🇮🇷 IRAN
Leaked Audio:
Iranian President in Panic
According to C14 News Israel, Islamic Republic President Pezeshkian was allegedly close to a “nervous breakdown” after Iran’s team came back from Islamabad empty-handed.
The US’s blockade is estimated to cost Iran $435 million a day.
A leaked audio reportedly records the president saying the following:
“Our economy was already just weeks away from total collapse. Now that they, the Americans, are cutting off our almost sole source of income, I don’t know where we’ll get the money to pay salaries.”
🇮🇷 IRAN
Iran's Chinese Satellite
A leaked Iranian military documents says Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satellite (TEE-01B).
This was to monitor US military sites across the Middle East during the recent conflict.
TEE-01B was reportedly built and launched by a Chinese company Earth Eye Co, then handed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Aerospace Force in late 2024.
The satellite tracked sites in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Iraq.
🇪🇸 SPAIN
Spain Starts
Mass Regularization
Illegal immigrants arriving by a boat at the port of La Restinga in El Hierro, Spain (2023).
Spain's government just signed off on a broad regularization plan for illegal immigrants already living and working in the country.
This paves way for about 500,000 illegal immigrants to become "regularized" with one-year residency and work permit.
Online filings start April 16, in person on April 20.
To qualify, they had to have arrived in Spain before January 1, 2026, stayed for at least five months, and have no criminal record.
Prime Minister Sanchez is framing it as both fair and economically necessary, tying it to Spain's aging population and need for more workers paying into the system.
🇮🇹 ITALY
Trump Turns On Meloni
Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni (left) and US President, Donald Trump (right).
Italian PM Meloni had been one of Trump's closest EU partners.
But now, he has publicly turned on Meloni.
What did she do?
Italy denied US military aircraft use of the Sigonella airbase in Sicily, reportedly because Washington sought authorization only after the planes were already in the air, rather than securing clearance beforehand.
Italy also paused the automatic renewal of its defense cooperation agreement with Israel.
Trump then called her out for lacking courage on Iran.
Things got worse when Trump went after Pope Leo after the pope called Trump’s threat against “the entire people of Iran” “truly unacceptable,” while also criticizing his treatment of immigrants.
Trump called him "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy."
Meloni then pushed back, calling Trump’s attacks on the pope unacceptable.
📌 Context. According to a 2024–2025 survey by GAMAAN, ~70% of the Iranian population oppose the Islamic Republic, while another 2025 ISPA poll shows 92% public dissatisfaction with the country's conditions.
Despite the Islamic regime’s internet blackout on ordinary Iranians, videos still got out in the early days of the US-Israel attack against Iran, showing people celebrating the US strike that killed Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
It’s harder to tell whether that mood has held through the ongoing attacks, but a lot of anti-regime voices online seem firmly against any US “peace deal” with Iran. Instead, they’re urging Trump to see it through and bring the regime down.
Some estimates put the number of people executed by the Islamic regime over the past few months as high as over 40,000 protesters—a point Trump is now using to go after Pope Leo in his latest post attacking the pope.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 LEBANON & ISRAEL
First Talks Since 1993
(From left to right) Counselor for the US Department of State, Michael Needham, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, Lebanese Ambassador to the US, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, and Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, at the State Department in Washington, Tuesday, April 14, 2026.
On Tuesday, Lebanese and Israeli officials sat down in Washington for a two hour meeting for the first time since 1993.
Lebanon had been pushing for face-to-face talks after Hezbollah fired rockets on March 2. Israel only came around last week, after deadly strikes hit crowded parts of Beirut and sparked international backlash.
Even with talk of a truce, Hezbollah says it won’t honor any deal made in Washington, since it wasn’t even part of the talks.
So right now, Lebanon’s government seems to want a truce, while Israel doesn’t look like it’s actually offering one.
📌 Context. Israel and Lebanon have no diplomatic relations and have officially been at war since 1948. Until now, communication usually ran through mediators like the US and UNIFIL.
The complication is that Hezbollah is not the Lebanese state.
It is an Iran-backed terrorist group and political party with seats in parliament.
It also maintains its own military apparatus outside the government’s full control.
That means Beirut can negotiate, but it cannot necessarily deliver Hezbollah.
