Middle East crisis live: Tehran says it will charge ships in strait of Hormuz after 60 days; US-Iran presidents sign peace deal | US-Israel war on Iran
Key events
Israeli foreign minister says he is ‘severing all ties’ with EU foreign policy chief over ‘apartheid’ remarks
The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said he is cutting off contact with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas after she reportedly compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s racist apartheid era.
In a post on social media, Saar accused Kallas of “acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness” against Israel and claimed she has not denied, clarified or addressed the remarks reported in Euractiv, a European news website.
“Therefore, as Israel’s minister for foreign affairs, I have no choice but to sever all ties with Ms Kallas,” Saar said.
Kallas did not immediately comment.
According to Euractiv, Kallas made the apartheid comparison during closed-door and confidential talks with officials in Mexico City last month as part of a senior EU delegation attending a summit there.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said the organisation was ready to start defining the “concrete steps” that will need to be taken after the signing of the agreement between the US and Iran which provides for the dilution of Iranian uranium stocks under its supervision.
“It is good that the memorandum is there. Now the technical work starts,” Grossi told reporters in Geneva.
“Now it is for us to sit down with our American and Iranian colleagues and start formulating concrete steps that will have to be taken.”
One person was killed in an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon this morning, according to the country’s official National News Agency.
The strike hit a car near Kfar Tebnit, a village near the city of Nabatiyeh, where the Israeli military has been operating, the news agency reported.
Israel has continued to bomb Lebanon despite a ceasefire agreed in April, but it is facing pressure to halt attacks after the US and Iran signed a deal to wind down the conflict.
Israel is “conducting stubborn negotiations” with the US on the issue of continuing its deployment of troops in southern Lebanon, a senior Israeli official close to Benjamin Netanyahu told Reuters.
Israel has no intention of backing down on its positions, the official said.
Donald Trump had urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop blowing up buildings” during a phone call about Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper cited sources who overheard the phone conversation between the two leaders, whose relationship has grown increasingly hostile as the war raged on.
The report followed the US president’s public rebuke of Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, when he told reporters at the G7 summit earlier this week that Israel did not need to bomb entire apartment buildings to target the Iran-backed group.
“We have a little dispute over Lebanon,” he said. “I say, ‘You can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah’.”
He added: “I’m not saying they shouldn’t protect themselves. I’m saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better, and frankly, they could do a better job.”
You can hear more of his remarks here:
The Swiss foreign ministry said planned talks between the US and Iran in the Buergenstock mountaintop resort in Switzerland are still going ahead tomorrow, after both sides signed a ceasefire agreement last night to end the war.
“As things stand, the plan is still for the US and Iran, along with mediators Pakistan and Qatar and other involved countries, to meet tomorrow at Buergenstock for initial negotiations about implementing the agreement,” the ministry said in a statement.
“No further information is currently available regarding the schedule and details of this meeting.”
Analysis: Trump’s Iran deal is a result of unrealistic ambitions for an untenable war
As the adage goes: no plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy.
Donald Trump entered the war with Iran with maximalist goals: eliminating the country’s nuclear programme, destroying its ballistic missile programme and ending its support for regional military groups including Hezbollah and Hamas.
He exits it with Iran’s word not to build a bomb and to hold further nuclear discussions, no mention in writing of the ballistic missile programme and with Hezbollah celebrating a “victory” as the memorandum of understanding (MOU) instituted a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has seized a swath of the country as a “buffer zone”.
Iran’s key asset ended up being the strait of Hormuz, the waterway that almost every previous simulation of the war predicated would be quickly cut off by Iran. To reopen the strait, the administration was forced to fold on its broader goals or face what Trump called a “worldwide depression”.
It has been clear for days that the Trump administration was skittish about putting out the text of its MOU. It was only finally read out by a senior administration official on a briefing call on Wednesday, and the White House still has not published a copy online.
The reasoning is clear: many in Trump’s own party will hate this deal. The outgoing US senator Bill Cassidy, of Maryland, called it the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades”.
The full analysis is here:
German defence minister Boris Pistorius is being quoted as saying just now that before it can participate in any mine-clearing operation in the strait of Hormuz, it will need a permissive environment – meaning approval by Iran and Oman – as well as a parliamentary mandate.
On Sunday Donald Trump said the initial reopening of the vital energy-supply route would be for the “purposes of mine removal”.
What do we know about how many mines Iran has laid in the strait, what the options are for clearing them, and what are the risks?
These are other questions are answered in this explainer:
The Israeli military says one of its soldiers was killed during fighting in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, while seven others were injured in the incident.
Master Sergeant (Res.) Alexander Filin, a 29-year-old from Haifa, was killed in combat, the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement posted on Telegram on Thursday. As well, an officer, a reserve officer and a reserve soldier were moderately injured, it said.
A combat non-commissioned officer, two reserve soldiers and a female reserve soldier were lightly injured, the IDF said.
Under the US-Iran ceasefire deal, Lebanon is included – a key demand from Tehran – and the agreement calls for end to the war in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah.
Israel and Hezbollah aren’t parties to the agreement, however. Iran insists Israel must withdraw from the large area of southern Lebanon it has occupied since March, but as the Associated Press reports, the interim deal doesn’t explicitly require that and only affirms a commitment to ensuring Lebanon’s “territorial integrity”.
Israel has vowed to keep its troops in the zone, while the Iran-backed Hezbollah says it is committed to resisting Israel “until full withdrawal is achieved”.
Trump’s Iran deal met with anger, relief and incredulity
Jonathan Yerushalmy
Pakistan’s prime minister has hailed the “peaceful resolution” of the conflict between the US and Iran, while congratulating the leadership of both countries for signing an agreement that he claimed would immediately reopen of the strait of Hormuz.
But amid the celebrations from Shehbaz Sharif – who has served as mediator for the deal – the release of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that gets the ball rolling on the next 60 days of negotiations between Iran and the US has proven more divisive, eliciting a mixture of outrage, bewilderment and relief.
In France, the leaders of the G7 countries welcomed the deal, calling it a “historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon”.
European leaders have largely been sidelined from the negotiations, but expressed relief that the strait of Hormuz would reopen, allowing the flow of oil to resume. Emmanuel Macron said it would put a stop to a “situation of great instability that had terrible consequences for our economies”.
In Israel, however, the agreement has been greeted with less optimism.
Mark Regev, a former senior adviser to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, questioned how seriously Iran would approach negotiations over its nuclear program now that America has removed the economic and military “pressure”. His views were reflected across Israel.
See the full report here:
Natasha May continues from her last post:
Philippines president Ferdinand R Marcos Jr was also optimistic, saying the freedom of navigation returning to the Hormuz strait was “what we have been hoping for since the day after the war started”.
However, he acknowledged that recovery from the crisis would take time due to the scale of instability, saying:
Because of the enormity of the problem, of the instability that this war has caused – it’s inevitable that it will take some time for us to adjust back to what will be the new normal.
The Middle East conflict has provided a “stark wake-up call” for south-east Asia’s energy system, the International Energy Agency said in a new report – exposing deep structural vulnerabilities linked to import dependence, limited diversification and concentrated supply routes.
If these energy security vulnerabilities were not addressed, the report predicted, the region’s energy import bill could more than triple from $80bn in 2024 to $245bn by 2035.
Natasha May
South-east Asian nations – which were amongst the first and the hardest hit by the energy crisis due to their heavy reliance on Middle Eastern oil – have welcomed the US-Iran agreement on ending the war, particularly relieved at the reopening of the strait of Hormuz.
Before the crisis, about 60% of south-east Asia’s imports of crude oil and a third of its imports of gas were coming from the Middle East, while 45% of its oil product supply were dependent on Middle Eastern crude. The conflict led to immediate price shocks and governments across the region implementing policies such as encouraging the public to reduce their air conditioning and working from home.
Thailand’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement this week that the country “warmly welcomes the agreement reached” and hoped it would lead to “lasting peace and stability in the region, global economic stability and freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz”.
Domestic diesel prices in Thailand have seen a steady decline over the past week, with energy minister Akanat Promphan projecting that if the situation in Middle East remained stable, oil prices would likely return to normal in the near future.
US-Iran deal takes immediate effect, says Pakistan
Pakistan’s prime minister said earlier in the day that the agreement between the US and Iran agreement was taking “immediate effect” after being signed by both sides.
Shehbaz Sharif said on social media that “as a first step, Islamic Republic of Iran will instantly reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the United States of America will immediately lift the naval blockade”.
Sharif, who helped mediate the memorandum of understanding, also reportedly said there would still be a formal signing ceremony in Switzerland on Friday to “commemorate this landmark event and commence with the technical level talks”.
Summary: Tehran says it will charge ships crossing strait of Hormuz after 60 days
Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
The US and Iran have released the text of an interim agreement their presidents have signed to end their war, but Donald Trump has threatening to resume attacks and kill Iranian officials if Tehran fails to honour its commitments.
Trump, attending a G7 summit with other leaders in France, also withdrew at least one of his stated rationales for initially attacking Iran, saying it would be “unfair” for Tehran not to have ballistic missiles, although he previously vowed to obliterate them.
“We’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement,” Trump said of Iran at a press conference. “I don’t want them to. I want them to honour the agreement.”
The 14-point memorandum of understanding extends an April ceasefire by another 60 days, including in Lebanon, to allow the two sides to negotiate a final truce over the coming 60 days.
The agreement also includes the full resumption of maritime traffic “with no charge” in the strait of Hormuz, the lifting of a US blockade of Iranian ports, the waiving of US sanctions on Iran, the unfreezing of its assets, and a $300bn investment fund for Iran’s post-war reconstruction.
However, lead Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the Hormuz strait “will not return to prewar conditions” and that Iran would charge ships to transit the waterway after the 60-day toll-free period stipulated in the agreement. Trump has previously said he will not accept tolls being imposed for crossing the vital energy route.
In other developments:
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Iran’s leaders did not address the new threats while celebrating the deal, with Ghalibaf saying on state television: “Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation; it was not even comparable.” The deal included the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets, he claimed.
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Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian both digitally signed the memorandum of understanding in English and Farsi, US and Iranian officials said. Iran’s foreign ministry said the agreement was already in effect as of Wednesday, as did mediator Pakistan.
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Under the agreement Iran also undertakes not to build nuclear weapons, reaffirming a vow it had made for decades. It also agreed to an on-site “down-blending” of its stockpile of enriched uranium.
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Trump signed just before a grand dinner with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, the site of the signing of the treaty that formally ended the first world war. G7 leaders hailed the agreement at their summit in France. The US has said a formal signing ceremony for the deal is due to be held in Switzerland on Friday.
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Oil prices fell again on Wednesday on prospects for the reopening of the Hormuz strait, with Brent crude futures below $80 – their lowest level since the war’s start – but later regaining more than 1% after Trump threatened renewed violence. After the signing US crude dipped 1.25% to $75.83 a barrel and Brent crude was down 1.4% to $78.41 a barrel.
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Donald Trump entered the war with maximalist goals and exits it with a pragmatic decision to end the conflict despite the political cost, Andrew Roth writes in this analysis.
With news agencies
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