Family of UK couple held in Iran did not know pair’s whereabouts for month

Son of Lindsay Foreman said they had also not known for fortnight if she and husband, Craig, had survived Israeli bombing

The son of a British woman who has been held in Iran since January on espionage charges along with her husband has told the Guardian he lived with the agony of not knowing their whereabouts for a month or in the past fortnight whether they had been killed in the Israeli bombing on Tehran’s Evin prison on 23 June that left more than 70 dead.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both 52, were arrested on 3 January in Kervan City in southern Iran while travelling through the country from Armenia to Pakistan on a motorcycle journey to Australia. The Foreign Office were informed they were due to be taken to Tehran on around 8 June, raising fears they may have been caught in the Tehran attack, but on Tuesday they were informed they were still held in Kervan.

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Europe is scrambling to form a united front and regain relevance in the Iran crisis

Tehran now places little faith in the European countries who played a key role in brokering the Iranian nuclear deal

Exposed as divided and marginalised during the Iran crisis, European nations are scrambling to retrieve a place at the Middle East negotiating table, fearing an impulsive Donald Trump has diminishing interest in stabilising Iran or the wider region now he believes he has achieved his key objective of wiping out Tehran’s nuclear programme.

On Tuesday the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, was the latest senior European figure to phone the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, offering to be a facilitator and urging Tehran not to leave the crisis in a dangerous limbo by keeping UN weapons inspectors out of Iran.

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Pentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’

Sean Parnell repeats Trump claim that key sites were destroyed, based on ‘assessments inside the department’

The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defense department said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The spokesperson, Sean Parnell, repeated Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been completely destroyed, although he did not offer further details on the origin of the assessments beyond saying it came from inside the defense department.

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Tuesday briefing: How weakened is Iran after Operation Midnight Hammer – and where might it go from here?

In today’s newsletter: With its nuclear capabilities down but not out and domestic support strong, the question is where Iran goes next

Good morning. The term “cakeism” – the false belief that one can simultaneously enjoy the benefits of two mutually exclusive choices – may forever be associated with the Brexit negotiations, when keeping the advantages of EU membership while also shedding its costs became the UK’s official bargaining position.

But the appeal of cakeism endures, and over the last week the US president’s approach to the conflict with Iran has started to look distinctly gateau-shaped. Donald Trump wants the glory of a decisive victory on the battlefield but is not so keen on the long-term repercussions that come with it: tit-for-tat retaliations, unforeseeable conflict spillage, focused diplomacy, or even regime change – the kind of talk the Maga movement associates with Trump’s predecessors.

Welfare | Downing Street’s plans to see off a major Labour welfare rebellion were in chaos on Monday night, amid continued brinkmanship between MPs and the government over the scale of the concessions. There was significant division between government departments over how to respond to rebels’ demands ahead of the knife-edge vote on Tuesday.

UK news | Police have formally opened a criminal investigation into comments made by Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury after reviewing video and audio footage of the performances. Meanwhile on Monday, the BBC said that it should not have allowed chants of “Death to the IDF” at Bob Vylan’s performance to be broadcast.

Crown Estate | King Charles is set to receive official annual income of £132m next year, after his portfolio of land and property made more than £1bn in profits thanks to a boom in the offshore wind sector.

Arms trade | Britain’s decision to allow the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, despite accepting they could be used in breach of international humanitarian law in Gaza, was lawful, London’s high court has ruled. The judges ruled that the “acutely sensitive and political issue” was “a matter for the executive … not for the courts”.

Crime | A 92-year-old man who evaded justice for almost 60 years has been convicted of raping and murdering a woman in Bristol, after a review by a cold case police team and scientists. Officers believe the 58-year gap between the crime and the conviction may be the biggest in modern English policing history.

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Sleeper cells and threat warnings: how the US-Iran conflict is spinning up fear

Experts stress that a weakened Iran isn’t in a position to attack on US soil and doesn’t want to invite Trump’s wrath

As the war between Iran and Israel intensified, teasing the eventual involvement of the US military, American security agencies began to warn of a looming threat of Tehran-backed “sleeper cells” known to be active stateside that could be called in for retaliatory attacks.

But as the B-2 bombers struck nuclear sites across Iran and the Iranian military responded with a missile barrage on US bases in the region, a ceasefire took shape. In the end, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iran’s elite military and intelligence branch, wielding a global web of terrorist groups and agents acting on its behalf – didn’t appear to sponsor or carry out any covert operations inside the US, nor has it since.

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Iran’s nuclear enrichment ‘will never stop’, nation’s UN ambassador says

Amir-Saeid Iravani says Tehran is ready for negotiations but Trump’s ‘unconditional surrender is not negotiation’

Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that the Islamic republic’s nuclear enrichment “will never stop” because it is permitted for “peaceful energy” purposes under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The enrichment is our right, an inalienable right, and we want to implement this right,” Iravani told CBS News, adding that Iran was ready for negotiations but “unconditional surrender is not negotiation. It is dictating the policy toward us.”

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Trump considers forcing journalists to reveal sources who leaked Iran report

President dismisses leaked assessment suggesting strikes only temporarily disrupted Iran’s nuclear development

Donald Trump said he is weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources – and the president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump doubled down on his claim that the 21 June airstrikes aimed at certain Iranian facilities successfully crippled Iran’s nuclear program. He insisted the attacks destroyed key enriched uranium stockpiles, despite Iranian assertions that the material had been relocated before the strikes.

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Iran says it has ‘serious doubts’ over Israel’s commitment to ceasefire – as it happened

Iran’s armed forces chief of staff says it is ‘ready to respond with force’ if attacked again; Iran says airstrikes on Evin prison killed at least 71

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli attacks have killed at least 14 people, including three children, so far on Sunday.

Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that 13 people were killed in airstrikes at four locations around the Gaza Strip, and another from Israeli gunfire near an aid distribution centre.

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Iran will likely be able to produce enriched uranium ‘in a matter of months’, IAEA chief says

Rafael Grossi says some of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile could have been moved before US attacks

The UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi says Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months”, despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks, CBS News said on Saturday.

Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites on 13 June, saying it was aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon – an ambition the Islamic republic has consistently denied.

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Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza as Qatar calls for peace talks – as it happened

This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

Emirates extended its cancellation of flights to and from Iran’s capital Tehran until July 5 due to the “regional situation“, it said in a statement on Saturday, Reuters reports.

The Dubai-based airline said it will recommence operations to Baghdad on 1 July and Basra on 2 July.

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Trump is making US intelligence parrot his line on Iran – it echoes Bush’s invasion of Iraq

Tailoring assessments to suit political prejudices undermines their very function and led us to the Iraq war

In the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, journalists covering the preparations for war became familiar with the concept of “stovepiping”.

The term described the tactic of pushing intelligence to key political decision makers, bypassing checks and balances within the system.

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Starmer confirms willingness to make concessions on welfare bill, saying reforms must be fair – UK politics live

‘We want to see reform implemented with Labour values of fairness,’ the PM says

In his final answer Starmer explained how he thought government and business should work together.

A true partnership is not two people or two bodies trying to do the same thing. It’s two people or bodies realising they bring different things to the table.

Government shouldn’t try to run businesses. It’s done that in the past and it doesn’t work particularly well.

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Hegseth defends Iran strike amid doubts over Trump’s ‘obliteration’ claims

Defense chief says US bombings degraded Iran’s nuclear sites, citing AI models over leaked intel doubts

The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has defended the US strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities and said that Donald Trump had “decimated … obliterated” the country’s nuclear program despite initial intelligence assessments that last week’s strikes had failed to destroy key enrichment facilities and they could resume operations within just months.

But he and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, largely based that assessment on AI modeling, showing test videos of the “bunker buster” bombs used in the strikes and referred questions on a battle damage assessment of Fordow to the intelligence community.

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Khamenei says Iran will strike back if US hits again in first remarks since ceasefire

Iran’s supreme leader says attack on US base in Qatar was ‘slap to America’s face’

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has threatened to respond to any future US attack by striking American military bases in the Middle East, in his first public comments since a ceasefire with Israel was declared.

The 86-year-old, who has not been seen in public since taking shelter in a secret location after the outbreak of the war on 13 June, said his country had “delivered a slap to America’s face” – a reference to an Iranian missile attack on a US base in Qatar on Monday, which caused no casualties.

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Iran’s parliament approves bill to suspend cooperation with IAEA

Move makes it harder to verify degree of damage inflicted on Iran’s three key nuclear sites by US and Israeli bombing

Iran’s parliament has unanimously agreed to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear inspectorate, making it harder for an independent expert assessment to be made about the degree of damage inflicted on Iran’s three key nuclear sites by the joint US and Israeli bombing.

It also makes it harder for the location of any highly enriched uranium to be known. The vote is a sign that Iran wants to harden its negotiating position on cooperation with the west in the wake of 12 days of attacks mounted by Israel and the US, but supported by European governments only with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

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Pakistan debates Trump Nobel peace prize nomination after US strikes on Iran

Pakistani government had credited US president with ‘pivotal leadership’ in its ceasefire negotiations with India

Donald Trump’s intervention into the Iran-Israel war, and brokering then announcing a ceasefire, has drawn a heated debate in Pakistan – where the government had formally nominated the US president for the Nobel peace prize as the US military was making its final preparations for a strike that threatened all-out war in the Middle East.

A statement in the early hours of Saturday local time – shortly before US B-2 bombers left the Whiteman air force base in Missouri and headed to Iran – had credited Trump for a “legacy of pragmatic diplomacy” and “pivotal leadership” for ensuring Pakistan’s ceasefire with India in a conflict that had begun with the killing of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir in April.

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Trump and Hegseth admit doubts about level of damage to Iran nuclear sites

President calls intelligence ‘inconclusive’, while defence secretary describes harm to facilities as ‘moderate to severe’

Donald Trump and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian programme had been set back by only a few months.

“The intelligence was very inconclusive,” Trump told journalists at a Nato summit in The Hague, introducing an element of uncertainty for the first time after several days of emphatic declarations that the destruction had been total. “The intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the intelligence suggests.”

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Israel-Iran live news: Trump insists nuclear sites ‘destroyed’ after intelligence suggests program could restart in months

Report says program likely set back only a few months; Iran and Israel both say they will honour truce if other side does after US president expresses frustration at violations

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has weighed in on Donald Trump cursing after becoming frustrated that Iran and Israel violated a ceasefire brokered by the US president.

Trump attacked both nations for breaching the agreement in the early stages, saying on live television “they don’t know what the fuck they are doing”.

We heard some blunt speak from the president, and I think that just reflects the fact that the stakes are high in the Middle East.

I think those who haven’t used that word privately can cast the first stone.

Now it’s for us to sit down with the Iranians and get to a comprehensive peace agreement, and I am very confident that we are going to achieve that.

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Tuesday briefing: What you need to know about Trump’s declaration of peace between Israel and Iran

In today’s newsletter: The US president responds to Iran’s limited retaliation by celebrating the end of the war, with Israel confirming agreement to proposal

Good morning. After the United States attacked Iranian nuclear sites early on Sunday, the question was how Tehran would respond. Last night, we saw the beginnings of the answer – and, at least according to Donald Trump, the end of it.

The retaliation came in the form of ballistic missile attacks on a US base in Qatar. While the Iranian authorities called the operation a “mighty and successful response”, no Americans were harmed – apparently by design. Trump described it as a “very weak response”, suggested that the Iranians had “gotten it all out of their ‘system’”, and added: “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!”

Protest | UK home secretary Yvette Cooper has vowed to ban Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws, after activists from the group broke into RAF Brize Norton and spray-painted two military planes. PA’s lawyers said that Cooper’s proposal was an attack on freedom of expression and assembly.

Politics | Labour MPs have launched a significant rebellion against the government’s ​benefit cuts with an amendment that could kill its ​welfare bill, spearheaded by senior select committee chairs and which sources say could be signed by up to 100 MPs.

NHS | UK health secretary Wes Streeting has launched a national investigation into “systemic” failures in NHS maternity services in England, saying “maternity units are failing, hospitals are failing, trusts are failing, regulators are failing” and there is “too much passing the buck”.

Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Russia, Iran and North Korea as a “coalition of murderers” during a visit to London, where he held talks with Kier Starmer on how to put further pressure on Moscow to end the war. Ukraine’s president has accused Tehran of being complicit in Russia’s invasion.

Music | U2 guitarist The Edge has officially become an Irish citizen, 62 years after moving from Britain to Ireland, in a step he said was “long overdue”.

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Australian passenger disruption as airlines delay or cancel flights after Iran’s attack on US base in Qatar

Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong said there had been ‘disruptions to flights with temporary airspace closures in the region’

The Albanese government and airlines are warning passengers in Australia of flight delays and disruptions after Iran’s strike on a US base in Qatar resulted in several countries closing their airspace.

In a post to X on Tuesday morning, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said there had been “disruptions to flights with temporary airspace closures in the region”.

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