Trump says US will claim Hormuz as two days until MoU deadline

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Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said early Saturday that Tehran would not be intimidated by threats or a show of force by Washington after US President Donald Trump said he would declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory.

Commenting on Trump's statements, Gharibabadi said in a post on X that the strategic waterway would only be opened or closed under Iran's authority.

UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said on Saturday that one of its vessels came under attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz a day earlier.

The state oil company said no injuries were reported, with the situation now under control.

Britain on Friday hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derisively calling the country an "Islamic republic" in an interview, branding the remarks "completely unacceptable".

The diplomatic tit-for-tat came after the right-wing prime minister made the reference in an army radio podcast interview the previous day, in which he criticised the UK's stance on Israel.

It echoed the language of far-right politicians and commentators in the Western world who have made baseless claims that parts of Britain have come under Islamic law due to immigration, drawing accusations of Islamophobia.

"These comments are completely unacceptable and we have raised them with the Israeli Government," a UK government spokesman said Friday.

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would "soon" declare the Strait of Hormuz waterway part of US territory after defeating Iran.

"After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated -- pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," he said with a chuckle during a political rally at a police academy in New York state.

"It's true," he added.

Trump, together with Israel, launched a war against Iran on 28 February but remains locked in a stalemate with Iran over the strait, with Iran denying access to much of the civilian shipping and the US Navy mounting a blockade of Iranian ports in an attempt to cripple its economy.

"We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to," Trump the cheering crowd of supporters and police.

US President Donald Trump told Fox News on Friday that the United States will hit Iran hard economically as Washington and Tehran struggle to reach a deal to end a nearly six-month conflict.

His comments came a day after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US was going to apply measures that have "never been seen" on Tehran as soon as next week.

A military official from Yemen's internationally recognised government said a Houthi attack on Friday on the port city of Mokha killed six people, two of them security personnel.

The Iran-backed rebels "fired five missiles at commercial ships unloading at the port, and two ships are on fire", the official said.

Israeli settlers shot two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank town of Bani Na'im, east of Hebron, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa, citing the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday accused Lebanese authorities of subjecting the country's armed forces to undue pressure by implementing a framework deal agreed with Israel to end hostilities.

The June trilateral framework, to which the United States is also a party, involves the disarmament of the Lebanese militant group and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon's south, where it has occupied several areas.

It also includes the deployment of the Lebanese army to areas where Israel's military has pulled out, starting in test areas known as "pilot zones".

"How can you accept this ongoing humiliation of the Lebanese army, exposing it to bombardment and Israeli pressures, instead of acting as its protectors?" Qassem said in a speech.

In talks between Lebanon and Israel in Rome last week, both sides discussed which countries might participate in a committee tasked with verifying the Lebanese army's deployment in the pilot zones and clearance of Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure, a Lebanese presidency source told AFP.

"Israel is attempting to bind Lebanon to an inquiry committee that oversees the army's deployment, operations, and internal details. Where is the patriotism? Where is the dignity of the army that ought to be preserved?" said Qassem.

Yemen's Houthis said they targeted an Aramco facility in the Saudi city of Najran with a drone, the group-run SABA news agency reported on Friday, citing a military source.

The source said the attack was in response to what it described as Saudi military aircraft violating Yemen's sovereignty by entering airspace over the northeastern part of Saada governorate.

There was no immediate confirmation from Saudi authorities or Aramco. It was not immediately clear from the report whether the facility was hit.

US President Donald Trump's envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner will visit Israel next week in hopes of bridging gaps on a Gaza plan rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, officials said Friday.

Kushner and Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza of Trump's so-called Board of Peace implementing the deal, will visit both Israel and key mediator Egypt.

The trip comes after Netanyahu publicly rejected a 15-point plan announced by Mladenov in which Hamas agreed to hand over its weapons to a new Palestinian governing committee in Gaza.

A Board of Peace official said Kushner and Mladenov hoped for "constructive conversations" on advancing Trump's overall peace plan that began with the October 2025 declaration of a ceasefire, which has reduced but not ended Israeli strikes in Gaza.

"The United States and Israel agree on the end state, which is a demilitarised Hamas," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"We will hear the concerns that have been raised and talk about next steps. What is critical is that we both agree on the desired outcome and are finding ways to accelerate progress."

The French embassy in Israel has called on the Israeli government to arrest and charge violent settlers in the occupied West Bank, saying in a post on X that the government must "take all necessary measures to protect the Palestinian civilian population, as required of them under international law," according to Haaretz.

The embassy added that it "call[s] on the Israeli authorities to arrest the perpetrators of these acts and bring them to justice."

Israeli forces and settlers continued their assault against Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank on Friday despite mounting international condemnation over the siege of homes in Qusra and escalating attacks elsewhere.

In Qusra, south of Nablus, settlers remained near Palestinian homes for a sixth consecutive day, while Israeli forces prevented foreign and Israeli solidarity activists from reaching besieged families with water and other basic supplies.

The siege has drawn unusually sharp criticism from Washington, with White House officials pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly condemn the settlers after learning that one of the affected homes belongs to a Palestinian American.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee - a supporter of the settler movement - described those responsible as "Israeli terrorists" and their actions as "criminal", while France condemned what it called the "occupation" of Palestinian homes and called on Israeli authorities to arrest and prosecute those responsible.

Amid the criticism, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to prepare a plan to transfer civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the police.

Egypt is seriously considering joining the new joint defence agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said on Thursday.

Abdelatty made the remarks after talks with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, in the northern coastal city of El Alamein.

Asked at a joint press conference whether Cairo would enter the agreement, Abdelatty said the pact was being examined by the relevant Egyptian authorities in accordance with the constitution and any legal obligations that membership could entail.

The agreement, known as the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, was signed last Friday by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

It includes a collective defence provision modelled on NATO’s Article 5, under which an attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all three.

Iraq's average daily oil exports since the beginning of August are the highest since the outbreak of the Middle East war between Iran and the United States 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.

He said the daily rate had been achieved "for the first time since the crisis began" on February 28 after US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which retaliated by blocking the waterway crucial for global oil and gas trade.

Before the war, Iraq produced around four million barrels per day, and exported an average of 105 million barrels per month, mostly from its Basra oil terminal via Hormuz.

Ali Nizar, the head of Iraq's State Organisation for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), said in a TV interview last week that Iraq exported in July "35.5 to 37 million barrels" via 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.