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Iran and US to meet in Qatar to resume peace talks, according to reports
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Iran and the United States have reportedly agreed to halt recent strikes and renew talks regarding their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz.
The development, reported by Axios, could end hostilities that had threatened an interim peace agreement. The two sides plan to meet Tuesday in Qatar, Axios said, citing a senior US official.
Iran and the US had traded attacks in the Gulf in recent days as each accused the other of violating an interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four month war.
On Sunday, Iran said its naval and aerospace forces carried out a joint missile and drone operation targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, and warned further violations would receive a “crushing response”.
Earlier, the US military said it had struck Iran for the second day after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz.
US Central Command said its strikes were launched “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping”.
Qatar’s interior ministry said on Sunday a Qatari national was killed after sustaining injuries from shrapnel due to “military operations in the area” after a vessel carrying him and another person went missing.
The ministry said the second individual was injured, adding that it located the missing vessel in the early hours of Sunday after search operations that started a day earlier.
It did not give the location of the incident and did not say whether the shrapnel was linked to Iranian drones launched against US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain on Sunday.
The number of Iranian cyberattacks against Israel has shot up since the launch of the US-Israeli offensive against Iran this year, a senior Israeli security official was quoted as saying on Monday.
Yossi Karadi, Director General of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, told German newspaper Die Welt that in June 2025 during Israeli military operations against Iran, Israel’s authorities registered around 1,600 hostile cyber incidents.
During the same month in 2026, the number had jumped to some 4,800 incidents, he told the paper.
“Some groups are very skilled,” Karadi said, according to the German text of the interview.
“We can handle them, but we have to take them seriously. Unlike in the kinetic realm, there’s no ceasefire in cyberspace.”
Karadi said the attacks were directed against systems used by Israel’s critical infrastructure, central organisations, small to medium-sized companies and the public, citing law practices and accounting firms as among the smaller ones hit.
“So far – and hopefully it stays that way – we’ve managed to fend off attacks on critical infrastructure,” he said.
Companies that were easier to penetrate often ended up having their computer systems wiped, he said, without mentioning any names. Iran typically denies carrying out hacking campaigns against other countries while reporting attacks on itself.
The Israeli military said it destroyed underground infrastructure used by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in a village in southern Lebanon, according to a joint statement by the Israeli prime minister and defence minister on Sunday.
The US was informed ahead of the attack, which targeted a 200m long tunnel in the town of Majdal Zoun, according to the statement from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.
The strike came two days after Lebanon and Israel agreed a US-brokered security arrangement intended to ease hostilities along the border.
The agreement provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from some parts of southern Lebanon alongside the deployment of the Lebanese army, although Israeli forces would be permitted to remain in an expanded security zone for the time being.
The Israeli statement said the tunnel contained hundreds of weapons and launchers. The attack comes hours after the Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and hit a rocket launcher in the Nabatieh area of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah said early on Monday that the Israeli attacks were a “flagrant” violation of the ceasefire to which it has so far adhered, adding that it is closely monitoring all such violations and reserves the right to “defend its homeland and people”.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has rejected the security agreement, describing it as a surrender to Israel. He said the group would continue its armed resistance.
Netanyahu said in his statement late on Sunday that the Israeli military would remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon and will “continue to destroy terrorist infrastructure, remove threats from the northern communities, and safeguard the security of Israel’s citizens”.
More than a million Lebanese have been driven from their homes by the conflict that has run in parallel with the wider Iran war. Hezbollah and Iran say Washington pledged to ensure the end of hostilities in Lebanon as part of its memorandum of understanding signed two weeks ago to end the wider war.
Qatar’s Interior Ministry announced on Sunday that a Qatari citizen had been killed and another injured amid the hostilities between the U.S. and Israel and Iran.
According to the interior ministry, the two individuals were on a boat that was struck by shrapnel from a military strike. The ministry said the vessel never returned to port on Saturday, which kicked off a search and rescue operation.
Responders found the vessel and the two individuals early on Sunday. The injured individual — who has not been identified — was transported to a hospital for treatment. The Qatari citizen died.
People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since the war in Iran started.
Top power distributor Meralco has raised prices by 10 per cent since the Middle East conflict began in late February. Now, a median household spends around 12 per cent of monthly income on electricity, assuming it consumes 200 kilowatt-hours – approximately the monthly average for three people.
The Philippines is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia with barely any power subsidies, and its residential power prices are the highest in the region. Only Singapore comes close, but its citizens average purchasing power is nearly 13 times higher.
Adrian Sabatera, a 39-year-old software engineer, thought about getting solar for years but found it too costly. That changed as costs came down and electricity prices kept rising.”I wouldn’t be shocked if a third of the middle-class population eventually finds their way to this setup,” Mr Sabatera said after recently pulling the trigger on a ₱570,000 ($9,300) installation at the Manila house he shares with `three others.
The rooftop solar rush has resulted in $407m in panel imports in the three months through May, a 145 per cent increase from a year earlier, according to trade data from China, which accounts for most global supply.
Even when Chinese panel shipments fell 13 per cent in May after a tax rebate removal, exports to the Philippines rose by almost a third. On paper, the Netherlands remains a larger market for panels, but experts say that’s because it is a transshipment hub.
One round of mediated talks, led by vice president JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington waived sanctions on Tehran, but fighting has since resumed and intensified.
About an hour after Donald Trump’s post, Kuwait’s army said its air defences were responding to missile and drone attacks, while Bahrain said sirens had sounded there.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Guards said US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, state-run Press TV said. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.
A US official, confirming Iran had targeted US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US sites in the Middle East but the situation was still unfolding.
Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, where authorities said an Iranian attack damaged a residential building in Muharraq province, with no casualties reported. Bahrain urged the UN Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.
The Kuwaiti army said it had intercepted two ballistic missiles with no damage or casualties. Separately, Qatar said one of its nationals had died after sustaining injuries from shrapnel aboard a vessel that had gone missing on Saturday.
A second person was injured in the incident, which was due to “military operations in the area”, the interior ministry said, without giving a location or apportioning blame.
Israel said on Sunday it had once again struck Iran-backed armed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, destroying underground infrastructure used by the group in a village in southern Lebanon.
That came after another strike on Saturday, which closely followed its latest ceasefire deal with Lebanon on Friday. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must end if the wider agreement is to stick.
The US military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Tehran has largely closed for most of the conflict.
“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump said on social media, before the Axios report.
“If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!” he added. The 14-point interim peace accord was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on 28 February, and reopen the strait while talks proceeded on issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, met with Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Sunday where he accused the U.S. and Israel of violating parts of the recently-established memorandum of understanding between the three nations.
He announced the meeting on his Telegram channel.
Araghchi met with Iraqi President Nizar Amidi and told the leader that the alleged violation could prove to be a major hurdle to future peace in the region.
He insisted that Iran was acting according to the memorandum but wanted the nation would respond decisively to breaches from the U.S. or Israel.
Iran and the United States agreed to halt recent hostilities in the Gulf and renew talks regarding their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a US official said on Sunday, raising hopes of saving an interim peace deal that was under pressure from days of tit-for-tat strikes.
“Technical talks are slated to continue on all areas of the Mou. Both sides will stand down for now and vessels can move freely,” the official said, referring to the 14-point memorandum of understanding that was agreed on 17 June under which the strait would be re-opened for traffic.
Axios, which first reported the cessation of hostilities, citing a senior US official, said talks would resume on Tuesday in Qatar.
A return to diplomacy would follow several days of strikes and counterstrikes since an Iranian projectile hit a cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, with both the US and Iran accusing the other of breaking an interim ceasefire that was agreed to on 17 June.
Iran launched missiles and drones at US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain early on Sunday, shortly after president Donald Trump threatened that the Islamic Republic would cease to exist if it did not honor the agreement to end the war.
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