Top Stories — Wednesday, April 8, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Iran War Live Updates: Fragile Cease-Fire Takes Hold as Both Sides Claim Victory — nyt News
- Delta CEO says airline will 'meaningfully' cut growth plans, sees $300 million boost from its refinery — CNBC
- China Pressed Iran Toward Cease-fire, Iranian Officials Say — nyt News
Iran War Live Updates: Fragile Cease-Fire Takes Hold as Both Sides Claim Victory
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/8/2026, 4:05:21 PM
Beirut/Tel Aviv1:38 p.m. April 8
The United States and Iran announced a two-week cease-fire and plans to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday evening, hours before President Trump had threatened that Iran would see its “whole civilization” destroyed if it did not allow free transit through the vital waterway.
The agreement that was brokered by Pakistan was hailed as a victory by both countries. Mr. Trump said a 10-point plan from Iran was a “workable basis on which to negotiate” a lasting end to the war after demanding Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” for weeks. Iranian officials were triumphant, with Mohammad Reza Aref, the country’s first vice president, saying on social media that “the era of Iran” had begun after Trump failed to destroy the Islamic republic’s government. Iran also said it would fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and natural gas shipments, while negotiations take place to secure a permanent deal.
In Lebanon, the Israeli military said that the cease-fire did not cover its offensive against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon. It was also unclear whether word of the nascent deal had reached Iranian local commanders, as fresh Iranian attacks were reported in some Persian Gulf countries early Wednesday morning.
Investors welcomed the cease-fire after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran caused an energy crisis and weeks of turmoil for global markets. The price of oil tumbled, with Brent Crude, the international benchmark, down almost 15 percent to trade at about $95 a barrel, and global stock markets soaring.
Global relief at the pause in fighting was tempered by confusion over what comes next. Many challenges remain if the United States and Iran are to achieve a permanent deal to end the war, especially given that both seem to be claiming to have achieved their goals. Shipping companies also signaled that they were cautious about resuming transit through the Strait of Hormuz immediately. And restarting operations at refineries, storage facilities, and oil and gas fields that have been damaged in the war will take time.
After Mr. Trump said on Tuesday night that he had agreed to the cease-fire proposed by Pakistan, a U.S. official said American military strikes against Iran had stopped. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the country’s armed forces would “cease their defensive operation” and that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible for two weeks if it was coordinated with Iran’s military.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were scheduled to hold a news conference at the Pentagon at 8 a.m. Eastern.
Nima, a Tehran resident, said that Wednesday morning was the first time in around 40 days that he was not worried his colleagues might be killed in an airstrike. It was a good feeling, he said — the latest in a swirl of emotions that Iranians like him experienced while waiting to see what would come of President Trump’s threat to wipe out their civilization and reports of a flurry of negotiations to pause the war.
“Last night was a really frightening evening,” he said, declining to be fully named for fear of government reprisal. He opposed the war, and worried about what might come next for the country given the damage Iran had sustained to its infrastructure and key economic players.” Economically speaking, the country has seen a lot of damage,” he said. “The country is truly poor.”
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Lebanon: The Israeli military continued attacking Lebanon on Wednesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the cease-fire did not cover its offensive against Hezbollah. Mr. Netanyahu’s assertion contradicted a statement by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, who had said that the deal between the United States and Iran also applied to Lebanon.
Israel: Israel said it backed the cease-fire deal between the United States and Iran, but critics of Mr. Netanyahu said it was “a disastrous disaster” and accused the Israeli leader of failing to achieve his stated war goal of destroying Iran’s theocratic government.
Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates reported missile and drone attacks early Wednesday morning. Bahrain’s interior ministry sounded warning sirens and reported a fire started by an Iranian attack.
Pakistan: Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan said he had invited U.S. and Iranian delegations for talks in Islamabad on Friday, and Iran’s National Security Council said in a statement that Iran would attend. The United States said that it was in discussions about holding in-person talks with Iran but that “nothing is final” until it is announced by the president or the White House.
Markets respond: Stocks in Europe soared after markets rose sharply in Asia, where countries rely on imports of gas and oil from the Middle East. S&P 500 stock futures were up, pointing to a possible strong open when stock markets open in the United States.
A timeline: The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran raged for more than five weeks before a cease-fire was announced on the 39th day. It was the second time in less than a year that President Trump directly involved the United States in a military conflict with Tehran. Read through some of the key moments of the war so far here.
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,665 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Monday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Monday said that more than 1,500 people had been killed in the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 32 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 20 people had been killed as of Monday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.
Vice President JD Vance said that if Iran was “willing in good faith to work with us, I think we can make an agreement.” But should Iranian officials undermine the truce or subvert the talks, he said in remarks in Budapest, “then they’re not going to be happy.” He asserted that the United States still had considerable leverage should the talks break down. Iran experts have said it is unclear whether further U.S. pressure could lead the Iranian leadership to compromise on red lines they did not abandon despite the killing of top leaders during more than a month of war.
Iranian state media has claimed that the country came under attack on Wednesday morning, hours after a cease-fire should have come into effect. IRNA reported that an oil refinery on the country’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf was struck around 10 a.m. local time by “enemies,” without saying who had attacked the site. There were no reports of casualties, according to the state-run broadcaster.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan spoke with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after the cease-fire too effect on Wednesday. She told reporters that she had asked Pezeshkian to “promptly and quickly” ensure the safe passage of all vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Japan imports about 95 percent of its oil from the Middle East; more than 40 Japanese vessels have been stuck in the strait since the start of the war.
Pezeshkian has been increasingly side-lined in Iran’s power structure since the outset of the war.
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, issued a statement telling the hundreds of thousands of displaced people not to return home immediately because Israel was still attacking in the country. In a statement carried by Hezbollah’s official Al-Manar broadcaster, the group urged people to wait for “the official and final cease-fire announcement in Lebanon.” While the United States, Israel and Iran have agreed to a truce, Israel says it is continuing to strike in Lebanon, part of a broader ground invasion against Hezbollah. Nonetheless, Hezbollah said, “Today, we stand on the threshold of a great historical victory.”
Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, said he welcomed the cease-fire. It is still unclear what that means for Aoun’s country, which Israel is invading in a campaign against Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group. Aoun said that he hoped it would be “a first step towards a final and comprehensive agreement on the various issues that are destabilizing our region.” Israel has said it is continuing to attack in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has not fired missiles at Israel since the truce went into effect on Wednesday morning.
The Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, has been speaking with regional counterparts “to ensure Lebanon gets its chance at a ceasefire,” according to a statement from Elias Bou Saab, deputy speaker of the country’s parliament.
Iran’s ambassador to China, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, called at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday for China, Russia and the United Nations to provide security guarantees for his country. Iran has made similar suggestions in the past, and they have not prompted China or Russia to act.
A Chinese foreign minstry spokeswoman was noncommittal when asked whether the country might provide such a guarantee. “We hope that all parties will resolve their disputes through dialogue and negotiation,” Mao Ning said at the ministry’s daily briefing.
Reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
With a fragile cease-fire announced between the United States and Iran, leaders in Persian Gulf countries are grappling with a troubling new reality.
Politicians, investors and residents in wealthy cities like Dubai and Doha once believed they were essentially immune to the region’s conflicts. The American-Israeli war with Iran has smashed that assumption.
Gulf countries must repair the damage caused by thousands of Iranian missiles and drones. Most expect their economic output to shrink this year because of disruptions to their energy exports.
But they are also being forced to re-evaluate their relationships with Israel, Iran and the United States — their main security guarantor — now that the war has exposed the vulnerability of their oil fields, water desalination plants, hotels and airports.
“All that we have with the U.S. today does not provide the guarantee we need now,” said Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, a think tank in Saudi Arabia. “Will that stop any attack against us? No.”
Governments wishing for a viable alternative guarantor, however, may find that there is none. And if the cease-fire becomes a more durable end to the war, they could be left to face a weakened Iran that can still periodically attack them.
“This idea that you’re going to be left with a bruised, battered, angry but emboldened Iran — I think that’s a real concern,” said Dina Esfandiary, the Middle East geoeconomics lead for Bloomberg Economics.
Iran’s retaliatory attacks hit Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, all countries that host U.S. military bases or personnel. Executives in those nations are uncertain about the security of their businesses and their employees. Families who left in a rush after the war began on Feb. 28 are considering when, or if, to come back.
And the fate of the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway, vital to the global economy, that Gulf countries need to export their gas and oil — remains up in the air.
In recent weeks, Iran appeared to be operating a de facto toll system for vessels to pass through the strait, Bloomberg News reported. If that scenario outlasts the war, it will be a nightmare for many Gulf nations, putting their export revenues at the mercy of Iran.
“In truth, one of the most significant outcomes of this war is the shattering of the concept of a regional security system in the Gulf,” Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry, told reporters on March 24. “The security framework in the Gulf was based on certain axioms. Many of these axioms have been bypassed.”
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, welcomed the cease-fire announcement on Wednesday, while warning that further work was required to protect the region’s security.
“For now the world has stepped back from disaster,” Mr. Albusaidi wrote on social media. “But there’s no room for complacency. Serious negotiations now required for lasting peace.”
A senior Emirati official, Anwar Gargash, sounded a patriotic and celebratory note, saying that the Emirates had “triumphed in a war we sincerely sought to avoid.”
“Today, we move forward to manage a complex regional landscape with greater leverage, sharper insight and a more solid capacity to influence and shape the future,” Mr. Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president, wrote on social media.
Yet Gulf countries were still sounding scattered alarms warning of incoming attacks early on Wednesday, adding to skepticism about whether the cease-fire would endure. Bahrain’s interior ministry reported a fire caused by “Iranian aggression.” It said the fire had been extinguished without injuries. And Kuwait’s army reported “an intense wave of hostile Iranian attacks,” including 28 drones, that had been intercepted since 8 a.m. local time on Wednesday — hours after the cease-fire.
“This is a cease-fire plan that does not seem to include the Gulf in consultation,” Mahdi Jasim Ghuloom, a Bahrain political analyst, wrote on social media. “Clearly this will make it more fragile, and Iran has continued attacking some Gulf countries this morning despite the announcement.”
Whatever happens, the region’s royal families will have to reckon with newly apparent limits to their ability to steer Washington’s decision-making in the region, despite the personal ties they have cultivated with President Trump and his family.
“We suffer in the Gulf because he started the war,” Mr. Sager of the Gulf Research Center said. “We told him the consequences. We were never consulted.”
The Gulf countries will also have to decide how to deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates had sought warmer ties with the Islamic republic in recent years, trying to reduce the threat it posed them. Some officials look back at that decision with bitterness.
“When this war eventually ends, in order for there to be any rebuilding of trust will take a long time,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, told reporters on March 19.
Different Gulf governments are likely to adopt different stances, which could deepen cleavages in the region. The feud between the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, for example, which was interrupted when both were under attack by Iran, could soon pick up where it left off.
Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Vice President JD Vance acknowledged on Wednesday that the cease-fire remained “a fragile truce.” Speaking in Budapest, Vance sought to dispute Iranian officials’ claims of victory, asserting that some were “basically lying about the nature of the agreement.” Negotiations between the United States and Iran are expected to begin soon in an effort to extend the cease-fire. Vance added that President Trump told him overnight that “the Iranians are better negotiators than they are fighters.”
President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran told Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan in a phone call that an Iranian delegation would participate in peace talks in Islamabad, Sharif’s office said in a statement. Sharif proposed talks in Islamabad on Friday when he announced the U.S.-Iran cease-fire, but the latest statement does not include a date for the talks.
Gulf countries were still reporting incoming fire on Wednesday morning. Kuwait’s army said it was fending off repeated Iranian drone attacks targeting “vital oil facilities and power stations in the south of the country” since 8 a.m. local time, well after the cease-fire was believed to go into effect. Bahrain’s interior ministry said around 7 a.m. air-raid sirens had sounded, while the United Arab Emirates said air defenses were seeking to intercept an incoming missile, without identifying who had fired on them.
Israel’s military is continuing to order some Lebanese to flee their homes or else face imminent danger. Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military spokesman, said people could not yet safely return to the country’s south or Beirut’s southern suburbs. More than a million are estimated to have been uprooted. While mediators had suggested that the cease-fire with Iran should also halt the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group, Israel has said it is pressing forward.
Keith Bradsher reported from Beijing and Farnaz Fassihi reported from New York.
For years, China has been one of Iran’s most important lifelines. China has bought almost all of its oil exports, shielded it diplomatically and helped it weather international isolation. Now, according to three Iranian officials, Beijing has used that influence for a different purpose: to press Iran to accept the cease-fire with the United States.
Iran’s decision to accept the two-week cease-fire proposal brokered by Pakistan came after diplomatic efforts by Pakistan and a last-minute push by China, according to the Iranian officials. China asked Iran to show flexibility and defuse tensions, they said.
The intervention reflects not only Beijing’s influence over Tehran but also its own stake in preventing a protracted war that could disrupt energy supplies or set off a global recession, as well as hurt Persian Gulf countries, with which China also has close relations. The deal also calls for the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Chinese officials have not publicly described Beijing’s involvement in the lead-up to the deal announced by President Trump on Tuesday night. Asked on Wednesday if China had helped persuade Iran to agree to the deal, a foreign ministry spokeswoman in Beijing, Mao Ning, neither confirmed nor denied its involvement, saying only generally that “We have always been advocating for peace talks and the cease-fire.”
The deal, which Iran described as a victory in which Washington had accepted its terms, came 90 minutes before a deadline set by Mr. Trump for Iran to accede to his demands or risk widespread devastation.
China’s moves in recent days reflect the delicate balance that Beijing is trying to strike. At the United Nations on Tuesday, Beijing backed Iran by joining Moscow in vetoing a Security Council resolution that could have paved the way for military action to open the Strait of Hormuz. But behind the scenes, by the Iranian officials’ description, China also urged Tehran to pull back from escalation.
Wu Xinbo, a prominent foreign policy expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, said he believed that China had played an active role in achieving the cease-fire, not just by encouraging Pakistan to play a role as a mediator but also by directly encouraging Iran to strike a deal.
The top Chinese foreign affairs official, Wang Yi, made a flurry of calls to his counterparts in the region emphasizing the need for a cease-fire and for countries not to resort to force to reopen the strait, according to the foreign ministry. Last week, he met in Beijing with Pakistani officials, who came to the Chinese capital after hosting a meeting in Islamabad with officials from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to discuss a possible resolution of the conflict.
Pakistan and Iran are both heavily dependent on China. Loans from China have become vital to keeping the heavily indebted Pakistani economy afloat. And China has played a central role over the last several years in supporting the Iranian economy, by buying almost all of its oil exports at a time when many other countries avoided doing business with Iran because of its nuclear weapons program.
Iran’s ambassador to China, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, called at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday for China, Russia and the United Nations to provide security guarantees for his country. However, Iran has made similar suggestions in the past that have not prompted China or Russia to act. When asked during the Chinese foreign ministry’s daily briefing whether China might provide such a guarantee, Ms. Mao was again noncommittal, saying that, “We hope that all parties will resolve their disputes through dialogue and negotiation.”
Shen Dingli, an independent international relations scholar in Shanghai, noted that China had sought to distance itself from Iran since the war began. Beijing sent only a vice foreign minister to the Iranian Embassy to express condolences on the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who had been killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Mr. Wang, the foreign minister, in one of his calls with his Iranian counterpart, even urged Tehran to “pay attention to the legitimate concerns of its neighbors,” meaning the Gulf nations, Mr. Shen noted.
China has often tried to cast itself as a mediator on the world stage and a responsible global power, in unspoken contrast to the United States. It helped broker a surprise rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, for example. But other attempts have been less successful. Beijing set forth a 12-point peace plan for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and a three-part proposal for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, both of which were vague and saw little apparent follow-up.
Berry Wang contributed reporting from Hong Kong and Siyi Zhao contributed research from Beijing.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to hold a news conference at the Pentagon at 8 a.m. It had previously been scheduled for Tuesday morning but was abruptly cancelled while the administration held talks.
Euan Ward reported from Beirut, Lebanon.
Israel said on Wednesday that it supported President Trump’s suspension of attacks against Iran for two weeks but added that the deal did not extend to Lebanon, where the Israeli military is locked in a grinding war with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Israel’s strikes in Lebanon continued on Wednesday. With the Israeli military no longer stretched across multiple fronts — and with the Trump administration showing little sign of engagement on Lebanon — analysts say that Israel could intensify its offensive against Hezbollah.
The announcement by Israel was made by the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, contradicting an earlier statement from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, who had said that the two-week suspension of hostilities would extend to Lebanon. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah or from the Lebanese government.
For weeks, Israeli officials have publicly rebuffed overtures by Lebanon’s government to engage in direct talks about a cease-fire — a significant offer given that the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations. Hezbollah has mirrored Israel’s position, rejecting negotiations under fire and signaling that it is prepared to keep fighting.
The war in Lebanon erupted soon after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Within days, Hezbollah fired rockets toward Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with a large-scale bombing campaign in Lebanon. The Israeli military also issued sweeping evacuation warnings for much of the country’s south and for the densely populated southern outskirts of the capital, Beirut.
More than 1,500 people have since been killed and well over a million others displaced, according to the Lebanese authorities. The Israeli campaign has morphed into a large-scale ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and Israel has signaled plans to occupy much of the region even after the current invasion ends.
The Lebanese military on Wednesday warned displaced civilians to postpone their return to southern Lebanese towns and villages. “Doing so may expose their lives to the risk of ongoing Israeli attacks,” the military said.
The deepening humanitarian crisis has been compounded by the fact that the United States has placed Lebanon low on its list of priorities during Mr. Trump’s second term, analysts said.
With Israeli officials apparently showing little appetite for a political resolution, Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said, “The Israeli toolbox has one tool.”
“There’s no politics in there,” he added.
Even as Israel’s bombing campaign and expanding ground invasion continue to degrade Hezbollah, analysts warn the conflict may endure, and with it the risk of civil instability in Lebanon. Most of the displaced are Shiite Muslims, the core of Hezbollah’s support base, whose presence in host communities is heightening sectarian tensions.
Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said Tehran was now likely to double down on its support for Hezbollah, long a central pillar of its regional strategy, making a quick end to the fighting in Lebanon unlikely.
“This is a game of endurance,” Mr. Vaez said.
That prospect left Lebanese feeling little relief as they awoke on Wednesday to news of the cease-fire.
In the coastal village of Jadra, south of Beirut, Amir Hattoum, a father of two, is struggling to make ends meet. Displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, he is paying $500 a month in rent, which he says he cannot sustain. With only limited savings and airstrikes drawing closer, he is trying not to think too far ahead.
“I am living day by day,” Mr. Hattoum said. “It is exhausting.”
Iranian officials are declaring the cease-fire deal a win for Iran, hours after President Trump threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization. Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, wrote on social media that “the era of Iran” had begun. Mohsen Ejei, the head of the Iranian judiciary, said that the country had “proven that it is unyielding and undefeatable.”
An alliance of Iraqi militias aligned to Iran announced in a statement that they will abide by the temporary cease-fire between Iran and the United States. The groups had been firing missiles and drones almost daily at U.S. targets inside Iraq, as well as at neighboring Gulf countries.
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who has long mediated between Iran and the United States, said in a statement that the temporary cease-fire means that “for now the world has stepped back from disaster. But there’s no room for complacency. Serious negotiations now required for lasting peace. Oman will support this work for the vital and urgent purpose of strong and enduring regional security.”
Iraq’s airspace and airports will reopen today after being closed when the war started, the country’s civil aviation authority announced on Wednesday. The war has severely affected air travel across the Middle East, with multiple countries restricting or closing their airspace to civilian flights.
Nima, a Tehran resident, said Wednesday morning was the first time in around 40 days that he was not worried that his colleagues might be killed in an airstrike. It was a good feeling, he said — the latest in a swirl of emotions that Iranians like him have experienced while waiting to see what would come of President Trump’s threat to wipe out their civilization and reports of a flurry of negotiations to pause the war.
“Last night was a really frightening evening,” he said, declining to be fully named for fear of government reprisal.
He opposed the war, and worried about what might come next for the country, given the damage to Iranian infrastructure and key economic players.
“Economically speaking, the country has seen a lot of damage,” he said. “The country is truly poor.”
In an apparent reference to the cease-fire deal, Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Israel, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of overseeing “a diplomatic disaster” and of failing to meet the war’s goals. “It will take us years to repair the diplomatic and strategic damage that Netanyahu inflicted due to arrogance, negligence, and a lack of strategic planning,” Lapid said on social media on Wednesday.
The shipping giant Maersk said on Wednesday that it welcomed the cease-fire announcement and the statements that commercial passage through the Strait of Hormuz may be possible again. It said it was working urgently to get more information and was not making specific changes yet. “The cease-fire may create transit opportunities, but it does not yet provide full maritime certainty and we need to understand all potential conditions attached,” the company said in a statement.
A man in Tehran, who is in his 20s and insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that the cease-fire left him with mixed feelings. There was a quiet in the city that he hadn’t experienced in more than a month and he was relieved not to face the prospect of total annihilation, he said. But he worried about the confidence he said the regime would have as a result of surviving the war, and how it might further crush domestic opposition. He said he would use whatever stability the cease-fire provided to make plans to leave Iran.
Confusion is swirling in Lebanon over whether the country was included in the cease-fire deal. Pakistan said it was, but Israel said it wasn’t. As attacks inside Lebanon continued on Wednesday, the Lebanese military warned displaced civilians to postpone their return to southern towns and villages, warning that doing so could expose them to ongoing Israeli attacks.
Rebecca Elliott reported from Houston and New York, and Ivan Penn from Los Angeles.
in these structures is an
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essential processing step
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz — a central aim for the United States when it agreed to a cease-fire with Iran — would be the first step toward getting more energy flowing through the Persian Gulf.
That is because dozens of refineries, storage facilities, and oil and gas fields in at least nine countries, from Iran to the United Arab Emirates and beyond, have been targeted in strikes. All told, 10 percent or more of the world’s oil supply has been turned off. Restarting those operations will require not only safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, but also inspecting pumps, replacing bespoke processing equipment and recalling employees and ships that have scattered across the globe.
“It’s not a case of you just flick a switch and everything’s back up again,” said Martin Houston, a longtime oil and gas executive who now serves as board member for several energy companies.
The timeline for bringing the Gulf energy system back to some semblance of normal is highly uncertain. For one thing, the war has been paused for only two weeks.
In the cease-fire deal, which President Trump announced on Tuesday evening, Iran agreed to allow ships to pass through the strait without being attacked. Earlier that day, Mr. Trump said that if the waterway remained closed, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” He has also repeatedly threatened to strike Iranian power plants and other critical infrastructure if Iran does not allow vessels to pass through the strait — acts that could be considered war crimes.
Attacks on energy facilities continued in the days leading up to the cease-fire, including on an oil refinery in Kuwait and petrochemical complexes in Iran. How much damage has already been done to the region’s infrastructure is difficult to know because many countries have shared little information.
Once companies regain confidence that their ships can transit the narrow waterway that runs between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, the first order of business is likely to be shipping out the oil and other fuels that countries close to the strait stockpiled in storage tanks. Then, as long as hostilities do not resume, some wells are likely to flow again within days or weeks, industry analysts and Gulf oil executives say.
But a fuller recovery will be a monthslong process, they cautioned. And even then, some infrastructure that has sustained extensive damage is expected to take years to repair.
For consumers, this means that gasoline prices at the pump — which recently topped $4 a gallon, on average, in the United States — are unlikely to return to their prewar levels any time soon, even though international oil prices fell considerably late Tuesday. Countries are using up stores of energy they had before the war, so the longer the war drags on, the stickier those high prices are likely to be.
The shuttering of oil wells has other consequences. Once idled, oil and gas wells can be difficult to restart, and the longer they remain closed, the more trouble companies may have turning them back on.
The pressure underground can get out of whack while wells are closed; water can build up. If the shutdowns last a long time, equipment might corrode after being exposed to hydrogen sulfide for too long. The toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs, is often found mixed in with oil and natural gas. Saudi Arabia and Iraq inject gas or water into many of their wells to coax out more oil, adding another layer of complexity to re-establishing the correct pressure when the time comes to reopen, the research firm BloombergNEF wrote recently.
Kuwait, which is sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Iraq at the tip of the Persian Gulf, is the world’s 10th-largest oil producer. Before Friday, when its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by a drone, the chief executive of the state-owned oil company Kuwait Petroleum said he expected to be able to “bring out quite a bit of production immediately, within a few days” of the war’s ending. Sheikh Nawaf Al Sabah, the chief executive, added during remarks late last month at an energy conference, CERAWeek by S&P Global, in Houston that “the full production will come within three or four months.”
The big question is how much damage has been sustained by all the infrastructure needed to get oil and gas from wellheads to world markets. Analysts say few installations appear to have suffered catastrophic harm, but they are working with limited information about most facilities.
One of the most important energy assets in the region is Qatar’s natural-gas export plant, Ras Laffan. The site, which spans at least three square miles in a large industrial city, supplies countries throughout Asia and Europe with natural gas that people use for cooking, heating homes and generating electricity.
Before it can be loaded on a ship, natural gas must be turned into a liquid by cooling it at about minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius). Qatar stopped making this liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., during the early days of the war. Missiles later took out 17 percent of the site’s capacity.
The undamaged parts of the facility would be restarted first, likely over a period of weeks or months. Steps include reopening the offshore gas wells that feed the export terminal; restarting any utilities that had been turned off; restocking the inventory of fuels used to cool the gas, known as refrigerants; and then actually cooling the gas, said Mehdy Touil, who spent more than a decade at Ras Laffan and is now the lead L.N.G. specialist at Calypso Commodities, a Berlin company.
The damaged portions are another matter. QatarEnergy, which operates Ras Laffan, has said it will take several years to repair those areas and bring them online. (The company did not respond to requests for comment.) Ras Laffan has 14 L.N.G.-producing units. The strikes last month took out the heart of two of them — the mammoth structures in which gas is cooled — QatarEnergy’s chief executive told Reuters. That equipment can be as tall as an 18-story building, and the lead time for a new one can run two years or more, industry officials said.
“These facilities were custom‑engineered and integrated into the broader Ras Laffan complex, making them substantially more difficult to replace” than simpler kinds of energy infrastructure, said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California.
Less is known about the extent of the damage to oil-processing facilities throughout the region. A refinery on the west coast of Saudi Arabia had been operating at much lower levels after a drone strike in mid-March, according to Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based consulting firm. Rystad estimated that the refinery most likely could be fully restored within a year.
Iran has also suffered attacks on its energy infrastructure, including strikes on oil depots in Tehran that turned the sky over the capital city black.
One concern for rebuilding is that supply chains for some specialized parts have already been stretched thin. The rush to build data centers for artificial intelligence has created a demand for gas-fired power plants and other energy infrastructure. Many of those facilities rely on equipment, like gas turbines, that may also be needed to make repairs in the Gulf.
“If you have the right supply chain, you can get things built back pretty quickly,” said Mike Stice, a University of Oklahoma professor who serves on the board of energy companies including the U.S. refining giant Marathon Petroleum. But, he added, timelines will depend a lot on what has been damaged. “All it takes is one critical piece of equipment that has a two-year delivery date.”
In the end, however the conflict plays out, analysts expect energy prices to eventually fall from wartime levels, but remain higher than they would have been in the absence of war.
Analysts at the French bank Société Générale recently said they expected oil to trade around $80 a barrel at the end of 2026, up from their earlier forecast of $65. Traders will be pricing in a greater risk of geopolitical disruption in the future.
Investors are so far betting the cease-fire deal will lead to a reopening of critical energy supplies from the Persian Gulf. Stock markets across Asia soared on Wednesday: The Nikkei 225 in Japan jumped 5.4 percent and stocks in South Korea surged nearly 7 percent, the most in the region. S&P 500 stock futures pointed to a nearly 3 percent jump when trading resumes in the U.S. And the global oil benchmark plunged 15 percent, to $93 a barrel.
Oil prices plunged and stocks surged on Wednesday as investors cheered a last-minute cease-fire agreement in the war on Iran that offered hope that energy shipments from the Persian Gulf would resume soon.
The cease-fire deal came 90 minutes before a deadline set by President Trump for Iran to accede to his demands or risk widespread devastation. The deal calls for a two-week period when the United States would suspend strikes on Iran, and Tehran would allow vessels and tankers carrying oil, gas and other commodities to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for transit of oil and gas.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, traded at about $95 a barrel, plunging 13 percent after the cease-fire news. The price remained about 30 percent higher than they were before the war.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell to around $96 a barrel, down about 15 percent. The price of this grade of oil is more than 40 percent up since the start of the war.
For the past five and a half weeks, investors and analysts have been focused on the strait of Hormuz, which normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Shipping traffic exiting the Persian Gulf through the strait has been effectively halted since the war began, and restoring the flow of energy via the waterway could take time.
Stocks rose around the world on Wednesday. The Stoxx 600, a broad European index, bounced 3.5 percent. Futures on the S&P 500 were 2.5 percent higher, pointing to a strong open when stocks resume trading in the United States.
Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, posted big gains. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 5.4 percent, while South Korea’s benchmark Kospi Index rose nearly 7 percent. Markets in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China all posted significant increases.
U.S. gas prices rose again on Wednesday, jumping to a national average of $4.16 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by 40 percent since the war began.
Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
Diesel prices have increased even more quickly and stood at $5.67 on Wednesday, up 51 percent since the start of the war.
Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.
“Presuming traffic begins to flow through Hormuz, trade flow normalization will take months, not weeks,” said Zhuwei Wang, the director of research and analysis at S&P Global Energy. High prices have already led to cutbacks in energy usage, which is expected to continue, he added, and the strait will face “persistent threats” for the foreseeable future.
Members of Congress in both parties welcomed President Trump’s announcement Tuesday night of cease-fire between the United States and Iran, but Democrats continued to raise grave questions about the path forward after weeks of war without congressional authorization.
“I’m glad Trump backed off his threat to wipe out a whole civilization and is searching for an offramp from his ridiculous bluster,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said in a statement late Tuesday.
Republican leaders, who have proceeded with a two-week congressional recess despite the war and a partial government shutdown, were mostly mum on Mr. Trump’s abrupt de-escalation, as they were about a social media post Tuesday morning in which he had threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not accede to his demands by nightfall.
House Speaker Mike Johnson reposted the president’s social media message announcing the cease-fire Tuesday night without commenting on it.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of the most outspoken supporters of the war effort, praised the diplomatic agreement, though he also appeared to lay out conditions for a U.S. withdrawal.
“Every ounce of the approximately 900 lbs. of highly enriched uranium has to be controlled by the U.S. and removed from Iran to prevent them in the future from having a dirty bomb or returning to the enrichment business,” he said in a social media post. “Like everyone, I hope we can end the reign of terror of the Iranian regime through diplomacy.”
Democrats, however, raised concerns about what would happen next.
“De-escalation is a long-overdue step after over a month of war without a clear purpose and with mounting costs for the American people,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“I remain deeply concerned that U.S. actions may have incentivized Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” she added. “None of this makes Americans safer or our people better off.”
Other Democrats were sharply critical.
“This statement changes nothing,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said in a statement. “The president has threatened a genocide against the Iranian people and is continuing to leverage that threat. He has launched a massive war of enormous risk and of catastrophic consequence without reason, rationale, nor congressional authorization — which is as clear a violation of the Constitution as any.”
Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had been among the only Republicans in the Senate to criticize the president’s threat of wiping out Iranian civilization ahead of the cease-fire. A handful more in the House raised concerns about the possibility that the United States would carry out escalating strikes against civilian infrastructure targets.
But after Mr. Trump’s announcement, more G.O.P. lawmakers surfaced to cheer the turnabout.
Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, called it an example of Mr. Trump’s “peace through strength” approach.
“I’m grateful for President Trump’s unwavering dedication to defending our country and holding our adversaries accountable,” Mr. Cramer said.
Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, said the cease-fire announcement was “a strong first step toward holding Iran accountable” and presented leaders in Tehran with a chance to “do the right thing.”
Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pontiff, issued a rare rebuke of President Trump on Tuesday, saying it was “truly unacceptable” to threaten to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization.”
He did not mention the president by name, but it was clear whom he was referring to.
“Today, as we all know, there has also been this threat against the entire people of Iran. And this is truly unacceptable,” the pope told reporters Tuesday evening in Italy, hours before an announcement by Mr. Trump that a two-week cease-fire had been reached. “There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety.”
Mr. Trump had earlier threatened to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran if Tehran did not allow commercial ships to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz. The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure is forbidden under international law. Mr. Trump’s threat drew widespread condemnation from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as United Nations officials and others around the world.
In his first year as pontiff, Leo has largely avoided wading directly into U.S. politics, but he has consistently called for an end to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and a return to dialogue to resolve the conflict. He has also pointedly rejected efforts by some in the Trump administration to frame the war in Christian terms.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in March called on Americans to pray for victory in battle and the safety of their troops “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The pope soon after warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, saying that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
In a homily during a Mass before Easter last week, Leo said that the Christian mission had been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”
Then, on Easter Sunday, he renewed his call for peace. “On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo told tens of thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Mr. Trump had imposed a Tuesday evening deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face devastation. Leo pressed for diplomacy. “Come back to the table. Let’s talk,” Leo said Tuesday evening. “Let’s look for solutions in a peaceful way.”
Hours later, shortly before his 8 p.m. deadline, Mr. Trump made the announcement about the cease-fire agreement. In a post on social media, Mr. Trump also claimed to be “very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Elisabetta Povoledo and Motoko Rich contributed reporting.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Delta CEO says airline will 'meaningfully' cut growth plans, sees $300 million boost from its refinery
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/8/2026, 4:02:18 PM
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the carrier will "meaningfully reduce" its capacity growth plans in the near term as fuel costs soar, solidifying a pullback from airlines that have been roiled by a historic run-up in jet fuel due to the Middle East war.
Delta on Wednesday forecast adjusted per-share earnings of $1 to $1.50 in the second quarter, below the $1.52 a share analysts were expecting, with revenue up in the "low-teens" percentage points compared with a year earlier, above the roughly 10% Wall Street forecast. Capacity will likely be flat on the year, Delta said.
Here's what Delta reported for the first quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on consensus estimates from LSEG:
Delta is the first of the major U.S. airlines to report first-quarter results, though United Airlines, Delta and others had already been trimming capacity for the quarter.
Less capacity can mean higher airfare, which is already on the rise. Delta also joined JetBlue Airways and United in raising its checked bag fees on Tuesday. Carriers around the world are more even more affected by the rise in fuel costs because of their countries' reliance on imports and have added fuel surcharges or announced fare increases.
Bastian said demand remains strong, despite the higher travel costs, and that Delta's customer base continues to spend on travel, particularly for higher-end products like more spacious seats.
Speaking to reporters, Bastian said it isn't clear if or when customers will pull back.
Delta owns a refinery where it turns crude oil into jet fuel and other products, like gasoline and diesel, giving it an advantage over other carriers.
"We we don't know what where fuel is going to go, but to the extent fuel stays elevated, that refinery will continue to help us," Bastian told reporters.
Delta expects to post $1 billion in pre-tax profit in the second quarter and receive a $300 million benefit from its refinery, the carrier said, a major tailwind for the facility near Philadelphia that it acquired in April 2012 from Phillips 66.
The rise in jet fuel prices since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, has been sharper than the run-up in crude oil. Jet fuel prices in major U.S. cities were up nearly 88% since Feb. 27, through April 6, according to Airlines for America industry group, citing Argus data.
Delta expects all-in fuel costs of $4.30 per gallon in the second quarter.
Bastian said the airline isn't walking back its full-year forecast but isn't updating it either because of uncertainty of fuel prices. Delta projected potentially record earnings this year when it released its last earnings in January.
"As we gain more knowledge of the impact of the duration of the fuel spike over the course of the next couple months, we'll be in a better position," Bastian said.
Oil futures were sharply lower on Wednesday after President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he agreed to suspend planned attacks on Iranian infrastructure for two weeks, backing off of threats to imminently order the destruction of Iran's "whole civilization," and Iran agreed to open the key Strait of Hormuz shipping channel.
Meanwhile, premium travel demand continues to drive results. Delta said premium-ticket revenue, from first class and other more expensive options compared with coach, was up 14% in the first quarter over last year. Main cabin revenue increased for the first time since late 2024.
Capacity, however, fell 3% in the first three months of 2026 compared with last year "as continued investment in fleet renewal drove premium seat mix higher." the company said.
Rival United, the second-most profitable U.S. carrier, has been trying to increase its premium-seat footprint, investing in new onboard technology, new suites and other perks.
"I think they're smart trying to copy us," Bastian said.
Bastian said that Delta did see a pullback in some business travel during the hourslong Transportation Security Administration lines at airports last month due to the partial government shutdown but that travel segment appears to have recovered.
For the first quarter, Delta reported net income of $423 million, or 64 cents a share, up from $291 million, or 45 cents a share, during the same period last year. Adjusting for one-time items, Delta reported 64 cents a share for the first quarter, ahead of the 57 cents analysts expected.
Revenue, adjusted for third-party sales from its refinery and other items, rose more than 9% to $14.2 million in the first quarter.
China Pressed Iran Toward Cease-fire, Iranian Officials Say
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/8/2026, 4:01:14 PM
For years, China has been one of Iran’s most important lifelines. China has bought almost all of its oil exports, shielded it diplomatically and helped it weather international isolation. Now, according to three Iranian officials, Beijing has used that influence for a different purpose: to press Iran to accept the cease-fire with the United States.
Iran’s decision to accept the two-week cease-fire proposal brokered by Pakistan came after diplomatic efforts by Pakistan and a last-minute push by China, according to the Iranian officials. China asked Iran to show flexibility and defuse tensions, they said.
The intervention reflects not only Beijing’s influence over Tehran but also its own stake in preventing a protracted war that could disrupt energy supplies or set off a global recession, as well as hurt Persian Gulf countries, with which China also has close relations. The deal also calls for the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Chinese officials have not publicly described Beijing’s involvement in the lead-up to the deal announced by President Trump on Tuesday night. Asked on Wednesday if China had helped persuade Iran to agree to the deal, a foreign ministry spokeswoman in Beijing, Mao Ning, neither confirmed nor denied its involvement, saying only generally that “We have always been advocating for peace talks and the cease-fire.”
The deal, which Iran described as a victory in which Washington had accepted its terms, came 90 minutes before a deadline set by Mr. Trump for Iran to accede to his demands or risk widespread devastation.
China’s moves in recent days reflect the delicate balance that Beijing is trying to strike. At the United Nations on Tuesday, Beijing backed Iran by joining Moscow in vetoing a Security Council resolution that could have paved the way for military action to open the Strait of Hormuz. But behind the scenes, by the Iranian officials’ description, China also urged Tehran to pull back from escalation.
Wu Xinbo, a prominent foreign policy expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, said he believed that China had played an active role in achieving the cease-fire, not just by encouraging Pakistan to play a role as a mediator but also by directly encouraging Iran to strike a deal.
The top Chinese foreign affairs official, Wang Yi, made a flurry of calls to his counterparts in the region emphasizing the need for a cease-fire and for countries not to resort to force to reopen the strait, according to the foreign ministry. Last week, he met in Beijing with Pakistani officials, who came to the Chinese capital after hosting a meeting in Islamabad with officials from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to discuss a possible resolution of the conflict.
Pakistan and Iran are both heavily dependent on China. Loans from China have become vital to keeping the heavily indebted Pakistani economy afloat. And China has played a central role over the last several years in supporting the Iranian economy, by buying almost all of its oil exports at a time when many other countries avoided doing business with Iran because of its nuclear weapons program.
Iran’s ambassador to China, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, called at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday for China, Russia and the United Nations to provide security guarantees for his country. However, Iran has made similar suggestions in the past that have not prompted China or Russia to act. When asked during the Chinese foreign ministry’s daily briefing whether China might provide such a guarantee, Ms. Mao was again noncommittal, saying that, “We hope that all parties will resolve their disputes through dialogue and negotiation.”
Shen Dingli, an independent international relations scholar in Shanghai, noted that China had sought to distance itself from Iran since the war began. Beijing sent only a vice foreign minister to the Iranian Embassy to express condolences on the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who had been killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Mr. Wang, the foreign minister, in one of his calls with his Iranian counterpart, even urged Tehran to “pay attention to the legitimate concerns of its neighbors,” meaning the Gulf nations, Mr. Shen noted.
China has often tried to cast itself as a mediator on the world stage and a responsible global power, in unspoken contrast to the United States. It helped broker a surprise rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, for example. But other attempts have been less successful. Beijing set forth a 12-point peace plan for Russia’s war in Ukraine, and a three-part proposal for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, both of which were vague and saw little apparent follow-up.
Berry Wang contributed reporting from Hong Kong and Siyi Zhao contributed research from Beijing.
Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic.
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
Read the full story at nyt News.
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