US carries out more strikes on Iran and resumes blockade of nation’s ports – Middle East crisis live

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has struck a drone ramp at Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem airbase, adding the attacks were in response to US strikes.

Kuwait’s army said one of its navy vessels was targeted with four personnel injured, Reuters reports.

The injured personnel received medical treatment and are in a stable condition, the statement added.

Kuwait’s armed forces had detected and intercepted one ballistic missile, five cruise missiles and 33 drones on Tuesday’s attacks, which targeted several vital and civilian facilities, with debris falls caused material damage.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said as long as US “evil actions” continue in the region, “not a single drop of oil and gas” would be exported from the region, Iranian state media reported.

IRGC also said US “aggressions” would have no result other than to delay the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, adding that their attacks on what it described as U.S. facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain came in response to the White House-ordered attacks on Iran.

Top House Democrats on Tuesday said they will oppose an effort to cut funding for Israel’s military, amid a rebellion from voters over US support for the Middle Eastern ally that has roiled recent primary elections.

The party has been debating how to vote on an amendment that would halt $3.3bn in military aid for Israel, which the Republican congressman Thomas Massie has proposed adding to an appropriations bill for the state department and related agencies. Democrats were debating the amendment, which may come up for a vote before the House of Representatives later this week, in the context of a slew of primary victories by candidates who have vowed to take a hard line against Israel.

The trend has seen Democratic incumbents unseated in New York and Colorado, and could play a role in deciding contested House and Senate primaries in Michigan and Missouri in the weeks ahead.

US forces ⁠carried out additional strikes on military ⁠targets ⁠in Iran ​earlier on Tuesday to eliminate “emerging threats”, ⁠a US official has told Reuters, speaking ⁠on condition of anonymity.

The ​official ‌declined ‌to offer further details ‌except to say that there were only a few additional strikes.

The United States ‌carried out a large wave of attacks ​on Monday against coastal defense systems, missile and ⁠drone sites, and maritime ​capabilities ​in locations across ​Iran, including Bushehr, ​Chah ‌Bahar, ​Jask, Konarak, ​Abu Musa, and Bandar Abbas, the US military said.

A statement on the social media page of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hardline anti-Israel stance, denied on Tuesday that he was at the centre of a secret Israeli operation to groom him as an intelligence asset.

A New York Times investigation, citing US and Iranian officials familiar with the operation, reported that Israel had orchestrated a years-long plan to install Ahmadinejad as Iran’s new leader once the US-Israeli war on Iran ended.

The statement from Ahmadinejad’s office denied what it called “Hollywood-style claims” designed to undermine his popularity. The NY Times investigation, he said, “sought to exploit the political sensitivities arising from military threats”, and was an example of “psychological warfare” against the public.

Here’s our report on that from yesterday:

The first day of talks between Israel and Lebanon in Rome have ended and were productive, an unnamed official from the US state department has told Reuters.

Earlier, Israel said it was ready to move forward with plans to withdraw troops from two areas of southern Lebanon agreed under a US-brokered deal.

The US-brokered negotiations took place in the Italian capital over a framework agreement sealed last month after five rounds of talks in Washington, with Lebanese negotiators hoping for progress on an Israeli withdrawal.

The framework deal calls for an end to the war in Lebanon, disarmament of Hezbollah, the deployment of Lebanese troops in the south and for Israeli forces to steadily withdraw from the country in two “pilot zones”.

“Talks in Rome by Representatives from the United States, Israel, and Lebanon were productive and held in a positive atmosphere,” a US state department official said, adding that “both sides are eager to move forward” and that talks will resume on Wednesday.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar said earlier on Tuesday that his country was “ready to move forward implementing these two pilot zones”. He added: “I hope and tend to believe that this round of discussions in Rome will promote it.”

The Lebanese presidency had announced on Monday that its delegation to Rome had been instructed “to demand the immediate start of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the two pilot zones before any further discussion”.

A Lebanese diplomatic source familiar with the content of the talks told Reuters, “the Lebanese army is ready to gradually take control of the localities from which the Israeli army would withdraw”.

But Hezbollah rejects the agreement outright despite Lebanese government pressure, lowering expectations of success in the negotiations.

Explosions were heard in Kuwait City on Tuesday, an AFP journalist reported earlier, as the Gulf nation’s army announced for the second time in less than half an hour that it was intercepting “hostile” aerial targets.

“The General Staff of the Kuwait Armed Forces announces that any explosions are the result of the Air Defense systems intercepting hostile attacks,” the army said in its statements earlier, without providing further details.

Donald Trump also said earlier that Iran had “shot first”, which he said was a “big mistake”.

“I wanted to give them a chance at making a deal,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “And they shot first, and that was a big mistake that they shot first because we have been knocking the hell out of them. They’re very difficult people.”

Along with his usual claims about the US destroying much of Iran’s military capabilities, Trump also said that Iran and Hezbollah might be added to ⁠the Russia sanctions ⁠bill currently ⁠under consideration in Congress.

Donald Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call last Thursday that Israel should start redeploying its forces out of Syria and urged him to do the same in Lebanon, Axios is reporting citing US and Israeli officials.

The IDF is currently occupying large swathes of southern Lebanon and southern Syria, which the Israeli government insists is necessary to prevent another October 7-style attack.

Far-right members of Netanyahu’s government want to retain control over those areas and some even push for the establishment of Jewish settlements there. Netanyahu, who is only three months out from an existential election, is unlikely to be inclined to redeploy his forces.

A US official told Axios that Trump told the Israeli PM that the presence of the IDF in Syrian territory creates tensions and could lead to an escalation.

“They don’t want you there. You should redeploy,” Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, adding that the same is true about Lebanon. The call came a day after Trump met with Syria’s president Ahmed al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Ankara.

“The Prime Minister, on his part, raised the need for security zones along Israel’s borders,” the Israeli prime minister’s office told Axios in a statement.

Last Tuesday, US mediators met in Rome with Israeli and Lebanese diplomats to discuss the implementation of the framework agreement signed by the countries several weeks ago.

Under that agreement, Israel had committed to pull its forces out of two “pilot zones” it is currently occupying in southern Lebanon and allow the Lebanese military to deploy there. But that has yet to happen, and the Lebanese government is demanding a clear timetable for this to happen along with a plan for further withdrawals.

The White House declined to comment, but didn’t deny the account given to Axios.

A US official said: “President Trump has a strong relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Israel has always been a great ally to the United States. There has been no greater friend to Israel and a fighter for peace than President Trump.”

• Donald Trump has climbed down over his threat to levy a 20% toll on shipping for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz waterway, which had been opposed by the UK. The US president said the so-called “reimbursement fee” he only announced 24 hours earlier, would be replaced by “trade and investment deals” with Gulf states, which would see “billions and billions of dollars” pour into America.

• Trump ​told reporters ⁠the United States ⁠would ​be ‌there ‌for Iraq ‌if it needed protection, but added ‌that he did ​not think that would ⁠be ​necessary. He added that the US would be “doing a lot of deals” with Iraq and “taking a lot of oil out”.

• Explosions were heard today on Iran’s Gulf island of Qeshm, near the strait of Hormuz, the Fars news agency reported, amid renewed hostilities between the United States and the Islamic republic. “Around 6.45pm, the sound of several explosions was heard on Qeshm Island,” Fars said.

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said Isreal will strike powerfully against Iran if Tehran carried out an attack on his country. “I will say it to the leaders of Iran: Do not count on things remaining quiet if you attack us,” Netanyahu said at a conference.

• The US launched strikes on Iran for a third day and Iran retaliated with strikes on US allies and tankers, hours after Donald Trump said the US would take control of the strait of Hormuz and charge a toll to ships for safe passage. The US military said its five-hour operation early on Tuesday hit targets across Iran, including the port cities of Bushehr and Bandar Abbas. It shared videos of strikes that it said were meant to “degrade Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping”.

• The United Nations human rights chief ⁠said on ⁠Tuesday ​the resumption of hostilities between ⁠the United States and Iran was a huge ⁠setback for civilians ​in ‌the region, and ‌he urged restraint. “The return ‌to wider hostilities in the Middle East between the US and Iran is a ‌huge setback for civilians in the region and ​beyond. It undermines peace efforts and deepens instability, with grave ⁠risks for human rights ​across ​the entire region,” ​the UN high commissioner ​for ‌human ​rights ​Volker Turk said in a statement.

• Middle Eastern mobile networks were repeatedly hit with cyber attacks to monitor the locations of US personnel and contractors during the US-Israel war on Iran, according to a report in the Financial Times. These attempts came in the build up to the war being launched on 28 February and carried on into the early days of the conflict, according to the report, which cites telecoms data and people familiar with the matter.

• A Norwegian tanker was hit by an explosion caused by an unidentified device off the Omani coast early on Tuesday, a crisis response company said. MTI Network said in a statement that shipping company Stolt Tankers reported that at approximately 00.40am local time “its tanker vessel Stolt Magnesium while on passage in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman suffered from an explosion of an unidentified external device”.

• Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis said they shot down on Tuesday a Saudi-operated reconnaissance drone, as hostilities erupted a day earlier between the two sides for the first time in years. The fighters “succeeded in shooting down an enemy Saudi ‘Wing Loong II’ reconnaissance aircraft while it was carrying out hostile missions at dawn today over Al-Bayda Governorate in the centre of the country,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said.

• Fifty-five ⁠Iranian fishermen have been freed ⁠from ⁠custody in ​the United Arab ⁠Emirates, Iran’s embassy there said on ⁠its Telegram ​channel ‌on Tuesday. The ‌fishermen were ‌detained by the UAE’s coast guard in recent months due to “special ‌conditions” in the region, ​the embassy added, in a likely reference to ⁠the Iran ​war.

• Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has condemned the attacks carried out against Saudi Arabia yesterday, calling them “reprehensible actions” that violated the kingdom’s sovereignty and undermined regional stability. “Pakistan reaffirms its unwavering support for the Kingdom’s security and stands in complete solidarity with the brotherly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at this critical time,” he wrote in a post on X.

• Crude oil prices have hit their highest levels in four weeks, as Washington and Tehran traded attacks and the US reimposed a naval blockade of Iran. Brent crude has jumped $3.79 a barrel to $87.08 a barrel, a 4.55% increase, the highest since 12 June.

• The Indian foreign ministry said it summoned the deputy chief of mission of the Iranian embassy in New Delhi to register “a strong protest” against the attacks on two commercial vessels in the strait of Hormuz that were reported to have killed an Indian seafarer and injured several others. The two vessels had a total of 46 crew members, including 30 Indians, one of whom has “tragically lost his life”, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Trump was also asked to explain his change in thinking over the 20% fee for ships to ⁠pass through the ​strait of Hormuz that ‌he proposed ‌yesterday.

He said that following that announcement, he’d received calls from Gulf leaders offering trade and investment opportunities instead.

The president ⁠added that ​he didn’t think anybody ⁠should be able to charge a fee for ⁠ships transiting the strait.

“I don’t ‌think anybody should ‌be able to charge a fee,” he said. “I don’t like ​the concept of a fee, but at the same time, it’s ⁠not fair that we’re ​protecting ​this strait ​for the entire world.”

President ⁠Donald ⁠Trump has ​told reporters ⁠the United States ⁠would ​be ‌there ‌for Iraq ‌if it needed protection, but added ‌that he did ​not think that would ⁠be ​necessary.

He added that the US would be “doing a lot of deals” with Iraq and “taking a lot of oil out”.