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.
Updated at 17.31 EST
Key events
7m ago
Trump claims Iran ‘would have had nuclear bomb three years ago’
31m ago
US urges citizens to immediately depart over a dozen Middle Eastern countries
1h ago
Israeli military says it has launched new waves of strikes on Tehran
1h ago
Marco Rubio says US would not ‘deliberately’ target a school
1h ago
US attacked Iran ‘pre-emptively’ after learning Israel was going to launch strikes – Rubio
1h ago
Six US service members killed in Iran, military says
2h ago
Strait of Hormuz closed, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards says
2h ago
‘Killing terrorists is good for America’: White House says 49 senior Iranian leaders killed in strikes
3h ago
US military claims it has destroyed all Iranian ships in Gulf of Oman
3h ago
Israel’s UN envoy says Iran operation will last ‘as long as it takes’
3h ago
UK ‘doesn’t believe in regime change from the skies’, says Starmer
4h ago
The day so far
4h ago
Israeli strikes kill over 50 in Lebanon
5h ago
Trump says US’s mission in Iran ‘substantially ahead’ and could last 4-5 weeks
6h ago
US continues to carry out ‘large-scale operations’ in Iran, Trump says
6h ago
Trump doesn’t rule out possibility of US boots on ground in Iran
7h ago
Trump on Iran strikes: ‘The big wave hasn’t even happened’
7h ago
Iran Revolutionary Guards say targeted 500 US, Israeli sites
8h ago
IDF says it launched a ‘broad wave’ of attacks ‘in the heart of Tehran’
9h ago
Pentagon to brief media this morning on Trump’s Iran strikes
10h ago
Fourth US service member ‘killed in action’ – Centcom
10h ago
QatarEnergy halts liquefied natural gas production after attacks
10h ago
What we know so far…
10h ago
Two drones heading towards RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus intercepted, spokesperson says
11h ago
US says three jets ‘went down’ over Kuwait ‘due to an apparent friendly fire incident’
11h ago
Iran’s ‘reckless’ attacks threaten regional stability, US and allied Gulf states say
12h ago
Saudi Arabia halts some operations at Ras Tanura refinery after reported attack
13h ago
Mass evacuation of cities across Middle East may be necessary if nuclear power stations attacked, UN nuclear chief says
13h ago
IDF says ‘all options on table’ in response to question about possible ground invasion of Lebanon
14h ago
At least 555 people have been killed in Iran by US-Israeli attacks, Iranian Red Crescent Society says
14h ago
Saudi oil refinery reportedly halts operations after drone attack
15h ago
Kuwait says ‘several’ US warplanes have crashed in the country, with all the crew surviving
16h ago
Summary
16h ago
Israeli military says fighting Hezbollah could take ‘many’ more days
16h ago
US embassy in Kuwait warns of attack threat and urges people to take cover
17h ago
Israeli strikes in Lebanon kill 31 – report
17h ago
Iran launches another attack wave on Israel and Gulf cities
17h ago
Israeli general says strikes on Lebanon will intensify
18h ago
Iran’s security chief says it ‘won’t negotiate’ with US
18h ago
At least 10 killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut – report
19h ago
Streams of people flee Beirut amid airstrikes and evacuation orders
20h ago
UK responding to suspected drone strike at Cyprus base, says MoD
21h ago
Opening summary
Show key events only
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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:
double quotation markIf 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.
Updated at 17.25 EST
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.
ShareUS 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.
Updated at 17.31 EST
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”.
Updated at 16.57 EST
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.
ShareIsraeli 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.
Updated at 16.38 EST
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.”
ShareMarco 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.
Updated at 16.26 EST
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.
double quotation mark“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.
ShareUS attacked Iran ‘pre-emptively’ after learning Israel was going to launch strikes – Rubio
The US attacked Iran “pre-emptively” on Saturday to protect US forces from retaliation after learning that Israel was going to strike, Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday.
The US secretary of state said: “There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was, that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed that they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”
He added: “We knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
Six US service members have been killed since Saturday.
Marco Rubio speaks to reporters. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 16.40 EST
The news of two more service members’ deaths was announced by US central command. Centcom said it would not release the names of the fallen until 24 hours after their next of kin were notified.
In a statement posted on X, officials wrote:
double quotation markAs of 4 pm ET, March 2, six US service members have been killed in action. US forces recently recovered the remains of two previously unaccounted for service members from a facility that was struck during Iran’s initial attacks in the region. Major combat operations continue. The identities of the fallen are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification.
ShareSix US service members killed in Iran, military says
The number of US service members killed in Iran has risen to six, the US military said on Monday.
The US embassy in Amman, Jordan was temporarily evacuated on Monday due to a threat, it said in a statement. The embassy did not elaborate on the nature of the threat.
In a security alert posted on X, embassy staff wrote:
double quotation markOut of an abundance of caution, all personnel at the U.S. Embassy have temporarily departed the Embassy compound due to a threat.
Updated at 16.43 EST
We reported earlier that Kuwait’s army said a sailor with its naval forces was killed during an “operation” by its armed forces. That number has now risen to two, according to Agence France-Presse. The army did not elaborate on the circumstances of their deaths.
The general staff of the army identified the men as Sergeant Walid Majid Sulaiman and Sergeant Abdulaziz Abdulmohsen Dakhel Nasser, adding in two separate statements that they were killed during “duty as part of the national missions entrusted to the armed forces”.
Updated at 16.43 EST
And here we have a visual guide on how the escalating US-Israeli war on Iran is threatening oil supplies, driving up oil and gas prices, and stoking inflation around the globe.
ShareStrait of Hormuz closed, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards says
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander has said that the strait of Hormuz – the world’s most critical oil route – is closed and Iran will set any ship trying to pass on fire, Iranian state media is reporting.
It is Tehran’s most explicit warning since announcing it was closing the route on Saturday in a move that could choke a fifth of global oil flows and send prices rocketing.
“The strait (of Hormuz) is closed. If anyone tries to pass, the heroes of the Revolutionary Guards and the regular navy will set those ships ablaze,” Ebrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the Guards commander-in-chief, said in remarks carried by state media.
The strait is the world’s most vital oil export route, which connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
We have an explainer on the strait of Hormuz and why it is so vital for global oil supplies here:
Updated at 15.58 EST
‘Killing terrorists is good for America’: White House says 49 senior Iranian leaders killed in strikes
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.
“Preventing this radical regime and its terrorist leaders from threatening America and our core national security interests is a clear-eyed and necessary objective,” she said in a post on X.
ShareUS military claims it has destroyed all Iranian ships in Gulf of Oman
The US military said that it has struck over 1,250 targets in Iran since operations started on Saturday.
In a separate statement, US Central Command said it had struck and destroyed 11 Iranian ships (Trump earlier said 10). In a post on X it said:
double quotation markTwo days ago, the Iranian regime had 11 ships in the Gulf of Oman, today they have ZERO.
The Iranian regime has harassed and attacked international shipping in the Gulf of Oman for decades. Those days are over. Freedom of maritime navigation has underpinned American and global economic prosperity for more than 80 years. US forces will continue to defend it.
Multiple outlets are carrying satellite images showing dark plumes of smoke rising from a number of burning vessels – one of which is 750 feet long – at a military harbour in Bandar Abbas, Iran.
Updated at 14.58 EST
The Kuwaiti army said a sailor with its naval forces was killed during an “operation” by its armed forces. The army did not elaborate on the circumstances of his death.