stands

Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government has reported more strikes by the United States but insists this pressure will not impact its demands to end the war.

Ahmad Nafisi, deputy governor for Hormozgan, where the overnight US strikes hit, confirmed on Monday morning that the southern island of Qeshm was targeted but no residential and commercial areas or vital infrastructure were damaged.

The US did not directly acknowledge the air strikes, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated Washington’s characterisation of similar recent strikes on Qeshm as “defensive”. Previous attacks, the latest of which was acknowledged by President Donald Trump on Friday, have targeted Iranian air defences and radar installations.

Mediators are trying to prevent large-scale US attacks on Iran, which Trump has repeatedly threatened, with talks continuing. But Washington appears unwilling to accept Iran’s seven demands to end the war, which include the lifting of the US blockade on Iran’s southern ports and lifting sanctions on Tehran.

Seven demands

Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday rejected Rubio’s remarks that some of these seven demands were “ridiculous and really not realistic”.

“Iran’s plan is still the most logical plan on the table. I think it can lead to security returning to the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, and create the grounds for a process,” Baghaei said during a news conference in Tehran.

The terms mostly amount to a return to the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in June between Iran and the US. But Tehran now has additional stipulations regarding the future of the Strait of Hormuz.

Baghaei said the US announcement of a reward of up to $20m for information on Iran’s nuclear programme is a ploy by the Trump administration to “convey the sense that the Iranian nuclear issue is still a threat”, after the Republican Party’s heavy defeats in midterm elections.

Tehran says it will not part with its highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under the rubble of facilities bombed by the US and Israel last year. But it is open to downblending the material, which would be needed to build a nuclear bomb.

International inspectors have no access to Iranian nuclear sites, except for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, where the Foreign Ministry said there was a recent visit.

Iran has accused the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director, Rafael Grossi, of stepping out of their technical mandate and creating the grounds for attacks on nuclear facilities during last year’s 12-day war and the current war.

There have been signs of a positive breakthrough in mediation efforts, with reports that Trump and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani will meet in the White House on Monday.

But Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Washington’s biggest objection to the ongoing mediated talks is that Iran is essentially demanding the rewards of an agreement before providing the concessions to justify one.

“Reopening Hormuz within two days sounds accommodating, but it changes the timetable rather than the substance of the bargain,” he told Al Jazeera about the Iranian proposal.

Both the US and Iran’s Arab neighbours would not accept long-term Iranian-approved shipping corridors in the Strait of Hormuz.

Rubio and other officials are also against Iran’s demand for an end to hostilities across the region, as it would restrict Israel’s military freedom of action.

“Iran is going beyond a ceasefire, trying to translate its wartime leverage into a new regional security arrangement on its own terms,” Krieg said.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the country’s military mission in Iran remained unfinished, and threatened Lebanon’s Hezbollah with further territorial losses if it joined an Iranian attack.

Tankers and navigation systems targeted

Iranian authorities continue to warn ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz to refrain from taking “unauthorised” routes or face potential attacks.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesman Hossein Mohebbi rejected the claim by the US that all naval mines have been cleared from the Strait of Hormuz.

“Nobody dares enter the Strait of Hormuz to remove the mines,” he said on Sunday.

Iranian state television reported on Monday that 11 tankers have been attacked over the past 10 days, with four unable to continue transit.

IRGC-affiliated media cited an unnamed IRGC Navy source as claiming on Monday that maritime navigation systems were targeted in the southern areas of the waterway overnight, preventing tankers from transiting as part of the US-coordinated oil shuttle system.

Trump played down the prospects of a return to all-out war with Iran on Sunday, but added that the US military had marked civilian infrastructure like 38 bridges as targets if the war restarts at scale.

Krieg said he expects Tehran to continue its strategy of “controlled escalation” rather than immediate all-out retaliation against the US strikes.

“The new American effort to disrupt Iran’s overland trade will reinforce this strategy. Tehran will increasingly seek to make the Gulf states bear the economic consequences of Washington’s decisions, hoping they will pressure Trump towards compromise,” Krieg said.

“Washington may believe it is conducting a limited campaign of coercion, while Tehran increasingly sees an unrestricted economic war against its survival. At some point, Iran may decide that the costs of continued restraint exceed the risks of escalation.”

He came into the weekend insisting he was going to try to apply the “same mindset as I had all year – one race at a time”.

But on Saturday he acknowledged that this one was a new kind of weekend.

“It does feel a little bit different,” he said. “But the goal stays the same. I just need to keep doing my job. And, actually, I feel like I can enjoy more driving, everything.

“But, of course, we’re going to do the race tomorrow. We’re going to try and win. And then we’ll see what happens. Obviously, I’m in a very good position.”

Antonelli is typically accompanied by his father, Marco, at grands prix, but he said this weekend he had brought other people with him as well to help keep him in the right frame of mind.

“I have a great group of people around me,” he said. “I have a lot of friends here as well, so we enjoy the evenings together.

“We play cards in the evening, so we’re just doing the fun stuff. And that’s what helps, to just relax a little bit and just connect with the mind, and then once you go on track you are back full focus.”

The maths suggest the most likely scenario is that Antonelli will not win the title on Sunday – it would, as he put it on Thursday, require “something catastrophic to happen to the others”.

If this is a bit of an overstatement – Russell and Hamilton would need only to crash together on the first lap, for example – the fundamental truth is real.

Since 2010, Burnley have won promotion to the Premier League on five occasions and of their five subsequent relegations they have bounced back immediately three times – but achieving that for a fourth time is looking increasingly unlikely.

After Scott Parker’s departure towards the end of last season, Nicky Hayen was finally brought in as Burnley’s new head coach less than a month before the new Championship campaign started, after a move for Wales boss Craig Bellamy fell through.

“I think there is an element of sympathy among the fans for Hayen but two things can be true at the same time – you can sympathise and also think he’s out of his depth,” said Joe Redmond, creator and host of the Turfcast podcast., external

“He was brought in after pre-season had started, has been forced to work with some coaches left over from Scott Parker and had his main striker, Zian Flemming, sold from under him on transfer deadline day.

“These are clearly errors from the hierarchy but at the same time he clearly isn’t getting the best out of this squad – I’m sure there’s a decent manager in there somewhere but I don’t think he’s what we need right now.”

A total of 11 new players arrived under Hayen during a busy summer of transfer activity with 10 heading for the exit as the Belgian overhauled the squad.

What has followed has been nothing short of a horror show in the lead up to Halloween.

“I look at that squad and it’s been scattergun,” former Watford and Reading midfielder Jobi McAnuff, now an EFL pundit, told the BBC’s podcast 72+.

“They bounce up [to the Premier League], come down, go up, come down and they haven’t handled that well enough – we all knew Flemming was going but you leave it right until the end of the window and you’re killing the manager.

“Then you get [Jamie] Vardy in. I love him but he’s 39 and you cannot expect him to be your main man all season, he’s going to come on and chip in and be great around the dressing room.”

“At the very minimum we should be battling it out at the top end of the table,” added Redmond.

“This squad has proved it’s not good enough for that so far this season but one coming down from the Premier League should be able to compete, and if it can’t then something has gone seriously wrong.”