war

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi says the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is no longer a workable model. Iran’s nuclear technology and capabilities have advanced significantly, and any future agreement must reflect today’s realities, including the impact of the recent conflict.

On a modest bed inside his war-battered home in the Khartoum North neighbourhood of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, Murtada Mohieddin, a diabetic patient in his early 50s, carefully counts his remaining doses of insulin. His search for medicine has transformed into a harrowing battle – not just to find the treatment he needs to survive his diabetes, but to ensure the medicine is not expired or ruined.

“Sometimes the insulin is spoiled,” Mohieddin tells Al Jazeera, inspecting his limited supply. “You wouldn’t know if it is ruined or expired. You can check the expiration date, but it could still be damaged from poor storage.”

More than three years of civil war have crippled Sudan’s healthcare infrastructure: hospitals, health centres and pharmaceutical factories have been shut and vital medical supply chains and storage across the country have been disrupted.

The war, which erupted as a power struggle between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has killed more than 50,000 people and displaced 14 million – nearly a quarter of the country’s population.

The devastating conflict has paralysed domestic pharmaceutical production and collapsed vital supply chains across the country.

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) news release dated April 14, 2026, Sudan represents the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 21 million people lacking basic healthcare services out of 34 million needing aid.

In the void left by the closure of pharmaceutical companies, smuggling networks have flourished, flooding the market with unregulated drugs locally known as “Boko” medicines.

These include critical intravenous malaria medications smuggled across borders. Because they completely bypass strict temperature controls and quality checks during transit, these drugs are frequently spoiled, rendering them either totally ineffective or lethally toxic to patients.

A double threat

Inside local pharmacies in Omdurman, located on the outskirts of Khartoum, the crisis is not just limited to scarcity. Patients now face the double threat of exorbitant costs and life-threatening quality issues, as these illicit medicines are often severely spoiled due to a lack of proper storage and refrigeration.

Mutawakil Hamza, a pharmacist based in Omdurman, said the reliance on unregulated channels is putting lives at immediate risk.

“Most malaria medicines are now brought in through smuggling,” Hamza said. “These are ultimately injections for intravenous use, and this is highly dangerous to a patient’s health.”

Because intravenous treatments bypass the body’s natural defences and require absolute sterility, administering improperly stored or degraded smuggled injections can rapidly cause severe bloodstream infections, systemic shock, or death.

The war has effectively dismantled local manufacturing, reversing years of medical self-reliance. Yasser Ahmed Youssef, a pharmaceutical industry expert whose factory is located in Khartoum, noted the stark contrast to the pre-war era, when local factories managed to produce “very large quantities of life-saving medicines, including drugs for blood pressure, diabetes, colds, and paediatric care”.

Now, the majority of those production lines are silent, leaving the population dependent on a shattered healthcare system. According to the October 2025 Health Resources and Services Availability Monitoring System (HeRAMS) report cited in a WHO Public Health Situation Analysis from January 6, 2026, 40 percent of health facilities nationwide are entirely nonoperational.

The situation is even more drastic regionally, with 87 percent of facilities shut down in Khartoum and 85 percent closed in North Kordofan, whose control is contested between the rival sides.

In active conflict zones such as Gezira, Khartoum, Darfur and the Kordofan regions, the shortages are particularly dire.

A United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) emergency report from August 2025 highlighted that the only functioning maternity hospital in the besieged city of el-Fasher faces critical medicine shortages and risks imminent closure.

El-Fasher, the last SAF stronghold in the western region of Darfur, was taken over by the RSF in late October 2025, trapping approximately 700,000 civilians – mostly women and children. People have been cut off entirely from food and medicine and subjected to attacks.

Collapsed warehouses and supply lines

In the government-funded public sector, the National Medical Supplies Fund maintains that it is working to secure essential medicines despite the fighting, claiming to have achieved 75 percent availability for cancer medications and fully secured supplies for kidney patients.

However, officials admit the overarching infrastructure is in ruins, with the local health ecosystem almost destroyed.

“We have been massively affected by the ongoing war inside Sudan,” said Abubakar Salouha, a department director at the fund. “The medical supplies have been severely impacted; there has been a collapse at the level of the main warehouses at the headquarters.”

International aid deliveries from neighbouring countries also face enormous logistical hurdles.

The WHO’s January 6 situation analysis detailed that cross-border transit times for medical commodities can take up to 90 days to reach remote regions like Darfur from the Cameroonian city of Douala via Chad. Compounding these suffocating delays, armed groups have repeatedly targeted medical infrastructure, looting pharmacies and stripping remaining hospitals of their vital medical supplies.

Recent attacks highlight this systematic destruction by rival sides. On March 20, 2026, a drone attack on Al-Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur state killed at least 64 people, including medical personnel, and injured 89 others. Sudanese rights group the Emergency Lawyers reported that the army was behind the attack.

On April 2, another drone attack struck Al-Jabalain Hospital in White Nile state, killing 10 staff members, including the hospital’s director while he was performing surgery. That same day, the Family Hospital in el-Daein was looted, and patients and health workers were assaulted and expelled. Similarly, a hospital in Kurmuk, Blue Nile state, was looted on March 25, its equipment destroyed, and patients forced out. The RSF was blamed for these attacks.

“Sudan is confronting one of the gravest humanitarian and public health emergencies in the world today. The ongoing conflict has pushed the health system to the edge of complete collapse,” warned WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on April 4.

“These incidents are stark reminders of the urgent need for renewed international solidarity and decisive political and humanitarian action. Sudan cannot endure this crisis alone.”

Kuwait activated its air defences after what its foreign ministry later described as a ‘heinous Iranian attack’. Iran says it targeted a US base in retaliation for being used, according to Tehran, to launch recent attacks on Iran.

EXPLAINER

While a peace deal between the US and Iran remains elusive, Israel has deepened its offensive into southern Lebanon.

The United States military says it has struck Iranian military sites, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has targeted a US base in response, the latest in a series of exchanges as negotiations to end the three-month US-Israel war on Iran are conducted.

US President Donald Trump also on Monday described Iran as eager to reach an agreement.

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the USA and those that are with us,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

Here is the latest on the US-Iran negotiations as both sides announced on day 94 of the war on Iran that they traded attacks:

In Iran

• Production restored at South Pars: Iran has restored gas production at three offshore platforms in the South Pars gasfield after Israel attacked them in March.
• US says it attacks Iranian military sites: The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said it conducted “self-defense strikes” on Iranian radar and drone sites in the city of Goruk and on Qeshm Island at the weekend.
• Iran executes two men over January protests: Iran executed two men convicted over their role in antigovernment protests in January, according to the Mizan news agency. The men were found guilty of setting fire to a mosque in Tehran, damaging public property and clashing with security forces, Mizan reported.

War diplomacy

• Iran says messages being sent to US: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran is continuing to exchange messages with the US on a deal to end the war.

• Trump’s stance: Araghchi’s comments came after US media reported that Trump has called for tougher terms in the preliminary agreement.

In the Gulf

• Kuwait intercepts missiles and drones: The General Staff of the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were “confronting hostile missile and drone attacks”. If sounds of explosions are heard, they are the result of air defences intercepting the projectiles, the army added.

In Lebanon

• Israel pushes farther into Lebanon: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Israel’s military to push farther into Lebanon after Israeli forces made their deepest incursion into the country in more than 25 years.
• Hezbollah says it downs Israeli drone: The Lebanese armed group said it shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over the western sector of southern Lebanon using a surface-to-air missile on Sunday evening. It said in a statement on Telegram that the strike was in response to Israeli violations of a ceasefire that went into effect on April 8.
• Hezbollah strikes Israeli forces in southern Lebanon: Hezbollah also said its fighters fired a large number of rockets and artillery shells at Israeli forces on the eastern outskirts of the town of Yohmor al-Shaqif in southern Lebanon early on Monday.
• US proposes new plan: The US has put forward a proposal to de-escalate hostilities in Lebanon, a US official told Al Jazeera, adding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio held separate talks with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Netanyahu.

In Israel

• Israel said rocket fired from Lebanon intercepted: The Israeli military said it intercepted a rocket that set off sirens in northern Israel and destroyed the launcher from which Hezbollah fired the projectile. Earlier, Israel’s Ynet News website reported that air raid sirens had been heard in Western Galilee, the town of Kiryat Shmona and surrounding areas.

In the US

• The IRGC says it strikes US airbase: The IRGC said it struck an airbase that was used for an attack on a telecommunications tower on Sirik Island, located in the southern province of Hormozgan, Iran’s Fars news agency reported. The IRGC did not specify the location of the facility.
• Trump says Iran wants to make a deal: In a new Truth Social post, Trump claimed Tehran “really wants to make a deal” and whatever deal is reached will “be a good one” for the US “and those that are with us”.

France requests UN Security Council meeting over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, as Iran says talks with US continue.

BANGKOK — With summer around the corner, soaring prices and other complications from the war with Iran are straining the tourism-dependent economies of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia.

The region’s peak tourist summer season is at risk as elevated jet fuel costs coupled with ceasefire uncertainties prompt flight cancellations and higher ticket prices.

Tourism in Asia has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, many countries are coping with the war’s repercussions on global energy supplies and prices, which hit Asia first and hardest. Some families are pulling back on travel as gas and groceries get more expensive worldwide. Crowds have thinned at some places once synonymous with travel.

“With gasoline prices rising and tourism declining, how can we make money?” asked Siv Pech, a 58-year-old rickshaw driver in Siem Reap, home to Cambodia’s centuries-old Angkor Wat temple complex.

Tourism is an economic lifeline for many developing nations. It contributes nearly 13% of gross domestic product in Thailand and nearly 9% in Vietnam, and it underpins millions of jobs in Cambodia. Travelers bring in much-needed foreign currency for import-dependent economies such as the Philippines and Nepal.

Those tourism dollars are more crucial than ever as war-driven spikes in oil prices push up the cost of fuel imports, especially for parts of the world that relied on the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast as a conduit for much of their oil and gas. Iran essentially shut down the strait to commercial traffic after the U.S. and Israel launched the war more than three months ago.

The war will determine which tourism businesses can survive long enough to benefit from the eventual return of travelers, said Jitsai Santaputra of the Lantau Group, an energy industry consulting firm. “This, happening within five years of each other, first the pandemic and now the war, is horrible for the tourism industry,” she said.

Travel costs

Jet fuel shortages and surging costs have led Vietnam Airlines, the Malaysia-based AirAsia group, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific and other carriers to cut flights or otherwise adjust schedules.

European carriers face a squeeze for similar reasons.

Airspace closures across the Persian Gulf early in the war and the intermittent closures of certain Persian Gulf airports cut off key layover locations for Asia-bound flights or forced commercial airplanes to take longer, costlier routes.

Airfares have jumped, with airlines such as Air India and Cathay Pacific implementing sharp increases in fuel surcharges.

Cathay Pacific’s fuel surcharge for medium-haul flights has jumped to $80, up from $34 before the war. For long-haul flights, it increased to $174, up from $73.

“Jet fuel prices remain at highly elevated levels” and have increased cost pressures, said Lavinia Lau, Cathay’s chief customer and commercial officer. Travelers are booking closer to their departure dates, she said, indicating growing unease.

Sandra Awodele, a freelance travel writer in the Washington area, often plans year-round international trips and hoped this summer would be when she finally crossed off Asia from her bucket list.

In March, she began planning a long-awaited vacation to Thailand, envisioning one to two weeks of exploring. Her plans hit a wall when she checked airfares.

“I looked at flight options and that’s where it ended,” Awodele said.

On the ground, rising fuel costs in tourism-dependent Southeast Asia are squeezing taxi and ride-hailing app drivers.

Pech, the Cambodian rickshaw driver, said he used to earn up to $20 a day toting tourists around Siem Reap. That’s plummeted to about $5 a day.

His gas bill eats half of that. The rest goes to food. “Some days, I don’t earn even a cent,” he said.

Slow summer expected

Tourism is vital for many regional economies, accounting for nearly 11% of economic activity in the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations in 2019, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

An analysis by Moody’s Analytics estimated effects from the war would probably reduce economic growth across the Asia-Pacific region by 0.1 to 0.4 percentage points in 2026.

“The conflict will weigh on growth mainly through higher production costs and consumer prices, along with weaker external demand from trade and tourism,” said Albert Park, chief economist at the Asia Development Bank.

Higher airfares and weaker travel confidence can quickly spill over into household livelihoods and public revenues in economies where visitor arrivals are a major source of jobs, income and foreign exchange, according to a recent report by the United Nations Development Program.

Travel is often the first expense people cut when the economy worsens, said Le Tuyet Lan, who runs bed-and-breakfast properties in Vietnam’s Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

In times of crisis, luxury travelers tend to shift toward mid-range options, mid-range travelers move toward budget hotels, and the cheapest tier of the market becomes the most vulnerable.

“This will disrupt the whole industry,” she said.

‘We are feeling it’

Tourism in Thailand is “a big industry and we are feeling it,” said Santaputra with the Lantau Group in Bangkok, one of Southeast Asia’s most visited cities.

The number of visitors to Thailand fell 7% year-on-year in April, while European arrivals fell almost 16% and Middle Eastern arrivals sank 57%, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports.

In neighboring Cambodia, Sokha Sambo, owner of the popular Sambo Khmer & Thai Restaurant in Siem Reap, said the rising price of liquefied petroleum gas used for cooking has strained her budget, hindering her ability to dish out her signature green curries.

“I’m worried about gas and goods inflation. It makes the business less profitable and difficult to cover employees’ salaries,” said Sambo, who has 14 staff members.

In the first four months of 2026, the number of recorded international and domestic visitors to Siem Reap dropped by 37.5% compared with the same period last year, according to the province’s tourism department.

“This has greatly affected all of us,” Sambo said.

Delgado and Chan write for the Associated Press and reported from Bangkok and Hong Kong, respectively. AP writers Aniruddha Ghosal in Hanoi and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and freelance journalist Sinorn Thang in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, contributed to this report.

On October 28, 2025, more than 2,500 police officers launched a massive raid on two favelas in Rio de Janeiro. They were targeting leaders of Red Command, one of Brazil’s largest drug trafficking groups. By the end of the day, more than 120 people were dead, making it Brazil’s bloodiest police operation.

In the aftermath, police withdrew without securing the scene. Bodies were left behind, and forensic teams never arrived. Residents recovered the dead themselves, which erased critical evidence of what happened.

Through exclusive reporting, Fault Lines reconstructs the case of Douglas de Almeida da Silva, a father and small business owner shot by police that night. Officers say he fired first, but forensic analysis and witness footage raise serious questions about their account.

The raid reflects a broader pattern in Rio, where police routinely fail to preserve crime scenes, undermining investigations and shielding officers from accountability.

Despite repeated deadly raids, gangs continue to control the favelas, raising questions about whether these operations curb the violence or simply add to it.

US officials indicate Tehran may take days to respond to Trump’s tougher terms on a potential agreement to end the nearly three-month war.

President Donald Trump sought to change several terms of a proposal to end the US-Israel war on Iran, according to media reports in the United States, as a finalised deal remains elusive.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that Trump’s changes involved toughening the deal terms, and the US has sent the new framework back to be considered by Iran, according to officials familiar with the proceedings.

The report said it was not immediately clear what the changes entailed. However, Axios reported Trump wanted to reinforce multiple points of the deal that he felt were important, such as what to do with Iran’s nuclear material.

A senior US official told Axios that Trump was informed it could take three days for Iran to respond.

“They’re literally in caves, and they’re not using email,” the official told Axios.

“There will be a deal. The imminence of it, we’ll see. We’re willing to wait so the president gets what he asks for. It could be a week. It could be less. It could be more. At the turn of the week, we hope to have something,” the official added.

The new tweaks could prolong negotiations between the parties for days before a decision is reached on whether the deal would end the war, which began after the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

US sources told the AFP news agency that the proposal had been waiting on Trump’s sign-off, but he made no decision after a White House Situation Room meeting on Friday.

Trump has said his priorities for any deal included Iran agreeing to never develop nuclear weapons and the reopening of the blockaded Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply transits.

On Saturday, the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters reasserted the country’s control over the strait, warning that foreign commercial and military vessels would be targeted if they did not comply with regulations governing passage through the strategic waterway.

Tehran has also said repeatedly that it does not intend to build nuclear weapons. In March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the former US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that Washington “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.

Lebanese prime minister describes Israel’s attacks as collective punishment as US warns Iran of strikes if no deal is reached.

Iran has reasserted its control over the Strait of Hormuz, warning that foreign commercial and military vessels will be targeted, if they do not comply with regulations governing passage through the strategic waterway.

The announcement on Saturday came after the United States signalled that President Donald Trump was close to a decision on a potential deal with Iran, but Tehran denied an agreement had been reached.

“The management of the Strait of Hormuz is exercised with full authority by the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the operational headquarters of Iran’s armed forces, Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said in a statement reported by Iranian media on Saturday.

“All ships, commercial vessels, and tankers are only required to travel through the designated routes and obtain permission from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] Navy. Any violation of these regulations will seriously jeopardise the security of their traffic,” it added.

Iran also issued a warning to foreign military forces operating in the area, saying any attempt to interfere with maritime management or shipping movements would trigger a response.

On Friday, Trump met with advisers in the White House Situation Room and said a “final determination” on a possible deal with Iran would soon be made. But no statement followed the meeting.

US sources had told the AFP news agency the deal was waiting on Trump’s sign-off, but he made no decision after Friday’s meeting.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said on Friday that while messages continue to be exchanged “no final agreement has been reached” on a deal with the US.

US ‘more than capable’ of restarting war

While attending a defence summit in Singapore on Saturday, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said that Washington was “more than capable” of restarting the war if a satisfactory deal is not reached.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) posted on social media that American forces “remain present and vigilant across the region”.

The efforts to reach a deal were thrown into question this week by US strikes on the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, countered by retaliatory Iranian fire.

Iran’s IRNA state news agency said air defences shot down a drone “belonging to the US-Zionist aggressor enemy” on Saturday, citing a statement from the army.

Trump said his priorities in any deal include Iran agreeing to never develop nuclear weapons, and the reopening of the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

“President Trump will only make a deal that is good for America and satisfies his red lines,” a White House official told AFP, adding: “Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”

Trump ‘betraying diplomacy’

Also on Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, an adviser ⁠to Iran’s Supreme ⁠Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said in a social media post that Trump was “betraying diplomacy for ⁠the third time” by ⁠continuing the US naval blockade in the strait, and making what he described ‌as “excessive demands ‌in ‌negotiations”.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump said Tehran would remove mines from the strait and end its closure of the waterway with “no tolls”, while the US would lift its blockade.

Both countries would coordinate on removing and destroying Iran’s enriched uranium, he said, adding that “no money will be exchanged, until further notice”.

Iran’s Fars news agency, however, cited sources as saying Tehran was demanding “the immediate release of $12bn” in frozen assets before moving to the next phase of negotiations.

On the toll-free reopening of Hormuz, the sources said “no such clause appears in the text of the agreement”, while Trump’s comment on destroying Iran’s nuclear material “is fundamentally baseless”.

Iran’s ISNA news agency cited legislator Alireza Salimi as saying a plan “to implement Iran’s management and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz will soon be approved by parliament”.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the US blockade remains in place, and its ships “are receiving warnings from CENTCOM to stop and not cross the blockade line”.

“Pressure,” the new World War II movie from director Anthony Maras and writer David Haig, is a hyperfocused look at the days leading up to D-day with a special focus on the weather. It’s a one-setting thriller that unspools in the pressure-cooker environment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s war room at an English country estate. The movie works backward from a famous 1961 Eisenhower quip to JFK that attributed his success in Normandy, France, to the Allies having “better meteorologists than the Germans.”

If you’re skeptical about how exciting a movie about the weather on D-day might be, “Pressure” takes that as a creative challenge, an argumentative stance from which to start. For the next hour and 40 minutes, Maras and co-writer Haig, who also wrote the 2014 play from which the film is adapted, explain to us exactly how important the meteorologists of D-day were, beginning with the disastrous D-day rehearsal Exercise Tiger.

With the weather app at our fingertips these days, it can be hard to imagine just how difficult it was to forecast the weather in the 1940s, especially in Northern Europe. That was the predicament facing Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) just 72 hours before the planned D-day launch of June 5, 1944. But we know that D-day happened on June 6, so the arrival at that date is part of the film’s narrative intrigue.

After a devastating glimpse of Exercise Tiger, red blood mixing with blue ocean waves and white sandy beaches, we’re quickly introduced to our protagonist, Group Capt. Chief Meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott), in his cozy home with his pregnant wife before he’s swept into critical war planning.

He’s stern, terse and no-nonsense. Stagg is the kind of person who wants to be correct more than he wants to be liked and he insists on a careful collection of live data, using weather balloons, phone calls and mathematical charting. His foil is Col. Irving Krick (Chris Messina), a charming American meteorologist and Eisenhower’s chosen weather guru, a yes man who relies on selective historical data and a persuasive speaker whose approach rankles the fastidious Stagg. Eisenhower instructs the two men to come to an agreement and “Pressure” follows the ups and downs of their working relationship over the course of several days.

The movie becomes a two-hander between Scott’s Stagg and Fraser’s Eisenhower, the former convinced that a storm on June 5 will make conditions less than ideal, the latter raging at the uncertainty while simultaneously attempting to placate a phalanx of military personnel. The troops are requisitioned, the destroyers in place, the full moon just right, the secrecy of the invasion delicate. Fraser’s explosive performance underlines the immensity of the stakes, balancing every precarious element of this enormous mission.

Maras, who is known for another terrific one-setting thriller based on a true story, 2018’s “Hotel Mumbai,” both directs and edits and his films are put together like precision clockwork: propulsive and relentless, the pace italicized by Volker Bertelmann’s scores. “Pressure” is skillfully directed, sweeping us into this world with a kind of addictive immediacy, and is also beautifully lensed by cinematographer Jamie Ramsay. Maras and Ramsay make the wise choice to shoot the film with richly saturated color instead of the usual grayish, desaturated look often assigned to period pieces set in this era. It’s not gritty and harsh, but rather stunning and lovely — an eerie contrast to the terror and bloodshed of the day itself.

While Fraser delivers an external performance as the tough American general, Scott offers a restrained, mostly tamped-down depiction of the repressed and methodical Stagg. But when he finally bursts with a cathartic eleventh-hour speech about the inaccuracy of Krick’s historical forecast, Eisenhower listens. Scott, as seen in “All of Us Strangers” and “Blue Moon,” is so good at this kind of acting, processing every emotion internally but allowing just enough to show to let the audience into his character’s emotional state. It’s wildly compelling to watch.

In a quiet conversation with Eisenhower’s close confidant and aide, Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon), she jokes that weathermen are boring. Stagg reminds her that the weather itself isn’t. Weather feeds us, it can destroy us — it rules our existence, he says. “People ask, ‘When will the wind stop blowing?’ No one ever asks, ‘Why does the wind blow? What is the wind?,’ ” revealing himself as a sort of philosophical poet of the weather. His forecast was the crucial edge in D-day and the volatility of the weather is increasingly relevant in our lives, especially with our changing climate.

Boring? Never. Thrilling and history-making? Indeed.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Trump weighs next steps on Iran deal as Tehran insists negotiations are continuing and no final agreement exists.

Prospects for a US-Iran agreement to end the conflict remained uncertain on Friday, with President Donald Trump saying he would make a “final determination” on a deal, while Iranian officials stressed that no understanding had yet been reached.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Tehran would judge any agreement by actions rather than words, adding that no steps would be taken unless Washington acted first.

Meanwhile, fighting continued elsewhere in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces had advanced beyond Lebanon’s Litani River, as Israeli attacks across Lebanon on Friday left dozens more civilians reportedly killed or wounded.

Here is what we know:

In Iran

• Iran says talks continue, but no deal yet: Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said exchanges with the United States are continuing but stressed that no final agreement has been reached. He rejected Trump’s demands-based approach and described the US naval blockade as illegal, adding that Tehran would judge any easing of restrictions by actions rather than words.
  

War diplomacy

• CENTCOM highlights ongoing regional patrols: US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces remain “present and vigilant” across the region, sharing an image of an F-16 fighter jet conducting a patrol over the Middle East.
• US pushes allies to boost defence spending: Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Trump plans a $1.5 trillion investment in defence and described it as part of a historic expansion of America’s military-industrial base. Hegseth urged allies to spend at least 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, warning that countries that fail to do so could face changes in their relationship with Washington. He also reiterated that the US remains committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
• Washington praises Israel-Lebanon security talks: The US Department of Defense described military-to-military talks between Israeli and Lebanese delegations in Washington as “productive”, saying they focused on regional security and stability. The Pentagon also reaffirmed support for Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In the US

• Uncertainty remains after White House talks: Reporting from the White House, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said there was still no clarity after Trump’s Situation Room meeting on whether a final agreement with Iran had been reached. Fisher said any easing of restrictions around the Strait of Hormuz could signal progress, but officials are still waiting for concrete details from the White House.

In Israel

• Air raid sirens sound in northern Israel: The Israeli military said it intercepted several projectiles launched from Lebanon, while another landed near Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. The military reported no casualties and did not specify whether the projectiles were rockets or drones.

In Lebanon

• Netanyahu says Israeli troops have crossed the Litani River: Israel’s Netanyahu said Israeli forces have advanced north of the Litani River near Nabatieh, signalling an expansion of operations in southern Lebanon. The move comes amid ongoing Israel-Lebanon talks and could be followed by further strikes on Beirut and the western Bekaa Valley.

“House of the Dragon” Season 3 will see Rhaenyra Targaryen take back King’s Landing — but the war is far from over.

HBO on Friday released the final trailer for the upcoming season of its epic fantasy, which teases brutal battles, many dragons and the Targaryen queen returning to the capital of the Seven Kingdoms to claim the Iron Throne.

“I see you have been merciful,” Alicent Hightower (played by Olivia Cooke) says to her childhood friend (Emma D’Arcy) in the clip. “But the crown is a weight that crushes. You’ll do things that spell death for all involved.”

And if the trailer is any indication, there will be a lot of bloodshed in Season 3.

The second season of “House of the Dragon” left off with Rhaenyra and Alicent plotting for the former to take King’s Landing with minimal resistance in exchange for the latter’s freedom. Unfortunately, Alicent’s promised tribute — her son King Aegon II — has fled his castle so things won’t go exactly as planned.

After a slowburn of a second season, a higher octane Season 3 will kick off with the highly anticipated Battle of the Gullet, a fight at sea that is regarded as one of the bloodiest and most violent clashes in the history of Westeros. “House of the Dragon” showrunner Ryan Condal recently told Entertainment Weekly that the premiere is “arguably the craziest episode of television ever made.”

The new trailer shows that everyone will be reeling in the aftermath. According to the footage, what awaits Rhaenyra during her reign are fearful subjects, conniving enemies, sleepless nights and plenty of anguish.

“In a war, all suffer,” Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) says in the trailer.

“House of the Dragon” Season 3 will premiere June 21.

The success of D-day, a pivotal moment in World War II, partially hinged on the weather forecast. The Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, was planned for months as the American and British forces held practice operations in England.

Enormous efforts were made to mislead the Germans about what was coming. The operation was originally scheduled for June 5 but the day before, James Stagg, a meteorologist and group captain in the Royal Air Force, advised the American commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to wait for better conditions.

This lesser-known decision is the premise of “Pressure,” a new movie from filmmaker Anthony Maras. It’s an adaptation of David Haig’s play of the same name, in which the playwright himself portrayed Stagg. Haig, who co-wrote the “Pressure” screenplay with Maras, compares it to “The Imitation Game.”

“Some of these heroes who affect history from the sidelines just stay in the sidelines until somebody does research, discovers them lurking and finds they are so quietly heroic that it’s irresistible as a story,” Haig says, speaking via Zoom from London.

Haig began writing a version of the script shortly after the play debuted at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh in May 2014. It moved to the West End in 2018, and opened in North America at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre in 2023. Maras came onboard after making his 2018 film “Hotel Mumbai,” also based on a true story.

“When I first read the play and the script, I was bowled over by how, with this one decision, so many lives were changed,” Maras says, on a video call from Los Angeles. “Not just the lives of the men on the beach but throughout the Allied world. When you think of a war story, you think of men and now women on the field, but there is so much more to it behind the scenes.”

The film expands Haig’s play and includes additional characters and sequences, including the actual D-day invasion. It stars Andrew Scott as Stagg, Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower, Kerry Condon as Eisenhower’s secretary Kay Summersby, Chris Messina as U.S. Air Force meteorologist Irving P. Krick and Damian Lewis as senior British army officer Bernard Montgomery.

Both Haig and Maras strove to be as historically accurate as possible, even including archival footage from the war. “It is inevitably heightened, as any stage play or film is,” Haig says. “But it is very true.”

“It is absolutely as true as we could get it within the confines of a two-hour runtime,” Maras adds. “We took great lengths to try and be as accurate to the history but also to the deeper story as possible.”

Here’s what is true and what is dramatized in “Pressure.”

The importance of the weather

Brendan Fraser, left, and Andrew Scott in the movie “Pressure.”

(Alex Bailey / Focus Features / StudioCanal)

D-day, secretly known as Operation Overlord, was timed based on several factors, including the weather, the tides and the moonlight. Because the assault was multipronged, with Allied forces coming by sea, land and air, they required good visibility at night and a high tide to ensure less distances between the boats and the defending Germans.

“There were hundreds of meters between low tide and high tide,” Maras says. “So depending on where the boats landed, you either had 50 meters until you made it to the dunes and then the bunkers, or you had to make it 300 meters if it was low tide.”

A clear forecast with low winds and no rain was essential.

“The landing craft were antiquated and flat-bottomed,” Haig says, “and if they had gone on May 5 with the storms that Stagg anticipated coming in with the jet stream, those landing craft would have capsized. The war wouldn’t have been lost, although we do posit that it might have been in the film. In reality, failure would have elongated [the war] and caused countless extra deaths.”

To shoot “Pressure,” the filmmakers used real charts and meteorological instruments. The production design team re-created the famous D-day map from the Allied headquarters in Southwark House. The real one was made in two pieces by separate manufacturers to ensure secrecy.

“When you see that map, it’s a little bit mismatched and our team re-created that,” Maras says. “We got the paper they used to draw the maps from the same mill they used for those maps 80 years ago. A lot of effort was put into the minutiae that adds to the accuracy.”

Exercise Tiger

The film opens with a depiction of an Allied training operation called Exercise Tiger, which took place over several months on England’s Slapton Sands. Because many of the soldiers were young and untested, the Allied leaders wanted to prepare them for the sights and sounds of battle.

“They did a whole series of exercises to try and get together a full-scale dress rehearsal of what D-day would be,” Maras says.

These rehearsals, still widely unknown and spanning from late 1943 through April 1944, involved dangerous friendly fire and suffered from serious coordination errors, resulting in the real-life deaths of at least 700 American and British soldiers.

“That was an absolute disaster and yet we remember D-day as one of the great military triumphs in history,” Haig says.

Maras wanted the film to begin with this moment to emphasize the headspace of the Allied leaders.

“How do you establish what the true consequences of failure are for a story like this?” Maras says. “When we’re in the war room with all of those commanders and officers, they know what the implications of their words mean because they’ve seen it. They’ve lived it. The image of the blood in the water and the young men in that water was to tattoo in the audience’s brain that if these commanders mess up, this could happen again.”

Eisenhower, in particular, felt the magnitude of D-day. “He wrote two letters on the eve of D-day: what happens in success and what happens in failure,” Maras says. “He was sleeping two hours a night. He was a nervous wreck.”

Stagg vs. Krick

In the film, Scott’s Stagg arrives at Southwark House from Dunstable four days before D-day is planned. He is confronted by the American meteorologist Krick, who disagrees with him about the potentially disastrous forecast. Krick believes sun and calm seas are on the horizon thanks to historical analogue charts, but Stagg, using more comprehensive prediction methods, thinks a major storm is coming.

“In actuality, Stagg came onboard in about November 1943 and got to Southwark House a few months earlier,” Maras says. “His transfer came a few months earlier, not a few days earlier. The contours of the relationships between Stagg and Krick and the others are accurate, but they took place in a more compressed timeline.”

Both Stagg and Krick have recounted their version of events in various books, both claiming they were right about the weather. Although Haig and Maras imagine their dialogue and how these conflicts may have played out, the conflicts were real.

“They both adhered to their own meteorological vision,” Haig says, explaining the differences in prediction models from continent to continent. “In the United States, Krick’s system of weather forecasting was viable. If you come to the U.K., you can’t rely on the weather for more than five minutes, so that method doesn’t apply.”

Adds Maras, “They thought, ‘The weather is going to be good. We should hold our nerve and go.’ There was a rhetorically violent disagreement between him and the others.”

In the film, Krick claims that he has never inaccurately predicted the weather ahead of a battle, using his successes in North Africa as evidence. This was technically true.

“He was very good at his job within the context of certain geographical landscapes,” Haig says. “He didn’t make a mistake in North Africa. When Eisenhower challenges Stagg, he says, ‘This man never got it wrong.’ And he didn’t. In the whole of the North African campaign, Krick was spot on.”

After Stagg convinces the leaders to postpone D-day, he is vindicated by a deluge of rain that arrives while everyone is attending church at Southwark House on June 5. There was a church on site, although this moment in the film was dramatized.

“Whether it began raining precisely at that moment I have my doubts,” Haig says. “But it has the framework of truth.”

Ike and Kay

Andrew Scott and Kerry Condon in the movie “Pressure.”

(Alex Bailey / Focus Features / StudioCanal)

Kay Summersby had been an ambulance driver during the Blitz. The film hints at a less-than-professional relationship between Eisenhower and his personal secretary. She was certainly with Eisenhower at Southwark House, although there is less evidence that she had any kind of association with Stagg.

“The biggest fictional thing I did with both the play and the film was to join the third point of the triangle so you’ve got Stagg, Eisenhower and Kay,” Haig says. “The link between Stagg and Kay historically would be tenuous.”

There are differing opinions about Eisenhower and Kay’s relationship. “We know that they were extremely close and they shared a trustful bond,” Maras says. “There are many photos of them together. She was definitely a big force in Ike’s life at that time, and we wanted to pay respect to that.”

“Whatever one’s interpretation of the relationships that she inhabits within the story, her influence was substantial,” Haig adds.

After seeing Peter Jackson’s 2018 World War I documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old,” Maras had the idea to use colorized archival footage in “Pressure.”

“In the D-day sequence at the end, there are various real-life shots of the soldiers landing on the beaches,” Maras says. “We were able to cut between the archival [material] and our footage to increase the scope. And it wasn’t just to get the scale. Yes, we have shots of massive flotillas and ships and trucks, but sometimes it was just for a glance of a soldier where you can see death in his eyes.”

The team ultimately acquired more than 50 hours of archival footage. They hired research editors to go through it and, after a few days, Maras asked if any of the editors could recommend additional crew to help.

Then a man named James Stagg showed up to work. “Stagg’s grandson, 80 years later, walked into our offices and helped edit the archival movie footage that we put in his grandfather’s film,” Maras says.

Stagg’s wife

Andrew Scott in the movie “Pressure.”

(Alex Bailey / Focus Features / StudioCanal)

The play doesn’t include scenes with Stagg’s wife, Elizabeth, but Haig purposefully bookends the film with the couple together. “When he arrives at Southwark House as a terse, brusque, tricky man, you’ve already experienced his level of affection with his wife and that’s really important contextually,” Haig says. “You’re waiting for the end when he goes back to see her and the baby.”

At the time when Stagg went to Southwark House, his wife was pregnant. Stagg was not allowed to make phone calls to her because of the secrecy surrounding D-day. In reality, the hospital where she gave birth was not bombed, as it is in the movie.

“The bombing of the hospital was more reflective of the times that Stagg and his wife had gone through in the lead up to D-day,” Maras says. “That element is to encapsulate that Stagg was fearing for his wife. As he walks down this corridor, he is faced with: Is she alive? Is she dead?”

Truth to power

Ultimately, Stagg tells a room full of military leaders that they have to pause on D-day because of the weather — a truthful inclusion. It was important to Maras to emphasize how he stood up to power.

“Here’s a protagonist who’s not afraid to speak his mind and has the courage to get up in front of a room full of the most powerful military on Earth at that point and tell them something they don’t want to hear,” Maras says.

“When Eisenhower was passing on the baton of leadership at the inauguration for JFK, JFK asked, ‘What gave you the edge on D-day?’ Eisenhower said, ‘We had better meteorologists than the Germans.’ He had the wisdom to trust in the experts. It’s worth heeding that lesson from history.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei told state media that a proposed agreement with the US “has not been finalised,” pushing back on US President Donald Trump’s claim that his administration was making a “final determination” on a potential deal with Iran.

Romanian President Nicusor Dan says that the Russian consul in the southeastern city of Constanta will be expelled and the consulate shut down after a drone intended for Ukraine crashed into an apartment complex in the border town of Galati.

Deep mistrust remains between Washington and Tehran as Iran’s top negotiator urges action, not words.

United States President Donald Trump says he is meeting in the Situation Room to make a “final determination” on a possible deal with Iran that could extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

However, deep mistrust remains between the two sides. Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said earlier on Friday that Tehran would judge any agreement by actions rather than promises as talks continue.

In his latest post on the Truth Social platform, Trump on Friday set out numerous conditions for Tehran to accept, including: never having a nuclear weapon or bomb, the Strait of Hormuz being open in both directions and without tolls, the removal of any remaining mines left in the Strait, and the US unearthing and destroying Iran’s enriched uranium that is buried.

“Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!’” Trump wrote.

“No money will be exchanged until further notice. Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to. I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination,” he added.

Reporting from the White House, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane said that in the past, the Trump administration has indicated that a deal has been reached, only to find out it has not.

“If this was in fact a deal, it would be the entire wishlist of what the US was demanding and none of the concessions that Iranian were asking for,” she explained.

Uncertainty about the details of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) has grown over the past week amid ongoing distrust between the two sides as they seek to end the three-month-long war.

On Thursday, White House sources told Al Jazeera that the US and Iran had reached a tentative agreement to extend the ceasefire by 60 days to allow for formal negotiations, but Trump has yet to sign off.

Moreover, earlier on Friday, Iran’s top negotiator Ghalibaf said that Tehran did not trust “guarantees and words, only actions are the criterion”.

“No action will be taken before the other side acts,” he said in a social media post, without elaborating.

“The winner of any agreement is the one who is better prepared for war the day after,” the Iranian official added.

Still, Iranian state news outlet Fars, citing sources, reported on Friday that the agreement with the US was in its final stages of ratification, but no final decision has been made yet.

The sources stressed that there were no provisions about destroying Iran’s nuclear materials in the MOU and added that arrangements for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz could include the monitoring and inspection of ships.

The eruption of the Middle East war in 2026, which began with strikes led by the US and Israel against Iran under Operation Epic Fury, carries devastating consequences for recovery, development and regional stability. The assassination of senior Iranian figures, most notably Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the involvement of Hezbollah and Houthis in support of Iran, alongside Iranian attacks on neighbouring countries, further escalated the crisis. The war transformed from a military confrontation into a broader regional political, diplomatic and economic crisis.

While global attention focused on military escalation, oil markets and the Strait of Hormuz, far less attention was given to the war’s humanitarian consequences, despite the massive and irreversible impacts. The conflict has triggered new waves of displacement across an already fragile region. However, there were no meaningful strategies to protect or to facilitate aid efforts to sustain the lives of displaced people, further exacerbating the life-threatening risks facing affected populations.

The displaced of the 2026 Middle East war

The Middle East was already carrying one of the world’s largest displacement burdens before this escalation, mainly due to the Syrian, Palestinian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees and internally displaced populations. The recent war has deepened these vulnerabilities by displacing millions more across Iran and Lebanon. The speed and scale of displacement reflect the severity of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the region, overwhelming already strained humanitarian response efforts.

In Iran, the war intensified existing economic fragility and internal tensions while placing enormous pressure on state institutions not only to govern but also to effectively respond to the displacement crisis, a critical condition to maintain stability and prevent further chaos.

The displacement of over 3.2 million people has posed a serious challenge for the Iranian authorities. It has affected over 20 provinces, while the damage of 82,000 civilian infrastructure sites, disrupted essential services and attacks on healthcare have severely undermined the living conditions of displaced people.

Although figures fail to precisely capture the devastating realities experienced by displaced populations, they reflect the scale of vulnerability facing civilians forced to flee amid insufficient aid efforts and collapse of health, shelter and education systems.

Lebanon presents an even more fragile case, already affected by protracted conflict, sectarianism, the Beirut Port explosion and economic paralysis. While it was already hosting 1.4 million Syrian refugees and around 250,000 Palestinian refugees, the war has now led to the internal displacement of 1.3 million Lebanese civilians—one in five of the total population— with children accounting for a third of those displaced. The large-scale and ongoing displacement in the country has generated enormous needs, detrimentally affecting various areas of civilian life. While over 3,000 have been killed and more than 9,000 injured, around 130,000 people remain displaced in collective shelters, experiencing extremely difficult conditions. The plight of displaced populations in Lebanon is worsened by ongoing attacks on healthcare, lack of services and the destruction of the housing sector, in addition to limited access to education, where hundreds of schools are either closed or used as collective shelters.

Humanitarianism subordinated to hard politics

Efforts have been made to address the needs of displaced communities. These include government-led actions in Iran to, for example, address psychosocial and shelter needs and the work of local organisations and international agencies in Lebanon. Yet such efforts remain far from adequate, mainly due to the absence of serious international political will to prioritise civilian protection and displacement prevention.

Instead, regional and international actors continue to prioritise deterrence, strategic alliances, military positioning and regional influence over humanitarian protection. By the end of April, the Pentagon had reportedly spent $25bn on its war on Iran, with other estimates showing greater costs—ranging between $630bn and $1 trillion—amid US President Donald Trump’s request for an additional $1.5 trillion for defence. This is evident in how the US paused a $14bn arms sale to Taiwan to ensure its military readiness to face Iran. Iran’s resilience against these attacks and the use of drones—costing tens of thousands of euros—have pushed the US to dedicate more resources to the war. The use of financial means from both sides solely for war objectives while overlooking the humanitarian responsibilities exposes the extent to which military objectives have been prioritised over humanitarian response.

Even ongoing diplomatic efforts between Washington and Tehran reveal the extent to which humanitarian concerns remain secondary and completely neglected. The peace negotiations have largely focused on issues related to hard politics. These include Iran’s nuclear programme, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s frozen assets under US sanctions, with all these elements mainly addressing the security, financial and economic implications of the war.

The absence of the displacement crisis from peace agreements and negotiations reveals the deficiencies posed by the international human rights and humanitarian regimes. They underscore a reality where human lives continue to be shaped not by principles of protection, but by the strategic interests of powerful states.

This transformed the plight of affected populations in Iran and Lebanon from a humanitarian concern into a tolerated byproduct of geopolitical strategy.

Implications for future generations: The way forward

The humanitarian consequences of this war will not end when the war ends. Long-term displacement carries profound risks for future generations in Iran and Lebanon through collapsing health systems, interrupted education, intensifying social fragmentation and deepening poverty and dependency on international aid. Thus, the failure to protect displaced populations today risks producing future instability across the region. Addressing this requires tailored humanitarian interventions, international responsibility—especially from the US and Iran as the primary conflicting states—towards affected populations and the adoption of prevention strategies in future wars.

The international community, conflicting parties and international organisations must take practical yet realistic—acknowledging the centrality of self-interest during wars between states—steps towards addressing this issue. Without international responsibility sharing and collaborative efforts, the already-fragile international humanitarian system fails to continue functioning as the primary response mechanism, especially amid the growing humanitarian funding cuts due to the occurrence of other “national priorities”. Therefore, the US and Iran, alongside the international community, must dedicate resources to lead a comprehensive emergency response to alleviate the impacts of war on affected communities. This has to begin with protection-centred diplomacy, where the plight of displaced populations is prioritised among other key areas in the peace agreements.

Equally important is the stricter implementation of international legal frameworks to protect civilian populations during armed conflicts through accountability measures for violations against civilians. The role of international organisations and UN agencies is decisive in these matters, given their expertise and international positionality—though shrinking—when it comes to humanitarian missions and peacekeeping. Such efforts must revolve around promoting, integrating and imposing the adoption of humanitarian safeguarding standards for civilians in military and political decision-making. If displacement continues to be treated as collateral damage rather than political responsibility, the Middle East will keep producing generations of displaced people, serving the interests of regional and global powers.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.