1h ago
18.37 GMT
The day
so far
- Here’s a brief recap of the developments so far, on the third day of US and Israel attacks on Iran, and of Tehran continuing retaliatory strikes against US allies across the Gulf after the killing of its supreme leader on Saturday.
- At least 555 people have been killed in Iran by the Israel-US attacks across 131 cities since Saturday, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. US Central Command also said a fourth US service member has been killed.
- Speaking at the White House for the first time since attacking Iran, Donald Trump said the US military is continuing to carry out large-scale operations in Iran and said the campaign could continue for four to five weeks or more. The US president claimed his objectives in Iran are “clear”. They include “destroying Iran’s missile capabilities” and “annihilating their navy”, as well as preventing them from ever having nuclear weapons; he said that Tehran “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”. He also cited the apparent lack of progress in diplomatic negotiations as further justification for the strikes.
- The US president earlier did not rule out the possibility of boots on the ground in Iran if necessary, in an interview with the New York Post. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says ‘there will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’” His defense secretary Pete Hegseth had earlier said there weren’t plans to have service members on the ground in Iran, but had also been reluctant to say whether this was the administration’s lasting stance. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he told a Pentagon press conference earlier.
- Trump also told CNN that the “big wave” of strikes against Iran is yet to come. “We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” the US president said. “We’re knocking the crap out of them.”
- Hegseth said earlier that the US “didn’t start this war but we’re finishing it”, while also claiming that the US’s goal was not regime change in Iran (even though Trump has pushed for this and Hegesth himself then urged Iranians to “take advantage” of this opportunity for just that). Hegseth also indicated that the US did not plan to effect a democratic transition in Iran – and refused to establish a clear timeline for how long the US operation will continue. We have a story on that here.
- Israeli strikes have killed at least 52 people in Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry said, and wounded more than 150. Israel argued that its strikes were necessary after Tehran’s ally Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel (which Israel intercepted) in response to the Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
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