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Tensions around the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz have escalated sharply, after multiple sources confirmed that Iran and Oman are advancing a proposal to collect joint service fees for commercial vessels transiting the waterway — a move that directly contradicts the United States’ public opposition and threatens to upend centuries of precedent for free passage through one of the world’s busiest maritime chokepoints. The New York Times first reported the ongoing discussions on Tuesday, citing an anonymous Iranian official and four diplomatic insiders with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

The push for a joint fee framework emerges from a 14-point preliminary agreement between Washington and Tehran reached earlier this month, which enshrines a commitment to free, uncharged commercial passage through the strait for the 60-day window set aside for wider permanent negotiations. As a mandated component of that ceasefire-era deal, Iran and Oman have been tasked with developing a long-term regulatory plan for the waterway, opening the door to a paradigm shift that would end hundreds of years of toll-free transit as part of a post-war regional economic framework.

Inside the bilateral talks, key divides remain between the two Gulf nations over how the fee would operate, according to the unnamed sources who spoke to the NYT. Oman has pushed for a voluntary payment model, where contributions would go toward covering the costs of maintaining navigation safety infrastructure — a structure modeled on the existing system used for the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Iran, by contrast, has taken a harder line, demanding that the fee be mandatory for all transiting vessels. Last week, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister made clear Tehran’s position: if no mutually acceptable agreement is reached with Muscat, Iran will unilaterally implement its own transit fees.

The proposal has already triggered extreme pushback from the United States, which has been waging a widespread war against Iran alongside Israel. Last month, former President Donald Trump issued an extraordinary public threat against Oman, a longstanding U.S. Gulf ally, saying Washington would “blow up” the country if it moved forward with the joint toll plan with Iran. In his remarks, Trump asserted the Strait of Hormuz constituted international open waters, claiming no nation had the right to impose controls or charges on passage, and warned Oman that it must align with U.S. demands or face devastating consequences.

Multiple Arab and U.S. officials previously told Middle East Eye that Trump’s unprompted outburst forced U.S. diplomatic teams to launch urgent damage control to preserve bilateral ties with Muscat, while pressing Omani officials to issue a public statement rejecting Iran’s toll proposal — a demand that went unfulfilled. Oman, which has held the role of neutral mediator in multiple regional conflicts over decades, has not issued any public response to Trump’s threat. However, in a closed-door meeting between a senior Omani diplomat and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Muscat privately gave assurances that it currently held “no plans” to implement tolling for the strait, according to reports.

Oman’s position on the current conflict has long set it apart from other Gulf Cooperation Council states. When the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran launched, most neighboring Gulf states opened their military facilities to U.S. forces and joined the offensive against Tehran, but Oman openly criticized the war and refused to participate, earning a reputation as a regional outlier at the time. That decision has since been validated by the current ceasefire, which is broadly seen across the region as a strategic victory for Iran.

As the oldest U.S. treaty partner in the Gulf, with diplomatic and commercial ties dating back to 1833, Oman’s ongoing negotiations with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz toll plan underscores the deep rift between Washington and its longstanding ally over the future of the post-war Gulf. With the 60-day negotiation window still ongoing, the standoff over transit fees has emerged as one of the first major flashpoints in efforts to solidify a lasting ceasefire and new regional order.

Tensions that had simmered for months along the shared border of Pakistan and Afghanistan have boiled over once again, after Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime announced it had launched cross-border strikes targeting positions inside Pakistan. The assault, which the Taliban confirmed Wednesday, left multiple people injured in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan province, according to initial reports.

In response to the incursion, Pakistan’s military issued a statement confirming it had intercepted and downed four crude unmanned aerial vehicles launched from the Afghan side of the border. The statement carried a sharp warning, noting that any additional acts of provocation from Afghan territory would be met with a firm and appropriate response. To date, the BBC has not been able to deploy independent observers to verify the details of the Taliban’s strike on Pakistani soil.

This latest exchange of hostilities comes just days after Pakistan launched its own large-scale air operations inside Afghan territory on Sunday, a strike that the United Nations says killed 28 civilians. The Taliban administration in Kabul has put the civilian death toll from Sunday’s Pakistani strikes far higher, at 36, with more than 160 people injured, labeling the operation a “cowardly act” and an “atrocity” that targeted residential civilian homes.

Pakistan has pushed back on the criticism, saying its Sunday operations only targeted militant hideouts in the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar confirmed the operation killed 29 militants, framing the strike as a necessary response to recent deadly terrorist attacks targeting Pakistani civilians. Like the Taliban’s claims, Pakistani casualty figures have not been independently verified by third-party media.

The renewed clashes break a period of tentative calm that followed a bilateral ceasefire agreed by both sides in October, which ended weeks of violent back-and-forth hostilities. Cross-border violence has plagued the region for much of this year, with intermittent clashes and air strikes leaving dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of people dead. In February alone, border skirmishes killed dozens of people on both sides. A March Pakistani strike on a Kabul drug rehabilitation centre left hundreds dead, according to local reports. As recently as early June, another round of Pakistani air strikes killed 26 militants; the Taliban government confirmed at the time that 13 additional civilians, most of them children, also died in the operation.

At the core of the long-running dispute between the two neighbors is Pakistan’s consistent accusation that the Taliban administration harbors militant groups that carry out fatal attacks inside Pakistan. The Taliban has repeatedly rejected these claims, and in turn accuses Islamabad of launching unprovoked strikes that intentionally kill innocent Afghan civilians, a charge Pakistan denies, maintaining it only targets militant infrastructure and personnel along the shared border.

In a startling admission that lays bare Israel’s military strategy in southern Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed Monday that the widespread destruction of Shiite border communities was an intentional, pre-planned outcome of the country’s ongoing invasion. Speaking during an off-the-record briefing with military correspondents, Katz stated explicitly that “it was clear during Operation Silver Plow that the Shia villages along the contact line had to disappear.”

Katz’s remarks confirm longstanding allegations that Israel’s campaign extends far beyond targeting Hezbollah militants, outlining a deliberate plan to fully clear all populated border communities along the so-called “Yellow Line”—the UN-monitored buffer zone stretching south of the Litani River. The ultimate goal of creating this deep depopulated buffer, Katz explained, is the full demilitarization of Hezbollah, adding that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) “will not retreat an inch” from occupied Lebanese territory until that demand is met.

The defense minister also provided on-the-record figures quantifying the scale of destruction his forces have inflicted. According to Katz, the IDF has achieved nearly 100 percent destruction of contact-line villages in southern Lebanon’s western and central sectors, while 73 percent of border communities in the eastern sector have been razed. “Seizing territory and dismantling all infrastructure within it is the heaviest blow possible for jihadist organisations,” Katz said, justifying the campaign targeting residential areas.

The operation, launched in April, has already displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians, the vast majority of whom come from the region’s Shiite population. Katz made clear that none of these displaced residents would be allowed to return to the Yellow Line zone, which he insisted “must remain free of population.”

This admission is not the first time Israeli officials have confirmed that their objectives in southern Lebanon extend beyond removing Hezbollah fighters from the border. As early as May, Israeli outlet Haaretz published an investigative report citing unnamed IDF commanders and soldiers confirming that the campaign deliberately targets non-military infrastructure. Commanders admitted that residential homes, schools, and government buildings near the border were being systematically demolished to “clear the area.” One unnamed soldier told Haaretz that the IDF does not limit its attacks to “terrorist infrastructure” as Israeli authorities publicly claim, instead “they destroy everything.” The soldier added that unit commanders are required to submit daily reports detailing how many homes their units have destroyed. Analysis of satellite imagery conducted by The New York Times has since corroborated the accounts of systematic, widespread destruction of civilian areas.

The ongoing campaign in southern Lebanon has become a major stumbling block in fragile regional ceasefire negotiations, which have been dominated by the fallout from Israeli incursions across Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. Iran has repeatedly stressed that any comprehensive ceasefire agreement with the United States must include an end to hostilities on the Lebanese front, and a draft Memorandum of Understanding circulated by Islamabad calls for de-escalation across all regional fronts, including Lebanon.

While the Trump administration has publicly called for Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanese territory, the Israeli government has refused to pull back until Hezbollah fully disarms. For its part, Hezbollah refuses to lay down its weapons until Israel completes a full withdrawal from Lebanese territory, noting that linking a withdrawal to demands for disarmament crosses the group’s core “red lines.”

Analysts warn that this deadlocked cycle of demands ultimately works in Israel’s favor, buying the country additional time to continue its campaign of depopulation and destruction while delaying any negotiated withdrawal. Katz reinforced this position in his latest briefing, confirming that Israel plans to maintain a “long-term” military presence in southern Lebanon. “The equation stands – rocket fire on Israeli communities (by Iran) means an immediate assault on the Dahieh,” he said, threatening further strikes on Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Official data from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health puts the total Lebanese death toll from Israeli attacks since March 2 at more than 4,200, a figure that continues to climb as military operations proceed.

A landmark collaborative investigation by three independent journalistic and monitoring groups has uncovered a sustained, covert network of military support that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) maintains for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) through territory in eastern Libya, even after regional pressure targeted the group’s weapons supply lines. The probe, carried out by Lighthouse Reports, Sudan War Monitor and Evident, confirmed on Monday that RSF fighters receive weapons, logistical backing and specialized weapons training at multiple dedicated camps across Libya, contradicting repeated public denials from Abu Dhabi, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) led by Khalifa Haftar, and the RSF itself.

Interviews with seven RSF defectors who have passed through the Libyan training infrastructure, plus current and former LAAF insiders, have corroborated the findings. One defector, identified only as Ahmed, offered on-the-record testimony detailing the full supply chain. According to Ahmed, all military equipment sent to the RSF is Emirati-made. “Emirates is the one supporting the RSF. They would bring it from their country by a plane to here and from here we would receive them and deliver it to Sudan,” he explained. Ahmed added that he personally saw an armored vehicle marked “Made in Emirates” at one camp, even as most supplies are shipped without visible branding to cover the UAE’s involvement. He also emphasized the critical nature of Abu Dhabi’s backing, stating, “If the RSF lost UAE support, if UAE stopped supporting them, the RSF won’t be able to fight in the field anymore, it will break apart.”

The investigation identified five active RSF camps in Libyan territory controlled by Haftar’s LAAF, four of which were newly mapped: Seweidiya near the key southeastern LAAF base of al-Kufra, Sabha, al-Jufra, and Camp 17 near the eastern coastal city of Benghazi. Ahmed confirmed the logistics chain: RSF fighters are transported to the remote Chad-Libya-Sudan border triangle, moved to al-Kufra, then relocated to Benghazi and finally to Camp 17, which serves as the primary storage hub for all supplies bound for Sudan. Training at the camps includes hands-on instruction for operating heavy weaponry, such as DShk heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and multiple rocket launch systems. Investigators also confirmed the presence of Colombian mercenaries at the sites, matching a May 2025 Human Rights Watch report that identified these fighters as contracted by a UAE-based security firm with direct ties to the Emirati government.

This is not the first time foreign support networks for the RSF have been exposed: Middle East Eye, which first broke extensive coverage of LAAF-RSF collaboration, previously revealed a separate RSF training camp operated in Ethiopia. Longstanding ties bind the UAE to RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti: for decades, gold extracted from Darfur mines controlled by the Dagalo family has been exported to commercial markets in Dubai, and RSF fighters previously deployed as mercenaries to support the Saudi-UAE coalition in the Yemen war.

Despite regional pressure that included Egyptian and Turkish airstrikes on RSF weapons convoys departing from LAAF-held territory starting in November 2025, the investigation finds that the UAE has not scaled back its support – it has merely rerouted it. Egypt backs the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the RSF’s opponent in Sudan’s ongoing civil war, putting Cairo in direct conflict with the UAE and Haftar’s alliance. After airstrikes forced the temporary closure of al-Kufra air base, the UAE shifted its main supply hub to Amdjarass airport in eastern Chad, according to senior Egyptian military and intelligence sources speaking to Middle East Eye. Flight tracking data confirms a sharp uptick in flights from the UAE and Libya to Amdjarass following the closure of al-Kufra, proving the route shift was a tactical adjustment, not an end to operations. “The flights didn’t stop,” a senior Egyptian military source noted. “They were simply redirected – from Libya to Chad, and specifically to Amdjarass.”

Egyptian security surveillance has documented large-scale, ongoing expansion of Emirati infrastructure at Amdjarass, including a fully operational Emirati military coordination room, new drone hangars, and upgraded facilities capable of accommodating large Ilyushin cargo aircraft, one of the world’s largest military transport planes. “Emirati companies carried out extensive construction and expansion work at the airport that wasn’t limited or symbolic development,” an Egyptian commander explained. “What happened was large-scale expansion and the construction of new facilities.” The UAE has claimed its activities at Amdjarass are purely humanitarian, a claim that contradicts the documented military infrastructure observed by Egyptian intelligence.

A new secondary weapons corridor has also been established, running from the Gate 17 border crossing between Libya and Chad through central-eastern Chad to the Sudanese border town of Adre, before entering Darfur – the vast western Sudanese region almost entirely controlled by the RSF. Adre currently hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled Sudan’s civil war, which has been classified as the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 200,000 people killed since fighting broke out between the RSF and SAF in April 2023. The RSF has faced widespread international accusations of committing genocide against non-Arab communities in Darfur.

Jalel Harchaoui, a leading analyst specializing in Libyan political economy, told Middle East Eye that recent developments had incorrectly suggested the UAE was winding down its involvement. “Far from receding, Emirati interference is returning with full force: the UAE is aggressively re-escalating its support for the RSF via eastern Libya,” he said. To date, the UAE’s ongoing support for the RSF has faced no significant pushback from major Western powers, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

All parties involved have continued to deny any wrongdoing: the UAE’s foreign ministry issued a statement asserting “The UAE has not provided and is not providing military or financial support to any warring party in Sudan,” while the RSF has also denied receiving Emirati backing.