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Middle East crisis live: tensions rise in region after US launches ‘heavy’ strikes on Iran

Iranian residents, mostly the fishermen community living on Qeshm Island, described waking to a series of powerful explosions at around 3.45am local time, when at least three huge strikes rocked the strategic island in the strait of Hormuz. “The first blast shook the roof sheets and rattled the doors, waking everyone up from the sleep,” one resident told the Guardian, speaking on condition of anonymity. “By the second and third explosions, the whole neighborhood was outside, and there were killed near our neighborhood. Fishermen, women, and children gathered in groups, calling relatives and trying to understand what had been hit. No one could go back to sleep.” Another resident said the strikes had left the community living in constant fear. “You never know if it’s over after one strike or if another is coming in minutes. Every loud noise now makes people panic and feel threatening,” he said. “Residents remain outside the rest of the night checking their phones for updates and news, making sure their families are safe. Everyone is frightened because we don’t know what will happen next; we are still outside our homes sitting in groups.”

Spain sends extra troops and police to Ceuta after thousands of migrants arrive

The Spanish government is deploying extra troops and police officers to its north African enclave of Ceuta after thousands of people swam and waded into the tiny territory from neighbouring Morocco in a matter of hours. Videos shot at Tarajal beach on Thursday showed crowds of people walking around the breakwaters and running on the beach and roads. Most appeared to be young men, but there were also families with women and children. “Viva España!” some shouted to a freelance photographer working for the Associated Press, who was filming the scene. A spokesperson for the Guardia Civil force, which polices Spain’s borders, said ⁠the migrants were “massively entering from the sea” through the Tarajal breakwater but could not provide an estimate of the numbers. Spain’s national broadcaster, TVE, reported that between 2,000 and 3,000 people had crossed into Ceuta, while the state news agency, Efe, said some had entered the territory by scaling the high border fence. “The situation is absolute chaos,” said Rachid Sbihi, the head of the association that represents Guardia Civil officers in Ceuta. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing.” He added that the border had “totally collapsed”. Agence France-Presse quoted a government spokesperson as saying that nine bodies had been recovered. Achraf Maimouni, a member of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, described the situation as “exceptional”. He said the Tarajal border had been opened “under unusual circumstances” on Thursday morning and people had crossed over. Juan Jesús Vivas, the president of Ceuta, demanded the deployment of additional police and troops “to guarantee the inviolability of the frontier” and citizens’ safety. He also called on the central government to declare a national emergency over the crossings. Vivas had said on Wednesday that migrant reception centres were overwhelmed, with hundreds of people sleeping on the streets. He said Ceuta needed “more resources, more infrastructure, more regulation and effective coordination between all the administrations”. “We’re not looking for privileges; we’re looking for a fair and responsible solution in line with our reality,” he added. On Thursday evening, Spain’s interior ministry announced that 60 members of the armed forces would be deployed to Ceuta, along with an additional 30 Guardia Civil officers. “The armed forces will reinforce the Guardia Civil in the exercise of its powers and any others that may be necessary to maintain security in the city of Ceuta,” the ministry said. But it rejected calls for the declaration of a national emergency, saying such emergencies could not be declared over migration issues, and could only be declared in response to dire meteorological events – such as the current wildfires – or in the face of a volcanic or nuclear threat. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is due to travel to Ceuta on Friday with the interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. Sánchez said his government would provide “an immediate response” to the situation in Ceuta, which echoes the border crisis in 2021 when more than 8,000 people arrived in just two days. “We’re mobilising all necessary resources, working with Moroccan and international authorities, and preparing the necessary measures to restore normality as soon as possible,” he said in a post on X. “I just conveyed this to President Vivas. This is the moment to build solutions, with responsibility and cooperation.” This month Spain’s supreme court ruled that migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta – or Spain’s other north African territory of Melilla – could not be summarily returned under the enclaves’ special border rejection regime. The Guardia Civil spokesperson told Reuters: “It has been a slow trickle since the supreme court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion.” Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative opposition People’s party, to which Vivas belongs, said the situation was desperate. “The government can’t look the other way,” he added, “because we are facing a national security crisis.” Santiago Abascal, who leads the far-right Vox party, described the incident as an “invasion” and said those crossing into Ceuta were not fleeing war or poverty but had been summoned by Sánchez’s government to ensure he could remain in power. Moroccan government sources attributed the surge to “criminal organisations” and said its cooperation with Spain remained “exemplary”. The mass crossing into Ceuta in May 2021 came amid heightened tensions between Madrid and Rabat over Spain’s decision to allow a Western Sahara independence leader to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain. Speaking at the time, Sánchez hinted at a link between the sudden relaxing of border controls and the diplomatic tensions. “As the president of Spain, I believe firmly that Morocco is a partner country, it’s a country that is a friend of Spain and it should continue this way,” he said. “To be effective, this cooperation needs to always be based on respect. Respect for mutual borders.” Ceuta and Melilla make up the EU’s only land border with Africa. Both cities periodically experience crowds of would-be migrants attempting to enter to reach Europe.

Race to extinguish blazes across Europe as fire weather breaks records

Fire weather in the EU has broken records for severity for this time of year, data shows, as firefighters race to extinguish blazes across the Mediterranean. Inflamed by carbon pollution, the hot, dry and windy weather across the EU from the start of the year until the end of July has been 43% more severe than the average for the same period over the last two decades, data from the European Forest Fire Information Service (Effis) shows. Three firefighters died in Greece on Tuesday, officials said, while firefighters in France and Spain made overnight progress tackling monster blazes that have burned dangerously close to large cities. The figures, which were published on Thursday but may be revised further, showed that so far this year 435,000 hectares (1,075,000 acres) have burned, roughly triple the recent historical average. The devastation is the result of 1,400 fires, more than double the average. In France, where a blaze in the dense pine forests near Bordeaux grew so big it generated a rare thunderstorm that could ignite more fires, a total of 91,000 hectares have burned, according to Effis, breaking the country’s record for a full year of fires – with one month of summer still to go. Fire-ravaged south-western France experienced its “first somewhat optimistic day” on Thursday since wildfires broke out more than a week ago, said Sophie Brocas, the prefect of Gironde. “It is the first somewhat optimistic day, because we have the feeling that we are beginning to return to normal life and that things are starting to improve significantly.” Regional authorities in Gironde said the fire remained under control after a quiet night, with work continuing around its edge and in active hotspots. They said temperatures on Thursday had been expected to be “fairly favourable” after Wednesday’s 38C heat and strong winds hampered firefighting efforts. They allowed a further 84,000 people to return home on Thursday, after 60,000 people were given the green light on Tuesday. In Spain, which experienced its largest wildfire on record, west of Madrid, a total of 207,000 hectares have burned across the country, according to Effis. The figure is nearly five times the average for this time of year but shy of the devastation reached by late July during the 2022 fires. Regional authorities in Madrid said the fire situation had been declared “stable” but residents of seven housing estates were unable to return home. Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, announced the end of the national emergency in the regions of Ávila and Madrid on Thursday morning. However, a new fire near the Portuguese border prompted the evacuation of 600 people, officials said. Aemet, the Spanish meteorological agency, said temperatures above 35C were expected on Thursday in large areas of the interior, with some regions bracing for highs of 40C-42C. Wildfires in France and Spain have forced more than 300,000 people from their homes and tourist accommodation this month, prompting both countries to request EU support in the form of firefighters, fire engines, and water-dropping planes and helicopters. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, thanked firefighters for their “courage and commitment” on Wednesday as crews sent by Romania and Greece extended their stays. “As the fires in France and Spain continue to ravage, European solidarity knows no limit,” she said. Further difficult weeks were expected as fires worsened in Italy and Greece, officials at the EU’s crisis management centre said on Wednesday morning. Later that day, the Greek fire department announced the deaths of two firefighters who were tackling a blaze on the island of Crete, and of another in the south of the mainland. Greece has so far had a relatively calm fire season, Effis data up to 29 July shows, with slightly fewer fires than usual and a burned area well below the average. Meanwhile, Italy and Portugal have had near-record breaking numbers of fires, and burned areas well above average. The countries have so far been spared the scale of destruction experienced by France and Spain, but one firefighter died in Italy last week while tackling blazes in Sicily. Climate breakdown is causing Europe to burn this summer, with a series of almost back-to-back heatwaves drying out vegetation, which then provides a vast fuel surplus that has allowed small fires to grow into raging infernos. Sánchez repeated calls to create a “national pact” to address the climate emergency during a visit to a command post on Wednesday. “These fires may or may not be caused by humans, but in any case, they increase exponentially as a result of these high temperatures, low humidity, and also the atmospheric phenomena that these fires, these large fires, cause in our forests,” he said. A study by an international team of scientists, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that since the 1980s, the number of fires in southern Europe and the area burned had steadily declined as authorities became better at preventing and suppressing them. The study, published on Thursday, found the trend began to reverse in 2018. It found that summer days conducive to strong wildfires had more than doubled since 1981 across large parts of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece; in parts of France and Spain, the summertime fire weather index over the last decade was up to 50% higher than the 1981-2010 average. The scientists said this had resulted in European fires shifting to “fewer, but more intense and larger events”, with fires that escaped initial attacks by firefighters able to “quickly become catastrophic”. José Miguel Viñas, a meteorologist at the forecaster Meteored, who was not involved in the research, said it scientifically demonstrated a fact that southern Europe and other parts of the world had observed in recent years. “Increasingly extreme conditions of heat, dryness and wind are fuelling large forest fires,” he said. “Once started, they spread rapidly and become uncontrollable, overwhelming the firefighting efforts.” Rapid analyses have found western Europe’s June heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” in a world without climate breakdown, while the level of soil dryness – a major factor in bigger blazes – is five times more likely than it would be in a climate 1.4C cooler. The heatwaves are estimated to have killed at least 10,000 people and cost grain farmers €2bn (£1.7bn) in lost crops. The increase in temperatures from fossil fuel pollution has come as rural regions in southern Europe have hollowed out, with farms being abandoned as populations age and young people move to cities. The resultant overgrowth in vegetation has troubled firefighters and wildfire researchers across the Mediterranean.

Saudi Arabia prepares sea and possible land offensive against Houthis

Saudi Arabia is preparing for a major military offensive against the Houthis by sea and possibly by land in central Yemen, Yemeni sources believe, in a move to break the chokehold on its oil exports through the southern Red Sea. Saudi forces have been seen withdrawing from the east of Yemen in what could be preparation for a land offensive. At the same time, Riyadh is trying to organise a naval coalition to protect shipping from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait. The Saudi defence ministry said on Thursday that 14 states including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and Djibouti had issued a joint statement supporting a multinational maritime defence coalition. The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, and much of its Red Sea coastline, announced on 20 July that they were implementing a blockade against Saudi ships, but they have denied they are planning to impose tolls on all ships. The group says it will lift the blockade once Saudi Arabia lifts its blockade on Yemen, positioning the dispute as over the future of Yemen and not directly about Iran. Saudi Arabia intervened in the Yemeni civil war in 2015 in support of the country’s UN-recognised government against the Houthi rebels. Riyadh has also asked the US and a group of European countries including Germany, France, the UK and Italy to join a Red Sea coalition. The EU already has a naval protection mission, Aspides, operating in the Red Sea and it remains unclear if the Houthis are mounting a general blockade or one directed solely at Saudi Arabia. Houthi forces said on 25 July they had hit “sensitive” oil transport sites inside Saudi Arabia linking eastern province oilfields to a Red Sea export hub. If the Red Sea route is closed to Saudi shipping in addition to the strait of Hormuz blockade on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, the kingdom’s oil export will be severely constrained. Up to 80% of Saudi crude exports were shipped through the strait of Hormuz before the Iran war began. The Red Sea has therefore grown in importance, with more than half of Saudi oil now transported overland to loading terminals at the port city of Yanbu. Saudi strikes in Iraq on Wednesday killed at least 20 people as it hit back at Iraqi militia for striking its oil facilities. Donald Trump said the joint US-Saudi attacks had been mounted with the agreement of the Iraqi government, a claim that Baghdad did not confirm. The Saudi defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, held an urgent meeting with Trump and JD Vance on Wednesday to discuss the next steps. The Saudis are keen to show they will defend themselves and their industry, but are not willing to escalate the war against Iran, arguing that the disagreements between the US and Iran can still be settled by diplomacy. The troop movements inside Yemen involve concentrating forces for what could be an attack on al-Bayda, a governorate in central southern Yemen captured by the Houthis in 2020-21, the sources said. Fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia has erupted in the past fortnight with the Houthis mounting attacks against Saudi Aramco facilities. The strikes inside Saudi Arabia came hours after Saudi airstrikes targeted Houthi-controlled sites in the port of Hodeidah and a third Saudi commercial vessel was attacked in the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have been vying for control of Yemen for more than a decade and an uneasy status quo has unravelled over the past month. The tensions inside Yemen would be reduced if the Gulf states and Iran could reach an agreement for the reopening of the strait of Hormuz. Talks between Oman and Iran are continuing, with Iran demanding that all shipping enter the strait through a northern route close to Iran’s coast.

Russian missile destroys US firm’s Kyiv drone factory

A drone factory in Kyiv destroyed by a Russian ballistic missile on Friday was owned by a US corporation registered in Delaware, in what appears to be the first time Moscow has targeted a US company in the conflict. Terminal Autonomy makes precision “deep-strike” drones with guidance systems that are resistant to Russian jamming signals, according to a person familiar with the company. The phrase “terminal autonomy” refers to the final phase of a kamikaze drone’s attack in which AI takes over control of the weapon after the defending force jams radio waves or mobile service. State records show that the corporation was registered in Delaware in 2023. The company’s website says: “We deploy AI-guided loitering munitions and precision munitions, which are already in active service against enemy assets on the frontline.” Terminal Autonomy did not reply to an emailed request for comment. The Ukrainian defence ministry also did not respond to an email. Anthony Vinci, a former senior US intelligence officer who wrote The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America, said: “The Russians don’t care who owns the manufacturing facility. It’s still a target. They don’t care if it’s American or someone else’s.” Early in July, Donald Trump, who had previously been lukewarm to efforts to arm Ukraine, said the US would license Ukraine to manufacture Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. Vinci said: “I do think if Patriot missiles or any American system was manufactured in Ukraine, I think the Russians would target that manufacturing facility.” The Russian state news agency Tass first reported on the attack on Sunday, citing the Russian defence ministry as its source. The report did not disclose that an American company owned the factory but mentioned that “specialists from a Ukrainian-American company” had worked there. Tass accurately reported that the plant made AQ-400 Scythe and AQ-100 Bayonet drones. Nobody was killed in the attack, according to a source familiar with the company.

Russia accused of violating Polish airspace after missile explosion near village

Russia has been accused of violating Polish airspace, after a missile exploded in a field in the east of the country, triggering Nato air defences, in the midst of a massive air raid that killed 13 people in neighbouring Ukraine. Polish authorities said that the explosion near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia, close to Lublin, had created a 10-metre-wide crater. Residents of Tarnawa-Kolonia reported hearing an explosion at about 4am that shook the windows of their homes, police said. Nato’s supreme ⁠allied commander for Europe, Gen Alexus Grynkewich, said: “Nato will continue to take all necessary measures ‌to defend Nato territory.” The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, speaking at the scene of the explosion, in a field about 50 miles from the Ukrainian border, said the missile was most likely Russian. “From the analysis of most of the traces, the recovered fragments point to a Russian KH-101 missile,” he told journalists. He said there was no reason to think that Poland had been the target of the missile but said the Polish military had been prepared to shoot it down if it threatened a built-up area. As the attacks on Ukraine took place, Poland scrambled fighter jets to protect its airspace, its armed forces said. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said in a post on X that a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile had crossed into Poland. The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. António Costa, the president of the EU council, said on X: “Last night, Russia launched a massive combined strike against Ukraine. During the attack, Polish airspace was also violated, underlining once again that Russia’s aggression is a threat to the security of Europe as a whole.” Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said the ⁠Russian missile incident ⁠in ⁠Poland was another “unacceptable violation” of the ⁠EU’s airspace. At least 13 people in Ukraine – including one in Kyiv – died in Thursday’s attacks, which extended as far ⁠as the western city of Lviv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ⁠said Russia appeared to have used a North Korean missile in an attack near the central city of Kryvyi Rih, which local officials said killed ⁠six people, including two girls, aged five and 12. “In Radushne, the Russians ‌used a ‌missile from North ‌Korea for the first time in a long time – that is what preliminary data shows,” Zelenskyy ‌said in his nightly video address. “The alliance of Moscow bastards with the mad regime in North Korea – for ⁠missiles, for the North Korean contingent here in Europe, on our borders, ‌and for the killing of our Ukrainian children.” Another six people, including two children, were killed in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava. The military administration for Kyiv confirmed one death, with the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, reporting fires in several districts. Earlier, he posted: “The enemy is attacking the capital with ballistic weapons. The threat of further attack remains present. Stay in shelters!” In ‌Lviv, close to Poland, rescue workers were scrambling to clear rubble to reach those trapped after Russian missiles damaged two blocks of flats and injured 26 people, officials said. Late on Wednesday, Zelenskyy had posted: “The Russians prepared a massive attack several days ago, and there is a high probability that the strike will be carried out tonight … Please, in all regions of Ukraine, pay attention to air raid alerts today and stay safe.” Zelenskyy also repeated his request to Ukraine’s allies to supply Kyiv with the missiles its air defence system lacked. “It is important that our partners fully understand what is happening and that the protection of people’s lives depends directly on their willingness, or lack of willingness, to provide air defence missiles.” Russia’s defence ministry, commenting on the strikes, said it had used land, sea and air-launched missiles, as well as strike drones, during the raid and claimed it had targeted military industrial facilities. Elsewhere on Thursday, the ⁠Ukrainian military struck four Russian ⁠tankers in the Black Sea ⁠and the Sea of ⁠Azov, Ukraine’s drone forces ‌commander, ‌Robert Brovdi, said. Brovdi said on the Telegram app that 205 tankers – 130 in the Sea of Azov ⁠and 75 in the Black Sea –had been ‌hit in the past three weeks.

Iran’s war with the US is not its only conflict as internal crises mount

Iran, in the middle of an escalating five-month war with the US, continues to stumble from one internal crisis to another – whether it is over public executions, the rising cost of living, the alleged bias of the state broadcaster or even the post-midnight destruction of pavements outside liberal-leaning Tehran cafes. Very little that happens in Iran, cultural or political, momentous or trivial, does so uncontested. But there is now a growing threat of a long diplomatic deadlock, forged by mutual distrust in which neither side believes the other will stick to any agreement. That impasse has occurred as the war broadens, drawing in Yemen, Iraq and now Egypt. In Iran, at least, the advocates of escalation are winning. As a result, a convergence of Iran’s conflicts, internal and external, becomes more likely. Parts of the Trump administration and the Iranian opposition – including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former deposed Shah – have never abandoned the belief that the Iranian government is on the brink of collapse. What is true is that the picture of cohesive if brittle society presented by the millions attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month revealed only one side of the public mood. ‘We just practise enduring’ Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, rarely tires of warning that the conditions that led to the bloody protests in January remain. At a recent meeting of the supreme judicial council he argued: “Iran is engaged in a full-scale war. Today’s war is not just a war of missiles; the enemy has come to the conclusion that it cannot force the Iranian nation to surrender through military attacks. The most important battlefield today is the economy and livelihood of the people. If economic pressures cause social discontent to form and this discontent spreads, the enormous social capital that the people have created in support of the system will be lost.” Undoubtedly dissent, in the form of despair, exists. Golshan Fathi, a Tehran human rights activist, recently wrote on her social media page: “The same sick cycle repeats … morning … the call to prayer, news of an execution … noon with power cuts, afternoon the water stops … dusk, the anxiety of war and renewed attacks on cities, and at midnight, the earth trembles. “And tomorrow, the same story again. Caught between natural disasters, management failures, and man-made crises … every day we don’t live, we just practise enduring. Repetition, repetition, repetition … until a weary land no longer asks: ‘What will tomorrow bring?’ It just waits to see: ‘When will the next crisis arrive?’” Dissent in the form of political protest also exists, whether it is those inside jails or citizens in the squares of Isfahan protesting against the current wave of intimidatory public executions. Many critics ask why the punishment of the accused takes place in public gallows, yet their trials are held in secret courts. On Monday the political bureau of the Nation’s Union party warned that ignoring the protests over the wave of executions could have “devastating consequences”, and urged academics and religious scholars to intervene to end this state violence. ‘War has no winners’ Azar Mansouri, once a close reformist ally of Pezeshkian, warned last week at the annual meeting of the Iranian reformist front about a small but vocal group that seemed determined to portray negotiated agreements with the US as retreats or defeat. War, she warned, “is not just a confrontation between military forces and armies. It is the destruction of the economy, the erosion of social capital, the spread of despair, the emigration of elites, the increase in poverty and the loss of opportunities for development. Ultimately, it threatens the future of the nation.” Similarly a “we do not want war” statement signed by 268 political activists this month said they believed the overwhelming majority opposed war, and this should be tested in a public vote. Another letter from 1,000 activists linked with the former president Mohammad Khatami warned “the contemporary experience of Iran is that war has no winners. Those who advocate negotiations should not be slandered.” What unites these initiatives is a fear that diplomats are losing, and Iran is being edged into a forever war that can be portrayed as an Iranian-Arab war, a war that would be to Israel’s advantage. Yet opposition to the whole principle of negotiation with America – fuelled by Donald Trump’s own erratic behaviour – is being voiced by hardliners, in street rallies and more recently on unofficial billboards. The sway of the hardliners lies less in their strength in parliament – many were elected on low turnouts and anyway have been deposed from key committees in parliament – but in the belief that a network of deep-state support exists in the military and in the office of the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The absence of Khamenei from public view makes it harder to resolve the controversy about whether the family sees any purpose in negotiations with America. The closure of cafes, or the destruction of the sidewalks around them, is also seen as a crude attempt to shape debate. Last year the prominent hardliner Saeed Jalili described the cafes as an anti-Islamic “third space” beyond the dormitory or the office where people go to escape loneliness. “In this concept the family loses any meaning. This stands in opposition to Islam’s philosophy of marriage.” Alleged broadcaster bias Despite being a conservative newspaper, Jomhouri-e Eslami complained “an addiction to violating the dignity of one’s political opponents is increasing every day”. That in turn is, in part, a reference to the criticism of negotiators meted out by the publicly funded national broadcaster IRIB, long seen as a preserve of those opposed to talks with the west. Many see IRIB as an exclusive platform for the hardliners rather than a mirror of a diverse society. The crisis between the government and the broadcaster is now out in the open after interventions by Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief negotiator, were censored. The government in a statement complained: “Censorship of the president’s speech, unilateral destruction of the government’s performance, and efforts to destroy the memorandum of understanding that was formed to get the country through the crisis and protect national interests are no longer media criticism; they are a stand against national cohesion, empathy, and unity. “The question is clear: is the Iranian broadcasting system with the people, government, and interests of Iran or with those who benefit from division, tension, and polarisation? The national media should be the voice of Iranian unity, not a platform for destroying the government and disrupting national understanding.” There are calls for a complete overhaul of the organisation’s accountability when a new head is appointed this September. At one level the politics of the national broadcaster should not matter, since surveys suggest less than 12% of the country watch it. The difficulty for the government is that this leaves audiences watching hostile foreign satellite channels instead. Economic toll of war This tension over the national broadcaster coincides with a period of unprecedented economic pressure. In the next six months food rationing might become necessary, Majid-Reza Hariri, the head of the Iran-China chamber of commerce, warned this week. Gholamhossein Mohammadi, the deputy minister of labour, said more than a million jobs had been lost as a result of the war. In a way rationing – through food price inflation – has already started as Iranians are being forced to change their diets because of the cost of fruit, eggs and chicken. Year-on-year food inflation reached 134% in July, meaning the average household’s monthly food budget has more than doubled in a year. Overall inflation is at 84%. In a further sign of the long-term pressure on living standards, figures released this week showed the real value of the minimum wage had plummeted. Azadeh Mokhtari, one of the best chroniclers of the impact of the economy on everyday lives, wrote this week: “Society has reached a point where ‘I don’t have the patience’ and ‘I don’t have the energy’ have become everyday phrases. No one asks: ‘How are you?’ any more because everyone knows the answer.” The toll of the war on the economy has spread everywhere from the internet to tourism. All 400 hotels on Kish Island in the strait of Hormuz – the site of US bombing on Thursday – have shut. As many as 30,000 Iranians visited medical centres during the two wars in 2025 and 2026. Civilian facilities such as the Bushehr meteorological centre have been almost destroyed and the Bushehr airport has become unusable. The Chabahar maritime watchtower has been completely destroyed; 12 bridges and two tunnel openings have been damaged. This will take decades to repair. Crisis of trusts Yet one of the biggest bombshells was detonated on national television when Zabihullah Khodayian, the head of the General Inspection Organisation, a national audit office, revealed the scale of foreign-exchange corruption among so-called trusts, highly secretive government-sponsored bodies set up to evade US sanctions. These trusts, embedded in the Iranian political system for years, are entities set up to transfer Iranian oil income outside the network of sanctions. It is self-evident that they act in a nontransparent way, and siphon off public money. Khodayian confirmed as much, saying one trust that was given $200m (£149m) had not returned the money, and had also left the country. He said a further 229 individuals owed the state a total of €23.5bn (£20.2bn), while the judiciary said cases were being opened against nearly 50 individuals. It is still unclear on what basis these trusts were selected, how much they charge, what guarantees they have provided to preserve the country’s resources, and how they are held accountable. But there is a growing chance that a major scandal is about to be revealed that could involve Iran’s elite. If so, all the talk of social cohesion across the classes will start to look very hollow.

Nato ‘will take all necessary measures’ to defend territory after Russian missile crashes in Poland – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. Russia has been accused of violating Polish airspace after a missile exploded in a field in the east of the country, triggering Nato air defences (9:19). The missile crashed in an uninhabited rural area, and on impact created a crater about 10 meter wide (9:42), but caused no casualties. Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said the missile “looked like” a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile (10:23), a view confirmed by early military assessment (10:40), which Russia also used in strikes against Ukraine last night, which killed at least nine people. But Tusk insisted that there was “no reason to think Poland was the intended target,” as investigators look into how it ended up within Polish and Nato airspace (12:25). Nato said it was in contact with the Polish authorities, and stressed it would “take all necessary measures to defend Nato territory” (13:55). The incident was widely condemned by top EU and European leaders (10:03, 11:51, 13:23, 16:25, 16:32). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.