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After the first round of ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan collapsed over the weekend, we speak to two former nuclear negotiators about prospects for ending the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, including what another nuclear deal might look like. Robert Malley, a U.S. negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal (which President Trump withdrew from in his first term), says Trump's "mercurial" behavior makes it difficult to predict his objectives and the course of any future talks. "Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA" and was blindsided by the U.S.'s decision to pull out of the deal, says Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who served as spokesperson for Iran's nuclear negotiation team from 2003 to 2005. Now its leaders "don't know whether the U.S. is really for diplomacy or not."
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More than a dozen American warships positioned in the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea are acting as a "net," officials said. None of the encounters has required escalation.
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(Second column, 3rd story, link)
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The first-ever pope from the United States is clashing with the White House. Pope Leo XIV, head of the Catholic Church, which counts more than a billion people in the world as its members, has spoken out forcefully against war. He said in his Palm Sunday address that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war … [whose] hands are full of blood." In response, President Donald Trump said Pope Leo is "weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy." Trump is also under fire for sharing an AI-generated image that appears to show himself as Jesus Christ. Pressed about the controversy in an interview on Fox News, Trump's Catholic Vice President JD Vance said the pope should "stick to matters of morality."
"I don't know any other more pressing moral issues than war and peace, taking care of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the stranger," says Father James Martin, a writer and Jesuit priest. "I don't understand how Vice President Vance cannot see that war is a moral issue. … This idea that some people don't deserve mercy is completely against the Christian message."
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A survey from Ipsos and Reuters, released on Tuesday, found few Americans — 24 percent — think the war in Iran has been worth the costs and benefits.
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(First column, 8th story, link)
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The federal government is preparing to begin automatically registering eligible U.S. men ages 18 to 26 for the military draft pool. The U.S. hasn't had a military draft since 1973, but it still maintains a registry of eligible men in case the draft is restored. New rules around automatic military draft registration were tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
We are joined by Edward Hasbrouck, an organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition, which opposes the plan for automatic draft registration and is calling for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act. "The important thing is to take the draft off the table, remove it from the arsenal of war planning. Forcing the government to confront the question, before they make wars, of whether enough people will fight them actually constrains wars before they happen," says Hasbrouck.
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Ship traffic has been halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the U.S. military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Iran denounced Trump's move as an illegal act amounting to "piracy" and has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation. Trump ordered the blockade after the U.S. and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan. Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.
Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, predicts "the U.S. will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up. Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel." Abrahamian warns that soaring energy prices will have long-term implications for the world economy.
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Activists warned Friday that the world is rapidly running out of time to substantially change energy usage and curb global warming as the "deadline" for action fell.
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