America’s outsider peace duo faces biggest test in trio of hotspots
CNN
The two huddled with Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian officials Tueday. They’re expected back in Washington this week for a meeting of the Board of Peace — Trump’s personal big-dollar private global diplomacy network.
Witkoff and Kushner.
It sounds like an elite law firm, a 1970s cop show or even a duo of visionary architects, since they hope to turn battlefields into futuristic cityscapes.
But Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are running President Donald Trump’s freelance peacekeeping franchise, on which global stability, countless lives and their boss’s best hope of that elusive Nobel Peace Prize depend.
The pair were in the thick of it Tuesday, on an extraordinary double-barreled day of diplomacy in Geneva, huddling with Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian officials. They’re expected back in Washington this week for a meeting of the Board of Peace — Trump’s personal big-dollar private global diplomacy network.
Only one image was released from Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting Wednesday: a handshake in the Oval Office, distributed by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Beyond that single frame, there were no reporters, no statements, no spontaneous gaggle with shout-out questions
Ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, DC, this week, Israel has taken a series of sweeping steps to tighten its grip on the occupied West Bank.
The first week of the partial reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt was marked by confusion, and logistical hurdles, according to Palestinians attempting to cross and multiple sources who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity.
Delegations from the United States and Iran concluded indirect talks in the Gulf Arab state of Oman Friday. It was the first round of negotiations between the two sides since the US and Israel struck the Islamic Republic last summer.
US President Donald Trump warned that Iran’s supreme leader should be “very worried,” as both sides prepare for their first formal negotiations since the United States bombed Tehran’s nuclear program last year.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi is on hunger strike in detention by Iranian authorities, according to a letter by the Narges Foundation, which is run by her family.
Iran conditionally agrees to nuclear talks with US, first since Trump’s military strikes last summer
Iran has tentatively agreed to resume nuclear talks with the US as it tries to avert the threat of strikes, in what would be the first such negotiations since the Trump administration bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites last summer.
Gaza’s only border crossing with Egypt reopened partially on Monday morning after Israel closed it nearly two years ago, according to an Israeli security official, allowing a small number of Palestinians to enter and leave the war-torn enclave.
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt began a trial phase on Sunday ahead of its planned reopening that will allow a limited number of Palestinians to leave the war-torn enclave and completing the first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire plan.