Meanwhile, a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon has continued to hold, with thousands more displaced families returning to their homes under the supervision of UN peacemakers. Here are some of latest images coming out of the country:
Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, will seek to revive her push for political change with a rally in Madrid on Saturday, having found herself sidelined by Donald Trump after the abduction of the president Nicolás Maduro. “Venezuela will be free,” the Nobel peace prize winner insisted in an interview on the eve of this weekend’s demonstration in the Puerta del Sol square, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of protesters. Supporters had hoped Machado, whose movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, would take power after US troops captured her autocratic rival on 3 January. Instead, Trump backed Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, in exchange for concessions involving Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral resources. “We’re very happy with the president-elect that we have right now,” Trump said earlier this month, despite Rodríguez not having been elected. Machado, who slipped out of Venezuela last December to receive her Nobel peace prize in Oslo, has been unable to return since Maduro’s capture, with Washington seemingly concerned her presence could cause social upheaval, and scupper Trump’s plans to exploit its oil reserves. In Machado’s absence, Rodríguez has consolidated power, purging key Maduro allies from government and attempting to portray herself as a competent technocrat capable of reviving the moribund economy. The streets of Caracas feature campaign-style propaganda posters stamped with Rodríguez’s face and the slogan: “Onwards, Delcy, you have my trust.” In a recent interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, Rodríguez’s brother, the powerful national assembly chief, Jorge Rodríguez, declined to say when fresh elections may be held. “The most important thing right now is the economy,” he said. Members of Machado’s movement have grown increasingly frustrated at being frozen out of their country’s political future and the lack of a democratic transition after Maduro’s downfall. Tom Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has worked on Venezuela since the 1990s, said: “Every day that [Rodríguez] is there, is a day that the democratic opposition is not there … and it’s devastating for the opposition.” Shannon, who was secretary of state John Kerry’s roving envoy in Latin America, said Trump’s decision to attack Iran had boosted Rodríguez’s hopes of retaining power. “The pressure’s off now because all of our military attention is directed elsewhere and there just isn’t the bandwidth to keep the pressure on in Venezuela,” he said, noting how Washington was “rehabilitating” Rodríguez by lifting sanctions against her and issuing licences to stimulate US investment. Speaking at a recent conference in Miami, the Machado ally Omar González complained that two crucial elements had been forgotten by those spearheading what the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had called Washington’s three-step plan for “stabilisation, recovery and transition”. One was the will of the Venezuelan people, who no longer wanted Rodríguez’s “gang of criminals in power”. The other was the country’s constitution, which requires elections to be held within seven months of a president’s absence. González said he believed the way to “unlock” the situation was for Machado to return from exile, something he claimed she and other opposition activists would soon do. “To draw a perhaps slightly over-the-top analogy, [it will be] a sort of Normandy landing,” González said, predicting Venezuelan exiles would simultaneously return by land, air and sea to fight for democracy. Quite when, or how, Machado will return remains a mystery, as does the reception she will receive from Rodríguez’s regime. In a recent interview, Delcy Rodríguez said the conservative politician would have to be “held accountable” if she did return. Walter Molina, a Venezuelan political scientist who lives in Argentina, said he had no doubt life had improved in Venezuela since the end of Maduro’s “absolute tyranny”, albeit not enough, with more than 500 political prisoners still behind bars and Maduro’s allies still in power. “If we were 50 floors below ground before, we are 35 floors below ground now … And if María Corina Machado returns I think we’ll be getting close to the ground floor,” he said. “[Before] it was impossible to see a way out. Now you can see one. The question now is: how far away is this way out? And how far are we from the light at the end of the tunnel?” Earlier this week, Machado met the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten. But despite the high-profile nature of Saturday’s rally, Machado said there were no plans to meet Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, during her time in Madrid. Sánchez, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump’s recent military interventions in Venezuela and Iran, questioned the legality of the US’s actions in the South American country after it seized Maduro. Machado, in contrast, has thanked Trump for intervening and presented him with her gold Nobel peace prize medal. Speaking to Spain’s Cope radio station on Wednesday, Machado said that securing Venezuela’s return to freedom and democracy was “the most important objective”. She added: “There are times when holding certain meetings to that end are appropriate and there are times when they’re not appropriate, and that’s why there’s no meeting planned at this time.” Sánchez will be attending a meeting of progressive leaders from around the world in Barcelona this weekend. However, on Friday Machado did meet Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of Spain’s conservative People’s party, and Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party.
The Kremlin is grappling with the fallout from the viral spread of a celebrity blogger’s criticism of Russian authorities, as Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings register their sixth consecutive weekly decline. Victoria Bonya, a household name in Russia who rose to fame in 2006 on Dom-2, the country’s answer to the reality TV show Big Brother, posted a video on Monday warning the Russian president that a string of mounting problems risked spiralling out of control. “The people are afraid of you, artists are afraid, governors are afraid,” she said, in the 18-minute video on Instagram, which has garnered 26m views and more than 1.3m likes in the past four days. She rattled off a list of issues she said no regional governor would dare raise with Putin directly: flooding in Dagestan, oil pollution along the Black Sea coast, livestock culls in Siberia, internet blackouts and a squeeze on small businesses from rising prices and taxes. “You know what the risk is?” asked Bonya, who lives outside Russia. “That people will stop being afraid, and they’re being squeezed into a coiled spring, and that one day that coiled spring will shoot out.” Moscow on Thursday took the unusual step of publicly acknowledging the sharp criticism, saying work was under way to address problems identified by Bonya. The influencer’s comments notably stopped short of directly targeting Putin himself or the war in Ukraine, prompting speculation that the intervention may have been coordinated with Moscow to signal that public grievances are being heard before parliamentary elections later this year. The approach fits a familiar Kremlin playbook: casting Putin as the “good tsar” kept in the dark by errant officials. The narrative has helped the president deflect blame for the country’s problems on to subordinates, preserving his personal standing even as discontent grows. Political analysts, however, said the outburst was unlikely to have been coordinated, but rather reflected a spontaneous reaction to simmering discontent across the country. “War fatigue is really starting to set in,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political scientist and author of a recent book on Putin’s ideology. “It is beginning to click in people’s minds that everything that is happening is a consequence of the war.” Kolesnikov added that it had become increasingly difficult for the authorities to explain away the war’s impact on everyday life, from the economic slowdown to tightening internet restrictions. Abbas Galyamov, an exiled former Putin adviser, said public appeals from Russian celebrities such as Bonya could lead to further discontent among society. “Bonya is bringing a fundamentally new audience into the opposition camp that wasn’t there before,” he said. “Their dissatisfaction is also growing, there are problems with the internet, prices in stores are rising, the war is getting on their nerves. The state is intruding into their private lives,” he said. Putin’s approval and trust ratings have slipped to their lowest levels since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, according to a string of recent opinion polls from state and independent organisations. At a meeting with top officials on Wednesday, the president tacitly acknowledged strains in the economy, pressing the government and the central bank to explain why performance has fallen short of expectations this year. Putin is also facing simmering anger from the hawkish community of pro-war bloggers, some of whom embed with frontline units, who have grown increasingly frustrated with Moscow’s slow progress on the battlefield and mounting losses. Andrey Filatov, a reporter for Russia Today, wrote this week: “Actual losses are either concealed entirely or spread out over time, creating the impression at the top that the situation is not so critical. As a result, the army is not adapting.”
Anna Bodakova’s days tend to be rather hectic at the moment. Hopping between meeting voters on the street, political debates and recording videos for social media, the 23-year-old is standing to become an MP in Bulgaria’s general election. Last year she was among the many young Bulgarians who participated in countrywide mass protests over the government’s economic policies and perceived failure to tackle corruption. Those protests ultimately resulted in the resignation of the prime minister, Rosen Zhelyazkov, and his cabinet in December. Bodakova, a recent sociology graduate from Sofia University, is standing for the pro-European We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) coalition. “The protest is only half of the work,” she said. “I’m a firm believer in the parliamentary republic. I’m a firm believer in the democratic process. I want to turn what was expressed in the protest into laws and into rules.” On Sunday, four months after the government’s resignation, Bulgarians will head to the polls for the eighth time in five years. Like Bodakova, many Bulgarians born around the turn of the millennium hope their country can surf on the protests’ wave and finally, after years of political turbulence, take a decisive step towards a more democratic, pro-European and corruption-free future. But the hopes of this generation look likely to collide sharply with the ambition of the former president Rumen Radev – known for his pro-Russian rhetoric and opposition to Bulgaria’s adoption last year of the euro, as well as to military support for Ukraine – to become prime minister. Compared by some to Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s recently defeated rightwing populist, Radev is leading in the polls, buoyed up by the support of older, rural voters who hope he can smash what he calls an “oligarchy” of corrupt veteran politicians. For voters like Aleksandar Tanev, 22, Radev is not a credible option. The law student believes Radev, who resigned as president in order to run in this election, “is part of this same model” of politicians and “had the opportunity to use the caretaker governments to fight this mafia” as president but did not. Dimitar Keranov, a Bulgarian fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s European resilience programme in Berlin, said voters were split along broadly generational lines. “I don’t think [Radev] would be a straightforward vote for young Bulgarians, because I think he represents the same status quo young Bulgarians would like to see dismantled,” he said. “He’s representing the same old guard or the usual political elite.” A victory for Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria (PB), a left-leaning but Moscow-friendly coalition, could prove another headache for Brussels and its allies just as the EU breathes a sigh of relief over Orbán’s demise. On Wednesday, amid concern over the rising cost of living, Radev took aim at the previous government for its introduction of the euro “without asking” voters. “And now, when you pay your bills, always remember which politicians promised you that you would be in the ‘club of the rich’,” he said. In July 2023, his apparent sympathy with the Kremlin prompted a scolding by Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Sofia’s presidential palace. “You would say ‘Putin, please grab Bulgarian territory?’” asked the Ukrainian president. Last year Radev said EU support for Ukraine was a “doomed cause”, and last month he criticised a security agreement signed between Ukraine and Bulgaria. In a recent interview, he said Bulgaria’s status as “the only member state of the European Union that is both Slavic and Eastern Orthodox” meant it could be “a very important link in this whole mechanism … to restore relations with Russia”. Bulgaria, a country of 6.5 million people sandwiched in the south-east corner of Europe between Greece and Romania, has struggled to find a way out of a long-running political crisis in which successive weak coalitions have failed to survive and trust in democratic elections has waned. The political turmoil, alongside allegations of endemic corruption and a captured judiciary, have contributed to historically low trust among voters in their governments and institutions – and election fatigue. The turnout at the last election in 2024 was just 39%, suggesting many did not see a point in casting their ballot. The run-up to the election on Sunday has been chaotic. Parties have accused each other of wanting to steal the election, several hundred people have been arrested and at least €1m has been seized in police operations against alleged vote-buying. Meanwhile, the Sofia-based Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) has said the country has been targeted by a disinformation campaign spreading pro-Russian and anti-western content, highlighting its vulnerability to outside threats. Some analysts believe the Hungarian election, in which Orbán’s defeat after 16 years in power was caused at least in part by high numbers of young people coming out to vote for his opponent, will prove a galvanising force in Bulgaria. Asen Lazarov, 26, a co-founder of Active Politics, an NGO that aims to make politics more accessible, said he was hopeful of a higher turnout than last time. “We believe that once you increase voter turnout, no matter which party goes to power, they will feel more responsibility towards the people, towards the institutions,” he said. “And once we get higher voter turnout, the power of manipulated votes goes down.” Others are less optimistic. Polls show Radev’s PB is leading with about 30% of the vote but is likely to fall far short of an outright majority, meaning he will probably have to form a coalition that could well end prematurely, leading to yet another election. Keranov said: “Honestly, I highly doubt that these elections right now will produce any real change.” Tanev, however, cautioned that ousting an entrenched political elite was necessarily a lengthy process. “That’s not ‘five protests, one election and Bulgaria’s a democratic, normal country’,” he said. “No, that’s a very long-term fight. This election is a very good opportunity. We need to try to decrease the influence of this status quo.”
By 10am on a spring day, the corridor of the clinic in the Transylvanian town of Săcele was already crowded with parents and children. They were all waiting to see Dr Mirela Csabai, one of just seven general practitioners serving a population of more than 30,000. Most of the cases that morning were routine: colds, checkups, chronic conditions. The calm, however, is recent. In 2024, a measles epidemic tore through this community and left one unvaccinated toddler dead. “As long as vaccination rates remain low, it’s a powder keg,” says Csabai. “Once an epidemic starts, it is already too late to vaccinate. We need to act now.” Romania is facing the worst measles crisis in the EU. The country has had four epidemics of the illness since 2005, each separated by only a few years of fragile calm. Between 2023 and 2025, it recorded more than 35,000 cases and at least 30 deaths, most of them infants too young to be vaccinated, infected by older, unvaccinated children. About 87% of all measles cases in the EU were reported in Romania in 2024; the next most affected country, Italy, recorded just over 1,000. Measles can cause serious complications, especially in children and infants, who can develop pneumonia and in some cases encephalitis. The crisis has a single, measurable root: a collapse in vaccination. The first dose for the MMR vaccine is recommended at between 14 and 18 months, and while coverage rises to 81% by the later age (from just 47.4% at 14 months), it still falls well short of the 95% threshold needed for herd immunity. Uptake of the second dose at five is just over 60% nationally and as low as 20% in some communities, according to the National Institute of Public Health. Romania’s MMR rate stood above the European average of 93% in 2010 but has been falling ever since, a decline that accelerated after the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s absolutely insufficient for measles,” says Dr Aurora Stanescu, an epidemiologist at the institute. “A firm political commitment to limit the number of deaths is necessary. This is a national security issue.” Casandra Stoica, 25, entered Csabai’s consultation room with three of her children. Two of her older daughters, now aged five and eight, contracted measles during the 2024 outbreak, when Brașov county became the hardest hit in Romania, recording the highest number of cases and four child deaths. There was no space at the local hospital at the time so Stoica had to travel to a neighbouring county to find care. “I got scared when the girls fell ill and now I want to vaccinate them all,” she says. But even when parents are convinced, access remains a barrier. Stoica is part of Romania’s Roma community and lives with her husband and four children in two rooms with no access to running water or electricity. These precarious conditions make it difficult for her to attend appointments or keep up with vaccination schedules. “The decision not to vaccinate doesn’t always come from the parents,” says Gabriela Alexandrescu, a country director for Save the Children. The organisation sounded the alarm in early March, saying Romania was facing “its worst vaccination crisis in decades”. The causes, Alexandrescu says, are also structural: poverty, medical deserts and GPs without the time or resources to counsel hesitant families. Vaccination is not mandatory in Romania. In 2015, responsibility for administering vaccines was shifted exclusively to GPs, increasing bureaucracy and piling pressure on to an already stretched system. At the same time, school nurses – who had provided a crucial safety net for children who missed their scheduled jabs – were not allowed to administer vaccines any more. At the Săcele clinic, Dr Simona Codreanu tends to more than 3,000 patients and sees more than 50 a day. “The majority of children get vaccinated at birth, but then they never return for the full schedule,” she says, flipping through charts in which children over five have barely a couple of vaccines recorded. One of her patients died during the last epidemic after contracting measles from an unvaccinated sibling. Dr Mihai Negrea, an epidemiologist from Târgu Mureș, another county seriously hit in 2024, says structural bottlenecks and an over-reliance on GPs are slowing vaccination efforts. Under current rules, only general practitioners are reimbursed by the state for administering vaccines. Other doctors must complete additional certification and often pay out of pocket for supplies. “The main cause is not just anti-vaccine views but bad management of the system,” he says. “By the time you manage to get your child vaccinated, it can take a month with all the paperwork – and parents can change their minds.” When vaccination becomes difficult to access, delayed or bogged down in red tape, rates inevitably drop, he explains, even when parents want to protect their children. Negrea’s prescription is practical: community vaccination centres and expanding the right to vaccinate to other doctors, rather than a system in which a single family doctor is expected to cover vaccination needs for thousands of families. Yet if the system is broken, it is also true that fear has found fertile ground within it. Across Romania, closed online groups have become spaces where anxieties are shared and amplified by mothers who are for or against the MMR vaccine. The Guardian spoke to half a dozen mothers who had decided to stop the vaccination schedule or not vaccinate their children at all against measles. Laura, 36, decided not to give her child the second MMR dose after the first jab, driven by fears about a link to autism – a claim that has been comprehensively debunked and for which there is no scientific evidence. “I’m not anti-vaccines, but I have fears around the MMR vaccine and most of all I’m put off by doctors not explaining things and not taking responsibility for side-effects,” she says. Some parents find their way back. Nicoleta Dima did not immunise her child with the MMR vaccine until the age of six, held back by fears of allergic reactions that she now recognises were unfounded. “My fear was largely fuelled from the outside,” she says. “I realised just how manipulated we are, and that I had effectively trapped myself in an unfounded fear. I realised that every unvaccinated child contributes to these epidemics.” In Bucharest, at the Matei Balș National Institute, the country’s leading infectious disease hospital, wards that were full during last year’s outbreak are now quiet. During the 2024 epidemic, the most severe cases in the country came to this hospital. There were five deaths from measles complications in Bucharest during the epidemic. Dr Gabriel Lăzăroiu-Nistor, an infectious disease doctor at the hospital, says the respite will not last. With vaccination rates so low, he expects another serious outbreak soon. “We must not forget our empathy and patience to explain to patients,” he says. “There’s a small minority who are firmly anti-vaccine, but the rest are undecided.” That distinction – between the committed refusers and the uncertain, anxious middle – is the one that most animates the doctors working on the frontline. Back in Săcele, Csabai saw Maria Olescu, 31, who vaccinated her first two children on schedule until the normal side-effects frightened her into stopping before the second dose. She has refused further vaccines since then, also partly because of influence from her religious community. “We don’t cut ties with parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, because that means we lose them for ever,” says Csabai. She tries to earn their trust by treating their other health issues and hopes they will vaccinate in time before the next epidemic comes through. “It is sad and regrettable that we still have children dying of measles,” Csabai says. “It hurts to see children suffer from preventable diseases. I think it’s our fault as doctors first: we have to earn their trust and we have to break the cycle.”
Like many Ukrainians, Oleh Kupchak was delighted when Péter Magyar won Hungary’s election last weekend, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power. “We were euphoric. Everyone was following the results closely. There were toasts,” said Kupchak, who has visited Budapest several times. “We didn’t love Orbán,” he added. Ukraine celebrated Orbán’s landslide defeat in a series of jokes and memes. Several likened him to the Star Wars character Jabba the Hut, and shared an image of Orbán fleeing from a drone. Others portrayed him sitting on a bench in Russia, alongside Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin former president Viktor Yanukovych, and his exiled Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad. The widespread joy that greeted the ousting of Orbán and his Fidesz party was hardly surprising. Hungary’s outgoing prime minister – the Kremlin’s biggest and most disruptive supporter inside the EU – ran a vociferously anti-Ukrainian election campaign. He accused Kyiv of plotting to sabotage key energy installations, and of threatening him and his family with physical violence. Recently Kyiv’s already brittle relations with Budapest had descended into open hostility. In late January a Russian drone set fire to the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Orbán claimed Volodymyr Zelenskyy was deliberately delaying repairs, causing a fuel shortage in Hungary, in order to damage Fidesz’s re-election chances. In the run-up to the poll, Hungarian voters encountered billboards showing Zelenskyy begging for money from the EU. Other posters featured photos of Ukraine’s president next to Magyar. The opposition leader and his Tisza party were accused of trying to drag Hungary into the fighting in Ukraine, and being a part of a Brussels-backed “pro-war lobby”. Ukrainian politicians and analysts welcomed Magyar’s victory, but downplayed expectations of a quick thaw in relations between the two previously embittered countries. Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of the foreign affairs committee in Ukraine’s parliament, said he felt “cautiously optimistic”. “A unique window of opportunity is now opening up for Ukrainian-Hungarian relations,” he told the Guardian. Merezhko interpreted Hungary’s election results as “on the whole a win for Ukraine”, since they represented “a strategic defeat for Putin”. “Putin had hoped to form an anti-Ukrainian coalition in Europe led by Orbán, which would also include Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Putin’s plan has failed. Without Orbán in power, such a coalition will not form,” he said. Magyar is expected to lift Orbán’s veto on €90bn in EU aid to Ukraine, once his government is sworn in early next month. Kyiv badly needs the money. Hungary is also expected to drop its opposition to new sanctions against Russia. With Orbán gone, Brussels will unlock EU funds earmarked for Hungary suspended because of democratic backsliding. Merezhko described Hungary’s new leader as more “constructively minded” than his pro-Russian predecessor and “not anti-European”. The deputy, however, warned that all bilateral issues could not be resolved “automatically and quickly”. “Magyar now needs to show Europe that his policy will not be a continuation of Orbán’s. And here, the issue of Ukraine is key,” he said. One potential dispute is over Ukraine’s EU accession. Magyar has said he would not oppose Kyiv joining the bloc, but rejects fast-track membership for Ukraine, and says the issue should be put to a referendum. Another is the status of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority. The small community in the western Zakarpattia region has long been a source of tension, exploited – Kyiv says – by a cynical Orbán. Last month Budapest impounded two Ukrainian armoured bank vehicles carrying millions of euros as well as bars of gold. Orbán had unlawfully seized the funds, Merezhko said, in a provocative scandal. “A very significant step, and a clear sign of Magyar’s willingness to engage in dialogue, would be for him to return the Ukrainian funds,” he added. Last weekend Zelenskyy sent a message of congratulation to Magyar and his Tisza party. “It is important when a constructive approach prevails,” he noted, adding that Ukraine had always sought good neighbourly relations with “everyone in Europe”. Ukraine was ready to develop “cooperation with Hungary” and to meet and work with its new government, he said. In contrast to the Trump administration, Magyar has stated Ukraine is a victim of Russia’s invasion and should not be forced to hand over its territory. In July 2024 he travelled to Kyiv, shortly after Moscow bombed the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital. He paid tribute to Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war and handed over humanitarian aid and a donation. However, Ukrainian commentators think Magyar should not be seen as a friend or booster. “Magyar is not a pro-Ukrainian politician. He is pro-Hungarian,” Serhiy Sydorenko, the editor of the European Pravda newspaper, wrote this week. He suggested Zelenskyy would reluctantly complete repairs to the Druzhba pipeline, allowing limited Russian oil exports to resume to Hungary, as a gesture of political goodwill. Other observers said Hungarian society had grown used to anti-Ukrainian narratives, after 16 years of Orbán propaganda, and would take time to change its views. “We can’t expect something very liberal from the reformist government,” said Marianna Prysiazhniuk, a political analyst with the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in Kyiv. She added: “What we’ve witnessed in Hungary is the reconsolidation of power.” Prysiazhniuk believes Zelenskyy should behave “very delicately” towards Budapest, taking into account its “internal context”. “We shouldn’t expect Magyar to shout: ‘Glory to Ukraine’. The priority is for Hungary to become a reliable European partner,” she said. The two leaders are likely to hold talks next month in Romania at a meeting of the “Bucharest Nine”, a gathering of Nato’s formerly communist east European member states. Kupchak, meanwhile, said he had driven several times to Hungary from his home in Lviv. It was a day-long journey via the Chop border crossing, through the scenic foothills of the Carpathian mountains. “In my opinion the Hungarians have a bit of an imperial mentality, similar to the Russians. It’s a hangover from the Austro-Hungarian empire. We hope that under Magyar this changes,” he said.
We’re wrapping up this live coverage of Middle East news for the moment but you can see our last full report here, and below is a recap of the latest developments. Thanks for joining us. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on Friday announced the strait of Hormuz was “completely open” for all commercial vessels for the remaining period of the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. The 10-day truce took effect on Thursday. Donald Trump hailed the reopening as a “brilliant day for the world” but said the US naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place. He also said Iran had agreed to never close the strait again, but that has not been verified. Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said later that the Hormuz strait “will not remain open” if the US blockade continued and that Trump had made multiple false claims on Friday. World leaders welcomed Iran’s announcement on the reopening, with UN chief António Guterres calling the move “a step in the right direction” and urging “the full restoration of international navigational rights and freedoms in the Strait of Hormuz, respected by everyone.” Oil prices tumbled after Iran’s Hormuz announcement amid hopes that energy supplies could resume after nearly two months of disruption. Brent crude – the benchmark for oil traded globally – plunged below $90 a barrel, a 10% fall. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron said the reopening must become permanent. The British prime minister and the French president on Friday co-chaired a virtual summit of about 50 countries on the issue. Amid the Israel-Lebanon truce, Trump said the US “prohibited” Israel from bombing Lebanon. Minutes before Trump’s post on social media, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu uploaded a video address declaring that Israel was not done yet with Hezbollah. The Lebanese army alleged “a number of violations” of the ceasefire by Israel on Friday morning, as thousands of displaced families began making their way home to southern Lebanon. A cruise ship successfully transited the strait of Hormuz on Friday, making it the first passenger vessel to make it through since the war began, according to ship tracking service MarineTraffic. But there remained uncertainty over how quickly shipping might return to normal, with some vessels observed making unsuccessful attempts cross the strait on Friday before turning back. Trump said Iran’s enriched uranium would be brought to the US, also claiming the US and Tehran would work together to recover the uranium but denying reports the US was considering a $20bn cash for uranium deal. “No money is changing hands,” he told Reuters. The Trump administration issued a waiver permitting countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products at sea for about a month, seeking to control soaring global energy prices. The UK will make “a wide-ranging military contribution” to an international mission to protect shipping in the strait of Hormuz, the UK ambassador to the US, Christian Turner, said in Washington The UN children’s agency said it was “outraged” after two truck drivers it contracted to deliver clean water to families in Gaza were killed by Israeli fire.
Iran’s foreign minister has said that the strait of Hormuz is now fully open to commercial vessels, reinforcing hopes for an eventual end to the war in the Middle East and sending oil prices tumbling despite analysts’ warnings that there will be no immediate widespread resumption of passage through the vital waterway. In a barrage of social media posts, Donald Trump claimed on Friday that Iran had agreed never to close the strategic waterway again, hailing “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” However, Abbas Araghchi’s pledge was given only qualified support by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has reinforced its already powerful authority in Tehran during the war. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, later warned that if the US blockade continued, “the strait of Hormuz will not remain open”. Whether the strait was open or closed and the regulations governing it “will be determined by the field, not by social media”, Ghalibaf added, in a swipe at the US president. Trump also said that Iran had agreed to indefinitely suspend its nuclear programme, and would not receive any frozen funds from the US. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that talks over a deal to end the war would “probably” be held this weekend. Separately, the US president told Reuters that Washington would work with Iran to recover its enriched uranium, which he referred to as “nuclear dust” that would be retrieved at “a nice leisurely pace” and moved to the US. Iranian authorities made no immediate comment on the claim, but Tehran has long asserted that its right to enrich uranium inside the country is sacrosanct. When asked about a report that the US was considering a $20bn cash for uranium deal, Trump said: “It’s totally false. No money is changing hands.” Araghchi statement that the strait was “declared completely open” came as a new 10-day truce in Lebanon entered its first full day, partly pausing fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah Islamist militant movement and offering a fragile relief in parts of the country after weeks of relentless Israeli airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians. Trump said that Israel would cease attacks on Lebanon, claiming: “They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A.” Minutes before that post, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, uploaded a video to his official YouTube page declaring that Israel was not done yet with Hezbollah. He said: “We have not yet finished the job. There are things we plan to do to address the remaining rocket threat and the drone threat.” Soon after, reports emerged that an Israeli drone strike had killed one person in southern Lebanon. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, insisted that the IDF was not withdrawing from the country and that military action could resume. Iranian state television quoted a senior military official saying commercial vessels would be allowed to travel through the strait of Hormuz but only along a determined route and with the permission of the IRGC navy. The US blockade of Iranian ports and shipping will remain in place for the moment, Trump said, and few vessels are likely to risk passage through the strait in such uncertain circumstances, meaning any return to normality is still distant. “The naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete,” the US president posted on his Truth Social network, adding that “this process should go very quickly”. On Friday the US treasury department allowed further purchases of sanctioned Russian oil loaded on vessels until 16 May, extending an original 30-day waiver that expired on 11 April. Trump’s administration has been seeking to control global energy prices that have shot higher during the war. The extension comes two days after the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said Washington would not be renewing the waiver that allowed countries to purchase Russian oil without facing US sanctions. In Paris, representatives of about 40 countries met at a conference chaired jointly by France and the UK for discussions on an international plan to secure the strait, which carried around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies before the conflict. The strait’s closure by Iran shortly after the conflict began has spiked the price of oil, fuelled inflation and threatens a deep economic crisis that could trigger recessions around the world. French president Emmanuel Macron said Araghchi’s statement was welcome, and urged the “full, unconditional reopening by all the parties”. Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, said any proposal to reopen the strait needed to be “lasting and workable”. Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, welcomed Iran’s announcement on the strait but said the situation remained “fragile”. He added: “This was positive news that we received last night. We hope that it holds, but what we know is that the impact will be long lasting.” Trump, however, said that he had rebuffed an offer from Nato to help and told them to stay away unless they want to load up ships with oil. “They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!” he posted on social media, before thanking Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Qatar. Shipping industry associations said they were reviewing the situation. “We are currently verifying the recent announcement related to the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, in terms of its compliance with freedom of navigation for all merchant vessels and secure passage,” Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of UN shipping agency the International Maritime Organization (IMO), said. Regional diplomats have engaged in a frantic push in recent days to prevent a return to violence between Iran, Israel and the US. The current ceasefire with Iran declared by Donald Trump earlier this month is set to expire on Tuesday. Field Marshal Asim Munir, the army chief of Pakistan, which has emerged as a key mediator, is in Tehran to carry forward negotiations for a more durable peace. Tahir Andrabi, Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said at a news briefing on Thursday that “peace in Lebanon and cessation of armed attacks in Lebanon are essential for peace talks”. In Lebanon, there were widespread celebrations at the fragile ceasefire. In Beirut, cars with mattresses stacked on their roofs passed cheering crowds who congratulated the displaced people on their return home. Cars blasted pro-Hezbollah music and waved the yellow flags of the group, claiming victory. The mass return to the south came despite continued occupation of a swath of Lebanese territory by the Israeli army and warnings from the Israeli military spokesperson not to head south of the Litani river. Hezbollah, the Lebanese army, and the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri, all put out statements urging residents of south Lebanon to wait before going home. Few appeared to heed the advice, with vast queues forming in front of ruined bridges over the Litani. Israel had bombed the only remaining intact bridge – the Qasmiyeh bridge, which leads into the southern Lebanese city of Tyre – just hours before the ceasefire. The war in Iran spilled over into Lebanon when Hezbollah launched missile attacks on 2 March against Israel in solidarity with Tehran, triggering a ferocious Israeli response, including a ground invasion into southern Lebanon. It came 15 months after the last major conflict between the two sides. The terms of the ceasefire return Lebanon to a status quo very similar to the period after the previous November 2024 ceasefire. Like that deal, it allows Israel the “right to take all necessary measures in self-defence, at any time” in Lebanon, despite the supposed end to hostilities. Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the ceasefire had left residents of northern Israel “seething”. “Netanyahu grasping for a workable narrative, as the majority of Israelis support continuing the war. This, despite the fact that the Israeli military has cast doubt on its ability to disarm Hezbollah through military force alone,” Zonszein said. An end to Israel’s war with Hezbollah was a key demand of Iranian negotiators, who previously accused Israel of breaking the current ceasefire deal with strikes on Lebanon. Israel said that deal did not cover Lebanon. The fighting has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, more than 2,100 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Thirteen US service members have also been killed.