US-Iran News LIVE: President Donald Trump concluded a two-hour Situation Room meeting without reaching a decision on a new Iran agreement. Senior administration officials believe a deal is close, but disputes persist over the unfreezing of Iranian funds and nuclear terms.
Iran Rejects Trump’s Framing
IRGC-affiliated Fars News described Trump’s public claims about a possible agreement as “a mix of truth and lies,” adding that the draft terms under review in Tehran differ significantly from what the US president has stated. No memorandum has been finalised.
Hormuz and Nuclear Sticking Points
The Strait of Hormuz remains a central flashpoint. Iranian officials regard control of the waterway as strategic leverage, while US officials cite a possible reopening as a condition of any deal. Nuclear terms remain equally unresolved, with Tehran rejecting demands to transfer enriched uranium abroad.
Military Clashes Continue
CENTCOM has accused Iran of launching a ballistic missile towards Kuwait. Tehran says the strike targeted a US military installation following a US attack near Bandar Abbas.
Coordination Doubts in Tehran
Questions persist over whether Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is operating in full coordination with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Meanwhile, Iranian citizens report worsening medicine shortages, mounting layoffs, and stalled trade as the blockade tightens.
Key Events
US-Iran News LIVE: Hegseth says US has global obligation to stop Iran getting nuclear weapon
US-Iran News LIVE: US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said on Friday that Washington holds a “global obligation” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore.
“We still have global obligations to ensure that, say, Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth told the annual defence summit, which convenes senior security officials from across the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
US-Iran News LIVE: FDD sets 6 conditions for a credible Iran Nuclear Deal
US-Iran News LIVE: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has outlined six conditions it says must form the basis of any future US-Iran nuclear agreement, warning that weaker terms would leave Tehran with a viable pathway to a nuclear weapon.
In a report released on Friday, FDD research fellow Andrea Stricker said any deal must include the recovery of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, a permanent ban on enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, the dismantlement of related infrastructure, a full declaration of past nuclear weapons work, and unrestricted IAEA inspections, including at military sites.
The report cautioned that allowing Iran to retain enrichment capabilities or restricting inspection access would fatally undermine any agreement reached.
US-Iran News LIVE: Iranian hard-liners move to derail US Nuclear talks
A vocal faction of Iranian hard-liners is working to undermine nuclear negotiations with the US, even as the two sides edge closer to a potential agreement, the New York Times has reported.
Hard-line figures in parliament, state media, and the Supreme National Security Council have mounted a campaign against concessions to Washington through rallies, media pressure, and political opposition, despite the country’s leadership publicly backing the talks.
President Masoud Pezeshkian recently rebuked state television for framing the negotiations as a failure. Analysts cited in the report described the hard-line camp as a minority within Iran’s political establishment, though one that retains meaningful influence. Tensions between hard-line figures and Iran’s negotiating team over the direction of talks with Washington are reported to be deepening.
US-Iran News LIVE: Hegseth says any deal with Iran would be a good deal
US-Iran News LIVE: US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that Washington retains global obligations to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, while signalling the administration’s openness to a diplomatic resolution. “We still have global obligations to ensure that, say, Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth said, adding that “any deal with Iran would be a good deal.”
US-Iran News LIVE: Trump insists on red lines as Iran deal remains elusive
US-Iran News LIVE: US President Donald Trump will only make a peace deal with Iran if it meets all of his conditions, a White House official told AFP on Friday, as questions swirled about the state of negotiations to end the war.
The White House had indicated Trump was close to a decision on a potential deal, even as Tehran insisted there was still “no final agreement” on ending the Middle East conflict.
An Iranian state media report also rebutted several key elements of Trump’s characterization of the deal, with sources calling his remarks a “mixture of truth and lies.”
US-Iran News LIVE: Qatar rejects Iran’s demand for unrestricted release of $12 billion in funds
US-Iran News LIVE: Despite Tehran’s firm demands for the immediate and unconditional release of $12 billion in cash upon the signing of an initial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United States, Qatari officials rejected the request, agreeing to release only half of the amount under strict limitations, according to iran International report citing officials familiar with the development
About the Author
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br>
She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br>
Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br>
Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.
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