National Cyber Security Centre urges increased vigilance over risk of indirect attack by hacktivists amid conflict
UK businesses with a presence in the Middle East have been urged to step up vigilance against cyber threats from Iran after US-Israeli attacks.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said there was “almost certainly” a heightened risk of an indirect cyber threat for organisations that had offices, or supply chains, in the Middle East.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary confirms strike on Akrotiri base but says it ‘simply not true’ the UK is being dragged into an Iraq-style conflict
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge went on Sky News to criticise Keir Starmer and his handling of the conflict.
“I’ve been very clear for weeks that if we were in government and the US had asked for our permission, we would have given them permission…but what they got with the prime minister as we saw last summer with the other bombing of nuclear facilities is the worst of both worlds: sitting on the fence, not showing strong leadership, very unclear.
Continue reading...Israeli military says fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah could take ‘many’ more days; US crew bailed out safely after crash-landing, says Kuwait
Bahrain has said that one person was killed by shrapnel from an intercepted missile. The death of a foreign worker at Salman Industrial City, working on a boat there, marks the kingdom’s first reported fatality in the war.
Bahrain, home to the US navy’s 5th fleet, said it intercepted 61 missiles and 34 attack drones launched against it. It said some shrapnel had gotten through, striking buildings and the naval base.
Continue reading...Lawmakers from Sanders to Mark Kelly offer mixed feelings on Trump’s action and killing of Iranian supreme leader
As Republicans celebrated the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with praise for Donald Trump’s decisive action, Democrats faced their own divisions and a reckoning over how to present a united front.
Most were quick to condemn the US president for sidelining Congress to launch an illegal and unconstitutional war and demanded a swift vote on a war powers resolution that would restrain his military onslaught.
Continue reading...Conflict spreads as militant group targets Israel over Ali Khamenei killing and IDF responds with Beirut strikes
Israel has carried out heavy airstrikes on the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut after the Iran-backed Lebanese group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Residents of Beirut were woken by the sounds of about a dozen blasts at 3am as Israel struck three different locations in the south of Lebanon’s capital. Bombings continued into the late hours of the morning, with the area almost entirely deserted by the time of a strike at around noon.
Continue reading...Two more drones intercepted on Monday, authorities say, in what appears to be sustained targeting of base
A one-way attack drone – said to have been launched by Lebanon’s Hezbollah – struck the UK’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus at about midnight on Sunday, prompting a partial evacuation of the military facility.
Two more drones were successfully intercepted on Monday morning, the Cypriot authorities said, as part of what appears to be a sustained targeting of the base on the third day of the war in the Middle East.
Continue reading...Yvette Cooper says plans under consideration to evacuate about 300,000 Britons from Middle East amid Iran war
It is “simply not true” that the UK is being dragged into another Iraq-style conflict in the Middle East, Yvette Cooper has said, after an RAF base in Cyprus was struck by an Iranian drone.
The attack was part of a barrage of strikes by Tehran around the Middle East after a US-Israeli attack on Saturday that killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The UK foreign secretary confirmed ministers were considering possible plans to evacuate about 300,000 Britons from the region.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer says decision was taken amid increasingly reckless Iranian actions, as Liberal Democrats demand parliamentary vote
The UK has agreed to let the US use British military bases to attack Iranian missile sites, Keir Starmer has said.
The UK has so far not been involved in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, but in a recorded statement on Sunday evening, the prime minister said that Iran’s approach was becoming more reckless and putting British lives at risk, leading to the decision to allow the US to use two of its military bases.
Continue reading...‘They should have done it sooner, they waited too long,’ says Trump but he doesn’t say when talks would take place
Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s political leadership have agreed to talks, a day after the US and Israel began to target the country’s military and political infrastructure, killing the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several top officials.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told a reporter for the Atlantic magazine on Sunday. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”
Continue reading...US president says Khamenei’s death is ‘justice for the people of Iran’ as he repeats call for regime change; Iran targets US bases in region
A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s response
War on Iran: how the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded
Loud explosions were heard early on Sunday near Erbil airport, which hosts US-led coalition troops in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, AFP reported. Thick black smoke was rising from the airport area.
On Saturday, US-led coalition forces downed several missiles and explosive-laden drones over Erbil.
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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says Australia was not told in advance about the bombing of Iran but won’t say whether intelligence facilities here were used.
“We weren’t told advance. You wouldn’t expect us to be but you would see there’s obviously been a lot of discussion,” she said.
Continue reading...Crowds gather in DC, New York and beyond to denounce Trump’s Iran strikes as an illegal act of war
A visual guide to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s response
War on Iran: how the US-Israeli bid for regime change unfolded
As news circulated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had been killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran, anti-war protesters gathered across the United States, including outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to voice opposition to US military involvement in the region.
“It wasn’t sanctioned by Congress, so what Trump is doing is on his own terms, it’s making him a fascist and it’s making the country into a fascist state,” said Sue Johnson, a protester.
Continue reading...Prime minister calls together emergency committee to decide UK’s response to latest fighting in Middle East
Keir Starmer is chairing a meeting of the UK government’s Cobra emergency committee as Britain decides how to respond to the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, and Tehran’s retaliation against bases in the Gulf.
The UK did not participate in the first wave of strikes early on Saturday but had deployed RAF Typhoons to Qatar to protect the al-Udeid airbase in the country and other allied military facilities in the region.
Continue reading...US president violates UN charter just days into his Board of Peace era, and chooses to take the biggest gamble of his administration
The first war of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace era has begun – an unprovoked attempt at regime change in collaboration with Israel, with no legal foundation, launched in the midst of diplomatic efforts to avert conflict, and with minimal consultation with Congress or the American public.
Trump’s recorded eight-minute address after the first bombs had fallen, made clear that this would be no limited strike aimed at cajoling Tehran into concessions at the negotiating table. He warned that if Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) did not surrender they would be killed, and the country’s armed forces, its missile and navy would be smashed.
Continue reading...Joint operation prompts Tehran to retaliate with missile attacks on bases across Middle East
Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been killed as the US and Israel launch a war on Iran to trigger regime change, Donald Trump has claimed. The US president announced the death of the ayatollah, who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, in a post on Truth Social. “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote.
The death of Iran’s supreme leader was announced after waves of air attacks across the country. Iran’s Red Crescent reported more than 200 deaths and 747 injuries in daylong attacks across 24 provinces.
At least 100 people were reportedly killed in a strike on a primary school in Minab, in the south-east.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had earlier said there were “many signs” Khamenei was “no longer alive”, and Israeli officials briefed media that his body had been recovered.
Tehran fired retaliatory strikes against Israeli and US bases across the Middle East. Iran’s attacks targeted more than six countries, pulling in places that had been previously untouched by the escalating crisis.
In Israel, one person died and 22 others are injured, media reports say, after an Iranian missile strike hit a building in Tel Aviv. An official said the building was aflame and had partially collapsed.
In Dubai, a number of people were injured after an incident occurred at Dubai international airport, the Dubai media office has said. The Burj Al Arab and Fairmont hotels caught fire amid Iranian attacks.
The United Arab Emirates said in a statement that it had intercepted the vast majority of the 137 missiles and 209 drones fired at its territory by Iran in the hours after the US and Israel launched a regime change war on the Islamic Republic.
In Bahrain, an Iranian drone flew into a high-rise building in what looked like a targeted attack, exploding and engulfing the skyscraper in flames. Earlier, the country’s national security agency was also struck by an Iranian missile.
Social media footage also appeared to show a missile hitting the huge US naval base in Bahrain. In Kuwait, a drone crashed into the country’s main airport, wounding several employees and damaging the facility.
In Lebanon, gas stations across the country had lines 10 cars deep within an hour of the strikes. People in Beirut airport watched as commercial flights were cancelled, and grocery stores were filled with the more cautious stocking up on essential goods – the memory of the 2024 war with Israel fresh in their minds.
At least one person was killed and seven wounded during an “incident” at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed international airport, officials said after Iranian strikes targeting the United Arab Emirates and Gulf states.
Continue reading...Department of foreign affairs warns travellers of risk of reprisal attacks, further escalation and flight cancellations in Middle East
Australia has declared its support for US action against Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon and “to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security”.
But Australia’s department of foreign affairs (Dfat) has warned of the risk of “reprisal attacks and further escalation” across the Middle East after the attack.
Continue reading...Tehran’s ICBMs cannot currently reach the US, experts say, and White House has claimed its nuclear programme has been destroyed
Donald Trump’s likely casus belli for an attack on Iran – which would be the largest US intervention since the Iraq war – is fraught with contradictions, and his top advisers have been left to cover for him as the White House makes the case for intervention.
In his State of the Union address this week, Trump alleged that Iran posed a direct threat to the US and that the country was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America”. But that claim has not been backed up with evidence by the White House or the Pentagon, and US intelligence reports from just last year say that it would take Iran 10 years to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the US.
Continue reading...Exclusive: memo came after Mike Huckabee’s remarks about Israel sparked alarm inside White House
The US secretary of state Marco Rubio told ambassadors in the Middle East to stop making public comments that could inflame tensions and undermine Donald Trump’s pressure on Iran to relinquish its capacity to produce a nuclear weapon, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.
“Given rising tensions in the region, Chiefs of Mission and embassies at addressee posts must refrain from public statements, interviews, or social media activity that could in any way inflame regional audiences, prejudice sensitive political issues, or complicate US relationships,” the cable said.
Continue reading...US president accuses Tehran of failing to ‘negotiate in good faith’ over its nuclear programme
Donald Trump says he has not made a final decision on whether to launch strikes on Iran but is “not happy” with the situation and military force – including regime change – remains an option.
The remarks came at the White House on Friday after talks between the US and Iran on Tehran’s nuclear programme ended inconclusively, with a suggestion that further discussions would be held next week.
Continue reading...The rationale to justify the US striking first has shifted from the country killing protesters to its developing weapons
As senior Democrats emerged from a classified briefing on Iran with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, earlier this week, the leaders of the opposition delivered reserved, cryptic warnings of what may become the US’s largest military intervention since the Iraq war.
This was not a line in the sand against a new war in the Middle East. Instead, Democrats targeted the opaque decision-making around Donald Trump – as well as his own unpredictable whims – that could guide the weightiest foreign-policy decision of his two terms in office.
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