A ceasefire amid fear and hope, New York Times report on Netanyahu's role in creating war

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Wednesday, 19 Farvardin 1405, April 8, 2026. Finally, last night a ceasefire was established after five weeks of the pointless, devastating and savage war that America and Israel had been waging against Iran. This ceasefire was brokered by Pakistan, by its prime minister and also its army chief of staff. After America had put forward a 15-point plan, Iran put forward a 10-point plan, and now there are various reports, including one by Axios, about what happened in the last 2

0:58 hours and how Mr. Trump finally decided to accept the ceasefire. He also wrote on Truth Social, his own social network, that a ceasefire had been established, and he said that Iran's 10-point plan could serve as a basis for negotiations. This comment on a plan whose published clauses lean very much in Iran's favor set off a wave of protest against Mr. Trump. The 10 points attributed to Iran have been reported piecemeal, although in some places the full text has also been published. They are as follows:

1:52 Point one is the complete cessation of any aggression against Iran and its allied groups. Then the withdrawal of American forces from the region and a ban on any attack from its bases. Limited daily passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz for the two weeks of the ceasefire. The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions as well as UN sanctions. Compensation for damages through the creation of an investment fund. A commitment by Iran not to build nuclear weapons. Recognition by America of Iran's right to enrichment, and negotiations over the level of enrichment.

2:44 Also, Iran's agreement to negotiate bilateral and multilateral peace treaties with America and the countries of the region, and the extension of non-aggression to all aggressors, meaning Israel, against all the resistance groups, meaning Hezbollah. And the last one is the termination of all resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors and the Security Council, and the ratification of all these commitments in an official resolution of the UN Security Council. After these points were published, in part or in full, and especially because Mr. Trump

3:38 had said that Iran's 10-point plan could be a basis for negotiations, a wave of attacks on Trump began, to the point that this morning, Wednesday morning, he said that what Iran has given privately is very different from what they say publicly, and once again a shadow fell over this ceasefire. On the other hand, Israel today launched a massive attack on Lebanon and said that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire terms at all. The attack on Beirut and several other Lebanese cities left at least 250 dead and hundreds wounded. They asked Mr. Trump too, because Mr.

4:34 Trump gives perhaps more than five or six interviews a day; reporters call him on the phone and he gives interviews, or in person, and so on. The main occupation of this American president is giving interviews. He again answered rather ambiguously and said no, the Hezbollah issue is a separate matter, but he did not deny that Israel is attacking, or say whether it should or should not be outside the ceasefire. Mr. Ghalibaf, who reportedly will head the Iranian delegation in the negotiations that are supposed to take place in Islamabad, wrote on Twitter that three of the points proposed by Iran have been violated, and if things are like this, there will be no

5:32 negotiations. On the American side, besides Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, Mr. JD Vance, Mr. Trump's vice president, will head the American delegation. He officially announced this in Hungary and said that they are in constant contact and working to bring this to a conclusion. In any case, we have to wait and see whether the negotiations will finally take place in Islamabad on Saturday or not. But among the news that followed this ceasefire announcement was that oil suddenly had its biggest one-day price drop, falling to around 93–94 dollars. On the other hand, Iran

6:30 has still not opened the strait and has not allowed some ships through. Also, European countries welcomed this ceasefire; China and Russia welcomed it too. The British prime minister is setting off on a trip to countries in the region, and many European countries, Australia, Japan and others announced that they are ready, given the ceasefire, both to quickly evacuate their own nationals who are stranded in the Middle East and to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where now

7:25 a long queue of ships has piled up. Stock market values, such as the Dow Jones in New York, rose by 2 or 3 percent, and even 4 percent has been mentioned. In any case, this ceasefire came suddenly, amid that atmosphere of tension and Mr. Trump's threats that he wanted to strike the infrastructure, and Israel's heavy operations from the day before yesterday up until yesterday, Tuesday, attacking railways, roads, bridges and other things, which had put Iran under intense bombardment. Some interesting scenes also took place. Some people

8:24 had gone around the power plants and announced that if America were to strike the power plants, "we are sitting here, ready to be killed." Some people went onto the railway tracks and onto the roads. And at the same time, with the announcement of the ceasefire, some of the regime's hardline supporters held demonstrations, chanted "death to the compromiser," and are demanding — it is not clear what — the continuation of the war, to end up who knows where. In any case, today too there are reports that explosions were heard in some parts of Tehran or other cities, but the Islamic Republic itself said that a drone

9:20 entered Iran's airspace, and also that Larak Island had been attacked, and in retaliation they immediately attacked Kuwait and, I think, the UAE as well. In any case, it is a shaky ceasefire, but we hope it lasts and peace negotiations begin. But one of the important things raised in the past 48 hours is an article that the New York Times wrote about how the war actually began. It lays out six points on how Trump arrived at the decision to go to war. The most important point is that Mr. Netanyahu, on a trip to

10:14 America, was present in the Situation Room — the war room, in effect — where foreign leaders have no access, and there, for an hour, he presented a plan under which, within one week, Iran's missile capability would be destroyed, Iran's leaders would be killed, and the Iranian regime would collapse. According to the New York Times, after he presented this plan, Mr. Trump immediately said it sounded good. But the American experts, advisers and officials who were in the meeting went and worked on it that night, and the next day Mr. Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, brought his agency's assessment and said that if there is a war, it is possible that Iran's military capability

11:07 would be hit, or that they could kill Khamenei and Iran's leaders, but the rest of what Mr. Netanyahu said is farcical and in fact ridiculous. Mr. Marco Rubio, who naturally oversees both the National Security Council and the State Department, also said that these claims of Mr. Netanyahu's are in fact nonsense. The other senior advisers, such as Mr. Caine, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others, also warned against going to war. Perhaps the only one who opposed it strongly was Mr. JD Vance, who raised both American domestic political issues

11:59 and the promise Trump had made not to enter a war, and also raised the point that this war might have no clear end, as well as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the gasoline issue and so on. But according to the New York Times, Mr. Trump makes the decision himself, carries it out, and enters the war, imagining that he will achieve victory within a week and that, with the very first strikes on Iran, it will no longer have the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz or do anything else. In short, the result was that this aimless, strategy-less, devastating and savage war against the country of Iran and the people of Iran, rather than the Iranian regime, in effect inflicted enormous damage on our country.

13:01 Now that Mr. Trump has, in any case, accepted the ceasefire period, the Iranian side has declared victory. This war will of course have consequences, and peace, if it is reached, will also have consequences, both in Iran's domestic politics and at the regional and global level. These are effects we can address on the following nights. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.