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Iran war briefing: US reportedly ready to provide support to Kurdish fighters if they enter conflict

The US-Israel war on Iran has entered a sixth day, with US forces reportedly ready to provide air support to Kurdish fighters if they enter the conflict. Kurdish officials told the Associated Press that Kurdish Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq were preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran, and the US has asked Iraqi Kurds to support them. Intense waves of airstrikes have hit dozens of military positions, frontier posts and police stations along northern parts of Iran’s border with Iraq in what appears to be preparation by US and Israel for a new front in their war. Experts predicted that backing armed groups from Iran’s ethnic communities would “open up a hornet’s nest”, aggravating divisions within the diverse country and increasing the risk of a chaotic civil war if the current regime collapses. Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the assassinated Ali Khamenei, is being heavily tipped to succeed his father as supreme leader of Iran, which would pitch a hardliner into the task of steering the Islamic republic through the most turbulent period in its 48-year history and offer a powerful signal that, for now, it has no intention of changing course. A torpedo fired by a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka. At least 87 Iranian sailors were killed in the attack on the Iris Dena on Wednesday. The frigate was sailing in international waters as it returned from a naval exercise organised by India in the Bay of Bengal. The torpedo strike prompted questions from former US officials about whether Washington’s aim of eliminating all of Iran’s military breached international law. Iran launched missiles at Israel early Thursday. Air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem shortly after the Israeli military said it had begun new strikes in Lebanon targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Air traffic appeared to be picking up slightly, even as travel across the region remained heavily disrupted by the widening Iran war. Governments around the world are rushing to organise the return of their citizens from the Middle East. Officials have chartered jets or deployed military aircraft, routing stranded travellers through Oman, Egypt and Saudi Arabia – key exit points where planes could land and take off. Top US military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian drone being launched against military installations and assets, according to two people familiar with the matter. The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and that they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage. Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to receive Congress’s permission before continuing the war with Iran. Republicans batted aside concerns from Democrats that the campaign is illegal and risks plunging the United States into a prolonged conflict. The measure would have forced an end to the US air and naval campaign against Iran and require the president to go to Congress before re-entering the war. The White House pushed back against questions on US involvement in the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school which killed 175 people. The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, did not accept US responsibility for the attack, and noted that the Pentagon is investigating the strike. Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said the US was investigating it. Hegseth also signaled a possible longer time frame for the conflict than has previously been floated by the administration, saying it could last eight weeks but that the US has the munitions and the equipment to beat Iran in a war of attrition. He declined to set a specific time range, saying the specific duration of the war would depend on how it unfolds. More forces are arriving in the region, including jet fighters and bombers, Hegseth said, and the US “will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed.” The impact of the Iran conflict on energy markets will be temporary and a “small price” to pay for US military goals, US energy secretary, Chris Wright, told Fox News. US and Israeli strikes on Iran and the subsequent response by Tehran have widened regional tensions and paralysed shipping through the strait of Hormuz, disrupting vital Middle East oil and gas flows and sending energy prices higher. Donald Trump has pledged to provide insurance and naval escorts for ships exporting energy from the region to contain soaring costs.

China sets lowest GDP growth target for decades as it braces for economic slowdown

China has set its target for GDP growth to a record low of 4.5-5%, the first time since 1991 that the figure has dropped below 5%, reflecting an economic strategy that is shifting away from export-led growth to a model that leaders hope will be more resilient to external shocks. Li Qiang, China’s premier, announced the target for 2026 in the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s annual parliamentary gathering, which began on Thursday. Addressing the nearly 3,000 delegates gathered in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Li described 2025 as a “truly remarkable” year with “profound and complex developments both at home and broad”, according to the text of the government work report. The NPC will also review the 15th five-year plan, an economic and strategy document for 2026-2030. The low GDP target was reflective of a shift to what Beijing is calling “high-quality growth” – that which is built on hi-tech industries and structural reform rather than the historic drivers of construction and exports. China is also grappling with downward pressures on its economic growth, such as an ageing population, an ailing property sector, weak domestic demand and a slowdown that is expected as a country moves up the income scale. “This year is a pretty important year for structural reform,” said Dan Wang, the China director for Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. Wang said that China was taking advantage of the one-year trade truce with the US to focus on reforming its economy away from export-led growth, while the lower target also reflected a “higher tolerance for unemployment”. Li announced a 5.5% target for urban unemployment and pledged to create more than 12m new urban jobs, targets in line with previous years. But some experts have said that China’s shift to prioritising hi-tech industries may pose a risk to millions of blue-collar workers. China and the US agreed to a one-year pause in the trade war in October, with further negotiations expected this month before an expected visit by Donald Trump, the US president, to Beijing on 31 March. Despite the trade war’s disruption to global supply chains, particularly those originating in China, the country ended last year with a record $1trn trade surplus. Li said that “financial and economic discipline” was a priority for 2026. China also wants to focus on boosting domestic demand, something that economists say is essential to China’s long-term economic stability. Last year an editorial in state media said that consumption should be managed with the “same rigour” as production, a shift from the traditional focus on heavy industry to stimulate growth. Additional research by Lillian Yang

Ukraine war briefing: Russia claims LNG tanker in Mediterranean hit by drones

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has accused Ukraine of carrying out a attack on one of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, which exploded and sank into the Mediterranean Sea off Libya. Explosions were reported on the Arctic Metagaz, which had been carrying 61,000 tonnes of LNG, on Tuesday night when the ship was about 150 miles (240km) off the coast of Libya. Ukraine has not commented on the sinking on the ship, which had been under US and EU sanctions. Russia’s transport ministry had claimed that the Arctic Metagaz had been hit by Ukrainian drones launched from the Libyan coast. Ukrainian drones damaged Russian civilian sites in the south-western region of Saratov, Roman Busgarin, the area’s governor said early on Thursday. Saratov airport and other airports in the southern and central regions were closed late on Wednesday and early on Thursday. Three injuries were reported. A prolonged energy crisis caused by the widening war in the Middle East may offer the Russian war machine an economic lifeline just as it was beginning to show signs of strain over its war in Ukraine. Russia could receive a windfall if disruption in the Middle East pushes buyers towards its energy, while a possible slowdown in western arms supplies to Ukraine as the US military action in Iran continues could give Russia a further boost. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that trilateral talks with Washington and Moscow about ending Ukraine’s war in Russia would resume, once the situation in Iran and the Middle East permitted. The Ukrainian president also said that he spoke to the king of Bahrain and the crown prince of Kuwait about the conflict in the Middle East on Wednesday. Ukraine has said it will boycott Friday’s opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy, over the participation of Russian athletes. Athletes from Russia and Belarus had been banned from the 2022 Winter Paralympics over its war in Ukraine, but were allowed to compete as neutral athletes in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland were set to join Ukraine in its boycott on Friday.

Why does Yao Ming, the 7ft 6in ex-basketballer, attend China’s Two Sessions meetings?

Among the generally drab lineup of mostly middle-aged men in suits who make up the nearly 3,000 delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, a few stand out. There are delegates from China’s 55 official ethnic minority groups, who often arrive dressed in traditional outfits rather than western-style suits. There are military members, identifiable by their uniforms. And then there is Yao Ming, the 7ft and 6in tall retired basketball player who, towering over every other person in the Great Hall of the People, is hard to miss. Born in 1980, Yao is one of China’s most recognisable sport stars. Although he played for the Houston Rockets in the US for nearly a decade, his career after he retired from basketball in 2011 has been mostly focused on China. Between 2017 and 2024 he served as the president of the Chinese Basketball Association. And since 2023, he has been a member of China’s NPC, sitting as an independent delegate. He is also a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the advisory body that meets in parallel to the NPC in early March each year. At last year’s NPC, Yao submitted a suggestion for launching a digital detox programme for children: a campaign to get kids to quit their phones for 24 hours. “It’s somewhat similar to spring or autumn outings when we were kids. In the past, it was about getting children out of the classroom environment; now it’s about getting them away from the digital environment,” he said. Yao’s stature means that most furniture in China is too small for him. The NPC is no exception. In previous years he has been spotted sat on his own row at the NPC, hunched over a desk that doesn’t leave room for his knees to fit underneath. Additional research by Lillian Yang

US may not have capacity to take down full barrage of Iranian drones, officials warn

Top military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian drone being launched against US military installations and assets in retaliatory attacks, according to two people familiar with the matter. The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and while they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage. As a result, the officials said in a classified briefing for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the US was focused on destroying the launch sites for the drones and conventional missiles as quickly as possible. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. In retaliation against US strikes, Iran has been launching its low-cost, one-way attack Shahed drones. By flying low and slow, the drones are seen to be better able to evade conventional air defenses than ballistic missiles. A senior administration official said Iran’s apparent drone strategy – to get the US to sacrifice its most sophisticated Patriot and Thaad interceptors – was misguided and unsuccessful because the US has been downing the drones with several different measures. Still, top Democrats in Congress have expressed concerns the US has been burning through interceptors to defend against ballistic missiles launched by Iran. Caine acknowledged that concern, a person familiar with the matter said, even as he expressed confidence in stockpile levels in public. “We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense,” Caine said at a news conference at the Pentagon on Wednesday morning, although he offered no details or specifics. The high rate of fire has been expensive. In the first days of the war, the US spent about $2bn per day, although that figure has dropped to closer to $1bn and is expected to fall further as the conflict continues, according to a person familiar with a preliminary defense department analysis. A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the joint chiefs of staff declined to comment due to operations security. On Monday night, Trump wrote on social media that the US could sustain its rate of fire indefinitely, saying the stockpile of “medium and upper medium grade” munitions was “virtually unlimited”. Still, he conceded that weapons at the “highest end” were “not where we want them to be”. At a press briefing on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US had more than enough weapons to wage an extended war with Iran and claimed Trump’s post had been criticizing the Biden administration’s decision to send weapons to Ukraine. “We have weapon stockpiles in places that many in this world don’t even know about,” Leavitt said. “The president was pointing out that, unfortunately, we had a very stupid and incompetent leader in this White House for four years who gave away many of our best weapons for nothing.”

Airstrikes hit Iran-Iraq border as US and Israeli plan to mobilise Kurds gathers pace

Intense waves of airstrikes have hit dozens of military positions, frontier posts and police stations along northern parts of Iran’s border with Iraq in what appears to be preparation by US and Israel for a new front in their war. A US official with knowledge of the discussions between Washington and Kurdish officials said the US was ready to provide air support if Kurdish peshmerga fighters crossed the border from northern Iraq. A spokesperson for Israel’s military said the air force had been “heavily operating in western Iran to degrade Iranian capabilities there and to open up a way to Tehran and create freedom of operations there”. Both Axios and Fox News, citing a US official, on Wednesday reported that the militias had begun their offensive inside Iran. There was no official confirmation or any immediate detail about how many fighters were involved or where they were operating from. Kurdish officials told the Associated Press that Kurdish Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq were preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran, and the US has asked Iraqi Kurds to support them. Khalil Nadiri, an official with the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, based in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region said on Wednesday that some of their forces had moved to areas near the Iranian border in Sulaymaniyah province and were on standby. He said Kurdish opposition group leaders had been contacted by US officials regarding a potential operation, without giving more details. Meanwhile, Baloch militant groups opposed to the Tehran regime have also moved from remote mountain bases in Pakistan across the border into Iran, according to local officials. Experts predicted that backing armed groups from Iran’s ethnic communities would “open up a hornet’s nest”, aggravating divisions within the diverse country and increasing the risk of a chaotic civil war if the current regime collapses. Donald Trump called two leaders of Iranian Kurdish factions based in northern Iraq earlier this week and is open to supporting groups that are willing to take up arms to dislodge the regime, US media have reported. Clandestine operations in north-western parts of Iran where Kurdish communities are most numerous were “ramped up” after the brief war between Iran and Israel last summer, according to former intelligence and defence officials in Israel, the US and elsewhere in the region. There were reports in January of clashes between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and groups of Kurdish peshmerga fighters who had entered Iran from Turkey and Iraq. Two weeks ago, five rival Iranian Kurdish organisations led by the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) formed a new coalition dedicated to overthrowing the regime in Tehran. “Getting your groups aligned and united is the first play in the playbook,” said one former US defence official with experience of clandestine operations. A spokesperson for the KDPI would not confirm or deny that its leader, Mustafa Hijri, was one of the two Iranian Kurdish leaders Trump called but said it was the duty of “free, democratic societies around the world to help [Iranian Kurds] win freedom”. “We think that the regime is in a deeply weak situation … and will soon see its end days,” the spokesperson said. Hijri called on Iranian military personnel on Wednesday to abandon their posts and “return to their families”. The KDPI said Hijri had issued the call “in light of ongoing US and Israeli strikes against the regime’s military and security installations, [which] pose a direct and serious threat to the lives of the soldiers, particularly in Kurdistan”. The US has repeatedly used Kurdish fighters as auxiliariesproviding vital assistance to US troops in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in the fight against Islamic State there and in Syria from 2014 to 2019. Alia Brahimi, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council, cautioned against using local forces. “If the ground fighting is outsourced to ethnic separatist groups, that will leave the US with even less ability to shape developments on the ground than in the conflict 20 years ago. If other separatists join the fray, the Iranian public may then rally around the regime in Tehran,” she said. “We’re only five days into the conflict, and we’re already seeing the dangerous consequences of the Trump administration’s lack of a strategic plan and the total absence of clarity over both rationales and objectives.” Operatives from the Israeli foreign intelligence service were already active inside Iran, according to one former Mossad official, while two analysts said that a series of short-range drone attacks launched against IRGC units and posts along the border in recent days also bore the hallmarks of Israeli intelligence. The drone attacks and other recent airstrikes along the Iran-Iraq border suggest an effort to open “access points” that would allow lightly-armed Kurdish fighters to cross into Iran and establish strongholds on the other side, said a former US defence official with recent experience of clandestine operations in northern Iraq. Such an operation would follow a well-established US strategy of embedding small teams of military or CIA specialists who can direct airstrikes with locally recruited ground forces. Such strategies were employed in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Syria and Iraq against IS. “If you have enough air power, and it is well coordinated, then [the Kurds] would just be walking through smoking rubble, and any regime counterattacks would be broken up well before there needed to be any shooting,” the former official said. The aim would not be to “march on Tehran” but to distract and drain Iranian military units, however, because US intelligence officials do not believe the lightly armed peshmerga could take on regular Iranian forces and IRGC units. The US has had a clandestine presence in northern Iraq for many years, with communication hubs, surveillance posts and training programmes for Kurdish and other Iraqi fighters. Israel is also thought to have a presence there. Iran’s Kurds – who make up between 5% and 10% of the population – have long history of separatist activism and broader opposition to the radical clerical regime. Kurds also fought alongside US forces in Syria, building close personal connections within the US military and intelligence services. They include many fighters from the KDPI and the other faction Trump reportedly contacted, the Kurdistan Free Life party (PJAK). Reports that the US had provided weapons in recent months are likely to be unfounded, however, with light arms and ammunition already widely available locally, analysts said. Support for Kurdish armed groups is likely to provoke deep concern in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, which also have sizeable Kurdish minorities. “If the administration is seriously mucking about or contemplating mucking about with the Kurds in Iran, they’re opening up a hornet’s nest. I think that Recep Erdoğan [Turkey’s president] will have a lot to say about it and so will others – count on strong reactions from Iraqi PM [Mohammed Shia al-] Sudani and Syrian president [Ahmed al-] Sharaa,” said Barbara Leaf, the former assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs until 2025 and a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute based in Washington DC. “Gulf leaders are likely to be very queasy about the prospect of such a US move.” Qubad Talabani, the deputy prime minister of the self-governing Kurdistan region of Iraq, said on Wednesday that the region was not part of the current conflict and would maintain its neutrality. There has been intensifying violence from separatist groups among Iran’s Baloch minority in the south-east of the country. Militants attacked an IRGC border patrol and a police checkpoint in December. Around the same time, the most active Baloch separatist group, Jaish al-Adl, announced a new coalition of armed factions that would seek to “strengthen the effectiveness of the struggle” against the “tyranny” of the Iranian regime. The coalition claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the assassination of the commander of a police station in the city of Zahedan, and issued a statement calling on “military personnel to … surrender to their fellow citizens so that no harm comes to them during these critical times”. Nasser Bouledai, an Iranian Baloch leader in exile in Europe, said he believed all Iranian communities would welcome US help, but that Washington had followed inconsistent policies in the past. The US was accused only months ago of cynically sacrificing the interests of Syrian Kurds in clashes with Syrian government forces. “I think [everyone] who is against the brutal cleric regime would accept support from the US but it should be a consistent and permanent support that resolves the issues of minorities – unlike, for example, when the US gave support for Syrian Kurds and then betrayed Kurds,” Bouledai said. “It is high time the US supports Iranian ethnic and religious minorities against the cleric regime and settles the question of Iran once and for all.”

Putin accuses Ukraine of attacking gas tanker that exploded and sank off Libya

Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of carrying out a terrorist attack on one of Russia’s liquefied natural gas carriers which exploded into flames and sank in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya. The Arctic Metagaz had been sanctioned by the US and EU for being part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers that carry its oil and gas around the world, skirting Western restrictions. The Libyan Maritime Authority reported “sudden explosions, followed by a massive fire” on the ship on Tuesday, when it was about 150 miles (240km) off the city of Sirte. The tanker, which had been carrying 61,000 tons of LNG, “completely sank” between Libya and Malta, a statement said. All 30 crew members were rescued and put on another vessel heading to the Libyan city of Benghazi, it said. “This is a terrorist attack. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing,” Putin told Russian state television late on Wednesday, accusing Ukraine of being responsible. He said the incident was an attack that “exacerbates the situation on global energy markets, including gas markets”. Russia’s transport ministry had earlier said the vessel had been hit by Ukrainian sea drones launched from the Libyan coast, but provided no details. Ukraine has not commented on the incident, but said in December that it had hit a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean with aerial drones in the first such strike to be confirmed in the four-year war. Previous Ukrainian attacks on Russian ships in the Mediterranean have reportedly come from the Libyan coast, but Kyiv has not publicly confirmed them. Ukraine’s military has said in the past that it used sea drones to sink Russian vessels in the Black Sea. Ukraine’s state security service unveiled an upgraded sea drone called the Sea Baby in October, which it said had a range of 930 miles and could carry a weapon of up to two tonnes. The Metagaz had sailed from the north-western Russian city of Murmansk on the Barents Sea and was bound for Port Said in Egypt, the Libyan Maritime Authority said. Its last reported position was in the western Mediterranean off the coast of Malta, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking platform. Putin also suggested on Wednesday that Russia could stop supplying gas to Europe and move to other markets. The European Commission will submit a legal proposal to permanently ban Russian oil imports on 15 April, three days after Hungary’s parliamentary election, according to EU officials and a document seen by Reuters. “And now other markets are opening up,” Putin said. “And perhaps it would be more profitable for us to stop supplying the European market right now. To move into those markets that are opening up and establish ourselves there. “But this is not a decision, it is, in this case, what is called thinking out loud. I will definitely instruct the government to work on this issue together with our companies.”