Israel’s attack on Iran is unlikely to push Iran toward a weakened position at the negotiating table on nuclear talks, Iran experts said, adding that it is more likely to trigger a war the Trump administration has sought to avoid.

“It is difficult to believe that Israel would and could have attacked at this scale without US knowledge and green light,” US foreign policy expert and former US State Department adviser Vali Nasr said on X.

US President Donald Trump “may have calculated this will soften Iran’s position, but just as he was wrong that maximum pressure will bring Iran to the table he will (be) proven wrong that Israeli attack could give him a diplomatic win,” he said.

Washington has long sought to limit Tehran’s nuclear capacity, with the most recent negotiations in Rome last month ending with no agreement. A sixth round of US-Iran talks had been scheduled for Sunday in Oman — and it’s not clear if it will go ahead.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, said today’s strikes were “not a pre-emptive attack on Iran alone,” but rather Israel “seeking to kill Trump and America’s chance to secure a deal with Iran that prevents” Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, said that Israel’s attack likely “blew up Trump’s diplomacy with Iran.”

Vaez added that Israel’s strikes have opened the door to further suffering on both sides.

London
CNN
 — 

Western countries have slashed foreign aid budgets this year and reductions will steepen in 2026, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada cutting the most, according to a new analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD).

The aid cuts will mean “significant losses” for many developing nations, according to the analysis from the DC-based think tank, shared exclusively with CNN. Ethiopia is projected to lose the most aid in nominal terms, with Jordan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo also hit particularly hard.

Smaller nations will also be hammered by the reduction in foreign aid, with Lesotho, Micronesia and Eswatini each losing around 50% of their aid.

“It’s setting fire to the bold ambitions to solve poverty and transform developing countries,” Lee Crawfurd, one of the authors of the report, told CNN. “It’s some of the poorest, most fragile places in the world that are going to be hardest hit.”

The analysis looked at projections of bilateral aid – money provided directly to another country rather than routed through multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies or the World Bank – for 2025 and 2026.

The US is projected to cut the most, with a projected 56% reduction compared to levels two years ago.

The Trump administration’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already left a hole in many international aid budgets, and several other Western nations are following suit rather than filling the void.

“A big, big chunk of overall cuts in the next couple of years are going to be from the US pulling out, rather than other countries. But these other countries are making things worse,” said Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the CGD.

The UK aid cuts are estimated to represent a roughly 39% reduction compared to 2023 levels of spending. Meanwhile, Germany is cutting about 27%, Canada 25% and France 19% of their international aid budgets.

The true level of aid cuts remains unclear, as the Trump administration’s proposed budget and other government proposals are still making their way through legislatures. But some funding cuts are almost guaranteed.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February that his government would increase the UK’s defense spending by cutting its aid budget to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027, its lowest level since 1999.

Many organizations and aid workers have raised alarm about European governments pitting aid budgets against defense spending.

“Cutting the already lean aid budget is a false economy and will only increase division and amounts to a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable people,” said Halima Begum, head of Oxfam GB. “It is a false dichotomy to pit international cooperation to tackle poverty against national security interests in order to avoid tax increases.”

Crawfurd said that bilateral aid is a “really small part of government budgets” and the money for defense or security could be found elsewhere. “It’s a choice… it’s a political choice,” he added.

The think tank wrote in its analysis that “one striking takeaway is that some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA (official development assistance) simply because of who their main donors are – while others are projected to lose very little” – a game of chance, with losses not matching up to the recipient country’s needs.

Yemen, for example, is projected to experience a 19% fall in its bilateral funding compared to 2023, while its “comparable” neighbor country Somalia is projected to lose about 39%.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that multilateral aid cuts are threatening efforts to tackle 44 of the highest-priority, protracted humanitarian crises. As of April, only 11.9% of the funding for UN response plans had been covered.

“Every year, the UN has been helping more than 100 million people in the world as they go through the worst time of their lives in wars and disasters. But let’s be clear: we won’t reach the level of funding in 2025 that we’ve seen in previous years,” Anja Nitzsche, OCHA’s chief of partnerships and resource mobilization told CNN in a statement. “Vulnerable families are being left without food, clean water, healthcare, shelter or protection in places such as Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan.”

The CGD is urging Western donors to reallocate aid to the poorest countries to try to “ensure that resources are directed to populations in greatest need.”

Western countries also need to improve coordination to mitigate further damage, especially as they are withdrawing from countries receiving aid, the think tank said.

In some countries, the cuts will change who the largest donor is, which “can lead to major shifts in what gets funded and how,” according to the CGD. For example, Portugal will likely overtake the US in aid to Angola, and Japan is projected to overtake France in Egypt. “A new lead donor may not continue the same programs” or may take time to get up and running, according to the analysis.

Giving a larger share of aid to multilateral organizations can also help improve international cooperation and cut down on duplication of aid efforts.

“Coordination is an ongoing challenge,” Crawfurd told CNN. “The easiest way to do that is just to fund big multilateral funds like the World Bank.”

CNN
 — 

Karsten Warholm crushed his own 300-meter hurdles world best time in front of a home crowd in Oslo, Norway on Wednesday, clocking 32.67 seconds.

Warholm set the previous mark of 33.05 seconds in April, but bettered that time by almost half a second at the Oslo Diamond League in Bislett Stadion.

The Olympic gold medalist and three-time world champion surged past American Rai Benjamin on the home straight and celebrated by roaring and ripping off his top.

“The race went well, although I was rather worried with how much Rai was closing on me,” Warholm said after the race, per World Athletics.

“But I knew I could push on over the last hurdle to home. I usually fade at the end of the 400, so the 300 suits me to some degree, but I will be back strong in the 400 on Sunday.”

Warholm was competing against reigning Olympic 400m hurdles champion Benjamin and Brazil’s former world champion Alison dos Santos for the first time over 300m hurdles – a lesser-seen event compared to the 400m.

Benjamin crossed the line in 33.22, holding off a late challenge from dos Santos, who was third in 33.38. Those two, alongside Warholm, will return to the track on Sunday for a showdown in the 400m hurdles.

World Athletics announced earlier this year that the 300m hurdles would become an official event at its competitions, though conditions for setting the inaugural world record – as opposed to a world best time – will be decided “once the popularity of the event (has) reached a meaningful level.”

Elsewhere at the Oslo Diamond League, Sweden’s Armand Duplantis took the pole vault title with a meeting record of 6.15 meters. The victory means that Duplantis, who broke the world record for the 11th time earlier this year, is unbeaten since July 2023.