Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Mar 30, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: Trump Claims Progress in Talks to End War, Then Again Threatens Intense Attacks
President Trump warned that if a deal was not struck, he would respond by “completely obliterating” Iranian energy infrastructure targets. Oil and stock markets wavered on the news.
Updated
March 30, 2026, 12:59 p.m. ET29 minutes ago
Aaron BoxermanErika Solomon and Sanam Mahoozi
Here’s the latest
President Trump zigzagged from claims of diplomatic progress to renewed threats of destruction on Monday, sending new shocks through oil markets as he sought to pressure Iran to make a deal to end the monthlong war.
Mr. Trump said in a Truth Social post that there had been “great progress” in talks with Tehran but warned that if they failed to produce an agreement, he would order the bombardment of Iranian power plants, oil infrastructure and potentially desalination plants. The president has repeatedly threatened such attacks in recent weeks, only to back down, as the global economy reels from the risk to energy supplies.
Despite Mr. Trump’s claim that the United States is in talks with “a new, and more reasonable, regime” in Iran, however, there has been little apparent progress in the negotiations. Iran has denied holding substantive talks with the United States and has rejected the Trump administration’s conditions as unreasonable. The war has raged on, drawing in much of the Middle East, sending oil and gas prices skyrocketing and fracturing Mr. Trump’s political support at home.
As Mr. Trump strains to find an end to a conflict he originally mused would last four to five weeks, he has alternately narrowed his aims — arguing on Sunday that “regime change” in Iran had already been achieved — and raised the prospect of escalation, ordering thousands more U.S. troops to the Middle East, including Marines and Special Operations Forces.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said that Iran had agreed to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, where Tehran’s de facto blockade has all but closed a vital route for oil, gas and fertilizer shipments.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran was “not at all happy that people in other countries are facing difficulties due to fuel and food prices,” and urged those countries to press Israel and the United States to end their attacks on Iran.
On Monday, two Chinese-owned commercial vessels transited the waterway, according to MarineTraffic, a ship tracking platform. The crossings offered an initial indication that Iran could be relaxing its stranglehold over the strait, the platform said. But a short time later, Mr. Trump renewed his threats to bombard Iran’s “Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,” from which Iran exports the majority of its oil, if talks on ending the war failed.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Pakistan talks: Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey convened on Sunday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for further discussions aimed at ending the war. The United States, Israel and Iran were not part of the talks, and it was unclear whether any progress was made. Read more ›
Lebanon: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had ordered his forces to increase the territory they control in southern Lebanon, adding to fears among many Lebanese of a long-term military occupation of the area. Lebanon’s president has denounced Israel’s campaign there against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia.
Peacekeepers killed: Two United Nations peacekeepers were killed in southern Lebanon on Monday when their convoy was “struck by an explosion of undetermined origin,” according to a U.N. report seen by The New York Times. A day earlier, an Indonesian peacekeeper was killed in a separate attack amid clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
March 30, 2026, 1:21 p.m. ET8 minutes ago
Reporting from Washington
As lawmakers leave Washington without reaching a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency remains shut down even as the Iran war has raised cyber threat levels. The D.H.S. agency, known as CISA, is tasked with defending the nation’s infrastructure against cyberattacks.
“CISA is shut down, but our adversaries are not,” Nick Andersen, CISA’s acting director, told a Congressional hearing last week.
March 30, 2026, 12:17 p.m. ET1 hour ago
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, jumped to $116 a barrel on Monday before falling back in midday trading. It remains more than 50 percent higher than before the war in Iran. The S&P 500 gained slightly after five straight weeks of declines. The index remains on track for its worst monthly performance since March 2025, when inflation and tariff worries rattled investors.
March 30, 2026, 12:17 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Reporting from Tel Aviv
The Israeli military said it had destroyed more than 100 high-rise buildings in the Beirut area since launching strikes there earlier this month. Israel said the buildings were used by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, as command-and-control centers for attacks against Israel.
Weeks of Israeli strikes in the Lebanese capital and its suburbs have caused extensive damage and killed large numbers of civilians, including children. More than 1,200 people in Lebanon have been killed in the nearly monthlong conflict, and more than a million others have been displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.
March 30, 2026, 11:08 a.m. ET2 hours ago
NATO air defenses shot down a ballistic missile fired from Iran that had entered Turkish airspace, Turkey’s defense ministry said in a post on social media. It was fourth time that the military alliance, of which Turkey is a member, has reported intercepting an Iranian missile in or near Turkey’s skies since the start of the war in Iran. The defense ministry did not say what Monday’s missile’s target was nor where it was intercepted. NATO officials did not immediately comment.
A successful attack on a NATO member could escalate the war in Iran, given the alliance’s mutual defense clause, although Turkish officials have not called for the clause’s activation. Iranian officials have denied that their country has targeted Turkey.
March 30, 2026, 9:21 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Reporting from Washington
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with ABC News that the “clerical regime” that has led Iran for decades is the foundational problem with the country, reiterating his hardline stance on the Iranian leadership in recent months. He said if there is new leadership that has taken power during the war that has a more positive “vision” for Iran’s future, he welcomes that, but also said the United States is prepared for “the possibility, maybe even the probability,” that that is not the case.
Rubio’s comments came after President Trump said that “regime change” in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders had been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks.
March 30, 2026, 9:02 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
Two U.N. peacekeepers traveling in a convoy were killed when it was “struck by an explosion of undetermined origin” in southern Lebanon on Monday and several other peacekeepers were injured, according to a U.N. report seen by The New York Times.
The blast came a day after the organization’s secretary-general, António Guterres, condemned the killing of an Indonesian member of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group, are engaged in escalating clashes as Israeli forces expand their ground invasion there.
About 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are stationed in the region as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which was established in 1978 during Lebanon’s civil war.
The internal report seen by The Times indicated that the U.N. peacekeeping force did not immediately know who was responsible for the latest strike and deaths. There was no immediate comment from Israel, Hezbollah or UNIFIL. The other strike was also being investigated, UNIFIL said in a statement.
In the latest explosion on Monday, a U.N. convoy that was heading between two UNIFIL bases was struck, destroying the lead vehicle and killing the peacekeepers. Several others were injured, one of them seriously, according to the report. The explosion, which again affected UNIFIL’s Indonesian battalion, occurred near the southern Lebanese town of Bani Haiyyan, the report said.
The three deaths over the past 24 hours were the first in a combat incident since a conflict that was sparked when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in 2023 in support of its Palestinian ally in Gaza, Hamas.
That war ended in a fragile cease-fire, but erupted again this month after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Tehran, opening a new front in the broader U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Israel has responded with a large-scale bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced well over a million others, according to Lebanese authorities.
Hezbollah has responded by attacking Israeli troops as they advance into southern Lebanon and keeping up rocket fire across the border into Israel, in a conflict that shows little sign of abating.
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March 30, 2026, 8:37 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Trump threatens to destroy Kharg Island and other key energy sites in Iran.
President Trump threatened on Monday to “completely” destroy Kharg Island, Iran’s main hub for oil exports, and other key energy sites in the country, if it did not agree to a peace deal and end its de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr. Trump said on social media that the United States had made “great progress” in discussions with “A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME” in Iran, and that a deal would probably be “shortly reached.”
But he also reiterated threats of extreme destruction against Iranian targets that he said the U.S. military had “purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” since it started bombing Iran alongside Israel over a month ago. Those targets included Kharg Island, electricity plants, oil wells and “possibly all desalinization plants,” he said.
Mr. Trump has made fluctuating and freewheeling public comments on the war, often alternating between claims of diplomatic progress and threats of stronger military action. In an interview published on Sunday, Mr. Trump had suggested that the United States might try to take over Kharg Island, which has emerged as a potential target for the U.S. military.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t,” Mr. Trump told The Financial Times. “We have a lot of options.”
He shrugged off Iran’s ability to protect the island, a territory about one-third the size of Manhattan that is in the Persian Gulf, about 20 miles offshore.
“I don’t think they have any defense,” Mr. Trump said. “We could take it very easily.”
Mr. Trump has said that he has no plans to send ground troops into Iran, but he has left himself some wiggle room. There are now over 50,000 American troops in the Middle East — too small a number for any major land invasion, military analysts say, but enough to give Mr. Trump new options to escalate the war, or attempt an operation like seizing Kharg island.
The U.S. bombarded the island this month, focusing on its military installations while leaving its oil export facilities untouched. An invasion would be a much riskier operation and would likely roil global energy markets even further.
Even if U.S. troops were able to take control of the island — a scenario that Mr. Trump has envisioned since the late 1980s — maintaining control of it would be costly and difficult. Mr. Trump told The Financial Times that American troops would have “to be there for a while.”
Airstrikes against Kharg Island’s oil infrastructure, or seizing the island outright, would cripple Iran’s ability to export oil. That would risk sending energy prices higher, especially if Iran retaliates by striking other infrastructure in the Middle East or oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz — which would remain a powerful source of leverage.
Helene Cooper, Anton Troianovski, Rebecca F. Elliott and Peter Eavis contributed reporting.
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March 30, 2026, 8:28 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Carlos Barragan
Spain has barred U.S. warplanes from flying through its airspace en route to strikes on Iran, the country’s defense minister said on Monday. The minister, Margarita Robles, said the restriction had been in place since the start of the war. Previously, Spanish officials had only publicly announced a ban on U.S. aircraft using Spanish air bases as a launchpad for attacks. Flight-tracking data on Monday showed that U.S. aircraft were still using Spanish bases before flying on to destinations other than Iran.
March 30, 2026, 8:11 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Reporting from Iraq
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said that President Trump was the only person who could end the war with Iran. In opening remarks at an international energy conference in Cairo on Monday, he addressed Mr. Trump directly, saying: “I speak to you on behalf of myself, humanity, and lovers of peace — and you, Mr. President, are a lover of peace. Please, Mr. President, help us stop this war. And you are capable of doing so.”
Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, has been working on mediation efforts to try to end the war. The four countries’ foreign ministers met in Islamabad on Sunday, but no results from the meeting have been announced.
March 30, 2026, 8:10 a.m. ET5 hours ago
President Trump said on social media that the United States was in “serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” adding that “great progress” had been made in the talks. But he also warned that if Iran did not reach a deal with the U.S. and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping route, then the U.S. would respond by “blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).”
Iranian leaders have not publicly confirmed that they are participating in direct talks with U.S. officials, saying only that intermediaries have been passing messages between the two sides.