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13-06-2026
WASHINGTON/ TEHRAN: US president Donald Trump said Iran has “taken too long to negotiate a deal” and that it will “have to pay the price” as a result.
He did not clarify what action he intended to take but the US military has been striking Iranian targets, including air defences and radar sites, near the Gulf. It is also not clear what this means for the ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the war, with Trump previously insisting that a deal could be reached.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said:
Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!
Netanyahu calls Tayyip
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also posted a message on social media around the same time as Trump, again insisting that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon and defending Israel’s decisions to attack the country.
In a separate post on social media, Netanyahu took aim at the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, calling him an “antisemitic tyrant”. This is likely a response to Erdogan’s earlier remarks condemning Israel’s “aggression” (see post at 11:52).
‘Neither war nor peace’
The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Tehran and Washington must move beyond “this state of neither war nor peace”, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency. His statement came after the US and Iran traded fire last night in the biggest escalation since a ceasefire was agreed on 8 April. The back-and-forth strikes have raised questions over whether the truce remains intact, and threatens to derails diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the war.
Pezeshkian said the Iranian former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a bombing on the first day of the war, had “repeatedly said that the situation was neither war nor peace, and the issue had to be resolved”, suggesting that the only way to move forward is to negotiate.
He added: At that time, we discussed with him that if we wanted to resolve the situation of neither war nor peace, what should we do? What should we do if we did not negotiate and it was on this basis that the leader allowed the talks to continue?
We must come out of this situation with neither war nor peace. War is definitely not in the country’s interest but it is not the case that if they want to violate our dignity, our soil and our land, we will surrender or back down. They dream of such a thing. This is not something we want to back down from.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Syria have reached a point where they also pose a threat to Turkey, media reports.
Speaking to members of the Turkish parliament, he called for an end to Israel’s “aggression”, which he said is a threat to the entire world.
Erdogan also claimed that there are initiatives, led by Israel, to destabilize the Mediterranean region. He vowed a “clear and forceful” response from Ankara to any action that violates the rights of Turks and Turkish Cypriots.
Asian stocks have fallen sharply after Iran and the US exchanged their biggest round of fire since a ceasefire was agreed in April.
Japan’s Nikkei index dropped 2%, while the tech-heavy South Korean Kospi slumped by about 6% although it is still up by more than 70% in the year to date.
However, oil prices have actually fallen a bit this morning, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, down 0.2% to $91.28 a barrel. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
