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Middle East crisis live: Trump threatens ‘much worse’ to come amid renewed US strikes; sirens sound in Kuwait and Bahrain

Control over the strait of Hormuz, and how it might be managed in the future is one of the key points of contention between the US and Iran. Why does this narrow strait matter so much? The strait of Hormuz is one of the most important arteries for global trade. About 20% of all oil supplies and about 20% of seaborne gas tankers pass through it. The strait lies between Oman and Iran. It links the Gulf to the north with the Gulf of Oman to the south and the Arabian Sea beyond. It is 20 miles (33km) wide at its narrowest point, with the shipping lanes just 2 miles (3km) wide in either direction. This location makes it a crucial choke point for oil deliveries from Opec countries to customers in Asia. Options to bypass the strait are limited.

Pip review is an opportunity – and headache – for Andy Burnham

If Andy Burnham is keen to deliver “change” as prime minister, then the government’s landmark review into disability benefits has just handed him a big opportunity – and a potentially even bigger headache. Stephen Timms, the disability minister tasked with reforming personal independence payments (Pip) after Labour MPs forced Keir Starmer to U-turn on cuts last summer, did not pull his punches in his interim report. The entire assessment system must be redrawn as part of a “radical” welfare overhaul, he warned, as disability benefits are “not fit for purpose”. The process, he added, is not simply widely ineffective but “dehumanising” for disabled people. That’s a judgment that few campaigners, charities or thinktanks would surely disagree with – all of whom have argued for years that Pip, brought in by the Coalition government in 2013, has led to a system plagued by basic errors, insensitivity and widespread wrongful rejections, resulting in increased poverty and food bank use and, in extreme cases, deaths. What exactly a “radical” overhaul should entail, however, will be less easy to agree on. Labour MPs will have to wait until the autumn for Timms’ detailed recommendations. But the interim findings give some hints. The points-based system currently used to assess disabled people’s day to day needs comes in for the heaviest criticism in the report, with Timms arguing there should be a new system that “adequately reflects the diverse reality and needs of disabled people today”, in particular the growth in fluctuating or less visible conditions such as depression, which are “harder to evidence.” But will the full report recommend a redesign of the assessment or go as far as to advocate for ditching a points-based system entirely? Campaigners will probably push for new rules to give more weight to evidence from disabled people’s own doctors, with claimants having long reported that the system disregards detailed medical records in favour of brief, function-based questions asked by private assessors who are often unqualified in their condition. Pip assessors include paramedics and physiotherapists. The report – prepared in collaboration with disabled people in what is the largest co-production undertaken at national level – is littered with crumbs that are aimed at winning the trust of both claimants and MPs on the left of the party. Highlights include countering media claims of a “bloated welfare bill” by acknowledging total benefit expenditure as a proportion of GDP has actually remained roughly the same in recent years, despite rises in Pip spending, to accepting the population has genuinely become sicker due to the pandemic, NHS backlogs and the cost of living. Nonetheless, there will be some alarm over the report’s admission that the next stage in the autumn will examine how any new assessment could help people to work where able, despite the fact Pip is paid to disabled people regardless of their job status. Timms argues that the current assessment acts a barrier to work as it encourages claimants to focus on the worst of their condition, a finding which will be of concern to ministers in light of the growing numbers of young people who are unemployed due to ill health. Any attempt to add conditionality to Pip or to link its receipt with whether a disabled person uses it for work would be passionately opposed by campaigners and Labour backbenchers, some of whom were frustrated last summer over the way Pip was misrepresented by colleagues on the media rounds as being an out of work benefit as an apparent means to justify Starmer’s cuts. The government is keen to stress the goal of the Timms report is not to reduce public spending (finding cuts is notably not included in the review’s current remit). But Burnham will come under pressure to lower the benefits bill, with sections of the rightwing media already lobbying him to reduce social security to help fund defence. If disability cuts last year was a key nail in the coffin of Starmer’s leadership, Pip reform will be one of the first big tests for Burnham. Will he oversee the long overdue overhaul of a broken benefits system? And will he resist calls to make cuts part of it? The path he chooses will affect millions of disabled people – and send an early signal for what a Burnham government will really mean.

US launches strikes on Iran for a second day after Trump says agreement to end the war is ‘over’

The US military carried out strikes on Iran for a second day, hours after president Donald Trump said that an interim agreement to end the war was “over”. Late on Wednesday Iranian state media reported explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz; in Sirik, another southern coastal city; and the south-western Bushehr province, home to Iran’s nuclear-power-plant complex. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!” US Central Command confirmed the strikes, posting on X: “At the direction of the Commander in Chief, US Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. On Tuesday three cargo ships ⁠transiting the strait of Hormuz were attacked, leading to the most extensive exchange of fire between the two sides since the interim deal was signed last month. The US Treasury also revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil. The latest escalation dented hopes of turning the memorandum of understanding signed between the two sides on 17 June into a permanent deal to end the war. Iran said earlier on Wednesday it had attacked US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait in response to the earlier US strikes on infrastructure. Wednesday night’s strikes were expected to be bigger than those carried in the first round, an unnamed US official told Reuters. Iranian state TV reported that further explosions were heard on Abu Musa Island. The island is one of three small islands claimed by the United Arab Emirates which provide the backbone of Iran’s control of the strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that the attacks on Bushehr province in southern Iran did not cause damage to the Bushehr nuclear power plant. US stock markets fell on Wednesday and Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped more than 5% to close to $80 a barrel, with the economic impacts of the war continuing to reverberate around the world. The US senator Bernie Sanders said of Trump’s action: “Restarting his reckless war with Iran won’t make America stronger. It will cost more lives and waste more taxpayer dollars.” In a post on X, Sanders added that “after getting the United States into a war based on lies, Trump has now declared the ceasefire with Iran ‘over’ after less than a month”. In the first round of strikes the US hit a variety of military sites and port facilities after Iran’s targeting of several merchant vessels off the coast of Oman. Earlier at the Nato summit in Ankara, Trump said that the US would “probably hit [Iran] hard again tonight”, and later added the latest strikes would not result in “long-term” military action. “Anything that happens is going to happen very fast,” Trump said, though he also suggested the US military might “just finish the job”. Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, the US president said the strikes were continued retaliation for Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the strait of Hormuz. “They are behaving very badly,” he said, accusing the country of launching drones and a missile at ships. Iran has asserted that the interim ceasefire deal gives it the right to manage traffic through the strait. Its parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a key negotiator in talks over a permanent end to the war, wrote on X: “The era of bullying and extortion is over. It leads nowhere. We don’t fold.” On his return trip from the Nato summit, Trump denied that security concerns involving Iran were behind the surprise decision to fly part of the journey on an older Air Force One, and not the new Qatari-gifted jet he arrived in. Asked if he was aware of any credible threats against Air Force One by Iran, Trump brushed off the question. “I have a threat all the time. I’m number one on their list,” he said. The fresh round of strikes came as Iranians were preparing to bury supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his home town of Mashhad in northeast Iran, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes that started the war. The supreme leader’s burial follows a multi-day funeral ceremony that attracted millions of mourners across various cities in both Iran and Iraq.

Atmosphere in Iran remains highly charged after Ayatollah’s funeral and escalation of grievances with US

Before a foreign ministry press briefing at the Grand Hotel Tehran, the assembled reporters were asked to stand for the national anthem that duly blared from fuzzy speakers. At the podium, the ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, claimed the world was witnessing a turning point in the history of Shia Islam. A century from now, he claimed, the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be revered as a second Imam Hussain, the martyred grandson of the prophet Muhammad. Donald Trump, meanwhile, would be seen as a latterday Yazid, the tyrannical 7th century caliph. Normally one of the most level-headed diplomats in the foreign ministry, Baghaei portrayed Iran as the victim of an epochal struggle to protect its independence. Although the streets outside were returning to a form of normality after Khamenei’s funeral procession, the deep wave of religiosity and patriotism it unleashed had not abated, only moved on to Najaf in Iraq, where the supreme leader’s coffin was taken to the shrine of Imam Ali. The atmosphere in Iran could not be more highly charged. So a foul-tempered Donald Trump picked a particularly sensitive moment at the Nato summit in Turkey to describe Iranians as “garbage”, “cancer”, “devils” and “scum”. He declared further talks with Iran a waste of time. It is tempting to see the latest military flare-up, including Tuesday’s exchange of fire in the strait of Hormuz, as just the product of an unfortunate juxtaposition. Trump, aggrieved at Europe’s supposed free-riding at Nato, was generally lashing out; Iran, gripped by grief and religious fervour, was asserting itself as “a brave and resilient nation that harbours no fear of threats or bluster”. On that basis, optimists may hope the current mood may dissipate like a dark passing cloud. After all, Trump left the door open for further talks, and spoke of Israel leaving Lebanon, a key Iranian demand. Unfortunately, such optimism may be misplaced. It seems just as likely that it is not Iran’s diplomats but the military who are now making the decisions, since all the supposed confidence-building measures have fallen flat. There may be no circuit breaker to end the cycle of Iranian attacks on shipping in the strait of Hormuz, US strikes on the southern Iranian coastline and Iranian counter-attacks on US military bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Eric Brewer, a former US national security adviser, said Trump may be reaping the consequences of what he sowed. “He accepted a vague agreement that postponed many issues to the future because he was concerned about the economic consequences of continuing the war and doubted further bombing would bring much success,” Brewer said. Vali Nasr, author of Iran’s Grand Strategy, warned that the current escalation could easily lead to an end of the memorandum of understanding (MOU), which was designed to lead to substantial peace talks. “Iran believes the US wants to use it to gain control of the strait from Tehran – and if that is the case, Iran must be prepared to go to war over this issue,” Nasr said. Ellie Geranmayeh, Middle East analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the problem is partly about sequencing: “Iran does not want to cede its leverage over the strait before a broader deal is reached on US economic relief. [But] for Trump, the reopening of the strait is the heart of the MOU and without it he will be under immense pressure from Republican hawks to resume war with Iran.” Baghaei insisted that the MOU clearly referred to continued Iranian control of the strait for at least 60 days, and argued that the recent US-Omani attempt to create a new southern route through the strait – the shipping lane that Iran attacked three times on Tuesday – is incompatible with the agreement. “The problem here is that the US is interfering in Iran’s business,” he said. Iranian diplomats know the articles of the MOU by heart, as the agreement was designed by Iran to defer discussion of the nuclear issue until Iran has first received tangible gains, such as sanctions relief. For them, any attempt to reopen the strait through demining and permissions would be seen as the decommissioning of its chief weapon. The recent surge of ships through the southern route – and the accompanying fall in oil prices – was alarming and premature. Iran needed to take back control, or risk losing its leverage to secure sanctions relief and a ceasefire in Lebanon. By contrast, the US says the main objective settled in the MOU was the reopening of the strait, and that an Iranian veto of the route was never part of the deal. To compound the crisis, the US on Tuesday revoked its sanctions waiver on Iran’s oil exports only 17 days after its introduction. The waiver had been the one tangible benefit Iran had received from the deal. Those close to the crisis are aiming to create a joint system of notification for ships passing through the strait in which both Iran and the members of the Gulf Co-operation Council would have a say. Such a move would be a loosening of Iranian sovereignty, but not an abandonment. But behind that piece of diplomacy is a bigger problem: Iranian diplomats insist that in future all ships transiting the strait will have to pay a security fee – a proposal that is universally rejected, but that Iran still seems unwilling to give up. For the moment the only constraint on a return to all out-war is that it has been tried, and failed.

Sabre-rattling to ‘tremendous love’: erratic Trump dominates final hours of Nato summit

An erratic and at times irascible Donald Trump has said he felt a “tremendous love” from western leaders at the Nato summit, only hours after lambasting them over their defence spending and not helping the US in attacking Iran. The US president’s mixed messaging dominated the final hours of the two-day gathering in Ankara, Turkey, beginning with him publicly calling Iran’s leadership scum and renewing his demand for control of Greenland. He then adopted a softer tone in a private meeting of 32 Nato leaders in the late morning, where he did not mention Greenland or other earlier criticisms, and instead told allies that “we want to remain with you”. “It was a great meeting, there was a lot of love in that room, a lot of unity,” Trump said soon after at a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which included a surprise offer to license the manufacturing of Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine. Trump concluded by hosting a rambling press conference that barely addressed Nato topics, but where he praised Turkey’s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, talked up the US economy and said he was “No 1 on TikTok”. Nevertheless, the shift from angry critic to Nato supporter – “If there’s one word that comes out of today it’s unification,” Trump said at the end-of-day press conference – will be hailed as a victory for the alliance whose stability been called into question. The final summit declaration, signed off by Trump and 31 other alliance leaders, affirmed the countries’ “ironclad commitment” to article 5, which says that an attack on one Nato member is an attack on them all. But there was also no announcement of the date for the next leaders’ summit, due to happen in Albania, where anti-Trump and anti-government protests are taking place, amid hints it would not happen until 2028. Nato summits have not always taken place annually but the overwhelming concern in parts of Europe is that Trump’s grandstanding at such events risks giving hope to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, undermining deterrence and alliance unity. European leaders were concerned Trump was in a bad mood after a dinner on Tuesday night at the Turkish president’s compound in Ankara, and had agreed not to mention the 4-1 loss suffered by the US team against Belgium earlier this week. It appeared that their worst fears were being realised when Trump appeared on Wednesday morning with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, and began with a lengthy monologue airing a string of grievances with Nato and several individual members, as well as attacking the leadership of Iran. Trump said he was “very upset with Nato” and complained that alliance members “didn’t want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror, that’s Iran”, a reference to a refusal by European countries apart from the UK to allow the US to publicly carry out bombing missions from Europe’s airbases. There was a specific jibe aimed at the UK, which did not initially allow the US to use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire for bombing missions in Iran before the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, changed his mind and allowed limited attacks on Iranian missile sites. “The United Kingdom wouldn’t let us use the island for two weeks, so we had to fly back,” Trump said, reiterating complaints he made against Starmer and Britain in the spring as the Iran war continued without the regime in Tehran collapsing. The introduction next to Rutte became a litany of complaint. “Greenland is a big problem for us,” Trump said as he renewed his claim the self-governing Arctic territory “was very important for the United States, but it’s not important for Denmark”. Earlier, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said as she arrived that Denmark would defend “every inch” of its own territory and emphasised that Greenland was “of course not for sale”. There were familiar comments about Nato defence spending from Trump, despite last year’s agreement by all members, with the exception of Spain, to lift national defence budgets to 3.5% of gross domestic product by 2035 – and so bring spending by Europe and Canada in line with the US. “I’m very upset with Nato, that we pay far, far too much,” he said. “Billions and billions of dollars, too much, because it’s unfair, because we’re protecting them, so we protect them, but they’re not there for us.” Fresh ire was reserved for Madrid given its decision to reject the 3.5% target. “Spain doesn’t agree to anything, and you shouldn’t carry them,” Trump told Rutte. “I don’t want to do any trade with them, all right?” the president said, turning to Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, who ‌replied: “Yes, sir.” Hours later the president appeared to soften his tone, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that Spain “came back all the way today. Spain was ⁠very generous today.” Rutte for his part tried to contain Trump through a mixture of flattery and occasional determined interruption. It was a strategy that appeared to calm him down as he praised Trump for persuading European Nato members to increase defence spending and match the US as a proportion of economic output. “You did what [President Dwight] Eisenhower tried to do,” he said. “It’s your win.” Trump, interrupting, responded: “That’s why I like him.” Soon afterwards, however, he was asked if he considered the ceasefire with Iran to be over, prompting him to say he believed it was: “I don’t want to deal with them any more. They’re scum.” It overshadowed what Nato had hoped would be billed as a “delivery summit” after last year’s 3.5% spending pledge. More than $50bn of international arms contracts were announced during the summit, including a 12-country commitment to develop deep strike missiles with ranges from 300km to more than 2,000km (185 to 1,250 miles).

Marine Le Pen ‘wants to talk politics’, but can she drown out the legal noise?

Marine Le Pen’s decision to run for French president in 2027, despite her legal woes, has drawn comparisons from her opponents to Donald Trump. Just as the US president felt his voter base cared little about legal investigations against him, the French far-right leader shrugged off the leftwing protesters who shouted “criminal!” as she launched her presidential campaign at a market walkabout in western France on Wednesday. The previous day, an appeal court had upheld her conviction for the embezzlement of European parliament funds. The centrist Gabriel Attal said Le Pen was taking the presidential campaign hostage. “This seems like the same reflexes, the same rhetoric as Donald Trump,” he said. “Here we have a politician convicted twice [at her first trial in 2025 and on appeal this week] for embezzling public funds and who is now engaging in a kind of judicial guerilla warfare in order to stand.” Le Pen, the 57-year-old figurehead of the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally party (RN), said she would run for president because the election was all that mattered. “The French people will decide,” she said. On Tuesday Le Pen had been found guilty by appeal judges of playing a central role in orchestrating a fake jobs scam of unprecedented size and duration. But the appeal judges also shortened Le Pen’s original ban on running for office, allowing her a window to make a fourth bid for the presidency. With her party polling high, she feels she has fair chance after she was twice beaten in the final round by Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and 2022. The real difficulty for Le Pen is that the appeal court also handed her a form of custodial sentence of one year wearing an electronic tag that would monitor and limit her movements to and from her home. This would clearly have hampered her ability to campaign, preventing late-night rallies or limiting her ability to travel outside France. Le Pen’s response was to lodge an appeal to the highest court, questioning a point of legal process. This move effectively puts her sentence on hold, ensuring no tag is fitted before the next court decision in several months. But it leaves a cloud of uncertainty over the two-round vote in April and May. The question remains whether Le Pen might lose her appeal and end up with an electronic tag in the final stages of the campaign. For decades Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration party has been seen by its critics as a danger to democracy that promoted racist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim views. Now her opponents said the embezzlement case would add another level of criticism and pollute the campaign. Le Pen, who has for 15 years tried to detoxify party’s image while maintaining its hard line on immigration, feels her base will stand by her. Snap polls found a majority of her party’s core voters approved her running. But she would need to reach far beyond her voter-base to have a chance in the presidential final-round runoff. She needs the bourgeois, higher-income voters of the traditional right that have been won over by her market-friendly 30-year-old protege and party president, Jordan Bardella. This might now be harder. Bardella had been expected to replace Le Pen if she could not run, but he will now campaign with her as her potential future prime minister. When Le Pen was convicted and banned for running for office after her first trial 2025, Trump backed her, calling it a “witch-hunt” by “European leftists”. Le Pen had said that a “tyranny of judges” wanted to stop her running in a presidential race that she could otherwise win. Le Pen’s phoenix-like return as candidate this week was portrayed by her party as proof of her strength at battling against the odds. But she could now struggle to set her own election agenda. Her market walkabout on Wednesday was punctuated by a barrage of reporters’ questions about the embezzlement case. “I’m not going to spend the campaign on legal analysis, I want to talk politics,” she said. But it remains to be seen whether her hardline policies can drown out the constant commentary about the case.

Middle East crisis: Trump threatens US will hit Iran ‘hard again tonight’ after saying truce is over – as it happened

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