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Middle East crisis live: Trump casts doubt on Iran war ceasefire over continued closure of strait of Hormuz | US-Israel war on Iran

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Summary

Welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

The fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran showed further strain on Friday, a day before delegations from both countries are due to meet in Pakistan, as Donald Trump accused Tehran of breaching promises on the strait of Hormuz and Israel struck Lebanon with attacks that Iran claims violate the truce.

Trump said in a social media post late Thursday that Iran was doing a “very poor job” of allowing oil to go through the strait. “That is not the agreement we have!“

There is no sign Iran is lifting its near-total blockade of the strait, which has caused the worst-ever disruption to global energy supplies. Tehran cited Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon, which included the heaviest strikes of the war on Wednesday, as a key sticking point.

Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz.
Cargo ships in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz. Photograph: Reuters

In the first 24 hours of the ceasefire, which Trump announced on Tuesday, just a single oil products tanker and five dry bulk carriers sailed through the strait, which typically carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows and 140 ships a day before the war.

  • Donald Trump has said he is “very optimistic” a peace deal with Iran was within reach as a diplomatic delegation led by his vice-president JD Vance prepared to head to Pakistan for high-stakes talks aimed at ending the war this weekend. Iran’s leaders “talk much differently when you’re at a meeting than they do to the press. They’re much more reasonable,” the US president said, in line with his administration’s narrative that there’s a disconnect between what Tehran says publicly and privately.

  • Trump also confirmed that he had asked Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to be “more low-key” in Lebanon to help ensure the success of the upcoming US-Iran negotiations in Islamabad. “I spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it. I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key,” Trump told NBC News, adding that he believed Israel was “scaling back” its operations in Lebanon.

  • Netanyahu said he had instructed his cabinet to begin direct negotiations with Lebanon aimed at disarming Hezbollah – all the while insisting that “there is no ceasefire” in Lebanon and that Israel will “continue to strike Hezbollah with force”.

  • Israel has since launched a fresh wave of strikes against what it called “Hezbollah launch sites” in Lebanon, after the IDF earlier ordered people to flee Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs. Later in the day, Hezbollah said it had fired a rocket salvo towards northern Israeli settlements.

  • While Israel continues to insist that the war will go on and “talks will be held under fire”, Lebanon is demanding a ceasefire before direct negotiations can begin. Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, said this was “the only solution”. Lebanon is also insisting that it needs the US as a mediator and guarantor of any agreement. Those talks will take place next week, hosted by the US state department in Washington.

  • Iran’s ⁠president ⁠Masoud Pezeshkian said ⁠Israeli strikes on ⁠Lebanon violate the ceasefire agreement and would render ‌negotiations meaningless, adding that Iran would not abandon the Lebanese people.

  • The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Lebanon forms “an inseparable part of the ceasefire” deal. In a post on X, he said “there is no room for denial and backtracking”.

  • Keir Starmer also said that Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon “shouldn’t be happening”. The British prime minister also dismissed an argument put forward by US vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday that there had been “a legitimate misunderstanding”, saying the issue “isn’t a technical one of whether it’s a breach of the agreement or not”. It is “a matter of principles as far as I’m concerned”, Starmer said.

  • A statement attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Iran will take management of the strait of Hormuz into a new phase, but did not elaborate on what that would be. In the statement, read out on state tv, he also said Iran remains determined to “take revenge” for his father, who was assassinated on the first day of the war, and all those killed in the war. “We will certainly demand compensation for each and every damage inflicted, and the blood price of the martyrs and the compensation for the wounded of this war,” he said.

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Key events

Donald Trump has said that right wing influencers Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones are “not ‘MAGA,’ they’re losers”.

The four had been reliable supporters of Trump for most of his presidency, but in recent weeks have spoken out over their opposition to the war in Iran.

In a long post on his Truth Social platform, the president launched highly personal attacks on the four, who are among the most influential voices in the right wing media ecosystem.

double quotation markAs President, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don’t return their calls because I’m too busy on World and Country Affairs and, after a few times, they go ‘nasty’.”

Tucker Carlson campaigning in 2024 with Donald Trump. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

The war on Iran has widened the cracks in Trump’s already shaky Maga movement, with many commentators and supporters saying that such an operation is a betrayal of Trump’s promise to put America First and extradite the US from messy foreign conflicts.

Carlson on Monday called the president’s rhetoric toward Iran, including an expletive-filled threat on Easter, “vile” on “every level.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked on his Info Wars show: “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” Former Fox News host and popular conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said the recent ceasefire with Iran “sounds very much like surrender,” but conceded that she supported it.

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Backlash against ‘short-termist’ UK plans to weaken EV sales targets | Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars

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The UK government’s plans to further weaken electric car targets have provoked a furious backlash from the charging industry and the electric car brand Polestar, which would lose out from the changes.

The Labour government is expected to dilute rules known as the zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. Government sources have said it will reduce a target for pure electric cars from 80% of all sales by 2030 to 50%.

The Labour government had already weakened the mandate last year by introducing loopholes – known as “flexibilities” – that allow the sale of more plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which combine an engine with a small battery.

The slower shift to electric cars would be a huge blow in particular to the charging industry, which is investing on the basis of future demand.

Greg Jackson, the chief executive of Octopus Energy, said the government had chosen “short-termist incumbent lobbying instead of the long-term future of industry”. As well as being the UK’s largest retail energy provider, Octopus is also a large player in electric vehicle leasing and charging.

“The fossil fuel market is shrinking globally and our best hope is to speed up development of electric vehicles, not go the other way,” Jackson said. “This hesitation undermines the credibility of government commitments which were supposed to give certainty to investors.”

The charging industry has invested in infrastructure on the basis of future demand for electric vehicles. Photograph: Xiu Bao/Alamy

Vicky Read, the chief executive of the industry lobby group ChargeUK, said weakening the target was an “astonishing” proposal which could cost tens of thousands of jobs in the longer term.

“The charging sector has ploughed billions into putting chargers in the ground on the basis of this policy, ahead of profitability,” Read said. “This government said it would not flip-flop like the previous did. To move the goalposts again would be exactly that – an act of self-harm denying the country a forward facing, economically prosperous industry leaving us behind the rest of the world.”

The proposal would probably mean millions more cars with petrol engines on British roads and significantly higher carbon emissions. Plug-in hybrids produce about 135g of carbon dioxide per kilometre driven on average, compared with about 166g from petrol cars, according to T&E, a thinktank monitoring transport and environmental issues. Electric cars produce zero carbon directly and have much lower associated emissions over their lifetime.

The government’s decision followed heavy lobbying by car manufacturers as well as the Unite union, which represents many workers in British automotive factories. Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, described the proposed changes as “a huge victory” and said it would “protect the jobs of UK automotive workers”.

However, Anna Krajinska, the UK director at T&E, argued that allowing more plug-in hybrid sales would ultimately harm the UK industry by leaving the door open to Chinese manufacturers. China’s Chery, owner of brands including Omoda and Jaecoo, and BYD, the world’s biggest electric carmaker, have sold about 30,000 cars each in the UK this year, many of them PHEVs.

“Slowing down targets and increasing hybrid sales will destroy the UK’s automotive sector,” Krajinska said. “Only a rapid transition to battery electrics can secure the future of UK manufacturing. For that to happen targets have to remain unchanged and [the business secretary] Peter Kyle needs to deliver a coherent and robust industrial policy to transition the sector and jobs.”

A weaker ZEV mandate would also represent a blow to manufacturers focusing on electric cars. Matt Galvin, the UK managing director of the Chinese-owned electric brand Polestar, said: “Weakening these targets allows car manufacturers to decelerate development of EVs at a time when they should be doing exactly the opposite and accelerating their investment and product offering.”



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Arrest over push of woman into bus's path in 2017

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A 44-year-old man is in custody over the incident where a woman appeared to be shoved into the path of a bus.



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World Cup 2026: Fifa urged to remove official over hand gesture; teams hit back at Ceferin; Iran arrive in US – live | World Cup 2026

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Key events

More now on the hand gesture story mentioned earlier. Fifa’s discrimination monitor at the World Cup has called for a video assistant referee to be removed for appearing to make a hand gesture resembling a white supremacist sign.

“Advice from our experts is that the gesture used clearly resembles an upside down ‘OK’ hand symbol used as a ‘white power’ symbol in global far-right circles,” the Fare network, a longtime partner of Fifa and Uefa, the European football governing body, to monitor racist and discriminatory chants, flags and symbols at international games, said in a statement. “Clearly this official should have no further role to play in this World Cup,” Fare said in a statement, describing the gesture as “neo-Nazi.”

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