Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports from the EU summit in Cyprus, where the leaders of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan met with European leaders to discuss the regional crisis caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Published On 24 Apr 202624 Apr 2026
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As tensions ramp up amid fragile truce, US military says it ‘redirected’ 34 vessels as part of blockade on Iran’s ports.
Published On 24 Apr 202624 Apr 2026
The United States has three aircraft carriers in the Middle East for the first time in 23 years with the arrival of the USS George HW Bush, the US military has said, amid a fragile ceasefire with Iran.
The Middle East-based Central Command (CENTCOM) of the US military said on Friday that the carriers include 12 accompanying ships, more than 200 aircraft, and 15,000 soldiers.
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“For the first time in decades, three aircraft carriers are operating in the Middle East at the same time,” CENTCOM said.
The last time the US amassed that amount of military assets in the region’s waters was in the lead up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The other two US aircraft carriers in the region are USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R Ford, which is the largest in the world.
The show of force signals that the US is preparing to return to fighting should the fragile ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran unravel.
Diplomacy between the two countries has been in limbo, with Iran setting the lifting of the US naval blockade against its ports as a condition for resuming the talks.
US President Donald Trump announced extending the truce on Wednesday, but he said the naval siege would persist.
For its part, Iran has reblocked the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockade after declaring the waterway completely open last week when the regional ceasefire was extended to Lebanon.
Trump has not set a deadline for the extended ceasefire and suggested that he is comfortable with the status quo, which he argues is depleting the Iranian economy at a low cost for the US.
“I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t,” he wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
The US president was later asked how long he would be willing to wait before receiving a proposed deal from Iran. He said: “Don’t rush me.”
Iran has described the blockade – which has seen US forces seize at least two Iranian oil ships – as an “act of war”.
Iranian forces have also captured foreign commercial ships in the Hormuz Strait, accusing them of violating maritime regulations.
With negotiations on hold, Trump has shown no signs of willingness to lift the siege in order to facilitate talks.
On Friday, the US military said it has “redirected” 34 vessels in the region. “The blockade against ships entering or exiting Iranian ports continues,” CENTCOM said.
Trump has previously threatened to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges, power and water stations.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that his country is awaiting the green light from Trump to return Iran to the “age of darkness”.
“Israel is prepared to renew the war against Iran. The [Israeli military] is ready in defence and offence, and the targets are marked,” Katz said, according to The Times of Israel newspaper.
On April 20, the United States fired at and then seized an Iranian-flagged container ship close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, amid its blockade of Iranian ports.
It was similar to a scene which played out in the 1980s during the so-called Tanker War between Iran and Iraq, during which both countries fired on each other’s tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, seeking to cripple each other’s economies.
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As naval tensions rise again in the Strait of Hormuz – this time between Iran and the US – we break down what happened in the 1980s and examine the parallels and differences between the situations then and now:
The war between Iran and Iraq began in 1980 when then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Iran following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
In 1984, this war reached the Gulf when Iraq attacked Iranian oil tankers, seeking to cripple its oil-revenue-dependent economy. Iran retaliated by firing at oil tankers belonging to Iraq and its allies in the Gulf.
According to a report by the University of Texas’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Iran also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz then, but did not do so since its own economy, already crippled by the war, was dependent on exporting oil to the rest of the world through it.
In November 1986, when Iran struck Kuwait’s ships, Kuwait asked for foreign help. The former Soviet Union was the first to respond and helped escort the nation’s ships in the Gulf.
The US, led by then-president Ronald Reagan, launched Operation Earnest Will in July 1987, also seeking to protect tankers in the Gulf and render more assistance than Moscow. The operation involved reflagging Kuwaiti tankers with the US flag so they could legally sail under US protection.
According to an article by the Veterans Breakfast Club, a US-based website which shares experiences of former US military veterans, during Washington’s very first escort mission in July 1987, a reflagged tanker hit an Iranian mine in the Gulf.
“The convoy continued, but the incident made clear that the United States had entered a shadow war with Iran at sea,” the article said.
“Over the next fourteen months, dozens of US warships rotated through the region escorting tankers and protecting shipping lanes. US forces also conducted special operations to hunt Iranian mine-layers at night and conducted strikes against Iranian military positions and ships. The mission wasn’t a small one, consuming 30 US Navy ships at one time,” the article added.
Then in April 1988, the US frigate USS Samuel B Roberts was damaged by an Iranian mine in the Strait of Hormuz. Historian Samuel Cox, writing for the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), noted in 2018 that by the end of 1987 that vessel was so badly damaged, that “the only thing actually holding the ship together was the main deck”.
So, the US launched Operation Praying Mantis, seeking to destroy Iranian vessels.
The tanker war eventually ended in August 1988, following a United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement between Iran and Iraq.
Cox noted that by the end of 1987, “Iraq had conducted 283 attacks on shipping, while Iran attacked 168 times. Combined, the attacks had killed 116 merchant sailors, with 37 missing and 167 wounded, from a wide variety of nationalities.”
“Initially, there was great concern that the attacks would cut off the vital flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf, but all they really did was drive up insurance rates. The world’s need for oil was so great, that over 100 dead merchant seamen was apparently an acceptable price,” he wrote.
The current hostilities between the US and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz began when Tehran, whose territorial waters extend into the strait, closed passage to all vessels after the US and Israel began bombing the country. On March 4, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared that it was in full control of the strait, and ships would need to get clearance from them to pass through it.
Shipping through the strait collapsed by 95 percent, sending the price of oil – 20 percent of global supplies of which are shipped this way – soaring above $100 a barrel.
Iran, through its imposition of control over who passes through Hormuz, has for almost eight weeks now, determined which vessels can exit the strait from the Gulf into the Gulf of Oman.
At first, Iran indicated that it would allow “friendly” ships to pass if they paid a toll. On March 26, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s state TV: “The Strait of Hormuz, from our perspective, is not completely closed. It is closed only to enemies. There is no reason to allow the ships of our enemies and their allies to pass.”
Vessels from Malaysia, China, Egypt, South Korea, India and Pakistan passed through the strait through most of March and early April.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided these vessels with an alternative route through the Strait of Hormuz to avoid potential sea mines. US officials, including Donald Trump, have said mines have been placed there by Iran, although it has not officially confirmed or denied this.
But on April 13, alarmed that Iran was continuing to ship its own oil out of the strait, the US imposed a naval blockade of all Iranian ports. Since then, US Central Command has said US forces have directed 33 Iran-linked vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port.
On Monday, the US military fired on and then captured the Iranian-flagged container ship Touska close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, and, a day later, detained another oil tanker sanctioned for transporting Iranian crude oil as it sailed in the Bay of Bengal, which links India and Southeast Asia.
In a post on social media after detaining the Touska, the Pentagon wrote: “As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran – anywhere they operate. International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”
Since the US naval blockade of Iranian ports began, Tehran, which was earlier allowing vessels from “friendly” nations to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, has further tightened its grip on the strait.
Justifying the decision not to allow any foreign ships to pass until the US ends its naval blockade on April 19, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said the “security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free”.
“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others,” he wrote in a post on X.
Last Saturday, Iran reportedly fired at two Indian-flagged merchant vessels in the strait. The IRGC said the two ships were attacked because they were “operating without authorisation”, according to state media reports.
Then, on April 22, Iran captured two container ships seeking to exit the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz after firing on them and another vessel.
Just like during the Tanker War of the 1980s, shipping has been severely disrupted by the US-Israel war on Iran, upending global oil and gas prices.
According to an April 17 article by the World Economic Forum, from the mid-1980s when the Tanker War took place, to the start of the new millennium, a barrel of crude oil averaged $20.
On Friday, while a ceasefire between the US and Iran was in effect, a naval battle was still playing out in the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude, the international benchmark, topped $106 per barrel. During open warfare between the US, Israel and Iran in March and early April, oil rose as high as $119 per barrel.
Mines in the sea are another problem common to both time periods.
While vessels were damaged by mines during the 1980s Tanker War, there has so far been no report of vessels being damaged by mines in the current war. However, the risk is the same.
US President Donald Trump has said the US will ramp up efforts to remove mines from the Strait of Hormuz. This has not begun yet, however.
According to CNN, there are only a few US minesweeping ships in the Gulf. The US Navy also told the broadcaster that four dedicated minesweepers stationed in the Gulf region were decommissioned last year.
John Phillips, a British safety, security and risk adviser and former military instructor, told Al Jazeera: “There are some clear parallels between the current situation in Hormuz and the Tanker War of the 1980s. In both cases, the basic idea is the same: pressure at sea can have effects far beyond the water itself.
“A relatively small amount of naval disruption, whether that means mining, harassment of shipping, missile threats, or attacks on tankers, can create real strategic and economic consequences, especially in a chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz. So in that sense, the original Tanker War is a useful reminder of how vulnerable global trade can be when the maritime domain becomes part of a wider political or military confrontation.”
During the Tanker War, the US escorted ships to protect them from Iranian attacks and also deployed vessels to remove mines. NATO countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Italy also joined.
But in the current standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, US allies like the UK and other NATO nations have refused to join Washington in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, or begin minesweeping operations, fearing they will be dragged into the war.
In a post on Truth Social in early April, the US president took aim at allies, “like the United Kingdom”, which, he said, have “refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”, telling them to either buy US fuel or get involved in the rapidly escalating war.
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” Trump wrote.
The framework of the US-Israel war on Iran is different from that of the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, experts say.
“In the 1980s, the Tanker War was part of the broader Iran-Iraq War, so the shipping attacks were tied to a much larger land conflict between two regional armies. Today, the situation is more about Iran’s standoff with the United States and its allies, and the maritime activity is less about asymmetrical war at sea and more about deterrence, signalling and the threat of escalation,” said Phillips.
“The military lesson, really, is that Hormuz is still one of those places where limited actions can have outsized effects, but the modern setting is more fast-moving, more technologically advanced and potentially more volatile than the original Tanker War,” he added.
Analysts have also pointed out that, unlike in the 1980s, Iran is currently stronger when it comes to withstanding attacks and naval blockades by the US.
In the Tanker War, Iraq was militarily supported by Western allies, while Iran was under a US arms embargo imposed in 1979 after the Iranian revolution. While this gave Iraq a military advantage, Iran’s IRGC used asymmetric warfare tactics by striking Iraq’s allies’ ships and oil tankers.
Experts also say that since the 12-day war between Iran and Israel last year, Tehran has shifted its military doctrine from one that is primarily about defensive containment to an explicitly offensive asymmetric posture.
“Iran today appears more structurally aggressive in doctrine where it is formally embracing earlier and more extensive use of regional missiles, drones, cyberattacks and energy coercion [when energy resources and infrastructure are targeted or cut off], but is operationally constrained by battle damage, sanctions and internal instability,” Phillips, the risk adviser and a former military chief instructor, told Al Jazeera in an interview on March 2.
A former US ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, also told Al Jazeera that Iran and the IRGC have “revolutionary fervour”, which means they can “survive”.
“They can tolerate pain for a lot longer than I think most American decision-makers and planners calculate,” he said.
United States President Donald Trump has claimed Iran is “collapsing financially” and said the country is losing millions of dollars a day due to Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday night, Trump wrote: “Iran is collapsing financially! They want the Strait of Hormuz opened immediately – Starving for cash! Losing 500 Million Dollars a day. Military and Police complaining that they are not getting paid. SOS!!!”
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The US blockade of Iranian ports began at 14:00 GMT on April 13. Since then, the US has fired on and seized an Iranian-flagged tanker near the Strait of Hormuz, and redirected ships in the open seas carrying cargo to or from Iran. Iran’s armed forces have called this “an illegal act” that “amounts to piracy”.
In response to the US naval blockade, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to all foreign shipping and has captured several foreign-flagged ships. Previously, it had allowed some ships deemed “friendly” to Iran to pass.
On April 19, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said the “security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free”.
“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others,” he wrote in a post on X.
“The choice is clear: either a free oil market for all, or the risk of significant costs for everyone,” he added. “Stability in global fuel prices depends on a guaranteed and lasting end to the economic and military pressure against Iran and its allies.”
In a statement on social media on Thursday, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and lead negotiator in the ceasefire talks, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said a full ceasefire could only work if the US naval blockade is lifted.
Analysts say the blockade is hurting Iran but believe the country has the economic and political will to sustain it.
How long can Iran survive the naval blockade?
Here’s what we know:
Iran exports oil, gas and other goods including petrochemicals, plastics and agricultural products by sea. Analysts say the US naval blockade of its ports, including in the Strait of Hormuz, could therefore affect this trade.
Soon after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran on February 28, authorities in Tehran implemented the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the only waterway out of the Gulf, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies were shipped from Gulf producers in peacetime.
The near-shutdown of the vital chokepoint sent global oil and gas prices soaring, and since then, Iran has controlled the strait. However, it has continued to export its own energy products through the waterway.
Iran’s oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz account for about 80 percent of its total oil exports. According to Kpler, a trade intelligence firm, Iran exported 1.84 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in March and has shipped 1.71 million bpd so far in April, compared with an average of 1.68 million bpd in 2025.
From March 15 to April 14, it exported 55.22 million barrels of oil. The price per barrel of Iranian oil – across its three major variants, known as Iranian light, Iranian heavy and Forozan blend – has not fallen below $90 per barrel over the past month. On many days, the price has surpassed $100 a barrel.
Even at the conservative estimate of $90 a barrel, Iran has earned at least $4.97bn over the past month from its ongoing oil exports.
By contrast, in early February before the war started, Iran was earning about $115m a day from its crude oil exports, or $3.45bn in a month.
Simply put, Iran has earned 40 percent more from oil exports in the past month than it did before the war.
Stopping this is a key motivation behind the US naval blockade of Iranian ports.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on April 14, Frederic Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera that the previous six weeks had been a boon for Iran in terms of oil revenues, but with the US blockade, that will change.
“Iran has some buffer in the form of crude oil reserves in floating tanks – basically parked tankers – which was estimated at about 127 million barrels in February. But that doesn’t mean that the blockade wouldn’t hurt Iran,” he said.
On Friday, Schneider told Al Jazeera that Iran, however, seems to be “playing the longer game” and has anticipated and prepared for this sort of conflict to some degree.
“The naval blockade has added economic strain, as several civilian ships have been captured in international waters. But it remains unclear how tight the blockade is, how many ships manage to pass given the considerable amount of floating Iranian oil, and how long Trump can maintain the blockade,” he said.
Schneider noted that Trump will face a legislative challenge by May 1, when the 60 days he can maintain a foreign offensive without congressional approval come to an end.
Dire conditions have been reported on the ships that are upholding the blockade, he said, and it remains to be seen how China will react to the continuing seizure of ships that carry any of its cargo.
“China has already said it sees the blockade of Chinese trade with Iran as unacceptable. Further, the closure of Hormuz by Iran in retaliation is hurting, if not the US itself that much, American allies in the region and globally, raising the pressure on Trump,” he said.
“If we can glean anything from the behaviour of the two sides, it is Iran that is signalling patience and Trump showing impatience,” he added.
Adam Ereli, a former US ambassador to Bahrain, told Al Jazeera’s This is America programme that while the US blockade of Iranian ports and seizure of vessels transporting Iranian oil “makes sense” as a policy, it may not work as intended due to domestic political considerations in the US.
“The Iranians have prepared for this, for this eventuality. They have their own plans. They’ve got alternative means of storing their oil or selling their oil,” Ereli told Al Jazeera.
“Even if they ran out of oil, they have ways to survive a very tough blockade and sanctions regime that, frankly, I think will outlast Trump’s patience and the patience of the American people,” he said.
“Remember, this isn’t just about moving soldiers and ships and planes around on a map. There’s politics involved here in the United States,” he added.
“Trump is nothing if not attuned to the political winds. And for that reason, I think that you’ve got this Iran strategy on the one hand that runs up against an electoral strategy on another hand, and therefore, the question is, which one is going to give?”
Iran’s domestic refineries have a capacity of 2.6 million bpd, according to consultancy FGE Energy. Its oil and gas production facilities are concentrated in southwestern provinces: Khuzestan for oil and Bushehr for gas and condensate from the South Pars gasfield.
Iran is also the third-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and exports 90 percent of its crude oil via Kharg Island for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The US naval blockade has begun affecting the country’s storage capacity, according to TankerTrackers, the maritime intelligence agency. The blockade means Iran has to store more oil, and space could become tight.
TankerTrackers said that on Kharg Island, to prepare for the possibility of running out of oil storage space, Iran has brought an old tanker named NASHA (9079107) out of retirement.
“She’s a 30yo [year old] VLCC [Very Large Crude Carrier] that’s been anchored empty for the past few years; currently spending 4 days on a trip that should take 1.5-2 days,” TankerTrackers said in a post on X, suggesting that the tanker is being used to store oil. It is unclear if the ship has a heading or course.
Yes, analysts say that for a few months, Iran can continue to earn revenue from oil which is already in transit at sea.
Kenneth Katzman, former Iran analyst at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, DC, said Iran is not exporting new oil amid the US blockade of Iranian ports, but Tehran has between 160 million and 170 million barrels of oil “afloat” on ships around the world currently.
Those supplies, which transited the Strait of Hormuz before the US blockade was imposed, are on board hundreds of tankers and “waiting to be delivered”, Katzman told Al Jazeera.
Katzman said he had been informed by an Iranian professor that, based on those supplies, Tehran could have revenue flows that can last until August despite the US naval blockade.
“Which is a long time. Does President Trump have until August? Probably not,” he said.
“He’s probably going to have to look at kinetic escalation if he wants to bring this to the conclusion that he wants, or he’s going to have to accept less than the deal he ideally wants,” he said.
Iranian ships will still have to avoid US naval ships on the open ocean, as the US Navy has also recently intercepted ships carrying Iranian cargoes.
On Wednesday this week, for example, the US military intercepted at least three Iranian-flagged tankers in Asian waters, Reuters reported, and was said to be redirecting them away from their positions near India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
Besides oil revenue, Iran is also currently receiving revenue from a “toll booth” system that the country imposed on the Strait of Hormuz in March.
On Thursday, Iran’s deputy parliament speaker Hamidreza Haji-Babaei said Tehran’s central bank had received the first revenues from tolls imposed since the start of the war, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. It is unclear how much that toll revenue is.
Iranian politician Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the United Kingdom-based, Farsi-language satellite TV channel Iran International in March that the country has been charging some vessels as much as $2m each to pass through the strait.
According to Lloyd’s List, the shipping news outlet, at least two vessels that have transited the strait so far have paid fees in yuan, China’s currency. Lloyd’s List reported that one “transit was brokered by a Chinese maritime services company acting as an intermediary, which also handled the payment to Iranian authorities”. It is, however, not clear how much the vessels paid.
In recent days, while pressuring Iran to negotiate a ceasefire deal, US President Donald Trump has claimed that Iranians are “having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is”, alleging that there is “crazy” infighting between “moderates” and “hardliners” in Tehran.
But the country’s officials have insisted that Iran’s government is united.
Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, said on Thursday: “Our political diversity is our democracy, yet in times of peril, we are a ‘Single Hand’ under one flag. To protect our soil and dignity, we transcend all labels. We are one soul, one nation.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also dismissed allegations that the Iranian military may be at odds with the political leadership.
“The failure of Israel’s terrorist killings is reflected in how Iran’s state institutions continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline,” he wrote on X, referring to the assassinations of Iranian political and military figures Israel has carried out in recent weeks.
“The battlefield and diplomacy are fully coordinated fronts in the same war. Iranians are all united, more than ever before.”
One of the strongest messages of unity came from Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“In Iran, there are no radicals or moderates,” he said on X.
“We are all Iranians and revolutionaries. With ironclad unity of nation and state and obedience to the Supreme Leader, we will make the aggressor regret.”
Iran has demonstrated considerable military resilience in the face of weeks of US-Israeli strikes through its use of asymmetric warfare.
This includes the use of guerrilla tactics, cyberattacks, arming and supporting proxy armed groups and other indirect tools.
During its war with the US and Israel, Iran has targeted energy infrastructure in Israel and across the Gulf, threatened to target banking institutions and targeted US data centres of technology companies such as Amazon in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Iran has also blocked the Strait of Hormuz and reportedly placed mines in the strait to disrupt shipping, sending global oil prices soaring.
Since the US began its naval blockade of Iranian ports in mid-April, Iranian officials have repeatedly promised that their country will defend itself and respond to any US attack.
Earlier this week, after the US military said it had seized an Iranian vessel and ordered dozens of others to turn around, Iran also retaliated by capturing foreign commercial vessels around the Hormuz Strait, which it said violated naval regulations.
Ereli, the former US ambassador, told Al Jazeera that Iran and the IRGC have “revolutionary fervour”, which means they can “survive”. “They can tolerate pain for a lot longer than I think most American decision makers and planners calculate,” Ereli said.
Ereli said it was unknown how long Tehran could last under “siege conditions” imposed by the US, but probably a lot longer than the US anticipates.
“I think they can go a lot longer, especially than most people imagine, and especially when it comes to kneeling to the Americans,” Ereli said.
“There’s a level of pride and survival. They’re at war with us, and for them it’s a war of necessity. They’ve got to survive,” he added.
Jump in prices comes as Donald Trump says vessels will need permission of US Navy to transit key waterway.
Published On 24 Apr 202624 Apr 2026
Oil prices have jumped on heightened tensions between the United States and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz following Washington and Tehran’s tit-for-tat captures of commercial vessels.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, topped $106 per barrel early on Friday morning as Washington and Tehran stepped up their confrontation over the key maritime route for transporting the world’s energy.
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Brent stood at $106.80 as of 01:00 GMT, up nearly 5 percent from its closing price on Wednesday, when it surpassed $100 per barrel for the first time in two weeks.
US stocks fell overnight, with the benchmark S&P 500 index dipping 0.41 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping 0.89 percent.
Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about one-fifth of the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, remains at a standstill as Iran continues to demand the right to decide which vessels may pass and the US blocks Iran’s maritime trade.
US President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday that he had ordered the US Navy to destroy any Iranian boats laying mines in the strait, shortly after the Pentagon announced that it had seized a tanker carrying sanctioned Iranian oil for the second time in less than a week.
Trump also appeared to expand the scope of the US naval blockade beyond Iranian ports, writing on Truth Social that no ship “can enter or leave” the strait without the approval of the US Navy.
“It is ‘Sealed up Tight,’ until such time as Iran is able to make a DEAL!!!” Trump said.
Trump’s threats came a day after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the capture of two foreign cargo ships in the waterway.
The IRGC said it had seized the Panamanian-flagged MSC Francesca and Greek-owned Epaminondas after the vessels had endangered maritime security “by operating without the necessary permits and tampering with navigation systems”.
The Greek Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Ministry has denied that the Epaminondas was captured and said the vessel remains under the control of its captain.
Only nine commercial vessels transited the strait on Wednesday, compared with seven on Tuesday and 15 on Monday, according to maritime intelligence platform Windward.
Before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28, the waterway saw an average of 129 transits each day, according to United Nations Trade and Development.
Several Iranian officials have stressed that their country is united, rejecting United States President Donald Trump’s claims of a rift in the leadership in Tehran.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf all issued statements rejecting the United States president’s assertion.
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Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf joined the Supreme National Security Council in posting the same message on X.
“In Iran, there are no radicals or moderates,” it said.
“We are all ‘Iranian’ and ‘revolutionary’, and with the iron unity of the nation and government, with complete obedience to the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions.”
Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, also shared the statement, adding another note in English.
“Iran is not a land of rifts, but a stronghold of unity,” Aref said. “Our political diversity is our democracy, yet in times of peril, we are a ‘Single Hand’ under one flag. To protect our soil and dignity, we transcend all labels. We are one soul, one nation.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has not made a public appearance since replacing his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed by US-Israeli strikes on February 28.
US officials have said that the younger Khamenei was wounded and “disfigured” in the strike that killed his father.
The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing unidentified Iranian officials, that Khamenei is gravely wounded but remains “mentally sharp”.
Trump and his aides have been reiterating daily over the past week that there are major disagreements among Iranian leaders.
The US president claimed that Iranians are “having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is”, alleging that there is “crazy” infighting between “moderates” and “hardliners” in Tehran.
Citing the supposed rift by Trump could serve to justify the extension of the ceasefire while also putting the blame on Iran for the stalled diplomacy.
Tehran, however, has stressed over the past days that the talks – previously scheduled to take place in Pakistan – are not happening due to the US blockade on its country’s ports.
On Thursday, Araghchi dismissed allegations that the Iranian military is at odds with the political leadership.
“The failure of Israel’s terrorist killings is reflected in how Iran’s state institutions continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline,” he wrote on X.
“The battlefield and diplomacy are fully coordinated fronts in the same war. Iranians are all united, more than ever before.”
diplomatic impasse with the US, with Trump suggesting that he is comfortable with the status quo of blockading Iran’s ports to inflict economic pain on the country without resuming the war or rushing towards a conclusive deal.
“Iran’s Navy is lying at the bottom of the Sea, their Air Force is demolished, their Anti-Aircraft and Radar Weaponry is gone, their leaders are no longer with us, the Blockade is airtight and strong and, from there, it only gets worse — Time is not on their side!” Trump said on social media on Thursday.
“A Deal will only be made when it’s appropriate and good for the United States of America, our Allies and, in fact, the rest of the World.”
But the truce under the status quo remains tenuous. Air defences were activated over Tehran earlier on Thursday, but there has been no official confirmation of an attack against the country.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump said the US military will “shoot and kill” Iranian laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which could spark a response
And oil prices are once again rising due to the uncertainty and the double blockade in the Gulf – Iran closing down Hormuz and the US naval siege on Iranian ports.
Israel also appears ready to rejoin the war. Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday his country is awaiting the green light from Trump to return Iran to the “age of darkness”.
“Israel is prepared to renew the war against Iran. The [Israeli military] is ready in defence and offence, and the targets are marked,” Katz said, according to the Times of Israel newspaper.
From protests to quiet resistance, dissent is rising inside the United States military over the US-Israel war on Iran.
As the US expands its war with Iran, opposition is growing – not just among the public, but inside the military itself. Some service members are questioning orders, exploring conscientious objection, and speaking out. What’s driving this shift, and how far could it go?
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This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolomé, Tamara Khandaker, and Sarí El-Khalili with Spencer Cline, Tuleen Barakat, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker and Noor Wazwaz.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer.
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Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
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Disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the Strait of Hormuz closure will hit crop yields, UNDP chief warns.
Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
The Iran war will push more than 30 million people back into poverty, with the knock-on effects of the conflict likely to increase food insecurity in the coming months, the United Nations has warned.
Disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the ongoing blocking of cargo vessels through the Strait of Hormuz has already lowered agricultural productivity and will hit crop yields later this year, the UN’s development chief said on Thursday.
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“Even if the war would stop tomorrow, those effects, you already have them, and they will be pushing back more than 30 million people into poverty,” said Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
He also warned of other fallouts of the United States-Israeli war on Iran, including energy shortages and falling remittances.
Much of the world’s fertiliser is produced in the Middle East, and one-third of global supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran and the US are jostling for control.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last week warned that a prolonged crisis in the strait could lead to a global food “catastrophe”.
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, and Egypt are among the countries most at risk, according to the FAO.
“Food insecurity will be at its peak level in a few months – and there is not much that you can do about it,” De Croo said.
The knock-on effects of the Iran conflict have already wiped out 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), according to De Croo, who noted, “Things that take decades to build up, it takes eight weeks of war to destroy them.”
De Croo, the former prime minister of Belgium, also warned that the Middle East crisis is straining humanitarian efforts in other parts of the world, with the sector already facing funding cuts.
The US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which began on February 28, have also choked up key humanitarian aid routes, delaying life-saving shipments to some of the world’s worst crises.
“We will have to say to certain people, really sorry, but we can’t help you,” De Croo said. “People who would be surviving on help will not have this, and will be pushed into even greater vulnerability.”
Iran’s revolutionary guard has released a video said to show its forces seizing a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. The container ship was one of two captured by Iran on Wednesday.
Published On 23 Apr 202623 Apr 2026
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United States President Donald Trump has described the Iranian leadership as “seriously fractured” as he announced an extension to a ceasefire.
Trump said on Tuesday that the ceasefire would be extended to allow more time for negotiations and appeared to be suggesting that Iran’s leadership is in disarray.
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He added that the US naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports would remain in place.
Three weeks ago, Trump claimed the US military campaign had succeeded in its goal of forcing a change in Iran’s government and the US was now dealing with “a whole new set of people” in charge of the country.
On April 11, Iran sent a delegation led by parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, to begin talks with the US.
So is Iran’s government “fractured”? We take a look at the key Iranian stakeholders and power centres in Iran and how their approach to US negotiations may differ.
Khamenei is the second son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran on the first day of the war on February 28. Mojtaba Khamenei was selected as Iran’s new supreme leader on March 8, according to state media reports.
The 56-year old has never run for office or been elected but has for decades been a highly influential figure in the inner circle of his father, cultivating deep ties with the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Observers said the younger Khamenei’s ascension is a clear sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment have retained power and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations with the US in the short term.
Since his ascension, however, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public. On March 13, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed Iran’s new supreme leader had been wounded in US-Israeli strikes.
An April 11, a Reuters news agency report that quoted three people close to the supreme leader’s inner circle said Khamenei was still recovering from severe facial and leg injuries suffered in the air strike that killed his father. The sources were quoted as saying he was taking part in meetings with senior officials through audioconferencing.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify these claims.
According to state media reports, Khamenei has been active in making decisions on the war.
In a message read on Iranian state TV on April 18, Khamenei warned that the Iranian navy was ready to inflict “new bitter defeats” on the US and Israel as tensions escalated in the Strait of Hormuz.
Ghalibaf, 64, has served as Iran’s parliamentary speaker since 2020.
He was commander of the IRGC air force from 1997 to 2000. After that, he served as the country’s police chief. From 2005 to 2017, he was the mayor of Tehran.
Ghalibaf stood in elections for president in 2005, 2013, 2017 and 2024. He withdrew his bid for president before the election in 2017 when Hassan Rouhani won a second term.
Last month in the early days of the US-Israel war on Iran, it was suggested that Ghalibaf was the Trump administration’s “pick” to lead the country after the war ended. He has also been the main Iranian official leading negotiations with Washington since they began on April 11 in Pakistan.
In an overnight post on X on Tuesday, Ghalibaf wrote that Iran is “prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield” after Trump threatened Tehran with “problems like they’ve never seen before” if the two-week ceasefire ended this week without a deal.
Ghalibaf expressed anger at Trump for “imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire”.
“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” he said.
The ceasefire was supposed to have ended on Wednesday, but shortly before its expiration, Trump extended it until Iran “can come up with a unified proposal”.
Within Iran, however, Ghalibaf’s willingness to engage in negotiations with the US has been criticised by some people who have accused him of “betrayal”.
According to a report on Monday by the Iran International TV channel, some critics of Ghalibaf have said on social media platforms in Iran that the parliamentary speaker’s suggestion that peace talks with the US were progressing was “worrying”.
“There is no good in negotiation except harm,” one critic said.
But Ghalibaf has defended undertaking negotiations with the US. In a televised interview on Saturday, he said diplomacy does not mean “a withdrawal from Iran’s demands” but is a way to “consolidate military gains and translate them into political outcomes and lasting peace”.
Iran’s military power structure is often described as opaque and complex.
The nation operates parallel armies, multiple intelligence services and layered command structures, all of which answer directly to the supreme leader, who serves as the commander in chief of all the armed forces.
The parallel armies comprise the Artesh, Iran’s regular army, which is responsible for territorial defence, defence of Iran’s airspace and conventional warfare, and the IRGC, whose role goes beyond defence and includes protecting Iran’s political structure.
The IRGC also controls Iran’s airspace and drone arsenal, which has become the backbone of Iran’s deterrence strategy against attacks by Israel and the US.
After the US and Israel struck Iran and killed Ali Khamenei, the IRGC promised revenge and launched what it called “the heaviest offensive operations in the history of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic against occupied lands [a reference to Israel] and the bases of American terrorists”. Since then, it has struck US military assets and infrastructure across the Gulf region.
Some experts said Iranian officials negotiating with the US are more closely aligned with the IRGC than other leaders and groups.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on March 25, Babak Vahdad, a political analyst specialising in Iran, noted that Iran’s appointment of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council suggested Iranian negotiations would become more tightly aligned with the IRGC’s priorities. Zolghadr is a former IRGC commander and has been secretary of the advisory Expediency Council since 2023.
But Javad Heiran-Nia, who directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, said a divide between the IRGC and Iran’s negotiating team was plain to see.
Iran has attacked three cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz since Trump announced the ceasefire on April 6 and said the US naval blockade will remain.
“The attack on tankers during the ceasefire demonstrates the IRGC’s dominance over the diplomatic team and its disregard for their positions,” he told Al Jazeera.
Heiran-Nia pointed to the role of the Paydari Front (Steadfastness Front), whose members are hardliners within Iran’s political structure who are deeply committed to preserving the original principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution and the absolute power of the supreme leader. This group, he said, has been using the negotiations to cement its position within the power structure and among its support base.
He added that the Paydari Front has also been questioning the negotiations.
“In Iran’s current political climate, various groups are trying to raise their weight, both within the power structure and in public opinion. Of course, the Paydari Front’s efforts are more meaningful in relation to their own support base rather than trying to influence other segments of society because their hardline approach holds no appeal for other social classes,” he said.
The influence this group could have over the progress of talks is debatable, however, he added.
“If a deal is reached, it will likely have a sovereign character. The establishment will impose its own narrative, and the IRGC will accept it. In the meantime, the hardliners will attack the administration of [President] Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf over the deal. However, it is unlikely that this will spread to the decision-making body of the establishment,” he added.
United States President Donald Trump has claimed that a new nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the US withdrew from in 2018 during his first term.
On Tuesday, Trump extended the two-week ceasefire with Iran a day before it was set to expire, with hopes for a second round of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Key among the US demands is that Iran stop all enrichment of uranium.
Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is for civilian use only, such as for power generation, which requires uranium enrichment of between 3 percent and 5 percent. To build nuclear weapons, uranium needs to be enriched to 90 percent.
In this explainer, we visualise what uranium is, how it is enriched and how long it could take Iran to make a nuclear weapon.
Uranium is a dense metal used as a fuel in nuclear reactors and weapons. It is naturally radioactive and usually found in low concentrations in rocks, soil and even seawater. About 90 percent of the world’s uranium is produced in just five countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia and Uzbekistan. Reserves of uranium have also been found in other countries.
Uranium is extracted either by digging it out of the ground or, more commonly, through a chemical process that dissolves uranium from within the rock.
Before it can be used as nuclear fuel, uranium is processed through several different forms, including:
Natural uranium exists in three forms, called isotopes. They are the same element, with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.
Most naturally occurring uranium (99.3 percent) is U-238 – the heaviest and least radioactive – while about 0.7 percent is U-235 and trace amounts (0.005 percent) are U-234.
To generate energy, scientists separate the lighter, more radioactive U-235 from the slightly heavier U-238 in a process called uranium enrichment. U-235 can sustain a nuclear chain reaction while U-238 cannot.
To enrich uranium, it must first be converted into a gas, known as uranium hexafluoride (UF₆). This gas is fed into a series of fast-spinning cylinders called centrifuges. These cylinders spin at extremely high speeds (often more than 1,000 revolutions per second). The spinning force pushes the heavier U-238 to the outer walls, while the lighter U-235 stays in the centre and is collected.
A single centrifuge provides only a tiny amount of separation. To reach higher concentrations – or “enrichment” – the process is repeated through a series of centrifuges, called a cascade, until the desired concentration of U-235 is achieved.
The higher the U‑235 percentage, the more highly enriched the uranium is.
Small amounts (3-5 percent) are enough to fuel nuclear power reactors, while weapons require much higher enrichment levels (about 90 percent).
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) considers anything below 20 percent to be low-enriched uranium (LEU), while anything above 20 percent is considered highly-enriched uranium (HEU).
Low enriched – less than 20 percent
Highly enriched – More than 20 percent
Depleted uranium, which contains less than 0.3 percent U‑235, is the leftover product after enrichment. It can be used for radiation shielding or as projectiles in armour‑piercing weapons.
The effort it takes to enrich uranium is not linear, meaning it is much more difficult to go from 0.7 percent natural uranium to 20 percent LEU than it is to go from 20 percent to 90 percent HEU. Once uranium reaches 60 percent enrichment, it becomes much quicker to reach 90 percent weapons grade.
The effort it takes to enrich uranium is measured in separative work units (SWU).
According to the IAEA, Iran is believed to have about 440kg (970lbs) of uranium enriched to 60 percent – enough to theoretically build 10 or 11 low-technology atomic bombs if refined to 90 percent.
Ted Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Al Jazeera that before the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow, the country had at least 10 cascades of 174 IR-6 centrifuges in operation – meaning 1,740 IR-6 centrifuges.
The IR-6 is one of Iran’s most advanced centrifuge models. The country also has tens of thousands of older centrifuges.
Little is known about the conditions of these centrifuges or the stocks of uranium hexafluoride, which are still believed to be buried underground.
Postol has calculated that Iran’s cascade of centrifuges could produce 900 to 1,000 SWUs annually.
“Getting from natural uranium to 60 percent enrichment, which Iran has already achieved, takes roughly five years, and about 5,000 SWUs using Iran’s cascades.”
“If I want to go from 60 to 90 percent, I only need 500 SWUs. So, instead of five years, [by] starting with the 60 percent here, this might take me four or five weeks. Because I am already very enriched,” Postol said.
Using an analogy of a clock, Postol explained: “Let’s say it takes seven minutes to get 33 percent enrichment, and then eight minutes to get to 50 percent enrichment. It only takes me one minute to get to total [90 percent] enrichment.”
Postol said Iran’s stockpile is held underground, meaning a military strike would not necessarily eliminate the nuclear threat.
A single centrifuge cascade capable of enriching weapons-grade uranium could take up “no more floor space than a studio apartment, making it easily hidden in a small laboratory”, he said, estimating the area at 60sq metres (600sq feet).
“A single Prius Compact Hybrid car can produce enough electric power to run four or more of these cascades at a time,” Postol added, meaning “Iran can covertly convert its 60 percent uranium into weapons-grade uranium metal”.
“What they have done is put themselves in a position where anybody who thinks about attacking them with nuclear weapons has to know that they could be sitting in those tunnels after such an attack, refining [and] enriching the final step they need to build atomic weapons and converting it to metal, and building a nuclear weapon, and that they have the means to deliver it,” Postol said.
“They would have all of the technical equipment they need to build the atomic weapons. And they have the missiles, which are also in the tunnels and can be manufactured in addition to what they already have. And the atomic weapon would not need to be tested, because uranium weapons do not need to be tested before they’re used.”
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), established in 1968, is a landmark international agreement aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Iran is a signatory to this pact.
The treaty supports the right of all signatories to access nuclear technology and enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, including energy, medical or industrial purposes, with precise safeguards to ensure it is not diverted to make weapons.
Under the NPT, nuclear-weapon states agree not to transfer nuclear weapons or assist non-nuclear-weapon states in developing them. Non-nuclear-weapon states also agree not to seek or acquire nuclear weapons.
Despite this, most nuclear powers are currently modernising their arsenals rather than dismantling them.
Most of the countries are signatories, except five: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan and North Korea.
In 2015, under the Obama administration, Iran struck a deal with six world powers — China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US — plus the European Union, known as the JCPOA.
Under the pact, Tehran agreed to scale down its nuclear programme, capping enrichment to 3.67 percent, in exchange for relief from sanctions.
“The Iranians agreed to it, and they were following the treaty. There was no problem with the treaty at all, absolutely no problem,” Postol said.
“They were allowed to have 6,000 centrifuges, which, if they had natural uranium, they could probably build a bomb within a year if they were secretly using these centrifuges, but that was all under inspection. They were just simply going to enrich to 3.67 percent, which is for a power reactor. They’re allowed to do that by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
But in 2018, Trump pulled out of the deal, calling it “one-sided” and reimposing sanctions on Iran. Iran responded by eventually resuming enrichment at Fordow.
After the US killed Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran stated it would no longer follow the set uranium enrichment limits.
Former President Joe Biden made attempts to revive the deal, but it never came to fruition due to disagreements over whether sanctions should be lifted first or Iran should rejoin the JCPOA first.
Trump has repeatedly said Iran should not have the ability to produce nuclear weapons. It has been one of Washington’s red lines during talks with Iranian officials over the past year, and was also the central justification that Washington used when it bombed Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day US-Israel war on Iran last year.
In the current negotiations, Iran has said it is willing to “downblend” its 60 percent enriched uranium to about 20 percent – the threshold for low-enriched uranium. The process of downblending involves mixing stocks with depleted uranium to achieve a lower percentage of enriched U-235 overall.
“From the point of view of showing goodwill, I think it’s good, it shows that the Iranians are thinking of ways to address what the Americans claim are their concerns,” Postol said.
Nine countries possessed roughly 12,187 nuclear warheads as of early 2026, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Approximately two-thirds are owned by two nations – Russia (4,400) and the US (3,700), excluding their retired nuclear arsenals.
Some 9,745 of the total existing nuclear weapons are military stockpiles for missiles, submarines and aircraft. The rest have been retired. Of the military stockpile, 3,912 are currently deployed on missiles or at bomber bases, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Of these, some 2,100 are on US, Russian, British and French warheads, ready for use at short notice.
While Russia and the US have dismantled thousands of warheads, several countries are thought to be increasing their stockpiles, notably China.
The only country to have voluntarily relinquished nuclear weapons is South Africa. In 1989, the government halted its nuclear weapons programme and began dismantling its six nuclear weapons the following year.
Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, with a stockpile of at least 90. It has consistently neither confirmed nor denied this, and despite numerous treaties, it faces little international pressure for transparency.
The IRGC says the aggression came in response to what it described as the US seizure of an Iranian commercial vessel.
Published On 22 Apr 202622 Apr 2026
An Iranian gunboat has fired on a container vessel near the coast of Oman, according to a British maritime monitoring agency, in an incident that occurred hours after United States President Donald Trump said he would extend a ceasefire with Iran.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said on Wednesday that the ship’s captain reported that the vessel had been approached by a vessel of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) before shots were fired.
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It “has caused heavy damage to the bridge. No fires or environmental impact reported,” the agency added. No casualties were reported, and all crew members were said to be safe.
British maritime security firm Vanguard Tech said the ship was sailing under a Liberian flag and had been informed it had permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically important waterways.
Iranian news agency Tasnim, however, said the vessel had ignored warnings issued by Iran’s armed forces.
The incident followed a warning from the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters after what it described as the US seizure of an Iranian commercial ship in the Sea of Oman, the IRNA news agency reported.
It accused Washington of violating the ceasefire and carrying out “armed piracy” after allegedly firing on the Iranian vessel and disabling its navigation systems.
Trump earlier announced he would delay a planned military attack on Iran after requests from Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the decision was made because Iran’s government was “seriously fractured” and needed time to present a unified position.
“We have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” he wrote.
He added, however, that the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would remain in place and said the military had been ordered to stay “ready and able”.
The announcement marked a shift from comments made a day earlier, when Trump said it was “highly unlikely” he would extend the truce beyond Tuesday.
Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said Iranian officials were sending mixed messages over the ceasefire and the prospects for negotiations.
“Tehran is saying they won’t negotiate under imposed terms and conditions … when we compare the initial 10-point and 15-point proposals by the Iranians and Americans, we can understand that the two sides are poles apart,” he said.
“The atmosphere is also clouded by this mistrust in Tehran towards the United States, as well as the simultaneous military rhetoric related to a potential failed negotiation … It is a warning that another round of confrontation may be ahead.”
He said Iran still viewed the Strait of Hormuz as a key source of leverage in any talks.
“It’s trying to exercise authority over the ships and vessels transiting this strategically significant chokepoint,” he said.
Asadi added that Iranian officials framed their regional position as based on mutual security. “Iranians are saying that the basis of their foreign policy behaviour, particularly when it comes to Israel, is security for all versus security for none,” he said.
EXPLAINER
President Trump said the US would extend the ceasefire until Iran presents a proposal and talks are concluded, but a naval blockade of its ports continues.
Published On 22 Apr 202622 Apr 2026
President Donald Trump said the United States is extending the ceasefire until Tehran submits its latest proposal with conditions for ending the war, and until negotiations conclude, keeping diplomacy open while maintaining pressure on Iran.
However, Trump said the US naval blockade on Iran would remain. Iran has insisted that the blockade represents a violation of the ceasefire, and has said it will not negotiate under the “shadow of threats” or while the blockade remains in place, underscoring the fragile and uncertain path to talks.
Meanwhile, violence continues across the region, with Israeli settlers killing two people, including a child, in the occupied West Bank, and Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon wounding civilians and damaging homes despite a 10-day ceasefire.
The Department of War has released a video it says shows US forces boarding a sanctioned tanker in the Asia Pacific region as part of their efforts to disrupt vessels providing support to Iran.
Published On 21 Apr 202621 Apr 2026
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United States President Donald Trump has said a nuclear agreement currently being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he withdrew from in 2018 during his first term in office.
The original 2015 accord took roughly two years of negotiations to reach and involved hundreds of specialists across technical and legal fields, including multiple US experts. Under it, Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to subject itself to inspections in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions.
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But Trump took the US out of that pact, calling it the “worst deal ever”. Before the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February, the US had made new demands – including additional restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programme, the restriction of its ballistic missiles programme and an end to its support for regional armed groups, primarily in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
Trump’s latest remarks come amid growing uncertainty about whether a second round of talks will proceed in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, as a two-week ceasefire between the US-Israel and Iran approaches the end in just a day.
So, what was the JCPOA, and how did it compare to Trump’s new demands?
On July 14, 2015, Iran reached an agreement with the European Union and six major powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US, and Germany – under which these states would roll back international economic sanctions and allow Iran greater participation in the global economy.
In return, Tehran committed to limiting activities that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.
These included reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98 percent, to less than 300kg (660lb), and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent – far below weapons-grade of 90 percent, but high enough for civilian purposes such as power generation.
Before the JCPOA, Iran operated roughly 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges. Under the deal, that number was cut to a maximum of 6,104, and only older-generation machines confined to two facilities, which were subject to international monitoring.
Centrifuges are machines which spin to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope – enrichment – in uranium, a key step towards potential bomb-making.
The deal also redesigned Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to prevent plutonium production and introduced one of the most intrusive inspection regimes ever implemented by the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In exchange, Iran received relief from international sanctions which had severely damaged its economy. Billions of dollars in frozen assets were released, and restrictions on oil exports and banking were eased.
The deal came to halt when Trump formally withdrew Washington from the nuclear deal in 2018, a move widely criticised domestically and by foreign allies, and despite the IAEA saying Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.
“The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence, bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. They have not lived up to the spirit of their agreement,” he said in October 2017.
He reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran as part of his “maximum pressure” tactic. These targeted Iran’s oil exports, as well as its shipping sector, banking system and other key industries.
The goal was to force Iran back to the negotiating table to agree to a new deal, which also included a discussion about Tehran’s missile capabilities, further curbs on enrichment and more scrutiny of its nuclear programme.
During the JCPOA period, Iran’s nuclear programme was tightly constrained and heavily monitored. The IAEA repeatedly verified that Iran was complying with the deal’s terms, including one year after Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the agreement.
Starting in mid-2019, however, Iran began incrementally breaching the deal’s limits, exceeding caps on uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels.
In November 2024, Iran said it would activate “new and advanced” centrifuges. The IAEA confirmed that Tehran had informed the nuclear watchdog that it planned to install more than 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium.
In December 2024, the IAEA said Iran was rapidly enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, moving closer to the 90 percent threshold needed for weapons-grade material. Most recently, in 2025, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440kg (970lb) of 60-percent enriched uranium.
The US and its ally, Israel, are pushing Iran to agree to zero uranium enrichment and have accused Iran of working towards building a nuclear weapon, while providing no evidence for their claims.
They also want Iran’s estimated 440kg stock of 60pc enriched uranium to be removed from Iran. While that is below weapons-grade, it is the point at which it becomes much faster to achieve the 90 percent enrichment needed for atomic weapons production.
Iran has insisted its enrichment effort is for civilian purposes only. It is a signatory to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
In March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a strongly worded statement, said Trump had no right to ”deprive” Iran of its nuclear rights.
Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, Tehran had always insisted negotiations should be exclusively focused on Iran’s nuclear programme.
US and Israeli demands, however, extended beyond that. Just before the war began, Washington and Israel demanded severe restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
Analysts say this demand was at least partly triggered by the fact that several Iranian missiles had breached Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Dome” defence system during the 12-day war between the two countries in June last year. While Israel suffered only a handful of casualties, it is understood to have been alarmed.
For his part, Trump has repeatedly warned, without evidence, about the dangers of Iran’s long-range missiles, claiming Iran is producing them “in very high numbers” and they could “overwhelm the Iron Dome”.
Iran has said its right to maintain missile capabilities is non-negotiable. The JCPOA did not put any limits on the development of ballistic missiles.
However, a United Nations resolution made when adopting the nuclear agreement in July 2015 did stipulate that Iran could not “undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons”.
The US and Israel have also demanded that Iran stop supporting its non-state allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a number of groups in Iraq. Together, these groups are referred to as Iran’s “axis of resistance”.
In May last year, Trump said Tehran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons”, during a GCC meeting in Riyadh.
Three days before the war on Iran began in February, during his State of the Union address to Congress, Trump accused Iran and “its murderous proxies” of spreading “nothing but terrorism and death and hate”.
Iran has refused to enter a dialogue about limiting its support for these armed groups.
According to Andreas Kreig, associate professor of Security Studies at King’s College, London, Trump is more likely to secure a new deal that closely resembles the JCPOA, with “some form of restrictions on enrichment, possibly with a sunset clause, and international supervision”.
“Iran might get access to frozen assets and lifted sanctions much quicker than under the JCPOA, as it will not agree to a long drawn-out, gradual lifting of sanctions,” Krieg pointed out.
However, he warned that the political landscape in Tehran has hardened. “Iran now is a far more hardline and less pragmatic player that will play hardball at every junction. Trump cannot count on any goodwill in Tehran,” he said.
“The IRGC is now firmly in charge… with likely new powerful and tested levers such as the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates as a parallel elite military force to the army and has a great deal of political and economic power in Iran. It is a constitutionally recognised part of the Iranian military and answers directly to the supreme leader.
Overall, Krieg stressed, the US-Israel war on Iran “leaves the world worse off than had Trump stuck to the JCPOA”, even if a new compromise is eventually reached.
Moreover, since the revocation of the JCPOA, the US and Israel have waged two wars on Iran, including the current one. The 12-day war in June last year included attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and killed more than 1,000 people.
Attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have continued since the latest war began on February 28, including on the Natanz enrichment facility, Isfahan nuclear complex, Arak heavy water reactor, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Nevertheless, King’s College’s Krieg said there is still room for a negotiated outcome if Tehran and Washington scale back their demands.
“Both sides can compromise on enrichment thresholds, and on temporary moratoriums on enrichments. But Iran will not surrender its sovereignty to enrich altogether, and the Trump administration will have to meet them halfway,” he said.
“While the Iranians will commit on paper not to develop a nuclear weapon, they will want to keep R&D [research and development] in this space alive.”
Economic incentives will be central, he added. “Equally, Iran would want to get immediate access to capital and liquidity. Here, the Trump administration is already willing to compromise.”
Sina* is a 28-year-old video editing assistant who fought hard to build a life in Tehran. After completing mandatory military service, he refused to return to his hometown of Neyshabur in eastern Iran, knowing opportunities for a young man with a background in film editing and independent student theatre were bleak there. Through a college friend, he found his footing at a video content creation studio in the capital, climbing from camera assistant to assistant video editor within six months, before losing his job as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran. As told to Arya Farahand.
It has been a few days since the guns fell silent, and the sliver of hope I felt when the ceasefire was announced is already fading. Out of all the resumes I sent in desperation, only one company called me for an interview. The salary they offered would not cover the bare minimum to survive. My family keeps calling from Neyshabur, repeating the same line: “Come back, there’s work for you here.” What they intend as a lifeline feels like salt in the wound.
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I had stopped taking money from my father, my salary grew, and I was buying gifts for my two sisters. I was, for the first time in my life, truly independent. Now, I am sitting in my grandmother’s empty apartment in Tehran, staring at a phone with almost no internet, waiting for a job offer that’s not coming.
This is what the war has done to me. Not a scratch on my body, but everything else – gone.
The morning the war started, we were in a briefing meeting, drinking tea. A colleague had brought fresh croissants. Then we heard the roar of a fighter jet, a whistle, and seconds later, an explosion.
Our initial instinct wasn’t terror, but naive curiosity. Against every survival guide we had read from the previous war, we piled into the elevator and went up to the roof, mugs still in hand. Pillars of smoke were rising across the city. Then, another explosion hit, deafeningly close. We sprinted for the stairs.
Our manager sent us home. The city had seized up. My driver called to say he couldn’t get through the gridlock, so we started walking – 40 minutes under the glaring sun, past stranded people and stalled cars. At one point, a middle-aged driver lost his nerve, swerving into the bus lane against traffic. A bus appeared head-on and deadlocked the lane. Trapped, he looked ready to explode. I didn’t stick around. I just kept walking.
I went to my grandmother’s house. Hard of hearing, she hadn’t heard a single blast and was simply overjoyed to see me. I drank tea, sat in front of the television, tried to process what was happening, then ate lunch and slept.
When I woke up, I reached for my phone, only to be reminded that the internet was dead. I am someone who fills every spare moment with online gaming or Instagram. Without either, the boredom was stifling. I couldn’t smoke in front of my grandmother, and the forced abstinence only added to my agitation.
In the days that followed, the city hollowed out. Whenever I stepped into the alley – using a quick errand as a pretext to sneak a cigarette – I saw fewer and fewer people. In our building, only five of the 12 units remained occupied. I could tell by the empty spaces in the parking garage.
When my cigarette supply ran out, the corner shop didn’t have my brand and the supermarket was charging double. With no certainty that my March salary would be paid, I settled for a cheaper, unknown brand. It was like inhaling truck exhaust.
The days blurred: the unemployment anxiety, the stifling boredom, the desperate secret cigarettes. I tried buying VPNs twice. The first worked for a single day. The second – the seller blocked me the moment I transferred the money.
The true nightmare came on the night of March 5. A mild explosion jolted me awake around 4m. I walked to the kitchen for water. Then a blast ripped through the air – a sound seared into my brain for life. I froze. My grandmother stumbled out of her bedroom in terror. I pulled her into the kitchen.
Then came the barrage. More than 10 consecutive explosions, each less than 10 seconds apart. My grandmother sat on the floor beside me, arms wrapped tightly around my leg, head buried. It was the closest I have ever felt to death.
When it finally stopped, the windows held. My grandmother, shaken, recalled how during the Iran-Iraq war, sirens had warned them in time to reach shelters. What she found most painful about this war was the absolute lack of warning – no sirens, no shelters. Just sitting, waiting for the next blast. With tired legs, she climbed back into bed. I did not sleep until morning.
Through all of it, I kept telling myself, “Hold on”. Our manager had hoped this war, like the previous conflict, would end in under two weeks. Whenever my parents called, begging me to return to Neyshabur, I said no.
On March 17, we had our final online meeting. The studio’s debts were mounting, invoices unpaid, and our manager saw no end in sight – for the war or the internet blackout. For the new Iranian year, starting on March 21, only 200 resources staff would remain. The rest of us were laid off, without pay.
As the call ended, it felt like 10 different voices were screaming in my head. I couldn’t rely on my grandmother’s meagre pension. My father was already supporting a family of four. The calculation was merciless: move back to Neyshabur and work at my uncle’s supermarket. Instead of planning how to improve my life, I was plotting survival.
I packed up and left. It was a gruelling 10-hour bus ride through eerily quiet roads. What haunted me most were the final moments in Tehran. The city felt hollow, silent, swallowed by a darkness I had never seen before.
From Neyshabur, I called my manager, hoping against hope. He laid out the brutal math. During the previous war and the December protests, waiting out the shutdowns had been viable. But a relentless year of economic bleeding, capped by this blackout, had driven revenue to zero. Even if the internet were restored tomorrow and we worked nonstop for months, it wouldn’t be enough. The studio hadn’t paused. It had collapsed.
I updated my resume, bought a return bus ticket, and went back to my grandmother’s apartment. There was nothing to go back to. I just needed to feel like I was doing something.
When the ceasefire was announced, I felt a sliver of hope. It lasted about a day.
My life used to be a blur of motion: the studio, independent theatres, cafes with friends, early mornings and late nights. Now, my entire existence has shrunk to four walls. The war has ended, at least for now. The internet remains largely throttled, the economy is in ruins, and the job market that existed before February 28 has not returned with the ceasefire.
Outside, people are beginning to move through the streets again. For them, perhaps, something is resuming. For me, there is nothing to resume.
I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.
*Name changed for security reasons
Morbi, India – For seven years, Pradeep Kumar would walk into the ceramics factory in western India at 9am, load raw materials – clay, quartz and sand – into the kiln, and spend the day around the heat and dust of the furnaces.
He handled the clay at different stages, sometimes feeding it into machines, sometimes moving semi-processed pieces towards firing. The work was repetitive and demanding, with no protective gear, such as gloves and masks, against the high temperatures.
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“It would be very challenging in the summers since the heat would be at its peak,” he told Al Jazeera.
But on March 15, he lost his job – not because of anything he or the company behind his factory had done, but because the United States and Israel attacked Iran, triggering another war in the Middle East and a global fuel crisis.
Barely two weeks after the war began, the ceramics company where he worked shut down due to a shortage of propane and natural gas. The company, in Morbi in Gujarat state – like all of its peers in the ceramics industry – depends on these critical ingredients.
Morbi is the centre of India’s ceramics industry that employs more than 400,000 people. More than half of these workers, like Kumar, are migrants from poorer Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Five days after Kumar lost his job, the 29-year-old took his wife and their three children back to their home in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi district.
“I am here until every other migrant worker who came back home with us goes back,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We don’t want to suffer like dogs, like we did during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added, referring to the 2020 and 2021 exodus of migrant workers from India’s more industrialised western states to the poorer east, with millions of starving families, including children, walking on foot for days and sometimes weeks to reach their homes amid a coronavirus lockdown.
With more than 600 companies, Morbi produces about 80 percent of India’s ceramics in the form of tiles, toilets, bathtubs and wash basins. But at least 450 of those companies have been forced to shut down as a standoff on the Strait of Hormuz, a lifeline for India’s gas imports, continues.
Meanwhile, the war continues, with the US on Sunday capturing an Iranian cargo vessel, even as Washington says it is willing to hold another round of talks with Tehran in Pakistan to reach a deal. Tehran has refused to commit to peace talks after its ship was seized.
The developments came as a fragile ceasefire agreed by Iran and the US after a month of fighting expires on Wednesday. But a re-escalation in hostilities has seen Iran shutting down Hormuz for traffic, disrupting global fuel supplies and raising oil prices.
“All manufacturing units in Morbi rely on propane and natural gas to fire kilns at high temperatures. While propane is supplied by private companies, natural gas is provided by the state to those with connections. Around 60 percent of manufacturers use propane because it is comparatively cheaper,” Siddharth Bopaliya, a 27-year-old third-generation manufacturer and trader in Morbi, told Al Jazeera.
Manoj Arvadiya, president of the Morbi Ceramic Manufacturers Association, said they had shut down the units till April 15, hoping that the Middle East crisis would be resolved by then.
“But even today, only around 100 units have opened, and most have still not begun the manufacturing process. For at least another 15 days, it is likely to remain the same,” he told Al Jazeera.
Arvadiya said the closure has impacted 200,000 workers, with more than a quarter of them forced to go back to their homes in other states.
India’s ceramic industry is valued at $6bn.
“About 25 percent of Morbi’s ceramics are exported to countries in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, with a net worth of $1.5bn. But exports are now delayed and, in some cases, completely halted, especially to Middle Eastern countries, due to the production slowdown over the past month,” Arvadiya told Al Jazeera.
Factories that rely on propane remain shut in Morbi. Though natural gas is mostly available, many units have not made the switch yet, as new connections are being priced at 93 rupees a kilo, while existing users receive it at about 70 rupees.
Khushiram Sapariya, a manufacturer of washbasins who relies on propane, said he will wait this month before deciding on reopening his factory.
“Because then I have to call hundreds of staff who have gone to their homes, and I want to be sure before taking their responsibility,” he said.
Among the workers who left Morbi last month is 27-year-old Ankur Singh.
“The shutdown of my company did not send me back alone, but with a Morbi disease – silicosis. I would often have fever and cough but kept ignoring it, until I came back to my hometown near Patna in Bihar and found after a check-up that it was silicosis,” he told Al Jazeera.
Silicosis is an incurable lung disease caused by inhalation of silica dust found in rock, sand, quartz and other building materials. One of the oldest occupational diseases in the world, it kills thousands of people every year.
Gujarat-based labour rights activist Chirag Chavda says the disease is “widespread in Morbi because workers are routinely exposed to fine silica dust generated during ceramic production”.
“Even those not directly involved in moulding or kiln work often inhale the particles due to poor ventilation and prolonged exposure across factory spaces,” he told Al Jazeera.
Chavda said most ceramic companies do not follow the government regulations regarding the safety of workers.
Harish Zala, 40, had worked in different ceramic companies in Morbi for two decades before he got silicosis two years ago. He said he received no help from his employer, who allegedly abused and threatened his father when he visited the company after the diagnosis.
“Every year, at least one labourer dies of silicosis in each company, while several get detected for silicosis,” Zala told Al Jazeera. “Some like me get lucky and survive, but have no choice but to quit the job immediately.”
Zala said many companies do not provide the workers with written proof of employment, such as appointment letters, salary slips, or identity cards. “This is done so that if a worker later demands labour rights or legal entitlements, they have no concrete evidence to prove that they were employed by the company.”
Chirag added that such workers are also denied social security under various Indian laws regarding salaries or pension funds, since doing so would establish proof of employment.
“As a result, even after working for years, workers are deprived of their labour rights due to a lack of evidence. This leaves employers with little to no legal accountability,” he said.
In Morbi, there are also migrants like Sushma Devi, 56, who did not go back to her home in West Bengal because the tile company her son works at has promised to continue giving them shelter and food as it waits for manufacturing to resume.
“I am here with a few more people because we did not want to spend money on travelling. Here, at least our ration is sorted,” she said as she walked with a bundle of dry twigs, wood and discarded plywood for the cooking.
“We step out to collect these every day to be able to cook our two-time meal,” said Devi. “I hope the kilns and manufacturing resume soon, but I also hope they don’t stop giving us rice and potatoes even if the kilns don’t start running anytime soon.”
Devi’s husband, Debendar, and their son Ankit live in a one-room set given to them by their company. The family has access to a common toilet for 10 families on one floor.
Kumar, meanwhile, is running out of his meagre savings and fears he could fall into a debt trap.
“Initially, we ate from whatever we had saved. But the house needed repair and we had to borrow 20,000 rupees ($214) from a relative, which we have no idea when or how we will repay,” he said, looking at the reworked roof of his brick house in Hardoi.
Dozens of US veterans and family members of military personnel have been arrested while staging a protest in the US Capitol building in opposition to the war on Iran.
Published On 21 Apr 202621 Apr 2026
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Daniel Benaim, the former US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Arabian Peninsula Affairs, says the US missed the early off-ramps to declare victory over Iran, and now finds itself behind where it began on all its objectives.
Published On 21 Apr 202621 Apr 2026
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The US and Iran are supposed to have another round of direct talks in Pakistan on Tuesday, but will the Iranians skip it like they are threatening and what do all sides want? Al Jazeera asked political analyst Mahjoob Zweiri.
Published On 20 Apr 202620 Apr 2026
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Tehran, Iran – Iranian authorities have been slowly expanding a list of individuals and entities deemed eligible to have limited internet access. However, the action serves only to illustrate that most of the population of more than 90 million people remains disconnected during the war with the United States and Israel.
The government imposed a near-total internet shutdown across Iran within hours of the first bombs falling in downtown Tehran on February 28. The move has seen internet connectivity reduced to about 2 percent of pre-war levels at most, according to monitors.
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A limited intranet functions to keep some local services and apps alive, but people are highly frustrated, and the economy has suffered billions of dollars in lost revenue as a result of more than 1,200 hours of the digital blackout. One business, however, is thriving: the black market for internet connections.
This week, tens of thousands of people and organisations selected by the state based on their positions and professions signed up or received text message invitations to connect through a service called Internet Pro.
That is the name selected for a limited and metered internet connection through which thousands of sites and most global messaging services are blocked but some applications, app stores and Google services function.
The service is being sold in the form of 50-gigabyte data packages by three top state-linked telecommunications companies. State authorities can also issue limited internet protocols (IPs) for global connectivity to designated office spaces of approved companies and businesses.
Applicants need to provide full identification and professional or referral documents. Business owners and traders introduced to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology and other authorities through their guilds and chambers of commerce were among the first to be connected this month.
Doctors, university professors, researchers and academics in various fields were nominated by the Ministry of Science this week. Freelancers were told to sign up through a webpage set up by the state-linked Iranian ICT Guild.
This is a separate service from that enjoyed by holders of “white SIM cards”, which offer less restricted connections and are reserved for officials, state-linked entities and individuals, journalists and some civilian supporters of the establishment perceived to be helping “get the message out” on behalf of the government.
For years, Iranian authorities have stressed that they are against a tiered internet system, which in effect renders connectivity a privilege, not a fundamental right in an age of rapid digital advancement.
But with such a system now in action and expanding, some state media are now framing it as a necessity despite harsh criticism regarding such an idea from the population over the years.
The state-linked ISNA news agency this week branded Internet Pro an “expert option providing a stable connection for professional activities”. The outlet encouraged potential applicants to contact the three telecommunications companies to see if they are eligible.
No such tiered system was implemented at a significant scale around the short-lived internet blackout imposed during the 12-day war with Israel in June or the 20-day near-total shutdown in January during deadly nationwide protests.
But the extended and unprecedented internet shutdown now in place sees eligible people and businesses giving in and electing to sign up.
Not all are convinced, however. Many are reported to have taken to state-run online platforms and news sites with demands for the full restoration of the internet.
On the local technology-focused site Zoomit, which can be reached through the intranet, thousands of people have recounted experiences of lost jobs and disrupted lives as a result of the shutdown.
“I’m a cybersecurity and network expert. Our servers and systems have not received security updates for about two months, and we’ve lost all our integration with open-sourced communities,” one user wrote. “This has significantly increased risks and stopped development, it’s unclear if my team will have its contract renewed this year in these economic conditions.”
Iranians circumventing the filternet through virtual private networks (VPNs) and other methods have also rejected the tiered system.
Aliasghar Honarmand, the editor in chief of an online privacy news website and an online medical news and research service, wrote on X that he has ignored multiple offers for Internet Pro over recent days.
“Access to the free internet is a fundamental and basic right for all people,” he wrote, adding that giving it to elites based on state classifications leads to normalising severe internet disruptions, creating an illusion of free connectivity, undermining social cohesion, violating personal privacy and propagating a black market.
Since the start of the war, Iranians going online from inside and outside the country have observed a battle between developers working on behalf of the state to deepen internet restrictions and those trying to skirt them.
This week, a circumvention method known as SNI (server name indication) Spoofing became popular after an unidentified user reported that he managed to establish a secure connection and published a guide.
The method tricked internet censors into thinking the users were visiting a permitted site or service when they were accessing blocked content. However, the authorities quickly moved to block gateways allowing the method to work, resulting in its demise within days.
Two experts who spoke with Al Jazeera said authorities are now deploying a heavily restrictive and centralised internet architecture through something called a national NAT (network address translation): a single country-scale gateway that all internet traffic must pass through.
This allows the authorities to reroute and bundle connectivity across Iran through a central operator with the aim of achieving higher levels of control and monitoring and an improved capacity to combat circumvention efforts.
But the method is hardware-intensive and costly, can lead to degraded or lagging connections and could potentially act as a single point of failure for saboteurs to exploit, the experts said.
One young resident of Tehran who has used Internet Pro issued for her university professor mother told Al Jazeera that most platforms considered essential by many people, such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram, remain blocked on the service. ChatGPT was also blocked, but China’s DeepSeek was available on the service, she added.
“This is ridiculous and stupid because all groups of society, for whatever reason, need and deserve the internet. This move excludes most people who have no links to get them connected, including the elderly, and serves to keep the internet out for longer,” she said.
Donald Trump has denied being dragged into war with Iran by Israel, as the United States president faces increasing criticism over the conflict, including from segments of his own base.
“Israel never talked me into the war with Iran, the results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON, did,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday.
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There is no public evidence linking Iran directly to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack against Israel. Trump’s own intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard also testified to Congress in March that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
For eight months prior to the war, Trump had been saying repeatedly that the June 2025 US strikes on Iranian facilities “obliterated” the country’s nuclear programme.
Many of Trump’s critics have argued that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the US, and that the war only advances the interests of Israel at the expense of the safety and prosperity of Americans.
Iran responded to the joint US-Israeli strikes – which killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, other top officials and hundreds of civilians on February 28 – by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring.
In the US, energy costs have skyrocketed, fuelling inflation. The price of one gallon (3.8 liters) of petrol has remained over $4 – up from less than $3 before the war, more than a week after the truce between Washington and Tehran came into effect.
A recent poll by NBC News suggested that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war.
With dissatisfaction growing, many of the president’s critics have pointed to Israel as the real power behind the war – portraying Trump as a weak leader following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“He entered a war – got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu, let’s be clear about that – entered a war that the American people do not want,” Kamala Harris, Trump’s 2024 Democratic opponent, said last week.
Harris served as vice president in the Joe Biden administration, which provided diplomatic and military support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza for more than two years.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump presented himself as the “peace” candidate, promising to end wars that were started under the Biden administration.
Trump’s National Security Strategy, released last year, also said that Washington would pivot its foreign policy and military resources from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.
But Netanyahu, who has visited Trump in the US six times in one year, has continued to push for a hardline against Iran. The most vocal supporters of the war in Washington have also been Israel’s closest allies.
On Monday, Trump renewed his attacks on the mainstream media for its coverage of the war with Iran.
“I watch and read the FAKE NEWS Pundits and Polls in total disbelief. 90% of what they say are lies and made-up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged,” the US president wrote.
He also touted his policies in Venezuela, where the country has remained stable and become more friendly to Washington after US forces abducted President Nicolas Maduro in January.
In Iran, however, the US-Israeli strikes led to the closure of Hormuz and sustained Iranian attacks across the region for nearly six weeks.
The conflict is now paused, and further talks between US and Iranian officials could take place in Pakistan this week. But both sides have threatened to renew the fighting if a deal is not reached.
“Just like the results in Venezuela, which the media doesn’t like talking about, the results in Iran will be amazing – And if Iran’s new leaders (Regime Change!) are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future!” Trump wrote.