US envoy and Trump’s son-in-law to travel to Pakistan amid hopes for renewed Iran peace talks – as it happened

Iran has made no request for talks with the Americans and has so far completely rejected US requests for negotiations due to their excessive demands, Iran’s state media Tasnim News reported, rejecting the White House press secretary earlier remarks about Tehran’s request for talks.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his counterpart from the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, called for the resumption of talks to secure a rapid, sustainable agreement to the Middle East crisis, the Russian foreign ministry said.

A statement said the ministers, in a telephone call, “expressed their shared view on the need to resume negotiations in order to promptly reach agreements on a long-term, sustainable resolution of the crisis, taking into account the legitimate interests of all countries in the region”.

The Iranian delegation that will be engaging in talks with the US government this weekend arrived in Pakistan, Reuters reports.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will be meeting with the Iranian government representatives on Saturday.

The Strait of Hormuz’s closure is leading to a worsening crisis of food insecurity and malnutrition in countries that are already struggling, a representative from the World Food Programme told CNN today.

“It’s becoming like a crisis within a crisis. The markets are being inflated, the prices are affected and that will continue to send shockwaves across the globe,” said Samer AbdelJaber, the World Food Programme’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe.

AbdelJaber estimates 45 million people will be food-insecure if the crisis continues.

His comments come as a coalition of countries released a report on Friday, warning that food insecurity and malnutrition levels remain extremely high. The crises are concentrated in ten countries, the report from the Global Network Against Food Crises said.

The ten countries recognized in the report are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen.

The Israeli military said its forces killed six Hezbollah fighters in a southern Lebanese town on Friday during a clash that included a firefight.

According to the military, troops identified six militants operating in the town of Bint Jbeil, an area that saw heavy fighting before a ceasefire was declared last week.

“Following the identification, an exchange of fire began between the terrorists and the soldiers, during which the soldiers eliminated two terrorists,” the military said.

“Subsequently, the soldiers struck the structure from which the terrorists had been operating. In the strike, the four remaining terrorists were eliminated.”

US president Donald Trump is sending special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for talks with the Iran’s foreign minister, CNN reported on Friday, citing two administration officials familiar with the matter.

Vice-president JD Vance is not currently planning to attend but he will be on standby to travel to Islamabad if negotiations progress, CNN said.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hezbollah on Friday of trying to “sabotage” efforts to reach a peace agreement with Lebanon.

“We have started a process to reach a historic peace between Israel and Lebanon, and it’s clear to us that Hezbollah is trying to sabotage this,” he said in his first remarks after a ceasefire with Lebanon was extended.

The comments came as the Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets in a south Lebanon village in response to a “ceasefire violation”, after earlier warning residents to evacuate the community.

“A short while ago, the IDF struck military structures in the area of Deir Aames, from which rockets were launched toward the town of Shtula in Israel yesterday,” it said.

“The structures that were targeted were used by the Hezbollah terrorist organisation to advance terrorist activities against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel,” it added.

EU leaders have distanced themselves from a call by the German chancellor Friedrich Merz for the bloc to ease sanctions on Iran as part of a ceasefire deal.

Merz indicated that the EU was willing to gradually ease sanctions on Iran if a comprehensive agreement was reached.

“The easing of sanctions can be part of a process,” Merz said following talks with EU leaders in Cyprus. As Reuters reported, he said: “It is, so to speak, part of the contribution we can make to advance this process and, hopefully, lead to a lasting ceasefire.”

But the heads of the EU institutions said such a move was premature. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, told reporters that sanctions relief “should be conditional on verification of de-escalation” but also “a change to the repression of [Iran’s] own people”.

She said:

That was the reason why we adopted the sanctions regime in the first place, the behaviour of the regime. We should not forget 17,000 young people have been killed in the first month of this year. So the reason for that has to be ended before we can speak about lifting sanctions.

The difference in tone was striking as von der Leyen, like Merz, is a German Christian Democrat, although she does not represent her country in the commission. Other groups outside Iran have estimated that up to 33,000 or more people were killed in the recent crackdown by the regime, before the US-Israeli airstrikes.

The EU currently has 263 senior Iranians and 53 organisations on its blacklist, including the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the morality police, news agencies and prisons. It also imposes a ban on the sale of equipment or finance that could be used by Iranian authorities to repress their people.

The EU also implements wide-ranging UN economic and financial sanctions on Iran intended to curb the regime’s nuclear programme. The European Council president António Costa said it was “too early” to speak about lifting sanctions, adding that “we don’t have a good experience with Iran”. He said the Iranian regime had failed to persuade the international community they would not develop a nuclear weapon, adding:

And we cannot ignore the nature of the regime, the violence of the regime against their people and the thousands of people they killed very recently.

The immediate reopening of the strait of Hormuz without restrictions is “vital” for the world, European Council president Antonio Costa said Friday, after talks with regional leaders including from Lebanon and Syria.

“The strait of Hormuz must immediately reopen without restrictions and without tolling, in full respect of international law and the principle of freedom of navigation. This is vital for the entire world,” Costa told a news conference in Cyprus.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi will hold bilateral talks during a brief visit to Pakistan on Friday, two Pakistani sources aware of the talks told Reuters.

Araqchi will discuss his side of the proposal for talks with the United States over the Iran war, which will then be conveyed to Washington, the sources said.

Indonesia once again strongly condemned an Israeli attack in Lebanon that resulted in the death of a fourth Indonesian peacekeeper, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

The peacekeeper sustained severe injuries due to an artillery explosion from an Israeli tank on 29 March and the ministry announced on Friday that he has passed away. Three other Indonesian peacekeepers had also died due to the attack.

Indonesia urged the UN to conduct a thorough, transparent and accountable investigation into the deaths of its Unifil peacekeepers.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that he had received successful treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, without specifying when the treatment took place.

After the publication of his annual medical report, he said he is “in excellent physical condition” after successful surgery for an enlarged benign prostate.

In his social media post, he said he chose to undergo treatment because “when I’m given information in time about a potential danger, I want to address it immediately”.

Treatment had “removed the problem and left no trace of it”, he added. Netanyahu said that he had delayed the release of the medical report by two months to prevent Iran from spreading “false propaganda against Israel“. In March, during the fighting with Iran, rumours that circulated on social media and aired on Iranian state media claimed that Netanyahu had died.

The Iranian ambassador has told the BBC that the US must ends its blockade on Iranian ports if negotiations are to continue between them.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme Ali Bahreini, the Iranian ambassador to the UN in Geneva, calls the blockade a “significant breach” of the ceasefire. He added that they are not looking to negotiate in order to give a chance to the “other side to prepare more to attack Iran”.

He calls for a “realistic approach from the United States by recognising Iran’s rights and Iran’s reasonable demands”.

The UAE has said rebuilding trust between Abu Dhabi and Tehran will take “ages and ages”, given the number of times Iran has targeted the United Arab Emirates during the war.

“You can’t be attacked with 2,800 missiles and drones and then talk to me about trust. That will take ages and ages,” said UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash at a World Policy Conference in France.

The top official said that 89 percent of the Iranian attacks targeted “civilians, civilian infrastructure, energy infrastructure”.

“Tehran was telling the Arab Gulf countries that ’you don’t matter in my calculations,’ and I think this is going to last for a very long time,” he said.

He continued: “To the region – to the United Arab Emirates and other countries, Iran will be seen as a strategic threat.”

The Pentagon chief says he would welcome a “serious European effort” over the strait of Hormuz and refers to the recent conference of leaders as a “silly conference”.

He says:

I think it’s a wake up call. It’s a wake up call for countries around the world. Either you have capabilities or you don’t.

Otherwise, you’re at the behest of a country, like Iran and the only country that can do something about it, is the United States military.

He adds that any attempts by Iran to lay more mines in the strait would constitute a violation of the ceasefire.

Hegseth says transit is occurring but limited and with risk. He says this is Iran’s fault for threatening vessels, including cruise ships.

“This is a real, full blockade,” he says. “We’ll use up to and including lethal force if necessary - and that stopped. And other ships have have taken note of that.

“So any ships that have attempted, there’s been levels of escalation, but none that far. And they’ve turned around.”

“This should not be America’s fight alone,” Hegseth says, saying that Europe and Asia benefit from the strait of Hormuz more than the US.

He says European leaders should have “less fancy conferences… and get in a boat”.

“This is more their fight than ours,” says Hegseth, despite the fact it is literally an American fight.

He adds:

Being an ally is a two-way street.

Joint chiefs of the staff chair Dan Caine is now providing his own update on the blockade.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to travel to Pakistan for talks by this weekend, sources have told AP.

The diplomat is expected to travel with a small team and a US logistics ⁠and security ​team is ​already ​in Islamabad.

This comes after an effort to hold direct talks between Washington and Tehran collapsed at the beginning of the week. Pakistan has been trying to restart ceasefire talks between Iran and the United States.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Iran’s footballers will be welcome at this year’s World Cup, secretary of state Marco Rubio said Thursday, distancing the United States government from a proposal that Italy could take their place in the tournament.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Rubio denied that the government had asked the Iranian team not to come to the World Cup – but warned the US may yet bar entry to members of the Iranian delegation it judged to have ties to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is regarded as a terrorist organisation by Washington and several other governments.

No one “from the US has told them they can’t come,” Rubio said of Iran’s World Cup participation. “The problem with Iran, it would be not their athletes, it would be some of the other people [they] would want to bring with them, some of whom have ties to the IRGC,” Rubio said. “We may not be able to let them in, but not the athletes themselves.”

Rubio was responding to a reported proposal from Italy-born US special envoy Paolo Zampolli, who told the Financial Times he had floated the idea of Italy taking Iran’s World Cup place to US president Donald Trump and football’s world governing body Fifa.

Read the full report here:

In its weekly report, the World Health Organization has said that 3.2 million people are displaced in Iran, and that health facilities in Lebanon remain damaged or closed due to Israel’s attack.

“Disease risks are increasing in overcrowded settings, and supply chain disruptions continue to limit the delivery of essential medicines and equipment,” it reads.

It continued: “Funding remains critically low: only 7 percent of the $30.3m required for the Middle East flash appeal has been received to date. Urgent, sustained investment is needed to maintain life-saving health services and scale up the response”.

The UK has responded to the US, saying that sovereignty of the Falkland Islands remains with the UK, after an internal email proposing 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 was leaked.

A spokesperson for British prime minister Keir Starmer said on Friday: “We could not be clearer about the UK’s position on the Falkland Islands. It is longstanding, it is unchanged.

“Sovereignty rests with the UK and the islands’ right to self-determination is paramount. It’s been our consistent position and will remain the case,” the spokesperson said, adding that Britain had expressed that position “clearly and consistently to successive U.S. administrations.”

Asked if Starmer thought this was an attempt by the US to put pressure on him to join the Iran war, his spokesperson said: “He has spoken about that and he has also spoken about how that pressure does not affect him, and he will always act in the national interest, and that will always remain the case.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to visit Saudi Arabia and hold talks with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, a senior official in Kyiv told AFP.

Zelensky has brokered closer ties with several states in the Gulf amid the US-Israeli war with Iran, striking defense deals, including with Riyadh, to share Kyiv’s expertise in downing drones, gained through fending off four years of Russian attacks. Ukraine touts its anti-drone defences as the best in the world.

This visit, taking place on Friday, his second trip to the country in as many months. In a visit last month, Zelenskyy said the two sides had “reached an important arrangement” on air defence.

There is still no sign that Iran and the US are to meet in Pakistan, Reuters reports, as the capital has been waiting for peace talks for nearly a week.

Key roads leading into Islamabad are shut down and a strict security cordon envelops the administrative centre, the so-called “Red Zone“. In the adjacent “Blue Area“, cafes have run out of fruit, markets are deserted and with no service at bus terminals, weekend commuters are struggling to get home.

Government officials say the measures are not ending any time soon and that they are ever ready for delegates, including US president Donald Trump, to show up at a moment’s notice.

“We have been told that the talks could be held any day,” one official said.

Sky News reports that Iran’s foreign minister has spoken to senior Pakistani officials about the ceasefire with the US.

Abbas Araghchi said he had spoken separately with Pakistan’s foreign minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar and army chief Asim Munir.

Human Rights Watch has called on Lebanon to join the international criminal court, after Israeli forces killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and wounded her colleague Zainab Faraj in an airstrike earlier this week.

Posting on social media, the group wrote: “The Lebanese government should join the ‘Rome Statute’ of the ‘international criminal court’ to enable accountability for serious international crimes.”

Lebanese president Joseph Aoun condemned the attack. “Israel deliberately targets journalists in order to conceal the truth about its crimes against Lebanon,” Aoun said in a statement denouncing “war crimes”.

Lebanese prime minister Nawaf Salam wrote on X that “targeting journalists and obstructing access for rescue teams constitutes a war crime”.

Amal Khalil, 43, who worked for al-Akhbar newspaper, was buried on Thursday. She was killed in what colleagues described as a sustained attack by Israeli forces. There were reports of rescuers attempting to dig her out of the rubble of a building also targeted and prevented from providing life-saving assistance.

Khalil was the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year. Last month three journalists were killed in a double-tap attack.

Lebanese MP Najat Saliba has praised the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire extension, and says it will help lots of the people in the area.

This comes as US president Donald Trump has announced that a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon would be extended by three weeks. Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office alongside the participants in the meeting, said he hoped the two countries’ leaders would meet during the additional three-week cessation of hostilities.

Speaking to Newsday on the BBC World Service, Saliba said: “Everybody is relieved that the ceasefire is going to continue for another three week. This is going to help a lot of people go back to their homes, check out their homes and get going with their lives.”

When asked about how Hezbollah could respond to the ceasefire extension agreement, she said “we don’t expect things to go forward very smoothly”.

But she added the Lebanese government is “very firm about going forward with the discussion in order for us to find a common ground that will relieve the people from all the bombing and killing.”

Later, at 8am ET (1pm BST), US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine will be hosting a press conference on Operation Epic Fury, the bombing of Iran.

We will be reporting live as this happens.

Iran’s deputy president has warned the US of “an eye for an eye” over oil strikes, the Mehr news agency has reported.

According to the outlet, Esmaeil Saqab Esfahani said: “If the enemy makes another mistake, our strategy will be an eye for an eye. If any of our oil wells are hit, one of the oil [facilities] of the countries from whose soil we are attacked will be targeted.”

He added that Tehran’s negotiation team has “grabbed the enemy’s collar at the negotiating table”.

He also said Iranians shouldn’t worry about their energy supply as the “necessary arrangements” have been made.

This comes after US president Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike oil plants in the area, as well as threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power stations and fresh water plants.

The EU’s foreign chief has said that talks with Iran should include nuclear experts otherwise “we will end up with a more dangerous Iran.”

Speaking on Friday ahead of an informal summit of EU leaders in Cyprus, EU’s foreign chief Kaja Kallas said: “If the talks are only about the nuclear and there are no nuclear experts around the table, then we will end up with an agreement that is weaker than the JCPOA was.”

“And (if) the problems in the region, missile programmes, their support to proxies, also hybrid and cyber activities in Europe are not addressed, we will end up with a more dangerous Iran,” she added.

Iran will reportedly be resuming flights between Tehran and the north-eastern city of Mashhad from Saturday, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Al Jazeera reports that this comes after Iran has been slowly reopening its aviation sector since 18 April, and has a four-stage plan to return to normal.

On Monday Iran reopened Imam Khomeini and Mehrabad airports in the capital Tehran. “Authorisation for passenger flights at Imam Khomeini International Airport and Mehrabad Airport has been issued” from Monday, the Civil Aviation Organization says in a statement, according to ISNA news agency.

It added that passenger flights from 10 airports across Iran “will also be possible from Saturday.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah have accused each other of violating ceasefire agreements.

This comes after the IDF said earlier that it had intercepted several projectiles launched from Lebanon, with sirens sounding in the Shtula area. Then, Hezbollah said on Telegram that it targeted the area in a rocket attack.

Writing on X, it said: “3 Hezbollah terrorists were eliminated after unsuccessfully launching a surface-to-air missile toward an IAF aircraft

“In 2 separate incidents, Hezbollah terrorists launched rockets and an explosive UAV toward IDF soldiers operating south of the Forward Defense Line in southern Lebanon.

“These actions constitute blatant violations of the ceasefire understandings.”

Last night, Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at northern Israel in response to an Israeli “violation of the ceasefire”.

Here are some of the latest images coming in from the Middle East.

A US journalist who was released a week after being kidnapped from a street corner in Baghdad late last month has taken to social media to thank people for her helping secure the release.

Shelly Kittleson posted on X in what were reportedly her first public comments since being released by Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah. She said:

I am and will always be incredibly grateful to those who worked for my release when I was held hostage by an armed faction in Iraq earlier this month.

So many people – including but not limited to government officials, press freedom organisations, and my wonderful community of fellow journalists and friends - put an immense amount of effort into ensuring that the level of attention to my case remained high.

Thank you all so very, very much.”

Kittleson, a freelance journalist, had lived abroad for years before the kidnapping, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria. She had entered Iraq again shortly before her abduction.