US & Canada

First came the energy shock. Now, the Iran war is hitting something even more basic: Food.

With the Strait of Hormuz blocked, vessels are being rerouted and supply chains are under strain.

The disruption is pushing up the costs of almost everything from factories to supermarket shelves thousands of miles away.

The longer the Iran conflict continues, the greater the pressure on businesses and consumers worldwide.

The United Nations warns that rising food, oil and shipping costs could push an additional 45 million people into acute hunger – taking the global total above its record of 319 million.

Air raid sirens sounded across Kuwait City as Iran targeted US assets with missiles and drones. Footage shows alerts sounding as the call to Eid al-Fitr prayers was made at a mosque.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says ‘clear dates’ needed as Ukrainian negotiators prepare for discussions in US.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukrainian negotiators will push for a clear timeframe for the next round of Russia talks, as diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have been paused amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv wants “clear dates – at least approximate ones” for the negotiations.

“Everyone understands that the situation in the Middle East, the war, is affecting the postponement of this date,” he said.

Zelenskyy’s comments come as Ukrainian negotiators are set to hold talks in the United States on Saturday on US-brokered attempts to reach an agreement to end the more than four-year Russia-Ukraine war.

Previous rounds of negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in Geneva and Abu Dhabi failed to yield a breakthrough.

The main sticking point has been territory, with Russia pushing for Ukraine to give up the remaining 20 percent of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian forces have failed to capture.

Kyiv has refused that demand while calling for robust security guarantees from its Western allies to prevent any other Russian attack should an agreement to end the war be reached.

“We have received signals from the US side indicating readiness to continue working within the existing negotiation formats to bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Thursday.

“There has been a pause in the talks, and it is time to resume them. We are doing everything to ensure that the negotiations are genuinely substantive.”

A senior Kremlin official indicated on Friday that a new round of US-mediated negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv will likely take place soon.

“The pause is temporary, we hope it’s temporary regarding the continuation of the trilateral format,” he said.

Amid the Iran war, Ukraine’s European allies have sought to reassure Kyiv that their attention remains focused on maintaining pressure on Russia to end the war.

“There is obviously a conflict in Iran going on, in the Middle East, but we can’t lose focus on what’s going on in Ukraine and the need for our support there,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week after meeting with Zelenskyy in London.

European countries also have raised concerns about a decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration to waive sanctions on some Russian oil supplies in a bid to offset soaring energy costs linked to the Iran war.

On Friday, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian officials at the US talks on Saturday would discuss the recent “dangerous” decision to ease those sanctions on the Russian energy sector.

Russian oil is emerging as a key beneficiary of the US-Israeli war on Iran, as countries scramble to charter tankers following United States President Donald Trump’s decision to temporarily ease sanctions, analysts say.

Following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 10, Trump said the US would waive Russian oil-related sanctions on “some countries” to ease the shortage caused by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which in peacetime carries 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas from producers in the Gulf.

This week, it was reported that a number of tankers carrying Russian oil bound for China had changed course and were heading for India instead.

According to figures from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Russia earned an additional 672 million euros ($777m) in oil sales in the first two weeks of the war on Iran, which began on February 28 when Israel and the US launched strikes on Tehran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.

Iran has since struck back, launching thousands of missiles and drones towards Israel as well as US military assets and infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf countries. The war stepped up a level this week, when Israel bombed Iran’s critical South Pars gasfield, and Iran hit back with strikes on Gulf energy assets, including Qatar’s Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility – the world’s largest.

This week, the average price of Urals oil – the Russian benchmark – was significantly higher than the pre-war price of less than $60, at around $90 per barrel.

Here’s more about who is buying Russian oil and which other nations might benefit from the oil crisis.

Why is Russian oil benefitting from the Iran war?

Iran’s effective closure of the Hormuz Strait, which is the only sea route from the Gulf to the open ocean, has “walled in” 20 million barrels of Gulf oil per day, George Voloshin, an independent energy analyst based in Paris, told Al Jazeera.

This has prompted the US to, at least temporarily, ease sanctions on shipped Russian oil to slow the ensuing energy crisis and potential global price collapse. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, has risen to above $100 a barrel since the closure of the strait, compared with about $65 before the war began.

Many analysts say a price of $200 is no longer “far-fetched”.

“Russia has emerged as a primary beneficiary of the Middle East conflict due to the massive supply vacuum created by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,” Voloshin said. “Global refiners are desperate for alternative medium-sour crudes, a need that Russia’s Urals grade specifically meets.”

He added that the US decision to grant a temporary reprieve for shipped Russian oil “has provided Moscow with a critical window to maximise export volumes and oil revenues, essentially allowing Russian crude to act as the world’s primary swing supply during the Iranian blockade”.

How has the price of Russian oil been affected so far?

The price of Russian Urals has surged significantly, experts say. As a result of US sanctions, the oil had been trading at below $60 a barrel for some time. However, while “Urals historically traded at a significant discount to Brent due to Western sanctions”, Voloshin said, “that gap has narrowed as demand outstrips supply”.

“Since the beginning of the year, the price of Russian oil is estimated to have risen by nearly 80 percent – most recently close to $90 per barrel – and consistently trading well above the G7 price cap of $60 as buyers prioritise energy security over regulatory compliance in a high-volatility environment,” he added.

Are ships changing course to deliver Russian oil to new buyers?

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that at least seven tankers carrying Russian oil had changed course mid-voyage from China to India, citing data from Vortexa, the data analytics group.

Then, Indian media quoted Rakesh Kumar Sinha, special secretary in the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, confirming that the Aqua Titan, a Russian oil-laden tanker originally destined for China, is now expected to arrive at New Mangalore port on March 21 having been chartered by Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MPCL).

India was the first country to receive a time-limited exemption from the US Treasury to import Russian oil that is already at sea, Voloshin said.

“There is clear evidence of a massive logistical redirection of Russian oil cargoes mid-voyage. Several tankers originally bound for Chinese ports have, indeed, switched trajectory to India. This shift is driven by India’s aggressive pursuit of discounted distressed cargoes to fill its strategic reserves and meet domestic demand, as well as the increased risk and insurance costs associated with long-haul shipments to East Asia via contested waters.”

Until recently, Trump had been strongly pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil, even slapping additional 25 percent trade tariffs on India last year in punishment for doing so. This was lifted earlier this year when Trump claimed he had received assurances from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India would start buying US oil, or even Venezuelan oil seized by the US, instead.

Which countries are buying Russian oil now?

Indian media has reported that India’s purchases of Russian crude have surged in the past three weeks, since the war on Iran began and the Strait of Hormuz was closed.

“The primary buyers of Russian oil continue to be India and China, who together now account for the vast majority of Russia’s seaborne exports,” Voloshin said.

Turkiye is also a significant buyer, he added, now using Russian crude to stabilise its domestic market amid the gas shortages caused by the Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars field.

“Additionally, a shadow fleet of ageing tankers continues to move Russian oil to smaller, less-regulated refineries across Southeast Asia and the Middle East, often through complex ship-to-ship transfers designed to obscure the origin of the crude,” he added.

He said this shadow fleet is becoming the primary delivery mechanism for oil in several contested regions, meaning more buyers could appear. “Additionally, the degree of cooperation between the US and its European allies remains a wild card. If the EU continues to refuse participation in military operations near Iran, the diplomatic and economic pressure on the US to maintain the Russian oil reprieve will likely increase.”

Will Russian oil remain in demand if the US re-imposes sanctions?

If there is nowhere else to readily source oil, countries may continue to seek Russian crude even if the US reimposes sanctions, Voloshin said. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says the closure of the Hormuz Strait has caused a shortage of 8 million barrels of oil per day.

If that persists, “major importers like India may feel they have no choice but to continue buying Russian oil to prevent domestic economic collapse”, Voloshin said.

If secondary sanctions on Russian oil are reintroduced, he added, buyers may demand much lower prices to compensate for the increased legal and financial risks of dealing with Moscow. “At the same time, in the presence of a continued severe market disruption, the US is very likely to roll over [extend] current exemptions,” Voloshin said.

Which other energy-producing nations could benefit?

Two other major non-OPEC energy producers that could benefit are Norway and Canada, experts say. However, this will largely depend on their capacity to increase production.

“Norway has already signalled its intent to maintain maximum gas and oil production to support European energy security, primarily selling to EU nations seeking to replace lost Iranian and Russian volumes,” Voloshin said. “Canada is exploring ways to increase its export capacity to the US Gulf Coast. However, like Russia, its ability to significantly ramp up production in the short term is constrained by pipeline throughput and infrastructure bottlenecks.”

Intelligence briefings have warned of the potential for extremists and criminals to target ⁠the FIFA World Cup 2026 at a time when hundreds of ⁠millions of dollars of approved security funds have been delayed, causing United States preparations to fall behind.

The previously unreported briefings from US federal and state officials and FIFA, the international federation overseeing the World Cup, outlined the risk of extremist attacks, including attacks on transportation infrastructure and civil unrest related to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The football World Cup, one of the ⁠globe’s biggest sporting events, will be held in June and July this year across three countries – the United States, Canada and Mexico.

While security at such events is always intense, US law enforcement officials have been on especially heightened alert since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and have raised concerns over retaliatory threats.

Officials working to prepare for the World Cup in the US have increasingly sounded alarms in recent weeks over a stalled $625m in ⁠federal security grants for the event that were part of a Republican-backed spending bill passed in July 2025.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, tasked with distributing the money, said in November that it was expecting to allocate the funds no later than January 30.

Following inquiries by Reuters this month after officials and organisers complained that they had still received nothing, FEMA announced on Wednesday that it had awarded the grants, saying the money would “bolster security preparations”.

With the first matches kicking off in Mexico on June 11 and then the US and Canada the next day, states and cities hosting the events are deep into planning, including how to safeguard from possible attacks. The delayed funding and threat warnings have compounded ‌an already complex process, multiple officials involved told Reuters.

The grant money distribution process normally takes months, and efforts to buy technology and equipment can take even longer, according to Mike Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association, which represents a network of 80 information centres across the US that facilitate federal, state and local intelligence sharing.

“It will be extremely tight,” he said.

A December 2025 intelligence report from New Jersey looking at potential threats to matches in the state – which will include the final – flagged recent domestic attacks, disrupted terror plots and a proliferation of extremist propaganda. The report also noted the possibility of spontaneous gatherings related to tensions between countries.

Another intelligence report, dated September 2025, described an online post appearing to encourage attacks on railroad infrastructure during the World Cup that said there were “plenty of opportunities for us to knock it off the tracks” and highlighted matches on the West Coast of the US and Canada. The documents were obtained through open records requests by the transparency nonprofit Property of the People.

Delayed funding risks lead to growing concerns, while ICE worries mount

Democrats have blamed outgoing US Department ⁠of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for delaying the release of the money. Under Noem’s leadership, the DHS also withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in homeland security funds last ⁠year from a dozen Democratic-led states and Washington, DC, while pressing them to increase immigration enforcement.

In response to a request for comment, White House spokesman Davis Ingle faulted Democrats for the delayed funding, citing disagreements over immigration enforcement tactics.

“The president is focused on making this the greatest World Cup ever while ensuring it is the safest and most secure in history,” Ingle said in a statement. “The Democrats need to stop playing games.”

Trump’s immigration crackdown has already cast a pall over the event and raised concerns about the presence of US ⁠Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Since Trump took office in January 2025, masked immigration agents have rounded up suspected immigration offenders in US cities and detained some tourists at airports.

That has coincided with a Trump-era dropoff in overall international visitors, according to US Commerce Department data. Early signs have, however, indicated still strong appetite for flight bookings ⁠and ticket sales for the tournament.

In a FIFA weekly intelligence briefing dated January 28, analysts warned that anti-ICE activism in US cities in response ⁠to immigration enforcement could lower the barriers “to hostile actions by lone actors or extremist elements”.

Trump has also placed full or partial travel bans on nationals of more than three dozen countries, including Iran, which is in talks with FIFA to move its matches to Mexico due to its current conflict with the United States. Three other countries whose fans face Trump travel bans – Haiti, Ivory Coast and Senegal – have also qualified for the tournament.

Security concerns extend to FIFA World Cup 2026 fan events

Several World Cup and state officials have said “FIFA Fan Festival” events are of particular concern. The events ‌allow large numbers of people to watch matches together on open-air screens.

A Fan Festival event that had been planned in Liberty State Park in Jersey City for the duration of the tournament was cancelled unexpectedly last month and replaced with smaller gatherings.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said at the time that many smaller events would allow more people in the area to enjoy the experience. Security concerns also factored in the decision, a person familiar with ‌the ‌planning said.

US Representative Nellie Pou, a Democrat representing a district in New Jersey that includes MetLife Stadium, one of the sites where games will be played, said that each of the World Cup’s 104 matches would be equivalent to a Super Bowl.

“Local government, local law enforcement, will certainly have their hands full,” Pou said. “They need every single dollar that they are eligible to receive, and they need it now.”

Israeli and US air attacks pound Iran as assassination campaign of country’s leadership continues.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesperson has been killed in overnight strikes carried out jointly by the United States and Israel, the IRGC reported, the latest in a mounting toll of senior officials assassinated since the war began.

Ali Mohammad Naini, a 68-year-old brigadier general who took up the IRGC spokesman role in 2024, “was martyred in the criminal cowardly terrorist attack by the American-Zionist side at dawn”, the IRGC said in a statement on Friday.

His death came just hours after he appeared on national television to insist that Iran retained full capacity to manufacture missiles, even under wartime conditions.

“Our missile industry deserves a perfect score … and there is no concern in this regard, because even under wartime conditions we continue missile production,” Naini was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “Iran no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium and manufacture ballistic missiles”.

The Israeli army said on Friday that it was carrying out strikes across eastern Tehran, as the country marks the Persian New Year, Nowruz, which this year coincides with Eid al-Fitr.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, described the mood in the capital as “hushed”, with none of the customary festivities visible on the streets.

Naini’s killing is the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations that have gutted Iran’s establishment in under three weeks.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening hours of the joint military campaign. He has since been replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Earlier this week, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and one of the most influential figures in Iran’s establishment, was killed in a strike along with his son and several aides.

The head of the Basij paramilitary forces, Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, and Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib were also confirmed dead within the same 48-hour period.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made little effort to conceal Washington’s glee, saying on Thursday that “the last job anyone in the world wants right now” is a senior leadership role in the IRGC or Basij.

However, other US officials appeared to suggest that Washington and Israel’s aims in Israel were not aligned.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the House Intelligence Committee this week that US and Israeli objectives “are different”, adding that while Israel had been “focused on disabling the Iranian leadership,” Trump’s goals were to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities “and their navy”.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has cast the killings as a means of opening a path for Iranians to reclaim their country, saying on Wednesday the campaign against the country’s leadership “will not happen all at once” but that persistence would give Iranians “a chance to take their fate into their own hands”.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the US and Israel had still failed to grasp that Iran’s political structure does not rest on any single person.

“The presence or absence of a single individual does not affect this structure,” he said.

Health and environment advocacy groups in the United States are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw a key 2009 climate change ruling known as the “endangerment finding”.

That finding had established that greenhouse gases are a risk to public health and environmental safety, given that they are the primary drivers of climate change. It formed the legal basis for many regulatory policies aimed at curbing climate change.

When US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”, rescinded the declaration in February this year, the EPA supported the move, deeming it the “single largest deregulatory action in US history”.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday this week, alleges that the Trump administration’s decision will risk the health and welfare of US citizens.

“Repealing the Endangerment Finding endangers all of us. People everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, the associate vice president of clean air strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Trump’s revocation of the endangerment finding is the latest in a series of steps he has taken to prioritise deregulation, boost fossil fuel production and reverse climate regulations.

But Trump is not the first US president to enact policy damaging to the environment. Here’s how decades of US policy have harmed the environment before he arrived in the White House

What is the ‘endangerment finding’?

The endangerment finding was established under the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama. It states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

That ruling allowed the EPA under President Obama to move forward on policy aimed at limit the release of greenhouse gases in the US, Michael Kraft, professor emeritus of political science and public and environmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, told Al Jazeera.

Under the endangerment finding, power plants were required to meet federal limits on carbon emissions or risk being shut down. This forced oil and gas companies to invest more to detect and fix methane leaks, curb flaring, and improve tailpipe and fuel‑economy standards to enable automobile companies to manufacture more efficient, lower‑emitting vehicles.

What does rescinding it mean?

“By allowing for increased pollution, these recent changes [by the Trump administration] will harm practically every single person on the planet,” Washington, DC-based policy researcher Brett Heinz told Al Jazeera.

“People living near fossil fuel facilities will be some of the most immediately affected, as they will be exposed to the new air and water pollution unleashed by deregulatory policies,” Heinz added.

Without the endangerment finding in place, the EPA has lost a key legal basis on which to limit greenhouse gas emissions, making it easier for coal plants, oil refineries and petrochemical complexes to run older, dirtier equipment for longer, expand without installing modern pollution controls, and emit more soot, smog‑forming gases and toxic chemicals into nearby communities.

Heinz explained that higher greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants, cars and industry as well as continued deforestation will also amplify the dangers posed by natural disasters. This is because increased warming exacerbates heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts, and raises sea levels – all of which turn existing natural hazards into more frequent and more destructive disasters.

“The only people who will benefit from these decisions are a small handful of wealthy fossil fuel executives and shareholders, who will see healthy profits while the world grows sick. These fossil fuel elites, many of whom contributed money to Trump’s presidential campaign, have now gotten a return on this investment,” Heinz said.

Experts say that Trump’s decision to entirely do away with environmental policy is unlike any president before him.

“The White House’s tidal wave of new pro-pollution policies is completely unprecedented. While past administrations have modified environmental rules, the second Trump administration is essentially trying to eliminate them entirely. So far, this has been the most radically anti-environmental presidency in American history,” Heinz said.

How have previous US presidents endangered the environment?

Trump is by no means the first US president to enact policy which is damaging to the environment, however.

Under Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, Congress passed the Reclamation (Newlands) Act of 1902, which treated land and rivers primarily as raw material for large infrastructure projects rather than as ecosystems in need of protection.

This was furthered by Democrat Harry Truman, who was president from 1945 to 1953 and pushed for rapid post‑war industrial and suburban expansion by commissioning the construction of interstate highways and promoting car‑centric development.

Under Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, the interstate highway system burgeoned, and the private car became a developmental priority in the US.

While Republican Richard Nixon, who was president from 1969 to 1974, signed key environmental laws, he also backed massive fossil‑fuel expansion. Under Nixon, the highly toxic herbicide, known as Agent Orange, was used by the US military during the Vietnam War.

Republican Ronald Reagan, who was president from 1981 to 1989, appointed people to the EPA and the Department of Interior who pushed for expanded oil, gas, coal and timber extraction on public lands.

To facilitate this, they favoured deregulation and industry interests, and rolled back existing environmental policy, slashing budgets for EPA enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, easing rules on toxic emissions and pesticides, and opening up more federal land – including wilderness and wildlife habitat – to oil, gas, mining and logging activities.

Republican George W Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, refused to ratify the 1997 UN-backed emissions reductions Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined global climate negotiations by formally withdrawing US support for Kyoto in 2001, appointing senior officials who questioned climate science, and pushing voluntary, industry-friendly approaches instead of binding emissions cuts.

While Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, introduced several landmark climate regulations, he also oversaw the fracking boom, making the US the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and locking in long-term fossil infrastructure.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to release oil and gas, a process believed to cause methane leaks, groundwater contamination, heavy water use and increased local air pollution.

Democrat Joe Biden, who was president from 2021 to 2024, approved large fossil projects such as the Willow project in Alaska. This involved oil development on federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve, projected to pump hundreds of millions of barrels of crude over several decades.

Figures released by the the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) suggested that the project would release 239 million to 280 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. The project, approved in 2023 and ongoing, was projected to continue for 30 years.

Biden also backed LNG export growth by approving new and expanded export terminals and long‑term export licences, allowing companies to lock into multidecade contracts to ship US gas to Europe and Asia.

Is this a partisan issue?

No.

“The failure of US policymakers to aggressively tackle global warming is not so much a Democrat versus Republican matter,” Steinberg said.

“It’s neoliberalism, a form of corporate freedom, that is the heart of the problem. A bipartisan consensus on the need for economic growth has led to a general trend toward weakening environmental regulations,” he added.

The US once led the world in conservation by creating an extensive national park system in the 19th century, Ted Steinberg, a history professor at the US-based Case Western Reserve University, told Al Jazeera.

“That was then. US corporate interests, especially the fossil fuel industry, combined with the one-party political system, in which both Republicans and Democrats indenture themselves to the business class, have caused the United States to drag its feet on global warming,” Steinberg said.

What is the history of Washington’s impact on the environment?

The US has historically been the largest contributor to global warming, experts say.

“As in most countries, US environmental policy has been a response to the problems caused by industrialisation and urbanisation, starting in the mid-19th century and proceeding from there, happening at the local, state and national levels,” Chad Montrie, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Al Jazeera.

“Much of that policy has been limited and inadequate, especially when corporations were able to exert their influence, but in some cases, it has been ahead of what other nations were doing,” Montrie, who specialises in environmental history, added.

There was a time when environmental policy was bipartisan. The EPA was, in fact, created by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970.

“It wasn’t until the rise of pro-business politics in the 1980s that Republicans like President Reagan took a hard turn against environmental protections,” Heinz said.

“The Democratic Party continues to believe in environmental protection and climate-friendly policies to some degree, while the Republican Party has become one of the few political parties worldwide that completely denies the scientific facts around climate change.”

How does this affect the rest of the world?

“US policy often sets the standards for policy in other parts of the world, both because of its cultural influence and because of the control that the US has over global bodies like the International Monetary Fund,” Heinz said.

“Right now, the US is actively pushing dirty fossil fuels on the rest of the world and even threatening some of its allies for trying to negotiate new environmental agreements.”

Heinz explained that this pressure, coupled with soaring energy prices, seems to have convinced Europe to retreat from some of their climate goals. Household electricity prices jumped by about 20 percent across the European Union between 2021 and 2022, according to Eurostat data.

Heinz said that if the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP negotiations are any indication, global climate ambition appears to be on the decline right now.

The latest conference concluded in November 2025 in Brazil with a draft proposal which did not include a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, nor did it mention the term “fossil fuels” at all. This drew rebuke from several countries attending the conference.

“So long as Donald Trump remains in office, the hope of future generations relies upon the nations of the world coming together and acting responsibly to preserve a healthy environment at a time when the United States has gone truly mad.”

The NBA’s leading scorer recorded the second 60-point game of his career as the Lakers take down the Heat in Miami.

Luka Doncic scored 60 points – the most ‌ever recorded against the Heat – as the Los Angeles Lakers won their eighth straight game, defeating ⁠the Miami Heat 134-126 ⁠away on Thursday night.

James Harden had the previous record against Miami with 58 points. He reached that mark while a member of the Houston Rockets on February 28, ⁠2019.

The Lakers (45-25) also got a triple-double from LeBron James, who had 19 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists. It was just the second triple-double of the season for James, who no ⁠doubt has fond memories of his time in Miami, leading the Heat to four straight NBA Finals (2011-2014) and two NBA titles.

It is possible that this was the final game in Miami ever for James, 41, who has not yet announced his future playing plans.

Doncic, who entered the day leading ‌the NBA with a 32.9 scoring average, made 18 of 30 shots from the floor, nine of 17 on three-pointers and 15 of 19 at the free throw line. He also had seven rebounds, five steals and three assists.

Over the past two nights, Doncic has scored 100 points.

Bam Adebayo led Miami (38-32) with 28 points and 10 rebounds. He appeared fully healthy after having missed Miami’s previous game due to tightness in his right calf.

However, the ⁠Heat are just 1-3 since Adebayo scored 83 points against Washington on ⁠March 10, the second-greatest scoring game in NBA history.

Tyler Herro added 21 points for Miami, and Norman Powell tallied 20.

The Heat were without two key injured players, Jaime Jaquez Jr (left-hip tightness) and Andrew Wiggins (left big toe). Those ⁠two players combine to average 30.9 points.

Miami led 42-29 at the end of the first quarter, during which the Heat shot 63.0 percent from the ⁠floor and had a 26-12 edge in paint points. ⁠Los Angeles, despite 12 points from Doncic, shot just 40.9 percent.

Los Angeles hit 12 of 20 shots from the floor in the second quarter and cut its deficit to 65-59 at halftime. Miami shot just 40.9 percent.

The Lakers took their first lead ‌of the game at 72-71 with 9:05 left in the third as Doncic hit his third straight three-pointer. By the end of the period, the Lakers led, 97-88.

Doncic scored 19 points in ‌the ‌third. Miami misfired on 10 of 12 attempts from behind the arc in the quarter.

The Lakers closed out the game without much trouble in the fourth quarter, beating Miami for the third straight time.

The United States Commission of Fine Arts, a federal agency, has approved plans for a commemorative gold coin that features one of Donald Trump’s recent presidential portraits.

The commission, made up of Trump appointees, voted unanimously in favour of minting the coin on Thursday. But the legality of such efforts has been repeatedly questioned.

Federal law prohibits the depiction of living presidents on US currency. Thursday’s coin, however, may sidestep the rule, as it is intended as a commemorative item, not for circulation as currency.

Still, the Trump administration has advanced other plans to put the president’s face on a $1 coin, in addition to the commemorative gold coin.

Critics denounced both initiatives as unlawful and inappropriate for a sitting leader.

“Monarchs and dictators put their faces on coins, not leaders of a democracy,” Senator Jeff Merkley told the news agency Reuters.

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, a bipartisan federal panel, has previously pushed back against efforts to mint Trump-themed coins.

One of its members, Donald Scarinci, said that the panel and the Commission of Fine Arts are both supposed to approve such designs.

“But we still fully expect them to plough ahead and mint both coins,” Scarinci said of the commission.

The gold coin is set to feature a bald eagle on one side, and Trump on the other, leaning with both fists on the table and staring straight ahead.

The image is a facsimile of a black-and-white image of Trump taken by photographer Daniel Torok and featured in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

“I know it’s a very strong and a very tough image of him,” said Chamberlain Harris, a Trump aide who was appointed to arts commission earlier this year.

Harris indicated that the Trump gold coin would be as large as possible. The US Mint currently produces coins as large as 7.6 centimetres, or three inches, which is what Harris said the Trump administration would aim for.

“I think the larger the better. The largest of that circulation, I think, would be his preference,” Harris said, referencing her discussions with the president.

Megan Sullivan, the acting chief at the Office of Design Management at the US Mint, also indicated that Trump had given the design his approval.

“It is my understanding that the secretary of the Treasury presented this design, as well as others, to the president, and these were his selection,” Sullivan said.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has pushed to leave his mark on the federal government.

In addition to the gold coin and $1 coin that are slated to bear his image, he has placed his name on the US Institute of Peace and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Both efforts are the subject of ongoing lawsuits. An act of Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, designating it as a living memorial to the late John F Kennedy, a president who was assassinated in office in 1963.

Likewise, the US Institute of Peace was established by Congress as an independent think tank dedicated to conflict resolution.

It was the subject of a standoff between its leadership and members of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last March, culminating in its employees being forcibly evicted.

Trump has also placed his face on government buildings around Washington, DC, in the form of long banners.

Even the architecture of the city is changing to reflect his tastes: Last October, he tore down the White House’s East Wing in order to build a massive ballroom, and he has plans to build a triumphal arch in the capital, similar to the one in Paris, France.

Trump has pitched many of the changes as part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations, which culminate this July.

At Thursday’s meeting to discuss the gold coin, his officials repeated the argument that celebrating Trump was a good way to mark the anniversary.

“I think it’s fitting to have a current sitting president who’s presiding over the country over the 250th year on a commemorative coin for said year,” said Harris.

Iran’s strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas facility will cut an estimated 17% of the country’s Liquefied Natural Gas export capacity for up to five years, officials say. The damage is a major blow to the global energy market, which could disrupt supplies to Europe, Asia and beyond.

While in Australia, members of Iran’s women’s football team found themselves at the centre of an international political storm. As several players choose to return home, difficult questions are being raised about athlete safety, agency and Western intervention. Samantha Johnson looks at how Iran’s women footballers became caught in the middle of something they had nothing to do with, and asks whether they were being used as political pawns.

Heavy social media use has contributed to ‘worrying decline’ in wellbeing in Western countries, World Happiness Report says.

Social media has played a large role in declining happiness among young people in Western countries, a United Nations-backed report has found.

Heavy social media use partly explains a “worrying decline” in the wellbeing of young people in the West, the latest edition of the annual World Happiness Report said on Wednesday.

In total, 15 Western countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, saw significant declines in youth wellbeing over the past two decades, according to the report.

The trend was not observed globally, with young people in regions covering 90 percent of the world’s population reporting higher life satisfaction than before.

“The trends are caused by many factors, which differ between continents. However, the evidence in this report does suggest that heavy social media use, especially in some countries, provides an important part of the explanation,” researchers John F Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara B Aknin, and Shun Wang said in an executive summary of the report.

“Outside the English-speaking world and Western Europe, the links between social media use and wellbeing are more positive, and they vary between platforms,” the researchers added.

The report, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, cited data from sources including the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and research by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Despite the decline in youth wellbeing, Western countries, particularly in Scandinavia, dominated the overall happiness rankings across age groups.

Finland ranked as the world’s happiest nation for the ninth consecutive year, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Costa Rica, Sweden and Norway.

The Netherlands, Israel and Switzerland also made the top 10.

Middle Eastern and African countries had the lowest happiness scores.

Afghanistan reported the lowest life satisfaction, with Zimbabwe, Malawi, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon also ranking among the bottom 10 countries.

Social media use among young people has been a growing concern for governments amid reports linking platforms to bullying, sexual exploitation and worsening mental health.

Australia last year introduced the world’s first social media ban for under 16s, with plans for similar restrictions under way in Indonesia, France and Greece.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister warns Iran that regional neighbours have ‘significant’ capabilities with which to respond to Tehran’s aggression.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has warned Iran that tolerance of its attacks on his country and those of neighbouring Gulf states is limited, calling on Tehran to immediately “recalculate” its strategy.

Warning that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have “very significant capacities and capabilities” that could be drawn on should they “choose to do so”, the foreign minister told a news conference early on Thursday that Iran had carefully planned its strategy for striking regional neighbours, despite denials from Tehran’s diplomats.

“The level of accuracy in some of this targeting – you can see it in our neighbours as well as the kingdom – indicates that this is something that was premeditated, preplanned, preorganised and well thought out,” Prince Faisal said.

“I’m not going to lay out what would and would not precipitate a defensive action by the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] because I think that is not a wise approach to signal to the Iranians,” the foreign minister continued.

“But I think it’s important for the Iranians to understand that the kingdom, but also its partners who have been attacked and beyond, have very significant capacities and capabilities that they could bring to bear should they choose to do so,” he said.

“The patience that is being exhibited is not unlimited. Do they [the Iranians] have a day, two, a week? I’m not going to telegraph that,” he added.

“I would hope they understand the message of the meeting today and recalculate quickly and stop attacking their neighbours. But I am doubtful they have that wisdom.”

Prince Faisal’s warning followed a meeting of foreign ministers from Arab and Islamic countries in the Saudi capital earlier in the day to discuss the expanding war in the region, which on Wednesday saw Iranian attacks on Gulf energy sites, including Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas facility, where significant damage was reported, and the United Arab Emirates’ Habshan ⁠ gas facility.

Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its “strong condemnation and denunciation of the blatant Iranian attack targeting Ras Laffan Industrial City”, located 80km (50 miles) northeast of the Qatari capital Doha, which is the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility, producing some 20 percent of the world’s LNG supply.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had warned earlier that oil and gas facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would face retaliation for an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gasfield.

Iranian state media reported that facilities linked to the country’s huge offshore South Pars field – located off the coast of southern Iran’s Bushehr province – had come under attack.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defence also said on Wednesday that its air defences had intercepted four Iranian ballistic missiles that targeted Riyadh and two launched towards the country’s eastern region.

Air defences in the UAE dealt with 13 ballistic missiles and 27 drones, according to the country’s Defence Ministry, while operations ⁠were ⁠suspended at the Habshan ⁠gas facility as authorities responded to ⁠incidents caused by fallen debris after the successful interception of a ‌missile.

The Saudi foreign minister also told the news conference on Thursday that while the war will end one day, it will take much longer to restore relations with Iran as trust “has completely been shattered” due to Tehran’s tactics of targeting its neighbours.

“We know for a fact that Iran has been building this strategy over the last decade and beyond,” Prince Faisal said.

“This is not something that is a reaction to an evolving circumstance where Iran is improvising. This has been built into their war planning: targeting their neighbours and using that to try and put pressure on the international community,” he said.

“So when this war eventually ends, in order for there to be any rebuilding of trust, it will take a long time. And I have to tell you, if Iran doesn’t stop … immediately, I think there will be almost nothing that can re-establish that trust,” he added.

Iranian strikes come after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gasfield, with President Pezeshkian warning of ‘uncontrollable consequences’ that could ‘engulf the entire world’.

Content note: This story contains details of sexual violence. 

Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta is one of several women in the United States speaking out against the sexual violence they say they endured at the hands of labour leader Cesar Chavez.

In a statement on Wednesday, Huerta said she was motivated to speak out after being contacted for an investigation by The New York Times, which revealed that children as young as age 12 were abused by Chavez.

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” Huerta wrote.

“Following the New York Times’ multi-year investigation into sexual misconduct by Cesar Chavez, I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences.”

Chavez, who died in 1993, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association alongside Huerta and other advocates. They rose to fame during the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, practising nonviolent protest techniques similar to those of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Together, Chavez, Huerta and other advocates drew attention to the abuses facing vulnerable immigrant farmworkers, particularly in the Hispanic and Filipino American communities.

Some of the slogans from the movement continue to have resonance in the US political sphere.

The Spanish phrase “si, se puede” — or, in English, “yes, we can” — was adopted as the campaign slogan for President Barack Obama, while the Tagalog phrase “isang bagsak” continues to be a rallying cry for collective organising.

The fight for equality and fair labour practices that Huerta and Chavez led would be remembered as one of the defining moments of the 1960s.

But it was out of fear of denting the burgeoning civil rights movement that Huerta and other women say they stayed silent about Chavez’s abuse.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said in her statement.

“I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”

Huerta explained that the first time she had sex with Chavez, she was “manipulated and pressured” into submitting to his advances while on a trip to San Juan Capistrano.

“I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” she said.

The second time, she said she was “forced, against my will”. The New York Times investigation includes a summary of what Huerta says happened: She was in a car that Chavez was driving when he parked in an isolated grape field and raped her.

Both instances resulted in pregnancies, which Huerta says she kept secret. The children were ultimately given to other families to raise.

“I had experienced abuse and sexual violence before, and I convinced myself these were incidents that I had to endure alone and in secret,” she said.

Her story was echoed by the accounts of other women featured in The New York Times investigation.

One of the interviewees, Ana Murguia, said she was 13 when a 45-year-old Chavez kissed her, took off her clothes and tried to have sex with her in his locked office.

He had known her since she was eight years old, and the abuse at his hands prompted her to attempt suicide.

Debra Rojas, meanwhile, was 12 years old when Chavez began groping her. She described being 15 when she was raped by him at a motel near Stockton, California.

A third woman, Esmeralda Lopez, said she was 19 when Chavez tried to pressure her to have sex with him while they were alone on a tour, offering to use his influence to get something named in her honour.

Lopez said she refused his advances, and her mother, a fellow activist, corroborated her account, based on conversations they had at the time.

The women explained that they grappled with whether to come forward and whether they would be believed, given Chavez’s rise to fame as a civil rights hero.

In response to the widening scandal on Wednesday, United Farm Workers — the group that emerged from the National Farm Workers Association — announced it would not participate in any events on Cesar Chavez Day, a federal commemoration that falls on the late leader’s birthday.

The group denied receiving any direct reports of abuse, but it pledged to create a pathway for reports to be submitted.

“Over the coming weeks, in partnership with experts in these kinds of processes, we are working to establish an external, confidential, independent channel for those who may have experienced harm caused by Cesar Chavez,” United Farm Workers wrote in a statement.

“These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.”

Lawmakers across the political spectrum, from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to New Mexico Representative Ben Ray Lujan, also called for Chavez’s name to be stripped from public buildings, roads and other places of honour.

Lujan called the revelations in Wednesday’s New York Times report “horrific” and a “betrayal of the values that Latino leaders have championed for generations”.

“His name should be removed from landmarks, institutions, and honors,” Lujan said of Chavez. “We cannot celebrate someone who carried out such disturbing harm.”

Huerta, meanwhile, said that, in the wake of the investigation, community advocacy was more important than ever.

“I have kept this secret long enough,” she wrote. “My silence ends here.”

The United States Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady as the labour market cools and prices on goods and services surge following the US and Israel’s joint strikes on Iran.

The central bank will maintain its benchmark rate at 3.5–3.75 percent, consistent with the Fed’s decision last month, when it also held rates steady.

“The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. Uncertainty about the economic outlook remains elevated. The implications of developments in the Middle East for the US economy are uncertain,” the central bank said in a statement announcing its policy decision and referring to its Federal Open Market Committee.

“The Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate.”

Holding rates steady was in line with estimates. CME FedWatch, a tool that tracks monetary policy decisions, forecast that there was a 99 percent chance that rates would hold steady.

The stall comes after three rate cuts in 2025.

Global gripes

Consumers are also facing the repercussions of US President Donald Trump’s trade and military policies in their daily expenses.

“Despite meaningful progress on inflation in 2024, Trump’s tariffs have stalled progress and kept inflation persistently above the Fed’s target. Wholesale prices are running hot as service prices surge, and now, Trump’s war in Iran is rocking commodity markets around the globe,” Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, an economic think tank, said in comments provided to Al Jazeera.

Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled against the president for his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The high court said the president exceeded his authority and that the tariffs imposed under that order must be refunded. However, the president then imposed new tariffs not covered by IEEPA.

The White House announced a 15 percent tariff through Section 122, which allows the president to impose tariffs for 150 days. Those changes were reflected in the producer price index report released by the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday.

Wholesale prices rose by 0.7 percent for the month, marking the biggest one-month surge in a year. Goods prices rose 1.1 percent overall after tumbling for two months. Energy prices rose by 2.3 percent, with the cost of gas or petrol rising by 1.8 percent. Those costs are expected to get higher as tensions rise in the Strait of Hormuz following joint US-Israel strikes on Iran in late February and the subsequent retaliation.

“In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation; however, it is too soon to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters.

In the last month, petrol prices have jumped for US consumers. The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.84, up from $2.92 this time last month.

“The Fed’s inflation worries extend beyond weathering a fleeting wave of one-off price hikes associated with tariffs and, more recently, an energy price spike,” Stephen Stanley, chief US economist at Santander US Capital Markets, told the Reuters news agency.

Labour market stalls

Holding rates steady also comes as the job market stagnates. The latest jobs report, which was released earlier this month, showed that the US economy lost 92,000 jobs, with unemployment rising to 4.4 percent.

Meanwhile, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, which came out last week, showed 6.9 million open jobs in the US, unchanged from the month prior. That shows that employer hiring has stalled and that those who have jobs are seldom leaving for new ones.

“This might be one of the toughest moments in recent memory for the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee,” Michael Linden, Senior Policy Fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera. “Recent data has revealed that economic growth in the back half of last year was extremely weak, the labour market seems to be on the precipice of disaster, and prices keep rising faster than anyone feels comfortable with.”

Political undercurrents

Wednesday’s decision is the second-to-last one of current Fed Chair Powell, whose term is up in May. Powell, who was first appointed by Trump during his first administration, has been a target of Trump’s scorn and criticisms for not cutting interest rates fast enough.

“When is ‘Too Late’ Powell lowering INTEREST RATES?” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday morning ahead of the decision.

Previously, Trump said he would not nominate someone to lead the central bank unless the nominee agreed with his position.

“Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed Chairman!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social in December.

“We at the Fed will continue to do our jobs with objectivity, integrity and deep commitment to serve the American people,” Powell told reporters.

Trump’s nominee to succeed Powell, Kevin Warsh, has his nomination in flux as Republican Senator Thom Tillis said he would not vote to advance any of Trump’s nominees to the central bank until a criminal probe into the current chairman, Powell, is closed.

Tillis sits on the Senate Banking Committee, which vets nominees for the central bank, including Warsh. He said he will not approve Trump’s Fed nominees until the probe of Powell is closed. The criminal probe of Powell centres on Fed building renovations after a judge quashed grand jury subpoenas and called the investigation a pretext to pressure the central bank to lower interest rates.

If Warsh has not been confirmed by the Senate in time for the Fed’s June 16–17 meeting, Powell would continue to lead the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

“If my successor is not confirmed by the end of my term as chair, I would serve as chair pro tem until he is confirmed. That is what the law calls for,” Powell said.

“On the question of whether I will leave while the investigation is ongoing, I have no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality.”

Washington, DC – Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US National Intelligence, said that the United States intelligence community had assessed that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capabilities following US and Israeli attacks last year.

The revelation on Wednesday appeared to undercut one of President Donald Trump’s key justifications for joining Israel in launching the latest war against Iran.

Trump and his top officials have repeatedly cited Iran’s nuclear ambitions as one of the main reasons for abandoning ongoing diplomatic talks in favour of military action.

“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer,” Gabbard said in written testimony to the Senate intelligence committee, referencing the June 2025 US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, “Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated”.

“There have been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” Gabbard said in the written testimony.

Notably, Gabbard did not read that portion of her testimony, which was provided to members of the committee, during her publicly televised oral testimony. When pressed on why she omitted the portion, Gabbard said simply that she did not have enough time. She did not deny the assessment.

“You chose to omit the parts that contradict Trump,” Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, responded.

Trump has repeatedly said the June 2025 attacks, which came at the end of a 12-day war between Israel and Iran, had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capacity, even as he warned that Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions presented an immediate threat to the US.

Tehran has for years denied it is seeking a nuclear weapon. Nuclear and arms monitors have maintained that even if Tehran were seeking a nuclear weapon, it did not represent a short- or medium-term threat.

The foreign minister of Oman, who had mediated the latest round of US-Iran indirect nuclear talks ahead of the war, has refuted Trump officials’ claims that the most recent negotiations were not yielding any progress.

The Guardian newspaper also reported this week that the United Kingdom’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, had attended the final session of talks and assessed that the Iranian position did not justify an immediate rush to war, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The administration has not settled on any single justification for launching the war, also pointing to Iran’s ballistic capabilities, its potential threat to Israel and US forces in the Middle East, and the totality of the Iranian government’s actions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The concept of an “imminent threat” is significant in determining the legality of Trump’s decision to strike a sovereign country under international law.

It is also significant for US domestic law, under which presidents can commit the military only in instances of immediate self-defence. Only Congress can officially declare war or authorise extended military campaigns.

Iran’s government ‘intact but largely degraded’

The White House said earlier this week that Iran’s ballistic missile capacity was “functionally destroyed”, with the Iranian navy “effectively destroyed” and the US and Israel dominating the country’s airspace.

Experts have assessed that Iran still maintains the military capacity to inflict significant damage in the region, and it has continued to wield its military influence over the Strait of Hormuz.

Gabbard, meanwhile, offered a more sober assessment than the White House, saying that despite the killings of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, top military officials, and most recently the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani and the intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, “the regime in Iran ⁠appears to be intact but largely degraded by Operation Epic Fury”.

“Even so, Iran and its proxies remain capable of and continue to attack US and allied interests in ⁠the Middle East. If a hostile regime survives, it will seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its missiles and UAV [drone] forces,” she said.

Gabbard also listed Iran, alongside Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan, as among the countries “researching and developing an array of novel, advanced, or traditional missile delivery systems, with nuclear and conventional payloads, that put our homeland within range”.

The Washington, DC-based Arms Control Association has said that US intelligence as of 2025 had said it may take Iran until 2035 or longer to develop a missile capable of hitting the US, if it did indeed seek to do so.

High-profile resignation

Gabbard spoke a day after a top official in her agency, Joe Kent, the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in opposition to Trump’s war with Iran.

In his resignation, Kent said that Iran “posed no imminent threat” to the US and that Trump’s decision to enter the war went against his “America First” pledges.

Kent is the first high-profile member of the Trump administration to step down in response to the war.

Gabbard herself had previously been a vocal opponent to indefinite military engagement in the Middle East and war with Iran. A former member of the US House of Representatives from Hawaii, she left the Democratic Party and supported Trump, in part, due to his anti-war vows.

However, in a post on X on Tuesday, Gabbard defended Trump’s decision to go to war.

“As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country,” she said.

She said her agency’s role was to funnel US intelligence to Trump.

“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” she said.

Concerns over US involvement

The war has reignited a debate within the Iranian diaspora about what role the US should play in Iran’s future.

This question is more than a distant geopolitical issue for Iranians in Los Angeles.

Many residents explained that their family histories had been shaped by US involvement in the region, whether it was through US support for Iran’s fallen monarchy or through the US decision to back Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980.

Aida Ashouri, a human rights lawyer who is running to be Los Angeles city attorney, was among those publicly condemning the latest US campaign in Iran at the city hall protest on February 28.

“This is a US imperialist war, and we have to make that clear,” she said. “Call a spade a spade. This war is not to liberate the women of Iran or the people of Iran.”

Ashouri was born during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Her hometown, Isfahan, was also bombed in June last year during the US and Israel’s 12-day war with Iran.

For Ashouri, it was telling that the US and Israel once again launched the first strike in the current conflict. For many legal experts, that made the conflict an unprovoked war of aggression, in violation of international law.

“A war implies two sides are actively engaged, but Iran has done nothing to be involved,” Ashouri said.

“This is a unilateral military invasion, an aggression of the United States and Israel. They are the ones with the power to end it by stopping the bombing.”

She and other protesters drew parallels between the current Iran war and the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, launched in 2003 and 2001, respectively.

“I lived through the shadow of the war on terror, all the propaganda talking points,” said Shany Ebadi, an Iranian American antiwar organiser with the ANSWER Coalition. “What the Trump administration is saying reminds me a lot of the Iraq war.”

As someone who follows the news closely, Ebadi remembers feeling alarm when the first strikes were launched in February.

“When I got the breaking news notification of the initial attack, my whole body felt paralysed. I felt anger and frustration,” she said.

She and Ashouri both said they fear the military operation in Iran could spark a regional war that might further destabilise not just Iran, but the entire Middle East.

“I fear that war will repeat the disasters seen in Palestine, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan,” Ashouri said, listing countries targeted in the US’s “war on terror” over the past two and a half decades.

The question of whether bombs can pave the way to freedom in Iran is a simple one for Ashouri and her fellow antiwar activists. The answer, they say, is simply no.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said an overnight strike killed Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib. There has been no confirmation from Iran but Katz says Israel’s military is authorised to target senior Iranian officials without additional approval from the government.

As United States President Donald Trump tries to build a coalition of navies willing to open the Strait of Hormuz, some countries are negotiating safe passage directly with Iran, underscoring a new de facto reality, analysts say: Regardless of military results, Tehran is calling the shots on who gets to use the world’s most important energy waterway.

After US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28 and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Iranian military leadership responded by focusing on its most potent form of leverage – Iran’s geography. The country controls the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas supplies pass. It is 33km (20 miles) wide at its narrowest point, so any naval force that wants to cross it becomes easy prey for Iranian attacks coming from the mainland.

Considering insurance companies’ low appetite for risk, it took relatively few attacks on vessels in the strait – or just the threat of them – to undermine market confidence and send insurance premiums shooting up, causing a near paralysis in maritime traffic. About 20 vessels have been attacked since the start of the war.

“Iran has effectively proven that it dictates the terms of passage through the strait. They have now shown they are the gatekeeper of this important chokepoint. This will elevate the status of Iran in the geography of the Gulf,” said Andreas Krieg, an associate professor in Security Studies at King’s College London and a fellow at King’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies. This will be the new reality for the foreseeable future, he added.

Meanwhile, crude prices have risen above $100 a barrel, more than 20 percent higher than pre-war prices, forcing countries to make the biggest releases of emergency reserves in history. Gas prices have risen by more than 40 percent since the war began.

Trump initially floated the idea of ordering the US Navy to escort vessels through the waterway. He then appealed to some countries to send warships and warned NATO members they would face “a very bad” future if these allies failed to help in opening the strait. But the appeal was either turned down or received noncommittal responses. Japan said it had no plans to deploy naval vessels. Australia ruled out sending ships. The United Kingdom said it would not be drawn into the wider war. Germany sent a clear message: “This is not our war”.

Others decided to take action – but not of the kind that Trump asked for. On Saturday, two India-flagged gas tankers passed through the strait after days of negotiations between New Delhi and Tehran, including a phone call between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Ships from Pakistan, Turkiye and China also have transited through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times has reported that Italy and France have also reached out to Iran for deals although Italian authorities have rejected making such an overture.

Meanwhile, Windward, a maritime intelligence tracking group, said that while traffic in the strait on Tuesday remained 97 percent below average, a growing number of ships have been passing through Iran’s territorial waters, suggesting that Tehran is allowing “permission-based transit”.

‘It is up to us to decide’

There is a precedent for US naval forces to escort convoys through the strait dating back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. But today’s scenario is different, experts said. Back then, the US, while it was backing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was not a direct party to the conflict. Iran was still in a post-revolutionary process of consolidating power, and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was nowhere near as organised as it is today.

Today, Iran has drones that its factories are capable of producing on a large scale and has been using them. Iranian forces could also use small boats to assault tankers, deploy mines and engage in other guerrilla-style tactics. While there are conflicting reports on whether Iran has placed mines in the strait, experts said it would be a counterproductive move for Tehran because it would disrupt the passage for any ships – Iranian vessels included – and it would take away from Tehran the power to choose who may pass.

Iranian officials are aware of their geographic advantage. “This is up to our military to decide,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday, referring to who will be allowed to use the strait.

Pro-government figures increasingly frame the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic bargaining tool beyond the war itself, suggesting the waterway could be used to extract compensation, sanctions relief or broader economic concessions after the war, Hamidreza Azizi, an expert on Iran and visiting fellow with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, commented on X.

Recent attacks seem to suggest that Iran wants to increase its pressure on the energy market.

On Tuesday, a drone attack caused a fire at the port of Fujairah, the United Arab Emirates’s only crude export terminal. It is located outside the eastern entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, allowing its exports to circumvent it. The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen could also further squeeze oil prices by disrupting the Bab al-Mandeb strait. That would force the US to operate across multiple maritime theatres. So far, the Houthis have not carried out such attacks, but this month, they said they were ready to strike at any ‌moment.

Still, the US is focused on applying maximum pressure on Tehran and forcing it to open the Strait of Hormuz. The US Central Command, the US military’s combat command responsible for operations in the Middle East, said early on Wednesday that its forces had used 2,270kg (5,000lb) bunker-busting munitions against antiship missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has also ordered amphibious ships carrying thousands of US Marines to move to the Middle East, and some experts believe the US might try to seize Kharg Island, a tiny piece of land in the northern Gulf where 90 percent of Iranian crude oil is exported from. The US has already bombed what it said were military sites on the island.

Such an operation, however, might do little to force Iran into opening the Strait of Hormuz, Krieg said. The island is 500km 310 miles) from the strait, and should the US take control of it, it would expose US Marines to Iranian fire. Should Iran see its key terminal being seized, it could also opt to mine the strait outright, having fewer reasons to allow some vessels to pass through.

“The issue with the Strait of Hormuz is really not a military one. … It’s a market issue, and confidence cannot be restored by the military. Confidence can be restored through diplomacy only,” Krieg said.

Venezuela upset the star-studded host nation to win a politically charged showdown in Miami.

Venezuela scored a stunning 3-2 upset over tournament hosts United States to capture the World Baseball Classic for the first time on Tuesday in a tense final played out against a backdrop of political tensions.

Eugenio Suarez drove in the winning run in the top of the ninth inning to seal a victory for Venezuela over an American lineup that had been hyped as a baseball “dream team”.

Trailing for most of the game, the Team USA looked to have hauled themselves back into the contest when Bryce Harper blasted a game-tying two-run homer in the eighth inning.

But Harper’s salvo proved to be in vain as Venezuela regained the lead in the ninth inning, punishing a shaky performance from USA reliever Garrett Whitlock to clinch victory.

“What can I say, it’s amazing,” Venezuela hero Suarez said. “Nobody believed in Venezuela, but now we win the championship today. This is a celebration for all the Venezuelan country.”

Suarez’s winning double settled a final that had got under way in a raucous atmosphere at Miami’s LoanDepot Park, with a large contingent of Venezuela fans in a sold-out crowd of 36,190 booing the USA lineup during pre-game introductions.

US President Donald Trump, whose government captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a military raid in January, had stoked tensions with a social media post on Monday, congratulating Venezuela for reaching the final while simultaneously suggesting the country could become the US’s “51st state”.

Trump again returned to the theme moments after Tuesday’s defeat, declaring in a post on his Truth Social platform: “STATEHOOD!!! President DJT.”

Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, who replaced the ousted Maduro, declared a “national day of jubilation” on Wednesday.

“This triumph is the victory of the passion, talent and unity that define us as Venezuelans,” Rodriguez wrote on X.

“An achievement that will remain forever in the heart of our country. ¡VIVA VENEZUELA!”

Venezuela dominate

Venezuela, whose players had been instructed by team management to avoid commenting on politics throughout the tournament, dominated the vaunted Team USA lineup for long periods, with starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez stifling the American batters led by New York Yankees home run king Aaron Judge.

The South Americans took the lead in the top of the third as USA starter Nolan McLean struggled for command from the mound.

Salvador Perez singled to get on base before Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuna Jr drew a walk.

A wild pitch from McLean left Venezuela with runners on second and third base, and on the next pitch, Kansas City Royals slugger Maikel Garcia’s sacrifice fly allowed Perez to score.

With the USA bats continuing to flail against Rodriguez, the Venezuelans doubled their lead in the top of the fifth inning.

McLean delivered a four-seam fastball into the centre of the strike zone, and Boston Red Sox left-fielder Wilyer Abreu duly pounced, crushing a 414-foot (126-metre) solo home run to centre field for a 2-0 lead.

Venezuela appeared to be closing in on victory, but were jolted by Harper’s 432-foot (132-metre) home run to centre field off reliever Andres Machado in the eighth.

But the USA rally was short-lived, and Venezuela grabbed the lead again in the ninth when Luis Arraez drew a lead-off walk from Whitlock before Suarez’s blast to left centre field gave Venezuela the winning run.

Closer Daniel Palencia removed Kyle Schwarber, Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony in quick succession to seal Venezuela’s triumph.