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Middle East crisis live: US submarine sank Iranian warship, Hegseth confirms; Israel launches ‘wave of strikes’ on Tehran

“I don’t have a message for them, and they’re not really a factor here, and our issue is not with them,” Hegseth said of Russia and China, both of whom have longstanding diplomatic and trade ties with Iran, while Moscow has military links to Tehran. The US defence secretary said the US focus on ending what he called “the nuclear ambitions of Iran”. Both Russia and China have criticised the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, with Moscow saying it had seen no evidence that Tehran was developing nuclear weapons while Beijing called for an immediate halt to the attacks.

‘Any threat against member state is threat against the EU’, says commissioner in response to Trump comments – Europe live

The European Commission unveiled plans to boost the competitiveness of the EU’s manufacturing sector during its drive to decarbonise and avoid reliance on cheap Chinese imports by setting local content requirements, Reuters reported. The intensely debated Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) will set low-carbon and ’Made in EU’ requirements for public procurement of, or subsidies for, making aluminium, cement and steel, and technologies including wind turbines, electrolysers or electric vehicles. “If we do nothing, then it’s quite clear that very soon, 100% of clean tech technology will be produced in China...It’s quite possible that our cement, steel industries will be offshored completely in the next few years,” commissioner Stéphane Séjourné told a news conference. Reuters noted that proponents point out that rivals such as the United States, China, Brazil and India already have rules on local content in place and that similar requirements could help fill the EU’s massive investment gap. The EU law aims to use the huge financial firepower of its member countries’ public procurement worth more than 2tn euros or 14% of EU economic output to shore up struggling domestic industries and push into newer growing sectors. The EU executive has drawn up lists of partners, including Britain, Canada and the US, with which it has free trade agreements or which are parties to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement. China is not one of the countries. The European Parliament and EU governments will negotiate the final text, meaning further changes are likely.

Britain not ruling out future strikes on Iran missile sites, officials indicate

Britain has not ruled out participating in future strikes against Iranian ballistic missile launch sites, officials have indicated. US heavy bombers are expected to reach UK bases at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands and Fairford in Gloucestershire in the next few days, from where they are expected to attack Iran’s underground “missile cities”. In a briefing, western officials did not rule out the possibility that the UK could take part in striking missile depots. “I wouldn’t rule anything out at all because we just don’t know what will happen day to day, week to week as this progresses,” one said. Destroying Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles and launch capabilities is one of the central goals of the joint US and Israeli bombing campaign, but many are buried below ground and hard to strike with more conventional weapons. One option is to fly US airforce B-2 or B-52 bombers armed with bunker-buster munitions from the two UK sites, and that could require additional support from the RAF beyond the simple provision of the bases. At first the UK did not take part in the US-Israeli bombing campaign that began on Saturday with the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. But on Sunday night Keir Starmer partly changed his mind. The prime minister said he would allow the US to destroy Iranian missiles “at source” by flying missions from UK bases to target “their storage depots or the launchers which [are] used to fire the missiles”. It was, he added, a “specific and limited defensive purpose”.

Israel flagged Hezbollah threat before launching air attacks, leaked memo shows

An internal US assessment indicates that Israeli officials had doubts that the Lebanese state could disarm Hezbollah even before Israel launched an aerial campaign against the group on Monday. The leaked embassy cable shows that on the eve of the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Israeli officials had told Washington that Hezbollah was reconstituting its military capabilities faster than the Lebanese armed forces could degrade them. It said neither Beirut nor Damascus could be trusted to contain the threat on Israel’s northern borders. The 27 February cable, seen by the Guardian, was sent to Washington a day before Israel and the US launched their aerial campaign against Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and prompting Tehran to launch retaliatory strikes across the region. Three days after the US cable was sent, Israel launched the first of a wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah-dominated areas in southern Beirut. The cable indicated that Israel doubted Syria’s new leaders could control their own security forces and was “gravely” alarmed by Turkish military entrenchment in Syria, which it warned could create a strategic threat to Israel’s north. It also claimed that Turkish officials had “repeatedly incited against Israel in Syria” even while Israeli and Turkish national security officials maintained “de-confliction” agreements. The cable said this suggested Ankara was pursuing a dual track – managing relations with Tel Aviv privately while positioning itself militarily in Syria at Israel’s expense. The cable was intended as a background briefing for the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, before a trip to Israel that was later cancelled. It was written under the auspices of the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. A self-avowed Christian Zionist, Huckabee had days earlier told the US journalist Tucker Carlson it would be “fine” if Israel seized territory stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The remarks triggered a diplomatic scandal and condemnation from 14 governments, prompting the embassy to say “US policy has not changed”. Huckabee also told Carlson that if Israel “ended up getting attacked by all these places and they win that war and they take that land, OK, that’s a whole other discussion”. The embassy cable said Israeli officials had lost confidence in the Lebanese state ever moving against Hezbollah. Israel, according to the internal report, “harbours major doubts Hezbollah will agree to give up its weapons” and questions the Lebanese government’s “commitment to confront Hezbollah to take control of all Lebanese territory”. Iranian funding was still reaching the group “through Turkey and elsewhere”, the cable said, despite the November 2024 ceasefire. The Israel Defense Forces, the cable added, had already been forced “to pick up military attacks on Hezbollah as a result”. The Lebanese army announced in January that it had taken over security in southern Lebanon – a move Israel greeted with scepticism. The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said efforts toward fully disarming Hezbollah were “an encouraging beginning, but they are far from sufficient, as evidenced by Hezbollah’s efforts to rearm and rebuild its terror infrastructure with Iranian support”. The ceasefire, brokered after months of cross-border exchanges, was already under strain before the Iran strikes began, with Israeli forces maintaining five military outposts north of a UN-demarcated blue line inside Lebanese territory. On Syria, Israeli officials told embassy staff they doubted its president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, had the “ability and willingness to control his security forces”. They expressed what the internal report called “grave” concern over Turkish military entrenchment, warning it could “create a strategic threat to Israel”. Israel has maintained a military presence in the UN buffer zone separating Israel and Syria since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, a move widely condemned internationally but which Israel insists is a defensive necessity. The cable was sent the day before US and Israeli strikes on Iran began. Within 72 hours, Hezbollah had fired rockets into northern Israel for the first time since the 2024 ceasefire, Israel had bombed Beirut and Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, had convened an emergency cabinet meeting demanding that Hezbollah disarm. In January, Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, showed little sign he would heed that call, saying that any attack on Tehran was an attack on Hezbollah.

US submarine sank Iranian warship off Sri Lanka’s coast, Hegseth says

The US has carried out a submarine torpedo strike that sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka, according to the US secretary of defence. Pete Hegseth confirmed that the US was behind the deadly strike on an Iranian frigate that killed at least 80 people, as it was sailing close to the Sri Lankan coast. “An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said. He said the attack was carried out by a US navy submarine late on Tuesday night. “It was sunk by a torpedo, a quiet death – the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since world war II,” said Hegseth. “Like in that war, back when we were still the war department, we are fighting to win.” According to Sri Lanka’s foreign affairs minister, Vijitha Herath, the Sri Lankan coastguard received a distress call from an Iranian navy ship, the Iris Dena, at 5.08am on Wednesday. Crew members had described the incident as an explosion. “By 6am we dispatched a naval vessel and by 7am the second naval vessel,” Herath said. He said Sri Lanka had an obligation to respond to their call for help as the country was a signatory to the international convention on maritime search and rescue. The Iranian ship was outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters but still within its economic zone, 44 nautical miles (81km) off the southern coastal city of Galle. Sri Lankan officials confirmed that at least 80 people were killed in the strike. According to officials, 32 of the crew were rescued and taken to a hospital in Galle. The deadly strike comes amid the war in the Middle East, after the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran over the weekend. The submarine strike marks an escalation in hostilities and is the first US attack on Iran’s military to take place outside the Middle East since the war began. The Iris Dena warship was the newest frigate in the Iranian naval fleet and was equipped with surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, cannon, machine guns and torpedo launchers. The vessel was probably passing by Sri Lanka as it returned from the international fleet review, which was hosted by the Indian navy last week. The Sri Lanka navy spokesperson Buddhika Sampath said rescue efforts were continuing and the main focus of the operation was to “help survivors”. A senior Sri Lankan official told the Guardian the Iranian embassy in Colombo had indicated through back channels that they believed their ship had been targeted by a US strike. The official said the Iranians claimed that the ship’s defence and counterattack capabilities were disabled by electromagnetic means before the attack. The Iranian government has yet to officially comment on the incident. Another Sri Lankan defence source said it appeared that the vessel had been hit by two torpedoes that struck the middle of the ship. Rohan Gunaratna, a well-connected Sri Lankan defence analyst, confirmed he had been informed that the ship had been targeted by the US in a torpedo attack from a submarine. The main US naval base in the Indian Ocean is Diego Garcia, located in the Chagos archipelago, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) away from Sri Lanka. The US involvement in the targeting of the Iranian ship signals a further escalation of its military attacks on Iran. The heavy bombardment has already killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other high-ranking Iranian officials, as well as targeting Iran’s ballistic missile and air defence systems. In response, Iran launched missile strikes across the Middle East and halted all shipments through the strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical oil-shipping corridor. The strikes continued into a fifth day on Wednesday, as Israel launched a further wave of strikes on the Iranian capital, Tehran. On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, tweeted his solidarity with the United Arab Emirates after it was targeted in retaliatory strikes by Iran, stating that Sri Lanka “stands firmly with the UAE and is ready to assist in any way it can”.

Trump administration waging illegal war on Iran, experts say

The Trump administration is waging an illegal war on Iran, one that defies both the US constitution and international armed conflict laws, according to several legal scholars and bipartisan lawmakers. The Senate will vote Wednesday on whether to halt Donald Trump’s military offensive, which he launched on 28 February. Hundreds of people, including six US personnel, have been killed in a conflict that has now expanded to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Israel and the Persian Gulf. The Trump administration has offered shifting explanations for its decision to launch attacks on Iran, at times describing a more pre-emptive war of choice designed to degrade Iran’s offensive and nuclear capabilities, while at other times asserting that the Iranians weren’t willing to renounce their nuclear ambitions, or that the US joined the attack to protect American interests after Israel had committed to launching a military offensive of its own. “An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American,” the president said in his first public remarks from Washington on Monday. “We cannot allow a nation that raises terrorist armies to possess such weapons.” Trump has also described broader wartime objectives, including eliminating threats posed by Iran’s regional proxy forces. He has not set out a clear timeline for achieving his various goals. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, offered a slightly different explanation, saying that the White House was compelled to launch strikes on Iran because its close ally Israel was determined to act. “It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone – the United States or Israel or anyone – they were going to respond, and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters gathered at the Capitol. “There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. Several lawyers have challenged the legal basis for the administration’s wide-ranging explanations for waging war. “Those are military policy objectives,” said Wells Dixon, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights after reviewing Trump’s rationale. “They are not a legal basis to launch an armed attack against another country.” Marko Milanovic, a professor of International law at the University of Reading, agreed that Iran may pose a threat, but said that there are many ways to respond. “Using force would require a basis in self defense,” he said. The Trump administration has previously touted its success in “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear facilities. But Trump revived the specter of an Iranian threat in his State of the Union address, saying that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.” Trump has not provided public evidence of this threat. Rubio’s statements invoked two legal concepts that could possibly justify waging war abroad – including the concept of an “imminent threat” posed to American lives, and the concept of launching preemptive strikes as an act of self defense. There are carve outs within international law that permit states to act in their own self defense. And the concept of an “imminent threat” is measured against evidence of a clear, visible and impending risk. But experts say that neither criteria was present in the case of Iran. “For something to be lawful self defense, it has to be necessary – in the sense that there’s no alternative,” said Brian Finucane, a former state department lawyer. “That’s not the situation here. There was another option: the US could have restrained Israel from attacking in the first place.” Finucane said that previous administrations have drawn this line with Israel. “Saying that, ‘Instead of stopping Netanyahu, we’re going to start it first’ – it’s a completely circular and crazy thing,” Milanovic chimed in. Several lawmakers shared in the lawyers’ assessment of Iran’s potential threat. “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel,” said Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee. “If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.” Senator Tim Kaine said he has supported US efforts to defend Israel during previous Iranian attacks, “but that’s a very different matter than the US engaging in the affirmative initiation of war,” he said. “We shouldn’t be waging an affirmative war on behalf of any nation in the world, no matter how close we are,” Kaine said. After the Vietnam war, the US adopted new constitutional provisions that say the president should try to consult with members of Congress before committing troops to hostilities. Last week, Rubio only briefed the Gang of Eight, a group of bipartisan lawmakers privy to information on covert actions and classified intelligence, about US plans to attack Iran. “Their pattern, thus far, seems to be to take action, and then give [us] a briefing afterwards,” Kaine said. “They’re trying to consign Congress to the role of a spectator, but that’s not the role that Article 1 [of the constitution] assigns to us.” Dixon said there was “a little bit of flexibility” on whether the president may commit troops without first consulting Congress. “But certainly he has to notify them within 48 hours,” Dixon said. The White House submitted a War Powers report to Congress on Monday night. Dixon noted that a separate requirement under the War Powers Act says that troops must be withdrawn immediately from hostilities within 60 to 90 days unless Congress votes to authorize the operation. This week’s war powers vote may shape how Trump proceeds with military action against Iran, even if it ultimately cannot sustain enough support to override a likely veto from Trump. “I think it can be an important political signal if there’s sufficient bipartisan support,” Finucane said. Previous congressional votes have seemed to deter further US aggression. “The president announced after one of our previous votes that he was scrapping a second wave of strikes on Venezuela,” said Kaine, who has introduced similar legislation to govern US engagements in the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela. “The mere fact of the vote, even if it’s unsuccessful, can have an impact.”

Mojtaba Khamenei, son of former supreme leader, tipped to become Iran’s next head of state

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. No official confirmation has been given and the announcement may be delayed until after the funeral of Ali Khamenei, which was on Wednesday postponed. His son is believed to have been the choice of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Israeli defence minister, Gideon Saar, has warned he will be assassinated. Ayatollah Seyed Khatani, a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses the new supreme leader, said the assembly was close to selecting a leader. Rigid in his anti-western views, Mojtaba Khamenei is not the candidate Donald Trump would have wanted. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said on Tuesday that Iran was run by “religious fanatic lunatics” – and Khamenei’s appointment is hardly likely to dispel that opinion. The choice of supreme leader is made by the 88-strong Assembly of Experts, who in this case are picking from a field of six possible candidates. His election would be a powerful if unsurprising symbol that the government is not looking to find an accommodation with America. Trump has said the worst-case scenario would be if Khamenei’s successor was “as bad as the previous person”. There has been speculation for more than a decade that he would be his father’s successor, which grew when Ebrahim Raisi, the elected president and favourite of Khamenei, was killed in a helicopter crash. Mojtaba Khamenei was born in 1969 and studied theology after graduating from high school. At the age of 17, he went to serve in the Iran-Iraq war, but it was not until the late 1990s that he came to be recognised as a public figure in his own right. After the landslide defeat of Khamenei’s preferred candidate, Ali Akbar Nategh Nuri, in the 1997 presidential election, where he won only 25% of the final vote, various conservative Iranian groups realised the need to make changes to their structures and Mojtaba Khamenei was central to that project. He was also seen as instrumental by reformists in suppressing the protests in 2009 that came after allegations the presidential election had been rigged, with his name chanted in the streets as one of those responsible. Mostafa Tajzadeh, a senior member of Iran’s reformist parties who was imprisoned after the vote, alleged that his and his wife, Fakhr al-Sadat Mohtashamipour’s, legal case was under the direct supervision of Mojtaba Khamenei. In 2022 he was given the title of ayatollah – essential to his promotion. By then he was a regular figure by his father’s side at political meetings, as well as playing an influential role in the Islamic Republic’s Broadcasting Corporation, the government’s official media outlet often criticised for churning out dull political propaganda that many Iranians reject in favour of overseas satellite channels. He has also played a central role in the administration of his father’s substantial financial empire. His closest political allies are Ahmad Vahidi, the newly appointed IRGC commander; Hossein Taeb, a former head of the IRGC’s intelligence organisation; and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the current speaker of the parliament. His rumoured appointment and its hereditary nature has long been resisted by reformists. The former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, referring to the long history of rumours about Mojtaba Khamenei succeeding his father as leader, wrote in 2022: “News of this conspiracy have been heard for 13 years. If they are not truly pursuing it, why don’t they deny such an intention once and for all?” The Assembly of Experts, in response, denounced “meaninglessness of doubts” and said the assembly would select only “the most qualified and the most suitable”. Israel on Tuesday struck the building in the Iranian city of Qom, one of Shia Islam’s main seats of power, where the assembly was scheduled, but the building was empty, according to IRGC-affiliated media.

Israel carries out fresh strikes on Tehran and Beirut as Iran targets US bases in Gulf

Israel has carried out another wave of strikes on Tehran and Beirut while Iranian missiles continued to fly toward Israel and the Gulf as the war with Iran entered its fifth day. Explosions were heard across Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning as the Israeli military announced “broad-scale strikes” on Iranian regime targets. Police stations and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) headquarters in the Kurdish regions of north-western Iran were also razed by strikes, Kurdish media reported. Iran’s death toll soared, as estimates of those killed by strikes rose to 800 to 1,500 people in five days of war. US and Israeli officials said the war was so far going better than they expected, but it was unclear what the end goal of their campaign was as they had offered contradictory aims. The Trump administration has said at various times that its goal was regime change, destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capacity and its navy, preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon, and putting a stop to its support for proxies across the region. The US president, Donald Trump, said that some of the individuals he was considering as possible post-war leaders of Iran were killed in the opening days of the war. On Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late shah of Iran, Trump said he preferred “someone from within” Iran. In Iran, funeral proceedings for the late head of state, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, started in Tehran on Wednesday morning. The body of Khamenei, killed in US-Israeli airstrikes on Sunday, is due to be on display for three days in a large compound in central Tehran for the public to view. The funeral came as Iran’s senior clerics met to appoint a new supreme leader, a position that functions as both head of state and commander in chief of its vast military apparatus. The reported favoured candidate of clerics was Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei and preferred choice of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Analysts have said that Mojtaba Khamenei is a hardliner and his choice as successor would signal an increasing role for the IRGC in Iran. His appointment would signify a doubling down on the Iranian regime’s authoritarian response to domestic calls for reform. Frustration with the government had exploded into weeks-long protests earlier in the year, put down by a brutal government crackdown that left at least 7,000 dead. Iran continued to strike US bases and installations across the Gulf, targeting the US embassy in Saudi Arabia and consulate in the United Arab Emirates. Iranian drones and missiles also struck US military radars and early warning systems in Bahrain and Qatar, unprecedented strikes for US bases in the region, which have enjoyed almost unchallenged primacy since the first Gulf war. Israeli authorities said Iran launched missile barrages overnight and into the early morning at Israel, though most missiles were intercepted and no casualties were recorded. Hezbollah also continued targeting Israel, shooting salvos of rockets and suicide drones at military bases and gatherings of troops in northern Israel. Hezbollah media also said it had struck three Israeli Merkava tanks that entered southern Lebanon, and downed an Israeli drone in Lebanese airspace. In response, Israel carried out wide-ranging airstrikes across Lebanon, particularly in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with explosions rattling the capital into Wednesday morning. Israel also struck a hotel without warning in Hazmieh, south-east of Beirut, about 700 metres from the presidential palace. Lebanon’s health ministry announced that six people were killed in the strikes, bringing the total death toll since Monday to 46. At least 58,000 people were displaced around the country by the strikes, and a state of panic descended on the country, where rumours of evacuation orders resulted in people fleeing from certain areas and buildings en masse, sometimes erroneously. The US and Israel provided an optimistic assessment of their war so far, with Adm Brad Cooper, the head of US central command, saying the US has struck about 2,000 targets in the last few days. Cooper said the US has “severely degraded Iran’s air defences” and destroyed large weapons caches and ballistic missile launchers. The Israeli military spokesperson Brig Gen Effie Defrin said it had struck a building in the Iranian city of Qom, where religious authorities had been meeting to elect a new supreme leader. Iranian media claimed the building was empty when it was struck and Defrin said Israel was checking for casualties. The Israeli military also said it struck sites in Iran that were being used to store ballistic missiles and that it had destroyed a secret underground facility used to develop “key components” for nuclear weapons. Iran has long maintained that it does not want a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear programme is for civilian use.