Top Stories — Friday, April 10, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Trump praises Palantir with stock down 14% this week as Iran conflict drags on — CNBC
- ‘I’m Fed Up.’ Frustrated With Trump, Starmer Embraces Other Allies. — nyt News
- Here’s the latest. — nyt News
Trump praises Palantir with stock down 14% this week as Iran conflict drags on
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/10/2026, 10:04:02 PM
President Donald Trump lauded Palantir in a post to Truth Social on Friday as the artificial intelligence software stock headed for a 15% weekly plunge.
"Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment," Trump posted on the social media platform. "Just ask our enemies!!!"
The U.S. military is reportedly utilizing Palantir's AI-powered Maven Smart System platform to identify targets in the Middle East, tied to strikes on Iran that began in late February. Palantir counts on the government, including the Pentagon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for more than half of its U.S. revenue.
Over the years, CEO Alex Karp vocally supported America's military and equipping warfighters with the best possible tools. Despite previous critiques of Trump and past donations to President Joe Biden's campaign, Karp has backed the new administration and its policies.
Karp regularly defends Palantir when the company is criticized for providing tools used to surveil immigrants and Americans. His outspoken support of Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas also led some employees to leave the company, he previously told CNBC.
In October of last year, Palantir communications chief Lisa Gordon called the company's political shift toward the Trump administration "concerning" in an interview at an event hosted by The Information. The video was quickly removed from The Information's YouTube and social media pages.
Palantir is also tied to AI lab Anthropic, which was blacklisted by the Department of Defense after raising concerns about the use of its tools for autonomous weapons and government surveillance. Palantir uses Anthropic and models from other AI labs on its platform.
Karp told CNBC last month that Palantir would "phase out" Anthropic's models, but has not done so yet.
Software stocks sold off this week after Anthropic released its new Mythos model in a limited capacity, citing concerns of potential misuse by hackers. Worries that new AI tools will displace traditional software models have plagued the industry in recent months.
Famed short-seller Michael Burry has been targeting the stock of late, along with other AI names. In a post this week that was subsequently deleted, Burry wrote that Anthropic is "eating Palantir's lunch."
Burry again wrote about the company following Trump's post on Friday.
"The stock may catch a wind here," Burry wrote in a Substack post. "It has been selling off with software stocks. As mentioned, I continue to hold the puts, as I believe the fundamental value of this company is well under $50/share."
After this week's slump, which deepened on the day of Trump's post, the stock is trading at about $128.
‘I’m Fed Up.’ Frustrated With Trump, Starmer Embraces Other Allies.
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/10/2026, 10:02:01 PM
As President Trump turns the United States into an increasingly grumpy and unreliable partner for Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is looking to diversify his friend group.
Hours after a fragile cease-fire halted the U.S. strikes on Iran this week, Mr. Starmer arrived in Saudi Arabia to begin a three-day visit to the Gulf, where he also courted leaders in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. It was an effort, he told ITV News, “to show that we stand with our allies.” Only toward the end of his Middle East trip did the prime minister talk with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Starmer’s new approach, which follows almost a year in which he repeatedly tried to cozy up to Mr. Trump, is part of a broader strategy to move Britain closer to partners in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere as the relationship with the United States sours.
In the six weeks since the Iran war started, the once-chummy rapport between Mr. Starmer and Mr. Trump has cratered. In the face of repeated taunts and mockery by the president, Mr. Starmer has hardened his approach, saying he will not give in to pressure from the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to join the fighting in Iran.
“I’m fed up,” he acknowledged during Thursday’s interview, in a rare venting of public frustration. The prime minister, who rarely criticizes Mr. Trump by name, complained that families and businesses in Britain were unfairly subject to wild swings in their energy bills “because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”
Asked about Mr. Trump’s profanity-laced social media post last week threatening to wipe out “a whole civilization,” Mr. Starmer did not hesitate to distance himself from the president.
“Let me be really clear about this,” the prime minister said, “they are not words I would use — ever use — because I come at this with our British values and principles.”
Peter Ricketts, a veteran British diplomat who served as the country’s first national security adviser, said this week that Mr. Starmer’s government needed to abandon the idea of a so-called “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, and make deeper ties with other allies around the world.
“We do have to rethink the idea that the U.S. is a reliable, trustworthy ally on which we can depend in the longer term,” Mr. Ricketts said in an interview with BBC Radio. “We’ve got to get closer to the Europeans. We’ve got to work out how we live in a world where American interest has moved away from Europe.”
He added: “I don’t think we can unsay the words that Trump has said about the fact that we have two broken aircraft carriers, old and useless. All this disparaging has to do damage.”
For his part, Mr. Starmer has made it clear that he is not giving up on closeness to the United States altogether, not least because the economic and security ties are still vital. But in recent weeks, the prime minister has highlighted the need to look beyond America.
In Bahrain, he said that Britain’s economy had struggled in the years following the Brexit vote and the subsequent deal to leave the European Union.
“That’s why, not just on defense and security but also on trade and energy, I want us to be closer to the E.U., to strengthen our economy, to make it more resilient,” he said.
That is politically difficult for Mr. Starmer, whose Labour Party pledged during the 2024 election campaign not to take major steps toward reversing Brexit or rejoining the European single market. But in his second year in office, he is increasingly testing the limits of that promise with steps to strengthen ties with the bloc.
There are other indications that Mr. Starmer’s government is trying not to rely as deeply on the United States.
On Thursday, John Healey, Britain’s secretary of defense, took the rare step of revealing a previously covert military operation to track Russian submarines caught spying in the northern Atlantic Ocean. Mr. Healey made a point of saying that the operation was a demonstration of what Britain and its allies, including Norway, can do to safeguard their waters against an aggressive Russia.
He did not mention America.
Last week, Yvette Cooper, Britain’s foreign secretary, convened a meeting of her counterparts from more than 40 countries to discuss efforts to secure the Strait of Hormuz once the fighting in the Middle East was over. The United States did not participate in the meeting or a later gathering of military planners from the same countries.
Mr. Starmer’s Middle East visit was meant to underscore a deepening alliance with Gulf leaders. While Britain did not join the attacks against Iran, its Typhoon and F-35 fighter jets have flown nightly missions over Gulf nations to help protect them from incoming missiles and drones.
It has also deployed more than 400 personnel, air defense and counter-drone units, and Wildcat and Merlin helicopters to the Middle East.
Those efforts, along with the diplomatic and military meetings organized by Britain, are part of Mr. Starmer’s attempt to take a leadership role in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, whose shipping lanes are crucial to the world economy, and to protect British interests. He said Thursday that he sees the war as a defining moment in his time as prime minister.
That kind of ambition comes with risks.
“The pressure will now be on Starmer to deliver on what he pledged — that the U.K. would step up to secure the Strait of Hormuz ‘once the fighting has ended,’” said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank based in London.
“We are there now,” she said, “so the question will be what is the U.K. willing to do? Washington will be watching too.”
But if Mr. Starmer is worried about what Mr. Trump will say, it’s not evident. (In fact, while the prime minister’s poll ratings in Britain remain very low, they have bumped up slightly since he began standing up to the president more.)
It was clear on Thursday that Mr. Starmer was talking about resisting Mr. Trump’s taunts about being too cowardly to join the fight against Iran.
“I make decisions on what’s in the British national interest and that is my focus,” he said. “And notwithstanding for noise and the pressure and the rhetoric, that has been my firm focus throughout this.”
Michael D. Shear is the chief U.K. correspondent for The New York Times, covering British politics and culture and diplomacy around the world.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Here’s the latest.
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/10/2026, 10:01:46 PM
Tehran8:08 p.m. April 10
Pinned
As Vice President JD Vance was heading to Pakistan on Friday for peace talks with Iran, a senior Iranian official laid out new conditions for the negotiations, adding even more uncertainty about the durability of the cease-fire and whether the two sides could reach a long-term deal.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, wrote in a post on X that two requirements — a cease-fire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets — “must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.” Mr. Ghalibaf, one of the key Iranian figures overseeing the war, did not say what he meant by blocked assets, but Iranian funds overseas are often frozen as a result of sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western nations.
Israel on Friday kept up its fight against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, intensifying airstrikes in southern Lebanon. The attacks came despite President Trump’s urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back Israel’s operations in the country. The strikes have exposed significant differences between Mr. Netanyahu, who has said Israel’s goals still haven’t been met, and Mr. Trump, who appears eager to make a deal with Iran to end the war.
Under pressure from Mr. Trump and European leaders, Mr. Netanyahu said on Thursday his country would start talks with the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah. But, hours later, he vowed to keep up strikes on the group, saying, “There is no cease-fire in Lebanon.”
A senior Hezbollah official dismissed the idea of talks between Israel and Lebanon, saying that the Lebanese government did not speak for the group.
Mr. Vance struck an optimistic but cautious tone about the talks in Islamabad. “I think it’s going to be positive,” he told reporters, but warned that if the Iranians are “going to try to play us, then they’re going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
One priority for Mr. Vance will be the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping passage for oil and gas that Iran has in effect blockaded since the war started. Even after the cease-fire was announced, marine traffic in the strait was at a trickle.
Iran’s military signaled on Friday that it would maintain control of the passageway, saying in a statement carried by Iranian state media that it would “not give up our legitimate rights in any way” over the strait.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Inflation surges: The Consumer Price Index jumped 3.3 percent in the year through March, reflecting the rising costs for energy and other goods affected by disruptions in the Middle East. Read more ›
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,701 civilians, including 254 children, had been killed in Iran as of Wednesday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Thursday said that more than 1,800 people had been killed in the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, including 303 in a wave of Israeli strikes on Wednesday. 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.
Criticism of Trump: Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain directed criticism at Mr. Trump, saying in an interview with the ITN news agency that he was “fed up” with Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia for causing the price of energy to jump. The prime minister rarely criticizes Trump by name in public.
Pakistan talks: Pakistani authorities have disclosed almost no details about the talks scheduled for this weekend, including where they will be held, citing security concerns and the need to let Iranian and U.S. officials drive the negotiations. In preparation, they have locked down the capital, blocking roads and deploying security forces across the city. Read more
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, reiterated on Friday his support for suspending the European Union’s association agreement with Israel over what he described as “violations of international law.” “Let’s not let Lebanon turn into a new Gaza,” Sánchez said at the European Pulse Forum in Barcelona. His remarks came hours after Israel expelled Spain from a U.S.-led group in Israel that manages humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said the decision reflected Spain’s “obsessive anti-Israel bias.”
Rescue workers in Beirut continued on Friday to clear the wreckage from a devastating series of Israeli strikes this week that left more than 300 people dead. Though several people remained unaccounted for, rescue teams said they no longer expected to find survivors or intact bodies beneath the rubble. But they said they were continuing to recover human remains from the debris and carefully collecting them for DNA analysis to confirm the victims’ identities.
Europe could face shortages of jet fuel if ships are not allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz soon, an association of airports warned top European Union officials on Thursday.
The warning, from the Airports Council International Europe, came days after President Trump announced a cease-fire agreement with Iran that was supposed to unblock the strait. But ship traffic through the passageway, which lies between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, remains far below prewar levels.
A significant share of global oil and jet fuel supply is exported from the Middle East through the strait. But that has been virtually cut off since the United States went to war with Iran. The shortage so far has mainly resulted in higher fuel costs for airlines, which have cut unprofitable flights, raised ticket prices, added fuel surcharges and increased bag fees.
“At this stage, we understand that if the passage through the Strait of Hormuz does not resume in any significant and stable way within the next three weeks, systemic jet fuel shortage is set to become a reality,” the group said in a letter to E.U. officials.
Fuel supply shortfalls could “severely disrupt airport operations and air connectivity,” risking “harsh” economic consequences, according to the group, which represents most airports on the continent.
Europe is particularly reliant on the Middle East for fuel. At least 40 percent of Europe’s jet fuel imports last year came from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Amaar Khan, European head of jet fuel pricing for Argus Media, a company that tracks commodity prices. Kuwait is Europe’s largest jet fuel supplier.
Asia is also very reliant on the Persian Gulf for energy, and some airlines there have had to cancel flights because of low supplies of jet fuel.
Israel intensified its strikes in southern Lebanon on Friday, though by evening there had not yet been new attacks in Beirut. Lebanon’s state-run news agency said that Israel had carried out its largest wave of strikes yet in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh. The strikes included one on an office belonging to Lebanese state security, one of the government’s main security and intelligence agencies, which killed at least eight members of the service, the agency reported. The Israeli military also said two soldiers were injured in a drone attack in southern Lebanon.
The speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Friday that negotiations with the United States to end the war could not start until the implementation of a cease-fire in Lebanon and the release of frozen Iranian assets abroad, a stance that could scuttle the talks before they even begin.
“Two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations,” Ghalibaf wrote in a post on X. “These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.”
Ghalibaf did not say what he meant by blocked assets, but Iranian funds overseas are often frozen as a result of sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western nations.
Reporting from Wexford, Ireland
The Irish government said it had called in the army to help clear blockades of crucial roads, after days of protests over the surging price of fuel, driven by the war in the Middle East, brought highways and streets to a standstill.
The government said in a statement that it had held an emergency meeting on Thursday night to discuss the effects of the protests, which it said were causing “significant disruption for the public, to supply chains and vital services.” It added that the blockades had restricted access to a number of ports, preventing fuel from being distributed to service stations in some parts of Ireland and causing concern that emergency vehicles could run out of fuel.
Groups of protesters began blocking roads on Tuesday with trucks and tractors, demanding the government do more to ease the burden of fuel costs, which have jumped in price around the world since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The protests appear to have been organized largely in messaging groups and on social media, with truckers, farmers and others reliant on fuel — especially diesel — taking part.
The average price of diesel in Ireland hit 2.11 euros per liter, the equivalent of more than $9.30 per gallon, at the start of this week, according to data compiled by the European Commission. The price of diesel has risen more than 30 percent since the start of the war in Iran.
Last month, the Irish government cut taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel and suspended a tax on home heating oil. But many protesters said the actions did not go far enough, with some demanding a cap on the cost of diesel and gasoline, while others want the tax cuts to be extended.
On Friday, trucks and buses blocked O’Connell Street Bridge in Dublin, a main artery connecting the north and south of the capital, while other protesters blocked roads connecting key ports and the country’s only oil refinery in Cork.
Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister, said in an interview with The Irish Times published on Friday morning that the government was open to engaging with the protesters but only “through established negotiating channels.”
He said that further measures to ease costs could be possible through negotiations, but added, “the strikes will have to end first.”
The Irish government met with a number of unions this week, including on Monday, the day before the protests began. Representatives from a variety of unions, including the Irish Farmers’ Association, are set to meet with the government on Friday afternoon.
Some of the most disruptive actions have taken place on the M50, the highway that encircles Dublin. It is also the main route to the country’s busiest flight hub, Dublin Airport. Some travelers stuck in traffic abandoned their taxis and buses and walked to the airport, rolling their bags along the shoulder, in an effort to make it to their flights after dozens of trucks parked on the roadway on Thursday evening.
But the protests were not just focused on the capital, with demonstrations in towns and villages across the country also causing standstills on local roads.
In the small village of Inch in County Wexford, dozens of cars lined an overpass, with protesters waving an Irish flag and cheering. Tractors blocked the on ramp to the highway, forcing frustrated motorists to turn back and find alternative routes.
Jason Karaian contributed reporting from London.
As U.S. and Iranian officials prepare for peace talks in Pakistan, Iran’s military signaled on Friday that it would maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz and would retaliate if Israel continues its attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, adding to doubts over the durability the two-week cease-fire.
In a statement carried by Iranian state media, the military said it would “maintain the initiative to dominate that strait and will not give up our legitimate rights in any way.” The military also warned of a “crushing and painful response” if Israeli strikes against Hezbollah continue.
Europe could face jet fuel shortages if oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are not restarted in a “significant and stable way” within three weeks, a group that represents most airports on the continent said in a letter to top European Union officials on Thursday. Fuel supply shortfalls could “severely disrupt airport operations and air connectivity,” risking “harsh” economic consequences, the group, the Airports Council International Europe, said in a letter.
Reporting from Johannesburg
After President Trump demanded that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz in an Easter Sunday social media post, the Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe responded with a snarky quip on X: “We’ve lost the keys.”
Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, the official social media accounts of several Iranian embassies and consulates around the world have made posts that went viral, matching, if not surpassing, Mr. Trump’s social media bravado.
The Iranian embassies in Africa appear to have taken the lead, particularly the South Africa account.
“Say hello to the new world superpower,” read a post on X by Iran’s embassy in South Africa on Wednesday, the day the cease-fire between the United States, Israel and Iran took effect. The jab was an apparent reference to Washington’s failure to crush Iran’s theocratic rulers, despite a far superior military.
An earlier post from the embassy in South Africa played on Mr. Trump’s claims to be a peacemaker, juxtaposing a cartoon dove with the shadow of a fighter jet.
While other missions have shared posts on social media mocking Mr. Trump, the South African account stands out for its frequency, its ability to go viral and because of the warm relationship between Pretoria and Tehran.
Iranian officials seem to have made the calculation to be aggressive on the social media accounts of embassies in places “where it would not attract negative repercussions from the host government and where they could possibly get support from the population,” said Na’eem Jeenah, the executive director of the Afro-Middle East Center in Johannesburg. “South Africa is probably one of the better examples of that.”
The Trump administration has accused South Africa of being too cozy with Iran. The South African government has often responded by citing historical ties between the two nations and emphasizing the importance of nonalignment in its international diplomacy.
Not all of the posts have been humorous or mocking. The embassy in South Africa used artificial intelligence to reanimate some of the children said to have been killed by an American bomb that hit their school in the southern Iranian town of Minab early in the war. In the clips, the children discuss their dreams for the future.
Some argue that Iran is appropriating the language of the extremely online to engage in information warfare. The aim, analysts say, is partly to sanitize its image and influence a generation of young people unfamiliar with the brutal repression of dissent in Iran and the decades of geopolitical tensions with the West, but highly attuned to vibes.
Hey @IraninSA
How’s the vibe in South Africa?
Tunisias ������������ are fully backing us and they’re saying we’re definitely going to win! ������
Other Iranian embassies in Africa have used their accounts to flatter their host countries and give the impression that those countries support Iran in its war effort against the United States and Israel. In one post, the embassy in Tunisia started a chain with other Iranian embassies boasting that they had the backing of the countries mentioned.
Google the price of oil, and you’ll most likely find two widely quoted prices for the commodity, one in the United States, the other in Europe.
These prices, which are constantly changing on electronic markets, suggest that although the war with Iran has made energy a lot more expensive, things are not nearly as bad as they were four years ago, after Russia invaded Ukraine.
But if you needed an actual tanker full of oil — and quickly — it would cost you dearly.
On Tuesday, before President Trump said the United States and Iran had reached a cease-fire agreement, a commonly cited price of Brent oil, the European one, was about $109 a barrel. That was well below highs reached in 2022, when that price briefly topped $130, without adjusting for inflation.
But in the market where energy companies buy and sell liquid oil transported on ships, the price was almost $145 a barrel, a record and more than double the price before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, according to Argus Media, a company that tracks commodity prices.
The reason the two prices were so different is that the first, more commonly cited price is the futures price. It’s a financial instrument that reflects how valuable traders think oil will be in a month or two, and — in simplest terms — is not unlike a stock price. The second is often called the spot price, and it is tied to the delivery of many tons of crude oil, which a refinery can turn into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
The futures and spot prices are rarely exactly the same, but the gap between them has grown unusually big in the past few weeks, so much so that oil executives and analysts say futures prices no longer accurately reflect the extent of the supply shock that the world is experiencing.
“The futures market is not representing the on-the-ground and on-the-water reality of oil at all,” said Vikas Dwivedi, global energy strategist at Macquarie Group, an Australian financial services firm. “It’s quite broken.”
Mike Wirth, the chief executive of Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, expressed similar concerns last month at a Houston energy conference, CERAWeek by S&P Global.
“Physical prices and physical supplies would reflect a tighter market than I think the forward curve reflects,” Mr. Wirth said, referring to the futures market.
Spot and futures prices often diverge during big market disruptions, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. International upheavals magnify the difference between the value of oil today and two months from now.
But the spread between the two prices in recent days dwarfs that of any other period in the past 20 years, Argus data show. Even energy analysts have struggled to explain why that gap is so large this time.
“It is a mystery,” Mr. Dwivedi said.
What is clear is that the war with Iran has upended oil markets in profound ways. Estimates indicate that companies have turned off 10 percent or more of the world’s oil supply since the war started because they cannot safely get tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.
Prices have soared around the world. And some countries in Asia — which depends heavily on fuel from the Persian Gulf — have even faced shortages. Gas stations in Vietnam and Thailand turned away customers, saying they had no fuel; Sri Lanka declared every Wednesday a public holiday; and many other countries have mandated or encouraged remote work.
The two-week cease-fire with Iran sent oil prices plunging in the hours after Mr. Trump announced the deal, but very little has changed on the ground. Shipping companies remain wary of sending vessels through the strait. That means that a substantial portion of the world’s oil is still trapped in the Persian Gulf.
“The physical price just tells you how tight everything is right now,” said Jason Gabelman, an energy analyst at the investment bank TD Cowen.
Vice President JD Vance struck an optimistic tone as he departed for Islamabad for peace talks with Iran. “We’re looking forward to the negotiation,” he told reporters. “I think it’s going to be positive.”
Less than 24 hours before U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to meet here for high-level peace talks, Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, is locked down.
The authorities have blocked roads with shipping containers and barbed wire, deployed security forces across the city, and sealed off a two-mile radius around the Serena Hotel, where parts of the delegations are scheduled to stay. Even the hiking trails on the lush hills overlooking the city have been closed to the public.
Pakistani officials declared Thursday and Friday as public holidays to prepare the capital, a quiet, green and residential city of just over a million residents in a country of 250 million people.
The Pakistani authorities have disclosed almost no details about the talks, including where they will be held, citing security concerns and the need to let Iranian and U.S. officials drive the negotiations.
Still, Pakistan’s government has welcomed its moment in the international diplomatic spotlight. World leaders in Europe and the Middle East have thanked Pakistan for its mediation efforts. Editorials in Pakistani newspapers have heralded a new era for the country as a regional power broker.
The Pakistani foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, even said that Iranian and U.S. journalists covering the talks could travel to Pakistan and obtain a visa on arrival — a highly unusual measure in a country where foreign reporters usually wait weeks or months before obtaining permission to enter.
The price of oil is edging higher as traders remain wary of the durability of the U.S.-Iran cease-fire. Brent crude, the international benchmark, is up about 1 percent, to around $97 a barrel. That said, oil had been trading at around $110 a barrel earlier this week, before the cease-fire was announced.
But those widely cited prices are on futures contracts, for delivery in June. For buyers who need oil immediately, prices on what’s known as the “spot” market are much higher, recently hovering around $145 a barrel. That reflects the supply crunch stemming from disruptions to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which have not eased since the cease-fire.
After NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, hinted at possible NATO involvement in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Spain’s foreign minister has pushed back on the idea. “NATO has no involvement in this war. The Middle East is not within NATO’s area of action,” the minister, José Manuel Albares, said on Friday, in remarks published by the Spanish news media.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain directed criticism at President Trump, saying he was “fed up” with Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia for causing the price of energy to jump. “I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy, because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world,” he said in an interview Thursday with the ITN news service. The comment was a rare eruption of frustration by Starmer, who rarely criticizes Trump by name in public.
Katie Rogers and Tyler Pager are White House correspondents. They reported from Washington.
Weeks after Vice President JD Vance privately warned President Trump of the costs of a full-scale U.S. war with Iran, he is now leading the charge to negotiate an end to the biggest foreign policy crisis that the president has faced during his time in office.
Mr. Vance departed for Pakistan on Friday to hold talks with the Iranians, as a cease-fire between the United States and Iran is under strain. It would be the highest-level meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials since 1979. He is expected to be joined by Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who led a failed round of negotiations in February.
The stakes are enormous for Mr. Trump and for Mr. Vance, whose most high-profile assignments from Mr. Trump have involved domestic politics, most recently as the president’s “fraud czar.”
Before the war began, the vice president was planning to be heavily focused on traveling the country ahead of the midterm elections, counteracting widespread concerns over the cost of living and affordability by attacking Democrats as out of touch and politically extreme. The war has upended that messaging. An Iranian blockade around the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil route, has sent energy prices soaring.
“Knowing that this is a midterm election year, that is the biggest leverage point that the Iranians have, and they know that,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. Vance’s predecessor from Mr. Trump’s first term. “That creates a challenge for the president’s negotiating team.”
He added: “There’s a best-case scenario that you have successful talks, and you have a great news cycle about it. But doesn’t Iran know that they can break the terms, as they have in the past?”
Mr. Vance, 41, has stayed largely at the periphery of other high-stakes foreign policy missions, including the operation to seize Nicolás Maduro and depose him as Venezuela’s leader. He was traveling in Azerbaijan in February, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, delivered a presentation requesting U.S. involvement in a war with Iran.
On Tuesday, as the president threatened to wipe out the Iranian civilization in Washington, Mr. Vance was in Hungary, stumping for Viktor Orban, the country’s nationalist prime minister.
He will now lead the effort to persuade Iranians to keep the strait open even as the Israelis continue a bombing campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a conflict that the United States has said is not part of the current cease-fire agreement but is threatening to upend it.
His initial opposition to the war is appealing to Pakistani officials, who asked Mr. Witkoff for Mr. Vance to get involved, according to two people familiar with those discussions. The president then asked the vice president to lead the peace effort.
The coming days could be a delicate balancing act for Mr. Vance, who must work closely with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, two people with deep ties to Mr. Trump who have been traveling the world on his behalf, as he tries to end the war.
Mr. Vance’s allies say his presence adds formality and heft to negotiations led by Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, whose fast-paced work is often conducted through constant phone calls back to Washington, and by writing, editing and circulating flurries of proposals. Mr. Vance is also joining a pair of negotiators who had failed to avert the war in the first place during an initial round of talks.
His involvement highlights the complex nature of the modern vice presidency: Unlike other cabinet members, Mr. Vance does not have a constitutionally defined role or an agency to run. For some people who’ve held the job, a lack of an established lane can be destabilizing and frustrating. As vice president, Mr. Vance has been content to be a “Swiss Army knife” with a willingness to go where he is needed rather than to ask for specific tasks, according to a person close to him who was not authorized to speak publicly.
But the vice president is the only person in the administration who can immediately be empowered to step into a high-profile diplomatic mission and speak as a direct emissary of the president.
“Because the vice president can pull all the strands together like no other cabinet member, it’s as close to a mirror to the president as you can get,” said Philip H. Gordon, who was the national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. “The vice president doesn’t have to be central to anything, but when asked to undertake an important diplomatic mission, then the vice president is hugely empowered.”
In 2021, Ms. Harris was sent to France to smooth over relations with President Emmanuel Macron after the United States, Australia and Britain brusquely canceled out a lucrative and strategically important submarine contract that the French had with the Australians.
For his part, Mr. Trump has a history of sending his No. 2 to resolve thorny geopolitical disputes.
In 2019, Mr. Trump pulled an unsuspecting Mr. Pence into the Oval Office and told him to head to Ankara, the Turkish capital, and persuade the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to pull back his forces from northern Syria. Mr. Pence emerged after five hours of talks with a cease-fire agreement that the United States claimed as a victory. In truth, Mr. Erdogan refused to pull back from the enclave, gaining territory and displacing tens of thousands of Kurds in the region without paying a diplomatic price.
Mr. Vance is now tasked with helping resolve a conflict much larger in scale and complexity than the one Mr. Pence faced. Before returning to the United States on Wednesday, Mr. Vance told reporters that he had spent a lot of time working the phones trying to help secure a cease-fire, but said that the president would resume fighting if the truce did not hold.
“I sat on the phone a lot,” Mr. Vance said. He added: “I think the president has struck a good deal for the American people, but fundamentally, the Iranians have got to take the next step, or the president has a lot of options to go back to the war.”
For Mr. Vance, the elevated role could bolster but also complicate his political future.
“This reduces any opportunity he might have to distance himself from the policy if he’s going to be the lead negotiator,” Mr. Gordon said.
At various times in Mr. Trump’s second term, Mr. Vance has privately voiced disagreements with the president’s foreign policy. In a Signal chat message with other senior Trump officials early last year, Mr. Vance said that he thought the timing of a forthcoming Yemen operation was a “mistake” and appeared to question if Mr. Trump understood the potential consequences of the action, according to The Atlantic, which published parts of the exchange.
Mr. Vance has also close ties to some of the war’s most vocal dissenters, including Tucker Carlson, whom Mr. Trump attacked on Thursday along with a group of conservative critics, saying they had “Low IQs” and were “Hand Flailing Fools.”
As Mr. Vance nurtures his political ambitions, Mr. Trump has repeatedly floated Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and national security adviser, as another potential presidential candidate. Mr. Rubio, by contrast, has been much more aligned with and central to Mr. Trump’s foreign policy agenda.
In Islamabad, Mr. Vance will have his most high-profile test of negotiating on the world stage, and experts warn he faces a tall task.
“For all the presentation of the cease-fire as an agreement, it was a very narrow agreement on a cease-fire with everything else T.B.D.,” Mr. Gordon said.
He added: “It’s going to be an ugly, messy and incomplete process.”
South Korea will send a special envoy to Iran to discuss the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the foreign ministry in Seoul said on Friday. The blockade of the strait has choked off around 70 percent of the country’s crude oil imports and stranded 26 South Korean ships.
President Volodymyr Zelensky also said in his social media posts on Friday that Ukraine would receive assistance in various ways in exchange for providing defense expertise to Middle Eastern countries. These include crude oil and diesel supplies, interceptor missiles and financial arrangements, he said, without elaborating.
Ukrainian military experts shot down Iranian drones over several countries in the Middle East during the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on social media on Friday. Ukraine sent military advisors, including drone warfare experts, to Persian Gulf countries to help improve their air defenses. This was the first public acknowledgement from Ukraine that its personnel were actively involved in shooting down drones from Iran.
Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, is on lockdown for the U.S.-Iran talks. The authorities have blocked roads with shipping containers and barbed wire, and deployed security forces across the city. The area in a two-mile radius around the Serena Hotel, which is expected to host the delegations, is sealed off. Even the hiking trails on the lush hills overlooking Islamabad have been closed to the public.
Pakistani officials have been tight-lipped about the talks, citing security concerns and the need to let Iranian and U.S. officials drive the negotiations. Less than 24 hours before the talks are expected to begin, we know very little about how they are going to unfold.
For the last several weeks, sailing a ship through the Strait of Hormuz was perilous, given the risk of Iranian attacks, whether by missiles or mines. Now that the United States and Iran have put the war on pause, the voyage may be less dangerous. But it is no less challenging politically or diplomatically.
Two days into the fragile cease-fire, the strait has become Iran’s biggest chip in a high-stakes geopolitical contest with President Trump.
Rather than throwing open the waterway to oil tankers and container ships, as the Trump administration had promised, shipping analysts said Iran was keeping a chokehold on it. And Iran is giving priority to a trickle of vessels from countries that either trade directly with it or are not viewed as hostile to the Iranian government.
This has put the dozens of countries that use the strait in a devilish position, having to navigate between Iran and the United States like modern-day versions of Scylla and Charybdis, the monsters of Greek mythology who threatened mariners with destruction in the treacherous Strait of Messina.
“The Iranians are willing to negotiate with certain countries to secure voyages, but only on a case-by-case basis,” said Bridget Diakun, a senior risk and compliance analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a London-based maritime data and intelligence company. “The Trump administration is forcing its allies to negotiate with Iran because there is no other option.”
That could change, of course, if the United States applies enough pressure on Iran to ease passage in the strait. But for now, at least, the Iranians are still exploiting their ability to disrupt global trade and energy flows — based on their interests.
It was no coincidence, shipping analysts said, that the first Western European-owned vessel to transit the strait since Iran imposed restrictions belonged to a French shipping company, CMA CGM, and that its safe passage last week came the day after President Emmanuel Macron of France lashed out at Mr. Trump for his management of the war and for his frequent criticism of the NATO alliance.
“France has positioned itself as not aligned with the U.S. on the war, and so not hostile to Iran,” said Martin Kelly, the head of advisory at EOS Risk Group, a consulting firm. “It was probably a message to the rest of Europe.”
A spokeswoman for CMA CGM declined to comment on how it struck a deal with Iran. French officials said they were in touch with the company but have not said whether the government played a role in securing the ship’s passage.
Other countries that have won passage for ships, like Turkey, Pakistan and India, either trade with Iran or have taken a neutral position on the war. Pakistan brokered the negotiations that resulted in the cease-fire, and it will play host to Vice President JD Vance and an Iranian delegation in Islamabad on Saturday, where the two sides will try to work out a permanent settlement.
In the meantime, Iran is keeping a chokehold on the strait. On Wednesday, only five cargo ships passed through, none of which were carrying oil or gas. Iranian media said Iran halted tankers to protest Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, in Lebanon. Iran, Israel and the United States have argued over whether the cease-fire agreement includes Lebanon.
On Thursday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said in an interview with ITV News that the strait was open to all but that there were still mines in the water and that ships wanting passage needed to coordinate with the Iranian military. That could further spook shipping companies, even if they doubted the veracity of Iran’s claims.
It also raised the pressure on them to use only a route that passes closer to Iranian territory, known as the Larak detour, which allows the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to vet the ships and potentially collect fees for passage.
In its negotiation with the Trump administration, Iran wants to make that arrangement permanent. Iranian officials said they plan to charge ships $2 million per passage and use the money, after giving neighboring Oman a cut, to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by American and Israeli airstrikes.
Mr. Trump responded by floating the possibility that the United States would jointly control the strait with Iran and split the proceeds with it. The toll-collecting concept was quickly rejected by allies like Britain, whose foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said on Thursday, “freedom of navigation means navigation must be free.”
Those remarks could rankle Mr. Trump, who has already lashed out at Britain for its lack of support for the campaign. In fact, European countries are likely to have the thorniest challenge in navigating the politics of using the strait. Mr. Trump has castigated NATO allies more broadly for their unwillingness to forcibly reopen the strait, and said at various times that Iran’s control of the strait is a problem for Europe, not the United States.
European countries, which rely more heavily than the United States on oil and gas coming from the Persian Gulf, are assembling a 35-member coalition to do that, but only after the conflict is settled.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar are also likely to balk at a toll, given their deep reliance on oil and natural gas exports. But even if it is a far-fetched idea, analysts said it could give Iran leverage in talks with the United States that will cover other difficult issues, like its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
While the world waits for a definitive end to the conflict, countries are likely to keep trying to cut their own deals with Iran.
Diplomats from Turkey, which had 15 ships and more than 150 sailors stranded by the war, have spoken with Iranian officials about securing safe passage for the trapped vessels. They drew on Turkey’s longstanding trade and diplomatic relations with Iran, which included President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to prevent the war before the United States and Israel began bombing.
Turkey got three Turkish-owned vessels through before the cease-fire was announced, flying the flags of Panama, Belize and St. Kitts & Nevis. One, the Ocean Thunder, is carrying about one million barrels of crude oil from Iraq, which Iran said would be exempted from restrictions on transit.
“Turkey has taken a position of active neutrality,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the managing director of the Turkey office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Turkey’s ability to have three of its ships pass through Hormuz is part of Iran’s appreciation,” he added. “It is basically signaling and telling others, ‘You, too, could have your ships passing if you show some effort.’”
Iran is also rewarding countries for doing business with it. India, which secured passage for eight Indian-flagged ships before the cease-fire was announced, confirmed that it had purchased its first shipment of oil from Iran in seven years. The United States temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil to ease the supply shortages resulting from the closure of the strait.
Indian officials denied that Iran was receiving money in exchange for allowing Indian vessels to cross the strait. “Amid Middle East supply disruptions, Indian refiners have secured their crude oil requirements, including from Iran; and there is no payment hurdle for Iranian crude imports,” the oil ministry said on X.
Mr. Kelly of EOS Risk Group estimated there were nearly 1,000 ships waiting to enter or exit the Persian Gulf. At the current trickle, only a fraction of those will be allowed to transit before the expiration of the two-week cease-fire. And that will give Iran enormous clout in negotiating deals, he said.
“This is the most effective bargaining chip that Iran has got, and will always have,” Mr. Kelly said. “This is going to have a huge impact on global trade and the global economy.”
Ben Hubbard contributed reporting from Istanbul, Elian Peltier from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Pragati K.B. from New Delhi.
In a statement on Thursday, the State Department said that a group of U.S. diplomats had been ambushed in Baghdad on Wednesday by Iran-aligned militia groups in Iraq. No casualties were reported. The ambush, the department said, followed “hundreds” of attacks in recent weeks against U.S. citizens and diplomatic facilities — including the weeklong abduction of the American journalist Shelly Kittleson.
The department called on the Iraqi government to take immediate steps to dismantle Iran-aligned militia groups in Iraq, and criticized its “failure” so far to constrain them.
Iran’s state media announced that the former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, who was targeted by Israel in airstrikes on April 1, was dead after more than a week of being in a coma. Kharazi headed Iran’s Foreign Policy Council, a body that sets foreign policies. He had been supervising discussions with Pakistan for potential talks between Tehran and Washington, according to three Iranian officials.
The United States delegation is set to meet with Iranian officials in Pakistan on Saturday for talks as continued strikes in the region test a tenuous cease-fire.
Pakistan brokered a two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran on Tuesday, pulling off a diplomatic victory after more than five weeks of war tied to thousands of deaths in the Middle East.
U.S. officials are entering the talks in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, amid rival demands from Tehran and Washington over a longer-term settlement and doubts about the durability of the cease-fire that is in place now.
The Israeli military has continued to attack sites in Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah holds sway. And confusion over the status of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital oil route that Iran closed off to U.S. allies during the war, has also tested the tentative truce.
Here’s what to know about the talks this weekend.
Pakistan will host the talks between the United States and Iran and serve as a mediator.
Pakistan shares a 565-mile border and deep bonds with Iran. It has also spent the last year wooing Mr. Trump, lavishing him with praise, nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and striking a series of business deals with the administration.
In June, Pakistan’s top military leader, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, had a private lunch with Mr. Trump at the White House.
Vice President JD Vance will lead the U.S. delegation, which will also include Mr. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner led the last round of talks with Iranian officials in late February, when they concluded that Tehran was not open to a deal over its nuclear program. Veteran diplomats have raised concerns that Mr. Trump has sidelined skilled experts and left Middle East diplomacy in the hands of a friend and family member, who have backgrounds in real estate.
The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will represent his country, according to Iranian state media.
He is one of the highest-ranking officials left in Iran since Israeli strikes took out many of the country’s top leaders, including the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Before he was killed at the start of the war on Feb. 28, Mr. Khamenei designated Mr. Ghalibaf as his de facto deputy to lead the Iranian armed forces during war.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile programs, as well as its moves against the Strait of Hormuz, will likely be major talking points during negotiations. As of Thursday, hundreds of tankers were still waiting to return to the waterway that once transported a large portion of the world’s seaborne oil and gas.
Iranian officials are seeking a guarantee from the United States of a more permanent end to hostilities, going further than the cease-fire that U.S. mediators are offering.
Iran released the proposal on Wednesday, outlining sweeping demands that would be difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with U.S. aims.
The framework allows Iran to maintain control of the strait, requires the United States to withdraw its forces from all bases in the region and maintains Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment. It also calls for an end to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. Israel and the United States say the current cease-fire does not apply to Lebanon.
A day earlier, Mr. Trump described the Iranian framework as “a workable basis on which to negotiate” an end to the war. But a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the demands in the 10-point plan were not in keeping with the framework Mr. Trump meant.
Many of them are likely to conflict with a 15-point proposal U.S. mediators laid out last month, which officials said addressed Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, as well as maritime trade.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Mr. Trump referred to the 15 points and claimed that Iran had already agreed to many of them.
According to Iranian state media, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps denied on Thursday that Iranian forces had launched any drones or missiles since the U.S.-Iran cease-fire began, after various Gulf states reported attacks on Wednesday and Kuwait said it was fending off drones on Thursday.
The I.R.G.C. said it had made “absolutely no launches toward any country” since the temporary truce was announced late Tuesday, adding that any reported attacks were the work of “the Zionist enemy or the United States.” It also said Iran publicly announces any operations it carries out.
President Trump again denounced Iran for not fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic, accusing it of being a violation of the cease-fire agreement. But it is unclear if the president would take any action in response.
“Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said in a social media post. “That is not the agreement we have!”
Only a handful of vessels have crossed the strait since the truce began. Iran’s foreign minister had said in a statement that safe passage through the strait would be possible if coordinated with Iran’s military and with consideration of “technical limitations.” But analysts have noted that this was Iran’s position before the cease-fire.
Reporting from Washington
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, described his tense meeting with President Trump this week as a “conversation” that “was really between friends.”
Mr. Trump, in a social media post on Thursday, put it slightly differently: “our own, very disappointing, NATO” does not understand “anything unless they have pressure placed upon them!!!”
Even as it has violently upended the Middle East and put intense strains on the global economy, the war in Iran has deepened the gulf between Mr. Trump and America’s NATO allies. That is after those countries spent more than a year buffeted by the president’s threats, begun in his first term, to abandon the alliance.
Mr. Trump is training his anger at NATO as his cease-fire with Iran hangs in the balance and even some of his supporters question whether the United States really achieved its objectives. He is airing his discontent over his inability to take over Greenland, despite behind-the-scenes talks over the Danish island that the White House says are going well. And he is forcing European leaders yet again to try to keep him from abandoning them, even as their countries struggle to shoulder the economic costs of the U.S. war with Iran.
“We have, sometimes, the political home front to take care of,” Mr. Rutte said onstage at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington on Thursday, in a diplomatically phrased reminder that the war was deeply unpopular in Europe. “NATO is there, of course, to protect the Europeans, but also to protect the United States.”
Mr. Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, was making the point that the U.S. military benefits from its bases in Europe and, despite the tensions, has used them as staging sites for the war on Iran. But widening cracks in the alliance show that even if negotiators succeed in making a deal in the talks that start Saturday for a more permanent end to the war, the scars are likely to be lasting.
The Iran war “has become a trans-Atlantic stress test,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said on Thursday, after acknowledging that his country was “massively suffering” from the energy market disruptions caused by the war. “We do not want — I do not want — a split within NATO.”
Mr. Trump’s disdain for the alliance dates back decades, underpinned by his conviction that Europeans have been freeloading off the American security umbrella. His latest fury stems from U.S. allies’ refusal to embrace his decision to join Israel in assaulting Iran, with Britain and Spain setting limits on the United States’ ability to use bases on their territory.
Mr. Trump escalated his threats against NATO even as he prepared to wind down the war — and despite the fact that he did not try to build a coalition with European countries before the bombing started. He told The Telegraph last week that he may pull out of the alliance entirely. In a news conference on Monday, a day before the cease-fire, Mr. Trump volunteered that he still sought control of Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory in the North Atlantic.
“It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland,” Mr. Trump said after voicing his dissatisfaction with Europe’s lack of support for the Iran war. “We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us.”
He reinforced the point Wednesday, posting on social media in all capitals that “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them” and that Greenland was a “big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!”
Mr. Trump’s pivot back to Greenland was striking given that he said in January that he and Mr. Rutte had formed a “great” framework for a future deal over the island. Three-way talks between officials from Greenland, Denmark and the United States have continued since. There is no indication that those talks would grant control of Greenland to the United States, but a White House official said the administration was optimistic about the course of the talks.
In years past, many of Mr. Trump’s allies in Washington tried to rein in his attacks on NATO, seeking to remind him of the power that the United States gains from being able to base troops and warplanes in Europe. But in recent weeks, many of the war’s supporters in the United States have joined Mr. Trump in piling on against NATO, especially given the president’s frustration over Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Sean Hannity, the Fox News host close to the president, said on his show Wednesday night that Europe was “a dying continent” and mused that “I’m not sure it’s worth going forward with NATO as we go on.”
Jack Keane, a retired general whom Mr. Trump awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020, told Mr. Hannity that he did not think the president would pull out of NATO because “there is still value” in the alliance, but he predicted there would be consequences.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t decide to move some of our troops out of Western European countries and move them into Eastern Europe countries,” General Keane said. “I think we’ll likely do something.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was considering moving U.S. troops stationed in Europe from countries seen as unhelpful in the war effort to ones seen as supportive, like Poland and Romania. The White House did not comment on the report, but a senior U.S. military official in Europe said that options were being reviewed.
Mr. Trump has threatened NATO many times, only to largely preserve the status quo. In the president’s latest outburst, some analysts also see a familiar inclination to attack a weaker party, especially given Mr. Trump’s inability to compel Iran to surrender after five weeks of bombardment.
“Beating up on Europe and NATO has really no domestic cost,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official who is the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s quite typical for Trump: When things are going wrong, he finds the weakest person in the room and blames them.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin.
The Israeli military said that it had bombed 10 rocket launchers in Lebanon late Thursday and early Friday. The launchers had fired rockets toward northern Israel earlier in the evening, the military said.
Reporting from Washington
Weeks of harmony between President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as they waged war against Iran is coming under strain as Mr. Trump’s search for a peace deal exposes divergences between their respective long-term goals.
Their differences may force Mr. Netanyahu to accept compromises on his ambitions to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon and bring down Iran’s battered clerical leadership in the name of preserving relations with Mr. Trump, who appears eager to strike a deal with Tehran.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he had asked Mr. Netanyahu to scale back Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, which threatened the two-week truce only a day after it took effect.
Mr. Netanyahu cares far more about the presence of Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon than about the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran militarized in response to the war, while Mr. Trump’s overriding priority appears to be allowing oil to pass through the waterway.
Mr. Netanyahu sees Iran’s regime as vulnerable and would prefer not to let up military or economic pressure on Tehran. Mr. Trump appears eager to conclude a war that has spiked gas prices, troubled his supporters and threatened his political standing.
Vice President JD Vance is set to lead a U.S. delegation to Islamabad this weekend for talks with Iranian officials, who hope to win relief from U.S. economic sanctions.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, singled out Mr. Netanyahu in a social media video message depicting Mr. Trump’s cease-fire with Iran as a farce. Israel’s continued attacks on Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, which drew Iranian threats to negate the cease-fire deal, showed that Mr. Netanyahu “continues to be the outsourced leader of American foreign policy,” Mr. Warner said.
But Mr. Trump asserted himself in a Wednesday phone call with Mr. Netanyahu, he told NBC News on Thursday, in which he pressed the Israeli leader not to endanger his diplomacy with Iran.
“I spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it” in Lebanon, Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname.
By Thursday afternoon, Mr. Netanyahu had announced that Israel would begin direct negotiations with Lebanon over its goal of disarming Hezbollah, and a U.S. official said the State Department would host a meeting to discuss the matter in Washington next week.
It is unclear whether that will be enough to satisfy Iranian officials. Mr. Netanyahu said that his military was “continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force,” and Israeli officials accuse Hezbollah of violating the cease-fire with cross-border rocket barrages.
Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said that Mr. Netanyahu’s goal was to deflect pressure from the United States without giving up on his military goals in Lebanon. But Mr. Sachs said there were limits to how much Mr. Netanyahu is willing to test Mr. Trump’s patience. The American president is very popular in Israel, making Mr. Netanyahu’s partnership with Mr. Trump his chief political asset at home as Israel prepares for national elections this year.
“Nothing looms larger in his mind than Trump,” Mr. Sachs said of Mr. Netanyahu. Whereas Mr. Netanyahu paid little price at home for brushing off demands from President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was not popular among Israelis, the dynamic has flipped, particularly among Mr. Netanyahu’s most conservative supporters.
“‘Trump asked me to do this’ is a valid excuse with his right flank,” Mr. Sachs said.
Unwilling to split openly with Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu will likely make a vigorous private case to the U.S. president for hard bargaining — and a return to war if necessary — with Tehran.
Even if Mr. Trump strikes a deal that the Israeli leader views as too conciliatory, Mr. Sachs added, Mr. Netanyahu might bide his time and, after attention has drifted from the conflict, come to Mr. Trump with new intelligence about Iranian malfeasance or other arguments for renewed action.
It remains unclear how the fighting in Lebanon became subject to different interpretations.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, whose country mediated the deal, said Tuesday on social media that the United States and Iran, “along with their allies,” had agreed to an immediate cease-fire “everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere.”
But Israel and the United States both insisted that was not the case. Mr. Vance on Wednesday chalked it up to a “reasonable misunderstanding.”
Hezbollah has been a mortal enemy of Israel for more than 40 years, since its creation, with help from Iran in response to Israel’s 1982 occupation of southern Lebanon.
Israel routinely clashed with the group but until recently had not mounted an all-out campaign to destroy it. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel changed Mr. Netanyahu’s strategic calculus, and the Israeli leader now considers Hezbollah’s elimination an urgent priority. For Mr. Trump, by contrast, Lebanon is “a tertiary priority at best,” Mr. Sachs said.
More differences may emerge with Mr. Netanyahu as Mr. Trump negotiates a potential deal with Iran in the coming weeks. Some Iranian capabilities, such as Tehran’s medium-range ballistic missiles and its support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy groups pose a greater threat to Israel than to the United States.
But every demand Mr. Trump makes of Iran will require something more in return. It is unclear how much he is willing to give up to protect Israeli interests as opposed to purely American ones — above all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
In exchange for allowing vessels to pass freely through the vital strait, Iran is demanding that Mr. Trump lift the crushing sanctions the United States has imposed on its economy over many years. Yet Mr. Netanyahu has long called for “maximum pressure” on the country, to starve its government of funding for Hamas and Hezbollah and possibly even to cause its clerical regime to fall.
In an address to his people after the announcement of Tuesday’s cease-fire, Mr. Netanyahu said he fully supported Mr. Trump, but also made clear that he considered business in Iran to be unfinished.
Israel still “has more goals to complete” in Iran, he said. “We will achieve them,” he added, “either through agreement, or through renewed fighting.”
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