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Middle East crisis live: Iran will completely close strait of Hormuz if Trump acts on infrastructure threats, says IRG

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said “threats and terror” are strengthening Iranian unity, after Donald Trump yesterday warned he would “obliterate” Iranian power plants if the strait of Hormuz is not opened within 48 hours. Pezeshkian said: The illusion of erasing Iran from the map shows desperation against the will of a history-making nation. Threats and terror only strengthen our unity. The Strait of Hormuz is open to all except those who violate our soil. We firmly confront delirious threats on the battlefield.

Iran says it will ‘irreversibly destroy’ Middle East infrastructure if US attacks energy sites

Iran has said it will “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure across the Middle East if the US attacks its energy sites, hours after Donald Trump threatened to “obliterate” the country’s power plants if the strait of Hormuz was not opened within two days. As Iranian missiles struck two southern Israeli cities overnight, injuring dozens and shattering apartment buildings, the developments signalled a dangerous potential escalation of the war in the Middle East, which is now in its fourth week. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, said on Sunday that “vital infrastructure as well as energy and oil infrastructure” across the region would become “legitimate targets” as soon as his country’s own was attacked. A statement on state media cited an Iranian military spokesperson as saying any strike on Iran’s energy facilities would prompt attacks on US and Israeli energy and assets across the region, specifically information technology and desalination facilities. On Saturday, the US president gave Iran 48 hours – until shortly before midnight GMT on Monday – to open the strait of Hormuz, a vital pathway for the oil flows, or the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants “starting with the biggest one first”. Ali Mousavi, Iran’s representative to the International Maritime Organisation, said on Sunday the strait was open to all shipping except vessels linked to “Iran’s enemies”, with passage possible by coordinating security arrangements with Tehran. Iranian attacks have in effect closed the narrow strait, which carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, causing the world’s worst oil crisis since the 1970s and sending European gas prices surging as much as 35% last week. More than 2,000 people have been killed since 28 February when the US and Israel began their attacks on Iran, with Tehran in turn striking targets in Israel and the Gulf states. Lebanon was drawn in after Iran-backed Hezbollah attacked Israel. Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours of Sunday morning, warning of incoming missiles from Iran, after scores of people were injured overnight in two separate attacks on the southern Israeli towns of Arad and Dimona. The Israeli army said on Sunday morning that it would strike Tehran in retaliation. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said during a visit to Arad that senior commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards would be “personally” pursued. “We’re going after the regime. We’re going after the IRGC, this criminal gang,” Netanyahu said. “We’re going after them personally, their leaders, their installations, their economic assets.” Israel’s military said it had not been able to intercept the missiles that hit Dimona and Arad, the nearest large cities to the country’s Negev Desert nuclear centre, which houses what is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal. Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, insisting that the site is for research. The strikes marked the the first time that Iranian missiles had penetrated Israel’s air defence systems in the area. The strikes wounded about 200 people, including a 12-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both reported to be in a serious condition. The Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 reported early indications of possible deaths but there was no official confirmation. Iran said the attacks had been launched in response to a strike on its main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz on Saturday. Israel denied responsibility for that attack; and in Washington, the Pentagon declined to comment. In Tel Aviv, 15 more people were injured on Sunday morning in a separate attack involving a cluster bomb. The attacks are adding to mounting pressure on Israel’s air defence systems, with Iranian strikes increasingly testing their limits. The World Health Organization said that the war was at a “perilous stage” and called for restraint. “Attacks targeting nuclear sites create an escalating threat to public health and environmental safety,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said. Tehran also fired long-range missiles for the first time on Saturday, the Israeli military chief, Eyal Zamir, said. Two ballistic missiles with a range of 4,000km (2,500 miles) were fired at the US-British Indian Ocean military base at Diego Garcia, Zamir said. The British cabinet minister Steve Reed said one missile “fell short” while another missile was intercepted”, saying there was no assessment backing claims that Iran was planning to strike Europe. The Israel Defense Forces had said Iran had missiles “that can reach London, Paris or Berlin”. But Reed said he was not aware of any assessment at all that Iran was even trying to target Europe, “let alone that they could if they tried”. He added in a separate interviewthat Trump was “speaking for himself” when he threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants. Analysts said Trump’s threat had placed “a 48-hour ticking time bomb of elevated uncertainty” over energy and financial markets, with a “black Monday” of plunging stock markets and surging energy prices looming unless it was rowed back. At least six overnight attacks targeted a US diplomatic and logistics centre at Baghdad airport, Iraqi officials said, while Saudi Arabia said three missiles had been detected over Riyadh. The UAE said it had responded to Iranian missile and drone attacks. In southern Lebanon, Israel said its military raided Hezbollah sites on Sunday and killed 10 of the group’s fighters. Hezbollah said it attacked several border areas in northern Israel. One person was killed in an Israeli kibbutz, emergency services said. Three Turkish nationals, including a soldier, and three Qatari service personnel were killed after a helicopter crashed in Qatar’s territorial waters, the Gulf country’s defence ministry said on Sunday.

Iran not believed to have capability or intent to bomb Britain, says UK minister

Iran is not believed to have the capability or intent to hit the UK with its missiles, a cabinet minister has said, after Tehran aimed two at the UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. One missile failed to reach the island, while another was shot down by a US warship, according to reports. It was the longest-range attack yet by Iran since the country was attacked by the US and Israel. Asked about Israeli warnings that the UK and other parts of Europe could be targeted by Iranian missiles, Steve Reed, the communities secretary, told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “There is no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK or [that they] even could if they wanted to.” On why Israel had issued such a warning, he said: “You would need to speak to the Israelis.” Reed added: “Whatever people might say, the UK is not going to be dragged into this war, but we will take appropriate collective defensive action to keep our nationals and our interests safe. “I’m not aware of any assessment at all that they are even trying to target Europe, let alone that they could if they tried. But even if they did, we have the necessary military capability to defend this country.” Asked about the attack on Diego Garcia, which is part of the Chagos Islands archipelago, more than 2,000 miles (3,200km) from Iran, Reed said one missile was intercepted and the other “fell short”, refusing to say how close to the base it had travelled. Keir Starmer’s government refused US requests to use UK airbases for the initial attack on Iran in late February, in part because ministers were warned it was likely to be in breach of international law. It has, however, since allowed the use of British bases for strikes on Iranian sites targeting British allies and interests in Gulf states. On Saturday, this scope was expanded to allow attacks on missile launchers that were targeting commercial shipping in the strait of Hormuz. Reed said the UK was seeking de-escalation and would not be pulled further into the conflict. “If you take the decision, as any British government should, that we will defend British people and British assets across the region, and the Iranians start targeting different assets, then of course, we have to respond to that and defend them as well. That doesn’t take away one iota from our interest and focus on de-escalation,” he told Sky News. Reed refused to comment on Donald Trump’s threat that Tehran had 48 hours to reopen the strait of Hormuz to shipping or face the destruction of Iran’s energy infrastructure. “The US president is perfectly capable of speaking for himself and defending what it is that he saying. Our position in the UK is absolutely clear as well. We’re not going to be dragged into this war,” Reed told Sky. Pressed on Trump’s comments, he added: “You need to ask President Trump about the things that President Trump is talking about doing.”

Slovenia goes to polls in election marked by claims of anti-Romany rhetoric

Campaigners in Slovenia have warned of a surge in anti-Romany rhetoric as the country heads to the polls on Sunday, leaving many bracing for the outcome of a vote that has become, in part, a referendum on how the country treats its most marginalised. In Sunday’s vote, the prime minister, Robert Golob, of the centre-left Freedom Movement party, faces off against the rightwing populist and Donald Trump ally Janez Janša. Polls suggest Janša’s Slovenian Democratic party has a narrow lead, though neither candidate appears likely to secure a majority in the country’s 90-seat parliament. In the months leading up to the elections, much of the focus has been on accusations of graft and access to public services, including health care. Questions of social policy have also threaded through the campaign, with campaigners accusing both Golob and Janša of scapegoating the country’s Romany minority. Golob’s government was accused last year of treating Romany people as a security threat, while Janša, athree-time former prime minister, has claimed they benefit from a double standard when it comes to rights and equality. “We Roma are facing two evils here in the election,” said Zvonko Golobič, who heads the Association for the Development of the Roma Community in the south-eastern town of Črnomelj. “So the question is: who is less evil?” Slovenia’s population of about 2.1 million includes an estimated 12,000 Roma. Many are singularly vulnerable: in 2020, Amnesty International said that life expectancy for Roma in Slovenia was 22 years lower than the rest of the population, and infant mortality more than four times higher. Several communities in the country continue to lack access to clean drinking water, electricity and sanitation as well as basic infrastructure and essential services. The election – and the discourse about Roma that has swirled in previous months – has left many worried that the community’s rights will be further eroded, said Haris Tahirović, the president of an umbrella group representing Romany communities across the country. “At this moment Roma are really afraid of who will come to power, what the political options will be, and what will happen after the elections,” he said. In November, the government passed a law that, in the view of campaigners, turned some Romany neighbourhoods into “security zones” by giving police power to enter homes in so-called “high-risk” areas and conduct raids without a warrant. The “Šutar law” was introduced after the death of Aleš Šutar, who was killed in an altercation linked to members of the Romany community. While Golob has said the measures are not aimed at “any particular ethnic group but against crime itself”, critics including Amnesty International have said they disproportionately affect the Romany community. Esther Major, Amnesty’s deputy director for research in Europe, said in a statement last November: “While not explicitly aimed at the Roma population, the vitriolic rhetoric used by the government to justify these measures raises serious fears that they would be deployed arbitrarily and discriminatorily against the Roma population. “Coupled with the security crackdown, punitive restrictions on social benefits could further penalise the most marginalised families.” Tahirović said it was little coincidence that Golob introduced the law in the run-up to the election. “He used it to scapegoat Roma because he recognised Roma as the easiest target to attack in order to save his place as prime minister,” he said. Even so, campaigners said it was likely that Janša – an ally of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, whose previous term in power was marked by attacks on media and migrants – would leave the community worse off. “He would be even more radical,” said Golobič, who is standing as a candidate for the newly formed We, Socialists! party, which is expected to receive about 1% of the vote in the election. “The stakes are high.” Before Sunday’s election, Janša suggested he would push for harsher sentences for Roma and potentially increase the number of areas designated “high risk”, meaning more Romany settlements could be targeted by security measures. Janša has also vowed to cut funding for civil society, a move that could hinder the ability of the Romany community to organise and speak up about issues that affect them. Tahirović said: “We’re not asking for anything other than to be an equal part of this society.” The election contest has heated up in recent weeks, after leaked audio and video recordings purporting to expose government corruption were published on an anonymous website. Golob has denied the claims. This week an investigation alleged that Janša met individuals in December linked to the Israeli spy company Black Cube, sparking questions as to whether the agency, best known for working with Harvey Weinstein to allegedly quash reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct, was behind the anonymous website. Janša has denied any wrongdoing. Commentators have warned that the polarising campaign, pitting the populist Janša against Golob, the centre-left incumbent, has left the country at a crossroads. Robert Botteri, an editor at the magazine Mladina, told Reuters: “These are … perhaps the most important elections ever in Slovenia because they will decide if Slovenia remains a democratic welfare state or it aligns with illiberal democracies.”

Mayoral races in balance as voting opens in last round of French local elections

Voting is under way in France in the second round of local elections seen as a bellwether for next year’s presidential race – with cities including Paris and Marseille in the balance and both the radical left and far right hoping for gains. Most of France’s 35,000-odd communes elected their councils in the first round last Sunday, but in municipalities where the contest is tighter, including most large urban areas, the second round will be decisive, with electoral alliances playing a key role. Analysts say that while local elections are often decided at least partly on local issues, they can hold important lessons for national ballots. “They create momentum, provide a boost and establish a narrative,” said Frédéric Dabi of the polling institute Ifop. Besides indicating voter sentiment before the 2027 vote – which, with Emmanuel Macron due to step down, the far-right National Rally (RN) sees as its best chance yet of seizing power – the local elections can suggest which tactical alliances may be struck nationally. One of the tightest races is in the French capital, where city hall has been held by the Socialist party (PS) since 2001 and the centre-left candidate Emmanuel Grégoire topped the first round with 38%, ahead of the conservative Rachida Dati on 25.5%. Three others qualified for the second round. However, a moderate rightwinger, Pierre-Yves Bournazel, has since merged his list with Dati’s, while the far right’s Sarah Knafo has withdrawn – potentially uniting the capital’s rightwing vote. On the left, Grégoire has refused to join forces with Sophia Chikirou of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical-left France Unbowed (LFI), which much of the mainstream left has refused to team up with over claims of extremism, antisemitism and violence. The centre-left candidate therefore faces a three-way race that, if he wins, will comfort the mainstream left’s reluctance to work with LFI – or if he loses, will be hailed by the right as proof of the potential of a broader rightwing alliance. The dynamic is very different in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, where the far-right National Rally (RN) candidate, Franck Allisio, finished barely one percentage point behind the outgoing centre-left mayor, Benoît Payan, in the first round. Like Grégoire in Paris, Payan ruled out an alliance with LFI – but its candidate, Sébastien Delogu, withdrew, saying the RN must be kept out at all costs. And a conservative candidate, despite RN calls for her to stand down, has stayed in the race. The RN, the largest single party in the French parliament, also has high hopes in Toulon and the Riviera city of Nice, where its ally Éric Ciotti, running as a joint candidate for his own breakaway conservative party and the RN, is the frontrunner. Bruno Retailleau, the national leader of the main conservative party, Les Républicains (LR), has refused to back the outgoing centre-right mayor of Nice against Ciotti, potentially clearing the way for a conservative and far-right electoral alliance next year. In some cities, the radical left is seen as the force to resist, with the PS merging its list with Macron’s centrists in Strasbourg to fight off an LFI threat, and the Socialists uniting with the Greens in Lille to try to block the radical-left party. But elsewhere, local alliances between the mainstream and radical left could have successes in cities such as Avignon, Brest, Nantes and Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city, while LFI could win the northern city of Roubaix under its own steam. A final key race to watch is in the port city of Le Havre, where the mayor, the former prime minister Édouard Philippe, is well placed to keep his job – and may become a leading presidential contender against the RN’s Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen. Polling stations opened at 8am local time and will close in the major cities at 8pm, with results expected in the course of the evening.

Iran social media strategy pivots to information war amid US-Israel attack

Iran has radically overhauled its social media strategy in an all-out information war launched by the country’s Islamic rulers in response to US and Israeli military attacks. Cyber experts say Iranian foreign influence operations have gone into overdrive as part of an “asymmetric” campaign designed to complement its military retaliation and intensify moral pressure on the US and Israel into curtailing their war efforts. It has meant flooding platforms such as X, Instagram and Bluesky with targeted postings calculated to exploit the war’s unpopularity in the US, including among supporters of Donald Trump. Previous multi-pronged communications aimed at fomenting support for causes such as Scottish independence and Irish unification have been jettisoned in favour of a single-issue message that has included AI-generated videos and memes mocking Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. Some AI generated footage has faked successful strikes on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, bomb damage supposedly inflicted on buildings in Tel Aviv, and Israeli soldiers supposedly crying in fear over Iranian retaliation. The Iranian campaign has been sufficiently effective to draw complaints from Trump, who accused Iran of using AI as a “disinformation weapon”. The intensified onslaught has come as the regime imposed a near-total internet blackout in Iran while threatening punishments against anyone using satellite internet connections, such as Starlink. Government agents have also reportedly tried to intimidate Iranians living abroad against posting online messages against the regime or in favor the US-Israeli war effort. Expatriate Iranians report receiving phone calls or online warnings that their citizenship will be revoked or family members in Iran harmed unless they stop posting. Analysts believe the cyber effort has become a central component of the regime’s survival strategy, along with military retaliation against US and allied targets, and closure of the strait of Hormuz. “It’s absolutely asymmetric warfare,” said Darren Linvill, co-director of the Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub in South Carolina and author of a study into Iran’s tactics. “The use of artificial intelligence is impressive, and it’s at a rate that I don’t think anybody’s seen before to the same extent or in the same way. “Iran is using every advantage they had. They had been preparing for this conflict for almost 50 years, and this was part of what they prepared for. They understand the media ecosystem.” The Clemson study found that Iranian social media efforts previously aimed at exploiting political discord in the UK and US were immediately redirected after the American-Israeli military strikes began on 28 February. Superficially-authentic troll accounts hitherto focused exclusively on Scottish or Irish politics, or criticising Keir Starmer or the Royal family, instead denounced the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the lethal strike on a school in the Iranian city of Minab that killed up to 175 people, mostly school girls. The troll accounts, as well as those in the US with Latino identities that primarily posted against Trump’s anti-migration agenda, have since been suspended. They have been replaced by content placed by Iranian proxies and embassies, which experts say is sometimes so effective that it is re-posted numerous times, compounding popular misgivings over an already, deeply unpopular war. “All their normal operations have been completely upended in order to focus on the war,” said Linvill. “They are very focused on the existential threat that is the ongoing war with Israel and the United States. “There were accounts run by the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] pretending to be Scottish and Irish and talking about Scottish and Irish politics one day and then exclusively focused the war in Iran and unabashed Iranian propaganda the next. “To use those same assets to suddenly talk about how the supreme leader is a martyr seems a little inauthentic from a voice that’s supposedly a 20-year-old girl in county Cork.” A key part of the goal appears to be to harness criticism of the war among Trump’s increasingly disenchanted from Maga (make America great again) allies. Press TV, Iranian state television’s English language satellite channel, posted four clips from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Joe Kent, who resigned this week as the Trump administration’s counterterrorism adviser, on its social media account within one hour on Thursday. Iranian propaganda operators would have seized on Kent’s assertion – voiced in his resignation letter and in his interview with Carlson – that Israel led the US into the war, said Alex Goldenberg, an expert on online threats and foreign influence campaigns. “A core part of the Iranian information model is identifying fault lines in American political debate and amplifying them,” he said. “For years, that meant platforming fringe movements on the left with demonstrable sympathies toward adversarial regimes. What’s significant now is is that Iranian state media has found new and growing supply of content on the right, where rhetoric questioning Israeli influence over American foreign policy is trafficking in overt antisemitism. “Iran doesn’t need to create that content. It simply presents itself.”

Trump tells Iran it has 48 hours to open Hormuz or US will ‘obliterate’ its power plants

Donald Trump has given Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait of Hormuz to shipping or face the destruction of its energy infrastructure, as Tehran launched its most destructive attack yet on Israel. The ultimatum, made just a day after the US president said he was considering “winding down” military operations after three weeks of war, came as the key oil passage remained effectively closed and thousands more US Marines headed to the Middle East. Trump wrote on Truth Social that the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran had imposed restrictions only on vessels from countries involved in attacks against Iran, and would assist others that stayed out of the conflict. In response to Trump’s threat, Iran’s army said it will target energy and desalination infrastructure “belonging to the US and the regime in the region,” according to the Fars news agency. Trump’s ultimatum came hours after two Iranian missiles struck southern Israel, injuring more than 100 people in the most destructive attack since the war began. The Israel prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to retaliate “on all fronts”. The strikes, which slipped through Israel’s missile defence systems, tore open the facades of residential buildings and carved craters into the ground. First responders said 84 people were injured in the town of Arad, 10 of them seriously. Hours earlier, 33 were wounded in nearby Dimona, where AFPTV footage showed a large hole gouged into the ground next to piles of rubble and twisted metal. Dimona hosts a facility widely believed to be the site of the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, although Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons. The Israeli army told Agence France-Presse there had been a “direct missile hit on a building” in Dimona, with casualties reported at multiple sites, including a 10-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel wounds. Netanyahu vowed to continue striking Iran. Hours later, the Israeli military said its forces had launched a wave of strikes on Tehran. Iran said the targeting of Dimona was retaliation for Israeli strikes on its Natanz nuclear facility, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) saying forces also targeted other southern Israeli towns as well as military sites in Kuwait and the UAE. After the Natanz attack, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, reiterated his call for “military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident”. The Natanz facility hosts underground centrifuges used to enrich uranium for Iran’s disputed nuclear programme; it sustained damage in the June 2025 war. The Israeli military denied it was behind the Natanz strike, but said it had struck a facility at a Tehran university that it claimed was being used to develop nuclear weapon components for Iran’s ballistic missile programme. The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday it faced aerial attacks after Iran warned it against allowing strikes from its territory on disputed islands near the strait of Hormuz. Iran has choked the vital waterway, which carries a fifth of global crude oil trade in peacetime. The standoff has sent crude oil prices soaring, with North Sea Brent crude now trading above $105 a barrel, as long-term consequences for the global economy become an acute concern. A joint statement from the leaders of several countries – including the UK, France, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Australia, the UAE and Bahrain – condemned the “de facto closure of the strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces”. “We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” they said. Trump has slammed Nato allies as “cowards” and urged them to secure the strait. On Sunday, Japan said it could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the strait of Hormuz, if a ceasefire is reached. The foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, said: “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider,” Motegi said on Japanese TV. Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Japan to use its self-defence forces overseas if an attack, including on a close security partner, threatens Japan’s survival and no other means are available to address it. Japan gets about 90% of its oil shipments via the strait, which Tehran has largely closed during the war, now in its fourth week With Reuters and Agence France-Presse