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President Trump confirmed the US isn’t expanding the window for peace talks with Tehran on Monday as the US-Iran memorandum of understanding’s 60-day deadline for negotiations expired. “Well, they want to make a deal, but they’re not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary,” President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. The president has demanded a ceasefire that will end Iran’s nuclear program but Tehran wants to pursue a “nuclear energy” program. The MOU failed to meet major objectives, like reopening the Strait of Hormuz, ending Tehran’s nuclear program and reaching...

Iran announced on Aug. 16 that it will offer a bounty of $30,000 to any individual who “kills or captures a U.S. soldier and hands them over to authorities,” according to Iranian state media. Iranian Army Commander-in-Chief Major General Amir Hatami revealed the bounty on Sunday at a ceremony that was allegedly held to honor journalists. Hatami suggested he’d double the reward if an Iranian woman killed or captured a U.S. soldier. The government suggested that it would even purchase the weapon used in the murder and display it in a museum. In a separate announcement on Sunday, Iran’s armed...

Iran has decided to shift its policy from defensive to "fully offensive" due to the deadlock in efforts to agree on a permanent end to its war with the United States, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday. Progress towards peace talks and a resumption of oil tanker traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz has ground to a halt, with no sign that the warring parties are moving towards ending the conflict that the US and Israel launched on February 28. "Iranian entities must be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region, as...

A top Iranian lawmaker appeared to warn President Donald Trump about his personal safety Saturday, telling the president to “worry about his own security” as tensions escalate over control of the Strait of Hormuz. “The U.S. President ought to worry about his own security rather than his endless bluffing regarding the Strait of Hormuz; before he ends up hiding in a food truck,” Ebrahim Azizi, chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, wrote on X. Azizi’s reference to a “food truck” appeared to invoke an extraordinary security operation during Trump’s trip to Turkey last month, when...

Iran claims that three of its pilots who disappeared after their aircraft were shot down during the war nearly six months ago are alive and being held by Qatar, prompting Tehran to call for international intervention and their immediate release. According to reports published Saturday, a senior Iranian armed forces official said the three pilots were captured by Qatari forces after the Su-24 aircraft they were flying were shot down during fighting in March. The claim represents a dramatic change in Iran’s account of the pilots’ fate. For months, Tehran said it did not know what had happened to the...

Iran announced that it has executed Shahram Sadeghi, who was convicted of running over seven police officers during a wave of anti-regime protests. The execution was carried out following a ruling by a court in the city of Karaj. .....

U.S. Central Command has unveiled Task Force Falcon Strike, a new multinational attack drone force for the Middle East. This unprecedented initiative integrates U.S. and regional militaries to deploy unmanned one-way attack systems across air, surface, and sub-surface environments. The move comes amid rising Iranian and Houthi drone attacks, prompting CENTCOM to seek a unified, multi-domain deterrent. Allies are being invited to join this coalition, which builds upon earlier U.S.-only efforts like Task Force Scorpion Strike. Falcon Strike will utilize advanced autonomous systems, including USVs, UUVs, and UAS, marking a significant shift towards a more aggressive, collective defense posture in...

President Donald Trump told Fox News on Friday that the U.S. is in firm control of the Strait of Hormuz, touting what he described as a “wall of steel” blockade and warning Iran against further attacks. “We totally control, we own, in the true sense, we own the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump told Fox News’ Alexis McAdams ahead of remarks in Nassau County, New York. “We only allow boats to come in if we want them to come in.” Trump said the blockade is costing Tehran “hundreds of millions of dollars every single day” and argued sweeping U.S. sanctions are...

The reports are everywhere — miserable conditions supposedly aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, including food shortages, broken plumbing, widespread exhaustion, and plummeting morale. It’s so bad, these reports say, that some sailors have attempted to jump overboard and presumably drown. Breathless headlines like “Conditions on US aircraft carrier at sea for more than 250 days raise alarms” are rampant. Democrat lawmakers like Richard "Da Nang Dick" Blumenthal (D-CT) are demanding answers and writing strongly worded letters. The U.S. military was already preparing to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East...

Confirmed Royal Jet flights from Abu Dhabi into Iran have intensified scrutiny of unverified claims that the United Arab Emirates released billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, including gold, to reduce its exposure to future Iranian attacks. The allegations, attributed exclusively to anonymous senior sources in Tehran, describe financial transfers designed to preserve an apparent pause in Iranian missile and drone strikes against Emirati territory during the wider 2026 United States-Iran confrontation. Flight-tracking data confirms that a Royal Jet Boeing 737-7KK Business Jet, registered A6-RJA, conducted short return flights from Abu Dhabi to Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport and Karaj’s Payam...

Oil pollution on the southern shores of Qeshm Island, which has also reached the island’s mangrove forests, has heightened concerns about environmental consequences on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz, as an oil leak from a stranded tanker has also reached the coast of Oman. Officials from the Iranian regime have not yet officially announced the source of the Qeshm pollution, but Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei says preliminary evidence indicates it originated from “a foreign bulk carrier.” Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian regime’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said on the evening of Wednesday, August 12, that pollution had been detected...

The U.S. military has enough assets to maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday, adding ships could be rotated in and out ​of the region as needed. Hegseth's comments suggest he is advising U.S. President Donald Trump that the ‌U.S. military can keep applying economic pressure on Iran for as long as needed to help so-far failed negotiations to end the conflict, begun in February. He spoke in Panama after addressing the crew aboard ​the USS Gridley, a guided-missile destroyer, which had previously deployed to the Middle East.

The two most senior members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, flew out of last month’s NATO summit in Turkey on what was effectively a decoy plane following an Iranian threat, while Trump was secretly moved to a smaller military jet, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. The official, who was briefed on the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of presidential travel, said Rubio was aware of the switch and details of the threat behind it but could or would not say why he had...

Violence across two of the world’s most important shipping corridors escalated sharply this week after an attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels killed six people near the Red Sea and U.S. forces separately fired missiles at a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Oman. The incidents mark another dangerous turn in a conflict that is increasingly threatening global shipping and energy supplies. They also come as oil prices climb and negotiations aimed at restoring normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. For investors and consumers, the stakes extend well beyond the Middle East. Continued disruption across the Red Sea,...

One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. ‘We’re low-keying’ the conflict, he said on Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June’s Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should: “Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands...

US President Donald Trump says Iran should also be responsible “for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.” The latest declaration by Trump in a Truth Social post comes an hour after he claimed he had instructed his negotiators to demand that Iran pay reparations for Americans it has killed over the years. | #FirstpostNews.

In a major setback to efforts to ease tensions in West Asia and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iran on Monday has ruled out any future negotiations with the Donald Trump’s administration, saying it will wait until the US President’s term ends on January 20, 2029, according to Iranian outlets and a post by an adviser to Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf.

The president said he ordered the demands raised in any future negotiations after Tehran sought its own compensation President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Iran compensate Americans killed or seriously wounded in attacks he blamed on Tehran, while also calling for payments to the families of Iranian protesters killed by the regime. The president also said he had instructed his representatives to raise his compensation demands in any future negotiations with Iran. Trump’s remarks came after senior Iranian officials demanded compensation from Washington as part of Tehran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. "I see that Representatives of...

Mossad Director Roman Gofman decided to remove two of the agency’s most senior officials from their posts over a plan to replace Iran’s regime that was never carried out as intended, N12 reported on Thursday. The officials are the head of the Mossad’s Intelligence Directorate, who entered the position in December, and the head of the agency’s Iran division. Neither official was named in the report. Security officials told N12 that neither official had developed a good working relationship with Gofman from the outset and that their tenures would end by mutual agreement. Both could remain in the Mossad in...

US President Donald Trump has been weighing the possibility of declaring victory against Iran without achieving a nuclear deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing US officials. According to the officials, Trump privately floated the idea to his senior aides. If the US can keep Iran's nuclear program in check and traffic resumes in the Strait of Hormuz, then Trump would be more likely to extend the ceasefire "indefinitely," the officials told WSJ. In recent weeks, the president told senior aides privately that Tehran is "likely unable to revive its nuclear work," after Operation Midnight Hammer caused heavy...