Follow our flagship MBN news sites in Arabic and English for the latest updates. If you prefer to read the Agenda in Arabic, click here. And if the MBN Agenda was forwarded to you, please subscribe.
The 60-day deadline for a more concrete peace deal between the United States and Iran expired Monday as Jared Kushner was shuttling between meetings with Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu to rescue Trump’s stalled Gaza plan. On the periphery, a growing number of Middle East governments are pursuing new diplomatic arrangements of their own – from Iran and Oman bargaining with Iran over the future of Hormuz, much to Trump’s annoyance, to new security alignments taking shape among U.S. partners. Those efforts raise questions about how Washington’s role in the region is changing.
This week, we look at why Iran may have little incentive to end the war with the United States, Kushner’s push to revive the Gaza roadmap, the Trump-backed Board of Peace’s refusal to bend to Netanyahu, Oman’s bid for a permanent role in Hormuz and the Pentagon’s search for cheaper ways to blunt Iran’s cheap drone advantage.
Andres Ilves, Alexis Thomas, Sakina Abdallah and Ghassan Taqi contributed to this week’s Agenda.
Washington Signals
As U.S. Deals Stall, the Region Starts Making Its Own
Two major U.S. diplomatic pushes hit turning points Monday. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy Jared Kushner met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem a day after rare talks with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo, trying to salvage Trump’s stalled roadmap for peace in Gaza. The 60-day deadline for a permanent U.S.-Iran peace agreement also expired with no new deal – and no indication that the deadline will be extended.
Trump brushed off talk about the deadline, telling Fox News there was “no time schedule” for a deal and confirming that Washington opened a backchannel to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps through the Kurds in northern Iraq. But in the resulting vacuum of any tangible progress to end the war with Iran, some of the most consequential Middle East diplomacy is now happening around Washington rather than through it. Iran announced Monday that it had reached a deal with Oman over the route ships would use through the Strait of Hormuz, even as Tehran and Washington remain deadlocked over the waterway and Trump himself even now threatens to seize the strait as U.S. territory.
Trump’s response revealed how uneasy Washington is with that parallel process. Asked about Oman’s parallel negotiations with Tehran, he warned: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s*** out of them.” The threat laid bare the limits of Washington’s tolerance for regional diplomacy that it does not control. But bombing a longtime U.S. partner for conducting diplomacy Washington would hardly strengthen America’s claim to continuing regional leadership.
The Hormuz talks are only one sign of a rapidly reorganizing region. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan earlier this month signed a mutual-defense pact pledging to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. Now, in the background, Israel and the United Arab Emirates and maybe even India are drawing closer around shared concerns about the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani alignment. The result is a Middle East (and broader region) that is increasingly being divided by rival camps comprising countries once defined simply as American partners.
None of this is to say that Washington is absent, though. Kushner’s ability to meet Hamas one day and Netanyahu the next shows the reach the United States still has, and U.S. military power and sanctions remain central to the Iran conflict and the overall regional power balance. But the developments point to a more crowded diplomatic landscape in which allies are making arrangements among themselves rather than waiting for Washington to set the architecture.
That leaves the Trump administration facing two tests: whether Kushner can bring Netanyahu back into a Gaza plan Israel has publicly rejected, and whether Washington can turn an expired Iran ceasefire framework into something durable before Tehran and its neighbors begin defining the postwar order on their own.
Quote of the day
Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting. No excuse for such thuggish behavior.
— Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, speaking about Israeli settlers who surrounded the house of a Palestinian-American family in the West Bank to prevent them from accessing food or water.
Iran Watch
Why Tehran Doesn’t Want the War to End
A model representing an Iranian missile is seen in Tehran amid a U.S.-Iran ceasefire, April 27, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters.
While Washington struggles to turn the expired ceasefire framework into something more durable, the powers-that-be in Tehran have very little incentive to play ball. The war has strengthened the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at home, expanding its grip over security, foreign policy and civilian institutions while weakening rival centers of power within the broader Iranian government.
Continued conflict also preserves leverage Iran would have to surrender in a peace deal. Keeping the Strait of Hormuz constrained gives Iran pressure over the United States and global energy markets, and war sustains the importance of its proxy network and keeps nuclear inspectors away from sensitive sites.
Peace, by contrast, would bring renewed scrutiny of Iran’s economic failures and revive internal competition, threatening IRGC dominance. An IRGC officer described extending the conflict as a strategy in itself: “One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition.”
Gaza Watch
Kushner Opens a Cairo-Jerusalem Shuttle
Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy and son-in-law, meets with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at a location given as El-Alamein, Egypt, in this handout photo released August 16, 2026. Egypt Presidential Handout/Handout via Reuters.
Washington has also moved from defending its Gaza roadmap to trying to make it operational. Kushner and Board of Peace envoy Nikolay Mladenov spent the weekend shuttling between Cairo and Jerusalem, meeting Hamas leaders and regional mediators before holding four hours of talks with Benjamin Netanyahu.
The goal is to translate the plan’s broad commitments into steps that can actually be verified and implemented: Hamas relinquishing weapons and governing authority, a Palestinian technocratic committee taking over administration and Israeli forces beginning the withdrawals needed to unlock reconstruction.
The meetings mark an unusually direct U.S. effort to work both sides of the conflict at once. Kushner has now sat with Hamas and Netanyahu within 24 hours, while Washington is simultaneously coordinating with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. It’s an intensive diplomatic push aimed at getting a stalled framework moving again rather than returning to renegotiating its basic terms.
Exclusive
Board of Peace Holds the Line Against Netanyahu
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance sit together surrounded by members of the “Board of Peace” during a signing ceremony / AFP.
Kushner’s diplomatic push is proceeding without any change to the Trump-backed Gaza peace plan itself. An official with the U.S.-backed Board of Peace told MBN that the roadmap is still advancing on the basis of “phased, reciprocal commitments,” despite Netanyahu’s public rejection of that sequencing last week.
The disagreement itself is less noteworthy than Washington’s refusal so far to rewrite the framework around Israel’s demands. The board is still insisting that verified Hamas disarmament should unlock corresponding Israeli withdrawals, rather than requiring Hamas to surrender every weapon before Israel moves.
That leaves the pressure increasingly on Trump. Netanyahu faces strong electoral incentives to hold his line ahead of October elections, while the White House needs Israeli cooperation to show that its Gaza initiative can move beyond ceasefire management. If the gap persists, Washington may have to decide how much of its leverage on Israel it is willing to use to defend its plan.
Gulf Watch
Oman Pushes for a Permanent Hormuz Role
A vessel at the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Oman’s Musandam province, April 12, 2026 / Reuters.
Oman is trying to turn its wartime mediation role into a permanent stake in the Strait of Hormuz. Muscat and Tehran have been discussing new shipping routes and some form of joint administration, even as Iran pushes maximalist demands including fees on “hostile” countries and restrictions on U.S. and Israeli vessels.
Washington has insisted it will not accept permits, mandatory transit fees or any arrangement that gives one party control over commercial shipping. Oman, meanwhile, favors a more multilateral model that would preserve free navigation while giving it a formal role in managing the strategic waterway.
For Oman, the talks are an opportunity to turn a wartime crisis into lasting regional influence. A formal role in Hormuz would give Muscat a say over one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. But it would also expose Oman to U.S. pressure if any deal is seen as legitimizing Iranian control or mandatory fees.
Regional Watch
Pentagon Seeks Cheaper Drones
A U.S. soldier controls a drone during an exercise in Germany.
The Pentagon is racing to close a costly gap exposed by the Iran and Ukraine wars: Attackers can launch drones worth tens of thousands of dollars or less while defenders burn through interceptors costing millions to shoot them down.
The U.S. military is now testing cheaper drones and AI-powered systems to create a layered defense without draining Patriot and THAAD stocks. One new approach, the Bumblebee V2, simply crashes into incoming drones, but other systems are being built to let a single operator control autonomous swarms.
“There is no silver bullet to countering drones,” Lt. Col. Adam Scher, a spokesman for the counter-drone Joint Task Force 401, told MBN. Even if the Pentagon develops cheaper drones, the challenge will be to produce enough at the speed and scale required to match mass drone attacks.
