Middle East crisis live: US says second day of Iran strikes ‘completed’; Tehran claims it has targeted US base in Bahrain
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Middle East crisis live: US and Iran trade strikes again, after Trump warns Tehran will ‘pay the price’ for stalled talks
Welcome to our live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. The US has launched a second round of airstrikes, after Donald Trump warned that Tehran would “pay the price” for stalled negotiations, and Iran responded with strikes targeting Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. The US assault across multiple Iranian cities came as efforts to negotiate an end the war again appeared stuck, with Iran insisting it would maintain its chokehold on the strait of Hormuz. It was the second consecutive say of back-and-forth strikes between the US and Iran, testing the limits of she shaky two-month ceasefire. Here are the days main developments: US Central Command said it had “completed” its latest round of airstrikes just before sunrise in Iran. It said the strikes targeted “Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites,” and were carried out by the US air force, Marines and Navy. The sounds of explosions echoed around Tehran, the port city of Bandar Abbas and other southern areas along the strait of Hormuz. Iran responded by launching strikes on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. Kuwait closed its airspace as its air defences fought off the attack. Kuwait’s directorate general of civil aviation said flights were being diverted to other airports, without elaborating. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had fired ballistic missiles at a US command centre in Jordan, according to state media. Iran’s UN envoy said the US should refrain from threats of force if it wants a deal. Israel early on Thursday warned residents in the north to seek shelter after the detection of suspected incoming fire from Lebanon. The international benchmark for crude oil traded above $93 a barrel on Wednesday, up more than 25% since the start of the war.
‘Highway of death’: the Ukrainian drone campaign menacing Russian logistics
Russian forces call it the “Novorossiya” route, the crucial main supply line that snakes through the Ukrainian territories under Moscow’s occupation, linking Rostov-on-Don in Russia to Melitopol, Mariupol and Crimea via the Sea of Azov coastline. In recent months, however, Ukrainian forces have given the R-280 a new name – “the highway of death” – in reference to the Ukrainian drones that dominate the airspace above the road, hunting down convoys of Russian military traffic. The road, which has been almost completely closed to civilian traffic since late May, is particularly important to Moscow because it constitutes the main land corridor for supplying Russian forces in the south that avoid the exposed Kerch Bridge to Crimea. Drivers have recorded video footage that not only shows burnt-out trucks on the side of the road, but in some instances captures the drone attacks themselves. Traffic was suspended this week on the Chonhar Bridge – a key section of the road connecting Russia-occupied Kherson province to Crimea – after a series of Ukrainian drone strikes. Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Regiment said on Tuesday: “We see all movements and totally control the enemy’s repair works. We are ready to make our long-range adjustments at any moment.” Ukrainian drone operators, including those of 412th “Nemesis” brigade, say dozens of trucks and tankers have been destroyed as part of an intensified effort known as the “middle strike campaign”. The campaign is aimed atRussian targets located between 20km and 200km behind the frontline, with a focus on logistics and supply lines. Last month, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said such strikes had quadrupled since February. “There are now twice as many strikes at distances of 20km-plus compared with March,” Zelenskyy said on 5 May, “and four times as many compared with February. And there will be even more. This is a priority area.” Three weeks later, Ukraine’s defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, was more explicit. The intention, he said, was a “logistics lockdown”, and extra funds and drones were being funnelled to the most effective units. “Our task now, as directed by the president, is to maximise the middle strike and, in coordination with the military, create a complete logistics lockdown for the enemy,” Fedorov said. His formula is simple: the enemy “will no longer feel safe even at a great distance from the frontline”. The impact on the Russian supply line has been remarkable. On Tuesday, Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said military cargo traffic along the highway had fallen by 71% over the past two weeks. Ukrainian drone units are coy about the precise details of the new tactics, but a central component of the effort appears to be the use of swarms of drones to attack logistics routes including roads, railways and bridges in numbers that seem to have caught Russian forces by surprise. US-produced Hornet drones have reportedly featured heavily in the Ukrainian attacks, their operators assisted by AI to identify truck traffic. The winged drones, which are the size of a large surf board and have a range of about 150km, have been used to patrol and bomb Russian convoys almost continuously. One immediate impact has been fuel shortages in Crimea. Ukrainian forces also appear to have been utilising a new, locally produced 2 metre-long lightweight fixed-wing drone, known as the Morrigan, which can be launched from a sling shot or a rail, removing the need for a road or airfield. A Russian official quoted on the Meduza independent news site also suggests that airdropped mines are being used. Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed head of the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, described a “comprehensive remote mining system” that detonated on movement, warning drivers to “limit trips unless absolutely necessary”. The end result has been roads littered with the charred hulks of destroyed Russian trucks, as convoys have tried to move off the main roads to avoid detection. The new Ukrainian tactic has been noted by independent analysts, including the US-based Institute for the Study of War thinktank. In a recent update, it said: “Ukrainian intermediate-range strikes are already achieving notable operational effects, including degrading Russia’s ability to use the key Russian highway connecting Russia to occupied Crimea and GLOCs [ground lines of communication] around Donetsk City.” On 21 May, Vladimir Saldo, the Kremlin-appointed governor of Russian-occupied Kherson region, signed a decree introducing restrictions on civilian truck movements on the R-280 where it runs along the Sea of Azov. In an indication of the Ukrainian success, Saldo compared the strikes to the siege of Leningrad: “This is cynical barbarism. In its cruelty, these actions are reminiscent of the fascist blockade of Leningrad, when the enemy tried to intimidate people, sever connections between territories and break the will of the civilian population.”
French man on trial accused of raping partner after contact with Dominique Pelicot
A bodyguard from Lyon is to go on trial for allegedly sedating and raping his partner after he was in contact online with Dominique Pelicot, who was convicted of drugging and raping his own wife, Gisèle Pelicot. Pelicot, one of the worst sex offenders in modern French history, is serving 20 years in prison after he was found guilty of drugging his then wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her in their home in the south of France over almost a decade. He and 50 other men were found guilty after the biggest rape trial in French history in 2024. The 73-year-old, who made contact with men in an online chatroom called “Against her knowledge”, crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into his then wife’s food and drink to render her unconscious. Gisèle Pelicot won support worldwide after insisting that the rape trial be held in public to raise awareness of the use of drugs and sedation to rape women, saying: “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them”. The man going on trial on Thursday worked as an international bodyguard for high-profile clients at film festivals and on trips around the world, including the US and the Gulf states. Investigators found communications between him and Pelicot as part of their initial investigations into Pelicot in 2020. The man, who was arrested in 2023, is accused of sedating his longterm partner, raping her and filming her. His lawyer, Gabriel Versini-Bullara, said he denied the charges. The investigation had established that the bodyguard had contact with Pelicot but this did not mean he had been a “disciple” of Pelicot, Versini-Bullara said. The court will seek to determine how close the contact was and whether the man had sought Pelicot’s advice on how to sedate and abuse his wife. The investigating magistrates’ summary of the case, seen by Agence France-Presse, alleges the bodyguard had sought to benefit from Pelicot’s “experience” in drugging and raping his wife. The fact that the woman was deeply sedated “ruled out all form of consent”, they wrote. The man’s partner told investigators she had experienced “great fatigue” over a period of three years without understanding why. She also spoke of heart issues, dizziness and several blackouts. The bodyguard admitted separate charges of the possession and distribution of child abuse imagery. The case will run until Friday.
Ukraine war briefing: Flamingo missiles hit more far-flung Russian targets
Long-range Ukrainian attacks hit targets deep inside Russia on Wednesday. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo long-range missiles hit a military factory in Cheboksary that supplies components for Russian drones and missiles. It is located in the Chuvashiya region more than 900km (560 miles) from the frontline. The Astra online news outlet reported that the Ukrainian strike hit the VNIIR-Progress plant that produces antennas for drones. Oleg Nikolayev, the head of Chuvashiya, confirmed the attack. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces also struck a refinery in Russia’s Samara region, where the governor, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, confirmed industrial plants were damaged by drone strikes and three people were injured. Astra carried images of a large fire at the Samara refinery. It matches with reporting by Reuters citing industry sources who said Russian oil producer Rosneft’s Kuibyshev refinery in Samara halted oil processing on 10 June after a drone attack. Kuibyshev refinery is part of Rosneft’s Samara refining hub, which also includes Novokuibyshevsk and Syzran plants. Syzran has been offline since 21 May after a drone attack. Novokuibyshevsk had to shut down on 18 April after a drone attack and has been running at reduced throughput. Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s SBU security service also targeted two oil infrastructure facilities in Russia’s Vladimir region, about 700km from the frontline. And a fire broke out in the area surrounding Russia’s Afipsky refinery in southern Krasnodar, with a gas pipeline also damaged, Russian authorities said. Zelenskyy declared Thursday 11 June 2026 the inaugural “Day of the Unmanned Systems Forces” – to be celebrated annually in a show of “respect and gratitude” to the Ukrainian military’s drone branch. “For the first time in the world, such a branch of the military was created, in Ukraine,” said Zelenskyy. “We are developing the USF to the max, and it is Ukrainians who have proved that through technology, ingenuity, and courage, we can change the nature of warfare.” Russian investigators said on Wednesday that they had arrested at least two suspects after two car bombings in Moscow. Pjotr Sauer writes that one explosion killed Col Damir Davydov, 57, head of the Russian military’s artillery and missile ammunition supply directorate, which oversees the distribution of weapons to the armed forces. The bomb under his BMW went off at about 5.30am on Tuesday in the city of Balashikha, the independent outlet Astra reported. Another bomb was found before it went off and in that case a boy and a girl in their teens had been charged, said Russia’s state investigative committee. The alleged target was an employee of a scientific production enterprise. Ukrainian forces struck the Russian-occupied port of Mariupol, Kyiv said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of drone attacks on logistics across a critical stretch of Moscow-held southern Ukraine connecting Russia to Crimea. The attack on the port, which Ukraine’s military said plunged the site into a blackout, followed two strikes earlier this week on the Chonhar bridge linking the Russian-occupied Kherson region to the Black Sea peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of the occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said the bridge had been hit twice and traffic had been suspended. Ukraine’s military struck the “shadow fleet” tanker West Horizon in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian general staff said on Wednesday. Russia meanwhile condemned a European Union decision to authorise EU military vessels in the Mediterranean to stop and inspect foreign ships suspected of being part of the fleet, which transports Russian oil in breach of sanctions. The EU said it had expanded the mandate of the naval mission known as Operation IRINI. Intensified Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have caused serious damage that threatens a significant reduction in shipments including agricultural exports, said Ukraine’s largest farmers’ union, UAC. All iron ore and more than 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural exports are shipped through the three ports of the Odesa hub. “The situation at ports in the Odesa region has reached a critical point,” said a UAC statement, warning that Russian shelling was “destroying Ukraine’s logistical heart”. Ukraine’s police chief has accused Russia of recruiting teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian military personnel, after the arrest of a 17-year-old suspect for murder. Ivan Vyhivskyi said the young women allegedly lured Ukrainian military personnel to rented apartments and poisoned their drinks with methadone. Police detained a 17-year-old woman in the western region of Zhytomyr last week after a fatal poisoning and said she had been communicating via Telegram with a man who was likely a Russian security services agent. She had received a parcel of what presumed was methadone, a synthetic opioid, police said. Russian MPs on Wednesday voted in favour of a law that enables Vladimir Putin’s government to increase spending and debt without going through parliament. Russia’s financial position has been deteriorating, with the government forced to raise value-added tax this year to cope with rising military spending. Putin has proclaimed Russia’s economic situation to be “under control”. Putin, the Russian ruler, told top officials on Wednesday that there are grounds to expect a cut in the central bank’s key interest rate when it meets next week. The central bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina, was absent from the meeting, purportedly due to illness. Concerns have been raised about Nabiullina’s absence – she was last seen in public during Putin’s visit to Kazakhstan on 28 May, and missed his drone-affected “Russian Davos” summit in St Petersburg altogether. China has complained as the European Union prepares further measures targeting Chinese firms for their alleged support for Russia’s war effort. Officials told AFP the measures would include adding 14 companies from mainland China and Hong Kong to a list of firms banned from buying EU goods. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that Beijing “has always firmly opposed illegal unilateral sanctions that lack basis in international law.” China would “closely follow” developments and “take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”.
Aukus is among Australia’s worst foreign policy decisions and requires ‘heroic’ optimism, Gareth Evans says
Aukus will prove to be one of the worst defence and foreign policy decisions ever made by an Australian government and is only being permitted by Donald Trump in order to destroy Chinese nuclear threats to the US mainland, former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans says. In evidence to an independent public inquiry into the $368bn nuclear agreement with the US and UK on Thursday, Evans, a cabinet minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, will warn the transfer and construction of submarines to Australia from the early 2030s is effectively only an extension of the American military fleet. He says a future US administration would not come to Australia’s aid in the event of an “existential attack” and would only assist in a military conflict if its own assets on Australian soil are threatened. “The notion that extended nuclear deterrence justifies our prostration – that the US really would be prepared to sacrifice San Francisco for Sydney, let alone Miami for Melbourne – is, and always has been, a ludicrous delusion,” Evans says. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Foreign affairs minister from 1988 to 1996, Evans will tell a hearing in Melbourne the delivery of three Virginia-class submarines from the US starting in 2032 is unlikely, due to construction delays and shortages for the US fleet, and that five new-design SSN-Aukus attack submarines to be jointly built by the UK and Australia will be extremely difficult. He says the complexity and timeline of the second phase of Aukus requires even more “heroic levels of optimism” than is needed for the American vessels. “Every report coming out of the UK indicates that its defence-industrial base is presently under extraordinary stress, with submarine building schedules tightening and costs increasing, and with every prospect of further deterioration, notwithstanding Australia’s commitment to spending $4.5bn over 10 years to help boost production rates.” Evans calls the government’s expected price tag for the deal “wholly speculative” and says the US views the submarines as primarily supplementary assets, effectively embedded into US military command, for the task of finding, tracking, attacking and destroying Chinese submarines seen as posing a risk to the US mainland. “Australian ministers have never explicitly conceded as much but the conclusion is inescapable that from the outset the whole enterprise has been viewed through an alliance reinforcement lens, with this role for the boats being the understood quid pro quo.” Evans calls Aukus a doubling down on Australia’s commitment to the US alliance, painting a target on the country’s back in the event of a military conflict. Thursday’s first hearing of the public inquiry – which is not a parliamentary process and is being backed by trade unions and the Australian Peace and Security Forum – will be led by commissioners including the former Labor minister Peter Garrett and former defence boss Chris Barrie. Current Labor ministers have accused the inquiry of being anti-Aukus from the outset. Nuclear non-proliferation campaigners Tilman Ruff, Richard Tanter and Dave Sweeney will give evidence in the hearing, as well as retired diplomat John Lander. Highly sceptical of the Aukus agreement, the inquiry’s commissioners will hold public hearings around the country before delivering a reporting in October. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, said on Thursday she and the defence minister, Richard Marles, had discussed Aukus with their UK counterparts in regular talks overnight. The UK government has confirmed the first steel for the newly built joint submarines will be cut next year, even as Britain’s existing submarine program runs years behind targets and billions over budget. “This submarine capability is central to assuring Australian sovereignty in a much more contested world,” Wong said. “It is a capability we need in a world that is more contested. There is no doubt that this project has its challenges. There is no doubt it is ambitious. But there is also no doubt that we do need this capability to assure our interests. And we are very focused on delivering it.” Labor is pushing back on criticism of the plan, including from its own MPs, before the party’s national conference in Adelaide next month.
Pacific nation of Nauru wants to change its name as it moves on from colonial past
Nauru, the world’s smallest republic, may soon make a big change: renaming itself “Naoero”. The switch would “more faithfully honour our nation’s heritage, our language, and our identity”, said the president of the Pacific microstate, David Adeang, in a speech to parliament in January. After Nauru’s parliament passed the proposal unopposed, the island – with an estimated population of 13,000 – will vote in a referendum on whether to make the change official. “Naoero” – pronounced Now-ero – is the term Nauruans use in their own language. “Nauru” – commonly pronounced Now-roo – became the island’s official name because its Indigenous name “could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues”, the government said, adding it was “changed not by our choice, but for convenience”. The remote island country – located about 3,000km north-east of Australia, and similar in size to London’s Westminster, at 21 sq km – has a history of name changes. In 1798 it was christened “Pleasant Island” when sighted by a British seafarer, who was struck by its beauty and the generosity of its people. After Germany annexed the island in 1888, the name “Nauru” entered official records, though variants “Nawodo” and “Navoda Onawero” were also used. When Australia took over primary administration of the island in 1919 under a League of Nations mandate, it maintained the “Nauru” spelling, which persisted after independence in 1968. In 2001, Australia began to use the island as an offshore detention centre. For scholars of Indigenous placenames, such changes are never just a matter of spelling. Zoltán Grossman, a professor of geography and Native American studies at Evergreen State College in the US, says changing names has long been part of exercising colonial power. “Changing placenames has been an integral part of colonialism to erase the presence of the original peoples,” he says. “It’s not just about the names themselves, it’s about who has the power to change the names.” In arguing for Naoero, the Nauruan government has pointed to other countries that have changed their official names to better reflect local language, including Türkiye (formerly Turkey) and Eswatini (Swaziland). It also cited the nearby Micronesian state Chuuk, which until 1990 was widely known as Truk – another foreign rendering of an Indigenous name. This “re-Indigenisation” of placenames to reflect local pronunciations is how formerly colonised peoples assert their sovereignty, Grossman says. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the de-russification of eastern European countries: Byelorussia became Belarus and Moldavia changed to Moldova. India has de-anglicised many city and state names since independence. Jordan Engel, founder of the Decolonial Atlas, a project to map and document Indigenous placenames, says there is a “growing momentum” to use them for landmarks and places. “At its core, decolonisation is about self-determination, and one of the most basic expressions of self-determination is being able to speak your language and use your ancestral placenames,” Engel says. But changing a place’s name is not always straightforward. A petition to change New Zealand to the Māori name of Aotearoa gathered more than 70,000 signatures, but its official use has sparked rows in parliament. Cook Islands has long wrestled with whether to drop the name of the British explorer James Cook. Nauru’s government declined to comment on the potential name change when approached by the Guardian. Nauruan Arcmen Willis, a wrestler who has represented Nauru internationally, supports the change; he hopes non-Nauruans people will make the effort to pronounce the new name correctly. “I want to tell people now how to pronounce it, so it goes around and people would pronounce it right,” Willis says. “It’s good to keep our identity,” he says, “because once it’s gone, there will be no more Nauru or Naoero.” Unesco officially classifies Nauru’s language – Nauruan or dorerin Naoero – as “severely endangered”. While Nauruans like Willis speak it among friends and family, it is not taught in schools. Engel says a name change to Naoero can help protect the language for future generations. “Changes like this can play an important role in language revitalisation and cultural continuity.” While the change may take some time to become official, the name “Naoero” has already been adopted by the postal service, national health service and utility provider. The Australian high commission is using both names in its public communications. For Nauruans like Willis, the change matters most in how the country is recognised from afar. At home, he says, it carries less weight. “I feel the same, because it’s only the name change,” he says. “It doesn’t change me.”
French star Patrick Bruel charged with rape and sexual assault
The French singer Patrick Bruel has been charged with rape and sexual assault in one of the biggest #MeToo cases in the French music industry. The 67-year-old, a major figure in French pop culture, was placed under formal investigation over several cases that included alleged rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. The Nanterre prosecutor’s office said Bruel had been questioned on Wednesday over cases relating to nine alleged victims between 2000 and 2019. Complaints from another 13 women accusing him of rape, attempted rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment from 1992 to 2008 had been added to the file handed to investigating magistrates, even if they “appeared to be beyond the statute of limitations at this stage”, the office said. Bruel’s lawyers said he denied all charges. The singer was released on bail in the early hours of Thursday. Bruel’s pop career took off in the 1990s with several top-selling albums. His face was routinely on the cover of teen magazines and his screaming fans were described as being in thrall to “bruelmania”. At the height of his fame, French media often described him admiringly as a “seducer” or “Don Juan”. He acted in dozens of films and in 1998 was briefly a world poker champion and continued to to be a regular on TV chat shows. The investigative website Mediapart and the magazine Elle published a series of accusations by women against Bruel in recent months, some detailing alleged assaults dating back to the 1990s. Bruel, whose lawyers told Mediapart, he denied “all allegations of violence, brutality or constraint” had continued acting on stage in a Paris until recent days and had intended to continue his concert tour across France. But he faced protests by feminist campaigners, and the mayors of big cities such as Marseille, Paris and Nancy urged him to cancel his concerts, resulting in him calling off the tour. Bruel attended a police station by appointment earlier this week and was charged on Wednesday night after hours of questioning by judges. The women who spoke out against Bruel in recent months include Daniela Elstner, the current director of Unifrance, a key cultural institution which promotes French cinema abroad. Separately, the lawyer Myriam Guedj Benayoun said this week she had filed a new complaint against Bruel for the alleged attempted rape of a 19-year-old woman at his home in 2000. The woman, who is now a 46-year-old actor, had taken part in filming for a music video with Bruel. Bruel’s lawyers said he denied all allegations. Bruel is the latest French celebrity to face sexual assault claims. The actor Gérard Depardieu, 76, was given an 18-month suspended sentence last year after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women, a set dresser and an assistant director, during the shooting of the feature film Les Volets Verts (The Green Shutters) in Paris in 2021. The judge ruled that his name must be added to the sex offender register in France. Depardieu’s appeal will be heard in November. He has also been ordered to stand trial on charges of raping and sexually assaulting the actor Charlotte Arnould at his Paris home in 2018. He denies the charges.