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US military denies striking civilian wheat storage in Iran after Trump threatens power plants and bridges – Middle East crisis live

The US has said it is preparing another wave of strikes against Iran in a further effort to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. It would be the second set of strikes targeting Iran during daylight hours today. In a post on X, US Central Command said it had “launched operations for a second wave of strikes today against Iran”. “The strikes are targeting Iranian military capabilities used to threaten vessels freely transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway vital to global commerce.” The statement added: “The US military is holding Iran accountable at the Commander in Chief’s direction.”

Germany warns US against election interference after it announces grants scheme

Friedrich Merz has warned Donald Trump’s administration against interfering in German elections after the US state department announced a scheme to fund Maga-aligned causes in Europe. The German chancellor was responding to a new US initiative offering grants of up to $3m (£2.2m) for European charities, thinktanks and individuals. The funding will be for those seeking to “address national sovereignty, migration, censorship, and lawfare challenges in line with shared political philosophy, law, and our common western civilizational heritage”. Amid growing concerns that the US is seeking to directly influence European politics, Merz said he did not want the US to interfere in German state elections in September. “For ‌our ‌part, we do ‌not interfere in American elections,” he told a press conference on Wednesday. “Conversely, I do not ‌want the American government or institutions close to the government to interfere in German ⁠elections.” Former US officials say the grant scheme is part of a months-long effort by the state department to repurpose US government funds to support far-right groups and potentially political parties in Europe. The language around who might be eligible to receive the money is ambiguous, one former state department official said. The announcement of the grants specifies that “individuals” and “governmental institution” (sic) can apply, without further detail as to whom or what these categories might include. Previous reporting has suggested that the state department under Trump is interested in funding political parties in Europe, but that it could be hampered by US laws around foreign assistance. On Wednesday, Merz highlighted that it is illegal to finance ‌political parties in Germany from abroad. The former state department official said: “There seems to be an effort by the state department to put the thumb on the scale of elections in Europe, giving an unfair advantage to rightwing parties with resources that they would ordinarily not get.” The initiative follows in the wake of high-profile attacks on traditional allies in western European countries by US figures including the vice-president, JD Vance, on issues including migration, abortion and online safety initiatives. State department officials have also been busy forging links with European social conservative groups as well as far-right parties. In December, a new US national security strategy claimed Europe faced “civilisational erasure” and – in an apparent reference to populist movements – hailed the growing influence of “patriotic European parties”. And last month, the UK government rejected claims made by a senior US state department official at a rightwing conference in London that British police were making thousands of “freedom of speech” arrests. The allegation was made by Sarah B Rogers, who has become the public face of the US state department’s hostility to European liberal democracies and has previously been a guest of groups such as Britain’s Prosperity Institute, a think tank which campaigns from an economically libertarian and socially conservative perspective. Earlier this year, Rogers pledged $500,000 in US funding to “promote digital freedom” during a visit to Ireland. The Guardian has asked the Prosperity Institute if it is likely to apply for one of the state department’s “Developing Civilizational Bonds, Democratic Resilience, and Rule of Law in Europe” grants. The awards are being administered by a branch of the state department called the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Though originally set up under President Jimmy Carter as an instrument of US policy during the cold war to challenge both Soviet and rightwing authoritarian regimes, it has been repurposed under the Trump administration. Other groups in Europe that could stand to gain from the grants include Britain’s Free Speech Union, which has campaigned on issues that have become conservative causes célèbres, and organisations that have lost out on financial support as a result of Viktor Orbán’s loss of power in Hungary.

Chaos and confusion bring US no closer to resolution on strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump has taken the war with Iran into a new, murkier phase as the two sides move further and further from the vague memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on 17 June. And as during the opening phase of the conflict, the US leader’s objectives and methods are clouded in confusion, daily U-turns and boasts that within hours are revealed to be false. Washington’s short-term aim is clear enough – to regain control of the strait of Hormuz from Iran – and the president seems willing to extend the bombing campaign from beyond Iran’s southern shores to achieve this. But the resumed fighting is also likely to push oil prices towards $90 a barrel, potentially taking Trump closer to defeats at the US midterm elections that could bequeath him a final two years as a lame, if angry, duck. In a sign of the strategic chaos, Trump proposed – then almost immediately abandoned – a suggestion that the US could charge tolls for clearing the strait, leaving it unclear if Washington had any vision for the future of the waterway. Many workable alternatives are available, including models based on the strait of Malacca or the Bosphorus and Dardanelles model, both of which have been discussed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Iran and Oman – the two littoral states – are willing to engage on these, but so derelict is the Washington policymaking machinery that the US has no proposal of its own to offer. In briefings on Tuesday, the White House insisted that the 20% US toll first announced by Trump the day before was a serious plan, claiming the president had been considering the proposal for a long time. Hours later, however, the product of Trump’s extensive cogitations was jettisoned after the scale of the revolt from shipping firms, members of his own administration and the region became apparent. That ever such an idea was even proposed is deeply embarrassing, since so many European leaders (and US officials) were on record saying freedom of navigation was a cornerstone of the rules-based order and a pillar of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, had previously argued that tolls were not compatible with international law. Only last week the 40-strong IMO council – of which the US is an active member – passed a motion reaffirming “that passage through the strait should remain free of any tolls and charges”. Addressing the IMO council meeting in London, the US ambassador to the UK, Warren A Stephens, vowed: “The US will continue to champion freedom of navigation and the rule of law – the bedrock principles without which international trade cannot function. The United States will defend these principles vigorously, in every forum, including this one. The IMO must be a forum where the rule of law is upheld – not a venue where coercive powers can exploit procedural gaps to advance their strategic interests.” He added: “The United States is committed to this organisation and to the principles it represents. But we will also speak honestly about the threats to the rules-based maritime order. A free and open ocean is not guaranteed. It must be defended – through strong standards, strong partnerships and the willingness to call out those who seek to undermine it.” Trump tried to cover his ignominious tracks by claiming conversations with Gulf leaders showed they were now willing to make substantial investment in the US economy. But it seemed a tenuous cover story, even by his standards: the commitment to invest in the US looks entirely unbankable, as fictional as the $350bn recovery plan referenced in the US-Iran ceasefire agreement. With the toll off the agenda for now, none of Trump’s remaining options look good. His single greatest political weakness is that he is still having to use force to reopen the strait of Hormuz – a waterway that was accessible until the point he decided to take Benjamin Netanyahu’s advice, leave the negotiating table and attack Iran. After nearly five months of war, Trump is in a worse position than when he started. About 6,000 sailors are still trapped in the strait, which remains controlled by the government in Tehran, which has drawn strength from the Iranian public’s farewell to its assassinated supreme leader. The idea, laid out in the memorandum, that the two sides will agree on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme by 17 August looks entirely fanciful. Meanwhile, Iran appears to have plentiful supplies of weaponry and continues to pummel US bases in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. The latest US administration estimate of the costs of the war, including damage to the bases, is put at $100bn. When the memorandum was signed a month ago, Trump effectively admitted the military option had not achieved its purpose. If the strait remained closed for much longer there was a serious risk of a global recession, he said, telling CNBC that he did not want to be “a president with a depression on his resume”. But now the advocates of war are back. Rob Malley, a former US nuclear negotiator, said: “On both sides, there are groups that believe they can bear the costs of escalating tensions and, more importantly, must prove this ability to the other side.” US hawks still believe Iran will crumble if the reinstated blockade of its ports makes it impossible to export oil. In Tehran, the chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has been allowed to purge his biggest critics inside the parliament. But Ghalibaf is still under daily pressure to explain the purpose of negotiating with a counter party that treats solemn and binding agreements like passing street litter. What is worse, Trump’s team cannot articulate a strategy for the strait. Joe Biden’s national security adviser Philip Gordon pointed out: “If the United States did not want Iran to take control of the strait, it should not have agreed to a document stating that ‘the Islamic Republic of Iran will make the necessary arrangements for the safe passage of ships’ or that ‘no fees will be charged for 60 days only’. Iran’s attacks on shipping are outrageous, but so was the US failure to clarify what it expected in exchange for the massive financial relief the MoU promised.” In retrospect it would have made more sense for the US to leave Iran largely in control for 60 days, and insist Tehran get on with demining, rather than trying to speed the process of ships leaving the strait by opening up a new southern route close to the Oman coast. The debate about the strait is becoming a wider one about security in the Gulf. Writing in Le Monde, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, the Oman foreign minister, argued that the whole premise of Washington’s Iran policy was flawed. “The combination of excessive local defence spending, the expansion of US bases in the Gulf and an over-the-horizon protective presence was developed and maintained at great cost but to very little real purpose. “The war has revealed that containment was a myth, a reality acknowledged now even by those who had previously been persuaded that more than 45 years of costly containment was a necessary evil. The gravest threats to the security of the Gulf come not from within the Gulf itself but from decisions and actions taken outside it, above all in Tel Aviv.”

Iran threatens to halt all Middle East energy exports amid renewed US blockade

Iran threatened to halt all energy exports from the Middle East after the US reimposed a blockade of its ports and ships, as the two countries traded strikes for a fifth day and Donald Trump threatened to attack a site linked to Iran’s nuclear programme while he weighed further expanding US strikes next week. The US blockade came into force early on Wednesday, and was followed by a 90-minute wave of strikes against Iran’s coastal defence systems and missile sites, according to the US military. Iranian authorities said the previous day of US strikes had killed at least seven troops, and wounded more than 300 people – the highest casualty count of any recent round of violence between the two countries. At least 30 civilians have been killed by US strikes in southern Iran in recent days, according to the Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani. The strikes came as Trump suggested the US could widen attacks against Iran to force open the strait of Hormuz, with the US president warning that he would hit “Pickaxe Mountain” – a fortified underground facility linked to Iran’s disputed nuclear programme. “We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the ⁠Iranians to be ready,” Trump said in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show. The facility was not hit in the last two wars. The US strikes and renewed blockade prompted Iran to shut the strait of Hormuz and carry out a wave of retaliatory airstrikes on countries hosting US bases in the region. “Regional energy exports are either shared by all or denied to all,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared in a statement on Wednesday. It added that the strait would remain closed until the “end of America’s evils”, further disrupting shipping in the waterway that before the war was a chokepoint for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas. Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said the renewed US blockade had “in a way, dismantled the Islamabad memorandum”, the interim deal that, among other things, was meant to keep the strait open and give space for negotiations towards a permanent peace. The flare-up in violence and disruption to shipping further drove up the price of oil, with the price of crude on Wednesday continuing to rise past the one-month high reached on Tuesday. Shipping companies were avoiding transiting the strait through a US military programme meant to keep commerce flowing, Reuters reported, after continued Iranian attacks prompted safety concerns. The US said Iran had attacked seven commercial ships in the strait last week, with almost a dozen crew members killed, missing or injured. Iran also launched airstrikes on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, countries that host US forces. Jordan said it intercepted three ballistic missiles from Iran on Wednesday, while Kuwait said it was working to extinguish a fire caused by Iranian attacks. The US military said it targeted Iranian defence and missile sites on the Greater Tunb island in the strait of Hormuz, as well as the barracks for Iran’s mechanised brigade in Sistan and Balochistan province, Iranian state TV reported. Iran’s army vowed a “decisive response to this aggressive action by the American enemy”. The dispute over the strait threatened to pull the region back into a total war. “Next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges,” the US president said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.” Targeting civilian infrastructure without a clear military target could constitute a war crime. Axios, citing three sources, reported that Trump held a situation room meeting on Tuesday to discuss a massive offensive against Iran in order to force Tehran to reopen the strait. Trump said US negotiators had been in touch with their Iranian counterparts to tell them to make a deal, while saying the US would save energy targets for last but would ultimately hit them. Trump made similar comments in March, when he threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power stations and fresh water plants if Tehran did not agree to peace terms “shortly”. Trump backtracked from a threat earlier this week that ships would have to pay a 20% fee to the US for “security” in the strait, replacing it with what he described as investment and trade deals with Gulf Arab states. The US president said he had decided to scrap the toll “based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership”, and touted “massive” investments, just five hours before the toll was due to come into effect. In Rome, Lebanon and Israel completed a new round of negotiations which was described as “positive” by the US. A US official said both sides had agreed to implement the “pilot zone” scheme, which would see Israeli troops withdraw from certain areas in south Lebanon and be replaced by the Lebanese army, which will be tasked with safeguarding the areas from Hezbollah. “Talks concluded after two days of productive and positive discussions,” a US official said in a statement. He added that the participants “agreed on the structure and guidelines for the pilot zone process, to be finalised and implemented in the coming days”. Israel occupies more than 600 sq km (230 sq miles) of land in south Lebanon, which it has labelled a “security zone” to protect residents of northern Israel. The Israeli military has destroyed dozens of villages in the areas it occupies, something Human Rights Watch said could amount to a war crime. The Lebanese delegation is seeking the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon, something unlikely to happen in the short term. Hezbollah, which is not a party to the talks, has made it clear that they view the dialogue process as illegitimate. With Agence France-Presse

Wildfires in Ontario make Toronto air quality worst in world

Smoke from more than 100 active wildfires in northern Ontario have made Toronto’s air quality the current worst in the world and caused yellow, smoky air in cities across the north-east US. Environment Canada issued health warnings on Wednesday after the sky over country’s largest city turned a sickly yellow and was ranked the worst in the world according to IQAir, the Swiss technology company that racks global air quality. The city is also suffering a heatwave that shattered a three-decade record after reaching 37.3C in the downtown core, with runways at its main international airport hitting 55C. The wildfires burning across northwestern Ontario have prompted mandatory evacuations from a number of First Nations communities. Striking video footage of a train near the community of Armstrong, Ontario, highlighted the speed and ferocity of the fires. “This could potentially overtake us here … This has gotten a little scary,” says a crew member as a wall of flames whips across the windows. “We’re encased in flames now.” The railway company Canadian National confirmed the crew had been “safely evacuated” from the area. Other images showed families fleeing their homes by boat against the backdrop of massive plumes of smoke. “My family hometown, Collins Ontario, is GONE,” Nadya Kwandibens, a photographer, posted on social media. Residents of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation said they had only minutes warning before fleeing across Collins Lake in the northwest part of the province. “What we are witnessing right now is devastating,” said Sol Mamakwa, a member of the province’s New Democratic party. “An entire First Nation community has been erased because of this disaster. With wildfires closing highways and threatening communities across the north, we urge everyone to follow the guidance of emergency officials and remain prepared in case evacuations are necessary. “Collins has burned to the ground. This is a tragedy and we are grateful that everyone got out safely,” said Lise Vaugeois, the provincial representative for the region. “Fires are part of a natural cycle, but the extreme temperatures we are experiencing across the county and the growing severity of weather events are indicators of climate change.” CNN reported that air quality alerts due to spoke have been issued across large parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and that thicker smoke is forecast to move over New York, Washington and other cities across the eastern seaboard later in the week.

Moscow warns that foreign troops in Ukraine would be seen as legitimate targets – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! Lithuanian (10:06) and Latvian (13:07) presidents warned that they were picking up intelligence that Russia could be looking to conduct targeted strikes or acts of sabotage against critical infrastructure on Nato’s eastern flank. Russia dismissed the warnings as “scare stories” (11:59), but separately warned that any foreign troops that could be deployed to Ukraine as part of a peace deal would be seen by it as “legitimate targets” (15:52). The exchange comes as the EU and Ukraine agreed on a new defence partnership, including a drone deal (12:52, 16:54), and EU ministers continued talks on the 21st package of sanctions against Russia (11:36). European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen received the inaugural Ukrainian Order of Europe in Kyiv, with Zelenskyy thanking her for support for Kyiv’s ambitions to join the EU (12:43). The Ukrainian president also appeared to endorse the head of the state energy company Naftogaz Sergii Koretsky to be Ukraine’s next prime minister, after Yulia Svyrydenko’s resignation earlier this week (16:25). Meanwhile, German chancellor Friedrich Merz defended his proposal for an associate EU membership for Ukraine, warning the bloc could lose its credibility if it didn’t move quickly enough to accept new members (14:46). Speaking at his annual summer press conference, Merz also defended his government’s track record on both domestic and foreign policy, playing down the prospect of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland winning in the upcoming regional elections (14:01). Merz also warned the US against using its proposed grant programmes to support far-right movements in Germany, saying “we do not interfere in American elections” (14:53). And, finally, Hungary’s former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, a close Viktor Orbán associate who faced criticism over his ties with Moscow, has stepped down as an MP to take a senior executive role at the Chinese carmaker BYD (15:20), prompting mockery and criticism from the country’s new prime minister, Péter Magyar (16:08). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Berlin man charged with 22 counts of raping unconscious women and filming the assaults

A Berlin man has been charged with nearly two dozen counts of raping unconscious women and filming the acts, while investigators believe based on video evidence that the suspect may have attacked up to 60 victims. In the latest of a series of high-profile cases involving the serial rape of unwitting targets on camera, Berlin prosecutors said they have indicted the 68-year-old German national on 22 counts of sexual assault of 14 women. The man, an electrician, has been in police custody since March. Because the suspect, who has not been named, is believed to have recorded each of the rapes “all the offences are alleged to have been committed in conjunction with an infringement of the right to one’s own image”, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The ongoing investigation “revealed numerous alleged offences committed against a total of 58 women”, they said, adding that 10 of the women have not yet been identified. “The accused is alleged to have sedated the women using various sleeping tablets in combination with alcohol and subsequently raped them,” prosecutors said, adding that the suspect lured the women beforehand on online dating platforms. Those believed to have been attacked who have already spoken to investigators said they could not recall the alleged assaults and “only learned of them after the videos of the offences were discovered”. Prosecutors said the suspect had not yet responded to the charges against him. The cases came to light after a tip from police in another state, Lower Saxony, who in early 2025 were investigating similar allegations against a man who has since died. He is believed to have been in contact with the Berlin suspect through online chats. The tip prompted a search of the man’s flat in the Friedrichsfelde suburb of the German capital during which police unearthed a cache of digital files. In 2026, an investigator found several videos of sexual assaults in which the suspect is believed to be the assailant. Police raided his home again in March of this year and detained him. The allegations recall similar cases this year in Berlin and Munich involving the serial sexual assault of drugged women captured on camera. German media drew parallels to the case of French woman Gisèle Pelicot whose then husband was convicted of drugging and abusing her and offering her unconscious to dozens of strangers to be raped over nearly a decade, in a trial that made global headlines. “Pelicot is not an isolated case,” said judge Markus Koppenleitner in Munich in April when sentencing a student from China to 11 years’ imprisonment for repeatedly giving his girlfriend an anaesthetic, raping her and filming the acts. The convicted man is believed to be part of a ring of abusers in a Telegram group called “German Driving School”, which targeted women of Chinese heritage living in Europe. “This is not a Chinese or French phenomenon, but one that also occurs in Germany and, ultimately, worldwide,” Koppenleitner said. Investigators in the UK said this month they had uncovered a “truly international network” of organised drug-facilitated sexual attacks in which victims are sedated before being raped and sexually assaulted.

As Russia’s assault continues, Ukraine’s politics shift and an old alliance begins to fray

I’ve just come back from a trip to Kyiv, where after more than four years of war, it can feel like the political and diplomatic news agenda has become cyclical: a suggestion that some kind of peace deal could be around the corner, followed by the swift intervention of reality that the Kremlin has no interest in abandoning its maximalist goals, and we all go back to the drawing board. We are now in a period where Russia has again stepped up its air attacks on the Ukrainian capital. Frequent mass drone and missile attacks keep Kyiv residents awake, and some even get through to the city centre, whereas in the past Ukrainian air defences were usually able to repel them. Nights can be noisy and scary: one attack while I was there killed 27 people. Thousands head into the metro to get some sleep. So what are the chances that Putin’s planned three-day war will finally come to an end in its fifth year? All of Donald Trump’s attempts to bring it to a close have failed, and these efforts have been somewhat muted over past months as Washington turned its attention to the Middle East. But the theme is again hanging in the air in Kyiv, and there is now cautious optimism in some quarters that late autumn this year might provide a possible window for some kind of a deal. Ukraine is keen to avoid another winter at war, and Vladimir Putin finds himself under pressure from Kyiv’s campaign of spectacular long-range drone strikes on Russia’s oil infrastructure. Others are more sceptical, pointing to Putin’s recent aggressive rhetoric and suggesting it’s much more likely that Moscow will double down than seek agreement. Domestically, political life is hotting up, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy about to reshuffle the government yet again, and rumours that he could seek a renewed mandate in a presidential election, which might swiftly follow some kind of ceasefire. As usual, when these discussions surface there are more questions than answers: even if there was a ceasefire, how would voting be organised for frontline communities, for Ukrainians living under Russian occupation and for the millions of refugees abroad? Who would stand against Zelenskyy, and is a real political contest possible in the circumstances? *** Tensions between allies If these debates are familiar to those who have been following the war in Ukraine, there is one new scandal that has erupted in recent weeks: the increasingly acrimonious nature of a falling out between Ukraine and Poland. Back in 2022, Warsaw was one of Kyiv’s most reliable allies but a dispute over history has brought the relationship to crisis point. It centres on Polish fury that Ukrainian authorities have decided to name a military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA” – the UPA being a wartime nationalist group, one branch of which was responsible for massacres of Poles and Jews durng the second world war. This has, unsurprisingly, been greeted with fury in Warsaw. It’s a fiendishly complicated story – as historical memory issues usually are – but I’ve tried to unpack it in this piece I reported from both Kyiv and Warsaw. It’s something I’d wanted to write for a while, but it’s one of those that can be very hard to get across all the nuance in. After all, the idea that Ukraine is full of fascism-loving neo-Nazis is a key trope of Kremlin propaganda. I wrote a whole book about historical memory in Ukraine and Russia back in 2018, and how selective or distorted narratives of the second world war informed modern-day events and bubbled under the surface during the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then of Donbas. In the four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, we’ve written countless stories about how Ukrainians are pushing back against Russia’s fake history, reclaiming their cultural heritage and building a new and consolidated national identity. But the tension with Poland introduces a more complicated element into Ukraine’s memory wars. Many people – not only Poles – take issue with veneration of the UPA. What has struck me from conversations in both Ukraine and Poland in recent weeks is the depth of animosity among ordinary people on both sides. Ukrainians rage that Poland is playing into Russian hands by fussing over history in a time of war; Poles say that after four years of supporting Ukraine with military and humanitarian aid, the least they could expect would be for their ally not to honour historical figures who massacred Poles. Bartosz Cichocki, Poland’s former ambassador to Ukraine, told me Poland may now get tougher on Ukraine’s path to joining the European Union. In short, there will be “no more romance, no more naivety”, in the Poland-Ukraine relationship, he said. As a general rule, it’s bad news when historical issues are in the hands of politicians rather than historians, and that is what has happened here. With elections due soon in Poland and (as discussed above) in Ukraine, potentially – expect things to get worse between Warsaw and Kyiv before they get better. To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.