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I'm Henry Bodkin and this is Iran the latest. It's Friday the 31st of July 2026, the 20th day of this latest round of fighting between the US and Iran. In today's episode, Hamas has agreed to a peace deal that will see the Iranbacked group disarm and Israel withdraw from Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel and the US consider a land blockade on Iran. Plus, Saudi Arabia is reported to be drawing up plans for a land offensive against the Houthis in Yemen. Well, today I'm joined from Washington DC by the Telegraph's acting US news editor, Lotty Tip Lady Bishop to discuss it all. Hi Lotty. Hi Henry. Okay, let's start with the latest in the Middle East overnight. Iran has retaliated to US strikes on Thursday, particularly the attack on Kashm Island.
The IRGC said it was a brutal attack on a residential home. In response last night, they targeted a US base in Q8. The army there said it targeted fighter aircraft shelters. That's the IRGC raid targeted fighter aircraft shelters, satellite communication systems and equipment storage facilities at the Ahmad Aljab air base in Q8. Q8's military said it has engaged and destroyed drones fired into Q8 airspace today. In a statement, the country's defense ministry spokesman blamed Iranian aggression, as he put it, for the attacks, which he said targeted vital military installations. Falling debris caused some material damage, but there were no casualties, the spokesman said. The IRGC also said they struck two
tankers under US air escort in the straight of Hormuz. In a statement carried by the Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency, the IRGC said that in the early hours of today, two rogue tankers under the mistaken belief they could pass into the straight of under the air escort of the child killing US military disregarded our warnings and proceeded along an unsafe and illegal path whereupon they were struck and brought to a halt. That's all a quote from the IRGC. It added that four other tankers swiftly changed course and returned to their previous location. There have been no new reports of US strikes on Iran overnight. However, the US Sentcom have said they continue to enforce the naval
blockade in the straight. In a statement on X, they said as of 30th of July, Sentcom forces have redirected 24 commercial vessels disabled to and boarded to ensure full compliance. Over in Iraq, a drone attack has targeted a camp belonging to an Iranian Kurdish opposition group located east of Iraq's bill. according to local security sources. However, it is not yet known who conducted the attack. So, diplomacy, the main news headline on that front has been the deal reached between Hamas and the Trump back board of peace to disarm and for Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza. This was announced very late last night, early this morning. Trump
said on social media, "The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases as disarmament is completed." He said, "Israeli forces will withdraw and the international stabilization force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors. Senior Hamas officials have reportedly agreed to the plan, but the question of whether the group disarms before or after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza has already emerged as a point of contention. And I've been reporting on this morning. Some people uh have already seen this as a car crash waiting to happen. Others are much more optimistic and say it's a question of language. In comments to Reuters, Gazi
Hammad from Hamas said the terror group will hand over its weapons to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a new body established by the Board of Peace to oversee the day-to-day affairs of the Palestinian territory. He said disarmament will be contingent on the withdrawal of Israeli troops and that ENKAG, that's the administration body and international force must enter Gaza and dismantle Israeli backed militias. What does the deal include? Well, there are lots of details yet to come out. I've seen parts of the text and it's uh it provides a uh definitely a road map and a framework, but lots of specifics that still need to be agreed.
Um, but what we think is that Hammer's weapons will be stored possibly in Gaza under the oversight in this part's crucial of the Palestinian-led force set up under Mr. Trump's original stalled peace plan for the enclave. Hamas's police, we believe, will be the first to have hand over their weapons to the transitional body. With the militant groups heavy weapons coming later in return for Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory, personal weapons, that's kind of rifles, light machine guns, handguns, that kind of thing, will be handed over last along with weapons held by the militias, the clans, basically the other armed groups in Gaza that are not Hamas, some of which are backed by Israel. Trump
has held the deal as a major milestone in the implica implementation of the Trump 20point plan, but Hammer said it would not take a single step towards disarmament until the Israeli military had left Gaza. An official also insisted that the plan only involved infantrying and storing weapons under Palestinian oversight rather than handing them over to Israel. Egypt, which helped broke the agreement, described the agreement as a road map. Israel has not yet commented on the agreement publicly, but a US official said Israel was very skeptical about Hammers complying, and that's a
view that appears to have been confirmed on Friday by various Israeli officials briefing the Hebrew press, saying things like, "We don't like the shape of the deal. Uh, we have reservations, that kind of thing." Just hours after the announcement of the disarmament deal, Reuters reported that several Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli strike in Gaza this morning. So Lotty, there'd been there had been some talk warming up about this for a couple of days, but I think it's fair to say that it still came as quite a bombshell when it dropped late last night. Uh that there is apparently finally a deal from Hamas to disarm. Um there's lots of conflicting views over here in the Middle East, but what's the
mood in DC about this? I mean, you're so right about it being a bit of a bombshell. I think that we it had been reported by Axios that it might happen and then I literally was walking out of the office and I looked at my phone and I saw Trump's truth and I was like, "Oh, it's it's literally just happened." Um, I think it's come at quite a good time for him. It's something that he can tout as a bit of a win while he's in the middle of um his Iran uh sort of quicksand that he seems to be sinking further into every day. I thought it was quite interesting and you mentioned it as well um what the Americans were briefing about Israel's skepticism and I also thought that their language um towards Israel was just quite pertinent when
they were saying things like we've done our side of the deal now Israel has to stick to theirs it felt quite like kind of scolding and I thought that was interesting especially given um all the reports that we've had this week of Trump's frustration with Netanyahu and about Netanyahu kind of maybe taking a bit of a step back or at least keeping his mouth shut when it comes to discussions on these kinds of things. Yeah. I mean, I think um people weren't expecting people over here in Israel weren't expecting this to be particularly high up the agenda or to be discussed at all. And I think I'm right in saying that there's actually no confirmation that it was discussed
between Trump and Netanyahu. But certainly um certainly the feeling is that this is a good time for the White House to really get things out of the Israelis because while Trump is um trailing in the polls for his midterms, Netanyahu's also could be doing a lot better uh in the polls for the elections coming up here and um there was all sorts of briefings earlier in the week that um that Netanyahu had been begging for a meeting with Trump for weeks and had basically been told by the Americans, don't come here empty-handed, i.e., you've got to come with some concessions. You got to you've got to give us some stuff that we've been after. So, I don't know to what extent it was talked about between
the two men, but I think it's probably quite a good week for Trump to just say to the Israelis, look, this is happening. You're going to accept it. Whether it really does happen down the line, but I'm sure we can discuss a bit later because of all the um technical ways that the Israelis could uh assist the process or otherwise is a different question. I also think it kind of it's quite a good position for Trump and the White House to put themselves in. And I think it's interesting actually that JD Vance was also in that meeting because like you say, it's a great time for
Trump to go to Israel and be like, "Hey, I want all of these things. give them to me. It's also a really good time for the Americans to show that they can negotiate with like a hostile actor. I feel like in the language in the briefing last night that I was kind of seeing coming in, Hamas was very front and center of this. And it almost feels like um perhaps I'm being a little bit too skeptical, but it does almost feel like if it doesn't work out, the Americans have put themselves in quite a good position to say, well, you know, it's the Israelis kind of holding things up. We said that they have to hold up their end of the bargain and maybe they haven't.
Yeah. And I think that I think there's that's that's definitely probably a PR consideration, but it's also really a genuine negotiating um belief on the Americans is that they have to really push the Israelis along with this. And if you accept the view, it's a cynical view, but hey, look, I'm sitting in Jerusalem. If you accept the view that the certainly Netanyahu doesn't particularly want this peace process to go forward, he's quite happy with the IDF controlling a massive buffer zone between Hamas and the Israeli communities and the Gaza periphery. Uh the kind of buffer zone they say that, you know, if they'd had on October the 7th, the massacre would never have happened. Um it's been a good year for
the Israelis in the sense that Trump's attention has been taken off this completely with Iran. Uh but obviously now it's back and um I think there's a feeling that they're really going to have to push the Israelis along on this because there's so many technical hurdles to get through. You've got to let Palestinian people out of Gaza to go and train as the new police force, you know, in order to come back in and be the new police force. That all takes Israeli consent, stuff like that. And totally it really suits Trump for um for his base to believe that um it's Israel kind of proddding along the conflicts plural in the Middle East. I mean after their meeting I think on
Tuesday, Netanyahu's official spokesman put out an extraordinary statement that was literally um he is not pressuring Trump to continue the war. I promise which was uh interesting. Yeah, it's a very different uh it's a very different mood music, isn't it? This is this Netanyahu visit. It's not about what can we get out of the Americans because I think the Israelis have realized firstly that, you know, their aspirations for this war are just nowhere near what they were before. You know, that they're not they're they're not probably they're certainly not going to get the collapse of the IRG of the Iranian regime and probably not the
nuclear stuff either. So, and actually it is quite damaging long term perhaps to Israel's image in the US to be seen to be flying to Washington and persuading Trump to do things, you know, persuading the Americans to do things which end up to be unpopular. So, they've Yeah. As you say, made a point of saying, you know, we just talk through the options this time. No, no big deal. Yeah. And nothing was um decided on apparently either, at least not from Netanyahu's end. So, we'll bring you more on the um on the Gaza story as it develops. I know we've got uh some stories in the works that'll be published uh online later
today and uh in the newspaper tomorrow. So to Lebanon, fighting continues. Local media reported massive explosions overnight in the southern parts of the country where Israeli forces say they have blasted an underground tunnel network belonging to Hezbollah. According to local reports, the explosions caused damage to some homes and windows to Shassa. In a post on X, the IDF said it destroyed several key features in the underground tunnel network in the Bowfort Ridge area. It claimed that the tunnel network was serving as a central terror headquarters for Hezbollah's Badier unit in southern Lebanon, which was funded and planned by the Iranian terror regime. That's a quote. Over the past weeks, IDF forces have completed their hold on the Bowfort
ridge area while controlling and clearing the underground infrastructure and preparing them for destruction, they said. So, it's quite an interesting backstory to this area. It's actually an old Crusader fort and there's a huge tunnel network under it. Um, and it's not it's less so for rockets, the IDF say, but more for as a staging post for a potential ground invasion by Hezbollah of northern Israel. Um, it's taken hundreds and hundreds of tons of explosives to get it ready for destruction, but the Americans didn't want them to because they thought that might disrupt the extremely fragile pilot priest process that's going on. But after Hezbollah we think um tried to destroy armored bulldozer. It was
unmanned an IDF bulldozer a couple of nights ago, the um the Israelis have gone for it and the explosion appears to have been absolutely ginormous. So moving over to the Iran blockade. Telegraph journalists Connor Stringer and Joe Barnes reported this morning that the US and Israel are considering a land blockade on Iran. Lotty, tell us about it. So I think it's this is quite interesting, right? because it centers on what I think is the number one question at the moment, which is can Iran's economy outlast um the US's dwindling weapons arsenal? Uh, and this kind of gets to the heart of it. I think the idea is that Israel and the US would
kind of put pressure on Iran's trading partners and regional neighbors to block off the border and uh nothing would be able to get in or out. crucially, which would obviously put them in a really difficult position, especially considering the state of their economy at the moment. Seems like quite a tall order. I think a lot of those countries surrounding Iran are not natural allies with the US and um so probably quite difficult to achieve. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think they'd have more luck with some than others, or at least Trump probably likes to think that he might at least be able to get Turkey and Pakistan to make some positive noises about it. Whether
they actually would be willing to do it is another question. And I think it's um I mean we have Seth McFarland, a retired three-star lieutenant general who spoke to us about it who essentially said the same thing that it would be extremely difficult but also that isolating them economically it is the way to do it especially considering we've now we're now in what month five of the war six I don't even know. Um and it is quite clear that uh striking them from the air isn't working. Yeah. Well, I saw I mean Connor himself reported um someone was saying that you know it's quite a bold idea but maybe it's a red herring for um for you know to distract the Iranians and while the Americans actually try something else which I
suppose um could work unless the IRGC has a telegraph subscription and has read the story in which case it's a militarily flawed plan because um they'll see it coming. Uh but it does perhaps smack of um of a leadership that's running out of ideas. I think so. I think you know I sometimes I really question and I'm in Washington and like speaking to these people and I don't really understand why they leak what they leak and why other things are kept secret. I mean it's kind of linking back to last week when we had someone in the White House leaking that they were running out of weapons. Not really sure why they would want Iran to
know this. I don't know if it's some kind of race against time thing with the economy that now that you have this coming out, but um it seems that it's maybe a bit of a scatter gun approach because you also have reports that Trump is like effing and blinding privately saying that he's extremely frustrated cuz apparently he said that they were going to beat the out of Iran, which is uh you know interesting talk if you're saying that one day and then the next you're like maybe we'll just squeeze them economically. ly I think that it's quite clear that the word that everyone's using in Washington is quagmire and I think that is a really apt description of the situation that Trump is in. Um he really is struggling.
He doesn't have that many places left to turn. I think probably that they are going to put out every single possible option and then continue to um hit them with strikes. We um I'm not sure if you saw it, but there was a report I think that we followed from the Wall Street Journal that Brad Cooper, who's an admiral, he's sort of like third in command between beneath Hexathan and Kane, he's very important, but he's not necessarily like completely within the White House and Washington. Um he is absolutely convinced that it just is going to take two more weeks. And I do wonder if that is actually what they're leaning towards. That seems to be like the overarching most realistic um plan of action to me.
Okay. Well, let's hope so. Everyone, you know, all over in two weeks, get the boys home by Christmas, all that kind of thing. Um by the midterms. Yeah, by the midterms. That's more likely. Um okay, so well, moving on to um maritime sea routes and the issues around the straight of course Mand Debb. Tensions continue to simmer in both straits. Just 25 commodity vessels passed through the Barbell Mandeb straight on Thursday. That's the Red Sea passage where um Yemen gets very close to Africa and there's a narrow passage
for but very important for commercial shipping from sewers and so on. Um traffic meanwhile through the straight of form remained low with only four vessels transiting according to Kepler shipping data. Saudi Arabia has been reported to be preparing for a major military offensive against the Houthis by sea and possibly also by land in central Yemen. Yemen sources believe in [clears throat] a move to break the chokeold on its oil exports through the southern Red Sea. Saudi forces have been seen withdrawing from the east of Yemen in what could be a preparation for a land offensive. At the same time, Riyad is trying its hardest to organize a coalition to um come up with a naval uh force uh to protect shipping from Houthi
attacks in the Reba and the Barbal Mandeb Strait. Saudi Arabia said on Thursday that it has set up a maritime defense alliance of 14 regional countries to secure navigation around the Barbal Mandab Strait. In Cyprus, Criate authorities have arrested a man on suspicion of spying on a UK military base on behalf of the Iranian military. London's Metropolitan Police Force said 44year-old Rashad Sultanov, a UK Azabaijani national, is alleged to have conducted hostile surveillance of RAF Aquiteri and shared information with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This comes just a day after a drone attack on Egypt's Mediterranean port and a week after the IRGC threatened UK military bases such as RAF Fairford as quote legitimate targets for
attack. So Lotty, one of the main talking points this week has been, as you alluded to earlier, um the idea that uh that the US campaign, they're going to try and do it all in 14 days. a 14-day uh campaign of air strikes that's going to aim to settle this once and for all. What do you know about it? And what is the mood music in terms of people's uh optimism or otherwise as to its success? So, I think it's based on this idea that Trump has kind of repeated a few times that he thinks that Iran has about 20% of its missiles left. I don't know what these estimates are based on and I mean I'm not privy to the intelligence that they're getting but um I think that a lot of analysts would disagree. Uh and
I'm not sure where those numbers are coming from. But if you do take that as a given uh the White House appears to think that it will just take 10 I think it's 10 to 14 more days to get rid of them all essentially. And it kind of brings us back to this number one issue that's at the heart of Trump and his war strategy is that you have kind of the more wararmongery side of things like Hegth and Brad Cooper who are really up for it and think that this could work and then the kind of more slightly um diplomatic minded side of his cabinet who are going well you know we have the midterms. Do we really want another two weeks of allout war? because it would be a return to war. I don't know if they could do this with
limited strikes. Um, is it a great look? Is it going to drive oil prices even further? I mean, every single thing that I'm reading and listening to at the moment is that people are looking at the oil reserves and it's looking pretty bare. So, I think it's the timing is the issue here. Yeah. I mean, if they're really trying to go for it in a short period of time, then I the obvious thought for me here sitting in Jerusalem is you might as well ask the Israelis to contribute as well because, you know, why not rope in a country that's got um that's got a you know, up to 200 war planes to throw at it as well. Um I mean you know from my point of view here um uh the reporting on I mean as in the reporting from the authorities both from the
Israelis and from the US on their success with hunting down ballistic missiles launchers killing off ballistic missile stocks on the grounds. It's just been completely wild. I mean in the first or second week of the war they were spouting figures like we've got 85% of them. Um then the following week it was like we've got 80% of them and I mean the whole thing unraveled. They just I think they don't know what they've got and the I think as we've reported on the podcast before there's this distinction between shutting down a launch site by collapsing the tunnel because you can easily do that. Um but that's not the same as actually killing off the launch site because they the IRGC just get some
diggers and open up the tunnel complex again and there's lots and lots of warheads and nches underneath. So, um, so yeah, it's a it's it's an issue which I think the um the US and the Israelis don't have a lot of uh a lot of trust on. What we do know as well, you're right, we just they just clearly have no idea about how many of their missiles they've they've taken out, is we do know that the US is running out of defenses, and we're seeing that because US bases are being hit at a quite a more regular rate than they were previously. And I think we discussed on the podcast last week that um the barracks were being hit and things like that which for a country like the US is it seems quite extreme in the
middle of a ceasefire. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean US [clears throat] troops were killed, weren't they? Was it last week or the week before in Jordan at the big base they have there? Two Fridays ago. Yeah. Um I mean I was actually in a man uh earlier this week and they've had um for by Jordanian standards um a bit of public disscent an open letter that was signed by hundreds of academics and stuff. I mean a lot of these people are quite leftist quite Islamist um but for Jordan which doesn't have a uh a um culture of free speech at all that was quite shocking and it was they were calling to kick the Americans out which is of course what the IRGC is always
saying you know to its um these Middle East countries. It's not you. Just get the Americans off your soil. Um and yeah, I mean they the Iranians seem to have upped their game in terms of being able to attack these targets. Their rocketry is more sophisticated and um combined with that, yes, the Americans seem to be uh seem to be running short and that's why they're sustaining these casualties. I just wanted to ask you one more thing, Lotty. They had a slightly off-the-wall conversation, but with a very senior actually British officer who was passing through the Middle East um in the last month, and he said that he still wouldn't rule out a full land invasion,
a full American land invasion uh of Iran at some point, maybe not in the next few weeks, but at some point in the next year. and his thesis was that is the only way to persuade the Iranians to open up the strait to persuade the Iranians that the Americans mean business is to amass a force of troops and we're talking you know first Gulf War level levels of troops you know hundreds of thousands to amass them in the region to show that you mean business and of course once they're there uh it gets a lot closer to actually using it and that's the full kind of Vietnam full-on war scenario it he described it as a slight ly off the wall scenario, but he actually thought it was more probable than people are giving credit for. And I just
wonder whether there's any appetite at all in the US for that. Any um any voices calling for even limited uh ground incursions, ground invasions around the straight or if that's just completely off the table. I think it probably is on the table. It might be in the quite far away, hard-to-reach corner of the table, but I'm sure it's being discussed. I think it is it's the nuclear option and I don't think it would happen until after the midterms because it is the antithesis of what Trump campaigned on and it would cause so much fallout politically within his cabinet. I mean JD Vance would have to resign presumably. It also I'm like pretty sure would um involve congressional approval. So that would
complicate things further. Um, but I agree. I think that it's certainly an option and I could imagine that somebody like Pete Hexiff is probably more into that than someone like JD Vance. So Lotty, politically the war seems to be coming becoming quite toxic for Trump. He's now at a record low approval ratings with Republicans. What's the view on the Hill about how he's doing with the midterms coming up? So, I was reading a couple of days ago something that I thought was really interesting, actually, that Trump has kind of given Republicans a little bit more grace to distance themselves from him ahead of the midterms than he normally ever would than is in his playbook. And I do kind of think that we
are seeing that a little bit. Um, he hasn't been hugely involved. I mean, in fairness, campaigning probably doesn't really kick off until September and then we might see him going to, you know, battleground states and cheering people on. Um, but yeah, it seems to me like he is aware or at least, you know, maybe Susie Wilds, his chief of staff, is aware that it's really becoming quite toxic and if his party is going to have much luck at the midterms and then they need to be able to go and say, well, you know, I wasn't really involved in this. Something that is going to do them favors with that is how difficult it has been to get any kind of uh funding for the Iran war through Congress.
It's just stalling at kind of every stage. Um but I think that the issue that they will face like you say is there's something like roughly 23 of people in various polls disapprove of Trump and what that seems to be linking back to is the economy. I was reading that 49% of people think they're worse off now than they were a year ago, which again is the opposite of what Trump campaigned on. And I think as long as the cost of living, especially energy prices remain high or at least really unpredictable, that's going to be really bad um luck for Trump at the midterms. Lotty, thank you so much for joining me on Iran the latest. That's all we've got time for today. will be back on Monday.
Until then, goodbye.
