Two days until MoU deadline as US and Iran claim competing control over Hormuz

Israel's defence minister called Friday for the police to take over law enforcement in the occupied West Bank from the military, which has come under fire from the right-wing for trying to remove settlers harassing Palestinians.

The measure, if implemented, would be a step towards Israeli annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory - something several ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government openly call for.

Defence Minister Israel Katz's office announced he had "instructed the IDF to prepare a plan to transfer all enforcement powers regarding civil matters among Israeli communities and population in Judea and Samaria to the Israel Police," using the Biblical term for the illegally occupied West Bank.

The military would continue to exercise power over Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

"The IDF's role is to fight Palestinian terrorism, focus on defending borders and communities against threats... and not chase boys on the hilltops," Katz said, referring to the Hilltop Youth - a settler group regularly accused of violence towards Palestinians.

The UK's Stephen Doughty has condemned violence in the occupied West Bank, saying he is "appalled" at the reports in the village of Qusra, which has seen Palestinian families besieged by Israeli settlers since Sunday.

"Civilians must be protected, perpetrators held to account, and international law upheld. Settlements are illegal under international law and undermine the viability of a two-state solution."

I am appalled by reports of settler violence in #Qusra.

Civilians must be protected, perpetrators held to account and international law upheld.

Settlements are illegal under international law and undermine the viability of a two-state solution.

— Stephen Doughty HC MP (@SDoughtyMP) August 13, 2026

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said today, Friday, that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi discussed, in a phone call with Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinel Reisinger, bilateral relations and regional and international developments.

During the call, Araqchi reviewed the latest developments in the region, including the Iranian-Omani discussions to organise mechanisms for the future management of the Strait of Hormuz, saying that the current situation "is the result of illegal attacks by the United States and the Israeli entity against Iran."

He added that although his country entered the diplomatic process in "good faith" and signed an understanding to end the US-Israeli war on Iran on 18 June, the American side violated the terms of the understanding and imposed a naval blockade on Iran, and launched attacks on military and civilian targets, explaining that this led to escalation of tension and insecurity in the Strait of Hormuz.

Referring to the continued Israeli attacks against Gaza and Lebanon, the Iranian Foreign Minister criticised the European Union's "negative position" and said that this represented "a major factor in the continuation of the occupation in the Palestinian territories."

He called on the EU to reconsider its policies towards issues in the West Asian region.

For her part, the Austrian Foreign Minister stressed the importance of returning stability and security to the region through diplomatic solutions.

Iraq's average daily oil exports since the beginning of August are the highest since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has choked off the Strait of Hormuz, the oil ministry said Friday.

Iraqi Oil Minister Bassem Mohammed Khudair told a press conference that "exports since the beginning of the month have reached a rate of two million barrels" per day, for a total of around 26 million barrels, saying the daily rate was achieved "for the first time since the crisis began".

Two slicks have appeared in Iranian waters, satellite imagery and video verified by Reuters show, as tit-for-tat attacks on oil tankers and other vessels by Iran and the United States spark concerns about environmental damage to the Gulf.

A potential environmental disaster is already unfolding off Oman outside of the Strait of Hormuz where a grounded tanker, the Caroline Bezengi, is leaking Russian crude oil in a protected marine area and has created a massive slick some estimates put at 2,000 square km.

The Caroline Bezengi incident has not officially been linked to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

One slick has appeared off the southern tip of Qeshm Island, the large dolphin-shaped island in the Strait of Hormuz close to Iran’s coast, pictures from Copernicus’s ​Sentinel-2 satellites showed.

A second slick was spotted near the smaller Sirri Island in the centre of the Gulf about 100 km southwest of Qeshm and home to some Iranian offshore oil and gas production, satellite showed.

The satellite imagery of Qeshm Island was taken on 10 August and that of Sirri Island on 13 August.

Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in the Iranian Parliament, Ibrahim Azizi, said on Friday that his country "will stop confront the US until final defeat," adding that Washington must realize that "if it again makes a mistake in its calculations towards Iran and exposes the security of our people to danger, we will rob it of security in various parts of the world."

The Iranian ISNA news agency quoted Azizi saying, “The message addressed to the Americans is to accelerate their withdrawal from the West Asia region, and to record this scandalous defeat in their memories."

The Pentagon on Friday announced framework agreements with Boeing and RTX to increase production of components of SM-3 Block IIA and SM-3 Block IB munitions.

Both agreements will strengthen production of a series of critical ship-fired surface-to-air interceptors that underpin the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, the Pentagon said in a statement. 

The United States wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly condemn a siege imposed by illegal Israeli settlers on a Palestinian village, US and Israeli officials said on Friday, as fanatical settlers besieged Palestinian residents by pitching a new tent under watch of Israeli soldiers.

Israeli settlers have been besieging homes in Qusra in the occupied West Bank for almost a week, trapping Palestinians in an area where rights groups say settlers are mounting a concerted state-backed effort to seize more land, further eating into territory where Palestinians aim to establish a state.

A US official and an Israeli official said on Friday White House officials are pressing Netanyahu to publicly condemn the siege.

Washington began to protest after learning that the home of a Palestinian-American was among those under siege, said the two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions, of which they had knowledge.

Netanyahu has not commented on the siege in Qusra. Neither his office nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.

Nuhail Muharram was three months pregnant when a doctor told her the foetus had died and would have to be removed. Then she waited six weeks because the medication was not available.

"Every day I lived with the pain, knowing the foetus was dead," she says. "I had two choices. Wait for the pills, or wait to start bleeding."

The 31-year-old mother of four from the Sabra district of Gaza City has been displaced six times since the war began. She discovered she was pregnant in March, between one displacement and the next. 

Read more below:

Iran's Tasnim news agency reported that an American MQ9 drone was shot down in the airspace of the coastal province of Hormozgan on the Gulf.

Foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey met in the coastal town of El-Alamein, northern Egypt, last night.

According to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, the three ministers discussed recent regional developments.

US stock index futures were subdued on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 closed at a record high, as rising crude prices after the latest developments in the Iran war kept investors cautious.

Cooling rate-hike expectations and resilient corporate earnings have put the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq on track for a third straight week of gains, their longest winning streak since early April.

Expectations for a September rate hike have eased this week after a benign consumer inflation reading helped allay concerns about price pressures.

Still, rising tensions in over the Strait of Hormuz tempered sentiment and sent Brent crude futures higher on Friday.

The US said it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran "indefinitely" and increase economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks stalled.

Ali-Asghar Abdollahi, acting head of the Razi Customs Office, told Fars news that trade via the Razi border with Turkey grew by nearly 300 percent in the first four months of this year, compared with the same period last year.

He said that good worth $217 million were exported from the Razi border to Turkey.

Abdollahi noted that 8,975 train wagons passed through the Razi border during the period, a 205 percent increase compared with the same period last year.

He added customs revenues at the border had increased by about 800 percent.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) condemned what they called "Iranian attacks" on two tankers belonging to the Emirati company ADNOC while they were crossing the Strait of Hormuz.

The Secretary-General of the Council, Jassim Mohammed Al-Budaiwi, said that the Iranian attacks represent a “dangerous and unacceptable escalation” and a direct threat to the security and safety of maritime navigation and international trade, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the relevant Security Council resolutions, including Resolution No. 2817.

Al-Budaiwi expressed categorical rejection of any Iranian attempts to turn the international corridor into a tool for pressure and threat, calling on the international community to stop these repeated attacks and ensure the security and freedom of maritime navigation in accordance with the principles of international law, the law of the sea and relevant international resolutions.z

Al-Budaiwi reiterated the GCC's full solidarity with the UAE.

Egypt condemned, in the strongest terms, the attack that targeted two ships belonging to the Emirati company ADNOC as they were crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday evening, considering it a threat to the security and safety to maritime navigation in one of the most important international waterways.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said that Egypt affirms its full solidarity with the UAE, stressing the need to stop all actions that would threaten the security and safety of international navigation or expose ships and civilian facilities to danger, and to respect the rules of international law, to maintaining the region's security and stability.

Israeli warplanes and drones have attacked near the town of Al-Mansouri in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, reported the country’s National News Agency.

Ben Gvir’s plan for a crocodile-filled moat around Ketziot prison shows the intensifying cruelty inflicted on Palestinians since 7 October, writes Yoav Litvin.

Read more below:

A senior Iranian official said that the general principles of a "strategic action plan" to manage the Strait of Hormuz have been agreed upon in a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Councils.

Valiullah Bayati, a spokesperson of the committee, told Tasnim news agency that "the strategic action plan to ensure the security and progress of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf was reviewed by the Councils' Commission and, after hearing the opinions, its general outline was approved."

A tanker was hit by a drone while making an outbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz, reported the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO).

UKMTO noted that the tanker was struck on Thursday evening, and the vessel sustained minor damage, while all crew were reported safe and accounted for, with no environmental impact reported.

The United Arab Emirates on Friday blamed Iran for attacks on two vessels linked to its state-owned oil company as they passed through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has imposed an effective blockade of the strait, frequently attacking commercial ships, and wants to charge users for passage, which the US fiercely opposes.

The UAE foreign ministry denounced what it called "the hostile Iranian attack" targeting two vessels affiliated with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), "with no injuries reported".

ADNOC confirmed "two of its vessels were attacked while transiting" the waterway on Thursday evening, adding the situation was "brought under control", the official WAM news agency reported.

Last week, ADNOC had said three of its tankers had been attacked in the strait, with the UAE foreign ministry reporting an attack on an ADNOC tanker a day later.

Euro zone bond yields held steady on Friday as the impasse between the US and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz continued, while oil prices remained subdued as investors focused on signs of weaker demand.

Germany's 10-year bond yield rose just under 1 basis point to 3.147% and was little changed across the week.

The US on Thursday said that it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely amid floundering ceasefire talks.

Iraqi media reported that three drones fell in the districts of Soran, Khalifan, and Harir in Erbil Governorate, northern Iraq, resulting in material damage and the outbreak of fires, without any deaths or injuries reported.

The Rudaw channel, which broadcasts from Erbil, reported that fragments of one of the drones that fell in the Soran district hit a house, while the fall of two other drones caused fires to break out in two mountainous areas in the Khalifan and Harir districts.

The channel added that the incidents did not result in deaths or injuries, without indicating who was behind the launching of the drones.

As the Iran-US war continues, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has announced a series of senior political and military appointments.

These changes come amid ongoing attempts to revive the Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and bring both sides back to the negotiating table.

Against this backdrop, the appointments offer an early indication of how Iran’s factional politics are evolving under its new leader—and how those shifts could shape the country’s approach to the war and beyond.

Read more below:

US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel to the region next week to try to advance plans for an end to Israel's war on Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition.

An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire, said Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.

The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, the official said. The trip was reported earlier by Axios.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalised, said the meetings would demonstrate the determination of Trump and the Board of Peace to "see peace, prosperity and sustainable security emerge" in a demilitarized Gaza where Hamas has ceded control to allow reconstruction of the devastated territory.

Shipping traffic at the Strait of Hormuz fell below the month average towards the end of the week due to volatile sentiment between the United States and Iran, with both countries making competing claims over its control.

The Strait of Hormuz is "under Iran's control and management", the recently appointed head of Iran's Basij paramilitary unit said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the United States on Thursday said it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely and would ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran as ceasefire talks have floundered.

Commodity vessel transits at Hormuz picked up slightly on Thursday, but remained lower than the month's daily average of 12, based on Kpler data in August so far.