Middle East crisis live: Trump says Israel-Lebanon ceasefire extended by three weeks but claims he won’t rush Iran deal

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to travel to Pakistan for talks by this weekend, sources have told AP.

The diplomat is expected to travel with a small team and a US logistics ⁠and security ​team is ​already ​in Islamabad.

This comes after an effort to hold direct talks between Washington and Tehran collapsed at the beginning of the week. Pakistan has been trying to restart ceasefire talks between Iran and the United States.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

At 8am ET (1pm BST), US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine will be hosting a press conference on Operation Epic Fury.

You can watch below. We will be reporting live as this happens.

Iran’s footballers will be welcome at this year’s World Cup, secretary of state Marco Rubio said Thursday, distancing the United States government from a proposal that Italy could take their place in the tournament.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Rubio denied that the government had asked the Iranian team not to come to the World Cup – but warned the US may yet bar entry to members of the Iranian delegation it judged to have ties to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is regarded as a terrorist organisation by Washington and several other governments.

No one “from the US has told them they can’t come,” Rubio said of Iran’s World Cup participation. “The problem with Iran, it would be not their athletes, it would be some of the other people [they] would want to bring with them, some of whom have ties to the IRGC,” Rubio said. “We may not be able to let them in, but not the athletes themselves.”

Rubio was responding to a reported proposal from Italy-born US special envoy Paolo Zampolli, who told the Financial Times he had floated the idea of Italy taking Iran’s World Cup place to US president Donald Trump and football’s world governing body Fifa.

Read the full report here:

In its weekly report, the World Health Organization has said that 3.2 million people are displaced in Iran, and that health facilities in Lebanon remain damaged or closed due to Israel’s attack.

“Disease risks are increasing in overcrowded settings, and supply chain disruptions continue to limit the delivery of essential medicines and equipment,” it reads.

It continued: “Funding remains critically low: only 7 percent of the $30.3m required for the Middle East flash appeal has been received to date. Urgent, sustained investment is needed to maintain life-saving health services and scale up the response”.

The UK has responded to the US, saying that sovereignty of the Falkland Islands remains with the UK, after an internal email proposing that the US should reassess its support for Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands because the UK did not do enough to assist the American bombing of Iran was leaked.

A spokesperson for British prime minister Keir Starmer said on Friday: “We could not be clearer about the UK’s position on the Falkland Islands. It is longstanding, it is unchanged.

“Sovereignty rests with the UK and the islands’ right to self-determination is paramount. It’s been our consistent position and will remain the case,” the spokesperson said, adding that Britain had expressed that position “clearly and consistently to successive U.S. administrations.”

Asked if Starmer thought this was an attempt by the US to put pressure on him to join the Iran war, his spokesperson said: “He has spoken about that and he has also spoken about how that pressure does not affect him, and he will always act in the national interest, and that will always remain the case.”

A leaked Pentagon internal email proposes that the US should reassess its support for Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands because the UK did not do enough to assist the American bombing of Iran.

It argues that the US could review a policy of endorsing European claims to longstanding “imperial possessions,” and highlighted sovereignty over the Falklands, subject of the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina.

The memo, reported on by Reuters, was drawn up in response to White House frustration that other members of Nato did not provide sufficient support for the US-led 38 day bombing campaign against Tehran.

It also argued that Spain should be suspended from Nato for refusing to allow US war planes to be based in or fly over the country during Operation Epic Fury, though it is not clear if there are mechanisms for doing so.

When asked to comment on the email, Kingsley Wilson, press secretary for the US department of war, said: “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our Nato allies, they were not there for us.

“The War Department will ensure that the President has credible options to ensure that our allies are no longer a paper tiger and instead do their part. We have no further comment on any internal deliberations to that effect.”

Though the Falkslands proposal looks vague and there is no immediate sign of it being adopted, the reference to the islands appears deliberately designed to provoke a reaction in the UK, where memories of the 1982 war linger.

Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, largely kept the UK out of Iran war, though unlike other European countries, did allow the US to fly B-1 and B-52 bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire to strike Iranian targets, including missile launchers and anything used to target shipping in the strait of Hormuz.

Donald Trump, however, repeatedly complained about the lack of military support provided by the UK complaining that Britain only wanted to help in protecting the strait after the war was over, that the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers were ‘toys’ and compared Starmer to Neville Chamberlain.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to visit Saudi Arabia and hold talks with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, a senior official in Kyiv told AFP.

Zelensky has brokered closer ties with several states in the Gulf amid the US-Israeli war with Iran, striking defense deals, including with Riyadh, to share Kyiv’s expertise in downing drones, gained through fending off four years of Russian attacks. Ukraine touts its anti-drone defences as the best in the world.

This visit, taking place on Friday, his second trip to the country in as many months. In a visit last month, Zelenskyy said the two sides had “reached an important arrangement” on air defence.

There is still no sign that Iran and the US are to meet in Pakistan, Reuters reports, as the capital has been waiting for peace talks for nearly a week.

Key roads leading into Islamabad are shut down and a strict security cordon envelops the administrative centre, the so-called “Red Zone“. In the adjacent “Blue Area“, cafes have run out of fruit, markets are deserted and with no service at bus terminals, weekend commuters are struggling to get home.

Government officials say the measures are not ending any time soon and that they are ever ready for delegates, including US president Donald Trump, to show up at a moment’s notice.

“We have been told that the talks could be held any day,” one official said.

Sky News reports that Iran’s foreign minister has spoken to senior Pakistani officials about the ceasefire with the US.

Abbas Araghchi said he had spoken separately with Pakistan’s foreign minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar and army chief Asim Munir.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has played down reports that the Pentagon is considering punishing Nato allies deemed insufficiently supportive of the US offensive against Iran by suspending them from the alliance.

A US official told Reuters that an internal memo was circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon that outlined retaliatory options, including suspending Spain from the alliance and reviewing the US position on the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands. It is not clear there is any mechanism to suspend countries from Nato.

The official said the policy options were set out in an email that expressed frustration over some allies’ perceived reluctance or refusal to grant the US access, basing and overflight rights – known as ABO – for its strikes on Iran.

The email described ABO is “just the absolute baseline for Nato”, and said that options included suspending “difficult” countries from important or prestigious positions within the alliance.

Sánchez – who has been the most vociferous European critic of the US and Israel’s war in Iran – has also angered Donald Trump by refusing the US permission to use jointly operated bases in southern Spain to attack Iran. Trump responded by threatening to cut off al trade with Spain.

The socialist prime minister previously riled Trump last year by rejecting Nato’s proposal for member states to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, saying the idea would “not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive”.

The UK, meanwhile, gave permission for the US to use British military bases for strikes on Iran, but only if those strikes were defensive – such as attacks on Iranian missiles sites.

Speaking in Cyprus on Friday morning, where he was attending a meeting of EU leaders to discuss topics including Nato’s mutual assistance clause, Sánchez stressed that Spain was a “loyal” Nato member and one that complied with its responsibilities.

“We don’t work on the basis of emails; we work with official documents and statements made by the US government,” he added. “The Spanish government’s position is clear: absolute cooperation with allies, but always within the framework of international law.”

But Sánchez also went on to renew his criticisms of the US war in Iran.

“The crisis that this illegal war has brought to the Middle East shows the failure of brute force – and has prompted demands for international law to be respected and for the multilateral order to be safeguarded and reinforced,” he said.

Asked by Reuters about the memo, the Pentagon press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, said: “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our Nato allies, they were not there for us. The War Department will ensure that the president has credible options to ensure that our allies are no longer a paper tiger and instead do their part. We have no further comment on any internal deliberations to that effect.”

Human Rights Watch has called on Lebanon to join the international criminal court, after Israeli forces killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and wounded her colleague Zainab Faraj in an airstrike earlier this week.

Posting on social media, the group wrote: “The Lebanese government should join the ‘Rome Statute’ of the ‘international criminal court’ to enable accountability for serious international crimes.”

Lebanese president Joseph Aoun condemned the attack. “Israel deliberately targets journalists in order to conceal the truth about its crimes against Lebanon,” Aoun said in a statement denouncing “war crimes”.

Lebanese prime minister Nawaf Salam wrote on X that “targeting journalists and obstructing access for rescue teams constitutes a war crime”.

Amal Khalil, 43, who worked for al-Akhbar newspaper, was buried on Thursday. She was killed in what colleagues described as a sustained attack by Israeli forces. There were reports of rescuers attempting to dig her out of the rubble of a building also targeted and prevented from providing life-saving assistance.

Khalil was the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year. Last month three journalists were killed in a double-tap attack.

Lebanese MP Najat Saliba has praised the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire extension, and says it will help lots of the people in the area.

This comes as US president Donald Trump has announced that a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon would be extended by three weeks. Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office alongside the participants in the meeting, said he hoped the two countries’ leaders would meet during the additional three-week cessation of hostilities.

Speaking to Newsday on the BBC World Service, Saliba said: “Everybody is relieved that the ceasefire is going to continue for another three week. This is going to help a lot of people go back to their homes, check out their homes and get going with their lives.”

When asked about how Hezbollah could respond to the ceasefire extension agreement, she said “we don’t expect things to go forward very smoothly”.

But she added the Lebanese government is “very firm about going forward with the discussion in order for us to find a common ground that will relieve the people from all the bombing and killing.”

Later, at 8am ET (1pm BST), US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine will be hosting a press conference on Operation Epic Fury, the bombing of Iran.

We will be reporting live as this happens.

Iran’s deputy president has warned the US of “an eye for an eye” over oil strikes, the Mehr news agency has reported.

According to the outlet, Esmaeil Saqab Esfahani said: “If the enemy makes another mistake, our strategy will be an eye for an eye. If any of our oil wells are hit, one of the oil [facilities] of the countries from whose soil we are attacked will be targeted.”

He added that Tehran’s negotiation team has “grabbed the enemy’s collar at the negotiating table”.

He also said Iranians shouldn’t worry about their energy supply as the “necessary arrangements” have been made.

This comes after US president Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike oil plants in the area, as well as threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power stations and fresh water plants.