By CNN Staff, CNN

(CNN) — As negotiations between the United States and Iran edge toward a possible agreement, Tehran is increasingly signaling that any return to war would look very different from the last.

US officials said Thursday that a tentative agreement had been reached in talks between Tehran and Washington and was awaiting President Donald Trump’s approval. Yet even as negotiators reported progress, the military confrontation showed little sign of disappearing. The US launched its second round of strikes on Iran in a matter of days this week, while skirmishes continued Thursday evening in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials have used the negotiations to project confidence that they retain significant military options should diplomacy fail. The Revolutionary Guards said any renewed conflict would spread “far beyond the region,” threatening “crushing blows” and “utter ruin” in places opponents “cannot even imagine.”

The warnings come after a war that saw Iran target US bases, Israeli cities and critical infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, while effectively shutting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and triggering a global energy shock.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that any future retaliation would “feature many more surprises,” while Iran’s military threatened to open “new fronts” using “new tools.” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, said the armed forces had used the ceasefire period to rebuild their capabilities “at the highest level.”

Experts say much of the rhetoric is intended to deter further attacks. But they also warn that Tehran retains significant escalation options should diplomacy collapse.

Should war resume, here are some ways Iran could respond:

A new blockade

Iran cannot prevail against the US and Israel via conventional military means, so it has pursued deterrence by inflicting global economic pain through a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint. Emboldened by its success, Tehran may now seek to disrupt another vital maritime corridor.

By activating its regional proxy, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran could orchestrate the closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, blocking another vital artery connecting major trade routes between Europe, Asia and the Arab world. Such a move would compound the worldwide economic pressure.

In 2023, more than 10% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passed through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. After the Houthis created maritime insecurity in the region near Yemen in 2024, that share nearly halved for oil and fell to near zero for liquefied natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

“A simultaneous crisis in Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz would be far more serious, potentially affecting both Red Sea trade and Persian Gulf energy flows, which would raise oil prices, freight rates, and inflationary pressure worldwide,” Umud Shokri, an energy strategist and senior visiting fellow at George Mason University told CNN.

In recent years, the Houthis have demonstrated their ability to disrupt maritime navigation near Bab al-Mandeb by attacking, seizing and sinking vessels passing through its waters. But creating a blockade similar to the one in the Strait of Hormuz would be “much harder,” Shokri said.

“Bab al-Mandeb is not directly controlled by Iran, and any sustained closure would likely trigger a strong international naval

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — Four months after TikTok’s US assets were spun off into a new joint venture to avert a ban, Sen. Ed Markey says Americans still don’t have enough information about whether the deal addresses national security concerns related to the popular video app.

Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Friday sent letters to TikTok US and Oracle claiming the spin-off deal violated “the spirit, if not the letter” of a 2024 law meant to protect Americans on TikTok. The letters demand information about the group’s relationship to TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance.

The letters could reignite lingering questions about the yearslong effort to secure TikTok’s future in the United States while protecting American users.

CNN has reached out to TikTok and Oracle for comment.

President Donald Trump, during his first term, vowed to ban the app. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden signed a law requiring that the US version of the app be spun off from ByteDance or be banned in the United States. Lawmakers feared that China could steal US users’ data or manipulate the content they see on the app. But during his second term, Trump repeatedly delayed enforcement of the law as he sought a deal to transfer control of the app’s US operations to American ownership.

One day before the ban was set to go into effect in January, a deal was finalized to transfer control of TikTok’s US user data and most of its US operations to a joint venture half owned by a consortium of investors comprised of Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and Emirati-backed investment firm MGX. Existing ByteDance investors held just over 30% of the joint venture, and 19.9% was retained by ByteDance, according to the group.

The joint venture is led by CEO Adam Presser — who previously oversaw efforts to secure US TikTok users’ data — and overseen by a board consisting of investor representatives as well as TikTok CEO Shou Chew.

But critics questioned if the arrangement fully addressed the core national security concerns that motivated the TikTok ban legislation in the first place because ByteDance was set to retain control of some of the US app’s operations. The TikTok ban-or-sale law prohibited “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm” between ByteDance and a new potential American ownership group.

The joint venture said it planned retrain TikTok’s algorithm on US user data and moderate content for US users and that Oracle would oversee storage of Americans’ data. However, the ByteDance-controlled global TikTok entity would continue to manage e-commerce, advertising and marketing on the new US platform. And the new joint venture said it would continue to license the TikTok algorithm from ByteDance before retraining and reviewing it, something Chinese officials had previously suggested could help to ensure the deal would be approved by Beijing.

“President Trump managed to keep TikTok online only by ignoring the law’s central goal and relying on vague, unproven safeguards to address the legitimate risks to national security,” Markey said in his Friday letter to TikTok US. “Congress and the American people need to understand if and how this deal protects against Chinese influence over TikTok’s

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — A California mom says she was scammed out of thousands of dollars this month after receiving a call that sounded like her daughter in distress. She now suspects it was an artificial intelligence-generated hoax.

She’s one of many who have been targeted by so-called “voice cloning” scams as AI tools allow anyone to create a convincing replica of someone’s voice with only a few seconds of real audio.

Americans lost more than $893 million to AI-related scams last year, including voice cloning attacks along with AI-generated phishing emails, romance scams and other hoaxes, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Scammers can mimic anyone from family members and friends to coworkers or professional services workers. Banks including the United Kingdom’s Starling and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia have warned customers to watch out for voice cloning scams.

Experts say AI voice replicas have gotten so realistic that most people can no longer reliably distinguish them from real human voices.

“For the everyday person, it is just not fair to expect them to be able to spot this stuff,” said Henry Ajder, an expert on AI-generated media who consults for governments and companies. “I struggle with it. Most people do.”

How do AI voice scams work?

Scammers can create an AI replica of someone’s voice using a short recording of their speech — often pulled from social media or an earlier scam call that was surreptitiously recorded. Social media can also provide a trove of information about family members and close friends who could be targeted.

Fraudsters will typically make it sound like the loved one they’re mimicking is in distress, purportedly having been kidnapped or in jail. Then they’ll urgently demand money in exchange for their loved one’s release.

“There was no time to think,” Gary Schildhorn, a Philadelphia attorney who was targeted by an AI voice scam mimicking his son, told CNN last year. “It was all, ‘I have to react to help my son. He’s in trouble.’”

In some cases, the AI voice may be more than just a single recording. Sophisticated attackers could use text-to-speech tools or “voice skinning,” which manipulate a scammer’s voice so they sound like the person they’re imitating in real time. Those techniques facilitate back-and-forth conversations between the target and the AI clone voice, potentially making the scam more convincing, Ajder said.

Hackers can also make it appear as if a call is coming from a known number through a tactic known as caller ID spoofing — so you can’t necessarily trust that a call that appears to be coming from your mom is indeed her.

How to avoid falling victim to AI voice scams

Strange pauses or vocal fluctuations were previously considered red flags that a caller’s voice might be AI-generated. But those signals may no longer be present now that AI has advanced.

Instead of trying to determine whether a voice is authentic, look for other general scam warning signs, Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley and chief science officer at GetReal Security, told CNN last year.

Is the person on the other end giving a deadline or introducing a sense of urgency? Are they encouraging you not to tell anyone else what’s happening? Are they asking you to move large sums of money in unusual

By Michael Williams, Alayna Treene, Alexandra Skores, CNN

(CNN) — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has become preoccupied with an idea to punish cities and states that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement — cutting customs staffing at their airports and possibly stopping the processing of international travelers all together.

But the ambitious plan is hitting turbulence: It has sent the travel industry and local officials reeling because of its disruptive potential, has been publicly opposed by a fellow Cabinet secretary, and has not yet been greenlit by the White House.

If “radical left Democrats” aren’t allowing federal authorities to enforce immigration laws in their communities, Mullin told Fox News earlier this week, “then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either.”

“They don’t want us to enforce immigration but they want us to process immigration at their facilities? Nothing about that makes sense to me,” the secretary said.

Airlines, for their part, have not commented on the plan or how close they believe it is to being implemented. If enacted, it would have huge implications for trade and tourism within the US, even if the administration decided to wait until after the upcoming World Cup matches. Cascading disruptions could affect large and small American airports in red states and blue states.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy criticized Mullin’s plan during a recent congressional hearing: “We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” he said last week.

And while Mullin keeps mentioning the idea in media interviews, there are not imminent plans for such a move, two Trump officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

The push is seen internally as more of a personal desire of Mullin’s than one coming from inside the West Wing. One of the officials said Mullin has been “obsessed” with the idea since being sworn in as Homeland Security secretary in March to replace his ousted predecessor, Kristi Noem, bringing it up unprompted during meetings at the White House.

“The President loves having a team that is constantly coming up with new ideas but ultimately any policy decisions will be up to him,” a White House official said.

While Mullin has been widely viewed as a stabilizing force atop DHS after a chaotic year under Noem’s control, and has built up a lot of goodwill with the president, his airport plan could have significant and wide-ranging consequences.

Some Trump officials have privately acknowledged the havoc the plan could wreak on international travel, and the industry has made the same point publicly.

“Reducing [Customs and Border Protection] staffing at major airports would have a devastating effect on the airline and tourism industries, causing a significant operational disruption to carriers, travelers and the flow of international cargo,” Airlines for America, a trade association that lobbies for several major American carriers, said in a statement.

The US Travel Association, a national organization that advocates for all aspects of the country’s travel industry, said its representatives recently met with Mullin. The secretary “confirmed his previous comments that the administration is considering a withdrawal” of customs agents at some major international airports, the association said in a statement.

“U.S. Travel believes such a move would have devastating consequences for the travel industry and communities that depend on international visitation,” the statement said.

While Mullin has pitched th

By Davis Winkie, CNN

(CNN) — What happens to Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, including the 970 pounds that it has highly concentrated to near-weapons grade, is one of the primary sticking points as the US and Iran have trudged through weeks of negotiations to potentially end the Iran war.

President Donald Trump has insisted that Iran must hand over what he calls its “nuclear dust.” Iranian officials have repeatedly said that the country has a right to a non-weapons nuclear program.

But what is in Iran’s stockpile, and what does it mean for Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon?

With the right equipment, the highly enriched uranium that Iran has could reach weapons-grade purity within weeks or even days, according to nuclear experts. And it’s enough for 10 nuclear weapons, international inspectors say.

Iran and the US are reportedly close to an agreement to formalize a ceasefire and open the Strait of Hormuz. But the question of what happens to the uranium would remain unsettled and a key part of subsequent negotiations, according to CNN’s reporting.

Those talks would likely focus on the nearly 1000 pounds of uranium purified to 60%.

“The US shouldn’t take a deal that doesn’t include removing the [highly enriched uranium],” said Eric Brewer, a nuclear materials expert for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) nonprofit who previously oversaw counterproliferation at the National Security Council during Trump’s first administration and led Iran intelligence analysis for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Building a nuclear weapon requires a significant amount of radioactive heavy elements, or what experts call fissile material. One such radioactive isotope, uranium-235, occurs in nature, but it makes up less than one percent of raw uranium ore that’s mined.

Enrichment concentrates the uranium-235 from raw ore and prepares it for conversion into weapons-usable fissile material. Iran enriched its uranium by converting it into a gas — uranium hexafluoride — and spinning it in a series of centrifuge machines in underground plants primarily at the country’s Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear complexes.

Iran’s near-half ton of 60% enriched uranium (and its estimated 405.9 pounds of 20% U-235) is believed to remain in gas form, as it was at the time of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s last verification in June 2025. Iran shut out international nuclear inspectors the following month in the wake of joint US-Israel airstrikes on its facilities.

Further enrichment to 90% purity, considered the threshold for weapons-grade uranium, would “only take days to weeks” if Iran has an operational enrichment facility, Brewer said.

The June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, what the Pentagon termed Operation Midnight Hammer, was assessed by US intelligence to have buried much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile at Isfahan, but didn’t destroy it, despite administration statements that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated.”

Earlier this month Trump threatened “to go in” with force and retrieve the uranium should negotiations fail. CNN reported in March that military planners had reviewed options for such an effort at the Isfahan complex, assessing that it could require hundreds if not thousands of troops and risk a high number of casualties. In addition to bringing in specialized forces and equipment to handle the material itself, creating a security perimeter to allow those troops to work w