united states

Several Iranian officials have stressed that their country is united, rejecting United States President Donald Trump’s claims of a rift in the leadership in Tehran.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf all issued statements rejecting the United States president’s assertion.

Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf joined the Supreme National Security Council in posting the same message on X.

“In Iran, there are no radicals or moderates,” it said.

“We are all ‘Iranian’ and ‘revolutionary’, and with the iron unity of the nation and government, with complete obedience to the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions.”

Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, also shared the statement, adding another note in English.

“Iran is not a land of rifts, but a stronghold of unity,” Aref said. “Our political diversity is our democracy, yet in times of peril, we are a ‘Single Hand’ under one flag. To protect our soil and dignity, we transcend all labels. We are one soul, one nation.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not made a public appearance since replacing his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed by US-Israeli strikes on February 28.

US officials have said that the younger Khamenei was wounded and “disfigured” in the strike that killed his father.

The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing unidentified Iranian officials, that Khamenei is gravely wounded but remains “mentally sharp”.

Trump and his aides have been reiterating daily over the past week that there are major disagreements among Iranian leaders.

The US president claimed that Iranians are “having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is”, alleging that there is “crazy” infighting between “moderates” and “hardliners” in Tehran.

Citing the supposed rift by Trump could serve to justify the extension of the ceasefire while also putting the blame on Iran for the stalled diplomacy.

Tehran, however, has stressed over the past days that the talks – previously scheduled to take place in Pakistan – are not happening due to the US blockade on its country’s ports.

On Thursday, Araghchi dismissed allegations that the Iranian military is at odds with the political leadership.

“The failure of Israel’s terrorist killings is reflected in how Iran’s state institutions continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline,” he wrote on X.

“The battlefield and diplomacy are fully coordinated fronts in the same war. Iranians are all united, more than ever before.”

diplomatic impasse with the US, with Trump suggesting that he is comfortable with the status quo of blockading Iran’s ports to inflict economic pain on the country without resuming the war or rushing towards a conclusive deal.

“Iran’s Navy is lying at the bottom of the Sea, their Air Force is demolished, their Anti-Aircraft and Radar Weaponry is gone, their leaders are no longer with us, the Blockade is airtight and strong and, from there, it only gets worse — Time is not on their side!” Trump said on social media on Thursday.

“A Deal will only be made when it’s appropriate and good for the United States of America, our Allies and, in fact, the rest of the World.”

But the truce under the status quo remains tenuous. Air defences were activated over Tehran earlier on Thursday, but there has been no official confirmation of an attack against the country.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump said the US military will “shoot and kill” Iranian laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which could spark a response

And oil prices are once again rising due to the uncertainty and the double blockade in the Gulf – Iran closing down Hormuz and the US naval siege on Iranian ports.

Israel also appears ready to rejoin the war. Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday his country is awaiting the green light from Trump to return Iran to the “age of darkness”.

“Israel is prepared to renew the war against Iran. The [Israeli military] is ready in defence and offence, and the targets are marked,” Katz said, according to the Times of Israel newspaper.

As the US expands its war with Iran, opposition is growing – not just among the public, but inside the military itself. Some service members are questioning orders, exploring conscientious objection, and speaking out. What’s driving this shift, and how far could it go?

In this episode: 

• Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner), Executive Director of the Center on Conscience & War

Episode credits: 

This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolomé, Tamara Khandaker, and Sarí El-Khalili with Spencer Cline, Tuleen Barakat, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker and Noor Wazwaz. 

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer.

Connect with us:

@AJEPodcasts on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

Published on 23/04/2026 – 17:09 GMT+2•Updated
17:41

French liberal MEP Christophe Grudler told Euronews the Commission’s proposed European preference, once adopted, covering public procurement in strategic sectors such as clean tech, cars and energy-intensive industries (aluminium and steel) should be limited to a core group of non-EU countries.

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The “Made in Europe” provisions of the so-called “Industrial Accelerator Act” have triggered a fierce political battle between supporters, led by Germany and Nordic countries, of a broad definition including “like-minded” partners, and those, led by France, pushing for a narrower approach.

In its proposal unveiled on 4 March, the Commission leaned towards the broader interpretation.

“The Commission’s option is very poor. It reflects a completely outdated view of trade policy,” Grudler said, adding, “When the Americans introduced the Buy American Act, they didn’t worry about whether it would strain ties with Europe. At some point, we need to stop being naive.”

The MEP is set to be one of the lead negotiators on the proposed new rulesin the European Parliament as talks begin shortly.

The European preference aims to counter foreign competition, notably from the US and China. The Commission proposes excluding non-EU countries depending on how open they are to the EU taking part in their procurement markets as well as existing trade agreements.

Geography should prevail, Grudler said

But Grudler argues geography should be the guiding principle, limiting “Made in Europe” to countries closest to the EU — first and foremost the European Economic Area: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Switzerland could also be “a good candidate”, he said.

“Switzerland has had a public procurement agreement since 1989. It is a bilateral agreement stating that all European companies have access to the Swiss public procurement market, and that all Swiss companies have access to the European public procurement market. It is therefore a rather good candidate.”

The UK could also be considered to some extent, but “conditions will need to be examined” following Brexit, he added. “There is also a point where Europe has to make sure it comes out financially ahead.”

He wants the law to send “a strong signal” to investors backing key EU industries, “particularly energy-intensive sectors and clean technologies.”

“It is another step in Europe’s resilience against unfair competition from other continents.”

However China has voiced strong opposition to the Commission proposal, seen in Beijing as restricting its access to EU procurement and investment.

“This legislation is Europe standing firm for its strategic industries,” Grudler said.

“China has overcapacities in cars or in steel. They are relying on the naivety of Europeans to do business, to generate double-digit growth again, and then to invest in research and development and get ahead on everything, all the while cheating through direct subsidies to destroy our industries.”

Washington, DC – The latest battle in United States congressional redistricting has been decided, with voters in Virginia approving redrawing the state’s electoral map.

The result of Tuesday’s referendum on Virginia redistricting is widely expected to benefit Democrats in their fight to retake control of the slimly Republican-controlled US House of Representatives in the midterm vote in November.

While redistricting is typically conducted every 10 years, following the US Census count of the country’s population, the election season has seen an unprecedented flurry of states moving to redraw their legislative maps early, initially spurred by pressure on US President Donald Trump to urge his fellow Republicans in Texas to do the same.

Democrats may be up at the moment, but several scenarios – including a redistricting push in Florida – could soon spoil those gains.

Experts, meanwhile, warn of the long-term implications of the election season’s norm-busting political manoeuvres, which they say could transform how and when electoral maps are drawn for years to come.

“Virginia’s unorthodox redistricting isn’t just a map redraw, it’s a mid-decade power play in a national arms race,” Rina Shah, a political adviser and strategist, told Al Jazeera.

“In a cycle defined by retaliation over reform, this sets a precedent: when one side bends the rules, the other follows, until courts or voters draw the final line.”

Democrats gain – for now

Trump has not been timid about his desire to redraw state congressional maps to benefit his Republican Party.

In July 2025, he confirmed the plan to reporters: “Texas would be the biggest one,” he said. “Just a very simple redrawing, we pick up five seats.”

By August, Texas’s Republican-controlled State House had passed a new map favouring Republicans, setting the party on course to secure five more seats in the US House of Representatives compared to the earlier map.

The move was soon followed by changes in Missouri, whose new maps are expected to net Republicans one additional seat, while redistricting in North Carolina and Ohio is expected to give the party two to three new Republican-dominated districts.

Democrats in several states responded in kind, pushing for redistricting in California and Utah that resulted in about six new Democrat-dominated districts. Virginia’s victory largely neutralised Republican gains, adding between two and four seats for Democrats.

“This could shift Virginia from a 6-5 split to something like 10-1 Democratic,” political adviser Shah said, referring to Virginia’s 11 congressional districts and noting this would result in “delivering up to four net seats and dramatically tightening the fight for House control in the 2026 midterms”.

This comes as Republicans are already expected to face a punishing election season, with wariness over the US-Israeli war in Iran and the stubbornly high cost of living in the US.

Democratic control of either chamber of Congress – or of both – would give the party the ability to largely curtail Trump’s agenda in the final two years of his presidency.

As of Wednesday, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a midterm predictor published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, rated 217 Congressional districts across the country as leaning towards Democrats, with 205 leaning towards Republicans and 13 rated toss-ups.

Good for Democrats, ‘terrible’ for democracy

In the short term, Democrats are “winning” from the redistricting battle, according to Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University who runs the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

“But from a non-partisan good government standpoint, it’s just a terrible event,” Wang told Al Jazeera.

He explained the “incredible” flurry of redistricting in recent months opens the possibility of a new age of heightened gerrymandering, the process by which congressional boundaries are drawn to benefit one political group.

Prior to this election cycle, there had been just three instances of mid-decade redistricting over the last five decades. Wang described the recent spurt as a “complete busting of norms”.

“It’s bad in the sense of reducing competition. Gerrymandering on both sides, basically, removes voters from the equation everywhere it happens,” he said.

Top Democrats have largely argued their hands were forced in mirroring the Republican strategy, rather than yield to the opposing party ahead of a consequential election.

“We fought back,” Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, told the Associated Press after Virginia’s vote. “When they go low, we hit back hard.”

But some Democrats have echoed concerns over the new precedent being set.

John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who has regularly sided with Republicans, told Newsmax on Wednesday, “Whether it’s a red state or whether it’s a blue state, our democracy is degraded.”

Attention turns to Florida

To be sure, while opportunities for further redistricting are diminishing following the vote in Virginia, the final congressional maps ahead of the midterms may not yet be set.

The Virginia vote now shifts pressure on Republicans in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is set to hold a special legislative session on April 28 to discuss possible redistricting.

A new map could add up to five Republican-dominated congressional districts in the state, but could be scuttled by strict language in Florida’s constitution related to the process.

Democrat Jeffries, in a statement on Wednesday, vowed to surge resources to the state to take down Republican incumbents if the map is redrawn. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,” he pledged.

Several challenges to Virginia’s redistricting ballot measure are also currently being heard before the state’s Supreme Court, which could hinder the implementation of the new map.

Trump on Wednesday decried the Virginia vote as “rigged”, without providing any evidence to back up the claim.

Meanwhile, a case pending before the US Supreme Court could beckon in another slate of redistricting in the US South.

In Louisiana v Callais, the justices will determine whether the creation of two Black-majority congressional districts is in line with the Voting Rights Act, which seeks to assure minority representation in states with a history of racist election policies.

A ruling could open the door to redrawing maps in several states that would have previously been banned due to so-called “racial gerrymandering”, a process of drawing congressional lines based on racial makeup to dilute the electoral power of a minority group.

A pathway to reform?

A handful of states have created independent commissions to oversee redistricting, in an effort to assure the process remains non-partisan.

But the vast majority rely on their state legislatures to draw the maps, which can lead to outsized influence over the party in control, barring legal challenges. That largely remains true whether redistricting is conducted every decade or, as the current election season could portend, more frequently.

But amid the current cavalcade of congressional map changes, Princeton’s Wang, who is himself running in the Democratic primary for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th district, sees a rare opportunity for federal reform.

That could take the form of Congress creating independent commissions to oversee redistricting.

“Now that mid-decade redistricting is backfiring on Republicans, it creates the possibility that both parties can see clearly that gerrymandering is a zero-sum game,” Wang said.

“It opens a path for possible bipartisan action.”

Two cabinet-level ministers in Peru have resigned after interim President Jose Maria Balcazar announced he would defer a decision to buy F-16 fighter jets from the United States company Lockheed Martin.

Defence Minister Carlos Diaz and Foreign Minister Hugo de Zela cited their opposition to the move in their resignation letters on Wednesday.

“A strategic decision has been taken in the area of national security with which I have a fundamental disagreement,” Diaz wrote.

The fighter jets have long been a source of controversy in Peru, where critics have questioned whether the purchase is a sign of deference to US President Donald Trump.

Last week, the left-wing Balcazar — Peru’s ninth president in a decade — announced he would leave the decision about whether to invest $3.5bn in the purchase to the country’s next elected leader.

Balcazar himself had only been in office since February, selected by Congress to replace the latest in a string of impeached presidents.

Last week, he abruptly cancelled a signing ceremony for the F-16 deal, which would have seen an initial batch of 12 new planes added to Peru’s ageing air force. The country aims to acquire 24 jets overall.

Balcazar explained he was not pulling out of the deal, but that he felt the next presidential administration should be involved in making such a hefty financial commitment.

“For us to commit such a large sum of money to the incoming government would be a poor practice for a transitional government,” Balcazar said at the time.

“We remain firm in respecting all agreements that may have been reached at the level of the armed forces, or in this case, with the relevant ministry of the air force, to carry out the corresponding negotiations.”

His decision, however, was met with pushback, both domestically and from the US. The US ambassador to Peru, Bernie Navarro, responded on April 17 with a warning posted on social media.

“If you deal with the U.S. in bad faith and undermine U.S. interests, rest assured, I, on behalf of
[President] Trump and his administration, will use every available tool to protect and promote the prosperity and security of the United States and our region,” Navarro wrote.

Critics of the deal, however, have argued that Peru has received more competitive offers from French and Swedish aircraft makers like Dassault Aviation and Saab AB, respectively.

But Navarro on Wednesday denied that the US had been outcompeted. In a statement, he wrote that the “bid was made at a high level of competitiveness” and called the plane fleet “the most technically advanced fighter jets ever built”.

He also denounced the delay as an unreasonable stoppage on a deal he characterised as already signed.

“In planning the delivery of a product of this calibre, there is no such thing as an inconsequential delay,” he wrote.

“Every delay results in significant costs. The same package cannot be available in a couple of months, or even weeks.”

The decision to spend the $3.5bn on 24 fighter jets was made in 2024 under former President Dina Boluarte. The purchase was to be financed by $2bn in domestic borrowing in 2025 and $1.5bn in 2026.

In September, the US Department of Defense approved a potential sale of F-16s to Peru.

But Boluarte was removed from office in October, and her successor, Jose Jeri, lasted just four months in office before he too was impeached.

The instability in Peru’s presidency comes at a time when the Trump administration is seeking greater influence over Latin America, as part of what the US president has called his “Donroe Doctrine”.

Already, the Trump administration has pushed Peru to distance itself from Chinese investment. In February, for instance, it publicly protested against Chinese ownership in the Pacific port of Chancay.

“Peru could be powerless to oversee Chancay, one of its largest ports, which is under the jurisdiction of predatory Chinese owners,” the Trump administration wrote in a social media post.

“We support Peru’s sovereign right to oversee critical infrastructure in its own territory. Let this be a cautionary tale for the region and the world: cheap Chinese money costs sovereignty.”

Just this week, one of Trump’s allies, Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, warned that the Chinese-owned port was a danger to the US.

“That’s a direct threat in our hemisphere, right in the country of Peru,” she told a congressional committee. “For that reason, the new Peruvian government, which will be elected next June, must take it back.”

She added that, if the Peruvian government responded accordingly, “the United States will help them under the Trump administration”.

The country, however, is enmeshed in a messy presidential race replete with vote-counting delays and accusations of malpractice.

Election experts have said there is no evidence of voter fraud. But the slow vote count has left the race’s outcome undetermined, more than a week after the ballots were cast on April 12.

Right-wing leader and former First Lady Keiko Fujimori is all but assured of progressing to a run-off in June. But who will join her is uncertain.

Left-wing Congress member Roberto Sanchez is currently in the lead in the race for second place, with 12 percent of the votes tallied, but far-right candidate Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a former mayor, is close behind with 11.9 percent. Lopez Aliaga has been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration.

The final vote count for the first round of the election is expected to be delivered in May.

Traditionally, Peru’s new president should be sworn in on July 28, the country’s independence day.

Rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of using third-country deportations to intimidate asylum seekers and migrants.

Fifteen South American migrants and asylum seekers recently deported from the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) say they are facing pressure to return to their countries of origin, despite concerns for their safety.

Women from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador told the Reuters news agency that, since being deported to the Central African nation last week, they have been given no credible options other than going back to their home countries.

“We feel pressured to agree to go back to our country, regardless of the risks,” a 29-year-old Colombian woman, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisals, told Reuters.

The group arrived in the DRC last week as part of a controversial third-country agreement with the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Since returning to the presidency for a second term, Trump has implemented hardline measures to restrict immigration to the US and expel immigrants already in the country, some of whom have legal status.

Among the 15 South Americans who were deported to the DRC, some say they had sought asylum — a legal immigration process — in the US after fleeing persecution in their home countries.

The 29-year-old woman, for example, wrote in her asylum application in January 2024 that she left Colombia after being kidnapped and tortured by an armed group, as well as suffering abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, who was a police officer.

A US immigration judge ruled in May 2025 that she was more likely than not to be tortured if she was sent home, according to court records reviewed by Reuters.

The AFP news agency also reported that a 30-year-old Colombian woman named Gabriela only learned that she was being sent to the DRC a day before last week’s flight. During a 27-hour trip, the hands and feet of the deportees were shackled.

“I didn’t want to go to Congo,” she told AFP. “I’m scared; I don’t know the language.”

Immigration advocates have said that third-country deportations are an effort to intimidate migrants and asylum seekers into agreeing to leave the US.

Such removals involve sending immigrants to places with which they have no familiarity. Many, including the DRC, are known for human rights concerns or are sites of active conflict.

“The goal is clear: Put people in a place so unfamiliar that they give up and agree to return home, despite the immense risk they face there,” said Alma David, a US-based lawyer representing one of the asylum seekers in the DRC.

WASHINGTON — Iranian forces attacked three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, stoking an already tense standoff in the Persian Gulf as a U.S. naval blockade strains Tehran’s economy and pressures its divided leadership to return to peace talks.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it seized two ships and damaged a third after the vessels “ignored repeated warnings.” British maritime monitors confirmed the incidents, describing one cargo ship left disabled in the water and another that took heavy damage to its bridge.

“Disrupting order and safety in the Strait of Hormuz is considered a red line for Iran,” the Iranian Navy Command said in a statement.

Hours before, President Trump confirmed he would maintain the naval blockade in the gulf, but agreed to give Iranian leaders additional time to agree on a new peace proposal, he wrote in a Truth Social post.

“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” Trump wrote Tuesday.

More than a dozen American warships have prevented exports from leaving Iranian ports since peace talks in Islamabad failed earlier this month. The tactic has greatly constrained Iranian oil exports — about 90% of which flow through the Strait of Hormuz — contributing to rising inflationary pressure.

The restrictions could wipe out roughly $435 million in daily economic activity, according to Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Oil exports, Tehran’s primary revenue source, have halted. At the same time, Iran has been unable to import food or industrial goods. As a result, the blockade is expected to empty Iran’s war coffers and sharply accelerate inflationary effects on its people.

Trump is betting that the strategy will force Iran’s fractured negotiating team — which appears to be split between parliamentary moderates and hard-liners within the Revolutionary Guard — to agree on a “unified” peace proposal.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday the president extended the ceasefire agreement to allow Iran to get their “act together,” and emphasized that Trump has not given Iran a “firm deadline” to respond yet.

“President Trump will ultimately dictate the timeline and he will do so when he feels it is in the best interest of the United States and the American people,” Leavitt told reporters.

Though she declined to specify who the administration is negotiating with in Iran, Leavitt said the president was “generously offering a bit of flexibility” to the regime so that they can come up with a unified response.

“This is a battle between the pragmatists and the hard-liners in Iran right now,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House.

That division was visible earlier this week when plans for a second round of talks in Islamabad collapsed after Iranian officials failed to confirm participation and instead introduced new preconditions under pressure from hard-line factions.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Bagher Ghalibaf initially signaled a willingness to attend talks, but was overshadowed by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, who insisted that the United States lift its blockade before discussions could begin. A report by the Institute for the Study of War said Vahidi sought to derail negotiations rather than secure meaningful economic relief.

“One challenge with the ongoing negotiations is the divided nature of Iran’s negotiating team,” the report said, adding that “[Trump’s] reference to a ‘unified’ proposal appears to imply that previous proposals were not unified in some way.”

And while hard-liners continue attempts to derail diplomacy with continued demands and attacks in the strait, moderates in Iran continue to push for peace.

This week, prominent Sunni cleric Moulana Abdol Hamid called a “fair agreement” the only viable path forward and warned that those who seek to block negotiations would bear responsibility for the “homeland’s devastation.”

Benjamin Radd, a political scientist at UCLA who studies Iran, said the dispute is a sign of a larger power struggle for control of Tehran’s government.

“There are clear divisions within the leadership,” Radd said in an interview. “Right now, it’s the IRGC faction that has all the power. They have the guns, they have the weapons. What they don’t have is the diplomatic connections and experience dealing with the United States.”

Radd pointed to the economic toll of the U.S. blockade as a key driver of tension inside Iran.

“They’re facing a huge domestic crisis,” he said. “They’re not able to replenish their own needs. Nothing can get in or out of the country. They can’t make any money.”

The consequences of the U.S. strategy could push the more moderate Iranian leaders to strike a deal on nuclear enrichment or a reopening of the strait in exchange for the United States lifting the blockade, Radd said.

“That would start rebuilding some sort of trust,” Radd said. “And then we’re seeing the IRGC is basically steadfast, refusing to do any of this.”

With renewed Israeli attacks in Lebanon killing at least three people Wednesday, despite a 10-day ceasefire agreement, Iranian leaders are preparing for the possibility that talks with the United States will fail altogether.

“Iran has prepared for a new phase of fighting,” the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported this week, citing military redeployments and updated target lists.

Meanwhile, Iranian Judiciary Chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei warned that renewed U.S. or Israeli strikes were likely. Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei made a similar statement in a news briefing Wednesday. He announced the country’s armed forces were “on high alert” and ready to defend against any threat, while being open to Pakistan’s mediation efforts.

He did not confirm if the government was participating in a second round of negotiations.

“Diplomacy is a tool for ensuring national interests and security,” he said, “and we will take the necessary steps whenever we conclude that the necessary and logical grounds exist to use this tool to achieve national interests.”

Until then, it appears both Washington and Tehran will continue brinkmanship in the strait.

On Wednesday morning, the IRGC released a statement confirming it seized the two cargo ships and identified them as the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas. It claimed the MSC Francesca was linked to Israel and accused both of “jeopardizing maritime security by operating without necessary permits and tampering with navigation systems.”

A third ship, the Euphoria, which sails under the Panamanian flag and is owned by a company based in the United Arab Emirates, was fired upon early Wednesday while heading east out of the Strait of Hormuz, according to Vanguard, a maritime intelligence firm.

The Euphoria later resumed sailing toward the Gulf of Oman, according to Lloyd’s List.

In Lebanon, Amal Khalil became the fourth journalist killed by Israeli fire since hostilities with the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah intensified on March 2.

Khalil’s body was reported to have been found under the rubble of a house where she and freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj were sheltering, according to their colleagues.

Khalil and Faran were in the southern Lebanese town of Al-Tayri, covering developments there when an Israeli attack targeted the vehicle in front of them, killing its occupants.

The two journalists then sheltered in a house but were hit by Israeli fire once more, according to a statement from the Lebanese Health Ministry.

When Red Cross crews scrambled to the area to rescue the trapped journalists, they were targeted with a sound bomb and machine-gun fire.

The Israeli military said it was not preventing rescue teams from reaching the area and that the incident was under review. It acknowledged targeting a vehicle it said had come out of a structure used by Hezbollah and was heading toward Israeli troops.

The Red Cross reached the house by the early evening local time, and rescued Faraj, who is reported to be in stable condition after undergoing surgery for a head wound, according to her colleagues.

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

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the federal government was not informed about the inclusion of CIA officers in an operation targeting a drug lab in the country’s north, adding that she is demanding answers from the US ambassador and state officials.

Tehran says all necessary arrangements has been made for participation in the tournament cohosted by the US.

Iran says that the country’s institutions are fully prepared for its national football team’s participation in the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

In a statement made to state broadcaster IRIB, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Wednesday that the Ministry of Youth and Sports ensured all necessary arrangements for the team’s effective participation in the tournament.

She also said the preparations were made under the directive of the sport minister, with a focus on providing the required facilities for a successful performance.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said on April 16 that Iran is expected to participate in the upcoming World Cup, taking place from June 11 to July 19, noting that the team has qualified and expressed its willingness to compete despite the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.

“But Iran has to come, they represent their people, they have qualified, the players want to play,” he said of the Iranian team’s upcoming matches scheduled in the United States in June.

“Sports should be outside of politics,” Infantino said.

Group matches in the US

US President Donald Trump said in March that while Iran’s team would be welcome at the tournament, he questioned whether it would be appropriate for them to attend, citing concerns over their “life and safety”.

Iran is scheduled to play its three Group G matches in the United States – two in Los Angeles, one in Seattle – with their base for the tournament in Tucson, Arizona.

Iran’s participation in the global tournament being cohosted by the three North American countries had been thrown into doubt by the conflict launched by the United States and Israel on February 28.

Iran raised the prospect of a “boycott” of the competition before asking FIFA to move its matches from the United States to Mexico, a request the world governing body rejected.

After several weeks of air strikes on Iran and Iranian reprisals against Israel and other countries in the region, a fragile truce came into effect on April 8.

The announcement of the two-week ceasefire was followed by rare direct talks in Islamabad on April 11–12, which ended without an agreement. The ceasefire was later extended by the US as diplomatic efforts continue.

The World Cup, the first to feature 48 teams, starts on June 11.

United States President Donald Trump has described the Iranian leadership as “seriously fractured” as he announced an extension to a ceasefire.

Trump said on Tuesday that the ceasefire would be extended to allow more time for negotiations and appeared to be suggesting that Iran’s leadership is in disarray.

He added that the US naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports would remain in place.

Three weeks ago, Trump claimed the US military campaign had succeeded in its goal of forcing a change in Iran’s government and the US was now dealing with “a whole new set of people” in charge of the country.

On April 11, Iran sent a delegation led by parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, to begin talks with the US.

So is Iran’s government “fractured”? We take a look at the key Iranian stakeholders and power centres in Iran and how their approach to US negotiations may differ.

Who are the key figures in Iran, and are they ‘fractured’ over talks with the US?

Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei

Khamenei is the second son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran on the first day of the war on February 28. Mojtaba Khamenei was selected as Iran’s new supreme leader on March 8, according to state media reports.

The 56-year old has never run for office or been elected but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of his father, cultivating deep ties with the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Observers said the younger Khamenei’s ascension is a clear sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment have retained power and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations with the US in the short term.

Since his ascension, however, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public. On March 13, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed Iran’s new supreme leader had been wounded in US-Israeli strikes.

An April 11, a Reuters news agency report that quoted three people close to the supreme leader’s inner circle said Khamenei was still recovering from severe facial and leg injuries suffered in the air strike that killed his father. The sources were quoted as saying he was taking part in meetings with senior officials through audioconferencing.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify these claims.

According to state media reports, Khamenei has been active in making decisions on the war.

In a message read on Iranian state TV on April 18, Khamenei warned that the Iranian navy was ready to inflict “new bitter defeats” on the US and Israel as tensions escalated in the Strait of Hormuz.

Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Ghalibaf, 64, has served as Iran’s parliamentary speaker since 2020.

He was commander of the IRGC air force from 1997 to 2000. After that, he served as the country’s police chief. From 2005 to 2017, he was the mayor of Tehran.

Ghalibaf stood in elections for president in 2005, 2013, 2017 and 2024. He withdrew his bid for president before the election in 2017 when Hassan Rouhani won a second term.

Last month in the early days of the US-Israel war on Iran, it was suggested that Ghalibaf was the Trump administration’s “pick” to lead the country after the war ended. He has also been the main Iranian official leading negotiations with Washington since they began on April 11 in Pakistan.

In an overnight post on X on Tuesday, Ghalibaf wrote that Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire ended this week without a deal.

Ghalibaf expressed anger at Trump for “imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire”.

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he said.

The ceasefire was supposed to have ended on Wednesday, but shortly before its expiration, Trump extended it until Iran “can come up with a unified proposal”.

Within Iran, however, Ghalibaf’s willingness to engage in negotiations with the US has been criticised by some people who have accused him of “betrayal”.

According to a report on Monday by the Iran International TV channel, some critics of Ghalibaf have said on social media platforms in Iran that the parliamentary speaker’s suggestion that peace talks with the US were progressing was “worrying”.

“There is no good in negotiation except harm,” one critic said.

But Ghalibaf has defended undertaking negotiations with the US. In a televised interview on Saturday, he said diplomacy does not mean “a withdrawal from Iran’s demands” but is a way to “consolidate military gains and translate them into political outcomes and lasting peace”.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Iran’s military power structure is often described as opaque and complex.

The nation operates parallel armies, multiple intelligence services and layered command structures, all of which answer directly to the supreme leader, who serves as the commander in chief of all the armed forces.

The parallel armies comprise the Artesh, Iran’s regular army, which is responsible for territorial defence, defence of Iran’s airspace and conventional warfare, and the IRGC, whose role goes beyond defence and includes protecting Iran’s political structure.

The IRGC also controls Iran’s airspace and drone arsenal, which has become the backbone of Iran’s deterrence strategy against attacks by Israel and the US.

After the US and Israel struck Iran and killed Ali Khamenei, the IRGC promised revenge and launched what it called “the heaviest offensive operations in the history of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic against occupied lands [a reference to Israel] and the bases of American terrorists”. Since then, it has struck US military assets and infrastructure across the Gulf region.

Some experts said Iranian officials negotiating with the US are more closely aligned with the IRGC than other leaders and groups.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on March 25, Babak Vahdad, a political analyst specialising in Iran, noted that Iran’s appointment of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council suggested Iranian negotiations would become more tightly aligned with the IRGC’s priorities. Zolghadr is a former IRGC commander and has been secretary of the advisory Expediency Council since 2023.

But Javad Heiran-Nia, who directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, said a divide between the IRGC and Iran’s negotiating team was plain to see.

Iran has attacked three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz since Trump announced the ceasefire on April 6 and said the US naval blockade will remain.

“The attack on tankers during the ceasefire demonstrates the IRGC’s dominance over the diplomatic team and its disregard for their positions,” he told Al Jazeera.

Paydari Front

Heiran-Nia pointed to the role of the Paydari Front (Steadfastness Front), whose members are hardliners within Iran’s political structure who are deeply committed to preserving the original principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution and the absolute power of the supreme leader. This group, he said, has been using the negotiations to cement its position within the power structure and among its support base.

He added that the Paydari Front has also been questioning the negotiations.

“In Iran’s current political climate, various groups are trying to raise their weight, both within the power structure and in public opinion. Of course, the Paydari Front’s efforts are more meaningful in relation to their own support base rather than trying to influence other segments of society because their hardline approach holds no appeal for other social classes,” he said.

The influence this group could have over the progress of talks is debatable, however, he added.

“If a deal is reached, it will likely have a sovereign character. The establishment will impose its own narrative, and the IRGC will accept it. In the meantime, the hardliners will attack the administration of [President] Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf over the deal. However, it is unlikely that this will spread to the decision-making body of the establishment,” he added.

United States President Donald Trump has claimed that a new nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the US withdrew from in 2018 during his first term.

On Tuesday, Trump extended the two-week ceasefire with Iran a day before it was set to expire, with hopes for a second round of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Key among the US demands is that Iran stop all enrichment of uranium.

Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is for civilian use only, such as for power generation, which requires uranium enrichment of between 3 percent and 5 percent. To build nuclear weapons, uranium needs to be enriched to 90 percent.

In this explainer, we visualise what uranium is, how it is enriched and how long it could take Iran to make a nuclear weapon.

What is uranium, and which countries have it?

Uranium is a dense metal used as a fuel in nuclear reactors and weapons. It is naturally radioactive and usually found in low concentrations in rocks, soil and even seawater. About 90 percent of the world’s uranium is produced in just five countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia and Uzbekistan. Reserves of uranium have also been found in other countries.

Uranium is extracted either by digging it out of the ground or, more commonly, through a chemical process that dissolves uranium from within the rock.

Before it can be used as nuclear fuel, uranium is processed through several different forms, including:

• Yellowcake: Mined ore is crushed and treated with chemicals to form a coarse powder known as yellowcake, which, irrespective of its name, is usually dark green or charcoal in colour, depending on how hot it has been treated.
• Uranium tetrafluoride: Yellowcake is then treated with hydrogen fluoride gas, which turns it into emerald-green crystals known as uranium tetrafluoride or green salt.
• Uranium hexafluoride: Green salt is further fluorinated to create a solid white crystal known as uranium hexafluoride. When heated slightly, this crystal turns into a gas, making it ready for enrichment.
• Uranium dioxide: The gas is spun in a centrifuge machine, which chemically converts it into a fine, black powder.
• Fuel pellets: The black powder is pressed to form black ceramic pellets, which can then be used in a nuclear reactor.

How is uranium enriched?

Natural uranium exists in three forms, called isotopes. They are the same element, with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.

Most naturally occurring uranium (99.3 percent) is U-238 – the heaviest and least radioactive – while about 0.7 percent is U-235 and trace amounts (0.005 percent) are U-234.

To generate energy, scientists separate the lighter, more radioactive U-235 from the slightly heavier U-238 in a process called uranium enrichment. U-235 can sustain a nuclear chain reaction while U-238 cannot.

To enrich uranium, it must first be converted into a gas, known as uranium hexafluoride (UF₆). This gas is fed into a series of fast-spinning cylinders called centrifuges. These cylinders spin at extremely high speeds (often more than 1,000 revolutions per second). The spinning force pushes the heavier U-238 to the outer walls, while the lighter U-235 stays in the centre and is collected.

A single centrifuge provides only a tiny amount of separation. To reach higher concentrations – or “enrichment” – the process is repeated through a series of centrifuges, called a cascade, until the desired concentration of U-235 is achieved.

What are the different levels of uranium enrichment?

The higher the U‑235 percentage, the more highly enriched the uranium is.

Small amounts (3-5 percent) are enough to fuel nuclear power reactors, while weapons require much higher enrichment levels (about 90 percent).

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) considers anything below 20 percent to be low-enriched uranium (LEU), while anything above 20 percent is considered highly-enriched uranium (HEU).

Low enriched – less than 20 percent

• Commercial grade – 3-5 percent: This is the standard fuel for the vast majority of the world’s nuclear power plants
• Small modular reactors – 5-19.9 percent: Used in more modern reactors and advanced research reactors

Highly enriched – More than 20 percent

• Research grade – 20-85 percent: Used in specialised research reactors to produce medical isotopes or to test materials
• Weapons grade – above 90 percent: This is the level required for most nuclear weapons
• Naval grade – 93-97 percent: Used in the nuclear reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers

Depleted uranium, which contains less than 0.3 percent U‑235, is the leftover product after enrichment. It can be used for radiation shielding or as projectiles in armour‑piercing weapons.

How long does it take to enrich uranium?

The effort it takes to enrich uranium is not linear, meaning it is much more difficult to go from 0.7 percent natural uranium to 20 percent LEU than it is to go from 20 percent to 90 percent HEU. Once uranium reaches 60 percent enrichment, it becomes much quicker to reach 90 percent weapons grade.

The effort it takes to enrich uranium is measured in separative work units (SWU).

According to the IAEA, Iran is believed to have about 440kg (970lbs) of uranium enriched to 60 percent – enough to theoretically build 10 or 11 low-technology atomic bombs if refined to 90 percent.

Ted Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Al Jazeera that before the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow, the country had at least 10 cascades of 174 IR-6 centrifuges in operation – meaning 1,740 IR-6 centrifuges.

The IR-6 is one of Iran’s most advanced centrifuge models. The country also has tens of thousands of older centrifuges.

Little is known about the conditions of these centrifuges or the stocks of uranium hexafluoride, which are still believed to be buried underground.

Postol has calculated that Iran’s cascade of centrifuges could produce 900 to 1,000 SWUs annually.

“Getting from natural uranium to 60 percent enrichment, which Iran has already achieved, takes roughly five years, and about 5,000 SWUs using Iran’s cascades.”

“If I want to go from 60 to 90 percent, I only need 500 SWUs. So, instead of five years, [by] starting with the 60 percent here, this might take me four or five weeks. Because I am already very enriched,” Postol said.

Using an analogy of a clock, Postol explained: “Let’s say it takes seven minutes to get 33 percent enrichment, and then eight minutes to get to 50 percent enrichment. It only takes me one minute to get to total [90 percent] enrichment.”

How easy would it be for Iran to build a nuclear weapon?

Postol said Iran’s stockpile is held underground, meaning a military strike would not necessarily eliminate the nuclear threat.

A single centrifuge cascade capable of enriching weapons-grade uranium could take up “no more floor space than a studio apartment, making it easily hidden in a small laboratory”, he said, estimating the area at 60sq metres (600sq feet).

“A single Prius Compact Hybrid car can produce enough electric power to run four or more of these cascades at a time,” Postol added, meaning “Iran can covertly convert its 60 percent uranium into weapons-grade uranium metal”.

“What they have done is put themselves in a position where anybody who thinks about attacking them with nuclear weapons has to know that they could be sitting in those tunnels after such an attack, refining [and] enriching the final step they need to build atomic weapons and converting it to metal, and building a nuclear weapon, and that they have the means to deliver it,” Postol said.

“They would have all of the technical equipment they need to build the atomic weapons. And they have the missiles, which are also in the tunnels and can be manufactured in addition to what they already have. And the atomic weapon would not need to be tested, because uranium weapons do not need to be tested before they’re used.”

What does the NPT say about enrichment?

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), established in 1968, is a landmark international agreement aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Iran is a signatory to this pact.

The treaty supports the right of all signatories to access nuclear technology and enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, including energy, medical or industrial purposes, with precise safeguards to ensure it is not diverted to make weapons.

Under the NPT, nuclear-weapon states agree not to transfer nuclear weapons or assist non-nuclear-weapon states in developing them. Non-nuclear-weapon states also agree not to seek or acquire nuclear weapons.

Despite this, most nuclear powers are currently modernising their arsenals rather than dismantling them.

Most of the countries are signatories, except five: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan and North Korea.

What agreements has Iran made about its nuclear programme in the past?

In 2015, under the Obama administration, Iran struck a deal with six world powers — China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US — plus the European Union, known as the JCPOA.

Under the pact, Tehran agreed to scale down its nuclear programme, capping enrichment to 3.67 percent, in exchange for relief from sanctions.

“The Iranians agreed to it, and they were following the treaty. There was no problem with the treaty at all, absolutely no problem,” Postol said.

“They were allowed to have 6,000 centrifuges, which, if they had natural uranium, they could probably build a bomb within a year if they were secretly using these centrifuges, but that was all under inspection. They were just simply going to enrich to 3.67 percent, which is for a power reactor. They’re allowed to do that by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

But in 2018, Trump pulled out of the deal, calling it “one-sided” and reimposing sanctions on Iran. Iran responded by eventually resuming enrichment at Fordow.

After the US killed Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran stated it would no longer follow the set uranium enrichment limits.

Former President Joe Biden made attempts to revive the deal, but it never came to fruition due to disagreements over whether sanctions should be lifted first or Iran should rejoin the JCPOA first.

Trump has repeatedly said Iran should not have the ability to produce nuclear weapons. It has been one of Washington’s red lines during talks with Iranian officials over the past year, and was also the central justification that Washington used when it bombed Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day US-Israel war on Iran last year.

In the current negotiations, Iran has said it is willing to “downblend” its 60 percent enriched uranium to about 20 percent – the threshold for low-enriched uranium. The process of downblending involves mixing stocks with depleted uranium to achieve a lower percentage of enriched U-235 overall.

“From the point of view of showing goodwill, I think it’s good, it shows that the Iranians are thinking of ways to address what the Americans claim are their concerns,” Postol said.

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

Nine countries possessed roughly 12,187 nuclear warheads as of early 2026, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Approximately two-thirds are owned by two nations – Russia (4,400) and the US (3,700), excluding their retired nuclear arsenals.

Some 9,745 of the total existing nuclear weapons are military stockpiles for missiles, submarines and aircraft. The rest have been retired. Of the military stockpile, 3,912 are currently deployed on missiles or at bomber bases, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Of these, some 2,100 are on US, Russian, British and French warheads, ready for use at short notice.

While Russia and the US have dismantled thousands of warheads, several countries are thought to be increasing their stockpiles, notably China.

The only country to have voluntarily relinquished nuclear weapons is South Africa. In 1989, the government halted its nuclear weapons programme and began dismantling its six nuclear weapons the following year.

Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, with a stockpile of at least 90. It has consistently neither confirmed nor denied this, and despite numerous treaties, it faces little international pressure for transparency.

Amid a standoff with the pope and criticism for an AI image of himself as Jesus, US President Donald Trump has read a Bible passage about punishment and national repentance as part of a Republican-led marathon event.

Virginia voters have narrowly approved a referendum to redraw the state’s congressional map, with about 51.5 percent voting yes and 48.6 percent voting no, and 97 percent of ballots counted, according to The Associated Press news agency.

The map redraws the boundaries of Virginia’s congressional districts, changes that can directly shape which party wins seats in the United States House of Representatives.

With most votes counted, the result remained close, but Democratic-leaning areas helped push it through.

The vote is part of a broader national fight over district lines – a battle that could decide who controls Congress.

Republicans in Florida, for instance, are planning a special session of the state legislature next Tuesday where they are expected to seek to redraw their state’s political map – a move that could help them gain as many as five seats, potentially wiping out any Democratic gain in Virginia.

Here are five key takeaways:

Democrats gain a major advantage in the House race

Currently, Virginia sends 11 members to the US House. At the moment, they comprise six Democrats and five Republicans.

The new map changes how those seats are drawn. By reshaping district boundaries, it makes most areas more favourable to Democrats by clumping together voters who lean towards the party strategically, while splintering communities that typically vote Republican.

• Eight districts would be safely Democratic
• Two would be competitive but lean Democratic
• Only one would be safely Republican.

Because of this, Democrats could realistically win at least eight and possibly up to 10 of the 11 seats in the US house, instead of just six.

This shift follows a high-stakes political battle, with total spending estimated at $100m.

Democratic leaders, including Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, framed the new map as a direct response to efforts by US President Donald Trump and Republicans to redraw districts in their favour in other states.

However, even with this win, “there’s no guarantee they’ll send a delegation dominated by Democrats to Washington,” Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan said, reporting from Virginia.

There are still six months until the midterm elections, and voter behaviour can shift. Even favourable maps can produce unexpected outcomes.

Virginia is one part of a bigger battle

Virginia is just one part of a bigger fight over who controls the US House.

After the 2024 election, Trump pushed Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps before the usual timeline to improve their chances in the 2026 midterms.

Republicans moved first in states like Texas, where new maps could give them up to five more seats.

Democrats responded with their own moves. In California, voters approved a plan backed by Governor Gavin Newsom that allowed lawmakers to draw a new, more partisan map. This is expected to give Democrats up to five extra seats.

The Virginia result fits into this bigger picture. If Democrats gain up to four seats there, it could help cancel out Republican gains in other states.

But the fight is not over. More changes could still happen, including in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is looking at redrawing the map.

“Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms,” Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said in a celebratory statement.

“At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and levelled the playing field for the entire country.”

Legal challenges could still overturn the result

The measure has been approved by voters, but its future is still uncertain.

The Supreme Court of Virginia is expected to review ongoing legal challenges that could affect whether the new map takes effect. While the court allowed the vote to go ahead, it said it would examine the case in full if the measure passed.

The challenges focus on two key issues: Whether Democratic lawmakers followed the correct legal process when putting the proposal forward, and whether the wording on the ballot may have been misleading to voters.

A narrow win

Both parties were watching the vote closely.

Democrats were happy to win, even if it was close. Republicans, meanwhile, were relieved it wasn’t a big loss.

“Virginia Democrats can’t redraw reality,” said Republican Congressman Richard Hudson. “This close margin reinforces that Virginia is a purple state that shouldn’t be represented by a severe partisan gerrymander.”

Gerrymandering is the process of redrawing electoral maps in ways that can benefit one party over another.

Democrats said the tight result was partly down to voter confusion, which they blamed on Republican messaging. Democrats framed the effort as a response to Trump, promoting the plan with advertisements featuring former US President Barack Obama.

Opponents pushed back by pointing to past comments from Obama and Spanberger, both of whom have previously criticised gerrymandering, using that to question the Democrats’ position.

Gerrymandering is at the centre of the fight

The vote highlights the growing importance of partisan map-drawing in US politics.

Democrats say this balances Republican advantages elsewhere. Republicans call it a power grab in a competitive state.

Either way, redistricting is now a key tool shaping election outcomes, not just reflecting them.

The IRGC says the aggression came in response to what it described as the US seizure of an Iranian commercial vessel.

An Iranian gunboat has fired on a container vessel near the coast of Oman, according to a British maritime monitoring agency, in an incident that occurred hours after United States President Donald Trump said he would extend a ceasefire with Iran.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said on Wednesday that the ship’s captain reported that the vessel had been approached by a vessel of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) before shots were fired.

It “has caused heavy damage to the bridge. No fires or environmental impact reported,” the agency added. No casualties were reported, and all crew members were said to be safe.

British maritime security firm Vanguard Tech said the ship was sailing under a Liberian flag and had been informed it had permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically important waterways.

Iranian news agency Tasnim, however, said the vessel had ignored warnings issued by Iran’s armed forces.

The incident followed a warning from the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters after what it described as the US seizure of an Iranian commercial ship in the Sea of Oman, the IRNA news agency reported.

It accused Washington of violating the ceasefire and carrying out “armed piracy” after allegedly firing on the Iranian vessel and disabling its navigation systems.

Trump extends ceasefire

Trump earlier announced he would delay a planned military attack on Iran after requests from Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the decision was made because Iran’s government was “seriously fractured” and needed time to present a unified position.

“We have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” he wrote.

He added, however, that the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would remain in place and said the military had been ordered to stay “ready and able”.

The announcement marked a shift from comments made a day earlier, when Trump said it was “highly unlikely” he would extend the truce beyond Tuesday.

‘Positive and negative signals’ from Tehran

Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said Iranian officials were sending mixed messages over the ceasefire and the prospects for negotiations.

“Tehran is saying they won’t negotiate under imposed terms and conditions … when we compare the initial 10-point and 15-point proposals by the Iranians and Americans, we can understand that the two sides are poles apart,” he said.

“The atmosphere is also clouded by this mistrust in Tehran towards the United States, as well as the simultaneous military rhetoric related to a potential failed negotiation … It is a warning that another round of confrontation may be ahead.”

He said Iran still viewed the Strait of Hormuz as a key source of leverage in any talks.

“It’s trying to exercise authority over the ships and vessels transiting this strategically significant chokepoint,” he said.

Asadi added that Iranian officials framed their regional position as based on mutual security. “Iranians are saying that the basis of their foreign policy behaviour, particularly when it comes to Israel, is security for all versus security for none,” he said.

EXPLAINER

President Trump said the US would extend the ceasefire until Iran presents a proposal and talks are concluded, but a naval blockade of its ports continues.

President Donald Trump said the United States is extending the ceasefire until Tehran submits its latest proposal with conditions for ending the war, and until negotiations conclude, keeping diplomacy open while maintaining pressure on Iran.

However, Trump said the US naval blockade on Iran would remain. Iran has insisted that the blockade represents a violation of the ceasefire, and has said it will not negotiate under the “shadow of threats” or while the blockade remains in place, underscoring the fragile and uncertain path to talks.

Meanwhile, violence continues across the region, with Israeli settlers killing two people, including a child, in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon wounding civilians and damaging homes despite a 10-day ceasefire.

In Iran

• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said oil production across the Middle East could be targeted if attacks were launched from Gulf neighbours’ territory.
• The US is continuing its naval blockade of Iranian ports despite the truce, a move Iran says undermines the ceasefire.
• An adviser to Iran’s parliamentary speaker said the ceasefire extension could be a “ploy to buy time” for potential military escalation.
• Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the US naval blockade as an “act of war” and a violation of the truce.

War diplomacy

• Tehran open to diplomacy: Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Almigdad Alruhaid said there was no official response to Trump’s ceasefire extension, but officials signalled openness to talks. The US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is seen as a violation of the truce, with commanders saying forces are fully prepared to respond to any escalation.
• US sanctions widened: The US imposed new sanctions linked to Iran’s weapons programmes, while the European Union is moving to expand its own measures.
• Talks planned in Washington, DC: The US is set to host ambassador-level negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, as Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pushes for a full Israeli withdrawal from the country’s territory as Beirut’s main objective.

In the Gulf

• Trump said a potential currency swap with the United Arab Emirates is “under consideration”, adding Washington would support the Gulf ally if needed, after reports the idea was raised with US officials amid concerns the war could strain the UAE’s economy.

In the US

• The US president said he was extending a ceasefire with Iran to give more time for negotiations, but would maintain the naval blockade of Iranian ports.
• Reporting from the White House, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said Trump has shifted between conciliatory and hardline rhetoric, linking the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to forcing Iran to negotiate, while warning of military action if negotiations fail.
• The mixed messaging has unsettled markets, but some analysts argue the strategy shows calculated pressure and a willingness to wait for Iran’s response.

In Israel

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country has been strengthened by its campaigns against Iran and its allies, claiming joint efforts with the US weakened Tehran’s capabilities and boosted Israel’s regional position, opening the door to new alliances.

In Lebanon

• Prime Minister Salam said on Tuesday that Lebanon needed $587m to address the conflict’s ongoing humanitarian fallout amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
• Tensions remain high as Israel and Hezbollah accuse each other of breaching the truce. Israel said rockets were fired at its troops in southern Lebanon and that it responded with strikes, while Hezbollah said its attacks were retaliation for Israeli shelling and ongoing strikes on Lebanese areas.

Oil and global economy

• Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains severely limited, raising concerns over global oil flows.

Football’s governing body puts more tickets on sale but has introduced new premium-priced tiers that angered some fans.

The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) is putting more World Cup tickets on sale after angering some fans by adding new, more expensive categories.

FIFA announced on Tuesday that it would make more tickets available at 11am EDT (15:00 GMT) on Wednesday for all 104 games in Categories 1, 2 and 3, in addition to the new “front category” pricing it added this month.

The new category led to online complaints from fans, who said they had thought that the better seats in the categories they had bought tickets for were withheld, and they had been assigned less favourable locations.

FIFA in December put tickets on sale at prices ranging from $140 for Category 3 in the first round to $8,680 for the final, then raised prices to as much as $10,990 when sales reopened on April 1.

FIFA did not respond to an April 9 request for comment about the new ticket categories it added.

Also on Tuesday, The Athletic reported that ticket sales are lagging for the US opener against Paraguay on June 12 at Inglewood, California. It said a document distributed to local organisers, dated April 10, said that 40,934 tickets had been bought for the US-Paraguay game, and 50,661 were bought for the Iran-New Zealand contest on April 15.

FIFA projects the capacity at the Los Angeles SoFi Stadium, where the US-Paraguay and Iran-New Zealand games will be held, to be about 69,650, noting that it may change.

FIFA’s December sale priced US-Paraguay tickets at $1,120, $1,940 and $2,735, and Iran-New Zealand seats at $140, $380 and $450.

In a social media post, President Trump announced an extension of the ceasefire in the war on Iran, but with the US blockade still in place. Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher says there are signs of movement as Trump shifts towards discussing a ‘unified proposal’.

Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.

In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.

The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.

Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.

“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.

“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”

Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.

The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.

Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Pressure campaigns

In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.

He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.

To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.

Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.

Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.

To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.

Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.

The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.

Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.

Legal victories

Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.

Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.

A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.

Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.

“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.

“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”

Kevin Warsh, United States President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has addressed concerns about his independence pending his appointment to the bank amid fears that Trump could sway his decisions on monetary policy.

On Tuesday, Warsh — who served on the central bank’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011 — faced waves of criticism during a confirmation hearing of the Senate Banking Committee where Democrats voiced concerns about the Fed’s independence should he be appointed to lead the organisation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the committee, questioned Warsh’s independence, alleging that he would be a “sock puppet” for Trump, concerns he pushed back against and addressed in his opening testimony.

“I do not believe the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials — presidents, senators, or members of the House — state their views on interest rates,” Warsh said.

“Monetary policy independence is essential. Monetary policymakers must act in the nation’s interest . . . their decisions the product of analytic rigour, meaningful deliberation, and unclouded decision-making.”

Warsh, 56, also called for “regime change” at the US central bank, including a new approach for controlling inflation and a communications overhaul that may discourage his colleagues from saying too much about the direction of monetary policy.

Warsh blamed the central bank for an inflation surge after it slashed interest rates to nearly zero in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a move that continues to hurt US households.

Concerned by the implications of artificial intelligence for jobs – expected to increase productivity – and prices, he said he would move quickly to see if new data tools could provide better insight on inflation, and would also discourage policymakers from saying too much about where interest rates might be heading.

“What the Fed needs are reforms to its frameworks and reforms to its communications,” the former Fed governor said. “Too many Fed officials opine about where interest rates should be … That is quite unhelpful.”

Warsh has also long been an advocate for shrinking the Fed’s $6.7 trillion balance sheet. In the Tuesday hearing, he said any such plans would take time and must be publicly discussed well in advance.

Jai Kedia, a research fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Al Jazeera that there were many “encouraging” signs in Warsh’s candidacy.

“Warsh is presenting himself as a regime change candidate at a time when the Fed needs serious reform,” Kedia noted. “Particularly encouraging was his understanding of the negative effects of QE and his focus on reducing the balance sheet. He also correctly criticised mission creep and acknowledged that the Fed did better when it kept its focus on the dual mandate [of keeping inflation at 2 percent and increasing employment].”

Quantitative easing or QE is an unconventional monetary policy under which a central bank lowers interest rates, among other measures, to boost the economy, a step taken by central banks in several developed countries during the pandemic.

Warsh’s private investments, at well over $100m, are also under scrutiny. Among them are two holdings in the Juggernaut Fund LP, apparently part of his work advising for the Duquesne Family Office, the private investment firm of Stanley Druckenmiller.

Warsh’s nearly 70-page financial disclosure also showed that his other holdings include investments in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the prediction trading platform Polymarket.

“I agreed to divest virtually all of my financial assets, the large majority of which will be divested” before taking office, Warsh said without giving any details.

Warsh noted that selling his holdings comes with challenges. He said that when that process is completed, he would have “virtually no financial assets” and “we’ll be sitting in something like cash”.

Warren, however, questioned him about the divestment plan. “Do we have any way to verify that, in fact, these sales will occur if we have no idea what’s in them?” she asked.

Political hurdles

The hearing quickly turned contentious, and the pace of Warsh’s confirmation process through the Senate remained in doubt.

He would not directly say that Trump lost the 2020 election – a statement of fact that Senator Warren said was a litmus test of Warsh’s independence from the Republican president who nominated him for the top Fed job.

Yet even amidst the focus on independence, Warsh needs 13 votes to clear the 24-member Senate Banking Committee.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said he would vote against Trump’s nominee and join Democrats, which would create a 12–12 split. The committee has 13 Republican members and 11 Democrats.

Tillis said he would not vote for any Trump nominee until an investigation into current Fed Governor Jerome Powell, whose term ends May 15, is either concluded or called off. Last month, federal prosecutors said they found no evidence of wrongdoing. But Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, has not indicated that the investigation will be dropped.

Tillis said on Tuesday that he would support Warsh’s nomination once the probe into Powell is dropped.

“Today’s confirmation hearing underscored that Warsh is aiming for independence with guardrails,” noted Selma Hepp, chief Economist of Cotality, a market analytics company. “He rejected being a political ‘sock puppet’ and argued the Fed protects its autonomy by ‘staying in its lane.’ He offered no pre-commitment on rates, while emphasising inflation discipline, a large balance sheet, and a desire for clearer Fed communication.”

Noel Dixon, senior macro strategist at State Street, said that with Warsh, the US would have a “dovish-leaning Fed”.

“When a senator asked him if he would lower rates to 1 percent – I guess Trump had indicated that he would like to have rates below 2 percent – Warsh didn’t really say no to that,” Dixon noted. “He didn’t say that it would increase prices. He kind of leaned on it and said there would be a lagged effect, and he was just very noncommittal to that. So it’s almost like – just reading between the lines – he’s giving himself space to maintain possible justification for rate cuts by the end of the year.”

Trump has continued to pressure the central bank.

On Tuesday, he said he would be “disappointed” if the Fed did not lower interest rates.

Tuesday’s remarks follow comments in December, when the US president said he would not appoint anyone to lead the central bank unless they agreed with him.

“The public needs to know whether Mr. Warsh will have the courage of his convictions or if he’s willing to compromise his independence and accommodate more Wall Street deregulation,” Graham Steele, an academic fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera in an email.

Warsh has praised the administration for its push for increased bank deregulation. In a November 2025 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Warsh claimed that Trump’s “deregulatory agenda” is “the most significant since President Ronald Reagan’s”.

Pete Hegseth says the decision is based on the principle of ‘medical autonomy’ and criticises the mandate as ‘overreaching’.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the flu vaccine will no longer be obligatory for members of the country’s military, the latest step under President Donald Trump to shift vaccine policy in the federal government.

Hegseth said in a video shared on social media on Tuesday that the decision was based on principles of “medical autonomy” and religious freedom.

“We’re seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our warfighting capabilities. In this case, this includes the universal flu vaccine and the mandate behind it,” said Hegseth.

“The notion that a flu vaccine must be mandatory for every service member, everywhere, in every circumstance at all times is just overly broad and not rational.”

The Trump administration has framed vaccine refusal as a matter of personal moral and religious principle, rolling back some policies meant to safeguard against preventable diseases.

Hegseth’s directive allows various military services to request that the mandate be kept in place, giving them a window of 15 days to do so.

The announcement comes after what health officials described as a particularly severe flu season when infections surged in the US. Public health experts have recommended that everyone aged six months or older get an annual flu vaccine.

The second Trump administration has reflected some of the backlash to public health guidelines and mandates that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hegseth himself has called that period an “era of betrayal” for the country’s armed forces. More than 8,400 members of the military were ejected for failure to abide by a 2021 mandate to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Trump administration has also rolled back vaccine recommendations in other areas, announcing earlier this year that it would not recommend flu shots and other forms of vaccines for all children. A lawsuit was filed challenging that effort, and the policy was temporarily blocked by a federal judge as the legal challenge plays out.

The Department of War has released a video it says shows US forces boarding a sanctioned tanker in the Asia Pacific region as part of their efforts to disrupt vessels providing support to Iran.

United States President Donald Trump has said a nuclear agreement currently being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he withdrew from in 2018 during his first term in office.

The original 2015 accord took roughly two years of negotiations to reach and involved hundreds of specialists across technical and legal fields, including multiple US experts. Under it, Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to subject itself to inspections in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions.

But Trump took the US out of that pact, calling it the “worst deal ever”. Before the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February, the US had made new demands – including additional restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programme, the restriction of its ballistic missiles programme and an end to its support for regional armed groups, primarily in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Trump’s latest remarks come amid growing uncertainty about whether a second round of talks will proceed in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, as a two-week ceasefire between the US-Israel and Iran approaches the end in just a day.

So, what was the JCPOA, and how did it compare to Trump’s new demands?

What was the JCPOA?

On July 14, 2015, Iran reached an agreement with the European Union and six major powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US, and Germany – under which these states would roll back international economic sanctions and allow Iran greater participation in the global economy.

In return, Tehran committed to limiting activities that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.

These included reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98 percent, to less than 300kg (660lb), and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent – far below weapons-grade of 90 percent, but high enough for civilian purposes such as power generation.

Before the JCPOA, Iran operated roughly 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges. Under the deal, that number was cut to a maximum of 6,104, and only older-generation machines confined to two facilities, which were subject to international monitoring.

Centrifuges are machines which spin to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope – enrichment – in uranium, a key step towards potential bomb-making.

The deal also redesigned Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to prevent plutonium production and introduced one of the most intrusive inspection regimes ever implemented by the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In exchange, Iran received relief from international sanctions which had severely damaged its economy. Billions of dollars in frozen assets were released, and restrictions on oil exports and banking were eased.

The deal came to halt when Trump formally withdrew Washington from the nuclear deal in 2018, a move widely criticised domestically and by foreign allies, and despite the IAEA saying Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.

“The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence, bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. They have not lived up to the spirit of their agreement,” he said in October 2017.

He reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran as part of his “maximum pressure” tactic. These targeted Iran’s oil exports, as well as its shipping sector, banking system and other key industries.

The goal was to force Iran back to the negotiating table to agree to a new deal, which also included a discussion about Tehran’s missile capabilities, further curbs on enrichment and more scrutiny of its nuclear programme.

What has happened to Iran’s nuclear programme since the JCPOA?

During the JCPOA period, Iran’s nuclear programme was tightly constrained and heavily monitored. The IAEA repeatedly verified that Iran was complying with the deal’s terms, including one year after Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the agreement.

Starting in mid-2019, however, Iran began incrementally breaching the deal’s limits, exceeding caps on uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels.

In November 2024, Iran said it would activate “new and advanced” centrifuges. The IAEA confirmed that Tehran had informed the nuclear watchdog that it planned to install more than 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium.

In December 2024, the IAEA said Iran was rapidly enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, moving closer to the 90 percent threshold needed for weapons-grade material. Most recently, in 2025, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440kg (970lb) of 60-percent enriched uranium.

What are Trump’s latest demands for Iran’s nuclear programme?

The US and its ally, Israel, are pushing Iran to agree to zero uranium enrichment and have accused Iran of working towards building a nuclear weapon, while providing no evidence for their claims.

They also want Iran’s estimated 440kg stock of 60pc enriched uranium to be removed from Iran. While that is below weapons-grade, it is the point at which it becomes much faster to achieve the 90 percent enrichment needed for atomic weapons production.

Iran has insisted its enrichment effort is for civilian purposes only. It is a signatory to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

In March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.

On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a strongly worded statement, said Trump had no right to ⁠⁠”deprive” Iran of its nuclear ⁠⁠rights.

What else is Trump asking for?

Restrictions on ballistic missiles

Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, Tehran had always insisted negotiations should be exclusively focused on Iran’s nuclear programme.

US and Israeli demands, however, extended beyond that. Just before the war began, Washington and Israel demanded severe restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.

Analysts say this demand was at least partly triggered by the fact that several Iranian missiles had breached Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Dome” defence system during the 12-day war between the two countries in June last year. While Israel suffered only a handful of casualties, it is understood to have been alarmed.

For his part, Trump has repeatedly warned, without evidence, about the dangers of Iran’s long-range missiles, claiming Iran is producing them “in very high numbers” and they could “overwhelm the Iron Dome”.

Iran has said its right to maintain missile capabilities is non-negotiable. The JCPOA did not put any limits on the development of ballistic missiles.

However, a United Nations resolution made when adopting the nuclear agreement in July 2015 did stipulate that Iran could not “undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons”.

Ending support for proxy groups

The US and Israel have also demanded that Iran stop supporting its non-state allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a number of groups in Iraq. Together, these groups are referred to as Iran’s “axis of resistance”.

In May last year, Trump said Tehran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons”, during a GCC meeting in Riyadh.

Three days before the war on Iran began in February, during his State of the Union address to Congress, Trump accused Iran and “its murderous proxies” of spreading “nothing but terrorism and death and hate”.

Iran has refused to enter a dialogue about limiting its support for these armed groups.

Can Trump really get a new deal that is ‘much better’ than the JCPOA?

According to Andreas Kreig, associate professor of Security Studies at King’s College, London, Trump is more likely to secure a new deal that closely resembles the JCPOA, with “some form of restrictions on enrichment, possibly with a sunset clause, and international supervision”.

“Iran might get access to frozen assets and lifted sanctions much quicker than under the JCPOA, as it will not agree to a long drawn-out, gradual lifting of sanctions,” Krieg pointed out.

However, he warned that the political landscape in Tehran has hardened. “Iran now is a far more hardline and less pragmatic player that will play hardball at every junction. Trump cannot count on any goodwill in Tehran,” he said.

“The IRGC is now firmly in charge… with likely new powerful and tested levers such as the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates as a parallel elite military force to the army and has a great deal of political and economic power in Iran. It is a constitutionally recognised part of the Iranian military and answers directly to the supreme leader.

Overall, Krieg stressed, the US-Israel war on Iran “leaves the world worse off than had Trump stuck to the JCPOA”, even if a new compromise is eventually reached.

Moreover, since the revocation of the JCPOA, the US and Israel have waged two wars on Iran, including the current one. The 12-day war in June last year included attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and killed more than 1,000 people.

Attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have continued since the latest war began on February 28, including on the Natanz enrichment facility, Isfahan nuclear complex, Arak heavy water reactor, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Nevertheless, King’s College’s Krieg said there is still room for a negotiated outcome if Tehran and Washington scale back their demands.

“Both sides can compromise on enrichment thresholds, and on temporary moratoriums on enrichments. But Iran will not surrender its sovereignty to enrich altogether, and the Trump administration will have to meet them halfway,” he said.

“While the Iranians will commit on paper not to develop a nuclear weapon, they will want to keep R&D [research and development] in this space alive.”

Economic incentives will be central, he added. “Equally, Iran would want to get immediate access to capital and liquidity. Here, the Trump administration is already willing to compromise.”