What happened

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi Sunday said a deal with Oman on control of the Strait of Hormuz was in the “final stages,” but that “does not mean reopening the strait” until “conditions” are fulfilled. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Saturday said the strait won’t be reopened until the U.S. “corrects its behavior,” permanently ending the war, lifting the naval blockade and sanctions, “unconditionally” unfreezing Tehran’s assets and “completely” compensating it for war damages.

Who said what

Between its leverage over global oil prices, the “diminishing stockpiles” of key U.S. weapons and the war’s deep unpopularity with U.S. voters, “Iran believes it holds the cards,” The Associated Press said. Trump Sunday told Axios that the U.S. was “low-keying it” with Iran, waiting for economic pain to bring it to heel. Iran’s demands are largely what Trump “already agreed to” in June, The New York Times said. And denying Trump the “ability to claim victory over the strait” is Iran’s “most efficient lever to persuade him to recommit to those agreements.”

What next?

Tehran’s emerging deal with Oman would give each country control of one direction of transit through the strait. There would be no “fees or tolls during the interim period,” the AP said, but “formal control over even part of the strait would be a clear win for Iran and a loss for the U.S.”

Well, is it on or is it off? No one’s quite sure, said Al Jazeera (Doha). Two weeks ago, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a multibillion-dollar deal allowing US companies to build and operate nuclear power plants on Saudi soil over the next 30 years.

But a day later, President Trump added a new condition, via social media: Saudi Arabia must fall in line with the UAE and other Arab nations that have signed the Abraham Accords, and recognise the state of Israel.

‘Reckless’ agreement

And that may prove a deal breaker, said David Frum in The Atlantic. Riyadh had been working towards this landmark pact for almost two decades. Thanks to the savvy of its de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), who ensured the private equity firm of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would get its share of the billion-dollar nuclear licensing deals at stake, he almost got it over the line.

But now it must surely be in doubt, said Mohamad Elmasry on Middle East Eye. Riyadh has vowed it won’t normalise relations until Israel guarantees Palestinian statehood. And MbS has reportedly told US officials that hostility towards Israel is so great among Saudis in the wake of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, that to sign a normalisation treaty would probably get him assassinated.

It’s obvious why the Saudis still badly want this nuclear deal, said Joseph Cirincione on MS Now (New York). It’s not, as they claim, to diversify their energy profile: that makes no sense for a nation sitting on an ocean of oil and blessed with the ideal wind and solar conditions for generating renewable energy – a far cheaper option.

No, the real reason is to gain atomic weapons to protect itself against its main foe: Iran. MbS has made no secret of his desire to build a bomb, and the deal would be a concrete step in that direction. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, it appears to permit nuclear enrichment on Saudi soil, thus enabling Riyadh to follow the likes of India, Israel and Pakistan in covertly enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.

‘Guiding hand’

Who knows what’ll happen if this “reckless” deal goes ahead, said Mitchell Plitnick on Mondoweiss (New York). The “gold standard” nuclear-power pact that the US signed with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 required the UAE to forego the ability to enrich uranium, and obliged it to submit to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections: this Saudi deal has no such restrictions.

Which is why it would inevitably trigger a Middle East arms race, said Azriel Bermant in Foreign Policy. If the deal proceeds, Iran would openly seek its own nuclear deterrent, something it has so far officially forsworn. “It beggars belief that the US went to war against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon yet now acts in a way that is an open invitation for Tehran to weaponise.” And in a way that would also pour “proliferation kerosene” on Turkey and Egypt’s “smouldering nuclear ambitions”, said Matthew Kroenig and Henry Sokolski in The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s deal invites disaster.

Actually, the US is doing the right thing, said the Washington Examiner. The hard truth is that the “era of non-proliferation is coming to an end”: Pakistan and North Korea are both testing nuclear weapons. Given that sobering reality, better the US offer “a guiding hand” to the Saudis and oversee their nuclear agenda than let China or Russia fill the void.

Good or bad, the deal matters a lot to the US president, said Sharon Squassoni in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Chicago), so rumours of its death “are premature”. After all, it’s not some “spur-of-the-moment fantasy” cooked up by Trump. The same deal was also being considered under Joe Biden, and then too enrichment was a quid pro quo for recognising Israel.

The Saudis won’t do so, of course, given recent history, but they won’t have to. Although Congress can disapprove the deal once it’s submitted, the present Congress – due to adjourn on 18 December – is much less likely to do so than any freshly elected one. So the Saudis can “call Trump’s bluff by simply sitting back” and waiting for him to succumb to the pressure of the December deadline.

Saudi Arabia last week announced it had joined American forces in conducting air strikes on Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of Iran-backed militias accused of attacks on both U.S. and Saudi assets in the region. The Saudi attack came in response ⁠to recent drone attacks targeting oil facilities “launched from Iraqi territory and carried out by Iran-aligned terrorist militias,” said the kingdom’s Ministry of Defense in a statement on X.

The latest assault is a “highly dangerous escalation,” said the PMF, per Al Jazeera. Iran’s Foreign Ministry had also condemned the “aggressive attacks” as a violation of Iraq’s “national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The kingdom ‘does not seek escalation’

After spending months “trying not to get dragged into a regional conflict,” Saudi Arabia “appears hemmed in, facing enemies in three directions” between Iran and its proxies in Iraq and Yemen, said CNN. Saudi Arabia’s strategy of “opening the kingdom up to foreign investment” and making it the “regional economic powerhouse” is “now on life support.” At the same time, embroiling itself in a “broader conflict” would be a “risky and potentially costly option” for Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia’s strikes, done “in coordination with U.S. Central Command,” mark the country’s “first announced foray” into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, said USA Today. But previous reports from Reuters citing “unnamed Western and Iranian officials” indicated that Saudi Arabia had “launched covert strikes on the Islamic Republic” earlier this year already. These most recent attacks stem from the kingdom’s “legitimate right to defend itself and its capabilities,” said the Saudi Defense Ministry in a statement. Riyadh also reserves the “right to respond at the appropriate time and place.”

While Saudi Arabia “does not seek escalation,” the ministry said, it will “respond to any aggression it faces.” Over the weekend, however, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with President Donald Trump and “expressed concern over his plans for massive new strikes” against Iran, said Axios. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman expressed similar sentiments at a recent meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance, emphasizing “deescalation with Iran” shortly after the joint U.S.-Saudi strikes, said the outlet.

The PMF in particular has “always been a contentious” issue between Iraq, the U.S., and “other neighboring countries” like Iran, said Al Jazeera. The Iraqi group exists as “part of the country’s security force,” reports “directly to the commander-in-chief who is also the prime minister,” and has “at times struck the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and bases across Iraq at will” while refusing government orders.

‘Unpalatable choice’

Unlike previous clandestine entanglements, Riyadh’s “overt involvement” in regional fighting “marks a new turning point in the conflict,” said The Guardian. “There is a feeling” among Saudi leadership that the Iranians are “doing what they are doing because they feel that the Gulf Arab states won’t move up the escalatory ladder,” said H.A. Hellyer, the Royal United Services Institute’s senior associate fellow in Middle East studies, to the outlet. Riyadh wants to “make it clear that assessment is wrong and that if Tehran thinks the Gulf states are easy prey, they are wrong.”

Should Saudi Arabia come under direct Iranian attack, “it could face an unpalatable choice,” said CNN. Either it must “respond directly in a way that would draw it more deeply into war” or risk emboldening a Tehran “regime that many see as more hardline than before the war.”

U.S. military power is immense but has its limits: Soldiers, sailors and Marines cannot fire missiles that do not exist. The war in Iran has used up much of the U.S. weapons stockpile, though the Pentagon is silent on how much remains. The answer to this question could determine President Donald Trump’s next steps in the Persian Gulf, as well as whether America is ready for a potential war with China.

What did the commentators say?

The missile question is “Washington’s very sensitive secret,” said The Wall Street Journal. Information about munitions stockpiles is always “closely guarded.” There is nonetheless “tremendous concern” within the government about a shortfall. The Army has reportedly “used up much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles” during the war with Iran, Reuters said this week. Fears that renewed fighting could “dangerously drain” remaining supplies have apparently been a factor in the president’s repeated decisions to “set aside” his threats to escalate the war, said The New York Times.

White House officials are pushing back against such a narrative, said The Associated Press. The military has “everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the president’s choosing,” a White House spokesman said in a statement to the outlet. But “shrunken inventories” of Patriot and other missiles are “potentially putting American troops at more risk,” said the AP, citing a new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That fear seems borne out by battlefield experience. U.S. commanders are “picking and choosing” which Iranian attacks to defend against to “preserve the Pentagon’s diminishing supply of weapons,” said NBC News.

The munitions crisis is “even worse than you think,” Aaron MacLean said at The Free Press. If war with a “middling power” like Iran can deplete U.S. missile supplies after just a few months, “what would happen in a broader and more intense campaign” against China? It is a sign that American plans for a potential war in the Pacific “involved some magical thinking.” Realism is needed. The war against Iran is a reminder that “presumptively short wars have a tendency to run inconveniently long.”

A missile shortage “should be a five-alarm fire” for the White House, said The Wall Street Journal. And public concerns about such a possibility undermine the “credibility of U.S. resolve” by signaling to Iran that America “can’t sustain the fight.”

What next?

Trump is attempting to boost weapons production, said Reuters. The United States has the “best quality in the world,” he said to armsmakers last month. “But we need a ​little more speed."

The conflict has nonetheless highlighted concerns about U.S. munitions manufacturing “in a way that now cannot be ignored,” Virginia Burger said at The Project on Government Oversight. The U.S. is facing a “multiyear window of degraded stockpiles” that cannot be quickly restocked, given the timeline needed to produce America’s complicated and expensive weaponry. This issue poses a danger. “Munitions are the clear backbone of American military strategy.”

Russia’s war against Ukraine would seem to be an entirely separate conflict from the hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. But Ukraine last month attacked an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, raising fears the two regional conflicts could merge and spiral into something bigger and more destabilizing to the world.

What did the commentators say?

The Caspian Sea attack “underscored the links between the wars,” said The New York Times. Russia has “launched swarms” of Iran-made drones at Ukraine, the outgrowth of a decades-long “close military relationship” between Moscow and Iran. (Ukraine said the Iranian ship was carrying a new supply of drones. Iran denied the accusation.) Ukraine, meanwhile, has “brought its hard-earned expertise” in drone warfare to the task of defending Gulf states from Iranian attacks after the U.S. launched its war.

The Ukraine-Iran conflicts are “beginning to overlap,” Gideon Rachman said at the Financial Times. The wars “now span two continents” in Europe and Asia and are “influencing conflicts in Africa.” Ukraine has “ample reasons” to want to hit Iranian shipments of drones that “killed a great many Ukrainians,” but leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy may also “see an opportunity to dramatically improve relations with the Trump administration” by assisting in the U.S. war. This is a fraught moment. The 20th century proved that “regional conflicts and great-power miscalculation can be a deadly combination.”

Zelenskyy appears to seek a “merging” of the two wars into a “single strategic theater,” Trita Parsi said at Responsible Statecraft. The Ukrainian leader has spent the war urging NATO to “move beyond supplying weapons and intelligence” and take a more direct role in defending his country. The Iran war now presents Ukraine with the opportunity to offer itself as a “strategic asset capable of helping Washington turn a military debacle into a splendid victory.” It is a “dangerous gambit” and it could “pave the way for a disaster.”

The Ukraine strike comes as the war in the Middle East appears to be expanding into a regional conflict that includes Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and Iraq. It is a “glimpse of just how apocalyptic” the war could become, Spencer Ackerman said at Forever Wars. There is increasingly a risk of the conflict “spiraling” beyond its current limits. “There is no mechanism at present to stop its growth.”

What next?

Iran and Russia may want no part of a larger war. Tehran and Moscow seek a “pragmatic partnership without entangling themselves in each other's regional wars,” Barnard College’s Alexander Cooley said to Newsweek. Ukraine could continue to “strike ships it believes are helping Russia,” said USA Today, but would otherwise “gain little from a full-scale confrontation with Iran.” Ukraine’s top priority “remains Russia,” Chatham House’s Neil Quilliam told the outlet.

The Trump administration has found a novel way to limit the U.S. death toll in the Iran war, said Jack Crosbie in Rolling Stone: Claim that “some deaths don’t count.” Last month, the names of four service members killed by Iranian strikes in mid-July suddenly vanished from the Pentagon’s official list of war dead, lowering the total from 18 to 14. U.S. officials gave differing explanations for the change, from benign “temporary data disruptions” to the claim that the troops killed in Jordan and Iraq didn’t actually die in the war with Iran since “Operation Epic Fury” technically stopped when President Trump struck a temporary ceasefire with Tehran in April. Never mind that neither side ever ceased firing. After Senate Democrats and veterans groups protested the disappearance, the names of the four service members reappeared on the Pentagon website—but under a different category for “Overseas Operations,” which includes only those killed and injured since July 7, when fighting fully reignited.

This is only the latest attempt by the administration to obscure the human cost of its unpopular war, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed an Iranian drone strike on a tactical operations center in Kuwait as a “squirter,” and the Pentagon said just five troops were seriously wounded. In fact, dozens of soldiers suffered injuries “including burns, shrapnel wounds, and brain trauma.” And when the Pentagon restored the four dead soldiers to its online database, it also quietly upped the number of wounded personnel by more than 140— pushing total U.S. casualties in the war above 600. Trump last month tried to put a positive spin on the casualty count, said Joe Lancaster in Reason, favorably comparing in an online post the conflict’s “4 months, 18 dead” with the thousands of Americans killed in multiyear wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. That may be true, but “American soldiers are still dead as a direct result of the conflict he helped instigate.”

This is predictable behavior from Trump, said David A. Graham in The Atlantic. He “has frequently treated the military as a political prop” and, according to his first-term chief of staff John Kelly, called U.S. troops who died in wars “suckers” and “losers.” Trump and Hegseth seemed to think that the American public are suckers as well, and thought their accounting tricks would prevent Iran war deaths from becoming a political liability. But that plan backfired and has succeeded only in drawing attention to the 18 dead Americans. “The administration sought to hide the war with Iran; instead, it showed the painful and growing costs.”

What happened

The Iran war expanded further across the Middle East last week, as Saudi Arabia joined the U.S. in striking Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthi militant group hit Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, and a U.S.-owned natural gas storage tanker at an Egyptian port was set ablaze in a drone attack. In Riyadh’s first acknowledged involvement in the conflict, Saudi and American fighter jets attacked the Iraq-based Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of Iraqi militants, in retaliation for more than 30 drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities, which the U.S. accused Iran of directing. The U.S.-Saudi operation, which killed at least 20 fighters, came hours after Iran launched a surprise ballistic missile attack at American military sites in Jordan, shattering a days-long pause in fighting. The missiles were all intercepted, but the assault marked a shift in strategy for Iran, showing it was willing to go on the offensive and not simply respond to U.S. strikes. After the drone strike at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta, President Trump vowed to retaliate against Tehran, saying, “It’s our turn to hit them.”

In the southern Red Sea, the Houthis claimed at least four attacks on Saudi-linked tankers since announcing a maritime blockade of Saudi ports last month. Iran fired on three tankers it said were using an “illegal” route through the Strait of Hormuz—Saudi Arabia’s other major shipping route—and reportedly rejected a proposal from Oman to divide control of the strait and solicit voluntary fees.

What the columnists said

Iran’s escalating attacks “illustrate a fundamental shift” in the war, said Jared Malsin and Suha Ma’ayeh in The Wall Street Journal. The hard-line Revolutionary Guard “exerts more power than ever in Tehran,” and “has grown more assertive and more comfortable with a state of war that could continue for months.” It suits them better than a peace in which they’d have to confront public anger over Iran’s “struggling economy.” Their “zero sum” stance makes any agreement to end the war even more remote, and “heightens the risk of more-frequent rounds of escalation.”

Trump has been told that “a return to major combat operations would be a hugely risky endeavor,” said Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan in The New York Times. At a meeting with Cabinet members and top advisers last month, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Dan Caine warned such an offensive would “dangerously deplete” the military’s stockpile of air defense munitions. Trump and aides “are also uneasy” about a widening war alienating Gulf allies vulnerable to Iranian attack, and a “growing energy crisis.” Sources say “few if any in Trump’s inner circle” believed “escalation was wise.”

That interceptor shortage could put “American troops at more risk,” said Ben Finley in the Associated Press. Our stockpile of Patriot interceptors has fallen from 2,330 before the war to as low as 759, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And our stash of 452 THAAD interceptors has dropped by nearly 40%. To conserve inventories, the U.S. could “take more risks,” such as firing two rather than the standard three interceptors at incoming missiles. That might prove fatal for soldiers on the ground: Last month, three U.S. soldiers were killed in Jordan after an Iranian missile slipped through air defenses.

Meanwhile, growing hostilities between Iran and Ukraine show the war’s potential to “go global,” said Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Ukraine recently sank an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea it said was ferrying military cargo to Russia, drawing threats of retaliation from Tehran. Iran has supplied Russia with drones that have “killed a great many Ukrainians”; Ukraine says Russia in turn has given Iran intelligence to target American military assets. That “Ukrainians are clashing directly with Iran” is an ominous step toward a wider conflagration.

Trump is in a bind, said Andrew Egger in The Bulwark. Through months of negotiation, Iran has offered “a steady, ironclad” position, insisting on an end to sanctions, no nuclear concessions, and control of the Strait of Hormuz. Our flailing president has toggled between “two demonstrably failed positions: If we bomb the hell out of them, they’ll give us what we want. If we stop bombing them, they’ll give us what we want.” While he vacillates in the vain search for an exit strategy, the damage mounts. “Petroleum reserves, missile stockpiles, global trust in the U.S.-led world order—these are finite resources that are all being spent down at alarming rates.”

It isn’t often we can trace a widely used turn of phrase to a single, inspired genesis. Not so with the mocking ‘TACO’ appellation. Coined in May 2025 by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, the acronym highlights President Donald Trump’s inclination to “Always Chicken Out” on his threats and proclamations.

While there have been numerous iterations and adaptations of Armstrong’s broader point (“perhaps the best Mexican food acronym for Trump is TAMALES,” said Reuters: “Trump Always Messes Around, Leaves Everybody Shafted”), none have quite captured the public’s imagination like Armstrong’s four-letter initialism. One year since its coinage, here are some of the president’s biggest TACO moments to date.

‘Liberation Day’ tariffs

The effects of Trump’s 2025 attempt to “remake the global trading system” by “erecting the largest tariff wall around the U.S. economy” in a century are “well-documented,” said Bloomberg. “Markets crumbled and then recovered when Trump delayed and scaled back his original duties” multiple times in the ensuing weeks, meaning that for a “certain audience,” a TACO “isn’t just a meal anymore.”

Ultimately, the administration “threatened far more tariffs” than Trump has “carried through on,” said NBC. Trump’s trade strategy since his Liberation Day rollout of global tariffs has been “rushed and improvisational,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. Absent congressional input and lacking overall cohesion, the White House’s tariffs and subsequent policy are “not U.S. trade agreements but rather Trump’s trade deals” for better or worse.

Wall Street’s TACO trades

Trump’s Liberation Day rollout of worldwide tariffs “didn’t just reshape global trade,” said CNBC, it also “spawned a new play in the stock market: the ‘TACO trade.’” Here, the president’s “extreme position on policy” is inevitably replaced with a “more palatable place for equities, leading investors to then ‘buy the dip.’” Those who buy stocks “at lower costs after Trump announces new tariffs or increases them” later “reap the benefits when the markets rebound as he delays or backs off of them,” said ABC. “Oh, I chicken out? Isn’t that nice? I've never heard that,” said Trump when asked a “nasty question” in the Oval Office about his eponymous trading trend.

Immigration raids at farms and hotels

“Changes are coming!” Trump said in a June 2025 post on Truth Social that acknowledged “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, longtime workers away” from the agricultural, hospitality and leisure industries. The waffling commitment to his mass deportation raids was an “echo of Trump’s back-and-forth rhetoric on tariffs,” said the Detroit Free Press.

It was a “rare concession” from Trump that his policies were “hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses,” said The New York Times — “industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.” The message from Trump’s shifting deportation tactics is “clear,” said The Daily Beast. The president’s “commitment to his own anti-immigration agenda cannot withstand pressure from his supporters” to protect “their bottom line.”

Threatening to end Iranian ‘civilization’

In “one of the more bizarre days in U.S. diplomatic history,” said The Washington Post, Trump’s threat to Iran back in April that a “whole civilization will die tonight” ended with the president “proclaiming a two-week ceasefire” to the U.S.-led war. Trump also announced the start of negotiations based on Tehran’s “10-point proposal,” which was full of “conditions that should be utterly unacceptable to any U.S. administration.”

Similar to the Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam War, Trump can now “pretend that his bloodcurdling threats coerced Iran into giving up,” when he has “so far given up more than the mullahs did,” said the Post. Critics “lampooned” the episode as “another TACO moment,” said CNN, in which Trump backed off his “maximalist” demands “in a way that erased his red lines and raised doubts about his credibility.”

‘Guardian’ fees for the Strait of Hormuz

Just one day after threatening on “Fox and Friends” to position the United States as the “guardian angel of the strait” of Hormuz — and then “get paid for guarding it, a lot of money” — Trump “abandoned his threat,” telling reporters the plan would be “replaced by trade deals with Gulf states,” with whom he had spent the past 24 hours talking, said the BBC. “It was TACO Tuesday in Washington” when Trump walked back his threat, said CNBC. “And Wall Street was all too happy to take a bite.”

In Minneapolis, a ‘soft TACO’ pivot?

The more Trump has pushed the limits of his power, the less locked into a binary TACO dynamic he seems, despite Armstrong’s initial framing. It “might be more helpful,” then, to “craft a more limited soft TACO theory instead,” said Vox. While Armstrong asserts Trump possesses a “low tolerance for political or economic pain,” the soft TACO idea posits that his tolerance “can sometimes be quite high — even if it isn’t unlimited.” Trump’s decision to scale back deportation operations in Minnesota after the shooting deaths of two protestors, for example, “shows he was not entirely captured by hardline advisers or ideology,” nor was he “so insulated” that he could “ignore such intense backlash.” However, said Vox, “it took months — and two deaths — to get him to back down.”

What happened

Joint U.S. and Saudi Arabian airstrikes on Iran-backed militia positions in Iraq on Wednesday have intensified fears that the Middle East conflict is entering a more dangerous phase. At least 20 fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces were killed in the attacks, while Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. military bases in Jordan. “We are going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn,” President Donald Trump said before the U.S. military launched what it called a “heavy wave of strikes” in Iran.

Who said what

The “scope of the war” in the Middle East has now “widened,” The New York Times said. Iran-linked groups across the region have “opened new fronts and reopened old ones, drawing in forces in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan”.

“This is a war in search of a rationale,” Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) told CNN. “We’re losing lives and we’re not going to be any closer to real peace in the Middle East.”

What next?

It is now impossible to know how Tehran will respond because it views this conflict as an existential struggle, H.A. Hellyer, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told CNN. The region has entered “uncharted territory.”

US Senator Lindsey Graham “relished his role as an informal envoy” between Donald Trump and foreign leaders, said The Economist. So it’s fitting that the Republican’s funeral today “will provide one final round of diplomacy”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu will both attend the service for Graham, a “defence hawk” who “forcibly lobbied Washington” to back Ukraine against Russia, and Israel against Iran, said Reuters. Tonight, the Senate prepares to vote on a bipartisan package imposing sanctions on both countries that Graham “spent his final days trying to push across the line”.

Both leaders are also scheduled to meet the US president “with the goal of winning the ear of Donald Trump” at a time when US policy towards both wars is “in a state of flux”, said Robert Tait in The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

Netanyahu will probably pressure Trump to further “escalate” the war in Iran, while Zelenksyy will “look to shore up American support” after the loss of Graham, “one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers”, said The Economist.

The two wars, taking place 1,550 miles apart, have “converged in recent days”, said Chris Hamill-Stewart on Al Jazeera. On Saturday, Ukraine attacked an Iranian tanker said to be carrying military technology and drones from Iran to Russia. Kyiv’s actions “will please” America, former US ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, William Courtney, told the news site. But Zelenskyy is “unlikely to want to be too closely associated with the ‘unpopular’ US war on Iran”.

There are signs of “a dramatic change” in the US posture on Ukraine, said The Guardian’s Tait. Washington seems “more supportive” of Kyiv than at any other time in Trump’s second presidency. Last week, right-wing influencer Laura Loomer gave the latest “signal of a sea change” when she met Zelenskyy in Kyiv, before “recanting her previous support for Russia”. Trump and Zelenskyy’s “cordial” meeting at the Nato summit in Ankara was also “starkly” different to “last year’s bitter confrontation in the White House”.

By contrast, Trump’s relationship with the Israeli prime minister has grown “visibly strained” since they last met in February, said Tal Shalev on CNN. “Close cooperation and effusive praise” at the start of the Iran war has “given way to Trump’s expletive-laden outbursts”. Trump has said he lashed out at Netanyahu, calling him “crazy”, for continuing to bombard Hezbollah in Lebanon and endangering peace talks with Iran. He has been “resistant” to this meeting, having “little interest in resuming a full fight” against Iran before the US midterms in November, according to one Israeli source.

What next?

Ukraine and the US are moving closer towards a deal on joint drone production, which “could help the US catch up with Ukraine in this crucial military technology”, said Al Jazeera. And Trump and Zelenskyy agreed this month to allow Ukraine to jointly produce Patriot air defence interceptors, “a crucial component for the country’s defence against Russian aerial attacks”.

For Netanyahu, there’s the sticking point of Lebanon: he told his security cabinet on Sunday that the Trump administration “wants to pull Israeli forces back from positions in Lebanon, as well as in Gaza and Syria”. But, as Israel has already refused to withdraw its forces completely before Hezbollah disarms, Netanyahu “intends to oppose the idea”, said CNN’s Shalev. The Israeli PM is under political pressure ahead of elections in October: in recent polls, “he falls far short of the majority he needs to secure another term”. He knows Trump’s support “could be critical”. The stakes “are as high as ever”.

How many sailors are in the Gulf?

About 6,000 seafarers are stuck onboard several hundred tankers and cargo ships, many of which have been stranded in the Gulf since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran erupted in late February. “It’s as if we are trapped in a pond,” Shafiqul Islam, captain of a ship carrying some 37,000 tons of fertilizer bound for South Africa, told the BBC last month. “There’s only one way out.” That’s via the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas—as well as shipments of crucial commodities including fertilizer, aluminum, and helium—once flowed from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, and Iran to global markets. Before the war, more than 100 ships a day transited the strait, which is 21 miles wide at its tightest point. After hostilities began, Iran declared the waterway closed and launched missiles and drones at vessels trying to sail through, grinding traffic to a halt. At one point, up to 20,000 mariners and 2,000 ships were stuck in the Gulf, with only a few vessels squeezing through the strait each day.

How were they able to get out?

India, China, Pakistan, and other countries negotiated with Tehran for safe passage for their flagged vessels, and some tanker operators paid Iran up to $2 million for transit rights for individual ships. The logjam in the Gulf eased in June after Washington and Tehran struck a preliminary peace deal, after which about 30 ships a day were able to move through the strait. But that number dropped back to single digits earlier this month after the war restarted. For the sailors stuck in this war zone—many of whom hail from the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Ukraine—the fear of death or injury is a constant. “Everyone is just exhausted,” said captain Hassan Khan, “both physically and mentally.” While standing on ships often loaded with highly explosive substances, the crews have watched missiles and drones streak overhead, and more than a dozen mariners have been killed in Iranian and U.S. strikes. Raman Kapoor, a tanker captain who had 10 days left on his tour when war erupted, watched helplessly in March as a nearby tanker exploded in flames after being hit by an unmanned craft. One crew member died. “Everyone was so scared,” Kapoor said. “We are just seafarers. We are not trained for any war.”

What are days like onboard?

Long, monotonous, and hot. While the crews work to ensure their ships remain seaworthy, and movies and ping-pong serve as distractions, staving off boredom and depression is a struggle. “We do our best to keep [up] morale,” Abhijit Chopra, the captain of a tanker that’s been stuck for more than 120 days, told Bloomberg. “But there is definitely a sense of strain and uncertainty.” To entertain themselves and add some diversity to onboard meals, some crews are catching and cooking fish; they report that dried ribbonfish is surprisingly delicious. Calls home are a boon, but infrequent, because satellite phone time is limited and expensive. To protect sailors’ mental health, captains encourage crews to do everything together and to never leave anyone alone—even when they dine or relax. Sailors report that access to knives and other sharp objects is more tightly controlled than normal, to prevent people from harming themselves or others. Meanwhile, food, water, and medicine on many vessels is running low.

Is anything being done about that?

Boats from nearby ports are delivering supplies, but prices keep going up. One Korean sailor told the BBC that it feels like suppliers “are trying to take advantage of the situation to make excessive profits.” The engineer of one ship said the cost of 180 tons of water has spiked in recent months from about $2,000 to $11,000. Price gouging isn’t the only way people are taking advantage of the stranded vessels. Scammers claiming to belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have also tricked shipping firms into sending hefty payments to their cryptocurrency wallets in exchange for safe passage.

Have there been any evacuation attempts?

A short-lived one. While a ceasefire was in effect in late June, the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization began ushering ships through the strait’s southern and northern corridors—avoiding the central lanes where Iran had laid mines. Some 130 ships and 3,000 sailors made it out, but the U.S.-backed initiative was scrapped within days after Iran attacked a tanker that was not taking part in the evacuation off Oman’s coast. Some sailors have taken matters into their own hands. Stuck at an Iranian port, Santosh Kumar borrowed nearly $7,000 to pay an agent to drive him to neighboring Armenia, where he boarded a flight to Dubai and then on to his native India. “My family just wanted me home alive,” he said. But such escapes have become increasingly difficult: Some Gulf Arab states have restricted short-term shore passes for sailors over security concerns. Many merchant sailors are now wondering if the profession has become too dangerous, because the Iran war is only the latest crisis to ensnare the shipping industry.

What were the other crises?

Mariners were stranded at sea during the pandemic, and drone attacks on vessels in the Black Sea have become routine since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen—who attacked more than 100 vessels during the HamasIsrael war—this week declared an embargo of Saudi Arabian shipping in the Red Sea, putting more commercial vessels in the line of fire. Merchant sailors seem increasingly wary of going to sea: Companies have struggled to secure replacement crews to relieve sailors in the Gulf whose contracts have expired, despite offering monthly salaries of up to $30,000. The war, said IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez, has shown that “people take seafarers for granted, they don’t value them.”

What happened

Lawmakers in Washington recently demanded that the Trump administration outline its strategy in Iran, as a war that President Trump had vowed would end quickly approached its sixth month and spread further beyond the Persian Gulf. In the first U.S. casualties since March, three American soldiers were killed in a missile attack on a military base in Jordan earlier this month. The next day, a fourth soldier died in Iraq during the controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone, bringing total U.S. deaths to 18. In response, the U.S. intensified its assault on Iran, hitting bridges and rail lines as well as missile and drone launch sites and air defense facilities. Iran stepped up its attacks on U.S. regional allies, striking a water desalination plant in Kuwait and a U.S. air base and an Amazon data center in Bahrain; the Revolutionary Guard also fired on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, forcing the crew to evacuate. President Trump vowed the U.S. would “destroy one bridge or power plant” each time Iran targets a ship in the waterway, through which 20% of the world’s oil once flowed.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was pressed on U.S. strategy during a contentious appearance before the Senate appropriations committee. Hegseth, who put the war’s current price tag at $37.5 billion, urged Congress to approve $67 billion in emergency defense funding and warned that the Pentagon would face “critical shortfalls” without the money. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Democrats would not bankroll “this war and whatever other misadventures Trump wants to get us into”; Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) called for “hard answers” about plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Hegseth insisted the U.S. had the upper hand, but Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said Hegseth and the administration had “failed” U.S. troops, adding, “You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia vowed to block Saudi Arabian ships from exiting the Red Sea and deployed drones and missiles near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, leading energy analysts to warn that oil prices— which spiked $20 this month to $95 a barrel—could go even higher. Attempts by mediators to secure a 10-day ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz made no apparent progress. Until Iran is “ready to meet in a meaningful way,” said Trump, “we have no interest."

What the columnists said

The Iran war “has entered a bleak new phase,” said Megan Messerly and Alex Gangitano in Politico. Trump allies fear the president is running out of ways to extricate America from an unpopular conflict ahead of the midterms. With average gas prices hitting $4 a gallon for the first time since June, Republicans say the war could sink them “in an election that is expected to hinge on costof-living issues.” Even among Trump’s MAGA base, 37% said in a new Politico poll that the U.S. should hold course in Iran only if it doesn’t raise costs.

Trump’s war will only “get harder and harder to defend,” said Zeeshan Aleem in MS.now. Nearly 100 troops have been injured over the past few weeks as Iran ramped up attacks on U.S. bases, and the war’s “human toll is likely to increase.” The Pentagon has been slow to release information on casualties, likely because it knows “the war will become even more widely despised as more people die.” The public will swallow casualties in a campaign they support, but won’t tolerate troops dying “for no obvious reason at all.”

Iran, it turns out, “may be stronger than we thought,” said Joshua Keating in Vox. Contrary to previous assurances by the Trump administration, Iran retains “significant missile and drone capabilities,” with 70% of its prewar missile stockpile intact, according to a recent intelligence report. Meanwhile, there are “growing questions about whether U.S. air defense capabilities are depleting.”

A Houthi blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait could widen the war and “further disrupt global oil supplies and international trade,” said Fatma Khaled and Ahmed Al-Haj in The Associated Press. Sitting at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the strait serves as a conduit for about 12% of global trade and has become even more vital for Saudi oil exports following the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis say they’ll stop only ships connected to Saudi Arabia, but even the threat of attack could drive up insurance premiums and deter other ships from using the route.

The conflict now “stands on a knife’s edge,” said Erika Solomon in The New York Times. We’re at a critical moment where both sides must find a way to dial back the hostilities or “risk provoking a war that cascades beyond what they may be able to contain.” With Iran’s economy in tatters and Trump under mounting domestic pressure, “the costs of accelerating the conflict are high for both sides.” But the same factors that make escalation dangerous are “pushing them to riskier attacks,” as they seek to gain leverage.

“Trump has only terrible choices,” said Brynn Tannehill in The Atlantic. With hard-line leaders and “a captive population” accustomed to “economic pain,” Iran is unlikely to bend. Facing that reality, Trump can “stay the course,” with scant odds of success. He can declare victory and walk away. He can ratchet up the pain by targeting civilian infrastructure, which would draw Iranian retaliation against Arab states and make the U.S. a pariah. Or he can launch a ground invasion, and pay a steep price in blood. It boils down to “an unpalatable choice between accepting Iranian hegemony over the strait—or initiating cycles of escalation that cannot end well.”

What happened

The United States has “pressed pause” on airstrikes against Iran after President Donald Trump’s advisers told him their military was “running out of targets” and “expressed worries” about dwindling munitions, Reuters reported Sunday. Sources also told Axios that Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, and other advisers “recommended stopping the bombing campaign” because it had “reached the limit of its effectiveness.” There have been no U.S. strikes in the region since last week, and Iran has halted its retaliatory attacks. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Who said what

The president is giving “some space” for diplomatic talks to take place while still keeping “all options on the table,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world,” Trump insisted in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

Recent polling shows the MAGA base is “losing patience” with the conflict, Politico said. Trump seems “trapped” by a “war he cannot find his way out of,” said The New York Times. “There is more skepticism than optimism” that the pause in fighting will continue, a senior Iranian source told Reuters.

What next?

Oil prices tumbled Monday morning as the pause held, but “analysts cautioned against pricing in further falls,” the Financial Times said. Fed officials will meet this week to discuss a possible interest rate hike as prices remain high.

Since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on 28 February, President Trump “has claimed more than 30 times that Operation Epic Fury has been successful, is over, or almost is”, said Robin Wright in The New Yorker. None of these predictions have been borne out; “some have bordered on delusional”.

Tehran on the attack

The latest ceasefire, agreed in June, has “functionally collapsed”. In the past fortnight, the US has launched nightly air strikes, renewed the blockade of Iranian ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, and reimposed sanctions. Iran has attacked US and other targets in Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Three US service personnel were killed last week by a strike on an airbase in Jordan; nearly 100 more have been injured in the latest attacks.

Trump has tried three strategies so far: regime change, a longer campaign of relentless bombardment, and diplomacy. None have worked. In Washington, “there is a growing sense of despair” about the direction of the war.

Iran’s leaders feared that the Memorandum of Understanding agreed in June was just a temporary retreat, said Vali Nasr in the FT – to relieve pressure on the world economy and allow US forces to rearm. There was, in fact, “plenty of evidence to support their suspicions”. More US military assets began to arrive in the area, and the deal’s provisions – on coordinating the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, on the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon – were ignored. Tehran’s aim now, in going on the attack, is to show that the US cannot dictate events, and that Iran can withstand whatever military and economic pain is inflicted on it.

Deep trouble

Some strategists think the new US plan could work, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. Its forces are battering Iran’s coast – military installations, bridges, airports, port facilities – to neutralise the Iranian military’s hold on the strait. At the same time, choking off oil exports will plunge the country into deep economic crisis – albeit in months, not weeks.

In the meantime, the collateral damage to the region is escalating, said Ahmed Al Omran in the FT. Kuwait, which is bearing the brunt of Iran’s current attacks, has endured 1,400 missile and drone strikes. Its airport and its oil infrastructure have been attacked, along with the energy grid and the desalination plants that supply 90% of Kuwait’s water. Oil exports have dropped to 20% of pre-war levels.

The US is in deep trouble, and there’s no easy way out, said Will Walldorf in Foreign Policy – short of accepting Iran’s authority over the Strait of Hormuz and its right to enrich uranium. “But that’s the unfortunate consequence of losing a war that should never have [been] started in the first place.”

Iranian strikes on CIA facilities have led US intelligence officials to believe that unprecedented intelligence cooperation is taking place between Russia and Tehran, with China cooperating closely with Moscow too.

The US is investigating how Iran was able to accurately target covert CIA facilities in Saudi Arabia and other allied countries in March. Reuters cited former CIA officials who said that relatively few countries possess both the intelligence capabilities and strategic motivation to provide Tehran with such highly sensitive data.

If confirmed, “the successful targeting of covert CIA facilities would represent one of the most significant intelligence security breaches affecting US overseas operations in recent decades”, said Military Watch Magazine.

What did the commentators say?

It appears likely that Iran had help from Russia as the attacks “were far more advanced than what they’ve done before”, Nicole Grajewski, from the Center for International Research at Sciences Po university in Paris, told Al Jazeera. Russia “has also allegedly helped Tehran improve the accuracy” of its attack drones by supplying a Russian-designed anti-jamming navigation system, said Al Jazeera.

A secret document seen by The Economist and estimated by the newspaper to have been from the first six weeks of the war showed Russia also offered to provide Iran with “unjammable drones and training on how to use them against American troops in the Gulf”. Christo Grozev, an expert on Russia’s intelligence services, said the proposal was consistent with other evidence that Russia is looking for ways of increasing support for Iran.

For Russia, the benefits of a continued conflict in the Middle East are obvious. More countries are looking to buy Russian oil while the Strait of Hormuz continues to be unstable, said RadioFreeEurope. The Philippines, for example, “has sought to increase Russian crude access and expanded discussions over long-term energy cooperation”. Where Moscow could benefit economically, “China may see diplomatic gains amid the same situation”.

Moscow and Beijing “have coordinated closely throughout the crisis”, said Jasim Al-Azzawi on Middle East Monitor, jointly convening UN sessions and “declining to abandon Tehran diplomatically even as they withheld direct military support”. There is “a seductive myth that China and Iran are allies bound by blood and ideology, that Beijing would ride to Tehran’s rescue the way Nato would for a member under Article 5”. But “nothing could be further from the truth. What binds Beijing and Tehran is colder, more durable, and in some ways more dangerous than sentiment: mutual utility.”

The Iran war has been good for Beijing because it has “accelerated three of China’s long-held goals: a Middle East less dependent on America, a world more dependent on critical Chinese technology and a reputation for Beijing as a serious and steady world power”, said Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. Accordingly, China “provides technological and military support to Iran”, said Nadia Helmy on Modern Diplomacy. Chinese companies are “supplying vital components and technologies used in Iran’s missile and defence programmes, making Tehran a regional power that is difficult to deter without significant cost”.

What next?

The US is “surging forces, medics and weaponry to the Middle East to give President Trump more muscular military options as he considers expanding the conflict”, said The Wall Street Journal.

But any escalation will be complicated by the continued support of China and Russia for Iran and the changing of the geopolitical pecking order that this war is beginning to cause. “The Iran conflict has shown that governments increasingly judge the major powers by whether they can help manage energy costs, shipping risk and inflation,” Ilango Karuppannan, a veteran Malaysian diplomat, told RadioFreeEurope.

“This creates a risk for Washington. The US may remain militarily important while becoming less economically relevant.”

What happened

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on Thursday morning said they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, enforcing a threatened blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb waterway that Saudi Arabia has been using to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The attack “threatened to open a new front in a war that has roiled the global economy” as the U.S. and Iran “vie for control of vital shipping lanes,” The Associated Press said. Both sides have also “increasingly threatened civilian infrastructure.”

The U.S. conducted a 12th night of airstrikes against Iran, which fired at U.S. allies in the region. Along with striking U.S. military bases, Iran has also hit several CIA sites, prompting U.S. intelligence to “investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or ​advanced drone technology,” Reuters said.

Who said what

President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened on social media to “destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT” in Iran every time Tehran “shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran will respond in kind with an “eye for an eye” defense against the U.S. and its enablers. “Current and former military officials caution it isn’t lawful to strike an adversary’s infrastructure for political purposes,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

Trump is considering “both a ceasefire and a significant military escalation” in Iran, Axios said. The Pentagon is “surging forces, medics and weaponry to the Middle East,” suggesting “Trump is considering escalating the conflict,” the Journal said.

What happened

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s Iran war had cost an estimated $37.5 billion so far, and that the $67 billion in supplemental war funding he was requesting is an “urgent, necessary” stopgap as Congress debates Trump’s $1.5 trillion annual Pentagon budget request. Hegseth faced “fiery questions” during the “combative Senate Appropriations Committee hearing,” The Associated Press said. And the scrutiny was “bipartisan,” The Washington Post said, as “frustrated lawmakers” pressed him to “explain the Trump administration’s strategy for the war” amid “renewed hostilities.”

Who said what

Hegseth’s appearance “represented an attempt by the administration to sell the unpopular conflict as a necessary expense,” Politico said. But Senate Democrats “questioned both the success of the war so far and the need for more military money, citing $75 billion in unused funds” from last year’s huge GOP-only spending package. “The problem is not a lack of money, but poor planning,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Hegseth. “This war is now spiraling out of control again,” and Trump is “asking for $70 billion more — and for us to just trust him it’ll all work out fine.”

What next?

The House plans to quit Washington on Thursday “for a month-long recess,” the Post said, “leaving any deal on military funding weeks away at the earliest.”

As the US and Iran continue to trade blows in the Middle East, the consequences of the intense bombings threaten Iran’s already “fragile biodiversity”, said The Associated Press.

Historically, Iran has had a “deep connection” with its wildlife, being one of the first countries to form an environmental protection agency, although “decades of mismanagement and years-long drought” had already put a strain on conservationist work.

Unique biodiversity

Iran’s geographical location gives it a “wide range of climates” that host an “astounding diversity of life”, said the AP. The country is home to at least 86 species at risk of extinction, including the “Asiatic cheetah, Persian fallow deer, brown bear, leopard, black bear, Persian onager, the great bustard and various birds of prey”, according to a 2024 report by Iran’s Environment Department. “Ironically”, military zones had been considered “one of the few areas where falcons can breed safely”, out of reach of smugglers and poachers.

US and Israeli strikes on remote military facilities in deserts and mountain ranges are “causing habitat degradation”, leading to “water and land pollution, soil contamination” and “destruction of land cover”, US-based Iranian wildlife expert Jamshid Parchizadeh told the AP. And an animal population driven away from its habitat, like mountain-dwelling Persian leopards and brown bears, “forever leaves that area from fear”.

Land ecosystems are not the only ones at risk. The “highly contested” Strait of Hormuz is home to the “most diverse” coral population in the region, said CNN. Greenpeace researchers have been able to “regularly detect oil slicks” in the water, following attacks on tankers passing through the strait.

“Many of the compounds found in crude oil will target heart function and respiration,” Martin Grosell, a professor of biology and ecology, told the outlet. Prolonged exposure also “suppresses immune function, rendering animals more susceptible to infections”.

Invisible victims

While most of the attention has been on the urban and economic consequences of the war, the country’s animal species are “less visible victims”, said Iranian news agency Wana.

While there have been “no official reports” on widespread casualties of animals in “natural habitats”, experts warn that a “lack of reporting does not equate to an absence of damage”. And the war’s impact “extends far beyond direct fatalities”: the “intense” noise pollution of bombardments also inflicts “devastating” physical and psychological trauma.

At the Lavizan Bird Garden in Tehran, it was reported that the “deafening noise” caused several birds to lose “behavioural control” due to “severe stress” and to collide with enclosure walls, resulting in injuries and some fatalities.

There are also lasting “indirect” ecological impacts for Iran’s biodiversity. International studies have shown animals exposed to conflict zones develop “disrupted migration, feeding, and breeding patterns” and show signs of “severe aggression or depression”.

“The war has caused serious environmental degradation in a country reeling from a range of climate-related crises, water stress, and air quality issues”, and Iran’s “fragile” ecosystems now face an uncertain future, said non-profit US news organisation Truthout. When it comes to “post-conflict reconstruction”, environmental rehabilitation “often doesn’t take priority”.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militia has announced it is closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Saudi ships, in a “maritime embargo” that could further disrupt global energy supplies. The strait, a strategic gateway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, is one of the world’s most important oil transit routes. And, in recent days, Iran has reportedly been calling on the Houthis to block the strait to all oil tanker traffic passing through it.

Closing off the Bab al-Mandab “chokepoint” on the sea path many oil tankers are now taking to avoid the Strait of Hormuz could seriously “squeeze the global economy” and “add another layer of complexity” to the Middle East conflict, said The Wall Street Journal.

What did the commentators say?

The Bab al-Mandab Strait is “one of the region’s most sensitive sources of leverage”, making the Houthis Iran’s “best placed” allies “to open another pressure front”, said Ahmed al-Shalafi on Al Jazeera.

Around 10% to 12% of annual global maritime trade passes through the strait. With both it and the Strait of Hormuz closed, cargo ships would have to “take a weeks-long detour” around Africa, said Akhtar Makoii in The Telegraph. The Houthis have already shown they are capable of shutting down the waterway: “during the Gaza war, they fired on commercial vessels in the Red Sea for months, driving much of the world’s shipping away from the route”.

Closing the strait again serves “Tehran’s ends” but the Houthis are “partners, not puppets” of Iran, and this move lets them “press their own regional ambitions” and, particularly, “punish Saudi Arabia, their long-time enemy”. Last week, Saudi Arabia “effectively opened a new front in the war” by bombing Sana’a airport in the Yemeni capital to prevent the landing of an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation back from Tehran.

The growing hostilities are “breaking down” the informal 2022 Saudi-Houthi truce that “ended virtually all cross-border attacks” between the two countries, said Stephen Kalin in The Wall Street Journal. The Houthis “see an opportunity to gain an advantage” on the Saudis and feel “strategically emboldened by a perception that Iran has outmanoeuvred the US”.

What next?

Saudi Arabia does not seem “eager to return quickly to a broad war” with the Houthis, said al-Shalafi on Al Jazeera. And closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait completely would require “military, logistical and maritime control capabilities” that the Houthis no longer possess, Ibrahim Al-Malek, a Durham University specialist in Middle Eastern strategic governance, told US-funded Arabic news service Alhurra.

“Whether the Houthis move from threats to direct action remains the critical issue,” Yemeni analyst Mohammed Albasha told Reuters. But “even if no ships are attacked, ​the announcement alone is likely to disrupt shipping and create ​uncertainty”.

What happened

The U.S. military early Monday morning completed a ninth consecutive night of airstrikes on Iranian targets, and Iran again fired missiles and drones at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. The Pentagon said a U.S. service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone, and human remains were found at a military base in Jordan hit by Iranian strikes last week. That attack killed two U.S. troops, and if the remains are confirmed to be a soldier missing since the strikes, the U.S. death toll from the Iran war will be 18. Iran said U.S. strikes had killed at least 50 people since a ceasefire collapsed this month.

Who said what

The U.S. hit Iran “very hard again” throughout the night “in honor of” the “great patriots” killed, Trump told reporters. “We feel very badly,” but “those great people” were “fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Iran has been “stepping up” its strikes on Jordan “as it seeks to produce American casualties and deter Washington from escalating its test of wills with Tehran,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

“Even larger American attacks may be coming” as “more U.S. warplanes head to the Middle East,” the Journal said. “The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post, but with dwindling munitions stockpiles and growing battle damage, “we do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that.”

What happened

The price of oil has jumped nearly 10% following renewed violence in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude futures climbed to $83 a barrel Monday, marking the “largest daily percentage gain since May 2020,” The Wall Street Journal said. The U.S. military launched its third straight night of attacks against Iran Monday night; Iran responded by striking two United Arab Emirates tankers.

Who said what

The new attacks “signaled a return to open conflict” in the region less than a month after the two nations agreed to a ceasefire, The New York Times said. They follow President Donald Trump’s social media declaration that the U.S. is “reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE,” and will take over the strait, charging a 20% fee for secure passage. That would “be a major new tax on global energy flows and would drive up the cost of the world’s oil and gas,” The Washington Post said.

What next?

The blockade goes into effect Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern time. Oil markets are facing a new reality, the Journal said, as the Strait of Hormuz is “no longer expected to return to a prewar norm.”

What happened

The U.S. military on Sunday night conducted a fresh wave of airstrikes against Iranian targets as retaliatory attacks between the two nations increase. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for attacks on a U.S. refueling facility at the Omani port of Duqm, as well as attacks on American bases in Qatar and Jordan. Tehran also said it had shut the Strait of Hormuz and struck commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway. The latest exchange follows fresh U.S. airstrikes on 140 Iranian military targets.

Who said what

Iran accused the U.S. of undermining diplomatic efforts, saying American attacks had “rendered futile” recent negotiations. The two nations have “traded fire and recriminations,” said The New York Times. Both have accused the other of violating the terms of the ceasefire and “leaving the region suspended between war and peace.” As the war “heats up” again, CNN said, U.S. weapon stocks “remain significantly depleted,” risking the military’s “ability to fight” any “future war.”

What next?

In a televised statement, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen since the Feb. 28 death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “vengeance” for his father’s killing “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out”.

Even though the United States and Iran are embroiled in war, a new lawsuit against the Trump administration is claiming that the two countries’ governments actually began working together last year — and jeopardized Iranian asylum seekers’ lives in the process. The White House has dismissed these claims, but those who filed the lawsuit are not backing down.

‘Confidential information’

The issue first arose in 2025 when the Trump administration “adopted a policy of providing” the Iranian government with “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF). Many of the asylum seekers whose information is allegedly being shared are people who “seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran,” such as pro-democracy activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Disclosing the confidential information of these asylum seekers “violates federal regulations requiring confidentiality, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran at risk of persecution,” the IALDF said in a statement. The lawsuit is requesting that the court “order the U.S. government to stop sharing asylum-applicant information with the government of Iran.”

The allegations are based on accounts from “detainees who had been called into meetings with Iranian officials who seemed to already possess details from their U.S. immigration files,” Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer representing the Iranian fund, told The New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied any wrongdoing. DHS “provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and agency policy,“ the department said in a statement.

‘Prohibit the government from sharing information’

The U.S. government is “allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics,” said The Associated Press. But federal regulations generally “prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the individual getting deported applied for asylum.” Congress “made these confidentiality protections mandatory precisely because lives depend on them, and no agency and no administration, of either party, may set them aside,” Ali Rahnama, the interim executive director of the IALDF, told the AP.

And while some may think that the conflict raging in the Middle East would have slowed the information sharing, the lawsuit “alleges that the Trump administration has continued to share confidential information during the current war between the U.S. and Iran,” said ABC News. Though the “in-person meetings reportedly stopped before the war began on Feb. 28,” the lawsuit claims the government continued to “mail or hand deliver document packages” to the Iranian Interests Section, which oversees the nation’s diplomatic duties in the U.S.

Some asylum-seeker data sharing may always occur, such as information on travel documents. What is “different here, though, is they are revealing information from the asylum applications, and that is a very specific category of information that is kept confidential,” Kirkpatrick said to NPR. The U.S. government “shouldn’t even reveal information from which one could infer that somebody had sought asylum.”

What happened

President Donald Trump Wednesday ended the two-day NATO summit in Turkey with warm words for U.S. allies, a promise to let Ukraine produce Patriot air-defense missiles and renewed fighting with Iran. After declaring the ceasefire “over,” Trump ordered a second night of strikes on Iran, which again fired at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. Iran’s leaders are “scum” and “sick people,” Trump told reporters. If Iran keeps bombing ships in the Strait of Hormuz, he said on social media, the “retribution” will “get much worse!”

Who said what

Trump began the NATO summit “publicly bashing the alliance and reciting a list of grievances,” Politico said, but “behind closed doors” he “was far more positive” with fellow leaders. “There was a lot of love in that room,” Trump told reporters. “A lot of unity.” The Ankara summit “amounted to a master class in how to manage a mercurial president and minimize damage,” CNN said. “It’s a lesson clearly not absorbed by, or of much interest to, Iran.”

What next?

The reignited battle over the Strait of Hormuz reflects a “divide among Iran’s leadership” between “hard-liners seeking lasting control of the waterway” and “pragmatists” seeking sanctions relief, The Associated Press said. It also leaves Trump back “mired in an unpopular war that he cannot seem to end,” The Washington Post said, “with midterm elections less than four months away.”

What happened

Slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral procession began advancing through the streets of Tehran this morning after Sunday’s prayers at the capital’s sprawling Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla complex. Three of Khamenei’s sons appeared publicly Sunday for the first time since their father and other family members were killed in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes of the Iran war, but Mojtaba Khamenei, the son who succeeded him as supreme leader, has still not made any public appearances.

Who said what

The funeral procession route was “packed to capacity” with black-clad mourners “hoping to gain a glimpse of the passing cortège,” CNN said. Some mourners said they were disappointed at the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei, whose face was reportedly “disfigured” and “one or ​both legs” significantly injured in U.S.-Israeli strikes, Reuters said. He is believed to be in hiding “due to the dangers of Israeli threats to his life,” Al Jazeera said.

The “increasingly” common “threats from mourners to avenge Khamenei’s death” included chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and signs calling for the “killing of both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” The Associated Press said. As the poet Mohammad Rasouli asked why “the biggest bastard in the world” was “still alive” to cheering mourners at the Mosalla complex, Trump was boasting he “wiped out” Iran’s military during “a speech at the same time across the world” to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

What next?

After a 12-hour procession through Tehran, Khamenei’s body will be transported to Qom, then to important Shiite shrines in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, and finally to Thursday’s burial in his hometown of Mashhad.

President Trump’s Iran deal-in-progress “is Israel’s disaster,” said Ruth Margalit in The New Yorker. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied Trump to launch the Iran war, telling him they could together topple Iran’s Islamist regime, wipe out its ballistic missiles, and end its nuclear threat. Four months later, that war of choice has ended with Trump signing a “memorandum of understanding” with Tehran that not only leaves the hard-liners in charge but also does nothing to address Iran’s arsenal of long-range missiles or its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. “Perhaps most disturbingly for Israel,” said Lazar Berman in The Dispatch, the deal yields to Iran’s demand for a ceasefire in Lebanon, shielding its proxy Hezbollah from attack even as the terrorist group continues to “threaten Israel from the north.” Rubbing salt in the wound are the “gratuitous insults” from Trump, who has called Israel a “very small partner” and Netanyahu a loose cannon with “no f---ing judgment,” while praising the Iranians as “strong,” “smart,” and “very rational.”

Vice President JD Vance also had some “harsh words for Israel,” said Aaron Blake in CNN.com. Responding to criticism of the Iran deal from top Israeli lawmakers, he warned the country to tread carefully. He noted the Jewish state’s reliance on U.S. weaponry, and said some Israeli leaders needed to “wake up and smell the reality” and defer to Trump, “the only head of state in the entire world” who’s still in their corner. It’s a stunning turnabout, said Matt K. Lewis in the Los Angeles Times. Broad bipartisan support for Israel was for decades “a law of physics” in the U.S. But Israel’s bloody campaign in Gaza following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, “repelled” many young Americans. And by allying himself so closely with Trump to “gin up a war against Iran,” Netanyahu alienated mainstream Democrats and Never Trump conservatives and infuriated “America first” populists in the GOP. Today, some 60% of U.S. adults view Israel unfavorably, up from 42% in 2022.

Netanyahu is in a bind of his own making, said Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic. “He’s built his brand on two promises” to Israelis: that “he alone could withstand international pressure to compromise on Israeli security and that he alone could handle Trump.” Facing re-election in October, he must now choose whether to defy Trump and “save his reputation as a stalwart security hawk” or cave and maintain what’s left of their relationship. He’s learning the hard way that with Trump any alliance is a “marriage of convenience.” As “a student of power” himself, Netanyahu “should have seen this rug pull coming.”

What happened

The U.S. last week removed sanctions on Iranian oil even as peace talks between Washington and Tehran appeared to descend into confusion, with the two sides issuing conflicting accounts of discussions on nuclear inspections and the unfreezing of billions in Iranian funds. An initial round of talks in Switzerland “laid a very good foundation” for a final peace deal, said Vice President JD Vance, who led the U.S. delegation. But the two sides soon sparred publicly over Iran’s nuclear program, with Vance and President Trump saying Tehran had agreed to U.N. inspections of its damaged nuclear sites while Iranians insisted they hadn’t. “They know they’re wrong,” Trump said. “They told us inside.” The two sides also disagreed over the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, which the preliminary agreement states will be diluted. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country will “never back down from the right to enrich uranium”; Trump shot back that “he better watch his mouth” or “we’ll take over the rest of the country.”

Citing “productive” talks, the U.S. waived long-standing sanctions on Iranian oil through August and cleared the way for Tehran to be paid in dollars, including by U.S. buyers. Iranian officials said steps had been taken toward the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets. Vance said if assets were released, Iran would have to spend them on U.S. exports, but Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei insisted Iran can spend any released funds “freely.” There were also sharp divisions over the Strait of Hormuz, where hundreds of ships were stranded during the conflict. Iran said it will charge “fees” to ships using the strait in exchange for unspecified services; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that no country can charge fees for transiting an international waterway.

In Washington, the Senate passed a resolution barring Trump from resuming the Iran war without congressional authorization, with four Republicans joining Democrats in a rare rebuke of the president. The vote came amid broad GOP skepticism about Trump’s ceasefire deal, which has been widely criticized for ceding too much to Iran while achieving none of Trump’s war aims. “The administration acts like they want a deal much more than the ayatollah regime,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). It “looks like weakness.”

What the columnists said

The “sweeping rollback” of U.S. oil sanctions reverses “years of pressure designed to cripple Iran’s economy,” said Anniek Bao in CNBC.com. The 60-day license issued by the Treasury Department will unlock the sale of 67 million barrels of Iranian crude floating in the strait, yielding a “windfall” of up to $9 billion for Tehran. And it reopens “Iran’s most important revenue stream.” Sanctions are unlikely to return after 60 days, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. “Once Iranian oil is in the international supply line, they have Trump over a barrel,” because he won’t be able to impose curbs on Iranian exports without “pushing oil prices up again.”

This is quite the turnaround for the Trump team, said Andrew Kaczynski and Jennifer Hansler in CNN.com. For years, Trump, Rubio, and Vance assailed deals that provided financial concessions to Iran, saying they would enrich a dangerous foe that “fuels terror.” That was their “central indictment” of former president Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, which granted Iran sanctions relief and “access to frozen assets.” Now they’re poised to hand the regime piles of dollar bills.

And for what? asked The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Tehran has “made no serious concession on nuclear matters.” Lifting oil sanctions now will “gut” U.S. leverage and send cash flowing to the coffers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran claims some of its frozen assets have already been released, possibly $6 billion that was being held in Qatar. Even if Tehran complies with a U.S. dictate that such cash be spent only on food and medicine, “it frees up other funds for military purposes.”

Meanwhile, the preliminary deal signed by Trump treats our ally Israel as if it were a U.S. “puppet” with “no sovereignty beyond that which America grants it,” said Noah Rothman in National Review. By demanding a ceasefire in southern Lebanon, Iran has compelled America to tacitly take the side of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists who use the region to strike at northern Israel. “And all in the craven pursuit of a ‘peace’ unworthy of the word.”

“Negotiating with Iran has always been an extraordinary challenge,” said David E. Sanger and Yeganeh Torbati in The New York Times, but it’s even more complex under Trump. Instead of letting negotiators quietly work toward a full agreement, he likes to trumpet “his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals,” in a bid to force Iran’s hand. The Iranians have their own “spin strategy”: Deny every claim, even if it contains “an element of truth.” Some “posturing” is par for the course, but at this level it raises the question of whether the sniping “will ultimately sink the whole venture.”

Hanging over the negotiations is “an uncomfortable question,” said Aviva Klompas in USA Today. What exactly has the U.S. accomplished? The hardliners remain in power in Tehran. The fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is unsettled. The Strait of Hormuz, where oil shipping was uncontested before the war, is now a “bargaining chip.” Iran has “suffered enormous losses” to its military and nuclear infrastructure. But if it is financially rewarded and retains its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, it’s fair to ask “whether Tehran has once again accomplished a tactic it has spent decades perfecting: losing the war while winning the negotiation.”

What happened

The U.S. attacked Iranian targets twice over the weekend while Iran struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and fired drones and missiles at U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain. The “renewed fighting was sparked by competing interpretations of the memorandum of understanding” to end the war, Axios said, especially regarding the strait.

Who said what

Hours after Saturday’s oil tanker strike, President Donald Trump warned on social media that if Iran kept violating the ceasefire, the U.S. might be “forced to militarily complete the job” in Iran, which would then “no longer exist!” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said the MOU gave Tehran sole responsibility for “the management and full restoration of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Attacking ships transiting the economically “pivotal” waterway “through Omani waters” was a risky but “necessary gambit” for Tehran, The New York Times said. Its “newfound power to disrupt traffic” in the strait is “critical leverage it cannot afford to lose — either at the negotiating table or back at war.”

What next?

After the weekend’s fighting, “both sides will stand down for now and vessels can move freely,” a Trump administration official told news organizations. “Iran has yet to confirm an agreement,” the Times said. U.S. officials said talks with Iran will resume tomorrow in Qatar.

Iran has become a “lose-lose issue” for Donald Trump, which is alienating his entire political base, said Zeeshan Aleem on MS Now. When he attacked Iran, he infuriated the isolationist wing of his coalition, who believed his promise that he’d start “no new wars”. Now, his scramble to end the conflict “is alienating the hawkish sector of his party”, who believe it amounts to a humiliating surrender.

One Republican senator described the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Trump last week as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades”. Texas senator Ted Cruz said Trump must be getting “very poor advice”. Critics are particularly outraged by the potential creation of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran. Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen called the provision a “disaster”, likening it to offering the “Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power”.

Vance under fire

Furious as they are, many Republican hawks are still reluctant to criticise Trump directly, said Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. So they’re turning their fire instead on the vice-president, J.D. Vance. “Trump effectively won the war and at the 11th hour Vance is negotiating his way to a loss,” raged one unnamed congressman to a Washington correspondent.

The president has done nothing to discourage such talk. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” he said, half-jokingly, of the peace deal. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D.” The irony, said Jim Geraghty in The Washington Post, is that Vance opposed starting this war. Now it has fallen to him to sell the peace deal and serve as the fall guy when it goes sour. “You almost have to feel sorry for Vance. Almost.”

Face of peace

“Playing the part of Trump’s surrender monkey” will hurt Vance’s image in the short term, said Jonathan V. Last on The Bulwark, but few Republican voters are likely to remember any of this stuff in two years’ time if petrol prices are back to normal and Iran hasn’t tested a nuclear device. Vance will just be the guy who helped bring an unpopular war to an end.

He has certainly been happy to serve as the face of this peace agreement, said Adam Cancryn on CNN. He asked to play a leading role in the talks, rather than being pushed into it. Vance may get the blame if the deal blows up, but he has no doubt concluded that if the two sides return to an intractable conflict, his hopes of becoming president are probably scuppered in any case.

What happened

The International Maritime Organization on Thursday paused a nascent effort to evacuate ships stranded in the Persian Gulf after Iran struck a cargo vessel, causing damage but no casualties, according to the ship’s owner. The IMO, a United Nations body, earlier this week began shepherding ships through the Strait of Hormuz along a route hugging Oman’s coast. Hundreds of ships and more than 11,000 seafarers have been stranded in the Gulf since the Iran war broke out, and Iran’s drone strike demonstrated its “continued ability to restrict the critical waterway, despite the agreement reached last week with the United States,” CNN said.

Who said what

The attacked vessel did “not transit under IMO’s evacuation framework,” IMO chief Arsenio Dominguez said in a press release, but “the evacuation plan will be paused until further clarity is obtained” on “necessary safety guarantees.” Hours before the strike, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that transiting the strait outside routes “authorized” by Iran was “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” The opening of an alternate passage “would relieve pressure on the world economy,” The Associated Press said, but also “remove Iran’s main source of leverage in ongoing peace talks.”

What next?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday during a “visit to the Gulf to reassure American allies” that “Washington was committed to the new route” and free passage through the strait, the AP said.

What happened

The Senate on Tuesday voted 50-48 to adopt a resolution instructing President Donald Trump to end the Iran war or obtain congressional authorization. Four Republicans joined all but one Democrat to pass the resolution, and two Republicans were absent. The House approved the measure 215-208 on June 3, and Trump cannot veto it.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “significant rebuke” to Trump, CNN said. It reflects “growing concerns” among GOP lawmakers “over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it,” The Associated Press said. Trump called the vote “poorly timed and meaningless.”

This is the “first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973” that both chambers “approved a concurrent resolution directing a president to end a military conflict,” The New York Times said. Whether it’s legally binding without a president’s signature “has never been definitively tested before the Supreme Court.”

What next?

The White House is expected to request $80 billion this week to pay for the war. Trump will “meet with restless GOP senators” on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where his preference that lawmakers just “pony up, and don’t ask too many questions” about the war, is “grating on many congressional Republicans,” Politico said.

What began as a photo opportunity between two world leaders has spiraled into geopolitical acrimony. An escalating war of words between President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni over who asked whom to pose for a photograph at the recent G7 conference now threatens to impact material relations between the Trump administration and Italy’s right-wing government. As Trump rages on social media over the photo flap, Meloni returns to Italy with an eye toward next year’s national elections — and the benefits of being seen standing up to an increasingly unpopular American president.

‘Developing rift’ with origins in the Iran war

Meloni is “clearly irked” at Trump’s “suggestion that she ‘begged’ him for a photo” at the recent G7 summit, said NBC News. While the prime minister “didn’t respond publicly” to other Trump barbs this spring, the “most recent clash, by contrast, quickly escalated.”

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani “abruptly cancelled a planned trip” to the U.S. after calling Trump’s comments “serious and offensive” to the whole of Italy, said The Associated Press. “Italy and I never beg,” said Meloni in a video response posted to social media over the weekend.

The “continuing exchange” between the two leaders has “highlighted a developing rift between the two countries” stemming from Trump’s war on Iran, said the BBC. Trump and Meloni once enjoyed a “close political relationship,” with Meloni the “sole European leader” to have attended Trump’s second inauguration.

The binational relationship has “grown strained in recent months over the war in Iran,” said Axios, particularly after Italy “denied U.S. aircraft permission to land at its bases” in March. Trump’s relationship with Europe more broadly “had long been fraying” over the war with Iran, his trade policies and threats to annex Greenland, said the Los Angeles Times.

Still, while Trump took a “warmer tone toward other European leaders” at the G7 meeting as they “aligned behind his interim agreement” to pause fighting in Iran, “tensions again were expected to be on full display” at next month’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. Meloni’s pushback on Trump’s photograph claim is a “punctuation mark” on a growing trend among European leaders to speak against the Trump administration, said CNN.

Electoral opportunity ‘deftly utilized’

Meloni had been trying to “preserve some harmony” between herself and Trump “until this week,” said The New York Times. She has “sought some distance” from the president now, as their “friendship became a political liability among Italian voters.” Meloni is “doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity,” said Trump on Truth Social. Now that the U.S. has allegedly “defeated Iran militarily,” he continued, “she wants to be friends again in order to get her ‘numbers up.’ No thanks!!!"

Trump may be correct that Meloni’s furthering of this feud is being done with an eye toward domestic Italian politics, said Fox News. The prime minister “must have calculated” that a “public row” with Trump “yields no tangible consequences other than an increase in her domestic and international standing,” said Mattia Diletti, a political science lecturer at Sapienza University of Rome, to the outlet.

Trump’s story is nevertheless “very difficult to believe,” said MS NOW. Not only has he “peddled similar absurdities before,” but “he’s not at all popular in Italy,” leaving Meloni “no political incentive to be seen with him.” Meloni’s pushback to Trump comes as the premier “gears up for a reelection battle,” in which her “close relationship” with Trump has become an “increasing political liability,” said the Financial Times.

Meloni faced a “setback in her grip on power in Italy” in March, after her government lost a battle over justice reform, said Time. Critics saw that defeat as a “barometer of how Italians perceived her closeness" with Trump, and how they have been “troubled by Trump’s globally destabilizing actions.”

Meloni “deftly utilized the opportunity” presented by the president in his photography blame-game to “distance herself from Trump,” said the Financial Times. Italian diplomats are “now working in overdrive,” hoping to “limit the fallout or deter Trump from retaliating against Italy.” Meloni’s “international policy is in tatters,” said former Italian NATO Ambassador Stefano Stefanini to the outlet. In reimagining Italian foreign policy moving forward, she “has to be careful not to appear to flip-flop.” Italians will “remember her closeness to Trump, so she has to tread this very carefully.”

What happened

The U.S. and Iran made “encouraging progress” after a rocky start to high-level peace talks in Switzerland, mediators Qatar and Pakistan said in a joint statement early Monday morning. The two sides approved a “roadmap” to reach a final deal during a 60-day truce, a “de-confliction cell” to ensure an end to “military operations in Lebanon” and a “communication line” to “avoid incidents and miscommunication” in the Strait of Hormuz.

The mediators had “delivered major progress to end Lebanon War,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on social media. Vice President JD Vance, the lead U.S. delegate, said in a press conference Sunday that “great progress” was being made.

Who said what

The negotiations “had a tense start,” The Associated Press said. As Vance talked of turning over “a new leaf” with Iran, President Donald Trump threatened on social media to “hit Iran very hard again” if it didn’t “immediately stop” Hezbollah from “causing trouble” in Lebanon. Trump told Fox News he had warned Iranian officials that if they closed the Strait of Hormuz, as they purported to do over the weekend, “you won’t have a country” or “even make it back to your f---ing country.”

Iranian state media reported that Trump’s threats “prompted the Iranian delegation to leave the negotiation venue,” The Wall Street Journal said. They continued negotiating through the mediators.

What next?

Lower-level technical negotiations will continue at Switzerland’s lakeside Bürgenstock resort for the rest of the week, the mediators said.

With the U.S. and Iran arriving at a “memorandum of understanding” to end hostilities, President Donald Trump seems to think petroleum prices will come down immediately. “Let the oil flow!” he wrote on social media. But while average gas prices did fall just below $4 per gallon after the deal was signed, economists say extended relief from high prices could take much longer to arrive.

When will gas prices come down?

Drivers might expect that oil prices will start to lower as soon as the deal with Iran is inked, but they will “probably have to wait weeks or longer to see meaningful improvement,” said The New York Times. Gas prices often fluctuate in an “up-like-a-rocket, down-like-a-feather” manner, meaning gasoline costs “quickly rise alongside the price of crude oil but are slow to follow its descent.” Gas stations tend to lose money when the price of gas goes up, so when oil starts to “go down, station owners are slow to bring retail prices down to make up for their poor financial performance on the way up.”

Trump is also hopeful that the reopening of the long-contested Strait of Hormuz, and the reactivation of its oil-shipping lanes will help ease the price burden. But there is a “big difference between reopening the Strait of Hormuz on paper and actually resuming the flow of oil through it,” said The Atlantic. While a small number of ships have started traversing the strait, the U.S. and Iran are “far apart on crucial issues, including Iran’s nuclear program,” which could “dissuade oil producers from resuming operations, insurance companies from reducing currently sky-high rates and ‘Ships of the World’ from starting their engines.”

Once ships do start moving again, there will be a “gradual process of resuming east-west traffic, with international actors providing additional support,” Gregory Brew, a senior analyst on Iran and oil at the Eurasia Group, told Intelligencer. But it will “take longer — probably between three and four months — for the region to return to normalcy.” Many countries in the Middle East aside from Iran have had their oil production affected. In Saudi Arabia, virtually “all oil production has been shut in” or capped, said Brew. So a “full return to prewar production and refining levels is likely to take weeks, months or even years,“ said Reuters.

What is the bigger picture?

Fas prices presumably staying high for a while could affect more than just the gas itself. Republicans are “hopeful prices will soon ease near pre-war levels” because the midterms are on the horizon, said Politico. Even if prices go down, voters may carry negative thoughts about Trump’s economy with them into the voting booth.

Other economic elements that rely on petroleum will still be affected as well, most notably airline travel. Aviation experts “have spent months warning that even if the war ended, travelers should not expect airfares to go down immediately,” said The Associated Press. Airlines often buy fuel in advance and adjust their schedules according to demand, meaning “lower oil and jet fuel prices can take weeks or months to get factored into the cost of commercial flights.”

Fuel prices remaining elevated will also affect the grocery aisle. Fuel accounts for 15% to 30% of the total price of food, according to the Independent Grocers Alliance. It “can take months for an energy shock like the one caused by the Iran war to wind through the food supply chain and raise grocery prices,” said the AP. Food, much like gas and travel, may be expensive for a long time to come.

What happened

President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to open the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran to sell oil on the global market and start unfreezing its assets. The deal also kicked off 60 days of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program and “at least” $300 billion for Iran’s “reconstruction and economic development.”

The text of the 14-point agreement was read to reporters by a U.S. official, and Iran later released a similar version. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator, said the agreement was in “force with immediate effect.”

Who said what

The truce will mostly “restore the status quo before the war,” The Associated Press said. However, the text suggests Iran might “negotiate some permanent way to exercise sovereignty” over the strait, including new shipping “fees,” after 60 days, said The New York Times. The Iranians have “emerged from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military” intact and “with much to celebrate.”

“Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation,” Iran’s lead negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on state television. The deal is “very strong,” Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in France. “Most people seem to be very happy.” Critics, including many Republicans, are “stupid and bad people,” he said. But “if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs.”

What next?

Instead of the planned signing ceremony in Geneva on Friday, Vice President JD Vance and other Trump envoys will “attend three days of negotiations with their Iranian counterparts,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The war against Iran upended the global economy and sent prices soaring. What happens now that a fragile peace has arrived?

Higher prices will “likely outlast the Iran war,” said The Associated Press. Fuel and food costs will come down slowly, airline tickets will stay pricey, and shipping costs will remain elevated as supply chain kinks are repaired after the Strait of Hormuz is reopened. There is a “good deal of uncertainty about how the reopening will unfold,” said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University, to the AP.

Rebuilding ‘could take years’

The war “permanently altered” the global economy, said Patricia Cohen at The New York Times. Many countries discovered their “profound vulnerability” to shocks from relying on imported oil for energy supply, sparking a long-term “transition to renewables like solar and wind as well as nuclear power.” And China is “poised to benefit most” from that shift.

More broadly, the world economy has been “kicked onto a path of slower growth and higher prices,” said Cohen. Countries and businesses will not “simply pick up where they left off before the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran.”

President Donald Trump long promised that oil prices would “drop like a rock” after the war ended. But that will be a “difficult promise for Trump to keep,” as the oil industry is experiencing “extraordinary practical challenges” to restoring supply chains disrupted by the war, said David Goldman at CNN. Tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz face a “bottleneck” after Iran mined the passageway, leaving only “two narrow passageways” for safe travel. Gulf States will also need time to restart wells shut off during the war because there was no way to export the oil. Plus, rebuilding oil facilities damaged by attacks “could take years.”

The end of the war may mark a “new era of U.S. inequality,” said Matt Peterson at CNBC. The conflict heightened an “already historic disconnect” between Americans who “share in the affluence” generated by AI-driven stock market gains and “those who can’t.” The second group was forced to dip into its savings to pay for the “energy crunch” caused by the war, exacerbating already simmering economic tensions. The war “didn’t create American inequality, but it hasn’t helped.”

Volatility ‘already baked in’

It “may be too late” for Republicans to benefit from lower gas prices they hope will result from the new peace, said Politico. GOP officials fear that “voter perceptions of a sour economy are already baked in” to the midterm elections outlook.

The problem is that actual relief will take time to arrive. Price volatility is “expected to last beyond the summer months” and into campaign season. Voters are unlikely to “forget about the months and months of high gas prices that added to their pain” when they go to the polls in November, said Democratic pollster John Anzalone to Politico.

What happened

Vice President JD Vance said Monday that he and President Donald Trump had “digitally” signed an interim peace agreement with Iran and expected the text of the memorandum of understanding to be released before a ceremonial signing in Geneva on Friday. The potential breakthrough “drew cautious optimism and frustration” in Congress, where “even some Republicans were reluctant to praise a deal whose terms the administration has yet to disclose,” The New York Times said. “If it’s a secret deal, then how can I take it seriously?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said to reporters.

In Israel, people “from across the political spectrum reacted angrily” to news of the deal to end the war that their government launched alongside Trump, The Associated Press said. And they directed their “fury at one man: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Who said what

It’s unclear if Trump’s deal is “one that Netanyahu will stomach — or one he will seek to derail,” The Washington Post said. Politically, he “has every incentive to continue fighting, especially in Lebanon.” For Trump, “this is his decision,” Netanyahu told reporters. For Israel, “the struggle has not ended.”

What next?

“Early signs of bumps ahead” included Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli forces would remain in Lebanon and Iran saying it “intended to charge ‘fees’ but not ‘tolls’” to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the Times said. But “for all the confusion,” oil prices “tumbled, and Iranians expressed wary optimism that a war that has killed thousands could soon end.”

Host Emmanuel Macron is expected to pull out all the stops for this week’s G7 summit to prove that this gathering of the world’s richest democracies still matters in an age of strongman politics.

In one of his last big diplomatic set pieces before his presidential term winds down next year, Macron “will seek to paper over divisions” between Donald Trump and the other six leaders, said Euronews. Top of the agenda will be trying to “forge common positions on how to end the war in Ukraine”, on the resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and on “the development of safer technologies”.

What did the commentators say?

The summit is being held in the alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains. The last time the G7 met here was in June 2003, when the US had invaded Iraq despite “the strident objections of France and Germany”, said Mark Landler, France editor of The New York Times. Then-US president George W. Bush “got chilly handshakes” but he worked hard with the other leaders “to maintain the veneer of like-minded countries uniting to confront the perils of an unruly world”. Two decades later, it’s the same town but another American war in the Middle East, and any “veneer” of unity has been “stripped away”.

The G7 is “a forum created to solve geopolitical crises but it was excluded from the US-Israeli planning for war” with Iran, said Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bloomberg’s Europe editor. And it was ignored by the US in both the diplomacy for and the timing of the peace deal, which Trump announced the day before the summit, with the signing taking place after it ends.

The truth is that while, collectively, the G7 nations – France, Italy, Germany, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan – might account for 45% of global GDP, individually, few would count as one of the world’s “biggest or indeed most powerful economies”, said Jonathan Moules in the Financial Times. And Trump would clearly rather play geopolitics with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping than waste time building consensus with leaders he views as weak.

For their part, Canada and Europe “no longer view the US as a partner on key issues such as climate change and security”, said Landler in The New York Times. And some even see America as a “threat”, given Trump’s “deepening disdain for Nato” and his repeated pursuit of Greenland. Across the group, there are “diverging opinions” on “how far to pull away from the US” but that’s certainly the direction of movement.

What next?

Expectations of what this three-day summit can achieve are “already low”, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico. “Despite all the efforts of the French presidency, the G7 format has lost much of its relevance,” an EU official told the website.

“They will talk, but I’m not sure anything will come out of it,” said a former French official. And even if it did, “any gains secured could be fleeting” with such a mercurial US president. In the end, it’s really all about keeping up appearances. As one European diplomat put it bluntly: “It will be a success if there is a family photo.”

What happened

President Donald Trump and Iran said Sunday they had reached a preliminary deal to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Neither side released the text of their memorandum of understanding, but it was slated to go into effect on Friday after a signing ceremony in Geneva and last for 60 days while they negotiate Iran’s nuclear status and the lifting of U.S. sanctions.

Who said what

The deal with Iran “is now complete,” Trump said on social media. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” He later said implementation had been pushed back to Friday “for purposes of mine removal.”

The U.S. and Iran “offered conflicting accounts” of what happens after the deal is signed, CNN said. Iran’s deputy foreign minister said negotiations would begin after the U.S. releases billions in frozen funds, a claim rejected by U.S. officials. Trump told The New York Times the agreement would assure that the Strait of Hormuz was “permanently toll-free” and that Iran “cannot develop or purchase a nuclear weapon.” In both cases, Trump “appeared to be celebrating” a “return of the prewar status quo” or “Iranian concessions that the country has not yet made,” the Times said.

What next?

The interim deal, if signed, likely “returns the region to a status that existed before the war, but with Iran having proven its ability to disrupt shipping in the strait,” The Associated Press said. Solving the Iranian nuclear impasse in 60 days is also a “tall order,” Axios said, given how “difficult it was to reach the much less detailed memorandum of understanding.”

What happened

The U.S. struck “multiple targets in Iran” for a second night “in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression,” U.S. Central Command said late Wednesday. Iran responded by firing missiles and drones at U.S. military targets in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, and announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed to all traffic.

Who said what

President Donald Trump is “pivoting back toward a war footing after months of failing to reach a lasting diplomatic resolution” that he has “repeatedly” claimed is close, The Wall Street Journal said. “We were really close to a deal, but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. Iran has “taken too long to negotiate,” he said on social media, and “now they will have to pay the price!!!”

Trump and Tehran both “seem to be looking for a way to end the conflict — if they can manage to sell it as a win at home,” The Associated Press said. Trump likely could have “concluded an initial agreement” two weeks ago if he had “accepted the terms his envoys had negotiated,” Axios said. Now, he’s “growing more and more frustrated” as Iran fails to respond to his requested changes amid “negative, even mocking media coverage about his unfulfilled promises of a deal.”

What next?

Trump said the U.S. attacks would resume Thursday if Iran did not capitulate to his demands.

Filling up your tank is pricey, and the total cost is more than just the price of gas alone. Every time you fill up, a federal gas tax and a state tax gets tacked on to each gallon of gas you put into your car.

With the price of gas skyrocketing of late, in large part because of the war Donald Trump started with Iran, the president has floated the idea of suspending the federal gas tax altogether. But how much would that really save consumers?

What is the federal gas tax?

It is an “excise tax that’s paid on any fuel that’s sold in the US.,” said Intuit TurboTax. Initially, the tax “was meant to be temporary when President Herbert Hoover signed it into law in 1932 to help pay for national defense spending,” said The New York Times. “But persistent budget deficits kept it in place, and the money it raises is used for road maintenance through the Highway Trust Fund.”

How much is the federal gas tax?

The current federal gas tax costs drivers 18.4 cents, a charge that applies per gallon of gas. For those filling up with diesel fuel, the cost is a bit higher, at 24.4 cents per gallon.

Keep in mind, that is just the federal gas tax. All states and the District of Columbia also tax motor fuels, with per-gallon gas tax rates ranging “from 8.95 cents in Alaska to 62.9 cents in California,” said the Tax Policy Center. Additionally, “10 states also levy a general sales tax or gross receipts tax on purchases of motor fuel,” which can further increase the overall cost of filling up.

How much could drivers save if the gas tax is suspended?

Will nixing those cents on the gallon actually allow drivers to save on gas? Yes, but only minimally. If the federal gas tax were to drop by the full 18.4 cents, that would mean “for a 15-gallon tank, that’s $2.70 saved,” said CBS News. “When filled up weekly, that’s about $10.80 a month.”

However, “experts say the price drop would be less than 18 cents,” said CBS News. Some of that gas tax would instead “end up staying with the gas station itself, maybe the producers or anyone else in the supply side of the gas market,” added the outlet, citing tax policy expert Adam Hoffer.

Gas taxes ultimately make up just a small portion of the amount consumers are paying at the pump. Even with the suspension of both federal and state gas taxes, “prices would still average 35% more per gallon than they were at the start of the Iran war,” said NBC News. Since the war began in late February, “prices nationwide are up more than 50%.”

What happened

Iran and Israel on Sunday night fired missiles at each for the first time since a U.S.-backed ceasefire took effect in April. Iran said it targeted an Israeli air base in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, and Israel said it retaliated by striking military targets in western and central Iran. Israel also said it intercepted a missile from Yemen.

President Donald Trump told Fox News earlier that the U.S. was not involved in Israel’s strike on Beirut’s suburbs and “I’m not happy about it.” After Iran launched missiles at Israel, Trump warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to imperil peace talks by firing back, according to several news reports. “I call all the shots,” Trump told the Financial Times. Netanyahu “doesn’t call the shots.”

Who said what

Trump told Netanyahu to stand down because “we are close to doing something good in terms of a deal,” a U.S. official told Axios, and Netanyahu “pseudo-agreed.” Israel “has responded enough, they don’t need to respond anymore,” Trump told Israeli public broadcaster Kan. “We can achieve peace after 3,000 years.” No “self-respecting country in the world would tolerate such an attack, and neither will Israel,” Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Yechiel Leiter, said on X.

What next?

The tit-for-tat attacks continued Monday morning and “threatened to drag the wider Middle East back into a regional war,” The Associated Press said.

The death of a British soldier in Iraq has refocused concerns over the UK’s military presence in the Middle East.

Lance Corporal James Stewart Freeman died in northern Iraq on Sunday during a training exercise, the Defence Secretary John Healey has said. The US has confirmed that the Briton, and an American soldier, died at a US-controlled base in Erbil, in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region near the Iranian border.

The UK’s position on the Iran war is to participate in “defensive action” only. But after Iran began retaliating against US-Israeli strikes, the UK deployed more personnel to the region, bringing the total number to about 1,000.

The heightened risk to British troops

Northern Iraq has been “one of the most dangerous places for British troops” since Iran launched retaliatory attacks on Gulf countries, said The Times. Tehran has been targeting “US strongholds” across the border in Iraq; specialist soldiers stationed in Erbil have “shot down more than 100 kamikaze drones” since the US and Israel started the war. British personnel “have been within a few hundred feet of successful Iranian strikes”. There is a “heightened risk” that Iran or its proxies could “hit coalition bases in the Middle East”.

The US has about “two dozen significant air bases, naval facilities and outposts scattered from Turkey to Oman”, said The Independent. About 50,000 US service personnel are stationed across the Middle East, many in Arab Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and the UAE – “all of which are at risk of Iranian retaliation with short-range weapons”. There are also about 200 British service personnel deployed in Iraq, involved in “training and supporting Iraqi and Kurdish security forces”.

Oman has been a “strategic hub” for the UK since the Royal Navy opened a “joint logistics support base” at Duqm port. The MoD said Duqm gives the UK a “strategically important and permanent maritime base east of Suez, but outside of the Gulf”. The UK also has two Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus: Akrotiri and Dhekelia. A string of drone attacks, presumably by Hezbollah, appeared to target the RAF Akrotiri base in March.

Britain: an unwilling participant?

“The UK’s armed forces have long had a presence across the Middle East,” said Geraint Hughes, military historian at King’s College London, on The Conversation. The UK’s naval support facility, which supports the Royal Navy’s “longstanding maritime security mission” in the Persian Gulf, has been in Bahrain since the 1980s. The base and its 300 personnel were “close to the Iranian missile strike” targeting the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in February. That shows that British military personnel “could potentially be at risk from an Iranian attack, even if indirect”.

Keir Starmer maintains that the UK will not join in “offensive action”, and that military assets are only being used to “support the defence of the Gulf states”. But Iran is “unlikely to acknowledge this distinction between ‘defensive’ operations and more ‘offensive’ ones”. As part of the Five Eyes alliance, Britain also “closely coordinates its eavesdropping operations” with the US.

Fundamentally, said Hughes, the regime in Iran is “profoundly Anglophobic”. It presumes the US and Britain will “always collaborate” – as they have done in the Middle East in the past. Iran may have “assumed British complicity in the launching of Operation Epic Fury”, and may “target the UK’s military assets in the Gulf and beyond”. Whatever Labour’s intentions, the UK “may find itself drawn into a war it had no say in starting”.

What happened

The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 215-208 to force President Donald Trump to stop military operations in the Iran war unless he gets authorization from Congress. Four Republicans joined all Democrats in passing the war powers resolution, which a bipartisan coalition pushed to the floor over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). It’s the first legislation to end the war approved in either chamber, though the GOP-led Senate advanced a similar measure in a procedural vote two weeks ago.

Who said what

The resolution’s adoption is a “remarkable rebuke” to Trump and his “handling of the conflict” from a GOP-led Congress that has “largely ceded its prerogatives” to curb his power, The New York Times said. Republicans who initially backed him on the war “have started to waver,” The Wall Street Journal said, as the conflict has “dragged on with no clear resolution in sight” and gas prices “continue to climb” while Trump’s poll numbers continue “sagging.” Later Wednesday, the House “bucked” Trump and Johnson on a “second foreign policy issue,” said The Washington Post, voting 218-204 to advance funding for Ukraine and “impose additional sanctions on Russia’s finance and energy sectors.”

What next?

The Iran war vote was “largely symbolic,” as the resolution is unlikely to gain the force of law, Politico said. But it “further stymies the White House’s political priorities” after Republicans recently “scuttled several Trump goals,” including funding his White House ballroom and paying off supporters with his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.

Donald Trump “lashed out” at Benjamin Netanyahu last night in an “expletive-laden call” with the Israeli PM about the country’s actions in Lebanon, according to US officials speaking to news site Axios. The official paraphrased Trump’s remarks as: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Trump himself described the call as “very productive”, saying he had demanded Israel abandon plans for a “major raid” and that Netanyahu had “turned his troops around” as a result.

The Israeli prime minister is caught between Donald Trump’s demands to end the bombardment of Lebanon, which threatens peace talks with Iran, and domestic pressure to escalate the campaign against Hezbollah, which has seen the Israeli army moving deeper into Lebanon and escalating air strikes.

What did the commentators say?

Since the 7 October attacks, Netanyahu has “struggled to assure Israelis he will keep them safe” against Iran and its proxies, said The Times. There was already “mounting frustration in Israel at the failure to defang Hezbollah”, said the Financial Times’ Jerusalem correspondent, James Shotter. Most polls suggest Israelis “favour more aggressive action” against the group, and Netanyahu’s “climbdown” to Trump provoked criticism from “across the political spectrum”.

National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, of his own coalition, urged him to ignore Trump’s demands and ratchet up the campaign against Hezbollah. “This is the time to tell our friend, President Trump – ‘no’,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X. Naftali Bennett, the right-wing former prime minister “widely regarded as one of Netanyahu’s main rivals” in the crucial upcoming election, accused him of “losing control over Israeli sovereignty”.

Netanyahu is also worried that any US-Iran deal will “leave Israel’s core concerns – Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, its ballistic missile program and regional proxy network – largely unaddressed”, said Tal Shalev of CNN’s Jerusalem bureau.

For more than three decades, Netanyahu has “defined himself as the leader who would confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions”. But a recent poll from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies found that 45% of Israelis believe the situation with Iran has worsened compared to before 7 October; only 31% believe it has improved. Nearly half believe Israel will probably not win, or has already lost, the war against Iran.

“It’s hard to overstate how deeply Netanyahu views this moment as a possible personal and political defeat,” Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at the institute, wrote on X. “Mr. Iran” may be forced to accept an agreement that “not only legitimises the very regime he sought to weaken but also exposes the collapse of his long-standing Iran doctrine”.

Ultimately, Netanyahu has to defend his own citizens, said The Jerusalem Post in an editorial. Northern Israel is “under constant rocket and drone fire”. Hezbollah had used the ceasefire as a “tactical opportunity” to regroup and rearm. It has “no intention of genuinely ending hostilities”; its purpose remains the destruction of Israel. The ceasefire “prioritised a quick diplomatic achievement for Washington” over the security needs of Israel; extending it further would mean “trading Israeli lives for a few more days of quiet”. The US negotiations with Iran over Lebanon “are certainly not worth the lives of Israeli citizens”.

What next?

Just hours after Trump announced the ceasefire agreement, Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon resumed. At least eight people have been killed today, according to Lebanese state media.

In a statement, Netanyahu said that he had told Trump that Israel would continue its operations. “Our position remains the same,” Netanyahu wrote. The Lebanese government, which wants Hezbollah to disarm, has begun direct negotiations with Israel today.

Iran continues to insist that any ceasefire between the US and Iran hinges on peace in Lebanon, with a senior military officer saying today that resumption of war with the US is “inevitable”.

What happened

U.S. and Iranian negotiators on Thursday reached a tentative agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and extend the ceasefire for another 60 days while thornier issues like Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions are hashed out, U.S. officials said. “We’re not there yet, but we’re very close,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters, adding that it’s “still TBD” if and when President Donald Trump “can endorse the agreement.” Tehran did not comment.

Who said what

The “emerging memorandum of understanding came as the fragile ceasefire” appeared to be “wavering,” The Associated Press said. Several “brief exchanges of fire” this week have added “pressure on negotiators,” The New York Times said. Meanwhile, Trump’s “seemingly haphazard approach to the conflict is bewildering allies” as he “veers between diplomatic dealing, military strikes and increasingly far-fetched ideas” to clinch some sort of victory.

Trump “finds himself in a bind,” Reuters said, as he “seeks to end the war” and secure a “quick solution to high gas prices” while avoiding a “potential backlash from Iran hawks” over “any concessions to Tehran.” Those “competing demands” leave him “little room to maneuver.”

What next?

Trump was “leaning toward signing off on the deal” as of Thursday afternoon, Axios said, citing senior U.S. officials. But he “wants to wait another few days” to “make sure Iranian officials would sign” and to “see how the domestic political debate around the deal plays out.” In Iran, officials “said Tehran is concerned Trump will scuttle the deal under Israeli influence,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Any path President Donald Trump takes to end the war with Iran is bound to generate a lot of dissatisfaction among his GOP supporters and advisers. Hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) continue to “press for more aggressive U.S. military action,” Daniel R. DePetris said at the Los Angeles Times, and Republicans “consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.” But Trump’s in-house political strategists want a quick end to the unpopular war to “minimize political repercussions against the Republican Party” in November’s midterm elections. Trump clearly wants the deal that he keeps promising to the U.S. public, yet accomplishing that may put him at odds with Republicans who “would consider anything short of Iran’s total surrender a failure.”

‘A bad option and a worse one’

The president “seems conflicted,” said DePetris. He’s “fed up with the current situation” but also “afraid of escalation,” said Danny Citrinowicz, of The Atlantic Council, to The New Yorker. The president is “fed up with the current situation,” but he is also “afraid of escalation,” the Atlantic Council’s Danny Citrinowicz said in an interview with The New Yorker. Escalation probably will not work “because the Iranians are not going to capitulate.” The other option to end the war, then, is a deal that provides both money and sanctions relief to the Islamic regime in exchange for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s choices are “between a bad option and a worse one.”

“Will Trump bail out Iran’s regime?” The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial. Inflation pressures at home are likely behind the president’s desire to “reopen the Strait even on Iran’s terms.” But a “bad deal would leave him worse off politically” even if domestic prices recede. Iran’s regime was beset by domestic crises that the war has exacerbated. A “half victory” by Iran now “would hurt America’s standing — and Mr. Trump’s.”

The issue is not Trump “terminating the conflict too soon,” Jacob Heilbrunn said at The Spectator. It is “that he began it in the first place.” The war is undermining both his presidency and U.S. military power, and the idea that escalation would result in Iran’s surrender “defies credulity.” The ugly truth illustrated by the Hormuz closure is that Trump “does not hold the cards.”

‘Leaving core issues unsolved’

Trump is looking to get a ceasefire deal now and “deal with the toughest problems later,” said The New York Times. He took the same approach in Gaza, where he brokered a truce last year. That effort ended the fighting but left issues of Hamas’ future and the rebuilding of Gaza to be figured out at a later date. So far that has not happened. Such an approach can be a way for Trump to “claim victory while leaving the core issues unsolved.”

“Doubling down” on the war remains a possibility, Ravi Agrawal said at Foreign Policy. But that would come with “uncertain benefits” and “much more potential pain.” We may soon find out one way or another, as the U.S. on Monday conducted strikes on Iranian positions, a sign the temporary truce is faltering.

What happened

The U.S. military on Monday night said it had “conducted self-defense strikes” on Iranian missile sites and “boats attempting to emplace mines,” interrupting a weekslong ceasefire after a weekend of positive signals about an imminent peace deal. Earlier, President Donald Trump said talks on ending the war were “proceeding nicely.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said a “large portion of the issues” had been resolved but no “agreement is on the verge of being signed.”

Who said what

The emerging framework indicates that Trump’s “mixture of threats and limited military operations” in Iran hasn’t “decisively shifted” Tehran’s negotiating stance, The New York Times said. After Republican hawks “slammed the contours of the deal,” The Wall Street Journal said, Trump “expanded the scope of his diplomatic ambition,” saying Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Muslim countries must normalize relations with Israel as part of any agreement. Trump posted Monday that it “should be mandatory” for all of them to “simultaneously” sign the Abraham Accords.

What next?

Trump’s Israel normalization push could give him a way to cast any peace deal “as a larger regional success story instead of a climbdown,” the Journal said. But it’s “highly unlikely to be heeded” by the Saudis or Qataris, given Israel’s intransigence on Palestinian rights.

A rare event occurred last week, said Fred Kaplan on Slate: President Trump posted a completely accurate observation on social media. Commenting on Iran’s response to a US ceasefire proposal, he declared it “totally unacceptable”.

He’s right about that. Iran’s statement – which included no concessions and a long list of demands, including war reparations, the lifting of all sanctions and Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz – read like something “the winner of a war would issue”. The question is, what can Trump do about it?

He has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing Iran if the regime rejects his peace proposals, but it’s hard to see what that would achieve. If the 38 days of devastating air strikes that began on 28 February failed to bring Tehran to heel, what difference would obliterating a few more targets make?

‘Wiggle out of this conflict’

“If this isn’t checkmate, it’s close,” said Robert Kagan in The Atlantic. Trump halted the bombing campaign on Iran “not because he was bored, but because Iran was striking the region’s vital oil and gas facilities”. If he’s not willing to accept the risk of more such retaliation, or to mount a full-scale ground and naval war to remove the Iranian regime, “walking away now could seem like the least bad option”.

Trump, to his credit, shows no sign of wanting to “wiggle out of this conflict” or sign some meaningless deal, said Noah Rothman in National Review. He’s rightly determined to stop Tehran getting a nuclear weapon. But to succeed, he’ll need to solicit the public’s support for this project, which requires showing a bit more patience and “humility”. He’s not going to win people over by branding all critics “stupid”, or dismissing the inflationary effects of the war. He recently claimed that he was motivated only by the nuclear issue, saying “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all”. That quote is going to be used against him in countless Democratic campaign adverts.

‘We will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger’

Trump’s rudeness and arrogance has also made Nato allies very disinclined to come to America’s aid, said Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times. Which is too bad, as the administration could really do with their help. The reality is that it’s in all of our interests to fix the Iran situation. It will be terrible for Europe if Tehran is allowed to decide who can and who can’t pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

And it will be worse still for the Arab Gulf states that rely on the channel, endangering their modernising, pluralistic reforms. “The Dubai model is precisely the one Tehran wants to destroy.” It’s understandable that Nato allies are loath to help Trump, but make no mistake: “we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger”.