Tonight’s strikes come 24 hours after the US had launched strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil after Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels on Tuesday. Speaking at the Nato summit in Ankara, Donald Trump had earlier declared the ceasefire with Iran is over.
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.
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.” 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’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.
We’re closing this blog now. You can read the latest reports here:
At a meandering news conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Donald Trump reiterated he does not think the Iran war will start again and that the US will eventually “take” Iranian nuclear material. He said: “I don’t think it’s going to start again. I think it’s going to go very quickly. They hit a couple of ships and so we hit that much harder. When they hit we had ten times harder. You know, we hit much harder than they do.” Trump added he is Iran’s “number one target” on their kill list. Trump also told reporters he’s destroyed Iran’s military and navy - adding that 159 Iranian ships were “at the bottom of the sea” and Iran does not have much military capability left. Greenland is not for sale, the island’s head of government Jens-Frederik Nielsen said after US president Trump renewed his demand to control the Arctic territory. “Repeated calls for the takeover or control of our country do not change this,” Nielsen wrote in a post on Facebook. The UK’s outgoing prime minister Keir Starmer said that Nato had emerged from its annual summit “stronger and more united”, citing US president Donald Trump’s closing remarks which he said had praised the spirit and unity of the meeting. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez insisted his country’s ties with the United States were “very positive” despite president Donald Trump’s latest threat to cut off trade links. “Relations between the United States and Spain are very positive relations in social, cultural, economic and also political terms,” Sanchez told reporters in comments reported by AFP. Trump earlier said the US would be prepared to buy Ukrainian drones. He said: “We would buy their drones. We make drones, we make great drones, but they have an ability to make a lot of them, which is amazing that in a war situation they make them in basements, wherever the hell you have a little shelter or even if you don’t have a shelter.”
A Palestinian aid worker who had organised screenings of World Cup matches in Gaza was killed by an Israeli missile strike just before the game between Egypt and Argentina on Tuesday evening. Two brothers aged eight and 10 and another man who was in the street near the site of the attack were also killed. Mohamed al-Wahidi, 57, the director of the Egyptian Committee in Gaza, had worked for years on aid and development projects in the Palestinian territory. More recently, he had organised the screening of World Cup games across the Gaza Strip, which had become a welcome diversion from the continuing misery of a very partially observed ceasefire, near daily Israeli strikes and while severe restrictions on humanitarian aid remain in place. The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying al-Wahidi had not been its intended target, and that the missile had been aimed at a “terrorist in Hamas’ military wing”. The Sabra district of Gaza City was hit about an hour before kick-off in the World Cup match that al-Wahidi had helped make accessible to people in the city, who turned out in large numbers to support Egypt. According to his family, he had been in a taxi on the way to a screening of the match in Tel al-Hawa in southern Gaza City when a missile hit the car he was in. His driver was reported to have survived, but at least three other people on the street near the car were killed, including the brothers Fari and Hamza al-Deri, who were on their way home from playing football. “We were gathered at a family event when we heard an explosion and were told that a car had been hit on al-Maghribi Street,” al-Wahidi’s cousin, Abd Alkhaleq al-Wahidi, said. “When I arrived, medical crews had already recovered the bodies of a child and an unidentified man, while another young man was lying on the ground with injuries. Someone at the scene told me that one of my relatives had been critically injured and might have died. “The first moments after learning of Mohamed’s death were extremely difficult,” he said. “He was widely loved and had a strong presence at family and community gatherings. He was known for his public speaking skills and was often chosen to speak at local events. He was known for helping people and supporting families in need.” The fourth victim of the strike was Ahmed Daghmush, 30, who was in a relative’s house near the blast when he was hit by shrapnel. Daghmush’s cousin, Ashour, said: “A piece of shrapnel struck him in the back and pierced his lungs. At first, he didn’t realise he had been seriously injured, but when he noticed the bleeding, people rushed him to the hospital, where he died of his wounds a short time later. “He was a kind and respectful young man who worked hard to provide for his family. He loved joking and laughing with everyone and was well-liked by his relatives and neighbours.” A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said al-Wahidi had not been the target of the strike. “Yesterday, the IDF struck a terrorist in Hamas’ military wing while he was traveling in a vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip,” they said. “The IDF is aware of the claim that uninvolved civilians were harmed as a result of the strike. The incident is under review. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and takes all feasible measures to mitigate such harm.” The spokesperson had no further comment on whether the intended target had been killed or injured. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action since the US-brokered ceasefire was declared in October, and nearly 3,500 wounded. The Israeli army still directly occupies more than 60% of the Gaza Strip, no significant reconstruction has been allowed, leaving civilian infrastructure and health and education services in ruins. A UN independent commission of enquiry said in a report last month that Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed by Israel during the war, including the period after the ceasefire. The overall Palestinian death toll since the war started in October 2023 is more than 73,000.