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Middle East crisis live: Trump says Israel-Lebanon ceasefire extended by three weeks but claims he won’t rush Iran deal

A leaked Pentagon internal email proposes that the US should reassess its support for Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands because the UK did not do enough to assist the American bombing of Iran. It argues that the US could review a policy of endorsing European claims to longstanding “imperial possessions,” and highlighted sovereignty over the Falklands, subject of the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina. The memo, reported on by Reuters, was drawn up in response to White House frustration that other members of Nato did not provide sufficient support for the US-led 38 day bombing campaign against Tehran. It also argued that Spain should be suspended from Nato for refusing to allow US war planes to be based in or fly over the country during Operation Epic Fury, though it is not clear if there are mechanisms for doing so. When asked to comment on the email, Kingsley Wilson, press secretary for the US department of war, said: “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our Nato allies, they were not there for us. “The War Department will ensure that the President has credible options to ensure that our allies are no longer a paper tiger and instead do their part. We have no further comment on any internal deliberations to that effect.” Though the Falkslands proposal looks vague and there is no immediate sign of it being adopted, the reference to the islands appears deliberately designed to provoke a reaction in the UK, where memories of the 1982 war linger. Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, largely kept the UK out of Iran war, though unlike other European countries, did allow the US to fly B-1 and B-52 bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire to strike Iranian targets, including missile launchers and anything used to target shipping in the strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump, however, repeatedly complained about the lack of military support provided by the UK complaining that Britain only wanted to help in protecting the strait after the war was over, that the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers were ‘toys’ and compared Starmer to Neville Chamberlain.

After Meloni’s law change, Americans hope Italian supreme court ruling will open door to citizenship

In 2025, after a long and arduous journey in her attempts to gain Italian citizenship, including a pivotal genealogical research trip to a village in Calabria, US-born Sabrina Crawford was hoping to fulfil her lifelong dream of building a life in Italy as she edged towards the final hurdle of the bureaucratic process. But her plans were scuppered when Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government enacted a law stopping access to Italian citizenship via distant ancestry. Since May last year, only those with a parent or grandparent who was an Italian citizen at birth, and who did not take on dual nationality, are eligible to apply. Crawford, from the San Francisco Bay area, was waiting for one crucial document proving that her Italian great-grandfather had not become a US citizen before submitting her application when the new rules were announced out of the blue. “It was as if the sky collapsed,” she said. “This horrible news really upended all of my plans, all of my hopes, all of my goals. It broke my heart.” Crawford is now counting on Italy’s supreme court to deliver a favourable outcome to a legal challenge presented by two US families arguing that the law should only apply to those born after it was enacted. A supreme court panel is expected to make its decision in the coming weeks. The legislation, which breaks with the longstanding tradition of welcoming the descendants of Italy’s huge global diaspora, was aimed at clamping down on those claiming tenuous links to the country in order to obtain a powerful Italian passport, and to clear the backlog in local councils and consulates, which for years have been overwhelmed by citizenship requests. “We believe that granting citizenship is a serious matter and should be reserved for those with a genuine connection to our nation,” said Meloni shortly after the law was approved in parliament. It appears to have stemmed from several contentious cases, including allegations in 2024 that the Italian consulate in Venezuela illegally granted citizenship to five members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia group and political party backed by Iran. The deputy prime minister, Antonio Tajani, also justified it by claiming that Black Friday-style discount deals were being offered on Italian citizenship in Brazil. But the move has had serious consequences for thousands of legitimate requests, especially from the US, Brazil and Argentina, where millions of Italians emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries to escape poverty. In March, Italy’s constitutional court ruled that the law was valid, but the supreme court has the power to clarify its scope, said Marco Mellone, the lawyer representing the two US families in the case. Mellone argues that the law should not apply retroactively and that his clients are invoking their rights enshrined in the legal principle of ius sanguinis, Latin for “right of blood”, which allows anyone who can prove ancestry after Italy’s formation in 1861 to seek citizenship. “This is a crucial point, and the main reason we consider this law to be absolutely unconstitutional and unfair,” said Mellone. “It touches on a [citizenship] right at the time of birth and so it should not be applied retroactively.” Citizenship has always been a thorny topic in Italy, and even though the number of children born in the country to immigrant parents has been rising sharply they are still denied birthright citizenship. A referendum last year on easing the rules failed because of low turnout. Citing recent data from Eurostat forecasting that by the end of the century Italy’s population will fall to 44 million compared with roughly 59 million today, Mellone said neither of these obstacles to citizenship were helping the government tackle what Meloni has described as Italy’s “demographic winter”. “They say no to children born in Italy to immigrants and no to those born to Italian emigrants,” he said. “The demographic decline is dramatic. Who will be the Italian citizens of the future?” Crawford, 50, who for several years lived and worked in Italy, albeit on temporary visas, started her citizenship procedure in 2018. She is Italian from her mother’s side but could not follow the maternal descent route through her consulate owing to an old law preventing Italian women born before 1 January 1948 from transmitting citizenship to their children. Instead, she had to trace an unbroken line of descent to her great-grandfather, who was born in the Calabrian village of Verbicaro. That involved a trip to the village where, by a stroke of luck, a local priest and historian helped her dig through archives to confirm her ancestor’s name, which in turn enabled her to obtain his birth certificate. Many other bureaucratic hurdles ensued, but Crawford persevered. If the supreme court ruling goes in her favour, she will be able to pursue her application through a court in Catanzaro, Calabria. “I hope there’s still a ray of hope for people like me who have invested so much time and energy into this,” she said, adding that she grew up surrounded by Italian relatives. “I always knew that I wanted to make my life in Italy.” Jennifer Daley, a historian from Kansas whose case Mellone is also representing, has been through a similar ordeal over the past 10 years. “This has been a long journey, but I have hope that justice will prevail,” she said.

Syria arrests suspected leader of Tadamon massacre

A Syrian former regime official suspected of leading a notorious civilian massacre revealed by the Guardian – and who became one of the country’s most-wanted fugitives after the fall of Bashar al-Assad – has been arrested by security forces, Syria’s interior ministry announced. Amjad Youssef was captured in the countryside about 30 miles (50km) outside the city of Hama and had “been taken into custody following a carefully executed security operation”, the interior minister, Anas Khattab, said in a social media post on Friday. Mugshots released by the ministry showed Youssef in a striped prison uniform, while videos circulated on social media showing the former military intelligence officer in custody in a vehicle, his face bloodied, being sworn at and slapped by uniformed men. Youssef is one of the most prominent suspects in what has become known as the Tadamon massacre, the slaughter of an estimated 288 civilians, including 12 children, in a southern Damascus neighbourhood in 2013. It was documented in a series of videos taken by the killers themselves and leaked to researchers in Europe, excerpts of which were published by the Guardian in 2022. • Warning: contains graphic images More than two dozen videos showed uniformed Syrian army officials working with pro-government militiamen to lead groups of blindfolded civilians to the edge of a pit, forcing them inside and then shooting them dead. Their bodies were burned and buried using a bulldozer, all of it captured in detail by the perpetrators. The footage offered an as yet unseen glimpse into the brutal treatment of civilians by Assad government forces in disputed areas across Syria, but was also extraordinary for the manner in which it emerged. A whistleblower discovered the videos on a government laptop and secretly passed them to activists in Paris, who sent them to a pair of researchers based in the Netherlands, Annsar Shahhoud and Prof Uğur Ümit Üngör, from the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Over the next two years, Shahhoud and Üngör worked to identify the location of the killings and the identities of the victims as well as the perpetrators, including their alleged ringleader, a young man with a distinctive scar on his left eyebrow whom they called “the shadow man”. Shahhoud eventually found a Facebook page, the profile image of which bore a resemblance to the man, which belonged to a Syrian intelligence official named Amjad Youssef. She posed as a pro-Assad researcher based in Europe and spent the next year conducting interviews with Youssef that she secretly filmed. After the Guardian revealed the massacre in text and published excerpts of Shahhoud’s secret interviews in a two-part podcast miniseries, the US state department and the EU announced sanctions against Youssef, and France said it was commencing a war crimes investigation. News of Youssef’s arrest was greeted with joy in Tadamon, where mass celebrations were expected after Friday prayers. “I don’t know what to say, I am so happy,” said Maher Rahima, a young man who lived through the era of the killings. “At the same time, I cannot forget the images of the children and women who were killed and burned. They must never be forgotten.” Residents have said the atrocities in Tadamon continued until at least 2015, with the true death toll likely to exceed 1,000 people, many of whom were interred in mass graves around the area. Rumours of Youssef’s whereabouts had circulated for years after Assad’s government fell in December 2024, including reports he had fled to Lebanon or to Europe and had undergone plastic surgery to change his appearance. Syrian security forces finally arrested him about 125 miles from Tadamon looking much the same as he had in 2022, with the same scar on his left eyebrow, but older, frightened and bruised in the custody of a new, rebel-led government.

Friday briefing: How the boom in running culture is reflected in the London Marathon

Good morning. Britain is experiencing a running boom – and it is being driven by gen Z women. More than a million people applied to be on the London Marathon start line this Sunday, including about 850,000 British runners. A third of those were aged between 18 and 29, and the majority in this category were female, according to event organisers. For a sport stereotypically dominated by spindly men in tight shorts, it is a remarkable transformation. For today’s First Edition, I speak with the Guardian’s chief sports reporter Sean Ingle about the London Marathon’s remarkable popularity – and why it could even become a two-day event. But first, the headlines. Five big stories UK politics | Cat Little, the lead official in the Cabinet Office, had to get a summary of Peter Mandelson’s file directly from UK security vetting (UKSV) after Olly Robbins, the subsequently sacked Foreign Office head, refused to provide it, Little has told a Commons committee. Middle East | Britain is prepared to deploy a squadron of RAF Typhoons based in Qatar to patrol over the strait of Hormuz as part of a multinational mission to keep open the strategic waterway once the Iran war comes to an end. Ukraine | EU leaders have welcomed the end of diplomatic deadlock over a long-awaited €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine, after the bloc finalised the agreement along with a package of sanctions against Russia. Economics | Confidence in the UK economy has fallen sharply amid the mounting fallout from the Iran war, as businesses prepare to raise their prices and consumers brace for a fresh cost of living shock. UK news | Russell Brand said he had “exploitative” consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl at the height of his fame. In depth: ‘A celebration of what’s good in humanity’ For anyone who has watched the London Marathon, it is obvious that it is more than just a running race. Each of the 59,000 participants has their own story about why they are there. Many have endured cold, wet training sessions through the miserable British winter to complete the 26.2 miles. In the process, they raise huge sums of money for charity. Runners often hold photos of friends and family members who they are running in memory of. It can be profoundly emotional to observe. Sean, who gets to cover some of the biggest sporting events in the world for the Guardian, says it is one of the most special days in the sporting calendar. “I am fortunate enough to cover the Olympics, Wimbledon finals, the Open – whatever. The London Marathon is right up there. It’s not seeing elite men and women go off at the sort of speeds that if you and I were trying to keep up with them, you would last maybe 100 metres. My favourite part is the end of the day,” he says. “I usually finish writing around six or seven in the evening and that’s when those who are finishing in seven, eight hours are crossing the line. They can barely walk but they’ve got the biggest smile. Their friends and family are there, the spectators are cheering. It’s really a celebration of what’s good in humanity, people doing great things and raising money for all sorts of charities,” he says. Runners of all ages are taking part on Sunday. The youngest are running on their 18th birthday. The oldest is 88-year-old Harry Newton, who will be running his 22nd London Marathon and only started marathon running in his late 50s. “It’s extraordinary”, says Sean. *** A new running boom The explosion of interest in running among young women is one of the big stories in UK sport in recent years. Figures compiled by Sports England found that there were 349,000 more runners in 2024 compared to the previous year – and they were nearly all women. This has been reflected in applications for the London Marathon, particularly for younger age groups. Social media is a big factor. Influencers like Phily Bowden, who is documenting her efforts to make the GB team for the 2028 Olympics, and Mary McCarthy, whose tagline is #beattheboys, have helped make running fashionable. Elite athletes like Eilish McColgan, Georgia Hunter Bell and Keely Hodgkinson all regularly record their training on Instagram and TikTok. Meanwhile, big fashion brands have all rapidly responded to the interest on social media. “We are in the midst of a third great running boom,” says Sean. “In the 70s, it was skinny men in tight shorts. Then you had another boom when Paula Radcliffe was breaking the world record. But both of these were among serious runners who cover themselves in Vaseline and run fast. What’s different this time is that it’s not just fast runners, it’s medium and slow too. It’s different ethnicities, different demographics, and it’s largely fuelled by women.” *** The role of social run clubs Many theorise that the rise of social run clubs, which make running not just fun, but safer for women, may also be behind the surge in popularity. “If you want to run fast, you join an athletics club. But there is a club for everyone these days. I was speaking with a woman at one of these clubs earlier and they do their runs at a 7 minute per kilometre pace, which is not fast at all. They go for a chat and a coffee afterwards. It is also much safer. If you are going out in January and it’s freezing and dark, a bunch of you running together makes you feel more protected,” he says. *** A future, expanded London Marathon London Marathon organisers are looking to capitalise on the popularity. Last month, Sean revealed that the race is in advanced talks about staging a two-day event in 2027, allowing tens of thousands more runners to take part. It has not yet been approved and would be a one off – for now – but race organisers say that the expanded event would raise more than £130m for charity and bring in £400m in social and economic benefits. “I think it will happen because the London mayor’s for it,” says Sean. “The organisers are insisting it would be a one off event in 2027 which I think eases the fears of the police who have the FA Cup and other events to contend with. That said, if it’s a roaring success, you wouldn’t be shocked if in five years’ time it is a regular thing.” For now, all that is left to say is a big good luck to the thousands of runners in central London on Sunday, especially to the Guardian’s Patrick Barkham, who is running the race dressed as a badger. Rest up, drink water and enjoy some big bowls of pasta in the meantime. I will be there with thousands of others to cheer you on. What else we’ve been reading Luke Oppenheimer went on a short assignment to photograph a remote village of shepherds in Kyrgyzstan, where wolves prey on livestock, and ended up staying for four years. Here are some of his pictures. Martin Harry Sword spoke with the heavy metal band Iron Maiden on more than 50 years of success and hard living. Patrick Experts remain divided on radiation’s long-term effects in Chornobyl, but Jonathan Watts discovers there is broader agreement that excluding humans has – unexpectedly – benefited wildlife and ecosystems. Martin I thought Zoe Williams summed up perfectly what we should really find shocking about Shabana Mahmood’s f-bomb moment. Poppy Noor, acting editor, newsletters The latest instalment of Sam Wollaston’s series on abandoned buildings in Britain takes in a Welsh church claimed by spiders and ivy, and examines what its decay means for the community. Martin Sport Football | The Italian sports minister has described a proposal for his country to replace Iran at the World Cup as “not appropriate”, rejecting any idea that the Azzurri will be granted a last-minute berth. Football | Tony Parkes dies aged 76 as tributes are paid to ‘Mr Blackburn Rovers’ who served the club from 1970 until 2004. Tennis | A White House photo celebrating the University of Georgia women’s tennis team has drawn backlash due to Donald Trump and a group of men overshadowing the female athletes by lining up in front of them. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now Film Agon | ★★★★☆ Here is a fascinatingly experimental debut feature from Italian film-maker Giulio Bertelli, son of fashion designer Miuccia Prada; a machine-tooled movie, intensely designed and controlled. It’s a kind of Martian’s-eye-view documentary about something that doesn’t actually exist; it is ice-cold and detached, almost without dialogue in the conventionally dramatic sense, other than the subdued exchanges which we, as audience, overhear rather than listen to. It accumulates its own kind of desolate force. Bertelli’s film intuits the military roots of three Olympic sports: judo, fencing and shooting, as three female Italian athletes are shown taking part in a (fictional) competition called Ludoj 2024. Peter Bradshaw TV Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 | ★★★☆☆ The original Netflix series plonked us in a fantasy past where kids in small American towns rode bikes, chewed gum, listened to cassettes and played Dungeons and Dragons in their friend’s basement; or, if you weren’t American, it reminded you of movies you’d seen where that was the vibe. Either way, it was access to an era before the internet, 9/11, the banking crash, the pandemic and Trump, when life seemed easier. The cartoon spin-off, Tales from ’85, does something similar for Stranger Things itself. It rewinds to a happy, straightforward time, namely between seasons two and three. In that moment, the world of Hawkins, Indiana had been established, but we were yet to endure the show’s bumpy late period. Jack Seale Theatre The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Swan theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon | ★★★★★ Bertolt Brecht’s comic grotesque parable on Hitler’s rise to power has been compared to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and there is something distinctly Chaplinesque in Mark Gatiss’s cartoon gangster. He is initially tragicomic as Arturo Ui, with his tramp-like clothing, powdered face and melancholy eyes. But he turns truly terrifying as Seán Linnen’s production for the Royal Shakespeare Company takes us through his thuggish ascendancy, Gatiss proving his ability to transform in a way that renders him almost unrecognisable here: part Hitler (signature moustache and hair), part Scrooge and part ghoul. Arifa Akbar Music Noah Kahan: The Great Divide | ★★★☆☆ Noah Kahan, who used to introduce himself on stage as “the Jewish Ed Sheeran”, has a thing for the stomp-clap rhythms of Mumford & Sons and stirs a little heartland rock – Springsteen via Sam Fender – into his sound. His fourth album, The Great Divide, is a record that deals in consolidation rather than development. The National’s Aaron Dessner co-produces – you can spot his touch immediately, in the opening lambent piano figure and misty ambience – but it sticks pretty close to the musical blueprint established on its predecessor. Alexis Petridis The front pages “Foreign Office shuts unit tracking potential law breaches by Israel” – a Guardian exclusive is the splash in our print edition. The i paper has “‘Shoot and kill’ – Trump’s new orders to US navy in Gulf, as Iran peace talks stall”. The Telegraph leads with “Hermer’s ‘excessive’ fee for Iraq witch-hunt”. “Heckler tells potty mouth Mahmood … Get it #!!*@* right, I’m not even white!” is the colourful front-page lead in the Metro. The Financial Times’ headline was written by a human: “US accuses China of industrial-scale theft from AI labs in tech arms race”. The Times has “Call to stop sharing data with China after breach”. The Mail offers “Farage: I’ll wage ‘war’ on benefits culture”. The Express campaigns on assisted dying with “There is one last chance” and a full-page photo of Esther Rantzen. “Infected by a monsters” – the Mirror reports on the “HIV predator jailed for life”. Today in Focus Will the backlash against AI turn violent? An attack on the home of OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman – and on the company’s headquarters – has led to concerns the backlash against AI could become violent. Guardian journalist Nick Robins-Early and researcher Sean Fleming discuss Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad A rare axolotl found injured in a Welsh river is now recovering – thanks to a sharp-eyed 10-year-old. Evie Hill spotted the unusual creature under a mat and said: “I was like: ‘That’s an axolotl.’” Despite being told it couldn’t be, she “went back in the water anyway … and caught it”. The salamander, nicknamed Dippy, is now being cared for at home after likely being abandoned. Wild axolotls, which resemble a cross between a fish and a lizard, are found only in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City and are considered critically endangered. The species’ popularity as pets, however, has exploded in recent years owing to their exposure on TikTok, Instagram and Minecraft. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

How a simple consumer data breach spiralled into a national security crisis in US-South Korea relations

When South Korea’s biggest online retailer revealed last year that a data breach had compromised tens of millions of customer accounts, it appeared to be a corporate crisis. But five months later the issue has grown into a diplomatic storm, threatening to further degrade relations between Seoul and the Trump administration. Coupang – often described as South Korea’s answer to Amazon – is nominally a Korean company but operates from Seattle, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and is run by Korean-American billionaire Bom Kim. In November last year the company disclosed that a former employee had stolen an internal security key, enabling unauthorised access to data from 33.7 million users. The breach triggered a widespread movement to abandon the service and a sweeping government response. Police raided the company’s Seoul headquarters, tax authorities launched a special audit, and parliament summoned executives for questioning. Kim refused to travel to Korea for hearings, citing his role as a global chief executive and Korean police have requested that immigration authorities notify them if he enters the country. Reports suggest that the strength of Seoul’s response may have jeopardised relations with the US, adding to tensions in an alliance which is vital to South Korea’s national security. Korean broadcaster SBS reported this week that Washington had signalled it would not proceed with high-level diplomatic and defence consultations unless South Korea guaranteed Kim would face no legal consequences in connection with the data breach. South Korea’s foreign ministry has not denied the report but said in a statement that “security discussions should proceed separately from the Coupang matter” and that investigations of the data breach would continue under Korean law. The US embassy in Seoul refused to comment on the matter. The dispute has affected talks on US support for South Korea’s development of nuclear-powered submarines, SBS reported. Korean officials say a scheduled visit from a US delegations has been postponed. The issue over Coupang is one of several tensions that have emerged between Seoul and Washington under the Trump administration. In September, an immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia detained more than 300 South Korean workers, sparking public outrage. The US has also reportedly partly restricted intelligence sharing after South Korea’s unification minister publicly identified a suspected North Korean nuclear site. In January, Trump threatened to raise tariffs on South Korean goods from 15% to 25%. Coupang spent over $3m lobbying the US government in 2025, bringing its total spending since 2021 to more than $11m, according to public data compiled by OpenSecrets, a non-profit that tracks lobbying. In the first quarter of 2026, Coupang doubled its spending on Washington lobbying compared to the same period in 2025, with filings showing outreach to the White House, including the executive office of the president and the vice-president’s office. In January, vice-president JD Vance raised the Coupang issue when South Korean prime minister Kim Min-seok visited Washington, expressing hope it could be “resolved fairly to avoid tension”. On 21 April, 54 Republican members of Congress wrote to South Korea’s ambassador accusing Seoul of “discriminatory actions” against US companies and of launching a “whole-of-government assault” on Coupang over what they characterised as a “low-sensitivity data leak”. It remains unclear why Congress and some members of the Trump administration have taken up the Coupang issue so strongly. Five US investment firms that hold Coupang shares filed notices earlier this year of intent to pursue arbitration against South Korea under the US-Korea free trade agreement, claiming Seoul’s enforcement response was disproportionate compared to similar cases involving Korean companies. The arbitration process remains active. Jaechun Kim, a professor of international relations at Sogang University in Seoul, said the fundamental issue is not whether South Korea has the legal right to regulate companies in its jurisdiction but how such actions are perceived and politicised within the alliance framework. The Trump administration’s tendency to blur economic and security issues into a single transactional framework means disputes like Coupang could spill over into areas that were previously insulated from retaliation, including nuclear cooperation agreements, advanced technology sharing, or even defence procurement decisions, he said. “There is a growing sense that the US-ROK relationship may be approaching a critical threshold of strain.”

US forces board vessel in Indian Ocean – as it happened

We’re going to wrap up this live coverage now but our latest full report is here – and below is a recap of the latest news. Thanks for following along. Donald Trump announced an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire would be extended by three weeks, saying on social media that “the United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah”, which opposes the Lebanon-Israeli talks. Trump said the leaders of Lebanon and Israel could meet at the White House “in the near future”. Trump ordered the US military to “shoot and kill” small Iranian boats that deploy mines in the strait of Hormuz. Trump also repeated the US had “total control” over strait, a claim that has met with scepticism in the face of Iranian commandos’ seizure of two container ships and a US report warning it could take six months to clear the strait of mines. The president also said a peace deal with Iran had not been reached yet because its leadership was “in turmoil”. He also said the US would not use a nuclear weapon against Iran as the conflict continues without a clear end in sight. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said there were no “hardliners” or “moderates” in Iran, responding to Trump’s claim of internal division in Iran’s leadership. Separately, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said Iran’s state institutions “continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline”. Israel’s killing of a Lebanese journalist in a strike has been met with international outrage as Lebanon’s prime minister described the attack as a “war crime”. Amal Khalil, 43, was killed in what colleagues described as a sustained attack by Israeli forces, with rescuers attempting to dig her out of the rubble of a building also targeted and prevented from providing life-saving assistance. Global stocks mostly fell on Thursday, retreating after recent gains as investors tempered their optimism for a quick end to the Middle East war. But on Friday Japan’s Nikkei share average rose and was poised for a third consecutive weekly gain, as enthusiasm over tech sector earnings offset uncertainty over the Middle East. Trump said the secretary of the US navy, John Phelan, was fired after conflicts with senior Pentagon leadership over shipbuilding. Italy was not interested in replacing Iran at the upcoming World Cup after a suggestion to that effect by a Trump administration official, Italian sports officials said. “It’s not a good idea,” said sports minister Andrea Abodi. The US had no objections to Iranian players participating in the World Cup but they would not be allowed to bring with them people with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said. Pope Leo XIV urged the US and Iran to return to talks to end the war and condemned capital punishment, calling for a new “culture of peace” to replace the recourse to violence.

Ukraine war briefing: Trump bristles at Prince Harry’s passionate plea for Ukraine

Donald Trump has said the Duke of Sussex “is not speaking for the UK” after Prince Harry told the US to honour its obligations in the Ukrainian conflict. “I think I am speaking for the UK more than Prince Harry … But I appreciate his advice very much,” said Trump, responding to the duke’s lengthy, impassioned speech at the Kyiv Security Forum on Thursday. Harry, an ex-serviceman, did not claim to be speaking for the UK. He said he was “not here as a politician” but as “a soldier who understands service” and a “humanitarian”. Harry said: “The United States has a singular role in this story. Not only because of its power, but because when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons, America was part of the assurance that Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders would be respected. This is a moment for American leadership, a moment for America, to show that it can honour its international treaty obligations – not out of charity but out of its own enduring role in global security and strategic stability.” A Ukrainian MP has told how he flew a drone intercepter from thousands of kilometres away, throwing a spotlight on the effectiveness of Ukraine’s technology. Marian Zablotskiy said that in a “historic experiment … I piloted an FPV interceptor drone first from my office, then from right in front of the state border, and then from somewhere about 2,000km away from the drone itself – from abroad. I consider this breakthrough a decisive factor in finally stopping the Russian offensive.” Ukrainian drone manufacturer Wild Hornets confirmed Zablotskiy’s involvement to Agence France-Presse and said it wanted the remote control system to “become the primary method of drone control”. Mykhailo Fedorov, the defence minister in Kyiv, said: “Ukraine is the first in the world to systematically scale up remote control of interceptor drones. Today, we have confirmed results – the downing of targets at distances of hundreds and thousands of kilometres.” Russia was struggling to extinguish a fire raging at a Black Sea oil terminal hit by Ukraine earlier this week, local authorities told AFP on Thursday as they urged residents to stay home to avoid the smoke. Ukraine struck oil facilities in the southern town of Tuapse on Monday as it targets Russian oil exports that fund the war. The attack triggered a huge blaze and sent plumes of thick black smoke into the sky. “The fire at the Tuapse oil refinery is still ongoing – four storage tanks are ablaze,” the regional emergency headquarters told AFP on Thursday, four days after the hit. Contaminated rainfall on Wednesday left “a black coating on surfaces,” authorities said. EU leaders welcomed the end of diplomatic deadlock over a long-awaited €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine, Jennifer Rankin writes, after the bloc completed the agreement along with a 20th sanctions package against Russia. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said she thought it would be possible to disburse the first tranche of the €45bn funding planned for 2026 in this quarter, meaning by the end of June. The first payment, she indicated, would fund Ukraine’s domestic drone production – “drones from Ukraine for Ukraine”. Russian attacks on residential areas killed three people and wounded at least 10 including girls aged nine and 14, the head of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region said on Thursday. In Russia’s Samara region, one person was killed in a drone strike; while another attack killed a person in the Russian border region of Belgorod, officials said.

Trump may talk of regime infighting, but Iran seems united by strategy born of war

Donald Trump has claimed that the infighting between moderates and hardliners in Iran’s leadership is so intense that Iranians have “no idea who their leader is”, but many experts questioned his analysis, saying, given the mass assassinations of senior commanders, the country had shown remarkable institutional cohesion. Trump’s allegations of “CRAZY” splits in the Iranian leadership – the second outing for this argument in three days – is remarkable since he has previously said either he has little knowledge of the new Iranian leadership or that there has already been regime change. Trump’s team, either through Pakistani mediators or more direct contacts, may be picking up that different factions are demanding different preconditions for the talks to restart. Trump at a minimum is implying that military hardliners have taken charge from the civilian diplomatic leadership. It is hardly a secret that Iran has been riven for decades over how to approach the US and the wisdom of negotiations, but some Iranian academics and observers are accusing Trump of cognitive warfare: attempting to create what Mohamed Amersi, a member of the Global Advisory Council at the Wilson Centre, described as “chronic systemic paralysis in which the country’s decision-making machine becomes deadlocked”. Ali Ansari, a professor of modern history at St Andrews, said Iran, if not experiencing a leadership vacuum, was at least a country in transition since the newly installed – and apparently badly injured supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei – had not yet been able to establish his authority, a process that took his father and predecessor Ali Khamenei many years. “We are not quite sure if he is all there and even if he is all there, whether he will be able to consolidate his position and authority in the way that his father did,” Ansari said. Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said Iran had been moving towards a more collective leadership in the final two years of Ali Khamenei’s life. “He was getting older and unwilling to take responsibility for unpopular measures or ones that he could not justify in religious terms such as not enforcing the hijab,” said Alfoneh. Mojtaba Khamenei has said little in detail about the talks or the ceasefire, but one indicator of his frame of mind may be his appointment as military adviser of Mohsen Rezaee, one of the most unreconstructed of the former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and an opponent of a ceasefire. Hassan Ahmadian, an associate professor of west Asian studies at the University of Tehran, denies there are any fractures in Iran’s leadership. “The Iranian political system is very institutionalised. Name another system whose top echelon is assassinated and is capable of continuing and also waging a retaliatory war effort against two big foes. I do not see any historical parallel to this,” Ahmadian said. He added: “For every institution in Iran there is a parallel institution and that makes it easier to withstand shocks.” He said that Iran had united around a new strategy born of war that focused on using the leverage provided by the strait of Hormuz to fight Trump’s pressure. “The strait is the key … If there is a fair deal, we will get sanctions relief and reparations and in exchange Iran will bring in the IAEA [the UN nuclear inspectorate] and dilute the highly enriched uranium. “Moreover, we are saying if you violate your commitments, we have a changed mentality. In 2018 [when Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal] Iran did not have a lot to offer. At this point we do, so we are talking Trump’s language. It is very effective. As you target our people, we will target the pockets of your people,” he said. Ahmadian said Trump’s claims of a divided command were a form of psychological warfare and argued that senior leaders widely agreed on the refusal to negotiate until the US ended its blockade of Iran’s ports. That policy, he said, derived its strength from being hammered out by the 13-strong supreme national security council (SNSC), the governing body that, far more than the political cabinet, brought together all the forces inside Iran: judicial, political, military and intelligence. The Israeli decision to assassinate the SNSC secretary, Ali Larijani, may turn out to be counterproductive as it removed the most capable, pragmatic and experienced figures in Iranian politics, who might have been able to forge a consensus negotiation strategy. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, his replacement as secretary, does not have the same breadth of experience, and is a veteran IRGC commander. To the extent that anyone has taken on Larijani’s cohesive role, it is the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Sometimes described as a “modernising autocrat”, he was appointed head of the Iranian delegation to Islamabad, overseeing the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, a skilled diplomat who would work inside pre-determined parameters. In a recent, widely praised TV interview, Ghalibaf laid it on thick how successful Iran had been, but also made clear the country could not continue in the same vein. Making the case for negotiation, he argued Iran may have won the battle, but it may not be able to win the war. He cautioned against exaggerating Iran’s leverage, stressing that US military superiority and capabilities should not be underestimated. Iran had to negotiate, a position not shared. In all this, the elected Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been sidelined. The reformist leader has been deputed instead to keep the home front operating, and has been kept from the details of the negotiations. Prof Ansari argued some of the tensions on how to negotiate reflect IRGC concern to protect essential interests – including its extensive business empire. He said: “The real danger for the Islamic republic is not war but peace, for then there will be an auditing of what the hell happened – especially if the economic situation is extremely difficult as it is expected to be.”