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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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It's Wednesday, april 1, 2026. This news update was recorded at 7:00pm new york time on Tuesday. I'm deborah pardes and this is arc news daily. It's day 33 of the war with Iran, and the United States and Israel are pointing to a scaled down endgame. They say the regime could end up weakened but still standing and still in control of the Strait of Hormuz. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump has recently told aides he is willing to end the war without fully reopening the strait. He previously set a deadline for the regime to reopen it. That deadline expires in six days. In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Trump criticized NATO allies for refusing to help secure the critical waterway, and he said if anyone needs oil from the strait, they should just, quote, come and take it. Trump also reiterated that a full overthrow of the Islamic Republic may not be necessary. He said the goal has essentially been met because, according to him, Iran's current leaders are more reasonable than those who were taken out during the war. Even Israel is signaling that regime change may not be in the cards right now. After spending weeks pushing for a revolution in Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to Newsmax on Monday that this is no longer Israel's focus.
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Eventually, I think this regime will collapse internally, but at the moment what we're doing is just degrading their military capacity, degrading their missile capacity, degrading their nuclear capacity, and also weakening them from the inside.
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I think another goal that Trump is abandoning is the removal of Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. He said he, quote, doesn't even think about it anymore because it's so deeply buried under rubble. Hours earlier, the US Said it bombed an ammunition depot in Isfahan, home to Iran's largest nuclear research facility. According to one Israeli security analyst, the strike may have been intended to bury those stockpiles beyond the regime's reach. That has not been confirmed, but Trump is still keeping his options open. He told CBS he's not quite ready to withdraw the thousands of troops he's sent to the Middle East. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a briefing on Tuesday that the United States wants to keep Iran guessing.
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You can't fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do or what you are not willing to do to include boots on the ground. Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are.
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With the United States narrowing its ambitions in Iran, the question is what will the world look like after the war? Israel is focused on a new Middle east that's less dependent on Europe and the United States. In this vision, Jerusalem is at the center of a regional economic and security alliance, and the Iranian regime, if it survives, no longer poses a serious threat. Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the war has transformed Israel into a global power. This means realignment for quite some time
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for my European colleagues. You know, we've shown remarkable weakness, most
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of them on Newsmax, Netanyahu described his disappointment with Europe, which is currently Israel's top trading partner. In fact, Israel announced on Tuesday that it will stop buying arms from France. The last straw reportedly was France blocking the United States from using its territory to launch attacks on Iran. In his interview, Netanyahu laid out his broader post war vision, where Israel looks away from Europe and toward the Gulf. Netanyahu hinted that more accords with Arab states are coming as soon as the war is over. He said a big piece of this new alliance will be creating a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Israel as an alternative to the Iranian controlled Strait of Hormuz.
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And I think these are interesting ideas to divert all the energy pipelines from the Gulf, where the Iranians have a geographical chokepoint, across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea and up there to the Mediterranean ports, our ports in Israel, and therefore you just.
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A number of Gulf officials have publicly acknowledged deepening ties with Israel. Earlier this month, Anwar Gargosh, an advisor to the UAE's president, said that Iran's attacks on its neighbors are forcing the transition.
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I think Iran's full throttle attack on the Gulf states will actually strengthen. The Israeli hole in the Gulf will not diminish it.
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Days after these remarks, the Trump Administration fast tracked $23 billion in arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan. And this week, Trump said again that he plans to sell F35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. The bottom line, the US wants the emerging Middle east alliance to take care of its own security. Israel is preparing to celebrate Passover under daily bombardment by Iran and Hezbollah. Since the war began, more than 6,000 people have been evacuated to Israeli hospitals. 19 civilians and 10 soldiers have been killed. Iran's Health Ministry reports that there have been more than 1900 Iranian civilian deaths. The Knesset has extended the state of emergency through April 14th. The home front command extended wartime restrictions through Saturday and said there are no plans to ease them. Gatherings are capped at 50. Parks are closed, schools are shut. No international carriers are operating flights to Israel. A travel industry executive told the Times of Israel that roughly a quarter of a million Passover tickets have been canceled, but some Israelis are still finding ways to go on vacation. In a bit of Passover irony, many plan to travel to Sinai, crossing by land into Egypt. It happens to be one of the most reliable travel options. While the Ben Gurion airport is still on a wartime schedule, those staying in Israel are adapting. Israel's chief rabbi issued special wartime Passover guidelines. They include rules for searching for leaven in bomb shelters and what to do if a siren sounds during the ritual stop. Go to the shelter and resume when it's safe. ARC Media is off for the rest of the week. We'll be back after the holiday. To everyone who's celebrating, please have a safe and meaningful Passover. I'm Deborah Pardes, and this is Ark News Daily.