Iran: Still a chance for peace talks with US
In an interview in Iran's foreign ministry in Tehran, a senior Iranian official said despite the attacks on his country by America and Israel, back-channel efforts are under way to restart the search for a diplomatic solution.
The comments will be seen as an olive branch for the administration to seize as it explores a diplomatic way forward.
Sky News is one of only a handful of foreign news organisations allowed access to Iran following
We also filmed the impact of Israel's attacks on ordinary Iranians in Tehran.
In the wake of declared by Donald Trump, Esmaeil Baqaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said the US must show it is genuine in its desire for peace.
"Diplomacy must not be abused or used as a tool for deception or for simply a sort of psychological warfare against their adversaries."
Iran felt diplomacy had been betrayed, he said. US-Iranian talks were on the verge of reconvening when Israel attacked his country.
And America had breached international law in its support of what he called "Zionist aggression".
But Mr Baqaei said "diplomacy never ends, there are contacts, indirectly. My minister is talking to Oman, Qatar and others".
President Trump says he is ready to talk with Iran, but major stumbling blocks need to be overcome.
The US wants Iran to give up nuclear enrichment completely. Iran has long insisted it has the right to carry on.
Read more from Sky News:
Across town, we witnessed the impact of Israel's attacks in Gisha, an upmarket neighbourhood of Tehran.
Israel claims its attacks on Iranian figures were precision-targeted. In reality they appear to have been far from surgical.
The airstrike came at 10.30 Friday morning two weeks ago. It ripped a hole through four floors of reinforced concrete in the residential apartment block.
The target may have been a nuclear scientist living there, but everyone in the building is now without a home. Engineers say it will almost certainly need to be torn down.
The mood in the Iranian capital seems subdued and tense.
Iranians fear Israelis will renew their air campaign despite the ceasefire.
There is widespread resentment of the leadership after nationwide social unrest and massive economic problems.
But the Israeli attacks have rallied many Iranians around their government all the same.
They had hoped diplomacy with America could deliver a new deal and an end to sanctions, then Israel began its 12-day aerial onslaught
Iranians hope somehow talks can be restarted, but they also know the chances of progress are for now at least not great.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
SHAPIRO: Is America starting to see the end of patriotism?
America has a major problem. Nearly half of Americans — 42% — don't believe in America. According to Gallup, just 58% of adults say they are either 'extremely' or 'somewhat' proud to be American. That number has been in steep decline for a decade. In 2004, that number was 91% and was still 81% as of 2016. Then it began to tumble and it hasn't recovered. The trend isn't equivalent across the political spectrum. Republicans have always been far prouder of their country; their pride number has never dropped below 84% in 2022 and currently stands at 92%. The serious decline is located among independents, who have dropped from 76% in 2013 to 53% today, and Democrats, who plummeted from 80% to 36% during that same period. Furthermore, Americans' age correlates highly with levels of American pride: 83% of the Silent Generation venerates the country, as do 75% of Baby Boomers and 71% of Generation Xers — but just 58% of Millennials and 41% of Generation Z do. So, what precisely happened? The answer is simple. Republicans started winning and Democrats spiralled off. President Donald Trump's victory in 2016 sent Democrats spiralling into an anti-American black hole, with their pride in America dropping off a cliff during the first Trump term, recovering only moderately during Joe Biden's term (62% in 2021), and then plummeting again this year. Democrats embraced a new and extreme anti-American point of view, reflected most obviously in the elevation of figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; and now New York Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. These figures, emblems of a new wave in the Democratic Party, are disaffected with America in general. If the promise of Barack Obama is that the vessel of the Democratic Party could be used to bottle the fire and fervour of the revolutionary left, these radicals believe that all bottles must be shattered — that the institutions of the United States must be exploded entirely. They see the re-election of Donald Trump as indicative of a deep rot at the heart of the American experiment and wish to eviscerate the fundamental ideas of that experiment. They champion the supposed virtue of the Third World and the supposed evil of the United States; the supposed beauties of socialism and evils of capitalism; the supposed virtue of transgressive social values and the supposed evils of traditionalism. They believe that America's unique Constitution is a framework for oppression; they believe that rights are mere guises for despotic power and that duties are cynically placed fetters upon their true selves. They are, as I describe in my upcoming book, Lions and Scavengers, the scavengers. They are all about tearing down, not about building something new. They have taken over the Democratic Party and they are making extraordinary inroads among younger Americans. Ironically, that's due to the failure of the very institutions the political left hijacked and misused for decades. Democrats heavily regulated and taxed the free market and then blamed the free market for recession or inflation; Democrats hijacked our educational institutions to pay off their union cronies and indoctrinate young people in their mindset and then blamed capitalists for failing to pay off young people's debts; Democrats abused our scientific and governmental institutions and then suggested that Republican resistance was actually Biblical fundamentalism rearing its ugly head. Meanwhile, political independents grow increasingly discouraged by our politics. They see Republicans shifting the deck chairs atop the Titanic of state as Democrats eagerly drill more holes in the hull — and they are increasingly depressed. They are not wrong to be. But they are wrong to believe that they can or should chart a middle course between those who love America and its founding principles and those who despise them. We should all be proud of America, the greatest country in the history of the world, with all of its faults and flaws. And we should work to correct those faults and flaws, rather than seek its overthrow or despairing and throwing up our hands.
New York Post
27 minutes ago
- New York Post
Ukraine pummels Russia airbase, Moscow continues massive drone assault on Kyiv — hopes of a mediated truce grow dimmer
Ukraine inflicted significant damage on a Russian airbase Saturday, amid Moscow's continued drone attacks on Kyiv, which killed at least one person overnight — part of a prolific Russian assault that has seemed to dash any hopes of a truce in the war. Ukrainian forces struck the Borisoglebsk airbase in Russia's Voronezh region near the Ukrainian border, hitting a depot containing glide bombs, a training aircraft and 'possibly other aircraft,' the military said. The calculated strike targeted fighter jets Russia regularly uses in its air strikes, in an effort to put a dent in the Kremlin's military capabilities, according to Ukrainian officials. 4 A Ukrainian anti-aircraft cannon is seen here firing at night. via REUTERS Moscow's Defense Ministry said it reported no casualties and claimed no damage. Last month, Kyiv destroyed more than 40 Russian planes stationed at several of the Kremlin's airfields in a surprise drone attack. Meanwhile, Moscow fired 322 drones and decoys into Ukraine overnight into Saturday, Ukraine's air force posted on Telegram. Most of the attacks were aimed at the city of Starokostiantyniv, an important military hub in western Ukraine's Khmelnytskyi region. The army said it was able to neutralize 292 of the incoming Russian drones. But some also struck cities in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, where firefighters were seen battling enormous blazes. A 55-year-old woman was killed, and 15 other civilians were injured, including two children, according to Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov. 4 Firefighters battled a large fire in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine, following a Russian drone attack overnight. STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE HANDOUT/EPA/Shutterstock Syniehubov said Russia used Iranian-made Shahed — so-called 'kamikaze' drones — in the attack, a powerful autonomous weapon designed to attack ground targets from a distance, before being destroyed. Ukrainian officials have warned of ramped up production of the Iranian weapon in recent days. 4 Smoke could be seen rising over Kyiv at night following a Russian strike Friday morning. AP The Saturday offensive came on the heels of Russia's largest air strike since the 2022 conflict began. Moscow pounded Kyiv with a record 550 drones and a dozen missiles Friday in an onslaught that killed two people and injured 57 others during a seven-hour barrage on the capital city — just hours after President Trump admitted he was 'disappointed' with Russian President Vladimir Putin following a Thursday phone call between the two leaders. 4 Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko visited the site of a missile attack on a residential building Friday. AFP via Getty Images The attack damaged roughly 40 apartment blocks, passenger railway infrastructure, five schools and kindergartens, cafes and cars in six of Kyiv's 10 districts, according to Ukrainian officials. Trump also spoke by phone with Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, and the Ukrainian president described the conversation as 'very important and productive.' Zelensky said he was 'grateful for all the support' from the US as the duo talked about boosting Ukraine's air defenses amid Russia's escalations on the battlefield.
Politico
31 minutes ago
- Politico
How Trump's Very MAGA Tax Cuts Break with GOP Tradition
For decades, Republicans have extolled the virtues of removing loopholes and carveouts from the tax code, arguing it would make the system fairer and more efficient, while allowing for lower overall tax rates. 'The tax code is littered with hundreds of preferences and subsidies that pick winners and losers and create complexity,' House Republicans led by then-Speaker Paul Ryan and then-Rep. Kevin Brady, said in their 2016 tax plan. 'Instead of free-market competition that rewards success, our tax code directs resources to politically favored interests, creating a drag on economic growth and job creation.' Fast forward to the present day, and one thing is for sure: President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill is not an exercise in tax simplification. Instead, it began with a push to extend the party's 2017 tax cuts — which despite some streamlining also introduced some complexity — and piled more on top, in line with a slew of presidential campaign promises. Add in a heavy dose of congressional politics, and the result was a sprawling and quirky piece of legislation that is distinctively Trumpy: lower taxes and a bigger pile of tax breaks. 'It's certainly a departure from what Republicans were trying to do in 2017 and broadly a departure from what Republicans have been arguing for decades about tax reform,' Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told me. The question, though, is not just whether doing your taxes is complicated and annoying. It's whether that complexity serves a particular purpose. For example, a provision in the GOP bill allows businesses to deduct expenditures on machinery and equipment entirely from their taxes, which could both encourage investment and support Trump's reindustrialization goals. For other key parts of the bill, several economists I spoke with worried it is the worst of all combinations: increasing the debt to pay for tax breaks that lead to neither growth nor other economically useful outcomes. 'I don't want to say it's vote-buying because that's probably a normative statement that is outside of my wheelhouse, but … there's not a lot of pro-growth stuff,' said Kent Smetters, a University of Pennsylvania business professor who serves as the faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Take, for example, Trump's popular campaign promises of no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. In some cases, those provisions simply reward people for their existing lifestyle. In others, it might lead businesses to restructure how they pay their employees. It's obviously great news either way for the employees who benefit. It's just unclear why the government is choosing to reward these particular subsets of workers over others. (It is presumably not an accident that Trump promised this tax perk to voters as he was pushing in the last election to win Nevada, a state where many hospitality and gaming industry workers rely on tipped income.) And cutting taxes without finding some way to offset the lost revenue — either by closing loopholes to broaden the scope of people and businesses that are taxed, like in 1986, or through some other method — leads to increased debt that can itself be a drag on growth. After all, investors are lending the money to the U.S. government rather than doing something else with it. And even after spending cuts, the new GOP tax law is still expected to add trillions to deficits over the next decade. 'The money has to come from somewhere,' said Alan Auerbach, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. In that sense, the tax cuts under President George W. Bush weren't the ideal way to structure policy either, as they mostly just lowered rates while increasing the debt. But this bill? 'It's worse than the Bush tax cuts because the scale is so much bigger, and there's a lot more weird stuff in it,' Auerbach said. The gargantuan scale and eccentricity of the tax package is a reflection, above all, of the president who propelled it into law, and it reveals how much the Republican Party has changed under his leadership. In the 2016 GOP policy document, under Ryan and Brady's direction, the party cited tax reform legislation passed in 1986 — which decreased the number of tax brackets, slashed deductions and lowered rates — as a guiding light, saying the party's goal was to 'replicate and build upon this achievement.' But this is now the party of Donald Trump, not Ronald Reagan. Trump, ina 1999 Wall Street Journal op-ed, referred to the bipartisan 1986 law as 'an offense against the working man,' decrying the removal of certain deductions as 'predictably disastrous.' Now the Trump administration needs to defend the law and all its peculiarities. Joe Lavorgna, who works at the Treasury Department as a counselor to Secretary Scott Bessent, said many critiques of the new law miss the point. A critical priority for Trump, he said, was avoiding the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts, which would have led to higher tax rates and therefore slower growth. He said language that allows people to deduct the interest they pay on auto loans for American-made cars, for example, will help boost the goal of having a 'vibrant, healthy' domestic car industry. Lavorgna also said the provision removing taxes on overtime will lead to more output. 'Anything that incentivizes people to work an extra hour because they're not going to be taxed on it or be taxed at the same rate' creates benefits for the economy, he said. 'It's not a giveaway. They're creating something.' As for no tax on tips? That will 'help people who have been under significant cost of living pressure,' he said. Ultimately, what's clear is that cutting taxes is still the centerpiece of the Republican Party — the rallying cry that could bring together a fractious governing coalition. But tax reform? That conservative dream seems to have died quietly.
