Region adapting to diminished US power after Washington fails to land knockout blow on Tehran or safeguard allies

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The shock of the Iran war and its fallout has driven rivals in the Middle East to get behind a peace deal, pushing the Trump administration to accept a tentative agreement in the face of furious opposition from Israel and its supporters in Washington.

The diplomatic efforts come as the region is reshaping to adapt to diminished US power after Washington’s inability to land a knockout blow on Iran, force the opening of the strait of Hormuz or safeguard its Gulf allies. Tehran has few friends in the region, but the regime’s survival has meant that its neighbours have had to find an accommodation.

The US president says plans for a US military strike on Iran have been paused because ‘serious negotiations are now taking place’

Iran has made a new proposal for a deal to definitively end the war in the Middle East, officials in the region said on Monday, with Donald Trump claiming he had postponed new military strikes so talks could continue.

But while the US president has regularly used social media to threaten Tehran, and to claim that a peace deal was within reach, there has been no sign of an immediate breakthrough in the stalled negotiations to end the war.

Tehran reportedly passed proposal to mediators in Pakistan on Thursday night, though its contents are not yet clear

Iran has passed a new proposal to Pakistani mediators in the latest effort to end the war with the US, but Donald Trump said he was not “satisfied” by it.

“Right now, we have talks going on, they’re not getting there,” he told reporters, adding that his options remained “either blast them away or make a deal”.

US president says negotiations could restart in Islamabad under ‘fantastic’ Pakistani army chief Asim Munir

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Donald Trump has said that US-Iranian peace talks could resume in Islamabad over the next two days, and complimented the work of Pakistan’s army chief as mediator.

The US president was speaking on Tuesday to a New York Post reporter who had gone to Islamabad for the first round of ceasefire talks over the weekend. After an interview discussing prospects for negotiations, the reporter said the president had called her back “with an update”.

Whatever outcome of ceasefire talks, the region will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Tehran

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Gulf nations will seek to add security partners as they rebuild battered economies after the US and Israel’s war on Iran and deal with an emboldened Tehran.

The Gulf will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Iran and its remaining missile arsenal. American bases on their soil turned them into targets for Iran, as it retaliated against a joint attack by the US and Israel.

President Masoud Pezeshkian says 14m people ‘declared their readiness to sacrifice their lives’ for defence of Iran

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Iranians officials called on young people to form human chains around the country’s power plants and people in Tehran stocked up on basic provisions, as the clock ticked down on Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to open the strait of Hormuz or face massive strikes on civilian infrastructure.

Iranian media showed people gathering outside electricity stations, waving Iranian flags and holding up banners, including at the country’s largest power plant, near Tehran, and in Tabriz in the north-west. In Dezful in the south-west, people gathered on a bridge said to be 1,700 years old.

President shifts deadline again for attacking power plants and bridges in expletive-ridden social media post

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Donald Trump issued an expletive-laden warning on Sunday that Tehran had until Tuesday night to reopen the strait of Hormuz or the US would obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges.

Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”.

US ground troops have arrived in Middle East but military options to open strait risk strong retaliation from Iran

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The arrival of US ground invasion forces in the Middle East over the weekend provides Donald Trump with the muscle for a perilous attempt to forcibly open the strait of Hormuz, Iran’s biggest pressure point in the war.

Iran’s chokehold on the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil trade normally passes, gives Tehran leverage that Trump understands, sending oil prices rocketing to more than $100 a barrel. The US president has said he is prepared to give diplomacy a chance, though bombing of Iran continues. But he also said on Sunday that he wanted to “take the oil in Iran”.

Islamabad is attempting high-wire diplomacy between US and Iran, but Israel could spoil any chance of success

Intensifying Israeli bombing of civilian targets in Iran and an expanding US military force in the Gulf are casting a dark shadow over Pakistan’s hopes of hosting peace talks between Iran and the US.

Pakistan is attempting high-wire diplomacy, using its relative neutrality as a country with good relations with Iran and the US, to provide a venue for negotiations. It is not a player in the Middle East and does not host any American military bases, so it does not bring the baggage of other potential regional mediators.

At least 400 killed in Pakistan’s strike on drug rehab centre, Taliban say, with families searching unmarked mass graves

Sohrab Faqiri spent Eid, the Muslim festival to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, looking for the grave of his brother, killed in a massive Pakistan airstrike on Kabul this week.

Pakistan’s bombardment campaign, on what it says is terrorist and military infrastructure in neighbouring Afghanistan, appeared to have gone catastrophically wrong. A rehabilitation centre for drug addicts was hit on Monday night, according to the United Nations and the Afghan authorities. The UN’s preliminary death toll is 143 people, while the Taliban administration puts the figure at more than 400 dead.

Bombarded by the US and Israel, Iranians worry about how to survive – and what comes next

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Fear, defiance, and quiet celebration intermingled in Tehran with everyday chores, local people said, as Iran’s capital continued to be rocked by American and Israeli airstrikes.

Residents said that many people had moved to the countryside or were trying to do so, believing it was safer away from military targets. In Tehran, military and police installations are located in residential areas and there were rumours security forces were moving into schools and mosques.

China calls it unacceptable to ‘kill leader of sovereign state’, while South Africa questions ‘pre-emptive’ justification

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The US-Israeli war on Iran has been condemned as illegal across much of the global south, with China saying it was unacceptable to “blatantly kill the leader of a sovereign state”.

Many countries objected that negotiations between the US and Iran over its nuclear programme and missile capability were not given a chance to succeed before Washington and Israel began bombing, and analysts often saw the war in terms of a colonial-style exercise of might.

Military reckoned ‘good’ Afghan insurgents were separate from ‘bad’ Pakistani insurgents but distinction has blurred

Days after the Taliban swept to power in 2021, Pakistan’s then spymaster appeared in Kabul on what looked to many like a victory lap. Sipping tea in the lobby of the Afghan capital’s fanciest hotel, Lt Gen Faiz Hameed told reporters: “Don’t worry, everything will be OK.”

This week it became clear just how badly Pakistan had miscalculated how it could rely on the Taliban, as Islamabad unleashed airstrikes in Afghanistan and troops from both countries fought each other on the border.