The ceasefire that Pakistan brokered eleven days ago, and that both Washington and Tehran have spent every day since systematically violating, expires on Wednesday. By Sunday morning it had already acquired the texture of a final hours. Iran re-closed the Strait of Hormuz on April 18 after briefly declaring it open the previous day, the IRGC opened fire on commercial vessels in the waterway including Indian-flagged ships, and Donald Trump posted a threat on Truth Social to destroy every power plant and bridge in Iran if a deal was not reached. Within the hour, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei responded on X, in the same register and in the same medium, calling the U.S. naval blockade “unlawful and criminal.” The war is now being conducted simultaneously in two theaters: the Strait of Hormuz, where the physical machinery of coercion operates, and social media, where both governments are managing the narrative of an oil price and a negotiating position at the same time. The gap between these two theaters is where the current catastrophe lives.

Read more

The US naval blockade of Iranian ports entered its fourth operational day on Thursday as CENTCOM confirmed it had turned nine vessels away since Monday, including a Chinese-owned sanctioned tanker that made a U-turn after exiting the Strait and is now stationary off Iran’s Larak Island, Iranian joint military command chief Ali Abdollahi warned in a statement carried on state television that if Washington continues blocking Iranian commercial vessels Tehran’s armed forces “will not allow any exports or imports to continue in the area of the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea,” satellite imagery reviewed by CNN shows front-end loaders actively excavating rubble from blocked tunnel entrances at two underground missile bases during the ceasefire, Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on Wednesday evening to deliver a message from Washington and met Foreign Minister Araghchi, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah on the first leg of a four-day tour heading to Qatar and then the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey, Israeli forces on Thursday destroyed the Qasmiyeh Bridge connecting Sidon and Tyre, struck Nabatieh and Kfar Rumman and demolished a high school in Marwahin, killed four paramedics in a triple-tap strike in Mayfadoun the day before, and Netanyahu said in a Wednesday address that Israeli forces would “overwhelm” Bint Jbeil and push their security zone further east, the Gaza death toll since October 7, 2023 reached 72,344 identified dead and 172,242 wounded according to Palestinian health sources on Wednesday with 765 killed and 2,400-plus ceasefire violations since October 2025, Sergey Lavrov met Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday and offered to supply China’s energy shortfall while reaffirming Iran’s inalienable right to enrich uranium, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned two Chinese banks of secondary sanctions over Iranian oil purchases, the nuclear gap that broke Islamabad remains fixed at fifteen years: Washington demanded a twenty-year moratorium, Tehran offered five, and the ceasefire expires on April 21.

Read more

The US naval blockade of Iranian ports entered its first full day on Tuesday as thousands rallied in Tehran, the IRGC Naval Command broadcast footage of vessels held in crosshairs and declared the strait under its “full control,” Iran’s armed forces formally named the blockade an illegal act amounting to piracy and warned of a forceful response to any military vessel that crosses into the waterway, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attributed the Islamabad collapse to “maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade,” Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem told Lebanese authorities to cancel the Washington talks as a free concession to the occupier before Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh sat down anyway at the State Department alongside Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, who arrived under explicit instructions from Netanyahu not to agree to a ceasefire, Hezbollah’s political council announced it would not be bound by anything signed in that room, in Gaza the nominal ceasefire of October 2025 has been violated more than 2,073 times, Israeli forces hold more than fifty percent of the strip, aid flows dropped eighty percent after February 28, and the Palestinian death toll since October 7, 2023 stands at 73,459 identified names with 172,040 injured, a count that has drawn no new diplomatic response in weeks because every room is watching the strait.

Read more

The Serena Hotel in Islamabad held the highest-level direct exchange between Washington and Tehran since 1979. It lasted twenty-one hours. JD Vance walked out before Sunday dawn, gave the cameras a thumbs-up, and told reporters Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms.” He boarded Air Force Two. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X that the Americans had failed to earn his delegation’s trust. Donald Trump, watching from Washington, posted a naval blockade order. Within six hours of the talks ending, a waterway that already wasn’t open had been declared subject to a second blockade by a different navy. The ceasefire is five days old. Nobody has explained what happens to it now.

Read more

JD Vance boarded Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews on Friday morning, heading for a city his government had not, until six weeks ago, considered a serious address in geopolitics. He told reporters before departure that Trump had given the delegation “some pretty clear guidelines” he intended to see through. He did not specify the guidelines. He did not need to. Trump had already posted them on Truth Social: no uranium enrichment, regime change achieved, the Golden Age of the Middle East imminent. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi spent Friday morning in Tehran telling assembled ambassadors something different: the 10-point plan Tehran submitted is the basis for negotiations, and Iran does not want “a ceasefire that allows the aggressor enemy to rearm.” The two delegations will sit across from each other in Islamabad on Saturday. Both will arrive carrying a victory they have already declared to their own publics, and neither version of that victory is compatible with the other.

Read more

Less than ninety minutes before Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline expired, the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Both governments declared victory. Oil fell sixteen percent. Crowds …

Read more

The Hormuz deadline expires at 8 p.m. Eastern. In the 24 hours before it: a synagogue destroyed in Tehran during Passover, Torah scrolls in the rubble. Railway bridges struck across three provinces a…

Read more

Trump gave a 19-minute speech that promised to send Iran “back to the stone ages” and ended with stock futures falling. Iran shot missiles at Israel through the first night of Passover and again through Thursday morning. The B1 bridge linking Tehran to Karaj, the Middle East’s highest, inaugurated this year, was struck twice in the same hour — the second time as rescue teams were working the wreckage of the first. Eight people are dead. Trump posted the footage. Forty countries met in a virtual room hosted by Britain to discuss how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The United States did not attend. Hegseth fired the Army Chief of Staff, effective immediately, the fourteenth or fifteenth senior officer removed since he took over the Pentagon, the count depending on how you count. Austria joined the list of countries refusing US overflight rights. Iran denied seeking a ceasefire. Brent crude closed around $108. The UN Secretary-General said the world is “on the edge of a wider war.” Passover began at sundown.

Read more

On Day 32, Hegseth held a Pentagon press conference in which he announced the US would “negotiate with bombs,” refused to rule out ground invasion, called out the United Kingdom by name, and revealed he had made a secret trip to the war zone over the weekend while his Morgan Stanley broker, per the Financial Times, had tried to buy into a defense ETF holding Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in the weeks before the bombs started falling. Iran hit a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker off Dubai. US gas crossed $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022. Trump told European allies to “go get your own oil” and then, four hours later, posted warmly about King Charles’s upcoming state visit. Pakistan’s foreign minister flew to Beijing with a hairline shoulder fracture to ask China to be the guarantor of a deal that Iran says isn’t happening and Washington insists is going very well. The IRGC launched its 87th wave of Operation True Promise 4, this time from the navy Washington said it had obliterated. The parliament in Tehran approved a toll collection scheme for Hormuz. The Strait doesn’t need to be permanently closed when it can be permanently monetized.

Read more

On Day 28, Israel bombed two nuclear facilities and two steel plants inside Iran, the IRGC fired successive missile salvoes at Israeli cities and warned civilians across the Middle East to evacuate areas near US forces, Trump extended his energy strike deadline to April 6, Rubio told the G7 the war would end in two to four weeks, and Iran’s state media released another AI-generated Lego video in which a bruised, pants-on-fire Trump figurine holds up a sign reading “I’m a loser.” The missiles are real. The timelines are not. The Lego figures have better production values than the White House videos they are answering.

Read more

On Day 27, Israel killed the IRGC Navy commander who built the Hormuz blockade at 3 a.m. in Bandar Abbas while the full US Cabinet sat for a televised war meeting in Washington at which Trump said he does not care about a deal, Vance said Iran no longer has a navy, Hegseth said 10,000 Iranian targets have been destroyed, and Witkoff said Tehran is seeking an off-ram - four men, one room, four different wars.

Read more

On Day 26, the United States delivered a formal 15-point ceasefire proposal to Iran via Pakistan that includes dismantling its nuclear program and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the two conditions Tehran has treated as existential since February 28, as Iran’s military dismissed Washington as “negotiating with itself” and a US-Israeli strike killed 12 people in south Tehran during morning rush hour.

Read more

Iran hit central Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile that cleared Israeli air defenses on Day 25, as Donald Trump announced a five-day pause on power plant strikes citing productive talks with Tehran that Iran’s government, military, and parliament all publicly denied had ever taken place.

Read more

LEDE Iranian ballistic missiles struck Dimona and Arad on Saturday night, killing no one by luck alone, and bypassing an Israeli air defense system that had never before failed near the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center.

Read more

The IDF struck targets in Tehran and Beirut simultaneously on Saturday morning. The US struck Natanz again with bunker-busting munitions; the IDF explicitly denied involvement. Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the joint US-UK base at Diego Garcia, roughly 4,000 kilometers from their launch sites; both failed to hit the base. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the strikes against Iran will “increase significantly” starting the week of March 22. CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper updated the total US strike count to more than 8,000 targets and 130 naval vessels destroyed. Trump called NATO allies “cowards” on Truth Social for failing to help open the Strait of Hormuz. The US deployed thousands more Marines and sailors to the region, including the USS Boxer amphibious ready group. Saudi Arabia shot down 20 Iranian drones in two hours in its eastern oil region. The UAE responded to 3 ballistic missiles and 8 drones. The US is actively weighing a military seizure or blockade of Kharg Island.

Natanz. The US struck Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility on Saturday morning using bunker-busting munitions, per IRNA, Tasnim, and US officials cited by the Times of Israel and NDTV. Iran’s official Mizan news agency confirmed the strike and stated no radiation leaked. The IAEA posted on social media that Iran had informed it of the attack and said “no radiological consequence” is expected. The IDF issued a direct clarification: “The Air Force was not involved in the strikes on Natanz overnight.” Saturday’s strike is distinct from previous joint US-Israel operations targeting the facility. Natanz has now been hit in three separate conflict periods: the June 2025 Twelve-Day War, the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, and again on Day 22. The structural condition of the underground centrifuge halls following two bunker-busting strikes in the current war has not been confirmed. The IAEA has not released an updated assessment of operational status.

Read more

Israel struck the Iranian Navy at Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea for the first time since the war began, destroying a corvette, four missile boats, a shipyard, and a command centre at the port Iran…

Read more

Iran confirmed the deaths of Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholam Reza Soleimani. Within hours, Israel killed a third senior official: Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, the third assassination …

Read more

Israel claimed to have killed Ali Larijani, Iran’s supreme national security chief and its most powerful operational figure since Khamenei’s assassination on Day 1, alongside IRGC Basij commander Gho…

Read more

US and Israeli forces struck multiple sites across Isfahan province overnight, killing at least 15 people, as Iran’s foreign minister declared Tehran never sought a ceasefire and is ready for a long …

Read more

US forces struck more than 90 military targets on Kharg Island overnight, the hub through which 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports pass, as Brent crude crossed $103 a barrel and the IRGC declared US …

Read more