The Daily Populous Thursday May 28th, 2026 day edition
Authored by cnn.com and submitted by Hot-Upstairs9603

A satellite image taken on January 30 shows a new roof over a previously destroyed building at Natanz nuclear site in Iran. 2026 Planet Labs PBC/Handout/Reuters

Though US President Donald Trump has offered various justifications for starting the war with Iran, he has repeatedly cited its nuclear program, which has also been a key sticking point in negotiations to end the conflict.

Washington was in talks with Tehran about its nuclear program before the US and Israel struck Iran. Trump was determined to ensure Iran would “never have a nuclear weapon,” despite Iran’s insistence that it was not pursuing this.

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on Iran and nuclear weapons says that there were concerns about Iran’s uranium enrichment since the early 2000s.

In 2015, Tehran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which capped uranium enrichment for 15 years and facilitated UN-led inspections to ensure adherence to the deal.

Trump abandoned the JCPOA in 2018, during his first term.

A US assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability published in 2024 said that while “Iran (was) not building a nuclear weapon,” it had, however, “undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses.”

Just days after the US and Israel’s strikes on Iran, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, told CNN that Tehran was not days or weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.

There were “many elements” in Iran that were “of serious concern,” Grossi said, including the “unjustified accumulation of huge amounts of almost military-grade material” and a “lack of transparency in inspections.”

But despite this, “we never had information indicating that there was a structured systematic program to build or to construct a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Ben_C17 on May 28th, 2026 at 07:18 UTC »

The assumption that Iran hasn't retaliated yet misses their pattern over the last two years. They rarely respond immediately or symmetrically. After the January strikes on IRGC facilities, we tracked at panopsik.com about eleven days of silence before coordinated proxy attacks hit US logistics contractors in Iraq and a maritime interdiction attempt near Bab el-Mandeb. Same pattern in April 2025 direct strike, twelve-day gap, then Houthi escalation and sabotage at a Saudi export terminal.

On the Strait seizure idea: the geography doesn't work. You'd need boots on both shores Iranian coast and Oman's Musandam Peninsula plus minesweeping capacity, air superiority over Iranian shore-based anti-ship missiles, and the ability to hold that position indefinitely. That's not a 'bad for midterms' problem. It's an operational impossibility against a peer adversary that's spent forty years preparing for exactly that scenario.

What's worth watching now is whether Iran keeps the response indirect again or breaks pattern with something direct. If they stay patient, the economic pressure from a disrupted Strait might do more for their negotiating position than any kinetic retaliation would.

NewsInternational494 on May 28th, 2026 at 05:03 UTC »

The President may finally be forced to do the one thing he needed to do with his bad strategic hand compared to the Iranians. Send ground troops to seize the Strait. While impossibly bad for the midterms and his presidency, he has little choice. Looks like the Iranians aren't budging on the enriched nuclear fuel and the Strait at the same time. So, Trump has no choice from a strategic angle. He needs the Strait opened to put the Iranians in a terrible place strategically. Then he can end the war with a negotiated settlement that covers his bases. He got us into a bad war, but he cant just walk away. The Iranians won't let him.

planj07 on May 28th, 2026 at 03:28 UTC »

I’m a bit surprised Iran hasn’t made done any small retaliation. Maybe they genuinely think Trump could be swayed into a bad deal and are holding back.