Washington has set a deadline. Tehran hasn’t blinked. Two U.S. carrier strike groups are in position, Secretary Marco Rubio heads to Jerusalem on Friday, and Iran’s written counterproposal must land before March 1. Geneva remains the last opening, but the window is closing fast.
Also, this week in the Agenda, a scoop from Baghdad: the ruling Shia coalition is moving to push Maliki out, with Trump’s sanctions threat the deciding factor. On the streets of Tehran, student protests are back, even as the regime’s attention stays fixed on the nuclear file. And in Gaza, the stabilization plan has a security gap that experts say may be fundamental.
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– Joe, Andres, Rami, Ghassan, and Asrar
Washington Signals
Five Days
The military buildup confirmed this week is the largest American presence in the region since 2003. Two carrier strike groups are within striking distance of Iran. Fighter squadrons and refueling tankers have repositioned across the theater. Nonessential U.S. personnel have been quietly evacuated from Beirut.
The White House has not denied reports in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that he is leaning toward pulling the trigger. A senior State Department official told MBN’s Washington Bureau Chief Joe Kawly that “the diplomatic channel is running out of time.” “This is not open-ended diplomacy,” the official said. “The president has asked for answers, not atmospherics.”
Trump himself put it plainly on Truth Social Sunday. He said he would rather reach a deal, but warned that if negotiations fail, it would be “a very bad day” for Iran and its people. He also pushed back on reports that his top military commander, General Daniel Caine, opposes military action, saying Caine believes a strike would be “something easily won.”
There are three dates to keep in mind:
- Tonight’s State of the Union address, where Iran-specific language will signal how Trump frames the buildup at home.
- Friday, when Secretary Rubio meets Netanyahu in Jerusalem, the last major diplomatic meeting.
- Sunday is the Trump-set deadline for Iran’s written counterproposal.
Geneva is still open, with U.S. and Iranian negotiators due to resume nuclear talks there on Thursday under IAEA and Omani auspices. According to a framework circulating through the International Atomic Energy Agency that’s backed by Director General Rafael Grossi, Iran could maintain a limited nuclear enrichment program while drastically reducing centrifuge capacity. A senior State Department official called it “a possible landing zone.”
“If Geneva fails, the region pays first,” a Gulf diplomat told MBN. “Energy routes, insurance markets, bases. Everything becomes exposed.”
Geneva is the last exit: if those talks don’t produce a deal by the end of the week, the strike window opens as early as Saturday, even though the formal deadline for Iran’s written counterproposal is Sunday.
Joe Kawly brings you raw conversations with ambassadors, envoys and negotiators behind the hardest foreign policy decisions.
Two Irans
Iranian protesters are not backing down. Over the weekend, students staged demonstrations at major campuses in Tehran and Mashhad, the first significant university protests since January’s crackdowns. Videos from BBC Persian and Iran International show students chanting against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom protesters refer to as “the dictator,” the Revolutionary Guard, and the Islamic Republic itself, demanding justice for the thousands killed and calling for a political transition.
The gap that defines this moment: the regime’s public messaging is fixed on Trump’s timeline and the nuclear file. The street is focused on the regime itself.
Tehran is not treating Trump’s 10-to-15-day window as a deadline. State-aligned outlets are calling it “Trump’s new rhetoric.” Nournews, close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned that playing with time and threats “can have consequences that are neither predictable nor easily contained.”
The threat language has grown sharper. Officials now say American bases and assets in the region are “legitimate targets” if Washington strikes.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not softened. “If a country lacks deterrent weapons,” he said recently, “it will be trampled underfoot by its enemies.”
Two negotiations are underway. One is in Geneva. The other is in the streets of Tehran.
Quote of the Day
It is high time for Iran to show it is serious in addressing the concerns of the international community. A military escalation would risk heavy repercussions for the stability of the region. 
– Anouar El Anouni, European Commission spokesperson, Feb 20
Scoop
Maliki’s Last Days
Baghdad is withdrawing Nouri al-Maliki’s nomination as prime minister. One source confirmed it definitively. Others told MBN it is a matter of days, likely by Thursday, as the coalition waits for him to step aside voluntarily. If he does not, they will move to withdraw the nomination themselves.
The coalition held a critical meeting Monday at the Baghdad home of Humam Hamoudi, head of the Islamic Supreme Council. Salam al-Zubaidi, spokesperson for the Victory Alliance, told MBN that more than half of the framework’s 12 factions now consider Maliki unsuitable to lead Iraq’s next government. “Many forces that previously supported him have changed their stance,” he said.
The Trump factor is central. President Trump warned this month that Washington would withhold all assistance to Iraq if Maliki returned to power. Maliki has refused to step aside, leaving the coalition with a binary choice: proceed and face consequences, or name someone else.
Three names are circulating as replacements: current Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri. The Federal Court is expected to rule on Thursday on the presidential election timeline, which would set the clock for a final decision.
Thursday is the date to watch.
Read the full scoop here
Conversation
Built on Sand
The money is ready. The security plan is not yet.
Trump’s Board of Peace meeting produced more than $5 billion in reconstruction pledges and a framework for stabilizing Gaza. What it did not produce is an answer to the only question that determines whether any of it holds: who disarms Hamas, where its fighters go, and what the foreign force on the ground is actually allowed to do.
Palestinian economist and former minister Samir Hulileh sees a familiar pattern. “This reminds us of the U.S. decision in 2003 to dissolve the Iraqi army,” he told MBN. With 30,000 to 40,000 trained fighters left out of the plan, with no income and no role, he warns that the result could mirror post-invasion Iraq.
The international stabilization force, led by Indonesia’s promised 8,000 troops, has no defined mandate. It is still unclear whether those troops will monitor or enforce security inside Gaza’s neighborhoods, a distinction that matters enormously on the ground.
The National Committee for Administering Gaza is still operating out of Cairo, blocked by security conditions and Israeli restrictions on reconstruction materials.
The regional picture adds another layer. Saudi Arabia has pledged $1 billion, a figure analysts read as deliberate restraint. Riyadh is wary that reconstruction could become a venue for proxy influence, particularly given Abu Dhabi’s central operational role through Mohammed Dahlan’s network.
Read in depth here
MBN Iran Briefing:
Andres Ilves’ weekly reporting and understanding of what’s going on in Tehran and its impact on the wider world.
Regional Signals
Nowhere Left to Go
For decades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad had a home in Damascus. The Assad regime sheltered it, Iran supplied it, and Hezbollah connected it to fighters in Gaza. That network is gone now.
Assad’s fall did not just remove a political patron. It broke the central supply chain running from Tehran through Damascus to Hezbollah and into Gaza. Syria’s new leadership has since pledged to Washington that it will prevent armed factions from using Syrian territory.
PIJ tried to adapt. It didn’t work. Syrian authorities arrested two PIJ leaders. Israeli strikes hit the movement’s Damascus headquarters and secretary-general Ziyad al-Nakhalah’s residence.
Lebanon is the most logical fallback, but it is not open terrain. PIJ exists in most Palestinian refugee camps but has few members, no public bases, and no defined zones of influence. The movement has gone entirely underground, with no media presence and no official spokespersons operating inside the country.
The contrast with Hamas is the tell. Hamas cultivated Qatar, Turkey, and others, giving it political flexibility when the ground shifted. PIJ stayed tethered to Tehran. “Once you remove Damascus as a permissive hub and tighten Lebanese space, you compress the organization back toward its patron,” a former CIA officer who tracked Iranian proxy networks in the Levant told MBN. “That reduces its maneuverability.”
The last Israeli strike found PIJ on the Lebanese-Syrian border, trying to cross. That is where the organization is now: between two countries that no longer want it.
The question is whether that grey zone holds, or whether the pressure eventually forces something desperate.
Read the full article here
Gaza Watch
New Face, Same War
Hamas is expected to announce a new leader this Ramadan. Two names are circulating: Khalil al-Hayya, a Sharia scholar rooted in Gaza, and Khaled Meshal, a veteran political operator with deep regional connections.
The identity of the new leader matters less as a personnel decision than as a signal. And the two candidates are sending very different ones.
Meshal led Hamas for 21 years, survived existential crises before, and knows how to make the organization retreat without collapsing it. Iran dislikes him. So does the military wing. But choosing him would signal that Hamas wants to save itself as a movement, not just defend its control of Gaza.
Al-Hayya would signal the opposite: a narrower, more desperate objective. He is a preacher with limited political instincts, not unlike Ismail Haniyeh, who replaced Meshal in 2017 and was killed in Tehran in 2024. Under Haniyeh, Iran’s influence grew, and real power shifted to military commander Yahya Sinwar, who was also killed in 2024.
When the announcement comes, it will likely be described as an election. Be skeptical. Real power inside Hamas has always followed guns and money. Money is likely to be bet on Meshal, guns on al-Hayya; what is certain: This is temporary and might be short-lived.
What it means to lead Hamas after October 7, more than anything else, is an Israeli death sentence.
For more, click here
Joe Kawly
Joe Kawly is a veteran global affairs journalist with over two decades of frontline reporting across Washington, D.C. and the Middle East. A CNN Journalism Fellow and Georgetown University graduate, his work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Arab world politics, and diplomacy. With deep regional insight and narrative clarity, Joe focuses on making complex global dynamics clear, human, and relevant.
Andres Ilves
Andres Ilves is Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives at MBN. His career as a journalist and writer includes two decades at the BBC and Radio Free Europe.
Rami Al Amine
A Lebanese writer and journalist living in the United States. He holds a master’s degree in Islamic-Christian Relations from the Faculty of Religious Sciences at Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He is the author of the poetry collection “I Am a Great Poet” (Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiya, 2007); the political pamphlet “Ya Ali, We Are No Longer the People of the South” (Lebanese Plans, 2008); a book on social media titled “The Facebookers” (Dar Al-Jadeed, 2012); and “The Pakistanis: A Statue’s Biography” (Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiya, 2024).
Ghassan Taqi
A journalist specializing in Iraqi affairs, he has worked with the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) since 2015. He previously spent several years with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as well as various Iraqi and Arab media outlets.
