King Charles’s private concern that the United States-Iran conflict continues to grind on nearly seven months after it began has emerged following an apparent hot mic exchange.

The 77-year-old monarch was hosting members of the Pakistan cricket team at Clarence House when he spoke with Mohsin Naqvi, the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman and Pakistan’s Interior Minister, who is also involved in talks between Washington and Tehran.

During the conversation, the King was heard telling Mr Naqvi: “It’s all going backwards.”

The remark surfaced as reports said Donald Trump has been privately consulting senior advisers over whether to state that the war with Iran has now come to an end.

Mr Naqvi, who has been working to help broker a peace deal involving the US, Israel and Iran, appeared to acknowledge the fragile pace of diplomacy, saying: “Yes, it is a story of one step forward and one step back.”

Charles told him the talks would clearly be challenging, adding: ‘We’re going to have to rely on you a great deal.’

Mr Naqvi appeared to say the US-Iran talks had been ‘one of the most difficult’ he had been involved in.

The conversation was picked up by a microphone from Pakistan’s most-watched TV news channel, Geo News.

Mr Naqvi later told the broadcaster that the King had acknowledged Pakistan’s work towards peace and security in the Middle East, calling his talks with Charles ‘very productive’.

Charles also met the Pakistan cricket team, who are currently 2-0 down to England in a three-match series. They presented the King with a signed bat.

The Wall Street Journal cited officials overnight who said that the US President now favours the idea of ending the conflict, now in its seventh month. 

Sources say Trump told his aides that he believes piling economic pressure on Tehran will eventually force the regime either to dismantle its nuclear programme or collapse.

Meanwhile, his advisors are warning Trump that an escalation of the Iran war beyond recent strikes could endanger Republican prospects in the November midterm elections. 

However the President said he isn’t taking electoral consequences into account when making decisions on the war. 

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said that the US military would remain prepared to launch more strikes ‘any time we want,’ similarly to its offensive this week after Iran tried to lay new mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

‘We see everything that they’re doing,’ Trump said. ‘They can’t go to the bathroom without us seeing it.’

Writing on social media, Trump said: ‘I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing.’ 

‘They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?’ 

Previously, Trump had appeared to pivot towards trying to bend Iran to his will through economic sanctions. 

He warned that if Iran retaliated for the new strikes ‘they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level’.

Iran continued attacking US military bases in Kuwait on Thursday, however, despite Trump threatening further strikes in a fresh flare-up just over six months into the war. 

Security chief Mohsen Rezaei warned the US that Iran had adopted a ‘new strategy’ in the war that ‘will shatter your foundations’. 

After a respite of more than a month, fighting between the US and Iran has been increasing since the weekend. 

It comes after the US hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran retaliating by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan. All were intercepted.

Kuwait’s army said Thursday it was intercepting a missile and drone attack from Iran, with Iranian state TV confirming that Tehran was targeting US bases in the Gulf state ‘in response to America’s crimes against the Iranian people’. 

On Wednesday, Bahrain, which hosts an important US naval base, intercepted an Iranian aerial attack.

It said its air defense systems intercepted incoming fire from Iran, accusing the country of ‘attacks targeting civilians’ in a statement issued by its military.

The renewed violence threatens to fully reignite the conflict and has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and is posing increasing political problems.

On Wednesday, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, climbed above $95, up more than 30 per cent from the start of the war.

But oil prices sank Thursday after the US president said the latest round of strikes could be over soon.

Asked how long the bombing campaign could last, he told reporters: ‘I don’t think too long.’ 

Ahead of the morning attacks on Bahrain on Wednesday, Iran fired missiles at Jordan and drones at Kuwait – all of which were intercepted. 

On Monday, the United Arab Emirates said it had intercepted an incoming Iranian drone over its waters as well.

The US Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday night that it had completed the latest barrage against Iranian military targets including air defense sites, radar systems and maritime assets.

One US strike hit a home hosting a wedding, according to Iranian media. At least five people were killed, including a child, and at least 68 others were wounded, according to Iranian officials.

Meanwhile, two oil tankers hit sea mines and were disabled while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.

In a statement, the Guards said the tankers had been forced to disembark their crews and were placed in the hands of US operatives to pass through what it called an ‘illegal route’ in the strategic waterway, despite earlier warnings from the Guards’ navy about the dangers of crossing the mined passage.

In a separate statement, the Iranian army said ‘dozens of the army’s attack drones… have targeted radar systems and the positions of US forces at the Al Dhafra and Al Minhad bases in the United Arab Emirates’.

It said it also targeted ‘radar installations and gathering points’ of US forces at Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Airbase.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards meanwhile said they targeted US forces in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

They added on Wednesday that four personnel were killed in a US attack on the western province of Kermanshah.

‘Four fighters of the IRGC Aerospace Force in Kermanshah province were martyred in an attack by the US regime,’ the Guards said in a statement carried by Fars news agency, using their acronym.

During last month’s lull in fighting, the US ramped up economic pressure on Iran, which is suffering from soaring inflation, negative growth and a collapsing currency, as Washington sought to win concessions to fully open the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping traffic.

About a fifth of the world’s traded oil was shipped through the key waterway before Israel and the US attacked Iran on February 28 and Iran largely shut it down. 

Despite many pronouncements from Washington that the strait is open, only a handful of ships are making the passage each day and Iran has regularly attacked vessels.

Trump suggested on Wednesday renaming the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic shipping lane that Tehran has effectively shut for six months, as ‘Trump Strait’ – although he implied later that he wasn’t serious.

‘Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???’ the US president wrote on Truth Social.

In launching its latest attacks, US Central Command said it was responding to Tehran trying to hit commercial ships and American forces in the Middle East.

At the moment, the US military is maintaining a presence of 50,000 troops in the region.

Their current goals include intercepting Iranian missiles and providing cover for commercial ships in the strait while blockading Iranian ports and coastal areas.

They are also ready to launch bigger offensive attacks if Trump decides to escalate the war. 

A 16-year-old schoolboy who stabbed a teacher in the head after asking her to look over his homework has been detained for four and a half years.

The teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, launched the sudden attack on history teacher Vicki Williams at a secondary school in Pembrokeshire in February.

The defendant, who was 15 at the time, waited until the school day had ended and Mrs Williams was alone in a classroom before taking a knife from his rucksack and striking her on the skull.

Following a trial at Swansea Crown Court, he was convicted of wounding with intent, while the jury cleared him of attempted murder.

Mrs Williams told the court she saw “pure hatred” in the boy’s eyes after he lunged at her with a kitchen knife with an eight-inch blade, pushed her into a chair and then ran from the room.

Children were placed into lockdown following the attack at Milford Haven School. 

Mrs Williams watched the sentencing hearing from an online link but in a victim impact statement said she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 

She said she did not know if she would be able to return to teaching.

Passing sentence, Judge Paul Thomas KC said it was ‘pure luck’ Mrs Williams had not been seriously injured or worse.

He said the boy had an undisclosed issue with the history teacher and bore her ‘considerable ill will’. 

‘I don’t know why you attacked Mrs Williams with that knife, you never told anybody why you did it,’ the judge said.

‘I think it may have been that in some way she had upset you, but I don’t know for certain why.

‘What I do know for certain is that you took a knife that day to school because you wanted to really hurt her with it.’

In a police interview, Mrs Williams said the boy came to her classroom ‘cool and collected’ at the end of the school day to ask if his ‘work was correct’.

She said that ‘confused’ her because he had ‘never seemed bothered before’.

Mrs Williams said ‘alarm bells’ rang in her head when he shut the classroom door, saying it was cold.

She said he was trying to ‘keep her talking’ while he tried ‘to find something in his bag’.

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‘I ask him again, “are you sure you’re alright?”. And then he pulls [the knife] out of the bag and lunges at me,’ she said.

Jurors heard the boy pulled a large kitchen knife from his bag and struck her in the head before a ‘violent struggle’ ensued during which Mrs Williams tried to take the weapon from him.

She said the attack came ‘out of nowhere’.

The boy then ran from the school while the teacher was taken to hospital in Haverfordwest, where she was treated for a wound to her scalp, scratches on her back and minor cuts on her hands.

Christopher Rees KC, prosecuting, said: ‘The prosecution case was that he had deliberately brought a knife into school in order to attack Vicki Williams.

‘It was a carefully planned attack. He waited until Vicki Williams was alone in her classroom after the school day had concluded.’

During the trial Matthew Roberts KC, defending, suggested the pupil had taken the knife to school to ‘show off’ to other boys.

The defendant previously pleaded guilty to possessing a kitchen knife on school grounds.

The judge said the defendant had never shown any remorse for what he had done and the court had a duty to protect teachers.

‘The courts have to try to keep teachers safe from attacks on them by pupils,’ he said.

‘This is the second case of a school pupil stabbing a teacher in school in the same Welsh county in the last couple of years.

‘I want anyone who is ever thinking in the future of doing the same to know what will happen to them if they do.

‘They will spend a lot of their teenage years and perhaps beyond unable to go out with their friends, go and do what they want, go on holidays, have fun, be with their parents, follow their hobbies, and do what the rest of their friends are doing.

‘That is what happens, and that is what’s going to happen to you – the people who attack teachers with knives.’

Jonathan Pritchard of the CPS said after today’s sentencing hearing: ‘This was a shocking display of violence on a teacher doing their job.

‘Knives cause terrible injuries which can often end in fatal consequences.

‘The teacher showed great courage in what must have been a terrifying incident.

‘The strong evidence presented by the CPS resulted in these convictions which we hope provide some comfort to the victim of this awful attack.’