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As Israel contemplates a two-week ceasefire announced by United States President Donald Trump in the war on Iran on Tuesday night, it appears weakened in the eyes of its opponents and critics. Its arch-nemesis, Iran, is still standing; Israel’s defensive stock of missiles is depleted and its prime minister is facing a political backlash.

Following news of the Pakistan-brokered truce, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement in English, saying that the PM supports the US decision and claiming that “Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile and terror threat to America, Israel, Iran’s Arab neighbours and the world.”

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But there was a caveat. While mediator Pakistan had announced that Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon would also cease, Netanyahu added that he does not regard the ceasefire as extending to Israel’s war on Lebanon, which, for now at least, the US appears willing to allow to continue, subject to its peace negotiations with Iran.

Responding to Netanyahu’s announcement, Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, who had strongly supported his country’s attack on regional nemesis Iran, called the ceasefire one of the greatest “political disasters in all of our history”. Israel had not even been involved in negotiations, he said, adding that, despite its military successes, the prime minister had “failed politically, failed strategically, and didn’t meet a single one of the goals that he himself set”, adding that it would take years to repair the damage inflicted upon the country through the prime minister’s “arrogance”.

Others were swift to join in the bashing. “I wasn’t surprised that the announcement was in English,” Ofer Cassif of the left-wing Hadash party said. “Netanyahu has no interest in talking to the people of Israel. He rarely does and almost never enters the [television or radio] studio,” he said of the prime minister, who waited two weeks to spell out his war aims to the Israeli public in a televised address after the start of the war on Iran.

“He knows, probably correctly, that those who support him will do so anyway, and those who oppose him will continue to do so, so when he speaks, it’s to the international media and to reassure his base,” Cassif said.

Netanyahu’s war aims

Those war aims, as stated by Netanyahu, of preventing “Iran from developing nuclear weapons” and of creating ” the conditions for the Iranian people so they can remove the cruel regime of tyranny”, were merely the latest iteration of Israel’s longstanding strategic goals. Indeed, Netanyahu has been claiming Iran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon was imminent since the 1990s.

But, despite significant military successes over the past 40 days of attacks on Iran, neither of those goals has been achieved.

“The Israelis are deeply disappointed with the ceasefire as none of the original aims of the war have been achieved,” Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at the Department for War Studies at King’s College London, who has recently returned from Israel, said. “The Iranian regime is still in place, its ballistic missile programme could be rebuilt very quickly, and it’s still got 440kg of enriched uranium at 60 percent purity, enough for 10 bombs.”

In fact, according to many observers, despite significant military defeats, including the loss of control over its airspace, the assassination of much of its leadership – including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war, as well as many of Iran’s key military figures – Iran has, counterintuitively, emerged stronger as a result, analysts say.

“Israel and the US had many tactical gains. They won militarily, but, strategically, Iran is the clear victor,” Bregman said.

A strategic blunder?

Key among its victories was not just the Iranian government’s survival in the face of relentless Israeli and US military strikes, but also its decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s key energy arteries and, according to current negotiations, one where safe passage for international shipping is now entirely under the control of Iran and its neighbour Oman.

Iran has been struggling under increased US sanctions after Trump, with Netanyahu’s encouragement, unilaterally withdrew from an international deal to limit its nuclear programme in return for reduced economic sanctions in 2018. However, many observers now expect Iran to continue with newly imposed levies on ships for safe passage through the Strait. Also supporting the Iranian economy are Trump’s promises, posted on Truth Social on Wednesday, of future sanctions and tariff relief as part of the ceasefire arrangement.

“Iran’s decision to block the Hormuz pushed Trump off balance, and he never recovered,” Bregman said. “Future historians will regard this Iranian decision as the turning point in the war.”

According to some observers, Israel’s conduct during the war has also served to strengthen the Iranian government. Some centres of opposition, such as Tehran’s Sharif University, which had been a focal point of antigovernment protests in January, have been destroyed in Israeli attacks. Donald Trump’s 11th-hour threat to wipe out Iranian civilisation also allowed the Iranian government to beam out rallying images of citizens forming human chains around critical infrastructure.

“Please understand, I despise the Iranian regime; it’s murderous,” Cassif told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. “But we [Hadash] had warned from second number one that we didn’t have the right, or the ability, to change it. Instead, we’ve strengthened the support for that regime at the expense of the opposition,” he said of reports of the surge in support for the Iranian government in the face of US and Israeli attacks.

Israel and the US had, he said, “given operational control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, which had never been an issue before, and, with the first aggressions coming while negotiations were under way, signalled to the entire world that they can’t trust the US and Israel”.

‘Israel has achieved nothing tangible’

Then there is Israel’s assault on southern and eastern Lebanon, where it claims it is targeting Hezbollah strongholds. Whether it will continue with these attacks remains to be seen.

For now, Israel is not expected to attend peace talks in Pakistan on Friday. But that is where, according to Bregman, its freedom to continue attacks on Lebanon may be determined by the US and Hezbollah’s allies in Tehran.

“Assuming the ceasefire holds beyond the two-week period, Israel achieved almost nothing tangible,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera of its war on Iran. “Iran upended the strategic asymmetry by both attacking the Arab Gulf states and, crucially, shutting the Strait of Hormuz with almost no pushback from China. Israel is increasingly perceived as a destabilising force and, arguably, strained the US relationship since all promises Netanyahu made to Trump unravelled,” he said, referring to reported assurances of swift regime change in Iran that Israel made.

Cassif was more succinct: “It’s crazy.”

In the final hours before a United States-Iran ceasefire was reached early on Wednesday in the Middle East, the war that had shaken the world for nearly six weeks had threatened to explode to even more prolonged and devastating levels.

US President Donald Trump issued increasingly apocalyptic warnings, including threats deemed genocidal, that he would obliterate Iran’s infrastructure and a “whole civilisation” would die if his deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8pm Washington, DC, time on Tuesday (midnight GMT) was not heeded by Tehran.

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A day earlier, Trump had also threatened to bomb Iran back to the “Stone Ages”.

World leaders expressed horror over his language, global markets tanked and some started pondering whether the Trump White House was perhaps even contemplating the use of nuclear weapons.

Eventually, over the course of a tense Tuesday, last‑minute diplomacy mediated by Pakistan culminated in a two‑week ceasefire less than 90 minutes before Trump’s self‑imposed deadline to carry out large-scale, devastating attacks on Iran. Israel also agreed to halt its attacks but said Lebanon was not included in the deal.

The truce was announced after both sides agreed to stop all attacks and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Talks in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Friday are slated to restart negotiations for a permanent settlement.

On Wednesday, Trump suggested in a Truth Social post that the ceasefire could usher in a “Golden Age for the Middle East”.

But through Tuesday as Trump’s self-imposed deadline approached, the region and the world were on edge as threats, counterthreats, escalatory attacks from both sides and diplomatic efforts intensified all at once, and it was unclear which would triumph – negotiations or further devastation.

Here are the key moments of the tense final hours leading up to this fragile ceasefire:

12:06 GMT, Tuesday – Trump’s threat to Iran’s civilisation

On Tuesday morning, Trump warned in a post on his social media platform Truth Social that Washington would unleash devastating strikes on Iranian bridges, power plants and other civilian infrastructure.

Trump even declared that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again” – a phrase that legal and human rights experts said was akin to a “genocidal” threat.

“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated … where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again,” he said.

15:21 GMT, Tuesday – US strikes hit Kharg Island

Iran’s semiautonomous Mehr news agency confirmed reports that Kharg Island, where Iran’s main oil exporting facilities are based, had been hit but added that there had been no damage to infrastructure and the situation was under control.

15:40 GMT, Tuesday – China, Russia Security Council veto on Strait of Hormuz

⁠During ⁠⁠⁠⁠a vote in the United Nations Security Council, China and Russia vetoed ⁠⁠a Bahraini resolution encouraging states to coordinate efforts to protect commercial shipping ‌‌‌‌in the Strait of Hormuz.

Eleven countries on the 15-member council voted in favour of the resolution, two abstained and ⁠⁠⁠⁠two voted against it – China ⁠⁠⁠⁠and Russia, which, as permanent members, have veto power in the UN’s highest decision-making body.

Moscow and Beijing argued the draft was one‑sided and unfair to Tehran. China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong, said moving ahead with the proposal while the US was issuing threats about the possible destruction of an entire civilisation would have conveyed the wrong signal.

16:54 GMT, Tuesday – Qatar and UAE send elevated alerts

Qatar’s Ministry of Defence said it “successfully intercepted a missile attack” targeting the country.

This followed an “elevated” threat alert that was sent out and subsequent sounds of missile interception over the capital, Doha.

Nearly half an hour earlier, the United Arab Emirates also reported a barrage of missile and drone attacks on its territory.

18:23 GMT, Tuesday – Iran’s envoy to Pakistan reports ‘step forward’ after ‘sensitive stage’

Reza Amiri Moghadam said in a post on X that “as of now”, there has been “a step forward from [a] critical, sensitive stage”.

“In the next stage, respect and comity should replace rhetoric and redundancy. Stay more tuned,” the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan added.

Moghadam earlier in the day had referred to Pakistan’s “positive and productive endeavours” towards peace and said talks had entered a “critical” stage – the first official confirmation from Iran that it was engaged in formal negotiations with the US.

19:17 GMT, Tuesday – Pakistan’s PM asks Trump to extend deadline

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appealed to Trump to push back his deadline for an Iran deal by two weeks and for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz during the same period, saying ongoing diplomatic efforts were promising and should be given a chance.

“Diplomatic efforts for [a] peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in [the] near future,” Sharif wrote in a post on X. “To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks.”

Sharif also called on Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz for the same two weeks “as a goodwill gesture”.

20:25 GMT, Tuesday – Iran threatens to block regional oil and gas

A spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, warned the country would target the energy infrastructure of the US and its Gulf allies in the region, Fars news agency reported.

The official said Iran would seek to deprive the region of oil and gas for years with the aim of forcing US forces and their partners to withdraw.

20:41 GMT, Tuesday – US and Israeli air strikes on energy plant in southwest Iran

The deputy security officer of Khuzestan province announced that the Amirkabir Petrochemical Plant in the port city of Mahshahr was struck in an air strike, Mehr reported, adding that local authorities were assessing the extent of the damage and potential casualties.

22:45 GMT, Tuesday – Trump announces temporary ceasefire

With less than an hour and a half to go to his deadline for the destruction of Iranian “civilisation”, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran after talks with Sharif and Pakistan’s military chief, Asim Munir.

He said the ceasefire would be “double-sided” and Washington had received a “workable” 10-point proposal from Iran.

Twenty-five minutes later, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed Trump’s announcement and added that Tehran would abide by the temporary truce if attacks on its territory were halted.

In a post on X, Sharif invited Iranian and US delegations to Islamabad on Friday “to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes”.

04:01 GMT, Wednesday – Trump says ceasefire could lead to ‘Golden Age’ for Middle East

A week earlier, Trump had threatened to bomb Iran back to the “Stone Ages”. Hours after he announced the two-week ceasefire with Iran, his tone had changed.

“A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!”

Washington, DC – Politicians in the United States have largely welcomed the truce with Iran, with some of President Donald Trump’s Republican allies voicing scepticism about a possible deal, as Democrats renewed calls for accountability over an “illegal war”.

Trump announced the ceasefire on Tuesday, about 10 hours after proclaiming that a “whole civilization will die tonight”. The two-week truce will see Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz as Tehran and Washington negotiate a lasting end to the war.

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Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally and one of the most vocal Iran hawks in Congress, said he preferred diplomacy and appreciated “the hard work of all involved in trying to find a diplomatic solution”.

But he said he was “extremely cautious” about reports surrounding the ceasefire agreement.

Trump had said in his ceasefire announcement that the US and Iran were “very far along with a definitive” agreement and described a 10-point plan proposed by Tehran as a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.

While the content of any future agreement remains unclear, Iranian officials say the 10-point plan includes sanctions relief for Iran and allows the country to retain control over the Strait of Hormuz. The proposal also says the US would accept Iran’s domestic uranium enrichment, according to Iranian media reports.

Graham, however, stressed that lawmakers would review any deal with Iran.

“We must remember that the Strait of Hormuz was attacked by Iran after the start of the war, destroying freedom of navigation,” he wrote on X. “Going forward, it is imperative Iran is not rewarded for this hostile act against the world.”

The senator added that Iran must not be allowed to return to the uranium enrichment “business”.

“Time will tell,” he wrote.

Democrats – who have been calling for Trump’s removal from office after he threatened to bomb civilian infrastructure in Iran in attacks that would amount to war crimes – lauded the two-week ceasefire.

“Stopping war is good,” Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego wrote on X. “I am glad our men and women in uniform will be out of danger. We can criticize why we got into this war, the illegality of it and holding the Trump admin accountable. But right now I am relieved.”

Iran hawks predict war will resume

Trump’s allies in Congress, including the leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate, have not commented on the ceasefire in its immediate aftermath.

But some of the war’s supporters underscored that Trump had not agreed to the Iranian plan, arguing that the truce is only a temporary pause to hostilities.

Laura Loomer, a far-right activist close to Trump, predicted that the ceasefire “will fail”.

“The negotiation is a negative for our country. We didn’t really get anything out of it and the terrorists in Iran are celebrating,” she wrote on X.

“I don’t know why people are acting like this is a win.”

Mark Levin, another pro-Israel commentator with ties to Trump, said that while he trusts the US president’s “instincts”, the war is not over.

“This enemy is still the enemy; they’re still surviving,” he said of Iran.

Trump launched the war on February 28 without congressional authorisation. US and Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the conflict.

Another attack hit a girls’ school in the southern city of Minab, killing more than 170 people, mostly children.

Iran responded with drone and missile attacks against Israel and the entire region.

The Iranian military also closed the Strait of Hormuz – a vital waterway for energy products – sending oil and gas prices soaring.

On Tuesday, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said allowing Iran to control the strait would be a “history-changing win” for Tehran.

“The level of incompetence is both stunning and heartbreaking,” he said on X.

‘Ceasefire is not a clean slate’

Other Democrats called for accountability against Trump for launching the war.

“I’m glad there is a reported ceasefire deal with Iran. But we shouldn’t be in this illegal war in the first place,” said Senator Ed Markey.

“And Donald Trump can’t simply threaten war crimes with impunity. Congress needs to get back in session now to stop this war and remove Donald Trump.”

Under the US Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war, and international law prohibits targeting civilian infrastructure as a form of collective punishment.

Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the truce “changes nothing”, stressing that Trump should still be impeached and removed from office over the war.

“The President has threatened a genocide against the Iranian people, and is continuing to leverage that threat,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. “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.”

Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at the rights group DAWN, also said US legislators should question Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran.

“Congress must open an immediate investigation into how this war started, who authorised it, who profited from it, and who will be held accountable for every civilian killed,” Jarrar told Al Jazeera.

“This ceasefire is not a clean slate. It should be the beginning of accountability.”

For much of Tuesday, it was unclear whether the United States would be launching a full-scale attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure.

But US President Donald Trump’s threat against Iran – that “a whole civilization will die tonight” – prompted condemnation from one of Generation Z’s most prominent activists.

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Swedish advocate Greta Thunberg expressed dismay at what she described as a muted public reaction to Trump’s threat.

Known for her activism on issues such as climate change and Gaza, Thunberg linked Trump’s comments to wider questions of passivity in the face of war crimes.

“The president of the United States just said that a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Thunberg said in an Instagram video on Tuesday, shortly before a ceasefire was announced.

“And no one is reacting. This speaks for itself. What the f*** is anyone even doing at this point?”

She called on her viewers to stop such rhetoric from becoming the status quo.

“We have normalised genocide, total annihilation of entire people, the systematic destruction of the biosphere which we are all depending on to survive, and that corrupt, racist war criminals can act with complete impunity,” she said.

“But even though we have allowed far too much so far, it is not too late to say stop.”

Experts have noted a generational divide among perspectives about the US and Israeli war against Iran.

In the US, polls have found that young people are more likely to express scepticism about the war, as well as support for Israel and US intervention more broadly.

Scepticism about intervention

Gen Z would not be the first generation to oppose a war that their elders had a greater tolerance for.

Similar divides have been chronicled throughout US history, including during the Vietnam War in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

But recent polls have suggested pronounced opposition among young people to the current war against Iran.

A poll released on Tuesday from the Pew Research Center found that young people across the political spectrum were more sceptical about the war’s prospects for success.

That was even true among Trump’s right-wing base. While 67 percent of Republicans over the age of 65 believed that the war would make Iran less likely to develop a nuclear weapon, just 25 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said the same.

When asked about the effect the war might have on the Iranian people, just 7 percent of older Republican voters responded that they would be worse off. That percentage was dwarfed by the nearly 28 percent of younger voters who believed the same thing.

Democratic-leaning voters were not as widely divided by age, though younger voters did tend to be more pessimistic about the war, according to Pew.

Some 60 percent of young Democratic respondents aged 18 to 29 felt the war would leave Iranians worse off, compared with only 48 percent of Democrats over age 65.

Similar trends have been documented by other pollsters since the outbreak of the war on February 28.

On March 20, Emerson College also released a survey that found young people in the US tend to fear the outbreak of war more than older respondents. Nearly 75 percent of people under 50 thought a new world war was on the horizon in the next four years, but 54 percent of those over age 50 shared that belief.

The publication Politico, meanwhile, found disparities in its poll of men who identified as “MAGA Republicans”, part of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political movement.

Only 49 percent of the respondents in that category, under age 35, believed Trump had a plan for the war on Iran. That was a far smaller ratio than the 70 percent over 35 who felt the same way.

A continuing trend

The generational divide has been reflected in public opinion surveys about other recent conflicts as well.

Polls have found pronounced opposition among young people in the US to foreign intervention, a trend some critics have tied to the historical context of their upbringing.

Many in Gen Z grew up in the shadow of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of the broader “war on terror” launched after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

A separate Pew Research Center poll from December 2025 suggests an isolationist streak among young people.

It found that only 39 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 believed it was important for the US to take an active role in world affairs, compared with 73 percent for those aged 65 and older.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has also prompted a Gen Z pushback, according to polling firms.

Since the war began in October 2023, human rights experts have documented multiple violations of international law and grave human rights abuses, including forced starvation, the mass killing of civilians and the withholding of humanitarian aid.

Tuesday’s poll suggested that 84 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 held an unfavourable view of Israel.

For those over the age of 50, the figure was significantly lower: 76 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

Thunberg has been outspoken about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza as well.

Last year, she took part in a humanitarian aid flotilla that set out to deliver assistance to Gaza. That October, she was detained and deported by Israeli forces.

Tehran says the negotiations will be based on its 10-point proposal, which calls for control over Strait of Hormuz and lifting of all sanctions.

Iran has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with the United States, with its National Security Council saying talks with Washington will begin in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Friday, based on Tehran’s 10-point proposal.

The statement on Wednesday came after US President Donald Trump said he was holding off on a threat to end Iranian civilisation and would “suspend” attacks on the country for two weeks.

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Trump said the truce was contingent on Iran agreeing to the “complete, immediate and safe opening” of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and through which a fifth of the global oil supply passes.

Iran’s partial blockade of the strait – imposed in the aftermath of the US and Israel’s attacks on February 28 – has disrupted global trade, driving up oil prices and causing fuel shortages across the world.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks have also reverberated across the Gulf and drawn in Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis, both of which have launched attacks on Israel, significantly widening the conflict.

Trump said in his Truth Social statement that the US has already “met and exceeded” all of its military objectives and “are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran”.

He said the US has received a 10-point proposal from Iran, “and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate”. The US and Iran have agreed on “almost all of the various points of contention”, he said, and that the two-week period will allow the agreement to be “finalised and consummated”.

Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi, speaking on behalf of the Iranian National Security Council, confirmed Tehran’s agreement.

“If attacks against Iran are halted, our powerful armed forces will cease their defensive operations,” he said in a post on X.

Araghchi said that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible in coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces, and that the decision was taken in light of Trump’s acceptance “of the general framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations”.

For his part, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the warring sides had agreed to an “immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere”.

The move is “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY”, he wrote on X.

Sharif thanked the US and Iran and extended an invitation to “their delegations to Islamabad on Friday, 10th April 2026, to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes”.

According to Iran’s National Security Council, its 10-point proposal calls for Iranian dominance and oversight of the Strait of Hormuz, which it said would grant it a “unique economic and geopolitical position”.

The proposal also calls for the withdrawal of all “US combat forces” from bases in the Middle East and a halt to military operations against allied armed groups across the region. It goes on to demand “full compensation” for war damages, as well as the lifting of all sanctions by the US, the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The proposal also calls for the release of frozen Iranian assets abroad and the ratification of any final agreement in a binding UN Security Council resolution.

The council said that while Tehran has agreed to talks, it does so “with complete distrust of the American side”.

It said Iran will allocate two weeks for these negotiations and that the time period “can be extended by agreement of the parties”.

The council added that Iran stood ready to respond with “full force” as soon as “the slightest mistake by the enemy is made”.

There has been no comment from Israel.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has proposed a takeover of Universal Music Group in a $64bn deal, the latest twist in his nearly five-year quest for the music label giant.

Pershing Square proposed a cash-and-shares offer on Tuesday through its acquisition vehicle that values Universal Music at about 30.40 euros ($35) per share, a 78 percent premium to the last closing price of 17.10 euros ($20), making the deal worth 55.75 billion euros ($64.31bn).

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Universal Music Group (UMG) – the company behind international superstars, including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar – is expected to move its listing to New York from Amsterdam, paving the way for more investors, including index funds, to own the company and ultimately lead to more robust earnings and a higher valuation.

Universal Music declined a Reuters news agency request for comment.

For Ackman, one of the world’s most voluble investors, who cemented his fame and fortune as an activist investor, forcefully pushing corporate America to adopt changes, this is a far friendlier approach, investors and industry analysts said.

Even as the music industry is flourishing, UMG’s share price has lagged, something Ackman is pledging to fix with this proposed deal.

Ackman’s letter to Universal Music Group’s board carried a mixed tone, at times complimentary of current management, led by chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge, and critical of the company’s “underutilized balance sheet” and handling of its 2.7 billion euro ($3.1bn) investment in Spotify Technology.

Fears of AI disrupting the music industry have played a role in UMG’s lacklustre performance. Its share of the music market has been sliding, and streaming growth is decelerating, Wells Fargo analysts noted. In March, UMG delayed its plans for a US listing.

Nonetheless, Ackman will need the support of UMG’s top shareholders – Bollore Group, which holds an 18.5 percent stake, and Vivendi, which owns 13.4 percent – to push through any transaction. China’s Tencent is a significant shareholder. French billionaire Vincent Bollore’s family controls 80 percent of UMG’s voting rights.

Old target

Ackman first flirted with Universal Music Group in 2021, when his Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, a shell corporation created to take a private company public, zeroed in on its target. But Ackman shelved the complex deal in the wake of heavy US regulatory scrutiny. Instead, Pershing Square became one of UMG’s biggest investors in 2021, and Ackman sat on its board until last year.

Post transaction, Ackman said Grainge should remain Universal Music’s chief executive.

Ackman said he and former Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz met with Grainge over dinner “a couple of weeks ago” to discuss the potential merger.

“Lucian encouraged us to send it in,” Ackman said.

Ackman proposed adding new directors, including Ovitz – who shepherded the careers of Madonna and Michael Jackson – who would become the board chair. Additionally, two representatives from Pershing Square would get seats, he said, not saying yet whether he would be one of the directors.

Shares of UMG, which is listed in Amsterdam, were up 13 percent on Tuesday, while Bollore Group climbed 5 percent. Shares in Vivendi were up more than 10 percent.

Pershing bought a 10 percent stake in UMG from Vivendi ahead of its 2021 Amsterdam IPO and has since repeatedly pressed for a New York listing, arguing it would boost UMG’s share price and liquidity.

Pershing currently has a 4.7 percent stake, making it UMG’s fourth-biggest shareholder.

UMG’s shares have lost almost a third of their value since its IPO.

Even as global music revenues grow year after year, UMG and other major labels, like Sony and Warner Music, are scrambling to stay competitive as streaming services from Spotify, Amazon, Apple and Deezer take an ever greater share.

They are now also contending with disruptions brought on by the expansion of AI – from copyright disputes to the advent of song-generating AI tools – that threaten to upend how music is created, consumed and monetised.

One survey last year found that a staggering 97 percent of listeners could distinguish between AI-generated and human-composed songs.

Under Tuesday’s proposal, Pershing’s SPARC Holdings would merge with UMG, and the new entity would become a Nevada corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Agyemang has been diagnosed with an Achilles tendon injury after he was stretchered off during a game for Derby.

USA striker Patrick Agyemang will miss the upcoming FIFA World Cup after suffering an ⁠⁠Achilles tendon ⁠⁠injury, his English ⁠⁠club Derby County has said.

“The club will ‌‌provide Patrick with the highest level of medical care and rehabilitation throughout his recovery,” the club said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Agyemang’s home World Cup hopes were thrown into doubt after he was carried off on a stretcher while playing for Derby in the English second-tier football league.

The 25-year-old landed awkwardly while bringing the ball down on his chest and collapsed to the grass during the English Championship match on Monday. He was visibly emotional as he was taken away, his right leg strapped.

“As a result of this injury, Patrick will unfortunately miss this summer’s FIFA ⁠⁠World Cup. At this stage,⁠ ⁠it would be wrong to put a timeline on his recovery,” Derby said.

Agyemang has helped Derby rise into contention for promotion from the Championship thanks to a team-leading 10 goals since arriving last summer from Charlotte in Major League Soccer.

During the recent international break, he came off the bench for USA and scored in a loss against Belgium and got minutes against Portugal.

Those were his first appearances for ⁠⁠the national team since ⁠⁠starting in the semifinal and final of the 2025 Gold Cup in July. Overall, he ⁠⁠has recorded six goals in 14 caps for the national side.

USA coach Mauricio Pochettino must name his World Cup squad by June 1. ‌‌The United States is cohosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico. The home side will face Paraguay, Australia and ‌‌Turkiye ‌‌in Group D.

The US-Israel war on Iran has resulted in the widespread destruction of its cultural heritage sites, as well as educational institutions and science and research centres.

While the United States and Israel maintain they are striking military targets, the Iranian government’s data tells a story of cultural and scientific loss. At least 56 heritage sites, 30 universities and 55 libraries have been damaged so far, according to local media reports.

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In an interview with Al Jazeera on April 1, Reza Salehi Amiri, Iran’s minister of culture and tourism, described the destruction during the US-Israel war on Iran as a “deliberate and conscious attack” on Iranian identity.

As the war continues to rage, we break down some of the key Iranian cultural and education centres targeted by the US and Israel so far.

Schools

The war on Iran began on February 28 with a strike on an elementary girls’ school, Shajareh Tayyebeh, in the city of Minab in southern Iran. At least 170 people, most of them girls aged between seven and 12 years, were killed when the missiles struck the school.

President Donald Trump initially denied that the US had attacked the school.

However, several independent investigations by media organisations, including Al Jazeera, and rights groups, including Amnesty International, have said the attack was likely deliberate and that a US-manufactured Tomahawk missile was used in it.

Universities and research centres

At least 30 Iranian universities have been attacked by the US and Israel since the war began on February 28.

On March 28, the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) was hit by what local media said were targeted Israeli-US strikes. It remains unclear what the damage and casualties from the strike look like.

A day later, a university in Iran’s central city of Isfahan said it was hit by US-Israeli air raids for the second time since the war erupted, leaving four university staff members wounded.

On April 4, the Laser and Plasma Research Institute of the Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran was bombed by US and Israeli warplanes.

“This hostile act not only targets the security of academics and the country’s scientific environment, but is also a clear attack on reason, research, and freedom of thought,” the university said in a statement, calling on international peers to raise awareness about similar strikes.

Hossein Simaei Saraf, Iran’s minister of science, research and technology, told reporters at the research centre on Saturday that Iranian scientists have been targets for decades. He pointed out that several Shahid Beheshti University professors were assassinated by Israel during the 12-day war in June 2025.

“Attacking universities and research centres means returning to the Stone Age,” the minister said, in reference to a threat by Trump to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” by systematically hitting its infrastructure, including power plants.

The attacks on Tehran’s IUST saw one of its research centres reduced to rubble and other departments damaged in late March. The facility worked on developing domestically made satellites.

The US and Israel also attacked the Pasteur Institute in downtown Tehran, which was founded more than 100 years ago in collaboration with the internationally renowned Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, but now operates independently. The institute works on infectious diseases, producing vaccines and biological products and providing advanced diagnostics.

On April 6, 2026, US-Israeli attacks hit Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, one of Iran’s leading scientific universities, often compared with the US’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the facility was severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound’s mosque and laboratories.

“The Sharif area has witnessed other attacks, including one on a gas facility,” Asadi said, adding that other civil facilities, including roads, power plants and bridges, were attacked across Iran.

“Iran’s Ministry of Science and Technology told us that at least 30 universities have been hit” since the beginning of the war on February 28, he added.

Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, accused the US of deploying a “bunker-buster” bomb to target the university.

“The bunker-buster bomb attack on Sharif University is a symbol of Trump’s madness and ignorance,” Aref said in a post on X.

“He fails to understand that Iran’s knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites,” Aref, a Stanford University-educated engineer, said of Trump.

Libraries

Besides schools, universities and science and research centres, libraries have also been hit.

The head of Iran’s public libraries’ association said on April 4 that at least 55 libraries have been damaged, including two that have been destroyed by US-Israeli strikes, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported.

Cultural heritage sites

Since the war on Iran began, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts has recorded damage to at least 56 museums, historical monuments and cultural sites. In Tehran alone, 19 locations have been hit. These included Golestan Palace, the Grand Bazaar and the former senate building.

The Golestan Palace, which was damaged on March 2, dates to the Qajar era. This 1789-1925 period was marked by the rule of a Turkic dynasty that unified Iran after decades of civil unrest. The Qajar dynasty made Tehran the capital of Iran.

Golestan is a walled palace built combining Persian craft and architecture with European motifs and styles. It features gardens, pools and ornaments. In Persian, “golestan” means “flower garden”.

Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, which was also hit, is a historic marketplace. Parts of it date back to the Qajar era.

Beyond the capital, the strikes have reached the heart of Iran’s Islamic golden age.

In early March, in Isfahan, the 17th-century Chehel Sotoun Palace and the Masjed-e Jame – Iran’s oldest Friday mosque – were also hit. According to UNESCO, the mosque “illustrates a sequence of architectural construction and decorative styles of different periods in Iranian Islamic architecture, covering 12 centuries”.

“Restoration, no matter how perfect, can never return an artefact to its starting point,” Amiri, Iran’s minister for culture and tourism, told Al Jazeera on April 1.

“When you lose the original stone of a Qajar palace or the 17th-century tilework of an Isfahan mosque, you lose a physical layer of history that cannot be manufactured again. Every crack is a permanent scar.”

On March 8, the Falak-ol-Aflak Castle in Khorramabad in Lorestan province was also damaged, according to the head of Lorestan’s heritage department, Ata Hassanpour, who added that the main structure of the castle remained intact.

Amiri, in his interview with Al Jazeera, also condemned the international community’s silence and explicitly called out UNESCO for failing to intervene, despite having the geographical coordinates of all heritage sites.

UNESCO has confirmed that it has verified damage to historic sites in Iran.

The UN agency said, before the war, it had provided all parties with the geographical coordinates of heritage sites so they could “take all feasible precautions to avoid damage”, The Associated Press news agency reported on March 12.

Is this all part of the US and Israel’s broader strategy in Iran?

Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, told Al Jazeera that what Israel and the US are seeking by destroying Iran’s industrial and educational capacity is to prevent reconstruction in a bid to turn the country of 92 million people into a failed state.

But he added that “a civilisation that has survived several millennia cannot be erased with aerial bombardment”.

Christopher Featherstone, associate lecturer of politics and international relations at the University of York, said Washington’s public statements amid the US-Israeli air raids on cultural monuments and educational institutions were also a break from the past.

A different administration, he suggested, would have tried to portray such attacks “as exceptional and accidental”, he told Al Jazeera.

“For this administration, Trump’s extreme rhetoric is almost seeking to normalise them. Trump’s blatant attempts to suggest someone else was responsible for the strikes on the girls’ school a few weeks ago also show just how little effort he is putting in to establishing a narrative to justify this war,” he added.

Do the US and Israel have a history of such attacks in the Middle East?

Yes. The US and Israel have carried out similar attacks in the past, particularly in Gaza and Iraq.

Iraq

The 2003 US‑led invasion of Iraq set the stage for the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, where thousands of artefacts were stolen or destroyed.

The same year, US troops watched as looters plundered the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad and set the building on fire. More than 90 percent of the rare books in the library were destroyed.

Gaza

In Gaza, according to UNESCO’s data this year, Israel destroyed or damaged nearly 200 heritage sites during its genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave, which began in October 2023. While a “ceasefire” has been in place since October 2025, Israeli attacks on Gaza continue.

Some of the heritage sites damaged include the Byzantine Church of Jabalia, which was built in 444 and whose floor was once decorated with colourful mosaics depicting animals, hunting scenes and palm trees. The church was destroyed in October 2023. The Anthedon Harbour, built in 800 BC, was destroyed by Israel in November 2023. After Roman temple ruins and mosaic floors were discovered on the 5-acre (2-hectare) archaeological site, it was placed by UNESCO on its Tentative World Heritage list in 2012.

Gaza City’s Great Omari Mosque, its largest and oldest, established in the seventh century, was also destroyed by Israel in December 2024.

United States Vice President JD Vance is travelling to Budapest to bolster support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose Fidesz Party faces its most difficult election in over a decade.

The White House announced last week that Vance would arrive in Hungary on Tuesday and hold two days of bilateral meetings.

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In February, US President Donald Trump endorsed right-wing leader Orban ahead of Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary elections, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the country that month to show support.

Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology at Princeton University in the US who has spent years as an analyst and critic of Orban’s government, says that the trip is meant to underscore the close relationship between Trump and his Hungarian counterpart.

“Orban will make a big deal out of the fact that he’s got Trump’s support. And that’s why Vance is coming,” she said, adding that she is sceptical that Vance’s trip will have a large impact on the outcome of the election.

“If you look at the polls in Hungary, they show the opposition with an 8 to 12 percent lead, in some recent polls up to a 20 percent lead. One visit by a relatively low-profile American vice president is not going to change that.”

Robust opposition

Orban’s 16-year tenure has been marked by the erosion of the independence of institutions such as the judiciary and the media, as well as reforms that critics say have slanted the electoral system in favour of Orban and his Fidesz party.

But despite what the opposition has described as a deeply imbalanced electoral environment, most polls show the 62-year-old Orban trailing the 45-year-old opposition leader, Peter Magyar, and his Tisza Party.

Magyar is a former high-ranking Fidesz official who broke with the party two years ago and has emerged as a popular voice railing against Orban’s rule.

His campaign has focused on corruption, deteriorating social services, economic conditions, and Orban’s combative relationship with the European Union, which has often centred on immigration and support for Ukraine.

The European Union suspended billions of euros in funding for Hungary in 2022 over what it characterised as democratic backsliding and declining judicial independence.

Magyar has pledged a more cordial relationship with the European bloc, as well as reforms that could lead to the restoration of suspended funds.

While Orban has depicted the opposition as a destabilising force that will sell out the country’s national interests on behalf of Ukraine and the EU, Magyar’s right-leaning politics mean that policies on issues such as immigration would see little change.

“Magyar is centre-right; he’s basically a believer in much of what Orban has done, minus the corruption. In EU terms, he’s slightly eurosceptical but wants to get the money back,” said Scheppele.

Blueprint for the US right

While Orban’s approach to consolidating power and his embrace of far-right politics have mired his relationships in Europe, they have made him a source of inspiration for the US far right and prominent members of the Trump administration, such as JD Vance.

Hungary has previously hosted the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual summit where individuals and groups from across the US right and allies from other countries gather to discuss the future of the conservative movement.

When CPAC convened in Budapest in 2024, Trump sent a video praising Orban for “proudly fighting on the front lines of the battle to rescue Western civilisation”.

Shared ire for Muslims, immigrants, and centres of liberal politics such as universities has helped cement that bond, and Vance himself has enjoyed especially close relations with Orban’s government.

When he was selected as Trump’s running mate in July 2024, Orban’s political director shared a photo of himself posing with Vance, captioned: “A Trump-Vance administration sounds just right.”

Orban’s Hungary has been at the centre of the Trump administration’s shifting policy towards Europe, firmly aligning itself with far-right parties and immigration restrictionists in countries such as France and Germany.

Scheppele says that Orban’s relationship with the Trump administration and status as an icon of the global far right may be of limited use in an election that is mostly focused on domestic issues.

But she noted that more tangible steps, such as a pledge of US financial support from the Trump administration if Orban wins, could buoy his chances in the closing days of the race.

“The big thing to watch is that, when Orban came to the US recently, Trump appeared to promise a fiscal safety net if Orban wins,” said Scheppele, adding that the US took similar steps before the 2025 midterm elections in Argentina in order to bolster right-wing ally Javier Milei, now the country’s president.

“Trump hasn’t made that kind of formal promise, and he’s now denied that he made any specific promise. But the Orban people think that Trump is going to backstop them if they win the election,” Scheppele added. “If Vance makes that kind of announcement, it could be a real game-changer.”

US president says Washington, as the ‘winner’ of the war, has a ‘concept’ for charging a toll in strategic waterway.

President Donald Trump has suggested the United States may be looking to charge a toll in the Strait of Hormuz after the war, a move that would likely require direct US military control over the strategic waterway.

Asked on Monday whether he would accept a deal that would allow Iran to take fees from ships to traverse the strait, the US president said: “What about us charging tolls? I’d rather do that than let them have them. Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner. We won.”

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Trump reiterated that Iran has been militarily defeated, a claim that he has been making since the early days of the war, despite Iran’s sustained drone and missile attacks across the region and its continuing blockade of Hormuz.

“The only thing they have is the psychology of, ‘Oh, we’re going to drop a couple of mines in the water.’ All right, no, I mean, we have a concept where we’ll charge tolls,” Trump told reporters.

Hormuz, which connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean, lies mostly within Omani and Iranian territorial waters. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) passed through the strait before the war.

Trump’s latest comments came as he issued what he called a “final” ultimatum to Tehran to reopen the strait and agree to Washington’s terms or face attacks against Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.

The US president told reporters on Monday that any deal with Iran must include reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be, we want free traffic of oil,” he said.

Reports have suggested that Iran is already charging a toll for some of the few ships it is allowing to pass through the strait.

“The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X last month.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has also called for “new arrangements” to manage the waterway after the war, ensuring safe passage for ships and protecting Iran’s interests.

“I believe that after the war, the first step should be drafting a new protocol for the Strait of Hormuz,” he told Al Jazeera in March. “Naturally, this should be done between the countries that lie on both sides of the strait.”

The White House said last week that Trump is considering asking Arab countries to pay for Washington’s expenses in its war on Iran.