What happened

The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday it had halted “all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions” with Iran “until future notice” due to “escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.” Hours earlier, the UAE had accused Tehran of firing two missiles into its territory. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called that accusation “baseless” and possibly a “false flag operation.”

Iranian Gen. Ali Abdollahi later warned “countries on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf” that “any assistance” given to the U.S. military “amounts to participation” in its war. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night threatened that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions” or other entities to “provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

Who said what

The UAE is one of Tehran’s “biggest economic lifelines,” The Wall Street Journal said, and Trump’s “effort to squeeze Iran into submission will depend heavily” on Dubai. It’s unclear if the U.S. “played a role in the embargo decision,” The New York Times said, but it was announced “hours after a call” from Trump to the Emirati leader.

What next?

If “implemented broadly,” the UAE’s trade severance could significantly harm Iran’s economy, the Journal said. But “severing those links will be difficult” and “could hurt Dubai’s role as a freewheeling global hub for commerce.”

It is “the most sought-after weapon in the world”, said CNN. But the US-made Patriot interceptor, capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, is “the focus of a global supply crunch”, caused by “liberal use in the Gulf”, often just to counter Iranian drone attacks. Ukraine, which is being “savaged” by Russia’s “near-nightly surge” of ballistic-missile attacks, has “pretty much run out”.

What makes Patriot so special?

Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target) is a mobile surface-to-air missile defence system, and “considered one of the most advanced” in “the US arsenal”, said The Independent. Nineteen other countries buy and operate the system, and its interceptors protect cities and military bases across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Combined with other defences, Patriot has this year intercepted more than 90% of Iran’s missiles and drones, according to the US Congressional Research Service. It is also “the only weapon capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine”, said the Financial Times.

Countering tactical ballistic missiles is “not a simple or cheap activity”, said The Guardian. To intercept them, a defensive system “needs to be remarkably sophisticated”, and building it involves “a huge amount of research and development”. Most Nato nations “have been happy for Washington to invest over decades to make the Patriot up to the job”.

The US “tightly guards the technical blueprints required to manufacture it”, said The Telegraph. So far, only Germany and Japan are licensed to make their own. Donald Trump has talked of letting Ukraine produce them but seems lately to have backtracked; Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “desperate for the technology”.

What is the stockpile situation?

Even before the US attack on Iran, Western allies “were nervous about depleting their own stocks by giving Patriot missiles to Ukraine”, said The Guardian. But the Iran war has now “created an acute global shortage”.

The US and its Gulf allies fired 943 rounds of Patriot batteries in the first 96 hours of the conflict, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For context, US manufacturer Lockheed Martin only makes 620 interceptors a year.

Ukraine’s Patriot supplies been exhausted, said The Guardian. Ballistic-missile intercepts “have gone from more than 70% to none”; Russia now strikes “with impunity”. In one recent bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine’s defences failed to intercept a single missile; 17 people were killed.

The situation is “so acute” that Kyiv has stopped disclosing the number of missiles Russia fires, to “avoid revealing how many it fails to intercept”, and “preserve public morale", said the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has “pleaded with” the US and European countries “to share more” of their stockpile with Ukraine. But such is the current depleted state of those stockpiles, they could take “months or years to be replenished”.

What does it mean for the world?

Almost all the countries that operate the Patriot system are “reliant on US production and supply chains, meaning any shortage in the US effectively becomes a global shortage”, said The Telegraph.

And such a shortage raises “urgent” questions about whether the US and its allies can “keep up in a new arms race with Russia, Iran, China and North Korea”. With those nations “ramping up production” of ballistic missiles, “the defence side is falling behind”.

The US, Germany and Japan can produce about 840 Patriot interceptors a year, said The Guardian. Russia produces about 750 Iskander ballistic missiles a year and “is looking to increase” that total. It can often take two to three interceptors – or more – to defeat an incoming missile. “And Iran has many more missiles in storage.”

Some analysts see America’s “ongoing strikes and conclude that stockpile concerns are overblown”, said the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “That is the wrong inference.” US-led forces can keep striking Iran because their stocks of bombs are “plentiful”. But “the strategic constraint” is the number of interceptors that “hold enemy launchers” at bay and “keep bases alive”. Bombs “let you keep fighting the war you are in”; interceptors decide if you can “afford to fight the next one”. The war in Iran is “creating a strategic illusion”: bombing continues but US readiness for a “larger, second-theatre conflict quietly bleeds out”.

Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea after the country stayed out of the war with Iran.

Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term. He also noted that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

What did the commentators say?

The US is losing the Iran conflict, so Trump has “taken the logical next step” of “punishing” a “loyal American friend”, said Tom Nichols on The Atlantic.

In fact, “scaling back the exercise” is an “insane” decision but in “Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult”, and “when things go wrong, someone must be held responsible” and, of course, “that someone is never Donald Trump”.

So the world is “witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage” because Trump “embarked on a war for personal glory”, but “what he got instead was ongoing humiliation”.

The Chinese, Russians and North Koreans will “draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy”, and notice that “when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting”.

It is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favour of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary”, wrote Konstantin Toropin and Alanna Durkin Richer on The Associated Press. It’s a particularly “sharp turnaround” from how his administration has viewed South Korea recently.

The announcement could be “part of an effort to divert attention” from the war in Iran, which has “left energy costs high”. This has become a “sensitive economic issue” ahead of the US midterm elections, said The Korea Times.

It could “trigger a debate over whether the scaling down of joint exercises could affect the allies’ deterrence” against North Korea as the “recalcitrant regime has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs”.

The “sudden” announcement “risks renewing concerns” that “US forces are too stretched to support crucial Western allies or maintain deterrence against autocracies that threaten them”, said Brad Lendon on CNN. It’s also a “gift” to Kim Jong Un at a time when he has “ramped up his own nation’s threat to global stability and offered no concessions in return”.

What next?

Experts told the BBC that the “walking back” of these joint military exercises could “carry a high cost with relatively little benefit”.

They are “essential for military forces to be ready and capable of doing their jobs”, Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told the broadcaster.

“Scaling them back” could “damage alliance coordination”, as well as “slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia”.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments and added that it hoped a favourable relationship between Washington and Pyongyang could lead to meaningful talks.

What happened

The Navy is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington from the South China Sea to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, U.S. officials said Thursday, amid growing concerns over deteriorating mental health and living conditions aboard the Lincoln after more than 260 days at sea. The ship, which hasn’t made a port call in more than 200 days, has been supporting U.S. military actions against Iran since January.

Separately, President Donald Trump signed a national security memorandum directing the Navy to “tear out a complex system for launching jet fighters from its aircraft carriers and instead go back to using steam catapults,” The Wall Street Journal said. This “would likely cost billions of dollars,” The Associated Press said, and “revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.”

Who said what

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said reports about deplorable conditions on the Lincoln have been “completely misrepresented.” But “concerns about the ship’s roughly 5,000 service members mounted” amid reports of “family members describing suicidal ideation and food shortages,” NOTUS said, and several attempts “to jump overboard.” At least one sailor did go overboard earlier this month, before being rescued, U.S. officials told CNN. “The Navy considered the incident a mental health episode.”

What next?

Trump’s directive to retrofit new aircraft carriers with steam catapults comes as the U.S. military is “trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment,” the AP said, and “as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.”

“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” said Donald Trump at the weekend, as an impasse over diplomatic discussions and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continue. By letting economic pressure mount, we are “low-keying it” with Iran, Trump told Axios, and “only semi-negotiating with them”.

In response, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that whether “lights out or lights on, Iranians showed they are professional chess players”.

With no end to the war in sight, inflation on the rise, fuel rationing and continued threats of strikes, the vast majority of the Iranian population appear not to be players, but pawns.

‘Extensive’ damage

Speaking openly about politics in Iran still “carries obvious risks”, said Nawal Al-Maghafi in The Guardian. Within Iran there is “no single narrative of the war”, with some believing it has “strengthened national unity”, and others saying it has only “deepened repression”. Nonetheless, the country has been “transformed” by the war and, as the conflict carries on, “so does the struggle to shape the legacy it will leave behind”.

Iran is facing “extensive” damage from US attacks, estimated to be “running in the hundreds of billions of dollars”, said Maziar Motamedi in Al Jazeera. But this plays into “decades-old economic structural issues” and being continually “strained by years of Western sanctions and local mismanagement”. During both world wars, the US and Israel “systematically bombed” ports, bridges, roads and other civilian infrastructure, and the country has a long history of internet shutdowns and a “cash-strapped” government.

Now, inflation has risen to “nearly 90%” in the last month, with food inflation “hitting 134%”, compared to a year earlier. Following two wars in less than a year, conflict with the US is “showing no signs of abating”.

Many Iranians feel “abandoned” by the West, said Roxana Saberi and Fatemeh Jamalpour in The Times. They believe the US and others have “largely stood by during the recent executions and the January massacre”. The crackdown since January has left Iranians with “widespread trauma” that “spans generations and classes”. The “greatest source of trauma” is the “inaction” of the international community, said head of a survivor charity Azadeh Afsahi. “If these Western countries have democracy, how come they don’t care to see that the Iranian people are suffering?”

Opinion is ‘far from uniform’

There is still a “fervour” among those who support the regime, said Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4. In June, the “streets were full” of people for national celebrations, and children fired foam darts at “targets bearing the faces of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump was by far the most popular face to fire at.” Many are still eager to “express their love of country and their hatred of the enemy”. In many ways, ironically, it “reminds you of the most fired-up Maga supporters in America”.

Yet for others, the “greatest fear” is that “the war will end with the Islamic Republic still in power”, said Kelly J. Shannon on the Atlantic Council. However the conflict ends, the “remnants of the regime” will likely become “further entrenched and even more oppressive”. The massacres after protests in January, and an April order to “speed up executions of political prisoners”, support state television warnings that “any dissidents will be killed”. In the eyes of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian population is the “enemy, and it is willing to use any and all measures to keep them in line”.

Ultimately, “Iranian society is diverse, politically complex, and far from uniform,” said Mahmoud Rasouli on the European Consortium for Political Research. “Citizens hold differing views about domestic reform, foreign relations, economic priorities, and the country’s future.”

Yet this does not translate to political influence. Both Washington and Tehran invoke the interests of the Iranian people, but never do they allow such interests to “directly determine the direction of the conflict”. This creates a “paradox”: the Iranian people are “central” to the language used around the war, but “peripheral” in the “decision-making processes that shape their future”. They are neither “invisible spectators nor the main architects of the conflict”, but the “primary stakeholders in a confrontation largely shaped by others”.

What happened

President Donald Trump left a NATO summit in Turkey last month aboard an alternate military aircraft after publicly boarding Air Force One, then secretly exiting from the plane’s opposite side in an “airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight,” The Washington Post reported Monday, citing U.S. officials and “corroborating material.” The “elaborate deception” to “spirit” Trump out of the region was prompted by a credible “threat against him and Air Force One from Iran,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

The “furtive operation” was apparently “developed in a matter of hours,” the Times said. Reporters flying with Trump were not told of the deception, thereby “making them unwitting participants in the ruse and leaving them, along with some White House staff members, to serve as unknowing decoys.” The journalists and staffers were not “made aware of the extent of the threat on Air Force One,” the Post said.

When reporters asked Trump later why they had been advised to keep their window shades closed on the flight from Ankara to Britain, he said they were “probably on a dangerous flight,” but since he’s Iran’s top target, “if I go, you go.”

What next?

Asked about the reports, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said “many enemies of America” have “their sights on” Trump and “we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”

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.”

At least 6,000 seafarers are stuck on board at least 400 tankers and cargo ships, according to the UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO). Many of the ships have been stranded in the Persian Gulf since the US-Israel 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 tonnes of fertiliser bound for South Africa, told the BBC in June. “There’s only one way out”: via the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which some 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas – as well as crucial commodities including fertiliser, aluminium and helium – once flowed from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq and Iran to global markets.

Before the war, more than 130 ships a day transited the strait, which is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. 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 each day.

How were they able to get out?

India, China, Pakistan and other nations negotiated with Iran 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 exit the strait. But that number dropped back to single digits earlier this month when the war restarted.

For the trapped sailors – mainly from India and the Philippines, as well as from nations including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria and Ukraine – the fear of death or injury is a constant. “Everyone is just exhausted,” said captain Hassan Khan, “both physically and mentally.” While trapped on ships often loaded with explosive substances, the crews have watched missiles and drones streak overhead, and at least 17 mariners have been killed in Iranian and US strikes.

Raman Kapoor, a tanker captain who had ten days left on his tour when the war erupted, watched helplessly in March as a nearby tanker exploded after being hit by an unmanned craft. One sailor died. “Everyone was so scared,” Kapoor said. “We are just seafarers. We are not trained for any war.”

What is life like on board?

Long, monotonous and very hot (daytime temperatures are usually above 40°C in July). While the crews work to ensure their ships remain seaworthy, and films 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 had 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. 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 are 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 and make excessive profits”. The engineer of one ship said the cost of 180 tonnes of water has spiked from about $2,000 to $11,000. Fees for “bottom cleaners”, removing biofouling – barnacles, mussels, algae – from ships’ hulls have shot up, too. Scammers are also taking advantage, claiming to belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, they’ve tricked shipping firms into sending hefty payments to their cryptocurrency wallets in exchange for safe passage.

Has there been any formal evacuation attempt?

A short-lived one. While a ceasefire was in effect in late June, the IMO began ushering ships through the strait’s southern and northern corridors – avoiding the central lanes where Iran had laid mines. Some 115 ships and 2,500 sailors made it out, but the US-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 some 600 miles to 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 hit the shipping industry.

What have been 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 war in Gaza – last month declared an embargo of Saudi Arabian shipping in the Red Sea, putting more commercial vessels in the line of fire. Merchant seamen 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 substantial bonuses. The war, said Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO’s secretary-general, has heightened the feeling among seafarers that they are “invisible, that they are not valued.”

A hidden workforce

Seafarers move 90% of global trade ($16.5 trillion worth of goods annually), yet they are largely invisible to the public. There are an estimated 2.6 million seafarers currently serving aboard 85,000 merchant vessels worldwide, according to the Seafarer Workforce Report 2026, published by the shipping association Bimco and the International Chamber of Shipping. More than half of all merchant mariners are provided by the “big five”: the Philippines, India, China, the Russian Federation and Indonesia; Poland, Romania and Ukraine are also important “supplier” nations. About a million are officers, and 1.5 million are ratings.

As ships have got bigger, and docks more automated, the number of sailors required per tonne of cargo has reduced drastically. Pay has become globalised, with most packages for able seamen around $1,200-$1,500 per month (the International Transport Workers’ Federation minimum basic wage is $690 per month). Around 24,500 UK merchant mariners were at sea in 2025; a collapse from the 1970s, when there were nearly 90,000 British sailors. This was driven by British-owned vessels shifting to foreign registries (known as “flagging out”) and the rise of recruitment from Asia and eastern Europe.

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.”

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.

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.”

Politics is the art of human beings solving problems without killing each other. Sometimes those efforts fail, never more memorably than in these classic political thrillers. They run the gamut from true storytelling about presidential corruption and the rescue of American diplomats in Iran to entirely fictional yet still believable stories about predatory drug companies and communist surveillance operations.

‘Foreign Correspondent’ (1940)

Hotshot New York Globe crime reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) is dispatched by his editor, Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), to Europe on the precipice of WWII to figure out what is about to envelop the continent in director Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller. There Jones discovers an espionage ring bent on selling out the U.K. and the Netherlands to their adversaries.

While the movie functions superbly as a “bold call to action to stop the looming threat of Nazism in Europe,” it also “boasts some of Hitchcock’s most memorable sequences and technical tricks, making for one set piece after another of formal virtuosity” despite the era’s technical limitations, said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)

‘The Conversation’ (1974)

Arriving the same year that a wiretapping scandal brought down the administration of President Richard Nixon, director Francis Ford Coppola’s quietly devastating thriller follows Harry N. Caul (Gene Hackman), a surveillance wizard hired to record a conversation between Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest) at the behest of the shadowy Director (Robert Duvall). Harry’s growing suspicion that the young couple is in danger fuels a twisty narrative that keeps both him and the audience guessing and appraising their relationship with technology. A film that is more than just a “product of its Watergate-era anxieties,” Coppola’s haunting masterpiece is a “chillingly prescient and masterfully crafted character study with themes that echo louder than ever in our hyper-surveilled world,” said Andy Punter at InSession Film. (Prime Video)

‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)

While it may seem quaint by today’s standards, the Watergate scandal consumed American politics for more than a year, ended Richard Nixon’s presidency and permanently decreased the public’s level of trust in the government. Director Alan J. Pakula’s film recreates the sleuthing of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) that blew the conspiracy wide open.

“All the President’s Men” mesmerizes by faithfully depicting the banal proceduralism of good journalism. A film that “intentionally underplays the enormity of the central conspiracy and eludes any histrionic moralizing,” this “subversive detective story” brilliantly “rejects mythologizing the pivotal history behind it,” said Wes Greene at Slant Magazine. (Prime Video)

‘The Official Story’ (1985)

Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Héctor Alterio) are middle-class Argentines with connections in government and business and an adopted daughter, Gaby (Analia Castro), that they adore. But Alicia soon begins to suspect that her daughter is one of the children grotesquely stolen from the desaparecidos, dissidents disappeared by the country’s authoritarian junta, and that her husband might be in on the repugnant scheme.

Director Luis Puenzo has made a “must-see film that, in light of the real events, paints a haunting picture of the cruelty humans inflict on one another” and also delicately “honors the memory of those affected by the tragedy that unfolded in Argentina,” said Matthew Jones at Philosophy in Film. (Tubi)

‘The Constant Gardener’ (2005)

“The Constant Gardener” is the first great paranoid thriller of the 21st century. When his wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), dies mysteriously, British diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) gradually discovers layers about who she really was, first suspecting her of being unfaithful and then unraveling a conspiracy to test a new drug on unwitting African patients. Helmed by the great Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”), it is a “brainy thriller” whose “visuals create an overwhelming sense of the world gone mad, the world falling down around the hero just as he's beginning to understand the way it works,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘The Lives of Others’ (2006)

At once both chilling and moving, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has created what may stand as the most enduring indictment of the 20th century authoritarian surveillance state. Set in East Germany near the end of its communist regime, it is about Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), who begins surveilling a prominent playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and his mistress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

The monastic Wiesler eventually comes to believe Dreyman is harmless and in the process doubts the very foundations of autocracy itself. A film that is “alert to the Kafkaesque absurdity of everyday life” in communist regimes, it “has a maturity and breadth of vision rarely found in a debut feature,” said Geoffrey Macnam at Sight and Sound. (Prime Video)

‘Argo’ (2012)

Ben Affleck directs and stars in this zippy thriller about the clandestine efforts to exfiltrate six American diplomats who managed to escape before they became hostages at the U.S. embassy during the Iranian Revolution. Affleck stars as CIA officer Tony Mendez, who concocts a creative cover story about how the diplomats are in Iran working on a Canadian science-fiction film. Affleck “displays a fearlessness when it comes to mixing genre” in this “part-comic, part-thriller narrative” whose mostly-but-not-entirely-true twists and turns “ensure your nails are down to the quick by the end credits,” said Amber Wilkinson at Eye for Film. (Prime Video)

‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’ (2013)

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s haunting “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” had to be smuggled into the Cannes Film Festival to protect its cast and crew, who remain anonymous to this day. It follows two government assassins, Khosrow and Morteza, who are tasked with tracking down, torturing and killing a group of dissidents suspected of distributing a manuscript.

That document pertains to what became known in Iran as the “Chain Murders,” a series of assassinations of intellectuals and dissidents in the 1990s. A “harrowing masterpiece,” it is an “unflinching look at creative oppression” that stands as an “entirely singular film experience,” said Joshua Brunsting at CriterionCast. (Prime Video)

‘Official Secrets’ (2019)

The combination of arrogance and doctored intelligence that led the United States and its allies into the 2003 Iraq War is almost made for Hollywood. In “Official Secrets,” real-life British intelligence officer Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) uncovers evidence of a joint British-American conspiracy to spy on and then pressure diplomats from countries on the U.N. Security Council to secure their votes for a resolution authorizing the war.

Martin Bright (Matt Smith) and Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) are journalists at The Observer who wrestle with the implications of publishing the story. The film turns a “historical footnote with potent resonance” into a “compelling tale of injustice on an individual and global level,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Netflix)

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.

In politics, first impressions can mean a great deal and Donald Trump has heaped praise on Andy Burnham for his plans to fast-track oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, the president said “the People of Aberdeen” are “dancing in the streets” because Burnham said “he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil!” As ever with Trump, this was playing fast and loose with the truth, as Burnham is yet to commit to any new drilling in the North Sea.

But after Trump gave Burnham an initial thumbs-up, “talk in DC turned to Ed Miliband’s role as the most contentious figure”, said The Times’ Katy Balls. Miliband has been an outspoken critic of Trump in the past, which is “likely to put him on the back foot with an increasingly hostile US administration”, said Bloomberg.

What did the commentators say?

There’s an “opening” for a new prime minister who is “liberal, centre-left, internationalist” and who “recognises the world has changed”, said Steve Bloomfield on The New Statesman.

Burnham must “find a way to deal” with the “fracturing” of the special relationship, and having “seen how others have fared”, with Trump, he “should find it easier”.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani calls Trump a “fascist” but still works with him on “areas where they agree”, while Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese “took the risk of standing up to Trump” and “subsequently won elections they were predicted to lose”. So “standing up to Trump is not only morally right”, it’s “electorally effective”.

Economic, intelligence and defence ties “run deep”, so many believe it’s “better to stay on the right side of Trump – however tempting it might sometimes be to give him a (metaphorical) kick”, but you don’t want to be a “total toady”, said Anushka Asthana on Channel 4 News.

On energy, Burnham “seems prepared to move the rhetoric” with the suggestion he will green-light two oil and gas drilling projects in the North Sea. He’s promised “help on the Strait of Hormuz” but what if Trump breaches international humanitarian law? Diplomats and advisers know “full well” that the unpredictable president could “change his mind, at any moment”.

Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump “turned from warm to cold”, said Andrew Buncombe on The i Paper. Burnham will “run into the same problems” on “issues that have created friction”, including Britain’s decision to cede control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, its refusal to get involved in the war against Iran, and “how far to proceed with drilling for oil in the North Sea”.

The PM “only has a limited way to try and influence how Washington acts” and he should remember that his first call with Trump was “just that – the first talk”. If the “rest are positive”, then Burnham “will turn out to be a very lucky man”.

What next?

Starmer was a former prosecutor seen as a “cool-headed technocrat, unruffled by the insults as long as he was making his case”, said Steve Hendrix in The Washington Post. But Burnham has “honed a warmer, plain-spoken touch” which “could be an asset” with a president who “responds to personal chemistry in ways he doesn’t respond to formal diplomacy”.

The new PM has “made clear that his instincts, and his mandate, are relentlessly domestic”, so the new No. 10 will “have its eyes fixed inward”, not “across the Atlantic”. Trump and the rest of the “foreign policy inbox” is “expected to be substantially subcontracted” to the foreign secretary.

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.”

For months, equity markets have been able to treat higher oil prices, higher government bond yields and vast AI costs “as separate problems arriving on different days”, said Stephen Innes on Investing.com. But Wall Street is now finally on “the collision course it had spent weeks pretending would never happen”.

The catalyst was the Strait of Hormuz, where the standoff between Washington and Tehran entered a dangerous new phase, pushing the price of Brent crude up by more than 10% to $85/barrel, the highest in four weeks. For investors, central bankers and governments, the spectre of an inflation shock that many had hoped was behind us has hoved back into view.

No shelter

“I’m left wondering why the smart money failed to hedge against what was always a highly probable breakdown of this fragile ceasefire,” said Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. “The interim peace deal was clearly resting on a knife’s edge, yet investors chose the comfort of short-term optimism over geopolitical probability. Again.” Iran isn’t the only conflict vexing the oil market, said Javier Blas on Bloomberg. “What matters for Main Street” isn’t the cost of crude, but of petrol, diesel and jet fuel. On that score, the concurrent escalation of the Ukraine War in recent weeks is troubling, given shortages in global refining capacity, in Russia and beyond.

The difficulty investors face is finding shelter from these geopolitical crises, said James Mackintosh in The Wall Street Journal. “In the old investment paradigm, government bonds acted as shock absorbers, with prices rising and yields falling when the economy takes a hit.” But that doesn’t work when shocks are inflationary – particularly “when government debt levels are so high”.

Challenge for Burnham

Bonds have suffered a painful sell-off on both sides of the Atlantic, with prices of benchmark ten-year UK gilts spiking above 5% for the first time since May. Bond yields have broadly tracked oil prices since the start of the Iran conflict, said Mehreen Khan in The Times. And, once again, the UK – highly exposed to global energy and food prices – is vulnerable. Andy Burnham’s economic inheritance as the incoming PM is suddenly looking much more troubling.

“Rising gilt yields eat into the government’s fiscal buffers” by raising the cost of servicing debt, and the unknown identity of the new chancellor is adding to the jitters in debt markets. Some investors are already voting with their feet. Asset manager Rathbones has slashed its gilts holding, as a hedge against potential “fiscal irresponsibility” – out of fear that Burnham “does a Truss”. Given an increasingly fragile fiscal backdrop, more may follow.

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”.

Tensions between Iran and the US are ratcheting up a new notch. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, has said “revenge” for the death of his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out”. Donald Trump has called Iranian leaders “scum”, and said any attempt by Tehran to assassinate him will be met by bombings “at levels they’ve never seen before”.

Meanwhile, both countries have renewed air strikes, as Iranian hardliners insist on control of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, “their principal source of strategic leverage”, said US-based security think tank The Soufan Center. It seems the stage is set “for a return to major combat”.

What did the commentators say?

In “a high-stakes gamble”, Iran is “playing what it believes is its key card”: announcing the closure of the strait “in an attempt to pressure Trump to bend to its will”, said the Financial Times. Its “belligerent” stance, and its attacks on ships and on US-aligned Gulf states, poses “the most severe test yet” of the fragile ceasefire. “It also lays bare” the “hawkish mindset that has taken hold in Tehran”.

The leadership that has emerged in Iran since Khamenei’s death “looks keener to project strength” and wear down Trump “through military pressure, rather than diplomacy”, said The Economist. There has been a noticeable “shift in the regime’s centre of gravity” towards the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which “has accelerated Iran’s transition from a theocracy to an ambitious nationalistic state dominated by military men”.

Their aim is “preventing the erosion of their perceived influence”, Sanam Vakil, Middle East director at UK think tank Chatham House, told the FT. “They feel they have to do this to survive.” They are wagering that “Trump is risk-averse” and that they can “absorb” some “low-level conflict. But this is a quagmire.”

The recent trading of strikes “raises questions for the future of the region”, said The Soufan Center. While Tehran seems “willing to suffer the consequences of escalation, neither they nor Trump appear to want to return” to all-out war. “Each side prefers a ‘no war, no peace’ status”, even while a return to negotiations looks “bleak”.

What next?

The conflict has “descended into a mutually unsatisfying stalemate”, with Washington “unable to topple the Islamic Republic” and Tehran “unable to force the US to vacate its backyard”, said Ali Vaez on Foreign Affairs. US-Iranian tensions are “worse than ever before” but, “paradoxically”, this may be “a moment of opportunity” for both countries “to repair their broken relationship”.

Now that it is “plainly apparent” that neither side can “deliver a knockout blow to the other” or sustain “unmanaged hostility”, there are “decision-makers” in each nation who “have started looking for ways to co-exist”.

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.”

As Iran’s religious, political and military elite turned out to say farewell to the country’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one figure was conspicuously absent.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as the de facto head of the Islamic Republic, has not been seen in public since the joint US-Israeli air strikes that killed many of his close family members and decapitated the regime on the first day of the war.

Khamenei, who is said to have been seriously injured in the attack, is believed to be in hiding due to Israeli threats to his life, but his absence has “raised questions about who is really running the country, and allowed extraordinary open divisions to fester”, said Farnaz Fassihi in The New York Times.

What did the commentators say?

For 36 years, “the question of who ultimately ruled Iran had one answer”, said Joshua Keating for Vox. While the country has an elected president and legislature, “whenever the US confronted Iran, American policymakers knew it was Khamenei who would make the final decision.”

But now “they’re no longer so sure”. With the sheer number of senior figures who have been killed over the past four months, “there’s something of a power vacuum in Tehran right now”.

In the void left by the killing of a supreme leader “who exerted absolute power over all important decisions”, the conservatives have “split” and generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have “consolidated power, effectively running the country”, said Fassihi.

With the power of the new supreme leader greatly diminished, and various factions and facets of the state jockeying for influence, the question now is just who is actually in charge of the Iranian system.

“The system is in control of the system,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East program at Chatham House, told Vox. “I know we all want to think that there’s one individual that has power or authority. There’s no one commander in chief. It is a system that is commanding collectively for the time being.”

If the week-long funeral for Ali Khamenei represents a “calculated projection of strength by a regime determined to demonstrate continuity and resilience despite an extraordinary crisis”, it has done little to quell questions “over the country’s political succession”, said France24.

What next?

Amid the jostling for power, Khamenei’s funeral is undoubtedly a “big moment”, said BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams: a “grand reminder that the old guard has given way to the new. And with the new faces comes a new approach with its own implications.”

The new leadership is not made up of ageing ideologues who emerged in opposition to the Shah and subsequently the US, “but of generally post-revolutionary leaders ruthlessly focussed on preserving the state and willing to act more decisively than their predecessors”, said Vali Nasr, professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“A whole new generation has taken over. They have a very clear agenda. They managed the war and now they’re going to manage the peace as well.”

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.

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 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.

Babak Anvari’s Bafta-winning film “Under the Shadow” (2016) tells the compelling – and frightening – story of a woman living in Tehran at the height of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, whose grip on reality starts to fragment after her doctor husband is sent to the front, and her apartment is hit by missiles.

This taut and nerve-shredding stage adaptation, by Carmen Nasr, “could scarcely be timelier”, said Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian. “When Shideh and her neighbours huddle together in their bomb shelter, cursing Europe and the US for abandoning them, this could be a livestream from 2026.”

Director Nadia Latif’s stylish, well-acted production honours the original film – and its paranormal elements – but “escapes its shadow”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph.

For Shideh (Leila Farzad), life has become a “form of entombment”. With the action confined to a single room and a bomb shelter, we share her “dementing claustrophobia” – and her horror at the idea that her home has been invaded by a djinn, or malevolent ancient spirit.

There are several jump scares as the atmosphere becomes increasingly unnerving. In a superb performance, Farzad conveys the “surreal, terrifying ordeal of living in a war zone and the misery of having your life ripped away by forces beyond your control”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Her Shideh is “truculent, grieving” and consumed by cold rage.

The piece is beautifully realised by Latif and designer Ben Stones, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. A bomb blast, and the shock of “inexplicable happenings” in the apartment, are magnificently conjured. This production is “intriguing and always watchable”. But as the djinn becomes embodied, the delicate balance between the real and the supernatural starts to falter. “The play’s shocks begin to stray into ‘Woman in Black’ territory, and its shifts in tone become too jarring.”

Some special effects simply “work best in a multiplex”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Still, this intriguing play “succeeds in taking us into an unsettling realm; one where ideology, rather than a ghost, is the enemy”.

Almeida Theatre, London N1. Until 4 July

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.

When a coalition of “clerics, leftists, students, nationalists and secular intellectuals” launched the Iranian Revolution in 1979, they were united less by a shared vision than “a shared rejection” of the Shah’s rule, said Reza Aslan in The New York Times. And as Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati observe in “Stolen Revolution”, “egalitarian ideals and immense hopes” were snuffed out as “the religious regime hunted, expelled and jailed its former allies”.

That is the story of this “quietly devastating” book, which charts Iran’s transformation over the past half century into a “mafia state”. The authors tell it through the lives of six Iranians, including a revolutionary ideologue, a tech entrepreneur, and two women at the forefront of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

“The result is one of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years, capturing not only the machinery of repression, but the fragile forms of hope that survive beneath it.”

Once in power, Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, swiftly “abandoned his revolutionary promises”, said Dina Nayeri in The Guardian. All talk of prosperity ended (our saints “gave up their lives for Islam, not for economics”, he intoned). Conservative dress codes were enforced, and a new military police force – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – was entrusted with preserving the revolution.

While the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) marked a more liberal, “reformist era”, the hardliners regained control when he left office and have ruled the country ever since.

“Stolen Revolution” is both an “unwavering account of the regime’s absurdities” and a “meticulously researched primer on modern Iran”.

Parts of it will “move some readers to tears”, said Justin Marozzi in The Times. The authors describe the fates of Kosar Eftekhari and Rozhin Yousefzadeh, who joined the “protests that erupted after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini”, a young woman arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. “Eftekhari had her right eye shot out by a smirking plain-clothes officer”; Yousefzadeh was thrown into the “filthy and dangerous Qarchak women’s prison”.

It was ostensibly in the hope of ending such tyranny that the US and Israel launched their war against the regime. This “blistering” book suggests that, on the contrary, the conflict will only entrench its most hardline elements further – and that it will prove to be “yet another US blunder in the Middle East, [and] one that will cost Iranians, and the rest of us, dearly”.

“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” said Donald Trump on social media after he announced the signing of an interim peace deal with Iran on Sunday. Under the agreement – which Iran acknowledged included a 60-day negotiating period for a final deal – the president said that following retrieval of mines, there would be a “toll free opening” of the Strait of Hormuz.

But many of the finer details remain “unclear”, said The Guardian. There are questions over the “exact timing of the reopening of the maritime route, who will oversee safe passage and whether any conditions will be applied”.

Financial markets have welcomed the announcement, but further volatility could yet hit people’s pockets.

Have oil prices changed?

The price of oil fell to about $83 (£62) per barrel following Sunday’s announcement, its “lowest since the early days of the war”. Then on Tuesday it dipped below $80. In February, before the first missiles struck Iran, each barrel cost around $73. The price peaked at around $120 at the height of the conflict.

Prices are expected to fall in the wake of a prolonged ceasefire, and there are “real grounds for optimism”, said Politico. Damage to oil-specific infrastructure has been “limited”, meaning it could take “as little as six weeks to resume outflows”.

“So that’s the energy crisis sorted, right?” Not so fast.” A combination of damage to wider infrastructure and the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has meant roughly 12 million fewer barrels of oil have been produced each day. And they “won’t magically reappear on the market even if the pact holds”.

Will this continue?

The “first big test” of the deal will be whether shipping companies will have enough “confidence” to return the use of the strait to pre-war levels, said The New York Times. If successful, this will free the 250 tankers and 330 cargo ships trapped in the Gulf, according to the BBC, and transport oil around the world. Oil and gas producers in the Gulf nations would then need to re-establish “wells, refineries and other infrastructure”.

Even if all of that were to materialise, European and Asian countries who have historically depended on oil from the region “will face a long wait”. Processing oil takes considerable time. “It is unlikely that the prices of gasoline, diesel and other fuels will return to pre-war levels anytime soon.”

What about inflation?

Despite air fares “surging” and fuel costs “tipping higher”, UK inflation remained at 2.8% in May, said The Independent. This was a “surprise” to economists, who had widely predicted a rise to 3% and “perhaps even beyond” due in part to the war in Iran.

Remaining at this level could imply that the “cost-of-living squeeze will not play out as badly as had been anticipated” earlier this year, even if the “Iran war sent energy costs spiralling”. However, prices are set to rise again later in 2026, leaving savers to make sure their investments are earning an interest rate “well above the rate of inflation”.

What does this mean for consumers?

Food prices in the UK look to be rising more slowly. Should the Strait of Hormuz open freely, fertiliser, which has “soared in costs” and put pressure on farmers, could fall substantially, said the BBC. Jet fuel has already seen a “small fall in price”, with Northwest Europe jet fuel trading at $1,033 (£780) per tonne, compared with $831 pre-conflict and around $1,840 at its peak.

How will businesses be affected?

Beneath the “encouraging headlines” about inflation control, there is a “hidden crisis for businesses”, said The Telegraph. The Iran war triggered one of the largest energy shocks in history, meaning businesses were “swallowing soaring costs to spare shoppers”.

“Input rises” for producers climbed by “8.7% year on year in May”, larger than the 7.9% in April and the highest in more than three years. On the bright side, this means the economy may avoid a dreaded “wage-price spiral”, but conversely lower margins could lead to increased pressure on the employment market.

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.”

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.

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.

Israel and Iran have traded tit-for-tat strikes, in defiance of Donald Trump, for the first time since a fragile ceasefire was agreed in April.

The Israeli Air Force confirmed hitting military targets in western and central Iran, in response to Iranian missile attacks on its own air bases. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had attacked the air bases after an Israeli strike on an alleged Hezbollah site in southern Beirut.

This escalation is a “major test for negotiations”, said CNN. Donald Trump said both sides must “stop shooting”, and told the media he had urged Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate to the Iranian attack. “We are very close to a final deal with Iran,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 News. “It is going to be a good deal. I don’t want it to blow up because of what is happening now.”

What did the commentators say?

Tensions between Iran and Israel have been heightening over Lebanon, said Maziar Motamedi at Al Jazeera. The Lebanese government was alarmed by Israeli troops crossing its Litani River last month. And, despite reports that Trump had convinced Netanyahu not to target Beirut, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned last week that “there will be no calm in the region” if Israel continued its occupation of southern Lebanon. The Israeli strike on the alleged Hezbollah site crossed “an unofficial red line for Tehran”.

Israel’s decision to strike back at Iran was “deliberate”, said Alex Winston in The Jerusalem Post. “It could not afford to leave unanswered” Tehran’s retaliation for the strikes in Lebanon. Had it not responded, “the message to Tehran would have been pretty clear”: “any Israeli response to Hezbollah could be framed by Tehran as a provocation, allowing Iran to fire directly at Israel while assuming that American diplomatic pressure would keep Jerusalem’s hands tied”.

Netanyahu’s decision to defy Trump’s instructions underscores a relationship that is increasingly at odds on how to prosecute the war on Iran, said The Wall Street Journal. “Under pressure from his political allies and the opposition to respond to the Iranian missile barrage”, the Israeli PM’s order to resume direct attacks on Iran “threatened to escalate a conflict that has been largely contained”.

What next?

Iran has now announced “a halt to the operations of the armed forces”. Mediation efforts “are naturally continuing”, said Esmail Baghaei, spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry, earlier today, but he warned that Iran believes the US “bears responsibility for the Israeli regime’s aggression”. No one would believe that the Israeli regime would take action “without coordination with the US,” he said. America will “be responsible for the consequences of any escalation in tensions”.

Tehran has also used its Houthi proxies in Yemen to threaten a blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait if Israel continues to escalate its use of force. The route is “another vital artery connecting major trade routes between Europe, Asia and the Arab world”, said CNN; closing it “would compound the worldwide economic pressure” generated by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

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”.

When is a ceasefire not a ceasefire?

Agreements have been announced in recent months “to great fanfare” in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, said PBS News, yet fighting continues. So the term “ceasefire” is “rapidly losing its meaning”.

What is happening?

Israeli forces have captured more territory in Gaza, contravening the US-brokered truce with Hamas in October, and at least 900 Palestinians have died in strikes, according to the strip’s ministry of health. Israel has also been increasingly bombarding Lebanon and making deeper incursions across the border, while Hezbollah has kept up rocket fire into northern Israel. The US and Iran have also continued to trade fire since the agreement in April, as they try to reach a permanent truce.

Advantages of an imperfect ceasefire

Ceasefires “often seem to be just smoke and mirrors that precede another round of fighting”, but “even when they don’t hold, they still have value”, said academics Avishay Ben-Sasson-Gordis and Simon Frankel Pratt on Foreign Policy.

They can “establish new bargaining baselines that, over multiple iterations, can become a ladder to a more permanent peace agreement”. The Northern Ireland peace process was primarily driven by two ceasefires in 1994, which ultimately paved the way for the decisive Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Even a partial decrease in fighting can save lives, reduce injuries and limit the destruction of infrastructure and homes. A ceasefire that cuts violence by 50% is often preferable for many than no ceasefire at all.

Truces can also help with humanitarian access because aid organisations can deliver food, medicine, fuel and other supplies to affected populations. Civilians may be able to evacuate dangerous areas. Even brief pauses in fighting can enable exchanges of detainees, recovery of bodies, or arrangements for missing persons. Meanwhile, observers can assess conditions on the ground.

What are the disadvantages?

Sceptics argue that imperfect ceasefires allow forces to regroup militarily. They can be exploited for propaganda, or they may create a false impression that a conflict is being resolved.

So “cynics begin to see ceasefires as jokes from the start, while the naive fall into a cycle of optimism and despair”, said Ben-Sasson-Gordis and Frankel Pratt. Diplomacy “starts to look false and pointless”.

An imperfect ceasefire can create long-term problems if policymakers do not have a clear objective. After the first Gulf War in 1991, the US stumbled into a “decade-long trap of its own making”, said academics Daniel Chardell and Samuel Helfont on Foreign Affairs.

Washington “crafted a cease-fire agreement” with Iraq that led to ongoing tensions, repeated military confrontations and a long-term containment strategy rather than a durable peace. Subsequent US presidents were unwilling to accept Saddam Hussein remaining in power or fully commit to removing him.

The US enforced no-fly zones, sanctions, military patrols and repeated air strikes, effectively becoming a policeman. Meanwhile, international support eroded and frustration grew in Washington. Ultimately, the ceasefire became a stepping stone to the larger war in 2003.

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.

Iran has signalled that any peace deal must include an end to Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But it’s unclear if the US could get Israel to agree to that, even if it wanted to.

Despite last month’s ceasefire, Israel has continued to pound Lebanon with airstrikes, killing at least 608 people, according to the World Health Organization. Yesterday, in response to a Hezbollah attack on its military posts, Israel launched one of its most intense waves of bombings, saying it had hit more than 100 Hezbollah targets. “I have ordered an even greater acceleration of our operations,” Benjamin Netanyahu said. “We will intensify our blows, increase our firepower, and we will crush them.”

What did the commentators say?

“Lebanon is in danger of becoming an overlooked but increasingly deadly sideshow”, as both Israel and Hezbollah violate the ceasefire, said Tom Kington in The Times. Israeli troops are occupying swathes of southern Lebanon, and won’t withdraw unless Hezbollah disarms. But the Iran-backed group says it won’t stop attacking Israeli positions until Israel withdraws. “The result has been a stand-off.”

Hezbollah is “waiting for a cue from Iran, which in turn depends on how Iran’s talks with the US go”, Michael Young, of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, told The Times. “If Iran emerges stronger from its clash with the US, Hezbollah will feel reinvigorated.” They will “be able to say they resisted and claim victory”. Meanwhile, Israel will be trying “to torpedo any deal”.

Washington is “pressuring” Lebanon’s leaders to disarm Hezbollah or else “face more Gaza-style destruction”, said Rami G. Khouri, a policy analyst at the American University of Beirut, in Al Jazeera. It has also “tied financial support” for the country’s reconstruction to “Beirut’s compliance with US-Israeli terms”. The Lebanese government faces “a disgruntled, deeply impoverished population, exasperated by relentless Israeli attacks”.

April’s ceasefire agreement heralded “weakened US-Israeli positions in the region”, as well as dealing “deep political blows” to Netanyahu and gifting “new diplomatic leverage” to Iran and Hezbollah. Having survived their “existential” battles and now pressing for permanent ceasefires, they could “weaken Israeli postures and help reshape Lebanon’s internal dynamics”.

“But far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition are pushing him to challenge” Donald Trump on the “ceasefire with Hezbollah”, said The Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison. “It is time for the prime minister to bang on Trump’s table and inform him that we are returning to war in Lebanon,” said Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, on social media. “There is an urgent need to put an end to the threat posed by Hezbollah’s explosive drones,” the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, posted on Telegram. Hezbollah has “ignored repeated requests to stop firing at Israel”, a US official told Reuters. Israel will never “​passively absorb attacks on its forces and civilians”.

But Tehran won’t accept such attacks on its proxy, either, Danny Citrinowicz, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, told The New Yorker. Lebanon is of “real strategic importance” to Iran; Hezbollah is “a vital element” of its “so-called Axis of Resistance”. So Trump “has a mountain to climb”. If he wants an agreement with Iran, he will have to “force Netanyahu’s hand on Lebanon”.

What next?

On Friday, delegations from Israel and Lebanon will meet for direct talks in the US, in preparation for further negotiations on 2 and 3 June.

The shaky US-Iran ceasefire, meanwhile, is under increasing strain: Iran has said US strikes near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday were a “gross violation”, and validated its “deep suspicion”. The US said its attacks were “defensive”.

But “even if Lebanon is part of a US-Iran peace deal, the Lebanese people will be wary”, said Kington in The Times. After all, April’s Pakistan-brokered ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran, supposedly included Lebanon – but Israel “denied this was the case and launched 100 attacks in a few minutes”.

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.