MOSCOW, February 26. /TASS/. US leader Donald Trump pushes forward with plans to attack Iran, and his administration may lift its oil blockade on Cuba. Meanwhile, Hamas is getting ready for a leadership vote amid Israeli military threats. These stories topped Thursday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Vedomosti: Trump pushes ahead with plans to attack Iran
On Tuesday night, Moscow time, US President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address in which he did not mention China for the first time in a while, only briefly referring to continued efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict, and spent relatively more time discussing Iran, the situation around which has been escalating for the second month already. "They [Iran] want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: We will never have a nuclear weapon," Trump said in his speech.
Against this background, the United States has continued to deploy its forces near Iran. The New York Times reported on February 22 that between 30,000 and 40,000 US troops have already been deployed in the region. In mid-February, the US and Iran held two rounds of talks in Geneva which did not yield any tangible results. The Washington Post reported on February 25 that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will hold another meeting with the Iranians in the Swiss capital later on Thursday.
