In the battle of propaganda, fake videos and images of female victims of Iran’s government are going viral, with even the US president sharing them. Al Jazeera’s Soraya Lennie explains how Iranian women, real or fake, are often used to sell foreign intervention.
Published On 24 Apr 202624 Apr 2026
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April 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that Israeli and Lebanese diplomats agreed to extend their cease-fire by three weeks in talks held at the White House.
The announcement came after the president hosted the countries’ ambassadors for negotiations along with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michael Issa.
“The Meeting went very well!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah. The Ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by THREE WEEKS.
“I look forward in the near future to hosting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun. It was a Great Honor to be a participant at this very Historic Meeting!”
During an Oval Office press conference on Thursday evening, Trump announced that Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would both be visit Washington in the next few weeks, though it was unclear if the trips were to occur at the same time.
“They actually like each other, Lebanon and Israel,” Trump said.
U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa thanked Trump and Rubio for arranging the rare meeting between Lebanon and Israel.
“This is 60, 70 years in the making and today is really a historical day,” he said.
“I’m going to keep going, working for a peace that we hope we’ll get it as soon as possible.”
Earlier Thursday, a senior White House official told The New York Times the ambassador-level negotiations originally expected to take place at the State Department. Israeli officials confirmed the meeting with The Times of Israel.
The two countries agreed to a 10-day cease-fire agreement after a first round of talks in Washington, D.C., on April 17, which was the first meeting between Israel and Lebanon in decades. The truce is shaky, though, as Israeli airstrikes have occurred since then, with Hezbollah responding with its own rocket fire.
Death toll from Israel's ongoing genocidal war on Gaza has reached 72,568 with 172,338 injured: Gaza's Health Ministry.
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Dozens of mourners, journalists and family attended the funeral of Amal Khalil, a Lebanese journalist who was killed in an Israeli attack in south Lebanon. Heidi Pett breaks down what we know about the incident, and Khalil’s last message to her family.
Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
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Disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the Strait of Hormuz closure will hit crop yields, UNDP chief warns.
Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
The Iran war will push more than 30 million people back into poverty, with the knock-on effects of the conflict likely to increase food insecurity in the coming months, the United Nations has warned.
Disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the ongoing blocking of cargo vessels through the Strait of Hormuz has already lowered agricultural productivity and will hit crop yields later this year, the UN’s development chief said on Thursday.
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“Even if the war would stop tomorrow, those effects, you already have them, and they will be pushing back more than 30 million people into poverty,” said Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
He also warned of other fallouts of the United States-Israeli war on Iran, including energy shortages and falling remittances.
Much of the world’s fertiliser is produced in the Middle East, and one-third of global supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran and the US are jostling for control.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last week warned that a prolonged crisis in the strait could lead to a global food “catastrophe”.
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, and Egypt are among the countries most at risk, according to the FAO.
“Food insecurity will be at its peak level in a few months – and there is not much that you can do about it,” De Croo said.
The knock-on effects of the Iran conflict have already wiped out 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), according to De Croo, who noted, “Things that take decades to build up, it takes eight weeks of war to destroy them.”
De Croo, the former prime minister of Belgium, also warned that the Middle East crisis is straining humanitarian efforts in other parts of the world, with the sector already facing funding cuts.
The US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which began on February 28, have also choked up key humanitarian aid routes, delaying life-saving shipments to some of the world’s worst crises.
“We will have to say to certain people, really sorry, but we can’t help you,” De Croo said. “People who would be surviving on help will not have this, and will be pushed into even greater vulnerability.”
Ninety-five years ago next month, Aurelio Manrique Jr. landed a job as a mild-mannered L.A. Times columnist. But the resume this native of the central Mexico state of San Luis Potosí brought to the paper was that of a firebrand.
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Medical student turned political prisoner. Fought in the Mexican Revolution. Governor of his home state. Trusted advisor of general-turned-president Álvaro Obregón. Founder of a left-wing political party. Mexican legislator. He even took to the floor of Mexico’s congress to denounce former president Plutarco Elías Calles as a farsante — a phony — and then pull a gun on a rival who took issue with his vitriol.
Tall, with round wire glasses and a shock of black hair that was the inverse of his Moses-like beard, Manrique cut an exciting figure in Latino L.A. when he arrived as a political exile in 1929 after the so-called Escobar rebellion, which was an attempt to overthrow the Mexican government. A Oct. 28, 1929 Times dispatch noted that “it is not uncommon to find among the shabby, shuffling street venders [sic] of Sonoratown” former Mexican bigwigs “offering sweetmeats and trinkets from trays” in an effort to survive.
They, like so many other political refugees before and since, made L.A. a home but also a place to fight for the freedom of their homeland.
Manrique, on the other hand, was hailed as the “intellectual head” of his fellow Mexican refugee politicos and an “accomplished linguist” who spoke Spanish, English, French and German.
“He stands in my memory as a pillar of fire because, at all times, he has never been afraid to do or say what he considered to be right, regardless of his own personal or political fate,” an admirer would recall decades later in the Virginia Quarterly Review.
The revolutionary found welcome audiences across the Southland with lectures and Spanish-language radio show appearances to talk about what was going on in his home country. He participated in Mexican Independence Day and Cinco de Mayo festivities and even found work in Hollywood films as everything from a British lord to an Arab sheikh.
But reputation doesn’t pay the bills, so Manrique also offered translation and interpreter services from a small Bunker Hill office. He also held Spanish-language classes twice a week at the L.A. Central Library. Soon after, The Times — a paper that back then loathed leftists of all stripes — hired Manrique as a columnist in May 1931. He was to be in charge of its daily Spanish-language roundup of world and local events, which the paper had regularly published since 1922.
I wish I could say that Manrique used his platform to inveigh against the mass roundups of Mexican Americans that kicked off that year and that would lead to the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, citizens and not, during the 1930s. Or that Manrique taught his Times bosses that Latinos were more than domestic help or a societal scourge. Or that he deserves a spot in the pantheon of legendary Times metro columnists like Jack Smith, Ruben Salazar and Steve Lopez.
Alas, it was not to be.
The daily columna was just a roundup of wire stories published in Spanish, part of The Times’ effort to teach the language of Cervantes to those interested. Every Monday, the 40-year-old Manrique also wrote Platicas de Los Lunes [Monday Lessons], a place for the professor to teach new words to readers via translations, poems and sample sentences.
Manrique’s last byline was April 25, 1932. In the hundreds of columnas he wrote for us, I found nothing even remotely hinting at the progressive lion that Mexicans in Southern California knew him as. But in an era in which Latino visibility in Anglo Southern California was nonexistent when it wasn’t heavily stereotyped, Manriquez’s brief tenure at The Times was an important step for future Latino writers at the paper, all of us whom owe a debt to the man.
He returned to Mexico in early 1933 after President Abelardo L. Rodríguez announced amnesty for him and other exiles. The former revolutionary spent the rest of his life working for the Mexican government, most notably as ambassador to Scandinavian countries from 1946 to 1956.
In 1962, the retired Manrique returned to his old L.A. stomping grounds one final time five years before his death for a lecture at the Alexandria Hotel.
“He finds Los Angeles completely changed,” La Opinión reported, “and told us, with a tone of barely concealed sadness, that many of those who knew him had disappeared.”
The fate of all Angelenos, alas.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at a March 7 town hall in Mentone.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The waffle with maple butter is the drive-across-town dish at celebrity-backed Max & Helen’s, the Larchmont diner opened by Phil Rosenthal and Nancy Silverton.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Marya says, “Hard Times in Paradise” by David and Micki Colfax.
Cristina says, “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.
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On this day 21 years ago, “Me at the zoo” was the first video uploaded to YouTube, opening the door to a new medium of television.
For the 20th anniversary last year, The Times’ Wendy Lee wrote about the video sharing platform and how it changed TV as we know it.
Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
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Details of how Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was “pursued” and killed by Israeli forces have been released by the network she worked for. Here’s what happened.
Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
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Israel has killed journalist Amal Khalil and injured her colleague Zeinab Faraj in a ‘double-tap’ attack in southern Lebanon. Repeated strikes on the reporters and paramedics delayed rescue efforts for hours, according to Lebanon’s Al Akhbar News.
Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
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Footage of an Israeli soldier attacking a Christian statue depicting the crucifixion of Jesus in southern Lebanon with a sledgehammer was difficult for Israel’s political establishment to ignore. The country has long tried to frame itself as a defender of Christians, and is allied with the powerful Christian Zionist movement in the United States.
But as Israel continues to lose support in the US and the West for its genocidal war in Gaza and attacks in Lebanon and Iran, support among Christians has also dipped – even before the video of the desecration of the Christian statue surfaced.
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Responding to the footage on Monday, a day after it first went viral, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed his regularly repeated line that Israel respects all religions, even as critics point out that his government regularly does the opposite.
But, with even some of Israel’s supporters voicing anger at the soldier’s actions, Israel announced on Tuesday that he had been jailed for 30 days, along with another soldier who had been filming him. Six other soldiers have been summoned for questioning.
The decision to pursue action against the two soldiers stands out because it is in marked contrast to Israeli military investigations conducted into violations by soldiers, which overwhelmingly find them not to have been at fault. In fact, no Israeli soldier has been charged with killing a Palestinian this decade, despite the thousands killed even outside of the Gaza war context, including the 2022 killing of Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the occupied West Bank, Shireen Abu Akleh, who was herself a Christian.
Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with Chatham House, noted that it was important for the Israeli government to ensure that its response to the attack on the statue of Jesus was visible, particularly in light of the important role Christian supporters of Israel – including the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee – play in the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Those supporters frequently justify their support for Israel by relying on Christian Zionist interpretations of the Bible, and emphasising a “Judeo-Christian” value system and shared cultural heritage.
But official Israeli action in this case makes inaction in other cases more glaring.
“This [attack on the statue of Jesus], and the attacks upon mosques by settlers and the killing of Palestinians are all war crimes,” Mekelberg said. “The problem is that we don’t know how widespread it is. We only know about this one because they filmed it.”
Through much of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, observers and analysts have pointed to the stark difference in Israeli government responses to attacks on Christian symbols and places of worship and what has been the large-scale destruction of Islamic sites.
In March, Netanyahu found himself having to explain the decision to block the passage of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to mark Palm Sunday, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Before the end of the same day, Netanyahu had posted to social media, explaining that there had been “no malicious intent whatsoever, only concern for his safety”.
Last July, Netanyahu again found himself apologising for a strike on a third church in Gaza following pressure from the Trump administration, when three of the hundreds of people sheltering there were killed and several others injured, including the parish priest who regularly spoke to the late Pope Francis.
In a statement issued through his office, the Israeli prime minister claimed he deeply regretted the strike on the church, which he said was an accident.
“Every innocent life lost is a tragedy. We share the grief of the families and the faithful,” he said, without referencing the almost 60,000 men, women and Palestinian children his forces had killed by that point in the war.
Throughout the war, Israel’s defenders have emphasised the concept of Judeo-Christian values in an effort to justify Israel’s attacks and its repeated breaking of international law. But evidence of a shared civilisational bond is thrown into question by attacks on Christian symbolism, such as in Lebanon, and by Israel’s long-standing treatment of Palestinian Christians, who face the same dispossession and occupation as their Muslim neighbours.
“I think a lot of Israel’s defenders in the West like to portray it as being ‘us’, just over there, as if ‘over there’ is some form of dark jungle,” said HA Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute.
“So, they can make excuses for Israelis killing Arabs in their thousands,” Hellyer said. “They can even make excuses for them killing Christians. But when you see Israeli soldiers destroying Christian symbols, it becomes much harder to defend those actions and to stem the growing trend of US supporters, both Democrat and Republican, moving away from Israel.”
While the Israeli government has been keen to preserve evidence of the Judeo-Christian bond, complaints of harassment by Christian groups within Israel are growing, particularly with the increase in strength of the Israeli far right, including in government.
In 2025, the interreligious Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue recorded 155 incidents targeting Christians in Israel, a marked increase from the previous year. While physical assaults were the most common, comprising 39 percent of incidents, there were also accounts of spitting, hitting, and pepper-spraying.
Christian holidays, specifically those around the time of Easter, have become particular sources of tension, the report noted, with priests and nuns wearing visible Christian clothing in West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem facing the risk of harassment every time they enter public spaces.
“We’ve entered a period of what [Australian genocide studies scholar] Dirk Moses called ‘permanent security’, where anything different, anything that might be a threat, or could even be a threat in the future, has to be destroyed,“ prominent Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani told Al Jazeera.
That difference is inherent to the Christian faith.
“It’s not about left or right,” Shenhav-Shahrabani explained. “It even goes to language. In everyday Hebrew, people refer to Jesus as Yeshu, which is a curse word, rather than Yeshua, which is correct.”
“That’s commonplace. That’s how it’s used in everyday media,” he continued. “If that’s where you begin, it doesn’t matter if it’s stupidity or ignorance, it all leads to the same place.”
Argentine President Javier Milei sang and lit a ceremonial torch at Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations. Milei has doubled down on relations with Israel at a time when other leaders are distancing themselves.
Published On 22 Apr 202622 Apr 2026
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Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Israeli Independence Day, commemorates the declaration of independence of Israel in 1948 and is the official national holiday of the state and the only official non-working day in Israel.
The holiday is celebrated on the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Iyar. The holiday is transferred to the preceding Thursday if 5 Iyar falls on Friday or Saturday.
The Gregorian date for the day on which Israel’s independence was proclaimed is May 14th, 1948 when David ben Gurion publicly read the Proclamation of the Establishment of the State of Israel, and the end of the British Mandate in Israel.
Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.
In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.
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The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.
Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.
“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.
“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”
Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.
The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.
Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.
In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.
He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.
To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.
Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.
Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.
To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.
Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.
The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.
Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.
Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.
Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.
A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.
Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.
“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.
“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”
ISLAMABAD — Last-minute ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran looked uncertain Tuesday as a two-week truce was set to expire and both countries warned that, without a deal, they were prepared to resume fighting.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, expected to lead U.S. negotiators if talks continue in Pakistan, remained in Washington on Tuesday, a White House official said. And Pakistan, which has been urging both sides to return to Islamabad, said it was still awaiting confirmation on whether Iran would participate.
Earlier in the day, two regional officials said Washington and Tehran had signaled they would hold a second round of talks, with Vance leading the U.S. team and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as its top negotiator. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
But Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said later Tuesday on X that Iran had not formally confirmed its participation, which was set to expire Wednesday.
Vance had policy meetings scheduled at the White House on Wednesday morning, said a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The vice president’s office and the White House did not immediately respond to messages asking whether Vance still intends to travel to Pakistan.
Both sides remain dug in rhetorically. President Trump has warned that “lots of bombs” will “start going off” if there’s no agreement before the ceasefire deadline, and Iran’s chief negotiator said that Tehran has “new cards on the battlefield” that haven’t yet been revealed.
The ceasefire, which began April 8, could be extended if talks resume, though Trump said in an interview Tuesday with CNBC: “Well, I don’t want to do that.”
“We don’t have that much time,” Trump said, adding that Iran “had a choice” and “they have to negotiate.”
White House officials have said that Vance would lead the American delegation, but Iran hasn’t said who it might send. Iranian state television on Tuesday broadcast a message saying that “no delegation from Iran has visited Islamabad … so far.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. said its forces boarded an oil tanker previously sanctioned for smuggling Iranian crude oil in Asia. The Pentagon said in a social media post that U.S. forces boarded the M/T Tifani “without incident.”
The U.S. military did not say where the vessel had been boarded, though ship-tracking data showed the Tifani in the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia on Tuesday. The Pentagon statement added that “international waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”
The U.S. military on Sunday seized an Iranian container ship, the first interception under a blockade of Iranian ports. Iran’s joint military command called the armed boarding an act of piracy and a violation of the ceasefire.
The U.S. imposed the blockade to pressure Tehran into ending its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane through which 20% of the world’s natural gas and crude oil transits in peacetime.
Iran’s grip on the strait has sent oil prices soaring. Brent crude, the international standard, was trading at close to $95 per barrel on Tuesday, up more than 30% from Feb. 28, the day that Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran to start the war.
Before the war began, the Strait of Hormuz had been fully open to international shipping. Trump has demanded that vessels again be allowed to transit unimpeded.
European Union transportation ministers were meeting Tuesday in Brussels to discuss how to protect consumers after the head of the International Energy Agency warned that Europe has “ maybe six weeks ” of jet fuel supplies remaining.
Over the weekend, Iran said that it had received new proposals from Washington, but also suggested that a wide gap remains between the sides. Issues that derailed the last round of negotiations included Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, its regional proxies and the strait.
Qalibaf on Tuesday accused the United States of wanting Iran to surrender.
“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats,” he wrote in an X post.
Pakistani officials have expressed confidence that Iran will also send a delegation to resume talks that mark the highest-level negotiations between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The first round April 11 and 12 ended without an agreement.
Pakistan said Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Tuesday with the acting U.S. ambassador in Islamabad to urge a ceasefire extension. Dar also met with the ambassador from China, a key trading partner with Iran.
Security has been tightened across Pakistan’s capital, where authorities have deployed thousands of personnel and increased patrols along routes leading to the airport.
Israel’s military said Tuesday it has sentenced two soldiers to 30 days in jail and removed them from combat duty for smashing a statue of Jesus Christ in Lebanon. Images of an Israeli soldier with a sledgehammer smashing the statue’s head emerged over the weekend, bringing widespread condemnation.
Israel said one of the soldiers being punished hammered the statue to the ground. The other filmed the destruction. The Israeli military said it replaced the statue.
Meanwhile, historic diplomatic talks between Israel and Lebanon were set to resume on Thursday in Washington, an Israeli, a Lebanese and a U.S. official said. All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes negotiations.
The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met last week for the first direct diplomatic talks in decades. Israel says the talks are aimed at disarming Hezbollah and reaching a peace agreement with Lebanon.
A 10-day ceasefire began on Friday in Lebanon, where fighting between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants broke out two days after the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran to start the war. Fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 2,290 people.
Since the war started, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, according to authorities. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.
Ahmed, Gambrell and Bynum write for the Associated Press. Gambrell reported from Dubai, and Bynum reported from Savannah Ga. AP journalists Michelle Price, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in Washington; Samy Magdy in Cairo; David Rising and Huizhong Wu in Bangkok; Sam McNeil in Brussels; Julia Frankel in New York; Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Ga., contributed to this report.
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.
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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.
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.
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”.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Spain’s foreign minister has warned the EU risks losing credibility if it fails to apply the same principles to Israel’s “perpetual war” in the Middle East as it does to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He urged a unified stance, citing human rights clauses in the EU–Israel agreement and criticising ongoing violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
Published On 21 Apr 202621 Apr 2026
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In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the three governments say Israel is violating ‘human rights’.
Spain, Slovenia and Ireland have urged the European Union to debate suspending its association agreement with Israel, saying the bloc can no longer remain “on the sidelines” as conditions worsen in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.
Speaking before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said the three countries had formally requested that the issue be placed on the agenda.
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“Spain, along with Slovenia and Ireland, has requested that the suspension of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Israel be discussed and debated today,” Albares said.
“I expect every European country to uphold what the International Court of Justice and the UN say on human rights and the defence of international law. Anything different would be a defeat for the European Union,” he added.
In a joint letter sent last week to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the three governments said Israel had taken a series of measures that “contravene human rights and violate international law and international humanitarian law”, adding that it breached the 1995 agreement that outlines political, economic and trade relations between the EU and Israel.
They said repeated appeals to Israel to reverse course had been ignored. The ministers pointed to a proposed Israeli law that would impose the death penalty by hanging on Palestinians convicted in military courts, describing it as “a grave violation of fundamental human rights” and a further step in the “systematic persecution, oppression, violence and discrimination” faced by Palestinians.
They also cited the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying conditions there were “unbearable”, with continuing violations of the ceasefire agreement and insufficient aid entering the territory.
The letter warned that violence in the occupied West Bank was also intensifying, with settlers acting “with absolute impunity” alongside ongoing Israeli military operations, causing civilian deaths.
“The European Union can no longer remain on the sidelines,” the ministers wrote, calling for “bold and immediate action” and saying all options should remain on the table.
The three countries argued Israel was in breach of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which ties relations to respect for human rights. An earlier EU review had already found Israel was failing to meet those obligations, they said, adding that the situation had deteriorated further since then.
During a donor conference in Brussels, Kallas said the estimated cost of rebuilding Gaza had risen to $71bn.
Ireland and Spain first pushed for a review of the agreement in 2024, but the effort failed to win enough backing from member states supportive of Israel. A later Dutch-led initiative succeeded in triggering an EU assessment, which concluded Israel had “likely” breached its obligations under the pact.
Possible trade measures, including suspending parts of the relationship, were later discussed but not implemented after Israel pledged to significantly increase humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
Ireland is also seeking to revive its Occupied Territories Bill, first introduced in 2018, which would ban trade in goods and services from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, including the West Bank. Progress has stalled despite unanimous backing in the lower house of parliament, the Dail.
Meanwhile, Spain and Slovenia have moved to curb trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank following sustained public protests and growing political pressure. In August last year, Slovenia banned imports of goods produced in Israeli-occupied territories, becoming one of the first European states to take such a step.
Spain followed later that year with a decree banning imports from illegal Israeli settlements, with the measure coming into force at the start of 2026.
All three countries formally recognised the State of Palestine in May 2024, in what was widely seen as a coordinated diplomatic move aimed at increasing pressure for a two-state solution.
Outrage continues to grow over the Israeli soldier who was photographed desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon, including among Trump’s former MAGA allies. From a Polish MP to a Palestinian theologian, observers say it reveals a wider pattern.
Published On 21 Apr 202621 Apr 2026
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A photo of an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus Christ in Lebanon has sparked outrage in the United States, adding to the anger Israel is facing, including from parts of US President Donald Trump’s base.
Although the incident is only one among a broad range of atrocities that Israel is accused of committing in the region in recent years, it garnered condemnations across the world and prompted a response from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the US, where support for Israel was once unchallenged – especially in right-wing circles that purport to espouse Christian values – the desecration of the Christian religious symbol added fuel to the criticism that the Israeli government is facing from some Republicans.
“You would never know it by consuming American corporate media, but this kind of incident is not rare,” said right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, a former Trump ally.
“The Israeli government has permitted its soldiers to behave like barbarians for decades, all while sucking up generous funding from the United States. The only difference between now and the past is that social media has exposed Israel’s behavior for the world to see,” Carlson wrote in his newsletter on Monday.
Former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – who fell out with Trump over his hawkish foreign policy – highlighted that Israel receives billions of dollars in US military aid annually.
“‘Our greatest ally’ that takes billions of our tax dollars and weapons every year,” she wrote in a comment on X in response to the photo showing an Israeli soldier taking a sledgehammer to the head of the statue of Jesus.
Matt Gaetz, another former Republican congressman and Trump ally, said, “Horrific”.
For his part, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald mocked how Christian Zionists may defend Israel over smashing the statue.
“Christian Zionists: This Israeli soldier was absolutely justified in smashing the head of the Jesus Christ statue because Hezbollah and Hamas were hiding inside. We owe him our gratitude,” Greenwald wrote on X.
The anger echoed growing scepticism of the close alliance with Israel in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) constituency.
Trump is already facing pressure over joining Israel in starting a war against Iran, which sent oil prices soaring. Earlier on Monday, the US president addressed and denied claims that Netanyahu dragged the US into the conflict.
Support for Israel in the US is at a historic low, recent public opinion polls show.
While Israel still enjoys near-unanimous Republican support in Congress, that consensus is starting to fray, with dissent being expressed by the likes of Carlson, in part due to prolonged wars in the Middle East and attacks on Christians.
The desecration of the statue, which took place near the town of Debl in south Lebanon, according to local reports, prompted an unusually swift response from the highest level of the Israeli government.
“I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday.
Israel rarely holds its soldiers accountable for well-documented abuses in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, including sexual violence.
Netanyahu, who has been evading an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over war crimes charges in Gaza since 2024, went on to argue that Israel treats Christians better than any other country in the region.
“While Christians are being slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon by Muslims, the Christian population in Israel thrives unlike elsewhere in the Middle East,” the Israeli prime minister claimed.
“Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing.”
Lebanon has the largest per capita Christian population in the Middle East, and its president is a Maronite Catholic.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar joined Netanyahu in denouncing the desecration of the statue, saying that it is “entirely contrary” to Israeli values.
But while Israel’s supporters tried to portray smashing the statue as an isolated mistake by one soldier, the incident reflects a pattern of Israeli attacks against houses of worship, including churches.
In 2024, Israeli troops filmed a mock wedding between two soldiers at a church in Deir Mimas in Lebanon and vandalised the building.
An Israeli tank demolished a statue of Saint George in the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun last year, as well.
Israel has bombed Palestinian churches several times in Gaza since the start of its genocidal war in the enclave, including an attack that killed at least 18 people in 2023.
Israel destroyed more than 1,000 mosques and three churches in Gaza during the war, according to local officials.
The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land denounced the attack on the statue on Monday.
“This act constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith and adds to other reported incidents of desecration of Christian symbols by [Israeli] soldiers in southern Lebanon,” it said in a statement.
“It further reveals a disturbing failure in moral and human formation, wherein even the most elementary reverence for the sacred and for the dignity of others has been gravely compromised.”
The incident came as Israeli soldiers pushed to completely destroy homes and civilian infrastructure in dozens of Lebanese villages in order to prevent residents from returning to them.
“The outrage shouldn’t be about a destroyed statue of Jesus – abhorrent as that is,” Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac wrote in a social media post on Monday.
“The real outrage is the targeting of civilians, the assault on human dignity, the devastation in Gaza and Lebanon. War is evil. We need Accountability.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on Trump and Congress to intervene and end Israeli violations after the destruction of the statue.
“For years, our government has ignored and enabled persistent Israeli attacks on churches and Christians in Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere,” CAIR said.
“Our message to American public officials is simple: If you continue sending more weapons and provide political cover for Israel’s rogue actions, you own what you see in this picture.”
Donald Trump has denied being dragged into war with Iran by Israel, as the United States president faces increasing criticism over the conflict, including from segments of his own base.
“Israel never talked me into the war with Iran, the results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON, did,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.
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There is no public evidence linking Iran directly to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack against Israel. Trump’s own intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard also testified to Congress in March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
For eight months prior to the war, Trump had been saying repeatedly that the June 2025 US strikes on Iranian facilities “obliterated” the country’s nuclear programme.
Many of Trump’s critics have argued that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the US, and that the war only advances the interests of Israel at the expense of the safety and prosperity of Americans.
Iran responded to the joint US-Israeli strikes – which killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, other top officials and hundreds of civilians on February 28 – by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring.
In the US, energy costs have skyrocketed, fuelling inflation. The price of one gallon (3.8 liters) of petrol has remained over $4 – up from less than $3 before the war, more than a week after the truce between Washington and Tehran came into effect.
A recent poll by NBC News suggested that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war.
With dissatisfaction growing, many of the president’s critics have pointed to Israel as the real power behind the war – portraying Trump as a weak leader following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“He entered a war – got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu, let’s be clear about that – entered a war that the American people do not want,” Kamala Harris, Trump’s 2024 Democratic opponent, said last week.
Harris served as vice president in the Joe Biden administration, which provided diplomatic and military support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza for more than two years.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump presented himself as the “peace” candidate, promising to end wars that were started under the Biden administration.
Trump’s National Security Strategy, released last year, also said that Washington would pivot its foreign policy and military resources from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.
But Netanyahu, who has visited Trump in the US six times in one year, has continued to push for a hardline against Iran. The most vocal supporters of the war in Washington have also been Israel’s closest allies.
On Monday, Trump renewed his attacks on the mainstream media for its coverage of the war with Iran.
“I watch and read the FAKE NEWS Pundits and Polls in total disbelief. 90% of what they say are lies and made-up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged,” the US president wrote.
He also touted his policies in Venezuela, where the country has remained stable and become more friendly to Washington after US forces abducted President Nicolas Maduro in January.
In Iran, however, the US-Israeli strikes led to the closure of Hormuz and sustained Iranian attacks across the region for nearly six weeks.
The conflict is now paused, and further talks between US and Iranian officials could take place in Pakistan this week. But both sides have threatened to renew the fighting if a deal is not reached.
“Just like the results in Venezuela, which the media doesn’t like talking about, the results in Iran will be amazing – And if Iran’s new leaders (Regime Change!) are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future!” Trump wrote.
US band The Strokes used their Coachella set to showcase the US-Israeli destruction of universities in Gaza and Iran, including Gaza’s al-Israa University.
Published On 20 Apr 202620 Apr 2026
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Islamabad talks in limbo as Tehran says it will retaliate after US marines capture an Iranian-flagged ship near the Strait of Hormuz.
Published On 20 Apr 202620 Apr 2026
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.
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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:
