标签： Asia

Fresh violence erupted across the Middle East on Monday 6 April 2026, as Iran defied a belligerent ultimatum from former US President Donald Trump that threatened catastrophic bombing of critical Iranian infrastructure unless the Strait of Hormuz was opened to all commercial shipping by Tuesday. The hardening of positions comes amid a spiraling exchange of cross-border attacks between Iran, Israel and US-aligned partners in the Gulf that has left more than 40 people dead and sent international oil prices surging to multi-year highs.

In an incendiary social media post published Sunday, Trump issued a stark threat to Iran, declaring that Tuesday would mark simultaneous “Power Plant Day” and “Bridge Day” for the country, promising that Iranians would be “living in Hell” if the strategic Strait of Hormuz—through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies pass—did not reopen to unimpeded traffic by the deadline. Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf quickly pushed back against the rhetoric, taking to social media to label Trump’s threats reckless war crimes, warning the US would gain nothing from the escalation.

By Monday, joint US and Israeli air and missile strikes had pounded targets across eastern, southern and western Iran. Iranian state media confirmed at least 34 fatalities from the bombardment, including six children, with senior military commander Major General Majid Khademi, head of intelligence for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, counted among the dead. Israeli strikes hit energy infrastructure at Iran’s massive South Pars natural gas field, and also damaged Sharif University of Technology, one of Iran’s leading centers of engineering and higher education.

Iran quickly retaliated for the attacks, launching its own missile and drone barrages against targets in Israel and US-aligned Gulf states. In Haifa, a major Israeli coastal city, an Iranian missile struck a residential building, killing at least four people. The Israeli military has since issued urgent warnings to residents that a second large-scale missile attack from Iran is imminent.

Across the Gulf Cooperation Council region, Iranian strikes targeted critical civilian and energy infrastructure. In Kuwait, missiles hit power generation, water desalination and oil facilities, while an oil installation in Bahrain sustained damage. In the United Arab Emirates, a drone attack damaged the headquarters of a telecommunications firm in the emirate of Fujairah, with no injuries reported. One person was wounded by falling debris from an intercepted attack in an industrial zone of Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital.

The escalation of hostilities at the Strait of Hormuz has already roiled global energy markets. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, jumped to $109 per barrel in early Monday spot trading, representing a 50% increase from pre-conflict levels. The price spike comes just one day after the OPEC+ alliance, which groups major oil exporting nations including Saudi Arabia and Russia, announced a modest output increase of 206,000 barrels per day set to take effect in May.

International mediators have already stepped in to push for de-escalation. According to reporting from The Associated Press, citing two anonymous senior Middle Eastern officials, mediators from Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey have submitted a joint draft peace proposal to both Tehran and Washington. Titled the tentative “Islamabad Accord”, the plan calls for an immediate 45-day ceasefire, the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and 15 to 20 days of negotiations to finalize a broader long-term settlement, with final talks scheduled to be held in Pakistan.

Neither Iran nor the US has issued an official formal response to the proposal, which was delivered Sunday night to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. However, a senior anonymous Iranian official told mediators that Iran would not agree to reopen the key waterway in exchange for only a temporary truce, arguing that the US has not demonstrated it is serious about achieving a lasting peace. Iran’s core demands for a final settlement include binding security guarantees against future attacks, war reparations for damage already sustained, and formal international recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Anwar Gargash, diplomatic advisor to the UAE’s president, offered his government’s position Sunday, stating that any viable peace deal must guarantee full unimpeded access through the strait. He added that any agreement that fails to address concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile development and drone production would leave the region more unstable and dangerous than before the current conflict.

Monday’s surge in violence follows a controversial rescue operation last Friday, after a US Air Force F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iranian territory. US forces successfully rescued the two crew members on board, but were forced to destroy two C-130 cargo planes and at least two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters that became stuck during the mission. Iran has claimed it shot down the abandoned aircraft, and Iranian state media has broadcast footage of charred wreckage to support the claim.

As hundreds of U.S. service members fly toward the Persian Gulf aboard military transport planes, ahead of a potential large-scale ground invasion of Iran, military analysts are sounding urgent alarms over the steep, unpredictable costs any such operation would incur – shaped heavily by Iran’s unique and formidable geography. Spanning more than 1.4 million square kilometers, Iran is a vast nation framed by two massive mountain ranges, with the Caspian Sea marking its northern border and the Sea of Oman and Persian Gulf forming its southern frontier. Its rugged, varied terrain, experts uniformly agree, would turn any ground incursion into a quagmire that is nearly impossible to control once initiated.

“If you examine the historical record of large-scale ground interventions, you quickly see that once invading forces cross the border, containing the scope and duration of the conflict becomes extraordinarily difficult,” explained Arman Mahmoudian, a research fellow at the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute, in an interview with Middle East Eye. Iranian and Western analysts have outlined three primary scenarios for a U.S.-led ground attack: seizing Iranian-controlled islands in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, launching an amphibious assault on Iran’s southern coastline, or pushing into western Iran through Kurdish-majority territories bordering Iraq and Turkey. Every proposed path carries severe, well-documented risks, analysts emphasize.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz – a critical global chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption passed before the outbreak of the current conflict – has emerged as the primary driver of pressure on former U.S. President Donald Trump and his defense department. Since hostilities began, Iran has targeted commercial transiting vessels and effectively shut down the waterway, granting passage only to a small number of tankers from nations it classifies as friendly, with unconfirmed reports indicating Tehran has charged some vessels up to $2 million for guaranteed safe passage. Iran’s control of the strait has already driven global energy prices sharply higher, intensifying pressure on Washington to reopen the route.

In response to the closure, the U.S. has launched airstrikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export hub located 32 kilometers off the country’s southern coast. The strikes have fueled widespread speculation that Washington could move to seize the island, a idea Trump first floated in a 1988 interview with The Guardian, decades before he entered electoral politics. But even analysts at staunchly anti-Iranian think tanks argue that a seizure of Kharg or any other Iranian Gulf island would be strategically unsound and likely backfire.

Mahmoudian notes that Iran would have little incentive to defend Kharg, which handles 90 percent of Iran’s total crude exports, in a direct head-to-head battle with U.S. forces. “Iran cannot win a direct fight for the island against American military power, so they would not waste troops trying. Instead, they would let U.S. forces take control, then launch sustained asymmetric attacks on occupying forces from the mainland,” he said. This dynamic holds for all major Iranian islands in the Strait of Hormuz, including Qeshm, Hormuz and Larak: any U.S. seizure would leave occupying forces vulnerable to constant attack. Farzin Nadimi, an analyst with the pro-Israeli, anti-Iranian Washington Institute, has even acknowledged this reality, stating in an interview that “the military occupation of Kharg is neither practical nor logical. Even if Iranian islands are taken, it would be very hard to hold them.” Seizing Kharg would also send global oil prices spiking even further, analysts add: removing Iran’s 1.5 million barrels per day of exports from the global market would create massive new supply shortages that harm consumers and economies worldwide.

Beyond Kharg, Iran controls 42 islands in its southern waters, 18 of which are permanently inhabited. The largest, Qeshm Island, spans 1,500 square kilometers – larger than the entire nation states of Bahrain and Singapore – and sits just two kilometers from the Iranian mainland along the Strait of Hormuz. Three smaller islands, the Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, hold particular geopolitical sensitivity: Iran controls the islands, but the United Arab Emirates claims sovereignty over them, leading to speculation the U.S. could seize the territories and hand them over to the UAE as a goodwill gesture. But Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, warns this would create decades of persistent tension between the UAE and whatever Iranian government remains after the conflict. Most analysts agree that any U.S. seizure of Iranian islands would primarily serve a political goal: gaining leverage to force Tehran to make concessions in future negotiations in exchange for returning the occupied territories. Senior Iranian sources have previously warned that Iran would respond to any ground invasion by heavily targeting the UAE, which it views as complicit in U.S.-led aggression.

A second potential invasion route is Iran’s 1,800-kilometer southern coastline, which stretches from the Iraqi border near Abadan all the way to the Gulf of Gavater on the Pakistani border. While the coastline’s enormous length makes defending every point a challenge for Iran, it would pose the same logistical nightmare for any invading force. Mahmoudian argues that a coastal assault makes geographic sense for the U.S., as Iran’s southern coast sits directly across the Gulf from pre-positioned U.S. military bases, allowing for easy logistics reinforcement, casualty evacuation and resupply. The U.S. already maintains overwhelming naval dominance in the region, and the Marines deployed to the area are specifically trained for large-scale amphibious operations. Even so, Mahmoudian warns that even a limited coastal incursion could quickly spiral out of control. “If you seize a stretch of coastline to control the Strait of Hormuz, your forces will still face constant Iranian attacks,” he explained. “To secure your position and build out defenses, you have to push further inland. Once that happens, containing escalation becomes nearly impossible.”

Iran’s massive size and rugged terrain work heavily in Tehran’s favor, even after weeks of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. Nadimi notes that Iran has still been able to launch consistent missile attacks, in large part because its vast territory allows it to disperse military assets, and key weapons systems are stored in hardened underground facilities. Iran is home to more than 390 mountains over 2,000 meters, including 92 that rise above 4,000 meters – among them Mount Damavand, the Middle East’s highest peak. Vatanka compares the current context to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, noting that Iran is four times larger than Iraq, with far more rugged terrain. Tehran has also spent decades preparing for this exact scenario, burying key military and nuclear infrastructure deep inside mountains, making it far more defensible than Iraq under Saddam Hussein was in 2003.

The third proposed invasion route would push into western Iran from Iraq, through the rugged Zagros Mountains and across Kurdish-majority regions near the Turkish border. Since the outbreak of the war, some analysts have suggested the U.S. could rely on Iranian Kurdish armed groups based in northern Iraq to lead the ground offensive in this scenario. So far, these groups have avoided direct involvement in the conflict, but commanders from the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) and the separatist Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) signaled openness to collaborating with Israel during a March 19 online conference at Tel Aviv University. Even so, experts argue this scenario is unlikely to achieve U.S. strategic goals.

Under this plan, the U.S. would provide air support while Kurdish forces lead the ground push, leveraging their local knowledge of the difficult mountain terrain. But Mahmoudian notes that Iran has already pre-positioned large numbers of troops in the region under the cover of military exercises, anticipating exactly this kind of incursion. The result would be extremely heavy casualties for Kurdish fighters. Vatanka adds that most Kurdish armed groups are lightly armed and lack the large, structured military units needed to sustain a deep incursion into Iran. “They can hide behind U.S. and Israeli air support, but they would still take catastrophic losses,” he explained. “As they push beyond Kurdish regions into majority-Persian areas, their position becomes even more untenable. There is no scenario where these forces advance all the way to Tehran – they simply do not have the capability.”

To date, the U.S.’s core strategic goals for the conflict remain frustratingly unclear. When the U.S. and Israel launched the campaign on February 28, leaders cited the goal of regime change in Iran, but weeks of intensive airstrikes and targeted assassinations of military and political leaders have failed to destabilize Iran’s governing structure. If the goal is instead to increase pressure to force Tehran into unfavorable negotiations, there is no evidence the strategy has worked – if anything, it has hardened the Iranian leadership’s stance and increased public nationalist sentiment in favor of the government. History also shows the Islamic Republic has never agreed to negotiations while its territory remains under foreign occupation, Mahmoudian pointed out, referencing the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. When Iraqi forces captured the port of Khorramshahr and besieged Abadan in the first year of the war, Baghdad offered Tehran negotiations to end the conflict – but Iran refused until all occupied territory was returned.

Vatanka argues that the current U.S. approach lacks any coherent grand strategy. The initial stated goal of regime change was quickly abandoned, he explained, leaving little more than a vague hope that the Iranian public would rise up and overthrow the government on its own. “That is not a strategy,” he said. “That is just a hope.”

Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate months of open conflict between the United States and Iran have entered a critical new phase, with Pakistan delivering a last-minute proposal for an immediate temporary truce now under review by both governments.

Reuters first broke the story on Monday, citing an anonymous source familiar with the backchannel negotiations. Tentatively named the “Islamabad Accords”, the proposal outlines a two-step framework: an immediate halt to all hostilities, followed by negotiations to lock in a comprehensive permanent agreement within a 15 to 20-day window.

According to the source, Pakistan’s top military commander, Army Chief Asim Munir, maintained round-the-clock contact through the night with three key figures: US Vice President JD Vance, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. The source emphasized that all core terms of the ceasefire would need to be finalized the same day the proposal was delivered.

This is not the only ceasefire framework currently circulating. Just one day earlier, Axios reported that regional mediators had been floating an alternative 45-day truce plan designed to clear a path for permanent conflict-ending negotiations.

Despite the flurry of diplomatic activity, insiders have warned that the odds of even a partial truce being agreed within the next 48 hours remain very low. The entire push is widely framed as a final attempt to head off major new US attacks, which US President Donald Trump has publicly threatened to launch if Iran does not meet his demands by an extremely tight deadline.

Trump has set an 8pm ET Tuesday deadline for Iran to unilaterally reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint that Iran closed in response to the US-Israeli military campaign that began more than a month ago. In an inflammatory post on his social platform Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” He has also explicitly threatened to target critical Iranian infrastructure, including bridges and national power plants, if his demands are not met.

This deadline is not the first Trump has issued, nor is it the first he has extended. On March 21, Trump gave Iran a 48-hour ultimatum to fully reopen the strait, threatening to “obliterate” Iranian power plants if the order was ignored. Two days later, he extended the deadline by five days, citing what he called “good and productive conversations” — a claim Iranian Foreign Minister Araqchi immediately denied, stating no official contact had taken place. As that five-day extension approached, Trump granted a second 10-day extension that was set to expire Monday evening, claiming the extension came “as per Iranian Government request.”

Even with these ongoing diplomatic overtures, Iran has already rejected core elements of the ceasefire proposal. A senior Iranian official told Reuters Monday that Tehran will not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as a concession for a temporary truce. The official pointed to Washington’s ongoing refusal to commit to a permanent ceasefire, adding that Iran rejects being pushed into accepting rigid arbitrary deadlines.

Many high-profile Iranian figures have openly spoken out against any temporary truce. Majid Shekeri, a former senior advisor to Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote on social platform X that “A temporary ceasefire benefits Pakistan, Turkey, and America, and harms Iran. It’s astonishing that they even dare to raise such a thing.”

This is not the first setback for Pakistan’s mediation efforts. The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that talks had already hit a dead end when Iran refused to hold direct talks with US officials in Islamabad, citing what Tehran called unacceptable US demands.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already had sweeping global economic impacts: the waterway handles roughly one-fifth of the world’s total daily oil and natural gas supplies, all of which have been cut off from global markets since Iran closed the passage.

The human cost of the ongoing US-Israeli bombardment of Iran has already been devastating. Iran’s own Ministry of Health reports that at least 2,076 Iranians have been killed in the attacks, with an additional 26,500 people wounded. The US-based Iran-focused Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has recorded a higher death toll of 3,531 killed, a count that includes 1,607 civilian deaths and at least 244 children among the dead.

In addition to his threats against Iran, Trump has repeatedly lashed out at US European allies in recent weeks, accusing them of failing to provide sufficient support for his campaign against Iran and calling them “cowards.” He has also threatened to withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) over the dispute. To date, Trump has publicly declared victory over Iran at least five separate times, despite the ongoing open conflict.

Amid the ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran, a deeply controversial and discriminatory access policy for religious sites in occupied East Jerusalem has drawn widespread condemnation, as Palestinian and Christian worshippers remain locked out of holy sites ahead of and during major religious holidays, while Jewish worshippers are permitted to gather for seasonal rituals.

Since February 28, Israeli occupation authorities have imposed a full ban on all Muslim Palestinian worshippers entering Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the most sacred sites in Islam. This total closure marks an unprecedented step not seen since Israel began its occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, with no exceptions granted even for Ramadan—Islam’s holiest month—or the major Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the fasting period. The shutdown extends to Christian holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City as well: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of Christianity’s most revered locations, has been closed to worshippers, who were barred from gathering for traditional Easter celebrations on Sunday, with only 15 members of the clergy permitted inside to conduct the holiday observance.

In sharp contrast, Israeli authorities allowed as many as 50 Jewish worshippers to enter the Western Wall, the structure that forms part of the outer boundary of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound (known to Muslims as the Buraq Wall), on Sunday. Those in attendance were able to take part in the traditional priestly blessing ceremony tied to the Jewish Passover holiday, held in a covered space adjacent to the Western Wall plaza.

The unequal application of restrictions does not end at the Western Wall. Thousands of people gathered for a large Passover event in an indoor hall in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak, an area that has been heavily targeted by Iranian missile strikes amid the ongoing war. Dozens more gathered for Passover festivities in Jerusalem’s Mamilla neighborhood, located just steps from the Old City. This pattern mirrors restrictions seen during the Purim holiday last month, when large gatherings of Israelis proceeded without interference, while wartime gathering limits were strictly enforced against Palestinian residents.

Israeli officials have framed the full closure of Al-Aqsa as a necessary security measure to mitigate risks from Iranian missile attacks. But Palestinian leaders and critics reject this justification, arguing the closure is part of a deliberate, long-running effort to consolidate exclusive Israeli control over the contested holy site, eroding long-standing Palestinian and Muslim access rights.

Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who serves as a member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), slammed the discriminatory policy on Sunday, calling for the immediate reopening of both Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Tibi pointed to a recent Israeli High Court decision that allowed gatherings of up to 600 people for anti-war protests, alongside unimpeded mass Jewish holiday celebrations, as proof that security concerns are a pretext. “There is no safety justification for the restrictions at Al-Aqsa; this is a blatant violation of freedom of worship,” Tibi said. He added that Israeli police “act forcefully against worshippers at Herod’s Gate and at the entrances to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is selective enforcement driven by political motives.”

After Sunday’s prayers at the Western Wall, the Israeli High Court issued a ruling that raised the maximum allowed gathering size from 50 to 100 people for both the Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Despite the new legal limit, however, no worshippers—Muslim or Jewish—have been permitted to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque building itself since the war began. Prior to the ruling, only 25 staff members from the Jerusalem Waqf, the Islamic endowment that manages the 14-hectare Al-Aqsa compound, were allowed on site per shift for maintenance work. Even that limited access has been contested: last week, Israeli forces reportedly turned away seven Waqf staff who were scheduled for their shifts.

It remains unclear whether the new 100-person gathering limit will pave the way for the return of Palestinian Muslim worshippers to the mosque. Prior reporting from Middle East Eye indicates that Israeli officials have informed the Waqf that the mosque will remain closed at least through mid-April. The decision to raise the gathering cap came after intense pressure from Israeli religious and far-right political leaders, coming on the heels of the High Court’s approval of 600-person anti-war protests.

Israeli police, under the oversight of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have drafted a proposal that would allow up to 150 “Jewish and Muslim worshippers” to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque. Ben Gvir has framed the proposal as an effort to ensure fairness, arguing that since anti-government protests are permitted, “I am obliged to ensure justice and prevent discrimination” against worshippers seeking access to the site. “The High Court must allow access both to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in small groups,” he stated, using the Israeli term for the hill where Al-Aqsa is located.

Before the outbreak of the war with Iran, ultra-nationalist Israeli settlers carried out twice-daily incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound under heavy Israeli police protection, in open violation of the decades-long international status quo agreement that designates Al-Aqsa as an exclusively Islamic holy site governed by Muslim authorities. These daily incursions were paused when the war began, but it remains unclear whether the new police proposal would allow them to resume.

If the proposal goes into effect, the 150-person cap would actually exceed the pre-war limit of around 100 settlers per incursion. The plan has already been celebrated by Arnon Segal, one of the most prominent Israeli activists who organizes the regular settler raids on Al-Aqsa. Writing on his X account, Segal noted that “Allowing ‘small groups of only 150 people’ onto the Temple Mount is more than the maximum group size Jews have ever been allowed to enter, even on the busiest and most crowded days.” He called the proposal “a dream,” crediting Ben Gvir for advancing the plan and framing it as an unprecedented, historic shift in access to the site.

Israel’s continued military operations in the Gaza Strip have left at least seven Palestinians dead over a 24-hour period ending Monday, among them a staff member working for the World Health Organization (WHO), in a new wave of violence that underscores ongoing violations of a October ceasefire agreement. The string of attacks, which stretched across multiple locations from northern to southern Gaza, adds to a mounting death toll that has already surpassed 72,300 Palestinians since the start of Israeli military operations in October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.