An Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will reach Pakistan on Friday night (April 24, 2026) to hold bilateral consultations, discuss the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and the current developments in the region, officials and media reports said.

Mr. Araghchi will lead a small delegation to Pakistan, Oman, and Russia on Friday (April 24, 2026) to “hold bilateral consultations and discuss current developments in the region, as well as the latest situation” in the U.S.-Iran war, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported.

 President Donald Trump was ​warned that attacking Iran could trigger retaliation against U.S. Gulf allies despite his claims on Monday (March 16, 2026) that Tehran’s reaction ‌came as a surprise, said a U.S. official and two sources familiar with ​U.S. intelligence reports.

Pre-war intelligence assessments did not say that Iran’s response was “a guarantee, ⁠but it certainly was on the list of potential outcomes,” said one source, who like the other two requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

Iran-Israel war LIVE – March 17, 2026

The president twice on Monday (March 16, 2026) said that Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, ‌the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait were a surprise, the first time at a Kennedy Center board meeting in the White House.

“They (Iran) weren’t supposed to go after ‌all these other countries in the Middle East,” he said. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.” Mr. Trump’s assertion ‌followed ⁠other administration claims that have not been backed by U.S. intelligence reporting, such ⁠as that Iran would soon have a missile capable of hitting the U.S. homeland and that it would need two to four weeks to make a nuclear bomb and would then use it.

Those allegations and an imminent threat posed by ​Iran to the U.S. and its forces in ‌the region have been among varying reasons that Trump and some top aides have given to justify his decision to join Israel in launching their air war against Iran on February 28.

Mr. Trump was also briefed ahead of the operation that Tehran would likely seek to close the ‌economically vital Strait of Hormuz, according to two other sources familiar with the matter.

Over ​the past two weeks, Iranian drones and missiles have struck targets in the Gulf nations that have included U.S. military bases and an Emirates base hosting French ⁠troops, civilian structures, including hotels, airports, and energy facilities. Iran has also halted almost all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of oil supplies move, causing global energy prices to spike.

Democratic lawmakers emerged ‌from administration briefings on the war last week saying they heard of no imminent threat that required the U.S. and Israel to launch the war.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

Warnings of a regional war

The U.S. official said that Mr. Trump was briefed before the war that striking Iran could trigger a broader regional conflict that would include Iranian retaliation against Gulf capitals, especially if Tehran saw those ‌countries condoning or actively supporting the U.S. attacks.

Mr. Trump repeated his claim later on Monday (March 16, 2026) during a signing event in the ​Oval Office. He was asked if he was surprised that nobody had briefed him about that risk that Iran would strike back at the Gulf states.

“Nobody, nobody, ⁠no, no, no. The greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit,” replied Mr. Trump.

The second source ⁠familiar with the matter said that before the U.S.-Israeli attacks, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Israel’s plan to launch strikes aimed at killing top Iranian leaders likely would result ‌in retaliation against U.S. military and diplomatic outposts.

The administration did not order departures of diplomatic staff from several regional embassies until after the air strikes began.

The community also warned that Iran “could” ​widen its retaliation to American allies in the region, the source said.

President Donald Trump said on Friday (March 14, 2026) that U.S. forces have “obliterated” military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island and warned that the oil infrastructure there could be next.

The small island in the Persian Gulf is the primary terminal through which Iran’s oil exports pass. Mr. Trump announced the action in a Truth Social post as he prepared to fly to Florida for the weekend.

“The United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump said on social media.

“I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider.”

The island, located around 30 kilometers (19 miles) off the Iranian mainland, handles roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports, according to a recent J.P. Morgan note.

Any move on the territory, which is about one-third the size of Manhattan, would have swift repercussions, experts said.

“A direct strike would immediately halt the bulk of Iran’s crude exports, likely triggering severe retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz or against regional energy infrastructure,” J.P. Morgan said.

Iranian strikes have all but halted maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of global crude oil and liquefied natural gas normally pass — and have also impacted oil infrastructure in other Gulf states.

Mr. Trump on Friday (March 13, 2026) said the U.S. Navy would start escorting tankers through the straits “very soon” to restore oil exports as he struggles to tackle soaring U.S. gas prices.

Kharg underwent key developments during Iran’s oil expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, with much of the country’s coast too shallow for supertankers.

With inputs from AP, AFP

A ceremonial event to honour American veterans at the White House, and the war of nerves between the Pentagon and AI giant Anthropic over the control and deployment of autonomous weapons systems amid the new West Asia war launched by the U.S. and Israel are connected by a shared question — where to find the fighters.

On March 2, three soldiers — Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson, honoured for saving 85 fellow soldiers under enemy fire in Vietnam; Master Sgt. Roderick W. Edmonds, posthumously recognised for shielding Jewish prisoners of war from Nazi guards in the Second World War; and Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, posthumously honoured for absorbing a suicide bomber’s blast to save a Polish officer in Afghanistan — were awarded the Medal of Honor by President Donald Trump.

Editorial | West Asia on fire: On the Israeli-American war against Iran

However, the classic transfiguration of a soldier’s death into an act of valour depends on a society willing to receive it. In the U.S., the cult of individualism is celebrated by the state and society alike. Social media has made the cost-benefit analysis of wars more democratic, and the loss of American lives is difficult to defend.

The question of who fights and who profits from wars has become an open public argument in the U.S. The manner in which war supporters were skewered by online influencers after many of them praised the sacrifice of the six American soldiers killed in ‘Operation Epic Fury’ is instructive. The vertical propaganda of sacrifice for the nation — spoken by strategic elites in the name of national interest — is severely challenged, and there is no restoring that narrative in the U.S. In contrast, consider the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who possibly wanted it that way: in Shia theology, revenge, sacrifice and martyrdom are integral.

Size of U.S. military

After the U.S. discontinued mandatory draft in 1973, the staffing of its voluntary military has gone through many policy questions and challenges. Currently, the size of the U.S. military is the lowest in its history — from 12.2 million during the Second World War to 1.4 million at the end of the Cold War to 1.1 million now. In 2018, a study estimated that 77% of young adults in the U.S. are ineligible to serve, disqualified by obesity, educational deficits, criminal records, or drug use. After several years of falling short of recruitment targets, the U.S. military had a good year in 2025, meeting them only after substantial pay increases and the introduction of preparatory courses for recruits who could not meet baseline academic or fitness standards.

Among the measures the U.S. tried in order to work around its recruitment challenges was privatisation of war itself: more than half of the personnel the U.S. deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan were contractors — their casualties not even tracked by the Pentagon. The U.S. has long offered non-citizens an expedited path to naturalisation through military service; between 2011 and 2015, the Army would have failed its active-duty recruitment goals in nearly every year without non-citizen enlistments. As of early 2024, more than 40,000 foreign nationals were serving in active and reserve components of the armed forces, with an estimated 115,000 foreign-born veterans living in the U.S. — soldiers who had already paid the price of membership without receiving its full guarantees. From 2008 to 2016, under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest programme, the U.S. recruited non-citizens with critical language and medical skills from abroad in exchange for an expedited path to citizenship, enlisting over 10,000 before it was wound down on national security grounds.

Motivating people to give up their lives is no easy task, and capitalist societies find it harder than most. It is the lower end of the middle class who enlists, and it is poorer regions and communities that recruiters target — American scholarship on military recruitment is consistent on this point. The richest are not sending their children to the battlefield. An individual in a capitalist, individualistic society must make the risk-reward analysis along a material metric before deciding to enlist. The state pins the virtues of patriotism and sacrifice on soldiers, and conducts a mix of religious and secular rituals to maintain an aura around the loss of lives. At the recent White House ceremony, a uniformed officer read aloud from the Bible. Religious warriors fight for the afterlife, currency that individualism lacks. Where the pursuit of individual happiness is both means and end, a soldier’s work becomes, in material terms, just a job — like any other. Secular military ceremonials seek to add a veneer of glory and the work is presented as the defence of ideals such as freedom, liberty, a way of life. Social media has possibly brought to American public consciousness the chasm between the worlds of soldiers and the beneficiaries of war within domestic society, and made the greed and profiteering that go along with war more transparent.

An atomic tug of war

The mechanisms of war become a matter of public interest and domestic politics primarily through human casualties. This question — of American soldiers fighting wars they do not necessarily need to, or benefit from — has been central to the anti-war argument that now turns out to have been mere theatre in Mr. Trump’s America First nationalism.

America First nationalism complicated the soldier identity in U.S. society by undermining non-citizen drafting. The fusion of citizen and soldier has been a classic American ideal, but capitalism had dealt with reality through its own mechanisms of reward — war contracting, and the drafting of non-citizens with the promise of citizenship. The prospect of machine soldiers offers the possibility of completely delinking the fighter from the domestic political process, making war a wholly technological, capitalist enterprise. Nobody will mourn for the machines; the President will not be required to read speeches in their honour.

U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Monday (March 2, 2026) that his attack on Iran could extend longer than a month, as the war spread with Israel bombarding Lebanon and Tehran targeting oil facilities in Gulf countries.

New powerful explosions shook windows in Tehran early on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) as fighter jets flew over the Iranian capital, AFP journalists witnessed, while the United States urged Americans to flee all of the West Asia from Egypt east.

Mr. Trump said that the war, which began on Saturday (February 28, 2026) with a strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was going “substantially” ahead of schedule but that the United States was equipped for a prolonged conflict.

“From the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Mr. Trump said at the White House.

He also for the first time laid out objectives — destroying Iran’s missiles, navy and nuclear program and stopping its support for armed groups across the region — which notably did not include toppling the Islamic republic.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented a strikingly new narrative of how the conflict started, saying that the United States joined only after learning ally Israel was set to strike Iran.

Rival Democrats voiced disbelief, with Senator Mark Warner saying it was “unchartered territory” for the United States to be triggered into action by Israel’s perception of a threat.