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ISLAMABAD (AP) — Iran’s president was traveling to Pakistan on Tuesday for talks with officials who have been mediating negotiations between Tehran and Washington on a permanent end to the war in the Middle East even as discrepancies were emerging on what had been agreed so far.

President Masoud Pezeshkian’s visit to Islamabad comes as technical teams were working on details of the deal, following high-level negotiations in Switzerland on Monday led by US Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

In Tehran, Iran’s capital, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that no visits have been scheduled for the U.N. watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — to see Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States last year. Vance had previously said the negotiations in Switzerland won an agreement for IAEA to inspect the sites.

The IAEA has been in and out of Iran since Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in 2025, but has not been granted access to the bombed enrichment sites targeted by the U.S. in that war.

Security was tight in the area of Islamabad where the Iranian president was to meet with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. It’s Pezeshkian’s first visit since the conflict started with the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28.

Pezeshkian and Sharif were to hold joint news conference after their discussions.

In the initial talks, marking the start of a 60-day diplomatic process that seeks to reach a permanent deal to end the Iran war, Iran and the U.S. agreed to create a “de-confliction cell” to address the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia group. The U.S. said negotiators also discussed “mechanisms” to ensure the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the transit of oil that Iran had effectively blocked during the war, remains open.

Ahead of his meetings in Pakistan, Pezeshkian cautioned that “the effectiveness of the talks depends on full commitment to the agreed obligations and their precise implementation.”

“Progress on this path will be measured by practical adherence to accepted responsibilities,” he wrote on X. “Statements outside the agreed text do not help advance the negotiations.”

Iran suggested the ongoing technical talks in Switzerland have led to the creation of specific negotiation groups, which include those focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues, reconstruction and monitoring, according to a the state-run IRNA news agency.

The report quoted Kazem Gharibabadi, a deputy foreign minister leading the technical talks, saying that the countries involved also formed a contact mechanism over ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz and over the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

It remains unclear whether the de-confliction cell being created will be enough to stop fighting between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel, which occupies part of Lebanon and insists it must maintain a free hand to attack militants launching attacks into northern Israel.

Mediators Pakistan and Qatar said the cell would include the Lebanese government and would “ensure the adherence of the termination of military operations in Lebanon,” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised new questions late on Monday, saying his military still has “full freedom of action to thwart any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of the north.”

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah are signatories to the U.S.-Iran deal, and Netanyahu has vowed to keep his forces in southern Lebanon until any threat to Israel is eliminated. Hezbollah has refused to halt attacks unless Israel commits to withdrawing.

U.S. President Donald Trump later said “we’re going to take a look at it,” when asked about Netanyahu’s comments, adding that he wouldn’t say what action he would take but that the situation would “get solved.”

“I’m a problem solver, I get problems solved real fast, including with Bibi,” he said, using a nickname for Netanyahu.

At the moment, the renewed ceasefire in Lebanon, brokered on Saturday, appears to be holding with no new Israeli or Hezbollah strikes reported overnight.

Lebanon and Israel planned another round of direct talks in Washington on Tuesday, which are expected to focus on developing a plan for an Israeli withdrawal.

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Rising reported from Bangkok and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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PARIS (AP) — Millions of people across France woke up drenched in sweat on Tuesday after another night of scorching heat, with most of the population exposed to extreme and exceptional temperatures.

Temperatures will remain exceptionally high around the clock as the national weather service, Meteo France, placed 54 departments under a red heat wave alert. That is about half of the country.

In a country without widespread air-conditioning, schools, trains and sporting events remain impacted, while some 20 drowning deaths have been reported since the weekend.

Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records.

“Sunshine continues to dominate across France, maintaining oppressive and exhausting heat throughout the country,” Meteo France said. Extreme conditions are expected to last at least until the end of the week, with daytime highs above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in many towns.

“Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” Meteo France said.

The heat wave is exceptionally intense, coming very early in the summer, “but with a still uncertain duration,” the weather service said. It has already been compared to the August 2003 heat wave, when the highest temperatures in over half a century caused an estimated 15,000 deaths, many of them among older people in apartments and retirement homes without air conditioning.

France introduced a heat watch warning system after that heat wave.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month. The above-average temperatures can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.

Across the British Channel, the Met Office issued a red extreme heat warning for Wednesday and Thursday, with forecasts suggesting June’s all-time daily temperature record could be broken.

Temperatures of around 37°C (98.6 F) are expected in southern England, with up to 35°C (95 F) in southeast Wales. The peak of the heatwave is now forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, when highs could reach at least 39°C (102.2 F). Conditions are expected to ease by Friday, the weather agency said.

The EU monitoring agency found that in Europe and globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the continent experienced its second-highest number of “heat stress” days.

Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, especially in southeastern Europe, making the region more vulnerable to health impacts and wildfires.

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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Joseph McGrail-Bateup, an Australian professional air conditioner cleaner and honorary town crier, has been recognized as the world’s loudest person.

Guinness World Records last week acknowledged the 58-year-old Canberra resident recorded the loudest ever shout by an individual. He yelled “now” at 122.4 decibels.

That broke the previous record of 121.7 dB set by Northern Ireland schoolteacher Annalisa Flanagan in 1994. She had yelled an ear-piercing “quiet.”

That is in the noise range of a chain saw, a jet aircraft taking off and an ambulance siren at close range.

The record attempt was not something McGrail-Bateup could train for, he said Tuesday.

“There’s no way that you can actually practice for it. You have to just keep it for the day, especially with the world record attempt,” McGrail-Bateup said.

“It took me seven attempts just for one word, which was the word ‘now,’ and my voice was shot for the next couple of days as well. It was husky. It was terrible. So no, you can’t really practice for it. But it’s a lot of fun when you’re doing it,” he added.

McGrail-Bateup considered himself the world’s loudest man rather than the loudest person, he said. There was no previous record for the loudest man.

“I’m pleased that she (Flanagan) gets to keep her record. So she’s still the loudest woman in the world and I’m the loudest male in the world,” McGrail-Bateup said.

McGrail-Bateup said he stumbled upon Flanagan’s record when searching Guinness World Records unsuccessfully for feats in the realm of town crying.

He became competitively loud when he was appointed the official town crier of the national capital Canberra in 2017. It’s an honorary and part-time role established by the local government which he considers “a bit of fun.” His town crier name is Lord Joseph.

He makes announcements at community events, school fetes and car shows.

With the job came membership of the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Australian Town Criers, a competitive professional organization dedicated to preserving members’ historic and ceremonial roles.

He won a 2024 guild competition with the loudest “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez,” at 98 dB. That was a command for silence and attention before an Australian town crier makes a proclamation.

He experimented with several words for his world record attempt before settling on “now.”

His shout was recorded May 2 in a Canberra radio studio by a professional acoustic engineer and with witnesses present. The files were sent to Guinness World Records, which announced the record Friday.

It’s the second time McGrail-Bateup has broken a world record. In 2019, he broke a speed record for an archer shooting 10 arrows. His time of 60.03 seconds shaved a fraction of a second off a record that had stood since 2015.

Nine months later, a 7-year-old boy shattered McGrail-Bateup’s record by 11.4 seconds.

McGrail-Bateup wasn’t interested in attempting to regain the archery record or in keeping his shouting record.

“If someone beats me, that’s fantastic,” he said. “Records are meant to be broken.”

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By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA, June 23 (Reuters) – Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday reported good progress in peace talks between the United States and Iran, but denied U.S. claims that Tehran would use assets unfrozen as part of a deal to buy U.S. commodities.

“Our colleagues continue to discuss in very good talks yesterday at the technical level,” said Ali Bahreini, adding that two working groups will be established within the coming days to discuss the removal of sanctions against Iran and issues related to Iranian nuclear activities.

The two sides, trying to build on the interim deal they signed last week to end more than three months of conflict, agreed a roadmap towards a permanent agreement within 60 days at the talks in the Swiss mountain resort of Buergenstock, mediators Pakistan and Qatar said.

The U.S. waived sanctions on Iran for 60 days from Monday after the first round of talks.

Bahreini, however, rejected a statement made by U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Monday that the U.S. and Qatar would have control over Iranian funds when they are unfrozen, and the money ⁠could be ​spent on U.S. corn, soy and wheat.

According to Vance, the proposal had been put forward by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

“Iran is the only country to decide what to do with its assets, which are going to be defrozen, and so I reject any claim about that if there would be any role for any other country to have an influence on those decisions or on those processes,” Bahreini told reporters in Geneva.

Iran’s frozen assets largely consist of oil revenues and central bank reserves trapped overseas, built up over years of sanctions. About $12 billion is expected to be released under the initial accord.

Bahreini said there would be some technical arrangements made by Washington and Doha, because the assets were frozen by the U.S., and some are in Qatar.

“Certainly Iran does not allow them to have further influence on the other processes, which have been related to buying the commodities and importing them. That is something that Iran, and only Iran, will decide,” he said.  

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Dave Graham in Buergenstock, Laila Bassam in Beirut and Reuters bureausEditing by Linda Pasquini and Sharon Singleton)

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Trump-Backed De la Espriella Wins Colombia Presidency by Narrow Margin  

Abelardo de la Espriella won Colombia’s presidential runoff election by a narrow margin, defeating left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda after campaigning on promises to combat crime, reduce bureaucracy and strengthen the economy.  

Results released by Colombia’s National Registry showed that with 99.99% of polling stations counted, De la Espriella, 47, received 49.66% of the vote, compared with 48.7% for Cepeda, 63.  

More than 41 million Colombians were eligible to vote in the election. The National Registry reported that 26.3 million ballots were cast in the runoff, including 12.9 million votes for De la Espriella.  

The president-elect was backed by President Donald Trump during the campaign. Following the result, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “He Won, BIG.”  

Supporters celebrating the outcome included some wearing hats modeled on those popular among President Trump’s supporters, bearing the slogan “Make Colombia Great Again!”  

De la Espriella, a defense attorney who branded himself as the law-and-order candidate and adopted the nickname “El Tigre,” or “The Tiger,” celebrated the victory in Barranquilla alongside vice president-elect José Manuel Restrepo, a former finance minister.  

Addressing supporters, De la Espriella said, “Tonight marks the beginning of a new story for the nation, tonight a new era begins, a change of order.”  

He also pledged to govern on behalf of all citizens regardless of how they voted.  

“I’m going to govern for all Colombians. For those who voted for me, and for those who chose the other candidate,” he said.  

In a separate statement, De la Espriella said that “today begins a new stage for our country, a stage built on the free and democratic will of millions of citizens who chose to believe in a great, safe, prosperous Colombia full of opportunities”.  

Cepeda, a close ally of President Gustavo Petro, had not conceded as of Sunday night. While acknowledging the preliminary count, he said the results had not yet been finalized.  

“Once the official canvass takes place and its final result is produced, and the corresponding verifications have been carried out, we will recognize the official result that emerges from that structure.”  

The final certification process remained pending following the release of the preliminary results. 

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Trump-endorsed outsider Abelardo de la Espriella appears to have won Colombia’s presidential election, making Colombia the latest country in Latin America to have chosen more conservative leadership.

De la Espriella was leading over rival Iván Cepeda by about one percentage point — about 251,000 votes — with nearly all votes counted Monday. Officials have not yet declared a winner. Cepeda has challenged the results, but that review is unlikely to change the outcome.

De la Espriella campaigned on a tough-on-crime approach, which includes proposals like canceling peace talks with Colombian rebel groups and building mega prisons, like those in El Salvador. He was endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump who described the lawyer and business owner, nicknamed “The Tiger,” as the candidate who could restore law and order in Colombia.

Here is a look at the Latin American countries that have elected conservative presidents in recent years:

Javier Milei, an economist and television commentator nicknamed “The Lion,” won Argentina’s presidential election in November 2023 by promising to slash government spending and tackle the South American nation’s decades-long inflation problem. The libertarian defeated the ruling Peronist movement.

During his tenure, Milei has stopped the nation’s central bank from printing money to finance the government deficit and has cut government spending by firing civil servants and halting investment in public infrastructure programs, while reducing subsidies for public utility bills.

Argentina’s inflation has fallen from 211% in 2023 to 32% in 2025. However some have blamed Milei’s austerity policies for decreasing the living standards of many Argentines, including public sector workers.

Daniel Noboa, a member of one of Ecuador’s wealthiest families, was reelected to a four- year term in April 2025, winning the election with 56% of the vote. The conservative leader has given the military a more prominent role in providing security in coastal cities overrun by drug gangs fighting over the control of ports and drug trafficking routes.

But the strategy has not substantially reduced homicide rates. The government also has been criticized for human rights abuses, such as extrajudicial executions.

Under Noboa’s watch, Ecuador’s military has started to conduct joint operations against drug traffickers with the U.S. Noboa also pushed for the reopening of a U.S. military base in Ecuador, but the proposal was struck down in a referendum last year.

Nasry Asfura, a real estate investor and former city mayor of the National Party narrowly won the presidential election in Honduras in November, defeating his closest rival by less than a percentage point.

Asfura, who belongs to the same party as former President Juan Orlando Hernández who was pardoned by Trump for a drug trafficking conviction, was endorsed by the U.S. president, who threatened to cut off aid to the small Central American country if Nasfura was not elected. Under Asfura’s administration, Honduras has received dozens of deportees from third countries through an agreement that was signed with the U.S. in early 2025, most of them Guatemalan nationals.

In December, José Antonio Kast, a conservative and a devout Catholic, won Chile’s presidential election with 58% of the vote, defeating a progressive government that had been in power for the previous four years.

In his campaigns, Kast capitalized on fears over increasing crime rates in Chile and said he would expel migrants from countries like Venezuela and Haiti that had been working in Chile without residency permits. One of his first moves after taking office has been to expand a trench along Chile’s borders with Peru and Bolivia in a bid, his government says, to stop drug trafficking and migration.

Kast’s government has recently faced protests over increasing unemployment and budget cuts that have affected public servants.

Laura Fernández, an economy minister under conservative ex-President Rodrigo Chaves, won Costa Rica’s election in February with 48% of the vote, defeating her closest rival by 15 percentage points and surpassing the 40% of votes needed to avoid a runoff election.

During her campaign, Fernández proposed tough-on-crime measures, including a state of exception that would enable police to arrest suspects without warrants, and said she would build a mega prison modeled after El Salvador’s notorious CECOT penitentiary.

Fernández’s government has received several flights with migrants from third countries deported by the U.S. as she complies with an agreement that was signed by her predecessor last year. In June, one of these flights had migrants from China, Vietnam, Colombia and Azerbaijan.

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Follow AP’s Latin America coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) – Scientists studying the comet 3I/ATLAS have determined that this interstellar visitor is remarkably ancient – formed an estimated 10 to 12 billion years ago in a primordial planetary system – and has a composition unlike anything in our solar system.

An evaluation of the chemical make-up of 3I/ATLAS – only the third interstellar object ever spotted in the solar system – provided guidance about the physical and chemical conditions in the planetary system where it formed, the researchers said.

The comet, which has a diameter of around 1.6 miles (2.6 km), is probably the oldest-known object to venture through the solar system, according to Martin Cordiner, a planetary scientist and astrochemist working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature.

The researchers said that 3I/ATLAS appears to have been born in a much colder environment – roughly minus-405 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-243 degrees Celsius) – than the one in which Earth and other bodies in our solar system formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago. They said it has traveled a vast distance since it was somehow expelled from its home planetary system.

“We have never before seen an object like 3I/ATLAS,” Cordiner said.

The researchers measured the ratio of isotopes – different versions of chemical elements such as hydrogen and carbon – observed on 3I/ATLAS using the James Webb Space Telescope.

Its hydrogen isotopes offered evidence about temperature and radiation in the environment in which 3I/ATLAS formed. Its carbon isotope ratios offered clues about the composition of the interstellar gas cloud that gave rise to 3I/ATLAS and its home planetary system.

The comet’s water contained about 30 times more deuterium – a hydrogen isotope – than other comets in the solar system. Its carbon isotope ratios differed from those seen in objects in the solar system and in interstellar clouds and planet-forming disks of material around newborn stars relatively nearby.

Cordiner said 3I/ATLAS likely is a fragment left over from the planetary formation process around another star.

“Our James Webb Space Telescope observations tell us that the planet-forming environment of 3I/ATLAS’s host system was distinct from our own solar system. It was likely colder, and less metal rich, while being more heavily irradiated by UV and cosmic rays,” Cordiner said.

‘ELEMENTS FOR LIFE’

Nevertheless, 3I/ATLAS is rich in organic molecules including those bearing carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. This, according to Cordiner, “shows that despite a cold and distant origin, the volatile elements for life as we know it were abundant in this distant planet-forming disk.”

The carbon composition indicated that 3I/ATLAS formed as much as 12 billion years ago during a period of intense star formation in its region. The universe is thought to have begun with the Big Bang event about 13.8 billion years ago, meaning 3I/ATLAS would date to a time when the cosmos was only about 13% of its current age.

The researchers believe 3I/ATLAS formed in the Milky Way, but based on its age cannot rule out an origin in another galaxy.

“I had anticipated that intergalactic distances were too vast, but in fact it could take as little as a billion years for a fast interstellar object to get here from our nearest galactic neighbors, the Magellanic Clouds,” Cordiner said.

3I/ATLAS may have been hurled from its home planetary system due to gravitational interactions with planets, though a collision of some sort also is considered a possibility.

The two other interstellar objects previously observed journeying through the solar system were comets called 1I/’Oumuamua, detected in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.

3I/ATLAS is now approaching the orbit of the planet Saturn and is expected to pass beyond the dwarf planet Pluto’s orbit in 2029 and exit the solar system’s outer boundary in around 2035.

The researchers are confident 3I/ATLAS is a natural object, despite some speculation last year by others that it was an alien spacecraft.

“While good scientists always remain open to updating their understanding, we take great care to weigh the evidence for each hypothesis,” Cordiner said. “In this case, the evidence was clear from a very early stage that we were looking at a comet-like object, and over time that interpretation has been confirmed by subsequent observations.”

(Reporting by Will DunhamEditing by Bill Berkrot)

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that her country seeks to restart oil shipments to Cuba soon, a move that could provide much-needed relief as the island’s crises deepen given a lack of petroleum.

Sheinbaum said her administration would seek to send the oil via commercial and privately owned firms instead of state-owned companies as it has done in the past.

Mexico became a key fuel supplier to Cuba after the U.S. attacked Venezuela in early January and halted critical oil shipments. But those shipments, which had already been reduced, were completely suspended after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that provides or sells oil to the island.

Since the attack on Venezuela, only one oil shipment has reached Cuba, courtesy of a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of oil that were used up in one month.

The lack of fuel has worsened an energy crisis on the island that produces only 40% of the petroleum it needs, leading to severe power outages, reduced work hours, water shortages, suspended surgeries and spoiled food.

Sheinbaum said she wants to take advantage of a package of free-market reforms that Cuba’s government recently approved, leveraging Mexican business owners who are already on the island.

“The mechanism would be through private companies that have permits to transport fuel to Cuba,” she stated without providing further details. “We hope that commercial transport can resume soon,” she added, without specifying when it might happen.

Sheinbaum said Mexico also would continue sending humanitarian aid.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Wearing the green jersey of Mexico’s national soccer team and a FIFA tie, he waddled into the room ahead of President Claudia Sheinbaum, took a seat facing reporters and quickly became the star of her Monday morning news briefing.

Merlín the duck — Mexico’s unofficial World Cup mascot — didn’t take any questions; his owner, Carla Gómez, did that for him.

Gómez, a street vendor who sells water and soft drinks, introduced her family with pride and determination, presenting them as representative of countless other working-class Mexicans. “We are the working part” of Mexico, she said.

Sitting beside the lectern, with Merlín at the center, were her sons, Carlos, 22, and Cristian, 14, who “doesn’t rest after school” and helps her every day by selling goods and carrying packages.

Merlín, he said, is “the boss of our little business. He’s the one who follows behind us, making sure we’re working and doing things the right way.”

The family takes great care with his diet, feeding him small fish, crickets and, on Sundays, even a meat taco.

Gómez said she was moved by the way Merlín captured the hearts of World Cup fans.

“It has been the best thing that has happened to us in this life,” she said, though she noted that other ducks the family had owned also became local celebrities in Mexico City’s historic center, including Bruna, who wore tennis shoes.

Gómez said she believes the family went viral because people saw in them “a hard-working family, a family that gets up every day to make ends meet.”

The president eventually had to cut off questions to move the news conference along, but not before trying to pet Merlín and posing for a photo with the family.

The scene had barely ended when social media filled with criticism of the president’s decision to welcome the duck while relatives of missing persons — who have been demonstrating and seeking a face-to-face meeting with her since the start of the World Cup — remained unheard.

Wildlife advocates also warned that the popularity of pets like Merlín can have unintended consequences. In a Facebook post, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Unit of Pachuca, a city about 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of Mexico City, cautioned that fame can fuel “impulse purchases and abandonment.”

“Animals do not need owners for fashion; they need responsible caretakers,” the government-run agency wrote.

Merlín, at least, appears to have found them.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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(Corrects identity of poll to Pew Research Center from Reuters/Ipsos in bullet point and paragraph 13)

By Alexander Cornwell and Benjamin Raab

JERUSALEM, June 22 (Reuters) – American allies of President Donald Trump this week defended him to an Israeli public anxious about a U.S. interim deal with Iran and White House criticism that together appeared to signal fissures in Israel’s decades-old alliance with Washington.

The U.S.-Israeli relationship has been on a roller coaster, from the early confidence they shared after their joint attack on Iran to public disagreements between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to end the four-month-old war. 

Netanyahu and many other Israelis see a risk that Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran will empower a state they regard as their deadliest enemy and constrict their ability to respond to threats from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

They sense the U.S. alliance – long the bedrock of Israel’s strategic approach – is under strain as opinion polls show Americans increasingly unhappy with Israel and their strongest champion in Washington appears to be turning away.

“The United States and Israel have an unbreakable bond,” Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said on Sunday after acknowledging there was an “enormous level of anxiety about the relationship.”

He spoke at a foreign policy conference in Jerusalem where concerns about the state of the U.S.-Israel alliance dominated many of the discussions.

Mark Levin, a conservative Fox News commentator and longtime Trump supporter who has broken with the president over the Iran deal, told the audience that while he did not like the agreement and believed that the “Iranian regime” had to be destroyed, he nevertheless praised Trump for what he said was the president’s support for liberty, religious freedom, Christianity and Judaism.

ISRAELIS WORRY OVER CRITICISM FROM REPUBLICANS

Alongside their concerns about the wording of the Iran deal, Israelis worry about Trump’s insistence on Israel agreeing a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and his language responding to Netanyahu’s resistance to those agreements.

In recent weeks Trump has called Netanyahu “fucking crazy,” lectured Israel that “you don’t have to knock an apartment down every time you’re looking for somebody” and publicly pondered asking Syria to replace Israeli troops in Lebanon. 

Vice President JD Vance also struck a more critical tone, saying “Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” adding later that not all criticism of Israel should be dismissed as antisemitism. 

The fact such sharp views are emanating from Trump’s Republican Party is especially worrying for many Israelis, with U.S. Democrats far more vocally critical of Israel than in previous years. 

Sid Rosenberg, a prominent conservative New York radio host, told Israelis that for all their concerns about Trump, he was the best option for them. “You could have JD Vance. Good luck with that,” he said, after acknowledging that “a lot of people in Israel are very, very upset” with the president.

While large majorities of Republicans 50 and older view Israel positively, younger conservative Americans have grown more critical, a Pew Research Center poll from late March showed. Some 57% of Republicans aged 18-49 have an unfavourable opinion of Israel, up from 50% a year previously.

Many Americans, including prominent Democratic politicians, were outraged by the scale of death and devastation in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza after the deadly Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, on Israeli communities and the taking of hostages. 

Israel has also faced criticism over the joint decision to launch the war on Iran, a conflict that is deeply unpopular in the United States, including among Trump’s conservative base.

Victoria Coates, vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank and Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term, suggested on Monday that the U.S.-Israeli relationship was strained but expressed confidence that the leaders of both countries would bring it “back on track”.

A day earlier, speaking at the conference, she had said that recent days had been “challenging for all of us, to put it mildly,” but that there had been plenty of “great and good things” in Trump’s second term “for which we can and should be grateful.”

NETANYAHU NOT CONCERNED BY TRUMP COMMENTS, OFFICIALS SAY

Until recently, Trump had been seen in Israel as its strongest-ever White House ally after his decision in his first term to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and his leading diplomatic role securing the release of hostages last year.

Two Israeli officials familiar with Netanyahu’s thinking said the prime minister was not concerned that comments by Trump and Vance indicated any meaningful U.S. policy changes such as slower arms deliveries. 

Netanyahu believed the comments might be partly geared towards assuaging voters ahead of U.S. midterm elections in November amid growing frustration over Israel and the war, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

The anxiety in Israel has led some prominent figures to say it is time for the country to envisage a future without strong U.S. support and to further build up its own military and technological capabilities. 

Ohad Tal, chair of the U.S.-Israel caucus in Israel’s parliament the Knesset, said Israelis needed to prepare for the day when there is a less supportive U.S. president “and this is why we have to be much more independent and we have to forge new alliances.”

(Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Howard Goller)

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