RFE/RL spoke with Jake Sotiriadis, an adviser to the US State Department, about whether these developments could signal the beginning of a diplomatic off-ramp between Washington and Tehran or merely a pause in a confrontation that still carries a significant risk of escalation.

"Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure of French culture and an artist devoted to freedom, whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim," the French presidency said in a statement.

Diplomatic efforts to contain the widening Middle East crisis entered a critical phase this week as US officials sought to keep alive negotiations with Iran amid mounting tensions. RFE/RL spoke with Dania Arayssi, program head and senior analyst at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy.

Matt Reisener, senior national-security adviser at the Center for Maritime Strategy, talks to RFE/RL about why diplomacy and military pressure are likely to continue, what Iran and the United States each believes it has to gain from talks, and why any agreement may actually hinge on Israel.

The U.S. and Iran moved closer this week to reaching an agreement aimed at ending the conflict, easing nuclear tensions and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but it remains to be seen whether the claim of a deal President Trump has made repeatedly over the past three months will finally come to fruition. Trump told...

Despite all the difficulties, as numerous as they are, something is moving in the Strait of Hormuz. Even before the United States and Iran agreed to reopen it, the world’s most important energy shipping lane has shown signs of a slight loosening. Despite the double blockade — imposed first by Tehran and then by Washington — the number of ships managing to transit has grown in recent days. Some — the majority — do so with the permission of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Others are escorted by the U.S. Navy. A few take the risk on their own.

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Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the U.S. and Iran have reached a 'final, agreed upon text' and that Pakistan was working with the warring countries on next steps.

Trump made the comment in a social media post after a drone boat rescued the crew of the Apache attack helicopter that crashed near the Strait of Hormuz.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there has been "slight progress" in Pakistan-mediated talks to end the Iran war, while warning against what he described as Tehran's attempt to establish a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz, which he said no country should accept.

Fell cuts through the analysis and legal deconstruction and reminds us that racism is real, which, at heart, is all you really have to know. Some racism is intentional and conspiratorial, like redistricting to keep Black candidates out of office or requiring bogus literacy tests to keep Black citizens from qualifying to vote. But it […]

The war and its global ripple effects are a through line influencing many of the issues that the two leaders will discuss in Beijing, from rare earth minerals to Taiwan.

Used to hearing Antony Beevor detail troop movements at Stalingrad, the siege of Berlin, the Normandy landings, the paratroopers’ effort at Arnhem or the Panzer offensive in Hitler’s last stand in the Ardennes, it is surprising to hear him talk about Rasputin’s penis. In truth, he adopts the same look of intense concentration he brings to his usual military topics. “Rasputin’s penis… is an object of interest, certainly,” he says when his interlocutor mentions that, during an afternoon of astonishment and vodka, he saw on display in a St. Petersburg museum the appendage shown as such in a glass jar. “Yes, it is said to measure 13 inches, about 33 centimeters, but I don’t know that it’s something to take seriously. My father-in-law, the historian John Julius Norwich, used to explain that his father, Duff Cooper, the first British ambassador to France after the Liberation and also a historian [and father of the notable writer Artemis Cooper, Beevor’s wife], was convinced that part of Rasputin’s sexual success and magnetism lay in his member and his muscular control, but there is no historical record that it was cut off after his murder. Today it is impossible to assert that what is on display is his; I don’t believe any DNA test has been done.” In fact, some say it is a horse’s penis, or, if not that, a dried sea cucumber, as has also been suggested. Beevor recalls, in any case, that at the time in Tsarist Russia, Rasputin was credited with extraordinary sexual potency and caricatures circulated showing his organ, in reference to the monk’s influence over the Tsarina Alexandra and, through her, Tsar Nicholas II, with the legend: “The rod that rules Russia.”

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