War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

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.

The Trump administration is in talks to provide funding to some drone companies, including Unusual Machines and Sequoia Capital-backed Neros, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter, according to Reuters.

Drone dominance was described as a “presidential priority” in President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request for fiscal year 2027.

Months-long discussions between private sector firms and the Pentagon have included the Office of Strategic Capital, a Biden-era lending unit focused on companies critical to national security supply chains, the Journal reported.

Unusual Machines is a drone components maker that counts Donald Trump Jr. as an adviser, while Neros is a startup specialising in autonomous drones.

Performance Drone Works, which won a contract to supply the US Army with reconnaissance drones, is also under consideration for possible funding, the report added.

Some proposals being discussed include funding via a mix of debt and equity that could give the government ownership stakes, the report said.

The US has sanctioned the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the body Iran has set up to manage the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reports, citing the Treasury Department.

The authority is a body Iran has set up to manage requests for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Anyone cooperating with the authority may be providing support to and receiving services from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and may be sanctioned, the Treasury said in a statement.

“The Iranian military’s latest attempt to extort global maritime trade is proof that Economic Fury has left the regime desperate for cash,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

US President Donald Trump has said he was unconcerned about the political fallout of an extended conflict with Iran, and that Iranian leaders had miscalculated if they thought the November midterm elections would force him into a deal, Reuters reports.

“They thought they were going to outwait me,” Trump said at a White House cabinet meeting, referring to Iran’s leadership.

“You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms.”

Trump has made the comments as he discussed how to end the conflict.

The US military has carried out new strikes targeting an Iranian drone operation that posed a threat to US forces and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a US official said, hours after President Donald Trump dismissed an Iranian report of a deal to restore traffic through the strategic waterway, according to Reuters.

The US official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about military operations, tells Reuters the military shot down four Iranian attack drones and struck a ground control station in the port city of Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone.

“These actions were measured, purely defensive and intended to maintain the ceasefire,” the official said.

Oil prices bounce higher after new US strikes on Iran, the latest test of a shaky ceasefire as diplomatic efforts to end the war persist, according to AFP.

Brent North Sea crude, the main international benchmark, rises by nearly two percent to $96.13 a barrel, while the main US contract, WTI, increases by 1.75 per cent to $90.23 a barrel.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, Al Jazeera reports, citing Iran’s ISNA news agency.

The two discussed bilateral relations, the latest developments in the Middle East and the ongoing diplomatic effort aimed at ending the US-Israel war on Iran, according to

US President Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting said that the Strait of Hormuz will be open to everyone and not controlled by any country under any deal reached with Iran.

“We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.”

He said that in a framework deal with Iran, the Strait would open immediately, and that the US would release boats from the Strait “at the right time”.

Oman, which is allegedly in talks with Iran over management of the waterway, will “have to behave like everybody else, or we’ll have to ⁠blow them up”, the president said, adding: “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has held a phone call with New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Al Jazeera reports, citing Iran’s state-linked ISNA news agency.

“The responsibility for the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz lies directly and exclusively with the aggressors,” ISNA quoted Araghchi as saying.

The foreign minister called for the international community to hold the US and Israel accountable for what he described as a “flagrant violation” of the UN charter.

Peters, meanwhile, said New Zealand was seeking an “urgent end” to the conflict, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that all areas south of Lebanon’s Zahrani River, which runs roughly 40 kilometres north of the Israel-Lebanon border, were considered “combat zones” and urged residents to head north.

The warning called into further question the fragile ceasefire that took effect on April 17, but which has done little to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X: “We advise the residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate to the north of the Zahrani River, as all areas south of the river are considered combat zones.”

In a telephonic conversation with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has hoped that a US-Iran peace deal can be finalised soon and would be done with dignity and honor for the Iranian nation.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that there has been some progress in negotiations with Iran toward a deal, Reuters reports.

“I think there’s been some progress and some interest, and we’ll see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made,” Rubio said at a meeting of President Donald Trump’s cabinet.