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“The deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Donald Trump posted yesterday. Everything about this deal puts Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in an impossible position and threatens to destroy the U.S.-Israel relationship.

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• Israel was not involved in the negotiations. The agreement does not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, does not deplete its ballistic missile stockpile, does not end its support for terrorist proxies—none of the stated objectives that justified launching the war in February.
• Instead, it begins a 60-day negotiation window, releases tens of billions in frozen Iranian assets, and, according to Iranian and Pakistani sources, includes a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

That last point is the dagger. Netanyahu has fought to keep Lebanon out of any Iran deal. He simply cannot survive politically—and Israel cannot survive physically—if he accepts terms that end Israel’s war with Hezbollah before Hezbollah is destroyed.

• Elections are scheduled for October. Former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have created a unified opposition and accuse Netanyahu of allowing Washington to dictate Israeli military decisions.
• Last week, Trump handed Netanyahu’s opponents more ammunition for that argument, declaring publicly, “Netanyahu will do whatever I want him to do.” Lapid quoted those words in a press conference.

Thus, Netanyahu is trapped:

• If he accepts the deal, he confirms the charge: He started a war that cost Israel dearly, achieved none of its goals, and surrendered Israel’s sovereignty to a U.S. president who publicly humiliated him.
• Yet if he defies Trump and keeps fighting in Lebanon, he risks losing America’s support—including the 42 percent of Israel’s weapons that come from the U.S. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy put it plainly: “Israel is not in a position to say no to Donald Trump.”

But it is not just about losing America’s support. If Israel keeps fighting in Lebanon, it could jeopardize the whole deal.

• The success of Trump’s grand Iran deal (and his desired title as peacemaker-in-chief) is conditioned on Israel’s surrender. Thus, in Trump’s mind, Netanyahu’s insistence on fighting turns Israel from ally to enemy.

The spirit of Antiochus Epiphanes is in the White House. Hezbollah is about to collapse, and America’s president is swooping in to save it so he can boast about making another peace deal.

• Gerald Flurry wrote last year that Trump had already betrayed Israel once, over the Hamas hostage deal. You could argue this is far worse: Trump is making a deal favoring Israel’s most dangerous enemy in a shameful echo of Obama’s Iran deal.

The U.S.-Israel relationship will be difficult to recover from this. This is the severing—or at least deep fracturing—of the U.S.-Israel brotherhood that Bible prophecy foretold and that Gerald Flurry has warned about for decades.

• And if Netanyahu goes in October, his successors will inherit all the nation’s problems—but lack his will and fight.

It is a stunning example of seemingly counterintuitive prophetic fulfillment:

• When Trump joined Netanyahu in striking Iran, it seemed to strengthen their bond, in addition to weakening or eliminating the threat from the “king of the south.”
• Instead, this conflict has ended up shaking that bond, demonstrating how resilient and strong Iran really is, and risking severely destabilizing Israel.

All as prophecy foretold.

Obama: Trump’s Iran Deal Is No Better Than Mine

Barack Obama thinks President Donald Trump’s Iran nuclear deal, still being negotiated, won’t be any different from his own 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It’s hard to disagree with him.

The former president said during an abc interview yesterday, “It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place.”

• During his first term, President Trump called the Obama deal a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” He said it “didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” He withdrew from it in 2018.
• That deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for Iran suspending—not dismantling—its uranium enrichment program. Yet media leaks suggest President Trump’s negotiations are based on the same premise.

Others have noticed the similarities:

• Journalist Lee Smith wrote in Tablet: “Thus it seems that what Trump has frequently called the worst deal ever negotiated, and has identified for more than a decade as Exhibit A in the case against American loserdom, has now become the pattern of his own Iran policy.”

France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom announced on Sunday that they are ready to lift sanctions on Iran because of the nuclear talks.

• These countries, minus Italy, were party to and proponents of the jcpoa until they activated the agreement’s “snapback sanctions” last August.

Last week, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “The Deadly Delusion in the Iran Talks”:

President Obama made this deal because he shared Iran’s goal of destroying America! President Trump doesn’t have that goal. … But now we see President Trump continuing Obama’s work! How could this possibly happen? Something is dreadfully wrong here.

There are deeper spiritual reasons behind this. If President Trump doesn’t turn this around, Mr. Flurry wrote, “We are heading toward bloody world war!”

‘Gold Rush Atmosphere’ at German Military Air Trade Show

The International Aerospace Exhibition in Berlin, held from June 10 to 14, set records with 110,000 attendees, 750 exhibitors from 37 countries and 300 political delegations. However, what many see as a reason to celebrate is actually a reason for concern.

• Interest is largely driven by Germany’s defense sector, which is booming due to crises, wars and government investments.

There is a “gold rush atmosphere at Berlin’s military air trade show,” Deutsche Welle wrote June 13. Investors are rushing to finance profitable military technologies produced by giants like Rheinmetall and Hensoldt, and start-ups Helsing and Stark Defense, firms from a sophisticated, trusted nation that has a history of military surprise and cruelty.

Germany is ready to “fight tonight” against Russia, Holger Neumann, chief of the German Luftwaffe, told the Telegraph in an interview published today:

“Fight tonight” means if someone calls me now and says, We have the following situation here, we have to be ready now—and we are ready.

We will go in with everything we have in Germany, the air force, but also in nato, to defend our country, our values, our population and our alliance.

Neumann said his forces are prepared to launch devastating air strikes on Russia if nato territory is attacked.

The Telegraph reported: “The Luftwaffe chief’s comments are among the strongest from a German military leader in years, and reflect a fundamental shift in Berlin towards rearmament and a greater role in European security.”

Germany is ready to fight, and its death-ware manufacturers are increasing its potential lethality every week. But Bible prophecy reveals that its first target will not be Russia. The nation is preparing for a much larger world war.

AI Shutdown Could Ignite AI Arms Race

Users of the most advanced artificial intelligence models abruptly found themselves cut off on Friday, after the Trump administration instructed Anthropic to block all non-Americans from using Mythos AI.

• Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos 5, excels at hacking. Anthropic has made it available to only a few governments and large companies so they can secure themselves ahead of a future release.

Last week, it released Fable 5, a public version of Mythos with its more dangerous abilities blocked.

• The U.S. government was warned that Fable 5 could be “jailbroken” to gain access to the full power of the Mythos model.
• The Trump administration issued an export ban, requiring Anthropic to block access to all non-American citizens, even those living in the U.S. or working for Anthropic.
• Since Anthropic does not collect the citizenship details of all its customers, it had no way of enforcing this, so it shut off access to Mythos and Fable for everyone.

This is a watershed moment for AI. It demonstrates the power a government can have by hosting advanced models.

• Fable had only been available for three days before the shutdown. But what if a more established model is cut off? Hospitals are building their medical care around these AI systems. They are becoming core parts of governments, business and even the military.
• Could AI become a new Strait of Hormuz—giving the United States the ability to hold the world to ransom?

America dominates commercial AI. American AI companies have attracted nearly $200 billion in venture capital. The European Union has attracted $16 billion.

• The United States hosts nearly 4,000 data centers, more than anyone else. In second place is the United Kingdom, with 500.
• According to Artificial Analysis’s commonly used leaderboard of large language models, 14 of the top 20 are based in the U.S. Europe has only one in the top 100: Mistral 3 Large, at number 98. China has six models in the top 20.
• America is operating at a completely different scale. Anthropic is using gigawatts’ worth of data center capacity. Mistral is trading in megawatts.

AI is changing fast. Who knows if the models and businesses that are relevant now will still lead the pack in five years. But Europe has to get its act together if it doesn’t want to be dependent on the U.S.

This is yet another issue motivating the Europeans to build a United States of Europe, which will ultimately unify under one leader. It is the only way they can muster the size, resources and leadership to compete.

The Bible prophesies the rise of this strong leader—and even indicates that he may be an expert in AI and similar new technology. Read about this in Gerald Flurry’s article “The Unknown Future of Artificial Intelligence.”

IN OTHER NEWS

Russia bombs major Ukrainian cathedral: Russia fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv this morning, killing five people, injuring 35 others and damaging structures that include the Dormition Cathedral. Founded in 1073, the unesco World Heritage site is among the most revered sites for Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Christians, but now it is smoldering. Many of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supporters portray him as one of the last defenders of Christendom, but since his full-scale invasion began in February 2022, his forces have damaged or destroyed more than 700 religious sites, many of them Orthodox churches, across Ukraine. To understand more about his true character, read “Is Putin the Last Defender of Family Values?”

German airports prepare to defend against Russian drones: Germany’s air traffic control is partnering with Hensoldt and Deutsche Telekom to build an AI-based platform to protect airports and other critical infrastructure from potential Russian drone attacks, Germany’s n-tv reported on Friday. This is part of the “Drone Action Plan Germany” presented at the International Aerospace Exhibition in Berlin, and it aims to coordinate systems such as network towers, airport sensors and military sensors to detect, classify and analyze drone threats. Germany is actively preparing to defend itself against Russia, as prophesied in the Bible.

Bulgaria pushes back on ‘pride month’: Bulgaria’s new government endorsed the country’s “March of the Family” on Saturday. The conservative rally in support of traditional family values countered the annual homosexual pride parade in the capital city, Sofia. “At a time of moral disorientation, social fragmentation and profound demographic crisis, safeguarding the traditional family is not simply a matter of personal choice; it is a cornerstone of our natural security, identity and future,” Member of Parliament Slavi Vassilev said. A trend the Trumpet follows is the English-speaking world, prophetically the nations of Israel, retreating from biblical morality. In this case, a Gentile nation is pushing stronger against this decline than many Israelites. God condemns Israel in Ezekiel 5:6 for rejecting His “statutes more than the countries that are round about her ….”

Qatar tried lobbying for Iran during wartime: The Washington Post reported June 12 that Qatar was trying to talk with the United States secretly on behalf of Iran to end the war in its opening weeks. Citing “Middle Eastern security officials and Western officials briefed on the intelligence,” the Washington Post claims Qatar offered to lobby U.S. President Donald Trump to call the war off early if Iran refrained from attacking its Ras Laffan natural gas complex. Iran attacked the complex anyway, but this is another example of how a country the U.S. sees as an important ally actually supports terrorism.

Conservative Catholic wins Peru’s presidency: Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, won Peru’s presidential election on June 8, beating leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez by only a few hundred votes out of nearly 20 million. Fujimori leads the right-wing Popular Force party. Her platform is socially conservative with strong anti-crime policies, pro-family emphasis, protection of life from conception, and opposition to certain progressive social changes. Her father, who ruled from 1990 to 2000, was an authoritarian populist who ruled with dictatorial powers after a 1992 autogolpe, “coup from the top.” Fujimori’s win continues a shift toward traditionalist Catholic leaders in Latin America. The late Herbert W. Armstrong forecast that the alliance between Europe and Latin America would grow strong, cemented by the Spanish language and the Catholic religion.

U.S. air strike kills leader of Venezuelan gang: Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced that U.S. forces killed Niño Guerrero, longtime leader of the Tren de Aragua gang, in an air strike in Venezuela. U.S. Southern Command carried out the strike on a gang compound, with help from Venezuela’s current government. The U.S. government classifies Tren de Aragua as a terrorist group. The U.S. Justice Department has accused former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro of ties to the gang. Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in January and now faces charges in the United States. Cooperation on this strike shows improved U.S.-Venezuela relations under the new Venezuelan leadership.

New York fans celebrate win, smash and burn: The New York Knicks won their first nba championship in 53 years on Saturday, beating the Spurs in San Antonio. Fans watching in New York City poured into the streets to celebrate, but some descended into what police called “reckless and dangerous behavior,” smashing and burning five yellow school buses used for World Cup fans. In one incident near Times Square early Sunday, a 17-year-old boy was shot in the foot. Gunshots caused panic, and crowds blocked ambulances, but no one was killed. Such shameful displays highlight a deficiency in American moral character that will endanger the nation when times get harder.