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Nearly two months into a ceasefire between US-led coalition forces and Iran, hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough have moved forward slightly after Tehran delivered a new negotiating proposal to Washington via Pakistani mediators, Iranian state media confirmed Friday.

According to Iran’s official IRNA news agency, the full text of the proposal was transferred to Islamabad for onward transmission to US officials on Thursday evening. This development comes after the only completed round of direct peace talks between the two parties ended without progress, even as a cessation of active hostilities has held since April 8. The conflict, launched on February 28 via a surprise joint strike campaign by the United States and Israel, has paused on the battlefield but left a tangled web of economic blockades that are roiling global markets.

A key point of ongoing friction remains control of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for 20% of the world’s daily oil trade. Iran has continued its restrictions on commercial shipping through the strait, cutting off millions of barrels of oil, natural gas, and fertilizer supplies from global markets. In response, Washington has enforced a full counterblockade of Iranian ports. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that US President Donald Trump has instructed national security officials to prepare for the standoff to extend through coming months, a revelation that immediately pushed up global crude prices.

Speaking in a video published by Iran’s judiciary website Mizan Online, top Iranian judicial official and senior cleric Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei reaffirmed Tehran’s position on negotiations this week. “The Islamic Republic has never shied away from negotiations,” he said, while adding that Iran would never accept externally imposed terms for a peace deal. Ejei also stressed that Tehran has no interest in resuming full-scale conflict. “We do not welcome war in any way; we do not want war, we do not want its continuation,” he added.

Even with the ceasefire holding, global markets have remained roiled by the uncertainty of the prolonged standoff. Crude oil prices remain more than 50% higher than pre-conflict levels, as traders price in extended disruption to Hormuz shipping. The European Central Bank opted this week to hold interest rates steady, driven by new concerns that sustained energy price hikes could reignite global inflation.

Domestically, the conflict has amplified political and economic pressure on both sides. In Washington, a bitter legal debate over war powers has broken out, centered on a 60-day deadline for the president to secure congressional authorization for military action under the War Powers Resolution. Trump administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, argue that the ceasefire has paused the clock on the deadline, claiming active hostilities that began on February 28 have formally ended for the purposes of the law. But critics have pushed back on the claim, and Trump faces growing discontent over the conflict, which has coincided with rising domestic inflation, slower-than-expected economic growth, and looming November midterm elections. US government data released Thursday put national inflation at 3.5%, well above policymakers’ target levels.

For Iran, the conflict has compounded economic hardship that built up over years of harsh international sanctions. The US Pentagon reported this week that its counterblockade has prevented Iran from exporting $6 billion worth of oil since the conflict began. Iran’s national statistics center shows that domestic inflation, already above 45% before the war, has climbed to 53.7% in recent weeks.

“For many people, paying rent and even buying food has become difficult, and some have nothing left at all,” Mahyar, a 28-year-old Iranian resident who spoke to AFP on condition of safety, said. He added that the private company he works for has laid off 34 staff, roughly 40% of its total workforce, amid the economic downturn.

On the diplomatic front, Washington has moved forward this week with plans to launch a new international shipping coalition, branded the “Maritime Freedom Construct”, to restore commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has repeatedly criticized US allies for dragging their feet on coalition efforts to reopen the waterway. Previously, France and Britain had organized a broader international coalition that pledged to support reopening Hormuz only after a diplomatic peace deal is reached.

After the US announcement of its separate coalition, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot sought to downplay tensions between the two initiatives during a visit to the Gulf this week. Barrot said the two coalitions have different mandates and will complement rather than compete with one another. “The US mission is not of the same nature as the one we established… it comes as a sort of complement,” he explained.

In a major escalation of armed opposition to Mali’s ruling military junta, a coordinated alliance of Tuareg separatists and al-Qaeda-linked jihadists has captured a key strategic military outpost in the country’s far north, after junta-aligned forces withdrew without major resistance.

The fall of the Tessalit military base — a strategically critical installation nicknamed a “super-camp” located just kilometers from the Algerian border — was confirmed by multiple independent sources speaking to Agence France-Presse, following a wave of large-scale coordinated attacks across the West African nation that have already killed a top junta leader and left at least 23 other people dead.

A senior official with the Tuareg-dominated separatist Front for the Liberation of Azawad (FLA), the group leading the rebel advance, confirmed that all remaining Malian army troops and their Russian mercenary allies surrendered the camp and retreated southward ahead of rebel forces entering the area. A security source based in Gao, the largest city in northern Mali located south of Tessalit, confirmed no significant armed clashes broke out during the capture, as regular Malian forces had fully evacuated the base before rebel fighters arrived. A locally elected official in the region further confirmed that Russian mercenary personnel, who have been embedded with Malian troops across the country to counter insurgent movements, also abandoned their positions at the outpost.

Geopolitical and military analysts have underscored the outsize strategic importance of the Tessalit base. Originally constructed by French colonial authorities, the installation features a well-maintained airstrip capable of accommodating military helicopters and larger fixed-wing aircraft, and its isolated position in the far northern Sahara offers unobstructed monitoring of cross-border movement across the entire Sahara region. Prior to its capture, the base hosted a large contingent of Malian army troops and Russian mercenary allies, and stocked a substantial arsenal of military equipment.

The capture of Tessalit comes as the culmination of a series of coordinated rebel offensives that mark the most significant armed challenge to Mali’s junta in nearly 15 years. Last weekend, separatist FLA fighters and jihadists from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) — an al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgent group — launched coordinated large-scale fatal attacks across multiple key junta strongholds across the country. The attacks included a car bombing at the residence of Mali’s defense minister Sadio Camara, a core leader of the 2020 junta, in the garrison town of Kati near the capital Bamako. Camara, 47, died of his wounds from the attack, and the junta held an official state tribute for him earlier this week. During the weekend offensive, rebel forces also seized full control of the major northern city of Kidal, and FLA leaders have publicly predicted their alliance will soon take control of all of northern Mali and topple the junta entirely.

Just one day before the fall of Tessalit, JNIM launched a full road blockade of the capital Bamako, permitting only exit for residents already inside the city and cutting off most inbound supply routes. This is not the first time the group has targeted the Malian economy with blockades: late in 2024, JNIM imposed widespread blockades on imported gasoline and diesel trucked into the country from neighboring Ivory Coast and Senegal, in an attempt to cripple government revenue and basic services.

Mali’s current political trajectory has been shaped by its 2020 military coup, which brought the current junta to power. In the years following the coup, Mali joined neighboring junta-led Burkina Faso and Niger in cutting all diplomatic and security ties with former colonial power France, and aligned closely with the Russian government. Russia has deployed thousands of mercenary fighters to the three Sahel states to support counter-insurgency operations against jihadist groups. Earlier this year, the three nations formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a joint security bloc with a stated combined force of 15,000 troops. Late Thursday, the government of Niger announced that the AES had launched intensive air campaigns across Mali in response to last weekend’s rebel attacks.

Thousands of kilometers from the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf, a small team of 12 French naval analysts sits hunched over monitoring screens in a basement facility in Brest, tracking every blink of vessel activity signaling shifting danger near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Since the outbreak of the Iran conflict in late February, this quiet outpost — the Maritime Information Cooperation and Awareness Center, or MICA Center — has become a critical lifeline for hundreds of civilian merchant vessels trapped in the Gulf amid escalating blockades and unpredictable attacks.

Tensions between Iran and the United States have led to overlapping blockades of the narrow strait, a global energy chokepoint that carried roughly one-fifth of the world’s total crude oil and liquefied natural gas supplies before the conflict began. The standoff has left more than 750 civilian ships stranded on the Gulf side of the passage, with only a tiny number able to successfully exit in recent weeks.

MICA’s core mission is to deliver real-time security alerts to commercial shipping operators across the globe. When the center’s team detects any sign of bombardment or imminent threat, it immediately dispatches an encrypted alert to all container ships, cargo vessels and cruise liners within a 50-nautical-mile radius of the danger zone. “We share the nature of the event, its context and exact position,” MICA’s commanding officer Thomas Scalabre told Agence France-Presse during an on-site interview. That advance warning allows vessels to react quickly: crews can steer clear of incoming fire or floating debris, or even disable their tracking transponders to avoid being targeted. For context, the strait measures just 29 nautical miles across at its narrowest point, making the 50-nautical-mile alert zone more than sufficient to cover the entire waterway.

MICA’s monitoring data draws from multiple sources, combining high-resolution satellite imagery, automatic location signals transmitted by ship transponders, and on-the-ground reports shared directly by crews operating in high-risk waters. The center currently provides its monitoring and alert services to 85 major international maritime transport companies, including French shipping giant CMA CGM and Danish industry leader Maersk. While the Strait of Hormuz is currently MICA’s top priority, the facility also monitors security risks across all the world’s open waters, tracking Houthi rebel missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea, piracy operations off the coast of Somalia, and transnational drug smuggling routes.

Since the outbreak of the conflict on February 28, Scalabre says MICA has documented roughly 40 separate security incidents in and around the Strait of Hormuz, 24 of which were direct attacks by Iranian forces on commercial vessels — some of which have resulted in fatalities.

France and the United Kingdom have previously announced plans to form a multinational coalition to reopen the strait to safe commercial navigation, but the coalition will not be deployed until after a ceasefire is reached. To date, peace talks aimed at de-escalating the conflict have stalled in recent weeks, leaving merchant shipping in a state of ongoing uncertainty.

In the absence of a clear resolution, “the rules Iran imposes on navigation remain very unclear and are constantly shifting,” Scalabre explained. This uncertainty extends to which vessels the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) may choose to target. “There isn’t necessarily any logic in the IRGC’s targeting policy. We’ve seen many different nationalities and types of vessels” targeted, he added.

Even nations long viewed as friendly to Iran are not exempt from unprovoked attacks. According to security intelligence firm Vanguard Tech, IRGC gunboats opened fire on the India-flagged tanker Sanmar Herald on April 18 without any prior radio contact, despite India being counted among Iran’s close partners alongside China, Russia, Iraq and Pakistan. Iran has also publicly confirmed it has laid sea mines across the main channel of the strait.

“What matters is the psychological effect. No one will take the risk of venturing there,” Scalabre said of the persistent threat. While Tehran retains the authority to grant individual ships permission to enter or exit the Gulf through the strait, even approved vessels are not guaranteed safe passage. “Even when they obtain it, the IRGC’s ‘mosquito fleet’ can emerge to block their way,” Scalabre added, referencing the IRGC’s fleet of small, fast attack speedboats that are used to intercept and harass commercial vessels.

In his office, Scalabre pulled up a satellite image showing a swarm of these small craft moving in to intercept a target: a dozen patrol boats cutting through the water, leaving trails of white wake as they encircle and seize a commercial vessel before it can exit the Gulf. “They sometimes carry out indiscriminate attacks, whether the country is considered friendly or not,” the French naval officer said.

For the Iranian government, controlling access to the Strait of Hormuz remains one of its most powerful leverage points, Scalabre noted: “For Tehran, controlling the Strait of Hormuz remains one of its trump cards to exert pressure and negotiate a way out of the conflict.”