Democratic senator proposes curbing Trump’s war powers amid Israel-Iran conflict

Tim Kaine introduces measure to prohibit US forces from taking action against Iran without approval from Congress

As Iran and Israel exchange missile attacks for a fourth day, Democrats in Washington are moving swiftly to reassert congressional authority over US military engagement in the region amid fears of American involvement in a broader conflict.

Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator of Virginia, on Monday introduced a war powers resolution that would prohibit US armed forces from taking direct action against Iran without explicit authorization from Congress or a declaration of war. The measure, like other attempts to claw back power from the executive branch, faces a steep climb in the GOP-controlled Congress, where Republicans have been mostly unwilling to challenge Donald Trump’s authority.

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Suspect in murders of Minnesota lawmakers caught and charged | First Thing

Vance Boelter accused of killing Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding John Hoffman and his wife. Plus, why a professor of fascism left the US

Good morning.

The man suspected of opening fire on two Minnesota legislators and their spouses on 14 June, killing one of them and her husband, was apprehended late on Sunday night and charged with two counts of murder and two of attempted murder, the state’s governor, Tim Walz, said.

How did the suspect get into the legislator’s homes? Authorities allege Boelter impersonated a police officer, wearing a uniform that most civilians would not be able to distinguish from the real thing and driving a vehicle made to resemble a police SUV.

Where did the manhunt end? After firing shots at police and fleeing on foot, he was finally caught in a rural area in Sibley county, south-west of Minneapolis, according to police.

Why did Israel say it launched the attack on Iran? Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had acted to pre-empt a secret Iranian programme to build a nuclear bomb, claiming Tehran already had the capacity to build nine.

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UK petrol prices poised to rise as Israel-Iran conflict pushes up cost of oil

Oil price increase likely to add 5p to petrol and diesel over the next couple of months, expert says

Britons are braced for higher prices at the pumps, after a rise in oil prices caused by the conflict between Israel and Iran in recent days.

Oil prices climbed again on Monday, as traders worried about the risks of a broader regional military conflict, which could disrupt supplies. Iran is a big oil producer, and accounts for about 3% of global supplies.

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Iran threatens to leave nuclear weapons treaty as Israeli bombing enters fourth day

Death toll in both countries continues to rise as Iran says it is preparing bill to withdraw from 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty

Iran has threatened to leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as Israeli bombing raids enter a fourth day, underlining the conflict’s potential to trigger a broader war and Tehran’s race to construct a nuclear weapon.

The human cost of the war continued to escalate with both sides broadening their range of targets, as G7 leaders convened in the Canadian Rockies with no clear plan to end the conflict. As he left for the summit on Sunday, the US president, Donald Trump, told reporters: “Sometimes they have to fight it out.”

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Iran strikes Tel Aviv and Haifa as Israel conflict enters fourth day

Casualties reported in central Israel as G7 leaders were set to meet in Canada with the battle between the two regional enemies set to dominate the agenda

Iranian missiles have struck Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, destroying homes and fuelling concerns among world leaders at this week’s G7 meeting that the conflict between the two regional enemies could lead to a broader Middle East war.

Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service said Monday that four people were pronounced dead after strikes at four sites in central Israel, with 87 injured. The dead were two women and two men, all approximately 70 years old, the MDA said.

Authorities in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv said that Iranian missiles had hit a residential building there, charring concrete walls, blowing out windows and heavily damaging multiple apartments.

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Israel and Iran broaden strikes during third day of escalating war

Trump calls for end to conflict and warns Tehran against striking US targets in the region

Israel and Iran have broadened their strikes against each other on the third day of an escalating war that has killed and injured hundreds of people, as Donald Trump called for an end to the conflict and warned Tehran against striking US targets in the region.

G7 leaders flying to Canada for a summit that starts on Monday are likely to try to use their time with the US president to urge him to keep the US out of the conflict and use his influence with Israel to broker a ceasefire.

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Tehran accuses Israel of seeking to expand conflict after attack on gas facility

Dragging conflict into the Gulf is a strategic mistake, says Iran’s foreign minister after drone strike on coastal facility

Iran’s foreign minister has accused Israel of seeking to expand the war beyond Iran by attacking a major gas facility in Bushehr province on the Gulf coast.

Speaking to diplomats in his first public appearance since the initial Israeli strikes, Abbas Araghchi said: “Dragging the conflict into the Persian Gulf is a strategic mistake and its goal is to drag the war outside Iranian territory. Any military development in this region can affect the entire world.”

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How the dismantling of Iran’s regional proxies paved way for Israel’s attack

Netanyahu has been systematically and successfully weakening his regional foes, now Tehran is in the crosshairs

Israel’s offensive against Iran is the latest link in a chain of events triggered by the attack launched by Hamas from Gaza into Israel on 7 October 2023. All have successively weakened Tehran and, militarily at least, empowered Israel. Without each, it is difficult to see how the new offensive it launched directly against Iran on Friday might be possible.

The first was the Israeli offensive in Gaza. This has now killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, but within weeks had militarily degraded Hamas sufficiently for the Islamist militant organisation to no longer pose a significant current threat to Israeli citizens.

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Mehdi Taremi to miss Club World Cup after Israeli strikes close Iran’s airports

  • Iranian forward remains in Tehran due to closed airspace

  • Inter to start Club World Cup campaign on Wednesday

The Inter forward Mehdi Taremi will not be able to join his teammates at the Club World Cup in the United States as he is stuck in Tehran because of the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel.

Flights from all Iranian airports have been grounded after an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel over the past two days. That meant the Iran international was unable to take his scheduled flight on Saturday to join his teammates in Los Angeles.

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Israel claims it has gained control of airspace over Tehran

Defence minister Israel Katz says Iranian capital ‘will burn’ if more missiles are fired at his country

Israel has claimed to have gained control of the skies over the Iranian capital and warned that “Tehran will burn” if more missiles are fired at its territory, but the Iranian leadership remained defiant, vowing a “more severe and powerful response” and threatened to widen the war by striking ships and bases of Israeli allies.

The mutual threats reflected the risks of a dramatic escalation in the conflict, as US-Iranian negotiations planned before the war in Oman were abandoned after Tehran said they would be “meaningless”, and Israel appeared to target Iran’s gas industry. Israeli rhetoric reflected its leaders’ growing confidence that they have gained the upper hand, and raised questions over whether Israeli war aims could go beyond the stated objective of crippling Iran’s nuclear programme.

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UK moves jets to Middle East as Starmer refuses to rule out defending Israel

Military assets to provide ‘contingency support’ as PM repeats call for de-escalation after Iran’s retaliatory strikes

The UK is moving jets and other military assets to the Middle East, Keir Starmer has said, refusing to rule out defending Israel from Iranian strikes despite Tehran’s threat that such an action could lead to British bases in the region being targeted.

Speaking to reporters on the plane to the G7 summit, Starmer reiterated his call for de-escalation, saying he had held a series of calls with other world leaders in the hours after Israel’s attack on Iran, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump.

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Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza

Critics of war will be more reluctant to press for its end while missiles from Tehran are killing people in Tel Aviv

In the hours after Israel attacked Iran, food shipments and distribution in Gaza stopped and a French-Saudi summit meant to pave the way for wider recognition of a Palestinian state was postponed indefinitely.

International pressure over starvation and civilian killings in Gaza had apparently dissipated in little more than the time it took for the smoke of the first missile strikes to clear over Tehran.

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Out of the shadows: drone-op claims show Israel’s Mossad leaning in to its legend

Footage purported to show spy agents launching missiles inside Iran is marked contrast to the intelligence service’s history of secrecy

Israelis were celebrating on Friday what many see as a stunning new success by their country’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

Hours after launching 200 warplanes in a wave of strikes against Iran, Israeli officials released footage they said showed the Mossad agents deep inside Iran assembling missiles and explosive drones aimed at targets near Tehran.

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Trump scrambles to claim credit for Israel’s Iran attack he publicly opposed

Discordant US response as president says he was fully aware of plans for what Marco Rubio called a ‘unilateral action’

Donald Trump is walking a tightrope as he claims that he was fully aware of Israel’s plans to launch massive airstrikes against Iran while continuing to distance the US from those strikes and deny Washington took any active role in the preparations.

The White House’s messaging has shifted quickly from Marco Rubio’s arms-length description of the Israeli attack as a “unilateral action”, to Trump claiming on Friday morning that he was fully in the loop on the operation and that it came at the end of a 60-day ultimatum he had given Iran to “make a deal” on its nuclear programme.

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Blasts heard in Tehran as Israel defence minister announces strikes on Iran – live

Explosions heard in capital Tehran as Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, says counter attack is expected

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has addressed the nation, saying the IDF had targted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb.

He said that Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz had been targeted.

This operation will continue for as many days as it takes … We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history.

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Israel’s Iran threat is familiar, but it is unlikely to attack without US backing

Israel has threatened to destroy Tehran’s nuclear programme before, ultimately holding back in absence of Washington’s support

The withdrawal of non-essential US personnel from parts of the Middle East and the anonymously sourced US reports in the past 24 hours that Israel is on the brink of an all-out attack on Iran are all deeply alarming, but they are also familiar.

The Israeli government has approached the same precipice, of a war to destroy Tehran’s nuclear programme, several times in the past two decades, going as far as honing detailed plans and conducting practice air sorties.

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US orders non-essential embassy staff out of Iraq amid growing Middle East tensions

State department move comes amid increasing concerns about nuclear talks between US and Iran that appear to be deadlocked

The United States has ordered the departure of “non-essential” diplomatic staff and their families from embassies in the Middle East amid growing diplomatic tensions in the region.

The US diplomatic draw-down came as Iran threatened to target US military bases in the region if conflict breaks out, while Donald Trump said he was “less confident” about reaching a nuclear deal.

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Iran says it will release Israeli nuclear secrets as pressure grows to reimpose sanctions

Tehran threat comes as European powers press for vote that could lead to reimposition of UN sanctions

Iran has said it will soon start releasing information from a hoard of Israeli nuclear secrets it claims to have obtained, as European countries push for a vote this week on reimposing UN sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme.

The unverified claims by Iranian intelligence of a massive leak of Israeli secrets may be designed to turn the focus away from what Iran argues is its own excessively monitored civil nuclear programme.

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Iran extends ban on dog-walking for ‘public order, safety and health’

Many cities said to have imposed prohibition in recent days that echoes 2019 police directive in Tehran

Iranian authorities have expanded a ban on walking dogs in public to many cities nationwide, citing public health, social order and safety concerns, domestic media have reported.

The ban, which echoes a 2019 police directive that barred walking dogs in Tehran, was expanded to Ilam city in the west on Sunday, according to reports.

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Iran blasts Trump for ‘racist mentality’ and hostility to Muslims over travel ban

Tehran condemns Donald Trump’s order barring 12 countries’ citizens from entering US as violation of ‘fundamental principles of international law’

Tehran has denounced the US travel ban on Iranians and citizens of 11 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries, saying Washington’s decision was a sign of a “racist mentality”.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday reviving sweeping restrictions that echo the US president’s first-term travel ban, justified on national security grounds after a firebomb attack at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado.

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