Monday, June 22, 2026

Meloni tells Trump to 'focus on your own popularity' as row escalates





Meloni tells Trump to 'focus on your own popularity' as row escalates


1 day ago
Joshua Cheetham


Handout via REUTERS
Giorgia Meloni talked to the US president on Wednesday at the G7 summit in Evian in France


Italy's Giorgia Meloni has again hit back at US President Donald Trump on social media after he questioned her political popularity and repeated his claim that she asked "over and over" for a photo together.

Trump said on Saturday that the prime minister was "doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity".

He also accused her of not supporting US efforts to prevent Iran "from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapon".

In a statement on Instagram, Meloni said Trump's "constant, unprovoked attacks" were "senseless".

"As for my popularity, being your friend has certainly not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you," said Meloni.

"My popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours," she added.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump also said Meloni had caused "a great logistical inconvenience" by barring the US from using Italian air facilities for American military operations in Iran.

But the Italian leader said the use of Italian bases "is governed by agreements that we have always respected, and that cannot be violated as long as I am prime minister".

On Friday, Meloni said she had been astonished by Trump's initial claim that she "begged" for a photo during a G7 meeting this week in France.

The continuing exchange between the pair has highlighted a developing rift between the two countries since Trump's military action against Iran this year.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has cancelled a trip to the US early next week.



'Neither I nor Italy ever beg': Meloni on Trump after 'false' anecdote


Trump and Meloni were pictured in close conversation at the G7 summit, and the Italian leader later told reporters their relationship was unchanged and there had been "no recriminations".

But soon afterwards, Trump gave a phone interview with Italy's La7 TV channel in which he alleged: "She begged me to take a photo with her; I felt sorry for her."

"She's probably happy I spoke to her," he said. La7 did not produce Trump's original words in English, but voiced them over in Italian.

Responding to the claim, Meloni in an Instagram video said she was "frankly stunned".

"I don't know why the US president behaves this way towards allies," she said, adding it was not the first time it had happened.

"But there is one thing he needs to remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg," she said.

Meloni received support for her comments from across the Italian political spectrum.

The leaders also clashed earlier this year after Trump accused Pope Leo XIV of being "WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy" in a Truth Social post, later telling reporters he was "not a big fan".

Meloni later said the comments were "unacceptable".

The two country leaders have had a close political relationship, with Meloni the sole European leader to attend Trump's inauguration in January 2025.

Italy's Meloni says Trump 'made up' story that she 'begged' him for photo at G7


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"My father opened his home to Jews and Yad Vashem did not open their home to us."


From Wikipedia:


Khaled Abdul-Wahab


Khaled Abdul-Wahab
Khaled Abdul Wahab in 1936
Born1 March 1911
French protectorate of Tunisia
Died4 September 1997 (aged 86)
Tunisia

Khaled Abdul-Wahab (1 March 1911 – 4 September 1997) was a Tunisian Arab Muslim man who saved several Jewish families from Nazi persecution, in Vichy-controlled Tunisia during the Holocaust.[1][2] He has been called the 'Tunisian Schindler'.[3]

Wartime rescue of Jews

Abdul-Wahab, the son of a wealthy aristocratic family, had frequently travelled abroad during his youth, mostly to France. Before the war he had studied art and architecture in New York.[4] He was 31 when German troops occupied Vichy Tunisia in November 1942. French Tunisia was then home to approximately 100,000 Jews. Under the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies, they were forced to wear yellow badges and were subject to fines and having their property confiscated. More than 5,000 Tunisian Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died. Another 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps.

Abdul-Wahab, acting as an interlocutor between the Nazis and the population of the coastal town of Mahdia, heard that German officers were planning to rape a local Jewish woman, whom he realized must be Odette Boukris, the wife of an acquaintance. He plied the German with wine until the German was drunk and drove to the oil factory where the family had taken refuge, and picked up the Boukris family and their neighbours, the Ouzzan family,[5] 25 people, and took them to his family's farm, and kept them there for 4 months, allocating a small room to each family member. Despite the contiguity of Khaled's farm to a Red Cross camp where injured German soldiers were tended, none of the farm-hands, who knew of the presence of these hidden Jews, revealed the fact. They stayed until the Nazi occupation ended, and in April 1943, with the arrival of the British at Mahdia, all the families returned to their homes.[4][6]

In December 1942, he helped save a Jewish family of nearly two dozen people. One of them was Eva Boukris, 13 years old at the time. All able-bodied men of Boukris' family were ordered into forced labour by the Germans. The family was offered protection by Khaled who ferried all the women, children and old men to his farm. The family was provided lodging by Khaled in the stables of his farm. Soon after a German unit arrived in the area. Khaled instructed the family to hide their yellow badges, stay in the courtyard and keep away from the main house. In order to keep the family hidden, he invited the German unit to his house. By the night, two drunk German soldiers wandered to the courtyard. They started banging on the door of the courtyard saying, "We know you're Jews and we're coming to get you!" The family upon hearing these threats hid all the girls. Khaled reached there and managed to convince the Germans to leave the family alone. Next day he apologised to the family for the threats by the German soldiers and promised them that such an incident would never happen again. Eva and her family passed the rest of the German occupation on his farm.[6][7]

"Righteous Among the Nations"

Robert Satloff, who had been searching for records of Arabs who had saved Jews from the Holocaust, was first informed of Abdul-Wahab by Odette Boukris' daughter, Anny Boukris, who had also been hidden by Abdul-Wahab at the age of 11; shortly after recording her testimony, she died at age 71. Satloff then went to Mahdia and confirmed the story.[8]

Although nominated, Abdul-Wahab still has to be approved by the Yad Vashem commission that grants the honor. Yad Vashem has conferred the honor on 60 Muslims, including Turks, Tatars and Bosnians, with Mohammed Helmy as the only such Arab. Most of the Muslims who received the award were Albanians. Abdul-Wahab's case has already been once studied by the Righteous Among the Nations Department of Yad Vashem but it was declined on the basis that Khaled Abdul-Wahab did not risk his own life; that he had "hosted" rather than hidden Jews, and that the Germans were aware of the presence of Jews on his family's farm.[4] Saving Jews in Tunisia was not against the law at the time and the saviors did not risk their own lives and safety which is a necessary condition in proclaiming a person Righteous Among the Nations.[9] His daughter Faiza Abdul Wahab commented: "My father opened his home to Jews and Yad Vashem did not open their home to us."[4] Specifically, investigations revealed, through interviews with Anny Boukris and Edmee Masliah (Ouzzan), that the Germans were fully aware of the situation, that the male Jews continued to work under German supervision, and that, during German visits, the group would put on their yellow badges in order to be counted to ensure none had escaped in the meanwhile. They also were furnished with medicine by the German Red Cross facility nearby.[5]

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Trump confirms Keir Starmer is resigning as PM ..... before Starmer has confirmed it himself


Thanks MF:


BREAKING: President Trump confirms Keir Starmer is resigning as Prime Minister… before Starmer has confirmed it himself. The final humiliation.


From the FB page of:


Piers Morgan
@piersmorgan
BREAKING: President Trump confirms Keir Starmer is resigning as Prime Minister… before Starmer has confirmed it himself. The final humiliation.




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Sunday, June 21, 2026

Israeli said "maybe the US needs another Pearl Harbor or 9/11”"


Thanks MF:


From the FB page of:

user avatar
Mario Nawfal
0xMarioNawfal
@MarioNawfal
🇮🇷🇮🇱🇺🇸 Researcher Ben Sabti posted (and quickly edited) that the U.S. “maybe needs another Pearl Harbor or 9/11” to remember who its real enemies and friends are. To give you all context, Beni Sabti is an Iranian-born Israeli Iran expert at a major security think tank, Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. He quickly tried walking it back, claiming he doesn’t wish for an attack, but said that America’s current approach is dangerously naïve. Even with the clarification, it shows how frustrated some hardliners in Israel are with Trump’s Iran policy. Writers: Claudio, Daniel
22:28 · 20 Jun 2026120kViews
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Israeli threatening Trump (and Wanks) a la 9/11


Thanks MF:


Americans need to begin delving into Hebrew language posts. They will be astonished, to say the least.






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Why Lebanon may make or break the Iran-US deal




Why Lebanon may make or break the Iran-US deal

Israeli escalation in Lebanon threatens to undermine agreement between Tehran and Washington and risks further regional destabilisation, analysts say.

By Justin Salhani
Published On 21 Jun 2026

Beirut, Lebanon – The memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran leaves no room for doubt, declaring “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon,” between the two countries and their allies.

“The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” the interim agreement signed on Wednesday added.

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Yet Israel appears to either have not received the memo or to be deliberately ignoring it.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have continued in the days since the MoU’s signing, bringing the death toll since the start of Israel’s air and ground offensive on March 2 to more than 4,000. These deadly strikes led to Iran postponing talks with the US that had been planned for Friday in Switzerland.

The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Lebanon’s government have both demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory although the former has said that should come by linking Lebanon to the Iran negotiations while the latter prefers direct talks with Israel.

“Lebanon is at the beginning of the agreement because the Iranians want to bring home that Lebanon’s territorial integrity is essential to the agreement, the success of the [MoU],” said Michael Young, a Lebanon expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Israel to ‘torpedo’ Iran-US deal

Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been fighting since October 2023, but Israel has twice intensified the conflict – in September 2024 and March this year – pummelling Lebanon with bombs and invading its territory.

The March intensification came after Hezbollah fired on Israel for the first time in more than a year following the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and as a response to more than 10,000 Israeli ceasefire violations since late 2024.

Since then, Israel has killed at least 4,057 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 12,121. Israel has targeted paramedics and journalists and razed dozens of villages.

While the US has tried to declare several ceasefires in Lebanon, the reality on the ground has played out differently.

US President Donald Trump has made several statements on Lebanon, including that Israel needs to scale back its operations there, but Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that their ability to continue operations in Lebanon must be protected.

“Israel is fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed,” Trump said on Tuesday at a G7 summit in France. “And you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah. That I can tell you.”

Trump also said he was “not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah. They should have been able to do the job faster. It just goes on forever.”

Analysts said they believe the presence of Lebanon in the MoU means that Iran feels strongly about the situation there and the US, which also enjoys positive bilateral relations with the Lebanese government, may be willing to put pressure on Israel to stop its military operations in the country.

“The US wants to split out the Lebanon and Iran conflicts,” said David Wood, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst on Lebanon. “It can help Lebanon by insisting that Israel implement the June 3 proposal for a bilateral ceasefire.”

“This approach would give the Lebanese state an opportunity to show that it can assert control over Lebanese soil effectively and defend the country by nonviolent means, as opposed to Hezbollah’s strategy of armed resistance against Israel,” Wood added.

But Israel may have other thoughts.

Young said Israel “is going to try to torpedo” the MoU and the talks between Iran and the US. “They don’t want these negotiations to succeed, so their way to do so is to basically continue the war in Lebanon,” he added.

According to Karim Safieddine, a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, there is “no political, technological, industrial, economic incentive for Israel to stop the war on Lebanon”.

What’s Hezbollah’s role?

Iran must also decide what it will do if Israel refuses to stop attacking Lebanon and the US is unable or unwilling to pressure the Israeli government.

Safieddine said there are divisions inside Iran, including in its state apparatus, about how far it should go to ensure Israeli aggression in Lebanon stops. After renewed Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Saturday despite another declared ceasefire, Iran announced the closure of the economically important Strait of Hormuz once again.

With the MoU, many people in Lebanon hope the end of Israel’s war is approaching. But there are still issues that need resolving.

In a speech on Wednesday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem praised the movement’s patron.

“We … thank the Islamic Republic of Iran for linking Lebanon’s arena as both a resistance movement and a people to a spirit of readiness for sacrifice that compelled” Israel to “halt its aggression”, he said.

Israel and Lebanon are due to continue direct negotiations next week, and Hezbollah’s disarmament remains a major issue. The Lebanese government has moved forward with efforts to disarm the group since early 2025, but the second Israeli intensification of the conflict halted these efforts.

“Lebanon’s political leadership finds itself in yet another bind under the US-Iran MoU,” Wood said.

“On the one hand, Lebanon understandably wants to take charge of its own future, including the path towards a sustainable end to the Israel-Hezbollah war. On the other hand, it is hard to fault President [Joseph] Aoun for welcoming Iran’s insistence on including a Lebanon ceasefire in the MoU, even if it has failed to end the fighting to date,” he added.

“Lebanon has very limited agency in addressing the fundamental conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, so inevitably, Beirut will need support from outside in the coming period.”

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Vance In Switzerland As High-Stakes Iran Talks Get Underway: What We Know So Far








by Tyler Durden
Sunday, Jun 21, 2026 - 10:45 PM


Qatar's Foreign Ministry has formally confirmed the launch of the talks between the United States and Iran with the mediation of Qatar and Pakistan in Switzerland, with the Iranian delegation headed by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

US Vice President JD Vance is leading the American side along with envoy Steve Witkoff. Also gathered at the Buergenstock Resort Lake Lucerne, near Stansstad, are Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Qatar has expressed "its aspiration that these meetings will lead to the conclusion of a comprehensive and permanent agreement addressing all aspects covered in the Memorandum of Understanding." Iran has reiterated it wants a comprehensive settlement and final end to the war. But it also demands a final Lebanon-Israel peace settlement be linked in. Already there could be an inkling of progress on the nuclear front:

  • PAKISTAN:US, IRAN AGREED ON REDUCTION OF ENRICHED URANIUM LEVEL
  • PAKISTAN:IRAN'S ENRICHED URANIUM TO BE REDUCED FROM 60% TO 0.7%
  • IRAN PRESIDENT SAYS QATAR TO RELEASE $6B AS TALKS START: IRNA


The last time Vance sat physically across from Iran's lead negotiator Ghalibaf was a full ten weeks ago, in mid-April. Interactions appear to initially be only through intermediaries, which will build up to face-to-face meetings, as happened in prior failed rounds.

Qatar's foreign ministry has previewed the following planned format to the opening of the talks as follows:The ministry statement says “specialized technical and expert groups have been formed to negotiate the terms of the final agreement, which will cover all aspects of the Memorandum of Understanding” between the US and Iran.
“Additionally, follow-up groups have been established to oversee the implementation of the Memorandum, monitor progress achieved, and work toward the conclusion of the final agreement,” it added.
“This reflects the commitment of all parties to moving forward in the negotiation process in good faith, with the aim of reaching a comprehensive and sustainable agreement.”

Of course, in terms of "implementation" of just the MoU itself, things are not quite there yet, as sporadic fighting and Israeli aerial attacks continue in Lebanon, which could serve to derail the Switzerland process at any moment.


IRNA News Agency ☫
@IrnaEnglish
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After roughly 45 min, the bilateral meeting between FM @araghchi and his Swiss counterpart @ignaziocassis came to a close at Bürgenstock Hotel. Quadrilateral talks between Iran, the US, Pakistan, and Qatar are expected to commence shortly at another venue on the same premises.
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Additionally, Iran has declared it has 'closed' the Strait of Hormuz just this weekend, but which the US military has been denying is a reality. VP Vance in media appearances has also been downplaying it.

The Lebanon situation seems the bigger, more pressing threat to the peace process - at least from Tehran's point of view. Dozens of people in Lebanon have been killed while at least six Israeli soldiers have been slain, with 20 wounded over past days of Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks.

As a reminder, President Trump doesn't want to oversee an economic catastrophe driven by a worldwide energy crisis. It seems he's ready to anything to not let it happen under his watch:


President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was motivated to finalize the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran to prevent “economic catastrophe” if the war was not resolved soon.

“So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover, he was always the one I didn’t want to be,” Trump said of the 31st president whose policies are often blamed for starting the Great Depression.

“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is, every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship,” Trump said during a press conference Wednesday on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Évian, France.

And so judging by this and other of recent Trump admissions, Iran clearly enters Switzerland in very strong negotiation position. Its current rhetoric regarding the Strait of Hormuz also reveals this.


Clash Report
@clashreport
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JD Vance met with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Asim Munir in Switzerland.
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Tehran has accused the US of a "clear breach of its commitments" and announced Saturday that "the Strait of Hormuz will be closed to the passage of vessels," according to state broadcaster IRIB.

For more on the details of the format, CNN has reported some further information in the following:

  • When and where do the talks start? US and Iranian negotiators will begin their meeting at around 1 p.m local time (7 a.m. ET) at the Swiss mountain resort of Bürgenstock, an Iranian source told CNN.
  • Who will be there? Both the United States and Iran have sent high-level officials to Switzerland. Vice President JD Vance is heading up the US side, while Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will lead Tehran’s delegation, Iranian media outlet Saberin News reported Saturday.
  • What format will they take? Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, who is part of the Iranian team, earlier told state media “the Iran-US talks will be held in a quadrilateral format, with the presence of Pakistani and Qatari delegations.”
  • What will be discussed? Lebanon is likely set to top the agenda after clashes between Israel and Hezbollah threatened the nascent agreement between the US and Iran. Vance says he hoped he would make advancements on negotiations surrounding the handling of Iran’s nuclear materials.

To put things in perspective about the long road ahead, analyst and reporter James Bayes - who is on the ground for the talks in Switzerland, has offered the following: "This is a very different deal from the Iran nuclear deal that was done by [former US] President Barack Obama … things have changed completely. But I think it’s worth looking at that deal for one reason, which is the timeline – how long these things take."


"Because when they did an interim deal then, in November 2013 until the final deal in 2015, it took 597 days," the correspondent added. "So, even though the circumstances have changed – it’s a very different deal and they’ve got the knowledge of that deal as well which is helpful – it’s a lot to do in just 60 days."


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