Iran Sends Response via Pakistan as Qatari Tanker Transits Hormuz

The Iran file ran on two tracks on Sunday — a public threat from the US president and a private answer routed through a third capital. Donald Trump told Sharyl Attkisson, in an interview released Sunday, that the United States has Iran's surviving nuclear materials site "very well surveilled" via Space Force and would "blow up" anyone who approached it. "If somebody walked in, they can tell you his name, his address, the number of his badge," he said. He put the campaign that opened on 28 February with Israel at "probably 70 percent" of targets hit and said the United States "could go in for two more weeks and do every single target." Reconstruction of what Washington has already destroyed, he said, would take Iran two decades. The same day, IRNA reported, Iran transmitted its formal response to the latest US ceasefire proposal through Pakistani mediators, with the first phase focused on ending hostilities and locking in safe passage through Hormuz. The diplomacy got its first physical signal: the QatarEnergy LNG carrier Al Kharaitiyat became the first Qatari vessel to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, bound for Pakistan's Port Qasim — the passage approved by Iran as a confidence-building step toward the two mediators. The wider regional file remained tense: a Financial Times investigation documented Iran's network of roughly 300 IRGC speedboats hidden in caves and tunnels along the southern coast, the asymmetric force the US Navy must plan around for any Hormuz transit guarantee.

Hormuz's economic shock kept moving outward. Asian economies are now bearing the same energy-price hit Latin America and the Caribbean took first, with rising oil prices triggering fuel queues and blackouts in countries dependent on Gulf imports. Latin American and Caribbean central banks have been pushed back into rate-hike posture by imported inflation; the same shock is now visible across Asia.

In Britain, the political weather turned against Keir Starmer. Backbencher Catherine West confirmed she will not start collecting nominations until she has heard the prime minister's Monday relaunch speech, after which she will pursue the 81 MP signatures (20 percent of the parliamentary party) needed to force a leadership contest. More than 30 Labour MPs have publicly called for him to go since Thursday's local elections, in which Labour lost close to 1,500 council seats and ceded control of Wales to Reform UK and the Greens. Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner broke her weekend silence to call the National Executive Committee's blocking of Andy Burnham "a mistake" and said this is Labour's "last chance" to be the party of working people. On Whitehall the Standing Strong: Extinguish Antisemitism rally drew thousands after the 29 April Golders Green stabbing — Pat McFadden was booed from the stage; counter-terror police arrested two over a Whitechapel arson at the former East London Central Synagogue. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he would "absolutely" stay on after a worst-ever 17-of-129 Holyrood result.

Ukraine spent the day inside a truce that is not stopping the fighting. Russian forces struck Zaporizhzhia Oblast 780 times in 24 hours of the declared May 9-11 ceasefire — 598 UAVs, eight MLRS volleys and 174 artillery strikes across 33 settlements, killing one and injuring three. Drones in Dnipropetrovsk wounded a 23-year-old rescue worker and a three-year-old girl; four civilians were hit in the Kherson region. The Institute for the Study of War said Russia used the truce's first day for rotations, reinforcements and logistics, with no 1,000-for-1,000 POW swap taking place. Kyiv's Office of the President told Suspilne that Vladimir Putin's claim Ukraine had "gone off the radar" on the swap "does not correspond to reality" — work on the deal, brokered through Washington as guarantor, is "actively moving forward." Looking past the truce, The New York Times documented Russia's slowest territorial gains since 2023, with net losses recorded in some months and the current pace projecting more than three decades to complete a Donbas seizure. Russia's symbolic answer was the Geran-5, a Chinese-component jet-powered cruise missile (~1,000 km, 600 km/h, 90 kg warhead) unveiled at a Red Square parade that this year took place virtually with no hardware on the square.

Across the Atlantic the Trump administration deepened a parallel domestic intervention. The Justice Department, after demanding voter registration data, ballots, driver's-licence records and partial Social Security numbers from nearly every state in 2025, has now seized ballots in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan and sued roughly 30 states that refused to hand over voter rolls. Arizona's Adrian Fontes warned the rolls are being assembled into a centralised citizen database. The defence reposition continued: the White House is weighing further US troop withdrawals from Europe, with Italy now flagged as the next candidate after the confirmed pull-out of 5,000 troops from Germany; Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in Stockholm, called NATO solidarity intact and said the alliance's strength "does not depend on troop numbers alone but on shared goals." In Berlin, CDU and SPD security politicians warned that AfD entry into a Saxony-Anhalt state government would put Germany's intelligence trust chain under "considerable strain."

Two regional stories closed the day. In Niamey, Niger's military government suspended nine French news organisations — AFP, France 24, RFI, TV5 Monde, TF1 Info, Mediapart and Jeune Afrique among them — without examples, days after a Tuareg-Islamist offensive killed Mali's defence minister and as Burkina Faso took a parallel step against TV5 Monde, completing a Russia-aligned Sahel press-freedom rollback. In Türkiye, Burcu Köksal of Afyonkarahisar is set to become the 15th CHP mayor to defect to Erdoğan's AKP since the 2024 local elections, even as the IFC announced its $25 billion Türkiye portfolio is now its third-largest country exposure and Belgium's Queen Mathilde landed in Ankara with a 428-business delegation.