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A fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire took hold this week as President Donald Trump insisted that the U.S. warships and troops deployed to the Middle East for the war will remain in the region.
Meanwhile, Iran’s speaker of parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf will reportedly join Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in leading talks in Islamabad with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Ghalibaf reiterated that “Lebanon and the entire Resistance Axis, as Iran’s allies, form an inseparable part of the ceasefire,” following Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon on Wednesday just hours after the ceasefire was announced, which left more than 300 people dead and over 1,150 wounded.
Drop Site’s Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous unpack the context around the ceasefire agreement, the attack on Lebanon, and what it all portends for the U.S. and the region. Lebanese journalist Lylla Younes talks about witnessing Wednesday’s brutal bombardment of Beirut, and Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed remembers his colleague Mohammed Samir Washah, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher who was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike near Gaza City on Wednesday.



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As heavy U.S.-Israeli airstrikes pounded targets across Iran on Tuesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his extreme threats against all Iranians in a post on social media, writing: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” Trump had previously given a deadline of Tuesday 8 p.m. ET to “Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy b******s” otherwise the U.S. would heavily target civilian infrastructure in Iran.
Iran’s revolutionary guard warned on Tuesday that it would “deprive the U.S and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” if Trump carried out his threat. “We have exercised great restraint and had considerations in choosing retaliatory targets, but from now on all these considerations have been removed,” the IRGC said.
Last-ditch diplomatic efforts are under way to avert a further escalation of the war. The Iranian government has repeatedly and consistently laid out its own demands for an agreement setting out a permanent end to the war—trading concessions on its nuclear program for sanctions relief and recognition of its ability to exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain discuss the latest with Sina Azodi, Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.
And as the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon continues, Beirut-based Drop Site contributor Lylla Younes discusses Israel’s ongoing scorched earth campaign, its deliberate targeting of journalists and emergency workers, and its use of tactics to foment sectarianism in Lebanon.



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As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran stretches into its fourth week, Tehran is denying claims by President Donald Trump that the U.S. and Iran are in the midst of negotiations to end the war, saying that no direct talks are occurring. Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, and Murtaza Hussain discuss the latest.
Grim and Hussain are also joined by jouranlist Alexis Daloumis on the ground in Sulaymaniyah, in northeastern Iraq’s Kurdistan region near the Iranian border. Daloumis is the director of the documentary “Belkî Sibê,” that follows leftist Western fighters—of which he was one—who fought alongside the Kurdish-led, American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in their battle against ISIS. 
Analyst Trita Parsi, the executive Vice President of Quincy Institute, also joins to discuss the latest geopolitical developments around the war on Iran.
Grim also discusses his recent trip to Cuba which is suffering from severe power shortages as a result of the Trump administration’s oil blockade which is affecting everything from hospitals to water systems.
And Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks about Palestinian journalist and Drop Site contributor Hossam Shabat on the one-year anniversary of his assassination by the Israeli military.



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On Tuesday, Israel announced that it assassinated Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani and the head of Irani’s internal security force and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling on Iranians to begin preparing to overthrow the government in Tehran. President Donald Trump and his senior aides claim that Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capacity has largely been decimated and that Iran is begging to negotiate an end to the war. Yet Iran continues to dominate access to the Strait of Hormuz and to launch strikes against both Israel and U.S. military outposts and bases across the Persian Gulf—and Iranian leaders say they will determine when the war ends.
On Drop Site’s weekly livestream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss the latest developments on the 18th day of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, including yesterday’s reporting on how special envoy Steve Witkoff has been texting Iranian officials asking to resume talks, messages Iranian officials told Scahill they have ignored. The White House responded angrily to Scahill’s report, calling Drop Site “abhorrent,” and denouncing the publication as engaging in “America Last behavior.”
Scahill then speaks to Dr. Foad Izadi of the University of Tehran about Larijani’s reported assassination, Iran’s current position in the war and the prospects for civil unrest or armed battles inside Iran.
Finally, Grim speaks to Emran Feroz, a journalist and contributor to Drop Site, about the growing conflict on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and last night’s raid on a hospital in Kabul that killed 400 people and wounded about 250 others. Residents in the area told Drop Site News contributor Feroz that the hospital itself was struck during the attack. Pakistan has not immediately commented on the allegation.
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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.”
Rubio subsequently tried to walk his initial remarks back, saying that the media had mischaracterized his comments and—regardless of whether Israel was going to strike—Trump had already made a decision to attack Iran’s ballistic missile capability and go to war. “We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way,” Rubio said. “If you tell the president of the United States that if we don’t go first, we’re going to have more people killed and more people injured, the president’s going to go first. That’s what he did.”
Baghaei called all of these claims by U.S. officials, “Lies after lies.”
“I think the American people deserve to know, to understand what their government is doing,” Baghaie, who is also the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said. “How their government is abusing their money, their tax money, their image in the Middle East, in the Islamic world, just in furtherance of the whims of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is by the way, wanted by the ICC [International Criminal Court], who is a genocidal killer in Palestine.”
Baghaei denied claims by some U.S. officials, including Trump, that Iran had asked to resume talks with the U.S. “They are killing our citizens. Municipalities, schools, hospitals, medical centers, sports clubs—everywhere is being bombarded and targeted by missiles by [the] Israeli and American war machine. Do you think any Iranian with common sense would be really in a position to reach out to the United States under these circumstances?” Baghaei asked. “We were negotiating with the United States,” he said, pointing out that another round of talks was scheduled for Monday, March 2. “Just two days before that, the United States and Israel attacked Iran,” he added. “We were betrayed. Diplomacy was betrayed.”
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