Iran-US war latest: Trump says peace talks will end immediately if Tehran imposes tolls in Strait of Hormuz

Trump touted his achievements against Iran during a partisan rally to kick off the Great American State Fair event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night.

“Last week we signed a historic agreement to end the conflict with Iran, fully open the Strait of Hormuz, and accomplish what no president has ever been able to accomplish before, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, that’s done,” he told the crowd.

“And thanks to the power and skill of the United States Armed Forces, today Iran has no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft capacity, no missile launches, no manufacturing, and their leadership has been obliterated, and for the first time in 3000 years, we are finally going to have peace in the Middle East.”

Looking out from a friend’s balcony, Milia el-Cheikh struggled to find her own home in the ruins of her now-deserted village, its entrances strung with barbed wire.

Her village of Dibbine is one of several Shiite-majority communities across southern Lebanon destroyed by Israeli forces battling the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah. Israel has occupied vast areas and fighting has raged through declared ceasefires. The latest truce — part of the interim peace deal between the United States and Iran — appears to be holding.

El-Cheikh, one of the few Christians from Dibbine, found shelter in another village but regularly visits Jdeidat Marjayoun, a mostly Christian village next to her hometown, to have coffee with a friend from church. Before the war, it was a comforting ritual. Now it takes place against a backdrop of loss and fear.

Donald Trump has said that Iran has agreed to indefinite nuclear inspections on its facilities accusing “fake news” media of distributing false rebuttals.

“Iran has fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!),” he wrote in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

“This will insure ‘Nuclear Honesty’. If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations!”

Iran has denied that it will allow inspectors into its nuclear sites despite US vice president JD Vance also insisting that Tehran had agreed to the visits.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday that Tehran had agreed “no new commitments” on inspections, adding that Iran would continue its current obligations as a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and under its safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

Iranian forces opened fire on the $31m F-15E Strike Eagle on 3 April, triggering a major search for the missing weapons-system officer, who held out in the mountains for hours before his dramatic rescue.

During a debriefing with intelligence officials, the pilot described seeing a unified and overwhelming drone formation resembling a jellyfish, sources familiar with the matter told CNN in a report published on Tuesday.

It says that Israeli forces “deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children”, as part of a “deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza”. Around 30% of those killed in the Gaza war were children, the report found, with a total death toll of at least 20,179 by October 2025.

The deal between Iran and the US to end the war is “America’s declaration of defeat”, Iran’s top negotiator said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a conference in Azerbaijan, the outspoken parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the initial agreement to stop the fighting and begin talks “was not the result of pressure and coercion, but rather the result of the resistance and authority of the brave Iranian nation”.

“That is why, the Islamabad memorandum of understanding became a declaration of America’s defeat,” he said, adding that Middle Eastern countries should be responsible for security in the region.

The two sides signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding last week setting out broad agreements in principle to end the war. The interim accord paved the way for 60 days of talks aimed at hammering out thornier details, including issues related to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Iran and the US have also offered conflicting accounts on financial incentives for Iran, control of the Strait of Hormuz and the war in Lebanon since ending a first round of talks in Switzerland on Monday.

Israeli outlet Maariv reported on Monday that Gofman views his predecessor’s approach to the war as having failed.

And he now plans on transforming parts of the agency to take on new strategies to accomplish the mission, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The families of three Indian seafarers who were killed during an attack on an oil tanker in the ​Gulf of Oman have demanded the US “take responsibility” and pay $5m compensation for the deaths of their loved ones.

Shivanand Chaurasiya, Patnala Suresh and Aditya Sharma were part of the crew of the Palau-flagged MT Settebello, and died when the US opened fire on the ship’s engine room to disable it.

The US military claimed that the vessel ignored some 60 warnings before it was struck. But a major Indian seafarers’ union has rejected the claim, arguing the crew had no reason to deliberately ignore or challenge American forces.