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A new push for a diplomatic resolution to ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran has entered its final phases, according to former U.S. President Donald Trump, even as hardening rhetoric and competing military moves in the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz keep regional tensions elevated. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump confirmed that negotiations between Washington and Tehran have advanced to the closing stages, warning that failure to reach a binding agreement could trigger harsh retaliatory measures from the U.S. “We’re in the final stages of Iran. We’ll see what happens. Either have a deal or we’re going to do some things that are a little bit nasty, but hopefully that won’t happen,” he told the press pool.

Iranian officials have formally acknowledged receipt of a new U.S. peace proposal, confirming that Pakistan’s interior minister is currently in Tehran to serve as a neutral intermediary for communications between the two governments. Key regional U.S. partner Saudi Arabia has publicly welcomed Trump’s commitment to exploring diplomatic solutions, issuing a statement urging Iranian leadership to seize the opportunity to reach a negotiated settlement.

In a reveal exclusive to Middle East Eye, Trump last week scrapped a pre-planned military strike on Iran after intense pushback from Gulf regional allies and senior members of his own national security team, who argued that launching an attack during the annual Hajj pilgrimage would carry unacceptable humanitarian and political risks. Trump later confirmed this account to reporters, noting that Gulf leaders had persuaded him to hold off on offensive action, and he would wait several additional days for a formal response from Tehran. The U.S. leader also held a diplomatic call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan; a readout from Erdogan’s office confirmed the Turkish leader backed the extended ceasefire and expressed confidence that a mutually acceptable negotiated solution to the conflict could be achieved.

Trump’s public posture toward Iran has remained inconsistent in recent weeks, shifting sharply between optimistic claims that a breakthrough settlement is imminent and blunt threats to resume large-scale military hostilities. Iranian hardline leaders have pushed back against U.S. overtures, with parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf issuing a stark warning that any renewed U.S. war effort would be met with a forceful Iranian response. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has additionally cautioned that any new conflict would quickly spread far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East. In an audio message carried by multiple Iranian state media outlets, Ghalibaf said, “The enemy’s movements, both overt and clandestine, show that despite economic and political pressure, it has not abandoned its military objectives and is seeking to start a new war.”

Beyond diplomatic posturing, tangible shifts have been observed in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow strategic waterway through which roughly 20% of global oil trade passes. The waterway has become the central point of contention in ongoing peace talks, as Iran and the U.S. have enforced competing blockades in a bid to assert dominance over the route. On Wednesday, three large supertankers carrying a combined 6 million barrels of crude oil from Kuwait and Iraq bound for Asian markets transited the strait. Two of the vessels have reported ties to China, while the third is linked to South Korea.

Data from global shipping intelligence firm Windward confirms the three vessels sailed along the northern corridor of the strait, the route Iran has designated for commercial traffic to allow for cargo inspections and the collection of transit tolls. The resumption of regular commercial transits alongside positive diplomatic developments pushed U.S. crude prices down 6% on Wednesday, settling at roughly $98 per barrel.

Tehran has outlined its core demands for any final peace deal, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei confirming Wednesday that Iran is pushing to establish a joint security mechanism with Oman to guarantee long-term stability in the strait. Iran has long demanded international recognition of its authority over the waterway, including the right to collect transit tolls from commercial shipping.

Despite the progress in talks, the U.S. has continued its long-running campaign of intercepting and seizing Iranian-flagged commercial vessels in international waters. The U.S. military confirmed Wednesday that U.S. Marine forces boarded an Iranian-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman this week. “American forces released the vessel after searching and directing the ship’s crew to alter course,” U.S. Central Command, the military command that oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East, wrote in a post on X.

Baghaei responded that any permanent peace deal would require the U.S. to immediately end what Iran describes as state-sponsored piracy against its commercial shipping. “Despite the negative record of the other side over the past year-and-a-half, Iran is pursuing the path of negotiations with seriousness and good faith, but it has strong and reasonable suspicion over America’s performance,” he added.

In a sharp escalation of long-running U.S. pressure on Cuba, the Trump administration has unsealed a sweeping criminal indictment against 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro, levying charges of conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens, aircraft destruction, and four counts of homicide stemming from the 1996 Cuban air force shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by a U.S.-based anti-Castro aid group. The indictment also names five additional Cuban defendants: Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, Emilio Jose Palacio Blanco, Jose Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raul Simanca Cardenas, and Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez.

The legal action opens the door for potential U.S. efforts to extradite or forcibly bring Castro to American soil for trial, with senior officials hinting at the same type of extraordinary law enforcement operation that the Trump administration deployed to seize former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026. President Trump has repeatedly touted that 2026 capture mission as a landmark political win for his administration, even as independent legal experts have widely questioned the operation’s compliance with international law. Trump has also openly acknowledged that the successful extraction of Maduro gave him the confidence to launch the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that began February 28.

Speaking at a Wednesday press briefing in Miami, Florida — a hub for the Cuban exile community — acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense lawyer, rejected claims that the indictment is a hollow political stunt. “We indict men outside of this country all the time, and there are all kinds of different ways that we get them here,” Blanche told reporters. “The reason why we indict somebody is because we want them here to face justice with a jury of their peers. How we go about doing that obviously depends on the circumstances in the case, and I’m not going to go beyond that, but… this isn’t a show indictment. This is an indictment because we expect that there is a warrant issued for his arrest, so that he will appear here by his own will, or by another way.” Blanche added a clear message of remembrance for the victims: “The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens.”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel immediately pushed back against the charges in a post on X, framing the indictment as evidence of U.S. hostility toward the Cuban Revolution. He called the action “a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression.”

The indictment is the latest in a series of aggressive moves by the second Trump administration to force Cuba’s government into concessions, a priority shaped heavily by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a long-time critic of the Cuban regime whose parents emigrated from the island. Just this week, Rubio announced a new round of economic sanctions on Havana, building on decades of U.S. trade and financial restrictions that have been in place since the 1960s. Those long-running sanctions have already gutted Cuba’s financial system and strained its already fragile energy infrastructure. In January 2026, Trump issued an executive order reclassifying Cuba as “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, and imposed secondary tariffs on any third country that sells goods or oil to the island. The president has previously made blunt remarks about his ambitions for Cuba, saying “Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it… They’re a very weakened nation right now.”

The charges trace back to the February 24, 1996, incident that claimed four American lives. On that date, Cuban military jets intercepted and shot down two small Cessna aircraft owned by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based organization founded by anti-Castro Cuban exiles that conducted search-and-rescue missions for Cubans attempting to flee the island by boat. The four men killed in the attack were Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr, Mario de la Pena, and Pablo Morales.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Wednesday statement claims that Cuban intelligence agents infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue years before the shootdown, and passed detailed intelligence on the group’s flight plans and operational schedules back to senior Cuban leadership, including Raúl Castro, who served as defense minister at the time of the incident. While successive U.S. administrations have consistently denied any official connection between the group and American intelligence agencies, the Cuban government has long maintained that Brothers to the Rescue’s core mission was to destabilize the communist regime.

If convicted on the conspiracy and murder charges, all defendants face a maximum possible sentence of either the death penalty or life imprisonment. Raúl Castro additionally faces up to five years of prison time for each count of aircraft destruction. Any final sentencing would be determined by a presiding U.S. judge, if the accused are ultimately brought into custody.

Israel’s public broadcaster Kan has released a bombshell assessment from military insiders confirming that Hezbollah’s expanding drone arsenal has crippled up to 80% of Israeli offensive operations targeting southern Lebanon, reshaping the dynamics of the ongoing cross-border conflict.

According to Kan’s Monday reporting, Israeli military estimates make clear that Hezbollah’s unmanned aerial vehicles have dramatically constrained Israeli troop movements across southern Lebanon and have directly contributed to mounting Israeli battlefield casualties. A critical supply gap has worsened the problem: Israel’s anti-drone defense systems are only allocated to a small fraction of frontline troops, forcing commanders to scrap most planned daytime operations entirely to avoid devastating drone strikes.

The growing threat posed by these drones has become a top priority crisis for Israel’s national government, prompting officials to assemble a dedicated cross-sector task force bringing together military commanders, defense industry specialists, and civilian technology experts to accelerate development of effective counter-drone systems.
Israeli military intelligence sources told Kan that Hezbollah has also overhauled its operational model in the wake of Israeli assassinations of multiple high-ranking commanders from its elite Radwan Force. Moving away from a rigid centralized command-and-control structure, the group has shifted to decentralized, cell-based guerrilla warfare. Small autonomous Hezbollah units now move between southern Lebanese villages, carrying out opportunistic targeted attacks on Israeli forces with far greater operational flexibility than before.

The advance of Hezbollah’s drone program is not a recent development: last month, Israeli outlet Ynet News first reported that the group had carried out major upgrades to its drone fleet, most notably the widespread adoption of fiber-optic tethered first-person view (FPV) drones for offensive operations against Israeli troops. Unlike larger, more expensive long-range missiles, these FPV drones are low-cost, easily assembled, and modified locally in southern Lebanese workshops. Local technicians add custom components including reinforced landing skids, high-resolution cameras, and lethal explosive payloads to convert the commercially derived platforms into effective weapons.
The key fiber-optic upgrade has proven particularly devastating to Israeli defense efforts. Tethering the drone directly to its ground control station via a fiber-optic line eliminates the need for vulnerable radio signals to transmit control data and video feed. This not only makes the drones far harder for Israeli electronic warfare systems to detect, but also blocks Israeli jamming attempts that would otherwise disable the aircraft.

In response to the escalating threat, Israel’s cabinet last week approved $700 million in emergency emergency defense funding earmarked exclusively for developing and deploying countermeasures against Hezbollah’s drones. The approved plan includes two core components: the installation of new fixed radar systems along Israel’s entire northern border to detect incoming small drones, and the procurement of five million specialized shotgun rounds engineered to shoot down low-altitude, short-range unmanned aircraft.

The ongoing cross-border hostilities have already unleashed a catastrophic humanitarian crisis across Lebanon. Since Israeli large-scale operations began on March 2, more than 3,000 Lebanese people have been killed in Israeli strikes, and another 9,301 have been wounded. The violence has displaced at least 1.6 million people – roughly one-fifth of Lebanon’s total population. Though a ceasefire was first announced on April 16 and extended last week, Israeli forces have continued to conduct near-daily airstrikes across Lebanese territory.