International Glance
In an exclusive interview with Drop Site News, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Esmail Baghaei rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that he launched the war because Iran was “going to attack first,” calling it a “big lie.”
“There was no intention on the part of Iran to attack the United States,” he said. “They claim that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” Baghaei added. “Did we come to the Gulf of Mexico to target Los Angeles and other U.S. cities? Or did they come 6,500 miles away to Iranian shores?”
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. decided to preemptively attack Iran because the White House knew Israel was going to begin bombing Iran and that Iran would strike back. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
On Tuesday, Trump sought to recast the U.S. rationale and said that he believed Iran was going to launch an attack first. “They were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first—I felt strongly about that,” Trump said, charging that the Iranians “were getting ready to attack Israel. They were gonna attack others.”
Five hundred Ukrainian defenders were recently returned from Russian captivity as a result of a large exchange under the 500 for 500 formula carried out by Ukraine and Russia. This is the largest exchange in the past six months. The last similar one on such a scale took place in the summer of 2025, when 1,000 Russians were exchanged for 1,000 Ukrainian defenders.
Thousands of cruise ship passengers remain stranded in the Gulf as a result of the war on Iran.
Israel closed all crossings into Gaza indefinitely when it attacked Iran, imposing a siege that has already pushed up food prices and threatens to plunge 2 million people into a new hunger crisis.
US President Donald Trump said his “biggest surprise” since unleashing a war in the Middle East has been Iran’s attacks on the Arab Gulf states, which the US counts as some of its closest and richest partners.
US political commentator and journalist Tucker Carlson claimed on Monday that Saudi Arabia and Qatar had caught and “arrested Israeli Mossad agents planning bombings in those countries”.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he’s “not happy” with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not joining the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, though he allowed US forces to use UK bases.
