However, any further information or confirmation has not been forthcoming. Regarding the Ukraine war, Russia's Ryazan oil refinery, about 200 km southeast of Moscow, was hit again overnight and is reportedly on fire.

Oil prices extend gains.

Images of Russian oil refinery fire, amid Trump-Zelensky standoff over Ukraine's ongoing strikes on Russian oil and diesel infrastructure...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday once again affirmed his country is not ready to give in to force, no matter how much military pressure or sanctions it faces from Washington.

He issued the words from Yerevan, Armenia, on the sidelines of the Leaders' Summit on Biodiversity. Pezeshkian said US-led sanctions "are beyond humanitarian frameworks and [US] attacks in recent months are unjustifiable and inhumane."

"Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, and we consider the destructive propaganda against our country to be lies," he added, as quoted by Iran's semiofficial Tasnim News Agency.

Pezeshkian then stressed: "We have always been ready to talk. They think they can make us surrender, but we will not give in to force."

During an interview with Newsmax on Thursday, President Trump reiterated some of his key rationales for going to war, and Iran's leader seemed to be directly responding to some of what Trump had to say.

"We want to make it so that they will never have a nuclear weapon, because if they had it, they would use it, in my opinion, instantaneously," Trump had said, but also again claimed the conflict would be over soon. There was also this interesting exchange with the Newsmax journalist in reference to the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb or MOAB, 'Mother of All Bombs' in Iran:

"Well, the mother of all bombs is not nuclear," Trump said.

Host Rob Finnerty asked, "Not tactical nuclear?"

"No, it's not nuclear at all. This is just an extremely large bomb," Trump said. "It's like a tiny nuclear bomb. The mother of all bombs is one big bomb, but it's not nuclear."

Trump did not say whether he had authorized the weapon's use, nor did he identify a potential target.

"The Iran war will be over very soon. It's going to end very soon," he said, while asserting that Iran is currently negotiating with the US. This seems merely a reference to messages being passed through mediators.