US-Israel war on Iran

Iran’s top diplomat tells Al Jazeera Tehran has reached a plan with Qatari mediators to reopen Hormuz within two days if the US meets its conditions.

EXCLUSIVE

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tells Al Jazeera Tehran doesn’t rule out attack, is ‘prepared for all scenarios’.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says a United States effort to open dialogue with Tehran is “a positive step”, but that there are currently no plans for meetings with US officials.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Saturday, Araghchi said Iran had studied a letter sent by US Vice President JD Vance in high-level meetings, and set out Tehran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which he said would pave the way for renewed negotiations with Washington.

He added that an Iranian delegation has travelled to Doha, a day after Qatari mediators were in Tehran in an apparent bid to negotiate a revival of the US-Iran ceasefire. Araghchi said one of his aides is in Qatar to continue consultations.

“The American side’s attempt to open the door to dialogue and understanding more broadly is a positive step,” the foreign minister told Al Jazeera.

However, he warned: “If Washington’s goal in sending this letter is to stir up discord, it would be yet another mistake to add to its previous ones.”

‘No need to meet with the Americans’

Araghchi played down talk of upcoming meetings between the two sides.

“What is being circulated in this regard is merely media speculation,” he said.

“We see no need to meet with the Americans at this stage. Our conditions are clear, and mediators are continuing their consultations regarding them,” he added.

He said whether Iran would hold direct or indirect talks with the US depended on Tehran’s conditions being met.

“Mediators have presented proposals concerning the nuclear dossier, which we are currently reviewing as part of the second phase,” he said.

“Qatari and Pakistani mediators are continuing consultations regarding our conditions,” Araghchi said.

Conditions for Hormuz

Araghchi said talks with Qatari mediators had shortened the time needed to implement Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“The Qatari side proposed shortening the implementation period of the Iranian proposal to five days. We have reached a proposal at this stage that reduces the implementation period to two days,” he said.

“Our conditions include lifting the sanctions imposed following the Islamabad memorandum and reducing US forces in the region,” he said, adding, “We demand the restoration of oil waivers and the release of all our frozen funds, including those held in Qatar.”

Iran is also demanding recognition of shipping routes through the strait that it had discussed with Oman, and the closure of other routes, he said.

‘Prepared for all scenarios’

Araghchi also said his country does not rule out the possibility of an attack against Iran.

“We are prepared for all scenarios,” he said.

“We have upgraded our weaponry, addressed our vulnerabilities, and tested new arms. Our forces are at the highest level of readiness.”

Israel’s parliament remains in deadlock.

After one of the highest voter turnouts in decades, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the self-styled Zionist opposition alliance secured the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority in the October 27 polls.

Netanyahu’s camp came first, with 53 seats, five more than the main opposition bloc. The Arab parties surged to a record 19 seats but have been relegated to merely observing coalition negotiations.

Viewed from a distance, the results could appear startling.

The judicial reforms ushered in at the start of Netanyahu’s government term in 2022 provoked the largest street protests in Israel’s history, while the prime minister himself is still embroiled in a corruption trial dating back to 2019. Alleged failures ahead of the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, that triggered Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have still to be reckoned with, despite overwhelming public pressure to do so. Moreover, the genocide has led to growing international isolation, while also providing the pretext for multiple attacks on countries across the region – the latest of which, undertaken with the United States on Iran in February, continues to roil energy markets around the world.

Nevertheless, roughly 2.38 million Israelis on Tuesday made the journey to the polls to back Netanyahu’s coalition, led by his Likud party, while some 2.21 million cast their ballots for the opposition alliance.

Between the two, little space was given to examine the multiple war crimes Israel stands accused of having carried out in Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed more than 74,500 people and left much of it in ruins, or government complicity in the surging violence and pogroms in the occupied West Bank, where a United Nations commission of inquiry said on Monday that Israel had been committing crimes against humanity, including extermination, torture and rape.

Gaza did not make the ballot

Analysts said the fact that neither Gaza nor the West Bank were a deciding factor in how Israelis voted on Tuesday was largely because they already represented an area of broad agreement across both alliances.

Instead, the election was fought on largely internal issues: the power of Israel’s courts, whether members of the ultra-Orthodox minority should be exempted from military service, and whether the government’s alleged culpability in missing the warnings of the October 2023 attack should be examined.

Leading Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani said the issues were pitched to the Israeli public along broadly similar lines to those used by the politicians enacting the policies.

“I don’t think the problem is simply that people are uninformed or disengaged,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Many Israelis know that Gaza has been devastated, even though they are exposed to a very selective representation of that devastation. But knowing something and recognising its moral and political implications are different things,” Shenhav-Shahrabani added, providing one explanation for the absence of empathy displayed by many Israelis in the face of the widely reported suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

“Ordinary people, who love their families, care for their friends, and consider themselves decent human beings, can participate in or acquiesce to a political order that produces immense suffering for others,” he said.

For Shenhav-Shahrabani, there has been “a powerful mechanism of denial” at work. “Not necessarily denial of the facts, but denial of their meaning,” he said.

Security on the agenda

For Netanyahu’s supporters, however, this denial could be traced to something more personal.

“The Likud is a tribe, or perhaps a cult and, as far as they are concerned, Dear Leader is always right,” Israeli analyst Ahron Bregman said of the prime minister’s base, which has sustained his rule for a cumulative 19 years – roughly a quarter of Israel’s entire existence.

“For them, the enemy, straight after the Arabs, is the left, and they would vote for Netanyahu regardless of his faults,” added Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at King’s College London.

For much of this electorate, the vote was less a judgement on the government’s conduct than a choice between competing claims to political legitimacy – or as Israeli academic Roi Zur put it, a contest over “the heart and soul of democracy” and the future of Jewish and Israeli identity.

“The most important thing, I think, for turnout among Netanyahu’s supporters is the understanding, or the belief, that the alternative coalition would be weaker on security,” said Zur, an expert on voter behaviour who teaches at Essex University.

What Netanyahu had been particularly successful in doing, he continued, was creating “this campaign of fear and the belief that he is the only one who can deal with this situation, that he is the only strong enough prime minister”.

“The idea that Netanyahu is the only and the strongest leader that can lead Israel through these recent times and the post-October 7 war.”

War and occupation, according to Shenhav-Shahrabani, were not choices to be made on the ballot paper.

Instead, they had become the prism through which, over decades, Israelis had come to view “security, citizenship, and the very meaning of democracy”.

“That is why replacing Netanyahu, important as it may be, would not by itself resolve the deeper problem.”

Over the past week, Washington and Tehran have sent mixed signals about whether their eight-month war is heading back to full-scale strikes or towards a peace deal.

On Thursday, the head of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, briefed US President Donald Trump on options for renewed attacks on Iran, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The US and Israel have drawn up joint plans to attack Iran after the November 3 US midterm elections, The New York Times (NYT) reported last week.

Yet on the same day, The Washington Post reported that Vice President JD Vance had offered to meet Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in person to negotiate an end to the war.

On Friday, Qatari mediators returned to Tehran for talks coordinated with the US, an official told Reuters.

So is Washington heading back to war, or towards a deal? Here’s what we know:

Why are there conflicting reports?

Essentially, Washington is preparing for war while keeping a diplomatic channel open.

The WSJ reported that the US has boosted air defences and munitions in the region and moved some troops away from bases vulnerable to Iranian retaliation.

Ten US military cargo planes landed at the Ovda and Nevatim air bases in Israel’s Negev region on Thursday, with more sent to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who said he had been briefed on the plans, called them “insane” and warned of a devastating escalation.

Can diplomatic efforts hold off a return to strikes?

Diplomacy has not stopped.

Vance’s letter, delivered to Rezaei through Qatari mediators on Sunday, proposed direct talks led by Vance, with Iran’s nuclear programme on the table from the start, according to the NYT, in a bid to prevent a renewal of strikes.

Whether it might have any influence over what happens next is a matter for debate. Rouzbeh Parsi, an Iran analyst who is an affiliated researcher at Lund University’s Department of History and Human Rights Studies in Sweden, described Vance as the “voice of reason” on Iran within the Trump administration, saying his signals have been “the least volatile and unpredictable”.

But he also told Al Jazeera that Vance’s position has “never proven to be sturdy enough to actually sway Trump”.

“Thus, while the optics with Vance look better than anyone else in the Trump administration, I doubt that they [Iranian officials] give the outreach much credence until Vance proves able to actually deliver something on his own,” he said.

Furthermore, Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that “Rezaei is just one voice among many” adding that the “reality is that decisions are made collectively inside the Islamic republic”.

Wolfgang Pusztai, a security and defence analyst and Austria’s former defence attache to Libya, has a different view, however, telling Al Jazeera, “There is no doubt that the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] currently calls the shots in Iran.”

In February, Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the initial attacks by Israel and the United States, and his son became the new supreme leader, but Pusztai says he “simply does not have the influence his father did”.

“Without the IRGC’s approval, there will be no agreement with Iran,” Pusztai said, adding it is safe to assume that when Rezaei makes a statement or endorses a proposal, “it reflects the position of the IRGC leadership” and that the US was “absolutely right to negotiate with him”.

Pusztai said it is unclear whether Rezaei is indeed ready to make a serious compromise, but under sustained US pressure, Rezaei, who holds a doctorate in economics, could come to see that “Iran’s interests and the regime’s survival can be better secured without nuclear weapons and through a less aggressive foreign policy”.

“He certainly knows that peak oil is approaching and that time is running out for Iran’s economic recovery through the use of its oil revenues,” he said.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said progress depends on Iran’s seven conditions being met – including the lifting of sanctions, ending the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, guarantees to an end to US-Israeli strikes, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets – adding that the “carrot-and-stick approach has no effect on Iran”, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Vance, meanwhile, told Fox News on Thursday that Trump would “never” let the conflict become “a forever war”.

Which of all these signals matter most?

The diplomacy may say more than the threats.

Andreas Krieg, an associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Vance’s offer of direct talks “suggests that the Americans do have second thoughts” and that they are less ready to strike than they publicly suggest.

But he warned that Cooper, whom he called “quite hawkish”, could give Trump false confidence “that there is a military way out of it, when in reality there isn’t a military way out of it”.

“This idea that there is a short and crisp military operation to solve this issue is obviously an illusion,” he said.

Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the White House could be sending signals to coerce Tehran, but that “the better interpretation is the simplest one”.

He believes “the United States is getting ready to carry out substantial attacks relatively soon”. He said he does not expect Washington to accept what he called the unfavourable deal Tehran is offering “without another round of attacks”.

Pusztai said Trump’s main focus is now the midterms, making it “very unlikely that he will order another large-scale attack on Iran before the elections”.

“Starting in mid to late November, there could be a major wave of attacks aimed at advancing the American agenda,” he said, adding that the aim would be to weaken the IRGC enough to push it towards a deal on US terms.

Whatever the vote’s result, “in the short term it will not change much”, Musgrave said.

A strong Republican showing could encourage more aggressive tactics, while a Democratic win could push Trump to show his unilateral powers, including by attacking, he said.

Hasn’t this all happened before?

It has. Iran was attacked by Israel or the US while talks were under way in both 2025 and 2026.

“We’ve seen this pattern of behaviour before from the United States,” Hashemi said, describing it as “talking diplomacy while preparing for war”.

On June 13, 2025, Israel launched major strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, two days before a sixth round of US-Iran talks was due in Oman. The US joined on June 22, bombing Iran’s Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear sites.

This year, the US and Israel attacked on February 28, two days after talks in Geneva that mediator Oman said had made “significant progress”.

A day before the strikes, Oman’s foreign minister said Iran had agreed to reduce its nuclear stockpiles to “the lowest level possible”.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera in September that Iran no longer trusts negotiations with Washington because attacks had come during previous rounds of talks.

Hashemi said he suspects “the same pattern is repeating itself”, with the US preparing “a massive bombing campaign in Iran, replete with war crimes like we haven’t seen before”, citing his reading of Murphy’s comments.

What is blocking a deal?

“The issue is mostly around sequencing and the lack of trust on the Iranian side that the Americans will actually follow through with their commitments,” Krieg said.

Tehran wants sanctions and the US naval blockade lifted quickly, fearing that a slow process gives Trump room to backtrack, he said.

Some IRGC hardliners do not necessarily see war as a bad thing if it tightens their grip on the Hormuz strait, he added, and “the Iranians have been prepping for this war for the last three weeks, so they are ready to fight”.

Krieg said he expects “nothing is going to happen until the 3rd of November [the date of the US midterm elections]”. After that, he said, the likelihood of war will “increase exponentially”.

Any new escalation would be worse than in February and March, he said, with Iran readier to strike critical infrastructure in Gulf countries.

He said the threat to the Gulf “will be unprecedented”.

When Paul McKinney, a farmer in northeast Arkansas, thinks of his son’s childhood, he remembers a small boy playing in vast fields.

To a child, a flooded rice field is “like a giant, 40-acre swimming pool”, he said.

Rice has been a staple on McKinney’s farm for four generations. Next year, however, the family plans to plant much less. Instead, they will focus on soya, a crop that is cheaper to produce.

Like farmers across the United States, McKinney is making tough decisions this year in response to higher fuel and fertiliser costs, which have skyrocketed since the start of the war on Iran.

This week, farmers also face tough choices at the polls. Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterm elections, as voters react to high prices economy-wide by switching parties or staying home.

Observers are watching farm country closely. Texas and Kansas could send Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades. In the House of Representatives, two majority-rural districts, Wisconsin’s Third and North Carolina First, could become tipping points for Democratic control.

Still, many of the country’s most rural areas, like Arkansas, are also its most safely Republican.

That leaves an uphill battle for Democrat Hallie Shoffner, who quit farming last year to challenge Republican Senator Tom Cotton in a campaign squarely focused on rising costs.

How high costs hurt farmers

Even before the US-Israel war on Iran, high input costs were straining farmers, said Ryan Loy, an extension economist for the University of Arkansas’ Division of Agriculture.

Loy pointed to a trade war with China that began in 2018, the ongoing war in Ukraine and disruptions related to the 2025 tariffs as factors driving up input costs and disrupting markets. A drought across the US heartland, made worse by climate change, has added to the strain.

Farmers across the country are working to adapt. In Arkansas, many farmers skipped rice in favour of soya. Soya is “the least input-intensive crop, and perhaps can break even or have the shallowest loss”, Loy said.

Now Arkansas, usually the country’s top rice producer, has its lowest rice acreage since the 1970s. Many farmers hoped 2026 would bring economic recovery so they could return to rice.

Then, the war on Iran hit. With the Strait of Hormuz blocked, fertiliser costs jumped just as farmers were fertilising during the spring planting season.

Loy tracked the increase in a sample budget that he maintains for Arkansas row crop farmers. “Urea fertiliser specifically peaked about 39 percent over our budgeted amount,” Loy said. Diesel costs came in about 72 percent more than budget averaged across the planting, growing and harvesting seasons, Loy found.

Those changes represent a significant economic hit. “For our state alone, it’s an additional cost of about $343m,” Loy said.

Last week, US President Donald Trump announced an $8bn fuel relief programme for farmers, following $12bn in tariff-related aid in 2025. If the fuel relief payment were divided equally between the 50 states, it would cover less than half of the extra costs that Loy estimates Arkansas’ farmers paid this year.

McKinney, a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said the announcement was welcome. Still, he hoped for longer-term solutions that would prevent “this constant battle for survival”.

For many farms, survival is indeed getting harder. Farm bankruptcies for the first three quarters of 2026 were up 19 percent compared to this time last year, according to a recent analysis by the University of Arkansas’ National Agricultural Law Center. They were up 73 percent compared to 2024.

‘We can’t keep doing this’

McKinney’s son, who grew up playing in muddy rice fields, now helps his dad farm their 24,000 acres. So does McKinney’s nephew, who this year is driving a combine.

“As has been done for us, we would love to be able to hand that down to the next generation,” said McKinney. “But you also have to think about what is going to be best for them.”

McKinney questions how long farming will provide a sustainable living. “It’s some heavy things to think about,” McKinney said.

For Shoffner, a sixth-generation Arkansas farmer, that reckoning came last year.

Higher costs, lower crop prices and the uncertainty of trade wars and tariffs “made the numbers stop working” for their 2,000-acre farm operation, Shoffner told Al Jazeera.

“I know what it feels like to work hard, make every adjustment you can, and still have to sit down with your family and say, ‘We can’t keep doing this,’” Shoffner said.

To protect her parents’ land and retirement, Shoffner closed the family’s farm. That “heartbreaking” decision helped spur her Senate run.

“I decided that if I can’t farm, I will fight,” Shoffner said.

If elected, Shoffner wants to end the war on Iran, build trade policies farmers “can actually plan around”, invest in local processing and distribution, and pass a robust Farm Bill — strategies she hopes will help farmers and rural economies more broadly.

“If we want rural communities to have a future, the people producing our food have to be able to make a living doing it.”

Cotton did not respond to a request for comment.

How will farmers vote?

Economic pain may not change farmers’ votes, however, in Arkansas or nationwide. Michael Shepherd, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, said many farmers, like many rural voters, are committed Republicans.

Committed voters tend to view the economy through a partisan lens, according to Shepherd. “Their political behaviours, their voting choices, things like that, are not particularly responsive to changes in the agricultural economy,” he said.

Some polling this year, however, did suggest the potential for movement. A poll by the Farm Journal in April found that 35 percent of farmers who “usually” vote Republican and 15 percent who “always” vote Republican were still considering how they would vote.

And September polling from Purdue showed that, for the first time this term, a majority of farmers surveyed think the country is “on the wrong track”.

Even if farmers are swayable, of course, Shoffner still may not be the one to sway them: her campaign has been far outspent by Cotton’s, an established lawmaker who has received funding from interest groups like AIPAC and leaders at companies like Anthropic and Palantir.

“If one side has a massive war chest, and the other side has very limited resources, then that game of tug of war can be won much easier than it should be,” Shepherd said.

And even if farmers do change their votes, they may not decide elections.

McKinney, who is now farming one of the Shoffner family’s former fields, said farmers represent a shrinking percentage of rural voters — their strength now is in organising, not numbers.

Still, even where candidates like Shoffner don’t win, their campaigns might signal to funders that similar races may be competitive in the future or help Democrats win down-ballot seats.

In Arkansas’ second congressional district, for example, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is betting on Democrat Chris Jones. It’s a long-shot campaign, but across the country, at least some long-shot candidates are expected to win.

“All indications are that this is gonna be one of the biggest shifts away from the president’s party that we’ve observed,” Shepherd said.

Gulf countries have stepped up diplomacy with Iran in a bid to de-escalate tensions across the Middle East, amid fears of renewed US strikes on Tehran and intensifying hostilities between Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

The three nations that signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in August – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye – and diplomats from Qatar met with high-ranking Iranian officials on Monday in an effort to prevent the resumption of all-out war.

Underscoring the high stakes, the meeting in Tehran was attended by Saudi Minister of Defence Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, just days after Iran-aligned Houthi fighters struck Saudi airports, ports and oil facilities.

Meanwhile, during a diplomatic visit to the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge on Monday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi called for a regional security framework, including a “non-aggression pact”, between the Gulf countries and Iran under which the United States would no longer be the primary provider of security.

While Gulf countries appear determined to avoid another round of conflict – which has already restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupted global oil and gas supplies and wreaked havoc on energy facilities and infrastructure in Gulf states – questions remain over whether a regional agreement is possible and where it would leave relations between the US and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Regional security or de-escalation?

On Friday, US President Donald Trump repeated warnings that Washington may carry out another military operation against Iran as rising fuel prices weigh on the US midterm elections scheduled for November 3. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iran would respond more forcefully to any renewed US military action, stoking fears of an even wider escalation.

While this week’s talks in Tehran mark the first high-level ‌contact between Iran and the Mecca mutual defence pact nations since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28, reports suggest they have stopped short of landing an agreement.

Reuters reported that Qatari mediators ⁠presented ⁠Iran with a draft deal on Sunday, which Tehran was expected to respond to by the end of the week. On Wednesday, the news agency quoted Iranian officials as saying Qatar had put ‌forward ideas that were unacceptable and that Tehran would ⁠show ⁠no flexibility regarding the nuclear ‌issue.

Khaled Batarfi, a Saudi political analyst and academic, said the visit to Tehran indicated that Saudi Arabia was willing to give Iran a “last warning” and “submit to the region’s concerns”, but that Iran has so far refused.

“The gap is [wide] and what makes it worse is that there is no trust,” Batarfi told Al Jazeera.

Observers say diverging views are unlikely to turn the current diplomatic efforts into a lasting infrastructure. “It’s really hard to see a regional security framework coming out in the coming months or even years,” Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, told Al Jazeera.

“What we are seeing is more small groups, flexible groups of countries that are taking the lead in trying to reach either bilateral or multilateral solutions,” the analyst said. “A regional security framework would need the same vision for the region, which is not necessarily shared… among the GCC countries themselves.”

Challenges ahead

Hamidreza Azizi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye share concerns that a prolonged confrontation between Iran and the US could further destabilise the region.

“The main obstacle remains the fundamental disagreement between Tehran and Washington over the sequence of commitments,” Azizi told Al Jazeera. “The US wants Iranian concessions, particularly on the nuclear issue, while Tehran insists that its conditions for ending the war must be met first.”

“Regional mediation could help bridge this gap, possibly through an interim arrangement, but the willingness of regional actors to facilitate an agreement does not necessarily mean that the two principal parties are prepared to make the necessary compromises,” he added.

As for a new security order, Azizi said regional countries do not share a common understanding of what it should look like and what role the US – which has so far been the GCC’s main security partner – would have left to play.

Iran has long advocated for a regional security architecture that would reduce or eliminate the US military presence. “Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, however, remain deeply integrated into the US security system, and there is little indication that they intend to abandon it,” Azizi said.

“The recent war has certainly raised questions about the reliability of American security guarantees, but this has encouraged these countries to diversify their security partnerships rather than fundamentally redefine their strategic alignments.”

BREAKINGBREAKING,

The official results are due to be published on November 4, more than a week after the vote.

Exit polls following what many pundits and voters have billed as the most pivotal election in Israel’s history indicate no clear winner in the hard-fought contest.

According to exit polls, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc is projected to secure 50 seats, while the bloc led by opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot is expected to win 52 or 53 seats. Sixty-one seats are needed to form a majority government. Arab parties are projected to collectively win 18 seats.

Polling stations closed at 10pm (20:00 GMT) local time. Preliminary results are expected on Wednesday, followed by a final tally on Friday. The official results are due to be published on November 4, eight days after the vote.

Exit polls are based on interviews with voters immediately after they have cast their ballots. The interviews help project the election’s outcome and have in previous elections tended to anticipate the results closely.

Voter turnout in the Israeli election reached 74.3 percent as of 8pm (18:00 GMT), according to data released by the Central Elections Committee. By comparison, turnout in the 2022 election was 70.63 percent.

Polls predicted a tight race between incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leading opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Yashar party and a former army chief.

Israel’s Central Elections Committee rejected a request by Netanyahu’s Likud Party to extend voting hours.

The election is the first since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza three years ago, following Hamas-led attacks on the country, and is widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s handling of the events on October 7, 2023 and the conflicts that followed.

Doha, Qatar – African countries are feeling the economic fallout from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, with rising fuel and fertiliser prices threatening to drive up food costs, according to trade ministers from the region and the United Nations’ top trade official.

The crisis around the Strait of Hormuz due to the United States and Israel’s war on Iran needs to be resolved “sooner rather than later”, Luz Maria de la Mora, director of the Division on International Trade and Commodities at UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), told Al Jazeera at the World Investment Forum on Monday. She warned that soaring fertiliser prices could affect harvests next year.

“Prices of fertilisers have risen dramatically … so many countries have decided to reduce the use of fertilisers, which will have an effect next year in terms of crops,” she said.

“It may have an effect on availability of food and prices of food.”

The US-Israel war on Iran has highlighted the world’s heavy reliance on the strategic waterway, through which one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade previously passed.

Against this backdrop, Doha hosted UNCTAD’s World Investment Forum on October 25 and 26, bringing together heads of state, policymakers, CEOs and investors to discuss global investment and sustainable development.

The Strait of Hormuz’s disruption has rippled through African economies. In Zimbabwe, rising fuel and fertiliser prices are a critical concern in a country where more than 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture, Monica Mutsvangwa, the country’s minister of women affairs, community, small and medium enterprise development, told Al Jazeera.

Uganda, another heavily agrarian economy, has also been hit, with fuel prices more than doubling, Sanjay Tanna, the country’s minister of trade, industry and cooperatives, told Al Jazeera.

The impact extends beyond the immediate cost of energy. Rising oil prices have disrupted supply chains, with effects lasting longer than anticipated, according to de la Mora.

“The effects are lasting longer than we would have expected or would have wanted,” she said.

‘Friend to all, enemy to none’

The shock has also exposed differences in how African economies weather global disruption.

Uganda’s reliance on subsistence farming has helped cushion the impact, with domestic food production offering some protection from international market volatility, said Tanna.

But the country has not been insulated from financial pressures: its currency has lost 10 percent of its value against the US dollar, the minister said. The Ugandan shilling has steadily declined since mid-2026.

For Zimbabwe, the crisis has reinforced the importance of attracting investment while maintaining economic ties across geopolitical divides.

Amid the simmering trade war between the US and China, Harare considers itself a potential partner to investors from either side, Mutsvangwa said.

“We are a friend to all and an enemy to none,” she said.

“Money has no color … If we get an investor who comes into our country, follows the rules and regulations of the country, makes his money, and Zimbabwe develops, that’s what we want.”

The official pointed to Zimbabwe’s deposits of more than 60 critical minerals, including lithium and graphite, as well as its tourism potential.

Trade in an unequal system

But attracting foreign capital remains a challenge for developing economies, with investment concentrated in a relatively small number of countries.

That concentration is “very understandable”, de la Mora said, arguing that investors need confidence that their money will generate returns.

“Capital is risk averse. Capital needs to have certainty that its investment is going to yield returns and it’s going to come to fruition,” she said.

Governments can help build that confidence through transparent institutions, the rule of law and investment in infrastructure, including reliable electricity, energy supplies and digital connectivity, she added.

The question of whether the international trading system treats all countries equally prompted a more blunt assessment from Uganda’s trade minister.

“Of course not,” said Tanna. “The world cannot be equal … It’s unfair, but we believe that, within the space that we are in, we are in a good space.”

Uganda was well placed for the future, he argued, because it produces its own food – an advantage at a time when international supply chains are under pressure.

For both Uganda and the Republic of Congo, building resilient economies also means investing in younger generations.

The Republic of Congo’s Deputy Prime Minister for Coordination, Development Infrastructure and Land Planning, Jean-Jacques Bouya, said the country had aligned its national development plan, Vision 2063, with the African Union’s broader development ambitions.

Connectivity – through electricity, digital infrastructure and physical links – is central to that strategy, he told Al Jazeera.

The Republic of Congo also wants to expand local processing so that more value from its natural resources remains within the country.

“Africa can no longer be a reservoir of raw materials, and neither can Congo – a place where raw materials are extracted, taken elsewhere, processed and then sold back to us at a much higher price. We cannot go on like this,” Bouya said.

Tehran, Iran – Ministers and senior security officials from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye – the three nations that signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement – are in Tehran to discuss regional security issues amid threats of new US strikes on Iran.

Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, Pakistani military chief Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin met Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and will discuss tensions with security chief Mohsen Rezaei.

The meetings are among the highest-profile dialogues held in Tehran in recent months. While there is still little information on what might be discussed, the meetings come amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to deal with a new escalation between the United States and Iran.

But analysts broadly believe the visit to Tehran by the three signatories of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, a regional defence alliance, will be enough to prevent a new outbreak in violence between the US and Iran.

“The Mecca pact’s 11th-hour visit to Tehran is an attempt to tip the balance in favour of those willing to compromise before the guns start blazing again,” said Ali Vaez, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the International Crisis Group.

“But unless they arrive with a credible formula to bridge the US-Iran divide, they may find themselves with little more than goodwill in a race against the clock.”

The talks are expected to address the waves of missile and drone attacks carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are allied with Tehran, on Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

“I believe that parties to the Mecca agreement lack options of military engagement with the Houthis, but Riyadh is certainly asserting greater pressure for more, and its expectation of its partners has grown in parallel with the offensive from Yemen,” Ayesha Siddiqa, a senior research fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

But despite the collective security arrangement in the Mecca defence pact, Saudi Arabia’s allies Turkiye and Pakistan cannot “afford to commit troops on the ground” in Yemen, said Siddiqa.

The latest diplomatic push is likely linked to visits by Pakistani army chief Asim Munir to Saudi Arabia and Iran last week, Siddiqa said, and coincides with Islamabad’s restrictions on overland border trade with Tehran amid the US blockade on Iran.

Iranian authorities have said they favoured “security originating from within the region” as they prepared for the meetings.

Umer Karim, who researches Saudi foreign policy and its implications for regional security, said the Tehran meetings are unlikely to reduce the risk of a renewed war between Iran and the US, which would likely lead to more regional turmoil.

“Therefore, these talks perhaps are more concerned about the security of Saudi Arabia and involve an attempt by Turkiye and Pakistan to compel Iran to reach a compromise,” he told Al Jazeera.

US President Donald Trump is said to be considering new attacks to break the diplomatic deadlock with Iran, which has refused to agree to any peace agreement with Washington unless several of its demands are met.

The US and regional powers want international shipping and transit through the Strait of Hormuz to resume without impediments or attacks. Washington also wants to rein in Tehran’s nuclear programme and bring in international inspectors to assess Iran’s highly enriched uranium. Israel says it wants to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Tehran wants to lift the US naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports, which has halted crude oil exports and disrupted most trade, and return to a memorandum of understanding agreed between the two countries in June.

The US has refused this, with President Trump saying he is left with a choice to “finish the job” by launching major strikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. This could prompt Iran to lash out at its neighbours, as it did earlier in the war with strikes on US bases in Arab states and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the US Department of State issued an October 21 order for nonemergency US government employees and their family ⁠members to leave Saudi Arabia for their safety’s sake, given the Houthi threat.

As talks involving Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye continue in Iran, analysts say these Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signatories will likely try to minimise the impact on Saudi Arabia if war does break out again.

“However, since little has changed from an Iranian strategic calculus and the actors involved don’t have the kind of leverage needed to affect Iran’s strategic thinking, these negotiations are going to yield little,” Karim said.

From judicial reform to conscription and the Palestinians, here’s where candidates stand on the key issues dominating the campaign.

For an election often billed as the most consequential in Israel’s history, many issues that outsiders might expect to divide the candidates are, in fact, points of consensus among the frontrunners.

None of the leading contenders in Tuesday’s election has questioned the case for unleashing a genocide on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, or the wars that have followed, including the one on Iran. Nor have most candidates for the premiership offered a clear path towards implementing a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that was envisaged in the 1990s, or towards an equitable settlement with the Palestinians whose territory Israel occupies.

Instead, the points of division centre almost exclusively on Israel’s internal politics and how voters see the future character of their country. The choice is between the hard-right government of incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unconstrained by the judicial oversight he has railed against, and the future outlined by the disparate coalition of his opponents, which promises a broadly similar policy agenda but within the confines of the law and without the more extreme elements of the current governing coalition.

So, what have the leading candidates said about the main issues?

The two-state solution

Despite having committed to working towards a two-state solution in the 1990s’ Oslo Accords, with many of their allies adjusting their policies towards Israel to reflect that commitment, few of the contenders in Tuesday’s election appear ready to honour it. Instead, their government stands widely accused of abetting the settler pogroms now raging across the West Bank, while supporting continued construction in the occupied territory in defiance of international law. This includes the E1 settlement plan, which ministers openly boast will bury the two-state solution.

Here’s what some of the contenders have said:

• Likud party leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “We are going to fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state; this place belongs to us.”
• Yashar party Gadi Eisenkot: “My position on the Palestinian issue has remained consistent: The principle of two states for two peoples is a mistake.”

• Religious Zionist party leader, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: The next government should “destroy the idea of an Arab terror state; finally, formally and practically cancel the cursed Oslo Accords and get on the path of sovereignty, while encouraging migration both from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria [occupied West Bank]. There is no other long-term solution.”
• The Democrats leader Yair Golan: “We need to understand that Israeli society is still in trauma from October 7. To make the galactic leap from the current situation to a two-state solution is impossible. It’s not enough to return to old formulas, we need to adjust our plans, our ideas, our perceptions. My concept is about civil separation and security responsibility.”

Haredi draft

The conscription of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, population into the army is an issue largely unique to Israel, and one whose prominence has grown as the human and economic costs of the wars in which many refuse to take part have mounted.

Netanyahu has continued to rely on the two main Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), for support in the Knesset. They have in turn insisted that he pass legislation overturning the Supreme Court ruling of June 25, 2024 and offering ultra-Orthodox youth a legislative shield against conscription.

Here is what leaders have said:

• Netanyahu after the arrest this month of about 40 Haredim – plural for Haredi – for avoiding the draft: “We must preserve the world of Torah because it preserved us. These arrests are a deliberate attempt to harm the process of drafting Haredim without coercion.”
• Shas leader Aryeh Deri: “There will be no government in Israel with Shas’s support or participation unless the status of yeshiva [seminary] students is regulated.”
• Eisenkot: “That is what the upcoming election is about: Netanyahu’s draft-dodging government, or a government of conscription led by me.”
• Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Liberman: “Netanyahu is issuing an impassioned call against the arrest of draft evaders, once again proving that he is a hostage to the draft evaders – without them, he has no government.”

Judicial overhaul

Days after taking office in 2022, Netanyahu’s government unveiled a plan to curb the powers of Israel’s courts, which triggered months of mass protests in 2023 before the war on Gaza paused the fight.

The coalition has passed measures reshaping how judges are appointed, while in July a law stripped Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of many of her powers, allowing the government to reject her legal advice and choose its own lawyers in court. Both are due to take effect after the election and most of the opposition has promised to reverse them.

The government has also boycotted Chief Justice Isaac Amit. Critics call it a deliberate assault on democracy by a prime minister embroiled in a long-running corruption trial of his own, while Justice Minister Yariv Levin says the election is a historic chance to finish the job.

Here are some of the contenders’ statements:

• Netanyahu: “Democracy is the rule of the people. It’s ‘we the people,’ not ‘we the judges … In Israel, [judicial reform] was completely derailed, and we have to bring it back. We don’t have to crush the judiciary, but we have to make sure it doesn’t crush the legislative branch, the Knesset or the executive branch of government.”
• Together alliance co-leader, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett: “I want to be clear. We will cancel all the legal revolution laws immediately upon the convening of the Knesset.”

October 7 inquiry

While the killing of more than 74,000 people in Gaza has been entirely absent during the campaign of the two main alliances, questions over political accountability for security failures ahead of and during the Hamas-led attack in 2023 have dominated this election cycle.

Inquiries into failings by the security services ahead of and during the Hamas-led attack led to the resignation of Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, announced in January 2025. They also fed a long, drawn-out and bitter fight with the prime minister that ended with the departure of Shin Bet head Ronen Bar in June last year.

However, despite recent news reports suggesting that Netanyahu was warned by both the UAE and Egypt ahead of the attack, and longstanding criticism of his policy of keeping Hamas in power in Gaza as a bulwark against the Palestinian Authority, no similar inquiry into his own alleged failings before October 7 has happened.

Here are some of the leaders’ statements:

• Eisenkot: “Netanyahu was warned and did not act. A State Commission of Inquiry that we will establish will investigate the disaster. The heads of the systems took responsibility and resigned long ago. We will not allow the master of evaders to escape the truth.”
• Netanyahu: The prime minister told the Knesset that his government “wants to establish a commission of inquiry with as broad public support as possible” and not one dismissed by what he claimed is “at least half the country”. The proposed government-led inquiry never reached its final reading and has been deferred to the next session.

Iran’s authorities are increasing investment in a campaign to arm and train civilians who would serve in the state security apparatus against domestic and foreign threats amid growing fears that fighting with the United States and Israel could resume imminently.

The public mobilisation drive – called Janfada, or “those who sacrifice their life” – was launched in late March at the peak of the war with the US and Israel. It has now spread to large parts of the country and is aiming to attract volunteer men and women. It has a stated focus on youth but is open to all ages.

At their numerous street booths and stations, representatives of the Basij militia of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other state bodies offer training on using weapons and other equipment to defend the government and its “revolutionary” values.

State-organised events and armed “exercises” linked with the mobilisation campaign have been held in Tehran, Isfahan, Zanjan, Shiraz, Kerman, Mashhad, Bojnord, Ahvaz and other big and small cities across many of Iran’s 31 provinces.

Ali Kowsari, Basij’s deputy for training, announced during a news conference this month that the IRGC wants to use at least 14 main squares across Tehran as training and equipment stations for Janfada volunteers. The goal is to use at least one to three squares in the capital city of every single province, he said, without divulging how many cities are currently being used as part of the campaign.

State-run nighttime events are sometimes held with rallies and motorcades during the day. A resident of Gilan province in northern Iran told Al Jazeera that people regularly see state-run stations on the streets in big and smaller cities across the province during their commutes.

“Sometimes they hold competitions to win some small prizes. They bring in live bullets, teach people how to load them into magazines, how to arm pistols and assault rifles, and how to aim and fire,” the resident said, asking to remain anonymous for security reasons.

“The organisers are mostly old men. Since the start of the war, they’ve gathered around the main square almost every night, also often playing revolutionary tunes and chanting from loudspeakers.”

In Gilan’s city of Rasht on October 15, residents objected to the noise and blocking of the street for the nighttime pro-government gathering. Videos circulating on social media showed a confrontation that escalated into a brawl although the authorities did not comment.

On Saturday, authorities cautioned residents in Alborz province’s Karaj near Tehran that they could expect explosions and loud noises from one of the Janfada exercises.

‘Revolutions are like riding a bicycle’

Last week, there was a big mobilisation campaign in northwestern Iran’s Kurdistan province, which borders Iraq.

The IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency characterised a procession in the provincial capital, Sanandaj, as an exercise in “unity” between the Shia and Sunni Muslim populations.

But a number of foreign-based Iranian human rights groups have characterised such armed mobilisation efforts as “intimidation” campaigns that are held months after January’s nationwide protests, during which thousands of civilians, including many young people, were killed from gunshots and stab wounds.

The government has acknowledged that protests took place in more than 400 counties across all provinces but describes them as a “coup” attempt wholly orchestrated by the US and Israel to overthrow the establishment. It also rejected findings by an independent United Nations fact-finding mission that said the authorities committed crimes against humanity while cracking down on the protests.

Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, said the US-Israeli war on Iran has “presented another opening for the more revolutionary elements of the Iranian body politic”.

“Revolutions are like riding a bicycle. To avoid a nasty fall, you must pedal hard. And this is precisely what the Janfadas and their leaders are trying to do – to remain relevant,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The Janfada’s training mobilisation also gives the more revolutionary-minded figures within the Iranian leadership a chance for choreographed displays of political and ideological loyalty to the revolution and its principles,” the professor said.

‘Siege mentality’

The government said 33 million Iranians have signed up on the campaign’s website but has provided no evidence to support this number.

It represents more than a third of the country’s population, or more than half of the over-12 population, men and women.

Earlier this year, foreign-based activists accessed the website’s source code, which showed that fewer than four million people had registered. Only a phone number was required for registration, and no national identification number was needed.

Speaking last week about the political goals of the campaign, Nematollah Bagheri, IRGC commander for the province of Lorestan, said: “The aim is to show that, just as the government supports the people, the people support the Islamic Republic and the Islamic revolution.”

Organisers said registrants could be used in future rescue operations and for social services and media and financial support. The government has also asked them to help ease the pressure of the US war, naval blockade and sanctions by consuming less fuel, electricity and other resources.

The establishment’s efforts to expand the campaign have only grown after nearly eight months of attritional war, which has killed thousands of people, made Iranians poorer and seen parts of the country’s civilian infrastructure destroyed.

Children have become a major focus for the campaign, and schools have increasingly been accommodating mobilisation. Last week, Education Minister Alireza Kazemi said the Basij militia was registering “student Janfadas” and had plans for more mobilisation and ceremonies involving children over the coming weeks.

Kamrava, the university professor, said this kind of mobilisation does not necessarily broaden the scope of the state’s legitimacy among the larger society.

“It does, however, serve to deepen the legitimacy that the state already has among its existing supporters. It reinforces belief in the revolution’s ideological and political mission and reifies the siege mentality that all revolutionaries have,” he said.

Speaking at the World Investment Forum in Doha, state minister says peace and security are essential for trade and investment prosperity.

Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Trade Affairs Ahmad bin Mohammed al-Sayed has called for greater international cooperation and economic stability, warning that trade and investment cannot flourish without peace and security.

Speaking at the United Nations-led World Investment Forum in Doha on Sunday, al-Sayed said geopolitical upheaval and growing economic fragmentation were threatening global investment prospects.

“The global economy is undergoing changes. There are geopolitical changes. These are all issues that redefine the landscape of global investment,” he said.

“We believe that investment in the future is related to investment in peace and security,” the minister added.

“Trade will prosper, and long-term investment will create its potential only with a safe and stable environment.”

Organised by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Investment Forum brings together heads of state, policymakers, CEOs and investors to discuss global investment, opportunities, challenges and sustainable development.

Al-Sayed’s remarks come as several conflicts continue to rage around the world, and with growing fears of an escalation in the US-Israel war on Iran in the coming weeks.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments, has been disrupted since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28. Iran responded by effectively blocking the strait and attacking targets across the region.

Prior to the war, one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas flowed through the strait.

In the past week, escalating attacks on shipping in the strait and uncertainty over diplomatic efforts to end the nearly eight-month war have led to a surge in oil prices, putting further pressure on the global economy.

On Thursday, oil prices climbed about 4 percent to a five-month high, with Brent futures crossing $113.17 a barrel.

‘Further cooperation, less isolation’

Al-Sayed stressed the need for predictable international rules and stronger economic partnerships at a time of heightened uncertainty.

“In our world, which is facing further uncertainty and economic fragmentation, our message stays clear. It is a call for further cooperation and less isolation, further cooperation and less division,” he said.

Iranian strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan industrial complex in March damaged facilities, with repairs expected to take several years.

The minister outlined Qatar’s efforts to strengthen supply chains, diversify economic partnerships and “open new markets for our exports”.

He said Qatar attracted 373 foreign direct investment projects in 2025, a 50 percent increase from the previous year, generating more than 15,000 jobs.

Qatar has also unveiled infrastructure projects worth $38.5bn over the next five years, alongside an anticipated $22.5bn in private sector investment in hospitality and real estate, al-Sayed added.

Tehran warns that even limited strikes would trigger a response ‘several times greater’.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has blamed Washington for the unravelling of an interim deal aimed at ending the war with the United States and Israel, amid growing fears that the fighting could resume imminently.

In comments broadcast by Iranian Press TV on Saturday, But Pezeshkian also said that both sides should return to the deal and “conclude it”.

His remarks come amid growing fears that military action could resume as soon as this weekend, after US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he “may do another little Epic Fury”, using the codename of the US-Israeli war against Iran that started on February 28.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned that even limited strikes would trigger a response “several times greater”, according to comments reported by the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ali Abdollahi said on Saturday that the US military would not be allowed in the Gulf “under any circumstances and at any time”. Abdollahi said Trump could only “dream” of seeing US forces enter the Gulf, adding that he would take his dream to the grave.

Trump has suggested he could take further military action against Iran, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he remains committed to overthrowing the country’s government.

Both leaders face elections, with Israelis set to choose their next government on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican Party faces crucial midterm elections on November 3, with Democrats potentially winning control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Such an outcome would be a major blow to Trump, who still has more than two years left in his final term in the White House.

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Saturday that Tehran would not “wait for permission to defend itself”, adding that the country “seeks peace but will respond to any aggression with severe consequences”.

“Our position is clear: we do not flee from dialogue for peace, and we do not hesitate in defending the country. Those who harbour the illusion of destroying Iran must correct their calculations,” Mohajerani wrote in a memo.

Her comments came as Iranian judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The pair discussed how to tackle corruption and pursue compensation for Iranians affected by the US-Israeli war, among other issues.

Khamenei replaced his father as supreme leader after the latter was assassinated during the opening strikes of the war on February 28. He has not been seen in public since assuming the position in early March.

Parliament Speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was reported to have met Khamenei earlier this week.

Trump says the US is considering a possible attack on Iran as soon as Sunday, or it could reach a major deal with Tehran.

Opposition figures join Tel Aviv protesters demanding an independent October 7 inquiry.

Thousands of Israelis are protesting against the government and calling for an independent inquiry into the security failures that led to the October 7, 2023 attacks.

Demonstrators rallied in the public plaza known as Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday, three days before Israel’s first general election since the genocidal war on Gaza began.

The protest was organised by the October Council, a group founded by the families of captives taken to Gaza three years ago, to demand accountability for the government’s failure to prevent the Hamas attack that preceded the war.

“Three days before the election, we will hold the culminating event marking three years of struggle to uncover the truth, demand accountability and establish a state commission of inquiry,” the October Council wrote on X ahead of the rally.

Elsewhere in Israel, protesters were also gathering for antigovernment demonstrations, reported Haaretz newspaper.

Taking part were leading figures from opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot of the Yashar party, who is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main centre-right rival.

In Tel Aviv, Eisenkot was greeted by chants of “Who’s coming? The next prime minister”, according to The Times of Israel. The leader of the Democrats, Yair Golan, was also at the rally.

“Masses, masses of masses, flowing in the ‘Democrats’ march from Rabin Square to the Hostages Square – for change, for hope, for r-e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n. What energy. This time it’s ours completely!”, Israeli citizen and lawyer Dan Adin posted on X.

Polls ahead of Tuesday’s election suggest a tight race, with Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc, in power since late 2022, neck and neck with Eisenkot’s. Neither bloc is currently projected to obtain a majority of seats in Israel’s parliament.

The election could be pivotal in determining whether Israel launches another round of strikes on Iran. Eisenkot is believed to be less inclined to resume military action against Tehran if he becomes Israel’s next prime minister.

However, on most other foreign policy issues, leading Israeli parties and politicians remain united, including in their opposition to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Ahead of the protest, the October Council alerted law enforcement to possible “provocations” from pro-government agitators.

“We have sent an urgent letter to the Police Commissioner following alerts about attempts by entities linked to the coalition to disrupt tonight’s rally,” it wrote on X.

The October Council aims to hold Israeli officials deemed responsible for the October 7 attacks to account and deliver justice for affected families.

Netanyahu’s coalition government, however, has refused demands to establish an independent commission of inquiry. Instead, it has offered to set up a “political” commission. Half of the commission’s members would be appointed by the government, while the remainder would be appointed by opposition legislators.

Opposition leaders have said they would boycott a commission appointed by politicians.

Global crude prices continue to climb, with Brent benchmark hitting $117.30 a barrel to build on four-year highs as market fears grow over a potential resumption of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Oil prices have climbed towards their highest levels in five months as attacks on tankers in and around the Strait of Hormuz mount and efforts to end the United States-Israel war on Iran are deadlocked.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose by more than $2 to $110.85 a barrel on Wednesday, close to a five-month peak.

A day earlier, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two tankers were “set ablaze” after hitting mines at what it called an illegal crossing point in the strait. Then, on Thursday, the IRGC said it hit seven more tankers although Washington dismissed the claim. In a statement, the IRGC said four of the vessels were transferring oil when they were targeted and caught fire overnight.

In September, the Houthis, an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God), seized territory in Yemen close to the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a critical chokepoint into and out of the Red Sea and a gateway to Egypt’s Suez Canal.

The escalation came as the world’s emergency oil stocks, already tapped heavily since the Iran war began on February 28, sit at their lowest levels in decades.

Al Jazeera put a question to analysts: If fighting resumes in full, the Strait of Hormuz is shut off completely and Houthi attacks choke off Bab al-Mandeb, how long could the world’s reserves last?

Here’s what you need to know:

What emergency oil reserves are there?

Strategic oil reserves are stockpiles of crude oil and fuel held by governments or by companies on their behalf for use in a supply emergency.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), which was established in 1974 after the Arab oil embargo, coordinates most of them. Its importing members must hold at least 90 days of net imports. China and India are not members.

How much of the reserves has already been released this year?

A record amount.

On March 11, days after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, the IEA’s 32 members agreed to make 400 million barrels available from emergency supplies, more than double the volume released after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The US pledged 172.2 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and Japan 79.8 million, according to IEA figures.

The SPR has since fallen to 283 million barrels, its lowest level since October 1982, according to the US Department of Energy.

Much of that oil was lent rather than sold and must be returned with extra barrels, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

How much oil is left?

Far less than before the war began in February, and not all of it can be used.

Aaron Kildow, a senior crude oil analyst at Sparta Commodities, told Al Jazeera that global strategic stocks excluding China and Iran have fallen by nearly 327 million barrels since the end of December 2025 with the US, Europe and Japan accounting for about 95 percent of the draw.

He estimated that leaves only about 400 million barrels of usable reserves worldwide, excluding China’s stockpile, which is unlikely to be exported, and Gulf stocks, which could be cut off by a total closure of Hormuz.

Nearly half of these available stocks are in Japan.

Europe has about 76 million barrels uncommitted, but members such as Germany are holding some back for a local emergency, Kildow said.

“Europe is the real wildcard, both on timing and willingness,” Kildow said.

Meanwhile, China’s onshore crude stocks stand at 1.13 billion barrels, down from 1.23 billion in late February but still enough for about 80 days of refinery intake, Muyu Xu, a senior crude oil analyst at the analytics firm Kpler, told Al Jazeera.

India’s reserves cover just eight days of its imports, the Reuters news agency reported.

What would a full closure of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb mean?

Before the war, about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, or roughly 20 million barrels of oil a day, passed through the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia has increased the amount of crude it transports from its oilfields in the east to its Red Sea port of Yanbu in the west via the East-West Pipeline, thereby bypassing Hormuz.

But there have been strikes on that pipeline, and tankers heading south from Yanbu must pass through Bab a-Mandeb, where the Iran-backed Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi shipping in July.

Only a confirmed 373,000 barrels a day of Saudi crude have transited Bab al-Mandeb so far this month, the lowest level since February, Xu said, with most Yanbu cargoes now heading north via Egypt instead.

If Hormuz were shut and the Houthis blocked all Saudi tankers, Gulf producers could export only through a few pipelines and Yanbu’s northbound route, Xu said.

That would leave about 7.5 million barrels a day of Middle Eastern crude, against 16.8 million now, a shortfall of about 9.3 million barrels a day, she estimated.

“If such attacks occur, the supply disruption could be even more severe and prolonged,” Xu said, referring to strikes on oilfields, terminals and pipelines.

So how long would reserves last?

Not for long – possibly just weeks, according to experts.

If Kpler’s estimated shortfall had to be covered entirely from the roughly 400 million usable barrels that Kildow identified, they could not, in practice, be released that fast. Japanese and South Korean reserves can move quickly, Kildow said, but US barrels are staged over three months, and Europe’s contribution is uncertain.

Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group, said the world was fortunate after the first closure. “The salient feature of March and beyond was how a crisis didn’t actually develop. We got away with it,” he said.

“I don’t think the global economy will be as lucky next time if there is a protracted conflict,” Beauchamp said. “A month or two is all we have.”

The world would not literally run out of oil. Instead, prices would rise until enough demand disappeared. “One hundred fifty dollars [per barrel] becomes a very distinct possibility, which then sees significant demand destruction,” Beauchamp said.

The sharpest squeeze would be on diesel, which is already nearly double the price of crude, the IEA said.

Refiners would compete for crude grades rich in diesel, “a cost that ultimately lands on consumers,” Kildow said.

Who would feel it first?

Asian importers with thin reserves.

Most Gulf exports in September and October went to Asian buyers, and India and Pakistan are among the most exposed, Kildow said, adding that their nearest alternative supply, from West Africa, is 25 to 28 days away by sea, compared with two days from Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates.

“The squeeze won’t hit uniformly. It lands fastest and hardest where reserves are thinnest and substitute supply is farthest away,” Kildow said.

Who would gain?

Oil producers far from the Gulf.

In the second quarter of this year, as the US-Iran war was under way, ExxonMobil reported earnings of $14.5bn, its highest in four years while Chevron posted $12bn, its best in six years and Shell more than doubled its earnings to nearly $10bn. Their profits are largely down to the high oil prices.

A second shock would send refiners scrambling for supplies from the US, Latin America, West Africa and Russia, Xu said.

“This would allow non-Middle Eastern producers to benefit from higher crude prices, potentially alongside lower transportation costs,” she said.

In August, US President Donald Trump said companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron were “making too much money based on a shortage”.