标签： Asia

A 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah entered into force on Friday, April 17, 2026, spurring tentative de-escalation efforts across the Middle East that have already cleared the way for the full reopening of the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz to global commercial shipping. The breakthrough, brokered through behind-the-scenes diplomacy between the United States and Iran with Pakistan serving as a neutral mediator, has offered a glimmer of hope to thousands of displaced Lebanese residents, though deep divisions and unresolved core issues leave the truce highly vulnerable to collapse.

Within hours of the ceasefire taking hold, both Washington and Tehran confirmed that the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s global oil supplies transit daily — is now fully accessible for commercial vessel passage. In a post on Truth Social, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed the reopening, emphasizing that the American military’s unilateral naval blockade on Iranian cargo will remain in place until a final bilateral agreement between the two nations is fully finalized. “The Strait of Hormuz is completely open and ready for business and full passage, but the naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100 percent complete,” Trump wrote in all caps.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi mirrored the announcement just minutes before Trump’s post, sharing on X that the waterway’s opening aligned with the new Lebanon ceasefire and would remain in effect for the full duration of the truce. Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi later reinforced the link between the two developments, noting that the ceasefire would not have been possible without Iranian diplomatic pressure on Lebanon’s behalf, and that Tehran views the truce as equivalent to the decision to reopen the strait.

On the ground in Lebanon, celebratory gunfire rang out across Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s traditional stronghold, as displaced families packed their belongings and began the journey back to their war-ravaged homes in southern Lebanon. For many returnees, the joy of the ceasefire was tempered by the scale of destruction left by weeks of fighting. “There’s destruction and it’s unlivable. We’re taking our things and leaving again,” Fadel Badreddine, who returned to survey his home with his wife and young son, told Reuters. “May God grant us relief and end this whole thing permanently.”

Despite the initial calm, the ceasefire remains extraordinarily fragile. The Israeli military confirmed it had struck more than 380 Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon in the lead-up to the truce, and remains on high alert to resume offensive operations at a moment’s notice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out any withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, stating that the full disarmament of Hezbollah is a non-negotiable precondition for any long-term “historic peace agreement” between Israel and the Lebanese state. Al-Moussawi responded that Hezbollah will uphold its end of the truce so long as Israel halts all offensive attacks.

Multiple regional and global stakeholders have welcomed the ceasefire, including Saudi Arabia and Oman, two key Gulf states with deep interests in regional stability. Riyadh has reaffirmed its unwavering support for Lebanese territorial integrity and national sovereignty, while Muscat has called on all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions that would violate the truce terms. Iran’s foreign ministry framed the ceasefire as a first step toward a broader regional de-escalation pact reached with the U.S. via Pakistani mediation.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which erupted on March 2, has already claimed more than 2,000 lives to date, displacing hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border. Political analysts warn that a path to lasting peace remains elusive. Abed Abou Shhadeh, a Jaffa-based Israeli political commentator, noted that Israel has failed to achieve its core goal of disarming Hezbollah, and lacks a clear political roadmap for a lasting settlement with Lebanon. “History over the past 40 years has proven this is not something Israel can achieve,” Abou Shhadeh said. “The military recently acknowledged that fully disarming Hezbollah would require occupying all of Lebanon — a mission it lacks the troop strength to carry out.”

For his part, Trump has announced that he held “excellent conversations” with both Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, and has extended an invitation to both leaders to travel to the White House for high-stakes talks aimed at cementing a long-term deal. The U.S. president also added that if a final U.S.-Iran agreement is finalized in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, he would be willing to travel there to attend the signing ceremony.

Regional policy experts say Trump’s push for a rapid deal stems from a desire to avoid deeper U.S. entanglement in the Middle East ahead of potential broader fallout for global energy markets. “Trump is seeking an exit ramp from the Iran war before it brings greater repercussions for the US and the global energy market,” said Abas Aslani, a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, speaking to Al Jazeera. “But it wouldn’t secure any strategic outcome for the US. There are some gaps that need to be bridged, but those differences remain.”

In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly stated that the conflict with Iran will end soon, but independent analysts say there is little concrete evidence to support that claim. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a sharp warning on Thursday, threatening that if Iran rejects a final deal, the U.S. military will launch targeted strikes against Iran’s critical infrastructure, including its national power grid and energy sector. Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, argued that the current U.S. administration is not positioned to negotiate a comprehensive, lasting settlement. “Trump has a political incentive to claim peace on his terms is imminent. That does not make it a reality,” Ramsay told Xinhua.

In a dusty residential and commercial neighborhood of central Kabul, what remains of Syed Murtaza Sadar’s life and livelihood stands as a stark testament to the human cost of Afghanistan’s push for infrastructure renewal. Where a two-story building once housed his family’s barbershop and public bath on the ground floor, and their home above, only scattered piles of broken brick and crumbled mortar remain. Sadar, a 25-year-old head of an extended family, says he was forced to tear down most of the structure with his own hands after municipal authorities ordered the property seized for road widening.

“This was our house, and now I am destroying it with my own hands,” Sadar explained pausing mid-work, his hands dusted with mortar. “It will be very difficult for us.”

The land expropriation that displaced Sadar’s family is part of a broad infrastructure initiative that the ruling Taliban administration has revived, originally drafted decades ago under the former U.S.-backed Afghan government. The plan aims to untangle Kabul’s crippling traffic congestion by expanding narrow, pothole-riddled streets, adding new flyovers, and constructing modern underpasses across the capital. When the plan was first proposed, it never moved past the drafting stage: bureaucratic gridlock, systemic corruption, and widespread violence during the Taliban insurgency derailed all construction work. Within months of the Taliban seizing control of Kabul in August 2021, following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops, the new municipal government prioritized reviving the stalled projects.

According to city officials, the progress has been substantial over the past four and a half years. Naimatullah Barakzai, Kabul municipality’s cultural affairs representative, announced at a recent press briefing that construction crews have completed roughly 280 miles of new roads across the capital, while expropriating more than 11,000 private properties to make way for the expanded network. For 2025 alone, the city has greenlit 233 new projects, with an allocation of more than 1.9 billion afghanis, equal to roughly $29 million in funding. Mohammad Qasim Afghan, the municipality’s head of planning, confirmed the budget allocation, noting that all road construction costs are covered entirely by local municipal funds. Barakzai added that Kabul’s municipal government has raised more than 28 billion afghanis (approximately $434 million) over the past four and a half years to fund the initiative, and property owners receive three months’ advance notice plus compensation at rates set by the city. More than 1.2 billion afghanis ($18.6 million) has been paid out to displaced property owners over the past year alone, per city data.

For affected residents, however, the compensation and long-term infrastructure benefits often do little to ease immediate hardship. After the initial round of demolition cleared the front of his street, Sadar says authorities ordered remaining property owners to tear down the rest of their structures themselves, leaving residents with little room to push back against the orders. His former business employed 25 local workers and supported five extended families, each with three to four children. Today, Sadar and his family live in rented accommodation, drawing down their limited savings while waiting for compensation to be fully processed. “If the government gives us money, God willing, I will be able to go back to work and buy or build a new house for myself,” he said. Even amid his displacement, Sadar acknowledges the urgent need for the project: the existing single-lane road running past his former neighborhood is so chronically congested that any trip across the city requires more than an hour of sitting in gridlock.

For a country grappling with widespread poverty and mass unemployment, the construction push has delivered one clear benefit: thousands of much-needed jobs for local workers. At the massive Baraki intersection construction site, project manager and civil engineer Obaidullah Elham says crews work around the clock, seven days a week, to complete a Turkish-designed $23 million flyover and underpass complex that will replace one of Kabul’s most congested junctions. The project employs 500 skilled and unskilled local workers, injecting much-needed income into a local economy reeling from international aid cuts and systemic economic collapse. Work on the 1,540-foot underpass began in July of last year and is already 80% complete, Elham said, standing beside a working excavator moving earth at the site. Construction on the flyover, only the second to be built in Kabul, started earlier this year.

The scope of the project has required clearing space even for longstanding community landmarks, including a 200-year-old graveyard in Kabul’s Qala-e-Khater neighborhood. The new planned road will cut directly through the historic burial ground, requiring the exhumation and relocation of hundreds of graves to a new section of the cemetery. Today, large rectangular empty holes mark where remains once rested, a quiet reminder of the project’s far-reaching impact.

Abdul Wadood Alokozay, a 21-year-old resident of the neighborhood, says his grandfather’s remains were among those moved. Alokozay’s extended family lost three properties in the area: a girls’ religious madrassa, and two multi-generational family homes, all of which were expropriated and leveled. “At first our family all were sad for this, that we lost our house,” Alokozay said. “It was even harder to tear it down ourselves, after we lived there for more than 20 years.” The family received roughly $13,000 in compensation for the three structures, with additional compensation promised for the land, and has since built a new three-story home on other family land overlooking the former property.

Shah Faisal Alokozay, a 30-year-old community representative and Abdul Wadood’s cousin, says plans for the connecting road have sat on city drawing boards for decades. “It’s a very important road, connecting east and north Kabul,” he explained. “So it is very important for the community.”

For Kabul’s new leadership, the infrastructure push represents both a practical solution to chronic urban congestion and a visible demonstration of the Taliban administration’s ability to deliver long-stalled public projects that the previous government could not complete. For displaced residents like Sadar, it is a complicated trade-off: short-term hardship and displacement in exchange for the promise of a more connected, less congested capital for future generations.

In a major development that calms one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, Iran and the United States announced Friday that the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway through which roughly one-quarter of all global oil shipments pass — will resume full commercial passage for all vessels during an ongoing ceasefire period, just days after heightened military tensions between the two nations and an Israel-US strike on Iranian targets.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed the move in a post on X, noting that the decision aligns with the broader ceasefire agreement reached for neighboring Lebanon. “The passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran,” Araghchi wrote.

US President Donald Trump hailed the announcement as a landmark win for the global community in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform, calling it “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!”

Trump clarified that while all commercial traffic is permitted to transit the strait, the unilateral US naval blockade targeting Iranian oil exports, implemented earlier this week, will remain in effect until all terms of the bilateral agreement between Washington and Tehran are fully finalized. “THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE,” he wrote, adding that most core terms have already been negotiated and the finalization process is expected to move rapidly.

The US president also claimed Iran had committed to a permanent, future commitment that the strait will never be closed to international shipping, and that Iran has cleared or is in the process of removing all naval mines from the waterway with US support.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres joined in welcoming the reopening, framing the decision as “a step in the right direction” for de-escalating broader regional tensions.

However, a key caveat has emerged from the Iranian side, an anonymous Iranian official told Reuters: the reopening of the strait remains conditional on the United States upholding all existing ceasefire commitments. This stands in direct tension with Trump’s repeated public insistence that the Hormuz agreement is completely disconnected from the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire he brokered just one day prior.

Iran had previously demanded that any regional ceasefire deal must include protections for its allied militant group Hezbollah, which has been engaged in cross-border hostilities with Israel for months. Rejecting any linkage between the two deals in his Truth Social posts, Trump wrote, “This deal is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon, but we will, MAKE LEBANON GREAT AGAIN!”

The US leader also outlined terms of the nuclear component of the agreement, stating that the US will take possession of all enriched uranium dust created by recent US B-2 Bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, adding that “No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form.” He further confirmed that the US will address the Hezbollah situation separately, and that Israel has been prohibited by Washington from conducting further bombing operations in Lebanon, saying “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA Enough is enough!!!”

The Iranian official pushed back on Trump’s characterization of nuclear progress, telling Reuters that no final agreement has been reached on the details of outstanding nuclear issues, and that substantive negotiations are still required to lock in any agreements on that front.

In his series of Friday social media posts, Trump also thanked several regional and neighboring powers for their mediation and support: he singled out Pakistan for leading mediation efforts between Washington and Tehran, and expressed gratitude to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for their assistance throughout the negotiations. Notably absent from his list of thanks were Washington’s traditional European allies, whom Trump publicly criticized as unhelpful.

“Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger! President DJT,” he wrote.

Trump’s rebuke came as an international summit focused on Strait of Hormuz maritime security was already underway in Paris, France. Speaking at the summit, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that roughly 40 countries have agreed to speed up military planning operations to secure permanent freedom of navigation through the strait once a full, permanent end to hostilities is reached.

The current two-week ceasefire is scheduled to expire next week, though Trump has indicated he is open to extending the truce to allow for further negotiations. Starmer added that full details of the proposed international military security mission will be released publicly next week.