JERUSALEM: After getting Iran and Israel to end hostilities, US Pres\u00adident Donald Trump said on Wednesday that progress was being made to end Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, as a new ceasefire push began more than 20 months since the start of the conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think great progress is being made on Gaza,\u201d Trump told reporters ahead of a Nato summit in the Netherlands, adding that his special envoy Steve Witkoff had told him: \u201cGaza is very close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Key mediator Qatar announced on Tuesday that it would launch a new push for a ceasefire, with Hamas on Wednesday saying talks had stepped up.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur communications with the brother mediators in Egypt and Qatar have not stopped and have inten\u00adsified in recent hours,\u201d Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP.<\/p>\n
He cautioned, however, that the group had \u201cnot yet received any new proposals\u201d to end the war.<\/p>\n
The Israeli government declined to comment on any new ceasefire talks beyond saying that efforts to return Israeli prisoners in Gaza were ongoing \u201con the battlefield and via negotiations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s comments came a day after a US intelligence assessment revealed that US strikes had only set back Iran\u2019s nuclear programme by just a few months. But on Wednesday, Trump compared the attacks to the end of World War II, arguing that the damage was severe even though available intelligence was inconclusive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intelligence was \u2026 very inconclusive,\u201d Trump told reporters while meeting with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte ahead of a summit in The Hague.<\/p>\n
Trump said the US strikes were responsible for ending the war between Israel and Iran and compared them to the United States\u2019 use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which brought an end to World War Two in 1945.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don\u2019t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended the war,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Trump argued that Iran\u2019s nuclear deal had been set back \u201cbasically decades, because I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll ever do it again\u201d and he turned to top advisers to reinforce that message.<\/p>\n
Teases nuclear talks<\/p>\n
Trump also said the US would hold nuclear talks with Iran next week, teasing the possibility of a deal even after boasting that recent US strikes had crippled Tehran\u2019s atomic programme.<\/p>\n
Insisting on the \u201ctotal obliteration\u201d of Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities, contrary to leaked US intelligence, Trump said, \u201cThey\u2019re not going to be building bombs for a long time,\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that the strikes had set back the programme by \u201cdecades\u201d and that the ceasefire that he declared was going \u201cvery well\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump later told reporters that Israel and Iran were \u201cboth tired, exhausted\u201d, going on to say that talks were planned with Iran \u201cnext week\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may sign an agreement. I don\u2019t know,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s death toll<\/p>\n
The spokesperson for Iran\u2019s Health Ministry has released an updated death toll from Israel\u2019s attacks on Iranian territory, Al Jazeera reported.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Hossein Kermanpour said at least 627 people were killed and 4,870 wounded in Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n
Tehran recorded the highest number of casualties, followed by Kermanshah, with Khuzestan, Lorestan, and Isfahan reporting significant losses, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JERUSALEM: After getting Iran and Israel to end hostilities, US Pres\u00adident Donald Trump said on Wednesday that progress was being made to end Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, as a new ceasefire push began more than 20 months since the start of the conflict. \u201cI think great progress is being made on Gaza,\u201d Trump told reporters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10359,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10357\/revisions\/10359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}