Category: News

Washington, DC – Preliminary data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that international development aid from its members dropped by about 23 percent from 2024 to 2025.

Much of that decline was attributed to a major shortfall in funding from the United States.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

The forum, which includes many of the the largest economies across Europe and the Americas, said on Thursday that the US saw a nearly 57 percent drop in foreign aid in 2025.

The OECD’s four other top contributors — Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and France — also saw declines in their foreign aid assistance.

The report marked the first time foreign development assistance from all five of the OECD’s top donors simultaneously declined. The total assistance for 2025 totaled only $174.3bn, down from $214.6bn the year before, representing the largest annual drop since the OECD began recording the data.

OECD officials warned the dramatic decrease comes at a time when global economic and food security has been cast into doubt amid the stresses of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

“It’s deeply concerning to see this huge drop in [development funding] in 2025, due to dramatic cuts among the very top donors,” OECD official Carsten Staur said in a statement.

Thursday’s preliminary data shows that only eight member countries met or exceeded their funding from 2024.

“We are in a time of increasing humanitarian needs,” Staur added, citing growing global uncertainty and extreme poverty. “I can only plead that DAC donors reverse this negative trend and start to increase their [assistance].”

The data covers the 34 members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which provide the vast majority of global foreign assistance.

But the numbers offer an incomplete picture of global development aid, as it fails to include influential non-DAC members including Turkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and China.

The data tracked by the OECD distinguishes official development assistance from other forms of aid, including military funds.

US drives ‘three-quarters of the decline’

In its preliminary assessment, the OECD noted that the US “alone drove three-quarters of the decline” in 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Trump has overseen widespread cuts to the US’s aid infrastructure, including dissolving the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of a wider effort to shrink government spending.

The US contributed about $63bn in official development assistance in 2024, which was cleaved to just short of $29bn in 2025, according to OECD.

Research this year from the University of Sydney has suggested that cuts to US funding over the past year have corresponded with an increase in armed conflict in Africa, as state resources grow more scarce.

Other experts have noted that the slashed assistance is likely to prompt upticks in cases of HIV-AIDS, malaria and polio.

Analysts at the Center for Global Development have projected that the US cuts were linked to between 500,000 and 1,000,000 deaths globally in 2025 alone. A recent article published in the medical journal The Lancet found that a “continuation of current downward trends” in development funding could lead to over 9.4 million new deaths by 2030.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has maintained it is transforming, not eschewing, the US aid model.

In recent months, it has struck a handful of bilateral assistance agreements with African countries that it says are in line with its “America First” agenda.

But while the details of such deals have not been made public, critics note that some negotiations appear to have involved requests for African countries to share mineral access or health data.

‘Turning their backs’

Oxfam, a confederation of several non-governmental aid organisations, was among those calling on wealthy countries to change course following Thursday’s report.

“Wealthy governments are turning their backs on the lives of millions of women, men and children in the Global South with these severe aid cuts,” Oxfam’s Development Finance Lead Didier Jacobs said in a statement.

Jacobs added that governments are “cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarisation”.

As an example, he pointed to the US, where the Trump administration is expected to request between $80bn and $200bn for the US-Israeli war with Iran, which has currently been paused amid a tenuous ceasefire.

The administration has separately requested a historic $1.5 trillion for the US military for fiscal year 2027.

“Governments must restore their aid budgets and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades,” Jacobs said. 

The United States fertility rate has now been in decline for two decades, dropping nearly 23 percent since 2007.

The fertility rate in the United States has dropped to an all-time low, continuing a trend that has seen births in the country drop by nearly 23 percent since 2007.

Data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday shows that the fertility rate for 2025 was 53.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, a one percent drop compared to the year before.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

Experts attribute the change to a variety of factors, from changing priorities among younger women to socioeconomic factors such as anxiety over the cost of living and the affordability of housing and childcare.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank focused on economic issues, the average cost of childcare in the state of California was nearly $22,000 per year. In states with a lower cost of living such as Alabama, it was nearly $8,000.

Even though Alabama’s costs were lower, the institute noted that $8,000 is the equivalent of 27 weeks of full-time work for a labourer making the minimum wage in the state.

For California, it would take a minimum-wage worker 33 weeks to earn enough for childcare costs alone.

Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, told the news agency Reuters that factors such as “greater and more demanding job market opportunities, expanded leisure options, [and] increased intensity of parenting” have made “the option to have children less desirable”.

Falling birth rates have also grabbed the attention of policymakers, with some seeking to roll out tools to incentivise young couples to have children.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump promised to embrace pro-birth policies, sometimes referred to as pro-natalist policies. Last year, the administration touted new guidance to increase access to IVF treatments as evidence that the Republican Party was the “party of parents”.

Such steps, however, have been paired with enormous reductions in access to government healthcare and other social programmes.

After unveiling his recent budget request for fiscal year 2027, Trump justified the need to slash social spending, while defending his $1.5 trillion request for military spending.

He has suggested that existing federal programmes be offloaded onto states, which have varying resources.

“The United States can’t take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country,” Trump said last week.

“Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal [basis]. We’ve got to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place, you have to let states take care of them.”

Far-right politicians have also become fixated on falling birth rates in Western countries, using them to promote a narrative that white majorities could be “replaced” by migrants from non-Western countries.

The number of babies born in the US in 2025 also saw a slight drop of about one percent, down to 3.6 million.

Confusion over competing United States and Iranian proposals to end the war is deepening uncertainty about the fragile two-week ceasefire between the longtime foes, with officials presenting sometimes differing accounts of what has been agreed.

At the centre of the dispute is an Iranian 10-point plan, which is the basis for the upcoming negotiations with the US in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, this weekend. President Donald Trump has called the plan “workable”, despite initially handing Iran a 15-point plan that Tehran dismissed as “maximalist”.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

However, hours after the ceasefire, US officials, including Trump, offered mixed responses to Iran’s proposal and what Washington understood the key points of the document to be.

Vice President JD Vance dismissed the publicised version as little more than a “random yahoo in Iran submitting it to public access television”.

Adding to the confusion, the Persian version of the plan notably diverges from the English one on a key sticking point between Washington and Tehran – Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

What was the US’s 15-point plan, and what was Iran’s response?

The Trump administration presented Iran with what officials described as a 15-point framework aimed at ending the war, and potentially achieving a permanent end to hostilities between the longtime foes.

While the full details have not been publicly released, reports by US media outlets and others included the following elements:

• Iran commits to never developing nuclear weapons.
• Iran must also no longer enrich uranium within the country, and hand over its stockpile of already enriched uranium to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
• Tehran would also commit to allowing the IAEA to monitor all elements of the country’s remaining nuclear infrastructure.
• Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Ending Iran’s support for regional proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
• A removal of all sanctions imposed on Iran, alongside the ending of the United Nations mechanism that allows sanctions to be reimposed.
• Limits on the range and number of Iran’s missiles.

Donald Trump on Wednesday said that “many of the 15 points” in the proposal had been agreed upon, signalling optimism about a broader deal.

“We are, and will be, talking tariff and sanctions relief with Iran,” the US president added.

However, Iran rejected the US framework, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirming that Tehran had received messages from the US via intermediaries. He dismissed Washington’s demands as “maximalist” and “illogical”.

Tehran advanced its own positions in a 10-point counterproposal, which included demands of compensation for damages suffered by Iran during the war, a commitment to non-aggression by the US, Iran retaining its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, and acceptance of Iran’s nuclear enrichment.

How has the US reacted to the 10-point proposal?

Trump on Wednesday said the US has received a 10-point proposal from Iran, which he called a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.

However, later in the day, confusion over what the official US position was started to become apparent.

Trump turned to his Truth Social platform to attack those he accused of spreading inaccurate accounts of supposed agreements.

“There is only one group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States, and we will be discussing them behind closed doors during these Negotiations,” Trump said, without providing details. “These are the POINTS that are the basis on which we agreed to a CEASEFIRE.”

The US president, in a separate post, said there will be “no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust’”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed certain reports about the Iranian proposal and said that Trump would reject any uranium enrichment by Tehran.

“The president’s red lines, namely the end of Iranian enrichment in Iran, have not changed,” Leavitt told reporters. While Iran says it is not seeking nuclear weapons, it insists on enriching its own uranium as a national right.

Moreover, Leavitt said Iran’s initial 10-point proposal was “literally thrown in the garbage” by Trump’s team, but Tehran later put forward a revised “more reasonable and entirely different” plan, one which could be aligned with Trump’s own 15-point proposal.

“The idea that President Trump would ever accept an Iranian wish list as a deal is completely absurd,” she said.

Trump’s second-in-command, Vance, dismissed the publicised version as little more than a “random yahoo in Iran submitting it to public access television”.

“We don’t really concern ourselves with what they claim they have the right to do; we concern ourselves with what they actually do,” he added in remarks made to reporters in Budapest.

He said he had seen at least three different drafts of the proposals. “The first 10-point proposal was something that was submitted, and we think, frankly, was probably written by ChatGPT,” Vance said.

Are there different versions of Iran’s 10-point plan?

In short, yes. At least two different versions of that same plan appear to exist, one in English and the other in Persian.

In the Persian version, made public by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, it said the “US has, in principle, committed to” a series of demands, most notably the “acceptance of enrichment”, signalling that any deal must recognise Iran’s right to continue enriching uranium.

However, this phrase was allegedly omitted from the English-language version.

Iran has consistently framed uranium enrichment as a sovereign right, while the Trump administration and its ally Israel call the demand a non-starter and a red line.

For years, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear activities are strictly civilian and that it has no plans to build nuclear weapons.

In 2015, it reached an agreement with the US to curb its nuclear programme in return for relief from sanctions. In 2018, however, Trump pulled Washington out of that landmark accord and reimposed sanctions on Iran.

Just hours after the United States and Iran announced a ceasefire in the war that has dominated news headlines around the world and pushed oil prices to new heights, Israel bombarded Lebanon on Wednesday, killing hundreds, injuring thousands and prompting Iran to reimpose its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

The bone of contention: whether or not Israel’s relentless strikes on Lebanon were included in the ceasefire at all. Pakistan, which brokered the agreement, said they were. Israel said they weren’t.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

Later on Wednesday, the US sided with Israel, with President Donald Trump calling the violence in Lebanon “a separate skirmish” even though Hezbollah had entered the war in defence of Iran.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under intense political pressure since the US and Iran signed the ceasefire, which had little or no active involvement from Israel.

None of Israel’s war aims, which Netanyahu had assured his country were the basis for what he framed as an existential battle with Iran, had been achieved, angering those who supported the war.

Furthermore, under the terms of the truce published yesterday, a 10-point peace plan put forward by Iran has been accepted as a starting point for negotiations due to begin this weekend in Islamabad.

Under early descriptions of the Iranian plan, Iran would retain its nuclear stock and could benefit financially from levies charged on shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and from tariffs and sanctions relief promised by Israel’s ally, US President Donald Trump, on his Truth Social account.

This is far from the 15-point list of demands the US previously put forward to Iran, which would have seen the strait completely reopened without conditions, and Iran giving up its enriched uranium stocks, ending its ballistic missiles programme and promising to stop arming proxy groups in the region, such as the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and a flurry of armed groups in Iraq.

Arguing that Lebanon is exempt from the ceasefire agreement, Israel launched the most extensive bombardment on its neighbour in recent months on Wednesday. In the space of about 10 minutes, the Israeli military carried out more than 100 strikes on what it claimed were Hezbollah targets, hitting Beirut, southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, killing at least 254 people, 91 of them in the capital, Beirut, alone.

The attacks have been condemned by numerous nations and international organisations, including Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United Nations and Pakistan, which brokered the ceasefire deal and stated explicitly that Lebanon was included.

Responding to the strikes, Iranian state media announced that its government was now considering walking away from the truce and has already announced that restrictions on the economically vital Strait of Hormuz will be reimposed.

For its part, Israel says it is not trying to kill the ceasefire by launching strikes on Lebanon. Charles Freilich, Israel’s former deputy national security adviser, told Al Jazeera that the motivation for the strikes arose solely from the “opportunity to hit numerous mid to high-level Hezbollah fighters, not spoil the ceasefire, which both the US and Israel maintain does not include Lebanon”.

‘Provocateurs-in-chief’

Some analysts are sceptical, however.

“Israeli officials will no doubt claim that this was a super sophisticated operation against necessary security targets, perhaps embellishing those arguments with claims of deep intel and technological penetration and sophistication, and you will probably have the usual mainstream Western media outlets slavishly parroting the Israeli line,” former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera, before explaining that such operations typically combine two principal features.

“The first is, sadly, an Israeli devotion to death and destruction, largely for its own sake, to spread terror and upend state capacity in various places in the region, and to upend civilian life,” he said. “And, secondly, a very transparent attempt to prolong the broader war against Iran, to collapse any ceasefire prospects, and to act as provocateurs-in-chief.”

Politically, support within Israel for the war may have weakened, however. Many of those who initially supported the war on Iran have been unsparing in their criticism of a potential pause in the conflict negotiated by the other two parties at Israel’s apparent expense.

Posting on X, opposition leader Yair Lapid claimed that Prime Minister “Netanyahu has turned us into a protectorate state that receives instructions over the phone on matters pertaining to the core of our national security”.

Democrats leader Yair Golan was equally scathing. “Netanyahu lied,” he wrote on X. “He promised a ‘historic victory’ and security for generations, and in practice, we got one of the most severe strategic failures Israel has ever known.”

“Netanyahu is in real trouble, and he thinks he has to wreck the ceasefire to get out of it, just as he did previously in Gaza,” Member of the Knesset Aida Touma Sliman of the left-wing Hadash party, which has opposed the war from the start, told Al Jazeera. “The ceasefire has lost him a lot of support, even among those who backed the war. None of his war aims have been achieved and it looks like he is losing control to the Trump administration,” she said.

“Don’t forget, we’re heading towards elections,” she added, referring to the vote currently slated for October, “and Netanyahu’s dropping in the polls. He needs something he can claim is a victory.

“And that’s why he did what he did,” she said, of Wednesday’s barrage on busy Lebanese neighbourhoods that killed hundreds, including women, children and medical workers, according to emergency workers on the ground. “He conducted a massacre in Lebanon.”

As the small East African coastal nation of Djibouti prepares for presidential elections on Friday, longtime leader President Ismail Omar Guelleh is expected to win the polls with little to no challenge.

Djibouti, a country of just about one million people that neighbours Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, is politically relevant in the Horn of Africa region. It is also internationally important due to its strategic location right at the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which provides access to the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden and through which a large portion of global trade between Asia and the West passes.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

Djibouti hosts important military bases for the United States, France, China and other powers, earning it the tag of the country with the most foreign military bases. It is also an important port hub for bigger inland landlocked countries like Ethiopia.

Incumbent candidate Guelleh is running for his sixth term as president. Though originally ineligible due to term limits and age, lawmakers removed age limits last year, paving the way for another term in office.

Formerly named French Somaliland under colonialism, the country continued to maintain large numbers of French troops following independence in 1977, but it was the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US that saw it garner new attention as Washington sought proximity to armed groups in Somalia and Yemen.

Djibouti was also a strategic military launchpad for naval units during the anti-piracy fights of the mid-2000s when the US, European Union, and other allies sought to battle pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Both French and Arabic are official languages in Djibouti. Somali and Afar are also widely spoken by Somalis, who make up about 60 percent of the population, and people from the Afar group, who comprise about 35 percent.

About 94 percent of people in Djibouti practise Islam. The local currency is the Djiboutian franc.

Here’s what to know about Friday’s election:

Who is eligible to vote?

About a quarter of the population, or 243,471 people, are registered to vote in the polls, according to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. That’s up from the last presidential election in 2021, when about 215,000 were registered.

Voter turnout on average is about 67 percent.

Polls are expected to open early on April 10 and close in the evening.

Although Djibouti is described by monitors as an “electoral autocracy”, election observers from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight-country regional bloc, arrived there on Tuesday.

IGAD said 17 observers from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda will be deployed across all regions, and will release a statement after the vote on April 12.

Who is running?

Ismail Omar Guelleh: The 78-year-old incumbent, known as “IOG”, is running for his sixth term as president. He was first voted into power in 1999. His party is the ruling People’s Rally for Progress.

Guelleh’s latest bid came after lawmakers in November unanimously amended the constitution to remove a 75-year-old age limit. Back in 2010, parliament had scrapped term limits in a constitutional reform.

Guelleh has been criticised for ruling with an iron fist and holding on to power unconstitutionally. However, he is also credited with maintaining a relatively stable hold in a region that’s usually rife with instability.

Under his rule, Djibouti, which has no natural resources, has signed infrastructure deals with China and lucrative military hosting pacts with Western powers by leveraging its location.

Djibouti Finance Minister Ilyas Dawaleh in 2017 said the country makes $125m a year from hosting US, French, Chinese, Italian and Japanese military bases, with Washington paying almost half of that.

The US base, Camp Lemonnier, is the only permanent US military base in Africa.

Guelleh, donning his party’s leaf-green colours, spoke to hundreds of his supporters during campaign rallies that were held in the capital this month.

In one campaign, he said the elections and the choices available to voters “are consistent with democracy” in the country and promised more “significant success” if elected. His supporters held up banners that read “national unity and social cohesion”.

Mohamed Farah Samatar: Guelleh’s only rival is a former member of the ruling party. He is running under the Unified Democratic Centre party.

Samatar rallied in Tadjourah and Obock regions with his supporters, claiming that “another Djibouti is possible”.

Sonia le Gouriellec, a Horn of Africa expert at Lille Catholic University, told the AFP news agency: “There’s not much at stake [in the election]. It’s just a token competition.”

Omar Ali Ewado, head of the Djibouti League of Human Rights (LDDH), called the vote a “masquerade” and said it is a “foregone conclusion”.

“The person who will challenge President Guelleh is a member of a small party subservient to those in power,” he told AFP.

What are the key issues?

Shrinking democratic freedoms

Guelleh’s critics are increasingly sounding the alarm about the shrinking of civic space in the country.

Elections have been described as merely ritualistic, with Guelleh winning more than 90 percent of votes in the 2021 polls. Since 2016, opposition parties have boycotted elections.

Guelleh’s government is also accused of high levels of corruption and nepotism, with some speculating that his stepson and the secretary-general of the prime minister’s office, Naguib Abdallah Kamil, is being prepared for the top job.

The country is regularly singled out by human rights organisations for its repression of dissenting voices. It is currently ranked 168th out of 180 in the 2025 press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

One aspiring presidential candidate, Alexis Mohamed, who formerly served as presidential adviser until he resigned in September, told reporters he was “unable” to pursue his candidacy because he had no “security guarantees” if he were to return to the country from his current location abroad.

Mohamed, who served in an official capacity for 10 years, accused Guelleh of “patronage-based management of the state”.

According to the International Federation for Human Rights, elections in Djibouti are “not free”.

Rising debt

Many accuse Guelleh of brandishing shiny infrastructure projects built by China, such as a railway to Ethiopia, but point to the country’s stagnating economy and rising debts to Beijing.

By 2026, the country owed China $1.2bn from loans, as well as several others. The International Monetary Fund said in a report in 2025 that Djibouti’s debt profile is “in distress and unsustainable”.

Some of these costly infrastructure projects have not had an impact on lowering poverty rates. About 73 percent of the country’s young population is unemployed due to a dearth of jobs, for one example.

Meanwhile, a major source of the country’s revenue is under threat: Djibouti’s ports almost entirely handle Addis Ababa’s maritime imports and exports for about $2bn annually.

However, in 2024,  Ethiopia is seeking to reduce that independence. The country signed a port deal with autonomous Somaliland, a case that has caused tensions with Djibouti as well as Somalia, which considers Somaliland part of its own territory.

Following Turkiye-led mediation, Ethiopia and Somalia reached a preliminary understanding in late 2024 to resolve their dispute. Ethiopia has agreed to pivot to “reliable and sustainable” sea access with Somalia rather than with Somaliland.

The Strait of Hormuz, which links the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, has held global attention since Israel and the US began their war on Iran in February.

Until fighting began, the narrow channel, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies are shipped from Gulf producers in peacetime, remained toll-free and safe for vessels. The strait is shared by Iran and Oman and does not fall into the category of international waters.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

After the US and Israel began strikes, Iran retaliated by attacking “enemy” merchant ships in the strait, effectively halting passage for all, stranding shipping, and creating one of the worst-ever global energy distribution crises.

Tehran continued to refuse to re-open the strait to all traffic at the start of this week, despite US President Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges if it did not relent. Trump backed away from his threat on Tuesday night when a two-week ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, was declared.

That followed a 10-point peace proposal from Iran that Trump described as a “workable” basis on which to negotiate a permanent end to hostilities.

As part of the truce, Tehran has now issued official terms it says will guide its control of the Strait going forward. The US has not directly acknowledged the terms ahead of talks set to begin in Islamabad on Friday. However, analysts say Tehran’s continued control will be unpopular with Washington, as well as other countries.

During the crisis, only a few ships from specific countries deemed friendly to Iran and those which pay a toll have been granted safe passage. At least two tolls for ships are believed to have been paid in Chinese yuan, in what appears to be a strategy to weaken the US dollar, but also to avoid US sanctions. China, which buys 80 percent of Iran’s oil, already pays Tehran in yuan.

Here’s what we know about how shipments will work from now on:

Who is controlling the strait now?

On Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said Iran would grant safe passage through the strait during the ceasefire in “coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations”.

On Wednesday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a map of the strait showing a safe route for ships to follow. The map appears to direct ships further north towards the Iranian coast and away from the traditional route closer to the coast of Oman.

In a statement, the IRGC said all vessels must use the new map for navigation due to “the likelihood of the presence of various types of anti-ship mines in the main traffic zone”.

It is unclear whether Iran is collecting toll fees during the ceasefire period.

However, Trump said on Tuesday the US would be “helping with the traffic buildup” in the strait and that the US army would be “hanging around” as the negotiations go on.

The Strait will be “OPEN & SAFE” he posted on his Truth Social media site on Thursday, adding that US troops would not leave the area, and threatening to resume attacks if the talks don’t go well.

It’s not known to what extent US troops are directing what happens in the strait now.

Delhi-based maritime analyst C Uday Bhaskar told Al Jazeera that there is a lot of “uncertainty” about who can sail through the strait, and that only between three and five ships have transited since the war was paused.

How does Iran’s 10-point plan affect the Strait?

Among Tehran’s main demands listed on its 10-point plan are that the US and Israel permanently cease all attacks on Iran and its allies – particularly Lebanon – lift all sanctions, and allow Iran to retain control over Hormuz. The plan has not been fully published but is understood to be a starting point for talks.

Iranian media say Iran is considering a plan to charge up to $2m per vessel to be shared with Oman on the opposite side of the strait. Other reports suggest Iran could charge $1 per barrel of oil being shipped.

Revenues raised would be used to rebuild military and civilian infrastructure damaged by US-Israeli strikes, Tehran said.

Oman has rejected the idea. Transport minister Said Al-Maawali said on Wednesday that the Omanis previously “signed all international maritime transport agreements” which bar taking fees.

What does international law say about tolls on shipping?

Critics of Iran’s plan to charge tolls say it violates international law guiding safe maritime passage, and should not be part of a final ceasefire agreement.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) says levies cannot be charged on ships sailing through international straits or territorial seas.

The law allows coastal states to collect fees for services rendered, such as navigation assistance or port use, but not for passage itself.

Neither the US nor Iran has ratified that particular convention, however.

Even if they had, there could be ways to get around this law anyway. Analyst Bhaskar told Al Jazeera that if Iran instead charged fees to de-mine the strait and make it safe for passage again, that could be allowable under maritime laws.

There is no precedent in recent history of countries officially taxing passage through international straits or waterways.

In October 2024, a United Nations Security Council report alleged that the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen were collecting “illegal fees” from shipping companies to allow vessels to pass through the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, where it was targeting ships linked to Israel during the Gaza war.

Last week, a top adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei suggested the Houthis could shut the Bab al-Mandeb shipping route again in light of the war on Iran.

How might countries react to a Hormuz toll?

Tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz would likely most affect oil and gas-producing countries in the Gulf, but ripple effects will spread to others as well, as the current supply shocks have shown.

Gulf countries, which issued statements calling for the reopening of the passage and praising the ceasefire on Wednesday, would also face a continuing degree of uncertainty, analysts say, as Iran could again disrupt flows in the future.

Before the ceasefire was announced, Bahrain had already proposed a resolution at the UN Security Council calling on member states to coordinate and jointly reopen the passage by “all necessary means”. It was backed by Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan. On April 7, 11 of 15 UNSC members voted in favour of that resolution.

But Russia and China vetoed the resolution, saying it was biased against Iran and did not address the initial strikes on Iran by the US and Israel.

Beyond the region, observers say the US is unlikely to accept indefinite toll demands by Iran as part of the negotiations expected to begin on Friday.

A toll to pass through the Strait of Hormuz “is not going to go down well with President Trump and his expectations that the strait should be open for everyone”, Amin Saikal, a professor at the Australian National University, said.

Other major powers have also voiced opposition. Ahead of the ceasefire, Britain had begun discussions with 40 other countries to find a way to reopen the strait.

Practical realities in the strait might see a different scenario play out with ship owners losing millions each day their vessels remain stranded seeking to get them out quickly and undamaged experts say. They are more likely to comply with Iran, at least for now.

“If I were the owner of a VLCC [very large crude carrier] which weighs about 300,000 tonnes, whose value could be a quarter billion dollars…I would believe the Iranians if they said we have laid mines,” Bhaskar said.

US vice president in Hungary calls Ukrainian leader’s ‘threatening’ remarks ‘completely scandalous’.

US Vice President JD Vance has said Ukraine’s prime minister made “scandalous” comments about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as he echoed Budapest’s accusations that Kyiv is trying to influence the upcoming elections there.

Vance’s remarks on Wednesday came during a visit to Budapest days before the far-right Orban, a Trump ally, faces the toughest challenge of his 16-year rule in an election on April 12.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

Hungary’s strained relations with Ukraine have taken centre stage in the election campaign, with Budapest’s government accusing Kyiv of deliberately stopping flows of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline in an effort to sway the ballot.

Kyiv says the pipeline was damaged by a Russian drone attack in late January, and it is fixing it as quickly as it can.

Hungary responded by blocking a 90-billion-euro ($105bn) EU loan for Ukraine, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to say he could give the address of whoever was responsible to the Ukrainian army, who could “speak with him in their own language”.

‘Completely scandalous’

Speaking at a Hungarian university, Vance said Orban had told him about Zelenskyy’s remarks.

“It’s completely scandalous,” Vance said. “You should never have a foreign head of government … threatening the head of government of an allied nation.”

Vance then accused the media of double standards in their coverage of alleged foreign interference in the 2016 US presidential election and in the Hungarian vote.

“You saw this back in 2016 where a lot of the American media said that it was a true scandal that the Russian government bought like $500,000 of Facebook advertisements … That’s foreign influence,” he said.

“But what’s not foreign influence is when the European Union threatens billions of dollars withheld from Hungary because you guys protect your borders… What’s not foreign influence is when the Ukrainians shut down pipelines, causing suffering among the Hungarian people in an effort to influence an election.”

Budapest has been embroiled in a long‑running dispute with the European Union over issues ranging from judicial independence to the treatment of migrants.

Vance had already lambasted what he said was EU meddling in the Hungarian vote at a news conference on Tuesday.

A European Commission spokesperson said on Wednesday Brussels would use diplomatic channels “to convey our concerns to our US counterparts” following those comments, according to the Reuters news agency.

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.”

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

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.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

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.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

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.”