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Iran’s president said his country will continue talks with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program but will not withdraw from its rights because of U.S. threats.

“We are negotiating, and we will negotiate, we are not after war but we do not fear any threat,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said during a speech to navy officials broadcast by state television Saturday.

“It is not like that they think if they threaten us, we will give up our human right and definite right,” Pezeshkian said. “We will not withdraw, we will not easily loose honorable military, scientific, nuclear in all fields.”

The negotiations have reached the “expert” level, meaning the sides are trying to reach agreement on the details of a possible deal. But a major sticking point remains Iran’s enrichment of uranium, which Tehran insists it must be allowed to do and the Trump administration increasingly insists the Islamic Republic must give up.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Earlier on Friday, Trump said Iran received a proposal during the talks, though he did not elaborate.

During his trip to region this week, Trump at nearly every event insisted Iran could not be allowed to obtain a nuclear bomb, something U.S. intelligence agencies assess Tehran is not actively pursuing, though its program is on the cusp of being able to weaponize nuclear material.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s atomic organization, stressed the peaceful nature of the program, saying it is under “continuous” monitoring by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, state TV reported Saturday.

“No country is monitored by the agency like us,” Eslami said, adding that the agency inspected the country’s nuclear facilities more than 450 time in 2024. “Something about 25% of all the agency inspections” in the year.

Meanwhile, Israel routinely has threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if it feels threatened, further complicating tensions in the Mideast already spiked by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

In his first reaction to Trump’s regional visit, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Trump wasn’t truthful when he made claims about creating peace through power.

“Trump said that he wanted to use power for peace, he lied. He and the U.S. administration used power for massacre in Gaza, for waging wars in any place they could,” Khamenei said Saturday during a meeting with teachers broadcast on state television.

The U.S. has provided Israel with 10-ton bombs to “drop on Gaza children, hospitals, houses of people in Lebanon and anywhere else when they can,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei, who has the final say on all Iranian state matters, reiterated his traditional stance against Israel.

“Definitely, the Zionist regime is the spot of corruption, war, rifts. The Zionist regime that is lethal, dangerous, cancerous tumor should be certainly eradicated, and it will be,” he said, adding that the U.S. has imposed a pattern on Arab nations under which they cannot endeavor without U.S. support.

“Surely this model has failed. With efforts of the regional nations, the U.S. should leave the region, and it will leave,” Khamenei said.

Iran has long considered the U.S. military presence in the region as a threat on its doorstep, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions.

The United Nations says 70% of Gaza is already “within Israeli militarized zones, under displacement orders, or both.”

Fresh evacuation orders were issued last week, just days after Israel declared large swathes of Gaza City unsafe.

On Friday, an NBC News team in Gaza captured people moving in search of safety, some driving in battered trucks while others used carts pulled by donkeys, while others fled on foot.

“I’ve been displaced four times, back and forth,” said Yusra Abu Warda from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. “There is no place, no shelter. I will stay on the streets.”

Other residents are have given up on moving despite the evacuation orders, too exhausted or disillusioned to flee yet again.

“Last year, we saw hundreds of thousands forced from area to area, but now people are just too exhausted,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNRWA, speaking to NBC News from Amman, Jordan. “They’re just they’re just too tired to move.”

After returning home during a six-week ceasefire in January and February, Wateridge said many Palestinians are now disregarding new orders, uncertain of their safety wherever they move.

“They’re just kind of staying put and accepting that wherever they go, they’re not going to be safe,” she added.

No aid has entered Gaza since March 2, and the risk of famine hangs over Gaza’s population, prompting alarm even among some of Israel’s closest allies.

A U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aims to start work in the enclave by the end of May, transporting aid into Gaza via so-called secure hubs, from which aid groups will handle distribution, a source familiar with the plan told Reuters.

Wateridge said the plan was “essentially using food to bait people, to move people around, to forcibly displaced people.”

“Is this going to be used to move people out of areas? Because if people are starving, of course, they will go,” she said. 

“If the intent was genuine to feed people, that can be done tomorrow,” Wateridge said, referring to existing humanitarian systems that had been effectively distributing aid in the 16 months prior. “So that does beg to question what the intent is.”

Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid, a claim the group denies.

A senior Israeli security official said last week that the “humanitarian blockade will continue, and only later — after the operational phase begins and a large-scale civilian evacuation to the south is completed — will a humanitarian plan be implemented.”

They added that, unlike in the past, the military “will remain in every area it secures to prevent the return of terror.”

The mass internal displacement of Palestinians comes amid further reports that Palestinians could be relocated outside of Gaza. Earlier this year, Trump said that Jordan and Egypt could take in Palestinians from Gaza.

On Friday, sources told NBC News that the Trump administration may be working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, according to five people with knowledge of the effort.

The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said. 

No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said.

The State Department and the National Security Council did not respond to multiple requests for comment. However, after publication, a spokesperson denied the reports were true.

BALTIMORE — Sovereignty is not running out of that starting gate in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, two weeks after winning the Kentucky Derby. Yet he is still the talk of Pimlico Race Course this week.

That is because owners and trainer Bill Mott opted to skip the Preakness and with it a chance at the Triple Crown because of the short turnaround. It is the second time in four years the Derby winner is not taking part for that reason, and the fifth time in seven years overall, the Preakness goes on with no Triple Crown on the line.

The trend has reignited the debate about what, if anything needs to change with the Triple Crown, with ideas ranging from putting more space between the Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes to adding incentives to run in all three to changing the order of the races altogether. Like starters in baseball throwing fewer pitchers, elite horses now typically get much longer time between races, and the situation has put tradition and modernization of the sport head to head.

The two-week turnaround now feels to many around the sport like an antiquated schedule when longer gaps are now the norm with an eye toward horse wear and tear and better performance. Thoroughbreds used to be trained and run at a much quicker interval.

“It’s a question that has more than one side to it,” said Steve Asmussen, who has won more races than any other trainer in North America. “I love how hard it is to do, which makes it so special. And then would it be making it easier? Does it dilute it? That’s a great question. And I think that it’ll continue to be debated.”

The debate

It was debated constantly during the 37-year drought between Triple Crown champions from Affirmed in 1978 until Bob Baffert-trained American Pharoah swept the three races in 2015. Baffert’s Justify did it in 2018, too, and the chorus of voices calling for change was quieted.

But then, for various reasons, there has been a Triple Crown chance in the Preakness only twice in the past seven years. The biggest draw of the middle leg — the anticipation for the possibility — went from being automatic to anything but.

“It is troubling, and it has been troubling for several years,” said Jerry Bailey, a Hall of Fame jockey who won each of the three races twice and is now an NBC Sports analyst. “It’s completely flip-flopped from my generation when it was the rule that they would run back and the exception that they wouldn’t.”

Many top trainers, including Baffert, D. Wayne Lukas, Mark Casse and Michael McCarthy have run a Derby horse in the Preakness or will this year. Others, like Mott, Chad Brown, Todd Pletcher and Brad Cox, are more reluctant to take the risk.

“We need them in the game,” said Casse, who won the Preakness in 2019 with War of Will and has Sandman this year. “This is important. We want the best horses for our sport.”

When Asmussen won a Triple Crown race for the first time with Curlin in the 2007 Preakness, it came after his horse finished third behind Street Sense and Hard Spun in the Kentucky Derby. Curlin, Street Sense and Hard Spun went 1-2-3 in the Preakness.

“We are definitely running on a very different environment than we were then,” Asmussen said. “Every horse is an individual, every year is different, and it’s just very unique circumstances.”

A Russian drone struck a passenger bus in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region on Saturday, killing nine people and injuring four others, Ukrainian officials said. The attack came just hours after Moscow and Kyiv held their first direct peace talks in years which failed to yield a ceasefire.

Ukraine’s national police released photos showing the aftermath of the strike in Sumy’s Bilopillia city, around 6 miles from the front line and border with Russia.

The Associated Press could not independently verify details of the incident. There was no comment from Moscow.

“This is another war crime by Russia — a deliberate strike on civilian transport that posed no threat,” the Sumy regional administration said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Turkey on Friday in an attempt to reach a temporary ceasefire, but the talks ended after less than two hours without a breakthrough. It was the first face-to-face dialogue between the two sides since the early weeks of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

And while both sides agreed on a large prisoner swap, they clearly remained far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting.

One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement. The Kremlin has pushed back against such a truce, which remains elusive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he discussed the talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of France, Germany, the U.K. and Poland. In a post on X from a European leadership meeting in Albania, he urged “tough sanctions” against Moscow if it rejects “a full and unconditional ceasefire and an end to killings.”

In Istanbul, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such swap.

Both sides also discussed a ceasefire and a meeting between their heads of state, according to chief Ukrainian delegate, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said both sides agreed to provide each other with detailed ceasefire proposals, with Ukraine requesting the heads of state meeting, which Russia took under consideration.

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