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Diplomatic efforts to end the more than month-long U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran have hit a major impasse this week, after an Iranian official confirmed Friday that Tehran has formally turned down a U.S.-brokered proposal for a 48-hour bilateral ceasefire. Iranian state-aligned Fars News Agency, quoting an anonymous senior official source, announced the rejection, adding the U.S. had tabled the offer Wednesday through an unspecified third-party intermediary. It remains unclear whether the proposed truce would have also required Israel, a key U.S. partner in the ongoing campaign, to halt military operations.

The rejection marks the second high-profile breakdown of ceasefire efforts in recent days, following a report from The Wall Street Journal Friday that Pakistani-mediated talks had collapsed. The deadlock came after Iran refused to send delegates to meet U.S. officials in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, citing what Tehran called non-negotiable, unacceptable terms set by Washington. Iran has laid out two non-negotiable conditions for any lasting ceasefire agreement: a full withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from bases across the Middle East, and financial compensation for extensive damage to Iranian civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and other critical public facilities that have been destroyed in the joint campaign.

Multiple regional states with close ties to the Trump administration—including Turkey, Egypt and Qatar—have been approached to lead new mediation efforts, but Qatari officials have so far resisted public and private pressure from Washington and regional actors to take on the mediating role, the WSJ report added.

The development comes amid a broader public dispute between U.S. and Iranian officials over ceasefire overtures: Earlier this week, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Iran had been the first party to request a truce, a claim Iranian officials have outright denied.

U.S. intelligence assessments suggest Iran has long prepared for a protracted conflict, retaining significant military capacity even after weeks of intensive bombardment. A U.S. intelligence review first reported by CNN Thursday found that roughly half of Iran’s original missile launcher fleet and kamikaze drone inventory remains intact after more than 30 days of fighting. That assessment directly contradicts repeated public claims from Trump and Israeli government leaders, who have consistently used rhetoric describing an effort to totally “obliterate” Iran’s military capabilities, with the most recent such comments coming as late as this Wednesday.

On Friday, the conflict escalated dramatically after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air defenses shot down a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle over southwestern Iran. Semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim carried confirmation of the downing from a spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the country’s top military command, who said the aircraft had been “completely destroyed.” Iran initially misidentified the jet as an F-35 stealth fighter before U.S. military officials confirmed the platform to be an F-15E.

The two-person crew ejected before the crash, and CBS News reported Friday that one crew member has already been recovered by U.S. search and rescue forces, while operations to locate the second pilot remain ongoing. Iranian state-affiliated local media reports the jet was targeted over Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, a remote, mountainous rural region in central-southwestern Iran.

Shortly after the first downing was confirmed, The New York Times reported Friday that a second U.S. combat aircraft, an A-10 Warthog ground attack plane, had been shot down near the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf region. The single-seat aircraft’s pilot was successfully rescued by U.S. forces, the outlet added.

In the latest development unfolding amid already soaring Middle Eastern tensions, multiple Israeli media outlets have confirmed that a U.S. fighter pilot ejected over Iranian airspace after his aircraft was downed, and has since been safely recovered. The revelation was first shared by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Friday, with other Israeli journalistic sources corroborating the report, though key questions remain unanswered about the second crew member on the stricken jet.

According to the outlets, the status of the navigator who was also aboard the downed aircraft is still unknown, as search operations continue across central Iran to locate the missing crew member. Citing information from a senior unnamed Israeli official, Channel 12 added that the Israel Defense Forces has called off planned strikes in the Iranian region where the search for the navigator is currently underway, to avoid disrupting ongoing recovery efforts.

Israel’s state-owned public broadcaster Kan TV News further reported that Israeli intelligence bodies are actively supporting U.S. operations to track down the downed jet’s two-person crew, sharing critical reconnaissance and location data to assist in the search.

The incident traces back to earlier the same day, when Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that its aerospace division had successfully intercepted the aircraft using advanced domestic air defense systems, shooting it down over central Iranian territory. Photos circulated by Iranian state media purport to show wreckage fragments from the downed U.S. jet, captured in the area after the incident.

This downing comes against a backdrop of drastically escalated cross-border hostilities that have roiled the region since late February. On February 28, joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes targeting sites inside Iran kicked off the latest cycle of open conflict, prompting Iran to launch retaliatory missile and drone assaults against both Israeli territory and U.S. military installations positioned in neighboring Gulf states. The ongoing clashes have raised widespread international alarm over the risk of a full-scale regional war that could draw in global powers.

In a swansong interview with Middle East Eye’s David Hearst Podcast, outgoing Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini has issued a stark warning to the international community: if UN member states permit Israel to eliminate the only organization dedicated to delivering education and healthcare to Palestinian people, no UN agency will be safe from the same fate.

Lazzarini pulled no punches in his assessment of the global response to Israel’s open campaign to dismantle UNRWA, which he says has become an officially declared war objective. He described the agency as facing an unprecedented, overwhelming assault that has proceeded with complete impunity, largely unchallenged by the international community.

“The agency has come under massive, massive attack,” Lazzarini told the podcast. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023, 391 UNRWA staff have been killed in Israeli strikes. Just weeks before the interview, the agency’s main headquarters in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was stormed, demolished, and burned by Israeli forces, with government and parliamentary figures openly celebrating the act and even quarreling over who deserved credit for the destruction.

Beyond physical attacks, Lazzarini said the agency has been targeted by a large-scale disinformation campaign, multiple legal challenges, and three new domestic Israeli laws explicitly designed to force UNRWA to shut down. He expressed deep frustration that a formal UN agency is being openly dismantled without meaningful pushback from member states or global bodies.

Lazzarini made clear that the entire campaign against UNRWA is politically motivated, arguing that unsubstantiated claims the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad were nothing more than a manufactured pretext to pressure donor countries into cutting funding. An independent investigation led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna found Israel failed to produce any evidence to back up its allegations of staff involvement in the October 7 attacks. Even so, 16 major donors including the United Kingdom froze funding within 48 hours of the claims being made; all have since resumed contributions except for the United States and Sweden.

Despite the relentless pressure, Lazzarini struck a defiant note, emphasizing that UNRWA remains the leading provider of public services to Palestinians in Gaza even amid the ongoing conflict. The agency continues to run vaccination campaigns, deliver clean water access, and manage waste disposal to stop outbreaks of disease, and is working urgently to restore learning opportunities for displaced children.

Since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in October 2023, relentless bombardment has systematically targeted civilian infrastructure including residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, places of worship, and UN-run shelters. Gaza’s healthcare system is already on the edge of total collapse: doctors are forced to perform surgeries without proper equipment or medication, and disease is spreading rapidly in overcrowded displacement camps. Even in this crisis, Lazzarini confirmed that around 11,000 UNRWA staff remain on the ground in Gaza, delivering 20,000 primary healthcare consultations every day. To date, roughly 70,000 children have returned to in-person classes, and more than 250,000 access distance learning programs run by the agency.

The roots of Israel’s campaign against UNRWA stretch back to the agency’s core mandate, Lazzarini explained. When Israel was admitted to the United Nations in 1949, its membership was conditional on recognizing UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the natural and legitimate right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and receive compensation for seized property. UNRWA is the only UN agency that formally recognizes Palestinian refugees and their descendants, so eliminating the agency is a deliberate attempt to erase this right to return — a core issue in any future final-status peace negotiations. Lazzarini pushed back against the narrative that dismantling UNRWA would revoke Palestinian refugee status, stressing that status is legally independent of the agency’s operations and will pass to future generations until a lasting political settlement is reached.

Even with the extraordinary resilience of its on-the-ground staff, Lazzarini warned that UNRWA is fighting to stay operational, crippled by growing funding gaps and shrinking operational space. He specifically called out the 90 percent drop in contributions from Arab states since 2024, alongside the ongoing funding freezes from the U.S. and Sweden, once a top-five donor. “Have member states done enough? Obviously not enough to protect the agency,” he said. “Hence my alarm to the members of the General Assembly, telling them that if you do not pay more attention to UNRWA, the agency might not be viable anymore in the future. We cannot continue to navigate a constant chronic lack of resources and at the same time seeing also our operational space shrinking because of political considerations.”

As global media and diplomatic attention has shifted to recent tensions between Israel and Iran, Lazzarini pointed out that Israel continues to block the entry of sufficient food and medical aid into Gaza. After the recent ceasefire agreement, aid groups expected 800 aid trucks to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing every day, but Lazzarini said the actual volume is nowhere near that target. Aid organizations estimate a minimum of 600 trucks a day are needed to meet the basic needs of Gaza’s population, and even that low bar is rarely met: Israeli authorities often require trucks to carry only partial loads, further restricting the flow of supplies. Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has been unable to bring any new supplies into Gaza this year, with critical shortages of chronic disease medication, surgical supplies, and essential medical equipment. “Since we cannot bring in new supplies or spare parts, malfunctioning equipment can force us to postpone or suspend surgeries, with serious consequences for patients,” explained Dr Randa Abu El-Khair Masoud, MSF’s project medical referent.

Lazzarini also rejected Israeli claims that other UN agencies can easily replace UNRWA’s services, arguing that no other body has the mandate, capacity, or resources to deliver the full range of public services UNRWA provides. For example, UNICEF can support supplementary education programs, but it cannot run the entire primary and secondary education system for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children across Gaza and the region. Lazzarini stressed that the only legitimate replacement for UNRWA is a fully functioning sovereign Palestinian state — exactly the original vision behind the agency’s creation 75 years ago.

Over decades, UNRWA has educated generations of Palestinians, and Lazzarini said he regularly meets Palestinians who credit their UNRWA schooling for every achievement they have made. “Palestinians have had their land, their houses taken away from them. We have to redouble our effort to make sure that education remains an asset that we cannot take away from the Palestinians,” he said. He warned that the current crisis risks losing an entire generation of Palestinian children in Gaza if UNRWA cannot continue its work, and even across the wider region, ongoing erosion of the agency’s capacity will damage education quality and undermine long-term social cohesion for Palestinian communities.

Jerusalem’s holiest Christian site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, hosted a dramatically truncated Good Friday service this year, led by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa, after sweeping Israeli access restrictions across the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem barred all public attendance.

Traditionally, the annual Liturgy of the Passion of Christ at the basilica — widely venerated by Christians as the exact location of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and burial — draws thousands of worshippers from across the globe. This year, however, only roughly 15 clergy members were permitted to participate in the ceremony. The restrictions that shuttered the site to the public also impacted Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, extending sweeping access limits across all major religious sites in the Old City.

The limited Good Friday service follows a similar scaled-down Holy Thursday gathering led by Pizzaballa at the same church just one day prior. During his remarks at the Good Friday service, the patriarch drew direct links between the restricted worship, rising regional volatility tied to the recent US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, and growing threats to religious freedom in the holy city.

“Outside, the doors of the Holy Sepulchre are closed,” Pizzaballa told the small gathering of clergy. “War has turned this place into a refuge, an inside cut off from an outside weighed down by tension.”

The restrictions on worship come on the heels of a controversial incident that sparked global outcry just weeks earlier, when Israeli forces blocked Pizzaballa from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Palm Sunday services. The patriarch and Father Francesco Ielpo, Custos of the Holy Land, were both denied entry to the site — a step that Jerusalem church authorities called unprecedented in centuries. Officials noted that the unprecedented denial of access to senior Catholic leaders set a dangerous precedent and ignored the spiritual sensibilities of more than 2 billion Christians worldwide who turn their focus to Jerusalem during Holy Week.

The incident drew immediate official condemnation from multiple European governments, including France, Spain and Italy. Facing mounting international backlash, Israeli police announced that they would allow a “limited prayer framework” for the Good Friday and Easter observances, though restrictions remained far stricter than in any prior year in recent memory.

Even with the adjusted limited access, many Palestinian Christians have expressed frustration with both the Israeli restrictions and the response from senior church leadership. Speaking to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity over safety concerns, one Palestinian shopkeeper in the city argued that Pizzaballa should have taken a more public stand against the entry block for Palm Sunday. The shopkeeper said the patriarch should have challenged the blocking Israeli soldiers, and even held open-air prayers in the street if necessary, adding that church leaders were wrong to enter into negotiations with Israeli authorities over access to sites that fall under occupied territory.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, since the 1967 Six-Day War, a occupation that the International Court of Justice reaffirmed in a 2024 ruling is illegal under international law. Since the launch of the US-Israeli assault on Iran weeks ago, the Old City has remained almost entirely closed to non-resident visitors. Israeli forces have maintained permanent checkpoints at all entry gates, strictly controlling access to all key religious sites.

Al-Aqsa Mosque has remained fully closed to Muslim worshippers throughout this period, a restriction that was also in place for most of the holy month of Ramadan and during the Eid al-Fitr holiday last month. Israeli officials justify the sweeping access limits by citing public safety concerns linked to potential retaliatory Iranian missile attacks. While debris from intercepted Iranian missiles has caused minor damage in parts of Jerusalem, many Palestinians argue the far-reaching restrictions are actually a deliberate tactic to strengthen Israel’s unilateral control over the occupied Old City, a strategic site with profound global religious significance.

This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, an outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

Border tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement that have killed hundreds of people in recent months have moved toward diplomatic resolution, with Beijing announcing Friday that mediated peace talks between the two sides are steadily advancing. The development comes just 48 hours after representatives from Islamabad and Kabul restarted negotiations in Urumqi, a major city in northwest China, ending a weeks-long pause in dialogue sparked by escalating armed clashes.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed that Beijing has been working behind the scenes to bring the two rival parties to the negotiating table, coordinating through multiple channels and across various levels of government to create a viable framework for dialogue. “Since the recent escalation of the Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict, China has been mediating and promoting talks in its own way, maintaining close communication with both sides through multiple channels and at various levels, and creating conditions and providing platforms for dialogue”, Mao told reporters during a regular press briefing.

Mao added that all three sides have agreed to concrete working arrangements for the talks, including protocols for media coverage, though she declined to share further details on the negotiation agenda or potential confidence-building measures. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have expressed support for China’s mediation efforts, a development Mao characterized as a positive step forward. “Both countries attach importance to and welcome China’s mediation efforts, and are willing to sit down again for talks, which is a positive development”, she said.

The diplomatic push comes against a backdrop of persistent unrest that has rocked the shared border region. Even as negotiators convened in Urumqi on Wednesday, a deadly attack underscored the volatility of the security situation: late Thursday, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle into a police station in Bannu District, northwest Pakistan, killing at least five officers and leaving multiple others injured. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though Pakistan has grappled with a sharp rise in insurgent violence in recent years, with the majority of major attacks claimed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban.

The TTP is a separate militant organization from the Afghan Taliban that rules Kabul, but the two groups maintain close ideological and operational alliances. The Afghan Taliban seized full control of Afghanistan in 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces that had occupied the country for 20 years. Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban government of allowing the TTP to operate safe havens from which to launch cross-border attacks into Pakistani territory, a charge the Kabul administration has consistently denied.

Large-scale open fighting between the two neighboring states erupted in February, after the Taliban government in Kabul announced that Pakistani military forces had launched airstrikes and ground operations across multiple Afghan regions, resulting in heavy civilian casualties. Islamabad responded that its strikes were exclusively targeting TTP militant hideouts, and later confirmed it was engaged in open armed conflict with the Afghan Taliban government. The months of clashes that followed have left hundreds of people, most of them civilians, dead, raising international concerns about a broader destabilization of South Asia.