US president Donald Trump is speaking at the G7 again this evening, saying his Iran deal “achieves everything we set out to accomplish and … much more.”
“If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years, you years, you would never have the Hormuz strait open, you would never have success,” he said.
He said he “didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.”
Trump added:
double quotation mark And by the way, if they don’t honor the agreement or some things aren’t even mentioned in the agreement, it’s a memorandum of understanding. But we have an understanding of certain things without writing it.And, if they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it. You know, it’s amazing what bombs can do.
Key events
The day so far
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US president Donald Trump said the deal with Iran is “not final” and threatened to “go back to shooting”Tehran if it does not “behave”.Speaking to reporters before meeting with Egyptian president Abdel Fatah el-Sisi at the G7 summit, he said: “It’s not final. It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.”
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Trump said that the deal his administration has struck with Iran will act as a “wall” to the Middle Eastern country having a nuclear weapon.Speaking in Évian-les-Bains, France, he told reporters that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) is a “strong one” and that if Iran went back on the deal, “the process will start again”.
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US vice-president JD Vance said the text of the US-Iran deal would be released on Friday “at the latest”, as he was quizzed on the contents of the memorandum of understanding that has been widely reported in the media. Vance said Washington has been pushing for it to be released sooner but that Qatari and Pakistani negotiators, who helped mediate the agreement, “asked us not to release the full text for a little while”.
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Lebanese president Joseph Aoun said that the Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel in Washington were independent of the US-Iran deal to bring an end to the Middle East conflict.“The assurances we have received, and what we insist on, is that Lebanon’s path in the negotiations is independent, though we are certainly for a ceasefire and for any country that helps us, including Iran,” Aoun said, according to a statement from his office, after Iran and Pakistan said Lebanon was included in the US-Iran deal.
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China’s top diplomat told his Iranian counterpart today that it was “key” for all sides to “genuinely implement” their commitments after Tehran and Washington reached a memorandum of understanding to end their war, Beijing’s foreign ministry said.“The dawn of peace has already emerged, the key part of the next step is for all parties to genuinely implement their commitments and eliminate interference from various sides,” Wang Yi told Abbas Araghchi in a phone call.
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Italy’s embassy to Tehran will re-open on Friday after more than three months of closure because of the Middle East war, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.“Our embassy in Tehran will re-open its doors on Friday,” foreign minister Antonio Tajani told Italy’s parliament.
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Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip have killed 1,005 Palestinians in the eight months since a ceasefire was reached between Israel and the militant group Hamas.That’s according to the Gaza health ministry’s latest toll released on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the death toll from the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 73,000 in Gaza, the ministry said.
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Nato secretary general Mark Rutte hailed the US-Iran deal to end the Middle East war, saying the planned reopening of the strait of Hormuz would be a “massive step forward”.“I know that many allies, through the initiative led by France and the United Kingdom, are ready to support,” Rutte told a press conference in Brussels.
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Iran’s military has threatened to respond to Israel after strikes in southern Lebanon killed four people, despite an agreement being reached between Tehran and Washington to end the Middle East war, including in Lebanon. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Israeli warplanes targeting the southern town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa and a drone strike in Ansariyeh on the coast this morning. There was no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the reports.
Jakub Krupa
Curiously, Trumpalso thanks Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping for staying neutral on Iran, saying otherwise “they could have made it much more difficult for us.”
Follow the full press conference in our Europe live blog here:
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said that Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel should be limited to “mutual security”, and that the country’s main demand should be restoring its sovereignty after Israeli troops invaded the south.
“The ceiling for the negotiations with the Israeli enemy is mutual security… and any proposal under the banner of disarmament will not pass, as this is an Israeli recipe for taking everything and wrecking the country,” Qassem said in a televised address.
“Everything linked to organising our domestic situation, whether the issue of weapons or the economy, or the national security strategy or defence strategy… it all must be completely outside the negotiations. This we discuss internally. Therefore in any negotiation, the main demand must be Lebanon’s sovereignty,” he added.
Jakub Krupa
Trump said he will work with the Gulf nations on “non-nuclear issues” but claims that maritime traffic through the strait of Hormuz “has already incrased very substantially” as a result of his political deal.
He then went back to praising himself.
double quotation mark What I’m doing and what I did should have been done years ago, would have been much easier, much less firepower, but it wasn’t.
US president Donald Trump is speaking at the G7 again this evening, saying his Iran deal “achieves everything we set out to accomplish and … much more.”
“If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years, you years, you would never have the Hormuz strait open, you would never have success,” he said.
He said he “didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.”
Trump added:
double quotation mark And by the way, if they don’t honor the agreement or some things aren’t even mentioned in the agreement, it’s a memorandum of understanding. But we have an understanding of certain things without writing it.And, if they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it. You know, it’s amazing what bombs can do.
Patrick Wintour
Largely similar versions of the Memorandum of Understanding agreed between the US and Iran have been published ahead of formal publication, which is due after a signing ceremony at a Qatari owned luxury hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Friday.
The memorandum has been described as “conceptual” by Donald Trump, and in essence deals with the start of a 60-day ceasefire, the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, the interconnection between talks on Iran’s nuclear program and the sanction relief that Iran will receive.
Tasnim, the news agency closest to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has claimed the leaked drafts is deficient with regard to the strait, a possible reference to a passage that Iran insists has been included saying the strait will be administered after 60 days by Iran. There is no reference to such an Iranian role in the leaked draft.
The draft opens by saying: “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, along with their allies in the current war, by signing this memorandum of understanding, declare an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon and pledge from now on not to launch any hostile action against each other and to refrain from threatening or using force against each other.”
The reference to Lebanon’s inclusion in the ceasefire and the binding in of all allies, a reference to Hezbollah and Israel, was crucial to Iran. But the US says the reference to a permanent end of the war does not require a Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory.
The next section states: “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States also commit to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.”
Both countries have accused each other of seeking regime change but Trump has now declared he is not a fan of enforced external regime change. The next section says 60 days has been set aside to reach a final agreement but this is extendable by mutual agreement.
An explosive Hezbollah drone detonated near Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, injuring four of them, the Israeli military said in an X post on Wednesday.
A second drone exploded several minutes later, injuring another soldier, the Israeli military added.
China’s top diplomat told his Iranian counterpart today that it was “key” for all sides to “genuinely implement” their commitments after Tehran and Washington reached a memorandum of understanding to end their war, Beijing’s foreign ministry said.
“The dawn of peace has already emerged, the key part of the next step is for all parties to genuinely implement their commitments and eliminate interference from various sides,” Wang Yi told Abbas Araghchi in a phone call.
“China has consistently supported Iran’s reasonable and legitimate claims and Iran’s efforts in safeguarding its own sovereignty and security,” Wang added.
Italy’s embassy to Tehran will re-open on Friday after more than three months of closure because of the Middle East war, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
“Our embassy in Tehran will re-open its doors on Friday,” foreign minister Antonio Tajani told Italy’s parliament.
After the US and Israel began the war with air strikes on Iran, Italy in early March decided to temporarily close its embassy and move its staff to neighbouring Azerbaijan for security reasons.
“Our ambassador will return to the Iranian capital with all our diplomats and foreign ministry officials,” Tajani said.
Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip have killed 1,005 Palestinians in the eight months since a ceasefire was reached between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
That’s according to the Gaza health ministry’s latest toll released on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the death toll from the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 73,000 in Gaza, the ministry said.
It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. It is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.
US president Donald Trump says that the deal his administration has struck with Iran will act as a “wall” to the Middle Eastern country having a nuclear weapon.
Speaking in Évian-les-Bains, France, he told reporters that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) is a “strong one” and that if Iran went back on the deal, “the process will start again”.
Trump added that the MOU is a “very strong one”.
Vance said he expects gas prices to come down “a lot more” over the next few weeks.
“We really do think, as the president said, this was a short-term increase in prices,” he told CBS.
“We understand it caused a lot of disruption, there are a lot of American families who are struggling, but this is not a long-term change.”
Vance says text of US-Iran deal will be released on Friday ‘at the latest’
US vice-president JD Vance said the text of the US-Iran deal would be released on Friday “at the latest”, as he was quizzed on the contents of the memorandum of understanding that has been widely reported in the media.
Vance said Washington has been pushing for it to be released sooner but that Qatari and Pakistani negotiators, who helped mediate the agreement, “asked us not to release the full text for a little while”.
“We’re actually trying to push them to get it out today, because we want to tell the American people what’s in this deal,” Vance told CBS.
He described it as a “good deal for the American people” and said he had seen “misrepresentations” about it, in an apparent reference to reports about leaked versions of the draft.
Vance said the agreement would reopen the strait of Hormuz “immediately” and provide a framework “whereby if the Iranians give us what we need on stopping the funding of terrorism, on no longer pursuing a nuclear weapon, then they can get some benefits, be reinvited into the world economy”.
“When I say benefits, I’m talking about sanctions relief on their economy,” he added.
“We’ve destroyed their nuclear programme, but one of the things the president is trying to do is give them the incentive not to try to rebuild that programme for the long haul.”
William Christou
Human rights experts have alleged that six multinational construction equipment conglomerates may be aiding and abetting war crimes by supplying excavators and bulldozers to Israel, after photos and videos showed the Israeli military using their equipment to demolish villages in south Lebanon.
The Guardian geolocated and verified images showing the Israeli military using excavators made by six companies – Caterpillar, Volvo, Hyundai, Doosan, Hitachi and Komatsu – to destroy homes, public utilities, shops and other structures across southern Lebanon.
Israel has levelled entire villages inside the “yellow line”, a 608 sq km area occupied by Israel along the Lebanese-Israeli border. At least 46 villages in south Lebanon have suffered heavy damage, most of it caused by demolitions carried out after the 17 April Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, according to a satellite analysis by Bellingcat.
The Israeli military said it was destroying Hezbollah infrastructure, with Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, calling for “all homes in Lebanese villages near the border” to be destroyed to “remove threats”.
However, Human Rights Watch has said that Israel’s wide-scale destruction of villages could amount to wanton destruction – a war crime. Displaced residents have watched from afar as videos show craters and vast fields of rubble where their family homes once stood.
Much of that destruction is being carried out by excavators and bulldozers produced and sold to Israel by foreign companies.
Lebanon is following its own path in negotiations independently of US-Iran deal, says Aoun
Aoun also said that the Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel in Washington were independent of the US-Iran deal to bring an end to the Middle East conflict.
“The assurances we have received, and what we insist on, is that Lebanon’s path in the negotiations is independent, though we are certainly for a ceasefire and for any country that helps us, including Iran,” Aoun said, according to a statement from his office, after Iran and Pakistan said Lebanon was included in the US-Iran deal.
“The Lebanese state is sovereign in its decision-making, and for the first time, it is the one conducting the negotiations, and nobody is negotiating for us,” Aoun said ahead of a fifth round of Israeli-Lebanese talks next week.
Lebanese president Joseph Aoun said on Wednesday that Lebanon welcomed support from any country, including Iran, to help secure a ceasefire, marking a softer public tone towards Tehran after weeks of sharp criticism.
Earlier this month, Aoun accused Iran of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the United States and said Lebanese people were being killed to serve Iran’s interests.
The International Energy Agency said that opening the strait of Hormuz was essential to ending the shock from soaring oil and gas prices.
“The single most important solution to this problem is fully and unconditionally opening up the strait of Hormuz to shipping,” said IEA chief Fatih Birol.
Since the US-Iran deal was announced, families displaced by war in southern Lebanon have begun to return to their homes. Many of them have found their villages and towns almost completely destroyed by Israeli bombing, which has killed nearly 4,000 people and displaced more than one million since renewed fighting with Hezbollah began on 2 March.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency has reported continued Israeli strikes in the south of the country this morning, even as leaders of the G7 called for an immediate ceasefire.
