EU leaders vowed to boost security and economic ties with Middle East partners and push for a diplomatic end to the Iran war, after talks in Cyprus focusing on the fallout from the conflict.

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Leaders from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan as well as the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, were in Nicosia to meet their European Union counterparts on the sidelines of an EU summit.

“The current situation clearly underscores how closely Europe’s security is linked with that of the Middle East, and how vital our cooperation on security and defence has become,” European Council president António Costa told a press conference after the talks.

Although no formal decisions were taken, the summit provided an opportunity to exchange views about the war, the situation in Lebanon and across the Gulf, as well as the economic consequences for Europe amid the US blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran effectively shuttering the Strait of Hormuz.

“The recent ceasefires between the US and Iran, Israel and Lebanon are welcome developments. Now all parties must engage in good faith to achieve a peace. The European Union is not part of the conflict, but we will be part of this solution,” European Council President Antonio Costa said at a press conference on Friday.

Fighting has currently been suspended in both Iran and Lebanon. Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump said that a ceasefire with Iran that was due to expire on 22 April had been extended indefinitely, while on Thursday he said that a suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon had been extended for three weeks.

Meanwhile, the White House said on Friday evening that special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would head to Pakistan for a second round of talks on Saturday.

European officials have floated the idea of a multinational force to escort commercial ships and clear mines in the Strait of Hormuz, but the plan remains at an early stage and it is unclear whether it will be implemented.

Even if EU leaders are actively avoiding direct involvement in the war, they’re aiming to provide support to Middle Eastern countries affected by it, which the EU considers strategic partners in energy, migration and digitalisation.

Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was among the key regional figures at the talks and he reiterated the importance of bilateral relations with the EU and described them as “essential and inevitable, particularly to ensure global security and the stability of supply chains.”

At the same time, he asked the international community to “uphold its responsibilities in addressing all forms of Israeli aggression affecting our land and territories.”

Increasing energy prices in Europe

Another topic of discussion was rising energy prices around the world due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The standoff is choking off nearly all exports through the vital waterway, through which around 20% of the world’s traded oil passes in peacetime.

The disruption has sent energy prices soaring across Europe, prompting fears of shortages and economic decline.

EU leaders discussed a set of new measures unveiled by the European Commission earlier this week, such as social schemes, tax reductions and subsidies for green technologies.

“Since the beginning of this conflict, our bill for imported fossil fuels has increased by over €25 billion without a single molecule of energy in addition. We need to reduce our over-dependency on important fossil fuels because these make us vulnerable to crises,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.

Von der Leyen also said work was under way to boost economic, trade and political ties with Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Gulf nations and proposed those partnerships broaden to defence matters.

“We could consider expanding the scope of missions like Operation Aspides evolving from mere protection to a sophisticated joint maritime coordination,” she said without providing further details.

Aspides is the EU’s naval mission in the Red Sea, launched in 2024 to prevent attacks on trade vessels by Iran-backed Houthi rebel forces.

“The threat of mass proliferation of drones and missiles is sadly a shared reality. We should set up a structural cooperation of scaling up defence production,” von der Leyen added.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the weeks after the April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, it was difficult to get any information about the scope of the disaster, aside from terse announcements from the government of the Soviet Union.

Acting on a telephone tip, then-Associated Press Moscow correspondent Carol J. Williams and another Western journalist drove to a cemetery in the northwestern part of the capital, where they discovered the simple graves of some of the victims. The journalists were briefly detained by police at the cemetery and accused of trespassing but were able to see workers digging the graves for the victims.

As part of its coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, AP is republishing Williams’ story from June 24, 1986:

___

By CAROL J. WILLIAMS

MOSCOW (AP) — The 23 fresh graves just inside the main entrance of the Mitinskoye Cemetery are all alike. There is no sign to identify the dead as victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Each grave has flowers on the mound of earth and a concrete border. Workmen are erecting identical marble tombstones. Eerily empty spaces indicate more deaths are expected.

Six of the headstones bear the names of firefighters the Soviet press has identified as victims of radiation at Chernobyl, and a cemetery official said Tuesday the plot was for those who died as a result of the nuclear accident.

At the cemetery on Moscow’s northwest outskirts, workers toiled in steady drizzle putting up marble headstones bearing the victims’ names, birthdates and the day they died in gold-painted inscription. All the dates of death were after the April 26 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Some graves had temporary, hand-printed signs with the names and dates.

A cemetery official who declined to give his name to two Western reporters who visited Mitinskoye said a monument will eventually be built to those who died.

“They will all be brought here,” the official said, declining to say how many deaths have occurred as a result of the Chernobyl accident.

The last official report on casualties from the Ukrainian power station was given on June 5, when Soviet officials said 26 people had died, including two killed during the initial fire and explosion.

One of the victims, power plant worker Valery Khodemchuk, will be entombed with the ruined No. 4 reactor because his body was never recovered, the Communist Party daily Pravda reported on May 23.

The newspaper reported that another man, Vladimir Shashenok, had been killed instantly and buried at a village near the power station.

American bone marrow specialist Dr. Robert Gale, who helped Soviet doctors treat those suffering from radiation sickness, has said there would probably be more deaths among the 55 or 60 people still in serious condition.

Those suffering radiation sickness were brought to a Moscow hospital and the deaths presumably occurred there.

At Mitinskoye Cemetery, more deaths seem expected. Fifteen graves form a row at the back of the Chernobyl plot. There is a second row of eight graves, with three graves to the right and five to the left of a gap that would accommodate seven graves.

On the headstones of firefighters Viktor Kibenok, Vladimir Pravik, Nikolai Vashchuk, Vasily Ignatenko, Vladimir Tishchura and Nikolai Titenok are etched gold stars and the ranks they held in the military fire brigade that first responded to the accident.

Graveyard workers declined to say how long ago the burials took place, or whether rituals were separate for each victim or held together for the group.

Bouquets of red and pink flowers left by relatives were carefully placed on the mounded earth on each grave.

“It’s very sad, they were so young,” commented an elderly woman visiting another area of the cemetery. “They were brought here to be treated at hospitals, but they couldn’t be sent home to be buried.”

A danger zone has been drawn around an area of the nuclear power station and all residents of the area have been evacuated.

Cemetery officials confiscated the notes and film of the two reporters, saying reporters needed permission to visit the cemetery.

A policeman stationed at the cemetery said it was off limits to all except family members and special permission was needed from local authorities to copy the names on the headstones or take pictures.

The official later escorted the two reporters to the graves on condition they not make notes or take pictures.

Days after Iran’s leadership projected a unified front, undermining the long-cited moderate-vs.-hardliner divide, President Donald Trump canceled planned talks with Tehran in Islamabad, Pakistan, citing “infighting and confusion” inside the regime.

Iranian American experts argue that social media posts from Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian and other key officials reveal that the “good cop, bad cop” tactic that the regime exploited to deceive adversaries and secure generous concessions in nuclear negotiations has collapsed.

In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump announced he canceled the trip, citing “too much time wasted on traveling” and “too much work!”

“Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership,’” the president added, noting “nobody knows who is in charge, including them.”

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“Also, we have all the cards, they have none!” Trump wrote. “If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

The implosion of the hardline-moderate dichotomy within the regime could have profound consequences for Trump’s approach to the atomic talks in Islamabad, experts said. Trump appeared to allude to a blurry divide between factions within Iran last week.

“Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know! The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!), and it is CRAZY!” Trump wrote in an X post Thursday.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei quickly fired back, claiming “due to the strange unity created among compatriots, a fracture has occurred in the enemy.”

“With practical gratitude for this blessing, cohesion has become even greater and more steel-like, and the enemies will become more wretched and diminished,” Khamenei wrote. “The enemy’s media operations, by targeting the minds and psyches of the people, intend to undermine national unity and security; may our negligence not allow this sinister intent to come to fruition.”

Mariam Memarsadeghi, a senior fellow at The Macdonald-Laurier Institute and founder and director of the Cyrus Forum for Iran’s Future, told Fox News Digital the Islamic Republic has, for decades, fooled Western policymakers by sending moderates to negotiations as a “window dressing for its terror and subjugation.”

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The officials would then tell their counterparts that they are under pressure from hardliners, implying that the West must make concessions to strengthen them internally.

“Because of the war, the Trump administration is in a remarkably advantageous situation vis-à-vis the imperial terror state, one never before attempted, much less achieved,” Memarsadeghi said. 

“But every time Trump says regime change has already happened, he denies America the opportunity to finally, truly be rid of the world’s top sponsor of terror and the existential threat it poses not just to the people of Iran but to all the world.”

Navid Mohebbi, who worked as a Persian media analyst for the State Department’s Public Affairs Bureau, cautioned that while rivalries and factions do exist within the Islamic Republic, they are united on the regime’s core principles.

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“Their disagreements are primarily over tactics, not fundamental direction,” Mohebbi told Fox News Digital, stressing that real decision-making power in Iran has always rested with the supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“So-called moderates have never had the final say on key strategic issues and are often used to soften the regime’s image abroad,” he said. “From the perspective of the Iranian people, there has been little difference. Across administrations labeled ‘moderate’ or ‘hardline,’ the system has consistently relied on repression.”

Mohebbi cited the example of Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani, who presented himself as a moderate but whose security forces violently killed 1,500 protesters during the November 2019 uprising.

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“The same pattern has continued under Masoud Pezeshkian in the January 2026 protest massacre, reinforcing the reality that these labels have not translated into meaningful change on the ground,” he said.

A regional official, however, insisted there are clashes between moderates and hardliners in Iran. The official told Fox News Digital that Pezeshkian is a moderate, but he “could not even make good on his campaign promise regarding internet freedom. To be honest, he’s not even been able to do s—.

“The joint reaction by the heads of the three branches of power was in response to Trump’s reference to the issue of rift and also to the fact that there are indeed hardliners and moderates,” the official added. 

“Look, whenever Iran wants to make concessions, they throw moderates under the bus so that the moderates make a deal, and then, the hardliners blame them for the same concessions all of them had agreed to make.”

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Lawdan Bazargan, who was imprisoned by the Islamic Republic in the 1980s for her political dissident activities, told Fox News Digital that what officials are seeing now is not the disappearance of the divide, but the exposure of what that divide actually was.

“In reality, all of these figures — Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf [speaker of Iran’s parliament], Saeed Jalili [member of the Expediency Discernment Council], Pezeshkian, Ahmad Vahidi [head of the IRGC], Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei [head of Iran’s judiciary] — operate within the same ideological framework,” Bazargan said. 

“They are all committed to the preservation of the system, the projection of power in the region and confrontation with what they define as ‘the forces of evil,’ namely the United States and Israel.”