Tehran has sought to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz during the US-Israel war with Iran, but some vessels continued to attempt to transit the waterway. The US also introduced its own blockade on ships entering and leaving Iranian ports.

On April 17, Iran said the strait would reopen to commercial vessels, though the US blockade of Iran’s ports would remain in place.

BBC Verify has been monitoring the situation closely but often has to rely on partial vessel data and expert insights to understand developments in the region. The strait is one of the most scrutinised waterways in the world, with around a fifth of global oil supply passing through it.

Before the April 17 announcement, Ben Chu spoke with Michelle Weise Bockmann, a maritime intelligence analyst at Windward, about how tankers are trying to break through the US blockade in the strait.

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Iran’s Lego-style AI videos have been a viral success story. 

Featuring dying children, fighter jets and President Trump, they have defined the so-called ‘slopaganda war’, colouring the narrative around the US and Israel’s conflict with Iran.

In this interview, Explosive Media admit for the first time that the Iranian government is a direct “customer” of theirs.

Their representative – known as Mr Explosive – tells Matt Shea they remain editorially independent, despite evidence that they are being fed key military information and their access to internet inside Iran.

When challenged on the factual inaccuracies featured in their content, he says they are acting defensively, “resisting against a hyper-reality Trump is using against us.”

#US #Iran#BBCNews

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Pope Leo has criticised leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” in unusually forceful comments during a visit to Cameroon.

He blasted those he said had manipulated “the very name of God” for their own gain, while touring a region ravaged by a deadly insurgency.

The remarks come just days after a high-profile spat with US President Donald Trump, who posted a lengthy attack on the Pope, a vocal critic of the US-Israeli military operation in Iran.

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Pope Leo XIV has said he has “no fear of the Trump administration”, after his criticism of the Iran war drew scorn from President Donald Trump.

On Sunday, the US President called the Pope “weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy”, and posted a now-deleted AI image of himself depicted as a Christ-like figure.The posts caused outrage among Catholics and the religious right, but he has said he will not apologise to the Pope.

We speak to BBC presenter and author Edward Stourton, who has reported on religious affairs and US politics for decades, about what happens when an American president takes on an American Pope.

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00:00 Introduction
01:11 Feud timeline so far
06:28 Confrontation between
08:02 Pope Leo, the diplomat
10:01 American Catholicism
12:36 The ‘eternal’ viewpoint of the church
13:42 Pope John Paul II comparisons
14:40 Religious rhetoric around the war in Iran
16:48 American evangelisms relationship with the Pope
17:47 Donald Trump’s use of Christian imagery
19:50 Who is really the most powerful American in the world?

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Russia launched a wave of drone and missile attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday night, killing at least 16 people and injuring …

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