Three paramedics have been killed and six were wounded in Lebanon’s Tyre district as they were recovering victims after an airstrike, according to the World Health Organisation’s office in Lebanon. The WHO said health workers “must never be targeted”.
Iran has in effect closed the strait of Hormuz to oil and gas exports for the past four days with a mixture of drone strikes and fear that has halted commercial maritime traffic despite intense US attacks on Iran’s navy. At least four tankers have been struck and Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that seaborne traffic had dropped by 80% on Sunday, with little sign of a return as key maritime insurers cancelled cover the next day. In an effort to ratchet up the threat, on Monday, Brig Gen Ebrahim Jabbari, a senior adviser to the commander-in-chief of Iran’s revolution guards, said: “We will attack and set ablaze any ship attempting to cross.” In fact the most recent reported incidents at sea were on Sunday, according to the UK’s Maritime Trading Organisation. An unknown projectile exploded “in very close proximity” to a vessel 40 miles west of Sharjah in the UAE on 1 March, it said, though no serious casualties were reported. Despite the rhetoric, Tehran’s capacity to attack ships is likely to be sharply reduced. The US Central Command (Centcom) has engaged in a sustained campaign to target Iran’s small navy, and said on Monday it had sunk or crippled all 11 of the ships the navy had operating in the Gulf of Oman to the east of the strait. They include the Shahid Bagheri, a container ship converted over two years to carry, launch and recover drones and helicopters, and, in theory, a means of extending and projecting military power deep into the region, with Iranian officials saying it could remain at sea for 12 months with facilities such as a hospital on board. Gen Dan Caine, the head of the US military, said in a briefing on Monday that the US attack on Iran began with strikes by Tomahawk cruise missiles which “closed in on Iranian naval forces” and were accompanied by “strikes across the southern flank in Iran”. Satellite imagery showed that Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base was heavily targeted. While Israel has concentrated on attacking Tehran and politically important regime sites, a key part of the US military effort has been to secure the south of the country, controlling maritime routes and the airspace there. The US military also said it has seen no sign of Iran escalating by attempting to mine the two-mile-wide shipping lanes with the help of its small fleet of submarines. Though details were scant, Centcom said it had targeted the Iranian submarine fleet, also at Bandar Abbas. Nevertheless, tankers laden with oil, natural gas or other fossil fuel products have declined to risk the transit out of the Gulf, though there are reports that some are considering turning off their tracking transponders and risking a transit at night, even though they may not be insured. Conventionally, it is said, about a fifth of the world’s crude oil passes through the strait of Hormuz. But that masks considerable regional and country variations – while countries in the Americas import 12.5% of their oil via the strait, the proportion rises to 45.7% for China, according to the data agency Kpler. Iran’s strategy, meanwhile, has quickly evolved to bombing infrastructure and ships at port, with seemingly more effective results. Satellite imagery showed damage to two parts of the Saudi Ras Tanura oil refinery, the country’s largest. It shut down on Monday after two drones were intercepted over the site, their debris causing a fire. Qatar’s state-run energy firm halted liquefied natural gas production “due to military attacks” on Monday. A day later, a fire broke out at Fujairah in the UAE after a drone was intercepted in the city’s port area, a key oil storage and trading centre. The result so far is that oil and gas prices have soared. Brent crude, a global benchmark, surged to $83 a barrel, up 15% from its level on Friday. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is considering proposals for the US government to help oil tankers in the region obtain insurance to restore confidence after a war the US and Israel started.
It took months for the Bush administration’s falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to come to light, after an invasion, regime change, an investigation, and then, finally, the truth. For the Trump administration’s warnings of an imminent threat from Iran, it took an afternoon. On Capitol Hill on Monday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, swiftly undercut the Trump administration’s claims that Iran was planning a preemptive strike by adding a key piece of information: Israel was planning to strike first. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said on Tuesday. There were two corollaries from that bombshell behind the largest US military intervention in a generation. First, that senior US officials had misled the public on Saturday when they warned of intelligence about Iran’s plans to launch a preemptive strike. And second, that Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu played a far larger role in prompting the US to launch strikes against Iran than was previously admitted. Democrats, predictably, were apoplectic. “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians,” said Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, who had received classified briefings from Rubio. “There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.” “I think secretary Rubio inadvertently told the truth here that this was driven by Benjamin Netanyahu and here we are in a major conflict,” said senator Angus King as he grilled Elbridge Colby, a Pentagon official in charge of policy planning. The administration has been understandably prickly about the accusation that Netanyahu lobbied Trump into this latest war. (His press secretary Karoline Leavitt retweeted an article with the helpful headline: No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran). “I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” Trump said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they [Iran] were going to attack first.” Since Trump began mustering his “armada” in the Middle East in the largest buildup since the Iraq war, the administration has run through a number of justifications for the attack on Iran. And it still doesn’t seem to have settled on why the US is now at war. It began with Trump’s claims that he was sending warships to the Middle East because of Iran’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, which he said had killed 35,000 people (other estimates have been more conservative). Then it was the Iranian nuclear programme, which US special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed had reconstituted itself since it was “obliterated” last summer and could allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon within a week. Then it was Iran’s ballistic weapons programme, which Trump claimed could soon deliver a strike not just against US interests in the region, but also against the US itself. He didn’t provide evidence, and US intelligence estimates had said the opposite: that Tehran wouldn’t have that capability for at least a decade. Most recently, it was the warning that Iran was planning for an imminent strike, which Trump said was not linked to the negotiations at all.
Mike Babayan was in a hookah lounge when he heard the explosion on Saturday night. Dubai – a gilded playground for the ultra-rich and oligarch class, billed as one of the safest places on Earth – had been attacked by Iranian missiles. Phones lit up with emergency messages urging residents to take shelter. But Dubai is resilient, at least when it comes to partying. “Everyone just went back to their hookah and food a minute later,” said Babayan. Still, as a precaution, that night Babayan moved from his main home in the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building and anchor of the Dubai skyline, to a residence further from the city center. There, he could hear the explosions much clearer – one every 20 to 30 minutes, he said. “But everyone is just having coffees, walking around like there’s no care in the world. It’s pretty insane.” Babayan is 23 and originally from Los Angeles. He moved to Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, in 2020 to work in finance. He now documents his life as a daytrader and flexes the trappings of influencer life (BMWs, million-dollar apartment) to his nearly 150,000 TikTok followers. Over the weekend, he shifted his focus to commentating on the Dubai strikes in the direct-to-camera style typical of influencers, the city’s night skyline shimmering behind him. He felt a responsibility to combat misinformation; when he saw an AI-generated video of the Burj Khalifa burning, he told his followers it was fake. But he couldn’t resist showing off a little, too. In one clip, Babayan said he felt that Dubai remained safer than New York, Los Angeles and London, even amid the war. Where else, he asked, could he walk around at night wearing his $60,000 watch undisturbed? “I feel like that’s more important, not having to look over my shoulder every two seconds, compared to the chances of a drone hitting me, which I feel is not as likely,” he said. Iran began targeting neighboring Gulf states with missiles and drones in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks that have killed more than 700 Iranians, including 168 people at a girls’ elementary school, according to Iranian state media. Caught by surprise, influencers living in Dubai responded in the way most natural to them: by flooding the information void with scenes from a life of luxury interrupted by war. Will Bailey, a British travel influencer with nearly 500,000 followers, witnessed the missiles fall from his perch at a beach club. The DJ did not stop playing thumping beats as Bailey and others posted videos of themselves staring at the nearby Fairmont The Palm hotel engulfed in smoke. (Sample response in his comment section: “Why is everyone still partying?”) Another visiting travel influencer posted his vantage point of the attack, from the deck of a yacht party. One British entrepreneur visiting Dubai became the face of entitlement after she complained that the conflict grounded her flight, saying in a since deleted video: “It’s really annoying actually because we have got events, we’ve got meetings, probably going to have to cancel them.” “Influencers give the impression that they are more douchy in the way they portray life,” said Babayan. “That does piss people off, and now they’re saying that [the chaos] is well deserved.” Dr Sreya Mitra is an associate professor of mass communication at the American University of Sharjah who studies South Asian influencers based in Dubai. (The UAE is overwhelmingly populated by expatriates, the largest demographics being Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.) Indian television news channels face what some have called a “credibility crisis”, and Mitra says Indians living in Dubai felt the need to reassure friends and family back home. “Indian social media influencers are trying to counteract and factcheck the hyperbole of Indian news channels,” Mitra said. “[These influencers] are reinforcing a narrative of normalcy. They’ll say, ‘Hey, it’s 2am and I’m here in the Ramadan market or downtown Dubai, and it’s safe.’” The UAE has reported three deaths and 68 injuries since the war started – far less than those reported by Lebanon and Israel, and more than Qatar and Bahrain, per Al Jazeera. The UAE said it destroyed or intercepted most of the missiles and drones launched at it by Iran; the Fairmont hotel and airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi sustained damage, and on Tuesday a drone strike reportedly hit the US consulate’s parking lot in Dubai, causing a fire but no injuries. Some influencers downplayed the strikes. “We are calm. We are protected. We are in safe hands,” a Ukrainian influencer captioned her video montage of Emirate leaders. “There’s no place I’d rather be,” wrote another Dubai-based content creator over clips of picturesque sunsets and bike rides along the beach. The influencer facade The influx of content from the Gulf has brought into focus the strange interplay between state repression and the uninhibited lifestyle that influencers show on their socials. Dubai is known as the influencer capital of the world, playing host to an ecosystem of content creators, agents, producers and luxury brands ready to tap into the talent pool. Professional posters are required to obtain an operating license that can cost up to $4000. They are ordered by the UAE’s media council to “respect” the state, its politics, and “the divine and Islamic beliefs, as well as all other religions and beliefs” in their posts. The “safest place in the world” moniker often touted by influencers comes at the expense of a migrant working class subject to abuse and suppression, and an advanced system of civilian surveillance. “Dubai and the UAE in general have very strategically used the idea of creators and influencers to promote the country, not just to the west but to the global south,” said Dr Zoe Hurley, an associate professor of media at the American University of Sharjah and author of the 2023 book Social Media Influencing in The City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition. “They strategically deploy digital assets to hold up a mirror to the world and provide a place of affordable destination as an alternative to the American dream.” Hurley describes the mood among UAE-based influencers now as one of shock and vulnerability. “People are attracted to living here because previously, it was this safe oasis in this region. That idea has been shattered,” she said. “I’m someone who questions authenticity in my writing, but I’m seeing quite authentic responses to this situation.” She notes that news coverage and commentary painting influencers as “selfish” does not take into account the full story. “People pay $20 US dollars to go to a beach club and look like they’re living in an Instagrammable place, but that’s kind of the facade,” Hurley said. “It’s really a city and a place of contradiction.” Bailey, the influencer who shared videos of missiles from his beach club, has defended himself from commenters who called his posts sensational and misinforming. “All I’m doing is I’m documenting what’s happening,” he said in a video posted on Monday. “I’ve had thousands of messages from people who are grateful for the videos I’m putting out.” But no TikTok can fully encapsulate a conflict that was decades in the making and the result of more than 70 years of US and Israeli entanglement with Iran. Influencer dispatches from the Gulf’s biggest cities are inherently “ahistorical”, said Peter Loge, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. “These content producers are saying, ‘Hey, here’s a quick video, it’s exploding, it’s scary.’ But you can’t do more. [That] is not what social media is built for, and that’s not what people are on TikTok to learn about.” Users across the globe are eagerly scrolling through “POV” war content. Loge likened the feed to the next evolution of “disaster tourism”, a uniquely western phenomenon where travelers visit recent catastrophes sites (such as monied tourists visiting the ruins of Pompeii in the 1700s, or bus tours descending on New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina). Of course, Dubai’s influencer class did not realize they were about to witness disaster themselves. Nevertheless, they were in prime position to film, caption and post as it happened. “Whenever anything big happens, we try to make sense of what happened,” Loge said. “It’s meaning-making, this is what we do all the time as human beings. These influencers are part of the meaning-making ecosystem.” Mia Plainer, 23, is a social media planner for a fashion and beauty-themed social media channel in London. She and a friend found themselves in Dubai this weekend on “a little break” from the corporate grind. They were on a boat when the missiles started falling. The Coast Guard brought them back to shore, and they ended up sheltering in their hotel’s garage for the night, sleeping on sun lounges brought in from the pool deck. Plainer filmed their experience, which she called a “juxtaposition” of war and luxury, for her family and followers. “There’s this narrative of, ‘Oh look at all these influencers crying about how war’s going on and they’re not used to it,’” she said. “But I think it opens your eyes to how anyone and everyone is in the same situation, no matter your status.” Plainer says she has empathy for people in war zones such as Gaza and Ukraine, many of whom have shared their experiences on TikTok. “I’m always shocked that these people have to live this reality,” she said. “This is their day to day, and I’ve just come out for a trip, it’s just a few days of my life.” By Tuesday, the vacation had returned to normal. Plainer and her friend hope to fly home on Thursday afternoon; the UK is preparing to evacuate citizens in the Gulf, and the US urged Americans to leave 14 countries in the Middle East including the UAE. However, flight availability and air travel remains uncertain as the war escalates across the region. For Plainer, “the plan is just, life goes on, and to enjoy ourselves as much as possible as we can whilst we’re here.” This article was amended on 3 March 2026 to include mention of a drone strike reportedly hitting the US consulate’s parking lot in Dubai.
Israel and the US intensified their attacks on Iran on Tuesday, launching waves of strikes targeting command and control facilities, strategic state offices and missile launch sites as Donald Trump said he had rejected what he claimed was an attempt by Tehran to restart negotiations. Iran retaliated with hundreds of missile and drone attacks against Israel and across the Gulf region, targeting US military bases, embassies and civilian infrastructure. Despite acute international fears, there appeared little chance of any de-escalation of the conflict as violence and chaos continued across an fast-widening swathe of the Middle East for a fourth day. Hundreds of people have been killed, mainly in Iran where the Red Crescent said 787 were dead and thousands injured. Billions of dollars of damage has been inflicted on oil refineries, tankers, airports, luxury hotels and much else, with the world economy threatened with a severe crisis as energy prices soar. “Their air defense, Air Force, Navy and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!’,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform, saying the US was prepared “to go far longer” than a four to five-week war against Iran. In later comments at the White House with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, he said: “Just about everything’s been knocked out.” Trump denied Israel had forced his hand into launching the war, while conceding he feared a “worst-case scenario” in Iran where “somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person”. Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva denied on Tuesday that Tehran had approached the US for negotiations. Among targets hit in new waves of US and Israeli airstrikes in Tehran and other main Iranian cities was a building used by the committee of senior clerics who will choose a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose assassination by Israeli planes on Saturday opened hostilities. It was not clear if the building was occupied at the time of the strike. “The American-Zionist criminals attacked the Assembly of Experts building in Qom,” south of Tehran, Tasnim, an official Iranian news agency reported. Iran’s foreign ministry said the UN security council had a duty to act to stop the war, while its military remained publicly defiant. A spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guards threatened that “the gates of hell will open more and more” on the US and Israel. The US embassy in Riyadh, which was damaged and briefly caught fire overnight in an Iranian drone strike, warned on Tuesday of an imminent attack in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran, site of most of the kingdom’s oil and gas installations along the Gulf coast. Economic targets came under fire elsewhere in the Gulf as Iran continued to launch volleys of retaliatory drones and missiles at its neighbours. Qatar said it had downed missiles targeting Hamad international airport in Doha, while Oman reported several drones attacking the port of Duqm, and in the UAE falling debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at an oil storage and trading zone, authorities said. On one newly opened front of the expanding conflict, Israel said ground troops had entered southern Lebanon to protect people living in northern Israel. In response, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s political council, Mahmoud Qamati, declared “open war” with Israel. The pro-Iran group continued to target Israel, saying it had launched two missile salvoes overnight towards military bases in northern Israel, and shelled a military base on Tuesday morning. Israel carried out strikes and issued evacuation orders for villages in southern Lebanon, emptying out the country south of the Litani River and turning the southern suburbs of Beirut into a ghost town. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Tuesday he had instructed Israeli troops to “hold and advance” into areas of south Lebanon to prevent further Hezbollah fire on northern Israel. It was the first acknowledgment that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah would involve ground forces. Israeli airstrikes have killed 52 people and displaced at least 29,000 in Lebanon so far. US officials maintained their bellicose rhetoric. The defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, raised the possibility of US troops on the ground in Iran, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that the “hardest hits are yet to come”. Trump said on Tuesday that successive waves of US-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed figures he had considered could be new leaders. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead … I guess the worst case would be, we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? … We’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people,” he said as he met Merz. US officials offered varying justifications for launching a war on Iran, with Rubio saying the US’s hand had been forced by Israel. Trump has at times said the goal was regime change in Iran, and at others that he was solely trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and to curb its ballistic missile programme. Iran has consistently denied it is developing nuclear weapons. Benjamin Netanyahu was more plain in his objectives, saying the US and Israel were “creating the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple their government. Israeli analysts suggested the Iran campaign came at a good time for the Israeli prime minister and would boost flagging poll numbers before legislative elections. Israeli authorities said 12 people had been injured on Tuesday in three Iranian missile attacks on southern Israel, some of which contained cluster munitions, a weapon banned by most countries. The US said six soldiers had died, seemingly killed while stationed in Kuwait. Three F-14 fighter jets were shot down by accident by the kingdom’s air defence systems on Monday. Trump criticised some allies on Tuesday for their lack of support for the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, saying Spain had been “terrible” and that he was “not happy with the UK either”. Referring to Keir Starmer, he said: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” Iran’s strikes against energy infrastructure have paralysed the resource-rich Gulf states. Qatar announced a halt to its largest liquid natural gas production facility, and Saudi Arabia ceased operations at its Ras Tanura oil refinery. Global energy prices jumped further after Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, a global choke-point for hydrocarbons, attacking several ships that attempted to pass through the narrow waterway. Brig Gen Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, said continued US-Israeli attacks would bring Iranian reprisals against “all economic centres” in the Middle East. “We have closed the strait of Hormuz … The price of oil … will soon reach $200. We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centres, we will hit all economic centres in the region,” Jabbari was quoted as saying by Iranian news agency Isna. Loud explosions were heard in Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi on Tuesday night.
Iran endured a day of unprecedented military and diplomatic pressure on Tuesday as US airstrikes pushed the death toll in the country above 800 and the offices of Assembly of Experts, the body due to select a replacement for the assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamenei, were bombed. It would be an extraordinary security lapse if it emerges that many of the 88 elderly clerics on the assembly had been in the building in Qom voting at the time. “There was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial,” Trump said at a White House event, although it was unclear what specifically he was talking about. In Tehran, a building that is home to a body that mediates between Iran’s parliament and the Guardian Council of clerics and lawyers was also attacked. In a bid to instil some stability, it had become an imperative for Iran’s authorities to try to rapidly install a new clerical figure to replace the 86-year-old Khamenei. He was assassinated along with his wife and granddaughter on Sunday. Reports the defence minster, installed only two days earlier, had been killed were not confirmed. The offices of the supreme national security council had been bombed. It is not known whether Ali Larijani, the council’s secretary general, was present. The chaos suggests Iran’s government is struggling to function at all in the middle of a war that is turning into an existential struggle for survival. Behind the scenes a power struggle between officials is under way over whether to adopt a more flexible approach to the west, a debate that irevolves around the choice of the new supreme leader, underlining the need for the political elite to make a decision. Israel’s war planes appear to have near-complete control of the skies over Tehran and can pick off Iran’s leaders and security officials at will. Vast swathes of black smoke and fires were shown across the Tehran skyline, as more residents sought to flee to the countryside. Donald Trump has admitted the airstrikes on Iran’s leadership have been so effective that at least two government members he had prospectively earmarked to lead Iran had been killed in airstrikes. With Trump’s objectives in the war shifting almost daily, it is not clear if he wants Iran to scrap the concept of clerical rule, and whether he believes a secular politician will be more malleable. The supreme leader in Iran has an authority no politician can match, and effectively can overrule any democratic institution in the country. Trump showed no interest in diplomatic efforts led by Turkey to restart talks, sending a message on Truth Social that: “Their air defense, their air force, their navy, and their leadership are gone. They want to negotiate, I said it’s too late!” Iran’s officials denied they are seeking to resume talks that ended on Thursday, followed 24 hours later by the first airstrikes on Tehran. Iran had thought the talks were due to continue at a technical level this week. In a sign of the tragedy unfolding across Iran, thousands turned out in Minab, southern Iran for the funeral of more than 170 school girls killed in a bombing on Sunday. The US has not accepted responsibility, but the UN human rights commission has asked Washington to mount an urgent inquiry into its role, including whether the US mistook the school for an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps building. Highlighting the destruction of civilian property including schools and hospitals, Esmail Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesperson, held his weekly press conference in a damaged school in Tehran. Baghaei insisted Iran was not interested in resuming the talks that fell apart last week, saying: “Now is the time for war and defending the homeland. Anything that tries to distract us must be avoided and rejected. Deception is part of the US behavioural pattern.” He described the US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s description of the negotiations as lies. Baghaei explained Witkoff had claimed in US TV interview that the US had four demands: “An end to the nuclear and missile programmes, any kind of support for friends in the region and an end to the Iranian navy. Of course, none of these were raised in the negotiations. These are lies they are making up to justify their actions.” Picking up on claims by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, the US had acted largely because it knew Israel was about to attack and that would make the US a target for Iran the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said this seemed a case of Israel and not America First. He added: “Trump was fed false information by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran’s military defence and deterrent capabilities. The question is whether Israel, with deliberate miscalculation, made the US a victim of its own interests.” He warned European powers not to help the US launch airstrikes against Iran, saying: “It would be an act of war. Any such act against Iran would be regarded as complicity with the aggressors.” The UK has said it is willing to allow the US to use its airbases in the UK and the base at Diego Garcia to attack Iran as long as the attacks on Iranian missile sites are part of a defensive operation to protect the economies of the Gulf states. Tensions with Gulf allies continued as Tehran pursued its long signalled plan to create chaos in global markets by attacking US assets right across the region. The move is leading to a collapse in relations with Gulf states and pushing the price of oil towards $85 a barrel. The foreign ministry urged angry Gulf states to act with reflection and patience. Ministry sources said they believed Israeli the Mossad agents were working in Saudi Arabia and Qatar in a bid to run operations that might turn the states against Iran. In a rare admission of the diplomatic damage the strategy may be causing, the son of the Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, Yousef, said: “I know how much my father tried to improve relations with neighbours and Muslim countries in the region, and how important it was and is still to him. “How bitter it is that to defend ourselves we have to strike American bases in our friendly countries. I do not know if they understand or not. I wish none of our neighbours’ soil was under the control of the US army.”
Donald Trump said his biggest fear in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran would be regime change that brought in leadership “as bad as the previous person”. At an Oval Office news conference with the visiting German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, the US president was asked by a reporter about the “worst-case scenario” of the risky operation that led to the assassination on Saturday of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “I don’t know if there’s a worst case,” Trump said, expressing confidence about superior US-Israeli force. “We have them very much beaten militarily, from the military standpoint. They’re still lobbing some missiles,” he said. “They won’t even be able to do that because we’re hitting all of their carriers. We’re hitting all of their missile stock … and we’re knocking out a lot.” However Trump admitted that hopes Iran would soon turn a page with a less repressive government could easily be dashed. “I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don’t want that to happen. It would probably be the worst,” he said. “You go through this and then in five years, you realise you put somebody in who was no better. So we’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people.” Trump, who had called on the Iranians to rise up en masse against the regime after the military attacks, urged caution as long as the massive state security apparatus was still in place. “We’ll see what happens with the people. You know, they have their chance. And we’ve said, don’t do it yet,” he said. “If you’re going to go out and protest, don’t do it yet. It’s very dangerous out there.” Trump also asserted that Iran was going to attack before he did, walking back comments by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday that Israel triggered the war. “I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” he said. Turning to Europe’s disparate reactions to the military campaign, Trump threatened to cut off all trade with Spain after the Nato ally refused Washington permission for two jointly operated bases in southern Spain to be used in US strikes on Iran. “Spain has been terrible,” Trump said, adding that he had told the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to “cut off all dealings” with the European country. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain.” Trump’s threat came hours after Spain’s foreign minister had played down the chances of any retaliatory actions. “The bases used jointly with the US are Spanish sovereign bases that operate within the framework of the treaty with the United States, and it is within that premise – of our sovereignty and the treaty framework – that they can be used,” José Manuel Albares told reporters. “Therefore, there is nothing strange or surprising about it, and we do not expect any consequences whatsoever.” Trump also attacked Spain once again for refusing to accept Nato’s proposal for member states to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, in critical remarks echoed by Merz when he was asked. “Everybody was enthusiastic about it – Germany, everybody – and Spain didn’t do it,” Trump said. “And now Spain said we can’t use their bases – and that’s OK. We could use their bases; if we wanted, we could just fly in and use it [sic]. Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it. But we don’t have to. But they were unfriendly.” Spanish government sources pushed back at Trump’s remarks, saying Madrid “makes a significant contribution to the defence of European territory” and is a key trade partner. “If the US administration wishes to review this relationship, it must do so respecting the autonomy of private companies, international law, and bilateral agreements between the European Union and the United States,” the sources said. Trump lashed out again at the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who has not joined the US-Israeli attack but did let US forces use UK bases. “I’m not happy with the UK. It’s taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land,” Trump said. “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” Merz, whose good rapport with Trump has endured despite confusion over his on-again, off-again tariff policies, had refrained from criticising Operation Epic Fury before his departure. He is the first European leader to visit Trump since the war began. During his Oval Office audience, Merz underlined common ground with Trump, while attempting to pull the conversation back to Ukraine’s security as Europe’s priority. “We are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Tehran away. And we will talk about the day after, what will happen then if they are out,” he said of the Iranian government. “And we have to talk about Ukraine. There are too many bad guys in this world, actually. And this is an issue we have to talk about because we all want to see this war coming to an end as soon as possible. But Ukraine has to preserve its territory and their security interests.”
Donald Trump has claimed Iran was going to attack before he did, walking back secretary of state, Marco Rubio’s assertion that Israel triggered the war. “I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” Trump told reporters as he met Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, at the White House. Trump said that the US and Israel are hitting Iran “where it is much more appropriate” adding, “everything has been knocked out”. This comes after the worst mass casualty of the strikes so far, which was on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran. The devastating attack killed at least 168 people (our visual guide is here). Trump also said he was upset with Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, who has not joined the US-Israeli attack on Iran but did let US forces use UK bases. “I’m not happy with the UK,” the US president said. Referring to Starmer, he added: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.” Trump also said the United States would cut off all trade with Spain after the country refused to let the US military use its bases for missions linked to strikes on Iran. “Spain has been terrible,” Trump said. Israel launched further strikes in Tehran and Beirut on Tuesday, saying it was targeting Iranian military sites and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah. Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 52 people and displaced at least 30,000 in Lebanon. Fighting continued in Lebanon, with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, approving a ground incursion into the southern part of the country and the Israeli military issuing new evacuation orders for dozens of locations. Israel also struck the building of Iran’s assembly of experts, which is responsible for electing Iran’s next supreme leader. Iranian news agencies confirmed that attack and said there were no casualties (the building wasn’t in use at the time). The Iranian Red Crescent Society said that at least 787 people had been killed across Iran. However, in its latest update, the Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said the death toll on day three had reached at least 1,500, including 200 civilians and 1,300 members of the Iranian forces. Casualties and destruction were reported across at least nine countries, with the United Arab Emirates recording 186 missiles and 812 drones sent toward the country since the start of the conflict and two ports in Oman targeted in drone strikes today. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday confirmed that the entrance buildings of Iran’s Natanz fuel enrichment plant had sustained some damage in the recent strikes. Israel’s military said in the early hours of Tuesday that it was working to intercept a new wave of missiles launched from Iran, warning residents in multiple locations to seek shelter. After the latest salvo, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency services said they were treating seven people with injuries. Netanyahu said the war against Iran may take “some time” but would not take years. He told Fox News: “I said it could be quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it’s not going to take years. It’s not an endless war.” The US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was hit by a drone strike, causing a fire to break out. The state department urged Americans to immediately leave more than a dozen countries in the Middle East. Officials said US citizens should leave using available commercial transportation “due to safety risks”. The US has not organised its own evacuation flights. Other countries, including Italy, Germany and France are trying to organise the return of their citizens. The evacuation of Spanish citizens is under way by land and air, and the country expects a first group of 175 citizens to land in Madrid from Abu Dhabi on Tuesday afternoon. A British government charter flight is to take off from Muscat, the capital of Oman, “in the coming days”, according to the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper. There was confusion over the status of navigation in the strait of Hormuz after a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to “burn any ship” seeking to navigate the waterway, a vital route for oil and gas shipments. However, US Central Command said the strait was not closed, according to Fox News. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that “49 of the most senior Iranian regime leaders” have been killed in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, declaring that “killing terrorists is good for America”. That number includes supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The US military said that it had struck more than 1,250 targets in Iran since operations started on Saturday.