The Strait of Hormuz could be “open very soon” if diplomatic talks go well with Iran, US President Donald Trump has said. The Iranian Foreign Ministry, however, has flatly denied the US president’s claims that any talks have taken place, either directly or through an intermediary.
A gas pressure regulation station in the Iranian city of Isfahan and a gas pipeline to the Khorramshahr power plant were both reportedly damaged on Monday – although it remains unclear whether the strikes came before or after Trump said he called off US strikes targeting Iranian energy facilities for at least five days.
Brent oil futures rebounded to over $100 on Tuesday morning, after plunging more than 13% following Trump’s promised reprieve.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said that while his “friend” Trump seeks to “leverage the massive achievements of the IDF and the US military” in potential talks, Israel is “continuing to strike” both Iran and Lebanon to keep up the pressure.
Trump upped the ante over the weekend, threatening strikes on Iranian energy facilities if Tehran did not lift its threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, to which Iran responded by publishing a list of power stations and energy facilities across the Gulf that it would target.
Here are the latest developments:
- Trump has announced that he called off strikes targeting Iranian energy facilities, following alleged “productive conversations” with Tehran. Trump also claimed that there will be “a very serious form of a regime change” inside Iran. Tehran has denied that any conversations took place with the US.
- Asked if Iran would still be able to control the crucial waterway, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, Trump replied it would be “jointly controlled” by him and “whoever the next Ayatollah” is. Tehran, however, has already announced the Islamic Republic’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
- Pakistan has reportedly offered to host direct talks between the US and Iranian officials. However, the White House has refused to confirm or deny a Reuters report that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Vice President J.D. Vance were expected to travel to Islamabad later this week.
Follow our live coverage below for continuous updates. You can also read our previous updates here.
24 March 2026
General Jim Mattis, a former US defense secretary in the Trump administration, has warned that should Washington end the Iran war now, it would basically cede control of the Strait of Hormuz to Tehran.
”Iran right now, if we declared victory, they would now say they own the strait,” Mattis said, as cited by Politico, adding that Tehran would seek to tax “every ship that goes through.”
He suggested that the US is “in a tough spot,” arguing that “neither side has the ability right now to move the other side off of where they’re at.”
Unidentified traders made more than $500 million in oil futures trades mere minutes before Trump announced “productive” talks with Iran, news that sent crude prices tumbling, according to the Financial Times.
“It’s hard to prove causality . . . but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” an unnamed market strategist told the paper.
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Israel against “occupation” of Lebanon, stressing that the country’s fight against threats to its security is “just.”
“No occupation, no form of colonization – not here, not in the West Bank, nor anywhere else – is able to ensure the security of anybody,” he said while speaking next to Lebanese Culture Minister Ghassan Salame at the opening of an exhibition of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said the Middle East conflict has led to a “critical energy situation,” warning that the hostilities are having a knock-on effect on gas and oil markets.
She stressed that the strain on the energy supply underscores the urgency of ending hostilities, adding that a negotiated solution is needed to stabilize markets.
Several Iranian missiles have reportedly penetrated the Israeli missile defenses, with the IDF requesting the public to stay away and not record the impact sites.
“Search and rescue forces are on their way to several sites in southern Israel where reports of impacts have been received. The public is requested to avoid gathering in these areas,” the Israeli military said.
The IDF has detected more missiles launched from Iran towards Israel, warning residents to seek shelter until further notice. Meanwhile videos circulating on social media show Israeli air defenses engaging projectiles over Tel Aviv earlier in the night.
The White House has refused to confirm or deny a Reuters report that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Vice President JD Vance were expected to travel to Islamabad, Pakistan, later this week to meet with Iranian officials.
“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions, and the United States will not negotiate through the press. This is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to ABC News.
Brent oil futures rebounded to nearly $100 on Tuesday morning, after plunging more than 13% on Monday following Trump’s promise to postpone strikes on Iranian energy facilities until the end of the week.
The US Central Command has published new combat footage showing an F/A-18 Super Hornet taking off from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier “in support of Operation Epic Fury, as the aircraft carrier sails across regional seas.”
The IDF has again warned residents to seek shelter from incoming Iranian missiles.
The Israeli military has reportedly struck a gas station in Al-Rashidiya in southern Lebanon, with videos from the scene showing an inferno and a crater left in the aftermath of the bombing.
Kuwait's energy ministry has said that at least seven high-voltage power lines were damaged by debris from “air defense operations,” causing partial power outages in several areas of the country.
The Israeli Home Front Command has warned citizens to seek shelter, after the IDF said its air defenses were operating to intercept more missiles launched from Iran.
Saudi Arabia’s air defenses intercepted at least 20 drones over the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province, the country’s Defense Ministry said in a series of posts over the past several hours.
Pakistan has offered to host talks between Iran and the United States, a Foreign Office spokesperson told CNN, hours after Tehran denied reports that a diplomatic channel had been opened over the weekend.
“If both sides agree, Pakistan is always ready to host talks,” spokesperson Tahir Hussain Andrabi said, as contradictory statements from Iranian and US officials continued to emerge in the fourth week of the US-Israeli assault on Iran.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry insisted there was “no dialogue” between Tehran and Washington, while President Donald Trump claimed that talks over the weekend had led to a provisional 15-point agreement.
Two Iranian energy infrastructure sites in Isfahan and Khorramshahr have allegedly come under attack, according to semi-official Fars News Agency.
“The Gas Authority building and the gas reduction station on Kaveh Street in Isfahan were struck, resulting in damage to parts of these facilities and surrounding homes. At the same time, reports emerged that the gas pipeline to the Khorramshahr power plant was targeted,” Fars wrote, without clarifying the exact timing of the attacks.
Earlier on Monday, President Donald Trump announced that the US military would postpone strikes on Iranian power plants for five days, pending potential talks. Meanwhile, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu promised to continue strikes on Iranian targets to keep up pressure on Tehran.
The Trump administration is allegedly considering Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as a potential partner in negotiations, or even a future US-backed leader, Politico has reported, citing anonymous White House sources.
“He’s a hot option,” one administration official told the publication, noting that the White House is not yet ready to commit to any one person. “He’s one of the highest … But we got to test them, and we can’t rush into it.”
Ghalibaf flatly denied holding any talks with the US earlier in the day, but Politico sources dismissed his statements as internal posturing.
“We’re in the testing phase of really trying to figure out who can rise, who wants to rise, who tries to rise,” the source said. “And then as people rise, we’ll do a quick test, and if they’re radical, we’ll take them out.”
23 March 2026
An unnamed senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official allegedly told CBS News that Tehran has “received points from the US through mediators and they are being reviewed.”
However, Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said earlier in the day that “no negotiations have been held with the US, and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
“The Iranian people demand complete and remorseful punishment of the aggressors. All Iranian officials stand firmly behind their supreme leader and people until this goal is achieved,” Ghalibaf added in a post on X.
The Israeli military has carried out multiple strikes on several neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs, claiming it targeted Hezbollah infrastructure. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but videos from the scene show large fires and plumes of smoke rising from the area.
The US Central Command has boasted that it struck more than 9,000 Iranian targets in over 9,000 combat flights conducted since the war with Iran began on February 28. The new infographic offered few specifics, but described the targets as over 140 Iranian naval vessels, as well as missile sites, drone and missile manufacturing facilities, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence sites.
The IDF has detected a new barrage of missiles launched from Iran toward Israel, warning citizens to seek shelter as air defense systems are “operating to intercept the threat.”
Israel should seize vast swathes of land in southern Lebanon as part of its ongoing campaign against Hezbollah militants, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has stated. The new border should be moved all the way to the Litani River, located nearly 40 kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, he said on Israeli radio on Monday.
“I say here definitively... in every room and in every discussion, too: the new Israeli border must be the Litani,” Smotrich said. The campaign “needs to end with a different reality entirely, both with the Hezbollah decision but also with the change of Israel’s borders,” he added.
Since renewing its military campaign against Hezbollah in early March, Israel has ordered all residents of southern Lebanon to leave the area south of the Litani. According to the Lebanese authorities, the Israeli strikes have killed over 880 people over the past two weeks, with more than 2,000 injured and over one million displaced.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has called his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to discuss the situation in the Persian Gulf, which has “sharply deteriorated as a result of US and Israeli aggression,” the foreign ministry in Moscow said in a readout of the conversation.
The top Russian diplomat “underscored the categorical unacceptability of strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, noting that such actions pose serious risks to the safety of Russian personnel and carry the potential for severe environmental consequences across the region,” according to the statement.
The Russian side also stressed the urgent need to end hostilities immediately and transition toward a political and diplomatic resolution that “would take into account the legitimate interests of all parties involved, with particular emphasis on Iran,” it added.
Araghchi has in turn expressed his “gratitude to the Russian leadership for its substantial diplomatic and other forms of support extended to the Islamic Republic of Iran, including humanitarian assistance,” Moscow said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has touted the national unity and sacrifices of the armed forces, as thousands of Iranians poured into the streets in a show of support for the country’s government earlier on Monday, according to footage circulated by state media.
“I kiss the hands and arms of the brave members of the armed forces and the devoted defenders of our homeland,” Pezeshkian wrote on X. “The country’s bright future, and the safe and peaceful tomorrow of its children, are owed to the people’s resilience and steadfastness, and their sacred unity with those who protect Iran.”
Iranian air defense units intercepted and shot down a US unmanned aerial vehicle as it flew over the Persian Gulf coastline, Iran’s Southeastern Air Defense Headquarters said in a brief statement.
According to footage circulated by Iranian media, the intercepted drone was a Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a near-copy of Iran’s cheap and effective Shahed-136.
Iran will “use every capability to ensure security as necessary,” a spokesman for the Khatam Al Anbiya Central Headquarters, Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, told state media.
Tehran “controls the Strait of Hormuz very intelligently and powerfully,” Zolfaghari said, warning that “extra-regional countries do not have the right to interfere.”
According to Fars news agency, Zolfaghari also said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has carried out “extensive attacks” in Iraq’s Erbil, targeted US forces at al-Dhafra airbase in the UAE and at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, struck the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and launched missiles at the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the Gush Dan area.
The IRGC reiterated that President Trump’s “deceitful” behavior will not make Iran “neglect the war front and the battle with the adversary,” asserting that the US and Israel “will continue to retreat.”
An Israeli air strike in Tyre, a city in southern Lebanon, targeted a civil defense ambulance, resulting in the death of one medic, according to Al Jazeera.
Four others are wounded.
Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2 have displaced more than 1.16 million people, according to the country’s authorities. At least 1,039 people have since been killed.
UK destroyer has now arrived in the eastern Mediterranean and is ready to “begin operational integration into Cyprus’s defences”, according to the UK’s Defence Ministry.
Britain’s HMS Dragon departed from the UK on March 11 and is assigned the mission of defending a British airbase in Cyprus, which has recently been targeted by an Iranian-made drone.
”Royal Air Force Typhoons and F-35 jets continued their defensive missions overnight including over Cyprus, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain,” the ministry added.
Iran sees “no need” to lay mines in the Persian Gulf, a spokesperson for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement published by IRIB state television.
”The armed forces ... are capable of ensuring the security of the Persian Gulf, and extra-regional countries have no right to intervene in this area,” he said.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken with his counterparts in Oman, South Korea, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan.
He discussed recent US-Israeli attacks on provinces adjacent to the Caspian Sea with Azerbaijani minister and “warned of the security and environmental consequences”, according to IRNA news agency.
During the call with South Korean counterpart, Araghchi discussed the economic impacts of the Strait of Hormuz closure.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) claims it’s attacked more than 9,000 targets in Iran and damaged or destroyed 140 Iranian vessels since February 28.
Despite Trump’s comments that talks are underway with Iran to halt hostilities, CENTCOM said that attacks on the Islamic Republic continue.
Saeed Jalili, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator, has ridiculed Trump’s suggestion that the US president could “jointly control” the Strait of Hormuz with “the next Ayatollah.”
“This is the very definition of a retreat,” Jalini declared, concluding that “Iran’s power has brought the United States to the table of realities.” Jalini’s tweet included the hashtag “TACOTrump,” an acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” commonly used by his political opponents in Washington.
Iran will not lay mines in the Persian Gulf, as it already “has taken initiative in the Persian Gulf region and the territorial waters of Oman, and skillfully and powerfully controls the Strait of Hormuz,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari has announced.
Zolfaghari said that Iran will continue to “use all available means to ensure security” in the region. Separately, an Iranian official told Al Jazeera that the idea of mining the strait remains on the table in Tehran.
Netanyhau just released a video statement, announcing that he has spoken to Trump about “an agreement” with Iran “that protects our vital interests.”
According to the Israeli PM, Trump “believes that there is a chance to leverage the massive achievements of the IDF and the US military in order to achieve the goals of the war through an agreement.”
Israel will “protect our vital interests in every situation,” and “is continuing to strike, in Iran and in Lebanon,” he added.
Türkiye, Pakistan, and Egypt have been shuttling messages between Washington and Tehran over the past two days, Axios has reported, citing an American source. The three countries’ foreign ministers have reportedly held separate talks with White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on ending the war and “resolving all outstanding issues.” Tehran insists there is “no dialogue” with Washington, saying Trump’s claims are aimed at lowering energy prices and buying time for military plans.
Oil prices nosedived following Trump’s remarks on Monday, with Brent dropping from an intraday high of $113 a barrel to as low as $96 before rebounding to around $102.
Israel is aware that preparations are underway for direct talks between the US and Iran, Axios journalist Barak Ravid has reported, citing sources in the Israeli government. Shortly afterwards, Ravid added that US Vice President JD Vance spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a potential deal with Iran.
However, Trump’s claim that “contacts are progressing,” and that Washington and Tehran have reached agreement on certain points took the Israelis by surprise, he added. Iran still maintains that no discussions have taken place.
”Iranian people demand complete and remorseful punishment of the aggressors,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on social media. “All Iranian officials stand firmly behind their supreme leader and people until this goal is achieved.”