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MENAFN – Five Things To Know About The Iran-US Talks In Islamabad

Pakistan is set to host talks between Iran and the United States in a bid to turn a fragile two-week ceasefire into a lasting end to a war that has left thousands dead and roiled global energy markets.

Here are five things to know about the Islamabad talks:

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched deadly coordinated strikes that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei and struck Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

More than 3,000 people were killed in Iran in five weeks, according to Iranian media and US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).International News Subscription.

Tehran responded by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf waterway through which about a fifth of global oil and gas passes, sending energy prices soaring and disrupting trade worldwide.

On April 8, Washington and Tehran agreed to a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. The ceasefire is expected to expire April 22.

Pakistan’s unlikely starring role

Pakistan’s value as a mediator rests on an unusually broad diplomatic network.

Iran was the first country to recognise Pakistan’s statehood following independence in 1947, with the two neighbours sharing a 900-kilometre (560-mile) border and deep historical, cultural and religious ties.

Islamabad has cultivated strong ties with Washington, Riyadh and Beijing.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar visited Beijing at the end of March for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who backed Islamabad’s mediation efforts as “in keeping with the common interests of all parties”.

Trump himself told AFP that China helped bring Iran to the negotiating table, an account backed by Pakistani officials.

“On ceasefire night, hopes were fading, but China stepped in and convinced Iran to agree to a preliminary ceasefire,” a senior Pakistani official familiar with the negotiations told AFP on condition of anonymity.

What’s on the table?

The gap between the two sides remains vast.

Washington’s reported 15-point proposal centres on Iran’s enriched uranium and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran has countered with a 10-point plan demanding control over the strait, a toll for vessels crossing the strait, an end to all regional military operations and the lifting of all sanctions.

Lebanon is also a major sticking point.

Israel has continued its strikes in the country targeting Hezbollah – after the ceasefire came into force – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejecting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s assertion that the truce included Lebanon.

US Vice President JD Vance appeared to take a softer tone, saying there may have been a “legitimate misunderstanding” from Iran that Lebanon would be included.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on X that Israel’s strikes on Lebanon rendered the negotiations “meaningless”.

Iran has also long refused to concede to Washington’s demands on its nuclear programme.

Iranian sources have also told Iranian media that Tehran won’t attend the talks unless a ceasefire is in place in Lebanon.

Who are the negotiators?

Vance will lead the American team, joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

It marks the most senior US engagement with Iran since Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal.

Witkoff held multiple rounds of Oman-mediated talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi before the war cut the process short.

Araghchi and Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, along with other security and economic officials, have arrived in Pakistan, Iranian state television and the Pakistani government confirmed.

Reporting their arrival, state broadcaster IRIB reiterated Tehran’s position that talks will not begin unless its conditions are met, including a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Islamabad on lockdown

The talks are being held in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The government has kept its cards close to its chest, not confirming the venue, but the Serena Hotel — located next to the foreign ministry in the capital’s high-security Red Zone — asked its guests to clear out on Wednesday.

Authorities in the capital announced a two-day public holiday on Thursday and Friday.

The streets of Islamabad are flooded with armed security personnel in military fatigues, traffic diversions are in place and police checkpoints are set up.

The talks are expected to be indirect: the two delegations sitting in separate rooms with Pakistani officials shuttling proposals between them, mirroring the format used in earlier Oman-mediated rounds.

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The Times of Israel – The US And Iran Head Into Very Difficult Talks

High-level US-Iran talks are due to begin in Islamabad on April 11, four days after the United States and the Iranian regime accepted a two-week ceasefire proposal brokered by Pakistan to pause the war in Iran.

The fighting erupted on February 28 after the United States and Israel launched joint air strikes in Iran. These attacks killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and almost 50 key political and military figures in the Iranian regime ranging from Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Defense Council, to Aziz Nasirzadeh, the defense minister.

Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba, was wounded on the first day of the war and has yet to show his face in public.

When the ceasefire was announced, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that at least 1,665 civilians had been killed in Iran. In Israel, the civilian death toll stood at 20, with more than 7,000 wounded. Over the course of 39 days of war, Iran fired approximately 650 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel. More than 90 percent were shot down. In the Gulf states, 32 people were killed. The United States lost 13 soldiers.

The negotiations in Pakistan’s capital are sure to be extremely arduous and lengthy because the ceasefire is clouded by ambiguities and complicated by issues that may well defy a resolution.

A resumption of the war is possible, though neither the United States nor Iran wish to renew hostilities.

The truce was hammered out shortly after US President Donald Trump issued an apocalyptic ultimatum threatening to extinguish Iran’s “whole civilization” if the Iranian regime did not fully reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas flows.

The day before, Trump sent a crude warning to Iran, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Justifying the Trump administration’s acceptance of the truce, US Vice President JD Vance said that American forces had “largely accomplished its military objectives.”

Echoing Vance’s assessment, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, claimed that Iran’s military capabilities and industrial defense base had been decimated during the course of the US-Israel air campaign in Iran.

The US and Israel carried out 13,000 and 8,500 sorties respectively.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly urged Trump to press on with the war, arguing that a ceasefire at this point carried significant risks.

Trump, bent on extricating himself from a “forever” war and concerned that his presidency would be imperiled by the drastic uptick in the price of oil, decided that a ceasefire would be preferable.

All the same, the war has left Trump’s political base fractured, with some of his former supporters having accused him of violating his promise to keep the United States out of unwinnable wars in the Middle East.

As expected, critics seized on Trump’s decision to abandon fiery rhetoric and pursue diplomacy, denigrating him as “Taco” (Trump always chickens out).

While he and his team declared victory, Iran made an identical claim.

At a press conference on April 8, Hegseth said that the United States had won the war, and that Iran had “begged” for a ceasefire because it had run “out of options and out of time.” In his view, Operation Epic Fury was “a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. A capital V military victory.” He added that the USand Israel had achieved “every single objective,” including the destruction of Iran’s navy, air defense system, and missile production capability.

The ceasefire means that Iran will “never, ever” possess a nuclear weapon. “We finished completely destroying Iran’s defense-industrial base, a core pillar of our mission. They can no longer build missiles.”

Hegseth admitted that Iran is not completely defenseless. “They can still shoot, we know that,” he said. “They can still shoot here and there, but that would be very unwise.”

Iran claimed it had achieved a “historic victory” over the United Stares and Israel.

There is some truth to its claim.

Iran, which faced severe internal unrest in January, successfully survived a ferocious onslaught. The US and Israel appear to have failed to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, one of the stated goals of the operation. Iran bombarded Israel and the Arab Gulf states with an unending salvo of ballistic missiles and drones and remained defiant and unbowed. Iran took control of the Strait of Hormuz, causing global economic disruption.

Given these factors, state-orchestrated rallies in Tehran celebrated the truce as a “total and complete victory” over the United States and Israel.

Despite the heated rhetoric, the United States and Iran were primed for talks. Iran realized that a protracted war would further destroy or damage its critical infrastructure. The United States was aware that the disruption of energy supplies could set off a global recession that would inevitably affect its own economy.

China, worried by the mounting costs of the war, apparently pushed Iran, its ally, to show flexibility, defuse tensions, and embrace a ceasefire.

Apart from being tenuous, the truce is rife with question marks.

As Elliott Abrams, a former US diplomat and conservative commentator, wrote, “Well, there is a ceasefire. Or perhaps not. It includes Lebanon. Or it doesn’t. Iran’s 10-point plan is an acceptable working document for the United States. Or it isn’t the one US negotiators saw. The Strait of Hormuz will be open. Or passage requires Iranian approval and a toll.”

He added, “All this confusion is unsurprising, because the only meeting of the minds between President Donald Trump and whoever is ruling in Tehran was that the United States would stop attacking Iran. In return, Iran would stop attacking all its Arab neighbors and Israel — though not immediately, we soon learned. My own guess is that at the end of two weeks allotted for negotiations, two more weeks will be allotted, and then two more. There may never be much more than a ceasefire agreed, given the distance between Iranian and American demands.”

Robert Malley, a liberal who was President Joe Biden’s special envoy for Iran, said that the ceasefire is so ambiguous that the United States and Iran are already arguing over it. “It’s hard to know not just where you go from here, but where you are to begin with,” he told The New York Times. “The talks are starting on very weak grounds.”

Indeed.

The truce, in essence, has not even remotely resolved the fundamental issues that triggered the war.

It leaves a theocratic and autocratic government, backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in charge of a cowed population.

Trump claims that “complete and total regime change” has occurred, with “different, smarter, and less radicalized minds” governing the country. Trump’s claim is untrue. As Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it, “There has been personnel change in Iran, not regime change. Different men with the same ideology.”

In addition, Iran remains a cocky, dangerous and destabilizing force in the region.

Iran is supposedly still in possession of a stockpile of 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, which is currently buried under the rubble of two shattered Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran has enough near-bomb-grade material to produce nearly one dozen nuclear bombs, as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghachi told US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at one of their meetings prior to the war. Trump claims that this nuclear “dust” should not be a problem. “We’ll always be watching it by satellite,” he said on April 1.

The Strait of Hormuz is effectively in Iran’s hands and few ships are getting through. Iran, too, has reportedly begun charging tankers exorbitant tolls. The Iranian regime exercised no such authority prior to the war.

The war has been a traumatic experience for Arab Gulf states. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were pummeled by Iranian missiles and drones, causing extensive damage to their petroleum industry. They feel vulnerable and believe that the United States did not protect them.

As the fragile ceasefire took hold, Netanyahu claimed that it did not apply to Israel’s current military campaign in Lebanon. Iran has threatened to resume the war and close the Strait of Hormuz if Israel does not halt its offensive in Lebanon.

Trump and Vance initially backed Israel’s position, while Pakistan and Iran claimed that Lebanon was included in the truce. Britain, France, Canada and the European Union have sided with Iran, with British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper having said that leaving Lebanon out of the ceasefire would “destabilize the whole region.”

Two days ago, following the deadliest Israeli air strikes in Beirut targeting Hezbollah offices, Trump partially backtracked and asked Netanyahu to scale back Israel’s bombing of Lebanon so as to preserve the ceasefire. After his phone call with Trump, Netanyahu said that Israel will continue to strike Hezbollah “with force, precision, and determination.”

He also announced that Israel would launch direct negotiations with Lebanon “as soon as possible” to disarm Hezbollah and reach a full peace agreement with Lebanon, which has been in a state of war with Israel since its creation in 1948. The conditions under which the talks would take place was immediately in dispute, with Lebanon demanding a ceasefire first and Israel insisting that negotiations be conducted under fire.

Meanwhile, negotiators in Islamabad will face immense stumbling blocks. Trump’s 15-point peace plan is greatly at odds with Iran’s 10-point plan.

Trump’s plan calls for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, a permanent commitment from Iran never to develop nuclear weapons, the handover of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a commitment from Iran to allow the IAEA to monitor all elements of its remaining nuclear infrastructure, and iron-clad guarantees that Iran will no longer enrich uranium.

The plan also places strict limits on the range and number of Iran’s ballistic missiles, pressures Iran to end its support of regional proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, envisages the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and envisages the removal of all sanctions imposed on Iran.

Iran’s 10-point plan is just as maximalist.

A commitment from the United States not to restart the war. The controlled passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with the Iranian armed forces. An acceptance of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions against Iran. The end of all resolutions against Iran at the IAEA and the United Nations Security Council. The withdrawal of US combat forces from all bases in the Middle East. Full compensation to Iran for damages caused during the war, to be secured through tolls paid to Tehran by vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The release of all Iranian assets and properties frozen abroad. The ratification of all these clauses in a binding United Nations Security Council resolution.

The gaps between the opposing proposals are so immense that it is inconceivable that they can be reconciled within the next two weeks, if at all. Months of extremely difficult and messy negotiations lie ahead.

It is safe to assume that Iran will consume Trump for a long time to come.

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Union-Bulletin – Trump threatens Iran as Vance heads to Pakistan for talks

President Donald Trump ramped up pressure on Iran as Vice President JD Vance traveled to Pakistan for talks to end the war, with Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz’s effective closure looming over diplomatic efforts.

Trump posted on social media Friday that Tehran’s only leverage is “short term extortion of the world by using International Waterways” — a reference to Hormuz, a critical shipping lane for oil and natural gas that remains largely shut, raising global energy prices. Trump declared that the “Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards.”

While the two-week ceasefire was broadly holding across the Middle East, the situation with the strait and continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon threatened to complicate negotiations due to begin over the weekend in Islamabad.

The Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, has arrived in Islamabad, the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim reported Friday.

Before arriving, Ghalibaf pushed back, stressing on social media that a ceasefire in Lebanon is one measure that “must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.” The other is the “release of Iran’s blocked assets,” he added, without being more specific.

The president told reporters late Friday that he expected that the strait would be opened “pretty quickly” and warned that if it didn’t he could resume military action.

Trump earlier had detailed that threat to the New York Post, saying U.S. warships were being reloaded with “the best ammunition” to launch fresh attacks if talks faltered. When asked if he believed negotiations would be successful, Trump told the Post: “We’re going to find out in about 24 hours.”

Before departing for Pakistan, Vance told reporters Trump had provided “clear guidelines” for the talks and the vice president urged Iran to take the negotiations seriously, warning Tehran not “to try to play us.”

An Iranian delegation is expected to arrive in Islamabad on Friday night, officials in Pakistan’s capital said. Ghalibaf and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will lead the delegation, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.

The Middle East war has killed thousands of people and damaged energy infrastructure across the oil-rich Persian Gulf in the past six weeks, while Iran’s ongoing shuttering of Hormuz has choked global fuel supplies. The strait — which handled about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas before the war — remains a central sticking point.

Traffic through the strategic waterway has shown little sign of a meaningful pickup since the truce began, as shipowners await clarification of its status. A Russian-flagged supertanker passed through the strait late Thursday, ship-tracking data show, but that was a rare example.

The ongoing blockage has maintained pressure on oil prices. U.S. crude swung between losses and gains all session as traders unwound positions into the weekend to stay neutral ahead of the talks on Saturday. Prices settled below $97 a barrel.

Wall Street traders bracing for the talks left stocks wavering. An advance in equities faded after Trump’s comments to the New York Post about preparing for further military action.

Trump, who has warned Iran against charging fees on tankers, said Friday the U.S. would not permit Tehran to collect tolls to transit the strait. “Nobody knows if they’re doing that, but if they’re doing that, we’re not going to let that happen,” Trump said.

Despite the challenges, Trump has said he’s optimistic about a deal with Tehran, describing Iran’s leaders during an NBC News interview as “much more reasonable” than their public comments would suggest.

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father was killed on the first day of the war, said in a statement on Telegram that Iran “will definitely bring the management of the Strait of Hormuz to a new stage,” though it was unclear whether he was referring to previous Iranian demands to retain control of the waterway that the U.S. has rejected.

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ABC News – Iran live updates: US-Iran-Pakistan trilateral talks ongoing, White House says

President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeting military and government sites.

Trump set a deadline for Iran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face broad strikes on its critical infrastructure. Hours before the deadline expired, Trump said he had agreed to suspend planned bombing for two weeks if Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi then said that “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supported the ceasefire with Iran, but that Lebanon — where intense Israeli strikes continued — was not covered by the agreement, despite Iranian protests.

Trump says it ‘makes no difference to him’ if US, Iran make a deal or not
Speaking to reporters at the White House before leaving for Miami, President Donald Trump said he doesn’t “care” what happens with Iran negotiations because “regardless what happens, we win.”

“Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me,” Trump said.

Throughout the gaggle, Trump repeatedly asserted that the United States emerges victorious, no matter the result of the ongoing negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan.

“We’ll see what happens. Look, regardless we win. Regardless what happens, we win. We totally defeated that country. And so let’s see what happens. Maybe they make a deal. Maybe they don’t. From the standpoint of America, we win,” Trump said.

While claiming that the U.S. will open the Strait of Hormuz, the president repeated his usual criticism against other countries for their lack of assistance with the critical waterway.

Guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) sails in the Arabian Sea during Operation Epic Fury, on March 18, 2026.
U.S. Navy
“Now all we do is we’ll open up the strait even though we don’t use it, because we have a lot of other countries in the world that do use it, that are either afraid or weak or cheap,” he said.

Asked about Iran’s assets, which is a key point in the Iranian’s proposal, the president sidestepped and said the U.S. is in “very deep negotiations with Iran” before repeating the assertions that the U.S. will “win regardless.”

The president also repeated his claims from this morning that other countries are sending oil tankers to the U.S. to be filled with oil and gas, calling this a “beautiful thing.”

“One of the things that’s happening is that boats are sailing up and heading out to our country – big, beautiful tankers, and we’re loading them up with oil and gas and everything else and it’s pretty, beautiful thing to see,” he said.

Trump also acknowledged that Iran “probably [has] a couple of mines” in the Strait of Hormuz but emphasized that the U.S. has minesweepers to combat this.

“They probably have a couple of mines in the water. We have mine sweepers out there. We’re sweeping these straight. In addition to that, we’re negotiating,” Trump said.

Iran denies claims that US vessels entered Strait of Hormuz
A spokesperson for Iran’s joint military command denied a claim by the United States that two Navy destroyers transited the Strait of Hormuz, saying “the initiative for the passage and movement of any vessel is in the hands of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

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New York Times – Iran Has Been Consistent in War. Will It Be Consistent in Peace Talks?

From the moment the United States and Israel ignited their war against Iran, Tehran has maintained a markedly consistent set of demands, built around a permanent peace, economic relief and the right to pursue nuclear enrichment.

In contrast, President Trump frequently has recast the war’s aims — fluctuating among denying Iran nuclear weapons, inflicting devastating destruction, imposing regime change and achieving total victory — sometimes several times in one day.

Iran’s unwavering demands helped the regime to survive a war inspired at least partly by the hope that it would collapse, analysts said. The question is whether the two-week cease-fire that was announced Tuesday can endure should Iran maintain the same line during negotiations due to start Saturday in Pakistan. The maximalist demands put forth publicly in its 10-point plan for the talks appear both unrealistic and unworkable, not least because Mr. Trump has already been dismissive.

The United States is seeking major concessions, including Iran’s surrendering its highly enriched uranium and committing to no nuclear weapons as well as other limits on its military abilities; restoring unfettered transit through the Strait of Hormuz; and ending support for its regional proxies like Hezbollah. In posts on his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump described Iran’s published demands as a “hoax,” while suggesting that Iran’s proposals behind closed doors are more reasonable.

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Human Rights Activists in Iran – On 26 March 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced a recruitment campaign to encourage children as young as 12 to join and ‘help the defenders of the homeland’. Advertised roles include checkpoint duties, cooking and medical support, logistics, and security patrols. Children and students have been asked to participate in human chains to protect infrastructure from airstrikes. Iranian parents have been called on to send their children to checkpoints at night, for them to feel they are ‘heroes on the battlefield’ and to ‘turn sons into men.’

Despite a ceasefire, Basij checkpoints and security operations remain active. On April 9, images circulated showing children behind mounted machine guns on the backs of 4×4 trucks and dressed in IRGC uniforms. Eyewitness accounts collected through Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA)’s network over the past 7 days indicate the widespread use of children at checkpoints across Tehran, as well as in Karaj, Mashhad, Isfahan, Ahvaz and Shiraz. Boys have been observed stopping and directing vehicles, transporting supplies, and generally supporting checkpoint operations. While HRA’s network confirms that girls are also supporting the Basij, they are mostly seen at government events and marches, handing out promotional flyers and supporting mobilization efforts.

“They go to the local mosque every day, and from there they get assigned a task— one day they’re at a checkpoint, another day they’re at a government march holding speakers, and sometimes they help with serving people. Their family encourages them to do this.”

Testimony indicates that child recruitment is largely driven by family influence and the social environment, rather than by financial incentives. The IRGC cited children’s enthusiasm and interest as justification for lowering the minimum age to 12. However, even where their involvement appears voluntary, the participation of children under the age of 18 is considered coercive under international law, given a child’s inherent inability to provide full, free, and informed consent. Their age makes them particularly susceptible to authority, ideological propaganda, and a desire for power and belonging.

“It’s the appeal of the uniform, the environment they’re in, the excitement and epic vibe created for them—even things like seeing weapons up close… they kind of feel like superheroes.”

“It’s mostly about social influence, encouragement from people around them, and a sense of feeling important, rather than money or direct coercion.”

The Iranian regime has a long and well-documented history of exploiting children to support armed groups and security structures, dating back to the Iran-Iraq war and through the establishment of the Basij organization. HRA has previously reported on IRGC coercion of Afghan immigrant children, some as young as 14, to fight in Syria in exchange for incentives such as residency rights.

While IRGC regulations set a minimum age of 16 years old for recruitment, this falls below international human rights standards, which define a child as any person under 18. Under customary international humanitarian law, the recruitment or use of children under 15 is a war crime. Legal gaps and ambiguity within Iran’s domestic law regarding the age of a child has enabled the historical involvement of children in security and military activities. The recent campaign lowering the recruitment age to 12 amplifies the urgency for the safety and protection of children in Iran.

In this context, the persistence of child recruitment over time, despite clear international prohibitions, supports the conclusion that it reflects a de facto state policy rather than isolated or unauthorized conduct.

The recruitment and use of children in armed forces and armed groups directly exposes them to a heightened risk of injury and death. This risk is particularly acute in Basij checkpoint operations, which have been repeatedly targeted in US and Israeli strikes, including during busy daytime hours when civilian presence is high. Since February 28, HRA has verified 43 attacks on checkpoints resulting in 44 casualties.

On 11 March, 11-year-old Alireza Jafari was killed by an IDF drone strike while volunteering at a Basij checkpoint in Tehran.

According to Jennifer Connet, HRA Legal Advisor, ‘the association of children with armed groups has lasting and profound consequences, including the potential for injury and long-term disability, psychological trauma, and the lifelong repercussions of a lost childhood. The exploitation of children by the IRGC further compromises the resilience and coping capacity of a generation of children living through the devastation of the current conflict.’

The recruitment or use of children in armed conflict is a war crime and a grave violation of children’s rights. The UN Security Council must consider expanding the children and armed conflict agenda to include Iran, and Iran should be listed in the UN Secretary-General’s Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict. The establishment of a formal Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism would enable the systematic documentation of grave violations against children, including their association with armed forces and armed groups, and inform further action by the Security Council and relevant UN bodies.

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ANHA – Over 100 killed, injured in Eastern Kurdistan, Iran within 24 hours

The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on Tuesday that 109 people were killed and wounded in Iran over the past 24 hours as a result of continued U.S.-Israeli attacks.

In its daily report, the agency stated that around 215 attacks were carried out across 20 provinces and areas of Eastern Kurdistan, targeting 61 sites, including military bases, Revolutionary Guard headquarters, airports, police centers, oil depots, and nuclear energy facilities.

The report indicated that the airstrikes carried out by the United States and Israel focused on the provinces of Tehran, Fars, Khuzestan, Isfahan, Hormozgan, Alborz, and Sistan and Baluchestan.

According to HRANA, the total number of civilian deaths since the beginning of the war reached 1,665 as of yesterday, including 248 children under the age of 18.

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New York Times – Trump Renews Threat of Attacks on Iran’s Bridges and Power Plants

President Trump on Monday escalated his threats to devastate Iran if it does not agree to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his Tuesday night deadline, even as he again floated the possibility that there could be a diplomatic resolution to the war.

“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again,” Mr. Trump said at a White House news conference. If the attacks take place, he added, “It will take them 100 years to rebuild.”

Mr. Trump also gave a laudatory depiction of the rescue of a missing American airman shot down over Iran. The mission involved 155 aircraft and hundreds of people, he said, though “a lot of it was subterfuge” designed to lead Iranian forces away from the aviator. He also revealed that the plane, a U.S. Air Force F-15E, had been downed by a single shoulder-fired missile.

His remarks to reporters came after Iran delivered a new 10-point peace proposal dotted with conditions that American representatives have already rejected as unacceptable. The full contents of the Iranian plan were not made public, but diplomatic efforts have yielded little so far, despite Mr. Trump’s repeated claims of progress.

“We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me,” Mr. Trump said of the Iranian plan, which was made through Pakistani mediators, adding, “and part of that deal’s going to be we want free traffic of oil, and everything else.”

Later he said, “I can tell you that we have an active, willing participant on the other side. They would like to make a deal.”

He has threatened repeatedly to bombard critical Iranian infrastructure, like power plants and bridges, setting deadlines for opening the strait, and then repeatedly postponing them. On Sunday, he pushed back the deadline by a day, to Tuesday evening in the United States. Analysts say that without tangible progress toward peace, the postponements risk eroding the power of his warnings.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

Iran’s response: Iran said on Monday that it would retaliate forcefully if President Trump carried out his threatened attacks, which would affect millions of civilians, in what many legal experts argue could be considered war crimes under international law. “If attacks on civilian targets are repeated, the subsequent phases of our offensive and retaliatory operations will be carried out much more crushingly and extensively,” Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, said on Monday.

University bombed: Overnight airstrikes hit Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran’s top science, engineering and math institute, prompting outraged responses from Iranians, including opponents of the regime. The university is under Western sanctions for ties to the Iranian military and agencies that develop weapons systems.

Rescued airmen: The two U.S. airmen who were rescued after being shot down over Iran were receiving care at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a military hospital in Germany, a U.S. military official said.

Attacks across the Middle East: Israel said it had bombed a major Iranian petrochemical complex on Monday, just days after it struck a similar site — part of an avowed goal to destroy factories that fill Iran’s coffers. Another Israeli strike overnight killed Majid Khademi, the intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Iran fired volleys of missiles at its neighbors and at Israel, where rescue workers retrieved the bodies of four people killed by a missile strike in Haifa, according to the Israeli authorities.

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Hurriyet Daily News – Strikes outside Tehran kill 18 people: Iranian media

A deputy governor of Alborz province said U.S.-Israeli strikes hit residential areas and that “the deaths of 18 of our fellow citizens have been confirmed, including two young children”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website and the Fars news agency reported.

Twenty-four people were wounded in the early morning attack, the deputy governor added.

Iran’s government has not released an updated overall casualty toll for the war in recent days.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said on April 6 that at least 3,597 people had been killed, including 1,665 civilians — among them at least 248 children — as well as 1,221 military personnel and 711 people whose status had not been classified.

 

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The Times – Iran war latest: US says it will destroy regime but won’t use nuclear weapons

Four people, including a child, have been injured in Qatar after debris from intercepted missiles fell on a house, says Qatar’s Interior Ministry.

In Saudi Arabia, local media reports said air defences were also active on Tuesday night, in a sign that Iran was continuing its retaliations against Gulf countries.

Tehran has launched air attacks against such nations since the beginning of the war in late February.

Turkey has joined the negotiations between Pakistan, Iran and the US on a potential two-week ceasefire proposal put forward by the Pakistani prime minister tonight.

Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, held a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart, Ishaq Dar, as part of diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Iran war, Turkish foreign ministry sources said.

Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, put forward certain conditions to Iran to secure the ceasefire deal.

He asked Tehran to commit to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a focal point of talks during the ongoing conflict.

Blasts have been heard in the Qatari capital Doha and the Iraqi capital Baghdad tonight, while the UAE says its air defences are responding to missile threats.

“The UAE’s air defences are currently dealing with missile and drone attacks coming from Iran,” the Emirati Ministry of Defence said in a statement on X.

President Trump has criticised Iran’s call for citizens to form human shields around power plants in the country, during a brief telephone call with a US broadcaster.

“Totally illegal,” Trump said, according to NBC News. “They’re not allowed to do that.”

The president declined to provide any update on the status of ongoing negotiations with the Iranians during the call, the channel reported.

As for what motivated him to post this morning that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” — a comment that has provoked backlash from around the world — he would only say: “You’ll have to figure that out.”

As President Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz approaches, Israel has warned of an increased risk of inbound attacks.

“Following a situational assessment, and as part of preparations for the possible expiration of the ultimatum, there may be an increase in fire toward the territory of the State of Israel in the coming hours,” the Israeli military said on its official Telegram channel.

Both the US and Iran are said to be reviewing Pakistan’s request for a two-week ceasefire and an extended deadline for negotiations to seek an end to the war.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Axios: “The president has been made aware of the proposal, and a response will come.”

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran was “positively reviewing” the ceasefire request that Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, announced on social media just five hours before President Trump’s stated final deadline was due to expire.

By the normal standards of warfare, Iran should be down and out. Its leader has been killed. His successor is thought to be incapacitated. The upper echelons of the military and security apparatus are either dead or hiding below ground. The naval fleet is mostly sunk. Missile-launch capability has been severely degraded (Tom Ball writes).

And yet for all that, Tehran is refusing to submit to America’s demands for capitulation. Such recalcitrance does not conform to President Trump’s understanding of how deals are made.

“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal, his 1987 manual for aspiring tycoons. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”

The prime minister of Pakistan, which is a key mediator in the Middle East conflict, has asked President Trump for a ceasefire period of two weeks to reach a deal with Iran and “allow diplomacy to run its course”.

He also suggested Iran could open the Strait of Hormuz during this period “as a goodwill gesture”.

Writing on X — and tagging Trump and other US and Iranian leaders — Shehbaz Sharif said: “Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future.

“To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks. Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open the Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding period of two weeks as a goodwill gesture.

“We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region.”

The Islamic republic is prepared for all possibilities in its war with the US and Israel, according to Mohammad Reza Aref, the first vice-president of Iran.

“National security and infrastructure sustainability are the subject of our precise calculations,” Aref wrote on X. “The government has finalised the necessary measures in detail for all scenarios. No threat is beyond our preparedness and intelligence.”

Tehran also said it will prevail over “brute force” in an apparent rebuke to Trump’s threats.

Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, wrote on X: “The power of a “CIVILIZED” nation’s culture, logic, and faith in its righteous cause will undoubtedly prevail over the logic of brute force.

“A nation that has every faith in the righteousness of its path shall harness all its capacities and capabilities to safeguard its rights and legitimate interests.”

The Pope has said that threats to inflict widespread damage on civilian targets in Iran were “unacceptable” and could breach international law.

Speaking to journalists as he left his residence in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, he said: “Today … there was this threat against all the people of Iran, and this is truly unacceptable. There are certainly questions of international law, but much more than that, it is a moral question.”

President Trump’s threats to extinguish Iran’s “civilisation” and destroy its power and desalination plants would constitute war crimes if acted upon, according to experts including the UN’s human rights chief (Samer Al-Atrush writes).

Trump’s aim is to force the Iranian regime to agree to a ceasefire on his terms. But targeting civilian infrastructure, even if it is also used by the Iranian military, could violate laws in the United States and internationally.

In a post on Truth Social hours before his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump wrote: “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Iranian officials reported damage to bridges, railway systems and highways today as part of a wave of deadly airstrikes on infrastructure.

A bridge near the holy city of Qom and another carrying a railway line in the central city of Kashan were struck, according to regional officials quoted by state media.

Akbar Salehi, a senior regional security official, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (Irna) that two people had been killed and three more had been injured in Kashan.

A key highway in northern Iran connecting the main northern city of Tabriz with Tehran via Zanjan was also temporarily closed after a hit around 90 kilometres (55 miles) outside of Tabriz, the Irna and Fars agencies reported.

Fars and the Mizan news agency also reported a strike on railway tracks in Karaj, outside Tehran, with images showing Red Crescent rescuers carrying an injured man on a stretcher.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, has aссused Brussels of meddling in elections that could end the career of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, whose self-styled “illiberal democracy” has been touted by President Trump as a role model for Europe (Marc Bennetts writes).

An outspoken opponent of European Union policies on Ukraine, immigration and gender, Orban has been in power since 2010. However, his ruling Fidesz party is trailing in most independent polls to Tisza, a party led by Peter Magyar, a former government insider, before Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Vance, who arrived in Budapest on Tuesday to try to boost Orban’s hopes of securing a fifth straight term, said his two-day visit was intended as a “signal” to the EU, which he alleged was carrying out a “disgraceful” campaign to bring down Orban at the ballot box.

Iran is said to have told Pakistan, an intermediary in peace talks, that it retained a large stockpile of weapons and that it “believed it was winning” the conflict.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said Tehran claimed to still have 15,000 missiles and 45,000 drones with which to retaliate against US-Israeli attacks.

Mediators said the numbers were likely to be exaggerated but reflected Iran’s unchanged negotiating position. Despite claims by the Pentagon and Israel that most of the regime’s launchers had been destroyed or damaged, the regime has proved capable of launching daily attacks against Gulf countries, as well as Israeli and US military bases and other targets in the region.

Israel regrets damaging Tehran synagogue

The Israeli military has expressed regret over “collateral damage” to a synagogue in Tehran in an overnight strike that targeted the “emergency headquarters” of a senior Iranian commander.

It said the results of the strike were “under review”, adding that “steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance”.

Iran’s Shargh newspaper and Mehr news agency have reported that the Rafi-Nia Synagogue in central Tehran was “completely destroyed”.

Judaism is one of Iran’s legally recognised minority religions and there are thought to be a few thousand Jewish people in the country.

Iranians form human chains on infrastructure

Iranians appear to have been forming human chains on bridges and power stations after President Trump threatened to bomb civilian infrastructure.

Crowds waving national flags and banners were filmed gathering at key sites after a call from Iranian regime officials to symbolically protect the locations.

On Easter Sunday, Trump announced the US military would destroy Iranian power plants and bridges if Iran did not meet his terms for a deal, but it was not clear if the gatherings would continue into the night.

For President Trump, the finality of his deadlines are as stable as his genius (David Charter writes). His latest threat to Iran follows a series of elastic ultimatums that can be summed up as:

• March 21 “Open the Strait in 48 hours”;
• March 23 “Open it in five days”;
• March 26 “Open it in ten days”;
• March 30 “Open it immediately”;
• April 4 “Open it in 48 hours”;
• April 5 “Open it in [another] 48 hours”.

This brinkmanship was Trump’s hallmark in business and in his 2016 presidential campaign he said that America “must, as a nation, be more unpredictable”.

He said yesterday that a deal with Iran had fallen through, so he ordered the bombing of its largest bridge. The regime does not know for sure if he would seriously bomb every bridge and power station if it fails to comply with his demands tonight.

The most likely outcome is that he will find a way to extend the deadline again or carry out limited but high-profile strikes on infrastructure. Yet, as he also said yesterday, “a lot of this is instinct” — keeping everyone guessing.

Democratic members of Congress have suggested the 25th amendment should be invoked to remove President Trump from office (Josie Ensor writes).

“Donald Trump has lost his mind and his threats to wipe out the Iranian people should be taken seriously,” Robert Garcia, a ranking Democratic member of the House oversight committee, posted on X. He called for the invocation of the amendment, which allows the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to remove power from a president deemed unable to discharge their duties.

Melanie Stansbury, a congresswoman for New Mexico, posted: “This man is threatening mass killings and war crimes on social media posts. When will enough be enough? We need our Republican colleagues to do the right thing, for this country and for the world.”

An aid convoy organised by the Vatican’s envoy to Lebanon had to turn back today after it came under fire.

Archbishop Paolo Borgia was travelling in a convoy headed for Christian villages in the country’s south, a source told AFP news agency. Despite being escorted by French peacekeepers from the United Nations, the convoy was fired upon as it approached border villages. Vehicles were damaged but no casualties were reported.

The source did not specify who had fired the shots but there has been fighting in border villages between the IDF and Hezbollah fighters for the past month.

An American journalist kidnapped in Iraq has been freed (Josie Ensor writes).

Shelly Kittleson, a freelance correspondent from Minnesota, was taken from a Baghdad street last week by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia. It announced its intention to release her today.

The sole Royal Navy warship sent to protect British bases from Iranian drones and missiles has returned to port for maintenance (Charlie Parker writes).

HMS Dragon, a Type-45 destroyer, arrived in the eastern Mediterranean weeks after the fighting began but is having to temporarily withdraw. The Ministry of Defence admitted that the vessel, which is tasked with defending RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as well as Gulf allies, has sailed to a safe berth for repairs.

However, defence sources denied it would affect the ship’s operational capability. Officials said the stop would include addressing “a minor technical issue with onboard water systems”.

The Israeli military issued a warning today for all vessels anchoring or sailing in the maritime area from the Israel-Lebanon border to the Lebanese city of Tyre, possibly signalling an imminent attack.

All vessels must immediately sail north of the Tyre area, the military said.

The joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran is “approaching a strategic crossroads”, the head of Israel’s military has said, while promising to “intensify the damage inflicted on the regime”.

Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, said: “We have achieved significant gains, including relative to the objectives we set at the outset of the operation. We will continue to act with determination and intensify the damage inflicted on the regime.”

The remarks came after the Israeli military announced it had struck eight bridges that it said were used by Iran’s armed forces “for transporting weapons and military equipment”.

The Israeli military has published video of what it said were strikes against “terrorists” in Lebanon as it continues its military campaign against Hezbollah.

The footage, posted online, shows aerial surveillance and explosive attacks against individuals on foot, in vehicles and against buildings.

The Israel Defence Forces said in a caption “that approximately 130 terrorists were eliminated … In various operations, the forces identified terrorists who posed a real threat to them, closing the circle quickly as the terrorists were eliminated by the air force in co-ordination with observation forces after attempting to flee.”

The UN commissioner for human rights decried the “incendiary rhetoric” in the Middle East war and said that deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure would constitute “a war crime”.

Volker Türk said in a statement: “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Anyone responsible for international crimes must be held to account by a competent court.”

Türk did not name the United States, Israel or Iran.

President Trump is the only person who knows his plans for Iran, the White House said today after his repeated warnings hours before a “final deadline” was due to expire.

“The Iranian regime has until 8pm eastern time [1am BST] to meet the moment and make a deal with the United States,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement to AFP. “Only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.”

China and Russia have vetoed a resolution at the UN security council on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

There were 11 votes in favour. Pakistan, a mediator in the dispute, was one of two countries that abstained. The initial proposal, from Bahrain, would have authorised countries to use “all necessary means” — UN wording that would include military action — to ensure transit through the Strait of Hormuz and deter attempts to close it.

President Trump’s social media comments on Iran are an “embarrassment”, a former US state department negotiator has said.

Aaron David Miller, who served six secretaries of state as an adviser on the Middle East, told Times Radio: “No American president has ever behaved in this fashion, no American presidency seemed to relish the possibility of destruction of civilian infrastructure, no American president ever deployed profanity — a certain cruelty and unkindness of this language.

“It is an embarrassment, it is a shame, and having worked for Republicans and Democrats — and voted for Democrats and Republicans — this seems to me to be a result of an American president who is angry, full of rage and cannot see beyond his own frustration.”

Iran has denied reports that negotiation channels with the US had been cut off.

“Diplomatic and indirect channels of talks with the US are not CLOSED,” the Tehran Times, an English-language newspaper tied to the regime, said after sources told American newspapers that Iran had informed Pakistan, the intermediary in ceasefire talks, that it would no longer take part.

President Trump said “there is going to be an attack like they have not seen” as he reinforced his deadline for negotiations with Iran to move forward.

The Fox News presenter Bret Baier told viewers: “I just got off the phone with the president … I said, ‘Listen, if you were to put odds on it, what were the odds that this is going to end up being a negotiated deal?’ He said he wasn’t going to put odds on it. But he said 8pm [1am BST] is happening.

“He said if we get to that point, there is going to be an attack like they have not seen. Now he’s sticking to that. He said if negotiations move forward today and there is something concrete, that could change. But at this hour, he didn’t want to put odds on it, but he said it is moving forward with the plans that we have.”

The White House has denied that remarks by JD Vance, the vice-president, contained any suggestion of a US nuclear strike against Iran.

After Vance said US forces had tools they “so far haven’t decided to use”, an X account said he had implied Trump “might use nuclear weapons”. The White House responded on its Rapid Response 47 account: “Literally nothing @VP said here ‘implies’ this, you absolute buffoons.”

Vance, who is in Hungary to support Viktor Orban before the prime minister seeks re-election this weekend, also said the US had “fundamentally” completed its military objectives in Iran and there were two ways the war could end — either “Iranians decide … they’re not going to fund terrorism any more, they’re going to be part of the world system of commerce and exchange”, or “the economic situation in Iran will continue to be very, very bad”.

Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel had struck railways and bridges in Iran “used by the Revolutionary Guards”.

“We are crushing the terror regime in Iran … with even greater vigour and with increasing force,” the Israeli prime minister said. “Yesterday, our pilots destroyed transport aircraft and dozens of helicopters at an Iranian air force base. Today they struck the railways and bridges used by the Revolutionary Guards.”

The Israeli military said it struck “eight bridge segments that were utilised by the Iranian terror regime’s armed forces for transporting weapons and military equipment in several areas across Iran, including Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kashan and Qom”.

Iran’s hardline judiciary chief has urged the courts to speed up verdicts against “enemy agents” linked to the US-Israeli war.

Since the war began on February 28, Iran has hanged seven people in connection with January protests: six convicted of membership of the banned opposition group the People’s Mujahidin of Iran (MEK) and a dual Iranian-Swedish citizen on charges of spying for Israel.

Rights groups have said dozens more people are at risk of execution over the January protests or after being arrested on suspicion of helping the enemy during the war.

“You need to speed up the issuing of sentences for executions and the confiscation of property,” Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the chief justice, told a televised meeting of senior judiciary officials. “It is necessary to continue issuing judicial verdicts for elements and agents of the aggressor enemy with greater speed.”

Iran has attacked Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex, the heart of the kingdom’s oil refinement, processing and distribution sector.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was responding to assaults overnight on its Asaluyeh petrochemical plants, which are connected to the massive South Pars gasfield.

Jubail, a sprawling industrial city, houses multibillion-dollar joint ventures between the state-backed oil giant Saudi Aramco and its petrochemical subsidiary Sabic, and western energy majors.

French pair going home after release from Iran jail

Two French citizens detained in Iran are on their way home, President Macron has announced. They were released in November after more than three years in prison on espionage charges.

“Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris are free and on their way to France,” Macron wrote on X.

A source at the French foreign ministry said they left Iran for Azerbaijan on Tuesday at dawn in a diplomatic convoy with the French ambassador.

Kohler, who is her forties, and Paris, in his seventies, had been jailed on charges of spying for France and Israel, after being arrested in 2022. Freed in November, they had not been allowed to leave the country until now. “This is a relief for all of us and obviously for their families,” Macron said on X.

Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director, has called for President Trump to be removed from office.

“Wake up: he is calling for a nuclear strike. Seek his removal immediately,” Scaramucci, who served in Trump’s first administration for ten days in July 2017, wrote on X.

US attack would make it an ‘agent of chaos’

President Trump’s former counterterrorism chief said America “stands in danger” after his latest threat to Iran.

Joe Kent, who resigned in March over the war, wrote on X: “If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilisation, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilising force in the world, but as an agent of chaos — effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.

“This would upend our economy and shatter the global order. The process is already under way, yet we still have time to avert catastrophe if Trump finds the courage to pursue serious negotiations rather than reckless rage and destruction.”

Oil price increases after Trump’s social media post

The oil price has risen back above $111 a barrel after President Trump dashed hopes of a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough in talks with Iran with a post on his Truth Social website.

He wrote “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will”, adding “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death”.

There was an attack on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil-export hub, while Iran has kept up attacks across the Gulf.

Brent crude rose 0.75 per cent to $111.31 a barrel in early afternoon trading. It had dropped to $108.44 a barrel in late morning after rising as high as $111.70 a barrel earlier in Asia.

Vance: We have options we haven’t used

JD Vance, the US vice-president, said “there’s going to be a lot of negotiation” until the deadline expires for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of bridges and power plants.

Vance said during an official visit to Hungary that he was confident the US would get a response by the deadline, but added that America had “tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use”.

Downing Street suggested that Sir Keir Starmer was still urging restraint before President Trump’s deadline for a deal with Iran.

Asked if the US president’s comments were a help or a hindrance, No 10 said: “We believe the best path for the region is a negotiated settlement, and that continues. The prime minister has been very clear that this isn’t our war. We’re not being dragged into it, but our position is very much focused on de-escalation.”

The US was understood not to be joining an online meeting of military planners from more than 40 countries this afternoon. No 10 said there was no disruption to supplies of petrol or jet fuel, and encouraged motorists to fill up their tanks as usual.

The US has carried out strikes on military targets on Iran’s Kharg island, a US official said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. The strikes did not hit oil infrastructure, they said.

Trump has warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.

“I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

Iran is increasing activity at a “forgotten” oil port after threats that the US could invade its main export facility on Kharg Island.

Jask port, which has been largely inactive for years, has shipped millions of barrels of oil since the start of the war, according to an analysis of satellite imagery. The volume of oil stored at its terminal has also increased.

Jask, which is 95 miles east of the Strait of Hormuz, offers a plan B, experts say — especially if President Trump acts on his threats to seize Kharg Island, through which Iran exports 90 per cent of its oil.

A US-Israeli strike shut down a key highway in northern Iran connecting the city of Tabriz with Tehran via Zanjan, regional authorities said.

The highway was hit about 55 miles outside of Tabriz, Iran’s main northern city, the official IRNA news agency said, quoting the crisis management office of the northern East Azerbaijan province.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Telegram channel said the strike hit an overpass bridge.

Qatar has said the war in the Middle East has neared the threshold at which it would not be able to be controlled, after President Trump set a deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have been warning since 2023 that escalation left unchecked will get us into a situation where it cannot be controlled, and we are very close to that point, and this is why we have been urging all parties to find a resolution to find a way of ending this war before it’s too late,” Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, said.

The death toll in the Turkey shooting has been revised down to one. One of the gunmen was killed and two others wounded in close to the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Davut Gul, the governor, said.

Police officers pulled out guns and took cover as shots rang out for at least ten minutes near a permanent security checkpoint. One person was seen covered in blood near the glass towers in the heart of the city’s main financial district.

The three attackers had links to an organisation that exploits religion, Mustafa Ciftci, the interior minister, said.

The incident happened next to a major motorway just after midday, immediately outside the tower where the Israeli consulate is located. The Turkish authorities said the three attackers had been “neutralised”.

American complaints about Nato allies and threats to quit the alliance are pushing European countries to seek alternative security arrangements, José Manuel Albares, the Spanish foreign minister, has said.

After European countries declined to send their navies to open up the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump declared he was considering withdrawing from the alliance, thrusting it into a crisis.

Albares said the decision was entirely up to Trump, but underscored that Nato allies stood in solidarity with Washington after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He told LA Sexta TV: “Nato is a mutually beneficial alliance for both Europeans and Americans … But the US administration’s remarks and new positions on Euro-Atlantic security are inviting us Europeans to take a leap in terms of our sovereignty and defence matters. We must take our citizens’ security and dissuasion into our own hands.”

He said the EU should advance toward a pan-European army and integrate its defence industries.

Spain has been a leading critic of the war.

The Kremlin said there was a huge number of requests for Russian energy from a range of different countries due to the global energy crisis.

European consumers had been trying to end their reliance on Russian energy to punish Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine, and Russia had looked set to cut its output in the wake of Ukrainian attacks on its oil infrastructure.

President Putin had suggested switching supplies more swiftly away from European customers if they do not want Russian energy.

“Now that the world has confidently embarked on the path of a rather serious economic and energy crisis, which is growing day by day, the market and market conditions in the field of energy and energy resources have completely changed,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.

“We are negotiating, we are negotiating in such a way that this situation best suits our interests.”

Iran has warned that fuel would be cut off “for years” if President Trump carried out threat to attack power plants and bridges if the Strait of Hormuz did not reopen.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said in a statement that it would “deprive the US and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” in such a scenario.

Multiple Iranian media outlets carried the statement, as the group also issued a new threat to the Gulf Arab states.

“We have exercised great restraint and had considerations in choosing retaliatory targets, but from now on all these considerations have been removed,” the warning read.

Explosions have been heard on Iran’s Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export hub, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.

The agency also claimed the US and Israel launched an attack on the island in the last hour, although there was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli or US military.

The US struck military targets on the island in mid-March amid threats to strike its oil infrastructure should Iran continue to blockade the Strait of ​Hormuz. At the time, President Trump said the US had “obliterated” every military target on the island, but left its oil infrastructure in tact.

Kharg Island is the export terminal for 90 per cent of Iran’s oil shipments.

People involved in consulate shooting ‘known to authorities’

The Turkish minister of the interior, Mustafa Ciftci, said that the identities of the attackers in Istanbul were known, and they travelled to Istanbul from Izmit (about 60 miles east) in a rented vehicle.

One of them had ties to a religious extremist organisation, one had a drug record and two were brothers, he said.

The oil price has fallen back from above $111 a barrel as some traders bet that President Trump’s deadline for Iran to reach a deal might lead to a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough.

Brent crude was trading down 1.1 per cent at $108.44 a barrel in the late morning in London after rising as high as $111.70 a barrel earlier. Shipping data showing that Iran had begun allowing a limited number of vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz added to hopes of a deal.

Brent crude also hit a technical resistance level at $110.65, when the price failed to hold significantly above that, automated sell orders were triggered, helping push the price back down.

Iran’s president has said that millions of Iranians would “sacrifice their lives” to defend their country as President Trump’s deadline loomed.

“More than 14 million proud Iranians have so far registered to sacrifice their lives to defend Iran. I too have been, am and will remain devoted to giving my life for Iran,” President Pezeshkian wrote on X.

Iran has a population of about 90 million. At the end of March, Iran began a campaign titled “Sacrificing Life” where people could express “their readiness to defend the country” by sending the digit 1 to a phone number.

The Istanbul governor said that there had been no diplomatic personnel at the Israeli consulate in Istanbul for more than two years.

Israel’s foreign ministry said it was “aware” of reports of shooting near its consulate in Turkey.

Akın Gurlek, the Turkish justice minister, said the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had begun an investigation into reports of gunfire near the Israeli consulate in the Besiktas district of Istanbul.

A deputy chief public prosecutor and two public prosecutors have been assigned to the investigation, they have arrived at the scene and begun their examination.

Three people were killed and two police officers injured in a shooting near the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday, police said.

Reuters video showed a police officer pulling out a gun and taking cover as gunshots were heard. One person was seen covered in blood.

An armed police presence is always maintained in the area near the Israeli consulate. Television footage showed armed police patrolling in the area after the shooting.

Sri Lanka has announced a record $320 million relief package for farmers, fishermen and low-income households hit hardest by soaring energy costs due to the Middle East war.

President Dissanayake said the package, the biggest ever state handout, would help the most vulnerable in the island nation of 22 million.

Cash grants would be paid directly into the accounts of thousands of fishermen and rice and tea farmers, he said.

Those living below the poverty line, about 25 per cent of the population, would have their electricity bills subsidised, and get an additional $25 this month to celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil new year festivals.

Iranian media has reported that 18 people, including two children, were killed in strikes in Alborz province neighbouring the capital, citing a provincial official.

A deputy governor of Alborz province said that US-Israeli strikes hit residential areas, with “the deaths of 18 of our fellow citizens have been confirmed, including two young children”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website and the Fars news agency reported.

Twenty-four people were wounded in the early morning attack, Kodratollah Seif added. Iran’s government has not released an updated overall casualty toll for the war in recent days.

Trump threatens journalist with jail over ‘leak’

President Trump threatened to jail a journalist who first reported that a US airman was missing if they did not hand over information on their source to the US government.

In his first press briefing on the mission to rescue the crew of a US F-15 fighter jet downed on Friday over southern Iran, Trump voiced anger at a “leaker” for disclosing that the aircraft’s pilot was successfully rescued before the second crew member was safe.

“We’ll be able to find it out because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail,’ ” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Iran’s ambassador to Kuwait urged Gulf states to find a way to avert a “tragedy”, as President Trump’s deadline loomed for Iran to agree a deal or face strikes on civilian infrastructure.

“We hope that the countries in the region will use all their diplomatic and political capabilities to prevent such a tragedy from befalling the region,” Mohammad Toutounji told the AFP news agency.

US and Israeli strikes on Iran have killed nearly 3,600 people, including at least 1,665 civilians, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana).

Since the start of the war, the US-Israeli forces have killed at least 248 children, the US-based NGO said.

At the beginning of the week, Hrana recorded at least 573 attacks across 215 incidents in 20 provinces in 24 hours, resulting in a total of at least 109 killed or injured.

“In Tehran, we have had around 548 impact points: the number of damaged residential units has reached 33,500. More than 13,000 units have been completed, and residents have returned to their homes,” Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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