“Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and that is why we have continually supported efforts to reach a negotiated solution,” a government spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“Our immediate priority is the safety of UK nationals in the region and we will provide them with consular assistance.”<\/p>\n
They added: “We do not want to see further escalation into a wider regional conflict.”<\/p>\n
British people in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have been told by the UK Foreign Office to immediately shelter in place following reports of missile attacks.<\/p>\n
UK nationals in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Oman have been told to “remain vigilant” and take shelter if advised to do so.<\/p>\n
Following the strikes on Iran early on Saturday morning, explosions and air raid sirens have already been heard in Qatar’s capital, Doha, which is host to a US military facility. Qatar’s defence ministry said it had intercepted Iranian missiles.<\/p>\n
Bahraini state news is also reporting the service centre of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet based in the Gulf nation had been “subjected to a missile attack”.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has described the strikes as the start of “major combat operations” and called for Iranian government forces to lay down their arms.<\/p>\n
The US president urged Iranians to shelter until the operation had finished.<\/p>\n
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) promised a “crushing” response to the US-Israeli attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and that is why we have continually supported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-450254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}