conflict

Hamas says the Israeli escalation represents the failure of the international community to uphold the truce in Gaza.

Israeli forces have killed 12 Palestinians in attacks throughout Gaza, medical sources in the enclave tell Al Jazeera, as Israel continues its daily violations of the ceasefire struck last year.

An Israeli attack on a police vehicle on Friday killed at least eight people, including three civilian bystanders, in Khan Younis. A separate attack in Gaza City also killed two police officers.

Two other people were killed in the bombing of a house in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior called on the international community on Friday to intervene and end the Israeli targeting of local police forces working to restore security in civilian areas.

It said the attack in Khan Younis came after security forces intervened to break up a fight in the area.

“The continued silence of international organisations … regarding the targeting of civilian police officers constitutes complicity with the Israeli occupation, encouraging it to commit further crimes against a civilian institution protected under international law,” the ministry said.

“We emphasise that the police force provides services to citizens in the Gaza Strip across various aspects of daily life. There is absolutely no justification for targeting it or killing its personnel.”

Israel has been systemically killing police officers in Gaza, as it allies itself with criminal gangs in the occupied territory.

During its genocidal war on Gaza, which started in October 2023, the Israeli military regularly targeted officers securing aid convoys, which led to intensified looting. That, in turn, deepened the hunger crisis that Israel imposed on the territory.

A ceasefire, brokered by United States President Donald Trump, came into effect in October of last year. That decreased the intensity of the Israeli bombardment.

But Israel has nevertheless continued its attacks on the territory, killing at least 984 people and injuring 2,235 others since the truce was announced, according to health authorities.

Just this week, Israeli strikes killed five people, including three children, on Wednesday.

The overall death toll in the war has surpassed 72,500, with more than 172,000 others injured. Thousands of missing people are believed to be dead and buried under the destroyed buildings.

The number of confirmed casualties represents more than 7 percent of the enclave’s population of two million people. The Israeli assault also turned most of Gaza’s structures into piles of rubble.

Leading rights groups and United Nations investigators have concluded that the Israeli military campaign amounts to genocide: an effort to destroy the Palestinian people.

Under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has continued to bomb Gaza as it simultaneously attacks south Lebanon, in violation of a separate truce with Hezbollah.

Hamas on Friday called the deadly attacks in Gaza part of the Israeli government’s “unprecedented bloody, fascist approach”.

“This escalation … by the government of the war criminal Netanyahu represents a clear failure of the role of the mediators and guarantors [of the ceasefire] and the international community to quell the barbaric Zionist killing machine,” it said.

More than six months into the ceasefire, Trump has struggled to implement the 12-point plan on which the truce was based.

Israel continues to occupy most of Gaza. Reconstruction in the territory has not begun. An international security force envisioned by the agreement has not been formed.

In February, Trump convened his so-called Board of Peace that is supposed to govern Gaza through a council of Palestinian technocrats, but it is not clear when or how these forces will take over government agencies in the territory.

On April 20, the United States fired at and then seized an Iranian-flagged container ship close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, amid its blockade of Iranian ports.

It was similar to a scene which played out in the 1980s during the so-called Tanker War between Iran and Iraq, during which both countries fired on each other’s tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, seeking to cripple each other’s economies.

As naval tensions rise again in the Strait of Hormuz – this time between Iran and the US – we break down what happened in the 1980s and examine the parallels and differences between the situations then and now:

How the 1980s Tanker War played out – a timeline

The war between Iran and Iraq began in 1980 when then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Iran following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

In 1984, this war reached the Gulf when Iraq attacked Iranian oil tankers, seeking to cripple its oil-revenue-dependent economy. Iran retaliated by firing at oil tankers belonging to Iraq and its allies in the Gulf.

According to a report by the University of Texas’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Iran also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz then, but did not do so since its own economy, already crippled by the war, was dependent on exporting oil to the rest of the world through it.

In November 1986, when Iran struck Kuwait’s ships, Kuwait asked for foreign help. The former Soviet Union was the first to respond and helped escort the nation’s ships in the Gulf.

The US, led by then-president Ronald Reagan, launched Operation Earnest Will in July 1987, also seeking to protect tankers in the Gulf and render more assistance than Moscow. The operation involved reflagging Kuwaiti tankers with the US flag so they could legally sail under US protection.

According to an article by the Veterans Breakfast Club, a US-based website which shares experiences of former US military veterans, during Washington’s very first escort mission in July 1987, a reflagged tanker hit an Iranian mine in the Gulf.

“The convoy continued, but the incident made clear that the United States had entered a shadow war with Iran at sea,” the article said.

“Over the next fourteen months, dozens of US warships rotated through the region escorting tankers and protecting shipping lanes. US forces also conducted special operations to hunt Iranian mine-layers at night and conducted strikes against Iranian military positions and ships. The mission wasn’t a small one, consuming 30 US Navy ships at one time,” the article added.

Then in April 1988, the US frigate USS Samuel B Roberts was damaged by an Iranian mine in the Strait of Hormuz. Historian Samuel Cox, writing for the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), noted in 2018 that by the end of 1987 that vessel was so badly damaged, that “the only thing actually holding the ship together was the main deck”.

So, the US launched Operation Praying Mantis, seeking to destroy Iranian vessels.

The tanker war eventually ended in August 1988, following a United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement between Iran and Iraq.

Cox noted that by the end of 1987, “Iraq had conducted 283 attacks on shipping, while Iran attacked 168 times. Combined, the attacks had killed 116 merchant sailors, with 37 missing and 167 wounded, from a wide variety of nationalities.”

“Initially, there was great concern that the attacks would cut off the vital flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf, but all they really did was drive up insurance rates. The world’s need for oil was so great, that over 100 dead merchant seamen was apparently an acceptable price,” he wrote.

What is happening in the Strait of Hormuz now?

The current hostilities between the US and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz began when Tehran, whose territorial waters extend into the strait, closed passage to all vessels after the US and Israel began bombing the country. On March 4, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared that it was in full control of the strait, and ships would need to get clearance from them to pass through it.

Shipping through the strait collapsed by 95 percent, sending the price of oil – 20 percent of global supplies of which are shipped this way – soaring above $100 a barrel.

Iran, through its imposition of control over who passes through Hormuz, has for almost eight weeks now, determined which vessels can exit the strait from the Gulf into the Gulf of Oman.

At first, Iran indicated that it would allow “friendly” ships to pass if they paid a toll. On March 26, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s state TV: “The Strait of Hormuz, from our perspective, is not completely closed. It is closed only to enemies. There is no reason to allow the ships of our enemies and their allies to pass.”

Vessels from Malaysia, China, Egypt, South Korea, India and Pakistan passed through the strait through most of March and early April.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided these vessels with an alternative route through the Strait of Hormuz to avoid potential sea mines. US officials, including Donald Trump, have said mines have been placed there by Iran, although it has not officially confirmed or denied this.

But on April 13, alarmed that Iran was continuing to ship its own oil out of the strait, the US imposed a naval blockade of all Iranian ports. Since then, US Central Command has said US forces have directed 33 Iran-linked vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port.

On Monday, the US military fired on and then captured the Iranian-flagged container ship Touska close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, and, a day later, detained another oil tanker sanctioned for transporting Iranian crude oil as it sailed in the Bay of Bengal, which links India and Southeast Asia.

In a post on social media after detaining the Touska, the Pentagon wrote: “As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran – anywhere they operate.
International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

Since the US naval blockade of Iranian ports began, Tehran, which was earlier allowing vessels from “friendly” nations to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, has further tightened its grip on the strait.

Justifying the decision not to allow any foreign ships to pass until the US ends its naval blockade on April 19, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said the “security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free”.

“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others,” he wrote in a post on X.

Last Saturday, Iran reportedly fired at two Indian-flagged merchant vessels in the strait. The IRGC said the two ships were attacked because they were “operating without authorisation”, according to state media reports.

Then, on April 22, Iran captured two container ships seeking to exit the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz after firing on them and another vessel.

What are the parallels between the two wars?

Just like during the Tanker War of the 1980s, shipping has been severely disrupted by the US-Israel war on Iran, upending global oil and gas prices.

According to an April 17 article by the World Economic Forum, from the mid-1980s when the Tanker War took place, to the start of the new millennium, a barrel of crude oil averaged $20.

On Friday, while a ceasefire between the US and Iran was in effect, a naval battle was still playing out in the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude, the international benchmark, topped $106 per barrel. During open warfare between the US, Israel and Iran in March and early April, oil rose as high as $119 per barrel.

Mines in the sea are another problem common to both time periods.

While vessels were damaged by mines during the 1980s Tanker War, there has so far been no report of vessels being damaged by mines in the current war. However, the risk is the same.

US President Donald Trump has said the US will ramp up efforts to remove mines from the Strait of Hormuz. This has not begun yet, however.

According to CNN, there are only a few US minesweeping ships in the Gulf. The US Navy also told the broadcaster that four dedicated minesweepers stationed in the Gulf region were decommissioned last year.

John Phillips, a British safety, security and risk adviser and former military instructor, told Al Jazeera: “There are some clear parallels between the current situation in Hormuz and the Tanker War of the 1980s. In both cases, the basic idea is the same: pressure at sea can have effects far beyond the water itself.

“A relatively small amount of naval disruption, whether that means mining, harassment of shipping, missile threats, or attacks on tankers, can create real strategic and economic consequences, especially in a chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz. So in that sense, the original Tanker War is a useful reminder of how vulnerable global trade can be when the maritime domain becomes part of a wider political or military confrontation.”

What are the differences between the two wars?

During the Tanker War, the US escorted ships to protect them from Iranian attacks and also deployed vessels to remove mines. NATO countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Italy also joined.

But in the current standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, US allies like the UK and other NATO nations have refused to join Washington in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, or begin minesweeping operations, fearing they will be dragged into the war.

In a post on Truth Social in early April, the US president took aim at allies, “like the United Kingdom”, which, he said, have “refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”, telling them to either buy US fuel or get involved in the rapidly escalating war.

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” Trump wrote.

The framework of the US-Israel war on Iran is different from that of the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, experts say.

“In the 1980s, the Tanker War was part of the broader Iran-Iraq War, so the shipping attacks were tied to a much larger land conflict between two regional armies. Today, the situation is more about Iran’s standoff with the United States and its allies, and the maritime activity is less about asymmetrical war at sea and more about deterrence, signalling and the threat of escalation,” said Phillips.

“The military lesson, really, is that Hormuz is still one of those places where limited actions can have outsized effects, but the modern setting is more fast-moving, more technologically advanced and potentially more volatile than the original Tanker War,” he added.

Analysts have also pointed out that, unlike in the 1980s, Iran is currently stronger when it comes to withstanding attacks and naval blockades by the US.

In the Tanker War, Iraq was militarily supported by Western allies, while Iran was under a US arms embargo imposed in 1979 after the Iranian revolution. While this gave Iraq a military advantage, Iran’s IRGC used asymmetric warfare tactics by striking Iraq’s allies’ ships and oil tankers.

Experts also say that since the 12-day war between Iran and Israel last year, Tehran has shifted its military doctrine from one that is primarily about defensive containment to an explicitly offensive asymmetric posture.

“Iran today appears more structurally aggressive in doctrine where it is formally embracing earlier and more extensive use of regional missiles, drones, cyberattacks and energy coercion [when energy resources and infrastructure are targeted or cut off], but is operationally constrained by battle damage, sanctions and internal instability,” Phillips, the risk adviser and a former military chief instructor, told Al Jazeera in an interview on March 2.

A former US ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, also told Al Jazeera that Iran and the IRGC have “revolutionary fervour”, which means they can “survive”.

“They can tolerate pain for a lot longer than I think most American decision-makers and planners calculate,” he said.

United States President Donald Trump has claimed Iran is “collapsing financially” and said the country is losing millions of dollars a day due to Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday night, Trump wrote: “Iran is collapsing financially! They want the Strait of Hormuz opened immediately – Starving for cash! Losing 500 Million Dollars a day. Military and Police complaining that they are not getting paid. SOS!!!”

The US blockade of Iranian ports began at 14:00 GMT on April 13. Since then, the US has fired on and seized an Iranian-flagged tanker near the Strait of Hormuz, and redirected ships in the open seas carrying cargo to or from Iran. Iran’s armed forces have called this “an illegal act” that “amounts to piracy”.

In response to the US naval blockade, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to all foreign shipping and has captured several foreign-flagged ships. Previously, it had allowed some ships deemed “friendly” to Iran to pass.

On April 19, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said the “security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free”.

“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others,” he wrote in a post on X.

“The choice is clear: either a free oil market for all, or the risk of significant costs for everyone,” he added. “Stability in global fuel prices depends on a guaranteed and lasting end to the economic and military pressure against Iran and its allies.”

In a statement on social media on Thursday, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and lead negotiator in the ceasefire talks, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said a full ceasefire could only work if the US naval blockade is lifted.

Analysts say the blockade is hurting Iran but believe the country has the economic and political will to sustain it.

How long can Iran survive the naval blockade?

Here’s what we know:

How is the naval blockade hurting Iran?

Iran exports oil, gas and other goods including petrochemicals, plastics and agricultural products by sea. Analysts say the US naval blockade of its ports, including in the Strait of Hormuz, could therefore affect this trade.

Soon after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran on February 28, authorities in Tehran implemented the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the only waterway out of the Gulf, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies were shipped from Gulf producers in peacetime.

The near-shutdown of the vital chokepoint sent global oil and gas prices soaring, and since then, Iran has controlled the strait. However, it has continued to export its own energy products through the waterway.

Iran’s oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz account for about 80 percent of its total oil exports. According to Kpler, a trade intelligence firm, Iran exported 1.84 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in March and has shipped 1.71 million bpd so far in April, compared with an average of 1.68 million bpd in 2025.

From March 15 to April 14, it exported 55.22 million barrels of oil. The price per barrel of Iranian oil – across its three major variants, known as Iranian light, Iranian heavy and Forozan blend – has not fallen below $90 per barrel over the past month. On many days, the price has surpassed $100 a barrel.

Even at the conservative estimate of $90 a barrel, Iran has earned at least $4.97bn over the past month from its ongoing oil exports.

By contrast, in early February before the war started, Iran was earning about $115m a day from its crude oil exports, or $3.45bn in a month.

Simply put, Iran has earned 40 percent more from oil exports in the past month than it did before the war.

Stopping this is a key motivation behind the US naval blockade of Iranian ports.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on April 14, Frederic Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera that the previous six weeks had been a boon for Iran in terms of oil revenues, but with the US blockade, that will change.

“Iran has some buffer in the form of crude oil reserves in floating tanks – basically parked tankers – which was estimated at about 127 million barrels in February. But that doesn’t mean that the blockade wouldn’t hurt Iran,” he said.

On Friday, Schneider told Al Jazeera that Iran, however, seems to be “playing the longer game” and has anticipated and prepared for this sort of conflict to some degree.

“The naval blockade has added economic strain, as several civilian ships have been captured in international waters. But it remains unclear how tight the blockade is, how many ships manage to pass given the considerable amount of floating Iranian oil, and how long Trump can maintain the blockade,” he said.

Can the US keep the blockade going for long?

Schneider noted that Trump will face a legislative challenge by May 1, when the 60 days he can maintain a foreign offensive without congressional approval come to an end.

Dire conditions have been reported on the ships that are upholding the blockade, he said, and it remains to be seen how China will react to the continuing seizure of ships that carry any of its cargo.

“China has already said it sees the blockade of Chinese trade with Iran as unacceptable. Further, the closure of Hormuz by Iran in retaliation is hurting, if not the US itself that much, American allies in the region and globally, raising the pressure on Trump,” he said.

“If we can glean anything from the behaviour of the two sides, it is Iran that is signalling patience and Trump showing impatience,” he added.

Adam Ereli, a former US ambassador to Bahrain, told Al Jazeera’s This is America programme that while the US blockade of Iranian ports and seizure of vessels transporting Iranian oil “makes sense” as a policy, it may not work as intended due to domestic political considerations in the US.

“The Iranians have prepared for this, for this eventuality. They have their own plans. They’ve got alternative means of storing their oil or selling their oil,” Ereli told Al Jazeera.

“Even if they ran out of oil, they have ways to survive a very tough blockade and sanctions regime that, frankly, I think will outlast Trump’s patience and the patience of the American people,” he said.

“Remember, this isn’t just about moving soldiers and ships and planes around on a map. There’s politics involved here in the United States,” he added.

“Trump is nothing if not attuned to the political winds. And for that reason, I think that you’ve got this Iran strategy on the one hand that runs up against an electoral strategy on another hand, and therefore, the question is, which one is going to give?”

Can Iran store the oil the US is blockading in the meantime?

Iran’s domestic refineries have a capacity of 2.6 million bpd, according to consultancy FGE Energy. Its oil and gas production facilities are concentrated in southwestern provinces: Khuzestan for oil and Bushehr for gas and condensate from the South Pars gasfield.

Iran is also the third-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and exports 90 percent of its crude oil via Kharg Island for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The US naval blockade has begun affecting the country’s storage capacity, according to TankerTrackers, the maritime intelligence agency. The blockade means Iran has to store more oil, and space could become tight.

TankerTrackers said that on Kharg Island, to prepare for the possibility of running out of oil storage space, Iran has brought an old tanker named NASHA (9079107) out of retirement.

“She’s a 30yo [year old] VLCC [Very Large Crude Carrier] that’s been anchored empty for the past few years; currently spending 4 days on a trip that should take 1.5-2 days,” TankerTrackers said in a post on X, suggesting that the tanker is being used to store oil. It is unclear if the ship has a heading or course.

Can Iran continue to earn revenues from oil?

Yes, analysts say that for a few months, Iran can continue to earn revenue from oil which is already in transit at sea.

Kenneth Katzman, former Iran analyst at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, DC, said Iran is not exporting new oil amid the US blockade of Iranian ports, but Tehran has between 160 million and 170 million barrels of oil “afloat” on ships around the world currently.

Those supplies, which transited the Strait of Hormuz before the US blockade was imposed, are on board hundreds of tankers and “waiting to be delivered”, Katzman told Al Jazeera.

Katzman said he had been informed by an Iranian professor that, based on those supplies, Tehran could have revenue flows that can last until August despite the US naval blockade.

“Which is a long time. Does President Trump have until August? Probably not,” he said.

“He’s probably going to have to look at kinetic escalation if he wants to bring this to the conclusion that he wants, or he’s going to have to accept less than the deal he ideally wants,” he said.

Iranian ships will still have to avoid US naval ships on the open ocean, as the US Navy has also recently intercepted ships carrying Iranian cargoes.

On Wednesday this week, for example, the US military intercepted at least three Iranian-flagged tankers in ‌Asian waters, Reuters reported, and was said to be redirecting them away from their positions near India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

How else can Iran earn revenue?

Besides oil revenue, Iran is also currently receiving revenue from a “toll booth” system that the country imposed on the Strait of Hormuz in March.

On Thursday, Iran’s deputy parliament speaker Hamidreza Haji-Babaei said Tehran’s central bank had received the first revenues from tolls imposed since the start of the war, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. It is unclear how much that toll revenue is.

Iranian politician Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the United Kingdom-based, Farsi-language satellite TV channel Iran International in March that the country has been charging some vessels as much as $2m each to pass through the strait.

According to Lloyd’s List, the shipping news outlet, at least two vessels that have transited the strait so far have paid fees in yuan, China’s currency. Lloyd’s List reported that one “transit was brokered by a Chinese maritime services company acting as an intermediary, which also handled the payment to Iranian authorities”. It is, however, not clear how much the vessels paid.

How resilient is Iran’s leadership?

In recent days, while pressuring Iran to negotiate a ceasefire deal, US President Donald Trump has claimed that Iranians are “having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is”, alleging that there is “crazy” infighting between “moderates” and “hardliners” in Tehran.

But the country’s officials have insisted that Iran’s government is united.

Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, said on Thursday: “Our political diversity is our democracy, yet in times of peril, we are a ‘Single Hand’ under one flag. To protect our soil and dignity, we transcend all labels. We are one soul, one nation.”

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also dismissed allegations that the Iranian military may be at odds with the political leadership.

“The failure of Israel’s terrorist killings is reflected in how Iran’s state institutions continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline,” he wrote on X, referring to the assassinations of Iranian political and military figures Israel has carried out in recent weeks.

“The battlefield and diplomacy are fully coordinated fronts in the same war. Iranians are all united, more than ever before.”

One of the strongest messages of unity came from Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.

“In Iran, there are no radicals or moderates,” he said on X.

“We are all Iranians and revolutionaries. With ironclad unity of nation and state and obedience to the Supreme Leader, we will make the aggressor regret.”

How strong is Iran militarily?

Iran has demonstrated considerable military resilience in the face of weeks of US-Israeli strikes through its use of asymmetric warfare.

This includes the use of guerrilla tactics, cyberattacks, arming and supporting proxy armed groups and other indirect tools.

During its war with the US and Israel, Iran has targeted energy infrastructure in Israel and across the Gulf, threatened to target banking institutions and targeted US data centres of technology companies such as Amazon in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Iran has also blocked the Strait of Hormuz and reportedly placed mines in the strait to disrupt shipping, sending global oil prices soaring.

Since the US began its naval blockade of Iranian ports in mid-April, Iranian officials have repeatedly promised that their country will defend itself and respond to any US attack.

Earlier this week, after the US military said it had seized an Iranian vessel and ordered dozens of others to turn around, Iran also retaliated by capturing foreign commercial vessels around the Hormuz Strait, which it said violated naval regulations.

Ereli, the former US ambassador, told Al Jazeera that Iran and the IRGC have “revolutionary fervour”, which means they can “survive”. “They can tolerate pain for a lot longer than I think most American decision makers and planners calculate,” Ereli said.

Ereli said it was unknown how long Tehran could last under “siege conditions” imposed by the US, but probably a lot longer than the US anticipates.

“I think they can go a lot longer, especially than most people imagine, and especially when it comes to kneeling to the Americans,” Ereli said.

“There’s a level of pride and survival. They’re at war with us, and for them it’s a war of necessity. They’ve got to survive,” he added.

Three professors at Atlanta’s Emory University in the United States have filed a lawsuit over their arrests during a 2024 campus protest over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Their lawsuit on Thursday argued that the university broke its own free-speech policies when it called in police and state troopers to aggressively disband the protest, making 28 arrests.

“The judicial system would find that Emory failed to protect its students, to protect its staff, to protect the educational mission of the university,” said philosophy professor Noelle McAfee, one of the plaintiffs.

“So this isn’t just about people’s individual rights. It’s our educational mission to train people in free and critical inquiry, to be able to learn how to engage with others, to be fearless.”

Laura Diamond, a spokesperson for Emory, responded that the university believes “this lawsuit is without merit”.

“Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm,” Diamond said in a statement. “We regret this issue is being litigated, but we have confidence in the legal process.”

The suit is just one example of how the nationwide wave of protests from 2023 and 2024 continues to reverberate on elite campuses.

There have been multiple instances where students and faculty have filed lawsuits against universities, arguing they were discriminated against because of the protests.

But the Emory suit is unusual. McAfee and her fellow plaintiffs — English and Indigenous studies professor Emilio Del Valle-Escalante and economics professor Caroline Fohlin — all remain tenured faculty members. None were convicted of any charges.

The civil lawsuit in DeKalb County State Court demands that the private university repay money the three spent defending themselves against misdemeanour charges that were later dismissed, along with punitive damages.

McAfee said she’s suing her employer “to try to get them to be accountable and to change”.

All three say they were observers on April 25, 2024, when some students and others set up tents on the university’s main quad to protest the war. They say Emory broke its own policies by calling in Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers without seeking alternatives.

McAfee was charged with disorderly conduct after she said she yelled “Stop!” at an officer roughly arresting a protester. Del Valle-Escalante said he was trying to help an older woman when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Fohlin said that, when she protested against officers pinning a protester to the ground, she herself was thrown face-first to the ground and arrested, suffering a concussion and a spine injury. Fohlin was charged with misdemeanour battery of an officer.

Emory claimed that those arrested that day were outsiders who trespassed on school property. But 20 of the 28 people arrested were affiliated with the university.

The professors said that, after their arrests, they were targeted by threats and harassment, part of a pushback by conservatives who said universities were failing to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism and allowing lawlessness.

Nationwide, however, advocates say there is a “Palestine exception” in which universities are willing to curb pro-Palestine speech and protest. Palestine Legal, a legal aid group supporting such speech, said Tuesday that it received 300 percent more legal requests in 2025 than its annual average before 2023, mostly from college students and faculty.

McAfee served as president of the Emory University Senate after her arrest. The body makes policy recommendations and has helped draft the university’s open expression policy.

She said she asked then-President Gregory Fenves in fall 2024 why Emory police weren’t dropping the charges against her and others. McAfee said Fenves told her that he wanted “to see justice”.

The open expression policy was revised after 2024 to clearly prohibit tents, camping, the occupation of university buildings and demonstrations between midnight and 7am.

Whatever the policy, McAfee said students are afraid to protest at Emory, saying the university has turned its back on what Atlanta civil rights icon John Lewis called “good trouble”.

“Students know right now that any trouble is not going to be good trouble at Emory, that they could get arrested,” she said. “So students are afraid.”

On the outskirts of Somalia’s southern port city, the land has become an open graveyard for cattle. Some are left where they fell, while others are buried in shallow graves after consecutive failed rainy seasons.

For many families here, pastoralists who rely on livestock for milk, meat, and income, animals were everything, but what was once a lifeline of food and income has now become a stark symbol of loss.

The impact is not just felt in Kismayo, but across the country, with 6.5 million people forced to skip meals and go hungry every day. Drought and rising costs only pushing the country deeper into crisis.

The humanitarian director at Save the Children, Francesca Sangiorgi, says the crisis is being driven by repeated climate shocks that are compounding over time. “We’re seeing multiple rainy seasons that have failed across the country,” she tells Al Jazeera, adding that even when rain arrives, it is often too uneven and too late to restore livelihoods that have already collapsed.

What’s the scale of the crisis?

The scale of Somalia’s hunger crisis is severe and rapidly worsening.

With a third of the population facing severe food insecurity (classified as IPC Phase 3 and above), many households are struggling to get enough food to meet their basic daily requirements (PDF) — and in some cases going without food altogether, leaving them more vulnerable to malnutrition and illnesses such as diarrhoea, measles, and other infections.

Of these, more than 2 million people are in the most critical conditions short of famine (IPC Phase 4 or emergency levels), where families are facing extreme shortages and are increasingly forced into displacement in search of basic needs, moving towards already overcrowded aid camps where resources are rapidly dwindling.

Children are among the most affected. According to the UN, an estimated 1.8 million children under five in Somalia are at risk of acute malnutrition, putting their survival in immediate danger.

Sangiorgi notes that the deterioration has been unfolding rapidly, its effects already evident.

“The situation of children across the country is extremely concerning,” she explains. “We’re seeing the spread of child illnesses across the country. Dropout rates are extremely high right now, and they continue to rise because of the drought. We want to make sure that children have a chance at life—access to the health and nutrition services they need, as well as education.”

According to Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, more than 3.3 million people have been displaced, severely straining the already limited resources and basic services in these communities.

What does the crisis look like on the ground?

Near Kismayo, one of Somalia’s largest camps for displaced people has formed, sheltering families who have nothing to eat and have travelled from across Jubbaland.

One woman describes how her herd has fallen from 200 cattle to just four, ending her very livelihood.

Barwaqo Aden, a displaced Jamame resident in Lower Juba, arrived at the camp only recently, but her eight-month-old daughter is already in the local hospital with severe malnutrition due to the lack of resources.

Others arrive after exhausting journeys, fleeing areas controlled by the armed group al-Shabab. A displaced resident, Hodhan Mohamed, walked for days and crossed the River Juba by boat before reaching a crowded settlement, unsure what she would find. Like many new arrivals, she now waits for assistance that is limited and uncertain.

Sangiorgi explains that secondary displacement – when people who have already been forced from their homes are displaced again – is becoming increasingly frequent. “As services and commodities continue to shrink across the country, the prices of essential goods keep rising as well.”

More than 3.8 million Somalis are currently displaced, making up 22 percent of the population. Many have been uprooted multiple times, moving from one settlement to another as aid resources dwindle and access to support becomes more limited.

What’s driving the crisis?

At its core, the crisis is primarily driven by climate shocks.

Somalia has had three consecutive failed rainy seasons in recent years, drying out rivers, wells, and pasturelands.

For livestock-dependent communities, the impact has been immediate: animals are dying, and with them, livelihoods are disappearing.

As local production collapses, families are forced to buy from markets even as food, fuel, and water prices continue to rise. In rural areas, especially, incomes no longer stretch far enough to meet needs.

Insecurity caused by armed conflict adds further strain, displacing communities and limiting access for aid workers in some regions.

Beyond Somalia, the global economic crisis linked to the US–Israeli war on Iran has also played a role in constricting supply chains. A UN aid chief told the Reuters news agency in March that these disruptions are compounding costs and weakening the ability to deliver assistance, as humanitarian systems come under growing strain.

MSF reported last month that transport costs have risen by up to 50 percent in parts of Somalia, making it harder for people to reach health facilities and increasing the cost of delivering care as fuel prices climb.

The organisation also said more than 200 health and nutrition facilities have closed since early 2025 due to sharp funding cuts, leaving critical gaps in already overstretched health services.

What does the aid collapse look like?

As the need for aid rises, humanitarian funding and response capacities are only shrinking.

The UN response plan for Somalia is currently funded at just 20 percent of what is required — with $1.42bn needed but only $288m received. That discrepancy has forced major cuts, reducing the number of people targeted for assistance from 6 million to just 1.3 million.

For Somalia, which relies heavily on imported food and external assistance, the consequences are immediate. Fewer supplies are reaching ports, while the cost of delivering essentials continues to rise, testing an already fragile system.

As UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told Reuters in March, “These [constraints] will damage our humanitarian supply chains, reduce ‌the ⁠humanitarian supplies we can get to people who need them, but they’ll also drive up energy costs and food costs across the region, this really is a perfect storm of factors right now, and I’m seriously worried,” he stated.

The humanitarian response has been cut by 75 percent, meaning millions of Somalis are no longer receiving assistance, even as the crisis deepens on the ground.

United States President Donald Trump has described the Iranian leadership as “seriously fractured” as he announced an extension to a ceasefire.

Trump said on Tuesday that the ceasefire would be extended to allow more time for negotiations and appeared to be suggesting that Iran’s leadership is in disarray.

He added that the US naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports would remain in place.

Three weeks ago, Trump claimed the US military campaign had succeeded in its goal of forcing a change in Iran’s government and the US was now dealing with “a whole new set of people” in charge of the country.

On April 11, Iran sent a delegation led by parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, to begin talks with the US.

So is Iran’s government “fractured”? We take a look at the key Iranian stakeholders and power centres in Iran and how their approach to US negotiations may differ.

Who are the key figures in Iran, and are they ‘fractured’ over talks with the US?

Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei

Khamenei is the second son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran on the first day of the war on February 28. Mojtaba Khamenei was selected as Iran’s new supreme leader on March 8, according to state media reports.

The 56-year old has never run for office or been elected but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of his father, cultivating deep ties with the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Observers said the younger Khamenei’s ascension is a clear sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment have retained power and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations with the US in the short term.

Since his ascension, however, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public. On March 13, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed Iran’s new supreme leader had been wounded in US-Israeli strikes.

An April 11, a Reuters news agency report that quoted three people close to the supreme leader’s inner circle said Khamenei was still recovering from severe facial and leg injuries suffered in the air strike that killed his father. The sources were quoted as saying he was taking part in meetings with senior officials through audioconferencing.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify these claims.

According to state media reports, Khamenei has been active in making decisions on the war.

In a message read on Iranian state TV on April 18, Khamenei warned that the Iranian navy was ready to inflict “new bitter defeats” on the US and Israel as tensions escalated in the Strait of Hormuz.

Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Ghalibaf, 64, has served as Iran’s parliamentary speaker since 2020.

He was commander of the IRGC air force from 1997 to 2000. After that, he served as the country’s police chief. From 2005 to 2017, he was the mayor of Tehran.

Ghalibaf stood in elections for president in 2005, 2013, 2017 and 2024. He withdrew his bid for president before the election in 2017 when Hassan Rouhani won a second term.

Last month in the early days of the US-Israel war on Iran, it was suggested that Ghalibaf was the Trump administration’s “pick” to lead the country after the war ended. He has also been the main Iranian official leading negotiations with Washington since they began on April 11 in Pakistan.

In an overnight post on X on Tuesday, Ghalibaf wrote that Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire ended this week without a deal.

Ghalibaf expressed anger at Trump for “imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire”.

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he said.

The ceasefire was supposed to have ended on Wednesday, but shortly before its expiration, Trump extended it until Iran “can come up with a unified proposal”.

Within Iran, however, Ghalibaf’s willingness to engage in negotiations with the US has been criticised by some people who have accused him of “betrayal”.

According to a report on Monday by the Iran International TV channel, some critics of Ghalibaf have said on social media platforms in Iran that the parliamentary speaker’s suggestion that peace talks with the US were progressing was “worrying”.

“There is no good in negotiation except harm,” one critic said.

But Ghalibaf has defended undertaking negotiations with the US. In a televised interview on Saturday, he said diplomacy does not mean “a withdrawal from Iran’s demands” but is a way to “consolidate military gains and translate them into political outcomes and lasting peace”.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Iran’s military power structure is often described as opaque and complex.

The nation operates parallel armies, multiple intelligence services and layered command structures, all of which answer directly to the supreme leader, who serves as the commander in chief of all the armed forces.

The parallel armies comprise the Artesh, Iran’s regular army, which is responsible for territorial defence, defence of Iran’s airspace and conventional warfare, and the IRGC, whose role goes beyond defence and includes protecting Iran’s political structure.

The IRGC also controls Iran’s airspace and drone arsenal, which has become the backbone of Iran’s deterrence strategy against attacks by Israel and the US.

After the US and Israel struck Iran and killed Ali Khamenei, the IRGC promised revenge and launched what it called “the heaviest offensive operations in the history of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic against occupied lands [a reference to Israel] and the bases of American terrorists”. Since then, it has struck US military assets and infrastructure across the Gulf region.

Some experts said Iranian officials negotiating with the US are more closely aligned with the IRGC than other leaders and groups.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on March 25, Babak Vahdad, a political analyst specialising in Iran, noted that Iran’s appointment of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council suggested Iranian negotiations would become more tightly aligned with the IRGC’s priorities. Zolghadr is a former IRGC commander and has been secretary of the advisory Expediency Council since 2023.

But Javad Heiran-Nia, who directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, said a divide between the IRGC and Iran’s negotiating team was plain to see.

Iran has attacked three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz since Trump announced the ceasefire on April 6 and said the US naval blockade will remain.

“The attack on tankers during the ceasefire demonstrates the IRGC’s dominance over the diplomatic team and its disregard for their positions,” he told Al Jazeera.

Paydari Front

Heiran-Nia pointed to the role of the Paydari Front (Steadfastness Front), whose members are hardliners within Iran’s political structure who are deeply committed to preserving the original principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution and the absolute power of the supreme leader. This group, he said, has been using the negotiations to cement its position within the power structure and among its support base.

He added that the Paydari Front has also been questioning the negotiations.

“In Iran’s current political climate, various groups are trying to raise their weight, both within the power structure and in public opinion. Of course, the Paydari Front’s efforts are more meaningful in relation to their own support base rather than trying to influence other segments of society because their hardline approach holds no appeal for other social classes,” he said.

The influence this group could have over the progress of talks is debatable, however, he added.

“If a deal is reached, it will likely have a sovereign character. The establishment will impose its own narrative, and the IRGC will accept it. In the meantime, the hardliners will attack the administration of [President] Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf over the deal. However, it is unlikely that this will spread to the decision-making body of the establishment,” he added.

The IRGC says the aggression came in response to what it described as the US seizure of an Iranian commercial vessel.

An Iranian gunboat has fired on a container vessel near the coast of Oman, according to a British maritime monitoring agency, in an incident that occurred hours after United States President Donald Trump said he would extend a ceasefire with Iran.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said on Wednesday that the ship’s captain reported that the vessel had been approached by a vessel of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) before shots were fired.

It “has caused heavy damage to the bridge. No fires or environmental impact reported,” the agency added. No casualties were reported, and all crew members were said to be safe.

British maritime security firm Vanguard Tech said the ship was sailing under a Liberian flag and had been informed it had permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically important waterways.

Iranian news agency Tasnim, however, said the vessel had ignored warnings issued by Iran’s armed forces.

The incident followed a warning from the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters after what it described as the US seizure of an Iranian commercial ship in the Sea of Oman, the IRNA news agency reported.

It accused Washington of violating the ceasefire and carrying out “armed piracy” after allegedly firing on the Iranian vessel and disabling its navigation systems.

Trump extends ceasefire

Trump earlier announced he would delay a planned military attack on Iran after requests from Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the decision was made because Iran’s government was “seriously fractured” and needed time to present a unified position.

“We have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” he wrote.

He added, however, that the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would remain in place and said the military had been ordered to stay “ready and able”.

The announcement marked a shift from comments made a day earlier, when Trump said it was “highly unlikely” he would extend the truce beyond Tuesday.

‘Positive and negative signals’ from Tehran

Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said Iranian officials were sending mixed messages over the ceasefire and the prospects for negotiations.

“Tehran is saying they won’t negotiate under imposed terms and conditions … when we compare the initial 10-point and 15-point proposals by the Iranians and Americans, we can understand that the two sides are poles apart,” he said.

“The atmosphere is also clouded by this mistrust in Tehran towards the United States, as well as the simultaneous military rhetoric related to a potential failed negotiation … It is a warning that another round of confrontation may be ahead.”

He said Iran still viewed the Strait of Hormuz as a key source of leverage in any talks.

“It’s trying to exercise authority over the ships and vessels transiting this strategically significant chokepoint,” he said.

Asadi added that Iranian officials framed their regional position as based on mutual security. “Iranians are saying that the basis of their foreign policy behaviour, particularly when it comes to Israel, is security for all versus security for none,” he said.

As the sun sets on Israel’s Memorial Day, 12 torches, together symbolising the spirit of the nation, are lit to mark the beginning of Independence Day, the anniversary of the country’s establishment in 1948 – which led to the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians.

To be selected to light one of the torches over the resting place of Theodor Herzl, the man widely credited with the creation of modern Zionism, is regarded as one of the greatest honours in Israel.

This year, among those selected to light the torch on Tuesday evening is Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbi so controversial that even the Israeli military – an organisation that admits to having killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza – has publicly distanced itself from him. A military spokesperson said last week that Zarbiv “was not selected in coordination” with the military, and was not representing it at the ceremony, despite his being an army reservist.

Obliterate

Zarbiv first came to national prominence in Israel in the early months of 2024, when the 52-year-old rabbi and state rabbinical judge was filmed throwing grenades at Palestinians in Khan Younis during a firefight.

Since then, he has recorded himself gleefully demolishing Palestinian homes – his name even becoming a verb meaning to flatten or obliterate – and has delivered sermons from the ruins of Rafah promising “victory and settlement”. Zarbiv pairs it all with the traditional mannerisms of a religious leader, punctuating his threats and violence with footage of him blowing on a traditional ram’s horn, or shofar, as well as reciting prayers and parts of the Torah.

Zarbiv has also shared footage of himself taking part in the demolition of homes in southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces are accused of deploying the same scorched earth tactics as they did during Gaza’s genocide.

Speaking to Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 in January 2025, Zarbiv boasted of the destruction inflicted on Gaza.

“There are tens of thousands of dead. The dogs and the cats ate them because no one collected them,” he said. “Tens of thousands of families – they have not a piece of paper, no childhood photo, no IDs, they have nothing. No home, there is nothing. They come, they have no idea where their house is. It’s something unbelievable.”

While the army leadership itself might be seeking to distance itself from Zarbiv, the rabbi himself says that he represents his fellow soldiers.

“I am one soldier among many, I am a soldier of the Givati Brigade,” he said in an interview last week.

Illegal settlement

Last week, the Israeli organisation Kerem Navot, which monitors illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, filed a complaint to Israel’s judicial watchdog after confirming that Zarbiv had built his home illegally on private Palestinian land in the Beit El settlement, accusing him of violating the ethics rules for both judges and rabbinic judges.

That had no bearing, however, on Transport Minister Miri Regev’s decision to nominate Zarbiv for the torch-bearing ceremony.

“Rabbi Zarbiv, a father of six, continues to serve in reserve duty and combines in his life in an inspiring way between the book and the sword – between Torah and the army, between study and action, and between spiritual leadership and security responsibility,” the right-wing minister said.

She continued, describing the man now accused of multiple war crimes as representative of a generation “that refuses to part with responsibility, that chooses to bear the burden and continue to build, out of great faith in the future”.

Nevertheless, in January 2025, The Hind Rajab Foundation, the Belgian-based NGO that seeks to prosecute Israeli soldiers on the basis of the video evidence they themselves frequently provide, filed an official complaint against Zarbiv with the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the foundation’s lawyers, Zarbiv’s gleeful boast of destroying 50 buildings per week in Gaza, participating in the complete destruction of entire neighbourhoods, and having publicly incited violence and hatred through his appearances on Israeli media, were clear enough breaches of the Geneva Convention and Rome Statute to deserve prosecution.

Zarbiv was not a neutral public figure being honoured for civic virtue, Dyab Abou Jahjah, cofounder of The Hind Rajab Foundation, told Al Jazeera. Rather, “he is a notorious perpetrator of grave international crimes”, Abou Jahjah said.

“His selection [for the Independence Day ceremony] is therefore not incidental – it is revealing,” Abou Jahjah added. “When an individual implicated in acts that constitute genocide is elevated in this way, it reflects the underlying logic of a state project historically rooted in the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. From that perspective, his selection is entirely consistent.”

B’tselem, the Israeli rights group, is also

among those objecting to Zarbiv’s selection.

“The government’s decision to laud Zarbiv as an ‘exemplary citizen’, after more than two years of genocide in Gaza and amid a reality of unprecedented state and settler violence in the West Bank, represents a state-level endorsement of the complete dehumanization of Palestinians and the systematic destruction of Palestinian life,” B’tselem said in a statement.

“This selection sends a clear message to the citizens of Israel and the entire world: In Israel, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes are the ‘spirit of the nation’,” the group added.

There was a time when various developments from this past week – such as the Israeli government spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting ultra-nationalist marches, a sanctioned settler leading army-escorted livestock raids on a Palestinian village, and the Israeli finance minister calling for the full military occupation and settlement of Gaza while speaking at once-dismantled occupied West Bank settlements – would have been met with outcry or debate in some corners of Israeli society.

This week, however, they have become routine, as United Nations experts describe Israeli policy as “ethnically cleansing the West Bank through daily attacks resulting in killing, injury, and harassment of women and children, and the widespread destruction of Palestinian homes, farmland and livelihoods”.

Against that backdrop, this past week brought intense and coordinated settler attacks on villages near Ramallah, continued Israeli strikes on civilians in Gaza, new evictions and demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem, and US-Hamas diplomatic talks in Cairo that showed some glimmers of progress – while falling well short of what either side has demanded.

Gaza: Strikes, starvation, and a partial offer on weapons

Across the Gaza Strip, Israeli air strikes, gunfire and drone attacks continued throughout the week as the humanitarian crisis worsened.

On April 14, a strike on a police vehicle on al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City killed four people, including three-year-old Yahya al-Malahi, whose father said his family had been leaving a relative’s wedding. A strike on the Shati refugee camp later the same day killed at least five more.

On April 16, brothers Abdelmalek and Abdel Sattar al-Attar were killed in Beit Lahiya in an area that witnesses said fell outside the zone under Israeli military control along the so-called “yellow line”. On April 17, brothers Mahmoud and Eid Abu Warda were shot dead by a drone while trying to get water in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood; a drone separately struck a water desalination facility in the same area, killing one more. The following day, two civilian contractors delivering water on behalf of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) were shot dead by Israeli troops in northern Gaza.

Since the October ceasefire, 777 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and at least 2,193 injured, as of April 20. Since October 7, 2023, the cumulative death toll stands at 72,553 – a figure revised upwards this week after the Gaza Ministry of Health certified an additional 196 deaths.

Meanwhile, aid access into Gaza remains severely constrained. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations and partner aid inflows declined by 37 percent between the first and second three-month periods following the ceasefire. Bakeries have scaled back production due to dwindling flour and fuel, with Palestinians reporting hours-long queues for bread.

Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov told an Egyptian news channel this week that Israeli restrictions at border crossings remain “the primary obstacle” preventing sufficient aid from reaching Gaza.

On the diplomatic front, direct US-Hamas talks in Cairo this week focused on implementing phase-one commitments before any discussion of disarmament. No official agreement has been reached.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order the military to “immediately prepare for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip” and establish Israeli settlements there if Hamas refuses to disarm entirely. Smotrich made the declaration while attending a ceremony commemorating the re-establishment of the illegal settlement of Sa-Nur, which had previously been dismantled by Israel in 2005 along with settlements in Gaza and several others in the northern West Bank.

Coordinated attacks and killings in the West Bank

The week’s most sustained violence in the West Bank took place across a cluster of villages northeast of Ramallah – Khirbet Abu Falah, al-Mughayyir and Turmus Aya – where three new illegal Jewish outposts have been established in the past two months, all on privately owned Palestinian land in Area B, which is supposed to be under limited administrative control of the Palestinian Authority. One such outpost was built on land from which the Abu Najjeh community – itself already forcibly displaced from Ein Samiya in the summer of 2023 – was recently violently expelled from.

On April 18, settlers launched simultaneous coordinated attacks on all three villages, according to local activists. In Turmus Aya, settlers arriving in more than a dozen vehicles burned a home and a car, with a military force near the outpost refusing to intervene, according to local activists. In Khirbet Abu Falah, dozens of settlers gathered at a newly established outpost before descending on Palestinian homes; soldiers subsequently raided the village themselves, according to locals. In al-Mughayyir, soldiers stopped two small children playing in the street, pushing them to the ground. They drove away before settlers on a government-supplied quad bike attacked a Palestinian driver on the nearby road.

The following morning, settlers raided a sheep pen in al-Mughayyir and stole 70 sheep. When residents pursued them, settlers fired live ammunition, activists said. Israeli military and police then escorted the Or Nachman outpost’s founder, Amishav Malt, back into the village, where he led a raid that he claimed was to recover stolen sheep – a tactic local activists say is routinely used to justify further theft. One Palestinian resident was beaten unconscious by police, according to local activists. Soldiers then enabled Neria Ben Pazi – the founder of another local illegal outpost who is internationally sanctioned by Australia, Belgium, France and Britain – to steal sheep from a restrained Palestinian resident. At least 20 military vehicles subsequently laid siege to the village entrance.

Beyond these villages, settler attacks on shepherds, farmers and residents were documented across numerous communities, including olive trees cut down in Yatma near Nablus, and the theft of livestock and crops in Jifna and several communities in Masafer Yatta. Settlers erected a barbed wire fence on the path that children from Umm al-Khair use to reach their school, blocking their safe access ever since.

On April 16, Israeli forces staged a raid on Beit Duqqu, northwest of Jerusalem, during which they shot dead 17-year-old Mohammed Rayan. Soldiers prevented ambulances from treating him, instead removing his body – denying his family proper Muslim burial rites. Four others were shot with live fire. On April 18, Israeli forces killed Mohammed Suwaiti, 25, in Khirbet Salama, southwest of Hebron, claiming he was approaching the illegal settlement of Negohot.

According to the latest OCHA humanitarian situation report, in 2026, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been displaced by demolitions, settler attacks, and evictions – including more than 1,100 children. Settler attacks now account for 75 percent of all displacement recorded this year, with March recording the highest monthly settler injury toll since documentation began in 2006.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli military for comment on the incidents reported on this week, but has yet to receive a reply.

East Jerusalem evictions

In occupied East Jerusalem, demolitions and evictions continued at an elevated pace. Israeli authorities demolished the home of 80-year-old cancer patient Abu Kamel Dweik in Silwan’s al-Bustan neighbourhood, at least the eighth demolition in the area this month.

According to OCHA, since January 2026, at least 86 Palestinian-owned structures have been demolished in East Jerusalem, displacing more than 250 people, with roughly half demolished by their owners to avoid additional fines.

In addition to further home demolitions in al-Bustan expected shortly, the extended Basha family – six households comprising 12 people, most over 60, who have lived in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter for nearly a century – now face court-ordered eviction by April 26.

The week also saw reports from Israeli media that the Netanyahu government is allocating approximately 1.2 million shekels ($400,000) to expand the ultra-nationalist Jerusalem Day marches across the country next month – yearly events marked by vulgar, racist slogans and violent attacks on Palestinian neighbourhoods.

With such funding, the marches are being expanded to several mixed Jewish-Arab cities including Lydd (Lod), where Jerusalem Day clashes in 2021 escalated into days of violence. That the state is now directly subsidising such events reflects the broader influence of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose reach over police operations has itself become the subject of a rare legal challenge.

Israel’s High Court this week ordered Ben-Gvir to reach an agreement with the attorney general to curb his political interference in police work, after his repeated alleged violations of a prior agreement not to do so. Critics say his tenure has radicalised the police’s approach toward Palestinians – a charge given weight by documented incidents of police facilitating settler attacks and, in some cases, participating directly in violence against Palestinian residents.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have been displaced by recent fighting along the Pakistan border, forced into tents with little access to food, healthcare, or education. Pakistan says its strikes target armed groups attacking its territory, but displaced families now fear for their safety and are uncertain if they will ever return home.

Islamabad talks in limbo as Tehran says it will retaliate after US marines capture an Iranian-flagged ship near the Strait of Hormuz.

Donald Trump announced on Sunday that a second round of US-Iran talks is to be held in Pakistan on Monday – but Tehran has not confirmed participation, two days before a ceasefire deal expires.

The capture by US Marines of an Iranian-flagged container ship near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday has further clouded the Islamabad talks, as Tehran has pledged to retaliate.

The attack came hours after President Trump announced he is sending a team to Islamabad for talks, while once again threatening to knock out Iran’s power plants and bridges if there is no deal. The ceasefire, which ended more than a month of war, expires on Wednesday.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, spoke on Sunday with Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, as he reaffirmed his government’s readiness to mediate the conflict.

Here is what we know:

In Iran

• ⁠Iran’s top ⁠joint ⁠military command, Khatam al-Anbiya, accused the US of ⁠violating the ceasefire by shooting at ⁠an Iranian ship in the Gulf of Oman and vowed ‌to retaliate.
• President Trump ⁠posted on Truth ⁠Social on Sunday that US Marines ‌captured a vessel that tried to get past ⁠the American blockade on ⁠Iranian ports, adding that ⁠US forces ⁠stopped the ⁠ship by blowing a hole in ‌its engine room.
• Iran ⁠executed ⁠two men convicted of cooperating with Israel’s Mossad ⁠intelligence service and planning attacks inside the ⁠country, the judiciary’s news outlet Mizan reported on Sunday.
• French ⁠shipping ⁠company, CMA CGM, confirmed on Sunday that “warning shots” were fired at one ⁠of its ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday. 
• ⁠Iran’s ⁠armed forces turned back two tankers attempting ⁠to transit the Strait ⁠of Hormuz on Sunday after issuing warnings. The semi-official Tasnim ‌news agency said that was a result of the continuing US maritime ⁠blockade on Iran.
• International flights from Mashhad airport in northeast Iran will resume on Monday, the civil aviation authority said.

War diplomacy

• Iranian state media reported that Tehran had rejected new peace talks, citing the ongoing blockade, threatening rhetoric, and Washington’s shifting positions and “excessive demands.”
• Iranian state media reported on Sunday that Tehran was not planning to take part in talks with the United States, hours after Trump said he was dispatching negotiators to Islamabad.
• The US president posted on Truth Social ⁠on Sunday that representatives are going to Islamabad “tomorrow night” for Iran negotiations. “We’re offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and ⁠I hope they ⁠take it because, if they don’t, ⁠the United States ⁠is going to ⁠knock out every single power plant, ‌and every single bridge, in Iran,” ‌Trump ‌wrote.
• Pakistan’s Prime Minister ⁠Sharif ⁠said on Sunday that he spoke with ⁠Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian about the conflict ⁠in the Gulf.
  Sharif posted on X that he shared insights with Pezeshkian regarding his recent ‌conversations with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye.
• “I appreciated ⁠Iran’s engagement, including ⁠its high-level delegation to Islamabad for the historic talks, and ⁠recent discussions with Field Marshal Syed ⁠Asim Munir in ⁠Tehran,” Sharif said.
• Turkiye’s Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, said on Sunday he was “optimistic” that a two-week ceasefire between Iran and the United States, which expires on Wednesday, would be extended, allowing more time for talks between the sides.
  

  

In the US

• Trump said on Sunday that the guided-missile destroyer, USS Spruance, fired on and seized the Iranian-flagged cargo ship, Touska, in the Gulf of Oman, and US Marines were “seeing what’s on board!”
• The US president said Iran has committed a “serious ⁠violation” of the ceasefire ⁠but still thinks he can get a peace deal, ABC ‌News reporter Jonathan Karl posted on X on Sunday. Trump added that a peace deal “will happen. ⁠One way or another”.

In Israel

• Argentine President Javier Milei, has reaffirmed his country’s support for the campaign against Iran, citing his government’s earlier decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist organisation”.
• Milei, who is visiting Israel for the third time since taking office, declared on Sunday that the joint US-Israel war against Iran was the “right thing to do”, as he signed on to the so-called Isaac Accords aimed at deepening bilateral ties between Israel and Latin American countries.

In Lebanon

• ⁠The Israeli ⁠military on Monday warned residents in southern ⁠Lebanon not to move ⁠south of a specified line of villages or approach areas ‌near the Litani River, saying its forces remain deployed in the area during a ceasefire ⁠due to what ⁠it described as continued Hezbollah activity.
• The Israeli army also said it had determined that an image circulating on social media showing a soldier in south Lebanon hitting a statue of Jesus Christ is authentic and depicts one of its troops.
• The viral photo of the Israeli soldier hitting the Jesus statue with a sledgehammer has sparked outrage.
• French President Emmanuel Macron is due to meet Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Paris on Tuesday. The announcement follows the killing of a French peacekeeper in Lebanon during the fragile 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
• Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military will use “full force” in Lebanon – even during the ongoing ceasefire – should Israeli troops face any threat from Hezbollah.
• Lebanon’s military said it has reopened a road and bridge between Nabatieh and Khardali, which were damaged by Israeli strikes in the south.

Oil prices rise

• Oil prices surged on Monday following the re-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East war However, lingering hopes that a deal to end the seven-week crisis continued to support equities, despite Tehran saying it was not planning to attend peace talks.

The United States army announced last month that it would raise the maximum age at which Americans can enlist from 35 to 42 years to expand its pool of eligible candidates amid recruiting challenges in recent years.

An updated version of US Army Regulation 601–210, dated March 20, outlined the changes, including the elimination of rules requiring anyone with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia to obtain a waiver to enlist.

Government data shows that while the US army has met its recruitment goals over the last two years, it fell short in 2022 and 2023 and has consistently failed to meet targets for the Army Reserve, shortcomings that analysts have attributed to several possible factors.

The new age limit was announced during the US-Israel war on Iran, towards which young people have expressed widespread opposition.

Here’s what you need to know about the changes.

When does the regulation go into effect?

The updated version of Army Regulation 601–210 officially takes effect on Monday, April 20.

What has the military said about the changes?

The US army announced updated enlistment regulations on March 20, with the changes scheduled to take effect one month later on April 20 and applying to the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard.

The maximum enlistment age is raised from 35 to 42, and previous restrictions requiring anyone with a single conviction for possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia to obtain a waiver to enlist are done away with.

Do these changes apply to the whole US military?

The changes announced in March are specific to the US army.

The military news outlet Stars and Stripes reported that those changes bring the army into greater alignment with the maximum enlistment age of other branches of the military, such as the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and Space Force, which accept enlistees in their early 40s.

The maximum enlistment age for the US Marines is 28.

What factors explain the change?

While the US army did not comment on the reasons for the increase, data from the US Army Recruiting Command show that the army has struggled with recruitment challenges.

While the army met 100 percent of its recruitment goals in 2025 and 2024, it missed its target by about 23 percent in 2023 and 25 percent in 2022.

That data also shows that the army has fallen short of recruitment targets for the Army Reserve for the last six years in a row.

The average age of army recruits has risen in recent years to 22.7, up from 21.7 in the 2000s and 21.1 in the 2010s, according to the military news outlet Army Times, citing data from a US army spokesperson.

The US Army Recruiting Command has attributed such challenges to issues such as changes in the labour market, limited awareness about military service, and a lack of qualified young people due to issues such as obesity, drug use, and mental health issues.

A 2018 poll listed concerns over possible injury and death, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), separation from family and friends, and other career interests as top reasons offered by young people for not joining the military.

Does the change have to do with the war in Iran?

Analysts have been discussing the possibility of raising the enlistment age for years as a means of addressing recruiting challenges, with a 2023 research report from the RAND Corporation, a US think tank, calling “older youth” a “crucial, largely untapped, yet high-quality pool of potential recruits”.

While the military has not suggested that the change is linked to the US-Israel war on Iran, where US President Donald Trump has previously said he could deploy ground troops, some social media users were quick to note the timing of the announcement.

Some in the online community joked that older supporters of the war would now be available to enlist.

“They raised the enlistment age to 42,” one X user said in response to a video of the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro praising Trump’s decision to attack Iran. “Why are you still here?”

Surveys have found that younger people are more likely to oppose the US war on Iran than those aged 65 and up, and polls in recent years have found that young people are more generally sceptical of US intervention abroad than older generations.

A 2024 Pew Research Center poll found that people between the ages of 18 and 29 were the only age bracket in the US who viewed the military more negatively than positively, with 53 percent saying the military had a negative effect versus 43 percent who said it had a positive effect.

How many people are currently in the US military?

According to the Pew Research Center, the US military has about 1.32 million active members. The US army accounts for the largest share, with nearly 450,000, while the US Navy is second with more than 334,000.

The Air Force has more than 317,000, the Marines more than 168,000, the Coast Guard nearly 42,000, and the Space Force nearly 9,700.

Data from the US Army Recruiting Command shows that about 80 percent of recruits in the Regular Army were men in 2025.

Black and Latino recruits also make up a larger share of army recruits than their percentage of the population, each making up about 27 percent of recruits while comprising 14 percent and 20 percent of the general population, according to data from the 2024 census.

White people made up about 40 percent of US army recruits, while about 57 percent of the general population.

After talks in Switzerland, the two sides also made progress on a protocol for ceasefire oversight.

The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and rival M23 rebels have agreed to ease aid deliveries and release prisoners, as mediators push to resolve a years-long conflict that has persisted despite multiple peace deals.

The two sides announced the measures in a joint statement shared by the US Department of State on Saturday, following five days of talks in Switzerland.

“The parties agreed to refrain from any action that would undermine the principled delivery of humanitarian assistance within the territories impacted by the conflict,” said the statement.

Both sides also pledged not to target civilians and to facilitate medical care for the wounded and sick as they noted progress on a protocol for humanitarian access and judicial protections.

They agreed to release prisoners within 10 days as part of efforts “to continue building confidence”.

In addition, the parties signed a memorandum of understanding for a ceasefire monitoring mechanism that will “begin conducting surveillance, monitoring, verification, and reporting on the implementation of the permanent ceasefire between the parties”.

Since 2021, the M23, backed by Rwanda, has seized territory in eastern DRC, a region ravaged by more than 30 years of conflict.

While the two sides signed a United States-brokered peace agreement in December, fighting has continued, most recently reaching the highland areas of South Kivu, according to media reports.

In a statement last week, Human Rights Watch accused the parties of blocking aid deliveries and stopping civilians from fleeing the South Kivu highlands.

“Civilians in South Kivu’s highlands are facing a dire humanitarian crisis and live in fear of abuses by all parties,” said Clementine de Montjoye, senior Great Lakes researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The latest round of talks, held in the Swiss Riviera town of Montreux, included representatives from Qatar, the US, Switzerland, the African Union (AU) Commission, and Togo serving as the AU mediator.

Field Marshal Asim Munir leaves Tehran while premier Shehbaz Sharif heads home from Turkiye amid hopes of another round of US-Iran talks.

Pakistan’s army chief and the prime minister have wrapped up separate diplomatic visits aimed at advancing efforts to end the United States-Iran conflict, with Field Marshal Asim Munir leaving Tehran and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif returning from Turkiye.

Munir met Iran’s leadership and peace negotiators during a three-day visit to Tehran, a Pakistani military statement said on Saturday.

The visit demonstrated Pakistan’s “unwavering resolve to facilitate a negotiated settlement… and to promote peace, stability and prosperity,” the military said ahead of expected US-Iran talks in Islamabad in the coming days.

Munir held talks with the country’s president, foreign minister, parliament speaker and head of Iran’s military central command centre.

Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, led the Iranian delegation to Islamabad for peace talks with the US last week, the highest level face-to-face contact between Washington and Tehran in decades.

Those talks ended without agreement, and a ceasefire is due to expire on April 22.

But diplomacy has continued, with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye to push the peace process.

His three-country trip concluded on Saturday, with Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar departing a diplomacy forum in Antalya, according to statements from both officials.

“I leave Antalya [Turkish city] with fond memories and a renewed commitment to further strengthening the enduring fraternal bonds between our two nations, and to continuing our close cooperation to advance dialogue and diplomacy for lasting peace and stability in the region,” Sharif posted on X.

The flurry of diplomacy comes as further negotiations are expected in Pakistan in the coming days as Islamabad intensifies contacts with regional and global leaders in an effort to sustain momentum towards a US-Iran deal.

Pressure for a deal between the two countries has grown after Iran reimposed restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, hours after its reopening following the start of a ceasefire in Lebanon. Tehran accused the US of violating a deal to reopen the strategically important waterway.

Donald Trump has said a second round of talks with Iran could be held in Pakistan in the coming days. The New York Post reported that Trump praised Munir, saying he was “doing a great job”.

Reporting from Islamabad, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said Munir landed back home on Saturday as Pakistan prepared for another round of US-Iran talks expected “within the next few days”.

“We have also seen a lot of praise from the Trump administration on social media, praising the Pakistani leadership. So all eyes are on Islamabad. Serious differences remain, but there is a flurry of diplomatic activity and a hope and expectation that some sort of breakthrough may happen,” he said.

Video shows Israeli police confiscating and destroying footballs that were being played with by children in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, in what mosque authorities described as part of ongoing restrictions on Palestinians inside the holy site.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and United States President Donald Trump have said that the Strait of Hormuz is open to commercial vessels.

Araghchi declared on Friday that the strategic waterwat was “completely open” in line with the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that took effect the previous day.

Trump affirmed on social media that the strait was open, later claiming that Iran had agreed to “never close the Strait of Hormuz again”. However, he also posted that the US naval blockade on Iranian ports would “remain in full force”.

In parallel, France and the United Kingdom hosted a meeting in Paris involving about 40 countries, which agreed to play a role in restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz once the US-Israeli war on Iran stops.

The blocking of tankers from using the strait, through which about 20 percent of the world’s crude flows on a typical day, has led to a global surge in fuel prices.

World leaders have welcomed the news with cautious optimism amid mixed messages from the US and Iran:

United States

“The Strait of Hormuz is completely open and ready for business and full passage, but the naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Minutes later, he issued another post saying the US Navy’s blockade on Iranian ships and ports “will remain in full force” until Tehran reaches a deal with the US, including on its nuclear programme.

Later, Trump told the news agency AFP that a deal to end the war on Iran was “close”, saying there were “no sticking points” left between Washington and Tehran.

Iran

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that the strait was “declared completely open” and would remain open for the remaining period of the 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, which took effect overnight Thursday into Friday.

Some Iranian state media reports later appeared to contradict Araghchi’s announcement, with a senior military official telling state media that only nonmilitary vessels would be allowed to transit with permission from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy.

The Fars news agency, which is close to the IRGC, noted a “strange silence from the Supreme National Security Council”, the de facto top decision-making body in the country, as the status of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, remains unknown.

United Kingdom

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer cohosted a summit on a potential military mission to secure the Hormuz Strait with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday, with about 30 to 40 countries participating in person or by video conference.

On the sidelines, Starmer cautiously welcomed news of the strait’s reopening but said it must become “both lasting and a workable proposal”.

He said the UK and France would lead a “strictly peaceful and defensive” multinational mission to protect freedom of navigation as soon as conditions allow.

France

Speaking after the gathering, Macron said, “We all demand the full, immediate and unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz by all parties.”

“We all oppose any restrictions or system of agreements that would, in effect, amount to an attempt to ⁠privatise the strait – and, of course, any toll system,” he added.

Macron’s office said roles for members of the international coalition working to reopen the strait could include “intelligence, mine-clearing capabilities, military escorts [and] communication procedures with coastal states”.

Germany

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany could contribute mine clearance and intelligence capabilities to the international mission, but would need parliamentary support and a ″secure legal basis″ such as a UN Security Council resolution.

He said he wanted US involvement in the international mission to secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. “We believe this would be desirable,″ he said.

Trump later appeared to rebuff his overtures, saying on social media that he had received a call from NATO, but declined its assistance in no uncertain terms.

Finland

Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who participated in the Paris summit, said on X, “We welcome Iran’s announcement on opening the Strait. Lasting solutions require diplomacy,”

United Nations

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio ⁠Guterres on ⁠Friday welcomed the opening ‌of Strait of Hormuz by Iran ⁠and said ⁠it was “a ⁠step in the ⁠right ⁠direction”.

International Maritime Organisation

Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the UN shipping agency said, “We are currently verifying the recent announcement related to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, in terms of its compliance with freedom of navigation for all merchant vessels and secure ‌passage.”

Shipping companies

The Norwegian Shipowners’ Association said several things had to be clarified before any ships can transit the strait, including the presence of mines, Iranian conditions and practical implementation.

“If this represents a step towards an opening, it is a welcome development,” said Knut Arild Hareide, CEO of the association, which represents 130 companies with some 1,500 vessels.

A spokesperson for Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd Shipping Company said, “We are now beginning to assess the new situation and the risks involved … For the time being, therefore, we are still refraining from passing through the strait.”

In a statement, Denmark’s Maersk said: “We have noted the announcement. The safety of our crew, vessels and customers’ cargo remains our priority. Since the outbreak of the conflict, we have followed the guidance of our security partners in the region, and the recommendation so far has been to avoid transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

“Any decision to transit the strait will be based on risk assessments and close monitoring of the security situation, with the latest developments also included in the ongoing assessments.”

Markets

Oil prices plunged after Iran’s announcement that passage for commercial vessels would remain “completely open” for the duration of a 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon.

“This news is having an immediate impact on markets,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB. “This is the biggest development so far during the ceasefire, and it gives hope that the war will end soon, and supply chains will return to some normality.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said he welcomed the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the Lebanon ceasefire, as the US and Iran declared the key waterway open. His comments came as European leaders discuss a post-war Hormuz maritime force.

Miguel Diaz-Canel marks anniversary of socialist revolutionary declaration under threat of US attacks.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said that his country does not seek conflict with the United States but is prepared to fight if necessary, as Cuba marks the anniversary of its socialist revolutionary character amid the threat of US attacks.

Diaz-Canel struck a defiant tone on Thursday in remarks before a crowd marking the 65th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s declaration of the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution and the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs by forces aligned with the US the day after.

“The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on April 16, 1961, to be ready to confront serious threats, including military aggression,” Diaz-Canel said. “We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it and, if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it.”

President Donald Trump has threatened that the US could overthrow the Cuban government, a longtime source of ire for Washington, and has ratcheted up energy restrictions meant to squeeze the island’s economy.

“We may stop by Cuba after we finish with this,” Trump said earlier this week, stating that his attention could turn to Cuba after the end of the US-Israel war on Iran.

A US energy blockade and an end to oil shipments from Venezuela after the US abducted former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January have caused deteriorating conditions on the island. Fuel shortages and energy blackouts have roiled the island for weeks, heaping strain on workers and businesses.

Even before those increased restrictions, Cuba’s economy had suffered from decades of economic embargo from the US, along with economic mismanagement and political repression that prompted many Cubans to leave the country.

A vote at the United Nations in 2025 demanding an end to the US embargo passed with 165 votes in favour and seven against, including the US, Israel, Argentina, and Hungary. The resolution has been passed annually for more than 30 years.

“Cuba is not a failed state. Cuba is a besieged state,” Diaz-Canel said on Thursday. “Cuba is a state facing multidimensional aggression: economic warfare, an intensified blockade and an energy blockade.”

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday confirmed that the United States and Iran were in discussions – through Islamabad – to hold a second meeting between their negotiators to end their now nearly seven-week war, with a fragile ceasefire announced on April 8 days away from expiring.

But it added that no date had been set for that next round of negotiations, even as Islamabad stepped up a parallel diplomatic push to keep the process alive.

“Who will come, how big the delegation will be, who will stay, and who will go is for the parties to decide,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told reporters in Islamabad, referring to what upcoming talks might look like. “As a mediator, it’s important for us to keep the talks confidential. We had the details and information of the talks entrusted to us by the negotiating parties.” 

Speaking of the first round of talks on April 12 in Islamabad, which concluded without a deal, Andrabi said: “There was neither a breakthrough nor a breakdown.”

The spokesperson confirmed that nuclear issues remained among the key subjects under discussion, but declined to elaborate.

His comments came as Pakistan’s civil and military leadership is travelling across the region in what some observers have begun calling the “Islamabad Process”, reflecting the government’s attempt to frame negotiations as an ongoing diplomatic effort rather than a one-off engagement.

Parallel diplomatic tracks

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif arrived in Doha on Thursday, the second stop of a four-day regional tour that began with Jeddah on Wednesday, and will see him visiting Antalya next.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on Wednesday with a delegation that included Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi.

Munir was received at the airport with a warm hug from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said he was “delighted” to welcome the field marshal and expressed gratitude for Pakistan’s “gracious hosting of dialogue”.

On Thursday, Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led Tehran’s delegation at the Islamabad talks, also met Munir.

Reza Amiri Moghadam, Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, said at an event in Islamabad that Tehran would not consider any venue other than Pakistan for talks with Washington.

“We will do talks in Pakistan and nowhere else, because we trust Pakistan,” he said.

Muhammad Faisal, a Pakistani security analyst and scholar at the University of Technology Sydney, said the parallel outreach reflected a deliberate division of labour.

“Pakistan’s strategy appears to be dual-tracked: PM Sharif is reassuring Gulf allies and attempting to build a broader support coalition, while CDF Munir is engaged in hard negotiations between the two sides to narrow gaps between Iran and the US, with an eye on extending the ceasefire and reaching a broader understanding,” he told Al Jazeera.

Reports that Munir might travel to Washington, DC after Tehran were denied by security officials, who called them “speculative”. Andrabi said he was not aware of any such development.

In Jeddah on Wednesday, Sharif met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and expressed “full solidarity and support” for the kingdom following regional escalation, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry. The crown prince praised what Riyadh described as the “constructive role” played by both Sharif and Munir.

In Doha, Sharif met Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and discussed “the regional situation, particularly in the Gulf region”, underscoring “the importance of de-escalation, dialogue and close international coordination to ensure peace and stability”, the prime minister’s office said.

From Doha, Sharif heads to Antalya with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. They are expected to meet counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and potentially Egypt on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum on April 17.

Regional security push

The Antalya meeting is part of a broader diplomatic effort. Turkiye is preparing to host talks on a regional security platform involving Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

It would be the third such meeting in a month, following earlier rounds of talks in Riyadh and Islamabad.

The goal is to establish a platform for regular, structured cooperation on regional security issues, the officials said, stressing the discussions are distinct from current efforts to end the Iran war.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan confirmed that discussions were under way, but said no agreement had been finalised.

“This pact is necessary so that countries can be assured of one another,” he told the state-run Anadolu Agency on Monday.

Turkiye also reaffirmed support for the US-Iran peace process on Thursday.

“We will continue to provide the necessary support for the ongoing ceasefire to turn into a permanent truce and eventually lasting peace, without becoming more complex and difficult to manage,” the Defence Ministry said, adding that it expected “the parties will be constructive in the ongoing negotiation process”.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said senior officials from the four countries had also met in Islamabad earlier this week to prepare recommendations for Antalya.

Ceasefire under strain

The two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan on April 8, which halted attacks in Iran and the Gulf, is due to expire on April 22. While still holding, it is under increasing strain.

A US naval blockade on Iranian ports remains in place, with the US Central Command saying its forces had turned away nine ships as of Wednesday.

Kamran Yousuf, an Islamabad-based journalist and expert on diplomatic affairs, said he expected the ceasefire to be extended.

“I would be really surprised if the current ceasefire is not extended. There is little appetite on both sides to go back to war. There are enough signs on the ground that if there is no deal before the truce expires, the ceasefire will be extended,” he told Al Jazeera.

Faisal offered a more cautious assessment, warning that failure to secure a second round would shift Pakistan’s role.

“Pakistan’s mediation will not collapse immediately, but Islamabad’s role will change from mediator to crisis manager. If hostilities resume, Pakistan will focus again on brokering a ceasefire,” he said.

Despite uncertainty, signals from both Washington and Tehran have remained cautiously optimistic.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said further talks would “very likely” take place in Islamabad, adding, “We feel good about the prospects of a deal.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said multiple messages had been exchanged with Washington through Pakistan since April 12.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that talks could resume within two days and that Washington was “more inclined to go” to Pakistan.

Sticking points remain

The path to a second round remains complicated by unresolved disputes.

Iran has insisted that Lebanon be included in any agreement, arguing that ongoing Israeli strikes there, which have killed more than 2,000 people and displaced 1.2 million, cannot be separated from the wider conflict.

On April 14, the United States convened a trilateral meeting in Washington with the ambassadors of Israel and Lebanon, the first direct engagement between the two sides since 1993.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio mediated the talks, which both sides described as “productive”, but no ceasefire or follow-up meeting was agreed.

Washington has maintained that any Lebanon deal must remain separate from US-Iran negotiations, rejecting Tehran’s position. On Thursday, Israel said its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would speak on the phone with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun — but Beirut had not confirmed any plans for a telephone conversation. The two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations.

At Thursday’s briefing, Andrabi aligned Pakistan with Iran on this issue.

“Peace in Lebanon is essential for US-Iran peace talks,” he said, adding that “signs of improvement on the Israel-Lebanon front over the past two days are encouraging.”

Yousuf said a Lebanon ceasefire would send an important signal to Iran.

“Extending the ceasefire to Lebanon will be an important confidence-building measure, a signal from the US that it is serious about a second round. It will also give Tehran good reason to return to the table,” he said.

But he added that the deeper challenge remained Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The nuclear issue is at the heart of the real problem. The flurry of shuttle diplomacy initiated by Pakistan is aimed at bridging the gap between the two sides,” he said.

Grace Wermenbol, a former US national security official and senior visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said Washington’s approach to Lebanon would hinge on Trump’s willingness to pressure Israel.

“A clear pathway to a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon exists,” she told Al Jazeera. “The question is whether Trump will be willing to apply the pressure necessary on Israel to halt its military offensive and allow the Lebanese government to continue its military disarmament efforts. So far, and this is also true for the months preceding the latest escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, we have not seen this pressure materialise.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains another major obstacle.

The waterway, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes during peacetime, has effectively been blocked by Iran since early in the war, except for ships belonging to countries that have struck individual deals with Tehran.

Starting Monday, the US imposed its own naval blockade on the strait, to prevent any Iran-linked vessel from passing through.

“Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as the primary issue in US-Iranian negotiations. Opening it is crucial to easing upward pressure on oil prices and instilling confidence in global markets,” Wermenbol said.

She added that Tehran appeared to be betting Washington would eventually back down.

“There is no easy military option here,” she said. “The only way to resolve this issue and remove the threat to maritime traffic will need to involve a diplomatic deal.”

Modern warfare has dramatically changed as we have seen from the Russia-Ukraine war, conflicts involving Gaza, India and Pakistan, and the recent US-Israeli strikes on Iran. At the centre of this shift is a surging global reliance on drone and missile technology as well as advanced air defence systems.

Turkiye, one of the largest military powers in the Middle East, is increasingly positioning itself as a major supplier in the global defence sector. Central to this effort is Roketsan, a company founded in 1988 to supply the Turkish Armed Forces, which has since evolved into the country’s primary manufacturer of missile and rocket systems.

Currently exporting to approximately 50 countries, the firm is one of the fastest-growing defence companies globally.

So how did Roketsan secure a large share of the global arms trade?

Bypassing Western embargoes

Turkiye’s defence expansion was largely accelerated by restrictions placed upon it. Western embargoes aimed at halting its military advancement meant Ankara could not acquire the necessary technical systems or components.

In 2020, the United States imposed Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) restrictions on Turkiye – a key member of the transatlantic military alliance NATO. These sanctions targeted Turkiye’s military procurement agency, its chief Ismail Demir, and three other senior officials. Washington also ejected Ankara from the F-35 stealth jet programme in July 2019.

The measures came after Ankara purchased Russia’s S-400 missile defence system, which was seen as a potential threat to NATO security. The European Union also prepared limited sanctions and discussed restricting arms exports following energy exploration disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean.

To circumvent this, the country built an integrated, domestic defence ecosystem. Today, Turkiye relies on a vast supply chain of nearly 4,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) scattered across the country. As a result, the Turkish defence industry now operates with a local production rate exceeding 90 percent.

This shift has yielded significant financial returns for Ankara. In 2025, Turkiye’s defence industry reported $10bn in exports. Roketsan’s General Manager Murat Ikinci told Al Jazeera that the company currently ranks 71st among global defence firms, with ambitions to break into the top 50, then the top 20, and ultimately the top 10.

To support this expansion, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated several large-scale facilities last week, including:

• Europe’s largest warhead facility.
• new research and development (R&D) centre housing 1,000 engineers.
• the “Kirikkale” facility dedicated to rocket fuel technology.
• new infrastructure for the mass production of ballistic and cruise missiles.

These projects represent a $1bn investment, with the company planning to inject an additional $2bn to expand mass production capabilities.

The ‘Tayfun’ and modern warfare

Roketsan’s R&D strategy – which employs 3,200 engineers and makes the company the third-largest R&D institution in Turkiye – is heavily influenced by data gathered from ongoing global conflicts.

According to Ikinci, the war in Ukraine highlighted the impact of cheap, first-person view (FPV) and kamikaze drones supported by artificial intelligence. In response, Roketsan developed air defence systems like “ALKA” and “BURC,” alongside the “CIRIT” laser-guided missile.

The regional landscape was further complicated during the US-Israel war on Iran, as cheap Iranian-designed Shahed drones – recently upgraded by Russia with “Kometa-B” anti-jamming modules – overwhelmed defences and even struck a British base in Cyprus in March 2026. During the same month, NATO air defences were forced to intercept three Iranian ballistic missiles that entered Turkish airspace.

Meanwhile, the recent conflict between Israel and Iran showcased the use of complex attacks combining ballistic missiles with “swarms” of kamikaze drones designed to overwhelm air defences. This environment makes hypersonic technology a critical asset.

This brings the Tayfun (Typhoon) project into focus. Tayfun is a developing family of long-range ballistic missiles. Its most advanced iteration, the Tayfun Block 4, is a hypersonic missile engineered to penetrate advanced air defence systems by travelling at extreme speeds.

When Al Jazeera asked for specific details regarding the Tayfun’s exact operational range, Ikinci was elusive. “We avoid mentioning its range; we just say its range is sufficient,” he noted.

Similarly, historical Western sanctions have pushed Turkiye to form new cooperation initiatives, effectively accelerating an “Eastern shift” away from Western defence dependence. Turkish drones are now being used by a growing number of countries, including by Pakistan during its war against India last May.

Based on these threat assessments, Roketsan has prioritised five key areas of production:

1. long-range ballistic and cruise missiles.
2. air defence systems, including the “Steel Dome”, Hisar-A, Hisar-O, and Siper.
3. submarine-launched cruise missiles, utilising the AKYA system to leverage Turkiye’s large submarine fleet.
4. smart micro-munitions designed specifically for armed drones.
5. long-range air-to-air missiles, a need highlighted by the brief India-Pakistan skirmish.

A strategic export model

Unlike traditional arms procurement, Turkiye is marketing its defence industry to international buyers as a strategic partnership.

“Our offer to our partners… is as follows: Let’s produce together, let’s develop technology together,” Ikinci stated.

By establishing joint facilities and R&D centres in allied nations across the Middle East, the Far East, and Europe, Turkiye is attempting to secure long-term geopolitical alliances rather than purely transactional sales. Ikinci highlighted Qatar as a prime example of this model, describing it as a benchmark for technological, military, and security cooperation in the region.

Filling the global stockpile gap

This rapid expansion comes at a critical time for the global arms trade. Ongoing wars have severely depleted the stockpiles of advanced weapon systems worldwide.

During the recent US-Israel war on Iran, Washington relied heavily on multimillion-dollar Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems to intercept cheap Iranian drones targeting US assets across Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. With growing concerns that US interceptor supplies could run low, Gulf states – which have collectively detected over 1,000 drones in their airspace – are actively seeking alternative defence technologies, creating a highly lucrative opening for Turkiye’s missile industry.

Defence analyses indicate that even military superpowers like the US will require significant time to replenish their current air defence inventories due to the complexity and massive infrastructure required to build them.

Turkish defence officials view this shortage as a strategic opening. Having localised its supply chain, Turkiye claims it can manufacture and export these highly sought-after complex systems independently.

As global demand for air defence and ballistic technologies rises, Roketsan is aggressively reinvesting its revenues into production infrastructure to expand its footprint in the international arms market.