In its latest offer delivered on Sunday, Iran proposed opening the key waterway to shipping traffic and lifting the U.S. blockade, while postponing the thornier nuclear issue until later.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, met with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow. Russia has tried to avoid entanglement in the conflict while remaining a key player in the region.

An Iranian negotiator returned to Pakistan on Sunday, despite the United States abruptly calling off a trip there by its two top negotiators.

Cease-fires in Lebanon and Iran are on shaky ground, with military attacks flaring and direct talks between Washington and Tehran to end their war stalled.

Officials had locked the city down, anticipating talks between U.S. and Iranian delegations. But they didn’t happen. “What did I close my business for?” one business owner asked.

Iran’s foreign minister has already arrived in the country, state media reported. He was believed to be carrying a written response to a U.S. proposal to end the war.

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ushered in a new form of collective leadership in the country, with more power for the Revolutionary Guards.

“She has to get out of there. She’s pregnant.” Dr. Mustafa Barghouti speaks on his cell phone to a Palestinian healthcare worker being held by the Israeli army in the southern West Bank. “We’re surrounded by 1,100 checkpoints and 200 security gates that isolate communities and turn them into cages,” he explains at the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian National Initiative, the party he founded more than two decades ago with the intellectual Edward Said. A former minister and member of parliament, Barghouti, 71, remains one of the most respected independent voices among Palestinians. “Things like this happen every day,” he says, “and during the war with Iran, everything got worse: we weren’t involved, but we were victims.”

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