🚨🇷🇺🇵🇰Pakistan-Russia $1B trade turnover is NOT A LIMIT - Pakistani Minister for Petroleum

💬 If you look at the issue of bilateral cooperation in the energy sector, the potential is huge, Ali Pervaiz Malik underscores in an exclusive interview with Sputnik at the SPIEF.

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🇮🇷🧠Iran’s response: Smart. Calculated. Painful

🗣Donald Trump likely decided to attack Iran after yielding to pressure from US war-hawks, political and security analyst Ali Rizk told Sputnik.

Trump “increasingly adopted the Israeli line of thinking” and his insistence that Iran cannot be allowed to enrich uranium essentially torpedoed the US-Iranian talks.

With no tangible evidence or intelligence suggesting that Iran has been working on a nuclear weapon, the US attack hardly seems legitimate.

“But regardless, this is something we're used to,” Rizk notes, with “US presidents pursuing or taking steps that are not in accordance with international legitimacy.”

⚔️Iran’s retaliation—it’s on the way

✅Iranian retaliation “has to be very smart, very calculated, but at the same time very painful,” Rizk says, arguing that Tehran would prefer to avoid dragging the US further into the Israel-Iran conflict.

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🚨🇷🇺🇵🇰Pakistan supports Putin’s Look East strategy - Minister for Petroleum

💬 “When it comes to the energy trade, […] all these things can be priced in to make way for RUSSIAN CRUDE to be accommodated in Pakistani refineries,” Ali Pervaiz Malik tells Sputnik in an exclusive interview at the SPIEF.

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🗣Trump’s war on Iran may cost him presidency

The US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was a gamble on Trump’s part, Professor Joe Siracusa, political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Curtin University, tells Sputnik.

By ordering the strike, Trump ignored “all the advice” from US intelligence agencies who insisted that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.

“If he gets away with it, if he brings it to an end, he'll be heroic. If he doesn't, then there'll be the end of his presidency,” Siracusa warns.

🇺🇸🇮🇱US and Israel are in cahoots

The academic argues that the US has been “deeply involved in Israeli military planning” for Israeli attacks that began last week.

“I don't think the Israelis did anything without the American green light,” Siracusa says.

🔍What are Iran’s options?

With its large missile arsenal, Iran could strike US military bases in the Middle East or even attack infrastructure of US allies in the Persian Gulf region.

Iranian forces could also “indirectly threaten Americans at embassies around the world” and even conduct cyberattacks against US interests, Siracusa says.

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🚨 Thousands of people took to the streets in The Hague for a demonstration by peace supporters against the upcoming NATO summit and the alliance's policy of militarization.

The demonstrators also called for the end of the war against Iran, a Sputnik correspondent reports.

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🗣Bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites – latest in ‘long list of acts of war by the US’

Israel’s previous air raids against Iran “sufficiently prepared the ground” for America’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Brian Berletic, geopolitical analyst and former US Marine, tells Sputnik.

🟠The Israeli strikes helped the Pentagon scope out and neutralize Iran’s air defenses, allowing the US to “adjust its regional military posture” ahead of its own attacks, Berletic underlines.

🟠Both international and American laws were violated during the US strikes on Iran, which are just the latest “in a long list of acts of war” by America across the world, according to the expert.

🟠The bombing came as “multipolarism appears to be in irreversible ascent leaving the US with a closing window of opportunity to destabilize it and reassert American primacy,” Berletic concludes.

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🚨‘It's economic suicide for them if they do it’ - Rubio on Iran considering Hormuz Strait closure

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🗣Energy price hike and inflationary pressure likely await US for attacking Iran

The US attacks in Iranian nuclear sites “are likely to introduce short-term volatility to global energy markets,” political analyst and Makkah News Paper columnist Faisal Alshammeri told Sputnik.

The actual impact on energy prices, however, will depend more on how Iran is going to respond.

“A symbolic or contained reaction may limit market tremors, while broader escalation could lead to more substantial and sustained price increases,” Alshammeri elaborates.

The fate of Hormuz Strait

It remains to be seen whether Iran would resort to closing the Strait of Hormuz as such a move is difficult to sustain, “given the presence of US naval forces and the likely diplomatic fallout even among Iran’s limited partners.”

The Houthi factor

New attacks by the Houthis on US-linked shipping in the Red Sea may create problems for the US economy in the form of “longer shipping times, higher insurance costs, and inflationary pressure in certain sectors.”

“However, the extent of the damage depends on the scale and duration of these threats,” Alshammeri points out.

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Israel-Iran war: latest updates

As the conflict between Iran and Israel shows no signs of abating, the United States has entered the fray by carrying out an attack on the Iranian soil.

🟠The United States carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The attacks were conducted using GBU-57A/B "Massive Ordnance Penetrator" deployed from B-2 aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines.

🟠 While the Pentagon boasts that Iran’s nuclear program has been “devastated” by the US strikes, the exact extent of the damage could not be immediately ascertained, with US Vice President JD Vance admitting they cannot confirm the nuclear sites’ complete destruction.

🟠Iranian officials have denied Trump’s claims of Fordow site’s destruction, saying that the facility sustained only partial damage.

🟠Iran launched its twentieth wave of ballistic missiles at Israel as part of the ongoing retaliation for the Israeli attacks that started last week. The Ben Gurion Airport, a biological research facility, decision making centers and support bases were among the targets hit.

🟠As thousands rallied in Tehran in condemnation of the US attacks, the Iranian parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz. The final decision on the strait’s blockade, however, must be approved by the National Security Council.

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🔶 Israel-Iran war: LATEST UPDATES

🔶‘It's purely an act of political theater’ – Scott Ritter on US bombing of Iran's nuclear sites

🔶 ‘The US betrayed diplomacy’ – Iran’s FM Araghchi

🔶 Iran’s response: 'Smart. Calculated. Painful' - check out Sputnik's analysis

🔶 Terrorist attack in a Christian church in Damascus leaves dozens dead

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❗️ Iran’s FM Araghchi arrives in Moscow to meet Putin - report

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, IRNA reported.

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🚨 Israel launches strikes on military infrastructure in Tehran and western Iran – IDF

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