The day so far

 

2h ago

17.56 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/31/iran-latest-updates-trump-threats-oil-spill-dubai-tehran-jerusalem-strikes?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-69cbfa018f0877c4498e3e5e#block-69cbfa018f0877c4498e3e5e

 

The day so far

 

• In a post on Truth Social, the US president, Donald Trump, has suggested that countries like the UK should build up the “courage” to go to the strait of Hormuz and “just take” fuel. “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” Trump said as he criticised countries who “refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”.
•  
• Extra UK troops are being sent to the Middle East to help the UK’s allies defend their skies from Iranian attacks. On a trip to Gulf nations, defence secretary John Healey announced the UK will deploy the Sky Sabre air defence missile system in Saudi Arabia and extend UK Typhoon jets’ action in Qatar, PA reported.
•  
• Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they will target US companies in the region as of 1 April in retaliation for attacks on Iran, state media reported. The 18 companies listed in the IRGC’s threat included Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla and Boeing.
•  
• Areas near the World Health Organization’s Tehran office were hit by strikes over the past two nights, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an X post on Tuesday. “Fortunately all WHO Iran office colleagues are accounted for and none were injured,” he added.
•  
• Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney on Tuesday denounced Israel’s deployment of troops against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as an “illegal invasion” that violates its “integrity and sovereignty.” “The government of Lebanon has banned Hezbollah, is taking action, is trying to take action against Hezbollah and their terrorist activities and their threats to Israel, and that is the purported justification for this invasion,” Carney told journalists at an event in Wakefield, Quebec.
•  
• Israel said on Tuesday that it will occupy wide swathes of south Lebanon and destroy the homes along the border to prevent the return of some 600,000 residents, prompting concerns of long-term forced displacement.
•  
• The Lebanese health ministry said yesterday that nine people had been killed and 137 others injured in Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the past day. It said the latest figures brought the death toll from Israeli attacks since 2 March to 1,247, with 3,680 other people reported injured.
•  
• Israeli airstrikes killed at least five people in the Gaza Strip in two separate attacks on Tuesday, health officials said. An Israeli airstrike killed at least three people in Jabalia, in the north of the territory, while two other people were killed in another airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to medics.
•  
• A UN security source told AFP on Tuesday that Israeli fire had killed an Indonesian peacekeeper at the weekend, after the UN force said it was investigating the incident. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon had said that the peacekeeper was killed on Sunday evening when a projectile of unknown origin “exploded in a UNIFIL position near Adchit al Qusayr”, while two more Indonesian blue helmets were killed in south Lebanon the following day.
•  
• Iranian state media reported yesterday that an Iranian parliamentary committee had approved a proposal to collect a toll on vessels travelling through the strait of Hormuz. The strait will be closed to ships from the US, Israel and countries that have been involved in sanctioning Iran, according to a Telegram post from the Fars news agency, which said that Iran will have a “sovereign” role in the implementation of the new system.
•  
• Italy has denied use of an airbase in Sicily to US military craft carrying weapons for the war in the Middle East. A source at the Italian defence ministry confirmed a report in Corriere della Sera that “some US bombers” had been due to land at Sigonella – a key US navy installation and Nato base – before heading to the Middle East.
•  
• A US-Israeli attack on the Iranian city of Mahallat last night (at about 11pm local time) killed 11 people and injured 15 others, the Tasnim news agency has cited a deputy security officer as having said. Four residential units were “completely destroyed” in the attack, in which three children were killed, according to the report, which we have not yet been able to independently verify.