war

A marathon round of high-stakes diplomacy in Islamabad ended without a breakthrough, as US Vice President JD Vance said the American negotiating team was leaving Pakistan after 21 hours of talks without securing a deal with Iran. Vance blamed the impasse on what he described as gaps in the negotiations, saying Tehran had declined to accept US conditions, including a commitment not to build nuclear weapons. "The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad…

Saturday April 11, 2026 Police officers walk towards bus for their deployment in Islamabad, Pakistan before planned US-Iran ceasefire talks With negotiators already on the move, the next round of US-Iran ceasefire talks has been plunged into fresh uncertainty. The United States delegation has left for Saturday’s planned discussions in Islamabad, Pakistan, while Iran’s government says its representatives have already landed. Yet even before the two sides sit down, Friday brought a new burst of friction that cast a shadow…

By ZVIKA KLEINFriday April 10, 2026 Qatar is now underwriting the most-watched English-language news channel covering the Middle East, a development that should alarm Israeli planners more than many of the military lessons drawn from the 40-day war. The reason is simple: the battlefield has expanded, and the fight for attention is being lost online. AL JAZEERA headquarters in Doha, Qatar. (photo credit: Imad Creidi/Reuters) One statistic, unrelated to missiles or airstrikes, may prove more consequential than much of what…

The ceasefire struck between the US and Iran has ended the fighting without delivering Israel’s core war aims, analysts say, prompting swift condemnation from Israeli opposition figures who cast the outcome as a serious strategic setback. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had framed the conflict around a central objective: eliminating, or at minimum sharply crippling, Iran’s nuclear programme, which he has long portrayed as an "existential threat" to Israel. He also said Israel sought to dismantle Iran’s ballistic…

Ben Roberts-Smith, once celebrated as Australia's most decorated living soldier, has been arrested and accused of war crimes over the alleged killings of unarmed civilians during deployments to Afghanistan. Police said the 47-year-old former Australian Defence Force member was taken into custody at Sydney Airport. Court records identified the man as Ben Roberts-Smith. Australian Federal Police said he was charged with five counts of war crimes tied to the murder of five people in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. Each…

On 16 February 1992, Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi was heading to Beirut in a black Mercedes with his wife and five-year-old son when the journey turned deadly. The Iran-backed Hezbollah secretary-general was travelling with two Range Rovers carrying armed bodyguards. He was returning from a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the killing of one of Hezbollah's founders. Trailing the convoy were Israeli Apache AH-64 helicopters, which fired missiles and killed the Hezbollah leader along with his family. A month later, a…

For Europe, the week brought back an unwelcome memory: the kind of creeping economic dread last seen when Covid-19 tore through the continent and pushed its economies to the brink in 2020 and 2021. "If this war escalates into a major regional conflict," Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at a Berlin news conference on Monday, "it could burden Germany and Europe even more than we experienced most recently during the Covid-19 pandemic or at the beginning of the war in Ukraine." Those two crises still loom large in EU capitals,…

Easter Sunday will carry unusual weight at the Vatican this year, as Pope Leo XIV prepares to mark the holiest day in the Christian calendar for the first time as pontiff while war in the Middle East darkens the celebration. The US-born pope, who has become one of the conflict’s most prominent critics, is due to celebrate mass in St Peter's Square from 9.30am Irish time before thousands of worshippers. The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics will then deliver the traditional blessing at 11am Irish time, a moment likely…

Friday April 3, 2026 A picture released by the Iranian government's foreign media department shows graves being prepared for victims, mostly children, of a United States attack on a girls' primary school in Minab, Iran More than 100 international law scholars based in the United States have issued a sharp open letter condemning US and Israeli strikes on Iran, saying the attacks violate the United Nations Charter and could amount to “war crimes”. Published on Thursday, the letter says the conduct of US forces and remarks by…

A recent report by Human Rights Watch has uncovered a harrowing reality in Burkina Faso, revealing that over 1,800 civilians have lost their lives in the turmoil following Ibrahim Traoré's ascent to power three years ago. The document outlines incidents that constitute both war crimes and crimes against humanity, with 1,837 civilians—including many children—reported killed across 57 events from January 2023 to August 2025. The majority of these killings have been linked to the military and its allied militias, while a…