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Israel hits Iran in waves of attacks and says it killed senior Hezbollah commander

Israel unleashed two waves of attacks on Tehran and said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Wednesday with little sign of the war easing up despite Donald Trump repeating a claim that Iran’s leadership was seeking a ceasefire. The US president, writing on social media, said that Iran’s president had “just asked” for a ceasefire, and that American troops would be “out of Iran pretty quickly” as he sought to extricate the US from the war. However, he confused the picture by incorrectly describing the president as a “new regime” leader. The country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been in post since 2024, well before the start of the month-long war. The country’s former supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the first minutes of the attack and has been succeeded by his son, Mojtaba, who is widely considered more hardline than his father, especially after the killing of other members of his family in the same initial attack. Trump nonetheless persevered later on Wednesday with the assertion that there had been “full regime change” in Iran. He said his agreement to a ceasefire would depend on the Iranian blockade of the strait of Hormuz being lifted. But Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson denied there had been a ceasefire request from Tehran and said the US president’s account was “false and baseless”. When asked when he would withdraw from the conflict, Trump said: “I can’t tell you exactly … we’re going to be out pretty quickly.” “I’m dealing with a very good chance that we’ll make a deal because they don’t want to be blasted any more,” Trump told Reuters. “I didn’t need regime change, but we got it because of the casualties of war.” After withdrawal, Trump suggested that the US would continue to carry out occasional airstrikes, referring to them as “spot hits”. Ebrahim Azizi, the chair of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, mocked Trump for his boasts. “Trump has finally achieved his dream of ‘regime change’ – but in the region’s maritime regime!” Azizi said in a post on X. “The strait of Hormuz will certainly reopen, but not for you; it will be open for those who comply with the new laws of Iran.” Iran fired about 10 missiles into central Israel a couple of hours before the start of the annual Jewish Passover festival on a day when its allies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis, also attacked with rockets and missiles. Qatar also reported in the morning that a fuel oil tanker used by its state-owned energy company was struck by an Iranian missile, though there were no casualties reported among its 21-strong crew or environmental damage. Israel’s military said it had struck approximately 400 Iranian regime targets over the past two days, including two waves on Wednesday, while Iranian media reported areas in northern, eastern and central Tehran had been under attack in the morning. At least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of the war, according to estimates from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, though precise figures are hard to come by. An Israeli navy strike on Beirut killed seven people including Youssef Hashem, the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, the most senior leader of the Iranian proxy group to have been killed since the start of the war. Israel’s military said Hashem had more than 40 years’ experience and his death would be “a significant blow” to Hezbollah’s efforts to resist Israel’s plans to occupy southern Lebanon in a rapidly escalating ground campaign. Hezbollah officials acknowledged his death, describing him as a “beacon of the Islamic Resistance” and “a tier one commander”, one of the most high profile casualties in a conflict that has killed 1,260 people in Lebanon. Most of those who have died have been Lebanese civilians, but Hezbollah estimated about 400 had been its fighters. Israel said 10 of its soldiers had been killed since 2 March when fighting broke out on the Lebanese front. In Israel, an 11-year-old girl was in critical condition after being wounded by shrapnel to her limbs, the country’s emergency medical service reported, after a missile strike at Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. It also said 13 others were less seriously wounded. Further waves of attacks – including an estimated 10 ballistic missiles – triggered alarms across the densely populated centre of Israel in the late afternoon, just before the start of Passover, which begins with the traditional family Seder meal. Brig Gen Effie Defrin, the IDF’s spokesperson, said “it was possible” that Iran and Hezbollah “will fire toward Israeli territory in an attempt to harm Israeli civilians during the holiday”, which runs from Wednesday evening for a week. Yemen’s Houthis said in the morning they had conducted a missile attack on southern Israel, their third since the group joined the war four days ago, in a coordinated attack with Iran and Hezbollah. Israel’s military said it had intercepted a ballistic missile that had been launched by the pro-Iran group; no casualties were reported. A total of 19 people have been killed and 515 injured by missile fire in Israel, according to reports by the Magen David Adom emergency medical service, since the war began. The strait of Hormuz has in effect been closed to oil and gas tankers and other merchant shipping since the beginning of the conflict, hiking oil prices and causing a growing range of critical shortages around the world. On Wednesday, 10 vessels transited the straits, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, the fourth busiest day since the start of the war. However, shipping volumes remain sharply down by more than 90% from pre-conflict levels. Trump’s unfounded insistence that there has been regime change, which had been echoed by the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has added weight to speculation that Trump is anxious to declare victory and withdraw the US from the battlefield as the consequences of the war, in form of an oil price spike and shortages of fertiliser and medicines, send shockwaves through the global economy. In his remarks on Wednesday, Trump did not mention the thousands of marines and paratroopers that have massed in the region to give the US the option of mounting a land attack, possibly on one or several islands in the Gulf and the Hormuz strait. He did however, appear to rule out a military operation to extract Iran’s 440kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, enough if enriched further to make about a dozen nuclear warheads. Since launching the attack on Iran, Trump has frequently cited the regime’s potential to make nuclear bombs, asserting without evidence that it was two to four weeks from making a warhead and using it against the US. Experts unanimously rejected those assertions as groundless. Trump declared himself unconcerned by Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, believed to be buried in deep shafts under Iranian mountains. “That’s so far underground, I don’t care about that,” he told Reuters. “We’ll always be watching it by satellite.” The president also said: “They won’t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now, and then I’ll leave, and I’ll take everybody with me, and if we have to we’ll come back to do spot hits.” Reuters also reported on Wednesday that the US vice-president, JD Vance, had been in touch with Pakistani intermediaries with the message that the administration was open to a ceasefire as long as certain US demands were met, including reopening the strait of Hormuz.

Middle East crisis live: Iran says Trump’s claim of ceasefire request ‘baseless’

Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian has rejected portrayals of Iran as a security threat, and described the perception of it as such as a product of the “political and economic whims of the powerful”. In an open letter addressed to the people of the United States and carried by state media outlet Press TV, he argued that Iran’s modern record is defensive as he urged Americans to “look beyond political rhetoric” and reconsider their view of his country. Iran, by this very name, character, and identity – is one of the oldest continuous civilisations in human history. Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination .… Iran has never initiated a war. Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it. He went on: Portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful, the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. I’ll bring you more from the letter as I get it.

Can Trump pull the US out of Nato – and why is he considering it?

After years of attacking its efficacy and assailing its members as spendthrift freeloaders, Donald Trump now appears on the very threshold of doing the once unthinkable: withdrawing the US from Nato. Such a move would signal a political earthquake for the western security architecture established in the aftermath of the second world war and which endured cold war confrontation with the Soviet Union before expanding after the demise of eastern European communism in 1989. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the alliance’s formal name, was set up in 1949 with an initial core of 12 members – including the US, Britain, France, Canada and Denmark – and has since expanded to include 32 countries. Its initial purpose was to provide a bulwark against Soviet communism, then deemed to be aggressively expansionist. But it was also underpinned by a recognition that an absence of collective security had been key to the failure to deter Hitler in the 1930s, as Nazi Germany steadily annexed territory before the second world war. What is Nato’s central tenet? Collective security, enshrined in the alliance’s article 5, which defines a military attack on one member as an attack on all. Such a scenario never arose in the cold war. The only time the collective premise was ever invoked was after the al-Qaida terror attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, when alliance members sent troops to Afghanistan in support of the US-led military effort. Why is Trump considering withdrawal from the alliance? Trump’s immediate ire has been piqued by Nato’s refusal to support or come to the US’s aid in the war against Iran. But nothing in Nato’s charter obliges its members to do so. The US was not attacked and did not consult fellow Nato states beforehand. What has Trump recently said about Nato? He called Nato “a paper tiger” and said withdrawing the US from membership was “beyond reconsideration” – words that implied his mind was made up. He has also repeatedly said – citing the lack of support for the Iran war and European inaction to reopen the strait of Hormuz – that Nato would not protect the US, in the same way the US shields Europe. This is belied by the Nato support for the long war in Afghanistan. Does the US president harbour deeper animosity towards Nato? Apparently. In 2017, he dismissed the body as “obsolete” and accused its members, especially European countries, of “ripping off” the US by failing to spend adequately on their defence budgets. More recently, in 2024, he threatened to tell Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any European country that did not meet his defence spending demands. Trump appeared on a collision with the alliance as recently as January, when the Nato members went on alert over his threat to annex Greenland. He backed down, but few believed his Greenland fixation had been permanently shelved. Have Trump's words had an effect? Yes. After repeated browbeating, European leaders strove to keep Trump onside. Last June, Nato members agreed to raise their defence spending target to 5% of GDP by 2025. A decade ago, some countries were failing to meet a lower target figure of 2% of GDP. Moreover, Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general and a former Dutch prime minister, has gone to extraordinary lengths to flatter Trump – referring to him as the “daddy” of the alliance and earning a reputation as a “Trump whisperer”. Rutte has even voiced support for the Iran war, in contrast to the opposition of Nato’s non-US members. Does Trump have a point – is Nato a ‘paper tiger’? Nato’s support for Ukraine – in the form of military help from both the US and European allies – has played a vital role in bogging down Russia’s invasion of the country, now in its fifth year. In doing so, it deters Russia from attacking actual Nato members (Ukraine is not a member of the alliance) such as Poland or the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has made no secret of his desire to break up Nato or decouple it from the US – an outcome that could leave Russia’s eastern European neighbours open to future Kremlin aggression. In the more distant past, Nato took military action in 1999 to deter Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević from embarking on the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kosovo, a campaign that Moscow regarded as an affront and an incursion into its traditional sphere of influence. In short, Nato – as it stands – is not a “paper tiger”. But its seems telling that Trump invokes Putin in describing it as such. What does the US provide its Nato allies? First and foremost, a nuclear umbrella. The US’s nuclear arsenal is vastly bigger than those of Britain and France. Additionally, there are numerous US military bases and installations throughout Europe, many of them centered in Germany. Another key site is Incerlik airbase in Turkey. All these bases are seen as providing deterrence against military attacks by the west’s enemies. Could Trump simply withdraw such a vast panoply of armed backing? It appears complicated. Legislation passed in 2024 prevents a US president withdrawing the US from Nato without a two-thirds Senate majority or an act of Congress. But Trump has shown himself willing to flout existing legislation to bypass Congress – for example, by attacking Iran without seeking congressional approval, as the 1973 War Powers Act says he must. And there are hostile actions Trump could take short of outright withdrawal. Ivo Daalder, the Obama administration’s ambassador to Nato, has suggested a scenario in which Trump could withdraw all US troops and pull US officers from the command structure – all while saying he is within the terms of article, but not providing any military support.

Swedish PM offers deal that could see far-right allowed into government

The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has said that he will allow the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) into government for the first time – and give its members key ministerial posts – if his coalition wins the next general election. Despite becoming Sweden’s second biggest political party after the Social Democrats in the last election, SD currently plays only a supporting role in the minority-run coalition. But Kristersson, who leads the centre-right Moderates, said on Wednesday that if his four-party coalition won September’s election, SD would hold “big political influence and important ministerial posts within immigration and integration”. In a joint press conference with SD’s leader, Jimmie Åkesson, Kristersson, whose polling after four years in government is not looking favourable, said: “We have agreed to jump-start the next term and form a strong majority government if we get the voters’ trust.” The announcement was a watershed moment for Swedish politics, which to date has largely treated SD, a party with neo-Nazi roots, as a pariah. Nooshi Dadgostar, leader of the Left party, said the prospect of the Sweden Democrats in government with the Moderates was “disgusting” and urged political leaders to “think again”. “Now there is a lot at stake and now we know that we can have rightwing extremist ministers in the government,” she told Dagens Nyheter. “Now we have to come together to offer a different path for Sweden.” Since replacing the Moderates as Sweden’s second biggest party in 2022 and entering into a supporting role in Kristersson’s coalition, the SD has had considerable influence on the government – particularly on immigration. Its rhetoric has shaped policy across the political spectrum, including on the left-leaning opposition, the Social Democrats, who have also adopted hardline immigration and integration policies, like their Danish counterparts under Mette Frederiksen. Standing by Kristersson’s side on Wednesday, Åkesson, who has led the SD since 2005, when it was a small party on the fringes of Swedish politics, said that after the next election he expected his party to get influence proportional to its size. “We have been clear that after the next election we will either be a governing party or an opposition party,” he said. SD’s policies include stopping people from countries outside Sweden’s “immediate area” from claiming asylum in the Scandinavian country, a step that would contravene human rights law, and ensuring that “more of those who do not have the right to be in Sweden leave than come to Sweden”. Mass immigration to Sweden, the party claims, has “changed Sweden for the worse” and resulted in “many societal problems”. Islamophobia is also prominent. In a recent documentary, Åkesson claimed that to be Muslim and to be Swedish was “a contradiction”. Wednesday’s announcement comes after the leader of the ailing Liberals, Simona Mohamsson, shocked her party last month by abruptly switching positions on SD, announcing that her party would accept being in government with a far-right force she had previously denounced as racist. She also held a press conference alongside Åkesson in which they hugged. Magdalena Andersson, the leader of the Social Democrats and former prime minister, said Kristersson and Åkesson’s proposal would lead to a “historically weak prime minister”. “It is obvious that it is Jimmie Åkesson who is holding the baton,” she told broadcaster SVT. “In an organisation where the person who is formally the boss is not the real boss, there will be instability and an organisation without the power to act.” The leftwing opposition parties have so far not presented a proposal for an alternative government.

Trump says he is ‘absolutely’ considering withdrawing US from Nato

Donald Trump has said he is “absolutely” considering withdrawing the US from Nato, warning that the matter was “beyond reconsideration” after the refusal of US allies to join the US-Israeli war against Iran. The president’s threats, his most determined to date, have left the alliance facing its worst crisis in its 77-year history, a former US ambassador has said. Trump has long been vocally sceptical about the benefit of Nato membership to the US, but since North Atlantic allies have refused to take part in the month-long, faltering US-Israeli assault on Iran, the president has stepped up his rhetoric. He told Reuters news agency on Wednesday he was “absolutely without question” considering withdrawing, after telling the Telegraph the matter was “beyond reconsideration”, insisting he had never been “swayed by Nato”. He signalled that he would express his disgust for Nato in an address to the nation scheduled for Wednesday evening. It could be politically and constitutionally difficult for Trump to formally withdraw from the 1949 Washington treaty, Nato’s founding document, but Ivo Daalder, the US permanent representative at Nato headquarters from 2009 to 2013, said the serious damage to the alliance had already been done. “This is by far the worst crisis Nato has ever confronted. Military alliances are, at their core, based on trust: the confidence that if I am attacked, you will come help defend,” Daalder wrote in an online commentary. “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defence.” Trump launched the war on Iran on 28 February in partnership with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but without consulting Nato allies. He did not invoke article 5 of the treaty, which triggers collective defence from other members in the event of an “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America”. Such an attack has not taken place. More than a month into the war, there is no sign of the regime change or collapse that Trump and Netanyahu had hoped for, and Tehran’s response – closing the economically vital strait of Hormuz – has caused an oil price surge and a worldwide shortage of fertiliser and other essential goods, threatening a global recession. Trump has swung between claiming a negotiated end to the war is imminent and threatening a ground assault, while calling on US allies to join the fight and force the strait back open. None of Washington’s traditional partners have come forward. Some European allies have declared the US-Israeli attack to be illegal and several have withheld the overflight rights and use of bases on their territory. Trump has consequently lashed out at European capitals, denouncing them as “cowards” and expressing particular contempt for the UK. “You don’t even have a navy,” Trump told the Telegraph. “You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.” The anti-Nato rhetoric has been echoed by the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was a staunch supporter of the alliance when he was a senator. Rubio told Fox News: “We are going to have to re-examine whether or not this alliance, that has served this country well for a while, is still serving that purpose or has now become a one-way street, where America is simply in a position to help Europe but when we need the help of our allies, they deny us basing rights and overflight.” The UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, has shrugged off the administration’s jibes as “noise”, insisting that “Nato is the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen”. He restated his position on the Iran conflict that “this is not our war, and we’re not going to get dragged into it”. In a phone call with Trump on Wednesday, Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, said he told the president that “a more European Nato” was taking shape and that Europe was “shouldering responsibility”. In response to previous Trump criticism, the UK and other European allies have raised their defence spending and tried hard, with diminishing success, to persuade him to maintain US support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia. Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, has gone out of his way to flatter Trump, to the extent of expressing support for the Iran war, despite the opposition of almost all the alliance’s other 31 members. “Backing one ally when 31 oppose isn’t the best way to maintain unity,” Daalder said. “We also now know that Trump does his own thing and doesn’t listen to anyone, including Trump whisperers.” In an effort to “Trump-proof” the alliance, Congress passed the National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2024, prohibiting a US president from unilaterally withdrawing the US from Nato without two-thirds Senate approval or an act of Congress – a provision co-sponsored by Rubio. The NDAA also prohibits using any federal funds to facilitate a withdrawal. The Democratic senator Mark Warner said on Wednesday: “Congress will not sit by while this president tries to unravel an alliance that has kept Americans safe for decades. Our commitment to Nato is ironclad, and we will use every tool available to defend it.” Any attempt to leave Nato formally would be likely to trigger a constitutional crisis that would almost certainly go to the US supreme court. However, the court has a record of siding with the executive in disputes over foreign policy issues. “Other presidents have withdrawn from treaties,” Daalder said. “In any case, whatever the legal status, Trump can undermine Nato by withdrawing troops, pulling US personnel from the Nato command structure and doing little if anything in case of an attack – all perfectly legal.” Nathalie Tocci, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Europe, pointed out that Trump had threatened to leave Nato before and the threats were not as damaging as his “betrayal of Ukraine” and his insistence this year that the US would seize Greenland, the sovereign territory of a Nato ally. “The fact that Trump hates Europe is an ascertained fact,” Tocci said. “All this is part of a coherent Trumpian onslaught on Europe and European leaders are finally moving away from the sycophantic Rutte approach to him.” Ruth Deyermond, a senior lecturer at the department of war studies at King’s College London, said the crisis facing the alliance would not simply recede at the end of Trump’s White House tenure. “This is wishful thinking,” Deyermond said on Bluesky. “The failure to understand the importance of the alliance for US security and the taking of allies for granted isn’t unique to the Trump administration.” “This is why the old Nato is gone and Europeans, plus Canada, need to develop a new security framework to replace it,” she said. “It’s frightening, difficult, and expensive, but that doesn’t make it less necessary or urgent.” Starmer signalled on Wednesday that he would use an upcoming summit with EU countries to solidify economic and security ties, calling for: “A partnership for the dangerous world that we must navigate together.”

Grounds for doubts over Henry’s coffee | Brief letters

I am loth to mock a Guardian news item, but the timely report in your print edition (Does shock find push our love of coffee back to reign of Henry V?, 1 April) fails to mention an earlier excavation in the grounds of Maxwell House, in the village of Brew. Among the relics discovered by the archaeologist Corr Tardo were late Roman amphorae, hinting that Nero may have been drinking a cappuccino as Rome burned. David Jeffrey West Malvern, Worcestershire • Your report may have implications for our interpretation of Shakespeare’s Henry V. If the “tun of treasure” offered by the French ambassador to King Henry contains not tennis balls but coffee beans (no doubt from the then French protectorate of San Serriffe), the implied insult could be that the young king is a hot-headed caffeine-fuelled chancer. Austen Lynch Garstang, Lancashire • Remnants of coffee found in 15th-century cups during an excavation of the drought-stricken Ness reservoir in east Suffolk? Saw what you did there! Helen Ryan Blandford Forum, Dorset • Having fallen, albeit briefly, for the Bob Dylan lyrics April Fools’ Day piece in the paper (Dylan’s draft lyrics for I’m Not There found in a Ginsberg book, 1 April), I found myself in urgent need of a caffeine infusion to restore my wits. Glenn Hackney Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire • This report in your print edition is an April fool joke, right (Palace confirms king’s US state visit as president steps up insults, 1 April)? Not a patch on San Serriffe, by the way. Lyn Dade Twickenham, London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Families condemn UK ‘impotence’ over UAE ‘social media misuse’ detentions

The families of UK citizens held in the United Arab Emirates over allegations that they shared images of the conflict with Iran have voiced frustration at the British government’s failure to help. Several British citizens are among more than 100 foreign nationals who have been detained under draconian Emirate rules that outlaw publishing or sharing material that could “disturb public security”. UK government ministers have refused to condemn the arrests, amid claims they are too fearful of offending the Emirates because of their economic clout. The campaign group Dubai Watch, which is supporting nine British detainees, said their identities could not be revealed for fear of reprisals. But it has shown the Guardian anonymised correspondence from their increasingly anxious families. A mother whose daughter is being held wrote: “This experience is exhausting, mentally and emotionally.” She described reading media reports about the continuing conflict in which Iran has retaliated against US and Israelis strikes by firing drones and missiles against its Gulf neighbours, including the UAE. She said: “I have just read another article, and quite frankly I could do one purely on the inadequacies and sycophantic responses from this [UK] embassy.” She also expressed increasing fears for her daughter’s safety as attacks continued. The mother said: “I spoke to [my daughter] last night and they are no longer allowed to go outside in the courtyard as it’s now deemed too dangerous to do so. This is an even bigger worry as they are all just sitting ducks.” Another message from a woman whose husband had been detained under the same law said the case had been “mishandled”. She added: “We are scared because nobody is telling us the truth. Can you please help us.” Police in Abu Dhabi said those detained had “filmed sites and events and disseminated inaccurate information via social media platforms during the ongoing events, an action that could stir public opinion and spread rumours among community members”. In a statement, the officials said these “violations” amounted to a “misuse of social media”. Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, confirmed that one of the detainees was a St Albans’ constituent. She said their family was frustrated by the lack of consular help. Cooper told the Guardian: “I’m deeply concerned that my constituent has been held with very little contact with their family, with no clear access to legal counsel, and no confirmation that UK consular officials have been permitted to visit them. The family are distressed and desperate for information about their wellbeing.” Cooper also criticised the UAE’s round-up of anyone it has accused of sharing images of the conflict. She said: “The response from the authorities appears wholly disproportionate given the nature of the allegations. Cooper added: “I have written to UK ministers asking them to urgently seek clarification from the UAE authorities on the legal basis for my constituent’s detention and to ensure that British embassy officials can visit them as soon as possible to confirm their safety and welfare.” The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed that five UK nationals were receiving consular assistance in the UAE. David Haigh, a human rights lawyer and founder of Dubai Watch, said: “There’s an awful lot more than five cases. The embassy is overwhelmed.” He added: “There hasn’t been any government intervention because it would offend the UAE and they don’t want to do that. Impotent is the best way to describe the response. They’re too scared – it’s all about the money and investment from the UAE. “If another country had done this there would be very senior level discussions to stop it. The people being detained are not terrorists; they are average holidaymakers who have taken pictures and thought, wrongly obviously, that it would be OK.” Haigh said: “Lawyers that I trust have told there are about 35 [British citizens] in Dubai and about 40 more in Abu Dhabi and the other Emirates. And that number has gone up, so I would say you’re now looking at around 90.” The Foreign Office said: “We are providing consular assistance to a small number of British nationals detained in the UAE in connection with this issue, and our ambassador is engaging with the Emirati authorities about their cases.” Last month, Dubai police confirmed it had arrested 109 individuals of various nationalities who had shared images of war damage in Dubai and elsewhere in the UAE. The numbers detained are feared to be many more. In Dubai, which was home to more than 200,000 British citizens before the conflict, police send out regular warnings against spreading misinformation and filming war damage. The force warns: “Photographing or sharing security or critical sites, or reposting unreliable information, may result in legal action and compromise national security and stability.”

Britain to host 35 countries for strait of Hormuz talks, says Starmer

The UK will convene 35 countries – excluding the US – to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran. Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the next phase of discussions in the joint British and French efforts to secure the waterway would be held on Thursday, with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, alongside international leaders. Donald Trump has said it will be up to other countries to make the strait safe if the US ceases its strikes on Tehran, criticising the lack of backing for his war from European nations. Starmer said on Wednesday the meeting would bring together 35 countries to “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities”. No 10 said it would be the first time the countries had convened to discuss a viable plan to reopen the strait. The prime minister said British military planners would meet afterwards “to look at how we can marshal our capabilities and make the strait accessible and safe after the fighting has stopped”. But Starmer, who convened energy and shipping bosses at No 10 on Monday, said the clear-up would last a long time after the hostilities had ceased. “I do have to level with people on this, this will not be easy,” he said. “They were clear with me, the primary challenge they face is not one of insurance, but one of safety and security of passage. So, the fact is, we need all of this together – a united front of military strength and diplomatic activity, partnership with industry, so they too can mobilise once the fighting has stopped and, above all, clear and calm leadership. That is what this country is ready to provide. “Because my guide from the start of this conflict has always been the British national interest. And freedom of navigation in the Middle East is in the British national interest.” The meeting will convene the countries who signed a joint statement last month. Several more have joined since. They include the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, as well as Japan, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria. It commits the countries to a “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait”. It is understood the US has not been invited directly to participate in the talks, with the focus on those who signed the joint statement, as well as other European allies and leading maritime and regional players in the region. About 1,000 ships are stranded by Iran’s partial blockade of the strait in response to the strikes by the US and Israel. Before the conflict, tankers carried about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies through the channel, and about a third of the global fertilisers necessary for half of the world’s food production. Only about 130 ships have made the passage since the war began, the number that would normally pass through every day. The Ministry of Defence has sent military planners to US Central Command to look at options for getting tankers through the strait. On Wednesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement on state TV that the strait of Hormuz would remain closed to “enemies of this nation” and that it remained under control of its navy. Trump posted on Wednesday that there would be no ceasefire with Iran until it had relinquished control of the waterway. “We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” he wrote.