Internal power struggles in Iran are threatening US-Iran peace talks.
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A summary of the latest situation in the Middle East: Trump approves plan to strike Iran; Iran believes the US will cause peace talks to fail.
BlockBeats reports the following is a summary of the latest situation in the Middle East on July 8th: Conflict Situation: Trump approved the strike plan against Iran. US officials stated that the strike against Iran was a "punitive action, not a reciprocal response," and that the operation "will not end anytime soon." A US official stated that the strike launched by the US against Iran on Tuesday was four to five times larger and more powerful than the strike launched 10 days earlier. The US revoked a general license authorizing the sale of Iranian oil, allowing related final transactions to continue until midnight Eastern Time on July 17th. This move is reportedly in response to Iran's recent firing on three merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that some merchant ships were sailing without coordination and had turned off or tampered with AIS signals, hindering safe navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. It urged regional countries and shipping companies to avoid any actions that violate the memorandum. The U.S. Central Command stated that its forces have initiated a series of powerful strikes against Iran in response to Iranian targeting and attacks on commercial shipping operated by civilian crews in international waterways. Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the U.S. Treasury Department's revocation of the temporary suspension of sanctions on Iranian oil sales. U.S.-Iran Negotiations: Iranian Foreign Minister Araqchi stated that if the threats persist, negotiations for a final agreement will not begin; please honor your commitments. Iran's Supreme Leader's advisor, Rezaei, stated that it is clear the U.S. will cause the negotiations to fail. Lebanese diplomatic sources indicated that Lebanon refused to hold the sixth round of Lebanon-Israel talks in Rome, insisting that negotiations should continue in Washington. Strait of Hormuz: A liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier was attacked in the Gulf of Oman. Multiple explosions occurred in the southern Iranian port city of Sirik. Explosions were heard on Qeshm Island and Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. British Maritime Authority: The threat level in the Strait of Hormuz has been raised to "serious".
Trump officially announced that the US and Iran will hold talks tomorrow, but Iran's deputy foreign minister said that "nothing has been arranged yet."
According to Odaily, the technical negotiation teams from the US and Iran responsible for implementing the interim peace agreement will hold talks in Doha, Qatar, in the coming days. Last weekend, retaliatory strikes by both sides brought the already fragile ceasefire agreement to the brink of collapse. Sources familiar with the negotiations added that the mediators have established communication channels to de-escalate unforeseen events, and technical consultations will continue. However, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi released conflicting signals on Monday through Iran's Tasnim News Agency, stating that no technical working group meeting was scheduled for this week, and the Qatar negotiations had not yet received final confirmation. He also indicated that regular consultations between Iran and Qatar were proceeding as usual, including monitoring and verifying whether the other side was fulfilling its commitments under the agreement. (Reuters)
Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General: Iranian attacks undermine regional peace efforts
Odaily Odaily that the Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) condemned Iran's attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait, stating that these actions blatantly violated the sovereignty of both countries and continued Tehran's efforts to undermine regional peace. According to a statement released by the Riyadh-based GCC, Secretary-General Abdelaziz Boudewi stated that the attacks directly threatened the safety of citizens and residents and constituted a serious violation of international law and the UN Charter. Boudewi said, "These attacks confirm Iran's consistent strategy of undermining international and regional efforts to build security and peace and resolve crises." (Jin Shi)
The US military has begun a series of powerful strikes against Iran.
According to ChainCatcher, citing Jinshi, the U.S. Central Command announced that the U.S. military has begun a series of powerful strikes against Iran.
SemiAnalysis: Meta will accelerate, rather than slow down, its computing power procurement; it is in talks with Anthropic to build its own AI model service platform.
According to BlockBeats, on July 3rd, SemiAnalysis stated in its latest report that after news broke that Meta might become a new Neocloud, the market's initial reaction was to sell off computing power cloud companies like CoreWeave and Nebius, and to renewed concerns about "AI computing power oversupply." However, the firm's assessment is the opposite: this concern may be wrong. Meta's data center and computing power procurement will not slow down, but rather continue to accelerate. The article mentions that in the first half of this year alone, Meta has already signed contracts for over 5GW of capacity in the cloud services and managed data center sectors, and this does not include its accelerating self-built projects. SemiAnalysis states that Meta is in final negotiations with Anthropic, hoping to obtain access to Claude private instances. If this comes to fruition, the significance goes beyond "Meta buying more computing power"; it suggests that Meta may be building its own AI model service platform. This model is somewhat similar to AWS's Bedrock, Microsoft's Foundry, and Google's Vertex. Meta can initially use Claude internally, or it can package the model capabilities as a token-as-a-service to provide services externally in the future. In the short term, it might use its own models externally and Anthropic models internally; in the long term, Meta might even incorporate Anthropic and OpenAI models into its external service system. SemiAnalysis states that the underlying logic is that Meta has computing power, advertisers, social network distribution capabilities, and consumer-end entry points. If it can combine cutting-edge models, intelligent agents, and sales and marketing SaaS, it will not just be a company that buys GPUs, but will be moving towards the upper layers of AI application and model distribution.
Sources say the next round of US-Iran talks will be held on July 18.
According to sources, the next round of US-Iran talks will be held on July 18, Odaily Odaily reports.