The Iranian nation isn’t frightened by such threats.” And: “The harm the US will suffer will definitely be irreparable if they enter this conflict militarily.”
The BBC says Iran’s mission to the United Nations has also rejected Trump’s claim Iran was seeking to resume talks over its nuclear program, saying: “No Iranian official has asked to grovel at the gates of the White House. The only thing more despicable than his lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s supreme leader [a reference to Trump’s social media posts earlier this week].”
Meanwhile, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given an address and thanked Trump for his support, the BBC adds.
As the rhetoric goes back and forth, the conflict continues to rage for a sixth day. The British broadcaster reports Israel has said in the past couple of hours it has launched a new wave of attacks targeting missile systems and storage sites in Tehran, while Iran says it has fired missiles at Israel.
Elsewhere, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has chaired an emergency meeting amid the concerns of American involvement, The Guardian reports. Downing Street was unwilling to repeat Starmer’s previous comments that he was confident the US would not join the bombing campaign.
The paper says one of the key issues for the UK is whether it would allow America “to fly B-2 stealth bombers from the Diego Garcia airbase in the Indian Ocean to attack Iran’s nuclear enrichment site, which is between 80 and 90 metres inside a mountain at Fordow”.
French President Emmanuel Macron has held a crisis meeting of his own and expressed concern that Israel’s strikes were increasingly aiming at “targets unrelated to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic programs”, the NYT reports.
CHALMERS ‘WILLING TO GRASP THE NETTLE’
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrapped up his attendance at the G7 summit in Canada yesterday with an agreement to negotiate a “security and defence partnership” with the EU, as well as resuming negotiations over a free trade agreement.
As he was doing that, his Treasurer Jim Chalmers was delivering his address to the National Press Club. The ABC reports Chalmers said during the Canberra event he was determined to use Labor’s significant election victory to deliver “bold” tax reform to improve the budget and support productivity.
“What we’re trying to do … is to be up-front with all of you and the country beyond about the trade-offs,” Chalmers said. “This is about testing the country’s reform appetite and I don’t see it in personal terms, but I am personally willing to grasp the nettle … I am prepared to do my bit.”
Guardian Australia flags Chalmers said he recognised the need to “lower” the tax burden on Australian workers and that the Albanese government had a “responsibility” to move beyond its election mandate.
Returning to its favourite topic, the AFR said Chalmers had also “refused to budge” on his plans to raise taxes on people with more than $3 million in superannuation.
Elsewhere, Guardian Australia reports Coalition MP Garth Hamilton has said special tax breaks for mothers should be considered, with the tax system needing an overhaul to better support “modern families”.
The Australian highlights former Labor prime minister Paul Keating “has slammed Defence Minister Richard Marles for saying Australia would play a key role in a potential US-China war in the Pacific”.
Keating accused the deputy prime minister of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency”.
Albanese’s announcement that he was now considering going to next week’s NATO summit in The Hague, a day after he said he expected Marles to go, continued to generate plenty of coverage overnight, given the very transparent subtext of a desire to get that face-to-face with Donald Trump.
The Nine papers report Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, is “leading a diplomatic push to lock in a meeting”. The Australian reports “several meeting scenarios are being explored” and that Albanese would not travel to The Hague if there was no chance of a meeting.
As commentators have pointed out though, given Trump’s erratic decision-making and the current global volatility, how could a meeting ever be truly nailed on? The Times of London highlights that very point with its piece headlined: “Nato summit ‘will be short and sweet’ to suit Trump’s attention span”.
In case you missed it, my colleague Bernard Keane has some strong thoughts on Albanese’s approach to chasing Trump around the world…
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
An 80-year-old man got stuck trying to drive his car down Rome’s famed Spanish Steps on Tuesday.
CNN reports the man, who has not been identified, told police he was “wrong” to drive his Mercedes-Benz A Class sedan down the steps and he had been “going to work” and taken a wrong turn. The broadcaster said it was unclear if he had been using a GPS device.
The 80-year-old was uninjured but taken to the hospital regardless, where he tested negative for both drug and alcohol consumption, police revealed.
The Italian Fire Brigade said the car got stuck on the steps at 4am and had been stopped by police officers patrolling the area.
A crane was used to eventually remove the vehicle.
Say What?
I mean, seriously, I think if any of you had stepped forward other than me, I was just deeply conscious that in a situation like that it would not have been good for anybody else to have stepped forwards, not that any of you rushed to!
Sir Keir Starmer
The British PM went viral earlier this week after scrambling to pick up the US-UK trade agreement Donald Trump dropped on the floor at the G7 summit. While Starmer’s critics enjoyed the imagery, many others asked the critics what on earth they thought Starmer should have done differently. The PM reckons he was more concerned about what Trump’s security team might have done if someone else had rushed forward.
CRIKEY RECAP
Makeover to takeover: Liberal moderates are desperate to cut loose from Dutton’s legacy
“This is about reclaiming the party and focusing on the main game, and that’s winning elections,” a moderate NSW Liberal source said about Tuesday’s appointment of a new committee.
The NSW division was overtaken by the federal executive last year after a fiasco involving the failure to nominate large numbers of candidates for council elections. On Tuesday, Victorians Alan Stockdale and Richard Alston were ousted from the committee, and the panel’s membership was increased from three to seven. The new committee will be chaired by ex-premier Nick Greiner and run until March 30 next year.
Sources told Crikey that Ley was a driving force behind the reboot, and that she did her legwork in the days and weeks ahead of the meeting by talking to influential party members and making sure the move had support. The new committee was voted in by 20 federal executive members against one.
Albanese should be avoiding Trump like the plague. Why is he (and Australia’s toytown media) chasing him?
The failure of the meeting to go ahead — which, according to the Australian media, is the real import of Trump rage-quitting the G7 gathering — is now being used by News Corp and the Coalition as evidence of Albanese’s failure. Albanese mulling whether to try to attend the forthcoming NATO summit and meet Trump there does nothing to dispel that narrative.
Except, News Corp and the Coalition now don’t matter. They’re just angry old men yelling at clouds. The electorate just voted en masse against the Coalition-News Corp alliance, which spent most of the months before May 3 promising to ape Trump right down to his more obscure policies.
And for what, exactly, is Albanese pursuing a meeting with Trump?
The rise of Pauline Hanson in Australia’s new normal
In Australia’s “post-major party” new normal, it’s unsurprising that One Nation’s policy smorgasbord, coupled with Hanson’s brand longevity and social media outreach, attracted disaffected Labor and LNP voters reluctant to back the teals, Greens, or Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots. But the destabilisation of democracy globally is also a factor. As wealth inequality rises under authoritarian leaders, voters are increasingly moving to the fringes. Civic distrust enables shadowy “world order” conspiracies to thrive: in the alt-right version, we’re being controlled by a secret global state; on the left, amoral corporations are to blame.
When filming Hanson’s 2016 election campaign, I was struck by how often conservatives and progressives agreed about Australia’s problems, but disagreed about solutions. Some viewers cancelled my film — Pauline Hanson: Please Explain! —because they found Hanson “triggering”. But censoring others from the safety of our digital silos solves nothing. If Australians are to meet the challenges of our complex, multicultural democracy, we must reject the reductive algorithms of social media and engage in nuanced, respectful, in-person debates.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Lone Air India survivor carries coffin of brother killed in crash (BBC)
News Corp boss earns $42m as highest-paid CEO of Australian-listed company (Guardian Australia)
Shoppers recall the moment a car drove through Northland Shopping Centre in Melbourne (ABC)
Fed holds, turns hawkish but sees two more rate cuts this year (AFR)
Tucker Carlson accuses Ted Cruz of knowing nothing about Iran (POLITICO)
Obama’s awkward call for a broad-scale Trump resistance (CNN)
THE COMMENTARIAT
As Donald Trump deliberates over Iran, he has a MAGA problem — Kamin Gock and Emily Clark (ABC): All lines that were stunning because they appeared to communicate the US was already somewhat entangled.
That is not what some parts of MAGA want to hear and despite being a convert to the movement himself, it appears JD Vance is well aware of the cracks starting to appear.
MAGA is far from a monolithic group, but some of its most high-profile commentators are putting its differences on display for Donald Trump to see.
Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene — the gang’s all here. The divide is getting deeper and getting very personal.
Amazon CEO says the ‘quiet part out loud’ about AI job losses — Chanticleer (AFR): That tells you Meta thinks the prize it’s chasing is in the trillions over time; is a $US100 million bonus really that crazy? Athletes are bought and sold for that amount regularly, and the returns those deals generate aren’t in the trillions.
But if you’re offering AI engineers $US100 million bonuses and spending $US72 billion a year on AI infrastructure, the returns you’re chasing had better come to fruition.
How are companies like Meta and Amazon going to get customers to pay big money for AI? By helping their customers slash costs. What is typically the biggest cost in any business? Staff.
