Day 64: Trump signs paper. The paper ends the war.

On 1 May, the US Treasury added three Iranian money-exchange firms and the tanker NEW FUSION to its sanctions blacklist, and named the Iranian Red Crescent Society as a channel that cannot be used to pay Iran's Hormuz shipping tolls.

The package landed on the same day as Trump's letter declaring the war over, leaving banks with two contradictory US government instructions dated the same day, with no official guidance on which takes precedence. Read full version ↓

Iran sent Pakistan its fourth ceasefire proposal on 1 May, offering to reopen the strait of Hormuz if the US lifted its blockade and ended the war, with nuclear talks deferred to a later phase. Pakistani officials confirmed they passed it to Washington.

Both sides immediately restated their maximum positions, and Trump rejected the proposal the same day. The sequencing dispute (Iran wants Hormuz settled first; the US wants nuclear commitments first) has now blocked four consecutive proposals. Read full version ↓

Oil prices fell $14.83 on 1 May to $108.17 per barrel after news of Iran's fourth ceasefire proposal, the largest single-session drop of the war. Trump rejected the proposal the same afternoon, and prices partially recovered but not fully.

The fact that prices did not bounce all the way back is new: after the first three failed proposals oil always fully recovered. Markets are now pricing a real chance of a deal for the first time, which raises the economic cost to the US of continuing to reject Iran's terms. Read full version ↓

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski set four conditions for any Iran war authorisation bill she would support: defined political and military objectives, named success metrics, advance notice before goals change, and an exit criterion. She set 11 May as the White House's deadline to produce a strategy meeting these tests.

The bipartisan bloc voting against the war reached 47 votes on 30 April, up from 43 three weeks earlier, still three short of a majority but gaining. Murkowski's conditions are drawn directly from the lessons of the 2001 and 2002 Iraq and Afghanistan war authorities, which Congress later found unacceptably broad. Read full version ↓

The IAEA's chief told the Associated Press that satellite imagery from June 2025 shows 18 containers of enriched uranium were moved into a hardened underground tunnel at Iran's Isfahan nuclear complex four days before Israeli strikes began, and no inspector has been inside since.

About 200 of Iran's 441 kilograms of 60%-enriched uranium is believed to still be in that tunnel. The US is demanding Iran hand over the full stockpile, but that demand cannot be verified: nobody on the outside can confirm how much material is actually in there. Read full version ↓

Iran executed Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour on 2 May on charges of spying for Israel. The human rights group Hengaw revised April's total to at least 26 executions, including 14 political prisoners, the highest monthly rate since the conflict began.

Three men convicted over a mosque fire in Pakdasht remain at a pre-execution holding facility and have not yet been killed. Human rights organisations say their convictions rested on confessions extracted under torture, and The Supreme Court has already upheld their death sentences. Read full version ↓

CENTCOM started publishing press releases under the web address war.gov on 1 May, extending Pete Hegseth's 'Department of War' branding from budget testimony into live government infrastructure, without any executive order or Act of Congress authorising the name change.

Changing the Pentagon's official name from Department of Defense requires an Act of Congress under a 1958 law. Changing its website address does not. The Administration has created an official-looking Department of War presence online through a DNS decision, putting the factual state ahead of the legal framework that would need to authorise it. Read full version ↓