The Levant Files

İslamabad’daki görüşmelerin çökmesinden saatler sonra Washington, dünyanın en kritik enerji darboğazı için deniz ablukası ilan etti. Yeni gelişme ABD’yi seyrüsefer özgürlüğünün şampiyonu olmaktan boğazı mühürleyen tarafa dönüştürdü. Pazar günü İslamabad’da gerçekleşen tarihî ABD–İran görüşmelerinin çökmesinden birkaç saat sonra, ABD Başkanı Donald Trump, Birleşik Devletler Donanması’nın “Hürmüz Boğazı’na girmeye ya da oradan çıkmaya çalışan her tür gemiyi ABLUKAYA alma sürecini başlatacağını” duyurdu. Truth Social platformunda paylaşılan duyuruya, uluslararası sularda İran’a geçiş ücreti ödemiş her geminin durdurulması emri ve “bize veya barışçıl gemilere ateş açan her İranlının CEHENNEME GÖNDERİLECEĞİ” uyarısı eşlik etti. Bu açıklama, yedi haftadır süren çatışmada niteliksel bir tırmanışı işaret ediyor. ABD’yi, 1980’lerdeki Tanker Savaşı’ndan bu yana Basra Körfezi’nde seyrüsefer özgürlüğünün geleneksel garantörü olmaktan çıkarıp, dünyanın en kritik enerji darboğazına kapanmayı dayatan...

Tehran emerged from the collapse of the Islamabad peace talks projecting confidence rather than anxiety on Sunday, with senior Iranian officials framing the failure of 21 hours of negotiations not as a setback for Iran but as proof of American intransigence — and insisting that the ball now lies firmly in Washington's court. The talks, the longest direct engagement between Iranian and American officials in over a year according to Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, ended without an agreement in the early hours of Sunday. But where Vice President JD Vance cast the outcome as Iran's refusal to accept a reasonable final offer, Tehran's narrative was strikingly different: Iran came with constructive proposals, the United States came with maximalist demands, and diplomacy — in Tehran's framing — never truly ends. 'Excessive Demands': Tehran's Core Charge The sharpest Iranian characterisation of the talks' failure came from Tasnim News Agency's cor...

Marathon peace negotiations between the United States and Iran concluded without agreement in Islamabad early Sunday, casting a deep shadow over the fragile two-week ceasefire and raising the spectre of renewed conflict before the truce expires on April 21. After 21 hours of face-to-face talks at the Pakistani capital's Serena Hotel — the most direct high-level engagement between Washington and Tehran since the severing of diplomatic relations following Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution — Vice President JD Vance departed for home in the early hours of Sunday, empty-handed. "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 news for the United States of America," Vance told reporters before boarding Air Force Two. The Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker and influential military figure Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, framed the outcome differently. In a statement posted on social media, Ghalibaf ...

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut after a month of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Washington is no longer pretending the war is about "regime change." The real prize, argues Turkish foreign policy writer Zeynep Gürcanlı in her column in Turkish news site Ekonomim, is rerouting Gulf oil away from vulnerable chokepoints and toward the Mediterranean — a shift that makes a long-frozen Cyprus settlement suddenly urgent. Gürcanlı writes that after one month of war, Hormuz — previously the free highway for Gulf crude — is largely closed. She cites Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's bitter summary: the enemy that claimed to have destroyed Iran's air force, navy and missiles now says its operational goal is to "open Hormuz," though the strait was open before the war started. Tehran's response, according to the column, is to turn the strait into a toll road. A draft law to charge for passage has already cleared the National Security an...

Moroccan academic Dr. Tarek Lissaoui says the recent US-Iran confrontation ended not with an American triumph but with a negotiated pause that reveals how military superiority no longer guarantees political control, and he urges Arab states to draw a hard lesson about self-reliance. In his latest assessment, published by Rai al-Youm, Lissaoui opens with the old fable of the sticks: one breaks easily, a bundle held together resists even strong hands. That, he writes, is the law of states as much as families. From Threats to a Repost Lissaoui argues the turning point came within days. The United States, he notes, moved from rhetoric threatening to erase a deep-rooted Iranian civilization to a quieter moment on April 8, 2026, when President Donald Trump's official account on Truth Social, and the White House account on X, republished a statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. For Lissaoui, this was not a routine media step. It was an implicit acknowledgment that the Irani...

Russia is set to supply Tehran with new systems for producing suicide drones, while U.S. intelligence assessments suggest Iran's missile force survived the joint campaign far better than officials admit. This picture emerges from a report filed from Nazareth for London-based Rai al-Youm by veteran Israeli-Arab affairs writer Zuhair Andraus, who draws on a series of American and Israeli leaks published late Friday and Saturday. Thousands of missiles remain underground Andraus writes that "day by day the dust clears" from the 40-day U.S.-Israeli offensive, and the emerging intelligence picture contradicts public victory claims. Citing sources "familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence assessments" quoted by the Wall Street Journal overnight Friday into Saturday, Andraus reports that Iran still possesses an arsenal of thousands of ballistic missiles, and can bring launch platforms out of deep underground storage. The sources are split on damage: some say many aban...

Beirut was ready for a political solution, but Israel preferred another war on Hezbollah, as Iran now moves to 'save' Lebanon from Israel and Trump greases the already slippery slope of Israel-U.S. ties. This assessment is drawn from an analysis published Friday morning in Haaretz by veteran Middle East affairs commentator Zvi Bar'el. Lebanon becomes Iran's bargaining chip Bar'el argues that Lebanon could decide the fate of the fragile U.S.-Iran cease-fire now being negotiated. He points to a Thursday social media post by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Iranian Parliament speaker leading Tehran's delegation to talks in Pakistan, who declared that "Lebanon and the entire Resistance Axis … form an inseparable part of the ceasefire" and warned that violations in Lebanon would bring "explicit costs and STRONG REACTIONS." Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards air force commander and ex-Tehran mayor, is described by Bar'el as trying to convert ...

Negotiators from Washington and Tehran are due in Islamabad on Saturday morning for Pakistan-mediated talks that both sides describe as an effort to lock in a fragile ceasefire, even as their core demands remain almost entirely opposed. The meeting follows two weeks of quiet between the U.S. and Iran that Pakistan helped broker, but it was nearly derailed this week by Israel's heavy strikes in Lebanon. After Tehran signaled it might pull out, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had ordered direct negotiations with Lebanon, a move an Israeli source described not as a ceasefire but as a cutback in attacks to allow diplomacy to proceed. Who Will be at the Table Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif invited both sides to the capital and will host. The U.S. delegation will be led by Vice President JD Vance, with President Donald Trump's key aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Iran will be represented by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Min...

  Iran has told the United States that any negotiations to end the recent war are conditional on full adherence to a ceasefire on all fronts, especially in Lebanon, where Tehran says Israeli attacks are continuing in violation of the truce, Tasnim News Agency reported Thursday. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei, speaking to reporters in Tehran, said conducting talks is dependent on Washington meeting its commitments under a ceasefire understanding brokered by Pakistan. "The halting of the war in Lebanon is an integral part of the ceasefire understanding proposed by Pakistan, and as the prime minister of that country also explicitly announced, the United States is committed to stopping the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and any action or position contrary to this commitment would be tantamount to the United States not adhering to its commitment," Baqaei said, according to Tasnim News Agency. Baqaei strongly condemned what he called crimes committed by the ...

  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that Israel will open direct negotiations with Lebanon focused on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations, even as Israeli forces remain inside Lebanese territory and both sides exchanged fire. "The negotiations will focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon," the prime minister said in a statement released by his office. He instructed his cabinet to begin the talks "as soon as possible," citing the active warfront with Hezbollah and the upcoming Iran-US peace discussions in Islamabad. The announcement came minutes before Hezbollah launched a fresh barrage of rockets toward northern Israel, triggering sirens across the Galilee. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the rocket fire.  Who Will Negotiate and When Israeli sources told The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz that the talks are expected to begin next week in Washington. Israel will ...