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US-Israel war on Iran live: death tolls rise in Israel, UAE and across region as Iran attacks continue and IDF strikes ‘heart of Tehran’

Iran targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln, but the “missiles launched didn’t even come close,” according to a social media post from US Central Command (Centcom). “The Lincoln was not hit,” the post said. “The missiles launched didn’t even come close. The Lincoln continues to launch aircraft in support of Centcom’s relentless campaign to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s most powerful military body, was quoted earlier in an Iranian news outlet as saying that four ballistic missiles had targeted the ship.

Trump allies defend US-Israel strikes on Iran as Democrats call it a ‘war of choice’

Donald Trump administration allies reinforced on Sunday the administration’s messaging on the Israel-US strikes on Iran, while Democratsdecried it as a “war of choice” that required congressional approval. On Sunday talk shows, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham defended the strikes, while Virginia senator Mark Warner, vice-chairman of the Committee on Intelligence, and other Democrats welcomed the elimination of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but said the administration must now answer vital questions. “I’m not going to shed any tears over the death of the Iranian leadership,” Warner told CNN’s State of the Union. “The question is why now? Why not make the case to the American public?” Warner said Trump had started “a war of choice”. “There was no imminent threat to the United States,” he said. “It’s incumbent that the president comes before the American people and Congress to make the case on why he’s chosen to go to war.” Warner has warned that the strikes risk pulling the US into another broad conflict in the Middle East. On Sunday, he went further, pointing to a lack of US intelligence visibility into the Iranian resistance to its theocratic leadership or who may replace Khamenei. “Will the president’s supporters still say this is a great move if the person who replaces the supreme leader is even further to the right and actually rushes forward on their nuclear program,” Warner said, pointing out that Khamenei maintained Iran’s nuclear enrichment program but did not approve moving to full weaponization. “We have very little visibility into what happens next,” Warner said. A populist revolution and a reduction in regional violence “would be a wonderful outcome,” he added, but “I don’t believe that will happen”. A deeply-embedded Iranian leadership, he predicted, “will fight vociferously to try to maintain their power.” Administration allies took a different position, saying that there was no doubt that Iran was going to continue to target US bases and allies in the region. “That’s why it was so vitally necessary to put an end to Iran’s 47-year campaign of terror and revolutionary violence once and for all,” Cotton, told CNN. He add that Iran had crossed the red lines of the civilized world going back to the 1979 hostage crisis. Trump, he said, “has finally put his foot down and made it clear that we will no longer tolerate the revolutionary violence of the Islamic republic of Iran.” Asked if the decapitation of the Iranian leadership would achieve regime change, Cotton said the immediate threat was Iran’s military capabilities. “We’ve always said Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. They also can’t be allowed to have a vast missile arsenal and that’s what they have”. Cotton repeated the strategic maxim that administration officials have used in recent days. “They have thousands and thousands of missiles, much more than what the United States and Israel have in missile defense combined.” Cotton said. “It’s much easier to kill the archer on the ground than it is to shoot his arrow out of the sky,” he added. “What you will see in the days ahead will be a methodical and systematic focus on Iran’s missiles, it’s missile launchers, and ultimately its missile manufacturing capability.” Speaking to NBC’s Face the Nation, Cotton added that the administration does not see US ground troops in Iran unless they are part of a search-and-rescue for a downed pilot. “The president has no plan for any kind of large scale ground force inside of Iran,” he said. He predicted that if Democrats force a vote on the strikes through the War Powers act, there will be “overwhelming Republican support for our troops and for the president’s decision to finally eliminate the threat of Iran”. He added: “I would invite Democrats in the Congress to join their Democratic colleagues like John Fetterman and Josh Gottheimer and Greg Landsman in supporting our troops, in finally putting America’s foot down against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In a separate interview, Graham disputed the characterization of a war. “I don’t know if this is technically a war,” Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press. “The leader of the largest state sponsor of terrorism and his inner team are dead. The mother ship that fuels the proxies is in sinking mode”. He added that “the goal of this operation is to change the threat, not the regime”. Graham also pushed back against former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wrote on Saturday that Republican leadership had gone back on a campaign promise of “no more foreign wars”. Graham said that Trump campaigned on a promise “to keep us safe, to stand up to people who would hurt America. She’s a former congressman for a reason”. The California congressman Ro Khanna rejected Graham’s position that the world is safer without the supreme leader, telling NBC’s Meet the Press the senator is “the face of Republican foreign policy”. “He’s been consistent, but he’s been consistently wrong,” Khanna said. “Let me say this: Khamenei was a brutal dictator, but Americans are not safer today. Senator Graham cheered us into the Iraq war. He cheered us into the effort with Libya. And Trump ran against him in 2016.” “He said regime change wars are absolute failures. And that has escaped Donald Trump,” Khanna continued. “The question is: is the country going to descend in civil war? Are billions of our dollars going to be spent there? Are American troops going to be at risk?”

Hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded or diverted by airspace closures in Middle East

The US and Israel’s attack on Iran continued to cause severe disruption to flights throughout the Middle East and beyond on Sunday, causing uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of travellers. Countries across the region closed their airspace, and three of the key airports that connect Europe, Africa and the west to Asia halted operations. The UK government is planning one of the biggest evacuations in its history in response. More than 76,000 citizens have registered their presence in affected areas of the Middle East and the number is expected to rise. Travellers were either stranded or diverted to other airports after Israel, Qatar, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain shut their airspace. There were also no flights over the United Arab Emirates, the flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said, after the government announced a “temporary and partial closure” of its airspace. That led to the closure of airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar, and the cancellation of thousands of flights by major Middle Eastern and global airlines, including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Dubai is the world’s busiest airport for international traffic. Major international airports in the region also became targets of Iran’s retaliatory strikes. Dubai’s international airport and its landmark Burj Al Arab hotel sustained damage and four people were injured. Abu Dhabi Airports said in a post on X that an incident at Zayed international airport in the UAE’s capital resulted in one death and seven injuries. It later deleted the post. The three major airlines that operate at those airports – Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad – typically have about 90,000 passengers a day passing through those hubs, and even more travellers headed to destinations in the Middle East, according to the aviation analytics firm Cirium. All three suspended flights. More than 3,400 flights were cancelled across the seven main airports in the Middle East on Sunday. . Airspace over Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar was virtually empty, maps by Flightradar24 showed. The tracking service said a new “notice to airmen” had extended closure of Iranian airspace until at least 8.30am UK time on Tuesday. More than two-thirds of the 76,000 Britons in affected areas are believed to be in the UAE, and most are holidaymakers or other travellers, rather than residents. Dubai a major tourist and business destination. The UK government’s advice is for people to follow local instructions, especially where it is to shelter in their current location. It is also looking at options for different eventualities, which could include evacuations via different routes at a later date - an enormous logistical task. The Foreign Office’s advice is against all travel to Iran, Israel and Palestine. It also advises against all but essential travel to the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. There are further instructions to avoid travel to some parts of Pakistan and British nationals in Saudi Arabia are advised to stay at home. Those in Jordan, Oman, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq should take precautions, given the heightened regional tensions. Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group, said: “For travellers, there’s no way to sugarcoat this. You should prepare for delays or cancellations for the next few days as these attacks evolve and hopefully end.” “It’s the sheer volume of people and the complexity,” said John Strickland, a UK-based aviation analyst. “It is not only customers, it is the crews and aircraft all over the place.” Austrian Airlines sent an evacuation flight to Muscat, the capital of Oman, on Sunday to return staff and crew unable to fly from Dubai. The airspace closures in the Middle East could be exacerbated by the fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan, squeezing airlines into even narrower flight corridors. It is unclear how long the disruption to flights could last. The situation is changing quickly and airlines urged passengers to check their flight status online before heading to the airport. Twenty-four out of 56 flights scheduled to depart from Heathrow to destinations in the Middle East were cancelled on Sunday, according to data from Cirium. Some airlines issued waivers to travellers that will allow them to rebook their flight plans without paying extra fees or higher fares. Jonathan Escott and his fiance had arrived at the airport in Newcastle, England, on Saturday only to find out that his direct flight to Dubai on Emirates had been cancelled, leaving everyone on the flight stuck there. Escott left to go back to where he was staying with family, about an hour from the airport, and had no idea when he may be able to travel. “No one knows,” he said. “No one really knows what’s going on with the conflict, really. Not Emirates, Emirates don’t have a clue.” The cancellations Numerous airlines cancelled international flights to Dubai through the weekend, as India’s civil aviation agency designated much of the Middle East – including skies above Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon – as a high security risk zone at all altitudes. Air India cancelled all flights to Middle East destinations, as well as some other destinations including London, New York and Paris. Turkish Airlines said flights to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Jordan were suspended until Monday and flights to Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman were suspended. US-based Delta Air Lines and United Airlines suspended flights to Tel Aviv at least through the weekend. The Dutch airline KLM had already announced earlier in the week that it was suspending flights to and from Tel Aviv. It has now also cancelled services to Dubai, Dammam and Riyadh until Thursday. Lufthansa suspended services to and from Tel Aviv, Beirut and Oman until Saturday, and flights in and out of Dubai. Pegasus Airlines has cancelled all services to Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Airlines including Air France and Transavia cancelled all flights to Lebanon, while American Airlines suspended flights from Philadelphia to Doha. Virgin Atlantic said it would avoid flying over Iraq, meaning flights to and from India, the Maldives and Riyadh could take slightly longer. The airline was already not flying over Iran and said all flights would carry appropriate fuel in case they need to reroute on short notice. British Airways said flights to Tel Aviv and Bahrain would be suspended until next week, and flights to Amman, Jordan, were cancelled on Saturday. It said customers booked up to Wednesday could request a full refund. Wizz Air has suspended all flights to and from Israel, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Amman until next Sunday. LOT suspended flights to Tel Aviv until 15 March, and cancelled flights to Dubai and Riyadh until Monday. FlyDubai suspended flights to and from Dubai until 3pm local time on Monday. Air Canada cancelled flights to Dubai until Tuesday, and to Israel until next Sunday. Aegean Airlines, Greece’s largest carrier, suspended flights to and from Tel Aviv, Beirut and Erbil until Monday. Air Astana has cancelled all flights to the Middle East until the end of Tuesday Airspace closures Iran swiftly closed its airspace as the strikes began “until further notice”, according to its Civil Aviation Organisation. Israel also closed its airspace to civilian flights, the transport minister, Miri Regev, announced. Qatar’s civil aviation authority said it had temporarily closed the Gulf state’s airspace. Iraq shut down its airspace, state media said. The United Arab Emirates said it was closing its skies “partially and temporarily”. Syria closed part of its airspace in the south along the border with Israel for 12 hours, the civil aviation authority said. Jordan’s air force was conducting drills to “defend the kingdom’s skies”, its military said. Kuwait closed its airspace. With Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Suspected Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker seized in North Sea

Belgium has seized an oil tanker believed to form part of the so-called “shadow fleet” used by Russia to circumvent western sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Special forces assisted by French helicopters boarded the ship in a clandestine operation in the North Sea on Saturday night, Belgium’s defence minister, Theo Francken, said on Sunday. Prosecutors said the tanker, identified as the Ethera, was falsely flying the flag of Guinea and was believed to be on its way back to Russia when it was seized in Belgium’s exclusive economic zone. Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office said the ship’s captain, a Russian citizen, was being questioned and a criminal investigation was under way. In a statement, the office added that ship’s documents found on the Ethera were also suspected of being false. Francken said the vessel was escorted to Zeebrugge harbour, where it will be officially confiscated. The seizure suggests a hardening of Europe’s attitude towards Russia’s shadow fleet. Since the start of the year, western naval forces have intensified their tracking of shadow fleet vessels in the Baltic and North Sea. The US, the UK, France and Germany in particular have been increasing surveillance operations and possess a higher readiness to board vessels at gunpoint using helicopters. The often dilapidated tankers, which tend to be either uninsured or under-insured, sail under the flags of countries such as Panama, the Gambia, Barbados or the Comoros and transport Russian crude oil to destinations including China and India. The oil is processed in the destination countries and then sold on international markets. By this point, it is no longer identified as Russian, and therefore circumvents international sanctions imposed on Moscow as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia has previously described the seizure of its tankers and other vessels carrying its cargoes as acts of piracy. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praised Belgium on Sunday for its “strong action against Moscow’s floating purse” and thanked France for its support of the operation. “This particular vessel has long been under US, EU and UK sanctions, but nonetheless continued to illegally transport Russian oil using a false flag and forged documents,” he said. The Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, congratulated the military on its “successful operation of the past night”. On social media, he thanked France for its support and added: “Belgium will uphold international maritime law and the security of its territorial waters.” In December, De Wever blocked the EU from using Russian frozen assets to fund Ukraine, citing fears that Belgium, where the assets are mostly held, could face a multibillion-euro legal challenge from Moscow. France has estimated the size of Russia’s shadow fleet to be somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 ships. Of these, more than half are now subject to sanctions, with the rest evading detection through the use of shell companies and reflagging to disguise their true origins. The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, called the seizure of the Ethera a “serious blow” to Russia’s shadow fleet. “Last night in the North Sea our French Navy helicopters contributed to the boarding of an oil tanker subject to international sanctions by Belgian security forces,” he wrote on social media, also including footage of Belgian forces rappelling from the aircraft to the deck of the ship. Russia’s shadow fleet has also been involved in what has been judged to be the deliberate vandalising of western underwater infrastructure, including electricity and data cables and gas pipelines. Eagle S, a tanker bearing the flag of the Cook Islands, is alleged to have severed several underwater cables connecting Finland to Estonia and Germany in December 2024 by trailing its anchor along the sea bed. The EU has also warned that shadow fleet ships could be serving as platforms for drone launches, radar jamming and general espionage. Due to the often dilapidated nature of the fleet, which cannot easily put in for repairs due to sanction restrictions, it is also considered a growing danger to the environment and other shipping

Trump appears to link Iran attack to his 2020 election loss

Donald Trump on Saturday appeared to link the massive attack he ordered against Iran to his persistent claims about his 2020 election loss to former president Joe Biden, in a social media post about allegations that Tehran’s government interfered in the US president elections. “Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump,” his Truth Social post said, “and now faces renewed war with United States”. Those words, written in the first hours of the bombardment of Iran, repeated the headline of an article to which he linked from Just the News, a Trump-friendly news site. “Iranian intelligence sought to undermine Trump’s re-election bid in 2020 through a variety of election influence efforts,” the article said. It also said Iran worked against him in 2024, when he beat Kamala Harris at the polls. This is the second military operation of the Trump administration where he alluded to allegations concerning the 2020 election. He made similar comments on social media in January, days after Trump ordered the Delta Force “rendition” of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro. Trump reposted links that repeated discredited conspiracy allegations that Venezuela interfered in the 2020 election by controlling voting machines. Previously, he had hinted at support for those theories in a post, linking to a podcast about the Venezuela theory and writing: “We must focus all of our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!” As the Guardian reported in November the Trump justice department began investigating the long discredited Venezuela theory last year. The White House did not respond to requests for comment for this story. While a central tenet of the Maga movement’s America First doctrine is an aversion to foreign wars, another core Maga obsession has been to dig into Trump’s election grievances. Where the Venezuela allegations have not been seen as credible by experts, Iran has indeed been accused of election interference, including by mainstream Biden era officials. In August of 2024, in the heat of the presidential campaign, officials said Iran was responsible for hacking internal Trump campaign records which appeared to have been sent to journalists. One document included research on JD Vance. The FBI, the ODNI and CISA wrote that Iran had done the hack “to compromise former President Trump’s campaign”, and said the intelligence community “is confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties”. Three alleged Iranian hackers were later indicted. It is also true that in 2020 officials said Iran was behind a strange hoax email incident where Democratic-registered voters received threatening emails telling them to vote for Trump. The emails were crudely faked to seem like they came from the Proud Boys far-right group but were then traced to Iran. In spite of that, there is no known evidence that Iran really played a key role in Trump’s 2020 election loss. But among believers, Iran is also a player in some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories. A recent book called Stolen Elections, which repeated the Venezuela allegations, listed Iran among the countries that purportedly help Venezuela remotely rig elections. “Iran,” the book said, “provides technical advice and computer engineers”.

US military says three of its service members killed in Iran operation

Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday. Five additional personnel have been reported seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, the US military said. Authorities have not yet publicly identified the three soldiers who were killed. While announcing the military action targeting Iran, Donald Trump cautioned that “the lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war”. On Sunday, Israel and the US carried out another round of heavy attacks across Iran, marking the second day of a military effort aimed at removing the country’s government. The campaign has pushed the Middle East into a broader regional confrontation with no clear end or predictable outcome. The escalation followed increasingly tense exchanges between officials in Washington and Tehran, signaling the possibility of further military developments in the near future. Trump stated on Sunday that the US would strike Iran “with a force that has never been seen before” if Tehran followed through on threats of retaliation after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday. The strikes extended beyond current government leaders. The home in Tehran belonging to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also destroyed, and his condition or whereabouts were not immediately confirmed. Meanwhile, Iranian state media reported that the number of people killed in a missile attack on a girls’ school in southern Iran has climbed to nearly 150. The school was hit on Saturday morning and appears to represent the deadliest single incident of the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran so far. Following the attack on Iran, anti-war demonstrations took place across the US, including gatherings outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square, where protesters expressed opposition to American military involvement in the region. Protest organizers released a statement saying: “Trump’s unprovoked, illegal attack on Iran is an act of war that threatens to cause unthinkable death and destruction. But the people of this country reject another endless war and will take to the streets now and make our voices heard.”

A visual guide to US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s response

The US-Israeli war against Iran entered its second day on Sunday, as news of the assassination of the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, shook the Islamic Republic and the wider region. Donald Trump announced Khamenei’s death while Israel claimed to have killed at least 40 senior Iranian commanders in the first day of attacks. Both countries continued to pound Iran, conducting hundreds of airstrikes across the country overnight and on Sunday. Despite the apparent loss of a significant portion of its senior military and political leadership, Iran did not slow its retaliation on Sunday, bombing targets in the Gulf and unleashing waves of ballistic missiles towards Israel. On Saturday, Israel announced the beginning of what it called Operation Lion’s Roar in tandem with Trump, which an Israeli military official said was intended to “degrade the regime’s capabilities”. They said operations would continue for “as long as necessary”. Trump went further, saying in a video posted on his Truth Social platform as the assault began that the aim was regime change. Strikes hit across the country on Saturday and were followed up on Sunday with further rounds, including in central Tehran. The strikes hit key security and political targets in Tehran, including Khamenei’s residence, and ballistic missile caches elsewhere in the country. Satellite footage showed black smoke coming from the supreme leader’s badly damaged compound, and Iranian state media later confirmed he had been killed. Hundreds of strikes hit at least 14 cities across Iran in what an Israeli military official said was a much more wide-ranging campaign than the previous US-Israeli attack on Iran in the 12-day war last summer. Strikes were aimed at intelligence and security headquarters, homes of Iranian officials, as well as ballistic missile launchers and caches – a tactic intended to limit Iran’s ability to respond to the US and Israeli attacks. Israel also said it had targeted Iran’s air defence systems in the west of the country to help establish air supremacy. Almost 150 people were killed and at least 95 wounded in a strike on a girls’ school in Minab, in the southern Hormozgan province, according to state media. The attack was verified by Reuters. There is an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base in the same city. Reuters said it had verified the footage as being from the school. Iran’s retaliation pushed past previous red lines that had excluded the Gulf from conflict. Much of the Middle East had been affected by Sunday. Iran struck targets including luxury hotels in Dubai and Bahrain and airports in Dubai, Kuwait and Bahrain. It also struck a port facility in Oman and a ship north-west of Muscat, as the Iranian military broadcast radio warnings to ships intending to cross the strait of Hormuz. People in Damascus, south Lebanon and Amman were shaken by explosions as Israel intercepted incoming Iranian missiles in the sky. Strikes on Gulf countries and the wider region left travellers stranded as major hubs in Dubai and Qatar were closed. Flights around and through the region were cancelled or delayed and it was unclear when the airspace above Gulf countries would reopen. The speed at which the conflict turned regional was dizzying. The geographical scope of the conflict exceeded that of the 12-day war within just a few hours. Satellite imagery from Vantor showed Iranian vessels burning at the Konarak naval base on Saturday. Thousands of people gathered in Tehran’s Enghalab Square to mourn the supreme leader on Sunday afternoon, waving flags and chanting slogans. Women wailed and beat their chests in grief and men holding aloft images of Khamenei called for retaliation against the US and Israel for the assassination. Protests broke out across the Middle East and the wider region as Shia Muslims gathered to express their shock and anger over Khamenei’s killing. As an ayatollah, he was a major religious figure for members of the Shia faith. In Pakistan, hundreds of pro-Iran protesters attempted to storm the US consulate in Karachi, prompting security forces to disperse the crowd. At least nine people were killed and several others injured. Protests also broke out in Baghdad’s green zone, as the Iraqi Shia leaders Ali Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr expressed their condolences for Khamenei’s death. Hezbollah called for a rally in Beirut on Sunday afternoon. Panic consumed the streets of Tehran as explosions rocked the densely populated city. Israeli military spokespeople told Iranians to distance themselves from military and industrial facilities. Iranian authorities instructed citizens to flee big cities for safety in scenes reminiscent of the mass exodus from Tehran this summer when Israel last attacked the city. Many security institutions and officials are located in residential areas, making civilian casualties likely. Israelis spent much of Sunday in air raid shelters as sirens sounded almost constantly. One person was killed and dozens were injured when an Iranian missile hit Tel Aviv on Saturday night. Another eight people were killed and 20 injured when a missile hit the town of Bet Shemesh on Sunday afternoon. Israel’s home command instructed its citizens to take shelter as Iran launched wave after wave of ballistic missiles at the country. Most of them were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system, which hits projectiles heading towards populated areas in mid-air.