US-Israel war on Iran

UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer has announced talks to be held this week and co-hosted with France, aiming at a diplomatic end to the war on Iran and securing safe passage in the Gulf shipping afterwards.

Move reflects regional alarm over attacks by pro-Iranian groups based in Iraq, which continue despite ceasefire.

Bahrain has summoned an Iraqi envoy over drone attacks launched at the kingdom and other states in the region, which persist despite the US-Iran ceasefire.

The summoning of the diplomat on Monday followed similar action by Saudi Arabia the previous day, signalling growing regional concern over the activities of pro-Iranian groups based in Iraq and complicating Baghdad’s efforts to rebuild ties with its Arab neighbours.

Bahrain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the “continued malicious drone attacks” launched from Iraq towards Bahrain and several Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the state news agency BNA reported.

The ministry said Abdullah bin Ali Al Khalifa, director general of bilateral relations, had delivered an official protest note during the meeting with the Iraqi charge d’affaires, Ahmed Ismail al-Karawi.

The diplomatic missive called on Baghdad to address “these threats and attacks urgently and responsibly”.

Launchpad

During the United States-Israel war on Iran, Iraq has become a staging ground for a secondary conflict as drones and missiles are launched by Iran-aligned armed groups repeatedly targeting the Gulf states and Jordan.

US interests in Iraq also have been targeted, particularly the embassy in Baghdad.

Last month, several Gulf countries and Jordan demanded in a joint statement that Baghdad act immediately to stop attacks from its territory by Iran-aligned groups.

The statement was signed by Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Baghdad has categorically rejected the use of its territory to target Gulf states or Jordan, adding that it is taking necessary measures “in accordance with the constitution and the law”.

The attacks are severely testing Iraq’s painstakingly rebuilt ties with its Arab neighbours, leading Baghdad to issue a statement in which it offered “full readiness” to receive any information or evidence regarding the attacks to address them “responsibly and swiftly”.

Iran-aligned groups in Iraq had announced their commitment to a two-week Iran-US ceasefire that has been in place since dawn on Wednesday, and said they were suspending their actions towards the Gulf countries.

However, just hours after the ceasefire was announced, several Gulf nations reported missile and drone attacks on their territories.

What does Donald Trump’s naval blockade of Iranian ports look like and can it achieve what the US president wants? It is hard to know when the planning appears to have been done on the fly, according to war studies lecturer Samir Puri.

Islamabad, Pakistan – More than 12 hours of face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran ended without agreement in Islamabad on Sunday, leaving a fragile two-week ceasefire as the only barrier between diplomacy and a return to war.

Pakistan, which spent weeks positioning itself as a mediator and succeeded in bringing both sides into the same room, emerged with its role intact. But officials acknowledge the harder phase now begins — getting American and Iranian negotiators back into talks before their differences explode into full-fledged war again.

“Pakistan has been and will continue to play its role to facilitate engagements and dialogue between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America in the days to come,” Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a statement after the conclusion of the talks.

The talks, the highest-level direct engagement between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, faltered over differences surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” said US Vice President JD Vance, who led the American delegation alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

However, Vance left a narrow opening for the resumption of talks.

“We leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. We’ll see if the Iranians accept it,” Vance said, tapping the podium for emphasis, before ending his brief remarks, which lasted for less than five minutes.

Pakistani and Iranian sources confirmed that the Iranian delegation met senior Pakistani officials later on Sunday before departing for Tehran, though details of those discussions remain unclear.

What is clear is that Pakistan isn’t giving up yet.

Washington’s red lines

US officials said that Iran had entered negotiations misreading its leverage, believing it held advantages that, in Washington’s assessment, it did not.

According to these officials, Vance spent much of his time during the talks correcting what they described as Iranian misperceptions about the US position — asserting that no deal would be possible without a full commitment on the nuclear issue.

Officials also suggested that Trump’s subsequent announcement of a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz was not an impulsive reaction, but a pre-planned step aimed at removing the waterway as an Iranian bargaining tool and forcing the nuclear issue back to the centre of any future talks.

But the US officials, speaking on background, also acknowledged that the gulf in the positions between Washington and Tehran that they failed to bridge extended to issues beyond Iran’s nuclear programme.

In essence, they said, the two sides failed to agree on six key points: ending all uranium enrichment; dismantling major enrichment facilities; removing Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium; accepting a broader regional security framework involving US allies; ending funding for groups Washington designates as “terrorist” organisations, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; and fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz without tolls.

Hours after the talks ended, Trump acknowledged partial progress, but underscored the central impasse.

“The meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said. “Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION.”

Iran has effectively controlled access to the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global oil supplies pass, since the US-Israeli attacks began on February 28.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has imposed what analysts describe as a de facto toll system, requiring vessels to secure clearance codes and transit under escort through a controlled corridor.

The disruption has pushed oil prices above $100 per barrel at times, unsettling global markets and placing sustained pressure on energy-importing countries across Asia and Europe.

Tehran has framed its control of the strait as both a security measure and a key negotiating lever, one it has shown little willingness to relinquish without a broader settlement.

Tehran’s point of view

Iran’s account of the breakdown differed sharply.

In a post on X early on April 13, after returning to Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country had engaged in “good faith”, only to face shifting demands.

“When just inches away from an Islamabad MoU, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade,” he wrote. “Zero lessons learned. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.”

The reference to an “Islamabad MoU”, a memorandum of understanding, was the clearest public signal yet that the two sides had come closer to a formal agreement than either government had previously acknowledged.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the country’s delegation, said his team had proposed “forward-looking initiatives”, but failed to secure trust.

“Due to the experiences of the two previous wars, we have no trust in the opposing side,” he wrote on Sunday.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei also pointed to partial progress but unresolved differences.

“On some issues we actually reached mutual understanding, but there was a gap over two or three important issues and ultimately the talks didn’t result in an agreement,” he said.

Tehran’s key demands, including an end to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, the release of $6bn in frozen assets, guarantees on its nuclear programme and the right to charge vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, remained unmet.

Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, however, offered a more measured view — suggesting that Tehran was not closing the window on talks.

“The Islamabad Talks is not an event but a process,” he wrote in his message on X on Sunday. “The Islamabad Talks laid the foundation for a diplomatic process that, if trust and will are strengthened, can create a sustainable framework for the interests of all parties.”

Pakistan’s balancing act

For Pakistan, analysts say, the outcome represents a setback but not a failure.

Officials were careful to describe the talks as “an important opening step in a continuing diplomatic process”, stressing that issues of such complexity cannot be resolved in a single round.

The emphasis, they said, was on keeping the channel open.

Muhammad Obaidullah, a former Pakistan Navy commodore who has served in Iran as a diplomat, said expectations of a breakthrough were always unrealistic.

“The mere fact of bringing both parties face to face is a significant diplomatic achievement in itself,” he told Al Jazeera. “The diplomacy is not dead.”

Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor emeritus of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, went further.

“The talks did not collapse; they concluded without agreement but with a defined US offer on the table and the channel still intact,” he said.

“Pakistan’s role was to move the crisis from escalation to structured engagement, which it achieved. The absence of convergence reflects structural differences between the US and Iran, not a failure of mediation.”

Both Trump and Iranian officials have praised Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir for their efforts to secure the ceasefire, and for hosting the talks in Islamabad. That, say analysts, suggests that they remain open to further Pakistan-brokered negotiations.

Sahar Baloch, a Germany-based scholar of Iran, said that trust remains Pakistan’s most valuable asset.

“The real test of credibility is not preventing breakdowns, but remaining relevant after them,” she said.

Fragile ceasefire

The immediate threat to Pakistan’s role comes from the evolving situation in the Strait of Hormuz and in Lebanon.

Iran has already warned that continued Israeli strikes on Lebanon could render negotiations meaningless. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has framed such attacks as a direct challenge to the ceasefire.

Trump’s blockade announcement now adds pressure from a second front.

Ahmad, a former Pakistan chair at Oxford University, warned that a collapse of the truce would sharply narrow diplomatic options.

“If the ceasefire collapses, the immediate consequence is the loss of the diplomatic window,” he said. “A second round becomes far more difficult because both sides would return to negotiating under active escalation, where positions tend to harden rather than converge.”

Obaidullah drew a historical parallel with the US naval quarantine of Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. What if China were to use its own ships to import Iranian oil? Would the US attack them?

“The world will again be watching who blinks first,” Obaidullah said. “However, it may turn into a far greater conflict if neither side does.”

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 brought the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war, after Washington discovered Moscow had installed nuclear missiles on Cuban soil, within striking distance of the American mainland.

The US blocked the Soviets from providing more equipment to Cuba, and eventually, a diplomatic settlement was reached, with the Soviets agreeing to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a US pledge not to invade Cuba.

Baloch, the Berlin-based scholar, agreed that the situation remains volatile.

“The ceasefire risks becoming more symbolic than substantive,” she said. “But paradoxically, escalation can sometimes force a return to talks, even if under more urgent and less favourable conditions.”

What is the road ahead?

Pakistan’s room for manoeuvring is also shaped by its economic fragility.

The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has driven up energy prices, compounding pressures on an economy already under strain before the conflict.

Ahmad said this creates both urgency and limits.

“Economic exposure, especially to energy shocks and external financing, creates urgency for Pakistan to prevent a prolonged conflict,” he said.

“But it also reinforces a constraint: Pakistan cannot afford escalation with either side. Its leverage is not coercive; it is positional. It comes from being the only channel acceptable to both sides, not from the ability to impose outcomes,” Ahmad said.

Eight days remain until the end of the initial two-week truce, a window Pakistani officials said privately represents a genuine opportunity for further technical and political alignment, if both sides choose to use it.

Ahmad suggested that any breakthrough would depend on creating a sequence of steps acceptable to both sides.

“The US is asking for early nuclear commitments; Iran is asking for guarantees and relief first,” he said.

Pakistan’s role, he added, would be to help “structure this sequencing, keep both sides engaged, and prevent breakdown at each stage”.

Islamabad won’t be the one drafting a deal itself, he emphasised, noting, “At this point, maintaining the channel is as important as the substance of the deal itself.”

Other US allies criticise Trump’s move, including France, Spain and Turkiye, and China also condemns the plan.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says his country will not join the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz announced by United States President Donald Trump, a move also criticised by other US allies.

“We are not supporting the blockade,” Starmer told BBC radio on Monday, adding that the United Kingdom “is not getting dragged in” to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Starmer said it was vital to get the strait reopened. In peacetime, about 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies pass through the strategic waterway that links the Gulf to the Indian Ocean.

“It is in my view vital that we get the strait open and fully open, and that’s where we’ve put all of our efforts in the last few weeks, and we’ll continue to do so,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from London, said Starmer has continued to “maintain a delicate balancing act” of saying the UK will not be joining the war while being careful not to level any criticism directly at Trump regarding his actions in the war.

Traffic through the strait has been heavily restricted since the start of the war. Iran has allowed through only some vessels serving friendly countries, such as China.

Starmer made his statement as the US military announced it would block all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports starting from 14:00 GMT. It was unclear, however, how the US military would enforce the blockade.

“The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman,” the US military’s Central Command said.

US forces would not impede vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports, it added.

In a lengthy social media post on Sunday, Trump said his goal was to clear the strait of mines and reopen it to all shipping and Iran must not be allowed to profit from controlling the waterway.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France and the UK would hold a conference in the coming days aimed at restoring freedom of navigation in the strait.

Macron reiterated that no diplomatic effort be spared in reaching a lasting end to the US-Israel war on Iran.

Nicole Grajewski, assistant professor at the Center for International Research at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, said a US blockade was “not a minor coercive signal” but could rather be considered essentially a resumption of the war.

Other US allies also criticised Trump’s move, including Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles, who said the planned naval blockade “makes no sense”.

“It’s one more episode in this whole downward spiral into which we’ve been dragged,” she said.

Fellow NATO ally Turkiye said the Strait of Hormuz should open “as soon as possible”.

“Negotiations with Iran should be conducted, persuasion methods should be used and the strait should be opened as soon as possible,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told the state-run Anadolu news agency.

China, Washington’s great power rival and a big importer of Iranian oil, also criticised the plan.

“The Strait of Hormuz is an important international trade route for goods and energy, and maintaining its security, stability and unimpeded flow is in the common interest of the international community,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun said, urging Iran and the US not to reignite the war.

Sana* is a 27-year-old woman living with her roommate, Fatemeh, in a two-bedroom apartment in western Tehran. The economics master’s student and risk control analyst at an investment firm had already survived the June 2025 Israel-Iran war. When the latest war began in late February, she promised herself she would not run away from the city again. As told to Ariya Farahand. 

The night before the war, every piece of news arriving on my phone had two possibilities: Either they strike, or they don’t. I stayed up late, waiting. Previously, the strikes had come around midnight, so I kept watching. When nothing happened, I put on some Persian music, poured myself a drink to take the edge off, and went to bed. I told myself the night had passed without an attack.

I was wrong.

It was 9:40am on February 28 when the first missiles hit Tehran. I was caught between sleep and wakefulness in my apartment in the west of the city. My neighbourhood hadn’t been targeted yet. I hadn’t heard any explosions. I didn’t know what to expect.

My phone began chiming with text messages I couldn’t bring myself to get up and check. When it started ringing, I realised that it was urgent. It was my boyfriend, his shaky voice enquiring if I was OK. Before I could answer, he blurted out: “They struck. They attacked.”

He didn’t need to elaborate further.

Within minutes, my mother, my father and my younger sister were calling from Sari, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north in Mazandaran province, where they’re based, begging me to leave the capital. I stared at my cat, Fandogh (Hazelnut). She stared back. I made myself a promise: No matter what happens, I am not leaving Tehran.

The 12-day war last June had broken something in me. On its third day, my family’s pressure forced me out of the city. The drive to Sari was miserable, and my parents’ house was crowded; none of us found peace. This time, I refused. My boyfriend urged me to go somewhere safer. I said no.

By mid-afternoon, my roommate Fatemeh had finally made it home from work, the gridlock traffic making her typical hour-and-a-half journey take four hours. She walked in, still wearing her coat, sat down in the middle of the living room, and wept – the first explosion, she told me, had hit right near her office.

Routine

The war settled into a grim routine. We learned to anticipate strikes during certain windows: early morning, the afternoon, and after 11 at night. The bombings were never predictable enough to be safe, but those were the hours we instinctively braced. We relied on supermarket deliveries to avoid going outside. If we absolutely needed something, we made a frantic dash to the shops and rushed straight back.

The internet was another kind of suffocation. When friends who had emigrated abroad heard there was “no internet”, they assumed it meant social media was blocked. But, for most people, it was a total blackout – we couldn’t even load Google. We kept buying virtual private networks (VPNs) that would work for a day and then stop. My daily life ran on podcasts and YouTube. Now there was nothing. I downloaded foreign TV series from local servers that were still operating just to keep my mind occupied. I read. I found a copy of Baghdad Diaries (a 2003 book recounting the war in Iraq), and its mirroring of my own reality sent a chill through me. You could write a whole book, I kept thinking, about what we were living through.

March 16 was one of the worst nights of my life – though it had started gently enough.

At my friends’ urging, I had gone to a nearby cafe that evening, the first time in weeks that anything felt briefly, superficially normal. I got home about 9pm, did some light cleaning, and was asleep by 11.

At 2:30 in the morning, a massive explosion tore through the silence. The force of it jolted me upright. Fatemeh was already awake. We stumbled into the hallway, peered out the window – and then an intense flash of light flooded the apartment, followed by a blast so violent we both screamed. Still in our pyjamas, without stopping to grab our phones, we sprinted down the fire escape to the lowest level of the parking garage. Several neighbours were already there.

Seven or eight more explosions followed. They were bombing near Mehrabad airport, close to us. I genuinely thought I was going to die.

When I finally went back upstairs, my cat was hiding in the wardrobe, trembling. My family and boyfriend had been calling and texting, without response, for hours, watching the news reports about strikes near the airport and imagining the worst. Guilt washed over me for leaving my cat behind. I called everyone to say I was alive.

Attempting normality

I felt like a refugee in my own city.

The days had already been darkening before that night. One day, an oil depot was struck. I had stepped out to do some shopping at the corner of the street. I stopped and looked up. It was the middle of the day, but the sky had turned black. Pitch black. Like the end of the world.

April 4 was my first day back in the office – and the day we would find out whether our contracts were being renewed or not. When I arrived, a colleague was already standing in the hallway, termination letter in hand, crying about how she would pay her rent, how she was supposed to find work in the middle of a war. I will never forget her tears. By midday, half the staff – 18 out of 41 – had been laid off. Nobody did any work.

I kept my job. Three days later, on my commute home, the streets were nearly empty – a journey that once took more than an hour took less than 20 minutes. The only queues were at petrol stations, snaking down deserted roads, after US President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran’s energy infrastructure and destroy our “whole civilisation”. In the lift, my neighbour stepped in, carrying two large packs of bottled water and talked anxiously about pooling money for a building generator. That night, Fatemeh went to bed early, claiming she didn’t care about any of it. She had been biting her nails all evening. She showered before bed – so that she would be clean, she told me, if the water was cut off after an attack.

When the ceasefire was announced, I couldn’t believe it. I waited for the denial that never came. When it was finally clear the war was on pause, it felt as though a 100-kilogramme weight had been lifted from my chest.

I pulled the blanket over my head, but found I still couldn’t sleep. What happens next?

The first thing I did the following morning was book an appointment to get my hair cut and my nails done. The second thing I did was buy a high-grade VPN – expensive, about $4 a gigabyte — and scroll through Instagram for the first time in weeks.

Small things. The kind that makes you feel human again.

*The names used in this article are pseudonyms chosen for security reasons

Iran’s military has called US blockade plans in the Strait of Hormuz an “act of piracy”, warning that the ports in the Gulf and Seas of Oman are “either for everyone or for no one”. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi is in Tehran.

Leo, ​who last year became the first US-born pope, has emerged as an outspoken critic of the US-Israeli ⁠war on Iran.

United States President Donald Trump has unleashed a storm of criticism at Pope Leo XIV, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”.

Trump delivered the unusual criticism of the head of the Catholic Church in a Sunday night post on social media, saying he does not “want a Pope who criticises the President of the United States”.

Trump’s outburst appeared to be triggered by recent remarks from Pope Leo critical of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Last week, Leo issued a rare direct rebuke of Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilisation, calling it “truly unacceptable“. And then, on Sunday, the 70-year-old pontiff implored leaders to end ongoing bloodshed, condemning what he described as a “delusion of omnipotence” fuelling war – comments that appeared directed at Trump.

The pope has also previously questioned the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, saying, “I don’t know if that’s ⁠pro-life.”

Taking to Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela.”

“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” said the US president.

Trump also claimed credit for Leo’s leadership in the Catholic Church, suggesting the Vatican picked the first US-born pontiff – elected last year – to curry favour with the White House. “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican,” Trump said.

Asked about the comments later on Sunday, Trump reiterated that he is “not a big fan” of Leo, who he said “is not doing a very good job”.

“He likes crime, I guess,” said Trump. “He’s a very liberal person.”

Trump also had a rocky relationship with Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who criticised Trump’s ‌immigration ‌policy proposals when he first ran for president and suggested Trump was “not a Christian“. Trump had called Francis “disgraceful” in early 2016.

Leo is set to begin an 11-day trip to Africa on Monday, starting with a historic visit to Muslim-majority Algeria.

Asian stocks fall as naval blockade threat injects new turmoil into financial markets.

Oil prices have risen sharply following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a naval blockade of Iran.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose more than 8 percent on Sunday to top $103 a barrel.

It was the first time the benchmark rose above the psychologically important threshold of $100 since Tuesday, when prices surpassed $111 a barrel.

Trump announced on Sunday that the US Navy would block all ships from entering or exiting the Strait of Hormuz, following the collapse of ceasefire talks between US and Iranian officials over the weekend.

US Central Command said in a later statement that it would only block vessels travelling to and from Iran and that other traffic would not be impeded, in an apparent scaling back of Trump’s threat to impose a full blockade.

The command said the blockade would take effect on Monday at 10am Eastern Time (14:00 GMT).

Oil prices have been a rollercoaster since US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted Tehran to impose a de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for about one-fifth of global oil and natural gas supplies.

After topping $119 last month, Brent fell below $92 a barrel last week after the US and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire following more than six weeks of war.

While Iran has allowed a limited number of ships to transit the waterway, subject to prior vetting and authorisation, traffic has been reduced to a trickle compared with peacetime levels.

Despite Washington and Tehran’s fragile truce officially remaining in place until April 22, only 17 vessels crossed the strait on Saturday, according to maritime intelligence firm Windward, down from roughly 130 daily transits before the war.

Major stock markets in Asia opened lower on Monday as Trump’s blockade threat stoked uncertainty on trading floors.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.9 percent in morning trading, while South Korea’s KOSPI dropped more than 1 percent.

US stock futures, which are traded outside of regular market hours, also fell, with those tied to the benchmark S&P 500 down about 0.8 percent.

Vessels will still be able to transit Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports, says CENTCOM; Iran warns any approaching military vessels will be breaching ceasefire.

The United States military has announced it will begin blockading all Iranian ports on Monday, its latest move to exert pressure on Tehran after marathon peace talks in Pakistan concluded without a deal.

In a statement on Sunday evening, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the blockade would apply to “all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports” from 10am Eastern Time (14:00 GMT) on April 13. That includes “vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas”, including those on the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

However, US forces “will not impede freedom of ⁠navigation for vessels transiting the Strait ⁠of Hormuz to and ⁠from non-Iranian ports,” CENTCOM said, in an apparent scaling back from President Donald Trump’s earlier threat to blockade the entire strait and pursue ships paying tolls to Iran.

“There are a lot of questions here,” said Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro from Washington, DC, pointing to “conflicting information” coming out of the US side.

“Trump said the blockade would target any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz. But CENTCOM is saying this would only target ships going to or from Iranian ports.”

The price of US crude oil jumped 8 percent to $104.24 a barrel after the US blockade threat. Brent crude oil, the international standard, increased 7 percent to $102.29.

Iran has essentially taken control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint for the global energy market, since the US and Israel launched a war against the country on February 28. Traffic through the waterway has since slowed to a trickle, nearly paralysing about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.

Iran has continued to move its own vessels through the strait, while allowing limited passage of ships from other countries. Iranian officials have discussed setting up a toll system after the fighting ends.

In a statement responding to Trump’s blockade threat, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said any approaching military vessels would be in breach of a US-Iran ceasefire – meant to be in effect until April 22 – and “will be dealt with severely”.

The US-declared blockade appears to be triggered by the failure of the talks in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, raising fears of renewed fighting.

Iranian officials blamed the US side for failing to reach a deal, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi saying US negotiators shifted the “goalposts” and obstructed efforts when a memorandum of understanding was “just inches away”.

Zohreh Kharazmi, an associate professor at the University of Tehran, said the US “is not in a position to dictate” to Iranians how to behave, or “to choose which vessels may pass”.

“If this blockade becomes a contest between the resilience of the Islamic Republic and the resilience of global markets, it will not take long to see who is losing,” she said, adding that Iran “is ready for a prolonged war”.

“Technically, they [the US] cannot control the situation. With Hollywood-style strategies, they cannot prevail in this battleground.”

CENTCOM says the blockade will begin at 14:00 GMT, as Iran warns of even higher prices at the pump.

In a matter of minutes, Israel killed more than 350 people across Lebanon on Wednesday, April 8. Here are some of their stories.

Rescuers are digging through rubble after a new wave of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon killed at least 13 people. The attacks hit multiple towns in the Tyre and Nabatieh districts. The death toll from Israeli attacks in Lebanon climbs above 2,000.

It was too much to ask of United States Vice President JD Vance that he hammer out a peace agreement with representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran after the first direct meeting of the two sides in more than a decade.

But it is not too much to ask for enemy combatants to maintain the ceasefire and for negotiators to come back to the table for a second round of meetings.

As of now, we still have a ceasefire. The question remains: Can America win it?

For President Donald Trump, this question is existential. If voters perceive that the US lost the war against Iran, the Republicans will lose Congress and the president would be on the political hot seat for his last two years in office.

If, on the other hand, voters perceive that this conflict with Iran was worth it and life returns to normal by the summer, then the Republicans have a better chance of breaking even in November’s midterm elections.

What would it take for the US to win the ceasefire and eventually get a peace agreement?

Well, first, the Strait of Hormuz must be open to all shipping. This must be the number one objective for the Trump administration as it is the one thing that has the most impact on the global economy and, most importantly for a domestic audience, the price of oil. Policy planners at the White House didn’t fully appreciate how Iran could seize control of this critical chokepoint in international commerce, but they appreciate it now.

Second, the US must increase domestic pressure on the Iranian regime. Stopping the bombing is a good way to do that. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been significantly weakened by the joint US-Israeli attacks. Our intelligence community needs to do everything it can to strengthen the Iranian protest movement, arming them with weapons and resources. Bombing bridges and oil refineries would have been a significant blunder by the Americans because it would have made it much more difficult for insurgents within the country to mount any kind of opposition.

Third, the US must mend its relationships with its traditional allies. This isn’t just about Iran. Russia and China look at the tensions within NATO, and they rejoice. A more united Western world, especially when it comes to keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, is essential.

Fourth, the Trump administration needs to improve its messaging game. Right now, the US is thoroughly divided when it comes to this war. Even elements of Trump’s political base are deeply sceptical of the campaign. I understand the motivation behind the president’s maximalist rhetoric, but trying to convince your opponents that you are a madman who just might put his finger on the button comes with some downsides.

Our allies were frightened, the American people were concerned, the pope was aghast. Even some of the president’s biggest political fans called for him to be removed via the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution, which provides for replacing a sitting president due to incapacity. Messaging from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth hasn’t been much better. Calling this another Christian crusade is not helpful to our long-term goals in the region.

Fifth, the president needs to paint a picture of what peace would mean to the Iranian people and to the region in general and then sell it to them. What is happening with Venezuela is a perfect example of what could happen with Iran. We cut off the head of government there, but the rest of the political body is still mostly in place. We do not need a total change in the regime. We do need a total change in the attitude of the current regime.

Sixth, the president needs to firmly lay out what we expect from a lasting peace agreement and what we need from the Iranian regime. The first thing we need is actual peace. Enough with funding terrorism, terrorist proxies and never-ending war against Israel. Peace means peace. The nuclear programme must never be turned into nuclear weapons.

Seventh, the president needs to make sure Israel’s objectives are aligned with ours. This would require some blunt talk between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Clearly, the Israeli prime minister sold Trump a bill of goods when he told him that this would be a quick war that would topple the Iranian regime at a relatively low cost. That hasn’t happened.

I appreciate how the Israelis are sick and tired of getting missiles sent their way from Hezbollah. But a forever war seems to be a key component of the Netanyahu political campaign, and that simply does not work for the American people any more.

The US and Israel need to be on the same page about what their objectives are now that we are in a lull in the fighting. This is critical to win this ceasefire.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Tehran, Iran – Iranian authorities say the United States needs to do more if an agreement is to be made to end the war as they urge their supporters to maintain control of the streets.

The US delegation at Saturday’s marathon talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, “ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations”, said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker who led the Iranian team.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the US Navy will immediately begin the process of “blockading any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” in Iran’s southern waters. He also said the US military remains “locked and loaded” and will “finish up” Iran at the “appropriate moment”.

The fact that the Iranian delegation did not accede to Washington’s core demands of eliminating nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil and ending Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz was welcomed by Iranian authorities on Sunday as they projected defiance.

Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei thanked the delegation that went to Islamabad and said they “guarded the rights” of the supporters of Iran’s government, including paramilitary forces converging on main squares, streets and mosques in Tehran and other cities every night for more than six weeks.

When the delegations were engaged in the talks on Saturday night, a member of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was shown by state television telling flag-waving supporters in downtown Tehran not to be concerned.

“If the enemy does not understand, we will make them understand,” the man who was wearing military attire and a black mask to conceal his identity said to cheers from the crowd, some of whom demanded more missile and drone attacks from the IRGC.

State television also said it was Trump, not Tehran, that wished to “restore his image” through the negotiations and his “excessive demands” were the reason the talks failed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it did not expect to reach an agreement after only one day of negotiations.

Multiple lawmakers in the hardliner-dominated parliament said they were happy that the talks did not yield results because they believed Iran had the upper hand in the war.

Hamidreza Haji-Babaei, the parliament speaker’s deputy, said the only thing acceptable to the establishment supporters who are on the streets is a United Nations Security Council resolution that would signal “surrender” for the US and lead to the lifting of sanctions against Iran and its leaders.

Amir Hossein Sabeti, a Tehran lawmaker affiliated with the Paydari faction of hardliners, said he was thankful to the negotiating team for “not backing away from red lines” and “there is no way left but to show resistance in the field against these evildoers and demons”.

More escalation ahead

This comes after some pro-state voices said they were disheartened by the abrupt announcement overnight into Wednesday of a two-week ceasefire and direct negotiations on ending the war with the US.

To assuage internal concerns, the Iranian delegation to Islamabad had more than 85 members, according to local media, including dozens of representatives from state-affiliated media and analysts close to different factions.

In addition to Ghalibaf, a former IRGC commander who advanced Iran’s missile programme, senior members of the team included Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, hardline diplomat Ali Bagheri Kani, Defence Council head and former security chief Ali Akbar Ahmadian and moderate central bank chief Abdolnasser Hemmati.

The talks on Saturday established that a diplomatic breakthrough was not close and that more escalation was likely, even if there is no immediate return to full-fledged fighting.

“What he [Trump] has been saying after the negotiations is just excessive talk. He is saying his wishes out loud,” Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the national security commission of Iran’s parliament, told state television on Sunday afternoon about Trump’s announced naval blockade and new threats.

The IRGC has threatened that it will respond to any passage of military vessels through the Strait of Hormuz with full force. It also rejected the US military’s announcement during the talks that two US warships had passed through the strait in preparation for an operation to clear naval mines blocking the strategic waterway.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in a phone call on Sunday that he is ready to continue diplomatically facilitating a peace settlement in the Middle East.

Pezeshkian, who has been tasked mainly with working on domestic affairs, has supported continuity of the establishment and backing for Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader who has not been seen or heard from outside of written statements since Israel and the US launched the war on February 28. His government announced that schools and universities will be held online, using a limited local intranet, until further notice.

Iran’s economy continues to suffer from chronic inflation with more jobs lost in 2026 as the state continues to impose a near-total internet shutdown.

On Saturday, the United States and Iran held direct negotiations for the first time in more than a decade. The talks ended without a deal, as the US and Iranian positions remain far apart.

While it is unclear what will happen next, the past month and a half of fighting has cast light on important lessons to be learned not just about this conflict but also the nature of modern warfare. These may turn into key considerations for decision-makers in Washington as they determine what to do next.

Scale and geography matter

Iran operates on a scale that immediately complicates any direct confrontation. With a landmass of approximately 1.64 million sq km (more than 633,200sq miles) and a population exceeding 90 million, the country dwarfs the environments in which recent major wars have taken place.

By comparison, Iraq — invaded by a US-led coalition in 2003 — has roughly one quarter of Iran’s land area and half its population. Afghanistan and Ukraine, while sizeable, are still significantly smaller in both territory and demographic weight.

This matters because military operations scale nonlinearly. Larger territory does not simply require more troops and weapons; it requires exponentially more logistics, longer supply lines, and expanded intelligence coverage.

If scale complicates the planning of a war, geography compounds it even more.

The US invasion of Iraq benefitted from favourable terrain. Coalition forces advanced rapidly through the relatively flat southern desert and river valleys, enabling a swift push towards Baghdad. Russian forces also benefitted from the relatively even landscape in Ukraine, easily crossing through the steppe in the eastern part of the country.

The problem with flat terrain is that it exposes troops to enemy attacks, as their movements can easily be detected.

Afghanistan presented the opposite challenge: mountainous terrain that limited conventional operations and forced reliance on airpower, special forces, and local allies.

Iran, however, combines the worst of both environments at a much larger scale.

The Zagros Mountains stretch along Iran’s western frontier, forming a natural defensive barrier. The Alborz Mountains in the north protect key population centres, including Tehran. The central plateau introduces vast desert expanses that can complicate military manoeuvres and sustainment. Meanwhile, Iran’s long coastline along the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman introduces maritime vulnerabilities, but also defensive depth.

Iran’s mountainous terrain not only makes a ground invasion almost impossible but also provides plenty of opportunities to hide missile launchers, military production facilities, and even air defences. This means that even a conflict limited to an air campaign could be stretched over many months, as Iran retains the capability to retaliate.

Strong and cohesive defence

The assumption that internal diversity translates into vulnerability is often overstated. Iran is ethnically diverse, with minorities such as the Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Baloch, and others forming a significant part of its population. Yet historical experience suggests that external threats tend to strengthen national cohesion rather than fracture it.

Ukraine provides the most recent example. Despite linguistic and regional differences, Russia’s invasion reinforced Ukrainian national identity and resistance.

Iran followed a similar trajectory. External military pressure did not dissolve the state; it consolidated it.

This is particularly significant given Iran’s military structure. With more than 800,000 active personnel, including both the regular army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran possesses a layered defence system designed for both conventional and asymmetric warfare. Its doctrine emphasises dispersal, survivability, and long-term resistance.

Unlike Iraq in 2003, whose military had been weakened by sanctions and prior conflict, Iran maintains a functioning state apparatus, integrated command structures, and extensive missile and drone capabilities.

Here, Ukraine offers another important lesson: even a large, modern military can fail to achieve decisive results against a smaller but determined and organised defender.

Russia entered Ukraine with a large force, hoping for a swift victory and regime change. Yet the war quickly evolved into a protracted conflict, with high costs and limited strategic gains.

Limits of conventional arms

There are also lessons to be learned about the effectiveness of conventional arms. The past month and a half has shown that even overwhelming air superiority does not necessarily translate into decisive results when deployed against a state designed to absorb and outlast attacks.

Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capabilities are central to this dynamic. Rather than relying on concentrated, high-value assets that can be quickly neutralised, Iran has developed a dispersed and layered system. Missile launchers, storage facilities and production sites have been embedded in mountainous terrain or hardened underground infrastructure, making them difficult to detect and eliminate. This reinforces the broader point: geography is not just a backdrop to conflict; it is actively integrated into Iran’s defensive strategy.

At the same time, Iran’s increasing reliance on drones and relatively low-cost missile systems introduces a different kind of challenge. These systems do not need to achieve precision or dominance; they only need to survive and sustain pressure over time. In doing so, they impose a continuous operational burden on even the most advanced air defence systems.

This creates a structural imbalance. Highly sophisticated and expensive military platforms are used to counter weapons that are significantly cheaper and easier to reproduce. Over time, this dynamic does not necessarily result in victory on the battlefield, but it erodes the ability to achieve decisive outcomes.

The result is a shift in how military power functions in practice. Conventional superiority remains important, but its role becomes more limited. It can disrupt, degrade, and contain, but it struggles to decisively defeat an adversary that is territorially embedded, operationally dispersed, and strategically prepared for a prolonged confrontation.

What this means strategically

Iran is not Afghanistan in 2001, nor Iraq in 2003, nor Ukraine in 2022. It is a hybrid of all three — combining scale, complexity and resilience.

Taken together, these factors reinforce a central conclusion of this conflict: Iran is not simply a harder target; it fundamentally alters the strategic calculus of war.

The combination of scale, geography, and resilience means that any conflict is likely to become prolonged, costly, and uncertain in outcome. This helps explain why, despite sustained military pressure, the war did not produce a decisive shift on the ground. Instead, it moved towards a temporary pause, reflecting the difficulty of translating military action into clear strategic gains.

This does not suggest that future conflict is unlikely. Rather, it indicates that the nature of such conflict could be different from what we saw in this month and a half. Direct, large-scale confrontation becomes less attractive when the probability of a quick victory is low, and the costs of escalation are high. Instead, what emerges is a pattern of limited engagements, calibrated responses, and strategic signalling — forms of conflict that fall short of full-scale war but stop well short of lasting resolution.

For the US and other major powers, the implications are equally significant. The expectation of rapid, decisive campaigns — seen in Iraq in 2003 — becomes far less applicable in this context. Military superiority can still shape the battlefield, but it cannot easily compress time or guarantee outcomes.

Ultimately, the conflict points to a broader shift in the nature of modern warfare. Victory is no longer defined by speed or initial dominance, but by endurance, adaptability, and the ability to operate effectively within complex environments. This may well be a major factor in US calculations on whether to restart the war.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

US Vice President JD Vance says the US delegation has failed to reach an agreement with Iran after 21 hours of negotiations in Pakistan. In a very short press conference, Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept Washington’s terms.

US Vice President JD Vance is leaving Pakistan after 21 hours of talks with Iran, saying Tehran chose not to accept their ‘final and best offer’. Here’s his full press conference in Islamabad.

Standing in front of a map of the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes how six countries ‘wanted to strangle us’ but instead ‘we strangled them… and we have more to do’. Ambassadors from Israel and Lebanon are set to hold talks in Washington DC on Tuesday, but they’ve issued conflicting statements on what will be discussed.

US President Donald Trump says ‘we win regardless of what happens’ in Iran talks. His comments outside the White House came as US and Iranian delegations continue negotiating late into the night in Islamabad.

The Strait of Hormuz is believed to be a key sticking point as Iran and the US continue negotiations in the Pakistani capital.