Peace

WASHINGTON — A day after the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, the truce showed signs of strain Wednesday as Iranian leaders accused Americans of violating the agreement and reports emerged that Tehran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The developments tested President Trump’s ability to parlay a fragile pause in fighting into a lasting peace deal with a country he has spent weeks threatening to destroy, and raised questions about whether the Trump administration had the diplomatic leverage to hold the deal together.

The White House sought to project confidence about the ceasefire, but the fragile deal grew shakier after Israel carried out its largest attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon since the conflict began. Iran said the strikes by the U.S. ally amounted to a breach of the ceasefire terms, even as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu maintained that Lebanon was not subject to the agreement.

“The big issue seems to be that the two sides can’t agree on what the agreement is,” said Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute. At best, he said, the two sides had secured a “tactical pause.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States must choose between a ceasefire or “continued war via Israel.

“It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”

Whether Iran will draw a red line over Lebanon could become a key question. The Wednesday back-and-forth represented “threshold-testing” of Iran and whether it will be willing to reengage the United States in conflict over the issue, said Ross Harrison, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The parties’ prospects for reaching an agreement — and what Trump’s options become for declaring success — will depend on how the ceasefire goes in the coming days, Harrison said.

“There’s some room here … if [the Iranians] see that negotiations are real and not a pretext for further attacks,” he said. “A lot of what the United States can get depends on what the United States is willing to give — not just in terms of the points of their plan, but also in terms of the signaling that they too have an interest in de-escalating.”

Reports that Iran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway whose opening was central to the truce negotiations, further complicated the ceasefire.

“Any vessel trying to travel into the sea … will be targeted and destroyed,” the Iranian navy told shipping vessels, Fars News reported. The news agency is aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

At a news briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was aware of reports that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed, a move she called both “completely unacceptable” and “false.” She added that the president expects the waterway will be “reopened immediately, quickly and safely” during the ceasefire.

Leavitt sidestepped questions about who currently controls the oil route.

Earlier in the day, at a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that “commerce will flow” through the strait, but did not say whether U.S. warships would be escorting vessels through the waterway. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who stood next to Hegseth, was asked whether the strait was open. He said: “I believe so.”

Hegseth emphasized that Iran should keep its end of the bargain or face the consequences.

He said the U.S. military plans to maintain a presence in the region to ensure Iranian compliance, saying American troops are ready to “go on offense and restart operations at a moment’s notice” if the truce broke down.

“We’ll be hanging around,” Hegseth said. “We are going to make sure Iran complies with this ceasefire and then ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal.”

The warning came as several Persian Gulf nations reported Iranian missile and drone attacks on their territories despite the ceasefire. Kuwait said its air defenses intercepted drones, while Bahrain reported that an Iranian attack has sparked a fire at one of its facilities.

Hegseth downplayed the continued Iranian attacks in the region, saying that “it takes time sometimes” for ceasefires to take hold, but advised Iran to “find a way to get a carrier pigeon to their troops in remote locations” and ensure compliance moving forward.

Israel, meanwhile, carried out its largest strike against Hezbollah since the militant group began launching rockets in solidarity with Iran last month. Lebanese health authorities said hundreds were killed and wounded in the Israeli strikes.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have maintained that Lebanon is not subject to the ceasefire agreement. Leavitt reiterated that stance, telling reporters that “Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire” and that it had been relayed to all parties.

Asked whether Trump would want to add Lebanon to the agreement in the future, Leavitt said that the matter “will continue to be discussed but that “at this point in time they are not included.”

More than a dozen European heads of state called on “all sides” to cease fire, including in Lebanon. In a Wednesday statement, they urged the parties to move quickly in diplomatic talks.

“The goal must now be to negotiate a swift and lasting end to the war within the coming days,” they said in the statement, which was signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, along with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as well as other European leaders.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped broker the ceasefire, wrote on X that ceasefire violations had been reported at “a few places across the conflict zone” and urged all parties to exercise restraint. He did not detail the violations but said the attacks “undermine the spirit of the peace process.”

The situation in the Strait of Hormuz underscores how much remains uncertain about the agreement between the United States and Iran. The full terms of the ceasefire have not been publicly disclosed, and Trump wrote on his social media website that the “only group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States” will be discussed behind closed doors.

Trump also seemed to take issue with the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released Wednesday. He said that there are terms being floated by people who have “absolutely nothing to do” with the negotiations between the United States and Iran. He said that “in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE.”

Leavitt declined to offer details about the working proposal being negotiated, saying the talks will take place privately. Both Leavitt and Hegseth, however, mentioned that the U.S. wants to ensure Iran does not have stockpiles of enriched uranium, the fissile material that is key in developing nuclear weapons.

“This is on the top of the priority list for the president and his negotiating team as they head into the next round of discussions,” Leavitt said.

Hegseth told reporters earlier in the day that Iran may “hand it over.” If they don’t, he said, “we will take it out, or if we have to do something else ourselves like we did [with] Midnight Hammer or something like that, we reserve that opportunity.” He was referring to the 12-day war against Iran in June.

Leavitt reiterated that administration officials “hope it will be through diplomacy,” but left open the possibility that the uranium could be retrieved through ground operations.

There is probably negotiating room over enrichment, said Harrison of the Middle East Institue, while Iran may be less flexible on the Strait of Hormuz. The United States needs a resolution more quickly than Iran, he added.

“Time is their friend, not a friend of Donald Trump’s,” Harrison said.

The United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, with talks to finalise a peace deal set to begin in Pakistan’s Islamabad on Friday.

The truce, announced by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, will see Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime corridor through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.

Countries around the world have welcomed the development.

Here’s a roundup of the reaction:

Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on X that he supports Trump’s decision to suspend strikes on Iran, and the “US effort to ensure that Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile and terror threat to America, Israel, Iran’s Arab neighbours and the world”.

Netanyahu said, however, that the ceasefire does “not include Lebanon“, where Israeli forces have launched a ground invasion and are fighting with the Iran-aligned Hezbollah.

Iraq

Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the news of the ceasefire but said that both the US and Iran must commit to the deal to achieve a lasting resolution.

“As the ministry asserts its support for regional and international efforts to contain crises and prioritise the language of dialogue and diplomacy, it stresses the need for full commitment to the ceasefire and refraining from any escalations,” the ministry said.

Iraq has been drawn into the US-Israeli war on Iran, with Tehran-backed armed groups and US forces trading fire in an escalating cycle of violence.

Egypt

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the ceasefire “represents a very important opportunity that must be seized to make room for negotiations, diplomacy, and constructive dialogue”.

The ministry said in a statement on Facebook that a truce must be built upon with a full commitment to “stopping military operations and respecting freedom of international navigation”.

The post also said that Egypt will continue efforts with Pakistan and Turkiye “to promote security and stability in the region”, and that the talks between the US and Iran “must take into account the legitimate security concerns” of Gulf nations.

United Nations

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the announcement and called on all parties to abide by the terms of the ceasefire “in order to pave the way toward a lasting and comprehensive peace in the region”, according to his spokesperson.

Guterres underscored “that an end to hostilities is urgently needed to protect civilian lives and alleviate human suffering”, and thanked Pakistan and other nations involved in facilitating the truce.

Japan

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told reporters that Tokyo welcomes the news of a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran as a “positive move” as it awaits a “final agreement”.

Minoru said the de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East remains a top priority, according to the Kyodo News Agency.

Indonesia

Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry Yvonne Mewengkang said Jakarta welcomes a ceasefire deal and called on Iran and the US to respect the “sovereignty, territorial integrity and diplomacy” of each side, according to the Reuters news agency.

Mewengkang also called for a thorough investigation into the deaths of three Indonesian UN peacekeepers killed by explosions in Lebanon in late March amid fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters.

Malaysia

Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the ceasefire marks a “significant development [and] serves as a crucial step towards de-escalating tensions and restoring much-needed peace and stability” to the Middle East.

It also urged “all parties to fully respect and implement all terms of the ceasefire in good faith to prevent any return to hostilities”, while also avoiding any “provocative actions or unilateral measures that could negatively impact the fragile stability of the region or jeopardise global economic and energy security”.

Australia

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong issued a joint statement welcoming the news and expressing their hopes that the deal will lead to a long-lasting resolution.

“Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, coupled with its attacks on commercial vessels, civilian infrastructure, and oil and gas facilities, is causing unprecedented energy supply shocks and impacting oil and fuel prices,” they said.

“We have been clear that the longer the war goes on, the more significant the impact on the global economy will be, and the greater the human cost.”

Albanese and Wong thanked Pakistan, Egypt, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia for their work as negotiators.

New Zealand

New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said his government welcomes the news of a ceasefire, although many concerns remain.

“While this is encouraging news, there remains significant important work to be done in the coming days to secure a lasting ceasefire”, as the war has had “wide-ranging impacts and disruptions” on the Middle East and beyond, he wrote in a post on X.

Peters praised countries like Pakistan, Turkiye, and Egypt for their work negotiating a deal.

Kabul’s foreign minister expresses hope that minor interpretations will not hinder progress.

Afghanistan has said that peace talks with Pakistan being held in China have been “useful”.

The comment was issued by the foreign ministry in Kabul amid talks aimed at halting cross-border fighting between the two neighbours, which were launched last week following an invitation by China.

The peace process in the western Chinese city of Urumqi is an effort to stop the conflict that began in February, which has seen hundreds killed and perturbed Beijing, which is sensitive to the violence close to its western regions.

Pakistan, which declared it was in “open war” with its neighbour, has carried out air strikes inside Afghanistan, including in the capital, Kabul.

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan posted on X on Tuesday that the conflict had displaced 94,000 people overall, while 100,000 people in two Afghan districts near the border have been completely cut off by the fighting since February.

The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other armed groups, including al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) group, still have a presence.

Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Zia Ahmad Takal said Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met China’s ambassador to Afghanistan on Tuesday, and thanked Beijing for arranging and hosting the talks, while also crediting Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates for their mediation efforts.

“Noting that constructive discussions have taken place so far, FM Muttaqi expressed hope that minor interpretations would not hinder the progress of the negotiations,” Takal wrote.

Separately, Muttaqi said that “useful discussions have taken place”.

There have been few official statements regarding the discussions since they began on April 1 between mid-level delegations from the two sides.

Accusations

Even as the talks have been taking place, Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of carrying out shelling across its border on several occasions, killing and wounding civilians.

Pakistan has not commented. Islamabad often accuses Afghanistan of providing a safe haven to armed groups that carry out attacks, especially the Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP.

The group is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops. Kabul denies the charge.

The recent fighting, the most severe between the two neighbours, began after Pakistan carried out air strikes aimed at such groups. Afghanistan then launched cross-border attacks in response.

The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October, after earlier fighting had killed dozens of soldiers, civilians, and suspected fighters.

On March 17, a Pakistani air strike hit a drug-treatment centre in Kabul, which Afghan officials claimed killed more than 400 people.

Pakistan denied it had targeted civilians, saying its strikes were against military facilities.

Iran has proposed a 10-point peace plan to end the war as the United States and Israel intensify their attacks on Tehran and a deadline looms that was set by US President Donald Trump for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, whose near-closure has triggered a global energy crisis.

At the White House on Monday, Trump called the 10-point plan a “significant step” but “not good enough”.

Iran’s top university and a major petrochemical plant were hit on Monday after Trump threatened to target power plants and bridges until Tehran agreed to end the war and open the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies pass.

Here is more about Iran’s 10-point plan and Trump’s response to it:

What is Iran’s 10-point plan?

On Monday, Pakistan, which has mediated talks in Islamabad aimed at ending the war, put forth a 45-day ceasefire proposal after separate meetings with US and Iranian officials. The Iranian and US negotiators have not met face to face about the 45‑day truce plan. In late March, Trump told reporters that his envoys were talking to a senior Iranian official, but this was not confirmed by Iran. Tehran has denied holding talks with US negotiators.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran had conveyed its response via Islamabad. Iran reportedly rejected the proposed ceasefire, putting forward instead a call for a permanent end to the hostilities.

The Iranian proposal consisted of 10 clauses, including an end to conflicts in the region, a protocol for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions and reconstruction, IRNA reported. The conflict has spread to the Gulf region and Lebanon, where 1.2 million Lebanese people have been displaced due to Israeli attacks.

Details about the 10 clauses have not been published.

How did the White House respond?

Speaking to reporters about Iran’s plan, Trump said: “They made a … significant proposal. Not good enough, but they have made a very significant step. We will see what happens.”

“If they don’t make a deal, they will have no bridges and no power plants,” he added.

In a profane Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump threatened to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants, if the Strait of Hormuz is not fully reopened. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****** Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” he wrote.

The deadline is set for 8pm Washington time on Tuesday (00:00 GMT). Tehran has rejected this ultimatum and threatened to retaliate.

Human rights organisations and members of the US Congress have criticised Trump for threatening to attack civilian targets, which is considered a war crime.

The Axios news website reported that an unnamed US official who saw the Iranian response called it “maximalist”.

What other proposals have been on the table?

The last time the word “maximalist” was used to describe a peace plan in this war was late last month when Iran called a US plan “maximalist”.

An unnamed, high-ranking diplomatic source told Al Jazeera on March 25 that Iran had received a 15-point plan drafted by the US. The plan was delivered to Iran through Pakistan.

The source said Tehran described the US proposal as “extremely maximalist and unreasonable”.

“It is not beautiful, even on paper,” the source said, calling the plan deceptive and misleading in its presentation.

The 15-point plan included a 30-day ceasefire, the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear facilities, limits on Iran’s missiles and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

In return, the US would remove all sanctions imposed on Iran and provide support for electricity generation at Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.

Iran has rejected a temporary ceasefire, arguing it would give the US and Israel time to regroup and launch further attacks. Tehran has pointed to Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June. The US joined that conflict for one day, hitting Iran’s three main nuclear sites with air strikes. Trump claimed at the time that the US had destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities but months later justified the current war by saying Iran posed an imminent threat.

The UN nuclear watchdog, however, said Iran was not in a position to make a nuclear bomb.

The US and Israel launched the war on February 28 as Washington was holding negotiations with Iran. On the eve of the war, Oman, the mediator of the talks, had said a deal was “within reach”.

Tehran has said for years that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes and it does not intend to create nuclear weapons. It even signed a deal with the US in 2015 to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. But Trump withdrew from the landmark deal in 2018 and slapped sanctions back on Iran.

In response, Iran decided to enrich uranium from 3.6 percent, which was allowed under the 2015 deal, to almost 60 percent after its Natanz nuclear facility was bombed in 2021. Iran blamed Israel. A 90 percent level of purity is required to make an atomic bomb.

Why does this matter?

With Tuesday’s deadline fast approaching, chances for a ceasefire appear remote as the two sides remain far from agreement and the conflict is now in its second month.

On Tuesday, Reza Amiri Moghadam, Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, posted on X: “Pakistan positive and productive endeavours in Good Will and Good Office to stop the war is approaching a critical, sensitive stage …”

“Stay Tuned for more”.

Aichatou often heard of insecurity for most of her life, but never experienced it herself. She had relatives who had either been killed or displaced in places like Bosso, a village close to Lake Chad that was ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency in 2015. But the violence that festered along the Sokoto and Kebbi flanks was not common where she lived in Dosso, a region in southwestern Niger. 

Then came the coup. And with it, a promise that what had happened elsewhere would never reach her. 

It did. 

In 2024, terrorists stormed her town. They killed her brother and neighbours. And like many other survivors, she fled carrying nothing except the experience of something she had only once heard about – violence. It had finally reached her. 

After Niger’s military rulers seized power in July 2023, they promised to do what the elected government could not: make the country safe. Nearly three years later, an analysis of conflict data, geospatial information, and interviews with people in the country shows that the military administration has failed to deliver on its promise.

While the junta has partly succeeded in shielding the capital city, Niamey, from attacks, more people are being killed across the country, and more people are being displaced from regions that were previously stable. The evidence shows that the generals have not ended the violence; they have simply relocated it.

For this investigation, HumAngle analysed 62 months of conflict data, evenly divided between the period before and after the coup. We complemented this with interviews with Nigeriens in Maradi and Diffa, many of whom had fled from areas that had historically never been frontlines. They declined to speak on record, citing fear and arrest, and so their names have been changed to protect them.

Aichatou now lives in Maradi as a displaced person. She has not heard from her missing relatives and some of her neighbours. They were scattered when the attackers came. Everyone ran for safety, and it’s unclear who died and who survived. It’s a crisis of missing persons during a war. 

“We don’t know where they are and don’t even have phone numbers to reach out,” she says.

The promise

When soldiers deposed President Mohamed Bazoum on the evening of July 26, 2023, the justification was that the civilian government had failed the people. Specifically, it had failed them on economy and security.

The coup leader, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, accused Bazoum of covering up the deteriorating security situation and cited what he described as both his predecessor’s “outstretched hand” policy toward armed groups and a fundamental failure to build a regionally coherent security architecture. 

Two days after seizing power, Tchiani proclaimed himself head of state, saying he had deposed Bazoum to prevent what he described as “the gradual and inevitable demise of the country.” The new ruling body named itself the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) – a title that placed national security at the very centre of its identity and mandate.

The announcement landed on fertile ground. Niger had suffered genuine insecurity under the elected government. The Tillabéri region, squeezed between the borders of Mali and Burkina Faso in the volatile Liptako-Gourma tri-border zone, had been burning for years. Attacks by Islamic State affiliates and al-Qaeda-linked groups had claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers and thousands of civilians. The insurgency had spread eastward into Tahoua, and southward into Dosso — regions that had once felt insulated. 

Ordinary Nigeriens, particularly in rural and border areas, had every reason to want something different. The coup, for some, looked like that. What followed were celebrations. 

Pro-junta crowds gathered in Niamey. Thousands marched. Russian and Nigerien flags flew alongside each other in the same streets where anti-French sentiment had been building for years. The generals had read the room correctly, at least in the capital.

Since assuming power, the junta in Niger has claimed some successes, especially in repelling some attacks, asserting sovereignty, and staging defences against the internal and perceived external threats. The military has, in 2025, also pursued general mobilisation decrees and created new partnerships, especially with Russian mercenaries. The mobilisation includes bolstering the military to 50,000 troops, increasing the retirement age for officers to 52, and mobilising youth to combat insecurity. 

However, under the same military, in 2026 (data for 2025), Niger reached its worst-ever ranking on Global Terrorism Index (GTI) as the 3rd most terror-impacted country in the world. This was significantly higher than when it was under an elected government, in which it was ranked between 8th and 10th. 

The silence

As the violence spreads under the junta, public criticism becomes more dangerous. 

State-owned newspapers in Niger do not often report comprehensively on the security crisis. Most of what appears tends to highlight that a security meeting was held, or that some terrorists were killed, or it focuses on accusing France of being responsible for the country’s security problems. This narrative has gone as far as Abdourahamane Tchiani alleging that Nigeria is collaborating with France to launch an attack on Niger through terrorists deployed at the Nigeria/Niger border. The Nigerian government and independent fact-checkers denied that. 

But when activists or independent journalists speak about insecurity, they get arrested.

Gazali Abdou Tasawa, a correspondent of DW Hausa, was arrested and jailed in January 2026 for reporting on displaced persons in Niger. He was not the first. 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented that in October 2025 six journalists were arrested in Niamey – Moussa Kaka and Abdoul Aziz of Saraounia TV; Ibro Chaibou and Souleymane Brah from the online publication Voice of the People; Youssouf Seriba of Les Échos du Niger; and Oumarou Kané, founder of the magazine Le Hérisson – over their alleged role in circulating a government press briefing invitation on social media criticizing the introduction of the mandatory payment for “Solidarity Fund for the Safeguarding of the Homeland”, a form of security levy in Niger to combat terrorism. 

Moussa Ngom, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s Francophone Africa representative, explained that “arrest and detention have become tools-of-choice for Nigerien authorities to try to control information they find undesirable.” For this investigation, HumAngle reached out to journalists in Niger to speak on insecurity. Three of them declined to speak and one promised to speak but never replied to our questions. 

However, recently, a few activists have begun to speak out. A prominent Nigerien activist, Maikoul Zodi, recently called on the military junta to account for two years of broken promises on security – the central justification offered for seizing power on July 26, 2023.

Writing on his Facebook page, Zodi was blunt about what he sees as the junta’s failure. “Niger is still bleeding… the same villages are burning… the same families are burying their dead.” He asked directly what tangible improvements had been made on the ground since the coup. 

His statement reflects a shift in civil society’s posture from solidarity with the transition to demands for results. “Compassion alone is no longer enough. There must be accountability,” he wrote, as violence continues spreading into regions that had previously been spared. 

“I think the CNSP should present a transparent report of the security situation, with concrete figures and data,” reacted Tahirou Halidou, a concerned Nigerien.

One day after that Facebook post, Zodi was interrogated by the police because of the publication. 

What the numbers buried 

The junta’s promise of improving security has not become a reality. 

To understand what changed, HumAngle analyzed conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project which maps political violence worldwide in real time, covering equal 31-month periods before and after the coup – from January 2021 to February 2026. 

ACLED data does not necessarily give us a complete picture of the dire  situation in Niger, given that most of its information relies on open-source reporting from NGOs and journalists who have been repressed by the junta, and so may not be able to accurately capture what is really happening on the ground. 

While the ACLED number of recorded incidents for the period under review rose only modestly, the outcomes of insecurity became dramatically deadlier in Niger Republic. Worse, the violence is spreading toward communities that were never hotspots.

“Although we are aware of insecurity in some villages a few kilometres away from ours, we had never experienced violence before the military coup,” said Ousmane*, an IDP who left his village Gadori in Diffa and moved to Maradi in early 2025.  

According to ACLED data, total recorded conflict events rose modestly after July 26, 2023 – from 1,879 to 2,221, an increase of 18.2 percent. Taken alone, that figure might suggest a country holding steady. But fatalities tell a radically different story: deaths surged from 2,983 before the coup to 4,855 afterwards, a 62.8 percent increase. The same rough number of incidents, but significantly more people dying in them. The deaths per incident climbed by 37.7 percent, meaning that even setting aside the raw count, each individual attack became deadlier on average.

One of the deadliest attacks recorded under the junta was on Dec. 10, 2024, when Jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State attacked Nigerien soldiers at a market in Chetoumane, Tillabéri region, killing at least 90 soldiers and over 50 civilians.  The junta suspended BBC for reporting the attack. 

The Junta Redistricted the Violence by IT HumAngle

The displacements

Before the coup, areas surrounding the Nigerien border with Nigeria were relatively safe, but not anymore. “In Dan Issa here, we had never experienced a situation when people were as afraid to go to villages as they are now,” one of the residents told HumAngle. “There is a silent displacement in the villages due to incessant cases of kidnappings.” 

Dosso, Aichatou’s region, appeared in the ACLED displacement data for the first time, with six distinct locations recording forced civilian movement: Dogondoutchi, Banizoumbou Kobia, Boumba, Kassalama, Kontalangou, and Tounouga. 

The entire Gaya corridor, the southern road connecting Niger to Nigeria and Benin, recorded zero displacement events in the 31 months before the coup. After it, the route became newly active, with JNIM and ISSP both documented operating along it. These are not places with histories of insurgent attack. They are places that were, until recently, buffers that absorbed refugees from further north without themselves being overrun. But that buffer has collapsed.

Tillabéri’s Abala district recorded nine distinct new displacement locations after the coup, compared to only two locations before the coup. A cluster triggered in a single week in October 2023 – Maimagare, Mandaba, Tamattey, Dangna, and Badak Toudou – marked the opening of that sub-region to what the data suggests was a systematic IS Sahel campaign of threats designed to clear villages. 

By early 2026, even Niamey itself was no longer exempt: an Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) attack on Air Force Base 101 in January 2026 produced the capital’s first recorded displacement event.

Across the full dataset, 51 locations recorded displacement for the first time after the coup. Only four sites of chronic, pre-existing displacement persisted into the post-coup period. The coup expanded the footprint of violence into entirely new territory. Generally, according to the United Nations Refugee Council (UNHCR), as of 2026, Niger has recorded over one million displacements, more than half of whom are internally displaced (IDPs). 

As the new wave of violence reached new places, more people fled their homes. Confirmed displacement events – i.e. ACLED incidents explicitly noting that people had fled or evacuated – rose by 83.3 percent, from 30 in the pre-coup period to 55 after. Abandoned settlement events declined, from 27 to 18, but that apparent drop carries a grim explanation: many of the communities that might have been abandoned had already been emptied. There were fewer inhabited places left to abandon.

The nature

The nature of the violence also transformed. Events recorded by ACLED explicitly as “violence against civilians” fell by nearly 31.7 percent. This decrease does not, however, reflect the full picture and reading it literally can be misleading.

ACLED records each conflict event under a single type based on its primary event: a gun battle is coded “Battles” even if the notes confirm civilians were killed; a roadside bomb is “Explosions/Remote violence” even when the target was a civilian vehicle. Only when deliberate civilian targeting is the defining characteristic, before they flag it as “Violence against civilians” and set the civilian targeting variable. However, three columns allow a closer accounting of civilian contributions to those increased overall fatality numbers: the “civilian_targeting” flag itself; the “interaction code”, which records the actor types involved; and the free-text “event notes”, which often documents civilian casualties in events coded under other categories.

Events that ACLED explicitly classifies as “Violence against civilians” did fall from 785 to 536 incidents. However, battles surged. The dominant interaction in battles by far was state forces against rebel groups, accounting for 182 clashes and 944 deaths before the coup and climbing to 382 clashes and 2,009 deaths afterwards. There have been clearly stated large combatant tolls in these events. But embedded in the ACLED event notes for those same battles are post-coup civilian-involved incidents, together contributing to 447 deaths when you count the fatality column of the rows’ note that explicitly records “civilian casualties”. This goes up from 23 battle events and 108 deaths before the coup to a more-than-threefold rise.

Most explosions and remote violence surges follow the same state-versus-rebel pattern: IED attacks on military convoys classified as “State forces-Rebel group” jumped from 46 to 155 events. Yet ACLED’s own civilian_targeting flag registers a 230 percent increase in civilian-linked explosion-related deaths (from 33 to 109). 

Reviewing these columns in those months before and after the July 2026 coup gives a narrower picture than the overall event counts suggest. 

More battles. Triple the bombs. Fewer labels, same bodies. by IT HumAngle

The increase in the death toll aligns with the assessments of other security monitoring bodies. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies noted that fatalities linked to extremist groups were projected to reach more than 1,600 in 2024 alone — a 60 percent increase from 2023. The Safeguarding Security Sector Stockpiles (S4) Initiative found that attacks on Niger’s own security forces in the first nine months of 2024 were more frequent than in any previous year. The CNSP had promised to protect its soldiers, but the opposite happened.

The HumAngle ACLED analysis also tracked attacks on state forces specifically: incidents targeting the military nearly doubled, rising from 198 to 366 – an 84.8 percent jump. Fatalities in those incidents climbed from 623 to 1,555, a 149.6 percent jump. By the post-coup period, state-force targeted deaths accounted for 32 percent of all fatalities recorded – up from 21 percent before the coup. The lethality of each individual attack on security forces also rose: from 3.2 deaths per event before the coup to 4.3 after.

“Those numbers reflect a simple reality that the security vacuum created by the rupture with Western partners has been exploited ruthlessly by non-state armed groups,” said Ikemesit Effiong, an analyst and a managing partner at SBM Intelligence, an African security intel firm based in Lagos, Nigeria. “A massive increase in violence metrics is more than a failure of policy; it is a failure of legitimacy,” he told HumAngle.

Jihadist groups, freed from the surveillance, intelligence-sharing, and operational pressure that Western and regional partnerships had provided, adapted their tactics. They hit less often but harder, and with dramatically more lethal results. JNIM, the al-Qaeda affiliate that had previously operated mostly in southwestern Tillabéri, expanded into southern Dosso. Islamic State Sahel Province consolidated control over the Abala sub-region and extended pressure southward toward Niamey. 

Tera, in Tillabéri, became the single deadliest location shift in the dataset: event counts rose by only a third, but fatalities exploded from 198 to 991 – a 401 percent increase. Gaya, on the Nigerian border, went from near-silence to an active conflict zone. Dioundiou appeared in the data for the first time, with 49 events and 144 fatalities recorded where none had existed before. The geography of the war had moved.

The war moved south. by IT HumAngle

In January 2026, the Jihadists affiliated with the ISSP conducted an unprecedented daring attack on the Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey. The attack included the first-time use of drones, which were reportedly engaged by the airport’s air defence systems. The attack sent a chilling message that the terrorists are getting bolder and ready to wage more sophisticated attacks on some of the state’s most protected infrastructure. 

“The use of drones by ISSP shows a level of technical sophistication and intelligence gathering we haven’t seen this close to the capital before,” said Effiong, the security analyst. “For the military regime, if they cannot secure the perimeter of the country’s premier international gateway, they cannot claim to control the state.”

The protection bubble

What the full body of evidence suggests is that the junta in Niger built a bubble around Niamey and the corridors of power that connect it to key military installations. Inside that bubble, things are calmer. Attacks on urban centres remain relatively rare. The capital’s residents can move through their days with a reasonable sense that yesterday’s normal will resemble tomorrow’s.

“The distinction is now visible,” Effiong told HumAngle. “Regime security focuses on Niamey’s checkpoints and the presidential palace; peripheral areas are being sacrificed.” 

Outside that bubble — in Dosso, in the new displacement clusters of Abala, in the villages whose names appear in ACLED event notes for the first time after July 2023 — the junta’s promise of peace has not arrived. 

“This emboldens groups like ISSP and JNIM because it reveals a risk-reward calculation: the junta’s air power is limited, and their reaction times are slow,” Effiong said.

The Islamic State Sahel Province has moved closer to Niamey than at any point in the country’s history, with militants increasingly controlling key roads into the capital, effectively tightening a noose that the junta’s propaganda apparatus does not mention.

Aichatou knows this too well. She is in Maradi, far from everyone who once knew her, far from the brother whose body she could not bury, far from the relatives she could not trace, and far from the neighbours who once gave her a sense of community.

The promise of security reached Niamey.

It did not reach her.

This article was produced with support from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI) and the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) as part of an initiative by Code for Africa (CfA). Visit https://disinfo.africa/ for more information.

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has proposed a roadmap for ending the United States-Israeli war on Iran as tensions escalate across the Middle East.

Zarif’s plan was published by Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday and goes “beyond a temporary ceasefire”.

The war, which erupted on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, has spread across the Middle East and convulsed the global economy as Tehran attacked its neighbours, claiming to be targeting US assets there and restricting movement of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Regional hostilities showed no signs of abating on Sunday, a day after US President Donald Trump said Iran had 48 hours to cut a deal or face “all hell”.

Against this backdrop, Zarif’s roadmap said that although Iran viewed itself as successful in the war, prolonging the conflict – while potentially “psychologically satisfying” for Tehran – would only result in further loss of civilian lives and destruction of infrastructure.

Iran should, therefore, offer to “place limits on its nuclear program” under international monitoring as well as “reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions”, Zarif wrote.

Since the war began, Iran has virtually blocked the key waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s crude oil and natural gas supplies normally pass.

Nuclear limits on Iran would include a commitment to never seek nuclear weapons and to blend its entire stockpile of enriched uranium so its enrichment levels fall below 3.67 percent, Zarif said.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates, Iran is believed to have about 440kg (970lb) of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a level at which uranium can be quickly enriched to the 90 percent threshold needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

Zarif called Trump’s demand for zero enrichment “fanciful” thinking.

Iran should also “accept a mutual nonaggression pact with the United States” in which both countries pledge to not strike each other in the future, the former minister said.

The US should also end all sanctions and United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iran, he added.

Regional consortium

Zarif also outlined potential roles for regional and international actors.

He suggested that China and Russia along with the US could help create a regional fuel-enrichment consortium with Iran and its Gulf neighbours at West Asia’s sole enrichment facility with Iran transferring all enriched material and equipment there.

Zarif additionally proposed that Gulf states, UN Security Council powers and possibly Egypt, Pakistan and Turkiye should form a regional security framework to “ensure nonaggression, cooperation and freedom of navigation”, including arrangements to guarantee safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

“To further consolidate peace, Iran and the United States should initiate mutually beneficial trade, economic and technological cooperation,” Zarif added.

The Iranian politician said this roadmap would benefit Trump, offering him a “well-timed off-ramp” and an opportunity to claim peace.

“Emotions may be high, and each side is boasting about its war-front victories. But history best remembers those who make peace,” he said.

The US has presented Iran with a 15-point plan for a ceasefire as Pakistan, Turkiye and Egypt have been trying to achieve direct talks, but there has been no signs of progress on the diplomatic front.

What about the Gulf?

Officials from Gulf states have responded to Zarif’s proposal, criticising it for overlooking Tehran’s attacks against its neighbours.

“Reading M. Javad Zarif’s article in Foreign Affairs ignores one of the core flaws in Iran’s strategy: aggression against its Gulf Arab neighbors,” Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, said on X on Saturday.

“Thousands of missiles & drones targeting infrastructure, civilians, even mediators, is not strength; it is hubris & strategic failure. The Arab world has seen this before: destruction peddled as victory,” he added.

Former Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani also responded to Zarif’s plan, writing on X on Sunday that he “agreed with much of it” and it took a “clever” approach.

Still, he pushed back, stating that the war has “led us all into a path that is more complicated and dangerous” and chiding Iran for its attacks on the Gulf.

“You may believe that you have achieved progress in some aspects, and perhaps temporary tactical gains, but the cost was clear: the loss of an important part of your friends in the region, and the erosion of the trust that was built over years,” he wrote.

“Today, we need a voice like yours [Zarif’s] merging from within Iran to propose solutions to this war,” he added.

March 27 (Asia Today) — President Lee Jae-myung said Friday that building a peaceful Korean Peninsula while maintaining a strong defense is the historic mission left behind by South Korea’s fallen West Sea heroes.

Speaking at the 11th West Sea Defense Day ceremony at Daejeon National Cemetery, Lee said the 55 service members honored each year had protected not only a maritime boundary, but also the everyday peace South Koreans enjoy and the future their descendants deserve.

“Our task is to firmly protect our people and the territory of the Republic of Korea with strong national defense capabilities, while also building a peaceful Korean Peninsula free from the worries of war and hostility,” Lee said.

He said the waters defended by the fallen should no longer remain a symbol of conflict, but be turned into “a foundation of peace and prosperity.”

“Peace is our livelihood, and peace is the greatest security,” Lee said. “Winning a fight matters, but winning without fighting matters even more. More important still is a peace in which there is no need to fight.”

Lee said his government would work to end the legacy of confrontation and tension in the West Sea and open a new chapter of shared growth and prosperity.

He also paid tribute to the bereaved families, saying the government would remember the dead, preserve their record and honor them properly.

Lee said his administration was trying to close gaps in veterans support under the principle that special sacrifice deserves special compensation.

Beginning in May, spouses of financially struggling war veterans will receive monthly living support payments, he said.

Lee also said the government plans to expand the number of designated veterans medical institutions nationwide to 2,000 by 2030 so national meritorious persons can receive treatment more easily at nearby hospitals.

He said mandatory military service should be recognized as a legitimate social asset so former service members can take pride in their time in uniform.

To that end, Lee said the public sector will be required to count mandatory service periods when calculating pay grades and wages for discharged veterans.

West Sea Defense Day is a national commemoration honoring those killed in the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong on June 29, 2002, the sinking of the Cheonan on March 26, 2010, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23, 2010.

Before the ceremony, Lee and first lady Kim Hye-kyung paid respects at the graves of those killed in the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, the Yeonpyeong shelling, the 46 sailors killed in the Cheonan sinking and the late warrant officer Han Ju-ho.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260327010008430

Details of a plan submitted by Board of Peace Director General Nickolay Mladenov for the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian groups in Gaza have been seen by Al Jazeera.

The plan would see disarmament – one of the components of the October ceasefire to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – implemented gradually over an eight-month, multiphase process.

The process would see disarmament in exchange for Israel fulfilling its own obligations, including allowing reconstruction materials into Gaza to begin the work of rebuilding the enclave after Israel’s devastation of the territory since October 2023. Israel would also allow an increase in humanitarian aid entering Gaza, and the plan envisions the transfer of the administration of the Palestinian territory to a national committee.

Mladenov referred to the plan in general terms in a speech to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday. There he said the plan had been “presented to relevant armed groups” that were urged to accept the framework “without delay”.

“Decommissioning [arms] proceeds in parallel with staged withdrawal,” Mladenov said.

The disarmament of groups in Gaza has been a controversial topic, particularly as Israel has continued to attack the enclave during the ceasefire, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Israel has also not stopped restricting aid into Gaza, driving up prices, even as many in the territory remain displaced and unable to afford basic items.

Hamas has repeatedly refused to give up its arms as long as Israel’s occupation of Gaza continues. Israeli forces maintain a presence in Gaza in areas beyond a “yellow line”, giving it a de facto buffer zone that Palestinians cannot approach without risking being shot. Hamas has also said disarmament is an internal Palestinian matter that should be discussed between factions rather than imposed from the outside.

Hamas and Israel have so far not officially reacted to the details of the Mladenov plan. But Palestinian experts have previously told Al Jazeera that the plan in effect means the “political surrender” of Hamas.

The Board of Peace, created by United States President Donald Trump in the wake of the ceasefire his government brokered, has assumed oversight of Gaza’s administration.

Step-by-step process

The Mladenov plan operates on a step-by-step formula, with transitions between phases only taking place once both sides have fulfilled their obligations.

The first phase, spanning the first two weeks of the deal, would see a complete cessation of military operations by Israel and Hamas as well as the implementation of humanitarian protocols that Israel committed to under the ceasefire. Representatives of the Palestinian national committee – a technocratic body established after the ceasefire with the aim of administering Gaza – would also be allowed into Gaza during this phase to assume all security and administrative responsibilities.

The second phase of the proposal, which would take place between day 16 and day 60, represents the central element of the plan with the beginning of the disarmament process. Hamas and other Palestinian factions would cooperate to remove heavy weapons initially from areas controlled by Israel and then, before 90 days, from areas still controlled by Hamas.

Hamas would also destroy its tunnel network before day 90 of the plan.

For its part, Israel would be required to allow temporary prefabricated residential units to be constructed in locations approved by the Palestinian national committee.

Once all sides have met their obligations in the first three months of the plan, they would move on to the next phase, in which Israeli forces would gradually withdraw to the perimeters of Gaza after a monitoring committee determines that Palestinian factions in Gaza have been disarmed.

Security forces answerable to the Palestinian national committee would be tasked with gathering weapons. That task should be completed by day 251, and if it is, then Israel would withdraw from Gaza with the exception of an undefined security perimeter “until Gaza is secured … from the potential for a return of any terrorist threat”.

Full reconstruction would also be permitted at this stage as well as the lifting of restrictions on the entry of “dual-use materials”, such as concrete, steel, fertilisers and fuel, which Israel has severely restricted, arguing that they can be used for military purposes even as humanitarian groups emphasise their importance to civilian life.

Scepticism

The plan, if implemented, would mark a final end to the war and to Hamas’s almost two-decade-long rule of Gaza.

But stumbling blocks remain, including whether Israel is truly prepared to withdraw from Gaza, fulfil its commitments and not attempt to spoil any deal, as it has in the past.

Hamas and other Palestinian factions are deeply sceptical of Israel’s adherence to any deal and to the idea of giving up their weapons, seeing them as a vital part of Palestinian national resistance.

Hamas would also give up all control of Gaza as part of what the plan envisions as “one authority, one law, and one weapon” in the territory under the Palestinian national committee.

Mladenov referenced that principle at the UN, adding that “the people of Gaza want reconstruction, and reconstruction requires the decommissioning of weapons.”

March 25 (UPI) — Iran’s foreign minister said Wednesday that Tehran has no plans to negotiate with the United States after the Trump administration offered a 15-point peace plan.

During a televised interview on state-run media, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said U.S. officials had been sending messages through intermediaries for “several days.”

U.S. officials who spoke to The New York Times and USA Today late Tuesday, said the United States sent a peace proposal through Pakistan, which earlier had offered to host talks between the two countries. The peace plan addressed Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, two of the key threats the administration and Israel cited for their decision to attack Iran.

Egypt has also offered to host peace talks.

Araghchi said passing messages through friendly countries doesn’t constitute “dialogue nor negotiation, nor anything of the sort.”

He added that Iran is focusing on defending itself against attacks and has “no intention of negotiating for now,” the BBC reported.

“This is Israel’s war, and people of the region and people of the U.S. are paying the price for it.”

U.S. officials said the proposed peace plan included lifting economic sanctions, limits on Iran’s missile program, making the Strait of Hormuz safe and winding down Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for cooperation on civilian nuclear energy — monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Destroying Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, launcher and production plants has been one of the main objectives of the U.S.-Israeli airborne military campaign, along with 970 pounds of enriched uranium; they are determined to prevent Iran from ever converting into a nuclear weapon.

Iran’s FARS news agency reported that an “informed source” said, “Iran does not accept a cease-fire.”

“Basically, it is not logical to enter into such a process with those who violate the agreement,” the source said.

Notwithstanding the assistance of Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshall Syded Asim Munir, said to have a direct line of communication to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps., communication with, and within, Iran is highly problematic, complicated by a civilian governance vacuum, damage to communications and officials reluctant to meet each other due to fear of being killed

There was no sign in Washington of any imminent let-up in the conflict on the ground.

“As President Trump and his negotiators explore this newfound possibility of diplomacy, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated to achieve the military objectives laid out by the commander-in-chief and the Pentagon,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

However, the offer to Tehran was being seen as evidence of the White House’s desire for an exit strategy from a costly war, now in its fourth week, with Persian Gulf allies being hit by Iranian missiles and drones round the clock and severe disruption to global energy supplies.

Earlier, reports emerged in U.S. media that at least 2,000 paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division were being deployed from North Carolina to the Middle East, though it was unclear where, as Trump backs up his diplomatic maneuver with military pressure.

The soldiers from the 82nd’s Immediate Response Force are the only U.S. Army division with the ability to mount an airborne assault operation anywhere in the world within 18 hours of receiving orders.

They will join an amphibious force of thousands of U.S. Marines

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that the United States doesn’t have “boots on the ground” in the Middle East, but said Tehran should take heed of the U.S. military buildup.

“I think Iran should watch that buildup, and they need to take note of that,” he told reporters.

The proposals request that Iran must “commit never to pursue nuclear weapons“, pledge to dismantle nuclear facilities and to hand over the enriched amounts of uranium it possesses to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, which is to monitor the issue going forward.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has offered Iran a 15-point ceasefire plan aimed at temporarily halting the war in the Middle East, as the Pentagon simultaneously orders thousands of Marines, paratroopers and a warship to the region.

The plan presented to Iranian leadership Tuesday broadly included a 30-day ceasefire and sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for a laundry list of U.S. demands, according to the Associated Press and other outlets.

But Iran dismissed the proposal Wednesday, criticizing the White House’s terms as “excessive” and out of step with reality, according to Iranian state-run media.

Those terms included limitations on Tehran’s missile stockpiles, and the permanent end to its nuclear program, its support for regional militias including Hezbollah, and of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, various outlets reported, citing Pakistani officials mediating the negotiations.

Several of those provisions have long been considered nonstarters for Iran, which sees its missile stockade and regional alliances as central to national security.

Iranian officials responded with defiance and skepticism.

“Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” an Iranian official told state media. “Not when Trump envisions its conclusion.”

The official outlined the Islamic Republic’s terms for ending the conflict, which included a halt to “aggression and assassinations,” an end to fighting on all fronts, enforceable guarantees that hostilities will not resume, compensation for war damages and a formal recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has stated that Iran is not interested in a ceasefire but rather a comprehensive “end of war” on all fronts, including the lifting of sanctions and guarantees to allow Iran to pursue peaceful nuclear enrichment for energy and medical applications.

Iranian officials told state media that they believed the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts were deceptive.

“You have reached a stage where you are negotiating with yourselves,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said in a televised address Wednesday. “Do not call your defeat an agreement.

Since the start of the conflict, Iranian leaders have voiced suspicion of any diplomatic talks with the Trump administration, pointing to prewar diplomatic efforts as evidence they were “tricked.” The Islamic Republic says it made clear in those talks that it had no interest in developing nuclear weapons, but Trump launched his military campaign nonetheless.

There have been conflicting media reports over Tehran’s exact position. Statements from Iranian officials and state-linked outlets have left open the possibility that elements of the proposal are still under review, while some reports frame the response as an outright refusal.

The Iranian response also conflicts with President Trump’s insistence that negotiations were progressing.

“We have had very, very strong talks,” he said Sunday in Florida. “We have points, major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement will at some point very, very soon meet.”

Compounding the issue, Israel — which continues to carry out routine bombing campaigns over Iran — has stayed out of the talks.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the peace deal in a phone call Tuesday. In a televised address, Netanyahu said that Trump “believes there is an opportunity” to realize U.S.-Israeli war objectives in an agreement “that will safeguard our vital interests.”

“At the same time, we continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “We will safeguard our vital interests in any scenario.”

The negotiations are being facilitated by Pakistan, with support from Egypt and Turkey — countries that have pushed to contain a conflict that has killed more than 2,400 people, further destabilized the embattled region and disrupted global oil markets.

As Washington pursued a diplomatic end to the conflict, the Pentagon deployed an additional 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Mideast. An additional 5,000 Marines and thousands of sailors are already en route to the region, where 50,000 more Marines are currently stationed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Wednesday that the deployment “sends a signal to Iran that they need to get their act together,” but denied any coming escalations by the American side. Johnson instead said that he believes “Operation Epic Fury is almost done.”

Now in its fourth week, the operation began with a series of intensive airstrikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other high-ranking officials. Since then, the U.S. and Israel have carried out over 9,000 strikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure and nuclear program.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday that while the president’s diplomatic envoys seek a peace deal, his department of war will continue to “negotiate with bombs.”

“The president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “Our job is to ensure that, and so we’re keeping our hand on that throttle.”

Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit Gulf infrastructure and halted energy production and shipping in the region, spurring global fears of an enduring supply crunch. Meanwhile, Israel has expanded operations in Iran and sought to expand its borders into Lebanon.

Oil prices, which had surged above $120 per barrel earlier in the conflict, fell sharply this week on hopes that a ceasefire could ease supply woes.

In a statement Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres demanded an end to the fighting, which he said “has broken past limits even leaders thought imaginable.”

He specifically called on the U.S. and Israel to end the war, as “human suffering deepens, civilian casualties mount, and the global economic impact is increasingly devastating.”

Times staff writers Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., and Nabih Bulos, in Beirut, contributed to this report.

Governing, the political sages tell us, is all about making choices, particularly when leadership faces finite resources and the choices are between war and peace; this is the “guns or butter” balancing raised by Lyndon Johnson’s pursuit of the Vietnam War and, appropriately, by President Trump’s Iran war.

Thus far, according to budget experts and the Trump administration itself, the war has cost Americans about $25 billion, with the White House reportedly preparing to seek $200 billion more in military funding. That points to the obvious question of what the U.S. could buy if it stopped spending on the Iran adventure.

Here’s the short answer: Medicaid coverage, free school lunches, and housing, child care and community college assistance for tens of millions of Americans. Those estimates come from Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

Kogan is not alone in doing the math. Similar estimates have been published by the Century Foundation and Mother Jones.

Democrats in Congress have offered their own juxtapositions: “$11.3 billion would have fully funded the training of 100,000 new nurses to solve our staffing crisis,” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) observed on social media. “Instead, it was spent in just six days on an illegal war with no endgame.” (She wrote when that was the government’s estimate on spending in only the first week of the Iran war.)

Details will follow. But first, a reminder that the “peace dividend” — that is, the surge of available resources for socially beneficial spending after the cessation of hostilities — has always been an elusive concept.

In part that’s because it invariably gets tied up in conflicts over precisely what peacetime programs political leaders wish to fund, and that often involves tougher decisions than whether to mount a bombing campaign against a perceived adversary.

“What happened to the peace dividend?” economist Augusto Lopez-Claros asked last year, referring to the supposed surfeit of funds that was to flow after the end of the Cold War. His answer was that there were always alternatives, many of them militaristic in nature, in the wings to suck up the funds that had been spent in the past.

The issue has especially acute significance today, not merely because of the Iran war. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have been campaigning to cut federal spending, almost entirely on social programs such as Medicaid and on Social Security and Medicare benefits, ostensibly because they contribute heavily to our “unaffordable” federal budget deficits.

Never mind that the largest single contributor to the deficit is the massive tax cut enacted by Republicans in 2017, during the first Trump term, which were made permanent by the GOP’s budget bill last year.

Placing military spending in the context of alternatives is typically shunned by Republicans and conservatives. The Wall Street Journal editorial board derided the exercise as “dorm room politics,” referring specifically to an estimate by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) that the $200 billion reportedly sought by the White House “would pay for free college for every American,” and more.

That doesn’t mean the exercise isn’t worthwhile, however. Kogan acknowledges that it wouldn’t be up to the Pentagon to redirect its budget to the social programs that could be funded with its funding request, but his point in making the comparisons is “to get a sense of scale.”

So let’s dive in, starting with Kogan’s work. He matched the cost of several social services against the $25 billion estimated to be spent on the war through the end of this week and the $200-billion new request. He also broke down some of the spending by ordnance. The price of one Tomahawk missile, invoiced about $3.5 million each, could cover Medicaid for a year for 275 people, for example; the U.S. has fired an estimated 300 of them in the Iran war so far, for more than $1 billion.

Kogan calculated that more than 3.1 million people could be covered by Medicaid for $25 billion, and 24.8 million could be covered for $200 billion. He based this estimate on the Congressional Budget Office’s finding that the federal share of Medicaid came last year to $668 billion to cover about 82 million adult and child enrollees, or about $8,048 per person annually.

Then there’s free school lunches, which the government has pegged at up to $4.69 per day for about 30 million children receiving meals in school. If they all received free lunch, that would come to a little over $25 billion, based on a 180-day school year. (Only about two-thirds of those children receive free meals, with the rest receiving cut-price meals or paying full price.)

Child care isn’t typically a governmental responsibility (though it should be); Kogan uses an estimate from the nonprofit organization Child Care Aware that care cost Americans about $13,128 on average in 2024; inflating that to a 2026 figure yields an average of $14,048, meaning that 1.78 million households could be covered for about $25 billion, and about 14.2 million for $200 billion.

Tuition for a two-year path to an associate degree in community college, that portal to higher education for millions of Americans, will cost an average of $8,700 this year by Kogan’s reckoning, based on the College Board’s estimate of $8,300 for 2025. That means that about 2.87 million Americans could have their tuition fully covered for about $25 billion, and nearly 23 million students could be covered for $200 billion.

The progressive Century Foundation contributed estimates of how much in social program spending could be accommodated for $200 billion. Its roster includes the cancellation of all medical debt for the 100 million Americans shouldering about $194 billion in medical debt. The enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that expired this year could be continued for almost six years for about $200 billion, extrapolating from the 10-year, $350-billion estimate produced by the CBO. “Ensuring health coverage for all Americans,” the foundation noted, “could save an estimated 68,000 lives per year.”

The foundation also notes that $200 billion could ameliorate the draconian cuts in Medicaid imposed by the preposterously named One Big Beautiful Bill that the GOP enacted as a budget measure in July. The work requirement in that bill is estimated to reduce Medicaid spending by $326 billion over 10 years, according to the CBO, mostly by throwing enrollees out of the program. The work rules, which as I’ve reported do nothing to enhance employment, could be deferred for six years, preventing the loss of coverage for about 5.2 million Americans.

Mother Jones reported soberly that $200 billion would cover the wages of 2.8 million public school teachers, based on an average salary of $72,030, as reported by the National Education Assn.

The publication took a rather more fanciful approach for some calculations. It reported that $200 billion would pay for 2,666 sequels to the “Melania” documentary, based on the $75-million reported cost of its production and marketing by Amazon, its sponsor. And 500 more White House ballrooms, based on the latest projection of $400 million for just one.

Obviously all these calculations are somewhat chimerical. No one really believes that if Congress rejects the $200-billion ask, that money would be redeployed for any of these social programs, at least while the GOP remains in control of the government purse strings. The basic arithmetic itself is subject to cavils resulting from the murkiness of some of the cost calculations and projections.

But they’re not far wide off the mark in terms of orders of magnitude. Millions of dollars in social spending could be covered by billions of dollars in military spending, and much more productive investments could be made in the years and decades to come.

The lost “peace dividend” encompasses not just domestic needs, but also “the potentially catastrophic risks that we are taking on in the future because we are misallocating resources now,” Lopez-Claros observed — “spending massively on defense while leaving unattended climate change mitigation, pandemic preparedness, the shamefully high levels of malnourishment in the world, among others. We may well come to regret this and by then, unfortunately, it might be too late.”

Even before the first bombs fell on Iran, after all, the U.S. was shortchanging all those imperatives. “Just last July, Trump signed into law the biggest cuts to the social safety net in all U.S. history,” Kogan says, including “the biggest cuts to Medicaid ever, and the biggest cuts to SNAP, ever.” (The GOP budget bill cut SNAP, the food stamp program, by $186 billion, leaving “nearly 3 million young adults ages 18 to 24 who receive SNAP vulnerable to losing that assistance,” the Urban Institute estimated after the bill was signed.

At their heart, these calculations are not really about dollars and cents. The financial figures just help us keep score of the choices that define us as a nation.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps calls Trump a ‘deceitful American president’, saying his ‘contradictory behaviour will not make us lose sight of the battlefront’.

Keeping and maintaining friends as an adult is hard, especially with the demands of life, travel and work. In volunteering, I encounter more people like myself, which is nice, but sometimes it’s difficult to participate without a lot of commitment to the organizations. I’m wanting to explore smaller, intimate groups to build community with people who I share similar values with. I’m interested in self-growth, psychology, games, mindfulness and yoga. I loved the L.A. Times story “Awaken your inner child at this welcoming collage club for adults” and I would love to know about similar activities. Thanks! —Marlen I.

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Marlen, I couldn’t agree more. As we get older, it can feel more and more difficult to sustain friendships, especially in Los Angeles, where people live so far apart and have busy lives. This struggle is exactly why so many social clubs have been sprouting up in L.A. over the last few years. From board game clubs to junk journaling meetups, there’s so many different ways to connect and maybe try something new. I’ve compiled a list of social clubs and community spaces that I think you’ll enjoy.

Since you’re already familiar with Art+Mind Studios, you should definitely check out Junk Journal Club. Junk journaling is essentially a craft practice that combines elements of collaging, journaling and scrapbooking. With the rise of junk journaling content on social media, the once solo pastime has turned into a lively social scene. Junk Journal Club, dubbed “the original junk journal club,” hosts monthly meetups, which can be found on its Instagram page. When my colleague Malia Mendez went to an event recently, people told her that attending Junk Journal Club “has made befriending strangers easy,” and many of them stay in touch.

Another craft-centered event that’s worth exploring is the Crafters Clubhouse, which founder Victoria Ansah calls “a creative third space for adult makers.” She hosts monthly arts and crafts workshops including activities like scrapbooking, punch needle embroidery and clay art.

Given that you’re interested in yoga and mindfulness, you may like WalkGood LA, a community-centered wellness organization that hosts a variety of activities including a run club and accessible yoga classes. During the pandemic, I found solace in attending their weekly yoga classes called BreatheGood. The outdoor sessions take place every first Sunday at Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and feature free chiropractic adjustments and healthy food vendors. The vibe of the intergenerational event feels warm and welcoming. All you have to do is show up with your yoga mat. The organization also hosts various classes including yoga, breath work, mindful meditation, mat Pilates and step aerobics at their studio, the WalkGood Yard, in Arlington Heights.

Another social club I recommend is Love, Peace & Spades, which my friend Kevin Clark started in 2022, to create a space where people could play the card game with others. With music provided by a live DJ, the monthly game night feels like being at a family cookout. Spades can be extremely intimidating to start as a beginner playing with pros. But don’t worry. Love, Peace & Spades has instructors who can teach you how to play.

If you’re interested in chess, L.A. Chess Club is “an event with the laid-back ease of a chill game night and all the social and romantic possibility of a night out on the town,” according to Times contributor Martine Thompson, who wrote a story about the event. At the weekly gathering, which features a food vendor, cocktails, tattoo artists and DJs, you can “competitively play chess, learn the game, meet new friends or mingle as a single person,” Thompson shares. Another fun event is RummiKlub, a monthly Rummikub game night that takes place in elevated, design-forward spaces across the city.

L.A. also has several fun creative venues that regularly bring people together, such as Junior High, a nonprofit art gallery and inclusive gathering space that hosts artist showcases, comedy nights, pottery workshops and more. There’s also Nina in Atwater, which holds a variety of gatherings including a monthly series that focuses on mindfulness called “Be Here Now: Simple Tools for an Everyday Nervous System Reset.”

I hope that these suggestions are a good starting point for finding the group, or several groups, that are an ideal fit for you. Just by putting yourself out there and being open, you are bound to build and find community. Best of luck on your journey!

Months after awarding the “FIFA Peace Prize” to Donald Trump, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said his organisation “can certainly not solve geopolitical conflicts.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have agreed on specific measures to expedite the implementation of the Washington peace accords. This agreement was reached during meetings held in Washington on March 17 and 18. 

A joint declaration released by both countries and the United States on March 18 outlines these developments. The two parties have outlined a series of coordinated actions aimed at “defusing the tensions” and “pushing forward the situation on the ground”. 

The measures include a mutual agreement to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country, as well as the disengagement of Rwandan forces and the lifting of defensive measures in certain zones of eastern DRC. The authorities in Kinshasa are making some reinforced yet limited attempts to neutralise the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels.

The protection of civilians was reaffirmed as a priority. Both DRC and Rwanda reiterated their commitment to achieving lasting peace in the Great Lakes Region within the context of the Washington Accords.

This announcement comes amid persistent tensions in the eastern DRC. The Kinshasa authorities on Monday praised the sanctions imposed by the United States on the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) and several members of their officers accused of “direct involvement” on the side of the M23 rebels.

According to the Congolese government, these American measures constitute “a clear signal” in favour of the respect of the DRC’s sovereignty and the effective implementation of engagements taken within the context of the Washington Accords. It also insisted on the necessity for “coherence between diplomatic engagements and the operational realities on the ground”.

The government expressed its recognition of the United States’ role in the peace efforts and called for pursuing initiatives to ensure the respect of commitments and the re-establishment of a durable peace in the region.