As Trump declares war won, Iran mocks suggestion serious talks underway

"Do not test our resolve to defend our land," the speaker of Iran's parliament warned Wednesday, as thousands more U.S. forces head for the Middle East and President Trump considers a ground operation despite declaring the war with Iran already won.

"We are closely monitoring all U.S. movements in the region, especially troop deployments," parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, in English, in a post on X.

"What the generals have broke, the soldiers can't fix; instead, they will fall victim to Netanyahu's delusions," he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Two sources told CBS News on Tuesday that the Pentagon was expected to send a command element and some ground forces from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East.

Three U.S. warships and about 2,200 Marines from an expeditionary unit departed California last week — the second Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed since the war began on Feb. 28. 

Iraq's Defense Ministry voiced anger Wednesday over an airstrike it said had hit a military clinic only about 50 miles from the nation's capital, Baghdad.

It said the Habbaniyah Military Clinic and Habbaniyah Works Division, both affiliated with a Ministry command site, "were subjected to an unjust airstrike, followed by aircraft cannon fire" that left seven service members dead and 13 others wounded as they carried out "their national and humanitarian duties."

The Iraqi military did not say who it believed was responsible for the strike, but the Arabic network Al Jazeera reported that an umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias known collectively in Iraq as the Popular Mobilization Forces has an installation near the clinic. 

U.S. forces have targeted PMF fighters and equipment during the war with Iran, and before it, repeatedly. The Iranian-backed militias have launched attacks on American bases in the region, also before and during the war.

Iraq called the Wednesday strike "a serious and blatant violation of all international laws and norms that prohibit attacks against medical facilities and their personnel" and "a dangerous escalation that requires firm action and accountability for those responsible."

The Ministry said it reserved "its full right to take all necessary measures to respond to this aggression in accordance with approved legal frameworks and laws."

An Iranian military spokesperson mocked U.S. attempts at a ceasefire deal Wednesday, insisting the Americans were only negotiating with themselves.

Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military's Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, made the statement in a prerecorded video aired on state television.

"The strategic power you used to talk about has turned into a strategic failure," he said. "The one claiming to be a global superpower would have already gotten out of this mess if it could. Don't dress up your defeat as an agreement. Your era of empty promises has come to an end."

He added: "Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves?"

Zolfaghari's statement came shortly after the Trump administration sent a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran through Pakistan.

"Our first and last word has been the same from day one, and it will stay that way: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you," Zolfaghari said. "Not now, not ever."

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had fired missiles at Israel as well as military bases hosting U.S. forces in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain, Iranian state television reported on Wednesday.

A Guards statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB said that "targets in the heart of the occupied territories," meaning Israel, and U.S. military bases in the region "were struck by precision-guided liquid- and solid-fuel missile systems and attack drones." 

Missiles fired from Iran in retaliation for ongoing U.S. and Israeli attacks are spotted in the skies over Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, March 25, 2026. Issam Rimawi/Anadolu/Getty

Financial markets experts are raising concerns about possible insider trading after an unusual spike in oil futures trading only minutes before President Trump announced talks with Iran on Truth Social.

Mr. Trump's announcement, which he posted on social media shortly after 7 a.m. EST on Monday, caused oil prices to tumble and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to surge more than 1,000 points. The president also touted what he described as "productive" peace talks with Iran, providing relief to investors concerned about rising oil prices and their impact on inflation and economic growth.  

The message amounted to a sudden shift from Mr. Trump's post on Saturday that threatened to "obliterate" Iran's power plants unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic. That abrupt change, which caught investors by surprise, has drawn scrutiny over unusual trading activity just before Mr. Trump issued Monday's market-moving announcement.

Read more here. 

The Pentagon is expected to send parts of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, according to two sources.

A command element and some ground forces are expected to be part of the deployment, according to a source familiar with the planning.

A U.S. official said the deployment is expected to be fewer than 1,500 troops.  

Read more here.

There was no damage to Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant after it was targeted in a strike, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog reported late Tuesday night local time. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a social media post that it had "been informed by Iran that another projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant today. According to Iran, there was no damage to the NPP itself nor injuries to staff, and the condition of the plant is normal." 

Bushehr was targeted in a strike last week, but Iran also told the IAEA at the time that there was no damage or injuries. 

The IAEA wrote Tuesday that its director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, "reiterates" the "call for maximum restraint to avoid nuclear safety risks during conflict." 

Bushehr, Iran's only commercial nuclear power plant, is located about 465 miles south of Tehran.

Construction on the plant began under Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the mid-1970s.

CBS/AP

Speaking alongside President Trump in the Oval Office, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he views the Pentagon as being a part of the negotiations with Iran as well.

"The air campaign that we've conducted, that Israel's conducted alongside us, was one for the history books, truly," Hegseth said. "And it's because we have a president of the United States that, when he sends his warfighters out to fight, he unties their hands to actually go out and close with and destroy the enemy as viciously as possible from moment one.

"And that's why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well," the defense secretary said. "We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice, as we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future."

President Trump voiced optimism on Tuesday that a peace deal will be reached with Iran, while insisting the war had already been won.

"This war has been won," Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office. "The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news."

"We killed all their leadership," he said when CBS News' Ed O'Keefe asked which Iranians the U.S. was now negotiating with. "And then they met to choose new leaders and we killed all of them. And now we have a new group, and we can easily do that, but let's see how they turn out."

"It's — we have, really, regime change," the president said. "You know, this is a change in the regime, because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems. So this was, I think we can say, Jason, this is regime change, right?"

Iran's new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war. While the new leader has not been seen since he was tapped to succeed his father, and he's believed to have been wounded in the same strike, there have been no signs of a disintegration of Islamic Republic's well-defined power structure, with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard still defiant, and seemingly in control of Iran's war effort.

O'Keefe asked the president why he trusts Iran.

"I don't trust anybody," Mr. Trump responded. "I don't trust you."

O'Keefe asked why the U.S. should bother talking to the Iranians.

"Because they're going to make a deal," Mr. Trump said.