Sporadic shooting resumes in Hormuz - war restarting?

Veterans march on May 25 against Iran war and Trump in Chicago

• Iran confirms it shot down another Pentagon MQ-9 surveillance drone and fired upon a RQ-4 drone & F-35 jet forcing them to flee the country’s territorial airspace. Iran reserves the right to respond to ceasefire violations. Iran also says the US violated the ceasefire by harassing Iranian commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz in the last 48 hours. The statement says Washington is acting in bad faith. Iran’s leader, Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, in a statement says: 'The hands of time will not turn back. Regions, nations & lands will no longer act as shields for US bases. Not only will America lack a safe haven for its mischief and military bases in the region, but its former status is fading day by day. The US is unwilling to lift the naval blockade & even after a MoU and reopening of the Strait of Hormoz, Iranian ships must coordinate with the US military & obtain its permission to exit the region. This is really bad and Iran will not be accepting this agreement on these terms.' This so-called US blockade is costing lots of money that Washington does not have as it sits on $38 trillion of debt.

• Sovereignista: Talking about normalizing Israel under the guise of Iranian hoped for Peace Agreements Trump says...'Sign the Abraham Accords and normalize Israel, or there is no peace.' A stumbling fantasy and attempt at outright blackmail, called ‘transformative’. (For who, we may ask?) The countries involved are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan. For once Saudi Arabia kept to their long-standing policy – no movement on these Accords [until] there is a land for Palestine. Pakistan also declined so far pointing out a long-standing clause printed on Pakistani passports stating they are valid for all countries except Israel — underscoring the official position of non-recognition toward the Israeli state.

• Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi: 'Hezbollah strikes tanks, while the Zionists bomb apartment blocks, and Western journalists and diplomats pretend that they represent the civilized world. They are the barbarians of our time.'

• As always Israel vows to bomb Beirut and begins a campaign of carpet bombing Lebanon. Civilians are fleeing Dahiyeh in south Beirut now. Israeli attack on Beirut or southern Lebanon suburbs risks total collapse of talks.  The empire is working very hard for this war to continue.
• Financial Times: Nine countries have left the Czech coalition for supplying ammunition to Ukraine. According to Czech president Petr Pavel, currently only nine countries are funding the initiative, whereas last year there were 18. "The difficulty is that only about nine member states are making a financial contribution. Within the framework of this initiative, up to 50 percent of all large-caliber ammunition is supplied to Ukrainians, so in this sense it is difficult to replace it with anything else," he said. Pavel’s office refused to name the countries that recently left the initiative. 

• Pope Leo XIV: "In our time, a culture of power is taking hold, in which the availability of resources and the ability to dominate tend to dictate the agenda and criteria for decision-making. In this way, the common good of humanity is relegated to the background and the concrete tragedy of peoples at war is reduced to a secondary consideration in relation to strategic interests. This culture of power infiltrates society, changes relationships and behaviors, and grows by normalizing war, pursuing ever-greater military power, taking advantage of the crisis of multilateralism and fueling a false realism that insists that there is no alternative."
• Armenia and the US have signed a strategic partnership agreement. (Another way for Washington to destabilize the region.) The agreement was signed by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The parties concluded a framework memorandum on the extraction, processing, and supply of minerals and rare earth metals critical to the US. As part of the TRIPP project ('Trump’s Road to International Prosperity), the parties confirmed a plan to create a transit route through Armenia’s Syunik region to the Azerbaijani enclave Nakhchivan.

• Dmitry Medvedev: Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has taken a course of breaking ties with Russia, and this must be admitted directly. Moscow's strategic partner is the Armenian people, and not any particular Armenian leader. Armenia will lose the Russian market and all of the EAEU as a result of Pashinyan's course. Pashinyan is actively pushing Armenia onto the path of Banderite Ukraine. Pashinyan has put relations with Russia, the CSTO, and the EAEU under direct threat, and his actions will have consequences.

• Sergey Lavrov urged the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to evacuate the US embassy in Kiev. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, spoke by phone with  Secretary of State Rubio on the instructions of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lavrov informed Rubio that Russian Armed Forces are beginning systematic strikes on objects located in Kiev and drew his attention to the recommendation to urgently evacuate US diplomatic personnel. Additionally, the Russian Foreign Minister expressed regret that “the arrogant efforts of Euro-elites” and the Kiev regime are undermining the Anchorage agreements. Strikes will also be carried out in Kiev, among other things, against places of design, production, programming and preparation for the use of UAVs. The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attack on the dormitory in Starobelsk has “exhausted the patience”. 

• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico: If Ukraine wants to join the EU, it must 'make concessions for the sake of peace.' The Slovak Prime Minister added that Kiev cannot count on accelerated accession to the union. "I will repeat for the third or fourth time: Ukraine cannot bypass those who are already very well prepared for accession — Montenegro, Albania, Serbia," he stated.
• John Perry and Roger D. Harris: “If we have to kill people so we can have peace of mind, we’ll do it. If we have to resort to repression to control the country, we’ll do it.” (Juan Orlando Hernandez, former US and Canadian-backed Narco-President of Honduras, 2014-2022). Governance in Honduras shifted sharply to the extreme right within months of National Party’s Nasry Asfura taking office on January 27, succeeding the Libre party’s progressive Xiomara Castro. In the November 30, 2025 elections, the National Party was trailing a poor third before Trump threatened to end all aid to Honduras unless Asfura won. Even then, Asfura had only a wafer-thin plurality, which might well have disappeared had the electoral council not broken its mandate by halting the count before all the votes had been tallied. Compounding this blatant interference, Trump announced just two days before the election that he was pardoning former Honduran president and National Party stalwart, Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been extradited to the US and was serving a 45-year sentence for narcotrafficking. The wider conspiracy has been revealed in a trove of leaked audio recordings, now dubbed “Hondurasgate.” The 37 recordings appear to show that Hernández, still in the US, is preparing a return to Honduran politics and, in league with Republican party officials, is actively producing propaganda directed against progressive governments across Latin America. Since taking office, Asfura wasted no time consolidating control over Honduran institutions. The elections left the Libre party with fewer than one-third of the seats in the National Congress, reverting to the historic pattern in Honduras in which the National and the Liberal parties, both neoliberal and subservient to Washington, swap power. This has enabled Asfura to move quickly against his enemies. Read the entire story at https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/hondurasgate