TV News LIES

The fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is under threat of falling apart after President Trump declared that the U.S. would “guide” vessels through the Strait of Hormuz in an effort he called “Project Freedom,” to begin Monday.

In response, Iran’s armed forces said they would not allow passage to American combat forces or commercial ships without their authorization.

Tehran’s forces opened fire on U.S. warships and commercial vessels on Monday, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) head Adm. Brad Cooper told reporters. He said American forces returned fire and destroyed six small Iranian boats.

Cooper would not say whether the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran had ended.

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Iran has submitted a 14-point response to the U.S. proposal to end the conflict that began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency and the state-owned media organization Press TV.

Key points of the plan include a demand to resolve all issues and end the war within 30 days, instead of observing a two-month ceasefire as the U.S. had proposed. Other demands listed by the Iranian outlets include guarantees against future military aggression, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iran's periphery, an end to the naval blockade, the release of frozen Iranian assets, payment of reparations, the lifting of sanctions, an end to fighting in Lebanon, and a new mechanism governing the Strait of Hormuz.

NPR has not independently verified the contents of the proposal. An Iranian official said Friday that the document had been handed to Pakistan, but did not disclose its terms. President Trump on Saturday said he is reviewing the new proposal, according to the Associated Press.

The U.S. previously presented Iran with a 15-point framework demanding, among other things, the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to Iran's nuclear program.

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Senate Democrats called BS, literally, on Donald Trump’s claim that the war in Iran is over, in a formal letter the president sent on Friday to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate.

“There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026 have been terminated,” Trump wrote, as the ongoing war he claimed the US won in the first hour of combat continues with competing Iranian and US blockades of the Persian gulf.

“That’s bullshit,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, posted in response to the news. “This is an illegal war and every day Republicans remain complicit and allow it to continue is another day lives are endangered, chaos erupts, and prices increase, all while Americans foot the bill.”

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On 28 February 2026, the first day of the war, the US and Israel launched a joint strike on the office of Iran's Supreme Leader. It resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior government officials. 

The neighbourhood where the Supreme Leader’s headquarters are located is known as Pasteur. It is named after the Pasteur Institute of Iran, one of the Middle East’s most prestigious and oldest scientific research centres, which predated most of the governmental facilities, including the Presidential Office, the Supreme National Security Council, and the Assembly of Experts.

On 28 February, the medical centre was left unscathed by the massive bombing in the Pasteur neighbourhood. However, a month later, on 1 April and 2 April, US-Israeli bombing hit the Institute, levelling its headquarters and 13 source laboratories.

Founded in 1920, following a diplomatic agreement between the French and Iranian government, the Pasteur Institute of Iran is part of 33 institutes worldwide at the forefront of the fight against infectious diseases, named after the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822-85), father of the germ theory and microbiology. 

"The main building is older than Israel," one of the Institute’s top scientists, who asked the name be withheld as scientists have been targeted by the US and Israel, wrote to me, adding "how dare they destroy such a piece of history?"

The 120-year-old building was on Waqf land, a religious endowment offered by the Qajar Prince and short-lived Prime Minister of Persia Abdol-Hossein Farman-Farma. It was a gift in the project to modernise Iran’s public health, which had been devastated in the first two decades of the 20th century by a great famine, the Spanish flu, and recurrent cholera and typhoid epidemics.

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In an extraordinary article published on 7 April, the New York Times described how Donald Trump decided to go to war with Iran. It is highly unusual for the White House Situation Room to be used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders. But this time, the Situation Room was not just used for a meeting with a foreign leader. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin, Netanyahu took over the presentation space, backed on a screen by the leader of the Mossad as well as Israeli military officials.

As the New York Times describes the scene, “Arrayed visually behind Mr. Netanyahu, they created the image of a wartime leader surrounded by his team.” The article makes it clear that Netanyahu’s “hard sell” of a quick war was pivotal to the US president’s decision to partner with Israel in attacking Iran.

This article is unusual in recent mainstream media about the war, which typically avoids mention of the role of Israel in Trump’s decision. Here is one example, from a journalist I admire. When it comes to Russia, Rachel Maddow has been forthright and heroic on the topic of foreign influence on US policy. But in a 28 February MS Now episode, Follow the Money, devoted to exploring Trump’s reasons for going to war with Iran, Maddow exhibits diminished virtue on this topic.

In it, she asks the listeners to consider the question: “Who wants Iran bombed off the map and for their own reasons, who are Iran’s rivals and enemies?” Maddow’s subsequent discussion suggests that it is the Gulf Arab states that are primarily responsible, who, she says, “appear to have rented the services of the United States military”. Maddow’s February discussion of the causes of Trump’s decision to go to war, in hindsight, with the information provided by the New York Times article, should raise alarm bells for those concerned for the status of democracy and a free press.

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Iran’s foreign minister returned to Pakistan on Sunday for peace talks, despite US President Donald Trump calling off his envoys’ planned trip to Islamabad. 

Abbas Araghchi will again meet Pakistani officials to convey "Iran's positions and views on the framework of any understanding to completely end the war".

Tehran's foreign minister was in Islamabad a day earlier, after which he travelled to Oman, while other Iranian envoys had headed back to Tehran "to consult and obtain the necessary instructions on issues related to ending the war", according to the Isna news agency.  

Before Saturday's Iran-Pakistan meetings in Islamabad, the White House had announced that Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner had planned to leave for Pakistan to engage in negotiations.

But Trump later told Fox News he had cancelled the trip, stating there was no point "sitting around talking about nothing".

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