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U.S. and Iran resume high-stakes talks in Geneva

U.S. and Iranian negotiators opened a new round of indirect talks in Geneva today with Oman again shuttling messages between the two delegations.  

The diplomacy is unfolding under heavy pressure from President Donald Trump, who is pairing negotiations with a conspicuous military posture in the region.

Publicly, Tehran is striking a cautiously optimistic note. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal was “within reach” if diplomacy is prioritized. In parallel, Iran is trying to widen the political appeal of any agreement by floating what it calls a “commercial bonanza” for U.S. firms, while U.S. officials insist commercial inducements are not the point of the talks.

The central dispute remains enrichment and sanctions relief. Washington is pressing for far tighter limits on nuclear enrichment and also missiles and support to proxy groups in the region, while Iran insists it cannot surrender its right to enrich uranium, will not accept restrictions on its missile program, and wants substantial, credible sanctions relief in return. Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is in Geneva as a technical presence, a sign that verification remains central to any resolution.

Iran offer would cap enrichment but keep high-grade stockpile at home

Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, says Iran would cut its uranium enrichment level from 60% to 3.67% and accept a temporary suspension of enrichment for seven years under draft terms being discussed in the Geneva track. The reported outline resembles the technical ceiling in the 2015 nuclear deal, which limited enrichment to 3.67% and tightly capped how much low-enriched uranium Iran could hold (although that limit would have expired by now).

The complication, as described, is that Iran would keep its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium inside the country rather than sending it abroad. That would leave negotiators with the central problem still unresolved: breakout risk depends less on the headline enrichment cap than on what happens to the accumulated material and how quickly industrial enrichment could be resumed. U.S. officials have pushed for Iran to relinquish its enriched-uranium stockpile, while Tehran has rejected export and instead proposed dilution as an alternative.

The stakes are raised by uncertainty over what Iran still has and where it is stored. At the time of the June strikes on Iranian sites, Iran had enough enriched uranium for about ten bombs (following one more enrichment step) by IAEA benchmarks, but the IAEA has not recovered the access needed to verify the stockpile’s current status.

U.S. aircraft carrier leaves Crete, heads for Israel

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s newest supercarrier, departed Souda Bay in Crete on Thursday 26 February. Reporting and video footage suggest it is sailing east toward northern Israel, with Haifa the most likely port of call.

Crete (Souda Bay) to Haifa is roughly 560 nautical miles (about 1,037 km [644 miles]) as the crow flies, and typically a little more in practice. At transit speeds of around 18–25 knots, that points to roughly 22–32 hours from departure to reaching waters off northern Israel, assuming a direct run and no operational pauses.

Treasury steps up pressure on Iran’s “shadow fleet” and weapons supply chains

On 25 February 2026, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned more than 30 individuals, entities, and vessels that it says enable illicit Iranian petroleum sales and support the production of ballistic missiles and other advanced conventional weapons.

The action had two main targets. The first was the maritime network that keeps Iranian crude, petroleum products, and petrochemicals moving to foreign buyers. Treasury described a “shadow fleet” of tankers using opaque ownership and operating arrangements, and said 12 vessels had transported petroleum and petrochemicals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The second was a set of procurement and technical-support networks that Treasury says help Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Defense obtain precursor materials and sensitive machinery. The aim, Treasury argues, is to rebuild capacity for missiles and other advanced weapons, and to supply unmanned aerial vehicles to partners abroad.

As with most OFAC designations, the immediate effect is to block U.S.-linked assets of the listed parties and generally prohibit U.S. persons from dealing with them. The broader goal is to discourage banks, insurers, ports, and shipping-service providers outside the U.S. from facilitating the trade.

Birthplace of civilization

Hezbollah sets “red line” on Khamenei as U.S.–Iran tensions rise

Hezbollah yesterday said the group would not intervene militarily if the United States carried out “limited” strikes on Iran, but would treat any attempt to target Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or to bring down the Iranian regime, as a “red line” that could trigger Hezbollah’s entry into the fight.

The comments come as U.S.–Iran nuclear talks resumed in Geneva amid intensifying U.S. military pressure, with President Donald Trump warning Tehran it has roughly 10 to 15 days to reach a deal or face possible military action.  

Hezbollah’s messaging appears designed to balance deterrence with restraint. By defining “limited” strikes as insufficient cause for intervention, the group signals it does not want Lebanon pulled into a wider regional war automatically. By simultaneously elevating leadership targeting and regime-threatening operations to an existential threshold, it seeks to raise the perceived cost of any U.S. escalation beyond a narrow, time-bounded strike package.

Lebanese officials have publicly warned against a new conflict spiral, fearing that any Hezbollah action tied to Iran could prompt heavy Israeli retaliation against Lebanon.

Ocalan marks a turning point in Türkiye’s Kurdish conflict

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is expected to issue a new public message on 27 February, a year after his “Peace and Democratic Society” appeal called on the group to lay down its arms and disband. Mithat Sancar, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) in Türkiye’s parliament, said the statement would be released on the anniversary, with the DEM’s Imrali delegation likely to read it at a press conference in Ankara rather than Ocalan speaking in person.

The timing matters because Ankara is trying to turn a reduction in violence into a durable legal framework. In mid-February a parliamentary commission backed a report outlining a roadmap for reforms that would proceed alongside verified PKK disarmament, including provisions for reintegration and broader civil-liberties changes, while steering clear of anything that resembles a blanket amnesty.

Ocalan’s message will be parsed for three things: whether he claims further progress in dismantling the PKK’s armed structures; what he asks of DEM and Kurdish voters as politics begins to shift toward the next electoral cycle; and how directly he ties demobilization to concrete legal steps, including revisions to counterterrorism laws and compliance with European human-rights rulings.

It’s the U.S. vs China, everyone needs to pick a side

Trump and Zelenskyy set next steps for Geneva talks

President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a roughly 30-minute phone call on 25 February, a day before Ukrainian and U.S. teams were due to meet in Geneva. Ukraine’s presidential office said Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s envoys, also joined the call.

Kyiv presented the conversation as an effort to keep the diplomacy moving: Zelenskyy’s office said the two leaders discussed Thursday’s Ukraine–U.S. meeting in Geneva and preparations for a further “trilateral” round involving Russia in early March. Kyiv said Trump supported sequencing that would allow the process to move up to a leaders-level meeting.

U.S. read-outs were thinner, but officials described the call as friendly and positive, and said Trump pushed to end the war quickly, with ambitions for an agreement by summer.

The diplomacy comes against a backdrop of intensified Russian strikes: Ukrainian officials said a large overnight aerial attack hit multiple regions.

Metsola signs Ukraine loan as Hungary blocks a key step

Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, has signed the European Union’s €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan ($97.5 billion), describing it as a way to keep Ukraine’s public services running, maintain the country’s defense, and anchor its future in Europe.

Parliament’s signature marks the completion of its side of the process after lawmakers approved the measures earlier this month. 

However, the spending is still subject to a veto by Hungary.

Hungary’s veto targets a separate budget-related component that requires unanimous backing among EU member states in the Council. That third step, which would adjust EU budget rules to support the borrowing, remains blocked, so the full mechanism cannot be activated as designed without Hungarian support.

Budapest has tied its position to an energy dispute over the Druzhba pipeline route, which carries Russian crude via Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia. In recent days, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has argued that resolving, or independently verifying, the disruption should be a condition for unfreezing EU financial support. Kyiv says the outage followed Russian strikes and that repairs will take time.

Senate Democrats step back from Russia sanctions push

A long-stalled bipartisan Russia sanctions package is losing Democratic momentum after changes that critics say were made to suit the White House, complicating an effort that its sponsors have touted as one of Congress’s biggest remaining levers over Moscow.

Jeanne Shaheen, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is urging colleagues to prioritize narrower “shadow fleet” legislation aimed at Russia’s sanctions-evasion shipping network, arguing it is a more effective and politically durable tool than the broader bill.

The broader bill, associated with Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, has enjoyed headline bipartisan support but has not reached a floor vote amid administration reluctance to have Congress hard-wire sanctions policy while the White House pursues negotiations over Ukraine.

Ukraine’s ambassador, Olha Stefanishyna, has publicly argued that the broad bi-partisan sanctions package is politically passable and should move, warning against excuses for delay as Russia’s war grinds into a fifth year.

Graham, in public commentary on X, attacked the idea of Democrats backing away. He said he was “very disappointed” to hear Shaheen urge a shift, and defended the bill’s design to pressure major buyers of Russian energy, pointing to the administration’s tariff leverage as proof of concept.

CK group sells Britain’s biggest power distributor

Hong Kong’s CK Group, chaired by Victor Li, has agreed to sell UK Power Networks (UKPN), Britain’s largest electricity distribution operator, to France’s Engie for £10.5bn ($14.23bn).

UKPN supplies about 8.5m customers across London, the South East and the East of England, an area at the center of Britain’s electrification drive as heat pumps, electric vehicles and data centers push up demand on grids built for an earlier era. The company operates around 192,000 kilometers (about 119,000 miles) of power lines.

Engie, which has been shifting away from volatile gas exposure toward steadier, regulated infrastructure and renewables, described the purchase as its largest-ever acquisition. The group said the deal would make Britain its second-largest market after France, and that it expects the acquisition to lift earnings while lowering sensitivity to swings in energy markets.

For CK Infrastructure Holdings, a Li-controlled firm within the wider CK empire, the sale crystallizes the value of a regulated asset at a time when governments are taking a closer interest in who owns critical infrastructure as geopolitical tensions rise with China.

Engie said it expects to fund the acquisition through a mix of asset sales, new debt and a capital raise, with completion targeted for mid-2026, subject to approvals

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