• Trump reiterates claims Tehran ready to make deal.
• Talks ongoing to negotiate end to month-long war: Trump.
• “Tehran’s leadership, nuclear programme suffered damage.”

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Friday insisted Iran must open up the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic to make a peace deal — and dubbed the crucial waterway the “Strait of Trump.”

Trump, who has renamed several buildings in Washington after himself during his second term, said his comment was a “mistake” but then added that “there’s no accidents with me.”

Repeating his claims that Tehran is ready to make a deal despite its denials, the 79-year-old US leader said that talks were underway to negotiate an end to the month-long conflict.

Trump added that Iran was “on the run” and reiterated assertions that Tehran’s leadership, navy, air force and nuclear programme had all suffered significant damage.

“We’re negotiating now, and it would be great if we could do something, but they have to open it up,” Trump told a Saudi-backed FII Priority investment forum in Miami.

“They have to open up the Strait of Trump — I mean Hormuz. Excuse me, I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake.”

Trump said the media would pounce upon the comment, but then added “there’s no accidents with me, not too many.”

He also talked about how he had ordered the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” shortly after returning to power.

During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump said it was “an option” to take control of Iran’s oil as the United States has effectively done with Venezuela — despite the fact that the war is still raging.

Republican Trump, who rose to fame as a property tycoon with his name plastered across his own skyscrapers, made similar teasing comments before renaming Washington’s Kennedy Centre the “Trump-Kennedy Centre.”

A peace institute in Washington was also renamed after Trump last year.

The Strait of Hormuz was open to international shipping before the conflict, but the narrow waterway has since ground to a standstill, leading to a surge in global energy prices.

Earlier Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced alarm that Iran would seek to establish a permanent “tolling system” for vessels in the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil normally transits.

• Trump suggests Cuba nearing collapse amid economic crisis.
• Says US opens talks with Cuban leaders to avoid escalation.
• Hints force an option, saying “sometimes you have to use it”.
  

US President Donald Trump on Friday said “Cuba is next” during a speech at an investment forum in Miami, during which he touted the successes of US military action in Venezuela and Iran.

While the president did not specify what precisely he plans to do with the island nation, he has frequently said he believes the government in Havana, facing a severe economic crisis, is on the verge of collapse.

His administration has opened up negotiations with elements of Cuba’s leadership in recent weeks, while Trump himself has hinted that kinetic action could be possible.

“I built this great military. I said, ‘You’ll never have to use it.’ But sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba is next, by the way,” Trump told the conference on Friday.

“But pretend I didn’t say that. Pretend I didn’t.”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has acknowledged that the country is in talks with the US in a bid to avert potential military confrontation. Cuba’s economy has been battered by disruptions in oil imports, which it relies on to run power plants and transportation.

Prior to the US operation to capture now-deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January, Venezuela had provided much of Cuba’s oil needs, but Caracas’ new government, under pressure from Washington, has ended those shipments.

Earlier in March, Trump had said Cuba may be subject to a “friendly takeover,” before adding: “It may not be a friendly takeover.”

• Hackers publish photos and over 300 emails from Patel’s account.
• Handala group claims hack, linked to Iranian cyber intelligence units.
• Attack aims to embarrass officials, expose vulnerabilities: experts.

Iran-linked hackers have broken into FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday.

On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel “will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims.”

The hackers published a series of personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum.

The FBI confirmed that Patel’s emails had been targeted. In a statement, bureau spokesman Ben Williamson said, “we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity” and that the data involved was “historical in nature and involves no government information.”

Handala, which presents itself as a group of pro-Palestinian vigilante hackers, is considered by Western researchers to be one of several personas used by Iranian government cyberintelligence units. Handala recently claimed the hack of Michigan-based medical devices and services provider Stryker on March 11, saying they had deleted a massive trove of company data.

Alongside the photographs of Patel, the hackers published a sample of more than 300 emails, which appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence dating between 2010 and 2019.

Reuters was not able to independently authenticate the Patel messages, but the personal Gmail address that Handala claims to have broken into matches the address linked to Patel in previous data breaches preserved by the dark web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. Alphabet-owned Google, which runs Gmail, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘Make them feel vulnerable’

Iran-linked hackers — who initially kept a low profile after the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against the Islamic Republic last month — have increasingly boasted of their cyber operations as the conflict drags on.

In addition to the hack against Stryker, Handala on Thursday claimed to have published the personal data of dozens of defence company Lockheed Martin employees stationed in the Middle East. In a statement, Lockheed Martin said it was aware of the reports and had policies and procedures in place “to mitigate cyber threats to our business.”

Gil Messing, chief of staff at Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point, said the hack-and-leak operation against Patel was part of Iran’s strategy to embarrass US officials and “make them feel vulnerable.”

The Iranians, he said, are “firing whatever they have.”

It is not unusual for foreign hackers to target senior officials’ personal emails, and breaches and leaks both happen periodically. Hackers famously broke into Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal Gmail account ahead of the 2016 election and published much of the data to the WikiLeaks site. In 2015, teenage hackers broke into then-CIA director John Brennan’s personal AOL account and leaked data about US intelligence officials.

Relatively unsophisticated breaches of this nature are in line with a US intelligence assessment reviewed by Reuters on March 2. The assessment said Iran and its proxies could respond to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with low-level hacks against US digital networks.

Iran-linked hackers may have other emails in reserve.

Last year, another group operating under the pseudonym “Robert” told Reuters it was considering disclosing 100 gigabytes of data stolen from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other figures close to US President Donald Trump.

Reuters has not been able to verify the claim and the group has not responded to messages in several months.