1h ago
21.08 GMT
The day
so far
Donald
Trump said the US has hit and “completely destroyed” 10 inactive mine-laying
vessels, warning that more would follow. It came shortly after the US president
initially said there had been “no reports” of Iran placing mines in the strait,
but warned that if it had, they must be moved “IMMEDIATELY” or Iran would face
military consequences “at a level never seen before”. US officials earlier told
CBS News that Iran may be preparing to deploy naval mines in the strait to
further disrupt the crucial shipping lane. According to CNN, a few dozen mines
have been laid in recent days.
White
House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the US Navy has not
escorted an oil tanker through the strait of Hormuz, after the US energy
secretary Chris Wright said it had happened in a swiftly deleted X post.
Leavitt also said that the US military is “drawing up additional options” to
keep strait open.
Leavitt
also said that the US and Israel’s war won’t end until Iran’s “complete and
unconditional surrender” and when Trump decides his objectives have been met
and determines that Iran does not pose a direct threat. She told reporters that
the US military is “making tremendous strides towards achieving our military
objectives”, and is now moving to “dismantle Iran’s missile production
infrastructure”.
Meanwhile,
the Trump administration is reportedly considering the deployment of special
forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU),
which experts say could be used to make at least 10 nuclear warheads. The US
secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has told Congress that “people are going to
have to go and get it”. Here’s our story.
The
United States reportedly asked Israel to halt strikes on Iran’s energy
infrastructure, marking the first time the US has reined in its ally since they
went to war 11 days ago. It comes after an Israeli bombing of fuel storage
facilities blanketed Tehran - a city home to some 10 million people - in toxic
black smoke and acid rain over the weekend, raising urgent health warnings for
ordinary Iranians.
Russia
denied sharing intelligence with Iran on US military assets in the Middle East,
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said. It follows reports on Friday that
Moscow was providing Tehran with targeting information that included locations
and movements of US warships and aircraft in the region. “Yesterday on the call
with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing,” Witkoff
said when asked if Washington thought Moscow had shared intelligence about the
location of US military assets with Tehran. “We can take them at their word.
But they did say that. And yesterday morning, independently, Jared [Kushner]
and I had a call with [Kremlin aide Yuri] Ushakov who reiterated the same.”
Iran’s
foreign minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed repeated claims from the Trump
administration that Iran was planning a preemptive or preventive strike against
the US or its military forces as “a sheer and utter lie”. “The sole purpose of
that lie is to justify Operation Epic Mistake, a misadventure engineered by
Israel and paid for by ordinary Americans,” Araghchi said in a post on X –
riffing on the US’s name for the military operation, Operation Epic Fury.
Approximately
140 US service members have been wounded since the start of the US-Israeli war
on Iran, according to the Pentagon, eight of them severely.
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