Author: Keyvan Rafiee

The Times – Iran war latest: US says it will destroy regime but won’t use nuclear weapons

Four people, including a child, have been injured in Qatar after debris from intercepted missiles fell on a house, says Qatar’s Interior Ministry.

In Saudi Arabia, local media reports said air defences were also active on Tuesday night, in a sign that Iran was continuing its retaliations against Gulf countries.

Tehran has launched air attacks against such nations since the beginning of the war in late February.

Turkey has joined the negotiations between Pakistan, Iran and the US on a potential two-week ceasefire proposal put forward by the Pakistani prime minister tonight.

Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, held a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart, Ishaq Dar, as part of diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Iran war, Turkish foreign ministry sources said.

Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, put forward certain conditions to Iran to secure the ceasefire deal.

He asked Tehran to commit to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a focal point of talks during the ongoing conflict.

Blasts have been heard in the Qatari capital Doha and the Iraqi capital Baghdad tonight, while the UAE says its air defences are responding to missile threats.

“The UAE’s air defences are currently dealing with missile and drone attacks coming from Iran,” the Emirati Ministry of Defence said in a statement on X.

President Trump has criticised Iran’s call for citizens to form human shields around power plants in the country, during a brief telephone call with a US broadcaster.

“Totally illegal,” Trump said, according to NBC News. “They’re not allowed to do that.”

The president declined to provide any update on the status of ongoing negotiations with the Iranians during the call, the channel reported.

As for what motivated him to post this morning that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” — a comment that has provoked backlash from around the world — he would only say: “You’ll have to figure that out.”

As President Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz approaches, Israel has warned of an increased risk of inbound attacks.

“Following a situational assessment, and as part of preparations for the possible expiration of the ultimatum, there may be an increase in fire toward the territory of the State of Israel in the coming hours,” the Israeli military said on its official Telegram channel.

Both the US and Iran are said to be reviewing Pakistan’s request for a two-week ceasefire and an extended deadline for negotiations to seek an end to the war.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Axios: “The president has been made aware of the proposal, and a response will come.”

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran was “positively reviewing” the ceasefire request that Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, announced on social media just five hours before President Trump’s stated final deadline was due to expire.

By the normal standards of warfare, Iran should be down and out. Its leader has been killed. His successor is thought to be incapacitated. The upper echelons of the military and security apparatus are either dead or hiding below ground. The naval fleet is mostly sunk. Missile-launch capability has been severely degraded (Tom Ball writes).

And yet for all that, Tehran is refusing to submit to America’s demands for capitulation. Such recalcitrance does not conform to President Trump’s understanding of how deals are made.

“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal, his 1987 manual for aspiring tycoons. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”

The prime minister of Pakistan, which is a key mediator in the Middle East conflict, has asked President Trump for a ceasefire period of two weeks to reach a deal with Iran and “allow diplomacy to run its course”.

He also suggested Iran could open the Strait of Hormuz during this period “as a goodwill gesture”.

Writing on X — and tagging Trump and other US and Iranian leaders — Shehbaz Sharif said: “Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future.

“To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks. Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open the Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding period of two weeks as a goodwill gesture.

“We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region.”

The Islamic republic is prepared for all possibilities in its war with the US and Israel, according to Mohammad Reza Aref, the first vice-president of Iran.

“National security and infrastructure sustainability are the subject of our precise calculations,” Aref wrote on X. “The government has finalised the necessary measures in detail for all scenarios. No threat is beyond our preparedness and intelligence.”

Tehran also said it will prevail over “brute force” in an apparent rebuke to Trump’s threats.

Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, wrote on X: “The power of a “CIVILIZED” nation’s culture, logic, and faith in its righteous cause will undoubtedly prevail over the logic of brute force.

“A nation that has every faith in the righteousness of its path shall harness all its capacities and capabilities to safeguard its rights and legitimate interests.”

The Pope has said that threats to inflict widespread damage on civilian targets in Iran were “unacceptable” and could breach international law.

Speaking to journalists as he left his residence in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, he said: “Today … there was this threat against all the people of Iran, and this is truly unacceptable. There are certainly questions of international law, but much more than that, it is a moral question.”

President Trump’s threats to extinguish Iran’s “civilisation” and destroy its power and desalination plants would constitute war crimes if acted upon, according to experts including the UN’s human rights chief (Samer Al-Atrush writes).

Trump’s aim is to force the Iranian regime to agree to a ceasefire on his terms. But targeting civilian infrastructure, even if it is also used by the Iranian military, could violate laws in the United States and internationally.

In a post on Truth Social hours before his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump wrote: “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Iranian officials reported damage to bridges, railway systems and highways today as part of a wave of deadly airstrikes on infrastructure.

A bridge near the holy city of Qom and another carrying a railway line in the central city of Kashan were struck, according to regional officials quoted by state media.

Akbar Salehi, a senior regional security official, told the Islamic Republic News Agency (Irna) that two people had been killed and three more had been injured in Kashan.

A key highway in northern Iran connecting the main northern city of Tabriz with Tehran via Zanjan was also temporarily closed after a hit around 90 kilometres (55 miles) outside of Tabriz, the Irna and Fars agencies reported.

Fars and the Mizan news agency also reported a strike on railway tracks in Karaj, outside Tehran, with images showing Red Crescent rescuers carrying an injured man on a stretcher.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, has aссused Brussels of meddling in elections that could end the career of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, whose self-styled “illiberal democracy” has been touted by President Trump as a role model for Europe (Marc Bennetts writes).

An outspoken opponent of European Union policies on Ukraine, immigration and gender, Orban has been in power since 2010. However, his ruling Fidesz party is trailing in most independent polls to Tisza, a party led by Peter Magyar, a former government insider, before Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Vance, who arrived in Budapest on Tuesday to try to boost Orban’s hopes of securing a fifth straight term, said his two-day visit was intended as a “signal” to the EU, which he alleged was carrying out a “disgraceful” campaign to bring down Orban at the ballot box.

Iran is said to have told Pakistan, an intermediary in peace talks, that it retained a large stockpile of weapons and that it “believed it was winning” the conflict.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said Tehran claimed to still have 15,000 missiles and 45,000 drones with which to retaliate against US-Israeli attacks.

Mediators said the numbers were likely to be exaggerated but reflected Iran’s unchanged negotiating position. Despite claims by the Pentagon and Israel that most of the regime’s launchers had been destroyed or damaged, the regime has proved capable of launching daily attacks against Gulf countries, as well as Israeli and US military bases and other targets in the region.

Israel regrets damaging Tehran synagogue

The Israeli military has expressed regret over “collateral damage” to a synagogue in Tehran in an overnight strike that targeted the “emergency headquarters” of a senior Iranian commander.

It said the results of the strike were “under review”, adding that “steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance”.

Iran’s Shargh newspaper and Mehr news agency have reported that the Rafi-Nia Synagogue in central Tehran was “completely destroyed”.

Judaism is one of Iran’s legally recognised minority religions and there are thought to be a few thousand Jewish people in the country.

Iranians form human chains on infrastructure

Iranians appear to have been forming human chains on bridges and power stations after President Trump threatened to bomb civilian infrastructure.

Crowds waving national flags and banners were filmed gathering at key sites after a call from Iranian regime officials to symbolically protect the locations.

On Easter Sunday, Trump announced the US military would destroy Iranian power plants and bridges if Iran did not meet his terms for a deal, but it was not clear if the gatherings would continue into the night.

For President Trump, the finality of his deadlines are as stable as his genius (David Charter writes). His latest threat to Iran follows a series of elastic ultimatums that can be summed up as:

• March 21 “Open the Strait in 48 hours”;
• March 23 “Open it in five days”;
• March 26 “Open it in ten days”;
• March 30 “Open it immediately”;
• April 4 “Open it in 48 hours”;
• April 5 “Open it in [another] 48 hours”.

This brinkmanship was Trump’s hallmark in business and in his 2016 presidential campaign he said that America “must, as a nation, be more unpredictable”.

He said yesterday that a deal with Iran had fallen through, so he ordered the bombing of its largest bridge. The regime does not know for sure if he would seriously bomb every bridge and power station if it fails to comply with his demands tonight.

The most likely outcome is that he will find a way to extend the deadline again or carry out limited but high-profile strikes on infrastructure. Yet, as he also said yesterday, “a lot of this is instinct” — keeping everyone guessing.

Democratic members of Congress have suggested the 25th amendment should be invoked to remove President Trump from office (Josie Ensor writes).

“Donald Trump has lost his mind and his threats to wipe out the Iranian people should be taken seriously,” Robert Garcia, a ranking Democratic member of the House oversight committee, posted on X. He called for the invocation of the amendment, which allows the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to remove power from a president deemed unable to discharge their duties.

Melanie Stansbury, a congresswoman for New Mexico, posted: “This man is threatening mass killings and war crimes on social media posts. When will enough be enough? We need our Republican colleagues to do the right thing, for this country and for the world.”

An aid convoy organised by the Vatican’s envoy to Lebanon had to turn back today after it came under fire.

Archbishop Paolo Borgia was travelling in a convoy headed for Christian villages in the country’s south, a source told AFP news agency. Despite being escorted by French peacekeepers from the United Nations, the convoy was fired upon as it approached border villages. Vehicles were damaged but no casualties were reported.

The source did not specify who had fired the shots but there has been fighting in border villages between the IDF and Hezbollah fighters for the past month.

An American journalist kidnapped in Iraq has been freed (Josie Ensor writes).

Shelly Kittleson, a freelance correspondent from Minnesota, was taken from a Baghdad street last week by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia. It announced its intention to release her today.

The sole Royal Navy warship sent to protect British bases from Iranian drones and missiles has returned to port for maintenance (Charlie Parker writes).

HMS Dragon, a Type-45 destroyer, arrived in the eastern Mediterranean weeks after the fighting began but is having to temporarily withdraw. The Ministry of Defence admitted that the vessel, which is tasked with defending RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as well as Gulf allies, has sailed to a safe berth for repairs.

However, defence sources denied it would affect the ship’s operational capability. Officials said the stop would include addressing “a minor technical issue with onboard water systems”.

The Israeli military issued a warning today for all vessels anchoring or sailing in the maritime area from the Israel-Lebanon border to the Lebanese city of Tyre, possibly signalling an imminent attack.

All vessels must immediately sail north of the Tyre area, the military said.

The joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran is “approaching a strategic crossroads”, the head of Israel’s military has said, while promising to “intensify the damage inflicted on the regime”.

Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, said: “We have achieved significant gains, including relative to the objectives we set at the outset of the operation. We will continue to act with determination and intensify the damage inflicted on the regime.”

The remarks came after the Israeli military announced it had struck eight bridges that it said were used by Iran’s armed forces “for transporting weapons and military equipment”.

The Israeli military has published video of what it said were strikes against “terrorists” in Lebanon as it continues its military campaign against Hezbollah.

The footage, posted online, shows aerial surveillance and explosive attacks against individuals on foot, in vehicles and against buildings.

The Israel Defence Forces said in a caption “that approximately 130 terrorists were eliminated … In various operations, the forces identified terrorists who posed a real threat to them, closing the circle quickly as the terrorists were eliminated by the air force in co-ordination with observation forces after attempting to flee.”

The UN commissioner for human rights decried the “incendiary rhetoric” in the Middle East war and said that deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure would constitute “a war crime”.

Volker Türk said in a statement: “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Anyone responsible for international crimes must be held to account by a competent court.”

Türk did not name the United States, Israel or Iran.

President Trump is the only person who knows his plans for Iran, the White House said today after his repeated warnings hours before a “final deadline” was due to expire.

“The Iranian regime has until 8pm eastern time [1am BST] to meet the moment and make a deal with the United States,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement to AFP. “Only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.”

China and Russia have vetoed a resolution at the UN security council on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

There were 11 votes in favour. Pakistan, a mediator in the dispute, was one of two countries that abstained. The initial proposal, from Bahrain, would have authorised countries to use “all necessary means” — UN wording that would include military action — to ensure transit through the Strait of Hormuz and deter attempts to close it.

President Trump’s social media comments on Iran are an “embarrassment”, a former US state department negotiator has said.

Aaron David Miller, who served six secretaries of state as an adviser on the Middle East, told Times Radio: “No American president has ever behaved in this fashion, no American presidency seemed to relish the possibility of destruction of civilian infrastructure, no American president ever deployed profanity — a certain cruelty and unkindness of this language.

“It is an embarrassment, it is a shame, and having worked for Republicans and Democrats — and voted for Democrats and Republicans — this seems to me to be a result of an American president who is angry, full of rage and cannot see beyond his own frustration.”

Iran has denied reports that negotiation channels with the US had been cut off.

“Diplomatic and indirect channels of talks with the US are not CLOSED,” the Tehran Times, an English-language newspaper tied to the regime, said after sources told American newspapers that Iran had informed Pakistan, the intermediary in ceasefire talks, that it would no longer take part.

President Trump said “there is going to be an attack like they have not seen” as he reinforced his deadline for negotiations with Iran to move forward.

The Fox News presenter Bret Baier told viewers: “I just got off the phone with the president … I said, ‘Listen, if you were to put odds on it, what were the odds that this is going to end up being a negotiated deal?’ He said he wasn’t going to put odds on it. But he said 8pm [1am BST] is happening.

“He said if we get to that point, there is going to be an attack like they have not seen. Now he’s sticking to that. He said if negotiations move forward today and there is something concrete, that could change. But at this hour, he didn’t want to put odds on it, but he said it is moving forward with the plans that we have.”

The White House has denied that remarks by JD Vance, the vice-president, contained any suggestion of a US nuclear strike against Iran.

After Vance said US forces had tools they “so far haven’t decided to use”, an X account said he had implied Trump “might use nuclear weapons”. The White House responded on its Rapid Response 47 account: “Literally nothing @VP said here ‘implies’ this, you absolute buffoons.”

Vance, who is in Hungary to support Viktor Orban before the prime minister seeks re-election this weekend, also said the US had “fundamentally” completed its military objectives in Iran and there were two ways the war could end — either “Iranians decide … they’re not going to fund terrorism any more, they’re going to be part of the world system of commerce and exchange”, or “the economic situation in Iran will continue to be very, very bad”.

Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel had struck railways and bridges in Iran “used by the Revolutionary Guards”.

“We are crushing the terror regime in Iran … with even greater vigour and with increasing force,” the Israeli prime minister said. “Yesterday, our pilots destroyed transport aircraft and dozens of helicopters at an Iranian air force base. Today they struck the railways and bridges used by the Revolutionary Guards.”

The Israeli military said it struck “eight bridge segments that were utilised by the Iranian terror regime’s armed forces for transporting weapons and military equipment in several areas across Iran, including Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kashan and Qom”.

Iran’s hardline judiciary chief has urged the courts to speed up verdicts against “enemy agents” linked to the US-Israeli war.

Since the war began on February 28, Iran has hanged seven people in connection with January protests: six convicted of membership of the banned opposition group the People’s Mujahidin of Iran (MEK) and a dual Iranian-Swedish citizen on charges of spying for Israel.

Rights groups have said dozens more people are at risk of execution over the January protests or after being arrested on suspicion of helping the enemy during the war.

“You need to speed up the issuing of sentences for executions and the confiscation of property,” Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the chief justice, told a televised meeting of senior judiciary officials. “It is necessary to continue issuing judicial verdicts for elements and agents of the aggressor enemy with greater speed.”

Iran has attacked Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex, the heart of the kingdom’s oil refinement, processing and distribution sector.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was responding to assaults overnight on its Asaluyeh petrochemical plants, which are connected to the massive South Pars gasfield.

Jubail, a sprawling industrial city, houses multibillion-dollar joint ventures between the state-backed oil giant Saudi Aramco and its petrochemical subsidiary Sabic, and western energy majors.

French pair going home after release from Iran jail

Two French citizens detained in Iran are on their way home, President Macron has announced. They were released in November after more than three years in prison on espionage charges.

“Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris are free and on their way to France,” Macron wrote on X.

A source at the French foreign ministry said they left Iran for Azerbaijan on Tuesday at dawn in a diplomatic convoy with the French ambassador.

Kohler, who is her forties, and Paris, in his seventies, had been jailed on charges of spying for France and Israel, after being arrested in 2022. Freed in November, they had not been allowed to leave the country until now. “This is a relief for all of us and obviously for their families,” Macron said on X.

Anthony Scaramucci, a former White House communications director, has called for President Trump to be removed from office.

“Wake up: he is calling for a nuclear strike. Seek his removal immediately,” Scaramucci, who served in Trump’s first administration for ten days in July 2017, wrote on X.

US attack would make it an ‘agent of chaos’

President Trump’s former counterterrorism chief said America “stands in danger” after his latest threat to Iran.

Joe Kent, who resigned in March over the war, wrote on X: “If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilisation, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilising force in the world, but as an agent of chaos — effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.

“This would upend our economy and shatter the global order. The process is already under way, yet we still have time to avert catastrophe if Trump finds the courage to pursue serious negotiations rather than reckless rage and destruction.”

Oil price increases after Trump’s social media post

The oil price has risen back above $111 a barrel after President Trump dashed hopes of a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough in talks with Iran with a post on his Truth Social website.

He wrote “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will”, adding “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death”.

There was an attack on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil-export hub, while Iran has kept up attacks across the Gulf.

Brent crude rose 0.75 per cent to $111.31 a barrel in early afternoon trading. It had dropped to $108.44 a barrel in late morning after rising as high as $111.70 a barrel earlier in Asia.

Vance: We have options we haven’t used

JD Vance, the US vice-president, said “there’s going to be a lot of negotiation” until the deadline expires for Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of bridges and power plants.

Vance said during an official visit to Hungary that he was confident the US would get a response by the deadline, but added that America had “tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use”.

Downing Street suggested that Sir Keir Starmer was still urging restraint before President Trump’s deadline for a deal with Iran.

Asked if the US president’s comments were a help or a hindrance, No 10 said: “We believe the best path for the region is a negotiated settlement, and that continues. The prime minister has been very clear that this isn’t our war. We’re not being dragged into it, but our position is very much focused on de-escalation.”

The US was understood not to be joining an online meeting of military planners from more than 40 countries this afternoon. No 10 said there was no disruption to supplies of petrol or jet fuel, and encouraged motorists to fill up their tanks as usual.

The US has carried out strikes on military targets on Iran’s Kharg island, a US official said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. The strikes did not hit oil infrastructure, they said.

Trump has warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.

“I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

Iran is increasing activity at a “forgotten” oil port after threats that the US could invade its main export facility on Kharg Island.

Jask port, which has been largely inactive for years, has shipped millions of barrels of oil since the start of the war, according to an analysis of satellite imagery. The volume of oil stored at its terminal has also increased.

Jask, which is 95 miles east of the Strait of Hormuz, offers a plan B, experts say — especially if President Trump acts on his threats to seize Kharg Island, through which Iran exports 90 per cent of its oil.

A US-Israeli strike shut down a key highway in northern Iran connecting the city of Tabriz with Tehran via Zanjan, regional authorities said.

The highway was hit about 55 miles outside of Tabriz, Iran’s main northern city, the official IRNA news agency said, quoting the crisis management office of the northern East Azerbaijan province.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Telegram channel said the strike hit an overpass bridge.

Qatar has said the war in the Middle East has neared the threshold at which it would not be able to be controlled, after President Trump set a deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have been warning since 2023 that escalation left unchecked will get us into a situation where it cannot be controlled, and we are very close to that point, and this is why we have been urging all parties to find a resolution to find a way of ending this war before it’s too late,” Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, said.

The death toll in the Turkey shooting has been revised down to one. One of the gunmen was killed and two others wounded in close to the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Davut Gul, the governor, said.

Police officers pulled out guns and took cover as shots rang out for at least ten minutes near a permanent security checkpoint. One person was seen covered in blood near the glass towers in the heart of the city’s main financial district.

The three attackers had links to an organisation that exploits religion, Mustafa Ciftci, the interior minister, said.

The incident happened next to a major motorway just after midday, immediately outside the tower where the Israeli consulate is located. The Turkish authorities said the three attackers had been “neutralised”.

American complaints about Nato allies and threats to quit the alliance are pushing European countries to seek alternative security arrangements, José Manuel Albares, the Spanish foreign minister, has said.

After European countries declined to send their navies to open up the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump declared he was considering withdrawing from the alliance, thrusting it into a crisis.

Albares said the decision was entirely up to Trump, but underscored that Nato allies stood in solidarity with Washington after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

He told LA Sexta TV: “Nato is a mutually beneficial alliance for both Europeans and Americans … But the US administration’s remarks and new positions on Euro-Atlantic security are inviting us Europeans to take a leap in terms of our sovereignty and defence matters. We must take our citizens’ security and dissuasion into our own hands.”

He said the EU should advance toward a pan-European army and integrate its defence industries.

Spain has been a leading critic of the war.

The Kremlin said there was a huge number of requests for Russian energy from a range of different countries due to the global energy crisis.

European consumers had been trying to end their reliance on Russian energy to punish Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine, and Russia had looked set to cut its output in the wake of Ukrainian attacks on its oil infrastructure.

President Putin had suggested switching supplies more swiftly away from European customers if they do not want Russian energy.

“Now that the world has confidently embarked on the path of a rather serious economic and energy crisis, which is growing day by day, the market and market conditions in the field of energy and energy resources have completely changed,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.

“We are negotiating, we are negotiating in such a way that this situation best suits our interests.”

Iran has warned that fuel would be cut off “for years” if President Trump carried out threat to attack power plants and bridges if the Strait of Hormuz did not reopen.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said in a statement that it would “deprive the US and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” in such a scenario.

Multiple Iranian media outlets carried the statement, as the group also issued a new threat to the Gulf Arab states.

“We have exercised great restraint and had considerations in choosing retaliatory targets, but from now on all these considerations have been removed,” the warning read.

Explosions have been heard on Iran’s Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export hub, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.

The agency also claimed the US and Israel launched an attack on the island in the last hour, although there was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli or US military.

The US struck military targets on the island in mid-March amid threats to strike its oil infrastructure should Iran continue to blockade the Strait of ​Hormuz. At the time, President Trump said the US had “obliterated” every military target on the island, but left its oil infrastructure in tact.

Kharg Island is the export terminal for 90 per cent of Iran’s oil shipments.

People involved in consulate shooting ‘known to authorities’

The Turkish minister of the interior, Mustafa Ciftci, said that the identities of the attackers in Istanbul were known, and they travelled to Istanbul from Izmit (about 60 miles east) in a rented vehicle.

One of them had ties to a religious extremist organisation, one had a drug record and two were brothers, he said.

The oil price has fallen back from above $111 a barrel as some traders bet that President Trump’s deadline for Iran to reach a deal might lead to a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough.

Brent crude was trading down 1.1 per cent at $108.44 a barrel in the late morning in London after rising as high as $111.70 a barrel earlier. Shipping data showing that Iran had begun allowing a limited number of vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz added to hopes of a deal.

Brent crude also hit a technical resistance level at $110.65, when the price failed to hold significantly above that, automated sell orders were triggered, helping push the price back down.

Iran’s president has said that millions of Iranians would “sacrifice their lives” to defend their country as President Trump’s deadline loomed.

“More than 14 million proud Iranians have so far registered to sacrifice their lives to defend Iran. I too have been, am and will remain devoted to giving my life for Iran,” President Pezeshkian wrote on X.

Iran has a population of about 90 million. At the end of March, Iran began a campaign titled “Sacrificing Life” where people could express “their readiness to defend the country” by sending the digit 1 to a phone number.

The Istanbul governor said that there had been no diplomatic personnel at the Israeli consulate in Istanbul for more than two years.

Israel’s foreign ministry said it was “aware” of reports of shooting near its consulate in Turkey.

Akın Gurlek, the Turkish justice minister, said the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had begun an investigation into reports of gunfire near the Israeli consulate in the Besiktas district of Istanbul.

A deputy chief public prosecutor and two public prosecutors have been assigned to the investigation, they have arrived at the scene and begun their examination.

Three people were killed and two police officers injured in a shooting near the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday, police said.

Reuters video showed a police officer pulling out a gun and taking cover as gunshots were heard. One person was seen covered in blood.

An armed police presence is always maintained in the area near the Israeli consulate. Television footage showed armed police patrolling in the area after the shooting.

Sri Lanka has announced a record $320 million relief package for farmers, fishermen and low-income households hit hardest by soaring energy costs due to the Middle East war.

President Dissanayake said the package, the biggest ever state handout, would help the most vulnerable in the island nation of 22 million.

Cash grants would be paid directly into the accounts of thousands of fishermen and rice and tea farmers, he said.

Those living below the poverty line, about 25 per cent of the population, would have their electricity bills subsidised, and get an additional $25 this month to celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil new year festivals.

Iranian media has reported that 18 people, including two children, were killed in strikes in Alborz province neighbouring the capital, citing a provincial official.

A deputy governor of Alborz province said that US-Israeli strikes hit residential areas, with “the deaths of 18 of our fellow citizens have been confirmed, including two young children”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website and the Fars news agency reported.

Twenty-four people were wounded in the early morning attack, Kodratollah Seif added. Iran’s government has not released an updated overall casualty toll for the war in recent days.

Trump threatens journalist with jail over ‘leak’

President Trump threatened to jail a journalist who first reported that a US airman was missing if they did not hand over information on their source to the US government.

In his first press briefing on the mission to rescue the crew of a US F-15 fighter jet downed on Friday over southern Iran, Trump voiced anger at a “leaker” for disclosing that the aircraft’s pilot was successfully rescued before the second crew member was safe.

“We’ll be able to find it out because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail,’ ” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Iran’s ambassador to Kuwait urged Gulf states to find a way to avert a “tragedy”, as President Trump’s deadline loomed for Iran to agree a deal or face strikes on civilian infrastructure.

“We hope that the countries in the region will use all their diplomatic and political capabilities to prevent such a tragedy from befalling the region,” Mohammad Toutounji told the AFP news agency.

US and Israeli strikes on Iran have killed nearly 3,600 people, including at least 1,665 civilians, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana).

Since the start of the war, the US-Israeli forces have killed at least 248 children, the US-based NGO said.

At the beginning of the week, Hrana recorded at least 573 attacks across 215 incidents in 20 provinces in 24 hours, resulting in a total of at least 109 killed or injured.

“In Tehran, we have had around 548 impact points: the number of damaged residential units has reached 33,500. More than 13,000 units have been completed, and residents have returned to their homes,” Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, said.

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ABC News – Iran live updates: Trump says Iranian people have asked US to ‘keep bombing’

President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeting military and government sites, officials said.

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Time – ‘Safe and sound’: How a U.S. Airman Shot Down in Iran Was Rescued From a Mountain Crevice

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The Hindu – Iran hangs two convicted of links with Israel in pre-war protests: judiciary

Iran executed two men on Sunday (April 5, 2026) convicted of acting on behalf of Israel and the United States during a wave of anti-government protests earlier this year, the judiciary said.

“Mohammad-Amin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast… were hanged after the case was reviewed and the final verdict was confirmed by the Supreme Court,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.

The two men were involved in the anti-government protests that peaked in January, it added.

The demonstrations broke out in late December over rising living costs before spreading nationwide and evolving into anti-government protests that peaked on January 8 and 9.

Iranian authorities said the rallies began peaceful before turning into “foreign-instigated riots” involving killings and vandalism.

Iran has carried out multiple executions in recent days of people linked to the protests or opposition groups, including members of the banned People’s Mujahedin (MEK).

The executions come against the backdrop of Iran’s war with Israel and the United States, which erupted on February 28 with strikes that killed the Islamic republic’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

On Saturday (April 4, 2026), Iran executed two members of the MEK after four other convicted members of the group were put to death earlier in the week.

On Thursday (April 2, 2026), it also executed a man convicted of acting on behalf of Israel and the United States during the protests, following similar executions of three others last month.

Tehran has said more than 3,000 people were killed during the unrest, including members of the security forces and bystanders, attributing the violence to “terrorist acts”.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), however, said it had recorded more than 7,000 deaths, the vast majority of them protesters, adding that the toll could be higher.

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New York Times – Downed U.S. Air Force Officer Rescued Deep Inside in Iran, Trump Says

An Air Force weapons officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, said current and former U.S. officials briefed on the operation.

President Trump confirmed in a social media post just after midnight that the stranded officer had been brought out of Iran safely by U.S. forces. “He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump said. He added that there were no U.S. casualties.

President Trump said in a social media post just after midnight that the Air Force officer who had been shot down in Iran had been brought out safely by U.S. forces. “He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump said. He described a tense rescue operation with officials in the United States monitoring the officer’s location at all times and dozens of aircraft sent to retrieve him. The weapons systems officer, a colonel, was one of two members of the F–15E Strike Eagle who ejected from the cockpit on Friday after Iran’s military shot down the plane. The pilot had been rescued earlier.

A building housing several government ministries in Kuwait was significantly damaged after it was targeted by an Iranian drone on Saturday evening, the country’s Ministry of Finance said. The Ministries Complex houses agencies including the finance, justice, and industry and commerce ministries. No casualties were reported, the ministry said, adding that employees would work remotely on Sunday.

Kuwaiti authorities said early Sunday that drone strikes they attributed to Iran significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, forcing the shutdown of two electricity-generating units. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation also said its oil complex in the Shuwaikh district in Kuwait City was targeted by Iranian drones early Sunday, sparking a fire, causing damage, and prompting the evacuation of the building. No casualties were reported in either attack, the company and Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a joint statement.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that at least nine civilians were killed across Iran in the past 24 hours during U.S. and Israeli strikes. The group recorded 272 attacks in 14 provinces on Saturday, with a total of at least 184 people injured or killed. Tehran saw the highest number of strikes, followed by Khuzestan and Isfahan.

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The Fulcrum – The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It.

Images from the missile strike in southern Iran were more horrifying than any of the case studies Air Force combat veteran Wes J. Bryant had pored over in his mission to overhaul how the U.S. military safeguards civilian life.

Parents wept over their children’s bodies. Crushed desks and blood-stained backpacks poked through the rubble. The death toll from the attack on an elementary school in Minab climbed past 165, most of them under age 12, with nearly 100 others wounded, according to Iranian health officials. Photos of small coffins and rows of fresh graves went viral, a devastating emblem of Day 1 in the open-ended U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

Bryant, a former special operations targeting specialist, said he couldn’t help but think of what-ifs as he monitored fallout from the Feb. 28 attack.

Just over a year ago, he had been a senior adviser in an ambitious new Defense Department program aimed at reducing civilian harm during operations. Finally, Bryant said, the military was getting serious about reforms. He worked out of a newly opened Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, where his supervisor was a veteran strike-team targeter who had served as a United Nations war crimes investigator.

Today, that momentum is gone. Bryant was forced out of government in cuts last spring. The civilian protection mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority. And the world has witnessed a tragedy in Minab that, if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, would be the most civilians killed by the military in a single attack in decades.

Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability.

Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II,” Bryant said. “There’s zero accountability.”

Citing open-source intelligence and government officials, several news outlets have concluded that the strike in Minab most likely was carried out by the United States. President Donald Trump, without providing evidence, told reporters March 7 that it was “done by Iran.” Hegseth, standing next to the president aboard Air Force One, said the matter was under investigation.

The next day, the open-source research outfit Bellingcat said it had authenticated a video showing a Tomahawk missile strike next to the school in Minab. Iranian state media later showed fragments of a U.S.-made Tomahawk, as identified by Bellingcat and others, at the site. The United States is the only party to the conflict known to possess Tomahawks. U.N. human rights experts have called for an investigation into whether the attack violated international law.

The Department of Defense and White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, successive U.S. administrations have faced controversies over civilian deaths. Defense officials eager to shed the legacy of the “forever wars” have periodically called for better protections for civilians, but there was no standardized framework until 2022, when Biden-era leaders adopted a strategy rooted in work that had begun under the first Trump presidency.

Formalized in a 2022 action plan and in a Defense Department instruction, the initiatives are known collectively as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, a clunky name often shortened to CHMR and pronounced “chimmer.” Around 200 personnel were assigned to the mission, including roughly 30 at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a coordination hub near the Pentagon.

The CHMR strategy calls for more in-depth planning before an attack, such as real-time mapping of the civilian presence in an area and in-depth analysis of the risks. After an operation, reports of harm to noncombatants would prompt an assessment or investigation to figure out what went wrong and then incorporate those lessons into training.

By the time Trump returned to power, harm-mitigation teams were embedded with regional commands and special operations leadership. During Senate confirmation hearings, several Trump nominees for top defense posts voiced support for the mission. Once in office, however, they stood by as the program was gutted, current and former national security officials said.

Around 90% of the CHMR mission is gone, former personnel said, with no more than a single adviser now at most commands. At Central Command, where a 10-person team was cut to one, “a handful” of the eliminated positions were backfilled to help with the Iran campaign. Defense officials can’t formally close the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence without congressional approval, but Bryant and others say it now exists mostly on paper.

“It has no mission or mandate or budget,” Bryant said.

Global conflict monitors have since recorded a dramatic increase in deadly U.S. military operations. Even before the Iran campaign, the number of strikes worldwide since Trump returned to office had surpassed the total from all four years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Had the Defense Department’s harm-reduction mission continued apace, current and former officials say, the policies almost certainly would’ve reduced the number of noncombatants harmed over the past year.

Beyond the moral considerations, they added, civilian casualties fuel militant recruiting and hinder intelligence-gathering. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, explains the risk in an equation he calls “insurgent math”: For every innocent killed, at least 10 new enemies are created.

U.S.-Israeli strikes have already killed more than 1,200 civilians in Iran, including nearly 200 children, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based group that verifies casualties through a network in Iran. The group says hundreds more deaths are under review, a difficult process given Iran’s internet blackout and dangerous conditions.

A mourner holds a portrait of students during a funeral held after a school in Iran’s Hormozgan province was bombed. Thousands attended the ceremony. Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images
Defense analysts say the civilian toll of the Iran campaign, on top of dozens of recent noncombatant casualties in Yemen and Somalia, reopens dark chapters from the “war on terror” that had prompted reforms in the first place.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” a senior counterterrorism official who left the government a few months ago said of the Trump administration’s yearlong bombing spree. “It’s ‘Groundhog Day’ — every day we’re just killing people and making more enemies.”

In 2015, two dozen patients and 14 staff members were killed when a heavily armed U.S. gunship fired for over an hour on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in northern Afghanistan, a disaster that has become a cautionary tale for military planners.

“Our patients burned in their beds, our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building,” the international aid group said in a report about the destruction of its trauma center in Kunduz.

A U.S. military investigation found that multiple human and systems errors had resulted in the strike team mistaking the building for a Taliban target. The Obama administration apologized and offered payouts of $6,000 to families of the dead.

Human rights advocates had hoped the Kunduz debacle would force the U.S. military into taking concrete steps to protect civilians during U.S. combat operations. Within a couple years, however, the issue came roaring back with high civilian casualties in U.S.-led efforts to dislodge Islamic State extremists from strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

The aftermath of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed 42 people. Najim Rahim/AP Images
In a single week in March 2017, U.S. operations resulted in three incidents of mass civilian casualties: A drone attack on a mosque in Syria killed around 50; a strike in another part of Syria killed 40 in a school filled with displaced families; and bombing in the Iraqi city of Mosul led to a building collapse that killed more than 100 people taking shelter inside.

In heavy U.S. fighting to break Islamic State control over the Syrian city of Raqqa, “military leaders too often lacked a complete picture of conditions on the ground; too often waved off reports of civilian casualties; and too rarely learned any lessons from strikes gone wrong,” according to an analysis by the Pentagon-adjacent Rand Corp. think tank.

Under pressure from lawmakers, Trump’s then-Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered a review of civilian casualty protocols.

Released in 2019, the review Mattis launched was seen by some advocacy groups as narrow in scope but still a step in the right direction. Yet the issue soon dropped from national discourse, overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and landmark racial justice protests.

During the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, a missile strike in Kabul killed an aid worker and nine of his relatives, including seven children. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized and said the department would “endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.”

That incident, along with a New York Times investigative series into deaths from U.S. airstrikes, spurred the adoption of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response action plan in 2022. When they established the new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence the next year, defense officials tapped Michael McNerney — the lead author of the blunt RAND report — to be its director.

“The strike against the aid worker and his family in Kabul pushed Austin to say, ‘Do it right now,’” Bryant said.

The first harm-mitigation teams were assigned to leaders in charge of some of the military’s most sensitive counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operations: Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida; the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

A former CHMR adviser who joined in 2024 after a career in international conflict work said he was reassured to find a serious campaign with a $7 million budget and deep expertise. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Only a few years before, he recalled, he’d had to plead with the Pentagon to pay attention. “It was like a back-of-the-envelope thing — the cost of a Hellfire missile and the cost of hiring people to work on this.”

Bryant became the de facto liaison between the harm-mitigation team and special operations commanders. In December, he described the experience in detail in a private briefing for aides of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who had sought information on civilian casualty protocols involving boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea.

Bryant’s notes from the briefing, reviewed by ProPublica, describe an embrace of the CHMR mission by Adm. Frank Bradley, who at the time was head of the Joint Special Operations Command. In October, Bradley was promoted to lead Special Operations Command.

At the end of 2024 and into early 2025, Bryant worked closely with the commander’s staff. The notes describe Bradley as “incredibly supportive” of the three-person CHMR team embedded in his command.

Bradley, Bryant wrote, directed “comprehensive lookbacks” on civilian casualties in errant strikes and used the findings to mandate changes. He also introduced training on how to integrate harm prevention and international law into operations against high-value targets. “We viewed Bradley as a model,” Bryant said.

Still, the military remained slow to offer compensation to victims and some of the new policies were difficult to independently monitor, according to a report by the Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank. The CHMR program also faced opposition from critics who say civilian protections are already baked into laws of war and targeting protocols; the argument is that extra oversight “could have a chilling effect” on commanders’ abilities to quickly tailor operations.

To keep reforms on track, Bryant said, CHMR advisers would have to break through a culture of denial among leaders who pride themselves on precision and moral authority.

“The initial gut response of all commands,” Bryant said, “is: ‘No, we didn’t kill civilians.’”

As the Trump administration returned to the White House pledging deep cuts across the federal government, military and political leaders scrambled to preserve the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response framework.

At first, CHMR advisers were heartened by Senate confirmation hearings where Trump’s nominees for senior defense posts affirmed support for civilian protections.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote during his confirmation that commanders “see positive impacts from the program.” Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, wrote that it’s in the national interest to “seek to reduce civilian harm to the degree possible.”

When questioned about cuts to the CHMR mission at a hearing last summer, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, said he was committed to integrating the ideas as “part of our culture.”

Despite the top-level support, current and former officials say, the CHMR mission didn’t stand a chance under Hegseth’s signature lethality doctrine.

The former Fox News personality, who served as an Army National Guard infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, disdains rules of engagement and other guardrails as constraining to the “warrior ethos.” He has defended U.S. troops accused of war crimes, including a Navy SEAL charged with stabbing an imprisoned teenage militant to death and then posing for a photo with the corpse.

A month after taking charge, Hegseth fired the military’s top judge advocate generals, known as JAGs, who provide guidance to keep operations in line with U.S. or international law. Hegseth has described the attorneys as “roadblocks” and used the term “jagoff.”

At the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, the staff tried in vain to save the program. At one point, Bryant said, he even floated the idea of renaming it the “Center for Precision Warfare” to put the mission in terms Hegseth wouldn’t consider “woke.”

By late February 2025, the CHMR mission was imploding, say current and former defense personnel.

Shortly before his job was eliminated, Bryant openly spoke out against the cuts in The Washington Post and Boston Globe, which he said landed him in deep trouble at the Pentagon. He was placed on leave in March, his security clearance at risk of revocation.

Bryant formally resigned in September and has since become a vocal critic of the administration’s defense policies. In columns and on TV, he warns that Hegseth’s cavalier attitude toward the rule of law and civilian protections is corroding military professionalism.

Bryant said it was hard to watch Bradley, the special operations commander and enthusiastic adopter of CHMR, defending a controversial “double-tap” on an alleged drug boat in which survivors of a first strike were killed in a follow-up hit. Legal experts have said such strikes could violate laws of warfare. Bradley did not respond to a request for comment.

“Everything else starts slipping when you have this culture of higher tolerance for civilian casualties,” Bryant said.

Concerns were renewed in early 2025 with the Trump administration’s revived counterterrorism campaign against Islamist militants regrouping in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Last April, a U.S. air strike hit a migrant detention center in northwestern Yemen, killing at least 61 African migrants and injuring dozens of others in what Amnesty International says “qualifies as an indiscriminate attack and should be investigated as a war crime.”

Operations in Somalia also have become more lethal. In 2024, Biden’s last year in office, conflict monitors recorded 21 strikes in Somalia, with a combined death toll of 189. In year one of Trump’s second term, the U.S. carried out at least 125 strikes, with reported fatalities as high as 359, according to the New America think tank, which monitors counterterrorism operations.

“It is a strategy focused primarily on killing people,” said Alexander Palmer, a terrorism researcher at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Last September, the U.S. military announced an attack in northeastern Somalia targeting a weapons dealer for the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. On the ground, however, villagers said the missile strike incinerated Omar Abdullahi, a respected elder nicknamed “Omar Peacemaker” for his role as a clan mediator.

After the death, the U.S. military released no details, citing operational security.

“The U.S. killed an innocent man without proof or remorse,” Abdullahi’s brother, Ali, told Somali news outlets. “He preached peace, not war. Now his blood stains our soil.”

In Iran, former personnel say, the CHMR mission could have made a difference.

Under the scrapped harm-prevention framework, they said, plans for civilian protection would’ve begun months ago, when orders to draw up a potential Iran campaign likely came down from the White House and Pentagon.

CHMR personnel across commands would immediately begin a detailed mapping of what planners call “the civilian environment,” in this case a picture of the infrastructure and movements of ordinary Iranians. They would also check and update the “no-strike list,” which names civilian targets such as schools and hospitals that are strictly off-limits.

One key question is whether the school was on the no-strike list. It sits a few yards from a naval base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The building was formerly part of the base, though it has been marked on maps as a school since at least 2013, according to visual forensics investigations.

“Whoever ‘hits the button’ on a Tomahawk — they’re part of a system,” the former adviser said. “What you want is for that person to feel really confident that when they hit that button, they’re not going to hit schoolchildren.”

If the guardrails failed and the Defense Department faced a disaster like the school strike, Bryant said, CHMR advisers would’ve jumped in to help with transparent public statements and an immediate inquiry.

Instead, he called the Trump administration’s response to the attack “shameful.”

“It’s back to where we were years ago,” Bryant said. If confirmed, “this will go down as one of the most egregious failures in targeting and civilian harm-mitigation in modern U.S. history.”

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USA Today – Trump says ‘We got him!’ as US forces rescue crew member missing in Iran

The second crew member of an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet that crashed in Iran has been rescued by U.S. forces, President Donald Trump said early Sunday in a social media post.

In the Truth Social post, the president described an intense search and rescue operation that led to the crew member being found safe.

“This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone,” Trump said.

On Friday, the F‑15E fighter went down over Iran, prompting a U.S. rescue mission that quickly recovered one crew member. But another from the fighter aircraft had remained missing as of late Friday.

Trump said the crew member sustained injuries but “he will be just fine.”

Separately, an A-10 “Warthog” plane that was part of the search-and-rescue mission was fired on by Iranian forces. The Warthog pilot ejected over the Persian Gulf but was rescued, according to the New York Times and CBS News.

Earlier Saturday, Trump posted that Iranian military leaders were “terminated” by U.S. strikes in Iran.

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Bloomberg – Trump Warns Iran It Has 48 Hours Left as Airman Remains Missing

President Donald Trump said Saturday that time was running out on his 10-day deadline for Iran to make a peace deal with the US and threatened that the Islamic Republic would face “all hell” in 48 hours.

“Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” Trump said in a social-media post the day before Easter. “Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to God!”

Trump had extended a five-day deadline to April 6 as preliminary discussions for peace talks got under way in late March. As attacks intensified from all sides, including Iran’s downing of two US military aircraft, Trump’s rhetoric has hardened from his recent attempts to find a way out of the growing conflict.

Trump has warned that if Iran doesn’t agree to his terms — which the government has rejected — and open the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping traffic out of the Persian Gulf, the US would bomb the country’s civilian energy infrastructure, strikes that would likely constitute a war crime under international law.

Missing Pilot

In Iran, the US continued search-and-rescue operations for a crew member from an F-15E fighter jet shot down by Iran on Friday, as Tehran kept up attacks on Gulf Arab states and Israel. A second US combat plane reportedly crashed in the Persian Gulf the same day. The incidents mark a significant blow for Washington as the war enters its sixth week with energy prices rising and little sign of an end to the conflict.

Trump declined to discuss the search-and-rescue operations in an interview with NBC News on Friday. He said the events wouldn’t affect any peace negotiations with Iran, according to a reporter who spoke to him on a call.

On Saturday, Iran said US-Israeli strikes hit petrochemical plants and forced the evacuation of a large industrial zone. Other attacks targeting the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant left one security staff member dead, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The main sections of the facility, where Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom has workers, were unaffected, Tasnim said.

Iran continued to fire missiles and drones across much of the Middle East. Dubai authorities reported that debris from an aerial interception fell on the facade of an Oracle Corp. building in Dubai Internet City on Saturday morning. They also reported debris hitting a building in the nearby Dubai Marina area. No fire or injuries were reported.

Iran fired more missiles at Israel. There was damage to a parking lot in Tel Aviv and to buildings in several outlying towns, authorities said, describing the impacts as caused by debris from interceptions. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The downing of the US jet came despite Trump’s claim in a primetime address on Wednesday that Iran no longer had anti-aircraft equipment. His military commanders, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have previously touted US air superiority over Iranian territory.

It’s the first known combat loss of a US or Israeli plane since the two countries began attacking Iran on Feb. 28. Three US aircraft were downed by friendly fire in Kuwait early in the war, while others have been destroyed or damaged at airbases by Iranian drones and missiles.

Read More: Iran Says Iraqi Ships Are Allowed to Use Strait of Hormuz

The US rescued one of the F-15 crew members, according to an American official who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information. The status of the second person is unclear and Iranian media said Tehran offered a reward of about $66,000 to citizens who capture the person alive.

The lone pilot of the second plane — an A-10 Warthog — was safely rescued, the New York Times reported.

Read More: Italy’s Meloni Visits Doha to Bolster Energy Supplies Hit by War

Iran Hits Energy Plants

Iran has continued to hit key energy infrastructure in the past two days.

The UAE’s largest natural gas processing facility, Habshan, suspended operations after debris from a projectile interception sparked a fire. A drone attack set ablaze Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi oil refinery, which can process almost 350,000 barrels a day of crude.

The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, said it detected 79 projectiles fired from Iran on Saturday, including 23 ballistic missiles. That was the highest number of projectiles since March 8, according to data published by UAE authorities, and continued a trend of more numerous attacks over the last three days.

The UAE, like other Gulf states and Israel, has intercepted the vast majority of Iranian attacks.

Israel’s military said it hit air defense sites and missile storage facilities in a wave of airstrikes on Tehran on Friday. Iran said US-Israeli strikes hit a petrochemical zone in Mahshahr, in the southwestern Khuzestan province on Saturday. Authorities ordered the evacuation of all personnel and said any potential pollutants don’t pose a risk to nearby cities, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Peace Efforts Stall

Iran has shown little sign of accepting Trump’s demands for peace and has laid out its own conditions — most of them unacceptable to the US and Israel.

The New York Times, citing US intelligence reports, said Iranian personnel have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by American and Israeli bombs and returning them to operation hours after attacks. That casts doubt on the US and Israel’s ability to destroy Iran’s missile capability — one of their key war goals.

Despite Trump’s weekend threat, the president signaled this week he may be willing to pull US forces out of the conflict in two to three weeks, even if the Strait of Hormuz is still effectively shut.

US allies are stepping up efforts to ensure the waterway — through which one fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies normally flow — is reopened soon.

Iran’s military said Saturday that Iraq would be exempt from shipping restrictions in the trait, opening the potential of as much as 3 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil cargoes.

More than 40 of their foreign ministers met virtually on Thursday to discuss plans, signaling to Trump their concern about the closure.

On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a social media post that he spoke by phone with Mark Rutte, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization saying the situation was heading for a deadlock and “urged the international community to step up efforts to end the war.”

The group, convened by the UK, was clear that any ceasefire talks with Iran needed to include a solution for Hormuz, people familiar with the discussions said. Still, the meeting, which the US and Iran were not part of, showed the coalition of countries deem it necessary to prepare for having to reopen the strait without Washington.

Nations such as France and the UK have said military options are unlikely to work until there’s a ceasefire.

Bahrain, supported by Jordan and Arab Gulf states, is proposing a United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at helping re-open Hormuz, according to the UAE. It would provide “a clear legal basis for all states to mobilize and support safe passage,” the UAE said in a post on X.

It’s unclear when a vote on the resolution will take place.

Russia, an Iranian ally, pushed back on the initiative, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying it would “legitimize aggression against Iran.” The comments signal Moscow may use its veto power, as one of five permanent members of the Security Council.

Ships Trickle Through Strait

Iran appeared to tighten its grip on the strait on Thursday, when its media reported that the government is drafting a protocol with Oman to monitor traffic. That would require shippers to pay tolls to Iran, according to its deputy foreign minister.

The passage is officially in international waters and any attempt by Iran to assert control over traffic will be opposed strongly by Western powers and Gulf Arab states.

A trickle of ships is managing to pass through. A French container ship and a Japanese-owned tanker have crossed the Strait of Hormuz in the past two days, in what appear to be the first such transits since the war in Iran shuttered the crucial waterway.

The energy shock, which has seen gasoline pump prices in the country jump to more than $4 a gallon on average carries political risks for Trump and his Republican Party in the November midterm elections.

US benchmark oil prices, or WTI futures, closed at more than $111 a barrel last week and have almost doubled this year.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict, almost three-quarters of them in Iran, according to government organizations and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Just over 1,300 people have been killed in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting a parallel war against Iran-allied Hezbollah.

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Financial Times – In Tehran, neighbours wonder where the next bombs will land

At about 4am one day this week, a three-storey house in a residential neighbourhood of western Tehran was obliterated in an air strike. The iron frame was torn apart and nearby buildings, including a high-rise across the street, were severely damaged.

Amid the shattered glass, confused and shocked neighbours gathered to make sense of the destruction. “Who lived there?” they asked, according to one person present at the scene. Rescue teams arrived with dogs, combing through the rubble for survivors. Locals later speculated that a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could have been the target, although it was not confirmed.

For residents of the city, dazed and ripped awake through the night by bombs that feel as if they are landing all around them, daily life seems like a gamble.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the US would hit Iran “extremely hard” over the coming weeks and “bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong”. And Israel, which has led the bombing campaign on Tehran, announced last week an “acceleration” of attacks on what it said was its remaining list of military targets.

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U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, including oil refineries, gas treatment facilities and fuel storage depots, pose severe health and environmental risks to civilian populations in Iran, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA) warned today. All parties to the conflict must cease attacks on energy infrastructure that lead to widespread public health harm, in violation of international legal prohibitions on attacks on energy that cause disproportionate civilian harm.

These dangers are unfolding in a health system already severely impacted by overwhelming demands following violence against civilians and attacks on health workers by the Iranian regime earlier this year, direct damage to health facilities, as well as ongoing shortages in medical supplies due to sanctions and economic crisis. Iranian health care workers have reported to HRA severe consequences stemming from U.S. and Israeli attacks on energy and health care infrastructure.

“During the period following the strikes on fuel depots, even in our hospital, which is not specialized in respiratory care, we observed a noticeable number of patients presenting with breathing difficulties, persistent coughing, and signs of airway irritation,” said a general surgeon in Iran. “One of the major challenges has been supply constraints. At different points, we faced shortages of key medications.”

Patients in Iran are presenting with “severe asthma attacks[…], and several previously healthy individuals presenting with bronchospasm, persistent cough, and reduced oxygen saturation,” a specialist in Tehran told HRA. 

“The strain on our facility has also been amplified by damage to smaller health care centers. Patients who would normally be stabilized or treated locally are instead referred to us, increasing the load.[…] The volume and acuity of cases exceed[ed] routine capacity,” said a health care provider at a specialized hospital in Tehran.

Environmental toxicologists have also highlighted the short- and long-term health harms populations can face from large-scale oil fires.

‘Heath effects of exposure to burning oil have been well documented in those exposed during the war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The wide range of documented respiratory and cardiovascular effects noted were observed in relatively healthy populations, whereas effects are likely to be far more severe in the general population, which includes the very young and elderly, many with pre-existing health problems. The additional ‘oil- related combustion’ problems are easy to prevent by avoiding attacks on energy infrastructure. All parties to the current conflict in the Gulf must not attack energy facilities,” said Alastair Hay, PhD, OBE, professor emeritus of environmental toxicology, University of Leeds, and PHR Advisory Council member.

Evidence from past large-scale oil fires shows that oil combustion releases a complex mixture of toxic pollutants, including a wide range of particulates of all sizes, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, acid aerosols, and heavy metals. These emissions can travel over long distances, degrading air quality and contaminating water and soil.

Preliminary reports from affected areas in Iran, describing dense smoke plumes and accounts of “black rain,” are consistent with the release of hazardous combustion byproducts. Exposure to these pollutants is associated with acute respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, cough, eye irritation, and skin conditions, as well as exacerbations of cardiovascular disease and respiratory diseases such as sinus and asthma conditions.

In a single attack on an oil depot in Alborz, HRA documented at least six civilian deaths and 21 injuries, underscoring that these strikes are not only causing serious health impacts but also directly resulting in civilian casualties.

Evidence also indicates the potential for long-term health effects. These include chronic respiratory illness, reduced lung function, and other systemic impacts. The scale and duration of these fires raise serious concerns about sustained exposure, particularly for populations living in close proximity to the affected sites.

During recent nationwide protests, Iranian health facilities were overwhelmed by mass casualties and subjected to interference, surveillance, and the targeting of medical personnel. Security forces have reportedly entered hospitals, detained patients, and pressured providers to conceal evidence of injuries. These actions have further undermined the ability of the health system to deliver safe, independent care.

Iranian retaliatory attacks on energy infrastructure across the region carry similarly serious and foreseeable health and environmental risks, impacting civilian populations in the targeted Gulf states.

Effective mitigation of attacks on energy requires coordinated public health interventions. Among these are real-time air quality monitoring, access to protective measures such as high-efficiency filtration and appropriate respiratory protection, and the capacity to provide timely clinical care and long-term medical surveillance. During an ongoing war and with internal barriers to sufficient resources, such responses may be delayed, inadequate, or inaccessible to people most at risk.

International law generally prohibits attacks on energy infrastructure and mandates that such attacks must not cause disproportionate harm to civilians. The foreseeable, severe, and reverberating consequences of the destruction of energy infrastructure on civilian life – in the immediate and long-term – require heightened precautions and consideration in any civilian harm assessment in the planning of an attack.

PHR​ and HRA​ call on Israel, the United States, and Iran to end all threats to and attacks on energy infrastructure in violation of international law and to adhere to their obligations to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including facilities essential to public health and environmental safety. ​ ​PHR ​and HRA ​also ​​call​​ on the governments of affected countries to implement immediate measures to mitigate exposure, protect affected populations, and ensure that the health system is supported to respond effectively.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations.

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