Trump 'cancels' planned strikes against Iran, says 'deal approved'

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Iranian forces prevented a tanker from transiting the Strait of Hormuz without coordination, state media reported early on Friday.

Iranian media earlier reported sounds of explosions near Bandar Abbas, but state news agency IRNA later said no explosions had been reported in the port city and that any sounds could have been related to military activity in maritime areas. Iran's top joint military command announced on Thursday the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, including oil tankers and commercial ships, saying any vessel that will attempt passage will be shot at.

Iranian media also reported explosion sounds off the coast of Sirik.

A military source told state media that the sounds heard near Sirik were linked to Iranian forces confronting an oil tanker attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The tanker later complied with the ban on transit after receiving warnings from the IRGC Navy, the source said. President Donald Trump on Thursday said the United States and Iran could sign a peace deal as soon as this weekend that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, but Iran countered that it had not reached a final decision on an agreement. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Thursday that Donald Trump vowed any Iran-US deal would include commitments to remove Tehran's enriched nuclear material, and welcomed the US president's commitments on limiting Iran's nuclear and missile programs.

"Although Israel is not party to the memorandum of understanding, the prime minister expressed his appreciation for President Trump's commitment that the final agreement at the conclusion of negotiations will include the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, limits on missile production, and the cessation of Iran's support for its terrorist proxies in the region," Netanyahu's office said on X after the two spoke.

Iran has not yet made a final decision on a possible agreement with the US and will not compromise on its "red lines" in negotiations, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Thursday, according to Iran's IRNA ​news agency.

Baghaei said reports regarding a time and place of signing the agreement remained speculative and that nothing had been finalised. He added that a large part of the negotiating text had been finalized but the U.S. repeatedly changed its positions during the talks. 

The mayor of Tehran said Thursday that the state funeral of late supreme leader Ali Khamanei, killed by US-Israeli strikes on the first day of the Middle East war, would be postponed until the end of June or early July.

Iran had earlier said it planned to hold the three-day event in early Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, which would have put in early June.

But Mayor Alireza Zakani, in a statement carried by the Fars news agency, said the ceremony had been postponed until after the first 10 days of Muharram to allow the faithful to complete their annual mourning of the Imam Hussein, the revered early Shia leader who was slain at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE.

This would mean Khamenei's funeral would take place in the second 10 days of Muharram, between 26 June and 5 July. Tehran officials have previously said they expect 20 million people to attend.

Khamenei, who led the Islamic republic for nearly 37 years, was killed in his home in central Tehran on February 28. A state funeral initially planned for March 4 was postponed due to the war.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he believed Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had approved a deal with the US that would trigger the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of a US blockade on Iranian ports.

When asked by a reporter at the White House whether Khamenei had approved the deal, Trump said: "I understand the answer is yes."

Trump described the deal as "a very strong memorandum of understanding," adding it was "a little conceptual, but it's something that's going to get done".

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and US President Donald Trump held a phone call on Thursday in which they reviewed the results of US-Iran consultations that had led to progress on understandings proposed within a negotiating track, the Qatari Emiri Diwan said.

Trump told the emir that efforts were continuing to complete final procedures before announcing arrangements to sign an agreement, the Diwan added in a statement.

Iran's Fars news agency, citing an unnamed source, said on Thursday that Tehran has not yet approved a text for any deal with the United States.

"No text has been approved for an initial memorandum of understanding with the United States," said Fars, quoting what it said was an informed source close to Iran's negotiating team.

US President Donald Trump had earlier said he had called off planned strikes on Iran and flagged the signing of a possible deal with Tehran.

Kuwait said Iranian strikes that targeted its territory on Thursday morning and forced a temporary airspace closure had damaged an airport radar and caused injuries.

This marked the second Iranian attack on Kuwait's only international airport in just over a week, after a drone strike killed an Indian national and injured 63 people on June 3.

"The airport's radar was targeted this morning," Kuwait's civil aviation body said in a letter addressed to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

It added that the attack "injured people and caused significant material damage and losses affecting radar facilities, equipment and air traffic management systems".

Earlier, Kuwait said it had reopened its airspace to commercial traffic after the latest volley of Iranian attacks caused a brief shutdown.

Kuwait's military had earlier said air defences were engaging "hostile aerial targets", after the United States launched fresh attacks against Iran.

A foreign ministry statement expressed "Kuwait's condemnation and denunciation of the continued sinful and repeated Iranian attacks".

Iran has repeatedly targeted Gulf airports and other civilian infrastructure throughout the war.

Last week, Iran accused Kuwait and Bahrain of allowing the United States to use their territory to launch attacks on an Iranian tanker and island.

Tehran said it attacked the US Navy's Middle East headquarters in Bahrain as well as the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, but did not mention the airport.

Kuwait has denied the accusations and demanded that two Iranian embassy staff leave the country.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he has canceled strikes against Iran that had been scheduled for later in the evening.

The Trump administration plans to deport a number of Iranians and other migrants to Central African Republic, a chronically unstable country racked by violence and poverty, two lawyers and an official briefed on the matter told Reuters.

The Iranians include two women who face potential torture and persecution if they are forced to go back to Iran, their lawyer, Emily Trostle, said. One is a Christian convert and the other is a pro-democracy activist, she added.

The US State Department and the presidency in the Central African Republic — which recently reached a deal to accept so-called third-country deportees from the US — did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

SYRIANS AND AFGHANS ALSO EXPECTED ON PLANE Both the women were detained upon arriving in the U.S. in November 2024, Trostle said. They applied for asylum in the U.S. and had secured a form of protection known as withholding of removal from a US immigration judge, Trostle said.

The official briefed on the matter told Reuters the first flight to Central African Republic under the deal was expected to take about 20 people, also including Syrians and Afghans. The plane could leave as early as Thursday, the two lawyers said.

Another source familiar with the preparations said one Turkish national was also expected to be deported.

The Trump administration has used third-country deportation deals — including with Central African Republic's neighbour the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is now facing an Ebola outbreak — to deport people it can't legally send home.

Washington has defended the deals as lawful, though rights groups and advocates have said the details of the deals are opaque and many of the deportees are ultimately repatriated.

Slovenia's government has revoked a 2025 decision banning the export and transit of weapons and military equipment to Israel, as well as most arms imports from the country, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry said the ban, introduced in July, was no longer necessary as the trade in arms is already governed by national law and European Union rules.

It added that existing legislation and regulations already define licensing procedures and controls, and Thursday's decision was also aligned with the EU Common Position on arms export controls.

The 2025 measure barred the export, transit of military goods to Israel and imports from Israel, exempting equipment needed for Slovenia's security.

The measure was introduced under then-Prime Minister Robert Golob, who said Slovenia was the first EU country to impose such an embargo.

In June, Slovenia's parliament approved Prime Minister Janez Jansa's centre-right government, ending a political deadlock since a March election produced no outright majority. 

The son of a Hamas co-founder said that Israeli authorities released his father in the occupied West Bank on Thursday after holding him without trial for more than two years.

Hassan Yousef, 71, was "freed near the southern West Bank city of Hebron" and taken to a hospital in Ramallah where he resides, his son Owais Yousef said.

Yousef is a senior leader of Hamas in the West Bank, having co-founded the group in the 1980s along with Sheikh Ahmad Yassine and other Palestinian members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Israeli police did not immediately respond to an AFP request for confirmation.

Yousef had been held in Israeli administrative detention since October 2023, shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.

Israel has increased its use of administrative detention against Palestinians since the war. The system allows it to detain individuals for renewable six-month periods without charge.

Israel has arrested Yousef several times over the years. He was last released in July 2020 from 16 months of administrative detention.

A member of the now-defunct Palestinian parliament, Yousef is estranged from his eldest son Mosab Hassan Yousef, who for 10 years spied against his father's movement.

From 1997 to 2007, Mosab Hassan Yousef worked for Israel's internal security agency Shin Bet, before relocating to the United States, where he lives under a new identity and wrote the book "Son of Hamas".

Iran's chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned Washington on Thursday to carefully consider its next step in the Middle East war or face years of turmoil and soaring oil and gas prices.

"Wrong strategies and impulsive decisions will reset the entire board for the worse, explode energy infrastructure and markets and create an endless quagmire that you will be stuck in for years," Ghalibaf, who is also Iran's parliamentary speaker, said in a social media post.

European and US stocks rose Thursday while oil prices wavered following the latest flare-up in the Middle East war, with investors also assessing the outlook for US and European interest rates as inflation rises.

The European Central Bank, as widely expected, raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 after the Iran war sent oil and gas prices soaring as the Strait of Hormuz was cut off to Gulf tanker traffic.

"The rate hike should be seen as an insurance move to reinforce the ECB's inflation fighting credibility, not as the beginning of an aggressive tightening cycle," said Stefan Gerlach, chief economist at EFG Bank in Zurich and a former deputy governor of Ireland's central bank.

The increase made the ECB the first of the world's major central banks to lift borrowing costs in response to the energy shock unleashed by the US-Israeli war against Iran.

A series of fresh strikes between the United States and Iran has kept sentiment on edge this week, despite a ceasefire agreed to in April.

Oil prices fell back after US Central Command said it had completed the latest strikes against Iran, but then turned higher as US President Donald Trump vowed fresh strikes and to seize the country's key oil infrastructure.

The US military will hit Iran "VERY HARD TONIGHT", Trump said in a Truth Social post.

A strike wounded 10 staff members of a hospital in the Lebanese city of Tyre on Thursday, the facility's director told AFP, as Israeli raids continue in the country's south.

All three of the historic city's hospitals have been hit since the start of the latest war between Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and Israel in early March.

"An area located around 15 metres (50 feet) from the hospital was targeted, and 10 members of the medical and administrative staff were wounded," said Dr Salman Aydibi, who runs Hiram hospital.

He said the strike shattered windows and damaged cars parked in front of the facility.

"This is the sixth time that the area of the hospital has been targeted by Israeli raids since the start of the war," he said.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military told the entire city of Tyre to evacuate, with an AFP correspondent witnessing residents fleeing and heavy traffic heading north after the warning.

Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East war on 2 March, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Israel has since carried out a massive campaign of strikes and a ground invasion that have killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, while occupying a large chunk of the country's south.

An April ceasefire in Lebanon was never observed, and the fighting has continued despite a new conditional truce deal announced last week after Lebanese-Israeli talks in Washington.

Lebanon's health ministry said late last month that an Israeli strike in the vicinity of Hiram hospital wounded 13 staffers.

The following day, an Israeli strike near Tyre's Jabal Amel hospital killed four people and wounded 127 others, including 39 staffers, the health ministry said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that all parties must work towards a diplomatic settlement that fully respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon.

In a post on X, Guterres added that there must be a comprehensive ceasefire and said he fully supports a monopoly on weapons by the Lebanese government.

Since March, we have witnessed a serious escalation – as Israel intensified its operations in Lebanese territory & Hizbullah fired deeper into Israel.

All parties must work towards a diplomatic settlement that fully respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty & political…

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) June 11, 2026

The Iran-backed Hezbollah said it has shot down an Israeli drone over the Nahle area of the Bekaa Valley, the National News Agency (NNA) said.

The group also said to have targeted the Jall al-Hammar site south of the town of Al-Aadaissah in the country's south with two drone attacks.

Israel denied entry on Thursday to French reporter Alice Froussard, who has been covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for public service broadcasters Radio France and Radio France Internationale (RFI).

RFI, part of France's public broadcasting corporation, condemned the ban as "an obstacle to press freedom" and expressed support for the journalist.

Froussard was refused entry after landing on Wednesday afternoon at Tel Aviv's international airport, where she was forced to spend the night before being sent back to Paris on a flight that took off Thursday morning.

Her deportation was announced by the Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli.

Froussard "sought to return and work in Israel on a permanent basis" and was "deported this morning and put on a flight back to France" on the ministry's recommendation, Chikli said.

The minister accused the reporter of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas.

"RFI journalist Alice Froussard was denied entry into Israeli territory... even though she had the required travel authorisation and had duly applied for a press visa to work in the West Bank," RFI wrote in a statement.

"Israeli authorities have not provided RFI with any justification for this decision," the statement added.

Froussard, 33, has covered news in Israel and the Palestinian territories as a freelancer for several news outlets since 2019.

A Palestinian child has been killed in an Israel airstrike on a house in Gaza City on Thursday, Palestinian media reported.

According to the Wafa agency, Israeli warplanes hit a house near the Al-Maghrabi Junction on the Jamal Abdel Nasser Street, in Gaza City's south.

Several others have been wounded in the attack.

At least 12 pro-government fighters were killed and others were wounded in an overnight explosion inside a munitions depot in the Yemeni city of Aden, two military officials told AFP on Thursday.

It is unclear what caused the explosion that hit a military camp close to Aden airport, which belongs to the Giants Brigades, the officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The Giants Brigades is a Yemeni armed faction that was created by the United Arab Emirates but later switched camps to ally itself with the Saudi-backed government.

"Twelve members of the Giants Brigades were killed -- in a preliminary toll -- and nine others were wounded in an explosion at the Al-Solban camp," a military official told AFP.

Another Yemeni military official also gave the same toll.

More than a decade of war has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen and divided the country between the Iran-backed Houthis, who hold much of the populous north, and the government, which controls the rest of the country.

The government was once a patchwork of Saudi and UAE-backed groups but is now dominated by Riyadh after a failed takeover of the south by UAE-backed separatists last year.

The UAE has said it has withdrawn from Yemen, while most of the groups it supported switched their allegiance to Riyadh.