Al Jazeera

By Zaid Sabah

    Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi heads to Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin, as Tehran steps up diplomatic efforts to end the war with the US.

    Israeli forces continue to bombard southern Lebanon despite a US-brokered ceasefire, killing at least 14 people, including two children, on Sunday.

More from Araghchi

    The Iranian foreign minister has also touched on his recent visits to Pakistan and Oman in his comments to the media following his arrival in St Petersburg.

    According to the official IRNA news agency, Araghchi said that his trip to Islamabad was “very productive” and involved “good consultations”, where officials “reviewed past events and the specific conditions under which negotiations between Iran and the US could continue”.

    On his visit to Oman, Araghchi said the two sides had held discussions on the Strait of Hormuz.

    “Iran and Oman are the two coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz, making mutual consultations necessary—especially as safe passage through the Strait has become a significant global issue,” he was quoted as saying.

    “It is natural that as the two coastal nations of this Strait, we must engage in dialogue to ensure our common interests are met and to remain coordinated in any action taken, as the interests of both Iran and Oman are directly involved,” he said.

    Araghchi added that there was a “high degree of consensus” between Iran and Oman and that two sides agreed “that consultations should continue at the expert level”.

Araghchi says meeting with Putin ‘will be a good opportunity to discuss war developments’

    As we’ve been reporting, the Iranian foreign minister has arrived in St Petersburg for his talks with senior Russian officials, including Putin.

    Upon his arrival, Araghchi told Iranian media that he travelled to Russia “with the aim of continuing close consultations between Tehran and Moscow on regional and international issues”.

    He said his meeting with the Russian president later today “will be a good opportunity to discuss developments in the war and review the latest situation”.

    “I am confident that these consultations and coordination between the two countries in this regard will be of particular importance,” he added.

Makan Nasiri, the only child still missing from the school bombed in Iran

    Seven-year-old Makan Nasiri is the only child from the US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab whose remains have never been found.

    The school was struck on February 28, the first day of the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, in what became the deadliest single incident involving civilians in the conflict.

    Makan’s parents rushed to the school after finding out it had been hit, got out of the car and ran on foot after encountering heavy traffic.

    “When we arrived, the school was destroyed. In the first moments after arriving, we only saw one thing: ruins,” Makan’s father, Cyrus Nasiri, told Iranian state media.

    He said he searched the area from before noon on the day of the attack until 2:30am the next day, but found no trace of his son. All the other children in Makan’s class were killed, but his father hoped against hope that he might have escaped.

    After nearly seven weeks of searching, Iranian authorities informed Makan’s family that his case was closed, without finding any remains.

Displacement is ‘something that kills you’

    At a Beirut school sheltering civilians displaced by Israeli attacks, Narman al-Shreem says displacement is not only about losing a home, but also about giving birth and raising children in uncertainty.

    “When my baby was born, and she cried for the first time, I cried too,” she said. “I said to her, ‘What will your fate be  What kind of life will you have to suffer through '”

    For Al-Shreem, displacement is “something that kills you”.

    “It is like a fish being taken out of water. Your home is your country. You lived there. You raised your family there. Your whole life is there.”

Markets in Asia open steady despite stalled talks

By Barnaby Lo

Reporting from Seoul, South Korea

    Major markets in Asia, including the Kospi in South Korea and Japan’s Nikkei, seem to be unbothered by the diplomatic impasse between the US and Iran.

    As we’ve been reporting, there’s been a lot of uncertainty over diplomatic efforts, with a second round of peace negotiations in Islamabad not taking place. And both sides are still imposing blockades in the Strait of Hormuz, seizing vessels around that area – but investors here seem to be shrugging all that off.

    The feeling here is that the ceasefire is holding and that diplomacy is not dead.

    Over the weekend, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Islamabad to present a framework for peace talks with the US, then he headed to Oman.

    He had phone calls with his counterparts from Gulf and Arab nations, and today, he’s headed to Russia, so all that is contributing to a sense of calm, and investors here are focusing instead on the artificial intelligence industry boom, and that has lifted the Nikkei to a record intraday trading high of above 60,000, or up by 0.65 percent from the previous session.

    And just about an hour ago, the Kospi in South Korea reached an intraday trading high of 6,551.14. And that’s up 1.21 percent from the previous session.

    Nasr told Al Jazeera that the US-Israel war on Iran has shown the limits of military force.

    “You don’t go to the table to demand surrender. The other side is not going to surrender, because they haven’t lost. So you have to cut a deal,” Nasr said, adding that Iran’s objective is to make sure the US and Israel understand that “war with Iran isn’t easy”.

Iran offers new terms to reopen Strait of Hormuz, Axios reports

    The US news outlet, citing a US official and two sources with knowledge of the matter, says Iran has offered Washington a new proposal for reaching a deal on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the ending of the war, “with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage”.

    Iran made the offer through Pakistani mediators, Axios reported.

    But reaching a deal on the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the US blockade on Iranian ports will leave Trump “with no real leverage in order to get Tehran to give up on its stockpile of enriched uranium, and commit to a suspension of uranium enrichment for at least a decade”, the outlet said.

Thousands flee southern Lebanon after Israel warns of attacks

By Heidi Pett

Reporting from Tyre, Lebanon

    Many of the hundreds of thousands, in fact, more than a million people who had been displaced in Lebanon had returned to their homes because of this ceasefire.

    They were going back to check on their houses, maybe make some small repairs if that was feasible. Some, of course, went back to find that their houses had been completely destroyed.

    But speaking to the Mukhtar – that’s the community leader of one of these villages that was given these fresh forced evacuation orders today – he said that about 75 percent of people had come back. Now they’re obviously on the move once again.

    In fact, many of them, they were evacuating and were stuck in traffic in scenes reminiscent of the first days of the war.

    They got in their cars with what belongings they could grab, they got stuck in traffic at the main roundabout on the way out of town [in the Tyre district], and a coffee stand at that roundabout was hit by an Israeli missile, killing at least one person so far and injuring multiple others.

Araghchi arrives in St Petersburg

    The official IRNA news agency is reporting that the Iranian foreign minister has arrived in St Petersburg ahead of his talks with President Putin.

    Araghchi’s flight carried the callsign Minab 168, in memory of the children killed in a US-Israeli strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab on February 28.

US ‘clearly unprepared’ militarily for war on Iran

    A top Russian lawmaker has said that the US was “clearly unprepared” militarily for a war on Iran, because it relied on the “misguided belief” that force could quickly achieve results.

    Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the information policy commission of Russia’s Federation Council, told the TASS news agency the US approach could have been influenced by its experience in Venezuela.

    “The kidnapping of [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro and the very, I would say, weak reaction to it from the Venezuelans, who chose to accept American conditions for controlling Venezuelan oil exports, convinced him [Trump] that a precise surgical military operation is a good tool for forcing a foreign regime to behave as the Americans please,” the senator said.

    “After this, Trump apparently decided that something similar could be done in Iran.”

    Pushkov added that Iran, on the other hand, had prepared well for a conflict with the US, moving “virtually all of their missile facilities underground, where they are extremely difficult to reach” and building up a missile and drone arsenal numbering in the tens of thousands.