A deal between the US and Iran could be signed within 48 hours, according to US officials. The agreement would reportedly focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and could mark a first step towards broader negotiations.
Al Jazeera’s Marah Ryan has the latest.
Published On 5 Aug 20265 Aug 2026
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The administration of President Donald Trump has cancelled the visa for Brazil’s ambassador in the United States, the latest sign of a deepening diplomatic rift between the two countries.
An anonymous US State Department official briefed reporters on Tuesday that Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti’s visa had been temporarily revoked.
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But Ribeiro Viotti was not being expelled from the country, the official added.
“The action was that the visa of a senior diplomat here was revoked or cancelled. That is not the same thing as kicking the person out of the country,” the official said.
The decision to revoke the visa was framed as backlash to Brazil’s decision to withhold approval for Trump’s ambassador to the South American country.
Should that approval be granted, the US official explained, Ribeiro Viotti’s visa would be returned. Until then, the official suggested she could remain in the US.
“It means that they are here but without a visa, and would have their visa restored if the balance is restored by giving agreement to our chosen ambassadorial nominee,” the official said.
The move comes after Washington expressed anger over Brazil’s failure to approve Trump’s choice for ambassador to Brazil, Danny Perez.
Perez is a Florida state representative and a Republican ally of Trump’s hawkish Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. He was nominated to the ambassadorship in June, but has yet to be confirmed by the full US Senate.
Media reports indicate that Trump publicly nominated Perez before reaching out to Brazil.
Sources inside the Brazilian government said this was considered a breach of protocol, and they intend to probe Perez’s nomination before issuing formal approval.
Without such approval, though, Perez will be unable to take up his post in the capital, Brasilia.
The tit-for-tat over the ambassadors is likely to ratchet up long-simmering tensions between Washington and Brazil, the US’s largest South American trading partner.
Last month, Brazil denied visas to officials from the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, after voicing concerns that the delegation intended to undermine the country’s election system. Brazil is set to elect its president in October.
Trump is considered a close ally of the Bolsonaro family, a powerful political dynasty on Brazil’s far right.
The US president’s first term overlapped with the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who was nicknamed the “Trump of the Tropics”.
His son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, is on the ballot this election season.
Both Trump and the elder Bolsonaro have used false claims of election fraud to dispute unfavourable election results.
Trump has also sought to boost the prospects of right-wing candidates across Latin America since the start of his second term, even threatening to withhold US funds depending on election outcomes.
With Latin America experiencing a shift rightwards, Brazil remains the largest country to be governed by a left-wing leader: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. He has emerged as a vocal critic of Trump’s attempts to increase US influence in Latin America.
Lula defeated the elder Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections, and he is seeking a fourth, non-consecutive term this October. Flavio Bolsonaro is his top rival.
Since being voted out of office, Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an alleged plot to overthrow the 2022 election results.
Trump vocally rejected Jair Bolsonaro’s prosecution, which was recommended by Brazil’s Federal Police. Last year, the US president placed steep tariffs on Brazil, demanding that prosecutors end their case.
Though the tariffs were lifted, the US announced in July that it would impose 25 percent tariffs, this time accusing Brazil of unfair trade practices.
Brazilian authorities remain wary that the US might seek to influence the outcome of October’s presidential election in favour of Flavio Bolsonaro.
Lula formally launched his campaign bid on Sunday, framing the race as a question of national sovereignty – and the “future of Latin America”.
Loaded pistol and rifle among items found in suspect’s pocket, car and home following arrest, police say.
Published On 5 Aug 20265 Aug 2026
A man carrying a loaded handgun and hollow-point ammunition has been arrested at Donald Trump’s Los Angeles-area golf club, days before a scheduled visit by the US president, local authorities said.
The man, arrested on Sunday at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, was identified by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as 38-year-old Jeanine John Taele. The department said he had been seen photographing and filming the grounds while appearing to monitor security preparations ahead of Trump’s scheduled appearance at a Republican Party fundraising dinner on Tuesday.
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Deputies said they found a 16-round magazine loaded with ammunition in his pocket, and later recovered a loaded pistol with a round chambered, along with a second loaded magazine, from his vehicle in the golf course car park.
Officials said Taele had already been under investigation by the El Segundo Police Department over a separate robbery case.
On Monday, detectives working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force searched Taele’s Downey home, where they said they recovered an illegally modified rifle, a second pistol, body armour, high-capacity magazines, bulk ammunition and other radio signal devices and notebooks containing what officials described only as “concerning statements”.
The sheriff’s department said it had not identified any credible threat to the public and that Taele is being held without bail while prosecutors weigh charges.
Trump’s visit is part of a broader campaign swing through California and Nevada ahead of the November midterm elections.
A US federal appeals court says EPA likely acted unlawfully in trying to cancel Biden-era clean energy grants.
Published On 4 Aug 20264 Aug 2026
A United States federal appeals court has ruled that the Trump administration likely broke the law when it tried to cancel a multibillion-dollar clean energy programme, dealing a blow to the president’s broader push to dismantle Biden-era climate policies.
The full US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot freeze roughly $20bn in grants awarded to nonprofit groups for clean energy projects, reversing an earlier decision by the same court.
But the money will not be released immediately. The ruling has been temporarily put on hold to give the EPA time to ask the US Supreme Court to intervene.
At the centre of the dispute is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a programme created by Congress through former US President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
The programme, often referred to as a “green bank”, was designed to give federal money to nonprofit organisations that would give out loans and invest in small energy projects, energy-efficient buildings and clean-energy infrastructure.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has been trying to dismantle the programme, saying it doesn’t align with his agency’s priorities and accusing its recipients of fraud, waste and mismanagement.
In a video posted on social media last February, Zeldin described the fund as an example of government waste.
“Shockingly, roughly $20bn of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA,” he said. “This pot of $20bn was awarded to just eight entities that were then responsible for doling out your money to NGOs and others at their discretion.”
“The days of irresponsibly shovelling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” he added.
The following month, the EPA froze billions of dollars that were being held at Citibank to be distributed as grants.
The organisations, which included the Climate United Fund, Coalition for Green Capital and three others, denied any wrongdoing and sued, arguing the administration was illegally withholding money already approved by Congress and attempting to kill the programme because it opposed its climate goals, not because of evidence of fraud.
Tuesday’s decision overturns a ruling by a three-judge panel of the same appeals court last September that sided with the administration. The full appeals court agreed to revisit that decision, a rare move reserved for significant cases.
The majority of judges said the EPA’s attempt to terminate the grants and claw back the money “based solely on a policy disagreement” likely violated the Inflation Reduction Act. It also said the agency hadn’t provided assurance that it would leave the funds untouched if the injunction were lifted.
The ruling restores an order issued last year by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who found the EPA had failed to justify cancelling the grants and warned the administration was encroaching on Congress’s power to decide how federal money is spent.
The case is one of several legal challenges to US President Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse Biden’s climate agenda. Since returning to office, Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, expanded support for fossil fuel production and sought to unwind clean energy initiatives, arguing they impose unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers.
While FBI poll monitoring is not new, US lawmakers raise alarm amid Trump’s years-long, evidenceless claims of election fraud.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced it has sent federal monitors to polls in four Democratic-leaning cities in Michigan, amid warnings that the administration of United States President Donald Trump could use such monitors for partisan aims.
The DOJ announced the monitors would be present during Michigan’s primary vote on Tuesday as part of an effort to “ensure free and fair elections nationwide”, according to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
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“The Department of Justice is devoting extensive resources to ensure uniform and nondiscriminatory monitoring,” it said.
While the department has for decades overseen an election monitoring programme to ensure compliance with federal civil rights laws, lawmakers and advocates have raised concerns over how such a programme could be used under the current administration.
Trump has for years alleged, without evidence, that US elections have been marred by widespread fraud. He has never acknowledged his 2020 loss to US President Joe Biden.
Michigan has played a major role in those claims.
In a primetime speech delivered in mid-July, Trump re-upped a previously concluded probe into alleged voter fraud in the city of Muskegon as he called on the FBI to reinvestigate the case. Local officials had already determined that several voter registration forms had been fraudulently filled out in the city by employees of a consulting firm attempting to falsely reach their quotas.
No fraudulent ballots were cast in connection with the fake voter registration forms. State officials have highlighted the situation as proof of the efficacy of their election security practices.
The announcement on Tuesday came weeks after the Department of Justice said it planned to monitor 15 jurisdictions across six states: Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia. The DOJ has said it will expand the use of monitors leading into November.
The department did not give a reason for why the four Michigan cities – Detroit, Hamtramck, Lansing, and East Lansing – were selected.
Detroit, Lansing and East Lansing are all heavily Democratic leaning. Hamtramck, considered the first Muslim-majority city in the US, has historically leaned Democratic, but has shifted increasingly Republican in recent years.
Residents of the state on Tuesday were casting ballots to determine party nominees in local, state and US Congressional races for the midterm election in November.
Key races include a fierce Democratic Senate race, with progressive Abdul El-Sayed hoping to defeat US Representative Haley Stevens, widely viewed as a weathervane for the party’s future.
Voters will also decide the candidates for the gubernatorial race, with Trump-backed US Representative John James facing off with former presidential candidate Perry Johnson on the Republican side, as Democrat Jocelyn Benson, the current Michigan state secretary, is expected to sail to victory in her party’s primary.
In a letter to the Department of Justice dated Monday, 10 Democratic senators asked for assurances that FBI monitors deployed across the country will not “target jurisdictions in a partisan manner; discourage voter participation or interfere with the voting process; or pressure, harass, or interfere with state and local election officials as they do their jobs”.
They noted the wider context in which the monitors are being deployed, including efforts by the Trump administration to obtain state voter rolls. On Tuesday, a judge ruled the administration could not access Colorado’s voter data, the latest in a string of similar rulings.
Trump has also called for Republicans to “nationalise” elections. Under the US Constitution, state governments administer elections, in a system of decentralisation that advocates have long argued protects against wholesale interference.
The senators said that the DOJ has characterised the monitors as “routine” and “non-partisan”.
“However, it would be remiss not to acknowledge concerns that monitors are being deployed disproportionately to jurisdictions in states governed by Democratic leaders or with Democratic chief election officials,” they wrote.
“Moreover, election monitors are being deployed in the context of President Trump’s ongoing threats to nationalise, militarise, and otherwise interfere with the conduct of free and fair elections.”
US President Donald Trump has threatened to fire US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, after she said the government would not press ahead with criminal charges of vandalism of Washington’s Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool against former Olympic athlete David Hearn.
The reflecting pool project is one of several changes to the landscape of Washington, DC that Trump has pursued during his second term in office.
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But following a multimillion-dollar refurbishment ahead of the 250th anniversary of US independence this year, parts of the lining of the pool were seen floating on the surface, and algae turned the water from blue to green, which Trump claimed was caused by vandalism.
Hearn, 67, was among a number of people arrested for suspected criminal damage to the “American flag blue” lining of the pool.
Pirro, however, acknowledged last week that the pool’s peeling sealant appeared to be the result of a “botched installation”, putting her at odds with the US president.
On Monday, Trump sharply criticised Pirro, who he had appointed as attorney for the District of Columbia in May last year, saying she had “choked” under pressure from a judge and “folded like an umbrella”.
Pirro met the president on Monday as he pondered firing her, but sources familiar with the matter told US broadcaster CNN late on Monday that Trump held back from firing his long-term ally.
Who is Pirro, and why has the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool become a flashpoint in her relations with Trump?
Here’s what we know:
David Hearn, who said he only visited the reflecting pool to find out what the fuss was about, was among at least seven people arrested or cited over alleged damage to the pool.
He says he had put his hand into the water to examine a piece of lining which had started peeling away on June 19. But he was accused of pulling the lining away, causing more than $1,000 in damage. He was charged with destruction of government property, an offence that carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
His indictment was announced at a news conference held by Pirro on July 2. The prosecutor accused Hearn, an Olympic canoeist, of “forcefully and violently” ripping the newly installed liner of the reflecting pool, part of a renovation project Trump had championed.
She described his actions as “an affront to the dignity of our shared history” and warned that Hearn could face up to 10 years in prison for the destruction of government property.
Then, this week, the charges were dropped when Pirro announced the damage had most likely been caused by faulty installation of the lining.
The pool has since been drained.
Born to Lebanese-American parents in June 1951 in Elmira, New York, Pirro is currently the US attorney for the District of Columbia. She was hand-picked by Trump in May last year for an interim period, and her position in the Senate was confirmed in August 2025.
According to the US government, Pirro has worked in the legal field for several decades, having started as an assistant district attorney for Westchester County, New York, in 1975 and later working as the first female judge in the Westchester County Court from 1990 to 1993.
She also became the first woman elected to serve as Westchester County district attorney for three consecutive terms from 1994 to 2005 and was the first female president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York.
Pirro also played a key role in starting the first domestic violence unit in a prosecutor’s office in the US and has authored eight books.
Besides politics, Pirro has also appeared on television in the US true crime series The Jinx, which aired in 2015, as well as hosting the reality show You the Jury, which aired in 2017.
When Trump hand-picked Pirro as the attorney for the District of Columbia, he said he was confident she would improve Washington, DC.
“Jeanine Pirro, I have no doubt will be an exceptional US attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the truly most important positions in our country of any position, where she will restore public safety in our nation’s capital, break up vicious street gangs and criminal networks, and ensure equal justice under the law. You’ll see very, very big improvements in the DC area, that I can promise you,” Trump said when he appointed her on May 8, 2025.
Pirro, a Trump ally, vowed to tackle violence in the city and said DC would “again become a shining city on the hill in an America that President Trump has promised to make great again and will make safe again”.
But now, relations with Trump have frayed after Pirro refused to support the US president’s claim that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool had been vandalised.
In a motion filed on Friday afternoon, Pirro acknowledged that the accusations levelled against Hearn did not appear to be substantiated.
“The damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism, as initially represented by [the Department of the Interior],” Pirro wrote.
Pirro emphasised she had not received the “new information” until after the criminal indictment against Hearn had been returned. She blamed, in part, the “barebones police reports” her office had received.
“It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI [US Department of the Interior] provided additional documents to the [US Attorney’s Office for Washington, DC] indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor,” Pirro wrote.
She added that the pressure to finish the reflecting pool renovation project before the Independence Day holiday – marking the 250th anniversary of the US – contributed to the renovation’s failure. Trump had planned several events for the occasion.
“The rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work that was not remediated before the project was finished and the fencing removed,” Pirro explained, citing delayed installation work, inclement weather and repeated testing failures.
Trump has aggressively pushed claims that the algae and tears to the lining in the reflecting pool are the result of vandalism.
“We caught some people vandalising our beautiful reflecting pool,” Trump said at a news conference in June. “They took a cutter, a box cutter, or something very sharp. Can you imagine? Where do these people come up with this? And they threw a little fertiliser in the water.”
Separately, he suggested those responsible should face “years in jail” for their alleged crimes.
After Pirro’s announcement, Trump said she should have continued pursuing the case.
“Pirro made a mistake. It was vandalism,” Trump said, adding he was “really disappointed” in Pirro and that “she folded like an umbrella”.
According to US media reports, he has also considered firing Pirro over the reflecting pool saga.
In a post on his Truth Social Platform on Saturday, Trump said: “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the reflecting pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”
Trump and Pirro spoke by phone on Saturday, according to CNN. Sources familiar with the call said their conversation “wasn’t pretty”.
Following an in-person meeting with Pirro on Monday, sources told CNN that Trump had held back from firing her.
Neither the White House nor Pirro’s office has commented.
The 618-metre (2,028-foot) Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has served as the backdrop for many iconic moments in US history, including the 1963 March on Washington, when civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
It sits between the Washington Monument, a large obelisk, and the Lincoln Memorial, two popular tourist sites mere blocks from the White House. But the pool had long struggled with leaks along its granite edge and concrete bottom.
In April, Trump abruptly announced he would address the problem by relining the reflecting pool with swimming pool coating in the colour of the “American Flag Blue”.
The Trump administration granted a $13.1m contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a company the president claimed to have worked with as a real estate developer, and which is led by one of his donors. The deal was struck without taking competitive bids, as is standard, on the basis that the renovation was necessary immediately.
By early June, Trump had announced the project was complete. But within days, a thick layer of green algae had appeared on the surface of the pool, and the blue coating appeared cracked, with sheets of paint flapping in the water.
On June 11, a National Park Service engineer observed that the reflecting pool’s new lining had begun to peel, Pirro said in her announcement.
Citing the engineer’s report, Pirro wrote that the damage to the pool appeared to have been caused by “over spraying and delamination”.
Aug. 4 (UPI) — The Democratic primary for Michigan’s Senate seat between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens is just one of Tuesday’s key races to watch.
Michigan is one of five states holding primaries on Tuesday, along with Virginia, Missouri, Kansas and Washington.
El-Sayed and Stevens are running for the seat left open by retiring Sen. Gary Peters. El-Sayed has received endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., while Stevens has the endorsement of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Stevens represents a more moderate wing of the Democratic Party while El-Sayed is the more progressive candidate.
Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman, is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Rogers lost a tight race against Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., in 2024. Rogers is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Whitmer’s endorsement of Stevens is among the last endorsements she will make as sitting governor. She has reached her term limit, leaving the governor’s seat up for grabs.
For the Democratic Party, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is running against Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson. For the Republican Party, Rep. John James is running against businessman Perry Johnson. James is endorsed by Trump.
The Democratic Party is focused on flipping House seats in Virginia after the state’s Supreme Court struck down a congressional redistricting plan pushed by Democrats. The proposed map would have favored Democrats in 10 of 11 congressional districts.
Instead, Democrats are hoping to flip several Republican-held seats, including that of Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va. Elaine Luria, a former congresswoman, is running to take on Kiggans, who defeated her in 2024. She is one of four Democrats vying for the party’s nomination.
Seven Democrats are running for the opportunity to challenge Republican Rep. Rob Wittmann in the Williamsburg and suburban Richmond district. The Democratic Party has supported prosecutor Shannon Taylor’s primary campaign. Taylor was the first Democrat to be elected Henrico Commonwealth attorney in 40 years.
A Republican-led redistricting in Missouri has altered the makeup of the state’s congressional districts. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who represents Kansas City, is running unopposed in a district that suddenly is more Republican-leaning than it has been in recent elections. The Republican primary to challenge Cleaver includes six candidates.
Former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., is seeking a return to Congress after losing her seat to Rep. Wesley Bell, D-Mo. Bush and Bell are running in a firmly Democratic district in St. Louis. The district voted 80% for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
In the state of Washington, nonpartisan primaries will see the top two vote getters on the ballot in November regardless of party. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., is running for re-election against eight candidates in Washington’s District 3.
The Kansas gubernatorial election is an open race with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly reaching her term limit this year. Three Democrats and seven Republicans are running for her seat in a state that favored Trump by 16 points in 2024.
British oil giant BP posted second quarter profit on Tuesday of $5.7 billion, more than double the $2.35 billion it made in the April to June period in 2025, amid sharply higher oil and gas prices caused by the U.S.-Iran conflict. File photo by Neil Hall/EPA
Aug. 4 (UPI) — British oil giant BP posted second-quarter profit on Tuesday of $5.7 billion, more than double the $2.35 billion it made in the April to June period in 2025, amid sharply higher oil and gas prices caused by the U.S.-Iran conflict.
Profit was $2.5 billion more than what the company made in the first quarter, the first two months of which were before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, and easily beat the $5 billion expected by analysts.
BP’s results, the latest of the oil giants to report bumper profits in recent days following on from Shell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump accused energy firms of exploiting the current shortage of supply.
“Based on a shortage, they’re making too much money,” he said Monday after Exxon Mobil and Chevron last week reported a combined $26.5 billion profit for the second quarter.
Trump demanded the companies return some of their windfall to the public by cutting their retail prices, saying profits that had jumped as much as 12-fold were not acceptable and that he was not happy about it.
On Friday, Shell, the other British supermajor, also posted results showing it more than doubled its earnings, reporting a $9.84 billion profit for the April to June period, up from $4.26 billion in the same period last year.
Environmental groups criticized the profit made by BP as unseemly.
“Clearly not everyone is feeling the pain of the energy crisis. While BP banks another round of enormous profits, millions of households are paying the price through sky-high energy bills and a climate crisis accelerating rapidly out of control with increasingly severe heatwaves, wildfires and droughts,” said Friends of the Earth campaigns head Rosie Downes.
BP CEO Meg O’Neill told CNBC on Tuesday that while she understood the pressure ordinary consumers felt when they were confronted by the prices at the pump, the company had little control over the cost.
“The reality is we produce a global commodity and the prices for the product we sell hangs off that global commodity price, said O’Neill, who stressed that the sterling financial results were due to strong performances across all its businesses,” she said.
She added that the company had tweaked the firm’s refining runs to ensure the products consumers needed most at any given point in time were available in sufficient quantities but insisted BP was “there was more to do.”
“We are not making the most of our potential. Our performance over the past few years has not met our own expectations, let alone those of our shareholders. We have not delivered consistently; we have written off too much value; and our costs and liabilities are not resilient enough in a low price environment,” said O’Neill.
BP’s results came four days after it put its North Sea oil business on the market amid uncertainty over whether the British government will forge ahead with phasing out North Sea oil and gas, in line with its Net Zero by 2050 target, or issue some new drilling licences to meet U.K. demand in the interim.
O’Neill said Tuesday that in a conversation with Prime Minister Andy Burnham he had assured her that he would take a “pragmatic” approach to the issue.
“The U.K. is still using a huge amount of oil and natural gas every single day, and we ought to be using our domestic resources first instead of buying those resources from a third party,” O’Neill added.
Analysts estimate BP’s 24 fields, about half of which are still producing, should fetch around $2.6 billion.
There are estimated to be at least 12 billion barrels of oil left under the North Sea, although developed reserves awaiting to be pumped are much lower.
Just over one month into the war on Iran, US President Donald Trump made an apocalyptic threat that raised the alarm in Washington and Middle Eastern capitals alike, attached to a tight deadline.
If Iran didn’t immediately reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz, Trump warned on April 7, “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.
Tehran didn’t blink. And with two hours to the deadline, Trump walked back the threat and instead announced a two-week ceasefire, brokered by Islamabad.
Since then, the US president has repeated this pattern multiple times. It goes like this: Trump ups the ante, shaking up the markets, and then dials it back down at the 11th hour, apparently hoping this strategy will influence negotiations.
On Monday, Trump again insisted that negotiations were close to ending the war – and, yet again, gave “duplicitous” Iran “one last chance” to make a deal or suffer catastrophic strikes.
For its part, Tehran denies any ongoing talks with the US, saying it is only talking to Oman about how to manage the Hormuz strait, the closure of which has caused oil prices to soar amid havoc in energy markets around the world.
The war is now in its 23rd week, with no end to hostilities in sight, and both Washington and Tehran are more entangled than before, with additional variables in the conflict that could determine its direction.
So, how many times has Trump given Iran “one last chance” to make a deal or suffer the consequences, before walking his threat back? And how many times have we heard from the US president that a deal is just around the corner?
There have been several times since February 28, when the US and Israel launched their first joint attacks on Iran, that Trump has threatened an attack but did not follow through.
Less than a month into the war, Trump threatened Tehran over its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US would strike Iran’s power plants if the critical waterway was not reopened. Two days later, he postponed the strikes for five days, citing “progress” in talks.
As the delayed deadline neared on March 26, Trump delayed the strikes again, this time for 10 days, claiming that Tehran requested it.
Then came the April 7 threat that a whole “civilisation will die”, before Trump called off those strikes and announced a two-week ceasefire, to give Iran a chance to reach a peace deal.
No deal emerged. And then, after threatening to strike Iran “harder”, and in the final hours of the ceasefire, on April 21, Trump announced an indefinite ceasefire, saying Pakistani mediators had asked him to do so.
With those talks making no progress, Trump returned to his threats to strike Iran on May 17, saying “nothing will be left” of Iran if Tehran did not make a deal with the US.
But the next day, Trump again told reporters that he had decided to “put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever, but possibly for a little while, because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran”.
By May 27, US strikes were back on after negotiations faltered, once again.
On June 11, after two days of back-and-forth strikes, Trump threatened the US would take “total control” of Iran’s oil and gas industries. But then, a few hours later, he posted on social media, claiming there had been a breakthrough in negotiations and called off the attacks.
On June 17, the US and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), announcing a ceasefire and a 60-day period to complete negotiations for a lasting peace. Within days, that had fallen apart over the glaring gaps in the two sides’ positions over the contents of the MoU, triggered mainly by who had control of the Strait of Hormuz – and both sides returned to tit-for-tat, widening strikes.
On July 27, Trump halted the strikes, claiming the “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to, but noting that Washington “is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II”.
On Monday this week, Trump told reporters again that negotiations were close to ending the war and that this was Iran’s “last chance before decapitation”. The US has not followed up on this latest threat yet.
Iran denies it is talking to the US, although it may be holding indirect talks via mediators, analysts say.
![US President Donald Trump looks on during an announcement about Dulles International Airport renovations in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on July 29, 2026 [AFP]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/afp_6a6abc6f49c9-1785379951.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
Trump has insisted that Iran is “desperate” to cut a deal, or that a deal is imminent, multiple times since the start of the war.
Two days after launching the first attacks on Tehran on February 28, which the US initially appeared to believe would be a quick operation, Trump seemingly conceded it might take a bit longer when he said at the White House: “We projected four to five weeks [to end Iran war], but we can go far longer than that.”
The US president changed tack again on March 9, when he told CBS that “the war is very complete, pretty much”, and that the US military operation was “way ahead of schedule”.
Later the same day, he shifted his stance again, saying the war is “both complete and just beginning”. And later that day again, he said: “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough.”
On March 23, Trump told reporters outside Air Force One that “major points of agreement, I would say – almost all points of agreement” had been reached with Iran. Tehran was denying that it was party to negotiations at this point.
Two days after that, Trump repeated that Iran wanted to “make a deal so badly”. The next day, he also told a cabinet meeting that Iran was “begging to make a deal”.
On April 7, Trump said, again, that Washington was “very close to a deal” with Iran, before threatening to blow up a “whole civilisation”, but then walked back on that to announce a ceasefire the next day.
Over the following days, throughout April, Trump reiterated that the war was, in fact, pretty much over. But it continued.
Trump repeatedly claimed on separate occasions that Iran had “agreed to everything”, that “I think we will get a deal in the next day or two”, and that “I don’t think there’s too many significant differences” between the US and Iranian positions.
On May 23, Trump said the administration was “getting a lot closer” to a deal, which was “largely negotiated, [and] subject to finalisation”.
On June 8, Trump called for “total victory” in the next two weeks and claimed Iran was “willing to give us everything”. Still, no peace deal has materialised and the conflict began again in July.
On Monday this week, Trump again told reporters that Iran was “desperate” for a deal and warned Tehran it had “one last chance” before “decapitation” to make an agreement. Iran denies it is even holding talks with the US, saying that it is only speaking with Oman about management of the Strait of Hormuz.
Aug. 4 (UPI) — The U.S. military’s strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific may have killed people not involved in drug trafficking, said Sen. Tim Kaine after reviewing classified documents on the operation.
The senior Democratic lawmaker from Virginia and a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees sent President Donald Trump a letter Monday urging him to examine whether military leaders exceeded his orders by targeting people the Justice Department did not say could be legally targeted and killed.
“And once you have done so, I urge you to halt this illegal, costly and ineffective operation,” Kaine said.
Since the first strike on Sept. 2, the U.S. Southern Command has killed at least 221 people in 66 publicly acknowledged attacks, according to UPI’s count based on military press releases.
Human rights and legal experts have widely condemned the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings carried out by the military in what is ostensibly a law enforcement matter. The Trump administration argues that it is in “armed conflict” with the drug cartels.
Little information about the strikes has been made public because much of it is classified. SOUTHCOM has responded to UPI’s requests for information on the planning and execution of these strikes by stating it does not comment on ongoing operations.
In July 2025, Trump authorized the Department of Defense through a still-classified directive to us military force against organizations he selected in a classified target list.
In September, after the strikes began, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion providing legal support for the operation, and stipulating who could be targeted in the attacks. That opinion remains classified, as does an October order from the Pentagon that contains targeting criteria SOUTHCOM is to use in carrying out these strikes.
Kaine said he had reviewed the classified documents, which often include descriptions of the targets and their activities during the kinetic operations. He said the documents make clear “that the United States is engaged in violent and fatal attacks against people far beyond those whom the OLC opinion claimed could be lawfully targeted.”
“In other words, a careful review of the available evidence suggests that the United States has killed individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking,” he said.
“They are murder victims.”
At least some of those killed in the strikes have been credibly described as fishermen who were not involved in drug trafficking. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused Trump of murdering Colombian fisherman Alejandro Carranza in an early September attack. The families of two men killed in October are also suing the Trump administration for damages, saying their loved ones were killed as they were heading home to Trinidad and Tobago after working as fishermen and farmers in nearby Venezuela.
Kaine’s letter follows a report by The Washington Post that found the fatal strikes have failed to curb the amount of cocaine entering the United States.
SOUTHCOM’s Operation Southern Spear, which includes the boat-strike campaign, had incurred $647 million in obligations through March, according to a Pentagon inspector general report.
The states claim the new levies are a pretext to re-impose tariffs that were ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court.
Published On 4 Aug 20264 Aug 2026
A group of 25 Democratic-led states has sued Donald Trump’s administration over its latest tariffs, claiming that the US president has exceeded his legal authority to implement the levies.
The lawsuit, filed in the US Court of International Trade on Monday, targets new double-digit tariffs imposed on 60 trading partners last month over allegations they were not doing enough to stop the importation of goods produced with forced labour.
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These latest tariffs took effect just as the clock ran out on temporary tariffs that Trump had turned to after the Supreme Court struck down his flagship “liberation day” levies in a February ruling.
“After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The states that sued over the new tariffs, including Oregon and New York, all have Democratic attorneys general or governors.
In response, White House spokesman Kush Desai said the levies were an appropriate and legal response to unfair trade practices in other nations.
“A foreign country’s failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is unreasonable and burdens US commerce, including American workers, and must be addressed,” Desai said.
Trump, who argues that high tariffs will revive US manufacturing, last year overturned decades of Washington policy that favoured lower tariffs and ever-freer trade.
Invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), he imposed double-digit tariffs on imports from almost every country, saying the US’s longstanding trade deficit amounted to a national emergency.
But the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA did not authorise tariffs. The decision forced the administration to establish a refund process for importers who had paid the tariffs.
Eager to make up the lost revenue, Trump turned to temporary 10 percent worldwide tariffs, but they expired at midnight on July 24.
The latest round of global tariffs was imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, meant to combat unfair or discriminatory economic practices by other nations. The tariffs imposed in July affect more than 99 percent of US imports.
The states’ complaint, like two previous lawsuits filed by small businesses over the tariffs, argued that the new tariffs used “forced labor” as a pretext to re-impose the tariffs that had already been ruled illegal in court. They said that a sweeping tax on imports would do nothing to address the real problems of forced labour around the world.
United States President Donald Trump has lambasted the nation’s biggest oil and gas giants as Houston, Texas-based Chevron reported record earnings while consumers struggle with soaring petrol prices.
“I don’t like it,” Trump told reporters on Monday in reference to the blockbuster second-quarter earnings, as his war on Iran has kept oil prices high for months.
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“Chevron, too much money. ExxonMobil, too much. Too much money.”
Trump’s comments came on the heels of an interview Chevron CEO Mike Wirth gave on the Fox News programme Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. Writing on his Truth Social platform, the US president berated Wirth for not crediting his administration’s efforts to help the oil industry.
“The only thing he [Wirth] conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!”
Chevron reported its highest quarterly profits in six years on Friday. Adjusted earnings per share came to $6.06, or $12bn, as tensions between the US and Iran strained global oil supply chains in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, where roughly one-fifth of the world’s energy supply travelled through before the war, sending prices soaring.
Chevron rewarded its employees. Wirth praised them for their work and said in an email that most workers would receive a bonus equivalent to half their monthly base pay, the Reuters news agency reported, citing an internal email.
Al Jazeera has not been able to independently confirm Reuters’ reporting.
Chevron’s strong earnings come as the company is less reliant on Middle Eastern production operations than its competitors, allowing it to reap the benefits of higher global oil prices during the quarter. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, was 23 percent higher than in the first three months of the year.
“Being less dependent on the Strait of Hormuz is definitely helping them. It’s also the refining they’re able to do here. The fact that Chevron has less than 5 percent exposure there gives it some protection,” Bill Drolet, executive director, mergers & acquisitions at The Post Oak Group investment bank, told Al Jazeera.
“More than 70 percent of Chevron’s production is concentrated in America, and that’s where it’s making its biggest margins right now.”
Chevron also benefitted from the president’s move to open up oil production in Venezuela after US special forces abducted the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, in January. Chevron had stayed on in the South American nation even after former President Hugo Chavez nationalised oil production.
Chevron did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Competitors also performed well. ExxonMobil on Friday posted its best quarterly profits in four years, but they fell short of analysts’ expectations. Earnings raked in $9.2bn.
Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, Valero Energy reported its highest ever second-quarter profit, with net income coming in at $3.7bn as US refiners reap the benefits of tensions choking oil production across the Middle East.
But those benefits have not reached consumers, who are feeling the strain at the petrol pump. Petrol prices are above $4 a gallon (3.78 litres) across the US. The average price for a gallon of petrol is $4.09, down from $4.11 this time last week, but up from $3.82 a month ago, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices.
By comparison, when the US and Israel first struck Iran in late February, the average price was $2.98.
An analysis from Bank of America published in April showed consumers spending as much as 4.2 percent of their income on petrol in March, up from 3.9 percent in 2019. Lower-income earners are hit much harder, with more than 10 percent of households spending more than 10 percent of their monthly income on petrol.
This comes as pressure on the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve continues. The reserves hit their lowest level since 1983 this week, according to the Department of Energy. They fell by 2.8 million barrels over the week to 304.8 million barrels.
The condemnation of the oil industry has come from across the political spectrum.
“A decent industry would say, ‘this was money we didn’t earn, it’s a windfall we get from our cartel pricing scheme.’ Not these corrupt, greedy and grasping rogues,” Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island wrote in a post on X on Sunday.
But lowering prices might not be as easy. Beyond pressure from consumers, companies across the corporate United States are beholden to a concept called shareholder supremacy. This means that while lowering prices might be in the best interest of pinched consumers, it may not be possible given the legal framework and companies’ fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
“They’ve [oil companies] got shareholders they’re responsible for. They could reduce share buybacks or dividend payouts, but right now, I don’t see oil companies doing much,” Post Oak Group’s Drolet said.
He said if he were advising a member of Congress or the president, providing relief to consumers might be easiest by suspending the so-called gas tax, which varies by state. In Texas, for example, the gas tax accounts for 20 cents per gallon, while in California, it is 63 cents per gallon.
“From a political standpoint, the best thing our government can do is suspend gas taxes, especially in California. If they put a temporary hold on taxes, that would help everybody get through this challenging time.”
Al Jazeera asked the White House if that policy is on the table, but the press office did not respond.
Heading into the US midterm elections, cost of living remains among the highest concerns for consumers. In a Washington Post/Ipsos poll last month, 54 percent of respondents said that high prices and the economy were a chief concern heading into November.
“They see the price of fuel and net profit for Exxon and Chevron and feel that they are abusing US consumers, especially as US consumers have access to the correct fuel, whereas other areas around the world have shortages [such as Germany, Philippines],” Babak Hafezi, professor of international business at American University, told Al Jazeera.
“The reality is that as the war [On Iran] progresses, the impacts of the lack of supply will create full price and supply shocks.”
Amid Trump’s comments, Chevron’s stock is on the downturn in midday trading, tumbling more than 2 percent from the market open. However, it is up more than 1.1 percent over the last five days.
ExxonMobil is down 0.5 percent for the day and 0.1 percent over the last five days.
Dearborn, Michigan – Yemeni-American activist Samraa Luqman has no regrets about voting for President Donald Trump in 2024.
While the United States president has been a disappointment to Arab Americans in Michigan with his pro-war and anti-immigration policies, she stressed that it was untenable for the community to vote for Democrats as Israel’s genocide unfolded in Gaza.
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“There had to be accountability for the genocide. We’re OK with what we voted for,” Luqman told Al Jazeera.
“I said from the beginning, I’m willing to live through another four years of Trump, that we expected him to be bad on our issues, but it was a pill we were willing to swallow in order to hold the Democratic Party accountable.”
Luqman is not alone.
Despite Trump’s staunchly pro-Israel policies and unpopular war on Iran, many say supporting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024 was out of the question, and it was the right choice for the community to break with the Democratic Party.
“I could not – with a good heart, good conscience – tell someone to vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump”, but the approach of “lesser of two evils” no longer works to sway Arab voters, Hussein Dabajeh, a prominent political strategist in the Detroit area, home to large Arab and Muslim communities, told Al Jazeera.
Democrats’ popularity amongst Arab Americans nosedived in 2024 as President Joe Biden ignored calls to compel a ceasefire in Gaza and continued to provide Israel with weapons and military aid as it killed tens of thousands in Palestine and Lebanon.
Then, Vice President Harris refused even to consider an arms embargo against Israel.
As a result of these policies, many Arab Americans, who had been reliable Democratic voters for years, ditched the party and refused to support Harris in her presidential bid.
Trump swept in, presented himself as a “peace” candidate, and his campaign forged ties with Arab community advocates.
At a rally in Michigan ahead of the 2024 vote, Trump brought local Muslim imams to the stage and praised the community.
The Republican leader also visited the predominantly Arab and Muslim Detroit suburb of Dearborn ahead of the election.
Trump ended up winning Michigan as many Arab voters in the Dearborn area refused to back Harris. Some voted for him, while others voted for a third party, left the top of the ticket blank, or skipped the election altogether.
According to an Al Jazeera analysis of election results in heavily Arab precincts in east Dearborn, about 45 percent of the votes went to Trump, 29 percent to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and 16 percent to Harris.
As president, Trump allowed Israel to continue its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon and launched an unprovoked war against Iran that has sent petrol prices soaring.
He has also intensified the crackdown on Palestinian rights advocacy at home with a campaign to deport noncitizen student activists critical of Israel.
In February, he also terminated immigration protections for Yemeni nationals, sowing fear and uncertainty in a community where many leaders had endorsed him in 2024.
Asked how Arab Americans feel about Trump now, Dabajeh said: “They hate him. There’s no other way of putting it. I don’t think there is a single person I know that voted for Trump from the Arab and Muslim community specifically that looks at what Trump is doing and is happy with what he’s doing, or what he’s done.”
Many Arab Americans stress that withholding support for Harris in 2024 was not out of love for Trump.
“No one understands the horrors of Trump’s policy more than us. We were his first victims in 2017,” said Amer Zahr, a comedian and Dearborn Board of Education trustee.
Shortly after starting his first term in 2017, Trump implemented a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.
“No one is more aware of the harm that Trump can cause than we are,” Zahr added. “But the genocide matured us in a way that we finally got to the point where we were willing to tell politicians ‘no’.”
As the election season returns to Michigan, Arab Americans once again find themselves at a political crossroads.
The community is rallying behind Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed – who had previously endorsed Harris – but some are keeping their political options open.
Luqman, the Yemeni activist, said she will certainly vote for El-Sayed and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib – who are outspoken critics of Israel – in the Democratic primary on Tuesday and in the general elections in November.
Luqman said Democratic voters’ support for progressive candidates will help the party regain credibility with Arab voters.
“Those are things that do bring the Democratic Party a little bit of relevance and credibility within our community,” Luqman told Al Jazeera.
“It has kind of brought the community back to centre, whereas they were kind of swinging to the right by a large margin.”
While some political commentators have been questioning why US support for Israel has become a decisive issue in US politics, particularly Democratic primaries, the answer in the Arab community is clear.
Advocates say domestic policy takes a backseat when their loved ones are being killed, and their hometowns are being wiped out by their own tax dollars via military aid to Israel.
“Gaza and Palestine and Middle Eastern issues have now become the forefront, the top of everybody’s issues, and it’s become a red line for my community,” Luqman said.
“So if you’re a Republican or Democrat and you hate AIPAC and you value Palestinians’ rights to self-determination, then you’re going to be getting our vote, regardless of what party you’re in,” she said, referencing the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby group.
Zahr echoed that message.
“People want us not to be single-issue voters. In other words, they want us to forgo our main issue, get screwed on it, watch our families die because Trump’s bad, and accept all that,” he said.
“Well, we said ‘no’. The blood of the children of Gaza had to mean something.”
Zahr emphasised that Arab Americans are not alone in centring Palestine in their electoral choices, pointing to the defeats that pro-Israel incumbents have suffered across the map in this primary season.
“You’ve gotten to a point where if somebody says, ‘Stop bombing hospitals’, everyone knows you’re talking about Israel. That’s because of Israel. That’s not because of us. That’s because of what Israel did,” he told Al Jazeera.
“And so, people are keying into the truth. And when you learn the truth, something that comes along with that is you learn that you’ve been lied to, and you get angry. A lot of righteous anger is pushing a lot of this.”
Dabajeh, the political strategist, said that while Arab voters care about the economy, affordability and infrastructure – like all Americans – they cannot overlook US policy on Israel.
“Are we supposed to call our family members overseas and be like, ‘Listen, khalto [auntie], this guy over here that’s running for office might kill some of your neighbours, might kill some of your kids, but don’t worry about it, he’s going to take care of the flooding in our homes’?”
“It’s not going to work. We can’t do that.”
Republicans tried to court Arab and Muslim voters in 2024 and capitalise on the discontent over Gaza policies, but now, many conservatives have returned to demonising the community as an electoral strategy.
Weeks after he was elected, Trump endorsed Randy Fine, a Florida politician with a history of anti-Muslim statements, for Congress. Fine would go on to win and call for the “destruction” of all Muslims.
Meanwhile, Republican governors in Florida and Texas have designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a “terrorist” group.
In Michigan, Republican Congressman John James, who is running for governor, has also pledged to blacklist the group.
Luqman said James had spoken to community members and promised to engage voters in Dearborn before that announcement.
“There was a really big opportunity for the Republican Party to solidify the swing of the pendulum, if you will, and they lost that option. They really missed that opportunity,” she said.
Aug. 3 (UPI) — Capital One attorneys said in court documents that the bank closed the Trump Organization’s accounts over concerns about money laundering.
Attorneys for the bank have asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump over it closing hundreds of Trump Organization accounts in 2021. The motion filed by Capital One on Friday clarifies that money laundering concerns were the reason the accounts were closed.
“The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One’s [anti-money-laundering] team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance,” the court files read.
Trump argues that banks have “debanked” him and other conservatives for their political views. This followed the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. He has also filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for the same allegations and sought $5 billion in damages.
Capital One argues that the Trump Organization’s accounts were closed in a lawful manner.
“Instead, Plaintiffs attempt to keep their misguided allegations of political discrimination alive by speculating that Capital One’s anti-money laundering concerns were pretextual and claiming that Plaintiffs were somehow ‘misled’ by the contractually permitted closure decision,” the court filings read.
The bank adds that its contracts with clients give it the discretion to close any account “at any time, for any reason or no reason and without notice.”
About 385 accounts with ties to the Trump Organization, Executive Vice President Eric Trump and other affiliated businesses were closed in total.
In March, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman granted a previous motion by Capital One to dismiss the initial lawsuit that allowed Trump a limited window to refile. Trump and plaintiffs since filed an amended complaint that Capital One says suffer from “the same fundamental flaws as their prior two pleadings.”
If Capital One’s latest motion for dismissal is granted, the Trump Organization will be barred from filing another lawsuit.
The US president says Gulf allies and Tehran urged him to delay planned strikes.
By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP and Reuters
Published On 2 Aug 20262 Aug 2026
United States President Donald Trump has said that negotiations with Tehran are set to begin on Monday after he decided to hold off on new strikes on Iran in pursuit of a deal.
Trump said on Sunday that a plan was in place for the US to launch “the biggest attack since World War II” against Iran but that he halted it to give diplomacy a chance.
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“Obviously, they don’t want to be attacked. They knew the extent of the attack because they saw it forming,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday.
“Now what we’re doing is talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon.”
He gave no details about the venue or participants in the talks.
Trump pulled back from threats of an attack on Saturday after saying the “perimeter” of a deal was in place.
In his latest comments, Trump said Iran and US partners Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had urged him to hold off on the strikes.
“When the allies asked to call it off, you’ve got to sort of say, ‘Well, let’s see.’ And the reason they ask is they think there’s a deal,” he said.
“There’s a deal on [the Strait of] Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearisation of Iran.”
He said Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had also urged against the strikes, warning of possible unintended consequences.
“I mean, will they be flooded with people pouring into their country and disaster? A lot of bad things can happen,” Trump said.
Trump’s announcement came hours after Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi held a second phone call with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, joined by Pakistani Army Commander Asim Munir, to discuss recent diplomatic efforts.
The officials exchanged views on the current situation and on “initiatives aimed at maintaining and strengthening security and stability” in West Asia, Araghchi said in a Telegram post. They also stressed the need to use regional cooperation and political solutions, he added.
Earlier on Sunday, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that negotiations between Tehran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz were in their final stages, citing Araghchi.
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the negotiations focused on agreeing to a new route through the strait, adding that this had “no link to the Strait of Hormuz being opened or closed. That is a separate discussion”.
The war began on February 28, when the US and Israel launched surprise strikes against Iran, although months of on-and-off diplomacy have led to periods of relative calm.
A previous ceasefire deal, which included the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for global energy supplies, fell through. Iran has since tightened its control over the waterway as the two countries resumed attacks against each other in recent weeks.
Oil prices dropped sharply in early trading after Trump abandoned plans for a new military operation against Iran, easing fears of further disruption to Gulf energy supplies.
Brent futures were down $4.08, or 4.64 percent, at $83.85 a barrel on Sunday. West Texas Intermediate lost $4.01, or 4.74 percent, to trade at $80.66, according to the Reuters news agency.
The decline reversed part of last month’s surge, when both benchmarks gained more than 20 percent as renewed US-Iran fighting and attacks on commercial vessels near Oman intensified concerns over shipping through the region.
Published On 3 Aug 20263 Aug 2026
Japan and the United States have confirmed a rare, coordinated yen-buying intervention to halt the Japanese currency’s slide to 40-year lows, with Tokyo signalling it is willing to take further action if needed.
The Japanese Ministry of Finance confirmed the joint intervention after a statement by US President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that Washington was helping to prop up the yen as a sign of friendship and to support the global economy.
“They have a weakening yen, and they wanted a little bit of help. And we’re always there for Japan,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s query about why the US is helping to support the currency.
The yen leapt after the announcement, leaving traders on high alert for further intervention from authorities. The Japanese currency gained as much as 1.4 percent to hit a nearly three-month high of 155.20 per US dollar, compounding a 3.8 percent surge over the previous two sessions. The yen also advanced broadly against other major currencies, including the euro and sterling.
The latest bout of aggressive yen-buying heavily pressured the US dollar. In early Asian trading on Monday, the euro climbed to a 1.5-month high of $1.1559, while sterling hovered near a two-week top at $1.3476.
However, the rapid appreciation of the currency immediately weighed on the equity market. The Nikkei share average tumbled, reversing course from the one-week high it had achieved in the previous session.
Analysts say the intervention underscores both countries’ resolve to prevent global spillovers from a sell-off in the yen and Japanese government bonds, including by adding pressure on already rising US Treasury yields.
Japan has been struggling to curb a relentless drop in its currency that has pushed up import prices and stoked broader inflation, hitting household wallets and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s approval ratings.
In its statement, Japan’s Finance Ministry said Friday’s yen-buying intervention with the US Treasury Department “countered excessive volatility and disorderly movements in the Japanese yen in recent months”.
“The Japanese Ministry of Finance remains attentive and in close communication with our counterparts at the U.S. Treasury,” it added. “We will not hesitate to conduct further joint intervention.”
The joint intervention is the first since a 2011 coordinated action to weaken the yen after the devastating earthquake in eastern Japan.
Tokyo may have sold as much as $58.97bn to buy yen when it intervened in New York markets on Thursday, Bank of Japan data indicated, before Friday’s confirmed joint intervention with Washington.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also confirmed Friday’s effort, noting on Sunday that Washington “will not hesitate to participate in further joint intervention”.
“We strongly support Japan’s decisive market and monetary steps to correct the substantial undervaluation of the yen,” Bessent said in a separate statement on X, repeating his calls for further interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan.
In line with Bessent’s repeated calls for higher Japanese interest rates, the Bank of Japan on Friday offered its most explicit signal to date of an early rate hike, even as it kept monetary policy steady.
In a sign of broader policy coordination, South Korea also stepped in to buy its won currency on Thursday.
Japan intervened in April and May, buying yen, but the move triggered only a brief rebound. The Bank of Japan’s June rate hike to a 31-year high of 1 percent also gave the struggling currency little lasting boost.
Aug. 2 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Sunday night that negotiations with Iran toward ending the war will resume Monday, about a month after formal talks between the two unraveled and preceded a return to open conflict.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Washington after spending a weekend at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club, Trump said talks with Iran will begin Monday afternoon, claiming, as he has repeatedly throughout the war, that Iran wants “to make a deal.”
“We’ll see if it’s true,” he said. “I’d love to do that. Save a lot of lives. Save a lot of unnecessary power, to be honest with you.”
Trump had called off what he advertised as a massive attack on Iran over the weekend, stating it was at the request of allies and Tehran, which he said had agreed to “the parameters of a deal.”
Aboard his plane, he identified Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as the nations that had asked him to hold off.
“It would have been a massive attack. We were all set to go. But when the allies ask to call it off, you go to sort of say, ‘well, let’s see,'” he said. “And the reason they asked they think there’s a deal.”
Trump has long sought a deal with Iran to constrain its nuclear program, going back to his first administration when in 2018 he unilaterally pulled the United States from an Obama-era multinational accord in order to fashion a new one, and imposed sanctions on Tehran to force it to the negotiating table.
In late February, the United States and Israel attacked Iran with the aims of destroying its remaining nuclear capabilities and inciting regime change, instead igniting the five-month-long war, during which Tehran has laid military claims to the vital Strait of Hormuz.
An April cease-fire created conditions for a memorandum of understanding to be signed in mid-June that was to lay the foundation for ending the war. Amid negotiations on implementing the MOU, disagreements arose over its stance on the vital energy route, which led to a resumption in fighting last month.
Monday’s negotiations would be the first publicly acknowledged since early last month. Trump said the discussions will concern the Strait of Hormuz and led into nuclear talks.
He said that the three allies believe “a deal is imminent.”
Trump called off the attack after speaking with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over the phone. Trump said Sunday that bin Salman warned him that the consequences of the attack would be unpredictable.
“I mean, will they be flooded with people pouring into their country,” he said. “A lot of bad things can happen.”
Trump said it would have been “the biggest attack since World War II” and “disastrous” for Iran.
The United States is seeking to restore freedom of navigation through the strait, while Iran is trying to maintain some form of control over commercial vessels that pass through it.
According to the nonpartisan, Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Iranian negotiators may be willing to make what it called “limited compromises” with the United States over Tehran’s control of the strait, though what those concessions may be were not entirely clear.
Aug. 2 (UPI) — Sen. Bernie Moreno on Sunday said his former son-in-law, Rep. Max Miller, should not be serving in the U.S. House of Representatives amid mounting allegations of domestic abuse made by Miller’s ex-wife.
Moreno, R-Ohio, broke his silence on the subject of Miller, R-Ohio., in a statement issued on social media in which he said his daughter Emily’s former husband “should not serve in the House of Representatives.
“I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake,” Moreno wrote. “I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.”
Miller, the Republican incumbent from a district in northeastern Ohio and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has been locked in a bitter custody battle with Emily Moreno over their 2-year-old daughter following the finalization of their divorce last year.
During their legal fight, Emily Moreno, a conservative policy adviser, has accused Miller of incidents of domestic violence such as scalding her with hot water and hitting and threatening her while they were married.
While those claims were previously known, they came back into the foreground last month when new court filings and police reports released by Mother Jones magazine detailed new information that their daughter had suffered a broken collarbone.
Miller has denied all of Emily Moreno’s allegations and on Sunday again pleaded his innocence and reiterated he would not withdraw as a GOP congressional candidate in the upcoming midterm election.
In a video posted on X, he blamed the “left-wing media” for his predicament and called his ex-wife a woman with “mental health challenges” while linking to a cache of documents he claimed refute all of her charges.
However, his former father-in-law — another vocal supporter of President Trump — nonetheless ended his strategy of avoiding comment on the situation, instead calling Miller unfit to hold office.
“As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help,” Bernie Moreno said. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”
The GOP senator asserted that “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives.
“I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.”
His remarks came after some Democratic House members called on the Ethics Committee to investigate Miller over what they called “deeply disturbing” reports of “domestic violence and child abuse.”
The deadline for Ohio Republicans to replace Miller on the November general election ballot is Wednesday, and his troubles are leading some Democratic strategists to view his seat as a possible political opportunity.
A 10-foot-tall golden trophy mocking US President Donald Trump for his ‘enthusiastic involvement in the Iran war’ appeared in New York’s Foley Square. The statue was created by anonymous art collective Secret Handshake.
Published On 2 Aug 20262 Aug 2026
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Saudi Arabia’s crown prince spoke to Donald Trump about the deepening crisis between Washington and Tehran, urging a renewed push for dialogue over further military escalation, hours before the United States president halted his latest attacks on Iran.
The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Sunday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) spoke to Trump by phone and “stressed the need to prioritise dialogue to reduce escalation and the importance of making every possible effort to achieve calm that paves the way for diplomatic solutions”.
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MBS also highlighted the need to preserve the Gulf’s security and stability and prevent a wider conflict “whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability”, SPA added.
Trump announced on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday that he would hold off on new strikes against Iran, citing the outline of a deal to end five months of war.
On Saturday, he had struck a very different note, declaring the US “locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, at levels of force not seen “since World War II”.
The reversal capped a day of dramatic swings in tone from Washington, after weeks in which the conflict has repeatedly threatened to widen into a broader Gulf confrontation.
Trump said he was calling off the planned attack only because Iran and other Middle Eastern governments had asked Washington to hold back, insisting “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to”.
That deal, he wrote, would involve reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending Iran’s “nuclear threat,” with Israel joining the US “in this commitment”.
Iranian state media quoted military officials dismissing Trump’s claim that Tehran had sought a pause as “nothing but a new lie”, insisting Iranian forces remained on high alert.
The Saudi crown prince’s intervention, according to a person familiar with the call cited by US media, centred on concern that a major US strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure could trigger Iranian retaliation against Gulf oil and gas facilities.
The kingdom has already faced direct attacks in recent weeks, intercepting drones aimed at its eastern oil facilities and at Riyadh, while Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen have separately struck Saudi crude infrastructure and threatened a Red Sea naval blockade.
The war began on February 28, when the US and Israel launched strikes aimed at destroying Iran’s missile programme, preventing a nuclear weapon and cutting off support for allied armed groups.
A June ceasefire collapsed within weeks in a dispute over shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway carrying roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports, reigniting the fighting in July.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US strikes had destroyed much of Iran’s navy, air force and missile defences, leaving it without the “conventional shield” it once relied on. “That’s changed the whole dynamic,” he told Fox News, arguing that the US was now approaching negotiations with Iran “from a position of strength, not from a position of weakness.”
Marlin Hardinger, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said direct Saudi involvement in mediation, alongside Qatar, Pakistan and Oman, appeared to have pushed Trump to reconsider, “letting some of the senior leaders in the region step forward and take charge of this”, as he put it.
Diplomats’ central task now, Hardinger told Al Jazeera, was simply to “keep the dialogue going”.
Mediators in Islamabad and Doha say they are cautiously optimistic that stalled talks could resume within days.
Aug. 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has called out District Attorney Jeanine Pirro after her office moved to dismiss charges against an Olympic canoeist for vandalism.
Prosecutors on Friday made the motion to dismiss charges against David Hearn, 67, and admitted that the damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was due to a “botched installation and not vandalism.” Hearn was indicted in early July for purposely ripping up a piece of the blue sealant from the bottom of the pool.
The filing in D.C Superior Court lists documents and evidence showing the contracting work was rushed to finish in time for the America 250 celebrations and was not done properly.
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
Soon after, he posted again, saying, “Look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool. The material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!”
A Pacific island has become one of the biggest economic success stories of the year so far.
Taiwan has witnessed a dramatic boom in recent months driven by the mania for artificial intelligence (AI). Earlier this year, its stock exchange soared to become the fifth largest in the world based on market capitalisation, the value of its publicly traded shares, overtaking the United Kingdom, Canada and India.
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Much of that upward momentum has been driven by AI and other technology exports highly sought after by the United States.
Last year, the US imported $201bn worth of goods from Taiwan, nearly double its rate from 2024, when it acquired $116bn in imports. In May, Taiwan eclipsed China to become the third-largest source of US imports, after Mexico and Canada.
Experts have described Taiwan’s market acceleration as a return to its status as a “tiger economy” — a term used to capture surging growth in East Asia. Much of the credit, they say, falls to its flourishing technology sector.
“Artificial intelligence helps explain the rising importance of Taiwan,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
But critics warn that, while Taiwan’s market remains strong, factors like tumultuous international relations, as well as demographic concerns, could complicate the island’s long-term outlook.
“It seems to be a win-win for now,” said Reza Hasmath, an academic faculty adviser at The China Institute at the University of Alberta. “But Taiwan is just postponing a reality that’s not sustainable.”
Taiwan’s thriving export market helped boost its gross domestic product (GDP) to 8.63 percent in 2025.
That rocket-ship trajectory continued into the first quarter of this year, when the GDP saw an exhilarating 13.69 percent rise.
Government data released on Friday showed that the island is continuing that momentum, with its economy growing an impressive 12.92 percent in the second quarter of the year, which ended in June.
“The GDP growth is going like gangbusters,” said Dexter Tiff Roberts, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
Roberts expects the trend to be “long term”, as Taiwan produces about 90 percent of the advanced chips used to power leading AI models.
“That’s not going to go away. We know the world, and the US, needs this,” he added.
While the AI boom is a global phenomenon, the US has become a major market for such chips, with billions of dollars flowing into the industry each year.
US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to bolster his country’s status as “the world leader in artificial intelligence”. His administration has claimed to attract more than $2.7 trillion in tech and AI investments since the start of his second term.
To secure US access to Taiwan’s cutting-edge semiconductor technology, the Trump administration signed an agreement under which Taiwan will invest $500bn in the US.
Half of that amount is expected to come in the form of direct investments by Taiwanese semiconductor and tech firms, including through the development of onshore tech manufacturing.
The rest is largely comprised of credit guarantees for additional investments from Taiwan in the US.
Under the agreement, Taiwanese firms would be allowed to import 2.5 times the capacity of their US factories, without fear of steep tariffs.
In a subsequent trade agreement, Taiwan agreed to reduce its tariffs on 99 percent of US exports.
Taiwan has also boosted its tech exports to the US through investments in nearby Mexico, with cross-border plants manufacturing inputs for data centres in Texas.
But Hasmath, the faculty adviser at the University of Alberta, warns that there are troubling signs on the horizon for Taiwan-US relations.
Trump has long sought to eliminate trade deficits with US economic allies, and he has lashed out at countries that export more to the US than they import.
Hasmath pointed out that Taiwan is building a robust trade surplus with the US, close to $200bn and counting. That could spark a backlash.
“This is an unbalanced relationship and not conducive to Taiwan in the long term,” Hasmath warned.
Trump will not tolerate a hefty trade surplus for long, he added. Hasmath believes the US president will soon look to renegotiate his country’s deals with Taipei.
Roberts at the Atlantic Council, meanwhile, warned that Trump is “mercurial” — and with such a temperament comes “uncertainty”.
Then there’s the question of political upheaval in the US. Trump’s approval ratings are low, and he is ineligible under US law to run for a third term as president.
While Taiwan’s economic boom is “very real” and “very obvious”, Roberts said there are clear vulnerabilities even on the domestic front.
Taiwan’s traditional export sectors like plastics and textiles are underperforming. Plus, Roberts pointed out that only a small fraction of the Taiwanese population is involved in the AI sector.
“A majority of the younger population is not in hi tech, so that’s a real problem,” he said.
While the booming stock market has sparked a “wealth effect” — those with rising portfolios feel richer and are more inclined to spend — that helps the wider population only to an extent.
With most of Taiwan’s employment concentrated outside of the AI sector, economists have warned that the island could develop what’s called a K-shaped economy, where the wealthy see growth, while the poorer segments of society stagnate or decline.
The chip industry employs up to 350,000 people at most, experts say.
Meanwhile, TSMC, Taiwan’s biggest chip company, makes up to 40 percent of the stock market and provides four percent of the island’s GDP growth. That lopsided proportion is “unsustainable”, according to Hasmath.
Plus, Taiwan has a rapidly ageing population, with roughly a fifth of its population over the age of 65.
The island also has other vulnerabilities. For example, it relies heavily on foreign imports of energy products, particularly oil, and has struggled with water scarcity.
Then, there’s the superpower next door: China. The government in Beijing considers Taiwan, a self-governing island, as its own territory, and it has taken aggressive measures to limit the island’s ability to establish diplomatic relations of its own.
That conflict has added fuel to the debate around Taiwan’s growth, with a spokesperson for the Chinese government reportedly saying the island’s growing proximity to the US tech sector will “drain Taiwan’s economic interests” and “hollow out” the country’s major industry.
Hasmath said that, if the AI boom backfires on Taiwan, all of that ultimately adds up to a “recipe for electoral change, a shift in government” in Taipei.