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US urges citizens to immediately depart over a dozen Middle Eastern countries
The US state department has urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries amid US-Israeli strikes against Iran.
US citizens were urged to depart using commercial means from Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the [occupied] West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, according to Mora Namdar, the department’s assistant secretary for consular affairs.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest international airports, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.
Key events
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Israel working to intercept new missiles launched from Iran
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Trump claims Iran ‘would have had nuclear bomb three years ago’
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US urges citizens to immediately depart over a dozen Middle Eastern countries
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Israeli military says it has launched new waves of strikes on Tehran
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Marco Rubio says US would not ‘deliberately’ target a school
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US attacked Iran ‘pre-emptively’ after learning Israel was going to launch strikes – Rubio
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Six US service members killed in Iran, military says
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Strait of Hormuz closed, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards says
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‘Killing terrorists is good for America’: White House says 49 senior Iranian leaders killed in strikes
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US military claims it has destroyed all Iranian ships in Gulf of Oman
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Israel’s UN envoy says Iran operation will last ‘as long as it takes’
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UK ‘doesn’t believe in regime change from the skies’, says Starmer
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The day so far
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Israeli strikes kill over 50 in Lebanon
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Trump says US’s mission in Iran ‘substantially ahead’ and could last 4-5 weeks
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US continues to carry out ‘large-scale operations’ in Iran, Trump says
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Trump doesn’t rule out possibility of US boots on ground in Iran
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Trump on Iran strikes: ‘The big wave hasn’t even happened’
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Iran Revolutionary Guards say targeted 500 US, Israeli sites
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IDF says it launched a ‘broad wave’ of attacks ‘in the heart of Tehran’
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Pentagon to brief media this morning on Trump’s Iran strikes
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Fourth US service member ‘killed in action’ – Centcom
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QatarEnergy halts liquefied natural gas production after attacks
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What we know so far…
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Two drones heading towards RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus intercepted, spokesperson says
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US says three jets ‘went down’ over Kuwait ‘due to an apparent friendly fire incident’
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Iran’s ‘reckless’ attacks threaten regional stability, US and allied Gulf states say
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Saudi Arabia halts some operations at Ras Tanura refinery after reported attack
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Mass evacuation of cities across Middle East may be necessary if nuclear power stations attacked, UN nuclear chief says
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IDF says ‘all options on table’ in response to question about possible ground invasion of Lebanon
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At least 555 people have been killed in Iran by US-Israeli attacks, Iranian Red Crescent Society says
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Saudi oil refinery reportedly halts operations after drone attack
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Kuwait says ‘several’ US warplanes have crashed in the country, with all the crew surviving
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Summary
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Israeli military says fighting Hezbollah could take ‘many’ more days
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US embassy in Kuwait warns of attack threat and urges people to take cover
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Israeli strikes in Lebanon kill 31 – report
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Iran launches another attack wave on Israel and Gulf cities
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Israeli general says strikes on Lebanon will intensify
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Iran’s security chief says it ‘won’t negotiate’ with US
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At least 10 killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut – report
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Streams of people flee Beirut amid airstrikes and evacuation orders
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UK responding to suspected drone strike at Cyprus base, says MoD
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Opening summary
Further to Chuck Schumer’s comments we brought you a few minutes ago, US senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, has said there was no imminent threat from Iran to the United States before the bombing campaign.
Exiting the classified briefing on the war, Warner told the New York Times that if a threat to Israel is now to be considered equivalent to an imminent threat to the United States, he said, then the Trump administration is “in uncharted territory”.
Israel working to intercept new missiles launched from Iran
Israel’s military said just after midnight (local time) on Tuesday that it was working to intercept a new wave of missiles launched from Iran, warning residents in multiple locations to seek shelter.
“A short while ago, the IDF identified missiles launched from Iran toward the territory of the State of Israel. Defensive systems are operating to intercept the threat,” it said.
Chris Stein
The US Senate’s Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said a briefing from Trump administration officials about the US war with Iran “raised many more questions than it answered”.
“Look, a whole lot of questions were asked. I found their answers completely and totally insufficient,” Schumer told reporters as he exited the meeting. He departed without taking questions.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio as well as CIA director John Ratcliffe are among those briefing Congress leaders in a classified facility in the Capitol.
A reminder that you can follow our US politics live blog for more US-focused reaction and developments:
Helena Smith
in Larnaka
Over in Cyprus local officials are confirming that nearly all residents have been evacuated tonight from the village of Akrotiri surrounding the British RAF facility that has been targeted by combat drones.
“Everyone has left with the exception of about 20 people who refused to leave” the area’s deputy mayor Giorgos Konstantinos told the Guardian. “It’s been a mass evacuation given the circumstances and fear.”
Police forces had been bolstered tonight around the RAF base from where non-essential personnel have also been removed to other parts of the sovereign base areas – a legacy of colonial rule – for safety following the midnight drone attack on Sunday.
It is still unclear if the unmanned vehicles, another two of which were intercepted earlier on Monday, were deployed against the base from Iran, or fired by Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon.
Trump claims Iran ‘would have had nuclear bomb three years ago’
Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that had he not ripped up the Iran nuclear deal signed by former US president Barack Obama in 2015, Tehran would have had a nuclear bomb by now.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform:
If I didn’t terminate Obama’s horrendous Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), Iran would have had a Nuclear Weapon three years ago. That was the most dangerous transaction we have ever entered into, and had it been allowed to stand, the World would be an entirely different place right now. You can blame Barack Hussein Obama, and Sleepy Joe Biden. THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!
The IAEA verified that Iran was complying with the JCPOA, which limited its uranium enrichment, at the time. It only breached those limits after Trump pulled the US out of the agreement in 2018.
Further to our earlier post, the Israeli military said it has targeted the complex of Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB in Tehran, following an evacuation warning for the area.
US urges citizens to immediately depart over a dozen Middle Eastern countries
The US state department has urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries amid US-Israeli strikes against Iran.
US citizens were urged to depart using commercial means from Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the [occupied] West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, according to Mora Namdar, the department’s assistant secretary for consular affairs.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest international airports, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.
The US embassy in Kuwait was struck by drones, three diplomatic sources have told AFP after smoke was seen rising from the diplomatic mission earlier.
One Kuwait-based diplomat and a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the embassy had been damaged by a number of drones while a second Kuwait-based diplomat said the embassy building had been struck directly in the attack.
As an AFP correspondent saw smoke rising from the diplomatic mission on Iran’s third day of retaliatory Gulf attacks, the US embassy said that people should not come to the facility, warning of “a continuing threat of missile and UAV [drone] attacks over Kuwait”.
Israel’s military has issued a new evacuation warning for residents of the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
We will bring you the latest updates as we get them.
Israeli military says it has launched new waves of strikes on Tehran
The Israeli military says it has begun a new wave of strikes on Tehran. This came shortly after the military issued an evacuation warning for Tehran residents, especially those located near the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB.
Israel’s Channel 12 reports Iranian television is one of the targets of the latest strikes, citing an Israeli source.
The US will take action to mitigate a spike in energy prices after the Iran conflict has sent oil prices rising, Marco Rubio said on Monday.
The US secretary of state said more detail on the plans would come on Tuesday. He spoke shortly after the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps announced it had closed the Strait of Hormuz – critical to the global flow of oil shipments – and would fire on any ships trying to pass.
Rubio told reporters: “Starting tomorrow, you will see us rolling out those phases to try to mitigate against that … We anticipated this could be an issue.”
Marco Rubio says US would not ‘deliberately’ target a school
US secretary of state Marco Rubio insisted the US would not “deliberately” target a school, after Iran said 168 people died in an alleged US-Israeli strike.
“The United States would not deliberately target a school. Our objectives are missiles, both the ability to manufacture them and the ability to launch them,” Rubio told reporters, while adding that the Pentagon was investigating the alleged incident.
The strike on school appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
Marco Rubio reiterated what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth said earlier on Monday that regime change in Iran was not the objective of the US-Israeli combat operation.
But Rubio added that the US hoped Iranians would topple the regime.
“We hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government and establish a new future for that country. We would love for that to be possible,” Rubio told reporters.
“But the objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities and of their naval capabilities,” he added.
