Digital monitor Netblocks says Iran’s internet blackout has lasted over a thousand hours, AFP reports.

While Iran’s domestic intranet remains operational, access to the global internet has been restricted since February.

“It is the Israeli public that holds Netanyahu’s fate in its hands,” writes Jonathan Freedland, writing on the role of the Israeli PM in the current Middle East tensions.

“What record will he be able to present to that domestic electorate, the one that judges him by his own lights? … Netanyahu-ism has gained nothing, and it has come at a monstrously high price.”

Read more of his analysis below:

In Islamabad, mutual mistrust remained the order of the day, Agence France-Presse reports.

“We have good intentions but we do not trust,” Iranian state TV quoted the head of the Iranian delegation, parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, as saying upon his arrival. “ Our experience in negotiating with the Americans has always been met with failure and broken promises”.

JD Vance, the US vice-president and head of their delegation, was equally wary. “If [the Iranians are] going to try and play us, they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive,” he told reporters.

Donald Trump has said his top priority is to ensure the Islamic republic cannot have a nuclear weapon – “That’s 99% of it” – but stopping the continuing Israeli strikes on Lebanon, a key demand from Iran as a condition of the truce, as well as the precise terms for allowing shipping traffic through the blockaded strait of Hormuz will also play a key part.

The Iranian side say negotiations cannot begin without commitments on Lebanon and on unblocking Iranian assets seized as part of sanctions. Israel and the US’s position is that that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire.

Trump, posting on social media, said “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. They only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”

Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif says making progress will be hard work. “This is the stage which, in English, is called the equivalent of ‘make or break’,” he said.

In Islamabad, all routes leading to the Serena hotel, which is hosting the talks, were blocked off with heavy security, with banners and signs along the expressway heralding the “Islamabad Talks”. But in Tehran, a 30-year-old local told AFP he was skeptical negotiations would be successful, describing most of what Trump says as “pure noise and nonsense”.

Islamabad continues to prepare for the upcoming ceasefire talks and the arrivals of delegates in Pakistan’s capital. Here are some new images coming into the newsroom today.