War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

NetBlocks has said that metrics indicate that Iranian internet users still face heavy filtering despite the connectivity has largely returned.

In a post on social media platform X, it said: “Three months ago today Iran shut off access to the global internet. While connectivity has now largely returned, metrics indicate that users still face heavy filtering, similar to the interim period between the January protests and the start of the war.”

Hezbollah has launched a series of attacks on Israeli forces across southern Lebanon, AlJazeera reports.

The group fired a rocket barrage at a group of Israeli army vehicles parked near the town hall of al-Qussair, in the Marjayoun District, the report cited the Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).

It also launched a missile strike on a building housing “the secret command of the armed vehicles” situated “near the reservoir” in the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, said NNA. An Ababil attack helicopter belonging to Hezbollah also hit a Merkava tank, stationed near the town’s pond.

Further, “the Numira mechanism in the town of Qantara with the Ababil attack helicopters achieved a confirmed hit,” said NNA.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares has lashed out at Israel as its heavy bombardment of Lebanese territory continues, AlJazeera reports.

“Israel must accept that other countries have exactly the same right as Israel to have their own state and to have it in peace and security. Israel has the right to its state in peace and security, but the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people have exactly that same right,” Albares said.

Albares has made the comments to reporters before participating in the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers being held in Cyprus.

Albares denounced Israel’s decision to declare southern Lebanon a “war zone” and demand all residents leave the area as “completely unacceptable” as well as being “contrary to international law”.

Iran’s football federation expects FIFA to facilitate multiple-entry visas for the US for the Iranian national team ahead of the 2026 World Cup, its president said in a video broadcast by Iranian media, AFP reports.

“FIFA is expected to deliver a multiple-entry visa so that the players can enter (the US) and return (to Mexico),” federation president Mehdi Taj said.

“It is certain now that we will go to Mexico. The team is preparing,” Taj said.

Tehran condemns the US attack on areas in Bandar Abbas, the country’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in a statement, Reuters reports.

Iran also expresses solidarity with Oman after “US officials’ threats”, Baghaei added, following US President Donald Trump’s threat to blow up Oman if it did not “behave just like everybody else” in regards to the control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The United Nations has added Israel to a blacklist of perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict zones, AlJazeera reports, citing Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

In a social media post on X, Danon reveals the UN’s decision, adding the world body had made “a political decision” to add Israel to the list.

“This is a political decision! Disconnected from the facts and reality!” he wrote, adding that Israel has submitted evidence to refute the UN reports.

The Israeli military has said that a soldier was killed the day before by a Hezbollah drone near the Lebanon border, taking to 24 the number of its troops killed in the war with Hezbollah, according to AFP.

A military statement named her as 20-year-old Sergeant Rotem Yanai, who “fell during operational activity in northern Israel”.

It added that one reservist soldier was severely injured and another moderately so in the same incident.

The military told AFP that Yanai was killed by a Hezbollah explosive drone.

A total of 24 Israelis have been killed since hostilities began on March 2, including 23 soldiers and one civilian contractor.

At least two people have been killed in a targeted Israeli drone strike on the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, AlJazeera reports, quoting Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).

The victims were riding a motorcycle when they were killed, NNA said.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Deputy Secretary Ali Bagheri Kani has said Tehran is seeking the release of all frozen Iranian assets from the US, describing them as the “legal right” of the Iranian people, AlJazeera reports.

All of Iran’s assets must be returned without conditions, Tasnim news agency reports, citing Kani.

New shipping data from monitoring agencies LSEG and Kpler have revealed that three tankers exited the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, with the vessels headed for India and China, AlJazeera reports.

Two supertankers and one liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker exited the strait with their transponders turned off, the report states, citing the data.

EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas has warned that it was in no one’s interest for the US war with Iran to continue, as the two sides traded fire in the worst clashes since an April ceasefire began, AFP reports.

“They are right now in between this very dangerous zone of war and peace, and it is not in anybody’s interest that this war continues,” Kallas told reporters at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Cyprus.

The Israeli military said it had begun new strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre after issuing an evacuation warning to its residents, AFP reports.

Israel the previous day had declared all areas south of Lebanon’s Zahrani River — an area roughly 40 kilometres from the border and including Tyre — as “combat zones” and told residents to evacuate ahead of attacks against Hezbollah.

The sweeping warning — the first of its kind since an April 17 ceasefire — came as many Lebanese tried to celebrate Eidul Azha.

Malaysia is tapping its offshore gas reserves to meet record power demand driven by a searing heatwave and data centres, even as countries across Asia burn more coal to make up for liquefied natural gas (LNG) shortages due to the US-Israeli war on Iran, Reuters reports.

Electricity demand in peninsular Malaysia — which accounts for about 80% of national demand — increased 11.5 per cent annually in April and was largely met by a 50.5pc surge in gas-fired power, data from Malaysia’s Grid System Operator showed.

Gold prices fell to a two-month low as fresh US attacks on Iran boosted the dollar and pushed oil prices higher, stoking concerns about rising inflation and clouding the interest rate outlook, Reuters reports.

Spot gold was down 1.7 per cent at $4,380.62 per ounce, as of 0409GMT, earlier falling to its lowest level since March 26. US gold futures for June delivery fell 1.6% to $4,377.10.

The dollar rose to a one-week high, making greenback-priced bullion more expensive for holders of other currencies.

“Geopolitical tensions remain high, and we’ve had too many false alarms from the peace deal talks. So I think the US dollar is going to remain bid, and that means gold is likely to remain under pressure,” said Matt Simpson, a senior analyst at StoneX.

The Middle East war is pushing countries to open new supply routes and turn to domestic resources to tide over the world’s biggest energy crisis, the International Energy Agency said, according to AFP.

“We are in the midst of the largest energy security crisis the world has ever faced — and I believe this will reshape investment strategies globally, with parallels to the major changes the energy world witnessed after the oil shocks of the 1970s,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

“We are already seeing intensified efforts by both producer and consumer countries to diversify trade routes and energy sources — such as advancing new pipelines and other supply infrastructure, on the one hand, and turning more to domestically available resources, on the other,” he added in the World Energy Investment report by the energy agency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they targeted a US airbase after what they described as an early morning US attack near Bandar Abbas airport, Tasnim news agency reported, Reuters reports.

The IRGC did not say where the base is.

They warned that any repeat of what they called aggression would draw a “more decisive” response and said responsibility for the consequences lay with the “aggressor”.

Kuwait’s military has said it was responding to missile and drone attacks, after the US carried out fresh strikes on Iran and Tehran said it had fired at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, AFP reports.

“Kuwaiti air defences are currently engaging hostile missile and drone attacks,” the Kuwaiti army posted on X.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s navy fired on a US tanker that “tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz by turning off its radar system”, Tasnim news agency reports, citing an “informed military source”, according to AlJazeera.

The Iranian news agency also reports that the US then fired in response “at a scorched area around Bandar Abbas”.

“The sound of the explosions was related to this incident” and “did not cause any casualties or property damage”, Tasnim adds on the Telegram messaging platform.

THE Abraham Accords were presented as a historic peace initiative in the Middle East. In reality, they were agreements brokered during US President Donald Trump’s first presidency under which several Arab states normalised ties with Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue.

Mr Trump now appears keen to expand the Accords again, pushing more Muslim countries to join after the recent Iran conflict. It is a dangerous and deeply dishonest move, driven less by regional peace than by pressure from Israel’s supporters in Washington and America’s hard-line pro-Israel right. The attempt to connect the Iran conflict with the Abraham Accords makes little sense.

Read more here.

Four vessels are confronted by naval forces as they attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz and enter the Persian Gulf without coordinating with Iranian authorities, AlJazeera reports, citing Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

The Iranian news agency, citing an informed military official, says the vessels received an initial warning from Iranian naval forces but warning shots were fired, after the ships disregarded the notice, forcing them to turn back.