The next steps to resume U.S.-Iran talks remained unclear Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was extending its ceasefire in the war at Pakistan’s request while awaiting a “unified proposal” from Tehran.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei acknowledged the ceasefire extension in comments reported Wednesday by Iranian state television, though did not specifically say Tehran was ready to attend a new round of talks with the United States in Islamabad.
Both countries have warned they were prepared to resume fighting if a deal isn’t reached.
Trump said Tuesday night in a social media post that “Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open” so they can sell their crude oil, after earlier saying that the U.S. military would maintain its blockade of Iranian ports.
Meanwhile, Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon traded some fire Tuesday, despite expected talks in Washington this week after a 10-day ceasefire went into effect last Friday.
Since the war started, fighting has killed at least 3,375 people in Iran and more than 2,290 in Lebanon. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.
Here is the latest:
A semiofficial news agency close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard again raised the idea Wednesday that Gulf Arab states remained vulnerable to having their undersea data cables being cut in the Strait of Hormuz.
The report by the Tasnim news agency suggested that “simultaneous damage to several major cables — whether through accidents or deliberate action — could trigger severe outages across the Persian Gulf.”
Multiple cables run through the strait. Already, the region has faced outages after undersea cables were cut multiple times in the Red Sea. Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels had threatened cables in the past.
With uncertainty over whether the ceasefire lasts, residents of Tehran say they are anxious about what comes next.
“Last night my family all stayed awake, waiting for the clock to show 3:30 a.m. and see who really has the upper hand,” said Reza Tehrani, a 34-year-old resident of Tehran.
Tehrani said Trump is making a series of false claims, including that Iran will give up its enriched uranium. “It’s obvious that he will eventually take his warships back and nothing will happen. We will win, rest assured,” he said.
One resident voiced frustration with the uncertainty.
“We should know where we stand. Is it going to be a ceasefire, peace or the war is going to continue?” said Tehran resident Mashallah Mohammad Sadegh, 59. “The way things currently are, one doesn’t know what to do.”
The European Union’s top energy official is warning that the massive energy crisis sparked by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is set to hit prices for months, even years, to come.
EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said Wednesday that “this is not a short-term, small increase in prices. This is a crisis that is probably as serious as the 1973 and the 2022 crises combined.”
Jørgensen says the war is costing Europe around 500 million euros ($600 million) each day and that “we are looking into some very difficult months, or maybe even years” ahead. “Even in a best-case scenario, it’s still bad,” he told reporters.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei acknowledged the ceasefire extension in comments reported Wednesday by Iranian state television.
Baghaei did not specifically say Tehran was ready to attend a new round of talks with the United States in Islamabad.
“Diplomacy is a tool for securing national interests and security, and whenever we reach the conclusion that the necessary and reasonable conditions exist to use this tool to achieve national interests and to consolidate the achievements of the Iranian nation in thwarting the enemies’ malicious objectives, we will take action,” he reportedly said.
The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights said an emergency doctor, Golnar Naraqi, and an Iranian citizen of the Bahai faith, Venus Hossein Nejad, have been out on bail since late March.
The two women were arrested separately during the January anti-government protests. The protests across Iran were met with a bloody crackdown that left thousands killed and arrested.
In a social media post Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump reposted a photo of six women and two teen girls that a conservative activist said are facing prosecution by the Iranian government.
Iran’s judiciary swiftly responded, saying some of the women have already been released without naming them. It said none of them face the death sentence. Internet restrictions have limited the flow of information out of Iran.
Rights groups say at least two of the other women still in detention are facing charges that carry the death sentence. There have been multiple executions during the war against alleged spies and protesters, mostly accused of links to Israel.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has attacked a third ship Wednesday in the Strait of Hormuz, semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported.
Nour News, Fars and Mehr all reported the attack by the Guard on a vessel called the Euphoria. They said the vessel had become “stranded” on the Iranian coast, without elaborating.
The Guard has seized the other two ships that were attacked, Iranian state television separately reported.
Two ships earlier attacked Wednesday by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard now are in the force’s custody and are being taken to Iran, Iranian state television reported.
It identified the vessels as the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas. The ship’s owners could not be immediately reached for comment.
The seizures represent an Iranian escalation after the U.S. earlier seized two Iranian vessels as ceasefire talks were due to take place in Islamabad.
The Guard said in a statement the ships “allegedly operated without authorization, repeatedly violated regulations, manipulated navigational aid systems and sought to covertly exit the Strait of Hormuz, endangering maritime security.”
The strait had been considered an international waterway open to all before the war, even though it sits in Iranian and Omani territorial waters.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called on Lebanon to work with Israel to disarm the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah ahead of negotiations in Washington on Thursday.
The meeting follows a similar gathering last week in Washington, and is the first time in decades the two countries are speaking directly.
“We don’t have any serious disagreements with Lebanon. There are a few minor border disputes that can be solved,” Saar said during Independence Day remarks to Israel’s diplomatic corps.
“The obstacle to peace and normalization between the countries is one: Hezbollah,” he said, adding that Lebanon could have “a future of sovereignty, independence and freedom from the Iranian occupation.”
Israel’s military has currently established a buffer zone stretching around 10 kilometers (6 miles) into southern Lebanon to remove the threat of short-range rockets and anti-tank missiles toward northern Israel.
An independent Islamabad-based analyst, Syed Mohammad Ali, says U.S. President Donald Trump has apparently concluded that a blockade of Iranian ports is a more effective way to pressure Iran’s already fragile economy than the continued use of force.
“As far as Trump’s war strategy is concerned, this blockade appears to be less expensive and more effective,” he said Wednesday.
Ali said prospects for a second round of talks between the United States and Iran have not faded, as Pakistan, with support from regional countries, continues efforts to prevent the collapse of negotiations.
He said securing an extension of the ceasefire for an indefinite period from Trump is an achievement for Pakistan.
China said after the announcement of an extension of the ceasefire that it is “imperative” to keep the conflict from reigniting.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Wednesday that the current situation in the Middle East is at “a critical stage.” He said China “is ready” to work with the international community to maintain peace, following four principles President Xi Jinping proposed a few days earlier, including peaceful coexistence and adherence to international law.
“It’s imperative to prevent the recurrence of the conflict with utmost efforts,” he said.
The United States must end its blockade on Iran as a prerequisite for any further ceasefire talks in Islamabad, an Iranian diplomat said Wednesday.
Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, the head of the Iranian mission in Egypt, told The Associated Press that communications with Pakistani mediators are underway “to implement Iran’s conditions.”
“We won’t negotiate under threat,” he said. “We won’t go to Islamabad before the lifting of the blockade.”
He accused the U.S. of using the ceasefire to build up more forces for a possible resumption of military action against the Islamic Republic.
“Behind the scenes, they say something, but in public, they say and do something else,” he said.
Pakistan’s top political and military leadership has worked to prevent talks from collapsing and to persuade the U.S. to extend the ceasefire over the past 24 hours, officials said Wednesday.
Two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press that authorities will keep security arrangements in place in Islamabad in case U.S. and Iranian delegations ultimately arrive.
Pakistan is also still waiting to hear from Tehran on when it will send a delegation for a second round, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
In Islamabad, police and troops remained on alert along key roads, manning checkpoints.
Residents were forced to take longer routes as authorities restricted access to parts of the city.
“We have not received any instructions to remove these barricades,” said police officer Mohammad Aslam as he directed commuters to turn back and use alternative routes.
— By Munir Ahmed
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met British High Commissioner Jane Marriott on Wednesday in the capital, Islamabad, to discuss the evolving regional situation.
According to the Foreign Ministry, Dar underscored Pakistan’s ongoing efforts to facilitate diplomatic engagement and stressed the importance of dialogue and diplomacy in the peaceful resolution of disputes.
Marriott appreciated Pakistan’s facilitative role in bringing the United States and Iran to the negotiating table, the ministry said.
A second ship came under attack Wednesday in the Strait of Hormuz, the British military said, just a short time after Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard opened fire on a container ship.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center did not immediately identify who shot at the second ship.
However, suspicion immediately fell on Iran, whose paramilitary Revolutionary Guard earlier opened fire on the container ship.
In the second attack, the cargo ship said it had been fired upon and was stopped in the water.
It said there was no reported damage to the vessel.
The attacks come days after the U.S. seized an Iranian container ship after shooting it this past weekend, and boarded an oil tanker associated with Iran’s oil trade Tuesday in the Indian Ocean.
Hard-line supporters of Iran’s government held rallies across the country late Tuesday that included the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard bringing missiles and their launchers into public places for the first time since the ceasefire in the war with Israel and the United States.
The scale of the demonstrations served as a sign of defiance to Israel and the U.S., which devoted a lot of their airstrike campaign to decimating Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal.
Iranian state media showed pictures, videos and wrote about missile demonstrations in Ahvaz, Arak, Bandar Abbas, Bushehr, Kerman, Tabriz, Tehran, Qom and Zanjan.
The missiles included the Faheh, the Kheibar Shekan, the Khorramshahr-4 and the Qadr.
Some of those include the cluster munitions used repeatedly against Israel during the war as a means to get around the country’s air defenses.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the drone strike on the village of Jabbour early Wednesday also wounded two people.
The Israeli military denied that it had struck in that area.
Since a 10-day ceasefire went into effect Friday, there have been several Israeli strikes while Hezbollah claimed its first attack Tuesday.
Britain and France are gathering military planners from about 30 countries to flesh out details of a mission to provide security in the Strait of Hormuz — if and when the key shipping route reopens.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said the two-day meeting at a U.K. command-and-control center in London aims to “turn diplomatic consensus into a detailed military plan.”
The plan is for an international mission to protect merchant vessels, clear mines and provide reassurance, and is dependent on a “sustainable” ceasefire being reached in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Countries, including France and the U.K., have pledged to send ships and mine-clearing drones.
Despite skepticism that the plan will ever be put into action, British Defense Secretary John Healey said Wednesday he is “confident that, over the next two days, real progress can be made.”
Iran hanged another man Wednesday over alleged ties to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency as Tehran continues a series of executions during the war, and after nationwide protests in January.
The Mizan news agency of Iran’s judiciary announced the execution of Mehdi Farid.
It described Farid as working for a “sensitive state organization” and passing information to the Israeli spy agency.
It said Farid was convicted in Iran’s Qom province.
Human rights activists have long said Iran convicts people in closed-door trials without allowing defendants to properly defend themselves.
There have been multiple executions of alleged spies recently, as well as protesters and those affiliated with an Iranian exiled opposition group.
Nour News, a website affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the Guard opened fire on the container ship after it had “ignored the warnings of the Iranian armed forces.”
Nour News added the ship sustained “extensive damage” in the attack.
Although the U.S. focused much of its fire in the war on Iran’s navy, sinking and heavily damaging dozens of vessels, the Guard operates a fleet of small attack boats, some of which apparently survived the war.
Those vessels typically carry mounted machine guns, and can be used for mining operations.
The Guard earlier Wednesday had vowed to “deliver crushing blows beyond the enemy’s imagination to its remaining assets in the region.”
The Guard “remains at peak readiness and determination to continue the fight, prepared for a decisive, certain and immediate response to any threat or renewed aggression,” the statement added.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard opened fire Wednesday on a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, damaging the ship and further raising the stakes as planned ceasefire talks in Pakistan failed to materialize.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said the attack happened around 7:55 a.m. in the strait and targeted a container ship.
The UKMTO said a Guard gunboat did not hail the ship before firing.
It said no one was hurt and there was no environmental impact from the attack.
Iran’s semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies, believed to be close to the Guard, both reported on the attack, citing the UKMTO.
Fars went further to describe Iran as “lawfully enforcing” its control over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s crude oil and natural gas traded once passed.
The strait had been considered an international waterway for the world’s shippers despite being in the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman.
The attack comes after the U.S. military seized an Iranian container ship after shooting it this past weekend, and after it boarded an oil tanker associated with Iran’s oil trade in the Indian Ocean.
