US & Canada

Carney declared the pipeline a project of national interest, smoothening its way to a single federal regulatory review process.

Canada will fast track the approval process for a new proposed crude oil export pipeline to its west coast that could generate billions in revenue and boost economic growth, Prime Minister Mark Carney has said.

Carney made the announcement on Thursday to fast-track the pipeline, which is a crucial part of his bid to diversify the economy away from the United States and help lessen the effect of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Carney said Ottawa is officially listing the Pacific Link pipeline, which had been announced in July, as a project of national interest. That will ensure it proceeds through a single federal regulatory review process. He said Ottawa aimed to complete the process by September 1, 2027.

“A pipeline to the west coast is part of our mission to transform our economy, to double our non-US exports over the next decade … [and] to unlock our full potential as a global energy superpower,” he told reporters in Fort McMurray, hub of Alberta’s tar sands industry.

Ottawa says the 1 million barrel a day project would create 140,000 jobs and generate more than 20 billion Canadian dollars ($14bn) in gross domestic product (GDP) per year and 100 billion Canadian dollars ($70bn) in government revenue by 2060.

Canada currently has just one east-west oil export pipeline in Canada, the 890,000-barrel-per-day Trans Mountain pipeline. An expansion of that pipeline was completed in 2024, but it is already running at capacity.

For years, Canada has sent more than 90 percent of its crude oil exports to the US via pipeline. A new oil export pipeline could make Canada a major global energy supplier, as Asia’s top importers seek oil from outside the Middle East in the wake of the Iran conflict.

Filling the pipeline, however, would require new tar sands expansions of the type no company has undertaken in more than a decade.

The pipeline will be built by government-owned Trans Mountain Corp in coordination with Pembina Pipeline Corp. Alberta estimates it could cost between 35.2 billion Canadian dollars and 43.7 billion Canadian dollars ($24.7bn – $30.7bn).

The majority owners will be the federal government and the government of Alberta. Indigenous communities will be offered a minimum of 10 percent ownership interest.

Previous oil pipeline projects in Canada have faced strong opposition from environmentalists and Indigenous groups, resulting in the cancellation of some projects and leading to cost overruns and construction delays with others.

Alberta separatism

Carney made the announcement alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada’s tar sands, a move meant to mend relations with oil-rich Alberta as separatists push for a referendum on leaving Canada.

Alberta is holding a public vote on October 19 on whether to hold a referendum on leaving Canada. Smith has long complained that Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, hindered Alberta’s energy industry and fuelled separatist sentiment.

Smith said she would vote to keep Alberta in Canada and called the roughly 22 percent support for separation in a recent poll “still too high for my liking”.

“I don’t like the fact that many of our fellow citizens have given up on Canada,” Smith said, adding that the pipeline was an example of how “cooperative federalism can work in action”.

Asked what message Albertans considering separation should take from the announcement, Carney said it demonstrated that “Canada is working” and showed what the country could achieve by acting together.

The case is the latest dispute over US President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case focused on the Trump administration’s policy requiring millions of undocumented immigrants to remain in detention while they fight deportation.

The case, accepted on Thursday by the justices, is the latest dispute over US President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown to reach the nation’s highest court.

At issue is whether migrants already living in the US have a legal right to a hearing where a judge can decide whether they should be released on bond from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention while their deportation cases are pending.

In July 2025, the administration introduced new guidance directing federal immigration authorities to detain undocumented immigrants without a bond hearing for the duration of their deportation proceedings, which can last for years.

The new policy, which has divided lower courts, reverses a decades-old interpretation that allowed some immigrants in the US to be released while their cases were pending in immigration court, according to Reuters news agency.

Most US federal appeals courts have ruled that immigrants cannot be detained without a bond hearing. But the 5th and 8th US Circuit Courts of Appeals have found that immigrants accused of illegally entering and remaining in the country must remain detained while their deportation cases proceed.

Trump administration attorneys told the Associated Press the split is “disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law”.

“The result is an unworkable patchwork of inconsistent immigration enforcement, where aliens present without admission are subject to mandatory detention in some circuits but are entitled to bond hearings and often released in others,” the lawyers wrote.

Millions could be affected

The Supreme Court case stems from a 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling involving Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a Brazilian national who entered the US around 2004 or 2005.

Immigration officers arrested him in September 2025 while he was driving to work in the US state of Massachusetts. He was initially denied a bond hearing under the administration’s policy but was later released on bond, according to court documents cited by Reuters.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press the Trump administration is trying to deny bond hearings for immigrants apprehended within the US rather than limiting the restriction to noncitizens stopped at the border.

“Millions of noncitizens could be affected by the government’s new interpretation,” ACLU attorneys wrote.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments on Monday, when its new term starts.

TA419 hackers used deceptive tactics, impersonating real figures like a former White House AI official

Chinese hackers have been impersonating artificial intelligence (AI) experts in the United States, including a former government official, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.

The report, released on Thursday, found that in July, a China-aligned hacking group called TA419 targeted a slate of US policy experts by impersonating prominent figures, including Lynne Edwards Parker, the former principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The hackers, who had been operating since April 2025, first sent otherwise harmless-looking emails intended to engage a target, such as requests to join an “AI Policy Advisory Committee”, and, once they responded, the target would be sent to a fake login page designed to steal their credentials.

The targets included policy experts at think tanks, defence contractors, universities and law firms in both the US and Japan.

The report used a technique that creates a fake browser pop-up window inside a legitimate webpage that mimics an authentic-looking sign-in prompt to deceive victims and make it harder for them to realise they are handing over their information to hackers.

Proofpoint did not specifically name the targets hacked, but the Reuters news agency was able to confirm at least one of them as Alex Engler, a former White House official who now heads the Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy.

Engler told Reuters that he got one of the emails, but after checking with industry colleagues, he discovered that he had received the email from an impersonator.

In February, the same group was behind the impersonation of a “prominent” Anthropic employee in efforts to target AI policy experts. The cybersecurity firm behind the report believes that the group will continue to target think tanks and other policy experts and will continue to use the identity of real-world experts to do it.

Parker did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

A medicine injected just twice a year could transform the fight against HIV.

In a 2024 clinical trial involving more than 2,000 young women in South Africa and Uganda, no participants who received lenacapavir contracted HIV.

Developed by United States pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, the injectable drug can be used to prevent HIV.

“It’s the most innovative tool that has reached the HIV arena for the last decade, because it’s the closest we have [to] a vaccine,” Carlota Baptista da Silva, global HIV lead at Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF), told Al Jazeera.

The World Health Organization has recommended the long-acting injectable as an additional form of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP – medicine to reduce the risk of getting HIV.

But the arrival of the drug comes at a challenging juncture in the global fight against HIV.

International funding for HIV fell 18 percent in 2025, to $7.3bn, its lowest level in nearly two decades, according to the United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The squeeze has already hit prevention programmes: The number of people receiving medicine to reduce risk fell from 1.4 million in 2024 to 1.1 million in 2025.

That makes the arrival of a highly effective, twice-yearly prevention option significant. The question of who can access it is now more urgent.

For MSF, the scientific question has largely been answered: lenacapavir can prevent HIV with remarkable efficacy.

The fight now is whether the rules governing manufacture, price and supply will allow that scientific breakthrough to reach the people who need it.

Why some countries are excluded

In the United States, lenacapavir costs about $28,000 per person annually. Generic versions are expected to cost about $40 a year.

A generic version is a copy of the original drug made by another manufacturer after the patent holder licenses the technology. It contains the same active ingredient, but it can be produced and sold at a much lower price.

In June 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved lenacapavir for HIV prevention, giving people the option of an injection twice a year. But in several low- and middle-income countries, access to cheaper versions is not expected at scale until 2027.

Gilead is supplying its own version of lenacapavir at no profit for programmes supported by the Global Fund and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), with rollouts under way in countries including South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria and Eswatini.

These are not the cheaper generic versions expected to cost about $40 per person a year. Gilead has licensed six manufacturers to produce those, with large-scale generic rollout expected in 2027.

At least 26 middle-income countries are excluded from Gilead’s generics agreement, MSF says, including countries with rising HIV infections and some that helped test the drug. Among them are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Peru.

“People should not really help generate the evidence for breakthrough medicine and then find that their country is excluded from affordable generic access,” da Silva said.

According to MSF, countries excluded from the licence accounted for close to 23 percent of new HIV infections globally in 2023.

Gilead has since announced a separate agreement with the Pan American Health Organization, creating an access pathway for 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries outside its generic licensing territory, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Peru.

MSF argues that leaves those countries dependent on Gilead rather than able to automatically buy the cheaper generics.

MSF says it still cannot buy the drug

For more than a year, MSF says it has sought permission to purchase lenacapavir directly from Gilead for its medical programmes, without demanding a discounted price.

“Despite those requests, Gilead has not allowed MSF to purchase this medicine directly,” da Silva said.

That matters particularly in humanitarian emergencies, she argues. People displaced by conflict or disaster may struggle to take a prevention pill every day, while sexual violence and other vulnerabilities can increase the risk of HIV.

Daily PrEP pills are already available as an alternative to the injection. But unlike lenacapavir, they need to be taken consistently to provide protection. An injection offering six months of protection could be particularly valuable.

“People living through conflict [and] humanitarian crises cannot be the last in line for medical innovation,” da Silva said.

Gilead declined Al Jazeera’s request for an interview due to scheduling constraints.  In its emailed statement, it said its access strategy combines no-profit supplies, royalty-free licensing and regional agreements. It didn’t reply to questions about why it won’t sell its drug to MSF, or why certain countries were excluded from its generics agreement.

The company plans to provide enough lenacapavir for up to three million people through 2028 as generic manufacturers scale up production, with large-scale generic rollout expected in 2027.

MSF says that is nowhere near the scale required, pointing to projections that close to 20 million people worldwide need access to PrEP to substantially reduce new HIV infections. That includes all forms of PrEP, not just lenacapavir.

But countries left outside Gilead’s generic licensing deal may have another option.

Can governments bypass the patent barriers?

World Trade Organization (WTO) rules allow governments, in some cases, to bypass a drug company’s patent so cheaper versions of a medicine can be made or imported without the company’s permission.

They can also authorise government use of patents and challenge patents they consider weak or unjustified. The 2001 Doha Declaration affirmed WTO members’ right to use such safeguards to protect public health.

Brazil has used them before in the fight against HIV. In 2007, after negotiations with pharmaceutical company Merck over the price of the HIV drug efavirenz failed, Brazil issued a compulsory licence allowing it to access cheaper generic versions of the medicine.

Nearly two decades later, activists are urging Brazil to consider using those powers again for lenacapavir if patent barriers prevent affordable generic access.

MSF says governments excluded from Gilead’s licence could consider those same legal safeguards for lenacapavir, including compulsory licensing, government-use authorisations and challenges to patents.

It is also calling on Gilead to ensure its agreements with generic manufacturers do not prevent them from supplying countries where patent barriers have been removed through such measures.

For MSF, the stakes go beyond lenacapavir. The way the drug is made available could determine whether one of the greatest advances in HIV prevention in decades reaches people based on need, rather than where they live or what their health systems can afford.

“For a humanitarian medical organisation, we should not have to spend more than a year trying to find a way to buy a WHO-recommended medicine,” da Silva said.

Witnesses say Tennessee officials were unable to execute Christa Pike after a lethal injection attempt.

Officials in the United States have failed to put a Tennessee woman to death for a murder she committed in 1995, after the lethal injection was halted for hours as courts considered a last-minute appeal to stay her execution.

Christa Gail Pike, 50 had been scheduled to die on Wednesday for a killing she committed at age 18, after the US Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start.

Her death would have been Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.

Following the top court’s ruling, officials attempted to go ahead with the execution as planned and appeared to give Pike two doses of the sedative pentobarbital, according to media witnesses.

At 7:46pm local time, prison officials closed the curtain separating Pike from the media viewing room. It was raised three minutes later, when witnesses said Pike could be heard loudly snoring.

The curtain was closed again at 8:06pm. Witnesses continued to hear Pike snoring until the microphone was switched off at about 8:53pm, when they were told to leave the area. The Associated Press news agency reported that emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.

The Tennessee Department of Correction did not immediately explain why the execution had not been completed.

Supreme Court ruling

Pike had initially been scheduled to die on Wednesday morning, and witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay.

The appeals court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered during her sentencing.

Later on Wednesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. Its conservative majority did not explain the decision, while the three liberal justices dissented.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that vacating the stay “unnecessarily prevents” the appeals court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.

Tennessee’s attorney general had argued that delaying the execution traumatised the family of Pike’s victim, Colleen Slemmer, and rewarded what it called “abusive delay tactics”.

1995 killing

Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse, including that she was raped from early childhood.

“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability,” her lawyers wrote in a filing.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she had initially intended to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she could not “put the brakes on”.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother has said she wants Pike’s death sentence carried out after waiting decades for the execution.

Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the US, representing about 1 percent of all executions, according to the centre.

Mammoth deal has raised questions about corporate consolidation and editorial independence in media.

A United States judge has entered an order giving the green light for the media giant Paramount to complete its $110bn acquisition of entertainment company Warner Bros., despite fears about the long-term impacts of media consolidation.

On Wednesday, US District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved a settlement between Paramount, Warner Bros, and a group of 12 states that had sued to block the merger.

In her ruling, Martinez-Olguin described the proposed deal as a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms”.

Analysts have long raised concerns about the acquisition, one of the largest media mergers in history.

The coalition of states that sued to block the deal, led by California, had argued that combining Paramount with Warner Bros would effectively stifle media competition. They estimated that nearly one-third of all theatrical releases and basic cable programming would be consolidated under the merger.

But the states abandoned their lawsuit in favour of a settlement on September 21.

The five-year agreement requires Paramount to abide by theatrical film release quotas, committing to 30 releases per year in the US.

It also mandates that the combined company must keep negotiations with cable providers for Warner-owned channels separate from its deals for Paramount-owned channels.

The settlement approved on Wednesday also includes the creation of a five-member panel meant to safeguard the editorial independence of CNN and CBS, two major news networks.

But sceptics have pointed out that the merger puts a large swath of US media under the control of David Ellison, who leads Paramount.

Under Wednesday’s agreement, Ellison is in charge of appointments to the board that would oversee news independence.

The Paramount CEO is the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a strong backer of pro-Israel causes who has close ties to the administration of President Donald Trump.

The founder of the film production company Skydance, David Ellison acquired Paramount last year as part of another controversial merger.

The 2025 Paramount-Skydance deal brought CBS under Ellison’s control. Ahead of the merger, sceptics questioned the abrupt cancellation of the CBS comedy show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which had been critical of Trump.

Ellison later installed Bari Weiss, a pro-Israel media figure, as the head of CBS News in a move that also raised questions about diminished independence within major journalism outlets.

Some critics depicted Wednesday’s settlement as a further capitulation to powerful corporate interests.

“Allowing one Trump-aligned, foreign-owned conglomerate to dominate American news and entertainment is a disastrous outcome,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in the wake of the settlement’s announcement.

But public officials like California Governor Gavin Newsom had called on his state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta to scrap the 12-state effort to block the deal and to pursue a settlement instead.

Paramount emerged victorious from a bidding war with the streaming giant Netflix in February to win control of Warner Bros’s holdings.

That includes a series of media and entertainment services, including the film studio Warner Bros Pictures, CNN and HBO Max. The Trump administration approved the deal without alterations in June.

Seven Minnesota judges face ethics complaint after speaking publicly about the US president’s immigration crackdown.

The United States Justice Department has filed a misconduct complaint against seven federal judges in Minnesota who spoke publicly about the pressure their courts came under during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The judges spoke to The New York Times this month about dealing with a flood of cases during Operation Metro Surge, an immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests in the Minneapolis-St Paul area from December to February.

The Justice Department says it crossed an ethical line by talking publicly about the cases.

Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the judges of showing “obvious bias” against the Trump administration and called on them to step aside from any cases involving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“When we have a situation like we have now, where you have a judge, a couple of judges, just not only violating the canons in our view but also showing bias in what they’re saying, we have no choice but to act,” Blanche told reporters.

The judges say they did nothing wrong. A spokesperson for Minnesota’s federal court system said legal experts had found that the judges were “well within the ethical rules” when they spoke to the newspaper.

The complaint is the latest in a series of clashes between the Trump administration and the judiciary, which has blocked some of the president’s policies and, in several cases, accused government lawyers of failing to follow court orders.

One of the judges named in the complaint, Patrick Schiltz, alleged that the government did not comply with nearly 100 court orders related to immigration enforcement in January alone.

In one ruling, he wrote that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “is not a law unto itself”.

Schiltz was nominated by Republican President George W Bush and previously clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

He later told The New York Times that what happened in Minnesota’s federal courts during the crackdown “created a grave threat to the rule of law”.

Schiltz also pointed to guidance issued by a federal judicial ethics panel in February, saying that judges can speak publicly about issues such as the rule of law and judicial independence.

“That is exactly what I did,” he said.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to cut the number of positions in the US military reserved for generals and admirals by 20 percent, raising concerns about political interference in the military’s leadership amid strained relations with senior Pentagon officials.

An announcement is expected on Wednesday when Hegseth gives his “State of the Force” address to junior officers and enlisted personnel at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

The Pentagon has presented previous cuts as a way to reduce bureaucracy. But analysts say Hegseth’s latest changes may be aimed at sidelining experienced commanders, discouraging dissent and appointing more officers loyal to President Donald Trump to the ranks.

So is the US military too top-heavy, and what could the cuts mean? Here’s what we know.

What is Hegseth planning?

Citing Pentagon officials, The Associated Press news agency has reported that Hegseth will double the 10 percent reduction in top-ranking personnel ordered last year, bringing the total decrease to 20 percent by January 1, 2027. The plan affects roughly 800 general and admiral positions across the one- to four-star ranks.

Congress sets statutory limits on the number of generals and admirals. A Congressional Research Service report recorded 848 active-duty generals and admirals in September 2025, below the authorised maximum of 857.

Cutting positions does not necessarily mean immediately dismissing everyone occupying them. An official told the Reuters news agency that some roles would be eliminated, while others would be assigned to lower-ranking officers.

Why are top-ranking military positions being removed?

The argument for reducing senior ranks predates Hegseth’s tenure, with supporters saying fewer layers of command would reduce administrative work and give officers closer to operations greater authority.

Walter Ladwig, a political scientist specialising in US foreign policy at King’s College London, said there is a credible case for reform. “Since the end of the Cold War, the overall size of the force has declined significantly, but we haven’t seen a corresponding reduction in the number of flag officers,” he told Al Jazeera.

“At the same time, we’ve seen headquarters and staffs proliferate.”

Trump and Hegseth have already fired or pushed into retirement more than two dozen military leaders since Trump took office in January 2025.

Those removed include General Randy George, the US Army’s top uniformed officer, in April, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, in February 2025. The administration also dismissed the only two women serving as four-star officers, alongside other senior female officers.

In February 2025, Trump also fired Air Force General CQ Brown as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a wider shake-up of top military leadership.

Other departures have been of civilian leaders. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned in late August after reported disagreements over Hegseth’s handling of senior military personnel.

The dismissals, alongside blocked promotions, have raised questions about how the administration selects commanders and whether professional disagreements could jeopardise careers. Robert Ralston, a lecturer in political science and international studies at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said the proposed reductions should be weighed alongside these earlier decisions.

“These cuts appear to be part of a broader, sustained effort by Hegseth to fill the ranks based on political, rather than meritocratic, considerations,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Politics is driving these decisions, in my view.”

What political fallout could there be from this?

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona criticised Hegseth’s changes at the Pentagon. “The US military doesn’t need more testosterone; it needs better leadership at this point,” Kelly told MS NOW’s Morning Joe programme last week.

“The consequences of firing all these admirals and generals are that we’re losing a portion, a good portion, of a generation of great leadership.”

David Galbreath, professor of war and technology at the University of Bath in the UK, told Al Jazeera that resistance from Congress and military leaders could complicate the changes.

He pointed to the opposition that arose to President Jimmy Carter’s plans to withdraw US ground troops from South Korea as an example of how military and congressional pressure can constrain a president.

“I suspect that after the election, we are likely to see a much more confrontational Congress with investigations and impeachments of Hegseth,” he said.

Whether that prediction comes true will likely depend on November’s congressional elections and whether the Republican Party retains control of both chambers of Congress.

What criticisms have been made of Hegseth?

Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon has been marked by controversy and tensions with senior officials. In March 2025, he shared details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen in a Signal chat group which inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief.

A number of US media reports about the dwindling supplies of weapons in the Middle East prompted his department to investigate leaks and restrict journalists’ access earlier this year. The New York Times reported in August that about 50 Joint Staff military and civilian officials had undergone polygraph tests amid growing mistrust inside the Pentagon.

Hegseth has meanwhile made ending what he calls “woke” culture a central priority, introducing new physical fitness requirements and abolishing diversity policies.

Ralston said the combination of dismissals and blocked promotions could damage morale and the military’s future leadership. “His relationship with senior military leaders has been adversarial, his scuttling of promotions has undoubtedly damaged morale, and will have long-term consequences for leadership pipelines within the Department of Defense,” he said.

King’s College’s Ladwig also described Hegseth’s relationship with senior Pentagon leaders as unusually confrontational but cautioned against interpreting every proposed cut as a power struggle.

“When a military is under civilian control, it means that the elected government has the right to determine defence priorities and reorganise the armed forces accordingly,” he said.

But Ladwig warned that the changes could encourage officers to hold back their professional recommendations when advising senior politicians. “That might create incentives for military officers to censor themselves rather than provide candid professional military advice, particularly if being politically aligned with the administration is seen as a path to success,” he said.

“This is a very worrisome pathology, and it’s the kind of thing that produces ineffective militaries in dictatorships.”

As Iran and the United States work with mediators to end seven months of hostilities, the reality in the Strait of Hormuz is shifting in ways that could prove to be a game-changer in ongoing negotiations.

According to the latest data from tanker-tracker websites, traffic through the key waterway has been steadily increasing, with some estimates putting oil and petroleum flow through the Strait of Hormuz at nearly 80 percent of what it was before the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28.

This could dent Iran’s leverage in reaching a favourable deal for itself in its attempts to end the fighting, which has seriously hampered its already heavily sanctioned economy, amid the US blockade of Iranian ships and ports.

Despite that, experts believe it would be a mistake to think normality in the Strait of Hormuz is imminent, or that Iran will fold easily despite growing economic hardship.

“The fact that oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz is encouraging, but flows are not yet regarded as completely secure or guaranteed, particularly while the wider conflict remains unresolved,” Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, told Al Jazeera.

Moreover, oil prices remain high globally, including in the US, where President Donald Trump faces a crucial midterm election that could see his party swept away in both houses of Congress.

Tanker insurance costs also remain elevated and energy flows through Hormuz are still far from secure, suggesting Iran’s leverage may be weakening rather than disappearing.

Oil flows through Hormuz recovering

The latest data from commodity analytics firm Kpler points to a significant recovery in oil exports from the Middle East.

Crude exports reached an estimated 16.328 million barrels per day (bpd) in September – their highest level since the war began in late February, the firm reported this week.

Flows through the Strait of Hormuz itself were expected to reach about 9.719 million bpd during the month. Saudi Arabia has driven much of the increase, with its exports rebounding from 2.446 million bpd in August to about 5.4 million bpd in September.

Kpler said Middle East crude exports have recovered to just under 80 percent of their pre-war level. But the figures remain about 3.2 million bpd below the 19.513 million bpd exported in February.

The data also does not include ships crossing Hormuz with their tracking systems switched off, meaning actual traffic could be higher.

Prior to the war, an estimated 120-140 vessels crossed through the waterway daily, roughly half of them oil tankers moving approximately 20 million barrels per day. At the height of the fighting, traffic through the waterway collapsed to as few as two tankers a day after Iran in effect closed the strait in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks.

Is Iran losing leverage?

The rebound in oil flow presents a challenge for Tehran. Iran has sought to use its ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz – one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints – as leverage against Washington’s military and economic pressure.

But if large volumes of oil can continue moving through the strait while Iran itself remains under a US naval blockade, Tehran’s bargaining power could diminish.

Iran, however, rejects any assessment that its control over the strait is slipping.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi on Tuesday said the ability of vessels to transit the waterway with US assistance did not mean Hormuz had returned to normal.

Oil prices are another indication that Iran has not lost all of its leverage.

Brent crude fell 2.6 percent to $102.59 a barrel on Tuesday as traders focused on recovering Middle East exports. But it was still heading for a roughly 13 percent gain in September.

Chris Beauchamp, an analyst at IG, said markets were beginning to incorporate evidence of recovering flows but remained wary about how durable that recovery would be.

“It takes time for evidence to filter through to markets,” Beauchamp said. “Oil prices came off yesterday as the narrative began to take hold, and should continue to fall.”

But he said concerns persisted over whether the US protection system could withstand a renewed barrage of Iranian missiles and drones.

Streeter of Wealth Club said the market still had a geopolitical risk premium built into crude prices, despite the improving flows.

“Insurance costs for tankers also remain elevated because of the perceived risks of operating in the region, adding to the cost of transporting crude even as more ships make it through the waterway,” she said.

Moreover, Streeter warned that crude figures tell only part of the story. Flows of refined fuels, particularly diesel and gasoline, remain constrained, while damage to infrastructure has placed additional pressure on energy supply chains, she added.

There is another vulnerability, the investment strategist pointed out. Countries including the US have relied heavily on strategic oil reserves to cushion the impact of the disruption and help contain prices.

“With those stockpiles now significantly depleted, there is a thinner buffer if there is another disruption, which is helping to keep a floor under crude prices,” Streeter added.

‘Economic war’ on Iran

There is little doubt that economic pressure on Iran is intensifying, potentially increasing Tehran’s incentive to reach an agreement.

Official data from the Statistical Center of Iran earlier this month showed gross domestic product (GDP) contracting 10.1 percent year on year between March 21 and June 20, while the crucial oil and gas sector shrank 26.4 percent.

Iran has also been battling high inflation and a plunging currency as the US blockade constrains oil exports and foreign currency earnings.

Twelve-month average inflation reached 69.9 percent earlier in September, while the rial had fallen beyond 2.2 million to the US dollar in early September.

In August, the US announced a fresh economic pressure campaign against Iran, promising to target Tehran’s financial interests across the world.

Mohammad Eslami, a research fellow at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran was facing an “economic war” alongside the military conflict.

“There is a US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which affects Iran’s revenues from oil exports and other products such as petrochemicals, which are important to Iran’s economy,” Eslami said. “As a result, Iran’s dollar revenues have been affected by the blockade.”

But he cautioned against judging Iran’s economy solely through the value of its currency.

“The exchange rate is a very important indicator, but it is not the only measure for explaining what is happening or the difficulties and challenges facing Iran’s economy,” Eslami said, adding that Iran has faced US economic pressure for “five decades”.

Can a deal be reached?

Despite the military and economic pressure, negotiations have not collapsed.

At the United Nations General Assembly last week, Tehran and Washington engaged in three hours of indirect talks, as US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

President Trump later described the encounter as “very good” and “very productive.”

Iran also proposed a seven-day roadmap under which the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened and normal maritime traffic restored if Washington meets Tehran’s conditions, a plan Trump categorically rejected.

Those conditions included ending the naval blockade on Iran, easing sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian funds.

However, on Wednesday, Reuters news agency reported that Araghchi had received US feedback on the proposal through Qatari mediators.

An official briefed on the talks said the main disagreement now centred on the sequencing of measures rather than the components of the plan.

The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula.

After a week of fierce competition, Backpack emerged victorious as Fat Bear Week champion, the heftiest bear in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.

The nonprofit running the longstanding contest announced on Tuesday that the bear, known for his pacifist nature, was the winner with more than 100,000 votes, giving him a close win over Bear 910 with just over 50 percent of the poll.

The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner towards the Aleutian Islands. Fat Bear Week was started in 2014 as an interactive way to inform the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies.

Last year’s winner, Chunk — known officially as Bear 32 — clinched his victory at an estimated 1,200 pounds. He was handily defeated in the first round of competition this year by Bucky, who went on to lose a face-off against Backpack, known officially as Bear 89.

The event this year featured 16 bears vying for the heavyweight title in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament. All voting is done online, and the winner was declared on Tuesday evening after the final poll closed. The public could watch the bears on explore.org’s livestream cameras before deciding on their favourite.

“Fat bears are successful bears,” the nonprofit says on its website. These bears gorge themselves on the abundant salmon that return to the Brooks River starting in late June. It is there that they can stuff themselves to accumulate the fat reserves they will need to survive the winter. To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area around the river.

Son of ex-champion

Backpack is the son of former Fat Bear Week champion Holly, who introduced him to the Brooks River when he was a first-year cub in 2006. His name was inspired by his habit of climbing onto his mother’s back when they swam the river. This year’s fans cheered on Backpack in the contest’s Instagram comments, noting his lineage and reputation as a gentle giant.

“Unlike many large adult male bears, Backpack hasn’t shown much aggression toward his competitors,” his contestant profile reads.

Backpack uses his “quiet strength” rather than brawling and is often seen in wildlife cameras sitting on a rock downstream, appearing to take in the scenery around him.

He defeated Bear 910, who is also the daughter of a former champion: 409 Beadnose.

Adult male brown bears typically weigh between 600 and 900 pounds (270-410kg) in midsummer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon, large males can weigh more than 1,000 pounds (454kg). Females are about one-third smaller. Bears may each eat as many as 30 fish a day this time of year, working hard to eat a year’s worth of food in about six months.

During winter hibernation, bears do not eat or drink and can lose one-third of their body weight.

Fat Bear Week’s contestants also included five bear families, in recognition of the record-high number of families and cubs at the river this summer. A mother must feed and protect her cubs while also eating enough calories to sustain herself through hibernation. Cubs often face the risk of attack from other bears due to territorialism or food scarcity.

Bear 132 and her three spring cubs advanced to the semifinals, but lost out to Bear 910.

She has become one of the largest and most experienced mother bears at Brooks River, according to her contestant profile. In mid-July, one of her cubs became separated from the family for several days, wandering the river corridor alone. The cub was reunited with the family a few days later.

The resolution cites a ‘lack of accountability’ by Israel’s government and an ‘inability to secure justice’ by the US.

The United States Senate has blocked a resolution that would have required President Donald Trump’s administration to report on the killing of nine Americans in the occupied West Bank and on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children in military detention.

The resolution failed 47-53 on Tuesday, with senators voting largely along party lines.

It was brought to the floor by Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, and cited a “lack of accountability” from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an “inability to secure justice” from the US government.

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote against advancing the resolution, while Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, joined Democrats in supporting it.

Van Hollen forced the vote under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which allows individual members of Congress to demand a formal State Department report on the human rights practices of any country that receives US security assistance.

“Violence is raging in the West Bank, & despite the deaths of nine Americans, the wrongful detention of even more, & the daily torment of Palestinians, we have no accountability from the U.S. or Israeli govt”, Van Hollen wrote on X before the resolution was brought to a vote.

Nine Americans killed

The resolution called for an unclassified report within 30 days of adoption. It would have detailed investigations into the deaths of the Americans, the treatment of US citizens held in Israeli prisons, and the conditions facing Palestinian children in Israeli military detention.

The measure cited the deaths of nine American citizens in the occupied West Bank since January 2022, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist and Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot in the head and killed in May 2022 while reporting in the city of Jenin.

It also included Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli soldier in September 2024, and Sayfollah Kamel Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in July 2025.

The others were Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee, who was 14; Tawfic Abdel Jabbar and Mohamed Ahmad Alkhdour, both 17; Omar Assad; Khamid Ayyad; Nasrallah Abu Siyam; and Khamis Rabee Jabara.

The resolution also noted the arrests of several Palestinian-American children by Israeli forces.

Among them was Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old from Florida, who was arrested in February 2025 and held in pretrial detention for nine months without contact with his family. It noted that US embassy officials and lawyers who met him told his family that he had lost nearly a quarter of his body weight, contracted scabies, and was beaten and tortured.

Other Palestinian Americans who remain in custody include Adam Wajeh Abdelfattah Karakrah, 16, and Sama Safi, 20, a student detained in June in raids targeting students at Birzeit University.

The resolution cited rights groups that have documented the deaths of at least 44 Palestinians in Israeli military camps since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Those groups, it said, have documented widespread abuses, including beatings, sexual violence, harassment and threats, “pointing to systemic and deliberate mistreatment”.

It also went on to note a sharp escalation in Israeli settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank, and stressed that there have been no convictions for the killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli settlers since 2020.

Rising goods and fuel costs are cited as key factors in the sharp drop in consumer confidence.

United States consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level since 2014, just over one month before the congressional midterm elections.

Consumers pointed to higher costs for goods and services as the primary reason for the decline, according to The Conference Board, which released its monthly report on Tuesday.

“The Consumer Confidence Index deteriorated notably in September, following two prior months of softening,” Dana M Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, said in a release announcing the report.

Consumers pointed to higher prices at the pump as one of the driving factors. The average price for a gallon (3.78 litres) of petrol has jumped 37 cents over the past month, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), which tracks daily petrol prices. The average price stood at $4.45 on Tuesday, compared with $4.08 a month ago.

“Oil and gas prices in particular rose to new heights, reflecting September’s surge in fuel costs. Comments about war/conflict eased this month but remained elevated,” Peterson said.

The consumer confidence report comes a day ahead of a key inflation report that the Federal Reserve uses to gauge the state of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, which was up 3.7 percent in June from a year earlier.

The US central bank raised interest rates for the first time in three years earlier this month, driving up costs of credit cards and car and bank loans. It is set to make another decision on interest rates at its October 27-28 meeting, putting pressure on Republicans as consumer sentiment tumbles across political affiliations.

Consumer confidence fell among all political affiliations, according to the report, the second-to-last major consumer confidence reading before the midterm elections, which will determine the balance of power in Washington, DC.

US consumers think the Democratic Party would handle the economy better than their Republican counterparts, with 42 percent saying Democrats would do a better job compared with 34 percent for Republicans, according to a recent Marist poll.

US markets are only slightly lower as the trading day comes to a close. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed down 0.08 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.2 percent and the S&P 500 was down 0.1 percent.

The high court grants an emergency petition ahead of expected arguments in the case, slated for December.

The United States Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue third-country deportations, halting a lower-court ruling that paused such removals over questions of due process.

On Tuesday, the high court granted the administration’s emergency request to resume the deportations, which involve sending immigrants to countries they may have no connection to.

The court’s order was unsigned, as is typical for an emergency petition. It also does not include an explanation or a list of how the justices voted.

But at the bottom of Tuesday’s order, the court’s three left-leaning justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan – indicated they would have denied the Trump administration’s petition.

The Supreme Court’s decision to pause the lower court ruling is temporary. The order calls for arguments to be heard in December.

That hearing comes as Trump administration continues its appeal against the lower court’s ruling, handed down by Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, Massachusetts.

Murphy had ruled that immigrants must be given a “meaningful” chance to raise safety concerns before their removal to third-party countries.

In pausing such deportations, Murphy indicated that some immigrants may have been denied the opportunity to challenge their deportations as part of their due process rights.

Tuesday, however, is not the first time the Supreme Court justices have weighed in on the practice of forcibly sending people to third countries, which Trump dramatically stepped up since his return to office in 2025.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to implement the “largest deportation operation in American history”, and his officials have argued that third-country deportations are a means of removing individuals whose home countries may not accept them.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court also issued an unsigned order allowing such removals to proceed.

That cleared the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be deported to South Sudan, a country the US State Department advises against visiting because of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict”.

The Department of Homeland Security at the time called the removals “a win”, while rights groups said the move flouted basic legal protections.

Critics have expressed concern that many of the governments receiving third-country deportations have a record of human rights abuses.

Third-country deportations have been used to bypass court protection orders that prevent immigrants from being sent back to their home countries due to fears of persecution.

But advocates say that some of those third-party countries have ultimately sent deportees, including asylum seekers, back to the places where they feared they would be at risk of torture or other harms.

At least 35 countries have signed agreements with the Trump administration to take in the third-country nationals, according to a tally by the nonprofits Refugees International and Human Rights First.

The groups estimate that more than 25,000 people have been subject to third-country deportations so far.

On Monday, human rights experts at the United Nations wrote to the ‌US ‌government urging a halt to such removals, warning they were putting deportees at heightened risk of abuse.

“At gravest risk are children, women, persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, LGBT persons, human rights defenders, stateless persons and other people in extremely vulnerable situations,” the experts said.

On Tuesday, Burundi became the latest country to enter an agreement with the US to take non-citizen deportations.

Officials said the country would only take in people who were not facing prosecution and had no links to “terrorism”.

Trump retaliated against Canada’s counter-tariffs on $20bn worth of US imports by banning $1bn of Canadian goods.

The United States is implementing a ban on nearly $1bn in imports from Canada, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles.

The ban took effect early Tuesday and is likely to further strain already-tense relations between the two neighbours.

Ottawa and Washington DC have long been allies and trade partners, with approximately $880bn worth of annual two-way trade. That relationship has been upended during US President Donald Trump’s second term as he unleashed tariffs on most trading partners, including Canada, and referred to the northern neighbour as the 51st state of the US.

Most recently, the US slapped 50 percent levies on Canadian goods worth $20bn, including dairy and motorcycles, on August 22 after trade negotiations failed. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney retaliated, saying Ottawa will match US tariffs “dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families and businesses”. Canada levied tariffs of 15 percent, 25 percent and 50 percent on US exports of a similar value.

Tuesday’s ban was Trump’s punishment for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs.

“The impact of such a ban will be minor, it is only $1bn while we trade hundreds of billions with Canada,” Professor Gary Shields at Wayne State University’s School of Business told Al Jazeera. “It is, however, rather astonishing how President Trump treats our allies in Canada and Europe, while rolling out the red carpet for China’s dictator when he visited the US last week”.

“It is a tit-for-tat. It will not reduce people’s taxes and won’t put money in their pockets. It is kind of personal and a way of showing off toughness,” Shields added.

Canada’s economy grew by an estimated 0.2 percent in August after remaining unchanged in July, according to Statistics Canada. But the new US-Canada tariffs, tighter financial conditions and a shrinking population should further weaken growth in late 2026 and early 2027, Michael Davenport, senior Canada economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note provided to Al Jazeera.

The last remaining US troops have left Iraq. The US military was first deployed to Iraq back in 2003 to depose its leader, Saddam Hussein.

It later faced a series of crises that ensued after the ousting of Hussein. Iraq became embroiled in a cycle of violence that considerably weakened the country.

While the US may have prevented the collapse of the state, it’s also accused of contributing to the subsequent chaos that engulfed it.

The Iraqi government will now be dealing with a new reality.

Is it up to the job? And who stands to gain from the US finally leaving Iraq?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Ahmed Rushdi – President of the House of Iraqi Expertise Foundation.

Kenneth Katzman – Senior fellow at The Soufan Center specialising in Middle East geopolitics and US foreign policy.

Abdullah Alshayji – Professor of political science at Kuwait University specialising in US politics and Gulf security.

America.gov for now functions like a chatbot comparable to ChatGPT or Claude, pointing users to official gov’t websites.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has launched a new website called America.gov aimed at simplifying access to government information.

The website functions much like a chatbot comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude and points users to official government sources for questions such as passport renewals.

The president announced the new site on Tuesday alongside several Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

In a speech, the president claimed that the website would not store user information and used the opportunity to tout simplified access to information about elections and applications for citizenship.

The site is powered by Google’s Gemini AI and xAI’s Grok, according to the chief design officer, Joe Gebbia.

The executive order announcing the new site calls it “a unified digital front door to the Federal Government for every individual in the United States seeking Federal information or services”.

It also says the site will provide “an entry through which an individual may sign in, communicate in plain language, receive accurate answers, and, where authorized and technically available, complete Government transactions without being required to navigate the websites of multiple agencies.”

White House officials told Al Jazeera that the website will abide by the security protocols of the government agency users inquire about, and it will be retained by those agencies and not America.gov, for example, Medicare.

Al Jazeera tested the answers the website provides to see how they align with the president’s views.

When asked “who is the fake news?”, it said, “I don’t label news outlets or comment on media.” When asked who won the 2020 presidential election, it said Joe Biden. When asked whether the department in which Pete Hegseth is secretary is the Department of Defense or Department of War, it said, “Department of Defense (DoD). That is still the name in statute until Congress changes it.”

When asked about obtaining specific records, such as individual tax information, citizenship records, political donations or Securities and Exchange Commission filings, it directed users to the government websites that provide that data for individuals.

However, in the presentation announcing the new site, Rubio showed that, in the future, the website may be able to help Americans apply for passports directly through the site and even take and upload their passport photos.

The website was created in coordination with the National Design Studio, which is part of the Executive Office of the President and was established by Trump in August 2025.

Indirect talks between the United States and Iran aimed at ending the seven-month-long war continue – most recently via Qatar as mediator on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York – but the two sides still disagree about the agenda.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left New York on Tuesday after telling state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) that he expects an official response to Tehran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by the end of the day. The proposal, which Iran said would see the strait reopened within seven days, was first passed to the US via Qatari mediators last week.

United States President Donald Trump was reported to have rejected that offer, under which Tehran would reopen the strait in return for Washington lifting its naval blockade, waiving sanctions, releasing an estimated $12bn in frozen Iranian assets and enforcing a wider regional ceasefire that includes Lebanon.

Under Iran’s proposal, wider peace talks, including discussions of its nuclear programme, would begin only then

Despite Trump’s public rejection, Araghchi says he has not yet received a formal response from Washington. Meanwhile, US media reports that Trump may well be willing to relax sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets have been strongly denied by the US president.

Instead, US officials say, the US wants a deal that resolves all outstanding issues, particularly Tehran’s nuclear programme, in one go, rather than pursuing a gradual, step-by-step approach.

Here’s what we know about the talks:

Qatari mediators met Araghchi in New York on Monday to discuss how to advance Tehran’s proposal for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and then progressing to wider peace talks.

In a post on Telegram, Araghchi insisted that the talks focused solely on the Strait of Hormuz. He denied that the US had formally rejected the Iranian proposal.

“Despite what the US president said, I said that we were waiting for the official US response through the mediators … They [Qatar] had ideas, and we discussed them. They are going to raise this issue with the American side again, and then the final response from the American side will be conveyed to us through the Qatari mediator,” Araghchi said late on Monday.

Araghchi also said negotiations had become more “serious”, but cautioned that Tehran’s position has not changed.

“I state firmly that there has been no change in Iran’s position. Our conditions for opening the strait are clear. Our position on other issues is also clear. At present, there has been no discussion at all about flexibility,” he added.

Tehran’s proposal includes elements of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU), which was signed by both the US and Iran on June 17.

Is Trump willing to accept some Iranian demands?

A US official told The Associated Press news agency last week that Trump is not willing to make a final peace deal with Iran until the issue of its nuclear programme is addressed. According to the official, who has not been named, the US president would be willing, however, to grant Iran sanctions relief and release some frozen funds if progress is made on the nuclear file.

Then, on Monday, US-based news outlet Axios also reported that Trump had offered Iran sanctions relief in return for concessions on its nuclear programme. The report also cited US officials, one of whom told Axios that the indirect talks had been “positive and constructive”, adding that Tehran had indicated it was “flexible” on nuclear issues.

Trump, however, angrily denounced the story as a “hoax” in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. He said the story was “not true” and demanded Axios remove the article.

Iran has been heavily sanctioned for decades. The restrictions have severely affected Iranians’ quality of life, including their access to essential medicines and healthcare.

In August, the US announced yet more sweeping economic sanctions on Iran and countries that trade with it as it sought to apply more economic pressure to isolate the country from the global economy during the diplomatic deadlock in their war.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the campaign as the “economic asphyxiation” of Iran.

It is difficult to quantify exactly how many Iranians have been killed by what Tehran views as “economic warfare”. However, a study published last year by the highly regarded medical journal The Lancet Global Health concluded that more than 564,250 people worldwide die annually as a result of US sanctions.

What does the US want?

In late February, just before the US launched its first strikes on Iran, the two sides were already holding talks hosted by Oman, which included the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme.

But before those talks could conclude, the US and Israel launched strikes, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas is shipped in peacetime, by Iran. The closure of the strait has since become the primary point of contention between the two sides, when it had not been an issue before the war began. The strait is currently subject to blockades by both sides.

Throughout the war, Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to strike a deal with Tehran. However, serious differences between the two sides will need to be resolved first, including the order in which issues are addressed for the purpose of peace talks.

Iran wants to establish its control of the Strait of Hormuz, have sanctions lifted and assets unfrozen, as well as ensure an end to US-Israeli strikes before it will go back to negotiating other issues, such as its nuclear programme. This was the order of events laid out in the MoU agreed between Iran and the US in June, but which quickly fell apart.

The US, however, wants everything to be on the table at the same time – it does not want to agree to anything relating to these Iranian demands before it addresses the other issues.

Scott Lucas, professor of US politics and international relations at University College Dublin, told Al Jazeera that Washington effectively wants Iran to surrender.

“The Strait of Hormuz has become a fundamental issue. The question here is, will both sides give? The memorandum of understanding clearly gave Iran a role in the management of the strait,” Lucas said.

“When the Trump administration pulled away from negotiating on the basis of the memorandum, they effectively went back to the idea of Iran having to completely allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz with no guarantees over it, in terms of not only what it means for Iran financially, but [also] in terms of Iranian security. The Iranian government is not going to agree to that, so we’re stuck in this limbo right now,” he added.

“Are the Trump folks going to come back to the talks on the basis of the memorandum of understanding or something that is a revised version of it, or are they going to try and break the government with economic warfare until at least after the US elections in November? That’s where we are right now.”

What does Iran want?

After half a century of bitter enmity with Washington, Iran wants to consolidate what it sees as the strategic gains it has made during a war it did not start. This specifically includes its newly established ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending global energy markets into a tailspin and placing additional pressure on the Trump administration.

Since US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, Hormuz has dominated talks aimed at ending the war and emerged as Tehran’s greatest point of leverage. Prior to the conflict, Iran did not exert control over the waterway and all commercial shipping passed through freely.

For this reason, Iran will not move on to wider peace talks until it has leveraged its control of the strait to get its demands met. “Our discussion is clear. Right now, it is only about the Strait of Hormuz,” Araghchi said late on Monday.

“The opening of the Strait of Hormuz is also subject to the fulfilment of a series of conditions that we announced to the other side.”

Ali Salehian, director of the Center for Intellectual Diplomacy at the Governance and Policy Think Tank in Iran, told Al Jazeera that Tehran does not believe Washington will honour any future deal as it did not honour what was agreed under the Pakistan-brokered June MoU.

“For Iran, the bottom line of every negotiation with Trump, considering all of his misbehaving and [military] targeting of Iran during negotiations, is the Islamabad MoU,” Salehian said.

“Tehran thinks that if the US doesn’t fulfil its commitments based on the MoU, there is no guarantee that any kind of future deal would be sustainable.”

What is likely to happen next?

It does not look likely that the diplomatic standoff will be eased anytime soon, analysts say.

Both the US and Iran have indicated throughout the war that they would prefer a diplomatic settlement to a continuation of the war. However, Trump has continued to threaten Iran with more strikes if it does not agree to a deal, and Araghchi told US news outlet NBC on Sunday that Tehran is also prepared to resume fighting, even though it has not abandoned diplomacy.

“We are fully prepared for the time for the war to be resumed, and I repeat, we stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war,” he said.

Trump said last week that he expects a deal will be reached, but not until after the US midterms on November 3.

“For the moment, the Trump administration is going to try to make the Iranian government capitulate through economic warfare,” Lucas said.

However, a deep sense of distrust remains between the two sides. Senior Iranian officials believe Trump will restart the war after the midterms on a far greater scale and that Israel would also participate.

If that theory proves true, Tehran may well prefer the fighting to resume before November’s elections, as it would allow Iran to impose a greater cost on Trump.

“The reaction of the Iranians to that might be to actually trigger the war themselves, early, right before the midterm elections in order to maximise the pain that [it] will impose on the US president,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera earlier this month.

As US President Donald Trump announced a $15bn steel megaplant while seated at his Oval Office desk on Monday, he had a lineup of mostly US politicians standing behind him – from cabinet members to elected representatives from Iowa, where the mill is to be built. There was one exception: an Indian man with a receding hairline and a lilac pocket handkerchief, standing behind the US president’s right shoulder.

Ravi Ruia is a cofounder of the Essar Group, which owns Mesabi Metallics, the Minnesota-based firm that’s building the steel mill, which is expected to be the United States’s largest once it is complete. A decade earlier, in October 2016, his brother Shashi was in the photo frame with a different president during the signing of another major deal: Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Steel and metallics aren’t Essar’s only association with minerals and natural resources. The conglomerate had been involved for years with oil, before it sold one of India’s largest private oil refineries to a Russian-led consortium in 2016 for nearly $13bn. Essar Oil was rebranded as Nayara Energy.

Today, Nayara Energy is half-owned by Russian gas major Rosneft, which is under heavy US and European sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Nayara has also emerged as a supplier of petroleum products to Russia at a time when the country is facing a fuel crisis following multiple Ukrainian attacks on its oil and gas depots.

And as part of a 99-year deal, Nayara is continuing to use Essar’s branding in India, where the company runs thousands of petrol stations. Nayara is under European Union sanctions.

The White House is touting the Iowa steel project, unveiled just before the US midterm elections, as a major economic win for Americans, promising hundreds of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue. And there is no evidence that the steel project is in violation of any Russia-specific US sanctions.

But Trump’s announcement of a mega project with an Indian firm closely tied to Russian investments under Western sanctions underscores how the US has struggled to isolate Moscow economically despite an unprecedented economic pressure campaign.

And the timing of the steel mill announcement raises questions, because it comes days after Trump signed a law that empowers him to punish countries that buy Russian oil with up to 100 percent tariffs. India is Russia’s second-largest oil buyer. But the legacy Indian conglomerate that best epitomises the country’s links to Russian energy is now also behind the US’s biggest steel factory.

What’s the steel factory project about?

The new project would integrate its iron ore mining operations in Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range with the upcoming steel complex in Iowa.

The White House and the company’s announcements said that the Iowa steel plant is expected to create at least 1,750 permanent jobs – “while continuing to work with suppliers and businesses throughout Iowa and the Midwest” – and support up to 6,000 construction jobs.

Washington also noted that the mill will produce 7.5 million tonnes of steel per year in its first phase, expected to rise to 10 million tonnes. First steel production is expected in 2030.

The first phase of the project is expected to generate $95bn in total economic impact during construction and its first 10 years of operation, according to the White House.

Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told the reporters that “these are your 232 tariffs, the steel tariffs at work.” He added: “Without those tariffs, this mine and steel plant doesn’t get built.”

Trump chipped in, too. “Soon after my inauguration, I imposed powerful 50 percent tariffs on all foreign steel, and now our steel industry is roaring back to life,” Trump said. “Everyone’s building their plant here because they don’t want to pay tariffs.”

But the steel project is also evidence of how countries and companies have skirted US economic pressure – and how it gives them leverage to continue to do so.

What are Essar’s ties to Russia?

Essar Oil, the group’s energy arm, began refining crude in 2008 at its refinery in Vadinar on the coast of the western Indian state of Gujarat.

But by 2016, the company was in deep debt, listed as a defaulter by the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, and desperately looking for a buyer who would take over its oil operations. The timing was opportune. President Putin in Russia was at the time trying to get Rosneft, his country’s energy giant, to offload some stakes in exchange for foreign capital.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi played matchmaker, helping stitch together a series of deals between 2014 and 2016 that helped Rosneft and Essar. First, Indian public sector oil majors bought stakes in Rosneft, giving it the cash it needed. Rosneft, in turn, joined hands with other investors to buy the Vadinar refinery, freeing Essar from its debts.

Essar Oil became Nayara Energy – a company in which Rosneft owns a 49 percent stake, and United Capital Partners, a Russian asset management company, owns another 49 percent. The buyers paid Essar $12.9bn for the deal. As part of the agreement, Nayara got to use Essar’s branding – including on thousands of petrol stations across India – for 99 years.

Is Nayara under Western sanctions?

Yes. The European Union imposed sanctions on Nayara in July last year as part of the broader 18th package of sanctions against Russian oil.

The sanctions banned the import of petroleum products processed using Russian crude oil and restricted the refinery’s access to EU shipping insurance, as well as financial and other services.

Nayara’s Vadinar refinery in western India has been processing only Russian oil since other suppliers backed out following the sanctions. Since then, Nayara has relied on international traders to import crude and export refined fuels.

In July this year, Nayara Energy sold petroleum to Russia as Ukrainian attacks targeted oil refineries across the country, triggering a fuel crisis.

In recent months, Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil facilities, setting them ablaze and causing long lines for fuel across the country, including in the capital, Moscow. The fuel crisis, unprecedented for Russia, a country that is one of the world’s biggest energy producers, has led to rationing in many regions.

These Russian links have brought Nayara Energy under wider scrutiny, prompting companies, including SAP, to suspend services to the refiner, citing sanctions and obligations under EU law.

Nayara challenged the move in the Delhi High Court, which ordered SAP India to restore its services earlier this month.

Are Essar or the steel plant violating any sanctions?

While Nayara is under EU sanctions, Essar does not face any US or EU sanctions.

In October 2016, after Essar struck its deal with Rosneft and United Capital Partners to sell the Vadinar refinery, the US – at the time under the Barack Obama administration – said that the agreement was not in violation of any sanctions.

“I don’t think we see any violation of any US-EU sanctions stemming from this deal,” State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said at the time. Essar also said that the deal was compliant with US sanctions.

There is no evidence of any sanctions breach in Essar’s investment in Mesabi, or in the planned investment to set up the steel factory in Iowa.

But Essar’s relations with Russia have nevertheless attracted scrutiny, including in the United Kingdom, where the Ruia brothers have long had major investments.

At the time of the sale of the Vadinar refinery to Russian buyers, the Russian bank VTB also gave Essar a $3.9bn loan for debt reconstruction.

The bank was hit by major US and EU sanctions in February 2022, right after Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine. Essar, reporting published in April 2026 by The Guardian and investigative journalism platform SourceMaterial, showed, moved the VTB loan to Mauritius, a tax haven, allegedly to avoid the sanctions. Essar owns the Stanlow oil refinery in the UK.

Why is the timing of the steel plant announcement significant?

Trump’s Republican Party is heading for crucial midterm congressional elections in November, while his approval rating has been plumbing all-time lows in the face of voter concerns about inflation, the cost of living, and the war on Iran.

In his second term, Trump has made tariffs and a revival of US manufacturing a cornerstone of his economic vision, claiming that higher barriers to imports will drive investment back to the US.

Moreover, Washington introduced legislation that would allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on imports from countries that continue economic engagement with Russia or Iran, aiming to put pressure on countries that continue buying Russian energy.

New Delhi is particularly exposed since it became one of the largest buyers of discounted Russian crude after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian imports in 2025 over the issue, before removing it in February 2026 after India committed to stop buying Russian crude.

Russia has remained India’s largest source of crude, although purchases have declined as the threat of US penalties has grown. The news agency Reuters reported that India imported approximately 2.1 million barrels per day of Russian crude in August.

There is also a recent parallel to underscore the incentives for investment in Trump’s US. In May this year, Washington moved to dismiss the criminal fraud and bribery charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, while his lawyers had told the Justice Department that Adani was prepared to invest $10bn in the United States. A federal judge subsequently dismissed the criminal case in August.

Tehran, Iran – Iranians are stocking up on food and medicines as fears grow that the country will face dire shortages as the United States tightens an embargo on the country.

The Iranian government had managed to keep household staples flowing during the early months of the war. But a US naval blockade and pivot to draconian sanctions have led to fears that imports will be limited.

More recently, the US announced a ban on Iranian airlines worldwide and is pressing other countries to cut trade ties with Iran in a bid to isolate the country.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned Washington for its blockade on his country, saying it will prevent food and medicine from reaching the Iranian people.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s offer for a seven-day truce that would see it reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for economic relief and other conditions.

As the war enters its eighth month and hopes for a diplomatic solution dim, Al Jazeera looks at how some Iranians are faring under a US embargo.

Consumers

Tehran’s stores remain stocked, but shoppers are keeping an eye on shop shelves. Their anxiety has deepened since a flurry of social media posts urging people to ensure they have several days of food before a possible new round of fighting with the US.

At one shopping centre, Ali, 51, was loading a trolley packed with rice, flour, pasta, pulses, cooking oil and canned food.

He is stocking up because he is convinced that Iran’s adversary is seeking to “starve” the people to push them to turn on their government.

“This is not a war in the traditional sense. It targets the people to put pressure on the authorities,” he said.

With flights to some nearby countries suspended, imports of certain medicines and mobile phone headsets are hard to find. The prices of those still available in shops have been pushed up.

Haj Pasandideh, a 71-year-old grocer, said he believed warehouses were well-stocked with basic goods at the moment. But the problem lies in the daily price increases due to Iran’s weakening rial, prompting him to bulk-buy goods before the expected hikes.

He sometimes caps cooking oil at one bottle per sale to ensure as many customers can purchase the goods as possible.

Exporters crushed

Farmers are also on edge due to the embargo, unable to ship out their produce and forced to sell to local markets.

The war has worsened the economic situation, even after years of sanctions that have pushed the country from being a regional exporter of agricultural and food products to being one of the region’s main importers.

Mehran, an apple grower, told Al Jazeera that due to the difficulties of exporting, he had sold only a third of this year’s harvest, all of it inside Iran.

Some neighbouring countries have halted trade with Iran in recent months, he said, while trucks now spend days at crossings they once cleared in a day, causing fruit to spoil before it reaches buyers.

“The blockade has not only closed the sea and air but also the land routes but in an undeclared manner,” he said.

Pharmaceutical shortages

The war has also deepened an already-dire shortage of medications. Some pharmacies Al Jazeera visited in southern Tehran had run out of infant formula and dozens of other types of medications.

Although officials have assured Iranians that substitute products were available, pharmacy staff expressed concern about the increasing number of customers searching for infant formula in vain.

“Imported medicines are disappearing fast, and lately people have been coming in to buy certain items before they need them for fear they will run out in future,” Mahsa, a 23-year-old pharmacy assistant, told Al Jazeera.

She said the health authorities had introduced “smart systems” to track the quantity and type of medication each person buys.

Breaking the blockade

The prospect of a prolonged siege and deteriorating economic conditions have driven some Iranians to call for a military solution.

On Tehran’s main thoroughfare, several people told Al Jazeera that another round of fighting with the US was unavoidable. Some urged the government to break the blockade by force before it is tightened further.

Mohsen, a 23-year-old economics student, believes Washington’s goal is to strangle the Iranian economy and the cost will ultimately be felt by Iranian citizens.

Iran possesses many strong cards that it must use to break the air and sea blockade before they develop into a land blockade that would completely choke Tehran, he said.

Alireza Taghavinia, an Iranian international relations expert, told Al Jazeera that the gap between Washington and Tehran was too wide to be bridged. “The siege imposed by force will only be lifted by force,” he said.

In a worst-case scenario, falling living standards could bring protesters onto the streets, he added.

“The enemy is counting on stirring up chaos inside Iran because it believes no military strike will achieve its objectives without internal unrest,” he said.