03-27 00:02 · AI,OpenAI,多模态,AI
OpenAI推出支持视频输入和输出的新一代多模态AI模型，在多个基准测试中表现优异
OpenAI今日正式发布了其新一代多模态AI模型，该模型在视频理解和生成能力方面实现了重大突破。
**技术特性**：
1. **视频输入支持**：模型能够直接处理视频片段，理解其中的场景、动作、物体和人物关系
2. **视频生成能力**：可根据文本描述生成高质量、连贯的视频内容，支持多种风格和分辨率
3. **多模态融合**：在文本、图像、音频、视频四种模态间实现无缝转换和理解
4. **基准测试表现**：在多个国际基准测试中表现优异，特别是在视频问答和内容生成任务上
**应用场景**：
- **内容创作**：为视频制作、广告、教育内容提供AI辅助
- **监控分析**：实时分析监控视频，识别异常行为和物体
- **娱乐产业**：为游戏、电影制作提供AI生成内容
- **教育培训**：创建交互式学习材料和模拟场景
**技术突破**：
- 采用新的Transformer架构，专门优化视频序列处理
- 训练数据包含数百万小时的标注视频内容
- 推理效率提升40%，相比前代模型减少计算资源消耗
- 支持实时视频处理，延迟低于100毫秒
**行业影响**：
OpenAI此举将进一步推动多模态AI技术的发展，特别是在视频内容理解和生成领域。竞争对手包括Google的VideoPoet、Meta的Make-A-Video等。分析认为，视频AI市场将在未来3年内达到千亿美元规模。
该模型现已通过API向开发者和企业客户开放，标准版支持720p视频处理，专业版支持4K视频和实时流处理。
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03-27 00:02 · AI,技术,HackerNews,AI
From zero to a RAG system: successes and failures
A few months ago I was tasked with creating an internal tool for the company's engineers: a Chat that used a local LLM. Nothing extraordinary so far. Then the requirements came in: it had to have a fast response, I insist... fast!, and... it also had to provide answers about every project the company has done throughout its entire history (almost a decade). They didn't want a traditional search engine, but a tool where you could ask questions in natural language and get answers with references to the original documents. With emphasis on providing information from OrcaFlex files (a simulation software for floating body dynamics, cables, etc., widely used in the offshore industry). It already seemed complex, but it was confirmed when I was given access to 1 TB of projects, mixed with technical documentation, reports, analyses, regulations, CSVs, etc. The emotional roller coaster had begun.
I'll tell you upfront that it was neither a quick nor easy process, and that's why I'd like to share it. From the first attempts, mistakes, to the final architecture that ended up in production. I also want to highlight that I had never done anything similar before and didn't know how a RAG worked either.
We'll go problem by problem, and the solution I applied to each one.
Problem 1: selecting the right technology
The first step was to define the stack.
I needed a local language model, without relying on external APIs, for confidentiality reasons. Ollama emerged as the most mature and easy-to-use option for running LLaMA models locally. I tried several embeddings, and nomic-embed-text
offered good performance and quality for technical documents.
Next was a RAG engine to orchestrate the document indexing process, embedding generation, vector database storage, and queries. Without it, no matter how fast the language model is, we couldn't retrieve relevant information from the documents. Think of it like a book's index: without it, you'd have to read the entire book to find the information you need. And with a good index, you can go straight to the right page. I'll call this process indexing for simplicity, although it's really a vectorization and indexing process.
After some research, I found a mature open source framework called LlamaIndex.
The language I'd use would be Python, I could list many reasons, but the most important one is that I feel comfortable and productive with it. Additionally, both Ollama and LlamaIndex have excellent Python SDKs.
I was ready to start building the software. I wrote my first scripts to run vector tests on the RAG system and do some query experiments. It worked really well with very little code. I thought it would be a project of a few weeks. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The next step was working with the actual documents. Hold on tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride!
Problem 2: the document chaos
My file source was a folder on Azure with a massive amount of technical documents: hundreds of gigabytes, thousands of files, various formats, with no organization or structure beyond the folder hierarchy. Every data engineer's dream (note the irony).
I cracked my knuckles, set the RAG output to save to disk, and launched my first script. LlamaIndex ended up overflowing my laptop's RAM within minutes, choking my OS until everything froze. I tried many configurations, caching systems, and other strategies, but at some point my machine always died.
After debugging, I discovered it was processing huge files that contributed nothing: videos, simulations, backup files... Documents that added nothing to a RAG system, but that LlamaIndex tried to process as if they were text. If a file weighed several gigabytes, the system tried to load it entirely into memory for processing, which was suicide.
I added a filtering system to the pipeline that excluded files by extension and by name patterns (simulation files, numerical results, etc.).
I also removed files that were expensive to process and didn't add value either, like CSVs, JSONs, among others. On the other hand, I converted PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, etc. files to plain text so LlamaIndex could process them without issues.
The result was a 54% reduction in the number of files to index. And of course, my RAM stopped exploding.
I could finally start indexing without fear.
Problem 3: indexing 451GB of documents without dying in the attempt
A RAG involves creating a vector index file containing document embeddings. Vectors are numerical representations of documents that allow measuring their similarity. LlamaIndex has a simple system you can configure with a couple of lines. You just point it to the directory and it takes care of storing all the information inside in JSON format. It's really convenient, works well, unless you're dealing with hundreds of gigabytes of documents. The system became unmanageable: every time the service restarted, it had to reprocess all documents from scratch, which could take days. Also, the default format is not optimal for larg
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03-27 00:02 · AI,技术,HackerNews,AI
We Rewrote JSONata with AI in a Day, Saved $500K/Year
A few weeks ago, Cloudflare published “How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week.” One engineer and an AI model reimplemented the Next.js API surface on Vite. Cost about $1,100 in tokens.
The implementation details didn’t interest me that much (I don’t work on frontend frameworks), but the methodology did. They took the existing Next.js spec and test suite, then pointed AI at it and had it implement code until every test passed. Midway through reading, I realized we had the exact same problem - only in our case, it was with our JSON transformation pipeline.
Long story short, we took the same approach and ran with it. The result is gnata — a pure-Go implementation of JSONata 2.x. Seven hours, $400 in tokens, a 1,000x speedup on common expressions, and the start of a chain of optimizations that ended up saving us $500K/year.
An expensive language boundary
At Reco, we have a policy engine that evaluates JSONata expressions against every message in our data pipeline - billions of events, on thousands of distinct expressions. JSONata is a query and transformation language for JSON (think jq with lambda functions), which makes it ideal for enabling our researchers to write detection rules without having to directly interact with the codebase.
The reference implementation is JavaScript, whereas our pipeline is in Go. So for years we’ve been running a fleet of jsonata-js pods on Kubernetes - Node.js processes that our Go services call over RPC. That meant that for every event (and expression) we had to serialize, send over the network, evaluate, serialize the result, and finally send it back.
This was costing us ~$300K/year in compute, and the number kept growing as more customers and detection rules were added. For example, one of our larger clusters had scaled out to well over 200 replicas just for JSONata expressions, which resulted in some unexpected Kubernetes troubles (like reaching IP allocation limits).
In some respects, the RPC latency overhead was actually worse than the pure dollar cost. An RPC round-trip is ~150 microseconds before any evaluation even starts. For a simple field lookup like user.email = "admin@co.com" something that should take nanoseconds - we’re paying microseconds just for crossing a language boundary. At our scale, those microseconds stack up quickly.
We’d tried a few things over the years - optimizing expressions, output caching, and even embedding V8 directly into Go (to avoid the network hop). They did their part, but it was mostly just incremental improvements. The closest we got was a local evaluator we built using GJSON that handled simple expressions directly on raw bytes. It was fast for what it covered, but anything complex had to fall back to jsonata-js. We were patching around the problem, but the root cause remained unsolved.
Building gnata
During the weekend I built out a plan (using AI) separated into ‘waves’. The approach was the same as Cloudflare’s vinext rewrite: port the official jsonata-js test suite to Go, then implement the evaluator until every test passes. The following day, I pressed play. The plan was straightforward - build out the full JSONata 2.x spec in Go, with a focus on performant streaming and some extra features sprinkled on (localized caching, WASM support, metrics, and fallthrough capabilities back to the jsonata-js RPC).
A few iterations and some 7 hours later - 13,000 lines of Go with 1,778 passing test cases.
Total token cost: $400.
I shared the numbers internally and someone asked about the ROI. Production cost for jsonata-js in the previous month was about $25K - now it was 0. That conversation ended up being pretty short.
Two-tier evaluation
gnata has a two-tier evaluation architecture. At compile time, each expression is analyzed and classified.
The fast path handles simple expressions - field lookups, comparisons, and a set of 21 built-in functions applied to pure paths (things like $exists(a.b) or $lowercase(name)). These are evaluated directly against the raw JSON bytes without ever fully parsing the document. For something like account.status = "active" you get 0 heap allocations.
Everything else goes through the full path - a complete parser and evaluator with full JSONata 2.x semantics. This does parse the JSON, but only the subtrees it actually needs, not the entire document.
On top of this there’s a streaming layer (the StreamEvaluator) designed for our specific workload: evaluate N compiled expressions against each event, where events are structurally similar.
- All field paths from all expressions are merged into a single scan. The number of expressions doesn’t matter - raw event bytes are only read once.
- After warm-up, the hot path is lock-free. Evaluation plans are computed once per event schema and cached immutably, so reads are a single atomic load with no synchronization.
- Memory is bounded. The cache has a configurable capacity and evicts the oldest entries when full.
The fast-path design took a lot of inspiration from t
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03-27 00:02 · AI,技术,HackerNews,AI
New York City hospitals drop Palantir as controversial AI firm expands in UK
New York City’s public hospital system announced that it would not be renewing its contract with Palantir as controversy mounts in the UK over the data analytics and AI firm’s government contract.
The president of the US’s largest municipal public healthcare system, Dr Mitchell Katz, testified last week before the New York city council that the agreement with Palantir would expire in October.
He said at the hearing that the contract, which focused on recovering money for insurance claims, was always meant to be short-term, and that there was an “absolute firewall” preventing Palantir from sharing information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said that the agency had “not had any incidents”.
The contract and related payment documents shared with the Guardian by the American Friends Service Committee and first reported by the Intercept, show that NYC Health + Hospitals has paid Palantir nearly $4m since November 2023. The contract noted that Palantir would be able to review notes about patients’ health and help the hospital claim more money in public benefits through programs such as Medicaid. It also includes a line stating that with permission from the city agency, Palantir can “de-identify” patients’ protected health information and use it for “purposes other than research”.
NYC Health + Hospitals said in an email to the Guardian that it will be transitioning to systems that were made entirely in-house, and there will be no data shared with Palantir or use of the company’s applications after the contract expires. “NYC Health + Hospitals’ use of Palantir technology is strictly limited to revenue cycle optimization, helping the public healthcare system close gaps between services delivered and charges captured, protect critical revenue, and reduce avoidable denials,” the agency said in an emailed statement.
A Palantir spokesperson said in a statement: “Palantir, as a software company, does not own or have any rights to customer data – and each customer environment is individually protected against unauthorized access or misuse via robust security controls which can be fully administered and audited by the customer.”
Palantir presence grows in the UK
As New York City’s hospital system prepares to part ways with Palantir, the company is facing similar scrutiny over privacy issues in its £330m agreement with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Health officials in the UK are concerned that the controversy surrounding Palantir may stop the nationwide rollout of the company’s data system, even though Keir Starmer is trying to speed up deployment. As of last summer, not even half of the country’s health authorities had started using Palantir’s technology amid concerns from the community and doctors. A 12 March briefing by Medact, a health justice charity, said Palantir’s software could enable “data-driven state abuses of power”, including US-style ICE raids. Palantir has denied that the data could be used in this way, noting that it would be illegal and a breach of contract.
Palantir, which also contracts with the British government’s Ministry of Defence, is expanding its influence in the country – despite backlash from activists and some lawmakers. The Guardian revealed last week that Palantir is trying to gain access to sensitive national financial regulation data.
The Financial Conduct Authority, a watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, awarded Palantir a contract to investigate internal intelligence data to help root out financial crime. That has sparked outcry from some MPs, who have urged the government to halt this agreement. Liberal Democrats called on Monday for a government investigation into the contract. Starmer has dismissed suggestions that the UK has become “dangerously over-reliant” on American tech companies, including Palantir, but noted he preferred to have more domestic capability.
Medact has raised privacy concerns in the UK about Palantir’s ability to access de-identified patient data. (De-identified data refers to data that has been stripped of characteristics that could indicate who an individual is, such as names and social security numbers.) In a 12 March briefing for health officials, Medact argued that the NHS’s data privacy protections are insufficient; NHS England has said that data is de-identified as it moves through its national software system, the NHS federated data platform (FDP). But Medact cited concerns that this data can be easily re-identified.
An NHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement to the Guardian that the supplier of the FDP “was appointed in line with public contract regulations and must only operate under the instruction of the NHS, with all access to data remaining under NHS control and strict contractual obligations protecting confidentiality”.
Data privacy concerns
Data privacy experts interviewed by the Guardian said that there are risks in Palantir accessing New Yorkers’ de-identified data for purposes other
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03-27 00:02 · AI,技术,HackerNews,大模型,AI
My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack
Now I have the full picture. Here's my analysis:
What 2.1.81
is: Claude Code v2.1.81. You had 5 Claude Code instances running at shutdown time.
Shutdown timeline:
- 01:36:33 — Force shutdown initiated
- 01:36:36 — Shutdown stall captured (162 processes still running, 21 of them Python)
- 01:37:11 — System booted
Process tree at shutdown:
Normal Claude Code MCP servers (2 instances):
Claude Code [82193] → python3.13 [88842] → node [88854] (416MB)
Claude Code [35621] → python3.13 [45088] → node [45091] (228MB)
These are MCP server bridges — Python wraps a Node.js MCP server. Normal behavior.
A uv run
chain:
zsh → uv [74172] (deadlocked) → python3.13 [74174] (running a .py file)
→ python3.13 [74180] (python -c "...", reading pipe)
→ python3.13 [86263] (running .py file, sleeping + os.stat)
→ python3.13 [86264] (python -c "...", reading pipe)
14 orphaned python -c
processes (two batches of 7):
- PIDs 89759-89765 (~38 hours old)
- PIDs 67956-67962 (different age)
- All running
_PyRun_SimpleStringFlagsWithName
— this ispython -c "exec(base64.b64decode(...))"
- All orphaned (parent died, reparented to launchd)
- All stuck reading from a dead pipe
What likely happened:
The exec(base64.b64decode('...'))
pattern is not malware — it's how Python tooling (including Claude Code's Bash tool) passes code snippets to python -c
while avoiding shell escaping issues. The base64 encoding is just a safe transport mechanism.
The 11k process storm was likely a runaway spawning loop from one of these sources:
- A Claude Code tool/agent interaction that got stuck in a loop spawning
python -c
processes - A
uv run
script (the 74174 chain) that had a subprocess spawning bug
Good news:
- No persistence mechanisms found — no suspicious crontabs, launch agents, or launchd jobs
- No suspicious Python processes running now — clean after reboot
- All processes used your local uv Python — nothing from unknown paths
- No malicious indicators — all parents trace back to Claude Code, uv, or zsh
Recommendations:
- Check if you had a Claude Code agent running in a loop before the incident
- If it happens again, try
killall python3.13
before force-shutting down - Consider setting a process limit:
ulimit -u 2048
in your.zshrc
to prevent fork bombs
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03-27 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Lebanon’s PM warns Israeli actions and statements threaten Lebanese sovereignty and violate international law.
The Israeli military is sending more troops into southern Lebanon despite growing international concern about Israel’s deadly bombardment and push to deepen its invasion of Lebanese territory.
The Israeli military said in a social media post on Thursday that troops from Division 162 would operate in southern Lebanon “with the aim of expanding” a so-called “buffer zone” in the area.
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Division 162 is joining two other army divisions already operating in southern Lebanon, it said in a social media post.
The deployment of additional troops comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military planned to create “a larger buffer zone” in southern Lebanon to push back a missile threat from the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Israel launched intensified attacks on its northern neighbour in early March after Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israeli territory following the February 28 assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the US-Israel war on Iran.
The Israeli military has carried out aerial and ground attacks across Lebanon while issuing mass forced displacement orders for residents of the country’s south, as well as several suburbs of the capital, Beirut.
More than 1.2 million people have been forced out of their homes since the beginning of March, according to the United Nations, prompting concerns about a mounting humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s attacks have also killed at least 1,116 people and wounded 3,229 others, figures from Lebanon’s Ministry of Health showed.
Foreign countries have called for de-escalation, with France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Canada warning last week that an expanded Israeli ground offensive “would have devastating humanitarian consequences” and “must be averted”.
But Israeli troops have pushed deeper into Lebanese territory while Defence Minister Israel Katz said Lebanese citizens would not be allowed to return to their homes in the south until the safety of northern Israel is secured.
‘Threatens Lebanon’s sovereignty’
On Thursday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned against Israel’s push to deepen its ground invasion during a phone call with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
In a readout of the talks, Salam’s office said the Lebanese leader told Guterres that Israel’s actions and statements “constitute a matter of utmost gravity that threatens Lebanon’s sovereignty” and violates international law and the UN Charter.
Salam also said his government would submit a complaint to the UN Security Council to urge the world body “to fulfill its responsibilities in putting an end to these violations”.
Amnesty International also warned that the destruction of bridges and homes in southern Lebanon reflected Israel’s “record of atrocity crimes” in the Gaza Strip, where it has carried out a genocidal war against Palestinians since October 2023.
“The Israeli military has already extensively destroyed and devastated civilian life in southern Lebanon. The world must not stand by as Israeli leaders shamelessly threaten further destruction and displacement,” the rights group said in a post on X.
“Israel must not be allowed to violate international law with impunity across the region. World leaders must uphold their international legal obligations to halt Israel’s unlawful destruction of civilian property.”
Meanwhile, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem this week promised that the group would continue fighting “without limits” against what he described as “an enemy that occupies land and continues daily aggression”.
Hezbollah announced more than 45 military operations against Israel on Thursday, including rocket and drone firings and the targeting of Israeli troops inside Lebanon.
The group also said it targeted several Israeli armoured vehicles with guided missiles, including two Merkava tanks in the border town of Deir Siryan.
A Hezbollah rocket attack on the coastal Israeli city of Nahariya also killed one person and injured 11 others, according to the Israeli authorities.
Separately, the Israeli military said one soldier was killed, and four others were injured, in an “incident” in southern Lebanon.
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03-27 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Defence minister claims Israel has killed Alireza Tangsiri, citing his role in blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
An Israeli air strike has killed the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy, Israel’s defence minister says.
The assassination of Alireza Tangsiri was carried out on Wednesday night and targeted other “senior officers of the naval command”, Israel Katz said on Thursday in a video statement.
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“The man who was directly responsible for the terrorist operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz to shipping was blown up and eliminated,” he said.
Since the start of the United States-Israel war on Iran on February 28, Israel has announced the assassination of several top Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and security chief Ali Larijani.
The toll on civilians is far heavier.
In almost one month, at least 1,937 people have been killed, including 452 women and children, Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Ali Jafarian told Al Jazeera. In addition, at least 24,800 people have been injured, including 4,000 women and 1,621 children, Jafarian added.
Earlier, Al Jazeera reported on the latest victims – two teenage boys who were killed in Shiraz.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tehran, said Tangsiri was a “well-known commander” who was instrumental in shaping the country’s naval doctrine underpinning its strategy in the Strait of Hormuz.
“He’s been commander of the navy for years, the IRGC’s navy, and he’s known to have worked a lot on developing the posture and the technicalities of this navy,” Hashem said. “He’s responsible for also developing drones for military maritime use.”
Hashem added that in recent weeks, Tangsiri had been in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, directly overseeing Iran’s efforts to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz by blocking some vessels.
He said Tangsiri’s social media accounts had also been posting updates on which ships were permitted to pass through the strait, moves that have contributed to a global surge in energy prices.
“He was one of those commanders who survived the two waves of assassinations, the one in 2025 and the one in 2026,” Hashem said. “But at the end, he was killed in Bandar Abbas. At least this is what the Israeli reports are saying.”
Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, said the assassination of Alireza Tangsiri “makes the region safer,” and added in a post on X that US forces have destroyed about 92 percent of Iran’s large naval vessels in ongoing operations.
Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, also in Tehran, said there was no official Iranian confirmation yet of Tangsiri’s killing.
“But if it’s true, it’s going to be another major blow for a country that has already experienced a lot of military commanders being killed,” he said.
The head of the Basij paramilitary forces, Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, and Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib were also assassinated in Israeli attacks.
In recent days, Israeli forces have carried out several strikes targeting the naval assets of Iran.
Last week, Israeli air attacks hit several Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea, including ones equipped with missile systems, support vessels and patrol craft.
Iran has been blocking ships it perceives as linked to the US and Israeli war from the Strait of Hormuz, but it is letting a trickle of others through the crucial waterway.
Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a bloc of six Gulf Arab nations, said Iran was charging for safe passage through the strait.
On Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Iran was letting its tankers pass through the strait, after talks with Iranian, Turkish and other regional leaders.
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03-27 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
The US president has threatened the attacks as a means of pressuring Iran to reopen Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway.
United States President Donald Trump has pushed back a self-imposed deadline for attacks on Iran’s power grid to April 6, citing progress in negotiations to end the ongoing war in the country.
Thursday’s announcement comes as the president continues to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil traffic.
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“As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 PM, Eastern Time,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well.”
The post marked the latest postponement Trump has announced since he first threatened Iran’s energy system.
On Sunday, Trump threatened to attack Iran’s power grid if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened within 48 hours. He wrote that he would strike energy plants, “STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST”.
Then, on Monday, he said he would delay the strikes for another five days based on “good and productive conversations” that Iran denies took place. Thursday’s is the second such delay.
The Trump administration has often put forward contradictory statements about the direction of the war, which began when the US and Israel attacked Iran nearly one month ago, on February 28.
But intentionally targeting Iran’s power supply could increase criticism of the overall military campaign.
A possible war crime?
Already, legal experts have described the initial attack on Iran as an act of unprovoked aggression.
Destroying or damaging civilian infrastructure, meanwhile, could be considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
Analysts, however, have noted a trend in contemporary warfare towards attacking “dual-use” structures that benefit both military and civilian populations.
In Ukraine, for instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin justified an attack on energy infrastructure by saying it would set back the country’s military industrial complex. Still, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for those Russian attacks.
Amnesty International is among the rights groups that have denounced Trump’s plans to bomb Iranian power stations as “a threat to commit war crimes”.
Despite confident assertions from the White House that the victory in Iran is close at hand, the war shows few signs of ending.
Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, meanwhile, has sent shockwaves through the global economy. More than one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the narrow waterway, along Iran’s shoreline.
Faced with threats to oil tankers, traffic through the strait has largely ground to a halt.
Trump has issued calls to allies to help reopen the strait, but so far, he has encountered scepticism from NATO countries and other partners.
In a cabinet meeting earlier on Thursday, Trump reiterated his position that Iran was “begging” for a deal to end the war, despite continued strikes against US bases and allies across the region. He also blasted media reports that Iran has rejected the US’s 15-point plan to reach a ceasefire.
“ They’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating. We will not negotiate.’ Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated. Who wouldn’t negotiate?” Trump asked.
“If they make the right deal, then the strait will open up.”
Reports in the US media have suggested that the White House is considering ground operations against Iran, a step that analysts warn would lead to further escalation.
Already, an estimated 1,937 people have been killed in Iran, and 13 US military members have died. Dozens more deaths have been reported around the Middle East.
Iran, however, has denied that talks are taking place and has threatened to step up attacks around the region if the US or Israel target its energy grid.
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03-27 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Iran has blocked the passage of vessels carrying 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.
The de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran in response to the United States-Israel war has caused one of the worst energy crises in decades with experts warning of a looming global recession.
The maritime route, through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies pass, has been thrust into the spotlight as Tehran has used it as a geopolitical bargaining chip in the war.
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Nearly 2,000 vessels are stranded close to the narrow strait, which is located between Iran on its north side and Oman and the United Arab Emirates on its south side.
On Thursday, Iranian media reported that the country’s parliament is seeking to pass legislation to collect tolls for ships transiting the world’s single most important oil passageway.
The reports by the Tasnim and Fars news agencies, quoting the chairman of parliament’s Civil Affairs Committee, said a draft law has been prepared and will soon be finalised by the Islamic Consultative Assembly’s legal team.
“According to this plan, Iran must collect fees to ensure the security of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz,” an official was quoted as saying.
“This is completely natural. Just as in other corridors, when goods pass through a country, duties are paid. The Strait of Hormuz is also a corridor. We ensure its security, and it is natural for ships and tankers to pay us duties,” he added.
But even without that domestic legal framework, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has already imposed a “toll booth” system to control vessel traffic through the strait, the shipping journal Lloyd’s List reported on Wednesday.
So what is the toll booth system? How does it work? Is it legal?
Here’s what we know:
Why has Iran made the decision to impose tolls?
Iran, whose territorial waters extend into the strait, has blocked the passage of vessels carrying oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Gulf to the rest of the world since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28.
The move has sent global oil prices soaring above $100 per barrel – a jump of roughly 40 percent from before the war – forcing countries, particularly in Asia, to ration fuel and cut industrial production. Impacted countries have been lobbying Iran to allow vessels to pass through the strait, which is the only route through which to export oil and gas from most of the Gulf producers.
Iran has demanded international recognition of its right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz as one of its five conditions for ending the war.
On Sunday, Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi told the United Kingdom-based, Farsi-language satellite TV channel Iran International that the country has been charging some vessels $2m to pass through the strait.
“Now, because war has costs, naturally, we must do this and take transit fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.
How many ships are waiting to pass through the strait?
International Maritime Organization Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez told Al Jazeera that nearly 2,000 ships are waiting on both sides of the strait to sail through it.
Maritime intelligence service Windward said this build-up suggests that “many operators have chosen to hold position outside Hormuz rather than commit immediately to long-haul rerouting.”
Only 16 crossings by ships with their Automatic Identification System (AIS) switched on were observed in the Strait of Hormuz in the week from March 15 to Sunday. Windward separately confirmed that four cargo vessels crossed or were crossing the strait overnight on March 13 and into the early morning, including one Pakistani vessel.
Windward also observed the presence of eight “dark ships” exceeding 290 metres (950ft) long and operating in the strait with their AIS switched off.
Dark ships included a US-sanctioned ship observed near the UAE’s Khor Fakkan port, an important hub for oil tankers, on March 16 before turning off its AIS.
What is the process to collect tolls?
While the Iranian parliament is yet to pass the legislation to impose tolls, in the past two weeks, “26 vessel transits through the strait have followed a route pre-approved under the IRGC ‘toll booth’ system that requires the ship operators to submit to a vetting scheme,” Lloyd’s List reported on Wednesday. These ships did not have their AIS switched on.
Sources familiar with the new system have told Lloyd’s List that to pass through the strait, vessel operators have to first reach out to intermediaries connected to the IRGC and submit all details of the vessel. This includes documentation, its International Maritime Organization number, the cargo being transported, the names of all members of the crew and the vessel’s final destination.
The intermediaries then
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03-27 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Trump claims US, Israel wiped out navy and air force, as Iran lawmakers plan to collect tolls for transiting ships.
Tehran has formally responded to Washington’s 15-point plan to end the US-Israel war on Iran, asserting its “natural and legal right” over the Strait of Hormuz, as US President Donald Trump claimed it was “begging to make a deal”.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated Tasnim news agency cited an “informed source” as saying that Iran had sent its official response to a US proposal to end the nearly monthlong war on Wednesday night and was awaiting a response.
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The Tasnim report published Thursday appeared to contradict Trump’s claim, laying out conditions that signalled a continued hardening of Tehran’s position.
These included an end to “aggressive acts of assassination” that have decapitated Iran’s leadership, from late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to security chief Ali Larijani, “compensation and war reparations”, measures to ensure “war does not recur”, and an end to hostilities from “all resistance groups that took part in this battle throughout the region”.
State English-language broadcaster Press TV cited an unnamed official outlining a five-point proposal covering the same conditions.
Signs of indirect Iranian engagement came as US special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed on Thursday that Tehran was seeking an “off-ramp”.
Speaking during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Witkoff said there were “signs” Iran had realised there was no alternative to negotiation.
“We will see where things lead, and if we can convince Iran that this is the inflection point with no good alternatives for them other than more death and destruction,” Witkoff told reporters.
He confirmed Pakistan had been acting as a mediator, adding that the US had “multiple reach outs from the region and others who want to play a role in ending this conflict, peacefully” and pinning blame on Iran for “stalling talks”.
But the source cited in Tasnim’s report slammed the US proposal, claiming that the US sought to “deceive the world by presenting an apparently peaceful image that seeks an end to the war” to keep oil prices low and prepare for “ground invasion”.
The source indicated that Washington’s bombings of the country during peace talks had eroded trust regarding its “willingness to negotiate at any point”.
‘Lousy fighters, but great negotiators’
On Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would pause attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure for 10 days until April 6, claiming Tehran requested the move amid “ongoing” talks that were “going very well”.
Earlier, the US president had presented Iran as being on the back foot, saying the country was “begging to make a deal”. “We are absolutely obliterating Iran,” he said, claiming to have “completely” wiped out the navy and air force. He called Iranians “lousy fighters, but great negotiators”.
His comments, including claims that the US was “way ahead of schedule” in the war came as the economic and humanitarian toll of the conflict mounted, with Iran continuing to effectively block the Strait of Hormuz – a critical waterway through which a fifth of global oil supplies pass – leading to fuel shortages spreading worldwide, and sending companies and countries scrambling to contain the fallout.
Alluding to an earlier remark about Iran giving the US a “very big present” as a concession, he said that the country was letting 10 oil tankers transit the Strait of Hormuz as an apparent goodwill gesture. On the same day, Iranian media had reported that lawmakers were seeking to pass legislation to collect tolls for transiting ships.
Reporting from Washington, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said Trump was “running into problems domestically – long lines at airports to get through security, the cost-of-living crisis getting worse, fuel becoming much more expensive. He needs reaffirmation from his cabinet that he’s doing a good job.
“Now, from people I speak to, they still believe that Donald Trump wants to see this war done within the four-to-six week timescale that he’s talked about,” said Fisher. “He wants to be able to say: ‘See, it was done. I predicted it. I was right.’”
In other comments, US Vice President JD Vance echoed Trump, saying the “conventional military” in Iran had been “effectively destroyed” during the war. Vance said Iran no longer had a navy and “they don’t have the ability to hit us like they could of, even a few weeks ago.”
The Reuters news agency cited a Pakistani source as saying that Israel had taken Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf off its list of targets after Pakistan urged Washington to press Israel not to target people who could be negotiating partners.
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