US Iran war highlights: Witkoff leaves for talks, Trump claims US ‘wiped out everything’ in Iran

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• Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is travelling to Switzerland for the first round of talks with Iran on a potential nuclear deal, Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official. Jared Kushner is already in Switzerland.

• US President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) claimed that he would be able to prevent Israel from carrying out strikes on Lebanon, asserting that Israeli leadership acts on his directions due to what he described as strong mutual respect.

• The head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee says the Donald Trump administration has shown a “failure to commit to the first clause” of the MoU with Tehran.

• Iran’s deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told Al Jazeera Arabic that Tehran wants to continue to negotiate with the US, if it is serious about respecting their agreement and ensuring Israel adheres to its terms.

US Iran war LIVE: An oil supertanker is once again heading from the Persian Gulf toward the Strait of Hormuz after briefly reversing direction, Bloomberg reported.

The Desh Vibhor, which had earlier appeared to be sailing toward a southern route that’s recommended by the US military, is now heading in a more northerly direction toward the Iranian coast. The vessel had made a U-turn before turning again back to resume its journey toward the strait, tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Al Jazeera Arabic reported that a Palestinian woman has been killed following an Israeli air attack targeting a residential apartment in central Gaza City.

The local ambulance and emergency services said several other people sustained injuries in the strike, according to the report.

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is already in Switzerland, Axios has reported

Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is travelling to Switzerland for the first round of talks with Iran on a potential nuclear deal, Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official.

The development comes a day after Vice President JD Vance cancelled plans to attend the talks, which were called off amid the renewed fighting in Lebanon. That escalation has raised fresh uncertainty over the fate of negotiations critical to reopening the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping.

Mark Kimmitt, a former assistant US secretary of state for political-military affairs, says there will be occasional ceasefire violations in complex deals like the one reached between the US and Iran – but that doesn’t mean the deal will fail.

“One can expect that ceasefires have these types of violations. There hasn’t been a ceasefire in the history of the world that hasn’t had violations,” he told Al Jazeera.

Israel has continued strikes across Lebanon despite the US-Iran deal stating that the war would end on all fronts.

“Whether it is persistent, and it causes one or the other side to declare the end of the ceasefire, then we have problems,” Kimmitt said, adding that both Washington and Tehran face the challenge of persuading their allies to step back from the brink.

“We’ve got to understand it comes with difficulty, it comes with complexity.”

Democratic US Senator John Hickenlooper says on X that, while people have faced increased costs in the US for months due to the war, “Iran gets money back” while Americans do not. “It’s despicable,” he says.

Senator Chris Van Hollen says Democrats should be arguing that the war been a “blunder” and there is “no good way out of a bad war”, so those pushing for a return to fighting should be confronted. “When you’re in a hole, stop digging,” he said.

In response to reports that says the Pentagon is asking for an additional $80bn to cover Iran war costs and other bills, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed the government’s “outrageous” priorities. “There is always money for war halfway around the world,” she wrote on X.

Republican Senator Rand Paul expressed strong support for Trump’s efforts, saying that “proponents of forever wars have zero credibility”.

US President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) claimed that he would be able to prevent Israel from carrying out strikes on Lebanon, asserting that Israeli leadership acts on his directions due to what he described as strong mutual respect.

During an interview on The Axios Show, when asked whether he could influence Israeli military actions in the region, particularly regarding potential strikes on Lebanon, Trump said that he would be able to exercise control over such decisions.

"Yeah, I will be. I mean, they have a lot of respect for me, and they do as I say," Trump said.

Trump also referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he maintains a strong but closely managed relationship with him.

"It's good, but we have to keep him a little bit sane," he remarked.

Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian home in the al-Hara’iq area of the West Bank, south of Nablus, the Wafa news agency is reporting.

Elsewhere, Israeli forces assaulted a young man in the Bir Qouza area in Beita. He was transferred to a local medical facility.

Israeli settlers also destroyed olive trees belonging to Palestinians in the village of Kisan, east of Bethlehem, according to local sources.

Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani has held discussions in Switzerland with Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis on the US-Iran deal and regional security.

The pair met in Burgenstock for talks on “diplomatic efforts aimed at promoting security and stability in the region” after the signing of the MoU, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

During the meeting, Sheikh Mohammed “affirmed Doha’s support for launching negotiations between the US and Iran to reach sustainable solutions to outstanding issues through dialogue and peaceful means”.

The head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee says the Donald Trump administration has shown a “failure to commit to the first clause” of the MoU with Tehran.

That first clause states that both sides agree to “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon”.

“America’s failure to commit to the first clause of the agreement demonstrates that America still lacks the will to gain the trust of the Iranian nation,” Ebrahim Azizi wrote on X.

“The continuation of this situation will come at a heavy cost to them, the first of which will be an intelligent and deterrent response to the violation of the agreement’s commitments,” he said.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has criticised French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot for his “hypocrisy”.

“You remained silent – you even made yourself complicit – while Iranian cities were savagely bombed and innocent Iranians were brutally massacred,” he wrote on X.

Baghaei was reacting to a video of Barrot saying that the Iranian people were the losers of the war, caught between repression and bombing.

“And yet, today, when it serves the political interests of your regime, your selective conscience suddenly awakens, and you claim to lecture the entire world on human rights,” Baghaei said.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned what it described as the Israeli seizure of land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan.

In a statement on X, the ministry said Israeli authorities seized the land on June 15, expelled the Patriarchate’s representative from the site, confiscated equipment, uprooted trees and enclosed the area with walls and gates.

The ministry described the move as a “grave assault on church properties” and a “gross violation of the legal and historical status quo in occupied Jerusalem”.

It said the measures “do not create any legal rights for the occupation and do not alter the prevailing legal and historical status in East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian land”, adding that all annexation, confiscation and seizure measures are “null and void under international law”.

The ministry called on the international community to take urgent action to halt what it described as violations against Christian and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem and to hold Israel accountable for its actions.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told Al Jazeera Arabic that Tehran wants to continue to negotiate with the US, if it is serious about respecting their agreement and ensuring Israel adheres to its terms.

In an interview in the wake of the latest wave of Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon on Friday, he said that Israel’s “continued war-making” would have consequences that are “serious and immediate”.

Iran was seeking “peace on all fronts, including Gaza,” he added.

Global stocks are ending a strong week on a cautious note as relief over an interim peace deal between the US and Iran gave way to a focus on the challenges of securing a lasting agreement.

With US cash markets closed for the Juneteenth holiday, S&P 500 futures declined after the benchmark posted its best week since the end of May. Europe’s Stoxx 600 dipped 0.2%, while Asian stocks retreated 0.3% from an all-time high. Markets in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were also shut.

Donald Trump said that the US has “had a lot of victories” during a speech at a ceremony to mark the unveiling of a new Air Force One gifted by Qatar as a replacement aircraft for ferrying the US president.

“You’re going to see oil drop so low, I hope the companies are happy about it,” he said.

“We have the greatest military in the world. You saw that in Iran, in one week, virtually, we knocked out their entire navy, their entire air force, their radar. We wiped out everything,” he said.

Donald Trump said that in “60 days, we have to make a deal, otherwise we will do things that won't make them [Iranians] happy,” in his speech, adding that he doesn’t think it will get to that.

“Remember, if we do that, then all of a sudden you’re not going to have the oil flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz because people who have billion-dollar ships don’t love missiles flying over them, don’t love mines all over the water,” he added.

US President Donald Trump says he thanked China for not becoming involved in the conflict with Iran.

Speaking to reporters, Trump said he had personally asked China not to intervene despite its heavy reliance on energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

“I want to thank China because I asked China not to get involved with Iran,” Trump said.

Noting that China receives around half of its oil through the strategic waterway, Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed to stay out of the conflict.

“They get 50 percent of their oil from the Strait, but I asked him not to get involved, and he said he wouldn’t – and he didn’t,” Trump said. “He made it very nice, actually, very nice. And I appreciate that.”

Oil gained on Friday as planned negotiations between the US and Iran were delayed and tanker traffic out of the Persian Gulf slowed.

Brent futures traded above $80 a barrel in London as Iran delayed the start of negotiations over a permanent peace deal with the US amid an uptick in fighting in southern Lebanon. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz thinned on Friday, a day after a surge in oil shipments renewed as the two countries vowed to lift a dual blockade.

The American push to quickly begin high-stakes talks with Iran hit a snag Friday, just days after the signing of an agreement that opens a two-month window for negotiations on Tehran's nuclear program and returning oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to prewar levels.

Iranian officials did not travel as planned to Switzerland, insisting that Israeli strikes on Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon must stop before the talks can take place, according to three regional officials and a person familiar with the matter. They were not authorised to publicly discuss the ongoing mediation to try to get the talks rescheduled and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The situation was fluid as Israel and Hezbollah agreed on Friday to renew their ceasefire, according to a U.S. official and regional officials. It remains to be seen whether that could help put the U.S.-Iran talks back on track.

Norway has launched a public consultation on proposed legislation that would ban trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, the country’s foreign ministry has announced.

The proposed law would prohibit the import of goods produced in Israeli settlements and ban exports to them. It would also prohibit the purchase of property in settlements, services linked to their construction or sale and the acquisition of businesses based there.

Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the settlements are illegal under international law and undermine the prospects for a two-state solution.

“The Israeli settlements in Palestine are in breach of international law,” Eide said. “We intend to prohibit trade with the unlawful settlements.”

The consultation period will run until September 19, after which the government will consider whether to submit the proposed legislation to parliament.

Israel's ambassador to the United States said on Friday that his country would commit to an "immediate ceasefire" in Lebanon if Hezbollah respected it, hours after a US official said the two parties had agreed a new truce.

"Israel remains firmly committed to an immediate ceasefire," Yechiel Leiter posted on X. "If Hezbollah honours the agreement and ceases its hostilities, they will be met with quiet," he added.

The US president will make a rare trip to Camp David ⁠this weekend, ⁠returning to the presidential retreat for only the second time since retaking office last year.

Trump will hold policy and political meetings during ⁠his visit, a White House official said, according to a report by the Reuters news agency. His family will travel with him for the weekend, which includes Father’s Day on Sunday.

The trip ⁠comes as Trump works to secure a final agreement to end the war with Iran. US-Iran talks in Switzerland planned for Friday were cancelled ‌as fighting flared in Lebanon despite reports of a ceasefire, creating new uncertainty about the timing of negotiations vital to ensure the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping and restoring peace in the Middle East.

Trump last visited Camp David in June 2025, meeting with top military leaders and foreign policy ⁠advisers to discuss immigration protests in California, Iran and the Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have discussed the situation in Lebanon on a phone call.

Aoun emphasised the “necessity of halting Israeli aggressions on Lebanese territories through the achievement of a comprehensive ceasefire,” the Lebanese Presidency said in a statement.

Lebanon considers this a “fundamental pillar” for advancing US-Lebanese negotiations in Washington next week.

Rubio reaffirmed US support for Lebanon and its “commitment to achieving security and stability” and “extending the state’s authority over all its territories, and supporting its legitimate institutions,” the statement said.