Elon Musk’s Grok ‘used in Iran strikes’ sparks alarm over AI-powered warfare claims, US says

Relations between the U.S. and Canada could deteriorate further at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if Trump goes ahead with his plan to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products. The two countries are seeking a truce on the new taxes as the deadline approaches.

The fate of the Gaza ceasefire remains unclear after a marathon meeting Monday between U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Officials signaled moderate optimism but Israel offered no concrete commitment to the latest U.

S.-proposed plan. Trump’s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea does not just slight a longtime ally — it raises broader concerns about the security interests of the United States in Asia and elsewhere. Trump explained his decision by citing South Korea’s refusal to join his war against Iran and pointing to what he said was his good relationship with North Korea’s reclusive dictator.

The Latest: Ship attacked in Hormuz strait as Iran throttles key waterway A projectile has hit a ship sailing out of the Strait of Hormuz , according to the British military’s UK Maritime Trade Operations center, causing “a crew casualty” but no environmental damage.

Iranian threats to shipping effectively closed the strait after Israel and the U.S. started the war nearly six months ago. An Iranian official said Tuesday that the waterway will remain closed until the U.S. meets Tehran’s conditions, which include ending a U.

S. blockade on Iranian shipping, “releasing frozen assets, lifting oil sanctions (and) ending threats and military operations on all fronts.” Turkey urges Trump to seek a diplomatic solution to the war Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Trump in a telephone call to continue to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran.

The call came late Monday as the 60-day negotiating period to find a peace deal between the United States and Iran was expiring, with no word of an extension and both sides seemingly as far apart as they were at the start. “President Erdogan said it is important to make maximum use of diplomacy amid tensions between Iran and the United States,” according to a statement from the Turkish presidential communications office.

The 60-day deadline for an Iran peace deal is expiring. Here’s where things stand The deal that Trump signed at Versailles in June set an ambitious 60-day deadline for ending the war with Iran and reaching an accord on its nuclear program. The deadline was Monday, and the two sides are further apart than they were then.

Talks, such as they are, have focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting a U.S. blockade on Iran, both of which were supposed to have happened under the interim deal. There has been no sign of any compromise on the strait, or that detailed nuclear talks have even begun.

The U.S., meanwhile, has no good options for getting out of the war it started alongside Israel. Acceding to Iran’s latest demands would mean giving it control over a critical international waterway that carried a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas before the war — and would be tantamount to admitting defeat.

Escalating the deeply unpopular war would further draw down U.S. supplies of advanced missile interceptors, jolt the world economy, and drive up gas prices ahead of U.S. congressional elections. So both sides have dug in, hoping the other will blink first.

So far, neither has. ▶ Read more Trump’s slight of South Korea in favor of the North raises broader US security concerns Trump on Sunday ordered the U.S. military to downsize the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, which began Monday as scheduled.

It wasn’t known which parts of the training were being scaled back. His announcement baffled many in South Korea, which has been closely allied with the U.S. for decades and where national security is a top priority due to threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

Trump explained his decision by citing South Korea’s refusal to join his war against Iran and pointing to what he said was his good relationship with North Korea’s reclusive dictator, a transactional and personal approach to foreign policy that has defined the Republican’s presidency.

“There is no American interest that I can see in this,” said Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration. “On all levels it makes no sense. It undermines the South Koreans, undermines the Japanese, frightens the Taiwanese, unnerves NATO and emboldens the Chinese, not to mention the North Koreans.

” ▶ Read more Long meeting produces optimism but no Israeli commitment to US plan for Gaza A marathon meeting Monday between U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left the fate of the Gaza ceasefire unclear, with officials signaling moderate optimism but offering no concrete commitment by Israel to the latest U.

S.-proposed plan. Hamas has already agreed to the proposal. American negotiators appeared to acquiesce to Israeli demands that Hamas disarmament must come before any reconstruction of the devastated Palestinian enclave. They did not publicly signal that Israel had made any commitments to withdraw from the 60% of Gaza that Israeli troops currently occupy.

That’s a major sticking point in the plan and one that Hamas had pressed negotiators to compel Israel to fulfill prior to the meeting. The talks came days after Netanyahu rejected the 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward, saying there would be no withdrawal without disarmament.

A day earlier, Kushner met for two hours with Hamas’ leader in Egypt. ▶ Read more Last-minute talks over 50% US tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian goods The United States and Canada have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other interminably over sore spots like Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.

S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market. President Donald Trump’s belligerent approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs — in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States — and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.

Tension could hit new heights at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if Trump goes ahead with his plan to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors. As the deadline approaches, the two countries are seeking a truce that would avoid the new round of tariffs.

″We are negotiating,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday, speaking in French. “The negotiations are very intense and delicate. This is not the time to talk about negotiations in public.

Alternatives could address the oil shortage but risks abound, some experts said. The largest global oil shock on record has catapulted U.S. gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, rekindled inflation and set the stage for November's midterm elections. It all traces to fighting in a narrow strip of water thousands of miles away.

Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked off a trade route responsible for about 20% of global oil supply, or nearly 21 million barrels of oil each day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. A U.S. blockade of Iranian ships deepened the crude shortage.

On-again, off-again negotiations have shown little sign of a breakthrough, encouraging oil producers and Gulf nations to seek out other trade routes, some of which are already transporting millions of barrels each day. Those alternatives, in theory, could eventually restore most of the lost oil flow and provide relief at the pump, some analysts told ABC News, but construction would take several years and require major investment.

Still, they said, the approach may offer a durable fix, heading off future flareups in the Strait. “You’ve already got some projects in the works. I don’t see any turning back,” Tom Seng, a professor of energy finance at Texas Christian University, told ABC News.

“Nobody wants to get stung without a solution again.” Shipping traffic in the Strait has declined sharply since the outbreak of war in Iran, according to oil data company Kpler. An average of about 13 ships crossed the Strait each day last week, the firm said in a post on X, down from more than 100 ships per day before the recent conflict.

The shortage of oil has kept fuel prices elevated. Global oil prices stand at about $89 a barrel, up about 25% since late February. The average price of a gallon of gas is $4.06, putting it well above an average of $2.98 before the war, AAA data showed.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright downplayed the oil shock in a post on X last week, saying alternatives had already helped replace much of the lost capacity, though he noted the majority of exported oil in the area continues to pass through the Strait.

“Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the U.S. military and our gulf allies, the seven-day average for oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz is currently up to almost 9 million barrels per day,” Wright said. “When combined with the additional 5-7 million barrels per day leaving the region via newly upgraded pipelines and export facilities, total oil flows are currently averaging approximately 15 million barrels per day,” Wright added.

After the war began, Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco came to depend on a pipeline that runs along the width of the country from the Persian Gulf to a port on the Red Sea. The pipeline carries as much as 7 million barrels of oil each day, about 5 million of which are exported, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in May.

Saudi Arabia is considering an expansion of the pipeline, potentially allowing it to deliver up to an additional 2 million barrels a day, Reuters reported last month. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, has begun construction on a new pipeline that will run from the country’s oil fields to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, circumventing the strait, the UAE announced in May.

The project is expected to double the UAE’s exports through Fujairah to 3.6 million barrels a day by next year, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research. Other projects are also in the works. Jordan and Iraq are partnering on a pipeline that could transport as much as 1 million barrels a day to a port in the Red Sea, a Jordanian state news agency said in June.

Kuwait is holding discussions with Saudi Arabia and other countries about a possible pipeline to bypass the Strait, Kuwaiti Oil Minister Tariq Sulaiman Al-Roumi said earlier this month. “There are viable pipeline paths,” Hugh Daigle, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies petroleum, told ABC News.

“It’s not impossible, but it’s a challenge of logistics.” Pipeline construction typically takes a matter of years and requires significant investment, some analysts said. While underway, the infrastructure could be vulnerable to attack amid a war in which Iran has targeted regional energy sites, some added, saying it could put workers at risk.

It will take as many as five years to build the infrastructure necessary to replace most of the oil that passed through the Strait before the war, excluding millions of barrels from Iran and Oman, Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston, told ABC News.

Expedited construction could take as little as two years, according to Seng and Daigle. “Pipelines can work but it will take years,” Krishnamoorti added. Even after the alternative routes have been completed, they could also prove vulnerable to attack by Iran or its proxy forces in the region, some analysts said.

In recent weeks, Iran-allied Houthi militants in Yemen claimed to have struck oil tankers traversing the Red Sea. Lately, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait -- a trade route that feeds into the Red Sea -- has played host to more tanker traffic than the Strait of Hormuz, according to Kpler, which counted an average of about 40 ship crossings per day over a recent three-day period.

Trade routes such as the East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia depend on export via tankers in the Red Sea, some analysts said, meaning any potential escalation of fighting in that area could shut off its viability as an alternative trade route. “The wild card is the Houthis,” Seng said.

“They could try to help the Iranians by disrupting any oil flow in the Red Sea.” With little sign of an imminent resolution to the impasse in the Strait, the development of alternative trade routes is all but certain, some analysts said, noting that oil-rich countries in the region want to control the supply chain for their key export.

"Regardless of short-term political outcomes, the Gulf nations have strategic incentives to think hard about avoiding this situation in the future," Jeff Colgan, a professor of political science and director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, told ABC News.

"They want to make sure nobody else can put a boot on their neck." ABC News' David Brennan contributed to this report.

TEHRAN, August 18. /TASS/. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until the United States fulfills the terms of the Iran-US memorandum, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said. "The Strait of Hormuz will not open until the blockade against Iran is lifted, frozen Iranian assets are unfrozen, the oil embargo is removed, threats and military operations on all fronts cease, and other conditions of the memorandum are fulfilled," Iran's Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.

The United States and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28. In June, Washington and Tehran, mediated by Islamabad, signed a memorandum of understanding providing for an immediate halt to hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon. However, the United States resumed large-scale strikes on Iran overnight into July 8, accusing it of violating the agreement's terms regarding the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran pushed to continue the war with the United States in order to force a ceasefire on its own terms, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said during a conference with Iranian educators on Tuesday. "We were the ones who refused the ceasefire and continued the war until we reached a point where they [the US] agreed to a ceasefire and negotiations on Iran's terms," Araghchi said.

"We fought with strength and negotiated with strength, and we won the war, and we won the diplomacy." According to Araghchi, "The Iranian people stood against what was supposedly the largest military in the world, which was supported and assisted by most Western countries and by several other countries in the region and beyond.

" Araghchi concluded by saying that "those who tried to impose unconditional surrender on Iran begged for negotiations shortly after the war began." Trump says Iran should raise white flag, threatens Oman over Hormuz On Monday, US President Donald Trump told FOX News that Iran should raise "the white flag of surrender," and that he has "no time schedule" and is in "no hurry" to make a deal.

The Iranians are "good poker players, but they're dying," said Trump. He also warned that “if Oman gets in the way [of US control in the Strait of Hormuz], we’ll bomb the s*** out of them." Regarding US munitions used against Iran, Trump said that what has been used so far against Iran "is peanuts.

" Miriam Sela-Eitam contributed to this report.