LIVE: Saudis push Trump to resume Iran strikes

Mohammed bin Salman and Donald Trump in the White House last November

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is urging Donald Trump to continue the US war with Iran, the New York Times is reporting.

The Saudi leader, known as MBS, has urged Trump to press on with strikes and take advantage of an ‘historic opportunity’ to remake the Middle East, according to the newspaper.

MBS and Trump are said to have shared phone conversations in which the Saudi leader has argued Iran poses a long-term threat to Gulf nations which can only be removed by regime change.

Iran has denied reports it is charging ships up to $2m to pass the Strait of Hormuz which has effectively closed during the US-Israel war.

According to reporting by Bloomberg, Tehran has established an informal toll on the waterway which usually carries around a fifth of the world’s oil supplies.

Some vessels are said to have made the payment though details on how the transactions are made were not made clear as well as the currency involved in payments.

The Iranian embassy in India has now denied the report in a statement on X. ‘In response to certain claims regarding the alleged receipt of a sum of 2 million dollars by the Islamic Republic of Iran from vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, it is emphasized that such claims are unfounded,’ the post read.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has declared Islamabad is prepared to host negotiations to stop the US-Israeli war with Iran.

His announcement comes amid mounting speculation it could act as a mediator after officials from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey passed messages between both sides.

‘Pakistan welcomes and fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end the WAR in Middle East, in the interest of peace and stability in (the) region and beyond,’ he wrote on X.

‘Subject to concurrence by the US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict.’

India’s Prime Minister has said he had a ‘useful exchange’ of views with Donald Trump as the leaders discussed how the Strait of Hormuz can remain open.

Amazon’s cloud arm has said its service in Bahrain had been disrupted after drone attacks hit the region.

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) spokesperson said the disruption was ongoing, without specifying the exact location affected or any potential damage done.

‘The AWS Bahrain Region has been disrupted as a result of the ongoing conflict,’ the spokesperson said, adding that the company was helping affected customers migrate to AWS servers elsewhere in the world.

‘We are working closely with local authorities and prioritising the safety of our personnel.’

AFP journalists based in Bahrain said the government’s portal for online procedures was inaccessible, as were several other services.

The country’s main telecommunications company sent a message to its customers apologising for a ‘technical problem’ affecting its operations.

Donald Trump has held talks with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the Iran war and how the Strait of Hormuz can be kept open.

The talks were revealed by the American ambassador to India Sergio Gor.

Iran will demand significant concessions from the US if mediation efforts lead to talks, three sources have said in Tehran.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are said to exert growing influence over decision-making which has resulted in a hardening of its negotiating position, it is claimed.

In any talks with the US, Iran would not only demand an end to the war but concessions that are likely red lines for Donald Trump – guarantees against future military action, compensation for wartime losses and formal control of the Strait of Hormuz, the sources said.

Iran would also refuse to negotiate any limitations to its ballistic missile program, they said, an issue that had been a red line for Tehran during the talks that were taking place when the U.S. and Israel launched their attack last month.

Trump said on Monday that Washington had already had ‘very strong talks’ with Tehran more than three weeks into the war, but Iran has publicly denied this.

Three senior sources said Iran had only had preliminary discussions with Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt over whether the groundwork existed for talks with the United States over ending the war.

Iran has named a former Revolutionary Guards commander to succeed Ali Larijani as head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, whose appointment was confirmed by state television, is a former deputy commander-in-chief of Iran’s ideological army who has also held senior posts in the interior and justice ministries.

Larijani was killed last week in an Israeli strike, ending the life of one of the most heavyweight non-clerical figures in Iranian politics who had been seen as a possible pointman in any eventual talks with the United States.

Zolghadr’s career has been embedded in the Revolutionary Guards, whose stated aim is to protect the Islamic revolution from internal and external threats.

After serving in the 1980s war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Zolghadr was the head of the Guards joint staff for eight years, and then as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Guards for another eight years.

In 2005, he was named deputy interior minister for security and police in the government of then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a move that was seen at the time as bolstering the Guards’ influence in politics.

Since 2023, he had been the secretary of the Expediency Council, a powerful body which plays both an advisory and mediating role between Iran’s various power structures and the supreme leader.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the economic challenges from the Iran war may be ‘significant’ as she shared that contingency planning was under way for energy bill support ‘for those who need it most’.

She told the Commons: ‘The previous government pushed up borrowing, interest rates, inflation and mortgage costs with an unfunded, untargeted package of support under Liz Truss. That gave the support to the most wealthiest of households.’

Ms Reeves added: ‘That left us with high levels of national debt, a cheque written then for a bill that is still being paid today.

‘I can confirm to the House that contingency planning is taking place for every eventuality so that we can keep costs down for everyone and provide support for those who need it most, acting within our ironclad fiscal rules to keep inflation and interest rates as low as possible.’

Hezbollah will fight to prevent Israeli troops from occupying southern Lebanon, one of the group’s high-ranking officials has said.

Hassan Fadlallah said such an occupation would pose an ‘existential threat’ to Lebanon as a state.

Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz said earlier today that he had instructed the military to establish a ‘security zone’ south of the Litani River, which runs about 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the Israeli border.

Katz has previously threatened Lebanon’s government it would lose territory if it did not disarm Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Tehran that drew Lebanon into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran when it fired into Israel on March 2.

On Tuesday, Katz said in a meeting with the military chief of staff that the military would ‘control the remaining bridges and the security zone up to the Litani’, and was creating a ‘defensive buffer’.

The Litani River meets the Mediterranean about 30 km (20 miles) north of the Israeli border with Lebanon.

The military has destroyed five bridges over the river since March 13 and has accelerated the demolition of homes in Lebanese villages close to the Israeli border as part of a campaign that Israel says is aimed at Hezbollah and not Lebanese civilians.

Iran’s embassy in South Africa has mocked Donald Trump over claims the US held constructive talks with Iran to end the war.

Diplomats in Pretoria posted an imagined one-way conversation between Trump, named President of PEACE, and the Ayatollah in which the President agrees to pause strikes for five days.

It comes after Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday that the US and Iran had held ‘very good and productive’ conversations about a ‘complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East’.

As a result, Trump said he was postponing for five days a plan to hit Iran’s power plants, which he had threatened if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Sri Lanka has ordered street lights, neon signs and billboard lighting to be switched off in a drive to cut energy consumption by 25 percent to tackle supply shortages.

Government spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa said all state institutions had been asked to reduce the use of air conditioning as the Middle East war entered its fourth week, driving up oil and gas prices.

Sri Lanka has already raised fuel prices by a third since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, triggering retaliatory attacks that have disrupted global energy supplies.

‘We need to reduce consumption by at least 25 percent,’ Jayatissa told reporters in Colombo. ‘We hope the private sector too will abide by the guidelines drafted by a panel of experts.’

The island has introduced a four-day work week and brought back work-from-home arrangements since last week, to reduce pressure on the transport network.

The minister said the new measures include switching off advertising illumination after 9:00pm (3:30pm UK time) and all street lights, except in high security areas.