US-Iran talks inch forward as Mecca pact holds first emergency meeting

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The United States must choose whether to end its war on Iran as Tehran does not wish to continue fighting, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a US television interview aired Thursday.

Pezeshkian took a defiant stand at the UN in New York on Wednesday, telling the world that Iran would not "bend at the knee" to Washington - even as US President Donald Trump acknowledged ongoing US-Iran talks.

"When we can resolve issues through dialog, we shouldn't resort to killing one another. But with the instigations conducted by Israel, they have imposed this war on us," he said on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier."

"But we do not wish to continue. It's America that must choose whether it wants to end this or not," he said in remarks translated by the broadcaster.

Pezeshkian insisted Iran was ready to strike a deal with Trump to end the conflict.

The United Nations Security Council condemns escalating attacks on Saudi Arabia by Yemen's Houthis.

“The members of the Security Council condemned, in the strongest terms, continued Houthi attacks against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including attacks impacting civilian and energy infrastructure, which have resulted in the injury of civilians, including women and children,” says the rotating president of the Council, French UN envoy Jerome Bonnafont, delivering a joint statement.

Notifications submitted by the US President Donald Trump administration to Congress, along with US State Department data covering the period from 20 January 2025 to 17 September 2026, show that the Trump administration has approved arms deals for Israel worth $21.6 billion in just 20 months.

The value of military aid, funded by US taxpayers, and arms deals approved by former President Joe Biden for Israel between October 2023 and early 2025 exceeded $17.9 billion, according to a study by Brown University.

These weapons were used in the genocide in Gaza and the killing of more than 50,000 civilians, children and women during this period.

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Yemeni government forces announced the capture of Mount Numan and the Dar al-Kafir area in Lahij province. 

According the forces, Houthi-affiliated groups retreated, leaving behind casualties as well as weapons and ammunition.

US President Donald Trump made clear during candid talks at the White House with Chinese President Xi Jinping that Chinese help for Iran is unacceptable, US Ambassador to China David Perdue told CNBC on Friday.

Qatar's foreign ministry said top diplomat Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a mediator in the Middle East war, spoke on Friday with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian about de-escalation and conditions for dialogue.

The pair met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Pezeshkian invited Sheikh Mohammed to his residence where they "reviewed the latest developments in the region and the efforts being made to de-escalate tensions and create a conducive environment for dialogue", the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Iraq's Erbil and Sulaimaniyah airports have suspended Iranian flights, two sources have told Reuters.

According to state media, flights to and from Iran are suspended from all four Iraqi airports at which they were operating: Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns after his one-day trip to New York to speak at the United Nations.

For the second consecutive official trip abroad, Netanyahu did not permit Israel’s traveling diplomatic press corps on his taxpayer-funded plane.

On Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly from behind a screen, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to take the same podium in person, highlighting a disparity that went beyond the two leaders' contrasting messages.

Abbas spoke by pre-recorded video after the Palestinian delegation was denied the necessary US entry visas to attend the gathering in person, according to Palestinian officials.

Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, spoke in person.

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On Friday, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported an increase in cases of acute malnutrition among children in Yemen, including the most serious cases, at a time when battles are hampering their access to health care and treatment centers.

"We are deeply concerned about the clear increase in acute malnutrition among children," UNICEF Representative in Yemen, Akhil Iyer, told reporters in Geneva, via video from Aden.

The main UK stock benchmarks rose on Friday and were set for weekly gains, as a retreat in crude oil prices helped lift risk appetite, with banks and mining shares leading the day's gains.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 index rose 0.41% to 10,723.98 points by 0952 GMT, while the midcap FTSE 250 climbed 0.71%, with both indexes on track for a second consecutive weekly gain.

A defence pact between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan could turn into a broader pact "for the Muslim world" that includes Iran, Turkey's parliament speaker said on Friday, adding that it is expected to be submitted for ratification from next month.

The regional powers signed the "Mecca Joint Defence Agreement" in August, weeks before Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis launched attacks against Saudi Arabia, in reaction to the wider Iran war. Similar to NATO's Article 5, the pact stipulates that an attack on one ally constitutes an attack on all. The signatories have been meeting to lay out the parameters of the accord and assess Riyadh's needs.

"For international agreements to come into effect, parliamentary approval is needed. The meetings held as part of the agreement at the moment are preparatory meetings," Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus told reporters in Ankara. "I expect this issue to come on the parliament's agenda in the coming period," he added, referring to parliament's return from recess in October.

Asked whether the pact was against Iran, Kurtulmus repeated Turkey's position that the agreement did not target any specific country but was primarily aimed at ensuring the security of states in the region amid conflicts and Israel's "hostile policies", adding that Tehran could potentially join the pact too.

"We never see the Mecca Agreement as a pact against Iran, it must not be that way. In fact, we hope the Mecca Agreement can turn into a broader agreement for the Muslim world. Iran can join this agreement too, we hope it will become much stronger with the participation of other regional countries," he said.

The UN agency for Palestinians has met behind the scenes with officials from the US-created Board of Peace, though the board declared that the agency—known as UNRWA—will have no role in a future Gaza.

Publicly, UNRWA has not been included in the board's planning for the territory's postwar future. But Philippe Lazzarini, the UN agency’s last chief, told The Associated Press that members of a Palestinian technocratic committee are clear they want to work with the agency.

"They know that if you get completely rid of the agency today, it might have a further additional devastating impact on the population," Lazzarini said.

The dynamic underscores how central UNRWA remains to addressing Gaza’s humanitarian crisis during the fragile ceasefire, even as Israel has sought to marginalise it. Israel alleges the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas militants, claims the International Court of Justice has said have not been substantiated.

With Saudi oil facilities, cities and ships off its coast coming under escalating attacks, the kingdom's top religious authority has called on soldiers to be prepared to defend the country from Iran-backed Houthis.

The strongly worded statement from Grand Mufti Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan, who traditionally avoids weighing in on politics in a country that holds enormous influence among Muslims worldwide, is a rare message on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East from the kingdom's top religious authority.

Al-Fawzan addressed his message to soldiers defending the kingdom's borders and members of the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen, peppering it with Quranic verses and religious edicts.

“Protecting this great nation, guarding its borders, defending against aggression and punishing those who want to harm any inch of it is one of the greatest duties ... where lives are sacrificed for the sake of God,” he said. The Saudi Press Agency carried the statement late Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has said it intercepted a number of missiles launched at the kingdom but has struggled, along with its allies, to contain the Houthis.

Iraq's Najaf International Airport has suspended all flights to and from Iran starting on Friday, the state news agency reported.

Two sources told Reuters earlier that Iraq was discussing diverting Iranian flights from Baghdad to Najaf after ordering its civil aviation authority to suspend Iranian flights to Baghdad airport from Wednesday, following a US threat to sanction any airport that services Iranian carriers.

Iran has submitted a proposal to the United States to end the US-Israeli war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, its foreign minister told media outlets in New York.

"If certain conditions are met, the strait will be open within seven days and talks will start," Abbas Araghchi, who is in the US for the UN General Assembly, told media outlets including the New York Times and The Guardian.

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According to shipping data from Kpler, the movement of ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait on Thursday slightly decreased compared with Wednesday, remaining at 26 ships, with 12 entering and 14 leaving.

On Wednesday, 27 commodity vessels transited the waterway, up from 24 a day earlier, and compared with an average of 26 ships using the strait in the past 10 days, the global data intelligence company said.

US and Iranian negotiators in New York are exploring a phased path out of war that would involve Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and Washington lifting its economic blockade of Iran, sources close to the talks said to Reuters.

The strait has become the central bargaining chip in efforts to end the nearly seven-month US-Iran conflict, with Iran seeking relief from the US blockade that is choking its economy and Washington seeking free passage for ships on the global oil supply route now blocked by Tehran.

The talks face a big obstacle as neither side wants to be the first to surrender its leverage, according to comments to Reuters by two Iranian sources, two regional officials and two Western diplomatic sources, but behind Iran's stance is a recognition of the economic cost of prolonged confrontation.

A senior Iranian official said the most plausible way to end the impasse would be a phased arrangement, with Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz in return for the US lifting its economic blockade and Tehran potentially gaining access to frozen assets.

"One way forward would be to solve the crisis in stages. The first would be to end the blockade and reopen Hormuz," he said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Brent was down $1.47, or 1.4%, at $105.11 a barrel as of 05:41 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was down $2, or 2.1%, at $92.61 a barrel as markets respond to new of US-Iran talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Turkey's Chief of General Staff General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet his Saudi and Pakistani counterparts as part of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, the Defence Ministry said on Friday.

Earlier, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said the chiefs of staff would hold an urgent meeting to discuss ways to support Riyadh under the defence pact following attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis. Ankara has said it could help meet Riyadh's military needs if necessary.

Israel's army said Friday that two reserve soldiers died in Gaza, with a military source telling AFP an explosion of an Israeli army drone left the two dead.

"The IDF drone crashed at a military post in the Gaza Strip but did not explode. The soldiers approached the drone, which exploded moments later," the official said.

"The incident is under review," the source added.

The army identified the soldiers as Nadav Kali, aged 24, and Ofek Moalem, 23, from its 7007th Battalion, 16th Brigade.

The number of Israeli soldiers who died in Gaza reached 970 since the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza on October 2023, which has killed nearly 74,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart met on Thursday and Moscow said both agreed that only a diplomatic settlement could end tension in the region sparked by the US-Israeli war against Iran.

"Current regional and international issues were discussed with emphasis on the situation around Iran," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement after Lavrov and Iran's Abbas Araqchi met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

"It was stressed that there is no alternative to a diplomatic settlement of the crisis provoked by the illegal actions of the United States and Israel."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian signed a strategic cooperation partnership in 2025 which provides for a deepening of bilateral ties and closer defence cooperation, but includes no mutual defence clause.

Each side has provided the other with military know-how and equipment.

Pezeshkian thanked Vladimir Putin earlier this month for Moscow's position on the Iran war and said together, Moscow and Tehran can resist what he called US "unilateralism".

Pezeshkian said in an interview published on Thursday that it was up to the US to choose when the Iran war would end, when asked if the conflict could end by the end of the year.

Colombia said Thursday it had cut diplomatic ties with Iran, the latest Washington ally in Latin America to sever links with the US arch-foe.

Colombia's new right-wing president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has redrawn Colombia's alliances since taking over from his leftist predecessor Gustavo Petro on August 7 with the full-throated endorsement of US President Donald Trump.

Before his inauguration, De la Espriella also announced plans to sever ties with authoritarian leftist regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua, though he has yet to do so.

His government said Thursday the decision to cut ties with Iran, which took effect on September 19, was based on "hemispheric national security" considerations.

It accused the Iranian government of having ties to "narco-terrorist groups that threaten the security of the country," without giving proof of the allegations.

The government further lambasted Tehran for blocking traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and attacking other countries in the Middle East in its war with the United States and Israel.

Bogota added that it would maintain consular relations with Tehran.

It is for the United States to choose whether to end its war in Iran as Tehran does not wish to continue fighting, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday.

Pezeshkian took a defiant stand at the UN Wednesday, for which he travelled to New York, telling the world that Iran would not "bend at the knee" to Washington; even as US President Donald Trump acknowledged ongoing US-Iran talks.

"When we can resolve issues through dialog, we shouldn't resort to killing one another. But with the instigations conducted by Israel, they have imposed this war on us," he said in remarks translated by the broadcaster. But we do not wish to continue. It's America that must choose whether it wants to end this or not."

Pezeshkian insisted Iran was ready to strike a deal with Trump to end the conflict.

"Why is it that within two weeks after the signing of an agreement, they chose to blow it up?" he said of the collapse of a shaky ceasefire. If the current American government, within international legal frameworks, wishes to reach an agreement, fine. If not, before the (US midterm) elections or after the elections, what difference does it make for us?"