War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

Hezbollah said its fighters carried out multiple attacks on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

In a statement, the group said it targeted several concentrations of Israeli troops and vehicles across a number of front-line towns in the region.

China’s envoy to the United Nations has told reporters that there is no real ceasefire in place between Israel and Lebanon, only a “lesser fire”, Al Jazeera reports.

“It is incumbent on Israel to stop this bombardment of Lebanon,” Fu Cong told reporters at the UN’s headquarters in New York, as China assumed the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for May.

The US State Department has announced new sanctions on ‘Iran-China oil trade’, Al Jazeera reports.

In a statement, it said that the sanctions applied to “several entities, an individual, and a vessel involved in the trade of Iranian petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products”.

The sanctions target Qingdao Haiye Oil Terminal Co, Ltd, a China-based petroleum terminal operator that the State Department said “has imported tens of millions of barrels” of crude oil under unilateral US sanctions.

“Haiye has enabled the flow of billions of dollars to Tehran that has relied on sophisticated evasion schemes, accepting cargo from vessels conducting illicit ship-to-ship transfers with sanctioned vessels,” the State Department said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told his Iranian counterpart that Russia is ready to provide any assistance to end the war against Iran and establish peace in the region, Fars News Agency reports according to Al Jazeera.

The statement was made during a telephone conversation between the two foreign ministers.

The Israeli military claims its air force “intercepted two additional suspicious aerial targets” before they crossed into Israeli territory after sirens sounded in northern Israel, warning of the “infiltration of a hostile aircraft”, according to Al Jazeera.

Israeli forces also “launched interceptors” following alerts of “rocket fire in the Kiryat Shmona area”, the military said on X.

“The interception results are being examined, and the incident is under investigation.”

President Donald Trump says the US Navy is acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran, Reuters reports.

Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.

“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”

US Central Command (Centcom) says it has blocked 45 vessels attempting to breach its blockade of Iranian ports.

“As of now, 45 commercial vessels have been directed to turn around or return to port to ensure compliance,” Centcom said in a post on X.

Lebanon’s health ministry says 13 people were killed on Friday in Israeli strikes in the south, including in a town where Israel’s army had issued an evacuation order despite a ceasefire, AFP reports.

The strikes in Habboush killed eight people, including a child and two women, and wounded 21 others, the ministry said, raising an earlier toll.

Other strikes in Zrariyeh killed four people, two of them women, and wounded four more, it said.

The ministry also reported a strike in Ain Baal near the coastal city of Tyre killed one person and wounded seven others.

In Habboush, where the Israeli evacuation warning was issued, an AFP photographer saw clouds of smoke rising after the raids.

The US State Department says it is approving military sales worth a total of over $8.6 billion to Middle Eastern allies Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, Reuters reports.

The announcement comes as the US and Israel’s war against Iran marked nine weeks since its start and more than three weeks since a fragile ceasefire came into effect.

The United Nations’ telecoms agency has decided to condemn, monitor and report on the impact of Iranian attacks on telecommunications infrastructure in four targeted countries in the Middle East, AFP reports.

The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Jordan, submitted a draft resolution to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union agency on the impact on civilian telecommunications and information and communications technology (ICT) in Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

The ITU council — the agency’s governing body — considered their submission, and adopted the draft resolution “by consensus”, an ITU spokeswoman told AFP.

“Based on this decision, the council has tasked the ITU secretariat with monitoring, assessing, and reporting on the specific impacts of disruptions” in these countries, “as well as the broader implications for regional and global connectivity”, she said.

The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon has announced, in an apparent US rebuke to the close Nato ally amid a widening rift between President Donald Trump and Europe over the Iran war, Reuters reports.

Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the US in talks to end the two-month-old war.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to twelve months.

Washington has warned European allies including the UK, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia to expect long delivery delays for US weapons as the war against Iran drains stockpiles, the Financial Times reports according to Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon estimates Iran has been denied nearly $5 billion in oil revenue because of the US blockade in the Gulf of Oman, causing unprecedented pressure on Tehran’s government, according to Axios.

Since the blockade began on April 13, the US military has redirected more than 40 vessels that have tried to pass through the blockade by carrying oil and other contraband, Pentagon officials have said.

“In total, 31 tankers laden with 53 million barrels of Iranian oil are ‘stuck in the Gulf’ and have a value of at least $4.8 billion,” Axios reports, adding that the US has seized two ships.

“Unable to fill oil in new tankers as on-land storage facilities reach capacity, Iran has begun to use older tankers as floating storage,” the outlet adds.

Axios, quoting US officials, notes that some tankers are taking “a costlier and longer route to deliver oil to China for fear of US maritime interdiction”.

Read the full report here.

US President Donald Trump has told a Florida rally that when oil tankers are released from the Strait of Hormuz, the prices of fuel will plummet.

“There is so much oil out there … it’s all locked up in the Strait of Hormuz,” he says, adding that there are “close to 400 ships loaded up with oil”.

“When all of that gets released, when all of that comes out … you’re going to see prices dropping on gasoline like you’ve never seen,” he adds.

Trump has also castigated Iran for “trying to hold up our country for years … by closing up the Strait of Hormuz”.

Addressing a rally in Florida, US President Donald Trump has insisted that a deal with Iran is going to be done “properly”.

“They’re not coming through with the kind of deal that we have to have, and we’re going to get this thing done properly,” Trump says. “We’re not going to leave early and have the problem arise.”

US President Donald Trump says he expected worse numbers from the stock market when he launched strikes on Iran at the end of February, reiterating that Tehran cannot posess a nuclear weapon.

“I did something that was, I don’t know, foolish, brave … I would do it again, but I thought the numbers would be much worse,” Trump says, addressing a rally in Florida.

“I thought the stock market would go down much more; I thought the oil prices would go up much more. I said, ‘But we have no choice, whether it does or doesn’t, I have to do what’s right: we can’t let them (Iran) have a nuclear weapon,” he adds.

The United Arab Emirates has reaffirmed support for Bahrain’s “sovereign measures to safeguard its national security”.

“Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, reaffirmed the UAE’s full support for the sovereign measures taken by the Kingdom of Bahrain to safeguard its security, uphold its sovereignty and national achievements, and counter any attempts to undermine the kingdom’s stability,” a statement by the UAE’s foreign ministry says.

It adds that the deputy prime minister stressed that the “security of the Kingdom of Bahrain is an integral part of the security of the UAE and the Gulf states, reiterating the UAE’s steadfast support for all measures undertaken by Bahrain to safeguard its national security and stability”.

China’s ambassador to the UN says it is of crucial importance that the ceasefire in the US-Israel war on Iran remains in place, Al Jazeera reports.

Fu Cong tells reporters at the UN that the Strait of Hormuz needs to be reopened as quickly as possible, adding that China is very concerned about remarks it had heard recently about the ceasefire being temporary and the need to initiate another round of attacks.

“Iran needs to lift its restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, and the US needs to lift its naval blockade,” he says. “The most urgent issue is to keep the ceasefire. And the ceasefire needs to last, and there has to be a good-faith negotiation between the two sides.

“I think the international community should be mobilised and raise our voices against the resumption of fighting,” he adds.

Asked about Trump’s visit to China scheduled for this month, he says: “I’m sure if [the Strait of] Hormuz is still closed by the time President Trump goes to China, this issue will be high on the agenda of the bilateral talks”.

The ambassador also rejects allegations from some US officials about military cooperation between China and Iran as “false.”

The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says that the “equations and rules of the new management of the Persian Gulf have been set based on the historic directive of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution and will be implemented”.

The IRGC Navy has vowed to make the waterway a “source of livelihood and strength for the dear people of Iran” by maintaining control of Iran’s 2,000-kilometre coastline.

A new poll has found that a large majority of people in the United States believe that the decision to take military action against Iran was a mistake, as the war roils the global economy and fuels cost-of-living concerns in the US, Al Jazeera reports.

A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll released on Friday shows that 61 per cent of respondents believe the use of military force against Iran was a mistake, with just 36pc saying it was the right decision.

US President Donald Trump’s administration argues that a ceasefire with Tehran has “terminated” hostilities with Iran, as a legal deadline arrived for coming to Congress about the two-month Iran war, Reuters reports.

Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the president can wage military action for only 60 days before ending it, asking Congress for authorisation or seeking a 30-day extension due to “unavoidable military necessity regarding the safety of United States Armed Forces” while withdrawing forces.

Trump formally notified Congress of the conflict 48 hours after the first airstrikes, starting the 60-day clock that ends on May 1. As that date approached, congressional aides and analysts said they expected the Republican president to sidestep the deadline.

A senior Trump administration official said that the administration’s view was that the war powers law deadline did not apply.

“For War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated,” says the official, requesting anonymity while describing the administration’s thinking.

Read more here.

US Central Command (Centcom) claims in a post on X that 45 vessels have been redirected since the US enforced a naval blockade on Iranian ports.