Iran offers new proposal amid stalled US peace talks

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US President Donald Trump told reporters that Iran has delivered a new proposal aimed at ending conflict, but says "I'm not satisfied" with terms presented.

China's ambassador to the UN says there is a need to revisit the decision to withdraw UNIFIL from southern Lebanon.

The UN peacekeepers' mandate will conclude at the end of 2026, following pressure from the US and Israel. Reports in recent weeks have said a different multi-national peacekeeping force could replace it in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon's health ministry said six people including a woman and a child were killed Friday in two Israeli strikes on a southern town where Israel's army had issued an evacuation order despite a ceasefire.

The ministry statement said eight other people including a woman and a child were wounded in the strikes on Habboush, where the state-run National News Agency had reported casualties after Israeli warplanes "launched a series of heavy strikes... less than an hour after warning" residents there to evacuate.

Habboush lies just north of the southern city of Nabatiyeh.

Any shippers paying tolls to Iran for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, including charitable donations to organisations such as the Iranian Red Crescent Society, are at risk of punitive sanctions, the U.S. Treasury warned on Friday.

Tehran has proposed fees or tolls on vessels passing through one of the world’s most strategically vital maritime routes, as part of proposals to end the war with Israel and the United States.

The advisory, from Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said the U.S. is aware of Iranian threats to shipping and demands for payments to receive safe passage through the Strait.

OFAC said demands may include several payment options, including fiat currency, digital assets, offsets, informal swaps, or other in-kind payments, such as nominally charitable donations made to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Bonyad Mostazafan, or Iranian embassy accounts.

"OFAC is issuing this alert to warn U.S. and non-U.S. persons about the sanctions risks of making these payments to, or soliciting guarantees from, the Iranian regime for safe passage," it said. "These risks exist regardless of payment method."

Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has brought reinforcements and weapons to the south of the country since the start of the war with Israel on March 2, the organisation's director of media relations said on Friday.

Speaking during an interview with a group of journalists including from AFP, Youssef Al Zein said the group had been able to "introduce forces and arms in the course of the battle" with Israel. He said the reinforcements did not use roads controlled by the Lebanese army.

"We are convinced that the army is a national army" that "will not enter into a confrontation with Hezbollah", he said.

He said that if Israel had been able to penetrate deeper into Lebanese territory it was because Hezbollah had been disarmed south of the Litani river, which runs around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border, and its infrastructure there, including tunnels, destroyed.

Nevertheless, he insisted that Hezbollah was able to "reconstitute its forces" after the last war with Israel, and that it was "prepared for a long battle".

The death toll in Lebanon from Israeli attacks since 2 March has reached 2,618 people, with more than 8,000 others wounded, the Lebanese health ministry said Friday.

Fighting resumed between Hezbollah and Israel in parallel to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Thousands more Lebanese were killed in the Israeli offensive in 2024 and the months that followed.

The Israeli military conducted a series of airstrikes on the south Lebanon town of Habboush, just north of the city of Nabatiyeh.

All day Friday, Israel carried out dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon despite a US-brokered ceasefire deal.

سلسلة غارات إسرائيلية تستهدف بلدة حبوش جنوبي لبنان pic.twitter.com/ndby9IxYCH

— Al Modon - المدن (@almodononline) May 1, 2026

The US oil benchmark fell 5 percent Friday after Iranian media reported that Tehran had delivered a new proposal for talks with the United States via mediator Pakistan.

A barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was trading at $99.85 down 4.97 percent, after briefly losing more than 5 percent, while Brent North Sea crude dropped 3.10 percent to $106.98.

The master of a bulk carrier on Friday reported being approached by a skiff carrying seven armed people 92 nautical miles southwest of Yemen's Mukalla in the Gulf of Aden, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency said.

Lebanon’s civil defence and ambulance crews recovered five bodies following an overnight Israeli strike on a building in Kfar Reman.

An Iranian diplomatic source told Al Jazeera that Tehran submitted a new proposal to Pakistani mediators on Thursday, as indirect efforts to de-escalate tensions continue.

The Israeli military claims it has destroyed more than 900 infrastructure sites belonging to Hezbollah and killed more than 200 fighters in the group during weeks of clashes and airstrikes on a key south Lebanon town.

The statement was made by Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee on X, where he shared videos of explosions carried out by the military and images of weapons he claims were confiscated in Bint Jbeil.

Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters clashed for weeks in Bint Jbeil, much of which has been reduced to rubble.

Israel has established a "buffer zone" along the entire border region in southern Lebanon, occupying and flattening dozens of towns and villages.

A bomb exploded in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb of Damascus on Friday, Syrian media reported.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed the latest situation in the US-Iran talks in a call with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, Turkish diplomatic sources said.

The cost of sending some aid to Sudan - the world's largest displacement crisis - has more than doubled due to the Iran war, as shipping disruption pushes up costs and delays the delivery of relief, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

Ships with aid that previously passed from Dubai through the Strait of Hormuz are being replaced by ships coming from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope, adding up to 25 days to delivery times, UNHCR spokesperson Carlotta Wolf told reporters in Geneva.

"People in dire need are receiving things that are ready later than what's needed," she said.

Transport costs for moving shipments of relief items from Dubai to Sudan and to neighbouring Chad have more than doubled, rising from $927,000 to $1.87 million, Wolf said. The U.N. routinely refers to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Sudan as the world's largest.

The U.S. Navy is ramping up its AI capabilities to hunt for Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical shipping lanes, a recently awarded contract shows.

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. Navy is clearing Iranian mines from the strait, a vital sea route for oil shipments, whose disruption is increasingly threatening the global economy. Sweeping for underwater explosives could take months despite a tenuous ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran in their weeks-long war.

The up to $100 million contract for the San Francisco artificial intelligence company Domino Data Lab could quicken this process with software that can teach underwater drones to identify new types of mines in a matter of days.

Israeli authorities say they are taking two activists who led an aid flotilla bound for Gaza — and who were captured by Israel in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea — to Israel for questioning.

The activists, Palestinian-Spanish citizen Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian citizen Thiago Ávila, were among dozens of activists intercepted by the Israeli navy off the coast of Crete. They are members the Global Sumud Flotilla's steering committee, whose mission was to break Israel's naval blockade and bring some humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory.

Spain and Brazil have not yet commented on the detention and transfer to Israel of Abukeshek and Ávila. But they said in a joint statement with several other nations late Thursday that Israel's interception of the flotilla and detention of the activists in international waters “constitute flagrant violations of international law and international humanitarian law."

Dozens of activists on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla which was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off Crete disembarked on Friday in the Greek island, an AFP journalist saw.

Israel's foreign ministry earlier said around 175 activists had been taken off more than 20 boats on Thursday. Flotilla organisers put the number at 211.

France's top diplomat on Friday said a new US-led coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz would complement and not compete with a similar mission spearheaded by France and Britain.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, speaking in Abu Dhabi following a regional tour, said he briefed Gulf allies on the UK-France initiative which was now at an "advanced" stage.

The US mission is "not of the same nature as the one we established... it comes as a sort of complement", Barrot said in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, following visits to Saudi Arabia and Oman.

A U.S.-Iran ceasefire that began in early April has "terminated" hostilities between the two sides for the purposes of an approaching congressional war powers deadline, a senior official of President Donald Trump's administration said on Thursday.

"For War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated," said the official, describing the administration's thinking.

There has been no exchange of fire between the U.S. armed forces and Iran since a fragile ceasefire began more than three weeks ago, the official added.

UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said on Friday in a post on X that no unilateral Iranian arrangements can be trusted or relied upon regarding freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, following its "treacherous aggression" against its neighbours.