International

Israel and Lebanon will hold talks next week in Washington after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered direct talks, a US official said Thursday. “We can confirm that the Department will host a meeting next week to discuss ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Israel and Lebanon,” a State Department official said, confirming an earlier account from a source familiar with the diplomatic ...

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan held a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi, the Saudi foreign ministry said Thursday, in the first official contact between the countries since Tehran launched strikes against its Gulf neighbours in retaliation for Israeli-American attacks. “The call focused on reviewing developments in the situation and ways to slow the pace of ...

The United Nations secretary-general on Wednesday warned that deadly Israeli strikes on Lebanon posed a “grave risk” to the fragile US-Iran truce, his spokesperson said in a statement. “The ongoing military activity in Lebanon poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and the efforts toward a lasting and comprehensive peace in the region. The Secretary-General reiterates his call to all ...

Speaking in Budapest, Vice President JD Vance said the United States had tools “that we so far haven’t decided to use” against Iran, without explaining further. The White House later denied Vance was alluding to nuclear weapons, while Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to AFP that “only the President knows where things stand and what he will ...

The US military has paused its strikes on Iran after President Donald Trump announced he has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Tehran in a last-minute offramp, allowing him to delay his threat to obliterate Iran’s power grid and bridges. Trump said the proposal, extended by Pakistan, would include opening the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of ...

More than 14 million Iranians have said they are ready to give their lives to defend the country in the war against the United States and Israel, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X on Tuesday. “Over 14 million proud Iranians have, up to this moment, declared their readiness to sacrifice their lives in defense of Iran,” he wrote. “I, ...

US-Israeli strikes killed on Monday the intelligence chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Guards said. “Major General Majid Khademi, the powerful and educated head of the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was martyred in the criminal terrorist attack by the American-Zionist enemy… at dawn today,” said the Guards in a post on their Telegram channel.

A Japanese shipping firm said on Monday that an Indian-flagged tanker owned by its subsidiary had passed through the Strait of Hormuz and was en route to the South Asian country. Iran has effectively closed the strait — a critical route for global crude oil and gas — in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that began on 28 February. The near ...

Iran launched fresh attacks across the Middle East on Monday and threatened “devastating” retaliation, after US President Donald Trump’s expletive-laced warning that Tehran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Israel, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates reported a barrage of missile and drone strikes early Monday. The attacks came as Tehran ramped up rhetoric against Trump, with Tehran’s central military ...

Israeli firefighters were searching for two missing people in the rubble of a residential building in the northern city of Haifa after it was struck by an Iranian missile that killed two others, authorities said Monday. The direct hit on a seven-storey building tore through sections of the structure which has partially collapsed, the military and rescue services said. AFP ...