Fragile ceasefire remains intact despite US trading fire with Iran
Morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s Middle East live blog.
The US said it carried out strikes on Iranian military targets after an attack on three American destroyers in the strait of Hormuz, while Tehran accused Washington of striking first. The exchange of fire threatens to unravel a fragile ceasefire in effect since 8 April – but Donald Trump insisted the truce remains intact.
“The ceasefire is going. It’s in effect,” the US president told ABC News, describing the strikes as “just a love tap”.
He repeated this stance when asked during a visit to see renovations of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool whether the ceasefire was still on despite the attacks. “Yeah it is,” he said. “They trifled with us today. We blew them away. They trifled. I call that a trifle.”
Writing on his Truth Social platform, he said “there was no damage done” to the US warships “but great damage done to the Iranian attackers”.
He added: “We’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!”
The deal he was referring to is the one-page proposal from the US that would have both sides reach an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz and end fighting for 30 days while they work on a longer term truce, the New York Times reported.
Iran, meanwhile, accused the US of violating the ceasefire by attacking an oil tanker and another ship on Thursday, saying its forces “immediately and in retaliation attacked American military vessels”.
Reacting to the attacks in the Gulf, Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, wrote on X: “Making the same mistake again and again won’t get you a different answer; only a stronger one. Respect the new maritime regime of Iran.”
The tit-for-tat attacks came as explosions shook the Iranian capital Tehran and coastal city of Bandar Abbas, as well as Qeshm, an island in the strait of Hormuz, according to state media. The reported attacks were blamed on the US and “enemy units”, with the semi-official Tasnim news agency suggesting UAE involvement.
Key events
The Pakistani foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said he spoke with his Iranian and Singaporean counterparts about repatriating crew members on ships seized by the US.
He asked the Singaporean foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan for help repatriating “11 Pakistani and 20 Iranian seafarers, aboard vessels seized by US authorities and currently near Singaporean waters”, Dar wrote in a post on X, without specifying which ships the crew were on.
He said he also spoke to Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and that they “remain in close coordination on the matter”.
“Pakistan also stands ready to facilitate the safe repatriation of Iranian nationals to Iran via Pakistan,” he added.
US special forces boarded a stateless oil tanker in the Indian Ocean last month, which the Pentagon claimed was carrying Iranian crude oil.
A senior Saudi diplomat has reaffirmed efforts “supporting de-escalation and negotiations” as the US and Iran traded fire overnight.
In a post on X, Saudi Arabia’s minister of diplomacy, Rayed Krimly, also cautioned for people to be wary about “media reports attributed to unnamed sources – some of whom claim to be Saudi – suggesting otherwise”.
This may be in reference to a report in the Wall Street Journal that cited unnamed officials saying Saudi Arabia and Kuwait lifted restrictions on the US’s access to their military bases and airspace. US and Saudi officials reportedly told the newspaper that the restrictions were imposed soon after Donald Trump announced his ‘“Project Freedom” military operation on Sunday to reopen the strait of Hormuz. It apparently led to the US president to hit pause on the operation on Tuesday, but he is now looking to restart Project Freedom to guide commercial ships with naval and air support.
You can read more on that story here:
More than three million people in Lebanon are surviving on humanitarian aid, according to the EU commissioner for equality, preparedness and crisis management, Hadja Lahbib.
That equates to more than half of the country’s population, Lahbib told reporters today after meeting the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, in Beirut.
She said the EU has provided €100m (£86m) in aid to Lebanon, but this barely scratches the surface in meeting growing humanitarian needs. Last month, the Lebanese minister for social affairs, Hanin Sayyed, said if war and displacement continues, the country will need $1bn (about €849.8m, £734.3m) “to just keep the humanitarian situation afloat”.
Rescue worker killed in Israeli strike in southern Lebanon, says country’s civil defence
In Lebanon, the country’s civil defence agency said one of its rescue workers was killed in an Israeli strike this morning as he was travelling between two towns in the south.
It is a further sign of a disintegrating ceasefire that took effect on 17 April, with Israel and Hezbollah continuing to trade blows and the Israeli military forcing people out of their homes in dozens of towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese civil defence said their rescuer was killed “as a result of an Israeli strike that targeted him” on a road between Rachaya al-Foukhar and Kfar Shouba in Nabatieh district.
The Israeli military has not commented on the report.
Since the war began in Lebanon on 2 March, the World Health Organization (WHO) had “verified 152 attacks on healthcare that resulted in 103 deaths and 241 injuries”, WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday.
Also this morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued another warning ordering people in seven towns and villages in Nabatieh and southern Lebanese district of Tyre to flee their homes as the Israeli military prepares to launch further strikes. The IDF has issued such orders almost everyday since the ceasefire began.
Mark Saunokonoko
It has been a week of dizzying, whiplash news in the Iran war.
Seven days ago, the US-Iran ceasefire was holding but negotiations seemed stalled, or inching forward at best. With the strait of Hormuz effectively choked off by Iran, and the US Navy blockading Iranian ports, there was talk of a one-page memorandum being passed between Washington and Tehran to break the stalemate.
In this explainer, we take a look at the key moments of the past week:
Oil back over $100 a barrel as ceasefire comes under pressure
Graeme Wearden
Oil is back over $100 a barrel as the US-Iran ceasefire came under strain, undermining hopes of an early reopening of the strait of Hormuz.
The jump in oil price came two days after hopes of a peace deal breakthrough pushed it down.
Brent, the price barometer for much of the world’s crude oil, is up 1% at $101 a barrel. That’s a fairly modest move, suggesting investors are still hoping that a deal will eventually be reached.
Markets have slipped back thanks to questions about whether the US-Iran ceasefire is holding, reports Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank:
double quotation mark Questions around the ceasefire have already had a market impact in Asia overnight, where all the major equity indices have lost ground. That includes the Nikkei (-0.69%), the KOSPI (-0.73%), Hang Seng (-1.17%), CSI 300 (-0.90%) and the Shanghai Comp (-0.43%).Moreover, European equity futures are down, with those on the FTSE 100 (-0.70%) and the DAX (-0.87%) both lower, although US futures have picked up a bit after yesterday’s losses, with S&P 500 futures up +0.21%.
Follow our business live blog for more:
UAE says its air defence systems intercepted Iranian drone and missile attacks
The UAE defence ministry said its air defense systems were intercepting missiles and drone attacks from Iran this morning, further straining the tenuous ceasefire.
Iranian state media blamed the UAE for reported strikes in southern Iran yesterday. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing sources, reported that there were signs of UAE involvement in attacks on Qeshm, an Iranian island in the strait of Hormuz.
There were no immediate reports of damage in the UAE. The defence ministry advised people not to approach, photograph or touch “any debris or fragments that have fallen as a result of successful air interceptions”.
In a post on X, the ministry said: “The UAE’s air defenses are currently dealing with missile and drone attacks originating from Iran, and the Ministry of Defense confirms that the sounds heard in various parts of the country are the result of the UAE air defense systems intercepting ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones.”
Iran has frequently targeted the UAE and other Gulf nations that hose US military bases in retaliatory attacks since the beginning of the war in late February.
Fragile ceasefire remains intact despite US trading fire with Iran
Morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s Middle East live blog.
The US said it carried out strikes on Iranian military targets after an attack on three American destroyers in the strait of Hormuz, while Tehran accused Washington of striking first. The exchange of fire threatens to unravel a fragile ceasefire in effect since 8 April – but Donald Trump insisted the truce remains intact.
“The ceasefire is going. It’s in effect,” the US president told ABC News, describing the strikes as “just a love tap”.
He repeated this stance when asked during a visit to see renovations of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool whether the ceasefire was still on despite the attacks. “Yeah it is,” he said. “They trifled with us today. We blew them away. They trifled. I call that a trifle.”
Writing on his Truth Social platform, he said “there was no damage done” to the US warships “but great damage done to the Iranian attackers”.
He added: “We’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!”
The deal he was referring to is the one-page proposal from the US that would have both sides reach an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz and end fighting for 30 days while they work on a longer term truce, the New York Times reported.
Iran, meanwhile, accused the US of violating the ceasefire by attacking an oil tanker and another ship on Thursday, saying its forces “immediately and in retaliation attacked American military vessels”.
Reacting to the attacks in the Gulf, Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, wrote on X: “Making the same mistake again and again won’t get you a different answer; only a stronger one. Respect the new maritime regime of Iran.”
The tit-for-tat attacks came as explosions shook the Iranian capital Tehran and coastal city of Bandar Abbas, as well as Qeshm, an island in the strait of Hormuz, according to state media. The reported attacks were blamed on the US and “enemy units”, with the semi-official Tasnim news agency suggesting UAE involvement.
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