The fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran has continued to shatter global markets. These are the major takeaways of what happened overnight.
What did Trump say?
US President Donald Trump spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, discussing the wars in Ukraine and Iran.
Trump said that the conversation was “very good” and that the US was “going to come up with a solution relatively quickly” over its continuing conflict with Iran.
He also said that the US was having talks with the Iranians. “They’ve come a long way. The question is whether they’re going to go far enough. At this moment, there will never be a deal unless they agree that there will be no nuclear weapons.”
In addition, Trump commented that the wars in Iran and Ukraine could end on a “similar timetable”.
According to Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov, the phone call lasted for more than an hour and a half, with Putin warning Trump of “the inevitable, extremely dire consequences not only for Iran and its neighbours, but for the entire international community, if the US and Israel resort to force again”.
Trump told reporters that Putin offered to help remove Iran’s enriched uranium from the country.
Foes and allies
The chasm between Washington and its Nato allies has continued to widen during the US-Israel war against Iran, with Trump taking aim at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on social media over the American military operation.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that “The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time”.
Who wins?
While the world remains mired in a fuel crisis because of the war and the ensuing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, American companies and the US are expanding their energy footprint abroad.
US crude exports achieved a record surge of more than 6 million barrels a day last week, becoming a net exporter of crude on a weekly basis, the US Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.
The US has shipped a record volume of oil since it started the war against Iran on February 28, with Europe and Asia becoming more dependent on American oil exports.
The US also signed deals worth billions of dollars with Balkan countries this week.
These included the formal launch of the “Trump Peace Pipelines Framework”, a Washington-led initiative to develop new energy pipelines and infrastructure across Central and Eastern Europe, during US Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s recent trip to Croatia.
“The US ... leads the world in LNG exports and is on track to more than double its exports within the next decade,” the country’s Department of Energy said in a note on Tuesday.
Australian foreign minister Penny Wong said on Wednesday in Beijing that China has agreed to cooperate with Australian business on jet fuel shipments to ease the energy shortage caused by the war in the Middle East.
How much is the war costing?
The Pentagon has for the first time unveiled a price tag for the war.
Jules Hurst, the Department of Defence’s chief financial officer, told Congress on Wednesday that the war on Iran had cost an estimated $25 billion so far.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to answer a question on how much longer the war could last or what it might eventually cost.
Pakistan’s commerce ministry’s executive order last week to open six land routes to Iran for the transit of goods could create “a breach” in the US naval blockade of Hormuz, while “opening an alternative path for thousands of containers”, Iran’s Fars news agency said on Wednesday.
Speculation was also rising over whether Tehran would turn to the International North-South Transport Corridor across the Caspian Sea that links southern Russian ports to reduce its dependence on Gulf shipping lanes, after Putin reaffirmed Moscow’s support to Iran when meeting with Araghchi on Monday in the Kremlin.
Military movements
The US Central Command said that the guided-missile destroyer USS Mason has joined the George H.W. Bush carrier strike group, one of three currently operating in the Middle East. The other two are the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln.
US media also reported that the Ford strike group is expected to leave the Middle East to head home in the coming days.
Citing two anonymous sources, Axios also reported on Wednesday that Trump is slated to receive a briefing on new plans for potential military action in Iran on Thursday from Brad Cooper, commander of the US Central Command.
In a statement published on social media on Wednesday, Cooper said that “the blockade is highly effective and US forces remain fully committed to total enforcement”.
The Iranian navy commander said on Wednesday that Iran had closed the Strait of Hormuz from the Arabian Sea, warning that if US forces advanced further, “we will quickly take operational action”.
“The enemy thought that in the shortest possible time, for example three days to a week, they would achieve results in the war against Iran, and this very notion has become a joke in military universities,” he said, according to a statement published by the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
War of words
On the economic pressuring of Tehran, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday that “we’ve been in a long race and we are springing for the finish line”.
“The retirement funds they thought they had outside of Iran, we are freezing. Same with their villas in the South of France. We are going to track them down and we are going to continue the economic pressure as well as the blockade,” he said.
The Iranian parliament’s speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on social media in the early hours of Thursday that the US administration was taking “junk advice ... from people like Bessent who also push the blockade theory and cranked oil up to $120+”.
“Next stop: 140. The issue isn’t the theory, it’s the mindset.”
In an audio message to the country on Wednesday, Ghalibaf warned that Trump was seeking to divide Iran into hardliners and moderates while planning to force the country into surrender through economic pressure and internal discord.
“The only solution to counter the enemy’s new conspiracy is one thing: maintaining unity,” he was quoted as saying by Iran’s Mehr news agency.
Pakistani minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday that the US-Iran ceasefire continued to hold, noting that Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who visited Pakistan days ago, assured him that Tehran would respond to Islamabad positively after consultations with its leadership, according to Associated Press of Pakistan.
Another fragile ceasefire
Lebanon’s deputy prime minister told the Australian broadcaster ABC that the ceasefire in his country was not holding because the US had effectively given Israel free rein to launch bombing raids “whenever they deem necessary”.
While the ABC reported the interview on Thursday morning, it was not clear when the interview occurred.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video clip on social media on Wednesday to show that his country was continuing to attack targets in Lebanon. It was captioned “Lebanon - continuing”.
Tehran has long emphasised that Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed paramilitary group Hezbollah, is based, was part of its temporary truce deal with Washington.
In a phone interview with Axios on Wednesday, Trump said he told Netanyahu on Tuesday that Israel should only take “surgical” military action in Lebanon and avoid a full resumption of the war. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
