US\u00a0President Donald Trump vowed to retain military assets in the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0until a peace deal with Iran is reached and warned of a major escalation in fighting if it failed to comply, as oil prices rose on concerns over supply and restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Trump\u00a0said in a social media post\u00a0that US\u00a0ships, aircraft and personnel with additional ammunition and weaponry would remain in place to destroy, if necessary, “a substantially degraded enemy”, but expressed confidence that a lasting deal would be agreed and followed.<\/p>\n
“If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the ‘Shootin\u2019 Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before,” Trump said, adding that contrary to “fake rhetoric”, Iran had agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
“In the meantime, our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”<\/p>\n
However, the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, when speaking about their 10-point plan for peace on X, did not include any clause on nuclear materials or weapons<\/p>\n
Though both the United States and Iran declared victory in a five-week-old war that has killed thousands of civilians, mostly because of Israeli and US strikes in Iran and Lebanon, their\u00a0core disputes\u00a0remained unresolved, with each side sticking to competing demands for a deal that could shape the Middle East for generations.<\/p>\n
Israeli military says it has killed Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem<\/p>\n
Israel said on Thursday\u00a0it had killed Naim Qassem, the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah,\u00a0in a strike on Beirut overnight.<\/p>\n
His death, if confirmed by Hezbollah, deals another big blow to the armed group and to Tehran as it is one of Iran’s main allies in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
By retaliating against Israel on March 2 for their strikes and incursions into Lebanon over the past year, Israel forced Hezbollah’s hand and it entered\u00a0the war\u00a0in the region on Iran’s side, two days after the United States and Israel began airstrikes against Iran.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah attacked Israel after Iranian\u00a0Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei\u00a0was killed on the first day of the war. Israel said it would respond forcefully and has since carried out airstrikes that have killed more than a thousand people.<\/p>\n
Israel had already weakened the group’s military capabilities and assaulted it with a series of “assassinations” since the\u00a0Gaza genocide began on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
Despite a US-backed ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in 2024 after more than a year of fighting, Israel has carried out regular strikes against what it has claimed are Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, resulting in mass civilian casualties and deaths.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah refused to disarm under a US\u00a0proposal aimed at extending the ceasefire. Qassem threatened Israel directly, saying missiles would fall on it if it resumed a broad war on Lebanon.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Israel killed Qassem’s predecessor, veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike on a Beirut suburb, the climax of a conflict that began when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions at the border in support of the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah named Qassem, who had been a senior figure in the group for more than 30 years, as its new chief a month after Nasrallah’s killing.<\/p>\n
The group was created in 1982 by Muslim Shi’ite militants in Lebanon and backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to fight what was then the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Spain to reopen its embassy in Tehran<\/p>\n
Spain is reopening its embassy in Tehran in hopes of achieving peace in the US-Israeli war on Iran, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“I’ve instructed our ambassador in Tehran to return, to take up his post again and reopen our embassy, and for us to join in this effort for peace from every possible quarter, including from the Iranian capital itself,” Albares said.<\/p>\n
US Charg\u00e9 d\u2019Affaires in Pakistan reviewed arrangements with Ministry of Interior<\/p>\n
The US\u00a0Charg\u00e9 d\u2019Affaires in Pakistan visited the Ministry of Interior to review arrangements for the US\u00a0Vice President’s visit\u00a0to Islamabad.<\/p>\n
Iran says talks ‘unreasonable’\u00a0amid Israeli strikes<\/p>\n
Trump’s latest post followed the largest\u00a0attack of the war by Israel on Wednesday that killed more than 250 civilians, including women and children, in Lebanon, prompting a warning from Iran’s lead negotiator that Israel’s relentlessly attacking Lebanon and Washington’s insistence on Tehran abandoning its “nuclear ambitions” could jeopardise talks to forge a\u00a0permanent peace deal.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Truce under strain as Israel plays spoiler<\/p>\n
“In such a situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations were unreasonable,” Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammed Bager Qalibaf, said in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Oil prices\u00a0climbed\u00a0on Thursday with investors concerned about the fragility of the truce and elevated geopolitical risks over Middle East supply, with doubts that restrictions in the\u00a0Strait of Hormuz\u00a0would soon ease.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures\u00a0were up $1.96, or 2.07%, at $96.71 a barrel at 0325 GMT, while US\u00a0West Texas Intermediate crude rose $2.6, or 2.75%, to $97.01 a barrel, a day after both benchmarks had fallen sharply on the ceasefire announcement.<\/p>\n
Brent crude and West \u2060Texas Intermediate remain far above the $70.75 and $65 a barrel before the joint US-Israel onslaught began.<\/p>\n
Asian share markets were in a\u00a0sober mood\u00a0on Thursday amid unease about the ceasefire, with Japan’s Nikkei\u00a0lingering either side of flat, having jumped 5.4% the previous session and the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan easing 0.7%.<\/p>\n
On Wall Street, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures were both off 0.2% as Wednesday’s surge ended, and in Europe, the 50 futures eased 0.1%, DAX futures fell 0.5%, while FTSE futures were up 0.4%.<\/p>\n
Contrasting agendas<\/p>\n
Israel’s slew of aerial bombardments on Wednesday threw a wrench\u00a0in regional truce efforts, with conflicting messages from Tehran and Washington on the scope of the ceasefire and sharply contrasting agendas for peace talks set to start on Saturday in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The United States and Israel say Lebanon is not included in the agreement, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said a halt in hostilities in Lebanon was an essential condition of Tehran’s deal with Washington.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah said it\u00a0fired rockets\u00a0early on Thursday at the small kibbutz of Manara, citing what it described as Israel’s ceasefire violations, warning of more until there was a halt in “Israeli-American aggression”.<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s foreign ministry condemned the Israeli operations on Thursday, which it said “undermine international efforts to establish peace and stability”.<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron earlier said Lebanon “must be fully covered” by the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Iran’s delegation for the talks is due to arrive in Islamabad on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
“Despite scepticism of Iranian public opinion due to repeated ceasefire violations by the Israeli regime … Iranian delegation arrives tonight in Islamabad for serious talks based on 10 points proposed by Iran,” Ambassador Reza Amiri Moghadam said in a post on X on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Italy PM Meloni said\u00a0reopening of Strait of Hormuz is vital<\/p>\n
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday that restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz is a vital interest for her county and the whole of the European Union.<\/p>\n
“We have come within a step of the point of no return, but we now face a fragile prospect of peace that must be pursued with determination,\u201d Meloni told parliament, adding that Italy condemns any violation of the ceasefire and is calling for a permanent halt to hostilities.<\/p>\n
Freedom of navigation means navigation must be free<\/p>\n
There was scant sign that the\u00a0Strait of Hormuz\u00a0was open in any meaningful way since the truce agreement, with Iran still asserting its control over the conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply, and setting\u00a0tolls\u00a0for safe passage.<\/p>\n
Read more:\u00a0Strait of Hormuz ‘Iran’s nuke’<\/p>\n
Tehran’s newly demonstrated ability to cut off Gulf energy supplies through its grip on the strait, despite decades of massive U.S. military investment in the region, shows how the conflict has already altered power dynamics in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy posted a map on Thursday showing alternative shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz to help ships avoid naval mines, the semi-official Iranian news agency\u00a0ISNA\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will say on Thursday that shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,\u00a0must be toll-free, countering a push by Iran to control a channel long treated as an international waterway, despite<\/p>\n
“The fundamental freedoms of the seas must not be unilaterally withdrawn or sold off to individual bidders. Nor can there be any place for tolls on an international waterway,” Cooper will say in an annual foreign policy speech in London, according to advance extracts.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah says it hit Israeli forces in southern Lebanon<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u00a0reported that Hezbollah said\u00a0its drone strike targeted and hit an Israeli force inside a house in the Tayyiba Project in south of the country.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the group said its missile also targeted and hit a Namer APC \u2013 an Israeli armoured personnel carrier \u2013 in the town of Al-Tayyiba, in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Lebanon<\/p>\n
The deal’s fractures emerged quickly as Israel carried out the heaviest strikes on its neighbour — including in densely packed central Beirut, since the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah joined the war in early March.<\/p>\n
At least 182 people were killed and nearly 900 wounded on Wednesday, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International\u2019s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, says that the \u201cnightmare for civilians has become more terrifying\u201d in Lebanon, \u201cjust hours after the world cautiously welcomed news of a US-Israeli ceasefire with Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cCivilians in Lebanon are already paying an unbearable price with children, health workers and journalists amongst those killed \u2013 the latest attacks will only escalate this devastating human toll,\u201d Heba said.<\/p>\n
Israel said its battle against Hezbollah was not part of the US-Iran truce agreed late Tuesday, an argument echoed by US Vice President JD Vance, days before he is due to\u00a0lead talks with Tehran\u00a0in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
“If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart… over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them, and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” he said.<\/p>\n
But Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf appeared to threaten the ceasefire, posting on X that the “workable basis on which to negotiate” had already been violated, making further talks “unreasonable”.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0How Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire deal between US, Iran?<\/p>\n
Adding to the fragility of the truce, agreed hours before a deadline set by US President Donald Trump, a senior US official said Iran’s 10-point plan was not the same set of conditions the White House had agreed to to pause the war.<\/p>\n
In Lebanon, where UN rights chief Volker Turk called the scale of killing “horrific”, strikes across the capital, Beirut, without warning triggered scenes of horror and panic.<\/p>\n
More than 1,700 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched airstrikes and a ground invasion last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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