Trump pledges to ‘take care of’ Houthis if group blocks Saudi ships – Middle East crisis live

The US has carried out a fresh round of strikes against Iran, after three US soldiers were killed in action.

The Pentagon has also admitted that nearly 100 US service members have been injured over the last two weeks, as Tehran launched a wave of reprisals to the tenth consecutive nights of attacks, even as peace talks mediated by Pakistan continue.

Lucy Hough speaks to senior international correspondent Julian Borger…

President Donald Trump said that the United States will continue attacks on Iran, while forecasting it would take the country more than 20 years to rebuild from current damage.

“If we left right now, it would take Iran 20, 25 years to rebuild. Okay, and we’re not finished at all…we’re not leaving right now,” he told reporters during a White House meeting with Lebanese president Joseph Aoun.

Lebanese president Joseph Aoun urged his US counterpart Donald Trump to maintain American support for his country’s military, warning that southern Lebanon could see a return of the chaos of the 1970s without Washington’s backing.

“We don’t want to see that back again. All we’re asking is, keep supporting the LAF,” Aoun told reporters of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) during a White House meeting with Trump today.

“All we’re asking is, keep supporting the LAF… I fully trust the LAF. I fully trust the leadership of the LAF.”

Trump also said he would “take care of” the Houthi rebels if the Iran-backed militant group follows through on its threatened blockade of Saudi ports.

“If something like that happens, we take care of it,” Trump told reporters during a White House meeting with Lebanese president Joseph Aoun.

“You know, we’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally.”

Trump said that Lebanon had been ⁠hit hard ​for ‌decades ‌and that the ‌United States would help the country going forward.

“It’s been a ‌very badly treated place ​and country, and we’re going to have ⁠it properly treated, ​and treated ​with ​the respect that ​it ‌deserves,” ​Trump ​said.

Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun has met with president Donald Trump to wrap up a four-day visit to Washington, in a bid for long-term calm after months of war at home between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.

Kuwait’s ⁠foreign ministry summoned Iran’s ⁠ambassador ⁠on Tuesday ​to protest against ⁠what it described as Tehran’s targeting ⁠of ​Kuwaiti ‌tanker Kaifan ‌while it was ‌transiting the Strait of Hormuz a day earlier.

The ministry ‌said in a statement ​that several members of the tanker’s ⁠crew suffered injuries ​as a ​result ​of the ​attack.

The US military has identified an army soldier killed recently during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone in Iraq as Sgt Michael Emmanuel Swinton, of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

According to a press release from the US defense department on Tuesday morning, the 30-year-old Swinton was supporting overseas contingency operations in Iraq – and he was “killed in action during a controlled detonation of a downed One-Way Unmanned Aerial System” on Saturday at Erbil airbase in northern Iraq.

The announcement follows the identification a day earlier of two other soldiers killed during the US war with Iran. First Lt Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, died in Jordan while defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks, the department said.

The latest deaths brings to 17 the number of US service personnel killed in the war, which began in February with US military strikes on Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

Hundreds of service members have been injured, including nearly 100 after an escalation of the conflict over the previous two weeks in which Tehran has launched reprisal raids for consecutive nights of US bombing.

Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif called for restraint from all warring sides during a meeting with Iran’s interior minister on Tuesday.

Sharif “urged all sides to exercise restraint and refrain from actions that could further destabilize the region”, a statement from the premier’s office said, adding that he told Iran’s Eskandar Momeni that Pakistan would continue to act as a mediator.

The Dutch government announced today that it would ban imports from Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli settlers from 22 September.

The Netherlands will join Ireland, Belgium and Spain among European Union countries that have imposed restrictions on trade with territories occupied by Israeli settlers.

There have been growing calls for the 27-nation bloc to impose EU-wide restrictions over Israel’s military action in Gaza and increased violence in the occupied territories, but some EU members are reluctant.

Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is considered illegal under international law.

The Dutch foreign ministry said:

With the proposed measures, the Netherlands is reinforcing its commitment to fulfilling its international legal obligation not to contribute to this unlawful situation.

Both Kuwait and Bahrain have issued alerts and sounded sirens in the past couple of minutes as they continue to intercept incoming Iranian drones.

Bahrain’s army said its air defence systems intercepted and destroyed “several” Iranian air attacks, while the Kuwaiti armed forces assured people that any explosion that may be heard are the result of “hostile targets” being shot down.

The Pentagon has identified a US solider who was killed in Iraq on Sunday.

Sgt Michael Emmanuel Swinton was killed during a “controlled detonation” of an Iranian attack drone at Erbil airbase in northern Iraq, the US defence department said in a statement today.

The New York Times, citing a US official, reported Swinton was not involved in the detonation of the drone but was killed by flying debris from the blast. The Pentagon said in its statement that the incident was under investigation.

The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) announced previously that two other US soldiers were killed in Iranian strikes on Jordan on Friday.

The Lebanese army accused Israel of firing near its troops as they were being deployed to an area in southern Lebanon.

In a statement on X, the army said its soldiers were operating in Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh when Israeli forces “opened fire in the vicinity of these units”.

The army said the attack “will hinder the implementation of the deployment stages in the ‘pilot zones’”, which began today under a framework agreement signed by Israel and Lebanon on 26 June (see post at 7:51).

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the claim.