The Daily Populous Friday February 20th, 2026 morning edition
Authored by yahoo.com and submitted by yahoonews

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran must make a "meaningful deal" in negotiations with Washington in the next 10 days or else "bad things happen", as he deployed warships, fighter jets and other military hardware to the region.

"It's proven to be over the years not easy to make a meaningful deal with Iran. We have to make a meaningful deal otherwise bad things happen," Trump told the inaugural meeting of the "Board of Peace", his initiative to secure stability in Gaza.

He warned that Washington "may have to take it a step further" without any agreement, adding: "You're going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days."

Trump's comments came shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his own warning to Iran saying, "If the ayatollahs make a mistake and attack us, they will receive a response they cannot even imagine".

The warnings were issued days after the US and Iran held a second round of Omani-mediated talks, this time in Geneva, with the US seeking to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, something it says it is not pursuing, and Iran seeking relief from US sanctions.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt warned on Wednesday there were "many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran".

"Iran would be very wise to make a deal with President Trump."

Trump has repeatedly threatened military action against Iran, at first over a deadly crackdown on protesters last month then more recently over its nuclear programme.

Iran's atomic energy chief on Thursday said "no country can deprive Iran of the right" to nuclear enrichment, following fresh US warnings that there were "many reasons" to strike the Islamic republic.

A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

CNN and CBS reported on Wednesday that the US military would be ready to launch strikes against Iran as early as this weekend, though Trump has reportedly not made a final decision yet.

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile reported that Trump had been briefed on his military options with "all of them designed to maximise damage", including a campaign to "kill scores of Iranian political and military leaders, with the goal of overthrowing the government", unnamed US officials told the newspaper.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the latest talks that Tehran had agreed with Washington on "guiding principles", but US Vice President JD Vance said Iran had not yet acknowledged all of Washington's red lines.

Speaking on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted "We do not want war" but suggested Tehran could not give in to US demands.

Amid the escalating warnings, Poland on Thursday ordered all its citizens in Iran to "leave immediately".

Germany meanwhile moved troops out of northern Iraq, reducing its footprint to the minimum necessary to keep its base there functional, citing regional tensions.

Russia called for restraint, with a Kremlin spokesperson saying, "We are currently witnessing an unprecedented escalation of tension in the region, but we still hope that political and diplomatic means and negotiations will continue to prevail in the search for a settlement".

Iran has insisted that the talks with the US be limited to the nuclear issue, though Washington has previously pushed for Tehran's ballistic missiles programme and support for armed groups in the region to be on the table.

The US has meanwhile been building up its military forces near Iran, including warships, fighter jets, and refuelling aircraft, laying the foundation for a potentially sustained campaign against Iran -- should Trump give the order.

Washington has ordered a second aircraft carrier to the region, with the first, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its nearly 80 aircraft, positioned about 700 kilometres (435 miles) from the Iranian coast as of Sunday, satellite images showed.

Iran has sought to display its own military might, with its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps holding war games earlier this week in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian politicians have repeatedly threatened to block the strait, a major global conduit for oil and gas, with fears of a US-Iran conflict sending oil prices surging this week.

The strait carries a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a fifth of all liquified natural gas according to the International Energy Agency.

Ok-Yak7370 on February 20th, 2026 at 01:52 UTC »

Is there any precedent for real regime change from the air? AIr power can assist local forces who are on the ground, e.g. the KLA in Kosovo, but we don't seem to have that here. An extended bombing campaign with perhaps some special forces on the ground could weaken the Iranian missile and nuclear programs and for some people that is reason enough to bomb.

But beyond that? I don't think the Venezuela precedent of sending in some special forces and grabbing (or taking out) a leader -which was not even a real regime change- works here. Iran is a more resourceful regime, and they've seen the US run that play. There also isn't anyone in place like Delcy Rodriguez. The Ayatollah doesn't have a "Vice-Ayatollah". There also is all the havoc an Iranian regime could wreak upon the Gulf and perhaps to a lesser extent Israel on the way out. So what is the plan here?

ConscientiousHomeles on February 19th, 2026 at 20:09 UTC »

The level of US military assets positioned around Iran right now isn't a deterrence posture, it's a strike posture. The air power concentration is designed to neutralize missile launch sites faster than Iran can fire them, and the naval presence is there specifically to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Iran's window to use the strait as leverage has likely already closed.

On nuclear sites, this is my own read, but the logical move isn't just destruction - it's securing them at ground level to prevent material from being moved or transferred. That requires a more complex operation than airstrikes alone, but it's the move that makes strategic sense given what's at stake.

The reason the regime won't negotiate is structural, not ideological. Over 48 years they built a parallel sanctions-proof economy, and the people running that economy - largely IRGC-adjacent networks - have no incentive to trade it away for international legitimacy they don't need. If the regime negotiates it loses its base, and without that base it has nobody willing to suppress the next uprising. From their internal logic, negotiation is actually a faster path to collapse than resistance. So they hold the line even when holding the line is no longer sustainable.

The post-strike question is where it gets interesting, and the trajectory of Iran's uprisings tells you a lot. The Green Movement was the last time ordinary Iranians wanted the regime to correct course - reform from within. Woman Life Freedom shifted that entirely, it became about removing the regime altogether. The most recent uprising, which produced thousands of martyrs, went a step further - the chants calling for Reza Pahlavi were heard across almost every province. This isn't a diaspora phenomenon being projected inward. The Iranian people looked at their options, saw an alternative, and have been remarkably consistent about who they want to lead the transition.

Pahlavi's own positioning reflects that responsibility. He's not claiming a throne - he's calling for a transitional government followed by a genuine referendum where Iranians choose their own system of governance. The contrast with 1979 is deliberate and important. Khomeini gave people a yes or no on an Islamic Republic with no alternative on the ballot, no real debate, and a backdrop of executed rivals. Pahlavi is proposing the inverse of that.

Unlike Iraq or Libya, Iran enters a potential post-regime moment with organizational capacity in the diaspora, documented domestic support for a specific alternative, and a figurehead who has been consistent and clear about not predetermining the outcome. The raw material for avoiding a vacuum exists here in a way it simply didn't in those cases, and that distinction is everything.

yahoonews on February 19th, 2026 at 15:52 UTC »

From AFP:

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday Iran must make a "meaningful deal" in its negotiations with Washington in the next 10 days or else "bad things happen", as he deployed warships, fighter jets and other military hardware in the region.

"It's proven to be over the years not easy to make a meaningful deal with Iran. We have to make a meaningful deal otherwise bad things happen," Trump told the inaugural meeting of the "Board of Peace", his initiative to secure stability in Gaza.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/facing-us-warnings-iran-defends-143025449.html