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President Donald Trump said that if there’s no deal with Iran, then he’ll blame Vice President JD Vance. Speaking at an Easter lunch Wednesday, Trump asked Vance for an update on negotiations with Iran in front of his guests. “He’s working on the deal, right? How’s that moving? Is it OK? The big deal?” Trump said. “It’s going good, sir,” Vance said from the audience. “Do you see that happening?” Trump pressed. “We’re gonna brief you too,” Vance said. “So, if it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit,” Trump said to laughter. “No, I think it’ll be uh. I think it has to happen. I think they’re desperate,” he added.***Leaked White House Video***Trump says he will blame JD Vance if he doesn’t get an Iran deal, but will take the credit for it if he does pic.twitter.com/iE7cL458h0— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 2, 2026Not desperate enough, it seems. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Iran believes it is still in a strong position and is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations to end the U.S. and Israel’s military onslaught, U.S. officials told The New York Times Wednesday. Trump has claimed that the U.S. has satisfied nearly all its objectives in the region—but will continue to hit Iran very hard over the next two weeks. Meanwhile, he has offered no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

We speak with Sarit Michaeli from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem following the Knesset’s passage of a new law mandating death by hanging for Palestinians who are convicted of murdering Israelis. Jewish Israelis will not face the same punishment for similar crimes. The law, which further cements Israel’s apartheid system, has drawn condemnation from rights groups and other countries. “This egregious, draconian law pretends to be somehow … grounded in some sort of objective criteria,” says Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international outreach director. “But essentially, it’s basically specifically written to apply only to Palestinians.”

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Several justices seemed highly skeptical of the administration’s arguments, though a final ruling is not expected for months. “I think the oral arguments went really well for our side,” says Aarti Kohli, the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus and co-counsel in the Supreme Court case. We also speak with Norman Wong, a descendant of Wong Kim Ark, whose landmark 1898 Supreme Court case affirmed birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Citing the Bruce Springsteen song, Wong says that being “Born in the U.S.A.” means someone is part of the national community. “We need to stand as Americans together, regardless of color or religion or where we came from,” he says. “We haven’t always gotten it right with all the people here. But that doesn’t mean we should make it worse.”

Berenjak, a buzzy Iranian restaurant that started in London before expanding abroad, opens a permanent location in Riyadh today, but the mood is dour.

The conflict with Iran has slowed but not stopped progress on autonomous transport in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Riyadh.

The kingdom has lithium and vanadium in its oil-field brine, which Pure Lithium wants to use to produce rechargeable batteries.

The Gulf accounts for around 23% of global, non-China aluminum production, most of which is sold overseas.

The US president said countries that depend on Gulf oil and gas should assume responsibility to “grab it and cherish it.”

President Donald Trump gave a primetime televised address Wednesday to discuss the war on Iran, his first since the United States and Israel launched attacks on February 28. Trump gave few clues about when or how the war could end, but he boasted about killing top Iranian leaders and degrading the country’s military. He threatened to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages, where they belong.” Despite the grandiose claims, built on “lies and delusions,” Trump “did not add anything new,” says Iranian American scholar Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, who calls Trump’s shifting justifications an admission of “defeat in the war of narratives.” We also speak with journalist Spencer Ackerman, who says the U.S. has already lost the war. “Iran has changed the entirety of this conflict,” he says. “It has pivoted this conflict onto its own territory and its own goals, and the United States does not have a military mechanism to redress that, primarily the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz.”