Iran live updates: US being 'humiliated' by Iran, German chancellor says

In an address to students on Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. has "no strategy" with Iran.

"I cannot see what strategic exit the Americans are now opting for, especially as the Iranians are obviously negotiating very skillfully -- or, rather, very skillfully not negotiating and letting the Americans travel to Islamabad (in Pakistan) only to leave again without any results," Merz said. "An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian state leadership, particularly through these so-called Revolutionary Guards."

"We offered, as Europeans -- and said that we were willing -- after the end of negotiations to help getting the Strait of Hormuz open again," he continued. "... We can help there but first the fighting needs to end. And at the moment I do not see how this can be realized in the near future because the Iranians are clearly stronger than one thought and the Americans clearly don't seem to have a convincing negotiating strategy."

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, as part of the Iranian diplomat's visit to St. Petersburg.

"The significance of this conversation is hard to overestimate in terms of how the situation around Iran and in the Middle East is developing," Peskov said.

Putin will meet with Araghchi at St. Petersburg's Presidential Library, Peskov said.

U.S. Central Command said in a post to X late on Sunday that American forces have so far directed 38 vessels to "turn around, or return to port" amid the ongoing blockade of Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

U.S. forces, CENTCOM said, are "preventing ships from entering or exiting."

The USS Abraham Lincoln was captured on satellite imagery some 80 miles from the blockade line -- which separates the Gulf of Oman from the Arabian Sea -- on Sunday, by the European Union-operated Copernicus Sentinel 2 satellite.