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Middle East crisis live: Trump suggests Gulf countries should sign Abraham accords recognising Israel under any deal

In a new post on Truth Social, the US president, Donald Trump, said that talks with Iran are “proceeding nicely” but reiterated his earlier warning that it will either be a “great deal for all” or there will be no deal at all, raising the prospect of a resumption of attacks on Iran if the deal doesn’t make it over the line. He went on to say that it should be “mandatory” for certain countries in the region – including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan – to sign up to the Abraham accords, diplomatic agreements brokered in 2020 in which several Arab nations agreed to recognise Israel, as part of US efforts to reach a deal with Iran. All of these countries have helped mediate between Washington and Tehran, with Pakistan taking the lead. Trump wrote: It may be possible that one or two have a reason for not doing so, and that will be accepted, but most should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be. The Abraham Accords have proven to be, for the Countries involved (The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kazakhstan), a Financial, Economic, and Social BOOM, even during this time of Conflict and War, with the current Members never even suggesting leaving, or taking so much as even a pause. The UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham accords during Trump’s first term in 2020, breaking a longstanding taboo to become the first Arab states to recognise Israel in a quarter century. Morocco and Sudan followed. Israel and the UAE have since developed close economic and security ties, including defence cooperation and a free trade pact, although there are significant strains in the relationship.

Iran denies deal with US is imminent despite some progress

Iran has poured cold water on suggestions that a deal with the US is imminent, pointing to the confusion in US positions and Israeli interference as key factors in why a complete agreement is proving difficult to secure. Speaking at the weekly foreign ministry press briefing, Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s negotiating team, also said future management of the strait of Hormuz was a matter for Oman and Iran to reach agreement on, and that it was not tolls that were being proposed but “fees for navigational services”. Referring to the state of the talks, Baghaei said: “It is correct to say that we have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion. But to say that this means the signing of an agreement is imminent – no one can make such a claim.” He also insisted that a ceasefire in Lebanon had to be included in the memorandum of understanding that would lead to Iran allowing commercial shipping through the strait, and the US lifting its blockade of Iran’s ports. By contrast, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, still held out hope that a deal could be reached on Monday, but there appeared to be a mounting list of unresolved problems in what was intended to be a roadmap to reopening the nuclear talks that Trump abandoned in February in favour of war. Rubio said it took time to receive an answer from the Iranian political system but he emphasised: “Either we will have a good deal or we will deal with this issue in another way, and we prefer to have a good deal.” The US president, Donald Trump, said in a post on Truth Social on Monday that the deal would either be “great and meaningful, or there will be no deal at all”. In the press briefing, Baghaei also said no nuclear issues, such as what to do with the Iranian stockpile of highly enriched uranium, would be tackled in the memorandum except for a commitment to negotiate in the next 60 days. Trump, under mounting pressure from critics inside the Republican party, wants the memorandum to contain a commitment by Iran to dispose of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, even if the precise method is not detailed. In previous rounds of talks with the US, Iran has said it is willing to down-blend the enriched uranium, but it will not permit the transfer of the stockpile to either the US or Russia. It has spoken of suspending domestic enrichment for as long as five years, but not the 20 years sought by the US. Iranian officials also claimed the political outcry about the deal inside the US was placing pressure on Trump to backtrack on plans to release as much as $12bn (£9bb) in frozen Iranian assets held in Qatar. The governor of Iran’s central bank, Abdolnaser Hemmati, travelled to Qatar on Monday. The release of the assets is a central Iranian demand, but has painful parallels for Trump, who lambasted Barack Obama for giving $1.7bn to Iran in cash at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal. Baghaei, referring to the chaos in Washington, said: “You are faced with a wave of dismissals, contradictory statements, opposition from Congress and also opposition from parts of public opinion.” Trump by contrast has dismissed his critics, saying he would not “listen to losers who are critical of something they know nothing about”. The deal contains nothing on Iran’s ballistic missiles or support for its regional proxy groups; as such, it contrasts with Trump’s promise that the war would end with Iran’s complete surrender. Baghaei accused Israel of trying to scupper the deal, saying nothing else should be expected of the Israelis. On the strait of Hormuz, Baghaei said talks were held on Monday between Omani and Iranian officials. He claimed the reason Oman and Iran were trying to establish a reliable and effective mechanism to ensure safe passage in the strait was precisely because “we believe in the use of this international waterway for free trade and safe navigation”. Rejecting claims the Iranian plan amounted to nationalisation of an open waterway, he said that if “navigation services are provided, plus necessary measures to protect the environment of the strait, these require the collection of fees. The term tolls should not be used. We do not charge tolls. I think we should be careful in the choice of words.” European and Gulf states are likely to see this as a distinction without a differences, especially if commercial shipping is in effect required to seek Iran’s navigational services. Inside Iran, many commentators saw the imminent deal as a roadmap to a hostile coexistence aimed at managing the tension, rather than ending it. The sense that the war for now may be reaching its endgame was underlined by reports that Iran’s officials would reconnect Iran to the international internet within a week after a vote by the supreme national security council. Iranian officials, facing soaring inflation of food prices, are nervous about the public reaction once internet controls are lifted. The spate of executions inside Iran continues unabated.

Pope Leo denounces ‘culture of power’ driving rise of AI

Pope Leo has denounced the “culture of power” driving the rapid rise of artificial intelligence while warning that the technology must be subject to the “most rigorous” ethical constraints as it infiltrates everything from work to war. In his encyclical – the first major text on safeguarding humankind of his papacy – he also apologised for the Catholic church’s long delay in condemning slavery, describing it as “a wound in Christian memory”, and spoke of the “new forms of slavery” due to the digital economy. In a break from tradition, Leo, who soon after being elected in May last year said he considered AI to be the biggest threat to humanity today, presented the document himself on Monday during an event at the Vatican. Among those in attendance was Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a US-based AI firm thatis embroiled in a lawsuit with Donald Trump’s administration over the ethics of AI. Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pope to the Catholic church’s 1.4 billion members, and typically outline his priorities while highlighting the major issues in society. In the document, called Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), Leo, who was born in Chicago and is the first US-born pope, referred to “a troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics” and said AI was helping to facilitate the “normalisation of war”. “For this reason, the development and use of AI in warfare must be subject to the most rigorous ethical constraints, to guarantee respect for human dignity and the sanctity of life and to avoid a race to develop such arms,” he wrote. Leo urged the “disarming” of AI, while stating that some autonomous weapons systems are “practically beyond any human reach” to control. “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition,” he wrote. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,” adding that the technology should be “human-friendly”, accessible to all and opened to discussion and debate. In a passage that appeared to be targeted at Silicon Valley, the pope warned that power over digital systems, infrastructure and data “does not rest with states but with major economic and technological actors”, and that when such power was concentrated “in the hands of the few” it tended to “become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities”. Olah said on Monday that the development of AI cannot be left solely to technology companies, urging greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society. Olah, who was sitting alongside the pope, said there was “a real possibility” that AI would displace human labour “at very large scale”. “If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions,” he said. Companies like his operated “inside a set of incentives and constraints”, such as under strong commercial, geopolitical and personal pressures, that can sometimes conflict with “doing the right thing” for the broader interests of society, therefore making outside scrutiny essential. Leo, whose family history includes both enslaved people and enslavers, wrote on slavery: “It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord … For this, in the name of the church, I sincerely ask for pardon.” Past popes have apologised for Christians’ involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. But no pope has ever publicly acknowledged, much less apologised for, the role that popes themselves played in giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels”. Alongside two of his cardinals, others at the presentation included the theologians Anna Rowlands and Léocadie Lushombo. Rowlands, professor of Catholic social thought at Durham University, said the encyclical “brings the vision of the Gospel to bear on the cultures of AI”, and in doing so “warns of a growing culture of power that is reshaping work, family, education, and political life”. The Vatican has been seriously engaged on questions surrounding AI for several years now, including having regular dialogues with Microsoft, Google and other big technology firms. The pope said on Monday that the Catholic church wanted to work with AI developers to discuss proper use of the technology. “What Leo has done in this document is put the full weight of his office behind the Catholic church’s efforts to be in dialogue with big tech,” said Christopher White, the author of Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy and a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. “He’s clearly approaching AI from a position of humility and making it clear that the church doesn’t have all of the answers when it comes to what sort of policies are necessary for AI regulation. But he is being clear-eyed that AI development can’t simply be the wild west like some of its advocates would like to see.” In reaction to the encyclical, Christine Allen, CEO and director of the Catholic aid charity Cafod, said the pope’s message spoke of the “inherent dignity of humankind”. “We are not simply instruments of production but living beings, entrusted with a moral compass,” she added. “In a world full of imbalances, we have a duty to use AI responsibly. Today’s message is that it should not be used to further exacerbate inequality and suffering.”

Trump Tower in Georgia to be built on land part-owned by son of US sanctions-hit leader

A Trump Tower planned for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, is to be built on land currently part-owned by the son of the US-sanctioned leader of the country, according to official records. The proposed skyscraper, a joint venture between a local consortium and the Trump Organization, which is managed by the US president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, will be on a plot whose current registered owner is the International Charity Fund Cartu. According to official records, the Fund Cartu is solely owned by Cartu Group JSC which, in turn, is 35% owned by Uta Ivanishvili, the eldest son of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire politician who is honorary chair of Georgia’s ruling party. Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is widely recognised as the de facto leader of the Georgian government, was put under US sanctions by the Biden administration in 2024 for “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation”. Uta Ivanishvili, who is not under sanctions, owned 100% of Cartu Group JSC until 2024 but reduced his shareholding to 35% when his father, who is Georgia’s richest man, was subjected to US economic restrictions. It is not possible to identify the remaining 65% ownership of Cartu Group JSC today, as individual shareholdings of under 5% can be held anonymously. Under the sanctions regime, US citizens are prohibited from conducting business, processing payments, or providing services to Bidzina Ivanishvili personally without authorisation but there is an exemption relating to businesses controlled by him. The links between the Trump Organization and the Ivanishvili family will raise fresh concerns about the potential conflict of interest raised by the selling of the US president’s name to developers seeking to sell residential and resort complexes. Similar franchise agreements struck by the Trump Organization include a luxury hotel and golf course complex in Oman, which is being built on land owned by the country’s government. That project and three others are in partnership with a subsidiary of a Saudi-based real estate company, Dar Al Arkan, which has close ties with the Saudi government, the New York Times reported last year. The White House has said that “neither the president nor his family” have “ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest”. In a press release published by the Trump Organization in April announcing the 70-storey tower project in Tbilisi, Eric Trump, the executive vice-president of the real estate multinational, said the company was “proud to bring this globally recognised standard of excellence to Georgia and are especially pleased to collaborate with such respected and professional developers on this project”. Four Georgian firms – Archi Group, Biograpi Living, Blox Group and Finvest Georgia, alongside the US-based Sapir Organization, a longstanding Trump partner – are going into partnership with the Trump Organization for the project to build Georgia’s tallest building. There are no sanctions against any of those companies or its directors. Archi Group’s founder, the businessman Ilia Tsulaia, previously served as an MP for the Georgian Dream party, while Biograpi Living is part of the Wissol Group, owned by the brothers Soso and Levan Pkhakadze, whose silence over Georgia’s recent political upheavals has been a point of comment in local media. None of the companies responded to a request for comment. The central Tbilisi plot on which the Trump Tower will be built is an old Soviet horse-racing track, known as the hippodrome. It is now owned by Cartu but an agreement was reached in 2023 for it to be sold to a company called Central Park Avenue LLC. The ownership of only a small peripheral portion of that land has been transferred so far to Central Park Avenue LLC. Completion of the sale of the majority of the plot is due to be made on receipt of payment to Cartu of the purchase price. Temo Tsikvadze, a lawyer for Ivanishvili, said: “Bidzina Ivanishvili’s family owned a total of 511,880 sq metres of land on the site of the former racecourse. “Bidzina Ivanishvili donated the bulk of this land – 431,735 sq metres – to the state and is currently building a public space, the Central Park, on it at his own expense. A preliminary purchase and sale agreement for the remaining land plot – 80,000 sq metres – was signed on October 16 2023. “Under this agreement, the future owner is Central Park Avenue LLC (although a portion of the area – 9,645 sq metres – has already been fully transferred). The transfer of the remaining land to the future owner will occur upon payment in accordance with the terms of the agreement.” The Trump Tower project has been seen by Bidzina Ivanishvili’s critics in Georgia as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the US president. Georgian Dream leaders have loudly trumpeted the project as a vote of confidence in Georgia’s economy and governance. The speaker of Georgia’s parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, who is from the ruling Georgian Dream party, has said that “when Trump’s company enters Georgia under its own brand, it means it has a strong understanding of the existing environment. Naturally, Trump and his company are careful to protect the reputation they have built.” Sandro Kevkhishvili, the anti-corruption programme manager at Transparency International Georgia, said there were grounds for concern that the Trump Tower project in Georgia was “not merely a private business project, but rather a political one”. The involvement of at least one businessman with affiliations to the Georgian Dream party was the first cause of concern, he said. “Second is that to this day the land plot on which the project is planned belongs to Cartu Fund – a charity organisation linked to the family of Bidzina Ivanishvili, the honorary chair of the Georgian Dream ruling party, and a person exercising effective control over Georgia; and third is the fact that the Georgian Dream-aligned propaganda channels, recently sanctioned by the United Kingdom under Russia sanctions regime for deliberately spreading false information about the Ukraine war, are presenting this business deal as a political victory of the ruling party.” The White House referred questions to the Trump Organization, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The BHP files: World’s biggest miner BHP backtracks on climate action with key projects put on ice, leaked documents reveal

The world’s biggest miner has halted or delayed projects to cut vast amounts of emissions and has quietly war-gamed options to push major climate investments in its Western Australian iron ore operations into the next two decades, internal documents show. An exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC’s Four Corners can reveal that BHP, one of Australia’s biggest historic emitters, has dumped plans for a facility that could have significantly reduced emissions and has put on ice renewable projects designed to power its iron ore operations in the vast, resource-rich Pilbara region. The cache of leaked internal records, dubbed the BHP files, reveals that the company was aware delayed climate action in the Pilbara would pose a “reputational risk” and that “urgent decarbonisation in line with BHP’s public commitments” effectively underpinned its “licence to operate”. Despite the warnings, it announced a slowdown of its decarbonisation program last year, slashing spending and putting off meaningful investment until the 2030s at the earliest. It did so in the face of overwhelming shareholder support for urgent climate action and board approval of a key solar project. The documents reveal: BHP’s first planned investment in its inland Pilbara decarbonisation plan – a 50-megawatt solar farm and 20MW battery at its Jimblebar mine – was effectively shelved soon after being approved and funded by the board in mid-2023. The move prompted internal criticism from staff, some of whom questioned the decision to unilaterally close a board-approved project. A huge system of almost 500MW solar, wind and battery that could power a small city has been significantly delayed. Documents show it will “not progress in its current form” and has been given no capital funding until 2031 at the earliest, despite an initial plan for it to deliver its first power from December 2027. BHP quietly dumped an iron ore processing plant that could have prevented 1.7m tonnes of emissions a year, the equivalent of taking more than 350,000 cars off the road. This was despite describing it as “well-aligned” with its climate transition action plan, which shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of, and its stated decarbonisation targets. The company initially planned to replace its fleet of diesel trucks – one of the biggest sources of BHP’s emissions – with electric ones beginning in 2027-28 but documents show it has continued to acquire polluting diesel haulage trucks for long-term use, including a purchase of more than $500m for new diesel trucks at Jimblebar. Public documents also suggest it is planning to use diesel trucks at a proposed new mine at Ministers North. BHP says it is still focused on its emissions reductions goals and has reduced emissions by 36% on 2020 levels, pointing to analysis suggesting it is one of the best climate performers of large publicly listed companies. “Despite this progress, many of the technologies the resources industry will need to achieve net zero are not yet ready to be deployed,” a spokesperson said. Experts and environmental groups have voiced concerns that BHP’s failure to urgently decarbonise could put national climate targets – including a 43% cut below 2005 levels by 2030 – in doubt. “BHP is fundamentally putting Australia’s emissions targets at risk,” said Tim Buckley of the thinktank Climate Energy Finance. “It’s the single biggest company in Australia, and its annual report shows its emissions going up between fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2030. It isn’t showing leadership and it is refusing to act on its own policy.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility’s head of engagement, Naomi Hogan, said the company’s actions had oversized influence in driving climate action, including in the development of technological advancements in electric trucking and rail. Big miners were more than mere “participants” in the energy transition, she said. “They can help shape it through their scale and purchasing power.” BHP is one of the world’s biggest historic emitters but has spent years trying to reposition itself as an industry leader on climate. It has previously set a target to cut emissions by 30% by 2030 and has a goal to reach net zero in 2050. In 2019 its then chief executive, Andrew Mackenzie, said fossil fuel dependence posed “existential” risks and tackling climate change would require “the biggest global mobilisation since World War II”. But the BHP files show that, within six years, the company was war-gaming options that would massively delay action on key decarbonisation initiatives in its Western Australian iron ore business. A memo seen by Guardian Australia, dated May 2025, shows BHP no longer considered its current decarbonisation plan to be achievable, claiming it had a “low probability of success” and blaming slow technological advancement by truck manufacturers. “The urgency to source renewables generation and storage services by 2030 has diminished,” the document said. The memo contemplates major delays to key decarbonisation projects. That includes two options to delay electrifying its highly polluting truck and rail fleets until 2035 or 2040, and a third to simply take no action at all. It said early studies for BHP’s landmark renewables project, almost 500MW of solar, wind and battery storage installations, would be “delayed”. The project would have produced enough energy to power a small city and could have accounted for up to 70% of the energy used on the inland power grid that supplies BHP’s Western Australian iron ore operations. A proposed second stage of the project was hoped to increase renewable generation even further. But documents show the renewables project has no capital funding allocated to it until 2031 at the earliest and that, as of last year, BHP said it would “not progress in its current form”. In a statement, BHP said its progress towards net zero emissions was dependant on technological shifts in trucks, trains and bulldozers, which were not yet ready to be deployed. “For example, no Australian mining operation is currently utilising critical 240-ton battery-electric haul trucks as the technology is not advanced enough to scale to an operational fleet,” a spokesperson said. The company is trialling battery electric trucks and rail in the Pilbara and is using solar energy to power 30% of its Port Hedland operations. The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia, an industry group, said the shift to electrified haulage was incredibly complex and required a whole-of-sector effort to pioneer technological change. “There is currently no mining operation anywhere in the world with the scale, complexity and operating conditions of the Pilbara running a fully electrified haulage fleet, because the technology to do so simply does not exist,” said its chief executive, Aaron Morey. “Companies including BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue are all investing heavily and partnering with equipment manufacturers to change that.” But Hogan said the big miners need to do more. “Remaining hooked on expenditure for diesel trucks and pointing to technology delays demonstrates BHP and Rio Tinto are taking a back seat on decarbonisation,” she said. “Right now, they could be boosting investment and upping the scale and speed of trials of early deployment low-emissions technologies to shape core investment decisions.” Do you know more? Contact christopher.knaus@theguardian.com

BHP defies its own climate strategy to spend hundreds of millions on polluting diesel trucks in Pilbara

BHP has continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying diesel trucks in the Pilbara despite internal documents suggesting it would increase emissions and be “misaligned” with its decarbonisation goals. The mining giant is Australia’s biggest consumer of diesel and trucks are its biggest single source of diesel emissions. Replacing the fleet with battery-electric trucks is considered a critical step in the multinational’s efforts to decarbonise. The company had planned to begin trialling electric trucks in Western Australia in 2024 and to begin rolling them out in 2027-28. But an exclusive investigation based on documents leaked to the Guardian and Four Corners can reveal that, far from embracing electric trucks, BHP has continued to buy polluting diesel trucks for its Jimblebar mine. It also plans to use diesel trucks at a proposed new mine. Public documents for Ministers North, a planned mine roughly 85km north-west of the town of Newman, show the mining giant is planning to use diesel trucks and expects they will account for most of its direct emissions at the site. “The largest source of [direct greenhouse gas] emissions is associated with diesel consumed by heavy haulage and ancillary equipment,” the company told the Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia last year. The documents suggest BHP expects the mine to be operational until at least 2041. BHP warned the EPA that technology for battery-electric trucks was not ready and that “these delays will impact the previously projected timelines for deploying battery-electric heavy mobile equipment and locomotives” across its Western Australian iron ore division. The same approach was taken at Jimblebar, a huge iron ore mine near the town of Newman, where much of the ageing truck fleet required replacement or refurbishment between 2024 and 2027. Internal documents show that BHP decided in 2022 that it would refurbish its Jimblebar fleet to extend its life by 60,000 hours, or about eight years. That plan would have neatly lined up with its goals to electrify the entire fleet in the 2030s, allowing it to keep the refurbished diesel trucks going for long enough that it could replace them with battery-electric trucks when the technology was available. “This approach also established a potential replacement window for [zero-emission material movement trucks] between FY30 and FY35,” the documents say. The 2022 plan warned that buying a new diesel fleet in the mid-2020s, rather than refurbishing the existing ones, would mean BHP was next due to replace the trucks between 2038 and 2041. This timing would be “misaligned with BHP’s climate change strategy that targets full displacement of diesel by 2040”. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email But the plan changed in 2023. Documents show BHP had achieved a “material reduction in cost” for new diesel trucks. The company then authorised the purchase of 62 diesel haul trucks at Jimblebar at an estimated cost of more than $500m. The internal documents said this would meet a goal of “40% diesel displacement by 2040”. The documents also said this was in line with its climate goals because it was “minimising capital investment in new diesel trucks” at Jimblebar. BHP presented its second climate action transition plan to shareholders in 2024. It made repeated references to the planned transition to electric trucks, initially through Western Australian Iron Ore, which “will likely be our first operated asset to progressively roll-out electric haul trucks and excavators towards the end of the 2020s”. The plan was overwhelmingly endorsed at the company’s 2024 annual general meeting. Just a year later, in its 2025 annual report, BHP flagged a dramatic slowdown in its shift away from diesel trucking, blaming “low technology readiness” among truck manufacturers. “These delays will impact our previously projected timelines for deploying battery-electric heavy mobile equipment and locomotives at [Western Australian Iron Ore],” the report said. In a statement to the Guardian, BHP said no Australian miner was now using 240-ton battery-electric haul trucks because “the technology is not advanced enough to scale to an operational fleet”. “To support the acceleration of this technology, BHP is partnering with equipment producers to run trials of battery-electric equipment including two 240-ton battery electric haul trucks being trialled on a BHP site in the Pilbara, and four battery-electric locomotives which we plan to commence trialling in coming months,” a spokesperson said. Aaron Morey, the chief executive officer of the industry group the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia, said: “There is currently no mining operation anywhere in the world with the scale, complexity and operating conditions of the Pilbara running a fully electrified haulage fleet, because the technology to do so simply does not exist.” The company’s claim that the technology is not ready is at odds with the actions of one of its key competitors, Fortescue, which has ordered 360 battery-electric haul trucks from two suppliers – Liebherr and XCMG – and brought forward plans to fully power its mining assets in the Pilbara using wind, solar and battery. BHP said: “Announced commitments by some companies to acquire new equipment in the future does not mean such equipment currently exists.” Experts and environmental groups say the attempt to blame equipment manufacturers ignores BHP’s oversized role in driving investment in new technology. Naomi Hogan, the head of engagement at the Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said BHP’s approach had also left it hostage to the global fuel crisis caused by the Iran war. “BHP and Rio Tinto can actively accelerate technology advancements through investment, procurement, and how they design and operate their assets to be electrification ready,” she said. “That includes building the renewable power needed to support electrification on remote sites and ensuring new operations are designed to accommodate low-emissions equipment.” BHP consumed 1.23bn litres of diesel and received $622m in fuel tax credits from the federal government in the 2025 financial year, according to analysis of data from Australia’s tax credit scheme. Tim Buckley, a director of the thinktank Climate Energy Finance, said BHP had doubled down on diesel trucks while backing a Minerals Council of Australia campaign against a proposal to limit fuel tax credit rebates to $50m a company each year. “I think BHP is not just ignoring change, they are actively trying to undermine any change,” he said.

BHP has made big climate promises – that’s the easy part. Now it must do the real work of slashing emissions | Adam Morton

The revelation that BHP cancelled and delayed commitments to act on the climate crisis should be a wake-up call. It matters in its own right: millions of tonnes of additional heat-trapping pollution will go into the atmosphere, adding to climate harm and making Australia’s climate targets that much harder to reach. It also matters for the influence the world’s biggest miner could have in accelerating use of technology needed to cut pollution from major industrial operations. BHP is not alone among its peers in stepping back its climate action. Rio Tinto has slashed spending on projects to reduce emissions and disbanded its specialist decarbonisation unit. Other major corporations have either jumped in fear of Donald Trump or used his rise as an excuse to drop climate commitments. But the scale of BHP’s reversal, revealed in documents leaked to the Guardian and the ABC, is significant. It shelved the first big investment planned under its decarbonisation plan – a huge solar farm – after it was approved and funded by its board. A much larger solar, wind and battery development that would have run most of its inland operations in northern Western Australia has been delayed for at least five years. BHP has also doubled down on using diesel-powered trucks, despite a promise to switch to a fleet of electric vehicles running on renewable energy. Internal documents acknowledge this is inconsistent with its climate pledges. Making promises to cut emissions is the easy part. Designing and spending up on plans to achieve those cuts is a tougher exercise. Inevitably, there will be bumps on that road. But the leaked documents show that is not what has happened here. Instead, BHP has balked at commitments that a company of its heft and worth could prioritise if it chose. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter The company’s own estimates suggest that its full decarbonisation could cost US$7.5bn over the next 25 years. It brings in the equivalent revenue in less than six months from its WA operations alone. BHP is famously known as the Big Australian – a reflection of its success and scale since its origins mining silver and lead in Broken Hill 140 years ago. It remains at or near the top of lists of the country’s most profitable companies. In many ways, it is a responsible corporate citizen. It and Rio pay more tax in Australia than any other company. But it is also a historic, global-scale polluter, mostly thanks to its mining of coal. Its extraction of that dirty fuel means it has been in the upper echelon of corporate emitters since industrialisation. The thinktank InfluenceMap lists it as the 31st biggest cumulative contributor to the climate crisis, and the 10th biggest among companies owned by private investors. Over the past 140 years, it has been responsible for more than 11bn tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere, counting the pollution released when its customers use its products. That’s equivalent to about 25 years of Australia’s current annual emissions. These days its marketing emphasises the need to cut emissions. It has sold some coalmines, and offloaded its petroleum arm – its oil and gas assets – to the Australian fossil fuel giant Woodside. It mines iron ore, copper, nickel and potash as well as metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking. But selling coal, oil and gas assets doesn’t help the planet. Those businesses continue to operate in other hands. And the BHP files show the company is now a long way from where it was in 2019, when its then chief executive, Andrew Mackenzie, told an audience of the powerful in Britain that fossil fuel dependence was a potential existential threat. The company says it is acting – that its emissions are down 36% since 2020, putting it ahead of its target of a 30% reduction by 2030. But the detail here matters. The claimed cut is due to power purchase agreements signed for some grid-connected renewable energy projects, particularly in Chile, and the 2024 suspension of its struggling Western Australian nickel operations. Its direct onsite emissions, mostly from burning diesel, continue. And its annual report shows its scope-three emissions – those that result from the use of its products – have increased by 7% since the turn of the decade. The scale of that increase – more than 25m tonnes a year – dwarfs the reduction the company claims it has made. There is a strong case, given the scale of its contribution to the problem, that BHP has a responsibility to invest heavily now to cut its emissions more rapidly than others and help accelerate solutions that could have a global impact. One reason it hasn’t might be that the Australian Labor government is sending mixed messages to big miners even as it pledges the country will reach net zero emissions by 2050. Mining companies receive more than $4bn a year in rebates on the cost of diesel that are not offered to households and small businesses. BHP is the biggest beneficiary. According to the thinktank Clean Energy Finance, the fuel tax credit scheme lowered its fuel bill by about $620m last year. Making fossil fuels cheaper is a strange way to encourage the uptake of electric trucks running on renewable energy. It also works against the goals of a government policy that requires big industrial sites, including those operated by BHP, to cut emissions year-on-year. That policy, the safeguard mechanism, also has an out. It allows companies to buy an unlimited number of carbon offsets instead of making direct cuts in pollution. And, for now at least, offsets are pretty cheap. The BHP files show that the company could reduce its reliance on offsets, and it certainly doesn’t need the diesel rebate. Rather than have its fossil fuel use subsidised by Australian taxpayers, it needs policies that encourage it to actually live up to its rhetoric – and move much faster in the direction it has promised to go. • Adam Morton is Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor