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Trump suggested if a deal was made he would meet with Iran’s supreme leader
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Iran’s navy has said that it fired warning missiles and drones at US warships in the Gulf of Oman on Friday.
It accused the American navy of harassing maritime traffic and seizing commercial vessels and oil tankers, according to Iranian state media.
The hostility follows Donald Trump’s comments that Washington did not need a ceasefire deal with Iran to get enriched uranium from the country as Hezbollah rejected a new ceasefire in Lebanon.
“We could get it right now. I don’t think they could stop us if we wanted, but there’s no reason to. It’s entombed,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
Oman suspended oil loading operations at the Mina al Fahal terminal following an explosion near the facility. The blast occurred between the terminal’s SBM 1 and SBM 2 single-buoy mooring berths and was allegedly caused by a drone attack, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Operations were resumed on Friday morning.
Iran-backed Hezbollah on Thursday rejected a new US-brokered ceasefire proposal in Lebanon, saying the group was not involved in the negotiations.
Meanwhile, Israel continued strikes in southern Lebanon, with defence minister Israel Katz saying military operations would continue and troops would not withdraw.
The United Stated has imposed new Iran-related sanctions, targeting several entities, individuals and LPG tankers, the US Treasury Department’s website showed today.
Among 12 entities designated are five that are based in the Marshall Islands, four in the UAE, and one in China, according to details posted to the department’s website.
Six vessels were targeted, including four Panama-flagged tankers.
Israel’s air force struck different parts of southern Lebanon on Friday as the military issued evacuation warnings for nine villages, including one that has been spared much of the destruction and was sheltering thousands of people displaced by the three-month war.
Six people were killed, Lebanon’s state news agency reported. The warnings forced hundreds of families to flee the village of Anqoun and the area of Aarnaya, on the edge of the predominantly Christian village of Maghdoucheh, near the southern port city of Sidon.
The strikes came a day after the Hezbollah militant group rejected the latest ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government, and demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Iran’s national football team is heading to their World Cup base this weekend, buoyed by a 2-0 friendly victory over Mali in Turkey, even though signifcant uncertainty continues to cloud their tournament participation.
Goals from Saeid Ezatolahi and Ramin Rezaeian sealed the win, securing Team Melli’s record of three victories and a single loss in four warm-up matches in Antalya.
These friendlies represent the only competitive football for Iran-based players since the domestic league was suspended following US and Israeli air strikes on the Islamic Republic in late February, which triggered a regional war.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told CNN that Iran was using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the United States.
Aoun has repeatedly sought to distance Lebanon from regional conflicts and has said decisions concerning the country’s sovereignty and security must be made by the Lebanese state alone.
US forces overnight conducted an interdiction of the sanctioned stateless vessel M/T DAVINA in the Indian Ocean, the Indo-Pacific Command said on Friday.
“We will continue global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate,” it wrote in an X post.
Washington has imposed a blockade on Iran’s trade by sea while Iran has fired on ships to prevent them sailing through the Strait of Hormuz waterway at the entrance to the Middle East Gulf. U.S. forces have intercepted multiple commercial and oil tankers in the Indian Ocean in recent months.
Iran’s navy has said it fired warning shots at US destroyers in the Gulf of Oman, according to state media.
The two sides have been trading strikes in recent days as negotiations appear to have stalled.
Lebanon’s parliament speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri said on Friday he would agree to the withdrawal of the Iran-backed group from southern Lebanon if Israeli troops simultaneously left territory they occupy in the country.
In written comments distributed by his office, Berri criticised the U.S.-mediated ceasefire framework announced this week as unfair, saying it should have included an “unconditional ceasefire by land, sea and air.”
He added that he “agrees to… Hezbollah’s withdrawal from south of the Litani River, in parallel with the Israeli withdrawal from the areas it occupied.”
As a barrage of Iranian missiles rained down on the Fujairah oil terminal, the explosion was deafening and the destruction dramatic: a brutal fire, thick black smoke stretching into the sky – and untold damage to one of the region’s crucial pieces of fossil fuel infrastructure.
The Fujairah terminal is part of the UAE’s key oil export route because it bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, loading up ships with about 1.7 million barrels per day. The attack on 4 May was one of many it has come under since the start of the war in the Middle East. Pension holders in Cambridgeshire, Dorset, and Leicestershire may be alarmed to discover that their savings are invested in it.
Theirs aren’t the only savings being put at risk by the ongoing war. We have found that local government pension schemes across the UK have invested almost £3 billion in funds holding assets that have been hit, stranded or put in the direct line of fire in the ongoing war. The money has been invested via funds managed by firms like BlackRock – the asset manager run by billionaire Larry Fink – that make billions of dollars in fees for investing UK savers’ money.
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