War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

Asked how many oil tankers his administration has gotten through the Strait of Hormuz, US President Donald Trump has replied: “A lot.

“I don’t want to say how many, but a lot,” he tells reporters.

Trump adds that “it shouldn’t take long” to solve the crisis in the waterway.

“One way or the other, it’s going to get done. And when it’s all straightened out, you’re going to have oil prices drop down to maybe even lower than they were,” he says.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner have travelled to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to consult with experts who could play a role in nuclear negotiations with Iran, Reuters reports citing Axios.

The Iranian ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, says the future of the key Gulf waterway will be decided by Tehran and Muscat, Al Jazeera reports.

“This strait will be opened, but under new conditions. And these new conditions will be determined by the Iranian and Omani authorities,” Jalali tells Russian newspaper Izvestia. “These are the issues currently being discussed. We’ll see and understand in the future what happens with this strait’s fate.”

US President Donald Trump has reiterated that Washington is having “great success” with Iran, stating, “They’re in no position to have a nuclear weapon.”

Asked about oil prices and production in the US, he responds, “We have everything we need, the world doesn’t.

“But I will say, people thought it was going to be a lot worse,” he tells reporters aboard Air Force One.

Iran’s World Cup players have been granted visas to enter the United States, a White House official tells Reuters.

The country’s football team are due to play their first Group G match on June 15 against New Zealand in Los Angeles, where they will also face Belgium before taking on Egypt in Seattle.

Hezbollah claims it carried out further artillery and rocket attacks in its latest strikes on Israeli troops near Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera reports.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden, as well as the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, have welcomed continued efforts to implement the ceasefire deal, Al Jazeera reports.

In a joint statement, the officials have expressed support for Lebanon’s efforts to extend its authority. They have also called on Hezbollah to cease its attacks and for Israel to “respect Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to stop its military escalation”.

“We call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint, adhere fully to the ceasefire, refrain from actions that could lead to further escalation and ensure the protection of civilians,” the statement adds.

Al Jazeera correspondents report that Israel is firing on the town of Blat in southern Lebanon.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog says Iran and the US are close to agreeing on a nuclear framework, which would give both parties time to address outstanding issues, Al Jazeera reports.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says the organisation is in contact with both sides but is not directly involved in talks.

“Our sense is that they seem to be pretty close to agreeing on what I would describe more with regards to the nuclear … to sort of a framework, organisational structure to give themselves time to look into the different problems,” he states.

Grossi has made the comments following an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors in Vienna.

The meeting has been requested by Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia in response to Iran attacking the UAE’s Barakah Nuclear Power Plant last month — an incident that Grossi said was “unacceptable”.

Russia wants oil prices on global markets to be balanced and stable amid the U.S. war against Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin says, according to Reuters.

Speaking at Russia’s annual economic forum, Putin says that the reduction in oil supplies is causing concern in the market, but that Russia is participating in OPEC+ to balance it.

A potential agreement between Washington and Tehran hinges on US President Donald Trump’s administration agreeing to release $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets, Reuters reports citing CNN, which quoted an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Mohsen Rezaei.

“The negotiations are at a deadlock and [US President Donald] Trump must break this deadlock,” he says, noting that the “ball is in Trump’s court”.

At least 3,558 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Lebanon since March 2, Al Jazeera reports citing the latest figures from Lebanon’s health ministry.

Another 10,870 people have been wounded over the same period.

The United States imposed new Iran-related sanctions on Friday, the US Treasury Department’s website shows, according to Reuters.

According to the notice, four individuals, 12 companies and six vessels have been sanctioned.

Hezbollah has claimed to have struck Israeli forces near Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon multiple times over the past 48 hours, Al Jazeera reports.

The group has released several statements claiming four attacks today, including strikes Hezbollah says targeted Israeli army vehicles and troops in the border town of Naqoura.

Hezbollah futher claims it used several attack drones to target soldiers near the border and also near Beaufort Castle, which Israeli forces seized earlier this week. It adds that fighters were also targeting Israeli forces with artillery fire.

The group adds that it also struck an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over Lebanon’s western Bekaa region with a surface-to-air missile.

United States Central Command (Centcom) has said that as part of its naval blockade of Iranian ports, 129 commercial vessels have been turned around and six others disabled.

The United States is preparing a draft resolution condemning Iran ahead of next week’s meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors, a step that could complicate wider talks between the US and Iran, Reuters reports citing diplomats.

With a quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) 35-nation board taking place next week, Washington is preparing a text, though it has yet to circulate it and details are therefore unclear, diplomats accredited to the IAEA say.

Iran has bristled at previous resolutions the board has passed against it, often retaliating by escalating its nuclear activities or scaling back cooperation with the agency. A more imminent concern this time is the talks with the US.

“I believe it may antagonise the Iranian side,” Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA, Mikhail Ulyanov, tells reporters. “As far as I know, they are going to call upon Iran to provide access to the agency’s personnel to nuclear facilities on the territory of Iran.”

He adds that he does not believe the US will actually submit the draft.

The US mission to the IAEA has declined to comment.

A new study by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) finds that the US-Israeli war on Iran has deepened food insecurity worldwide, leaving millions more people unable to afford basic food items as soaring energy prices drive up living costs, Al Jazeera reports.

The report finds that an additional 2.5 million people in Somalia have struggled to meet their basic food needs since the war began three months ago. In Afghanistan, which borders Iran, 2.3 million people are on the brink of hunger, as are around 1.3 million people in Sri Lanka.

In March, the WFP warned that as many as 45 million people could be pushed into food insecurity if the conflict continued. With the war at times driving oil prices above $100 a barrel, the agency says that projection is becoming a reality.

WFP has cautioned that conditions are likely to deteriorate further in the coming months, even if the conflict — which has since expanded into a broader regional war — begins to de-escalate.

Germany’s Foreign Office has issued advisories discouraging travel to Bahrain and Kuwait amid ongoing Middle East tensions, Anadolu reports.

It says that the regional security situation remains “highly volatile” and “strongly” advises against travel to Bahrain.

“A further escalation of the security situation in the region, including significant restrictions on air traffic, cannot be ruled out,” the travel advisory notes.

Travel to Kuwait has also been discouraged due to airstrikes from Iran.

“Since the announcement of the ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran on April 8, 2026, there have been repeated isolated attacks on military and civilian targets in the region, which cannot be ruled out in the future,” the Foreign Office has said in both advisories.

Read more here.

Iran says at least 50 per cent of its frozen assets must be released immediately upon the signing of a possible memorandum of understanding with the US, Anadolu reports, citing the country’s deputy foreign minister, who spoke with Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.

Kazem Gharibabadi says various mechanisms are being reviewed to secure Tehran’s access to its blocked funds under a possible understanding with Washington.

“At minimum, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists that 50pc of these funds be made available to Iran immediately upon the signing of the memorandum of understanding,” Gharibabadi says.

He adds that the remaining funds should be released within what Tehran considers a reasonable period, “not more than one or two months.”

Gharibabadi further says Iran will consider a text final only when its interests are fully reflected, including what he calls the immediate and permanent end of the war on all fronts, including Lebanon.

He states another key issue is the lifting of what Tehran describes as a maritime blockade.

Read more here.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has urged Iran not to interfere in his country in a video interview published by CNN, also telling Hezbollah that diplomacy was the only solution to the conflict with Israel, AFP reports.

“It’s not your country, it’s our country … It’s not your job to interfere into our country,” Aoun tells Iran in the interview, adding that “they are using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiation with the United States. It’s unacceptable”.

“Hezbollah must understand that [there is] no other way but to sit and talk, no other way to solve this problem and to save what’s left except through negotiation and diplomacy,” he adds.

Iran has called on the international community to adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” toward armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities, telling a special meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors that the United States and Israel carried out 17 waves of strikes against Iranian safeguarded nuclear sites in 2025 and 2026, Al Jazeera reports.

In a statement, Iran’s delegation says one of the gravest attacks targeted a structure just 350 metres from the reactor at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, which contains thousands of kilogrammes of nuclear material.

The IAEA Director General has previously said a direct hit on the plant could result in a “very high release of radioactivity to the environment.”

Iran says the attacks constitute war crimes and acts of aggression, entailing international responsibility and individual criminal liability for the perpetrators. It recalls that UN Security Council Resolution 487 (1981) condemned a previous Israeli attack on an Iraqi nuclear facility and obliged Israel to refrain from any such acts in the future.