🇺🇸🇮🇷⚡️ — President Trump was warned that a major U.S. strike on Iran is unlikely to bring down the regime and could spark a broader war, leading him to wait and see how Tehran handles the protests before deciding, WSJ reports.

➡️ Trump has not made a final call but has directed the military to stay prepared.

🇺🇸🇮🇷White House Special Representative Whitcoff voiced the US demands to Iran, which they want to be included in the agreement.

- Stop enriching uranium;
- Reduce missile stockpiles;
- Reduce approximately 2000 kg of enriched nuclear material (3.67–60 %);
- Stop supporting regional proxies.

In return, Iran is offered the lifting of sanctions and a return to the international community.

🇺🇸❌🇮🇸 Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Iceland Billy Long "joked" in Washington that Iceland will soon be the 52nd U.S. state and he’ll be the governor of it.

🔗 Daractenus

🇳🇴🇺🇸 Norway’s opposition worry that Trump’s plans for Greenland could result in Norway losing Svalbard.

They fear that USA could want Svalbard next or that Russia follows in U.S. footsteps.

SV party leader Kirsti Bergstø calls on PM Støre to tell MPs what Svalbard’s new situation is

🔗 Visegrad24

🇺🇸🇬🇱🇮🇸🇫🇴🇬🇧 A European perspective on the American annexation of Greenland | CIG #commentary

Regardless if the US annexes Greenland through peaceful or violent means, for it to control the GIUK Gap, Greenland by itself won't suffice. Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Jan Mayen Island, Svalbard and the Shetland islands will have to come under American control as well.

The dispute over Greenland isn't just about the U.S. consolidating its presence in the Arctic and fending off Russian and Chinese threats. Its also the EU's first big test in its struggle to present itself as a truly sovereign power and not a mere extension of the Global American Empire.

If Denmark and by extension, the EU, manage to retain control over Greenland, the case for European sovereignty from either the US or Russia will significantly improve and that may cause the Chinese and Russians to actually take Brussels seriously.

Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron have been proclaiming the EU's independence ever since Donald Trump took office but they have yet to put their money where their mouth is in regards to Greenland.

Trump could not have been more clear about his intent to annex the island, no matter how many concessions for military bases and mineral exploitation rights he's given by the Danish, yet no significant EU response was announced to this landgrab besides a few countries sending small groups of officers to "survey" the island.

Russia hasn't laid claim to a single inch of EU territory yet Brussels insists that's what's going to happen if Ukraine falls, but how should Russia be deterred and discouraged from creating a landbridge to the Kaliningrad exclave if the EU doesn't fight for Greenland?

Analysts have claimed that the US annexing Greenland will be the end of NATO but that's only half of the story. The loss of Greenland has the potential to be the last nail in the coffin for the European project and convince more EU members to seek alternatives and protection from other, bigger powers.

Weakness will only invite more aggression from neighbours. If the US succeeds in obtaining Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen, Svalbard are next.

@CIG_telegram

🇪🇺🇩🇪 Germany questions the future of the European project

Berlin doubts the EU’s ability to resist the rise of nationalist parties and the Trump administration’s knockouts. This scepticism, unprecedented across the Rhine, raises fears of a lasting weakening, even a progressive marginalization, of Europe as it exists today.

Fifteen years after the euro crisis, would Germany take to doubt Europe? The advance of nationalist parties on the Old Continent, four years of war in Ukraine without tangible hope of a ceasefire and the difficulty of the Twenty-Seven in responding to the repeated attacks of Donald Trump have installed, in the Rhine, a form of disbelief over the ability of the European Union (EU) to be more than an economic space.

“There is a growing scepticism about the European project,” said German Green Co-Chair Franziska Brantner. When I defend it [the EU], I am told: “Who do you want to build Europe with? Giorgia Meloni is Eurosceptic; Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia are also Eurosceptic, Emmanuel Macron has no more power, and France could switch to the far-right in 2027.” We postpone the plan to move forward, especially in defense and security, because of the possibility of Marine Le Pen being elected in 2027. If we continue like this, allowing Trump to divide us, the end of the EU is possible. »

“The end of the EU is no longer a taboo,” said essayist Sabine Rennefanz in her latest column in Spiegel, which appeared on 8 January, describing a mind-blowing EU, deeply divided on central issues such as the new imperialism of the United States and Russia.

“When we remember the beginnings of the European Union, the present seems disappointing,” she writes. The EU is “not decomposing, not unable to act, but it has weakened from within.” Her long unimaginable end is today “especially an unpleasant idea that no one likes to talk about.” The author would not be surprised “if, in ten years, this EU no longer existed. Not because of a great upheaval, but because of a gradual loss of importance. The treaties would remain, the buildings would also remain. Only the political idea behind them would have disappeared. »

The chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who was hopeful for the renewal of Europe when he came to the head of the German government in May 2025, seems to have become more cautious, sometimes playing the card of Germany alone. “If you don’t want Europe, at least make Germany your partner,” he suggested to Donald Trump on December 9, 2025, when the new U.S. security strategy had just been published.

“No one seems to care seriously about the EU”, yet alone to be able to “defend the European life model based on freedom”, alerts the center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in an analysis published on 11 January, going so far as to predict “the fall of Europe as early as next year” under the effect of the victory of populist and Eurosceptic parties in France and Poland.

Should the EU be more politically integrated? Having a leader elected by direct suffrage? Being a federation of nation-states? Having a common army? No one is looking into these issues anymore. Rather, it is “the American president who sets the tone of the debates in Europe,” laments Josef Kelnberger, correspondent of the Munich daily in Brussels, who fears that the EU will “perish out of indifference.”

“A European defence community must be recreated, as in 1952,” insists Franziska Brantner. But not to Twenty-Seven, it is obvious. Europe has only ever advanced in a restricted format, such as when the euro or the Schengen area was created. »

🔗 https://archive.is/20260115175640/https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2026/01/15/l-allemagne-s-interroge-sur-l-avenir-du-projet-europeen_6662250_3210.html#selection-5679.0-5691.68