New York Times: “In the latest blow to Iran’s senior leadership, the intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Seyed Majid Khademi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Tehran overnight on Monday, Israel’s defense minister said.”

President Trump claimed that the Iranian people want the U.S. military to continue to bomb their country.

Said Trump: “We’ve had numerous intercepts. ‘Please keep bombing. Do it.’ And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding.” 

Missy Ryan: “By the metrics the president cares about most—accessing oil and avoiding a protracted, politically damaging conflagration—Trump’s Venezuelan adventure is working…”

“Today, Venezuela remains ruled by unelected leaders—different ones, proceeding cautiously for now, but cut from the same authoritarian cloth. Trump-administration officials told me that they are steering Venezuela toward elections by late 2027 and slowly introducing potentially combustible factors, such as the return of the opposition leader María Corina Machado. Whether their bet that a more gradual transition can deliver democracy and avoid the pitfalls that wholesale political change brought in Iraq, Libya, and Egypt remains to be seen.”

Shane Harris: “Trump’s ‘excursion,’ as he calls the biggest U.S. military operation of his second term, has unleashed a parade of horribles…

“A regime that Trump claims to have replaced still remains in the hands of hard-liners, whose repression of the Iranian people will be strengthened for having survived a decapitation strike by the world’s only superpower. And neighboring countries in the Gulf, whose livelihoods depend on exporting energy and creating safe places for people to visit, live, and work, will amass new weapons and reconsider their strategic partnerships with the United States.”

“The entire country could be taken out in one night. And that night might be tomorrow night.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters about the Iran War.

Playbook: “The world is holding its breath to see what happens in the war tomorrow. It’s a now-familiar tightrope walk after more than a month of war with Iran, as well as a year-plus of the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, Gaza, tariffs and more: U.S. threats of escalation against an adversary commingle with nods to diplomacy, a history of postponements and the prospect of an eleventh-hour deal.”

“This moment is particularly perilous, after Trump’s Easter warning that he could unleash ‘Hell’ on Iran. And the war may shortly explode into a new phase…”

“Trump’s profane vow to strike Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure and bridges if Tehran doesn’t fold by tomorrow night — which experts say would likely constitute a war crime — looms large.”

“Iran on Monday rejected the latest ceasefire proposal and instead said it wants a permanent end to the war, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum loomed within hours,” the AP reports.

Garrett Graff: “The simple fact that we can’t say ‘definitely no, absolutely not, for sure’ is an astounding commentary on how unhinged and dangerous his presidency has become and how far off the rails the war with Iran has gone as Trump flails about with no plan, no strategy, no exit, and a global economy that day-by-day is reeling from the biggest geopolitical oil shock in history.”

“It sets the next 36 or so hours up as one of the weirdest and scariest moments in geopolitics of our lifetimes.”