Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic maritime choke point with Iran situated at the top with Qeshm Island and the United Arab Emirates to the South. Imaged 24 May 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called for China to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important trade routes for crude oil in the world.

“I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that, because they heavily depend on the Straits of Hormuz for their oil,” Rubio said in an interview on Fox News. China is Iran’s most important oil customer and maintains friendly relations with the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s foreign minister warned earlier Sunday that the Islamic Republic “reserves all options to defend its sovereignty,” after the U.S. bombed three key nuclear sites over the weekend.

Iranian state-owned media, meanwhile, reported that Iran’s parliament backed closing the Strait of Hormuz, citing a senior lawmaker. However, the final decision to close the strait lies with Iran’s national security council, according to the report.

An attempt to block the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman could have profound consequences for the global economy. Some 20 million barrels per day of crude oil, or 20% of global consumption, flowed through the strait in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged China to intervene and prevent Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is a major global oil trade route, with 20% of the world’s oil passing through it. Rubio’s appeal comes after recent US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites, which prompted warnings from Iran’s foreign minister about defending its sovereignty.

Iranian response Iran backs possibility of closing Strait of Hormuz According to Iranian state media, Iran’s parliament has voted in favor of closing the Strait of Hormuz. However, any final decision would rest with Iran’s national security council and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This comes after US airstrikes on three key nuclear sites in Iran over the weekend.

Economic impact Global oil prices could soar above $100 per barrel The potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz could have dire consequences for the global economy. In 2024, around 20 million barrels per day of crude oil passed through the strait, according to the Energy Information Administration. If closed for an extended period, oil prices could soar above $100 per barrel, Goldman Sachs and consulting firm Rapidan Energy warned.

Oil dependence Iran’s economy relies on oil exports Iran, OPEC’s third-largest oil producer, relies heavily on the Strait of Hormuz for its oil exports. In May 2025, Iran exported 1.84 million barrels per day (bpd), most of which went to China. Matt Smith from Kpler said cutting off the strait would stop crude exports to China and be a “self-inflicted wound” for Iran’s economy.

Starmer and Trump discuss need for Iran to return to negotiations

9 hours ago Share Save Jennifer McKiernan • @_JennyMcKiernan Political reporter, BBC News Cachella Smith BBC News Jacqueline Howard BBC News Share Save

Starmer says his focus is on ‘de-escalation’

Sir Keir Starmer has spoken to Donald Trump in the wake of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, Downing Street has said. The prime minister and US president discussed the need for Iran to return to the negotiating table as soon as possible and make progress on a lasting settlement, a No 10 spokesman said. Sir Keir warned earlier on Sunday of a “risk of escalation” to the Middle East and beyond the region after the US bombed three Iranian facilities. He said he wanted to reassure people that “we’re doing everything we can to stabilise the situation” and find a diplomatic solution. There was no UK involvement in the US action but the PM was told about it in advance, Sir Keir said earlier.

In their conversation, the prime minister and US president reiterated the grave risk posed by Iran’s nuclear programme to international security, the Downing Street spokesman said. “They discussed the actions taken by the United States last night to reduce the threat and agreed that Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding the pair “agreed to stay in close contact in the coming days”. The PM chaired an emergency Cobra response meeting on Sunday afternoon and held calls with world leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz. The trio subsequently urged Iran “not to take any further action that could destabilise the region”. “We will continue our joint diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions and ensure the conflict does not intensify and spread further,” they said in a joint statement. On Sunday evening, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he had spoken with counterparts in Iran and Israel, saying in a post on X: “I urged a diplomatic, negotiated solution to end this crisis.” The US said it had carried out strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran – Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo – on Saturday night. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the strikes “devastated the Iranian nuclear programme”. Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi called the US strikes “outrageous” and said they would have “everlasting consequences”. Speaking at his Chequers country retreat, Sir Keir said escalation was a risk to the Middle East and “beyond the region”. He added “that’s why all our focus has been on de-escalating, getting people back around to negotiate what is a very real threat in relation to the nuclear programme”. He said the UK had been “clear Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”, adding stability in the region was the priority. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that Iran “is a threat to this country, not in an abstract way, not in a speculative way”. He stressed there was “simply no way a responsible British government would ever allow [Iran] to possess nuclear weapons”. Last October, the head of MI5 said the intelligence service had responded to 20 plots backed by Iran in the UK since 2022, posing “potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents”. Ken McCallum said at the time there had been “plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale”. Reynolds stopped short of welcoming the US strikes, saying he “wanted a different way to obtain this but I cannot pretend to you that prevention of Iran having a nuclear weapon is anything other than in the interests of the UK”. Although the UK had “wanted” a peaceful de-escalation of tensions, Reynolds added: “Iran didn’t listen to the diplomatic calls for a peaceful solution. That was a mistake.”

The prime minister said the UK had been “moving assets to the region to make sure we’re in a position to protect our own interests, our personnel and our assets, and, of course, those of our allies.” A UK defence source said British military personnel in the Middle East were now on their highest level of alert. Only a week ago, Sir Keir met US President Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Canada, where he pushed for de-escalation, and had previously said there was “nothing” from the president to suggest he was about to get involved in the conflict. Iran has claimed its nuclear ambitions are peaceful and recent uranium enrichment to 60% was done as part of a research and development programme. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report warned that Iran had amassed enough enriched uranium to potentially make nine nuclear bombs, which was “a source of legitimate concern”. Asked why Iran needed uranium enriched to near weapons-grade, Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Seyed Ali Mousavi, told the BBC: “There’s no intention from our side to go into a military attack”. He added Iran is considering the “quantity and quality” of its reaction to the US action.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Kuenssberg that Iran’s nuclear programme had been hit “substantially” but added that he did not yet know the exact details of what happened as he did not know in advance and was “woken up when it happened”. Israel has been targeting military sites in Iran in recent days, with Iran returning fire. On Saturday, B-2 stealth bombers flew non-stop from a US airbase in Missouri to Iran to carry out the strikes. The UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands, was not used. In a televised address following the strikes, Trump said the US’s overnight operation was a “spectacular military success”, adding that if Iran did not make peace quickly it would face “far greater” attacks. No increase in off-site radiation has been reported, according to the UN’s IAEA latest update. UN Secretary General António Guterres said the overnight strikes were a “dangerous escalation”.

Russia’s economy is down but not out

Just now Share Save Daniel Thomas Business reporter Share Save

Getty Images Russia has significantly ramped up its military production to support the war in Ukraine

Since its illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has become the most sanctioned nation on Earth, and yet its economy has been remarkably resilient. In 2024, if Russian official figures are to believed, its economy outgrew those of all the G7 nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US. The Russian economy expanded by 4.3% last year, compared with 1.1% in the UK, and 2.8% in the US. This growth in Russia was led by the Kremlin’s record military spending. The country’s oil exports, by volume, have also remained relatively stable, as supplies once destined for Europe have been diverted to China and India. And a “shadow fleet” of tankers, whose ownership and movements could be obscured, has helped Moscow circumvent sanctions elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Russian rouble has recovered to become the best-performing world currency this year, with gains of more than 40%, according to Bank of America. Yet, as we move towards 2026, the mood music is changing.

Inside the country inflation has been persistently high, interest rates have soared to 20%, and companies can’t find the workers they need. And globally, oil prices had fallen back this year before the current conflict between Israel and Iran caused a spike. Russia’s economy minister warned on Thursday that the country was “on the verge” of recession after a period of “overheating”. And some Russia watchers have even suggested the economy could be headed for collapse. But how likely is that really? And how does it affect the course of the war? Yevgeny Nadorshin, an economist based in Moscow, tells BBC News: “Overall, it will be a pretty uncomfortable situation until late 2026, and definitely there will be defaults and bankruptcies.” But he predicts the downturn will be “mild” and calls any suggestion of a meltdown a “total lie”. “Without any single doubt, the Russian economy has experienced a number of recessions deeper than this.” Mr Nadorshin points out that Russia’s unemployment rate is currently at a record low of 2.3%, and will probably peak at just 3.5% next year. By contrast, the UK’s unemployment rate was 4.6% in April.

Getty Images Russia’s military spending, such as on new tanks, is reliant upon its overseas oil sales

Still, he and others see reasons for concern, and that’s because Russia appears to have entered a period of stagnation. Its inflation rate was 9.9% in the year to April, partly due to Western sanctions pushing up the price of imports, but also because of worker shortages which have driven up wages. The country lacked around 2.6 million workers at the end of 2024, according to Russia’s Higher School of Economics, largely due to men going to war or fleeing abroad to avoid it. The central bank put interest rates up to record levels this year to try and tame the rising prices – but it’s making it more costly for companies to raise the capital they need to invest. Meanwhile, Russia’s oil and gas revenues have fallen due to sanctions and weaker pricing, and were down by 35% year-on-year in May, according to official figures. It has contributed to a widening budget shortfall that has left the country with less to spend on infrastructure and public services. “They have this large pot of expenditure for the military that can’t be touched,” says András Tóth-Czifra, a political analyst and Russia watcher. “So it means money is starting to be reallocated from vital investment projects in road, rail and utilities. “The quality of provision is really suffering.” Russia may have coped better than expected with Western sanctions, but they continue to drag on the economy, he adds.

Russian companies are struggling to import the technology they need, and it has badly damaged the car industry. The EU has also banned imports of Russian coal and diversified away from its gas with a view to phasing out imports by 2027. “None of this is likely to seriously impede Russia’s ability to wage war in the short-term,” says Mr Tóth-Czifra. “But it could affect the economy’s ability to grow or diversify in years to come.” So far the Kremlin has brushed off the concerns. In early June, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the “macroeconomic stability” and “underlying strength” of the Russian economy were plain to see. In April, meanwhile, he said the economy was “developing quite successfully” thanks to government policies.

Getty Images Russia’s currency, the rouble, has been surprisingly resilient

What we know about US strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites

10 hours ago Share Save Thomas Mackintosh & Nadine Yousif BBC News Share Save

Maxar Technologies

President Donald Trump says the US has carried out a “successful” bombing attack on three nuclear sites in Iran and they have been “obliterated”. On Sunday, the Pentagon said it will take time to fully assess the effect of the attack though it appears all the sites sustained “extremely severe damage”. Israel says they were in “full co-ordination” with the US in planning the strikes. Iranian officials have confirmed the facilities were struck but denied it had suffered a major blow. The strikes mark a significant escalation in the ongoing war between Iran and Israel. Here’s what we know.

What has the US bombed, and what weapons did it use?

US Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Operation Midnight Hammer involved 125 US military aircraft including seven B-2 stealth bombers. Three nuclear facilities were targeted – Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, the US said. During a Pentagon briefing, Caine said bombers set off from the US on an 18-hour flight, with some heading west into the Pacific as a “decoy”, while the main strike package made up of the seven B-2 bombers proceeded into Iran. Just before the aircraft entered Iranian airspace, more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from a US submarine at targets at the Isfahan site, he said. As the bombers entered Iranian airspace, the US deployed “several deception tactics, including decoys,” with fighter jets clearing the airspace ahead of them, checking for enemy aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, Caine said. The lead B-2 then dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) – also known as “bunker buster” bombs – on the nuclear site at Fordo. Caine said a total of 14 MOPs were dropped on two target areas. All three Iranian nuclear infrastructure targets were hit between 18:40 Eastern time (23:40 BST) and 19:05 Eastern time (00:05 BST), Caine said. The bombers then exited Iranian airspace and began their return to the US. “Iran’s fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran’s surface-to-air missile systems did not see us,” Caine said. Speaking at the same briefing, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the operation did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people. He added that the mission “was not, and has not been about regime change”. The defence secretary said he recognised “our allies in Israel” for the support given, adding that the operations took months and weeks of planning.

Hidden away in a remote mountainside, Fordo nuclear site includes a uranium enrichment plant that is vital to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Located south of Tehran, it is believed to be deeper underground than the Channel Tunnel connecting the UK and France. Due to Fordo’s depth below ground only the US has the kind of “bunker buster” bomb big enough to penetrate the site. It weighs 13,000kg (30,000lb) and is able to drop through about 18m (60ft) of concrete or 61m (200ft) of earth before exploding, according to experts. Due to the depths of Fordo’s tunnels, the MOP is not guaranteed to be successful, but it is the only bomb that could come close. Caine confirmed that between the seven B-2 Spirit bombers, 14 MOP bombs were among “75 precision-guided weapons” used in the strikes against Iran.

What is known about the impact of the attacks?

Gen Caine has said it will take some time to fully assess the extent of the damage caused by the US attack. But, he said, “an initial battle damage assessment indicates that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction”. New satellite imagery taken on 22 June shows six fresh craters at the Fordo nuclear site, likely the entry points for US munitions, as well as grey dust and debris scattered down the mountainside.

Maxar Technologies New satellite imagery taken on 22 June show fresh craters at the Fordo nuclear site

Following the US’s confirmation that MOPs were used in the attack, senior imagery analyst at McKenzie Intelligence Services, Stu Ray, told BBC Verify: “You will not see a huge blast effect at the entry point as it is not designed to detonate on entry but deeper down into the facility.” He added that it looks like three separate munitions were dropped on two separate impact points, and that the grey colouration on the ground appears to show concrete debris blown out by the explosions. Mr Ray also said the tunnel entrances appear to have been blocked off. As there are no visible craters or impact points near them, he suggests this may have been an Iranian attempt to “mitigate against deliberate targeting of the entrances by aerial bombardment”. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization said the bombing of the three nuclear sites was a “barbaric violation” of international law. Both Saudi Arabia and the UN’s nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say there has been no increase in radiation levels after the attack. The deputy political director of Iran’s state broadcaster, Hassan Abedini, said Iran had evacuated these three nuclear sites a “while ago”. Appearing on state-run TV, he said Iran “didn’t suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out”.

How might Iran retaliate?

Within the hours of the US bombing, Iran launched a fresh barrage of missiles which hit parts of Tel Aviv and Haifa. At least 86 people were injured, officials said. On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the US “must receive a response for their aggression”. “We have always stated that we are ready to engage and negotiate within the framework of international law, but instead of accepting logic, the other side has demanded the surrender of the Iranian nation,” he said in a statement. BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says Iran must now choose between three strategic courses of action in response to the US attack overnight: Do nothing. This could spare it from further US attacks. It could even choose the diplomatic route and re-join negotiations with the US. But doing nothing makes the Iranian regime look weak, especially after all its warnings of dire repercussions if the US did attack. It may decide the risk of weakening its grip on its population outweighs the cost of further US attacks

Retaliate hard and fast. Iran still has a substantial arsenal of ballistic missiles after manufacturing and hiding these away for years. It has a target list of around 20 US bases to choose from in the broader Middle East. It could also launch “swarm attacks” on US Navy warships using drones and fast torpedo boats

Retaliate later at a time of its own choosing. This would mean waiting until the current tension has subsided and launching a surprise attack when US bases were no longer on maximum alert

What did Donald Trump say and how have US politicians reacted?

Posting on his Truth Social platform at 19:50 Eastern time (00:50 BST), Trump confirmed the strikes on Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Just over two hours later and flanked by Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Hegseth, Trump made a televised address. He said that future attacks would be “far greater” unless Iran reached a diplomatic solution. “Remember, there are many targets left,” he added.

Trump says Iran must make peace or face future attacks after US strikes

Several of Trump’s fellow Republicans have posted statements in support of the move, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who “commended” the president. Senator Mitch McConnell, an establishment Republican who has occasionally been highly critical of Trump, called it “a prudent response to the warmongers in Tehran”. Not every Republican was so supportive, with Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, usually a Trump stalwart, saying “this is not our fight”. Republican congressman Thomas Massie, who earlier this week introduced a bill that would block Trump from attacking Iran without lawmakers’ approval, took to X to call the strikes “not constitutional”. In a social media post, Trump called Massie a “pathetic loser”. Article I of the US Constitution places the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, that is, lawmakers elected in the House of Representatives and the Senate. But Article II states the president is commander in chief of the armed forces and grants him authority to order military force to defend the US against actual or anticipated attacks. Leading US Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said Trump risked US “entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East”, while others accused him of bypassing Congress to launch a new war.

How have world leaders reacted?

The UK, France and Germany have called on Iran to avoid taking any action that could further “destabilise” the Middle East. In a joint statement, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said they had been “consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon” and they supported the security of Israel. UN Secretary General António Guterres said the US air strikes were a dangerous escalation, while European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas urged all sides to step back and return to the negotiating table. Saudi Arabia has voiced “great concern” while Oman condemned the strikes and called for de-escalation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he had spoken to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and called for “dialogue and diplomacy as the way forward”. Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, said: “Trump, who came in as a peacemaker president, has started a new war for the US. “With this kind of success, Trump won’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.”

How did this start?