Iran-US war latest: Tehran claims to have shot down US fighter jet after Trump threatens strikes on power plants

Former CIA Director Bill Burns has described the U.S.-Israeli war launched against Iran as “a war of choice” that may have only further empowered the most hard-line elements within its theocracy.

Burns, a former State Department diplomat, made the observation in a podcast by Foreign Affairs magazine.

“This is a regime that is inept at many things like managing its economy, but it is designed to preserve itself and designed to repress its own people and designed to withstand even the decapitation of its senior leadership,” said Burns, who secretly negotiated with the Iranians ahead of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers during the Obama administration.

Burns also disagreed with U.S. President Donald Trump’s assessment that there had been a “regime change” in the airstrike campaign killing top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“In some ways, it’s certainly a much weaker regime, but it’s also one that’s even nastier and more radical and, you know, less open,” he said.

He added that Iran’s theocracy thought “victory is survival.”

“I’ve believed for a long time that this is a regime that’s on a kind of one-way street to its eventual collapse, but I worry that, you know, in this war, what we’ve done rather than accelerate that moment of collapse is slow it down a little bit,” Burns said.

A container ship belonging to French shipping group CMA CGM has crossed ⁠through the Strait of Hormuz, MarineTraffic vessel tracking data shows, in a sign that Iran may not consider France a hostile nation.

The Malta-flagged ⁠Kribi, owned by CMA ​CGM, ⁠crossed the Strait on April 2 and is the first French-owned vessel ⁠to make it through the channel since U.S.-Israeli ​attacks ⁠began in Iran at ‌the end of February.

Until the war led to the effective closure of the Strait, ‌it was the route for about ‌a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.

It was not immediately clear how the ⁠vessel, which the data shows is sailing south along the coast of Oman, secured safe passage. However, LSEG shipping data showed the vessel on Thursday changed its destination to “Owner France”, signalling to Iranian authorities the nationality of its owner, ‌before crossing the Strait’s Iran’s territorial waters.

The ​ship had originally been bound for ‌Pointe-Noire in the Republic ⁠of the Congo.

CMA CGM did not ⁠immediately respond to a request for comment. France’s foreign ‌ministry declined ​to comment.

Our political correspondent Millie Cooke reports:

Sir Keir Starmer condemned a “reckless overnight drone attack” on a Kuwaiti oil refinery on a call with the Crown Prince of Kuwait on Friday morning.

In a readout after the call, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister spoke to His Highness the Crown Prince of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah this morning.“

The prime minister began by condemning the reckless overnight drone attack on a Kuwaiti oil refinery.

He reiterated that the UK stands with Kuwait and all our allies in the Gulf.

“They discussed the deployment of the UK’s Rapid Sentry air defence system to Kuwait, which will protect Kuwaiti and British personnel and interests in the region, while avoiding escalation into wider conflict.”

The spokesperson added: “Regarding ongoing disruption to global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the prime minister and Crown Prince welcomed the meeting convened by the foreign secretary yesterday on a viable plan to reopen the Strait.

“They agreed to continue to work together on this and stay in close contact over the coming weeks.”

Iran has said a second US F-35 fighter jet has been shot down over Iran, with the state news agency saying it’s unlikely the pilot survived, Reuters has reported.

This is not the first time Iran has claimed to hit a US fighter jet, but so far, only one jet has been forced to make an emergency landing.

Last month, the US military said in a statement that a US F-35 aircraft conducted an emergency landing after flying a combat mission over Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is spending much ⁠time on the escalating Middle East crisis, ⁠Kremlin ​spokesman Dmitry ⁠Peskov said on ⁠Friday.

Nearly five ​weeks ⁠after it ‌began with joint U.S.-Israeli air strikes, ‌the war ‌in Iran continues to ⁠destabilise the region and unsettle financial markets, piling pressure on President Donald Trump to ‌bring the ​conflict ‌to a ⁠swift end.

Ireland’s foreign affairs minister has said there needs to be accountability for attacks on UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon.

Helen McEntee was speaking after it emerged here planned trip to the Middle East country had been cancelled due to concerns from Irish peacekeepers in the region.

“The trip was to coincide with my visit to Kyiv, to Ukraine, this week,” she told RTE radio show Today With David McCullagh.

“But a decision was taken, and this was on the advice of the Defence Forces themselves, that it wasn’t the appropriate time or the right time to do it, and I’m completely guided by them.”

Ms McEntee said she intended to make a trip to Lebanon to visit Irish troops in order “to recognise the work that they do”.

“Over the last number of years and decades they have done a fantastic job, in particular in supporting the Lebanese people,” she said.

“What’s heartbreaking, I think for all of us, is that in a very short space of time, decades of their work has been set back, essentially.

“We are seeing so much of the progress that has been made, years taken off it.”

She said there was fire “from all sides”, meaning from both Israel and militant group Hezbollah, and said she had told her EU counterparts that it was “not enough to condemn people firing directly at Unifil peacekeepers” and that “there has to be accountability”.

“War is not a game show; peace making is not a real estate deal; the world is not a casino”, said Mr Fletcher, who worked for three former British prime ministers: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Our political correspondent Millie Cooke reports:

Former Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who helped reach the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, made a peace proposal in Foreign Affairs magazine in a piece published Friday.

While Mr Zarif has no official position now in Iran’s theocracy, he helped get reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian elected.

He also would not have been able to publish such a piece without at least running the positions past senior members of the country’s theocracy.

While insisting Iran “is clearly winning” the war, he wrote that Tehran “should offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions — a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now.”

It remains unclear how Donald Trump would respond to such a pitch, particularly as Mr Zarif referred to Trump’s close friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as “completely illiterate on both geopolitics and nuclear technicalities.”

Iran’s former foreign minister Javad Zarif has shared his peace plan in a post on X, as he called for Iran to call victory and end the war.

He wrote: “As an Iranian, outraged by Donald Trump’s reckless aggression & crude insults, yet proud of our armed forces & resilient people, I am torn about publishing this peace-plan in Foreign Affairs. Yet I’m convinced that war must end on terms consistent with Iran’s national interests.”