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Middle East crisis live: Trump claims Iran has agreed ‘never’ to have a nuclear weapon as he reportedly approves sending more troops to region

Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani thanked Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a phone call for efforts aimed at regional de-escalation, according to a statement from the emir’s office on Tuesday. Erdoğan said earlier in the day that Turkey would continue working with all its resources to establish peace in the US-Israel war on Iran, which he said has hit the Turkish economy and the whole world. The Turkish president also said his government is considering a number of measures to protect the economy, as the war has engulfed the region and sent energy prices soaring.

Danish exit polls point to win for Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, but without a majority – Europe live

The first electoral projection by DR broadcaster appears to suggest some early changes compared to the earlier exit poll as we get more and more actual results. While Frederiksen’s Social Democrats are still ahead, revised upwards to 21.3% of the vote share, it is the conservative blue bloc that is now projected to get more seats in the next parliament – 83 to 79. This comes on the back of two significant upward revisions for the Danish people’s Party – to 9.6% – and for the Liberal Party, to 10.6%. But, but, but that still means there is no overall majority, it’ll still fall down to the Moderates, with 13 seats, to decide the next government, it seems. Usual caveats apply, expect these numbers to keep changing in the next few hour.

Trump’s rehashed 15-point Iran plan unlikely to appease Tehran

The 15-point framework plan for peace with Iran that Donald Trump has said is being discussed is based on a proposal put forward by his negotiating team during nuclear talks almost a year ago, diplomats with knowledge of the talks believe. That original 15-point plan was the basis for negotiations in late May 2025, shortly before the talks collapsed due to Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear programme. There has been much speculation as to what Trump’s latest claimed plan contains, and how much of it has been updated from the now outdated document the US presented to the Iranians last May. The fact that the plan may largely be a rehash of something that Iran did not accept a year ago suggests either a lack of US seriousness about the talks being planned for this week, or more likely a desire by Trump, for whatever reason, to pretend on Monday he had made more progress towards a deal than in reality he had. The Iranians accused Trump of trying to calm the US markets before they opened by saying he was not going ahead with his threatened attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure on Monday night. He said he was postponing the strikes for five days to give time to see if “15 points of agreement” could be reached. The US president claimed “very good and productive” conversations had led to progress over the previous two days. Iran denied there had been any backchannel talks save indirect discussions about reviving talks. Some of the US’s 15 points drafted in 2025 might be regarded as out of date since there have been three further rounds of talks subsequently in 2026, while Iran’s nuclear programme, especially its key uranium enrichment sites, has been obliterated by US bombing. Some diplomats close to the talks said they did not believe a radically different new US document existed, and even if the US was working on such a plan, it has not yet been shown to the Iranians, let alone secured their agreement. The May 2025 15-point plan, described by the US as a term sheet, was a plan put forward unilaterally by the US side containing a large number of proposals that Iran would find difficult to accept, including restrictions applied to Iran’s use of the money released by sanctions. The plan promised to end only nuclear-related sanctions as opposed to all sanctions including human rights sanctions. The money released by sanctions being lifted could not be used to fund its ballistic missile programme, the US proposed. The plan proposed all uranium stockpiles would be shipped out of Iran immediately as well as down-blended to 3,67%. All its enrichment facilities would be made unusable within a month and centrifuges would be rendered inoperable. The US would help fund a new Iranian civil nuclear programme with a fuel farm outside Iran and subject to inspection by the UN watchdog. A regional enrichment consortium would be established involving Iran, the US, the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The consortium could have an outside manager Iran, in any new talks probably overseen by Pakistan and held in Islamabad, would likely seek that the discussions focus on some kind of hard to deliver undertaking that the US will not mount further military attacks on Iran. The issue of freedom of navigation along the strait of Hormuz would also have to be addressed by Iran. The Gulf states will also be looking for some kind of guarantees from Iran through a non-aggression pact. As a result, it is likely any deal will be even harder to strike than the previous US-Iran talks since the number of issues have spiralled well beyond simply Iran’s nuclear programme, the chief focus of the 15-point plan. The Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, confirmed Pakistan’s offer of talks on Tuesday, and there were hopes that JD Vance would attend, a presence that would go some way to assuage Iran since he is seen as a sceptic about the war. The splits between the US and the rest of the G7 industrialised nations about the wisdom of launching the attack on Iran will be laid bare on Thursday and Friday at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Paris. Due to be attended by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the Iran war is due to be discussed on Friday lunchtime, but France, Germany, Italy, UK, Canada and Japan have all said that they do not support what they regard as an unlawful and unnecessary war. The six countries all stress they are acting to help defend Gulf allies, national interests in the region and promote freedom of navigation in the strait of Hormuz, but that an intervention that could only occur after there is a ceasefire.

Mette Frederiksen’s leftwing bloc fails to win majority in Danish election, exit polls suggest

Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats and Denmark’s other left-leaning parties appear to have failed to win enough votes to gain a clear mandate to form a government in an election fought amid geopolitical tensions with the US over Greenland. According to two exit polls released shortly after voting stopped on Tuesday evening, the prime minister’s party looked to have won the most votes but performed worse than expected, with an estimated 19% to 21% of the vote. If confirmed, the Social Democrats and the other left-leaning parties that form the “red bloc” would be well short of a majority in the 179-seat parliament. But the right-leaning parties of the so-called “blue bloc” also fell short, putting the foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the leader of the non-aligned centre-right Moderates, in the spotlight as a likely kingmaker. Official results are expected later on Tuesday or early on Wednesday. Denmark now faces weeks of coalition talks, after which another centrist coalition or a centre-right coalition appears likely to emerge. Frederiksen’s prospects for a third term as prime minister were not looking good after disastrous municipal elections in November, when her party took a severe hit nationally and lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than 100 years. The 48-year-old called an early election last month hoping to benefit from a “Greenland bounce” in the polls in response to her robust handling of Donald Trump’s threats in January to invade the largely autonomous territory that is part of the Danish kingdom. Discussions between the US, Nuuk and Copenhagen are still taking place but tensions have receded. The crisis appears to have had a lasting effect on Danish voters nevertheless. “I know that sometimes I express myself a bit bluntly,” the prime minister said during a recent campaign event. “But given the times we live in, it is perhaps very good that there are some things that cannot be misunderstood: that Russia should not be allowed to win or that Greenland is not for sale.” On Tuesday the Greenlandic prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, described the vote as the most important for the Danish parliament in the Arctic island’s history. “We are in a time where we have a superpower trying to acquire us, take us, control us,” Nielsen told AFP. “They have a desire to do it, so we are still in a very tense situation.” Frederiksen met Greenlandic people living in Aalborg on Tuesday and said she could never have imagined that as prime minister she would become involved in “defending you against anyone from outside”. She added: “For all of us who have been involved in this, whether as Greenlanders who have felt threatened or as Danes who have felt a strong sense of solidarity – or, in my own case, as the one who had to stand at the forefront – we will never forget the time we have been through together.” She said Greenland had been subjected to “completely unreasonable and unacceptable pressure” by the US. “But you stood firm, and you did so with a grace, determination and strength that the rest of the world greatly admires.” Although it grabbed the international headlines, the Greenland issue did not dominate the election, which was largely fought on domestic issues, including a Social Democrat pledge for a “wealth tax” to fund smaller class sizes in primary schools, as well as the cost of living crisis, the tightening of Denmark’s already hardline immigration laws, animal rights and clean drinking water. The wealth tax, a 0.5% tax on assets held by an individual worth more than 25m kroner (nearly £3m), was welcomed by many on the left but went down badly with Denmark’s super-rich. Henrik Andersen, the chief executive of the wind turbine firm Vestas, declared “enough is enough” and suggested he may leave the country if it was introduced. The shipping magnate Robert Mærsk Uggla, who is the chair of the board of directors of Maersk and the chief executive of AP Møller Holding, said the tax would be “harmful to Denmark”. In the coming weeks the role of Rasmussen is likely to be critical. On the eve of the election, Rasmussen said he did not want to be prime minister, a job he has already held twice, but that he would like the role of “royal investigator”, which entails helping to form a government and is usually held by the person who goes on to become prime minister. A veteran of the political scene, Rasmussen nonetheless cultivates an image as a man of the people, recently telling Euroman magazine that he sometimes used hand soap instead of toothpaste and liked to smoke his pipe in bed “if I have a sore throat or am sick”.

Tangled trail probably leads from Golders Green ambulance attack to Tehran

From Golders Green, where four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set alight in the early hours of Monday, a tangled trail probably leads across two continents to Tehran. British investigators are circumspect. Speaking at an event on Monday evening, Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan police, described a “very relevant and rolling threat” from Iran to the UK, and specifically to Jewish targets, but warned it was still too early to attribute the attack in north London to Tehran. Others who are less bound by the imperatives of policing and politics are not so cautious. In interviews, experts, security officials and others all pointed to Iran, which has been linked to a series of very similar attacks in recent weeks that have all targeted Jewish sites around western Europe with relatively low-tech incendiary devices. Four days after the US and Israel launched their offensive against Iran, experts noted, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite al-Quds force, which handles international military operations, warned: “The enemy should know that their happy days are over and they will no longer be safe anywhere in the world, not even in their own homes.” Since the beginning of the latest conflict, there have been attacks in Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. All have been linked to Iran by local authorities. There have also been a series of attacks in Europe, all very similar to that in Golders Green. On 9 March, an improvised explosive device was detonated in front of a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liège. Four days later, another went off outside a synagogue in Rotterdam. Then a Jewish school and a commercial centre were targeted in Amsterdam, also with amateurish incendiary bombs. Two teenagers were arrested overnight between Monday and Tuesday after a vehicle parked outside a Jewish-owned business in Antwerp was torched. Much of the media coverage this week has focused on a video posted on Telegram shortly after the attack in Golders Green by a group calling itself Harakat al-Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), or the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous, which showed a clip of the burning vehicles and claimed a “historic bond” between Israel and the Machzike Hadath synagogue, where the ambulance service is based. The Telegraph reported on the advent of “Tehran’s newest terrorist proxy”, in effect equating HAYI with organisations such as Hamas, which runs half of Gaza and still has tens of thousands of members, and Hezbollah, a movement with an influential political wing, a powerful if now depleted arsenal of up to 25,000 rockets and missiles and a global web of businesses raising huge sums. Hamas was founded in 1987. Hezbollah, which has been described as a “state within a state” in Lebanon where it is based, was created with Iranian help around 1983. Comparing HAYI to either organisation, both of which have close, if complex, ties with Tehran, is far-fetched. Indeed, it is very unclear if any such group exists. Security officials close to the investigation said the current “working assumption” was that “the group doesn’t exist and it is a front and a brand invented by Iranian intelligence or the Quds force”. The video of the Golders Green attack was first broadcast on social media channels affiliated with a pro-Iranian Shia militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which was organised, funded, trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guards. Its name and visual branding suggest inspiration from other Shia militant groups, researchers say. What is certain is that Iran has used unconventional attacks against its enemies around the world as a key tactic in its efforts to win an ongoing low-level conflict with much more conventionally powerful enemies – although it has been careful to ensure that evidence of its involvement in terrorism is kept to a minimum. Rowley said: “The rapid growth in recent years of Iranian state threats is grave: hostile state surveillance activity, 20 disrupted plots and recent attempted attacks on the Iranian diaspora. None of this is isolated. It is part of a rapidly shifting threat landscape.” Magnus Ranstorp, an author and veteran expert who has long tracked Iranian involvement with extremist and terrorist groups, said Tehran had always tried to maintain “plausible deniability” since its early involvement in the massive bombing of a US military base in 1982 in Lebanon and attacks in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, when the Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural centre were bombed in retaliation for Israeli strikes against Hezbollah. However, recent investigations and trials in Sweden, Greece and the US have revealed how Iranian intelligence or Revolutionary Guards officials have recruited individuals to carry out attacks, often working with criminal networks to provide manpower and resources. Two Iranians were charged last week with conducting hostile surveillance on the Jewish community in London for Tehran. Earlier this month, a Pakistani man was convicted in Brooklyn of planning to kill Donald Trump and Joe Biden as part of an Iranian plot. Asif Merchant admitted during his trial that the Guard Corps had tasked him with political assassinations in retaliation for the 2020 killing by the US of their revered commander Qassem Suleimani, and he described his recruitment by the Guards. Among a wealth of detail, he said his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in Tehran. The attack in Golders Green is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, not a terrorist incident, and there is still a possibility the attack was the work of individuals or a group acting independently. It comes less than six months after an attack on a synagogue in Manchester. According to the Community Security Trust (CST), there were 3,700 antisemitic incidents recorded in the UK in 2025, the second highest level ever and a 4% rise on the previous year. Ranstorp noted that the most recent wave of attacks was not lethal. “The Iranians have a record of killing people or trying to kill people, so for them to clearly try quite hard not to kill anyone is interesting. There is no need for them to put out big statements … but this is still about sending a message,” he said.

Jailed Bolsonaro granted ‘humanitarian house arrest’ amid failing health

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been granted permission to serve his 27-year sentence for a coup attempt at home instead of in prison because of his failing health. The decision by supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes followed Bolsonaro’s hospitalization since 13 March for pneumonia, one of several health problems the former leader has faced since he was stabbed by a man in 2018 before he was elected president. Bolsonaro recently was put in intensive care for a few days because of kidney problems and other issues. His doctors did not say when he would leave the hospital in Brasília, but his overall condition has improved. In the decision, Moraes said the house arrest was going to last for an initial period of 90 days. “After this period, the presence of the requirements necessary for maintaining humanitarian house arrest will be reassessed, including a medical examination if needed,” the justice wrote. Lawyers for the rightwing leader, who governed from 2019 to 2022, had long sought Moraes’s permission for him to serve his sentence under “humanitarian house arrest”, but the justice had previously denied all requests. On Monday, Paulo Gonet, Brazil’s attorney general, paved the way for Bolsonaro to be put in house imprisonment instead of returning to prison. One of Bolsonaro’s sons, senator Flávio Bolsonaro, has said he will run for the presidency in October. Polls show he is in a dead heat with incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Historically, Brazil’s supreme court only reverses house arrest if a detainee’s health improves dramatically, or if there is violation of the established rules, such as not making public statements, posting on social media or giving interviews to the media.

US set to send airborne troops to Middle East as Trump claims talks with Iran taking place

The US is poised to deploy airborne troops to the Middle East as strikes intensified across the region on Tuesday and Donald Trump claimed the US was in “very good” talks with Iran to end the war. Iranian barrages targeted Israel, Gulf Arab states and northern Iraq on Tuesday, while Israeli and US warplanes continued to carry out strikes across Tehran and on other targets in the Islamic Republic. Israel indicated that it planned to occupy control over swaths of southern Lebanon in what one Hezbollah official told Reuters was an “existential threat” to the Lebanese state. The US on Tuesday appeared poised to send a combat team to the Middle East of 3,000 troops from the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division, which can deploy anywhere in the world in under 24 hours, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paratroopers would join thousands of US marines already heading for the Gulf, where Trump could order them to wrest control of the strait of Hormuzor storm or blockade Iran’s oil hub on Kharg Island. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the war would continue “unabated” even as she said Trump was exploring the “possibility” of diplomacy. Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump did not give specific details of the supposed talks with Iran but said “they’re going to make a deal.” Tehran had offered the US a “very specific prize” related to the flow of oil and gas through the strait of Hormuz, he said. It had given Washington a “very big present worth a significant amount of money” that proved “we’re dealing with the right people”. He said the US vice-president, JD Vance, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and his envoy Jared Kushner were involved in the ongoing talks. While the human and economic toll from the joint US-Israeli invasion mounts and the conflict enters its third week, the White House’s claims of last-ditch negotiations to end the war have not been confirmed by intermediaries or the Iranian government. Iran’s UN ambassador said that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed in the country since the start of the war. Official sources in Tehran have denied that any talks are under way. Tehran distrusts any US offer of negotiations in part because it was in talks with the US before the surprise attack that started the war and killed the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of senior officials. Iran was also in talks last year when the US and Israel attacked its nuclear facilities, starting a 12-day war. “We must think wisely,” Esmail Kowsari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. “Their nature is to sow discord so that they can make people distrust officials and believe that such actions have taken place, whereas no such action has occurred.” However, potential intermediaries including Pakistan, Oman, Egypt and others have confirmed tentative efforts to establish channels of communication between Washington and Tehran. Analysts point out that there are deep divisions among surviving senior officials in Tehran, which could explain some of the defiant Iranian reaction. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been talking about the war in recent days with his counterparts in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Turkmenistan, his office said. In Islamabad, officials raised the prospect of a meeting between Iranian officials and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and JD Vance, the US vice-president. A European official told Reuters that while there had been no direct negotiations between the two nations, Egypt, Pakistan and Gulf states were relaying messages. Trump reposted an offer from the Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, to host US-Iran talks in Islamabad on his Truth Social platform. The activity came after the US and Iran traded threats over the weekend of strikes that could have cut electricity to millions in Iran and around the Gulf and knocked out desalination plants that provide many desert nations with drinking water. On Monday, Trump delayed a deadline for Iran to open the strait of Hormuz for shipping or see its power stations targeted by airstrikes, briefly driving down oil prices and boosting stocks. The deadline will now expire on Friday. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin-Salman, had been quietly lobbying Trump to push for regime change in Iran by destroying the country’s hardline government. Publicly Saudi Arabia had been more restrained, decrying Iranian missile and drone launches but initially opposing the joint US-Israeli strikes. Iranian media reported, meanwhile, that Israeli-US strikes targeted two gas facilities and a pipeline, hours after Trump stepped back from his threat to attack power infrastructure. The facilities in central Iran were “partially damaged”, said the Fars news agency, which did not provide a source and was Iran’s only news outlet to report the incident. It said an attack also targeted the gas pipeline of the Khorramshahr power plant, in the country’s south-west. Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue to strike Iran and Lebanon, where its offensive targets Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist militant movement, even as the US considers a ceasefire. “There’s more to come,” the Israeli prime minister said. Iran fired several waves of missiles at Israel early on Tuesday, and there were reports of an impact in the country’s north. In Tel Aviv, a missile with a 100kg (220lbs) warhead escaped Israeli defences to slam into a street in the centre of the city, blowing out windows of a neighbouring apartment building and sending smoke billowing. Earlier in the day, Israel pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, saying it was targeting infrastructure used by Hezbollah. A strike on a residential apartment south-east of the Lebanese capital killed at least two people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. In Kuwait, power lines were hit from air defence shrapnel, causing electricity outages. Missile alert sirens sounded in Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed 19 Iranian drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern province. Oil prices rose to $104 (£77) a barrel in morning trading, up more than 40% since Israel and the US started the war on 28 February. Analysts are warning of durable and deep disruption to the supply of oil and gas from the region even in the event of a rapid end to hostilities, with severe economic consequences around the world.

Russia fires nearly 1,000 drones in one of its largest aerial attacks on Ukraine

Russia has launched a huge wave of nearly 1,000 drones at Ukraine, killing at least seven people, as Moscow appears to be stepping up a spring offensive intended to break Ukrainian resistance along the front. Ukrainian officials said Moscow fired nearly 400 long-range drones and 23 cruise missiles overnight, followed by another 556 drones in an unusual daytime assault on Tuesday, hitting cities across the west of the country. Taken together, the barrage marks one of the largest aerial bombardments of Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion more than four years ago. One Russian drone struck the Bernardine monastery, a 16th-century church in Lviv’s Unesco-listed medieval centre, causing damage, local authorities said. Dramatic footage circulating online showed a large kamikaze drone hitting a busy street in Lviv. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the barrage had caused damage in 11 regions and he renewed calls for allies to urgently supply Kyiv with more air defence munitions. He has said repeatedly that Ukraine, which relies on the US for systems capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, faces looming shortages as Washington’s attention remains focused on the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. Neighbouring Moldova also said a key power line linking it to Europe had been damaged in overnight Russian strikes, and urged citizens to reduce electricity use during peak hours. After enduring a winter of widespread power and heating cuts, Ukraine is braced for a renewed Russian push. Moscow’s war of attrition typically intensifies in the spring as weather conditions improve. Russian forces, who outnumber Ukrainian troops by roughly three to one, are seeking to make gains along the eastern and southern fronts. Russian troops have continued a slow advance in the eastern Donetsk region during the winter, edging closer to the key city of Sloviansk from the north and east. They hold positions about 12 miles (20km) from its outskirts. Open-source analysts also report Russian gains near Zaliznychne in the Zaporizhzhia region. The Kremlin had moved heavy equipment and additional troops to the frontline, the Institute for the Study of War said late on Monday. Michael Kofman, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC, said: “Usually there is a Russian wave of mechanised assaults around April, and they once again prove costly and ineffective.” He said Ukrainian defences had been “optimised for defeating mechanised assaults”, with much of the fighting now focused on suppressing or displacing opposing drone units. Ukraine has also had a notable boost on the battlefield this year, retaking roughly 150 sq miles of territory in southern Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces had previously been advancing. February was the first month since 2023 in which Kyiv regained more territory than it lost, according to military analysts. The counteroffensive was aided by Elon Musk’s decision in February to switch off Russian forces’ access to Starlink internet connections, disrupting a key line of communication for the troops. Ukraine is still in a precarious position, however, with much of the world’s attention focused on the war in the Middle East, raising concerns that US Patriot missile interceptors, the backbone of the country’s air defences, could run out. Ukrainian and US delegations held two days of talks in Florida over the weekend intended to find a path to ending Russia’s full-scale invasion, but no breakthrough was reported. A key sticking point remains the Donbas, which Moscow wants Kyiv to cede in full. On Tuesday Zelenskyy wrote on X: “We had a detailed discussion on the outcomes of the meetings in the United States. It is telling that while our negotiators were reporting, Russia launched a new wave of ‘shahed’ drones against Ukraine. “The geopolitical situation has become more complicated due to the war against Iran, and unfortunately, this is emboldening Russia.” The well-sourced outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that the US had put pressure on Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donetsk region during the Florida talks, saying Washington could step back from peace negotiations and shift its focus further to the military operation in Iran. Zelenskyy has repeatedly said any discussion of a voluntary withdrawal would only be possible if Ukraine first received ironclad security guarantees from the west. The Kremlin, which has benefited from an unexpected economic windfall driven by a surge in global energy prices, said last week that talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv on ending the war in Ukraine were on a “situational pause” because of the conflict in Iran.