Jeremy Scahill

I mean, there's a lot of propaganda coming from the Barak Ravid Axios sphere, because what they often do is they say that this is the framework, but actually what they're doing is they're reporting on the U.S.

demands.

And then that puts the Iranians in a position where it looks like they're either backtracking or it's meant to sort of pressure them.

So this was going on.

And I guess the news of this is that last night,

I was told that Iran had finalized its decision prior to Trump initiating this bombing against Iran and was on the verge of actually sending it to the United States.

And then once these strikes happened that Iran publicly said was a violation of the ceasefire, they said, we're pausing or suspending the submission of this proposal.

Then I started to hear from Iranians that the Pakistanis were going nuts.

They were taken by surprise that the United States had done this.

Pakistan is the mediating, the primary mediating country.

And they were basically frantically trying to get the United States to stop.

And Iran, I was told, was prepared to start striking at what they called U.S.

interests in the broader Persian Gulf.

And it's clear that there were some back channel discussions aimed at sort of calming this down.

Marco Rubio says they expect the Iranians to submit their sort of version or their amendments to what the U.S.

sent them the other day.

But I think this could have gone into a very, very intense escalation.

And the final thing I'll say on this regarding Trump,

I mean, think about what he keeps saying.

The Iranians are desperate to make a deal.