by WorldTribune Staff, November 17, 2026 Non-AI Real World News

In another day of multiple developments in the ongoing conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump delayed his scheduled upcoming visit to China, and Israel said it eliminated the man considered to be the de facto leader of Iran after the elimination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump scorned NATO members who have chosen to sit out the Iran conflict, but then went on to say that the United States is powerful enough on its own.

Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social:

The United States has been informed by most of our NATO “Allies” that they don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran, in the Middle East, this, despite the fact that almost every Country strongly agreed with what we are doing, and that Iran cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be allowed to have a Nuclear Weapon.

I am not surprised by their action, however, because I always considered NATO, where we spend Hundreds of Billions of Dollars per year protecting these same Countries, to be a one way street — We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need.

Fortunately, we have decimated Iran’s Military — Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti-Aircraft and Radar is gone and perhaps, most importantly, their Leaders, at virtually every level, are gone, never to threaten us, our Middle Eastern Allies, or the World, again!

Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer “need,” or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID!

Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Trump on Tuesday said he is postponing his highly anticipated trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

“We are resetting the meeting … We’re working with China. They were fine with it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump had been set to travel to Beijing from March 31 to April 2 for the first trip there of his second term. The trip will now take place in about five or six weeks, Trump said.

Early preparations for the Trump-Xi meeting included talks this week in Paris between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Those talks reportedly focused on potential additional purchases of U.S. agricultural goods including poultry, beef and non-soybean row crops. They also discussed increasing the flow of rare earth minerals largely controlled by China.

“Head of state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance to China-U.S. relations,” Lin Jian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, in his resignation letter posted to X said: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Trump said in response to Kent quitting:

“I read his statement. I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security. I didn’t know him well. But when I read his statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted to do something about it. And many people, many of the greatest military scholars, are saying for years that [a] president should have taken out Iran because they wanted a nuclear weapon.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted that Kent’s resignation letter contained “many false claims,” chief among them being Kent’s claim that “Iran posed no imminent threat.”

“This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over,” Leavitt wrote in a post on X. “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.”

The Israeli military on Tuesday announced it eliminated Ali Larijani in an airstrike.

Larijani would be the highest-level leader of the terrorist regime to be eliminated since Khamenei died in the first hour of the war. He could also prove to be a greater operational loss than the elderly cleric was, analysts say.

“I was just informed by the Chief of Staff that the Secretary of the National Security Council, Larijani, and the head of the Basij — Iran’s main suppression body — Soleimani, were eliminated tonight and joined the head of the destruction plan, Khamenei, and all the thwarted members of the evil axis in the depths of hell,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday.

Gholamreza Soleimani was the commander of the Basij, the brutal militia deployed by the Iranian regime to keep its people in line during uprisings.

Soleimani assumed command of the Basij six months ago, meaning he was in charge during Iran’s violent suppression of the “Bloody November” protests in 2019, the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022, and the massive popular uprising in January 2025. The regime admitted to murdering almost 10,000 of its own people to suppress the latest uprising and some observers believe the true death toll was over three times that high.

Soleimani, 61, was under sanctions from the United States, Canada, and the European Union for his part in brutally repressing the Iranian people.

“Their leaders are gone. I guess one of their top person was — they say a lot of people say their actual top — was killed yesterday, along with somebody else that who was responsible for the killing, the man that was responsible for the killing of 32,000 people over the last two weeks,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.

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  Trump at war: U.S. no longer needs NATO ‘allies’; Delays Beijing visit, WorldTribune.com