President Donald Trump promised that ‘bad things’ would happen to Iran if the regime does not come to the table for nuclear negotiations. 

“My big preference is that we work it out with Iran, but if we don’t work it out, bad things are gonna happen to Iran,” the president said Friday. 

Iran is enriching uranium to 60%, just shy of the 90% weapons-grade. Experts say it could have a nuclear weapon within weeks if it were to take the final steps to building one. 

In response to U.S. sanctions threats, Iran showed off a sprawling underground tunnel system replete with missiles, launchers, engines and other advanced weapons. 

WALTZ TELLS IRAN TO GIVE UP NUCLEAR PROGRAM OR ‘THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES’

A video released this week by state media shows two Iranian military leaders, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri and IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, riding in a vehicle through long, weapons-packed tunnels that Tehran has dubbed “Missile City.” 

The 85-second clip, which has not been independently verified, is set to menacing music and suggests that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps stands ready to respond to threats of an attack from the U.S. and Israel. 

“Iran’s ballistic missile force remains the largest in the Middle East,” said Behnam Taleblu, fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is all part of the regime’s deterrent strategy to cement the idea of any conflict with Tehran being a costly and protracted one.” 

Trump warned Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to engage in nuclear talks, or “bad things” would happen.  (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency))

The move comes as U.S. is bolstering its forces in the Middle East. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently sent a second aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s USS Carl Vinson, to join the USS Harry S. Truman‘s carrier strike group, whose deployment was also extended. 

The U.S. also recently deployed two B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, a warning to Iran and Yemen’s Houthi militia. The planes are capable of carrying 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs and are now situated within range of Iran. 

Weeks ago, Trump wrote a letter to Iran urging the regime to engage in talks on its nuclear program. 

Kamal Kharazi, the top foreign policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Thursday that the regime would engage in “indirect” talks, according to local news reports.

IRAN’S LEADER WARNS US COULD RECEIVE ‘SEVERE SLAPS’ FOLLOWING TRUMP’S THREATS TO HOUTHIS

The U.S. also recently deployed two B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, a warning to Iran and Yemen’s Houthi militia. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“The Islamic Republic has not closed all the doors and is willing to begin indirect negotiations with the United States.” 

“Our policy is to not negotiate directly while there is maximum pressure policy and threats of military strikes,” foreign minister Abbas Aragchi explained. “But indirect negotiations can take place as they have in the past.”

If talks falter, the U.S. and Israel have floated the possibility of targeted strikes on underground nuclear facilities. 

In recent weeks, the Trump administration launched a series of offensive attacks on the Houthis in Yemen to send a message to Tehran, which supports them. 

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“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. 

“Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” he continued. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, “Intelligence.’” 

WASHINGTON — Two decades ago, the Bush administration said its “war on terror” prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay were off-limits to the federal courts, but the Supreme Court disagreed.

“A state of war is not a blank check for the President,” said Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2004. “Whatever power the U.S. Constitution envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organizations…, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake.”

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.

That issue is now back before the Supreme Court.

Although the nation is not at war, President Trump has invoked his war powers under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to round up and deport to El Salvador about 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan crime gang.

Two legal questions arose immediately.

How can Trump rely on the 1798 law, which applies only when Congress has “declared war” or a “foreign government” has launched an “invasion”?

And how does the government know all these men are gang members? Their families said they have no criminal records, and in some instances, fled Venezuela and sought asylum to escape the gangs.

So far, however, the legal fight has focused on the same big question from the Guantanamo era: Do federal judges have the authority to limit the power of the president who says he is protecting the nation from “dangerous aliens”?

On Friday, Trump’s acting solicitor general Sarah Harris urged the Supreme Court to set aside the judge’s order that put a temporary pause on further deportations.

“This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country — the President…or the Judiciary,” she wrote in her appeal. “The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice.”

The justices asked for a response from the American Civil Liberties Union by Tuesday. The fast-moving case poses an early test of whether the high court will uphold the president’s power to swiftly deport migrants without interference from judges.

Two weeks ago, Trump signed a proclamation that Tren De Araqua, a Venezuelan crime gang, was “perpetrating…an invasion” of the United States and ordering the “prompt removal” of all those who were held.

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 15, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg convened a hastily arranged hearing in response to an emergency lawsuit brought on behalf of five Venezuelan men who feared they would be deported to El Salvador.

At the same hour, administration officials were arranging for three planes to take off from Texas.

The judge questioned how the 1798 law could authorize such deportations, and “to preserve the status quo,” he ordered a temporary pause on all the deportations.

Although the five named plaintiffs stayed in Texas, the administration essentially ignored the broader order and allowed the three flights to proceed as planned.

Although the judge said he was troubled his orders were ignored, Trump’s lawyers were troubled by his intervention.

“These orders are an affront to the President’s broad constitutional and statutory authority to protect the United States from dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people,” they said on behalf of Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.

“The presidential actions they challenge are not subject to judicial review,” they said.

“The Constitution simply provides no basis for … no basis for second-guessing the policy judgment by the Executive that such an ‘invasion’ is occurring,” they said. The president “has an inherent authority to conduct foreign affairs and address national security risks.”

They took a hard line and refused to even disclose the flight times for airplanes that flew to El Salvador.

That’s a “state secret,” they said in a brief filed on Monday.

Veterans of the legal battles over Guantanamo see some similarities but differences as well.

UC Berkeley Law professor John Yoo, a former Bush administration attorney, said the Guantanamo prisoners were not brought into the United States.

“Here, there is no doubt that the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador were detained within the United States,” he said.

In the past, the Supreme Court has said people who are being held in this country, including noncitizens, have a right to due process of law.

Yoo said, “Trump is invoking the same arguments we made after 9/11 that the capture and detention of enemy prisoners during wartime fell exclusively within the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief to conduct war.” He is also “making similar arguments as to why federal judges today should defer to the decisions of the executive branch during what he has determined is an invasion.”

But Yoo said he doubts the courts will uphold Trump’s reliance on the 1798 law.

Earlier this week, Boasberg explained his order was narrow in scope as well as temporary. It would not lead to the release any of the Venezuelans that are being held, and it does not prevent the government from deporting those who have a “final order of removal” under the U.S. immigration laws, he said. It prevents only deportations to El Salvador that are based on the disputed Alien Enemies Act.

It also resolved nothing about the plight of those who are now held in El Salvador.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out Boasberg’s order but lost in a 2-1 decision.

Each of the judges wrote a lengthy opinion making a separate point.

Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, disputed the use of the Alien Enemies Act. “An invasion is a military act, not one of migration,” she said.

Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of President Obama, said the detained men deserve a hearing to challenge the claim they were gang members.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, dissented but said the detained men could file a habeas corpus claim in Texas where they are held.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who brought the lawsuit, said the decision preserving the judge’s order “means that hundreds of individuals remain protected from being sent to a notorious black-hole prison in a foreign country, without any due process whatsoever — perhaps for the rest of their lives.”

Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, called the D.C. Circuit’s decision “an important step for due process and the protection of the American people. President Trump is bound by the laws of this nation, and those laws do not permit him to use wartime powers when the United States is not at war and has not been invaded.”

In her appeal on Friday, Harris, the acting solicitor general, agreed with Walker that the Venezuelans held in Texas could file a writ of habeas corpus there.

ACLU attorneys and Millett dismissed that option as impractical. The hundreds of men who were held had no lawyers, they said, and no way to know they must file an individual legal claim in federal court.