Trump on Iran:

When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said tensions with the Trump administration stem partly from the company not donating to Trump, unlike OpenAI figures.

He wrote:

“The real reasons… [they] do not like us is that we haven’t donated to Trump.”

Amodei also said Anthropic refused to give “dictator-style praise” to Trump, supported AI regulation opposed by the administration, and warned about AI risks like job displacement, which he said put the company at odds with the government’s agenda.

Source: The Information

Former Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal:

Forget normalization, let alone what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank.

This is Netanyahu's war.

You talked about the dog and the tail, who's wagging who.

It is definitely Mr. Netanyahu, who as you mentioned, seven trips to America and obviously he somehow convinced the president to, to support his, his views.

And so Netanyahu has been trying to do this in order to get away from the murky and, and terrible conduct that he led Israel into, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank and internally.

He wants to change the constitution of Israel to allow him to undertake whatever he wants to do without check.

So that is why he has been pushing for this war is to drive people's attention away from what is happening on the ground in Palestine.

Trump:

China makes all the windmills; the only problem is that they don't have wind farms.

They make the windmills, and they sell them to the suckers over in Europe. Europe is buying them by the thousands.

Trump on coal:

In the Trump administration, you are not allowed to use the word coal unless you precede it by saying “clean, beautiful.”

US official to Fox News:

Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have launched a ground offensive in Iran.

Trump on Iran:

I have to go back and look at the war.

A lot of things are happening.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) says the Kurdistan Region is not part of the war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, while warning of rising tensions in the region.

“The Kurdistan Region is not part of this war.”

It urged the Iraqi federal government to “stop militias and illegal armed groups attacking the Kurdistan Region.”

The KDP also stressed that Iraq and the Kurdistan Region must be kept out of the conflict and called for political unity and support for security forces to maintain stability.

Source: Rudaw

NOW: U.S. Senate blocks effort to force Trump to end Iran strikes without Congress' approval.

48-52

RESULT: Trump can continue the military campaign for now on Iran, and Congress did not limit his authority to carry out the strikes.

Venezuela's Acting President, Delcy Rodriguez, meets with U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

NEW: A source from the Iranian Kurdish group Komala denies reports that it launched a ground offensive into western Iran.

Source: Rudaw

Israeli airstrikes targeted the governor’s office and nearby residential areas in Bukan (West Azerbaijan province), causing heavy destruction.

The strike reportedly occurred in two waves and resulted in many civilian casualties, including women and children.

Source: Tasnim

LATEST: U.S./Israeli media reports claiming Iraqi Kurdish groups launched a ground offensive in Iran have turned out to be fake.

NATO's Rutte:

For good reasons, we always will stay very ambiguous about when Article 5 is triggered.

And if it is triggered we will always immediately let everybody know.

But we keep it very ambiguous because we don't want to make our enemies, our adversaries, any wiser.

NATO's Rutte on Türkiye:

NATO is making sure that we in a 360-degree way defend every inch of NATO territory.

You saw that this morning when news came in of a missile which was heading for Türkiye and potentially impacting on U.S. interests in Türkiye, taken out by NATO anti-missile systems. So this is working.

NATO's Rutte on NATO:

NATO is there to protect us collectively against any adversary, be it Russia or whoever, or terrorism.

But also it is a platform for the United States to project power on the world stage...

NATO's Rutte:

Yes, we have debates. We are an alliance of democracies, but in the end we will follow the American lead when it comes to these crucial moments.

NATO's Rutte on Iran:

Iran was one of the key enablers of the Russian war effort against Ukraine through these weapons of destruction — these Shahed drones — and the fact now that Iran is facing this full onslaught of Israel and the U.S. will also degrade their capacity to export their chaos even to Russia and therefore to Ukraine.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China will send a special envoy to the Middle East to help mediate as regional tensions escalate.

The Pentagon is rushing additional air-defense systems to the Middle East, especially smaller, cheaper counter-drone technologies, after Iranian Shahed drones killed U.S. troops in Kuwait.

These drones are difficult to detect because they can fly below radar, and the U.S. is currently using missiles costing millions of dollars to shoot down drones that cost far less.

Source: POLITICO