White House envoy Jared Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for hours Monday, yielding an agreement to establish two working groups for disarmament and public health in the Gaza Strip, according to the Board of Peace and the Israeli leader’s office.

The meeting came a week after Netanyahu publicly rejected a 15-point plan negotiated by the United States with Hamas, which agreed to hand over its weapons as part of a roadmap that calls for Israel to withdraw its troops from Gaza.

“We’ve made a lot of progress to get here,” Kushner said Monday on Fox News. “For Israel we think this is a win-win situation because if Hamas actually gives over the weapons and the tunnels willingly over the next 60 to 90 days that obviously would be the elimination of a huge security threat for Israel, almost an unthinkable achievement.”

Kushner’s comments and the two readouts of his meeting seemed to show the Board moving toward Israel’s wide understanding of the definition of disarmament, which appears in conflict with Hamas’ more narrow interpretation. The gap underscores the difficulty in getting a final agreement that all three parties can agree to, despite the progress in establishing the working groups.

“It was agreed that there will be no [Israeli Defense Forces] redeployment from Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed and all of Gaza is demilitarized – every weapon, light and heavy, and every tunnel,” the Board of Peace said in a statement.

An official familiar with the talks, granted anonymity to disclose details, confirmed Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair attended the meeting with Netanyahu as well.

The White House and State Department referred questions on the meeting to the Board of Peace.

Kushner visited Jerusalem a day after he met with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo.

The Board of Peace roadmap, published this month, called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish control in Gaza to a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which the Board of Peace oversees. The Israeli military would withdraw its troops from Gaza in return. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told POLITICO last week he understood the roadmap to entail “storage of heavy weapons” under NCAG. When he rejected the roadmap, Netanyahu said Israel will not withdraw from the enclave until Hamas has been “genuinely disarmed.”

Another Hamas official, granted anonymity to frankly discuss negotiations, told POLITICO that he saw a difference in the terms of disarmament between the roadmap Hamas signed and the Board of Peace’s statement Monday. While Hamas described storing heavy weapons, the Board of Peace comment envisioned decommissioning all weapons, both light and heavy, as well as tunnels.

The Monday statement from the Board of Peace “suggests a metric that is rather absolute and likely impossible to achieve” on disarmament, said Robert Danin, a former career State Department official and previous head of Blair’s Quartet Mission in Jerusalem. “It requires the removal of every pistol and every tunnel before Israel withdraws from Gaza. And presumably the discovery of either would be grounds for Israel to halt or perhaps not begin to withdraw from Gaza.”

Dave Brat, Australia’s freshly confirmed U.S. ambassador, didn’t need to learn another language to qualify for his new gig. But he’s coming into the job fluent in a niche dialect that could give him a big advantage.

“He can speak Trump,” James Braid, President Donald Trump’s director of legislative affairs, said in a recent interview. “He can understand Trump, and he’s recognized as a longtime Trump ally. And I think that will really help him facilitate Aussie-United States relations.”

This dynamic could be key as Brat gets to work in Canberra, where political leaders have been rattled by the Trump administration’s aggressive trade agenda resulting in the implementation of a 12.5 percent tariff on Australian goods.

A longtime economist and academic, Brat is an avowed free trade advocate, which could quell some nerves on the ground. But Brat has also defended the Trump administration’s tariff regime as a kind of reset of the U.S. economic relationship with the world, telling a local news outlet in his home state of Virginia last year that “these tariffs are an attempt to bring some balance.”

At the same time, he has the ear of the White House, having earned Trump’s trust and respect long ago as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2014 to 2019. There, Brat was a member of the House Freedom Caucus — a contingent of conservative hard-liners known for taking uncompromising positions on federal spending — and in 2016 he embraced then-presidential candidate Trump as other more establishment Republicans turned their noses.

“The president hasn’t forgotten that,” said Braid, who was policy director of the Freedom Caucus during that period.

The Freedom Caucus was, as it is now, perpetually at war with party leadership on Capitol Hill, but the group harnessed Brat’s affable disposition and deft touch in high-stakes policy negotiations. He was obsessed with making sure that the group’s goals would be understood both by negotiators across the table and the public — something his former colleagues expect him to bring to the international stage.

Justin Ouimette, a former longtime executive director of the House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that Brat’s approach has always been, “here’s the message and here’s where it is coming from” — a tactic that “tends to lower the temperature.”

“He was one of those guys that’s typically dispatched to disagree without being disagreeable,” Braid agreed. “Brat is really effective at stating a position, being firm while also collaborating to reach an outcome, and so that that experience will serve him well in his new diplomatic post.”

There’s hope among some in Washington that Brat’s views on trade, coupled with his ties to the Trump administration, could help soothe existing tensions and result in a positive working relationship between the U.S. and Australia. That optimism is shared by Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, who supported Brat’s nomination.

“He will be very focused on commerce, trade, and economic opportunity. You know, things that are good for the U.S. and good for the Australian economies,” said Kaine, who as governor once relied on Brat’s contributions to a bipartisan economic advisory panel to build the state’s budget.

“He’ll be very mindful of the commercial relationship, and I think that’s something that will be viewed positively by the Aussies,” Kaine added.

He noted that Virginia’s massive naval base would now have an advocate in Brat amid the continued implementation of AUKUS, a trilateral security pact among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. in 2021 aimed at helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Warner was less effusive, saying he has “disagreed with Dave on a lot of issues,” but acknowledged he also was “a smart guy” he supported for the ambassadorship.

Brat also has long been vocal about the competitive threats to the U.S. posed by China, a concern shared by Australia in its diplomatic engagement with the Pacific region. Ouimette speculated that “his clear-mindedness and alignment with the administration on that particular issue weighed in his favor” as the White House was making its ambassador selection.

There are still some unknowns, however, including whether Brat will be living in Canberra full time and how he’ll handle staffing issues at the U.S. Embassy.

“I understand that Mission Australia’s current staffing and facilities are insufficient to meet the demands of our expanding Alliance activities,” Brat said in a written response to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, as part of his confirmation proceedings. “Our investment in diplomatic infrastructure reflects our commitment to this vital partnership.”

Brat’s arrival heads a wave of new senior appointments at the embassy including Robert T. Koepcke as deputy chief of mission and Jonathan A. Habjan as counselor for political affairs.

A slew of new military postings at the embassy includes Col. Richard Bush as defense attaché; Col. Pete Roongsang as Army attaché; and Col. Kabir Rao as chief of MILGROUP, which manages security cooperation, foreign military sales and defense relations with the Australian Armed Forces.

Brat also hasn’t spoken publicly or at length about how or why he was recommended for this particular posting, though he said during his confirmation hearing that he “loved the Australian people I have met in my life and appreciate their decency, wit and sense of humor” — as well as being a “tennis fanatic” eager to engage in “sports diplomacy across the board.”

Australian Prime Anthony Albanese is also a keen tennis player, known to invite dignitaries and journalists to play on the court at his official Canberra residence, The Lodge.

“I’m very much looking forward to having a hit of tennis with David Brat,” Albanese told POLITICO, adding that he believes Brat’s appointment will “bolster” the existing alliance.

Brat did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for interviews.

But Braid made clear that sending Brat to Australia is not a vanity posting or just a favor for a longtime Trump loyalist, calling Brat “a serious lawmaker with serious chops.” He conceded that while Brat “comes from a political tradition that may be a little bit unfamiliar to the Australians,” he brings relationships and experiences to the table a career foreign service officer could not.

“This is a serious person,” Braid said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a problem: Nobody wants the hardest job in Washington.

The Ukrainian president is struggling to find someone of sufficient influence to represent Kyiv to the Trump administration, with prospective candidates proving reluctant to take on the grueling assignment at a critical moment in the war, according to two former senior Ukrainian officials and four lawmakers.

The need to replace the previous envoy, Olga Stefanishyna, helped trigger Zelenskyy’s still-incomplete government reshuffle. Stefanishyna was formally dismissed on Aug. 3 over impending embezzlement charges. 

Zelenskyy moved his reshuffle plans forward so he could offer the ambassadorship to Yulia Svyrydenko, the outgoing prime minister, according to a former senior Ukrainian official and a Republican foreign expert familiar with the background to the shake-up. But she declined, disrupting his plans. 

“It is no secret that I counted on and offered Yulia Svyrydenko the post of ambassador to the United States,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference in late July. He added that he was looking for a candidate with the highest possible qualifications: “a person at the level of a deputy prime minister, minister, or prime minister.”

Since then, however, other prospective candidates have proved equally reluctant, spurning what would in any case be the difficult job of handling Donald Trump’s unpredictable White House.

Ukrainians with sufficient heft and skill for the ambassadorship are looking at it askance, “worrying that they would not enjoy the conditions they would need to do the job properly,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a prominent Ukrainian opposition lawmaker and former deputy prime minister who is a regular critic of Zelenskyy.

“Certainly that would be the case without having the ear of the president or his trust,” she added. That narrows Zelenskyy’s options sharply. The person would likely have to come from his tight inner circle of trusted aides, Klympush-Tsintsadze said, but there is no one there who seriously fits the bill. 

“Framing it as if nobody wants the job would be a kind of oversimplification,” said a former Ukrainian diplomat who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely. “Of course, there are people who want the job, but there’s no one who really measures up to it. Zelenskyy is having a hard time filling the position.”

Wrong direction

The trouble filling the Washington post is part of a broader problem for Zelenskyy, whose office did not respond to a request for comment. The president’s approval ratings have deteriorated since he embarked a month ago on a government shake-up that remains incomplete and has proved turbulent. According to a Socis Center for Social Research survey, more than 55 percent of Ukrainians believe their nation is moving in the wrong direction.

Zelenskyy’s dismissal in July of popular defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked street protests and a political backlash, while several key posts remain unresolved. The reshuffle has also raised questions about how Zelenskyy chooses his senior team — and how far beyond his tight circle of trusted aides he is prepared to look. 

“No one has explained to Ukrainians why exactly the government had to be changed,” Mykola Knyazhitskiy, an opposition lawmaker from Lviv and founder of Ukraine’s Espreso TV channel, said.

“There had been no clearly articulated public complaints about Svyrydenko. In her farewell address to parliament, Svyrydenko received applause. MPs gave her a standing ovation. So why was she dismissed if her performance was considered so successful and was so highly regarded?” 

Difficult timing

The ambassadorial vacancy comes at an especially fraught moment for Kyiv. Washington remains central to Ukraine’s ability to sustain the war, and whoever takes the job will have to navigate a Trump administration that has repeatedly shifted course on military support and on how — and when — the war should end.

In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns earlier this year, Stefanishyna acknowledged she had experienced “diplomatic whiplash” in the role. 

Kyiv is trying to persuade Trump to give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems, something he promised in June, only to reverse himself in July. The issue is becoming more urgent as Ukraine heads toward another winter of Russian attacks on its energy and civilian infrastructure and is already struggling to intercept intensified ballistic missile strikes. Zelenskyy has said this year’s deliveries of air defense missiles from Ukraine’s allies have fallen by two-thirds compared with 2025.

At the same time, there are signs the White House may soon seek to revive stalled peace negotiations. That would put a premium on having an ambassador in Washington with the political weight to get through the door, the authority to speak for Zelenskyy and the skill to navigate an administration where policy can change quickly. And also to lobby Congress. 

Leaving the post vacant, therefore, carries risks well beyond diplomatic protocol. Ukraine could find itself without a heavyweight operator in Washington just as decisions are being made over weapons, air defense, logistics and intelligence sharing, as well as the terms of any renewed peace push.

“It is quite likely that Zelenskyy won’t appoint anyone this side of the midterm elections in the United States,” said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an opposition lawmaker. “It will be hard to judge who would fit the political landscape best until those elections have been held.”

U.S. allies see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Washington’s 15-point plan for Gaza as undermining confidence in the Board of Peace — and in the Trump administration’s ability to influence the Middle East more broadly.

It increasingly appears that the U.S. either doesn’t have — or isn’t willing to exercise — the leverage needed to deliver on Gaza, a number of diplomats and others familiar with U.S. strategy in the region told POLITICO. And that has them concerned about U.S. efforts at negotiations across the region.

“Netanyahu’s rejection of the peace plan carries significant implications for long-term regional stability and Israeli security,” said an Arab diplomat familiar with U.S. policy in the Middle East. “President Trump is the only one to have the potential to influence this situation, as he could seek to reassert his political relevance by pressuring Netanyahu to reconsider his position.”

Netanyahu’s defiance adds to the growing list of woes Washington faces as it struggles to reshape the Middle East, from ending the Iran war to winding down the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Arab diplomat warned: “Arab and regional leaders may find themselves in a complex position, needing to balance their interests amid these evolving dynamics.”

Netanyahu disavowed the White House-backed peace plan for Gaza on Sunday, declaring that Israel requires Hamas to have “genuinely disarmed” before it withdraws its troops from the territory. That hard line could further threaten the viability of Trump’s Board of Peace, a 27-country initiative formed as part of Trump’s deal last year to end the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“The Board of Peace has a distinct limp to its gait at the moment,” said Robert Jordan, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the George W. Bush administration.

“It never appeared to be a broadly based, highly viable substitute for the United Nations,” he added, referring to Trump’s assertions in January that the board could be used as an alternative to the world body. “That’s compounded by the political situation in Israel at the moment.”

The Board of Peace declined to comment, but an official with the organization insisted that work is continuing apace, with Israel’s buy-in. The official pointed to a logistical support area under construction that is meant to serve hundreds of troops expected to deploy to Gaza as part of the international stabilization force envisioned by the board.

“The roadmap is between the Board of Peace and Hamas,” said the board official. “Separate discussions with Israel are continuing. Israel is not being asked to rely on trust or to make irreversible moves before verified steps are taken on the ground.”

The official, like others, was granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiation process.

A Western diplomat familiar with Middle East policy argued Netanyahu’s action is a sign that U.S. strategy toward Israel is misguided.

“This latest rejection once again shows that appeasing Israel only leads to more maximalist demands,” the diplomat said. “I don’t think it kills the [Board of Peace] but what it does do is once again show that Israel remains one of the obstacles to a viable two-state solution.”

Trump has avoided clashing publicly with Netanyahu over the roadmap, telling reporters Monday that he had a “good relationship” with the Israeli prime minister even though Netanyahu rejected the U.S. proposal. The White House declined to comment further on Israel’s rejection of the deal.

A Trump administration official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said the White House doesn’t see Netanyahu’s action as derailing the peace process at all.

“Broadly speaking, we see this as election-posturing by Bibi for a domestic audience,” the official said. “The [Board of Peace] has actually been getting good cooperation on the ground as of late. So that’s what’s important.”

Netanyahu’s rejection of the road map comes as his popularity has been eroding in Israel ahead of an October parliamentary vote that could lead to his unseating.

In Europe, some governments are still holding out hope that the Board of Peace can rescue the Gaza peace process.

“I extremely appreciate the work of chief negotiator [Nickolay] Mladenov on behalf of the Board of Peace, his achievements in the 15-point plan are absolutely substantial,” said Hildegard Bentele, a center-right German lawmaker in the European Parliament. He said he was confident the U.S.-led effort would make progress “if re-submitted after Israeli elections and targeting the core point of full weapons’ decommissioning.”

Others with experience in the region said that Netanyahu appeared to be successfully pushing the Board of Peace in a direction more favorable to Israel.

Netanyahu’s actions are “testing the tolerance of the American or Board of Peace team,” said Nimrod Novik, who served as senior diplomatic adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and is now a fellow at the New York-based Israel Policy Forum.

“It’s really a Trump personal enterprise,” said Zaha Hassan, who advised the Palestinian negotiating team during its bid for U.N. membership from 2010 to 2012 and is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So if it can’t get Israel to stand down in Gaza, to withdraw, to allow the Board of Peace to do its work, how can any other regional actor believe that the U.S. can restrain Israel in their neighborhood?”

A European diplomat said the disillusionment with Trump’s sway in the Middle East was already evident in his failure to wrap up the war in Iran quickly.

“The solution is not as close as anticipated or as Trump told us at some point. I think Trump is losing credibility,” said the diplomat, granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “Everything seems to be in limbo and in a high degree of uncertainty that affects us all.”

Jerry Wu, Megan Messerly, Myah Ward and Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.

Israel rejected a U.S.-backed peace plan for Gaza Sunday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Israel will not withdraw from the enclave until Hamas has been “genuinely disarmed.”

In dismissing the 15-point plan drawn up by U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, Netanyahu also said that as long as he is prime minister, “a Palestinian state will not be established” in Gaza or the West Bank.

The peace plan announced by the White House at the end of July would require Hamas to disarm and relinquish its governance in Gaza, while Israel would be required to withdraw its military forces from the territory.

Hamas has said that it would begin disarming, but in recent days an Israeli official said the country still had “serious security concerns.”

The rejection is a blow to peace negotiations the Trump administratoin has been brokering since September. The U.S. president had described the plan, now rejected by Israel, as a “critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government” and giving Israel “the security it deserves.”

Israel appears unlikely to pull back significant forces or make other concessions ahead of legislative elections scheduled for October. Netanyahu faces a tough reelection battle, with his far-right coalition partners urging him to keep up the pressure on Hamas and leave forces in Gaza. Opponents also accuse him of failing to prevent the Oct. 7, 2023, attack when Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 others hostage. Israel responded with a punishing military offensive that has killed more than 73,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Netanyahu said on Sunday that he is now in discussions with U.S. officials about how to move forward. “They have ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some of which are unacceptable to us, and we know how to stand up to these things,” he said.

Brussels is bracing for an unusual fight between the EU’s smallest country and a British ex-footballing legend.

Peter Shilton, the England goalkeeper who conceded the “Hand of God” goal from Diego Armando Maradona in 1986, has started a new life as an anti-gambling advocate after overcoming a decades-long addiction.

Despite being a diehard Brexit supporter, he’s become the poster boy of the European Parliament’s push to tax online betting in a bid to raise some much-needed funds to finance the bloc’s next €2 trillion budget.

But the campaign has run into strong opposition from Malta. The tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of just over half a million people, is home to a burgeoning betting sector. It says that higher taxes will cripple its gambling industry, boost illegal operators and drive firms outside the bloc.

“[Malta] will not accept the introduction of any EU-level taxes designed to sustain the bloc’s spending,” the country’s Prime Minister, Robert Abela, told the Maltese Parliament in June.

But Shilton, who lost more than £1 million in betting on horse racing over 45 years and now runs his own gambling addiction charity, dismisses the arguments by Malta and the gambling lobbies as “window dressing.” He’s in favor of higher taxes as he wants to shrink advertising revenue that is used to lure in new gamblers.

“Deep down they’re after everybody’s money. Simple as that,” he told POLITICO during a visit to Brussels in June.

The topic has split the EU’s 27 governments, pitting gambling-heavy Southern European countries against their more supportive Western European peers, led by France. Capitals are already fighting even though the Commission hasn’t yet issued a formal proposal for the possible tax, which would ultimately need to be unanimously approved by governments.

It’s one of numerous budget battle lines being drawn, with Ireland — which is steering the talks as chair of the rotating Council presidency — set to restart negotiations to facilitate an overall deal on the EU budget before the end of the year.

That’s no mean feat given Dublin’s task to mesh competing spending priorities into a single budget — financing everything from farmers’ subsidies to foreign aid — that is acceptable for each of the EU’s 27 governments.

National capitals will have to unanimously approve new EU-wide taxes — known as own resources — to pay for soaring defense spending and post-Covid debt repayments if they want to avoid drastically increasing national contributions to Brussels.

Supporters of the gambling levy point to the fact that it would rake in over €13 billion throughout the next budget cycle and — for some, more importantly — address a serious public health issue. An estimated 80 million adults globally have experienced a gambling addiction, according to experts.

“We look on it [gambling] as an illness. It’s something that’s inborn in you and that can be ignited,” Shilton said.

Malta’s game plan

Malta has invested heavily in the gambling industry — including lotteries, betting and casinos increasingly operating online — which now accounts for around 12 percent of its gross domestic product.

These firms have relocated to Malta because of its light-touch licensing regime, business-friendly tax regime and balmy weather.

The country is “as dependent on the online gambling industry as Germany is on cars,” said an EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak freely.

While gambling firms need local authorization to operate in most other European countries, securing the Maltese license is crucial to access banking services and gain a foothold in the EU market.

Malta-based firms dominated the German and Austrian online gambling markets before national regulators cracked down. This has prompted the Maltese government to refuse to recognize some court rulings and sanctions issued by other EU countries against its gambling firms.

Given its influence, it is hardly surprising that the gambling industry has found a friendly ear among Malta’s politicians in Brussels.

The Maltese president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, last year gave the opening speech at an international gambling conference in Rome that also featured Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Tajani.

“I’m more than a little proud that it started in my island home of Malta,” she said, referring to SiGMA, a Maltese events company that focuses on online gambling founded by Eman Pulis, a university friend of Metsola.

Betting lobbies say they oppose higher gambling rates on the grounds that they will fuel appetite for the illegal market, away from the grasp of EU rules.

“A higher tax would lead to worse odds for the customers … and it is relevant because access to the illegal markets in Europe is, obviously, one click away,” said secretary general of the European Gaming and Betting Association, Maarten Haijer.

Nicola Matteucci, an economist at the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy who has undertaken extensive research on the gambling sector, argued there is a “point where prices exceed a certain level and the demand [for gambling] diminishes. But it’s not as immediate as suggested by the industry.”

Matteucci said that most gamblers will be undeterred by slightly higher taxes and worse odds as they are not fully rational consumers.

Anti-gambling groups reason instead that higher taxes will reduce the sector’s spending on commercials, preventing would-be punters from getting sucked in to gambling in the first place.

“Higher taxes will therefore mean less gambling advertising overall and many people would regard that as a public benefit,” said Derek Webb, the founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling advocacy group.

Club Med joins Malta

Malta has joined forces with fellow Mediterranean countries — Italy, Portugal and Spain — to challenge the mooted tax which was first proposed by the Parliament’s socialist lawmaker Victor Negrescu, said four diplomats with knowledge of the discussions.

According to the European Commission’s estimates, seen by POLITICO, a 3 percent tax on the net turnover of the online gambling sector would generate an estimated €1.9 billion per year.

With its big online gambling market, Spain is expected to be among the biggest financial losers, should the tax go ahead. It is estimated to be on the hook for €414 million per year, almost a quarter of the total amount. That compares to a projected bill of €165 million per year for Malta— a disproportionality high amount for such a small country.

Portugal is also reluctant to back the levy. It fears that higher taxes would eat into revenue brought in by state-run betting and lotteries that is currently channeled to the charity Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa‘s healthcare and youth support programs, said a Portuguese official.

Meanwhile, given the relatively low uptake of online gambling, Italy’s misgivings have surprised anti-betting advocates. Rome is expected to pay a mere 7 percent of the proposed new levy — a significantly lower proportion than its regular EU budget contributions.

However, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party has previously been receptive to the gambling industry. Last year its MPs passed a resolution encouraging the reversal of a ban on professional football clubs advertising gambling firms.  

President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly called off the “biggest attacks since World War II” against Iran in favor of negotiations, the latest in a seemingly endless series of whiplashes in the conflict.

The energy markets, which typically favor stability and predictability, responded with little more than a shrug.

Crude prices dipped slightly and gas prices remained steady. Even as the war stretches past the six-month mark and the midterms creep closer, Trump has been able to keep retail prices lower than experts say they should be through the sheer power of promises – which have yet to come through – of a swift end to the conflict. On Monday, he took that a step further, chastising the major oil companies for “making too much money” off global oil shortages as a result of the war.

“They better cut the retail price, the consumer price,” Trump said. “I’ll say it loud and clear. I’m not happy about it.”

But Trump’s ability to jawbone the markets may be diminishing at a critical time, three months before the midterm elections when control of Congress is hanging in the balance and his approval is sinking to new lows amid voter anger over cost of living concerns. It comes as global crude oil supplies are running low, the war threatens more energy flows, refiners are running out of spare capacity and the administration has few tools to keep gas prices low.

“Labor Day is the point where gas prices are baked into the election,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “That last summer trip determines how voters evaluate their cost of living.”

And the higher gas prices come at a time when Trump repeatedly promises to escalate the war and then says it’s almost over a few hours or days later. That is starting to degrade his ability to cause price drops, a former adviser cautioned.

“His credibility has been a little bit shot,” said a former Trump adviser close to the White House, granted anonymity to avoid reprisal.

“The markets aren’t paying attention to him, they’re paying attention to what’s happening and, with respect to oil prices, it is a huge liability for the Republicans,” the adviser said.

Trump on Monday acknowledged that dynamic but expressed no urgency. He told reporters in the Oval Office that he was in no rush to end the conflict, though he acknowledged the need to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of global energy supplies flowed before the war. He hinted at the midterm stakes for his party if the conflict does not end soon.

“I’m under no time constraint,” he said. “I don’t happen to be running, but a lot of very good Republicans are running.”

Trump’s ability to move the markets may be the only tool the administration has left to keep gas prices in check, said Rory Johnston, an oil market researcher and founder of the Commodity Context newsletter.

The Trump administration has drawn down the U.S. Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level since President Ronald Reagan’s first term. Oil majors are warning that the lack of refinery capacity could keep prices high for the foreseeable future.

“The market is so entrenched on this idea that eventually this will resolve by Trump deciding and ceding some ground on some issue, likely kind of even symbolic control of the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “So the market’s going to be constantly watching for any sign that he’s shifting there.”

While experts continue to marvel at Trump’s ability to get the markets to bend to his whims, there is little consensus on when that power will dissipate.

Trump has “less credibility” in terms of moving markets, but it has not totally dissipated, Patrick de Haan, head of petroleum analysis at pricing service GasBuddy.

“I don’t think credibility completely goes to zero,” he said. “Hard to know though when it really bends.”

Trump’s push to keep energy prices low has also been buoyed by reduced Chinese oil imports, the successful rerouting of about 7 million barrels per day of Saudi Arabian crude through the Red Sea and releases from strategic petroleum reserves.

The administration released nearly 3 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last week, bringing the reserves down to their lowest level since February 1983, according to Department of Energy data. About half of the 218.5 million barrels the Department of Energy said it would make available to the market have now left the salt caverns along the Gulf Coast.

As the summer driving season winds down, consumers expect gas prices to fall as well.

If the national average price of a gallon of gas is still above $4 by Saturday, de Haan noted, it will set a new record for the latest in the calendar year that prices are so high.

Ben Lefebvre contributed to this report.

Iran said Monday there are currently no direct talks with the United States, after President Donald Trump said negotiations would resume. Speaking at his weekly news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran’s current negotiations are limited to Oman and focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“Our negotiations are with Oman. We are focused on an understanding on a route that will ensure the safe passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,” Baghaei said at a news conference, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.

He added that “the focus of the negotiations with Oman will be on this issue,” while “the issues related to Iran and the United States should be examined in the next stages to see where the situation will go.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations with Iran would resume Monday, after scrapping a planned military strike over the weekend. Speaking on Sunday, the American leader also refused to set a deadline for reaching a broader deal with Tehran.

“They knew the extent of the attack because they saw it forming. Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see,” said Trump, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One.

Asked whether he had imposed a deadline, the U.S. president responded: “Would I rather make a deal? I’m not looking to kill people because people die, a lot of people die, and we don’t want that.”

Trump’s remarks came on the heels of his early Sunday announcement on Truth Social that the U.S. was shelving a “massive attack,” after Iran and several Middle Eastern countries asked Washington to pause military action while negotiators worked toward an agreement. He said the framework under discussion included the “Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat, adding that Israel had also agreed to pause strikes.

Baghaei stated there would be “no significant change” in the situation in the Strait of Hormuz as long as Iran remained under what he described as U.S. military pressure.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron’s office is courting Saudi cash to turn what was once the country’s biggest theme park into a manga-themed attraction.

According to half a dozen diplomatic, government and industry officials — all of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a project one person characterized as “highly confidential” — the Elysée Palace has for several months held discussions with potential Saudi Arabian investors about the revival of Mirapolis, which closed in 1991 due to financial issues and has remained abandoned since.

A subsidiary of the Saudi Public Investment Fund called the Qiddiya Investment Company is at the center of the negotiations. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund recently opened an office in Paris.

According to one diplomat with contacts in the Gulf, the project would involve Saudi investors acquiring the former Mirapolis site, located some 30 kilometers northwest of Paris, with an eye to turning it into a theme park based on the popular manga series Dragon Ball.

Manga’s explosion in popularity has been felt keenly in France, where comic books and graphic novels are particularly popular.

The expected investment amount is not yet known, but several parties involved in the discussions suggest the deal could exceed €1 billion.

Saudi spinoff

The enterprise is part of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan, which aims to diversify the kingdom’s oil-dependent economy with massive investments in tourism and leisure.

The Qiddiya Investment Company is overseeing the construction of the city of Qiddiya — a huge entertainment complex situated some 50 kilometers from Riyadh. The site is set to feature a Formula 1 circuit, a large tennis complex designed to host international tournaments, an amusement park operated by the American chain Six Flags and another theme park based on Dragon Ball.

According to three people familiar with the negotiations, the current plan is to build a smaller-scale Dragon Ball park where Mirapolis once stood.

The Elysée did not respond to questions about the project’s details, and Qiddiya Investment Company did not respond to a request for comment.

Qiddiya Managing Director Abdullah Aldawood met with Macron at the last two Choose France summits, which are events organized to attract foreign investment in the country. At the event, the summit’s press kit referred to, in cryptic terms, the signing of a memorandum of understanding aimed at “exploring a major tourism and entertainment project in France.”

A few weeks before Choose France this year, Aldawood met with Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region, where the abandoned Mirapolis site is located. Aldawood also met with teams from Business France and Choose Paris Region — the region’s economic development agency — said a person who attended the meeting.

In a sign that the project is progressing well, late last month officials representing Île-de-France, which includes Paris, met with representatives from 10 key ministries, electricity grid operator RTE and public transport operator Île-de-France Mobilités to discuss the park’s possible revival.

The agenda for this meeting, which POLITICO saw, included discussions about the governance of the future project, transportation infrastructure, energy requirements and land acquisition issues. The gathering was chaired by Macron’s former Chief of Staff Georges-François Leclerc, who is now the prefect of the Île-de-France region.

“We had no information before receiving the invitation to the meeting, but we understand that the Elysée wants to step up the pressure on this issue,” said a ministerial adviser who took part in the discussions.

A fallen icon of the 1980s

Opened in 1987 by then-Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and with funding from Saudi billionaire Ghaith Pharaon, Mirapolis was intended to be France’s attempt at subverting U.S. dominance in the theme park industry.

But financial difficulties quickly mounted. Visitor numbers came in below expectations, and competition from EuroDisney further undermined the park’s business model a few years later. Mirapolis closed its doors for good four years later.

Discussions about Mirapolis’ manga successor have remained very limited. No one at the town hall in Courdimanche, the commune where Mirapolis is located, responded to requests for comment.

Rachid Temal, the Socialist Party senator who represents Mirapolis’ constituency, said he was not involved in the discussions and preferred not to comment at this stage.

Aurélien Taché, a member of Parliament from the far-left France Unbowed party who represents the area, said he was not kept in the loop either, and that he will be paying particular attention to “the environmental and social aspects of the project.”

Washington is again ratcheting up the pressure on the European Union with new tariff threats. Brussels’ response is strikingly different from a year ago: Don’t retaliate, don’t put on a show for Donald Trump, and don’t let him dictate the timetable.

Trump’s recent threat to “immediately initiate” a trade investigation over the European Commission’s $1 billion fine against Google came on top of new tariffs on the EU and dozens of other trading partners, and continuing pressure from Washington over drug pricing.

But rather than sounding alarms and scrambling to respond to this new phase of Trump’s global trade war, the EU has shown public restraint — a reaction that suggests that the 27-member bloc has become less susceptible to Trump’s pressure tactics.

This year, European capitals saw their united rejection of Trump’s Greenland ambitions fail to trigger a wider transatlantic rupture. His most sweeping tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court, and their successors have drawn legal challenges. Now, with a chance that Trump’s grip on Washington loosens in the November midterm elections, Europeans are happy to play for time.

“It is a strategy of buying time through dialogue,” Bernd Lange, a German member of the European Parliament and chair of its Committee on International Trade, said in an interview. “The Commission’s approach is to move away from anything that could be seen as legally binding and focus instead on dialogue forums, consultation and areas where cooperation is possible.”

Last year, Brussels repeatedly bristled at Trump’s tariff threats, which at times reached as high as 50 percent, before agreeing to a trade truce at the U.S. president’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. After months of delays that tested Washington’s patience, the EU fulfilled its side of the bargain by passing legislation in June to allow U.S. industrial and some agricultural goods to enter the bloc duty-free.

A USTR official, granted anonymity to share the administration’s thinking, credited the EU for implementing “key commitments,” in the Turnberry deal, “such as massive tariff reductions for U.S. exports, and has made concrete commitments on a number of other burdensome regulatory matters.”

“Any technical talks will be about implementing the remaining commitments, and the U.S. side anticipates this will move at pace,” the official added.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The EU law, however, also includes guardrails should Trump threaten the bloc again.

It didn’t take long for him to do so.

While the 10 percent tariff the U.S. government rolled out July 23 does not violate the Turnberry agreement, which caps U.S. duties on most EU goods at 15 percent, Trump’s threats to investigate Europe’s digital restrictions in the wake of the Google fine would likely do so. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has yet to launch an official investigation, but the official there confirmed to POLITICO that the agency expected “to initiate the investigation soon”. That could allow the White House to layer on more tariffs on EU imports.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is also conducting a separate trade investigation into Germany’s pharmaceutical pricing and has suggested he could launch similar reviews of other European countries’ drug pricing practices as well.

Those investigations, however, will take months to resolve, if not longer.

“The second phase of the trade war touches a nerve in Europe: sovereignty. Whether it concerns taxation, health care systems or competition policy, these are areas the EU sees as core to its autonomy,” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, a former International Monetary Fund and German government official who now heads Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.

“At the same time, Trump no longer appears as politically untouchable as he did at the start of his presidency. Weakening poll numbers ahead of the midterms, controversy over the Iran war and legal setbacks in the U.S. Supreme Court have exposed vulnerabilities,” Zettelmeyer said.

In the meantime, EU officials are keeping channels to Washington open. The thinking in Brussels is that every public confrontation plays to Trump’s preferred negotiating style, whereas slower legal and technical processes give the EU more room to manage disputes on its own terms.

Nor is German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a rush to offer concessions to the Trump administration on drug pricing, according to a European official familiar with the issue who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks. Berlin expects the U.S. trade investigation to take at least a year, the person noted.

Brussels is in close touch with Berlin on the probe, which it believes could be a blueprint for other possible U.S. trade investigations into France and Italy’s pharmaceutical policies. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, head of the Commission’s trade department, recently met with German officials in Berlin to focus on a way forward on drug pricing.

The Commission has adopted a similar strategy on transatlantic disagreements on digital policy.

While the Trump administration has pressed for broader talks, including on the enforcement of the EU’s competition rules governing Big Tech platforms, Brussels has taken pains to keep the discussions at a technical level.

In early July, a group of officials from the European Commission’s trade and tech departments headed to Washington for what a Commission spokesperson described as “a dialogue on the dialogue.”

A senior Commission official said the meeting was about seeing where the two sides could “partner up,” with Brussels looking at holding a “high-level” meeting with Washington in the fall and a series of technical rounds in between.

“From the EU’s perspective, both sort of genetically as an organization and tactically, they would be happy if as many of the discussions as possible moved to the technical level in dialogue committees rather than have it be, like, Donald Trump and somebody going at it on Twitter or in competing press statements,” said Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former trade diplomat for the Australian government and the founder of ExplainTrade, an outlet based in Geneva.

The Commission responded with characteristic restraint after Trump threatened retaliation over the latest Google fine. After the U.S. president’s Truth Social post, Brussels emphasized it would seek “technical-level contact” between the EU and the U.S., said deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill. A meeting at a higher, political level hasn’t yet been confirmed.

However, several people familiar with the matter confirmed they were expecting a reaction from the U.S., possibly in the form of a new 301 investigation.

“I have not heard anything yet on timing for the launch or scope of the Section 301 investigation,” said a U.S. tech industry representative, who was granted anonymity to discuss the conversations with administration officials. “But I believe this has been in the works for some time as a means of leverage in U.S. negotiations with the EU.”

Europe’s strategy depends on shifting disputes out of Trump’s preferred arena of public confrontation. But officials acknowledge that this bet rests on one unpredictable factor: Trump himself.

“We cannot let our guard down,” another Commission official said. “Trump may change course at any moment. His focus is on how markets react to his policies, not on how the EU behaves.”

Stefanie Bolzen reported from Washington and Camille Gijs reported from Brussels. Oliver Ward contributed to this report.