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Ali Larijani says efforts to get a framework for negotiations are advancing, as a US naval deployment in the Gulf fuels concerns.

Iran’s top security official has said progress is being made towards negotiations with the United States, even as the Iranian foreign minister again accused Washington of raising tensions between the two countries.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said in a social media post on Saturday that, “unlike the artificial media war atmosphere, the formation of a structure for negotiations is progressing”.

Larijani’s post did not provide further details about the purported framework for talks.

Tensions have been rising between Iran and the US for weeks amid US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to attack the country over a crackdown on recent antigovernment protests, and his push to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme.

The Trump administration has also deployed a naval “armada” to Iran, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, escalating fears of a possible military confrontation.

Senior Iranian leaders have said they are open to negotiations with Washington, but only once Trump stops threatening to attack the country.

Earlier this week, Trump said the US vessels being sent to Iran were ready to use “violence, if necessary” if Iran refused to sit down for talks on its nuclear programme.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) also warned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Friday over its plans to hold a two-day naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, a Gulf maritime passage that is critical to global trade.

“Any unsafe and unprofessional behavior near US forces, regional partners or commercial vessels increases risks of collision, escalation, and destabilization,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi hit back on Saturday, saying in a social media post that the US military, operating off Iran’s shores, “is now attempting to dictate how our Powerful Armed Forces should conduct target practice on their own turf”.

“CENTCOM is also requesting ‘professionalism’ from a national military the U.S. Government has listed as a ‘terrorist organization’, all while recognizing the right of that same ‘terrorist organization’ to conduct military drills!” Araghchi wrote.

The US designated the IRGC, an elite branch of the Iranian military, as a “terrorist” organisation in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office.

Araghchi added, “The presence of outside forces in our region has always caused the exact opposite of what is declared: promoting escalation instead of de-escalation”.

Reporting from the Iranian capital, Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the situation remains “quite fragile and delicate” amid the US military buildup in the region.

Still, he said that Saturday’s statement by Larijani, the Iranian security official, about progress being made on efforts to hold negotiations was a “positive” sign.

“Diplomatic [efforts] are [on]going,” Asadi said, noting that senior Iranian officials have held talks with allies in recent days amid a push to prevent a confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani met with Larajani in Tehran on Saturday to discuss “efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region”.

Sheikh Mohammed reiterated Qatar’s “support for all efforts aimed at reducing tensions and achieving peaceful solutions that enhance security and stability in the region”, the ministry said of the talks in a statement.

“He also stressed the need for concerted efforts to spare the peoples of the region the consequences of escalation and to continue coordination with brotherly and friendly countries to address differences through diplomatic means,” the statement added.

Local fire official says gas leak likely caused blast that ripped through residential building in Iranian port city.

An explosion that rocked a residential building in the Iranian port city Bandar Abbas was likely caused by a gas leak, the local head of the fire department told Iranian media.

The Bandar Abbas fire chief said residents were evacuated from the building in the city’s Moallem Boulevard area, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday.

“The initial cause of the building accident in Bandar Abbas was a gas leak and buildup, leading to an explosion. This is the initial theory,” fire chief Mohammad Amin Lyaghat said in comments broadcast on state television later.

The exact number of casualties was also not immediately clear.

Mehrdad Hassanzadeh, the head of crisis management in Hormozgan province, where Bandar Abbas is located, was quoted by the IRNA news agency as saying wounded people were being transferred to hospital, without reporting any deaths.

The Reuters news agency reported that a local official told Iranian news agencies that at least one person was killed and 14 others wounded. Al Jazeera could not independently verify that information.

State television said the explosion occurred at an eight-storey building, “destroying two floors, several vehicles, and shops” in the area.

Images carried by Press TV showed the building’s facade blown out, exposing parts of its interior, with debris scattered around.

The explosion took place amid soaring tensions between Iran and the United States and fears of a military confrontation between the two countries.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over a recent crackdown on antigovernment protests and Washington’s push to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme.

After rumours circulated online about the Bandar Abbas explosion, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denied that any of the buildings belonging to its naval forces in the province had been targeted, according to a statement carried by the Fars news agency.

Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman that handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.

The port suffered a major explosion in April of last year that killed dozens of people and injured more than 1,000 others.

Separately on Saturday, four people were killed in a gas explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to the state-run Tehran Times.

Crews had begun clearing the debris from that blast to rescue those trapped under the rubble, Press TV reported.

Los Angeles police solved more than two thirds of all homicides citywide in 2025, a year that ended with the fewest number of slayings in six decades, according to statistics presented by local authorities on Thursday.

Of the 230 homicides logged in areas patrolled by the LAPD, officials said that 156, or 68%, were considered solved. By the department’s definition, a homicide can be “cleared” through an arrest or other factors, including if the killing was deemed legally justified or the suspect dies. Whether the case results in criminal charges or a conviction is not part of the department’s methodology.

Factoring in the 78 homicides from past years that were solved in 2025, the clearance rate rose to 101%, officials said.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said the department’s success in solving homicides was the result of more data-driven actions against the relatively small number of individuals responsible for an outsize proportion of violent crimes, as well as collaboration with federal law enforcement and other agencies.

McDonnell pointed to an 8% reduction in the number of gunshot victims citywide, a decline he attributed to a significant increase in the number of guns seized by police. In 2025, LAPD officials recovered 8,650 firearms, 1,000 more than the previous year, he said. Gang killings still account for most of the city’s homicides, but are far below where they were in years past, officials said.

The chief said police need to remain diligent since “every life lost was one too many.” The trends for other categories of violent crime were a “mixed bag,” he said, and concerns about property crimes such as burglary and vehicle thefts remain ongoing.

He said that the declining numbers were proof that a depleted department, stretched thin by low recruitment numbers and recent protests and wildfires, was still performing admirably. At the same time, he acknowledged that the decline was likely also the result of other factors that govern the ebb and flow of crime.

Historically, experts have cast a skeptical eye on police-driven explanations for clearance rates, arguing that community attitudes and behaviors, prosecutors’ thresholds for filing homicide charges, and other variables may have more to do with solving homicides more than any particular law enforcement model.

The homicide tally marked the city’s lowest total since 1966, when the city’s population was nearly a third smaller. The downturn mirrors precipitous drops in many other large cities nationwide last year — and has sparked a range of theories about what’s going on.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, right, points to statistics showing an increase in the homicide clearance rate, a measure of how often detectives are marking investigations as closed.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

For those who view violent crime as a public health issue, the steep decrease is rooted in powerful social forces that are far beyond the control of law enforcement. Those factors include the return of social services that declined during the pandemic, and fatigue from decades of bloodshed.

Still others say it’s simply a matter of numbers: with lighter caseloads, homicide detectives have more time to thoroughly investigate each new killing.

Sal Labarbera, a former supervisor of detectives in South Bureau homicide, called the citywide solve rates a “beautiful” achievement.

“This is how it’s supposed to be. When murders are down, reinforce the teams and solve the older cases. In the past, when homicides were down, they sometimes took detectives away from homicide investigations,” he said. “It’s especially extraordinary considering the number of sworn officers are decreasing.”

According to statistics maintained by the state Department of Justice, homicide clearance rates statewide have hovered around 60% over the past decade, with a high of 64.6% in 2019 and a low of 54.5% in 2021. In Los Angeles, the percentage of slayings that have been solved rose slightly from 2024, but was down from the 79.9% clearance rate that the department achieved in 2023.

The data presented at a news conference Thursday didn’t offer a breakdown of how last year’s solve rates differed geographically in the department’s 21 patrol areas.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to approve a law aimed at boosting transparency at the Charter Reform Commission, by requiring that members of that panel disclose any private talks they have with the city’s elected officials.

The vote comes about two months before the commission, which began its work in July, is scheduled to finish its deliberations and deliver a list of recommendations to the council.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who proposed the ordinance, said she has been trying since August to pass a measure requiring the disclosure of such private conversations, known as “ex parte” communications. That effort was greeted with “nearly six months of stonewalling,” she said.

“While this is an important victory for oversight and transparency, government accountability shouldn’t be this hard to secure,” she said.

The ordinance, which also applies to communications between commissioners and elected officials’ staff, is expected to go into effect in about a month. Meanwhile, the 13-member Charter Reform Commission approved its own policy a week ago requiring the disclosure of private conversations between its members and city elected officials.

Some government watchdogs say the disclosures are needed to prevent council members and other city elected officials from seeking to dictate the details of the recommendations that are ultimately issued by the commission. The volunteer citizens panel is currently looking at such ideas as increasing the size of the council and potentially changing the duties of citywide elected officials.

“If the public is going to trust the outcomes of our charter reform process, it has to be transparent and credible,” Commissioner Carla Fuentes, who pushed for the new disclosure policy at its Jan. 21 meeting.

The commission has not yet voted on a proposal to also require disclosure of communications with elected officials’ staff.

It is also looking at the idea of adopting ranked choice voting, where voters list all of the candidates in order of preference, and switching the city to a multi-year budget process.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield raised warnings about the council’s vote on Tuesday, saying charter reform is substantively different from the 2021 redistricting process. Council members should be engaging in conversations with its volunteer commissioners, to help them better understand how the city is run, Blumenfield said.

Those communications will ensure the commissioners make an informed decision what to recommend for the ballot later this year.

“I don’t want this message to be that it’s somehow bad for council members and mayor and elected officials to be engaging in this process,” he said. “To the contrary, I think we need to double down our engagement. We need to speak to those commissioners. They need to learn a lot more about how this city really works for this thing to be effective.”

The commission is scheduled to take up the motion to disclose staffer conversations at its next meeting on Feb. 7.

Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of 2021, when members of the citizens commission on redistricting were regularly contacted by council members’ aides. Those ex parte communications were not disclosed, he said.

“If it didn’t apply to staff, we would simply be reinforcing the power of the staff, which have from day one been the most problematic aspect of this commission,” said Quan, whose group focuses on government oversight.

He and a group of other transparency activists have proposed a total ban on ex parte communication, which hasn’t been considered by the current commission.