war

Tehran, Iran – Iranians are stocking up on food and medicines as fears grow that the country will face dire shortages as the United States tightens an embargo on the country.

The Iranian government had managed to keep household staples flowing during the early months of the war. But a US naval blockade and pivot to draconian sanctions have led to fears that imports will be limited.

More recently, the US announced a ban on Iranian airlines worldwide and is pressing other countries to cut trade ties with Iran in a bid to isolate the country.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned Washington for its blockade on his country, saying it will prevent food and medicine from reaching the Iranian people.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s offer for a seven-day truce that would see it reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for economic relief and other conditions.

As the war enters its eighth month and hopes for a diplomatic solution dim, Al Jazeera looks at how some Iranians are faring under a US embargo.

Consumers

Tehran’s stores remain stocked, but shoppers are keeping an eye on shop shelves. Their anxiety has deepened since a flurry of social media posts urging people to ensure they have several days of food before a possible new round of fighting with the US.

At one shopping centre, Ali, 51, was loading a trolley packed with rice, flour, pasta, pulses, cooking oil and canned food.

He is stocking up because he is convinced that Iran’s adversary is seeking to “starve” the people to push them to turn on their government.

“This is not a war in the traditional sense. It targets the people to put pressure on the authorities,” he said.

With flights to some nearby countries suspended, imports of certain medicines and mobile phone headsets are hard to find. The prices of those still available in shops have been pushed up.

Haj Pasandideh, a 71-year-old grocer, said he believed warehouses were well-stocked with basic goods at the moment. But the problem lies in the daily price increases due to Iran’s weakening rial, prompting him to bulk-buy goods before the expected hikes.

He sometimes caps cooking oil at one bottle per sale to ensure as many customers can purchase the goods as possible.

Exporters crushed

Farmers are also on edge due to the embargo, unable to ship out their produce and forced to sell to local markets.

The war has worsened the economic situation, even after years of sanctions that have pushed the country from being a regional exporter of agricultural and food products to being one of the region’s main importers.

Mehran, an apple grower, told Al Jazeera that due to the difficulties of exporting, he had sold only a third of this year’s harvest, all of it inside Iran.

Some neighbouring countries have halted trade with Iran in recent months, he said, while trucks now spend days at crossings they once cleared in a day, causing fruit to spoil before it reaches buyers.

“The blockade has not only closed the sea and air but also the land routes but in an undeclared manner,” he said.

Pharmaceutical shortages

The war has also deepened an already-dire shortage of medications. Some pharmacies Al Jazeera visited in southern Tehran had run out of infant formula and dozens of other types of medications.

Although officials have assured Iranians that substitute products were available, pharmacy staff expressed concern about the increasing number of customers searching for infant formula in vain.

“Imported medicines are disappearing fast, and lately people have been coming in to buy certain items before they need them for fear they will run out in future,” Mahsa, a 23-year-old pharmacy assistant, told Al Jazeera.

She said the health authorities had introduced “smart systems” to track the quantity and type of medication each person buys.

Breaking the blockade

The prospect of a prolonged siege and deteriorating economic conditions have driven some Iranians to call for a military solution.

On Tehran’s main thoroughfare, several people told Al Jazeera that another round of fighting with the US was unavoidable. Some urged the government to break the blockade by force before it is tightened further.

Mohsen, a 23-year-old economics student, believes Washington’s goal is to strangle the Iranian economy and the cost will ultimately be felt by Iranian citizens.

Iran possesses many strong cards that it must use to break the air and sea blockade before they develop into a land blockade that would completely choke Tehran, he said.

Alireza Taghavinia, an Iranian international relations expert, told Al Jazeera that the gap between Washington and Tehran was too wide to be bridged. “The siege imposed by force will only be lifted by force,” he said.

In a worst-case scenario, falling living standards could bring protesters onto the streets, he added.

“The enemy is counting on stirring up chaos inside Iran because it believes no military strike will achieve its objectives without internal unrest,” he said.

Washington’s top diplomat calls the suspected plot ‘a very serious situation’ after five were arrested over the weekend.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said a “foreign actor” was involved in a suspected bomb plot near an airbase in the United Kingdom used by the US military.

Police arrested five men, all British nationals from London, in their early to mid-20s, on Sunday after being alerted by a local farmer about three white vans driving towards RAF Fairford, a British base that houses US bombers flying missions against Iran.

The counterterrorism police said on Monday they were investigating whether individuals were acting for a foreign state in an apparent plot to attack the airbase. They later said the suspects would be released on bail.

Commenting on the suspected plot and arrests on the Hannity programme on Fox News late on Monday, Rubio said, “What happened, what almost happened, what could have happened in the UK over the weekend is a very serious situation.”

“It’s one that clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor. I won’t get into great detail about that yet,” he added.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had said in July the Fairford base was a legitimate target.

Iran’s embassy in London said in a statement on Monday it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations” that it was involved, which it said would fuel “Iranophobia propaganda” in the UK.

Trump said on Sunday the UK and the US had had the suspects “under investigation” for a while and alleged, “They were looking to do big damage to our fort.”

After hearing news that suspects were being released on bail, Trump said on Monday the case “might be” linked to Iran but declined to elaborate.

US bombers

The UK gave the US permission in March to use Fairford for “specific defensive operations into Iran” to destroy Iranian missiles at source.

US bombers and other planes have since been seen taking off and landing at the base – the only one on the British mainland used for this purpose.

Residents in the rural Cotswolds area surrounding Fairford said the site, which hosts a range of US military equipment and personnel, had seen increased activity and security in recent months.

Authorities evacuated about 85 households from a nearby village early on Sunday, but they were allowed to return home the next day.

Tehran has previously warned London against allowing its bases to be used by the US in operations against Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has accused London of “putting British lives in danger” by allowing the bases to be used “for aggression against Iran”.

Russian forces have again struck the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, hours after a drone hit the National Academy of Sciences in the historic centre of the city, killing at least two people.

Explosions were heard across Kyiv early on Tuesday, with Mayor Vitali Klitschko saying missile debris had fallen in the courtyard of one building while a second had caught fire in another part of the city.

The attacks come as Russia has begun hitting Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with faster, high-flying jet drones.

Emergency officials said the strike on the National Academy of Sciences on Monday killed two people, with one person’s body recovered from the rubble later in the evening.

Video shared online appeared to show a fast-moving drone slamming into the building at a steep angle and exploding, sending smoke into a clear sky. People were seen leaning out of windows as bright orange flames engulfed part of the building.

Volodymyr Horbulin, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, told the public broadcaster Suspilne that he was at work at the academy when it came under attack. He said his assistant, who was near the building, was killed and that he was also slightly wounded.

The academy is near the German Embassy, a cathedral, the national opera and government buildings.

In a statement, the academy called the attack “Russian terror” and “barbarity” aimed at “peaceful people who were simply at their workplaces”.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Russia of cynicism for hitting a scientific institution during the workday.

“Russia is deliberately expanding the boundaries of what it believes the world will tolerate,” he said in a statement, urging Ukraine’s allies to provide more air defences.

Jet-powered drones

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces also hit a medical facility in Kyiv on Monday. He said at least nine people had been killed in Russian drone strikes throughout the country, while more than 80 people were wounded.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was still having difficulty countering ‌the faster, high-flying Russian jet-powered drones.

“New interceptors are being actively tested,” he said. “Some combat groups are using them, but, of course, some details still need to be refined to achieve enough effectiveness and scale. We are speeding up the developers.”

According to the Ukrainian president, 90 of 120 drones fired on Ukraine on Monday were jet-propelled, rather than propeller-driven, with an interception rate for this type of drone at 57 percent.

Widening targets

Officials said the Russian strikes on Kyiv also targeted a pharmaceutical company and petrol stations. In other cities and regions, civilian facilities, businesses and communications infrastructure were hit.

In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a Russian drone attack on a business centre killed three people and wounded 19, according to officials. Another ⁠⁠person was killed in a logistics office in Synelnykove, southeast of Dnipro, the regional governor said.

Emergency services said an attack on infrastructure in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia wounded 32 people.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Kyiv, said Russia has been hitting economic targets across Ukraine “in a rolling series of strikes that have been ongoing for six days now”, during the day and night.

“Data centres increasingly being hit, as well as digital and communications infrastructure,” he said. “Kyiv Star, the country’s biggest cell provider, was hit on Sunday, as was the second biggest, Vodafone Ukraine. The government is said to be preparing for the worst: a total blackout in communications should that come.”

The Russian attacks have brought Kyiv “firmly into the eye of this war”, Hull added.

Ukraine has also increased attacks on Russia, targeting oil refineries ‌‌as ‌‌well as online retailers to try to undermine revenues and support for Moscow’s war effort.

Zelenskyy said on Monday that Ukraine struck Russian oil facilities in the Krasnodar region and two defence plants.

Both sides have denied deliberately targeting civilians.

Iran’s foreign minister says his visit to the UN General Assembly last week was mainly to outline Tehran’s position on regional conflicts and the critical security situation in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz remains the most perilous choke point on the global map as Iran continues to disrupt traffic by attacking vessels. A recent proposal by the Islamic Republic to open the waterway within seven days raised hopes that the situation could go back to normal. United States President Donald Trump, however, rejected the offer.

To understand the strategic calculus behind his high-stakes decision, one must look beyond the immediate tactical noise and peer into the deeper logic of deterrence.

On its surface, the rejection of a temporary truce in the world’s most vital energy corridor appears to be a reckless gamble – a provocation inviting the very conflagration the West seeks to avoid. But viewed through the lens of cold realism, the rejection was not only a calculated necessity; it was the right decision.

The Iranian regime’s proposal was a classic exercise in asymmetric diplomacy. It offered a brief window of stability, a transactional pause, in exchange for what would have amounted to a de facto relaxation of American pressure. To accept such terms would have meant embracing the delusional belief that a terrorist power can be bribed into good behaviour by accepting its terms of engagement.

Had Washington accepted, it would have validated Iran’s self-assumed right to turn the spigot of global commerce on and off at will. By flatly rejecting the offer, Trump signalled that freedom of navigation is not a chip to be bartered in a week-long bazaar, but an absolute, non-negotiable prerequisite of international order.

The timing of this gambit – on the eve of the critical midterm elections – has naturally drawn the ire of the domestic political class. Critics argue that risking an energy crisis and a subsequent spike in oil prices weeks before Americans head to the ballot box is an act of political self-immolation. This view, while superficially plausible, misunderstands both the nature of the electorate and the psychology of our adversaries.

The Iranians chose this moment to put forward their proposal precisely because of the midterm elections. They are sophisticated observers of American domestic politics. They calculated that an administration facing an electoral test would be paralysed by the fear of rising fuel prices and would eagerly grasp at any diplomatic lifeline, however flimsy, to keep the peace until November.

Had Trump capitulated to save Republicans a few points at the polls, he would have handed Iran a profound psychological victory. He would have demonstrated that American foreign policy is subservient to the domestic election calendar – a vulnerability that every autocracy from Moscow to Beijing would immediately exploit.

By taking the gamble before the midterm elections, Trump has turned the tables. He has demonstrated that his administration is willing to absorb short-term political pain in pursuit of long-term strategic clarity. This is the essence of credible deterrence.

Deterrence is not merely a function of military hardware; it is a function of perceived will. When an adversary believes you are too weak, too compromised, or too worried about the next election cycle to defend your core interests, deterrence fails. By rejecting the seven-day proposal, the Trump administration proved it could not be blackmailed by the electoral calendar.

Trump’s decision reflects a sophisticated understanding of the regime in Tehran. The Islamic Republic is currently facing an acute internal economic crisis, a direct consequence of the sustained American maximum-pressure campaign.

The seven-day proposal was not a gesture of Iranian confidence; it was a sign of desperation disguised as a diplomatic overture. It was an attempt to buy breathing room, fragment the expanding international coalition against Tehran and project an image of being in control to its own restive population.

To grant Iran that reprieve would have been to throw a lifeline to an antagonist regime on the ropes. Clearly, this offer was only made because US strategy is working and Iran’s economy is cratering.

History teaches us that truces with terrorist regimes are rarely precursors to permanent peace; they are merely opportunities for the aggressor to rearm, recalibrate and choose the next moment of confrontation on more favourable terms. A short-term guarantee of open shipping lanes implied that any day, the threat could return, magnified by the legitimacy Washington would have afforded to Iran’s leverage.

The critics who cry havoc at this decision are the heirs of the foreign policy establishment that spent decades managing decline through endless, inconclusive and failed negotiations. They prefer the comfortable fiction of a temporary deal to the hard reality of a sustained geopolitical contest.

President Trump’s gamble is risky, yes. The potential for miscalculation in the narrow waters of the Gulf is always present. But the risk of inaction, or of a pliant accommodation, is far greater.

By holding the line, the administration has reaffirmed a foundational principle of US global stewardship: the US will not permit rogue states to hold the global economy hostage.

The rejection of the Iranian proposal is the correct path because it chooses clarity of American resolve over partisan political convenience. It signals to the regime in Iran that its leverage is artificial and its economic isolation is permanent unless its behaviour changes.

This November, American voters will decide the composition of the US Congress based on a multitude of domestic and foreign policy factors. But on the global stage, Trump remains steadfast by demonstrating that principle trumps political expediency.

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

Abbas Araghchi’s warning comes after Washington rejected a seven-day roadmap to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

South Korea’s presidential office criticises Ukraine for denying POW nondisclosure agreement.

The South Korean president’s office has expressed “strong regret” over Ukraine’s disregard for a nondisclosure agreement with Seoul in the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war (POWs) to Seoul, South Korean media reported.

Last week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that his country transferred two North Korean POWs to South Korea.

President Lee Jae Myung’s office “expresses strong regret over Ukraine’s unilateral disclosure [of the transfer] and its subsequent false announcement that there had not been a non-disclosure agreement”, the Yonhap news agency quoted Seong Ghi-hong, South Korea’s senior presidential secretary for public relations, as saying in a statement on Sunday.

The office said the nondisclosure agreement aimed to safeguard the soldiers from dangers they could face if their transfer were to be disclosed, in accordance with international law and humanitarian principles.

According to Yonhap, a South Korean media outlet, the Ukrainian presidential office said it had disclosed the transfer of the POWs without extensive details on the process, claiming that it would have been strange to keep the entire transfer a secret. Ukrainian media outlets reported a Ukrainian presidential source as denying the existence of a confidentiality agreement with Seoul, Yonhap said.

The South Korean presidential office said the Ukrainian presidential office’s “false” denial of the confidentiality agreement “seriously hampers” bilateral trust and causes serious disruptions to bilateral friendship.

Seong Ghi-hong said the government was considering additional measures over the issue, if necessary, Yonhap added.

North Korean POWS

Ukrainian forces captured the two North Korean soldiers in Russia’s Kursk region in January 2025.

Mounting evidence, including from intelligence ⁠reports and testimonies of defectors, has indicated that North Korean soldiers resorted to self-detonation or other forms of suicide rather than be captured.

In his UN address, Zelenskyy said, “These guys are not easy to capture alive.” He added, “One of them, when he realised he was going to be taken prisoner, tried to kill himself. And he was shocked that fate did not let him die.”

South Korean media reported that the two captured soldiers had expressed their desire to defect to South Korea.

The issue of North Korean prisoners of war was a key topic during the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkiye, where Lee met Zelenskyy in July.

Senior presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung stated afterwards that both leaders agreed to resolve the status of North Korean POWs in accordance with international law. This built on a prior agreement reached during the South Korea-Ukraine foreign ministers’ meeting in March, where both nations pledged to cooperate on the POW issue.

According to South Korean intelligence, North Korea is estimated to have deployed approximately 14,000-15,000 soldiers to support Russia’s efforts in its war with Ukraine since 2024, primarily in the Kursk border region. South Korean, Ukrainian and Western officials said they suffered heavy casualties, with more than 6,000 North Korean soldiers killed in the fighting.

The transfer comes as South Korea has backed efforts to revive dialogue with North Korea, while United States President Donald Trump has renewed his willingness to engage with Pyongyang.

As part of previous negotiations aimed at ending its war on Iran, the United States offered to sell Tehran uranium for use in a civilian programme, but Iran refused, a top US official said on Sunday.

“Heck, our negotiators even offered to sell them uranium,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said on NBC’s Meet the Press. He said the agreement would have been akin to that with the United Arab Emirates, which has “a peaceful programme, right there in their neighbourhood, and they abide by international law and inspection regimes”.

Waltz said the administration of US President Donald Trump was open to allowing Iran to keep a civilian nuclear programme, provided it agreed to its obligations in accordance with international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

There were “a number of ways” President Trump was open to dealing with Iran to ensure it did not have access to highly enriched uranium, or the ability to reconstitute highly enriched uranium, including by having Tehran “hand over” any such material it currently has, Waltz said.

The UAE, a signatory to the NPT, generates electricity from a nuclear power plant and signed an agreement with the US in 2009. Under those agreements, the UAE has agreed not to produce enriched uranium domestically, and not to reprocess spent fuel on its own. Trump said Saudi Arabia and the US reached an agreement on civilian nuclear use this year, but details have not yet been made public, and the US president has also claimed the deal is contingent on Riyadh agreeing to the controversial Abraham Accords. Around the region, Egypt and Turkiye also operate civilian nuclear programmes.

Pakistan openly operates a nuclear arsenal, while experts have long believed Israel secretly possesses one of its own. Neither country is a signatory to the NPT.

A key point of contention between Iran and the US has been what should be done with the uranium that Tehran currently has, and how, or even if, to ensure any future supply of the material is not capable of being used for producing a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted it has no plans to create a nuclear weapon, and any uranium it possesses and enriches is only for civilian purposes, including for generating electricity and use in medical treatments and scientific research.

Iran is estimated to have more than 440kg (970lb) of uranium enriched at 60 percent purity. Uranium enriched to around 90 percent purity is suitable for a nuclear weapon. Enriching uranium is a complex process that involves isolating the most radioactive isotope in a quantity of uranium. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to cap its uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent under strict international supervision in exchange for lifting sanctions against its economy. Trump scrapped that deal in 2018, saying it was too generous to Iran.

On September 10, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was concerned over Iran’s “continued noncompliance” with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory. Under the treaty, Iran agrees not to produce nuclear weapons and to meet IAEA safeguards to control its supply of uranium used for civilian purposes. The agency has not had access to key Iranian nuclear facilities since June 2025, when Israel and the US attacked sites in the country as part of a 12-day war.

Iranian officials have responded to the IAEA by saying the finding was made “under political pressure from the US and its allies”, and that they have not stopped respecting their treaty obligations, but could not allow inspections until facilities were safe from US and Israeli attacks.

At times, Trump has said he will destroy the enriched uranium Iran has or retrieve it by force. In April, the US president claimed to have convinced Iran to turn over the enriched uranium it had, which he referred to as “nuclear dust”. Iranian officials quickly dismissed those claims, saying enriched uranium would not be transferred outside the country under any circumstances.

On Saturday, Trump rejected a plan submitted by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, as Tehran continued to insist that only diplomacy can solve the conflict between the two countries. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said on Saturday that Iran wants to make a deal to open the vital maritime corridor immediately only “because they are losing so badly”.

In an interview on Meet the Press on Sunday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that Iran is prepared for war to resume, “even if it comes to a doomsday war”.

He added, “If you ask us, there is no reason why we should go back to diplomacy. But I’m still trying diplomacy, because I think we shouldn’t miss any chance for peace.”

Tehran, Iran – Hours after US President Donald Trump rejected a diplomatic solution put forward by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, explosions were heard in the waterway, according to Iranian media.

Reports of blasts near southern Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz suggested that multiple antiship missiles and drones were fired at vessels transiting the waterway against Tehran’s wishes.

While Iranian authorities did not confirm any attacks in the Strait of Hormuz that day, shipping continues to be attacked in the waters, including an Indian cargo ship last week, which killed a sailor.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) maintains that the strait is closed to any ship that does not coordinate with Iranian authorities. On Sunday afternoon, it released video of what it said was a second US underwater drone seized this month.

Tehran has issued instructions to shipping companies transiting the Strait of Hormuz to use a temporary route approved by Iranian authorities and pay relevant fees. But it has also said the strait will not fully reopen until the US blockade on Iranian ports ends.

Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority announced on Saturday that it would blacklist any shipping charterer company which orders crews to use routes it considers to be unauthorised.

It also published what it described as an apology from an unnamed shipowner blaming commercial pressure from its charterer for trying to pass through the strait.

Washington still insists that its warships are successfully guiding oil tankers out of the strait via a different route. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News on Sunday that the “running average” of crude oil in transit was nearly 13 million barrels per day.

A September 19 operational update by US Central Command claimed that its forces had helped move more than one billion barrels of crude out of the Gulf over roughly two months.

The US military also says its forces have redirected 122 commercial vessels to enforce the naval blockade of Iran’s ports, halting all Iranian crude exports.

Tehran has claimed that the US is providing false information regarding Strait of Hormuz traffic to project control over the key waterway. Shipping has been severely disrupted since the US and Israel started their war on Iran on February 28.

Andreas Krieg, associate professor at King’s College London, said Iran’s strategy of launching maritime attacks has spread the economic costs of the conflict beyond its borders.

While Iran has suffered economically from war damages, the US naval blockade and sanctions, it would be a mistake “to assume that reaching that threshold produces submission”.

“The next Iranian move is therefore likely to be an attempt to increase the pain experienced by the Gulf rather than simply absorb further American pressure,” Krieg said.

“That could mean more aggressive vessel interdictions in Hormuz, attacks on energy infrastructure, greater Houthi pressure around Bab al-Mandeb and pressure from Iranian-aligned groups against alternative Saudi export routes. We are already seeing how pressure on Hormuz, the Red Sea and Saudi infrastructure can interact.”

More escalation on the way

At the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Iran projected a message of defiance while also proposing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week if its seven conditions were met.

They included lifting the blockade on Iran, the release of frozen Iranian funds and an end to attacks on all fronts, including Israel’s assault on Lebanon. The demands mostly amounted to a return to the June memorandum of understanding between the US and Israel.

Tehran has added that reopening the strait must be undertaken through a bilateral arrangement already finalised with Oman, the only other country with territorial waters in Hormuz.

US President Donald Trump told reporters he rejected the offer, but Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday they were adamant about the conditions and would await an official response through mediators, such as Pakistan, Qatar and Oman.

Abolfazl Shekarchi, chief spokesman of the Iranian armed forces, warned that if the US further intervenes in the Strait of Hormuz, “it will get slapped”.

“The Americans have no way out other than withdrawing from the West Asia region. The sooner they leave, the fewer losses they will incur and the region will certainly become safe after that,” he said.

Iranian army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia  said conditions were deteriorating so badly for the US that it might launch another “military aggression” on Iran.

Krieg said that as the US moves to isolate Iran via sanctions, Tehran, unable to respond with mutual financial measures against Washington, will be forced to rely on continued coercion in the Strait of Hormuz.

“The most likely level remains controlled attrition rather than an immediate return to the massive air campaign of the opening months,” Krieg said.

“Over the coming weeks, I would expect further attacks or attempted attacks on tankers, US-enabled shipping and regional infrastructure, followed by limited US strikes against IRGC maritime assets, coastal missile positions, drones or vessels involved in those operations. That tit-for-tat cycle has already re-emerged around Hormuz.”

DAN Osborne shared how he battles with a “war in your head” following his split from wife Jacqueline Jossa.

The former Towie star and EastEnders actress split in March after 13 years together and now Dan has revealed his struggles.

Taking to his Instagram stories, the dad of three shared a quote by lifestyle entrepreneur Lewis Howe describing the perfect life.

It read: “The true luxury is waking up without a war in your head, with you nervous system at peace and your body healthy.”

Dan further captioned the post by writing: “Can’t wait for the day I wake up with this feeling,” and added a worried laughing emoji and prayer hands.

His following post was showing off his chiseled abs in a topless mirror selfie and describing how he carries on.

EX FLEX

Dan Osborne flashes his abs on holiday with his three kids after Jac Jossa split

jac’d in

Jac Jossa suffers fresh blow after split.. as insiders accuse Dan of game playing

“For now, I’m just going to keep exercising,” Dan wrote.

Dan and EastEnders star Jacqueline split in March after 13 years together, with their relationship often dogged by cheating scandals and crisis talks.

Jac and Dan met at an awards ceremony in 2013 and tied the knot at a Cheshire manor house in 2017.

They are parents to daughters, Ella, 11, and Mia, eight, and Dan also has an 11-year-old son with his ex, Megan Tomlin.

The Sun then recently revealed that Dan was moving on with fitness model Etila Santiago, 33, after he made a secret trip to Miami to visit her after a holiday romance in May.

The Sun On Sunday revealed that Dan grew close to the  Brazilian bikini model after bonding with her over fitness and their mutual support of Arsenal — and vowed to see her again soon.

Smotrich told Ynet News that Israel needs to “go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza’.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the Israeli military should “go to war” in the occupied West Bank and repeat what it “did in Gaza”.

Using a biblical term for the occupied West Bank, the minister told Ynet News in an interview published on Sunday that Israel needs to “go to war in Judea and Samaria, to do there what we did in Gaza, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which is a terror authority”.

Smotrich was responding to a question on how Israel should combat the increasing “security tensions” in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli violence against Palestinians has been steadily growing since the eruption of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, but the attacks have intensified significantly this year.

“We need to tell” Israeli forces, he said, “Just as you dismantled Hamas in Gaza, there won’t be terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria”. “No terrorists, no weapons, no tunnels.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank from January to late July, averaging six a day, the highest rate in about 20 years.

Various settler groups, often supported or protected by Israeli soldiers, have attacked Palestinians in several ways, including shootings, besieging homes and engaging in other forms of communal violence that experts have described as “pogroms“.

Rights groups warn that settlers are increasingly armed with military-issued weaponry and wear military uniforms during attacks, blurring the line between settler and soldier.

Military closure

The comments come as Israeli authorities announced a comprehensive military closure across the occupied West Bank, citing the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The heightened restrictions on the movement of Palestinians are set to remain in place until October 3.

Meanwhile, in occupied East Jerusalem, hundreds of Israelis stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy protection from Israeli police on Sunday.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the Israelis entered the compound through the Moroccan Gate and performed Talmudic rituals, as Israeli forces increased restrictions around the mosque and across Jerusalem’s Old City.

Army chief accuses Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s federal military has said it is handling rising tensions in the country’s north with restraint, as fears grow that Ethiopia could be heading towards another civil war.

In his first comments on the recent military developments, Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Berhanu Jula said the army was responding to what he called provocations from the Tigray front with “wisdom and restraint”.

He accused Eritrea of funding and supporting armed groups to weaken Ethiopia, describing the “Tsimdo” alliance as an extension of a longstanding pattern of hostile alliances, which he said cannot confront the state without outside backing.

Eritrea, wary that landlocked Ethiopia may be seeking to invade it to gain access to the Red Sea, denied the accusations.

The fighting has spread from Tigray into neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions after seven armed groups announced an alliance, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, committed to removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.

In Afar, the latest battles have taken place around Abala, where the military has been trying to prevent rebels from seizing control.

Separately, in North Wollo, a zone of Amhara bordering Tigray, the army said on Thursday it had killed 272 Tigrayan fighters and wounded 260 in a counter-offensive, reporting heavy losses for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The TPLF’s Tigray Army said the federal government had launched a “full-scale offensive” involving infantry, mechanised units and drones.

Abdisalam Balema, a TPLF central committee member, told Al Jazeera the situation had become a “full war”.

Fighting has also continued around Sama, Soqota and Raya Alamata, with government forces reportedly closing in on the town of Alamata.

The army command said it prefers a strategy of “strategic calm” over a large-scale military confrontation, arguing the Tigray front’s popular support is dwindling and its leadership divided.

Internet access was reportedly cut across northern Ethiopia on Friday, a day after the UN said it was alarmed by reports of drones being used against civilians there.

The renewed fighting has put the 2022 Pretoria Agreement, which ended a brutal two-year civil war in Tigray, under severe strain. It comes weeks after Washington lifted sanctions on Ethiopia and Eritrea tied to atrocities from the last war, saying the “national emergency … has expired”.

It marks the most serious challenge yet to that agreement, raising fears of a wider regional conflict that could draw in armed groups from across Ethiopia.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Ethiopia’s president sought to portray the country as a force for regional stability, accusing unnamed external actors of meddling in Ethiopia’s affairs while highlighting Addis Ababa’s role in supporting peace efforts in neighbouring Sudan.

Alemayehu Weldemariam, a professor of law at Indiana University, told Al Jazeera that the federal government bears much of the blame for the collapse of the Pretoria Agreement.

“This war has been in the making for a while now. Much of the provisions in the cessation of hostilities [in the 2022 agreement] were primarily sabotaged by the federal government itself,” he said, citing fuel, service and cash restrictions imposed on Tigray, and the government’s failure to set up the interim administration the deal had promised.

“What was supposed to be an interim arrangement turned out to be permanent,” with Tigray excluded from national elections since, he added.

US president rejects Iran’s seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying the deal is not ‘acceptable’.

United States President Donald Trump has rejected a roadmap submitted by Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz within a week.

“I reject their proposal,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday, before departing for Tennessee by helicopter.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that Tehran formally submitted a seven-day roadmap to the US via mediator Qatar, and was awaiting Washington’s response.

“It appears as though the proposal is dead in the water,” said Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC.

Late on Friday, US media reports indicated Trump would reject the proposal.

Trump was “privately sceptical” that Tehran would meet his demands, and reportedly told aides that he expects a renewed bombing campaign on Iran after the November US midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported, quoting unnamed US officials.

“President Trump has vacillated between extreme optimism, saying that ‘talks are going well’ to ‘I want to annihilate Iran’,” Hanna said about the recent diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.

“There is no consistency in terms of the [Trump] administration’s reaction,” he said.

But “the one thing that has been made clear by President Trump is that he is content to stay in the status of limbo”, Hanna added, despite concerns from much of the American public that the Iran conflict is turning into another “never-ending war”.

The Strait of Hormuz, a waterway key to the world’s oil supply, is central to the conflict between the US and Iran, which is at an impasse after nearly seven months, though new mediation efforts took place this week.

Earlier in the week, Araghchi held talks with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, and previously set out conditions for ending the war and reopening the vital shipping channel.

On Friday, the top Iranian diplomat said: “Iran has conveyed to the United States, through Qatar, a concrete seven-day plan. If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, and normal maritime passage restored within seven days.”

He was speaking at the United Nations in New York, where he and other senior Iranian officials were attending the General Assembly.

Under the plan, Washington would lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, release an estimated $12bn in frozen Iranian assets and observe a ceasefire covering the region, including Lebanon and Yemen.

“The choice now rests with the United States. Iran does not accept coercion, threats or intimidation, and Iran will not surrender its sovereign rights under pressure,” Araghchi had said.

On Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera that Tehran no longer trusts negotiations with the US after previous rounds of talks were followed by attacks and sanctions.

“We have no trust in the American side and do not know on what basis an understanding can be reached with it,” said Pezeshkian, who was also in New York for the UNGA.

He denied that Iran was responsible for blocking the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US “closed the routes before us”. He described the closure as “a natural response when routes are cut off to Iran”.

The Iranian president said the crisis could be resolved through negotiations rather than force, and that the waterway would reopen to commercial shipping if talks ended the war.

US Central Command says they redirected 122 commercial vessels to “ensure strict compliance” with the US blockade against Iran.

Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil, and Sulaimaniyah airports suspend flights as US ramps up pressure on Iran’s aviation sector.

Four Iraqi airports have suspended all flights to and from Iran days after the United States announced new aviation sanctions on any global companies doing business with Iranian airlines.

It is the latest ramping up of sanctions since the US launched Operation Economic Outcast in August in an effort to isolate Iran from the global economy.

Iraqi state media said flights will no longer be operating from Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah airports.

Iraq was one of the top destinations for Iranian airlines, especially after Iraqi airlines stopped flying to Iran at the start of the US-Israel war on Iran in February.

Passengers travelling between Iran and Iraq will now be forced to make a land journey of at least 12 hours, depending on the destination.

Najaf airport

Iraq’s state news agency reported the suspension at Najaf international airport earlier on Friday.

Airport director Hussein Muhanna told the AFP news agency that “all flights were halted between Iran and Najaf airport following a directive from the prime minister’s office to the governor” of Najaf.

Iraq and neighbouring Iran are both Shia-majority countries, and flights to and from Najaf carry Iraqi Shia Muslim pilgrims to Iran’s holy cities or Iranians visiting sacred sites in Iraq.

In a post on X, the Iranian Consulate in Najaf responded to the suspension of flights to and from Iran, saying “Najaf international airport, the shrine of the first Imam of the Shia, and the capital of their last Imam, is closed to the largest Shia country in the world?!”

An Iraqi employee of an Iranian airline at Najaf airport told AFP Iranian carriers usually operate at least 20 daily flights, but after the suspension, only four flights to other destinations remained scheduled on Friday.

Several other regional countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have either cancelled or restricted flights to Iran to enforce US aviation sanctions.

That is despite the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council warning neighbouring nations against imposing a US flight ban.

Iranian airlines are now relying on a few reduced routes, including Turkiye, Russia, China and Armenia, to remain operational.

“We cannot say that Iran is totally cut off from air traffic, but shrunk considerably,” said Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Tehran.

Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Jack Hewson said Iraq’s central government has made no statement about the flight suspensions, likely because it “doesn’t want to antagonise” pro-Iranian factions in Iraq’s parliament.

Explaining the country’s decision to comply with the US move, Hewson said: “Companies providing ground services, like refuelling, baggage, it appears, are not willing to risk secondary sanctions and being frozen out of the international US dollar system.”

“Iraq’s in a very difficult position,” Hewson added. “It’s tied to the US, but it’s also tied to Iran. And at times like these, it’s squeezed between the two.”