22m ago
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The day
so far
- US vice-president JD Vance has warned Iran not to “play” the US as he headed overseas for negotiations aimed at ending their war. Vance, who has long been sceptical of foreign military interventions and outspoken about the prospect of sending troops into open-ended conflicts, set off Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
- President Donald Trump has said that US warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if talks in Pakistan fail to produce a deal, in an interview with the New York Post. “We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made – even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart,” the Post quoted Trump as saying.
- Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Friday that two previously agreed measures, a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets, must be implemented before negotiations begin. In a post on X on Friday, Qalibaf said the steps were part of commitments made between the parties and warned that talks should not start until they were fulfilled, amid mounting disputes over ceasefire terms and continued hostilities in Lebanon.
- US negotiators intend to request the release of Americans detained in Iran as part of upcoming talks aimed at ending the war, according to media reports. The Washington Post cited people briefed on the plans in its report.
- Iran-backed Hezbollah fired around 30 projectiles from Lebanon into Israel on Friday, the Israeli military said, reporting that some strikes caused damage. Air-raid sirens were activated across northern Israel near the Lebanese border, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have continued to exchange fire despite a truce in the broader conflict involving Iran.
- Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun said on Friday that 13 state security personnel were killed in an Israeli strike on a governmental building in the southern city of Nabatieh. In a statement, Aoun condemned continued Israeli attacks and said targeting state institutions would not deter Lebanon from defending its sovereignty, Reuters reported.
- Israel’s foreign affairs ministry announced Spanish representatives will not be allowed access to the US-led centre responsible for monitoring the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip due to what it described as a “blatant anti-Israeli bias”. In a statement on its website, the ministry said the decision was made to block Spain from participating in the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in light of “the anti-Israel obsession of [Spanish] Prime Minister [Pedro] Sánchez’s government and its serious harm to Israeli (and also American) interests - including during the war against Iran”.
- European airports have said jet fuel shortages could hit the summer holiday season, if oil supplies do not start to flow through the strait of Hormuz within the next three weeks. Airports Council International (ACI) Europe wrote to Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the EU transport commissioner, saying the bloc is three weeks away from shortages.
- The Israeli military has claimed to have destroyed more than 200 Hezbollah rocket launchers since the start of the conflict. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement online that it destroyed more than 200 rocket launchers, including approximately 1,300 launch tubes, belonging to the Iran-backed militant group since 2 March.
- Keir Starmer said he used a call with Donald Trump to set out the views of Gulf states, the Press Association reported. “I had a discussion with president Trump last night and set out to him the views of the region here, these Gulf states are the neighbours of Iran, and therefore, if the ceasefire is to hold – and we hope it will - it has to involve them,” the UK prime minister said in Qatar, where he was on the final leg of his Middle East tour.
- Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s senior diplomatic envoy, said on X that his country will review regional and international ties in light of attacks by Iran to “determine who can be relied upon”. The UAE’s defence ministry said yesterday that its air defences have intercepted 537 ballistic missiles, 26 cruise missiles and 2,256 drones since the start of the war.
- The UN children’s agency, Unicef, reported that nearly 600 children have been killed or injured in Lebanon since the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war on 2 March. More than 30 children were killed and nearly 150 injured by the wave of bombings carried out on Wednesday by Israeli troops, Unicef said.
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