Two Days of Diplomacy, No Breakthrough — and the White Flag Trump Demanded From Tehran

For two days, Jared Kushner shuttled between the two sides of the Gaza war. What came out of it was machinery, not movement: two working groups, an agreed line about reconstruction — and no sign that either side has given ground. On the other front, the same day marked the 60th day of the interim deal with Iran, under threats from both directions.

Gaza: the mechanism is built, the positions are not

Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and envoy, met Hamas' political chief Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo on Sunday — a two-hour meeting with two fellow envoys and officials from the mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, the Associated Press reports. On Monday he sat down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem for several hours; Nickolay Mladenov, director of the US-created Board of Peace, was also in the room, according to two sources familiar with the plans cited by Reuters.

The two sides emerged with very different accounts, and both are worth reporting. Netanyahu's office called the talks deep and constructive and said Israel and the board agreed to establish two working groups — one on disarmament and demilitarization, one on public health and clean water — with demilitarization to be prompt and completed before any reconstruction. A Board of Peace official told Reuters the meeting was in-depth and very productive and that agreement had been reached on a path forward; he offered no details. An Israeli official, by contrast, said there was no breakthrough: Netanyahu made clear the military would not withdraw behind the demarcation line of the October ceasefire and would keep operating in Gaza, including against those involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Hamas, which says it agreed to the 15-point roadmap, demands a halt to attacks and a withdrawal before implementation begins. Since October, Reuters reports, more than 1,200 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza. Israel holds about 60 percent of the enclave, home to roughly two million people. The context is laid out in the fifteen-point order of operations and the anatomy of the 2026 war.

Hormuz: day 60 under mutual threats

The June interim deal declared an immediate and permanent end to military operations on all fronts. It unraveled within weeks: Trump called it over on July 7, and Iran's foreign ministry declared it suspended a week later, Reuters reports. Under the memorandum, the two sides committed to negotiating a final agreement — covering broader issues including Iran's nuclear program — within a maximum of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent. Monday was exactly that day. The story of the memorandum and the waterway that never reopened is told in the Hormuz deadlock; the Versailles memorandum met the same fate.

Trump, in a phone interview with Fox News cited by Reuters, said Iran should surrender: they should put up the white flag. Asked about the talks between Oman and Iran to restore commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — which carried 20 percent of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas before the US-Israeli attacks began in late February — he warned that if Oman gets in the way, it will be bombed. The dispute has driven up fuel prices and added pressure on Trump to end a war that is unpopular at home before the November midterms; the midterms, he said, have nothing to do with his thinking. On Monday morning he wrote on his social network that the number one goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon in any way, shape or form.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran, because of the deadlock, has shifted its policy from defensive to fully offensive — and that if the interim deal is not fully implemented within weeks, Iran will escalate tensions in and beyond the Strait of Hormuz and launch an attack.

Ben-Gvir: the arithmetic of 30 to 40 a night

Israel's domestic politics weighs on the equation in its own way. Remarks published Sunday show where the campaign is heading. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister and the extremist flank of Netanyahu's coalition, told Rom Braslavski, a former hostage freed from Gaza — the Associated Press reports — that it is no secret he disagrees with the prime minister: targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night; there are people there who are not worthy of life, they are not even people. Similar statements have previously been presented to the UN's world court as evidence of genocidal intent; Israel denies the charge. Israel's domestic media, per AP, gave the remarks scant coverage — ahead of the Oct. 27 elections, for which Likud picked its candidates on Monday and in which, per Reuters, the members' shift to the right could threaten Netanyahu's chances.

The most important name that was in no headline: Bahar Shadmehri

Today's headlines left no room for one name: Bahar Shadmehri, seventeen years old, from Neyshabur. According to Javidan Iran, she was killed on the evening of the 19th of Dey by direct fire from security forces. A viral video of the moment she was hit shows her trying to flee at the sound of gunfire, struck from behind; she was buried in the village of Shadmehrk near Neyshabur. On a day when diplomacy and threats bargain over the region's fate, she reminds us from the other side of the equation that the weight of every decision lands on someone who has no seat at any table.## The takeaway

Three news lines, one picture: in Gaza, American diplomacy has built the negotiating machinery but neither side has budged; in Hormuz, the 60th day of the deal passes under threats from both directions; in Tel Aviv, the October campaign gives the extremists room. What emerges from this point will come either from Cairo and Jerusalem — or from Hormuz.