From left: U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, Vice President Vance, President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh Moawad and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa listen to questions from the media at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
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Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Israel’s military said Friday it struck several Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon after the Iran-backed militant group fired rockets into Israel, despite President Trump’s announcement that an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire had been extended by three weeks.
The lengthening of the temporary truce in Lebanon was announced at the White House on Thursday, where ambassadors from both countries met for high-level negotiations. Hezbollah was not involved in the talks.
The shaky Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is linked to broader U.S. efforts to draw its war with Iran to a close. Tehran has insisted that the fighting in Lebanon remain paused as a precondition for further peace talks with the United States.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday he will be visiting Islamabad, where Pakistan hosted direct talks between the U.S. and Iran earlier this month, raising anticipation of possible progress toward a new round of negotiations. But there was no comment from the Trump administration yet.
President Trump unilaterally extended the ceasefire with Iran this week, hours before it was set to expire, without saying what the new expiration date would be.
Iran has dismissed the extension as “meaningless,” saying the continued U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports is a violation of the deal and that the Iranian delegation will not return to the negotiating table until the blockade is lifted.
Iran has also insisted that only vessels that pay a toll to Tehran will be allowed to pass, furthering tensions in recent days in the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping passage for about one-fifth of the world’s petroleum before the war. The Pentagon has also warned that it will intercept vessels anywhere in the world that are tied to Iran. On Thursday, the U.S. Navy seized a tanker transporting oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean, a day after Iran took control of two commercial ships in the vital passage.
President Trump said on social media he ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill any boat” laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. He added that the U.S. would triple the level of minesweeping in the waterway.
Here are the latest updates on Day 56 of the conflict in the Middle East:
Strait of Hormuz | Journalist killed | Pope Leo | Drone attacks
Trump says he’s in no hurry to end war as Hormuz crisis deepens
A boy walks near a man with a fishing net as ships are anchored near the shoreline in Bandar Abbas, an Iranian port city and the capital of Hormozgan province, along the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
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Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, will head to Pakistan on Friday, he said on social media. That’s where Vice President Vance traveled earlier this month for direct inconclusive talks with Iranian officials and where efforts to bring the two sides together for a second round fell through this week.
“Purpose of my visits is to closely coordinate with our partners on bilateral matters and consult on regional developments,” Araghchi said, noting he would also visit Oman and Russia.
The White House has not commented.
On Thursday, however, President Trump said he was in no hurry to reach a deal to end the U.S.-Israeli led war with Iran. “I don’t want to rush. I want to take my time,” Trump told reporters, adding that he was prepared to wait for “the best deal” to end the war.
Trump also dismissed the idea that he would use a nuclear weapon against Iran.
“Why would I use a nuclear weapon where we’ve totally, in a very conventional way, decimated them without it?” Trump said. “A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.”
Trump’s comments came as he ordered the U.S. Navy to “shoot and kill any boat” trying to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a post on social media.
Speaking at a Pentagon news conference on Friday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reiterated the president’s threat, saying such vessels were “acting like pirates, acting like terrorists.”
“They’re the ones who lay indiscriminate mines,” he said.
Hegseth also derided Washington’s allies in Europe for not joining the U.S.-Israeli war. “We are not counting on Europe,” he told reporters. “But they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and get in a boat.”
“This is much more their fight than ours,” he added.
NPR has confirmed a Pentagon assessment shared in closed-door briefings with Congress indicates it could take up to six months to fully clear Iranian-laid mines from the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump earlier disputed the assessment, saying U.S. minesweepers are already clearing the waterway.
The threat of being attacked has had a tremendous effect on global shipping. Some vessels with links to Iran made attempts to move through the strait, but others are staying away after Iran attacked three ships with gunfire earlier this week and seized two more.
Around 20,000 seafarers have also been stuck aboard their ships since the start of the war.
“There are a substantial number of tanker shipowners that [are keeping] their vessels away from the Middle East,” Basil Karatzas, who heads the maritime consulting company Karatzas Marine Advisors, told NPR.
The disruption goes beyond oil. Helium, fertilizer and aluminum, which are all critical elements for industry and farming, have been held up in the Gulf, causing global shortages and driving up costs.
Rights groups call for investigation into Lebanese journalist’s death
Press freedom groups are calling for an international investigation into the death of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who was killed earlier this week in an Israeli airstrike while reporting in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese officials said Khalil and another journalist took shelter in a house after a nearby vehicle was targeted, but the building was then struck as well. Medics said they were able to rescue a wounded journalist, but came under fire and were forced to retreat before they could save Khalil. She later died under the rubble. The Israeli military said it was responding to an “imminent threat” and was reviewing the incident.
Relatives and friends of Amal Khalil, a veteran correspondent for the daily newspaper Al-Akhbar who was killed in a reported Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, mourn at her home in the village of Bisariyeh, on Thursday.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel’s failure to allow medical crews to reach Khalil in time “may constitute a war crime.”
“Journalists are civilians and protected under international law,” CPJ’s Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement. “Israel’s blatant disregard for such norms — and the international community’s failure to hold them accountable — is abhorrent.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused Israel of targeting journalists.
“Israel’s targeting of media workers in the south while they carry out their professional duties is no longer isolated incidents, but has become an established approach that we condemn and reject, as do all international laws and conventions,” Salam wrote in a post on social media.
At least eight journalists have been killed by Israel in Lebanon since the start of the conflict, according to CPJ.
Pope Leo urges U.S. and Iran to return to talks
Pope Leo XIV called on the United States and Iran to return to the negotiating table Friday, calling for renewed talks to end the war.
Pope Leo XIV speaks to journalists aboard the papal flight from Malabo to Rome, on Thursday, at the end of his 11-day pastoral visit to Africa.
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Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane after a trip to Africa, Leo urged leaders to adopt what he called “a culture of peace.”
He called the negotiations between Iran and the United States “complex,” but urged all sides to remain committed to dialogue.
He said he was carrying a photograph of a young Muslim Lebanese boy killed in Israel’s recent attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The same child had been photographed holding a sign welcoming the pope during his visit to Lebanon last year.
“When conflicts arise,” Leo said, “the question is how to promote the values we believe in without the deaths of so many innocents.”
Drones target Iranian Kurdish opposition bases in Iraq, officials say
The Kurdistan Freedom Party, known as PAK, said several drones hit one of its bases in Irbil province, in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, late Thursday, wounding three fighters.
Iran and Iran-backed Iraqi militias have continued to attack Iranian Kurdish opposition bases throughout a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran that began April 8. Kurdish government officials say those attacks have killed at least five people since then.
A police officer stands holding a flag in Valiasr Square beneath a mural of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, on Thursday.
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President Trump extended the ceasefire with Iran indefinitely earlier this week, but Iranian officials have maintained that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports violates the truce.
On Friday, Hegseth said: “The blockade is tightening by the hour. We are in control. Nothing in, nothing out.”
PAK, which was trained along with Iraqi Kurdish fighters by U.S. forces to fight the militant group ISIS, called on Trump to protect Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, where the U.S. has bases.
Drone attacks were also reported in Kuwait, where the country’s defense ministry said “two sites at its northern land border centers” were targeted by “two fiber-optic wire-guided explosive drones” from Iraq.
In a social media post, authorities said the drones caused material damage, but no casualties.
Kat Lonsdorf in Beirut, Lebanon, Jane Arraf in Amman, Jordan, Ruth Sherlock and Rebecca Rosman in London, Jackie Northam in Maine, Quil Lawrence in New York and Scott Neuman in Washington contributed reporting to this story.
