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
29m ago
Lebanon bans Hezbollah military actions
1h ago
The day so far
1h ago
Israel working to intercept new missiles launched from Iran
2h ago
Trump claims Iran ‘would have had nuclear bomb three years ago’
2h ago
US urges citizens to immediately depart over a dozen Middle Eastern countries
2h ago
Israeli military says it has launched new waves of strikes on Tehran
3h ago
Marco Rubio says US would not ‘deliberately’ target a school
3h ago
US attacked Iran ‘pre-emptively’ after learning Israel was going to launch strikes – Rubio
3h ago
Six US service members killed in Iran, military says
4h ago
Strait of Hormuz closed, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards says
4h ago
‘Killing terrorists is good for America’: White House says 49 senior Iranian leaders killed in strikes
4h ago
US military claims it has destroyed all Iranian ships in Gulf of Oman
4h ago
Israel’s UN envoy says Iran operation will last ‘as long as it takes’
5h ago
UK ‘doesn’t believe in regime change from the skies’, says Starmer
5h ago
The day so far
6h ago
Israeli strikes kill over 50 in Lebanon
7h ago
Trump says US’s mission in Iran ‘substantially ahead’ and could last 4-5 weeks
7h ago
US continues to carry out ‘large-scale operations’ in Iran, Trump says
8h ago
Trump doesn’t rule out possibility of US boots on ground in Iran
8h ago
Trump on Iran strikes: ‘The big wave hasn’t even happened’
9h ago
Iran Revolutionary Guards say targeted 500 US, Israeli sites
10h ago
IDF says it launched a ‘broad wave’ of attacks ‘in the heart of Tehran’
11h ago
Pentagon to brief media this morning on Trump’s Iran strikes
11h ago
Fourth US service member ‘killed in action’ – Centcom
11h ago
QatarEnergy halts liquefied natural gas production after attacks
12h ago
What we know so far…
12h ago
Two drones heading towards RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus intercepted, spokesperson says
13h ago
US says three jets ‘went down’ over Kuwait ‘due to an apparent friendly fire incident’
13h ago
Iran’s ‘reckless’ attacks threaten regional stability, US and allied Gulf states say
13h ago
Saudi Arabia halts some operations at Ras Tanura refinery after reported attack
14h ago
Mass evacuation of cities across Middle East may be necessary if nuclear power stations attacked, UN nuclear chief says
15h ago
IDF says ‘all options on table’ in response to question about possible ground invasion of Lebanon
15h ago
At least 555 people have been killed in Iran by US-Israeli attacks, Iranian Red Crescent Society says
15h ago
Saudi oil refinery reportedly halts operations after drone attack
16h ago
Kuwait says ‘several’ US warplanes have crashed in the country, with all the crew surviving
17h ago
Summary
17h ago
Israeli military says fighting Hezbollah could take ‘many’ more days
18h ago
US embassy in Kuwait warns of attack threat and urges people to take cover
18h ago
Israeli strikes in Lebanon kill 31 – report
18h ago
Iran launches another attack wave on Israel and Gulf cities
19h ago
Israeli general says strikes on Lebanon will intensify
19h ago
Iran’s security chief says it ‘won’t negotiate’ with US
20h ago
At least 10 killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut – report
21h ago
Streams of people flee Beirut amid airstrikes and evacuation orders
21h ago
UK responding to suspected drone strike at Cyprus base, says MoD
22h ago
Opening summary
Show key events only
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Loud explosions have reportedly been heard and clouds of smoke seen in the diplomatic quarter of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
We’ll bring you more on this soon.
Updated at 18.55 EST
Israel’s military has just been quoted as saying it has launched fresh strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut, after warning it would press ahead with its campaign against the Iran-backed group.
“The IDF is currently striking Hezbollah command centres and weapons storage facilities in Beirut,” said a statement from the military on Tuesday, quoted by AFP.
Updated at 18.50 EST
Lebanon bans Hezbollah military actions
Lebanon’s government has taken the unprecedented step of banning Hezbollah’s military and security activity, prompting the Iran-backed group to lash out at the decision.
The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, was quoted by AFP as saying after an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday:
double quotation markThe Lebanese state declares its absolute and unequivocal rejection of any military or security actions launched from Lebanese territory outside the framework of its legitimate institutions.
This necessitates the immediate prohibition of all of Hezbollah’s security and military activities, considering them to be outside the law, and obliging it to hand over its weapons.
Hezbollah is represented in both the government and parliament, and the government’s move came hours after the Iran-backed militant group said it had attacked Israel early on Monday to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
File shot of Hezbollah fighters holding their group flags at a parade in Beirut. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP
Israel later began bombarding Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon, killing at least 52 people and wounded 154, according to the Lebanese government.
In response to the government’s ban, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Raad, condemned Beirut’s “rash decisions”, saying that “the Lebanese were expecting a decision rejecting the [Israeli] aggression”.
Updated at 18.41 EST
Several international airlines are resuming a small number of flights from the United Arab Emirates as war-driven airspace closures strand tens of thousands of travellers.
Emirates, Etihad and FlyDubai said on Monday they would operate select departures and arrivals after having suspended flights over the weekend, the AP is reporting.
Dubai officials are telling passengers to go to the airport only if contacted.
Planes parked at terminal 3 of Dubai international airport on Monday. Photograph: Raghed Waked/Reuters
Foreign governments are urging their citizens to shelter in place while officials explore evacuation options.
The German government said it planned to send planes to Oman and Saudi Arabia to evacuate ill travellers, children and pregnant people.
As reported earlier, the US state department has urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries amid the war on Iran.
Updated at 18.19 EST
The day so far
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 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.
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 state department has urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries amid US-Israeli strikes against Iran.
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 number of US service members killed in Iran has risen to six, the US military said on Monday.
The US military said that it has struck over 1,250 targets in Iran since operations started on Saturday.
Israel and the US will not stop their military campaign against Iran until its objectives are achieve, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said earlier.
Earlier, UK prime minister Keir Starmer said that his government does not “believe in regime change from the skies” as he set out to parliament why Britain will not join its closest military partner in offensive action against Iran – suggesting that to do so would be unlawful.
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”.
ShareIsrael 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.
Updated at 17.48 EST
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:
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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.
ShareTrump 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.