The overlooked environmental cost of renewables

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Friday that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was “wrong” when she previously said that the US believed Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, and he suggested that it would be “very hard to stop” Israel’s strikes on Iran in order to negotiate a possible ceasefire.
Trump has recently taken a more aggressive public stance toward Tehran as he’s sought more time to weigh whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended Fordo uranium enrichment facility. Buried under a mountain, the facility is believed to be out of the reach of all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.
After landing in New Jersey for an evening fundraiser for his super political action committee, Trump was asked about Gabbard’s comments to Congress in March that US spy agencies believed that Iran wasn’t working on nuclear warheads. The president responded, “Well then, my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?”
Informed that it had been Gabbard, Trump said, “She’s wrong.”
In a subsequent post on X, Gabbard said her testimony was taken out of context “as a way to manufacture division.”
“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly,” she wrote. “President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”
Still, disavowing Gabbard’s previous assessment came a day after the White House said Trump would decide within two weeks whether the US military would get directly involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. It said seeking additional time was “based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future.”
But on Friday, Trump himself seemed to cast doubts on the possibility of talks leading to a pause in fighting between Israel and Iran. He said that, while he might support a ceasefire, Israel’s strikes on Iran could be “very hard to stop.”
Asked about Iran suggesting that, if the US was serious about furthering negotiations, it could call on Israel to stop its strikes, Trump responded, “I think it’s very hard to make that request right now.”
“If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing,” Trump said. “But we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”
The president later added, “It’s very hard to stop when you look at it.”
“Israel’s doing well in terms of war. And, I think, you would say that Iran is doing less well. It’s a little bit hard to get somebody to stop,” Trump said.
Trump campaigned on decrying “endless wars” and has vowed to be an international peacemaker. That’s led some, even among conservatives, to point to Trump’s past criticism of the US invasion of Iraq beginning in 2003 as being at odds with his more aggressive stance toward Iran now.
Trump suggested the two situations were very different, though.
“There were no weapons of mass destruction. I never thought there were. And that was somewhat pre-nuclear. You know, it was, it was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today,” Trump said of his past criticism of the administration of President George W. Bush.
He added of Iran’s current nuclear program, “It looked like I’m right about the material that they’ve gathered already. It’s a tremendous amount of material.”
Trump also cast doubts on Iran’s developing nuclear capabilities for civilian pursuits, like power generation.
“You’re sitting on one of the largest oil piles anywhere in the world,” he said. “It’s a little bit hard to see why you’d need that.”

JENA, Louisiana: Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was released Friday from federal immigration detention, freed after three months by a judge’s ruling after becoming a symbol of President Donald Trump ‘s clampdown on campus protests.
The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his US citizen wife and newborn son.
The Trump administration sought to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests
“Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,” he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. “This shouldn’t have taken three months.”
Khalil was released after US District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal US resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
“Petitioner is not a flight risk and the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community,” he said. “Period, full stop.”
Later in the hourlong hearing, which took place by phone, the judge said the government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention.
The government filed notice Friday evening that it’s appealing Khalil’s release.
Khalil had to surrender his passport and can’t travel internationally, but he will get his green card back and be given official documents permitting limited travel within the country, including New York and Michigan to visit family, New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances and Washington to lobby Congress.
Khalil was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump ‘s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.
Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government couldn’t deport Khalil on those grounds, but gave it leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Trump administration lawyers repeated that accusation at Friday’s court hearing. It’s an accusation Khalil disputes.
In issuing his ruling Friday, the judge agreed with Khalil’s lawyers that the protest leader was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention. The judge noted that Khalil is now clearly a public figure.
Khalil’s lawyers had asked that he either be freed on bail or, at the very least, moved from Louisiana to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son, who are both US citizens.
Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally “breathe a sigh of relief” after her husband’s three months in detention.
“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others,” she said in a statement provided by Khalil’s lawyers. “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.”
The judge’s decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri.
Khalil was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The international affairs graduate student isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. He served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists and wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.
The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic.