March 17, 2026 - Daily News Digest
On this day in 1938, Poland issued an ultimatum to Lithuania in an attempt to settle the territorial dispute over the city of Vilnius.
QotD: “I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it,” President Trump said about Cuba, calling it a “very weakened nation”.
ISRAEL/IRAN/MIL – Iran rejects de-escalation offers; Israel says it killed Iranian security chief.
Israel claimed on Tuesday to have killed Iran's security chief, while a senior Iranian official said the new supreme leader had rejected de-escalation offers conveyed by intermediaries, demanding Israel and the U.S. first be "brought to their knees".
The senior official, who asked not to be identified, said two intermediary countries had conveyed proposals to Iran's Foreign Ministry for "reducing tensions or ceasefire with the United States". The official did not give further details of the proposals or the intermediaries.
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who had held his first foreign policy session since being named supreme leader, had responded that it was not "the right time for peace until the United States and Israel are brought to their knees, accept defeat, and pay compensation", the official said.
He did not clarify whether Khamenei, who has not yet been pictured since being named last week to replace his slain father, had attended the meeting in person or remotely.
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is now in its third week, with at least 2,000 people killed and no end in sight.
The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed off and U.S. allies have rebuffed U.S. President Donald Trump's calls for them to help to reopen the vital waterway, through which about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday Israeli forces had killed Iran's security chief Ali Larijani, widely seen as one of the most powerful figures in the country, as well as Gholamreza Soleimani who led the volunteer Basij militia, which plays a major role in domestic security.
IRAN/SEC/HORMUZ – EU seeks diplomatic solution for Hormuz Strait, Kallas says.
https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-seeks-diplomatic-solution-hormuz-strait-kallas-says-2026-03-17/
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Tuesday diplomatic ways have to be found in order to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, as U.S. President Donald Trump calls on allies to send warships there to secure transit amid the war in Iran.
"Nobody is ready to put their people in harm's way in the Strait of Hormuz. We have to find diplomatic ways to keep this open so that we don't have a food crisis, fertilizers crisis, energy crisis as well," Kallas said in an interview with Reuters.
US/INTEL/SEC – US National Counterterrorism Center director resigns over war in Iran.
The head of the National Counterterrorism Center resigned on Tuesday, becoming the first and most senior member of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to resign over the war in Iran, saying Tehran posed no imminent threat to the United States.
"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful lobby," Joseph Kent wrote in a letter to Trump posted on X.
Some experts have said an imminent threat would be required for the United States to launch a war under current law.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence also did not immediately respond.
Intelligence officials were caught off guard by the news.
Kent is close with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who has kept a low profile since the Iran war began.
Gabbard has not issued any public statements and has only appeared in public during the dignified transfer of American soldiers killed earlier this month during the conflict with Iran.
ISREAL/LEBANON/MIL – Lebanon has proposed the first direct talks with Israel in decades. It might be too late.
With airstrikes rocking Beirut and Israeli troops advancing against Hezbollah, Lebanon’s government has broken a taboo by proposing the first direct talks with Israel in decades. But Lebanese officials say they want the fighting to end first — and it might be too late for that.
Hezbollah’s decision to enter the wider Iran war by firing rockets at Israel has led to the heavy Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing some 850 Lebanese and driving over a million people from their homes.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah views the latest war as an existential struggle, and Israel is threatening a wider ground invasion, the seizure of territory and the destruction of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure.
The United States, which has mediated during past flare-ups, has so far shown no interest in doing so this time around.
Last week, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun offered to hold direct negotiations with Israel for the first time since the 1982 Israeli invasion during Lebanon’s civil war. Aoun also asked for a boost in funding for Lebanese troops and reaffirmed his commitment to disarm Hezbollah, a longstanding Israeli and U.S. demand.
But Lebanon wants the fighting to end before any talks with Israel, according to three Lebanese diplomatic and government officials familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment about the offer of talks. But Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, during a visit to an Israeli town hit by an Iranian missile, denied any talks were planned.
AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN/MIL/SEC – Afghanistan says Pakistani airstrike killed 408 at Kabul drug rehab centre, Islamabad rejects charge.
More than 400 people were killed and 265 wounded in an airstrike by Pakistan on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul, a spokesman of the Afghan Taliban government said on Tuesday, a sharp escalation in the conflict between the neighbours.
Pakistan rejected the statement as false and misleading and said it had "precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure" on Monday night.
The airstrike came hours after China said it remained ready to continue efforts to ease tensions between the South Asian Islamic nations and urged both to avoid expanding the war and return to the negotiating table.
The conflict that began last month is the worst between the neighbours, who share a 2,600-km (1,600-mile) border.
Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesman for the Taliban, said in a post on X the airstrike took place at 9 p.m. (1630 GMT) on Monday and targeted the state-run Omid Hospital, which he said was a 2,000-bed drug rehabilitation centre.
The Pakistani information ministry said Omid Hospital was miles away from Camp Phoenix, the "military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site" that it said was targeted.
"The visible secondary detonations after the strikes clearly indicate the presence of large ammunition depots," Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a post on X.
UKRAINE/RUS/SANCTIONS – Zelensky in London to press for peace and Russia sanctions as Iran war steals focus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in London on Tuesday for talks with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the British government said, as European countries look to keep international attention on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while the unfolding Iran war engages world leaders.
Starmer’s office said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will also join the meeting at 10 Downing St. to discuss peacemaking efforts in Ukraine and “the need to maintain sanctions pressure on Russia.”
The meeting comes days after the U.S. temporarily waived some Russian oil sanctions in a bid to ease pressure on global supplies triggered by the war in the Middle East, which was sparked by the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran starting on Feb. 28.
Zelenskyy criticized Washington’s move to ease sanctions, saying it would provide a windfall for Moscow to keep up its attacks on Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to secure a peace deal that ends Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II and has rattled the continent’s leaders, who reckon that Russia could pose a credible security threat to the European Union by the end of the decade.
But U.S.-brokered talks between delegations from Moscow and Kyiv, which so far have yielded no significant progress on key issues, have lost momentum amid the Middle East conflict.
Ukraine is the “ultimate loser” from the war with Iran, said Ed Arnold, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
US/VENEZUELA/MOROCCO/FERTS – White House says US seeking fertilizer from Venezuela, Morocco.
The Trump administration is seeking other sources of fertilizer amid the ongoing Iran war's shipping constraints, including from Venezuela and possibly Morocco, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Tuesday.
"We've ... established licenses for Venezuela to produce more fertilizer. We've had discussions with Morocco," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" program, calling it "an insurance policy against disruption" for U.S. farmers.
"I'm not saying that we can eliminate what disruption there is so far, but we can minimize it," Hassett told CNBC in the interview.
Fertilizer supplies have shrunk as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran cut off critical nitrogen fertilizer supplies from the Gulf to the world's farmers, sending prices spiking by more than one-third in recent weeks.
CHILE/IMMIGRATION/DEMOGRAPHICS – Chile’s new president launches border barrier plan to curb illegal immigration.
Chilean President José Antonio Kast wasted no time.
Less than a week after his inauguration, Chile’s arch-conservative president on Monday began overseeing preparations to build a border barrier – part of his flagship campaign promise to block immigrants from crossing illegally.
From Chile’s northern frontier area of Chacalluta, where legions of immigrants have slipped across the Peruvian border into one of the region’s most prosperous nations, Kast vowed to implement what he calls his “Border Shield” plan. Among other steps, it involves the construction of a physical barrier at the nation’s northern border made up of ditches and fences and patrolled by drones and military forces.
So far, it does not look like much. A single bulldozer on Monday could be seen digging into the desert to carve out a trench.
But Kast assured the public that “for all of Chile, this is a milestone”.
“We have taken clear and concrete decisions to close our border to illegal immigration, drug trafficking and organised crime,” he said. “We want to implement this without any delay.”
Echoing the political approach of his ally, US President Donald Trump, Kast in his first days in office used emergency powers to issue half a dozen decrees aimed at ramping up border security and deporting foreigners found to have entered the country illegally.
Chile’s foreign population doubled between 2017 and 2024. Over 300,000 foreigners without proper documentation are believed to be living in the country now, many of them Venezuelans.
CUBA/ENERGY/CRISIS – Cuba hit by massive islandwide blackout as power grid crisis deepens.
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260316-cuba-hit-by-blackout-power-grid-crisis
Officials in Cuba reported an islandwide blackout on Monday in the country of some 11 million people as its energy and economic crises deepen and its power grid continues to crumble.
The ministry of energy and mines said on X that there had been a “complete disconnection” of the country’s electrical system and that it was investigating, noting there were no failures in the units that were operating when the grid collapsed.
It was the third major blackout in Cuba over the past four months.
Tomás David Velázquez Felipe, a 61-year-old resident of Havana, said the relentless outages make him think that Cubans who can should just pack up and leave the island. “What little we have to eat spoils,” he said. “Our people are too old to keep suffering.”
Cuba’s ageing grid has drastically eroded in recent years, leading to an increase in daily outages and islandwide blackouts. But the government has also blamed its woes on a US energy blockade after President Donald Trump in January warned of tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The Trump administration is demanding that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalisation in return for a lifting of sanctions. Trump has also raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba”.
On Monday, he said he believes he will have the “honour of taking Cuba”.
“I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it,” Trump said about Cuba, calling it a “very weakened nation”.
Comments (1)
When Iran is demanding compensation and repatriation, what is a perfect world for them and would they be most likely to get? Would it be paid in dollars or are they after something bigger like the dissolution of the petrodollar in favor of the yuan or something bigger picture of the nature.