US Politics As It Happened: Tanker reports hearing explosions in Strait of Hormuz

Thanks for reading our live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East and US politics.

Here’s what made news today:

• Iran repeated that no talks with the US are under way, even as Tehran appears to be nearing a deal with Oman about the control of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Iran’s Yemeni proxies, the Houthi rebels, claimed to have struck a Saudi oil tanker in a ballistic missile attack.
• In the US, reports emerged that the FBI investigated the possibility of Donald Trump being a Russian asset after he fired James Comey from the bureau’s directorship, back in 2017.
• Meanwhile, the US president launched several tirades against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, after the progressive candidate won the primary vote to become the party’s Michigan Senate candidate in the upcoming midterm elections.

Israel’s former Iran desk intelligence head says the regime’s chief goal regarding the Strait of Hormuz is sovereignty - not money.

Danny Citriowicz of the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel said this was why Iran was supposedly willing to postpone collecting transit fees for 60 days under the initial memorandum of understanding.

“While the financial aspect matters, it is ultimately secondary to Iran’s broader goal of asserting sovereign control over the Strait,” he said on X.

“For Iran, the ability to register, monitor, regulate, and potentially deny passage to vessels is far more significant than the immediate income generated by those fees.

“That level of administrative and operational control is the real expression of sovereignty.”

Donald Trump came dangerously close to a midair collision over Washington DC earlier today in his military helicopter.

Marine One came within 1.2km in lateral distance and just 200m in vertical distance from a passenger plane at 2.30pm Wednesday local time (4am Thursday AEST).

Read the full article here.

JD Vance has provided his latest update on whatever level of negotiation is going on over the Iran war.

“It’s going to be messy, and it’s going to take some time,” Vance told Fox in an interview.

He blamed the Iranian government’s “fractured” system for the delays.

“Our job is to navigate through that and get the best outcome for the American people, but for the President of the United States as well,” Vance said.

He said oil prices would come down and stay down, and Iran would be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon, and that the US would be left in a stronger position.

“But we’re kind of in the middle of the game, and I think people are trying to prejudge exactly how this is going to go,” Vance said.

Iran says an agreement on the Strait of Hormuz is now close to being finalised as a joint statement with Oman.

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said the two nations had agreed on the geographic navigation route through the strait, according to state outlet IRNA.

However, he said, an “external party” could still disrupt the process - an apparent reference to the US.

He did not claim an Iran-Oman agreement would make the strait safe to traverse, claiming the security situation would remain febrile while the US naval blockade was in place.

The Michigan primary victory of Democrat Abdul el-Sayed continues to needle Trump, it seems.

“I was saying that probably it’s corrupt, you know, it’s probably corrupt,” he said of the vote to his audience in Vegas.

“I don’t know who the hell they wanted. I couldn’t care less.”

He also said el-Sayed was “full of s---“.

“We do actually, we do better against the communists according to every poll,” he said.

“The poll says we do better against the communists, so he won and so I think I’m happy.”

The White House and the Republican Party more broadly are trying to frame the coming elections as a “communist” threat as high-profile progressive Democrats notch up some wins.

While New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, el-Sayed has repeated on the campaign trail that he is a capitalist.

Trump says Iran “respects” the US and that he’d rather make a deal than return to open conflict.

“I’d rather make a deal, because I don’t want to kill people,” Trump said in a speech in Las Vegas.

“I do not want to kill people, but at some point we’re going to.

“We were set for the biggest attack of any attack, and we’ve hit them very hard for the last few months, but we were, we were all set for the biggest attack since World War II.”

He again claimed Iranian leadership had contacted him to ask him to call off the attack, a claim Tehran has denied.

Trump also again insisted “we are talking”.

“Let’s see what happens, but they respect us. They respect us.”

The FBI investigated the possibility of Donald Trump being a Russian asset after he fired James Comey from the bureau’s directorship.

Axios, attributing the information to newly-declassified memos, said the investigation began after Comey’s firing in 2017.

Investigators sought to establish whether or not Trump “wittingly or unwittingly” was acting on behalf of Russia.

The possibility could “constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” according to one of the memos released by the White House.

“Based on the facts and circumstances provided to date, the FBI believes that opening this investigation is the least intrusive method to address the serious national security risk posed by the activities alleged,” it said.

The investigation closed in 2019, shortly after Special Counsel Robert Mueller ended his own, very public investigation into potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia, Axios said.

Mueller’s investigation resulted in criminal charges for several Trump associates, but found no conspiracy between the president’s campaign and Moscow.

Trump was personally neither implicated in, nor cleared of obstructing justice.

A narrow primary win by a progressive Democrat in Michigan has apparently rattled Republicans - not least the president.

Abdul El-Sayed won his party’s primary race to battle it out for a US Senate seat in the November mid-terms.

Michigan is a “purple state” that’s backed the White House winner in the past three elections, meaning it’s firmly up for grabs.

El-Sayed campaigned against an establishment Democrat backed by the party’s leaders, and centred his campaign on universal healthcare.

He also was vocal about calling Israel’s ongoing military action in Gaza a genocide.

Trump posted twice about the Michigan race overnight, showing the possibility of a Democrat win is weighing on him.

In the first post, he once again rolled out his claim that voting in the state was corrupt and that mail-in ballots were fraudulent - claims that have been frequently found to be utterly without basis.

“The Radical Left Socialist has a real shot, and don’t discount all of those fake mail-in ballots that will ‘surprisingly’ show up at the last moment,” he wrote.

“Get ready for another Rigged Election. In November we must VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS, and make Michigan TOO BIG TO RIG.”

The second post, coming after El-Sayed’s narrow win was called, claimed the result was “great news” for the GOP.

“Now, the Dumocrats crazy policies will only get worse!” he said.