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Middle East crisis live: US orders Americans out of Iraq as Trump renews calls for allies to secure strait of Hormuz

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr accused news broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” amid the ongoing war in Iran in a post on X on Saturday. Responding to a post by Trump in which he accused the “Fake News Media” of running an “intentionally misleading headline” regarding the five US air force refuelling planes that had reportedly been hit in an Iranian strike in Saudi Arabia, Carr doubled down on claims that the media is pushing fake news and appeared to again advocate for revoking news stations’ broadcast licenses. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote. “The law is clear,” he continued. “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” He added: “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.”

Iran threatens to escalate war after Trump says ‘many countries’ will send warships to strait of Hormuz

Iran threatened on Saturday to further escalate the war raging in the Middle East by targeting any facility in the region with US ties, after Donald Trump predicted “many countries” would send warships to support a US bid to reopen by force the strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway closed to virtually all maritime traffic by Tehran since the beginning of the war. Iran has responded to the joint US-Israeli offensive, which is entering its third week, with daily attacks on oil and other infrastructure around the Gulf region, as well as against Israel. Both continued on Saturday with salvoes fired by Iran at Israel and a barrage of ballistic missiles directed at the United Arab Emirates. Some oil-loading operations have been suspended in the UAE’s Fujairah emirate, a global ship-refuelling hub, industry and trade sources said on Saturday, with TV footage showing plumes of dark smoke rising into the air. An Iranian military spokesperson called on people in the UAE to evacuate ports, docks and “American hideouts”, saying US forces had targeted Iranian islands from those areas. US planes bombed Iran’s main oil export hub, Kharg Island, on Friday and continued to launch waves of attacks in Iran on Saturday. Israeli warplanes also launched dozens of raids. At least 15 people were killed when an airstrike hit a refrigerator and heater factory in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the semi-official Fars news agency said on Saturday. The Israeli air force said it was seeking to degrade Iran’s ability to launch missiles and also targeting the security forces of the regime. In the latest flurry of social media posts, Trump wrote on Saturday on Truth Social that “many countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe.” The US president, seemingly in an attempt to bolster domestic and international support for the war, added: “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area.” The US has yet to present a coherent strategy to reopen the strait of Hormuz which usually carries a fifth of global supplies of crude oil and liquefied fossil gas. On Friday Trump said that US forces “obliterated” military targets in the raid on the Kharg island and warned that crucial oil infrastructure there could be next. “For reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island,” Trump wrote on social media. “However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.” Last week, Trump called the leaders of Iran “deranged scumbags” and said it was an honour to kill them. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, told a press conference in Washington that Iranian leaders were “desperate and hiding, they’ve gone underground”. Hegseth also said that Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, was wounded and probably disfigured. Iranian officials have admitted Khamenei was hurt in the Israeli strike that opened the conflict but say the 56-year-old’s injuries are not serious. The flow of oil and gas from Iran and the Gulf has moved centre stage in the ongoing conflict in recent days. Kharg lies about 15 miles (25km) off Iran’s coastline and is the main facility for exporting the country’s oil. Iran has effectively closed the narrow strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices surging and raising the prospect of major damage to economies worldwide. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesperson for Iran’s joint military command, warned of attacks on “all oil, economic and energy infrastructures belonging to oil companies across the region that have American shares or cooperate with America”, while Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called on Saturday for neighbouring countries to expel US forces from the Middle East. The US security umbrella in the region “has proven to be full of holes and inviting rather than deterring trouble”, the top diplomat posted on X, adding that Iran called on its neighbours “to expel foreign aggressors”. Iran’s strategy of hurting US allies in a bid to force Trump to halt the offensive appears to have had little concrete success so far, though its efforts to cause economic pain across the world may be having greater impact. Tehran is taking “the global economy hostage” as a means of “putting pressure on Trump”, said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at International Crisis Group. “The regime seems pretty intact, despite the fact that it has lost some very senior leaders,” and that allows Tehran to roll out a “three-part strategy”, Vaez said. “First, ensure survival. Second, keep enough retaliatory capacity to be able to stay in the fight. And then third was to prolong the conflict” so that “you can end it on your terms”. Meanwhile, the US embassy in Baghdad said Americans should leave Iraq immediately, after an overnight missile attack on the embassy building. In an alert on social media, the embassy warned of Iran-aligned terrorist militia groups along with the risk of missiles, drones and rockets in Iraqi airspace. Between 1,400 and 1,800 people are reported to have been killed in Iran, where residents report relentless bombing. Thirteen have been killed in Israel, and about 20 in total in the Gulf. Trump has declined to publicly give an end date for the conflict, telling reporters: “It’ll be as long as it’s necessary.” Analysts have suggested that Trump will seek to end the conflict soon to prevent a full blown global economic crisis and soaring fuel prices causing discontent among US voters. Trump’s comments on Saturday marked the first time he has publicly suggested the US may not be able to reopen the strait of Hormuz on its own, and without international support. Experts told the Guardian earlier this week that military actions directed toward Kharg would lead to a further dramatic increase in oil prices, already surging since the war began on 28 February. “We may see the $120 (£90) a barrel price we saw on Monday heading to $150 if Kharg were attacked,” said Neil Quilliam of the Chatham House thinktank. “It’s too vital for global energy markets.” In Lebanon, the humanitarian crisis deepened, with more than 800 people killed and 850,000 displaced, as Israel launched waves of strikes against Hezbollah and warned there would be no letup. Lebanon’s health ministry says 31 paramedics have been killed by Israeli strikes. Israeli officials accused Hezbollah of using civilian ambulances to transport weapons and fighters, without credible evidence. Concerns that the US may seize Kharg rose when officials in Washington said that 2,500 more marines and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli had been ordered to the Middle East. Marine expeditionary units are able to conduct amphibious landings, but they also specialise in bolstering security at embassies, evacuating civilians and disaster relief. The deployment does not necessarily indicate that a ground operation is imminent or will take place. US forces have suffered casualties, including the deaths of all six crew members aboard a refuelling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq.

‘A lot of the hate happened in Australia’: why the Christchurch mosque attack still awaits a full reckoning

When he was 14, a boy in South Australia downloaded more than a dozen videos of the terrorist attack committed by an Australian man on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019. He was sentenced in 2025 for possessing documents with information for terrorist acts and extremist material, according to the magistrate’s remarks, which included having the shooter’s manifesto on his devices. Two years earlier, a 16-year-old in South Australia was sentenced for several terrorism offences. The judge commented on his activities on the chat platform Discord, which included sharing material from Islamic State and “modern-day Nazi groups”, as well as death scenes, including images of the Christchurch killings that left 51 people dead. As a journalist whose job includes tracking such cases, it is always confronting to see the Christchurch terrorist’s propaganda continue to surface in the Australian legal system, especially in cases involving young people. Courts have heard about animated recreations of the Christchurch mosque shooting; about police finding the attacker’s video on a red USB storage device. But this growing legal record and the continued reach of the Christchurch attack is at odds with how the man who committed the atrocity – an Australian – is confronted in his home country. That is, hardly at all. In 2020, the terrorist pleaded guilty to 51 murders, 40 attempted murders, and engaging in a terrorist act. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. New Zealand held a royal commission. With a coronial inquiry still under way, New Zealand continues to confront what happened that day, and to ask what could have prevented it. In Australia, meanwhile, there has been little public accounting of what, if anything, could have been done here to identify the terrorist or stop the attack – despite the terrorist’s known interactions with local far-right groups. Australians care about what happened at Christchurch, said Rita Jabri Markwell, legal advisor to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, but the country’s leaders have failed to help us remember it together. “To grieve what happened, together. And that grieving is so important, because it validates our shared humanity,” she said. In the United States too, court records show the terrorist, his manifesto and the digital propaganda of his livestreamed attack on the Al Noor mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre remain pervasive. When Dallas Humber, one of the leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram network, was charged in 2024 for soliciting hate crimes and the murder of federal officials, among other offences, the indictment detailed how she helped create a publication that celebrated “white supremacist attackers as heroes of the white race”. Their so-called Saint Encyclopedia sat between two stills from the livestreamed massacre. Humber was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and Terrogram has since been listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia. Hank Teran, chief executive of Open Measures, an open-source threat intelligence and social media research platform, also tracks the spread of such material. He suggested the terrorist’s propaganda continues to be spread because it was intentionally framed under the guise of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory: the claim that there is a plot to take over white European countries with immigrants – or generally, “the other”. “In the Christchurch context, that ‘other’ was … Muslims,” Teran said. “The Poway synagogue shooting in California a few weeks after the Christchurch shooting, it was Jews. The El Paso shooting in Texas, it was Latinx.” For Teran, the public response can’t just be content moderation or de-platforming, or even age restriction on social media “and hoping it all goes away”. “It’s more about disrupting that pipeline from passive exposure to active planning,” he said. “That typically requires some proactive education amongst parents, community stakeholders to understand the intricacies of some of these complicated communities that they’re likely not in on a regular basis.” The significance of the Christchurch terrorist’s roots in Australia are still not properly recognised or addressed, said Jabri Markwell, even as the Muslim community continues to be painted by politicians and others in positions of power as a group “to fear or hate”. “He was socialised in his attitudes growing up in Australia,” she said. “A lot of his online activity was in Australia. A lot of the hate that he developed happened in Australia. Those views are not shaped in a few weeks, they are shaped over years. “There has been no accountability since that horrible day for the role that official language had in that Australian’s radicalisation.” Alaa Elzokm OAM, imam of Elsedeaq Heidelberg mosque in Melbourne, will be travelling to Christchurch for a commemoration of the attack. He will be speaking with Sakinah Community Trust, which is led by widows, mothers and daughters who lost family members on that Friday in 2019. Elzokm said dealing with Islamophobia in Australia, as with all forms of racism, is not only about showing sympathy but firm action so that everyone can feel safe when they worship. “We don’t want the incident to be forgotten with time,” he said. “Words are no longer enough.”

Jürgen Habermas, German philosopher and sociologist, dies aged 96

The influential German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas has died at the age of 96, his publisher has said. Habermas, a towering figure in the intellectual history of postwar Germany, is best known for his theory of political consensus-building. Widely considered one of most influential philosophers of the 20th century, he also helped to shape the discourse around European integration and the formation of the EU. In spite of his background in the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school and his reputation as a court philosopher of the Social Democratic party, his influence cut across party lines. German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, described him as “one of the most significant thinkers of our time”. “His analytical acuity shaped democratic discourse far beyond our country’s borders and served as a beacon in a stormy sea,” Merz said in a statement. “His voice will be missed”. Habermas’ career, which spanned seven decades, focused on the foundations of social theory, democracy and the rule of law. His belief that the formation of public opinion was vital for democracies to survive explains why Habermas continued to write books and newspaper articles deep into old age. In a 2015 interview with the Guardian, he criticised the then chancellor Angela Merkel for “gambling away” Germany’s postwar reputation with her government’s hardline stance during the Greek debt crisis. More recently, such interventions invited criticism from younger intellectuals. In 2022, he criticised Germany’s then Green party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, for her “aggressively self-confident” and “shrill” condemnations of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. His pronouncement that Israel’s war on Gaza following the 7 October Hamas attacks was “justified in principle” was met with disbelief by many philosophers following in the footsteps of the Frankfurt school’s “critical theory”, who published a condemnatory letter. His most recent work, Things Needed to Get Better, was published in December last year. In it, he refuses to “let defeatism have the last word”, arguing it is possible to “confront the crises of the present aggressively and finally overcome them after all”. His publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. He is survived by two of his three children. Born on 18 June 1929 to a bourgeois family in Dusseldorf, Habermas underwent two surgeries after birth and in early childhood for a cleft palate, which resulted in a speech impediment. This impediment is often cited as having influenced his work on communication. Habermas said he had experienced the importance of spoken language as “a layer of commonality without which we as individuals cannot exist” and recalled struggling to make himself understood. He was raised in a staunchly Protestant household. His father, an economist who headed the local chamber of commerce, joined the Nazi party in 1933 but was no more than a “passive sympathiser“, Habermas said. He himself joined the Hitler Youth at the age of 10, like most German boys at the time. At 15, as the second world war was drawing to a close, he managed to avoid being drafted into the military by hiding from military police. Later, he said he wouldn’t have found his way into philosophy and social theory if he hadn’t experienced confronting the reality of Nazi crimes as a young man. He recalled that “you saw suddenly that it was a politically criminal system in which you had lived”. Educated at the University of Bonn, where he met his wife, Ute, he first rose to prominence as a journalist and an academic in the 1950s. He belonged to the second generation of the Frankfurt school of intellectuals, following in the footsteps of Marxist thinkers like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. In the 1980s, Habermas was a prominent figure in the historikerstreit, or historians’ dispute, an intellectual debate where conservative historians, most prominently Ernst Nolte, argued that the atrocities of Nazi Germany were not unique and similar crimes had been committed by other governments. Habermas and other opponents of this perspective contended that the conservative historians were trying to lessen the magnitude of Nazi crimes through such comparisons. Defending the uniqueness of Third Reich atrocities, Habermas believed that Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past, had to be central to Germany’s identity. His wife, Ute Habermas-Wesselhoeft, died last year. The couple had three children: Tilmann, Judith and Rebekka, who died in 2023.

Five arrested in Cuba after protest at local Communist party office

Five people have been arrested in Cuba for acts of “vandalism” after a small group of protesters broke into a provincial office of the Cuban Communist party and set fire to computers and furniture. The incident, which also affected a pharmacy and another shop, took place in the town of Moron, a little more than 300 miles (500km) east of Havana. Videos shared on social media show the protesters ransacking the office, removing documents, equipment and furniture, and burning everything in the street. A smaller group also threw stones. “What began peacefully, after an exchange with the authorities in the area, degenerated into vandalism against the headquarters of municipal committee of the Communist party,” the state-run newspaper Invasor said. It added that five people had been arrested. Although protests are rare in Cuba, the country is enduring a US oil blockade and other intense pressure from the US president, Donald Trump, who has stated openly he would like to see regime change in Havana. Recently, people have started banging pots and pans at night in the street or at home to vent their frustration and discontent over shortages of food and medicine. Residents are also suffering frequent rolling power blackouts that can last for up to 15 hours a day. Independent media and social media posts say that Havana is at the centre of these recent nightly protests, but they are spreading to other parts of the country, too. On Friday, the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, confirmed for the first time that he was holding talks with the US government. Díaz-Canel said that no petroleum shipments have arrived in Cuba in the past three months, and blamed the US oil blockade for that. He said the island was running on a mixture of natural gas, solar power and thermoelectric plants. Trump has said Cuba will be next on his agenda after the Iran war and the US overthrow of Cuba’s top ally, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, in January. Cuba relied on Venezuela for oil and Trump, who says he effectively runs Caracas, has cut off the supply. The oil embargo has brought Cuba’s already troubled economy to the brink of collapse. The Republican leader has placed the impoverished island under a US oil blockade, strangling its fuel supply on the basis of what he called the “extraordinary threat” posed by Cuba to the US. This comes on top of a six-decades-old US trade embargo.

How the war in Iran and its economic fallout will lead to Trump’s defeat

Donald Trump is still high on the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The easy abduction of the Venezuelan president didn’t just grant Trump control of the nation’s oil and critical minerals resources. It allowed him to throttle the government of Cuba by denying it access to energy, raising the tantalizing prospect that he might bring down a communist regime that has annoyed Washington since 1959. Trump is confident that his joint venture with Israel in Iran will do just as well. The barrage of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors has done nothing to change Trump’s mind that he can win, regardless of how he defines “winning”. Whatever the war does to energy markets, the American economy can take it. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iranian nuclear threat is over, are a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” he noted on social media. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” Trump’s feeling of invincibility is also due to the fact that his erratic policymaking, so far, hasn’t caused as much damage as originally feared. Despite his wall of tariffs, his dismemberment of the federal workforce, his deportation of immigrant workers and his relentless attacks on the Fed, just a few weeks ago leading economists were wondering whether the economy may achieve that most difficult of feats: a soft landing from the era of high inflation. The United States is also perhaps the best insulated of the major advanced economies against a spike in the price of energy. Imports of crude have declined significantly as domestic production surged from the early 2000s. Natural gas, whose domestic price is not as sensitive to spikes in global markets, has taken a larger role in the energy supply. Today, oil satisfies about 38% of US energy consumption, almost 10 percentage points less than during the 1973 oil crisis, when Arab oil producers stopped shipping to the US to punish it for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Natural gas’s share has meanwhile grown from 30% to 36%. European markets shuddered when Iran throttled the strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil shipments flow, and swooned when Qatar shut down liquefied gas facilities. On this side of the Atlantic, though, Trump’s favorite gauge of the US economy, the S&P 500 index, still hovers close to its all-time high. But however high Trump is riding, he is nonetheless facing defeat. Not military defeat against whatever is left of Iran’s armed forces. He is about to be defeated by the only power ever capable of stopping American military adventures: the opposition of the American public. The war against Iran has been deeply unpopular from the start, an unusual twist for a nation that tends to support sending the kids off to fight, even under dubious justifications. Its economic effects are not going to help its popularity going forward. And self-sufficiency in energy cannot fully insulate the United States. The price of oil is set in global markets, whether it comes from Texas or the Middle East. Regular gasoline already shot up to its highest since Trump took office, past $3.50 a gallon. The government now forecasts that retail gasoline prices will only return to their 2025 level in the fall of 2027, while the retail price of diesel will remain above its pre-war level at least until the end of next year. Trucking companies will largely pass on higher prices to customers. Farmers facing higher fuel and fertilizer prices will also slap them onto the price tag of food. Retailers and airlines will also be hit by rising fuel costs. All this will undoubtedly show up in March’s reading on inflation, which had steadied in February to a 2.4% increase compared with a year earlier. And all this will get in the way of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, expensive gas at the pump is likely to hit sales of Americans’ beloved SUVs. All of this will hammer Trump’s approval ratings where it hurts. The president understands these risks, which is why he is pulling out the stops to bring oil prices down. The administration unveiled a plan to insure tankers and escort them through the strait. It waived sanctions against some Russian oil exports and is considering ways to expand Venezuelan oil production, to fill any supply shortfall. But reversing the largest jump in oil prices in more than three decades will take more than that. Either the war ends or the US degrades Iran’s capabilities to the point where the country can no longer threaten oil tankers moving through Hormuz. Trump, according to his public statements, simultaneously believes that he can achieve Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” and that the war “is very complete, pretty much”. But his advisers in Washington should have learned by now that you can bomb a country to smithereens from the air and still not win the war over the long term. Neither Iran’s Revolutionary Guards nor the Basij – institutions hated by most Iranians – will simply give up their weapons and risk their lives. However much Iranian infrastructure has been destroyed, there are thousands of armed warriors on the ground able to fight back and prop up a hostile regime in Tehran. Trump could back down from demanding “unconditional surrender”, invent alternative grounds to claim victory and bring his flotilla home. But that will hardly look good. Alternatively, he could deploy ground forces, an option he has not ruled out. Or he could keep on bombing, shifting to civilian targets once he is done destroying Iran’s military infrastructure. Neither of these approaches is quick, though, which means the economic pain from this war will most likely linger. And Trump may learn that, however easy it was to capture Maduro, beheading the US’s rivals is not necessarily a winning strategy everywhere in the world.

Israeli strike kills 12 healthcare workers in southern Lebanon

Israel killed 12 medical workers in a strike on a medical centre in south Lebanon on Friday night, bringing the toll of healthcare staff killed in the country by Israel to 31 over the past 12 days. A primary healthcare facility in the town of Burj Qalaouiyah was hit by an Israeli strike late on Friday, setting it ablaze and causing the structure to collapse on top of the staff inside. The strike killed doctors, paramedics and nurses on duty, according to the Lebanese ministry of health, which said it “violated all international humanitarian laws” in a statement. Human rights groups have said that any attacks on medical workers are a war crime, regardless of their political affiliation. Commenting on the deaths of the 12 medical workers and two paramedics killed earlier in the day in an attack on a health facility in Al Sowana, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “The killings in the last 24 hours of 14 health workers in southern Lebanon mark a tragic development in the escalating Middle East crisis.” Israel has carried out at least 37 attacks against healthcare workers and facilities in Lebanon, including against the state civil defence and Lebanese Red Cross, since the current hostilities began, Lebanese authorities said. The war in Lebanon started on 2 March after Hezbollah launched a volley of rockets at Israel, triggering a swift Israeli bombing campaign across the country. Fighting has since escalated, with Hezbollah continuing its rocket fire and Israeli troops invading south Lebanon. At least 826 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes, according to the ministry of health, and about 1 million have been displaced. On Saturday morning, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee accused Hezbollah of using ambulances and medical facilities for military purposes, and said that Israeli forces would “act in accordance with international law” if Hezbollah did not stop. The spokesperson gave no credible evidence for his claim. The Lebanese ministry of health denied the Israeli army’s claim that ambulances are being used for military purposes, calling it “nothing more than a justification for the crimes it is committing against humanity”, in a statement. During the 13-month Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024, Israel also accused Hezbollah of using ambulances for military purposes, again without credible evidence. It also killed 408 healthcare workers. Israel was accused of war crimes for its attacks on Gaza’s healthcare facilities during its two-year war on the strip by a UN commission of inquiry. A top prosecutor at the international criminal court said in 2024 that claims about the presence of Hamas fighters in hospitals in Gaza under siege by Israel’s military have been “grossly exaggerated”. Gaza’s healthcare system has been largely destroyed by sustained Israeli attacks. Humanitarian groups have warned the accusation by the Israeli military that Hezbollah is using healthcare centres for military purposes could be used as a justification for further attacks on such facilities in Lebanon. Under international humanitarian law, medical workers, regardless of political affiliation, are considered civilians and enjoy protected status.

‘Worst nightmare’: anger and frustration as Gulf states bear brunt of war they did not start

An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers have lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger. Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire. On Saturday, Fujairah, the UAE’s main oil port on its east coast, was targeted by a drone attack, with thick black smoke seen billowing from its terminal. It is one of the many consequences facing Gulf states as they are pulled deeper into a war that they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent. For decades, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman have allowed US military bases, infrastructure or access on their soil, and have been among the largest buyers of American weapons and technology. In return, the US has stood as the Gulf’s closest and most significant military partner and protector. But now, Gulf states have growing concerns over the relationship, analysts say, after Donald Trump was seen to wilfully torpedo peaceful diplomatic negotiations in favour of starting a war in the Middle East. “The perceived Iran threat to the Gulf only became a reality when the US declared the war – Iran did not fire first,” says Khaled Almezaini, an associate professor of politics and international relations at Zayed University, in Abu Dhabi. “There is strong condemnation of the Iranians but at the same time there’s a message to the Americans and the Israelis that, well, we have to find a way to end this. This is not our war.” In the weeks before the strikes, Gulf leaders hosted negotiations and made repeated overtures to the US president, emphasising the severe consequences for regional security if he attacked Iran. Yet Trump chose to carry out the strikes, it is widely believed, without consulting or warning Gulf allies. While the Gulf expected to be caught in the backlash, the scale of Iran’s campaign of revenge has left many shocked. Gulf states had assured Tehran that none of their bases would be used for attacks but that has not stopped Iran launching thousands of drones and missiles targeting airports, military bases, oil refineries, ports, hotels and office buildings. Aviation in the region remains highly restricted, with airlines losing billions of dollars. Bahrain is facing an economic crisis, while the UAE’s reputation as a haven for tourism and western investment has taken a significant hit. States are successfully rebuffing most Iranian missiles and drones, but the interceptors and air defence systems are costing countries like the UAE upwards of $2bn (£1.5bn). Iran’s violent blockade of the strait of Hormuz – the only sea passage linking the Gulf with the open ocean and through which a fifth of global energy supplies are carried – has led to a drastic reduction in the oil and gas exports that bankroll Gulf economies. Experts estimate that between $700m and $1.2bn is being lost every day in oil exports. “The UAE and GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] tried to stop the United States declaring this war because they knew the implications,” says Almezaini. He pointed to the threats made by Iran’s foreign minister only months earlier about the closure of the strait. “Now that exact scenario is playing out,” he adds. The asymmetry of the Gulf’s military partnership with the US has never been more stark, says Allison Minor, the director of the Atlantic Council’s project on Middle East integration. It was only in September that Israel carried out airstrikes on Qatar, another US Gulf ally, which did not prompt any substantive action from Washington. “The most fundamental question is one of consultation,” she says. “Are the Gulf states actually achieving the kind of partnership and security support that they feel is necessary if the United States is going to engage militarily in the region?” On Thursday, the Omani foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad al Busaidi, who was the mediator in the previous Iran-US talks, gave some of his strongest comments on the conflict yet. “Oman’s view [is] that the military attacks against Iran by the United States and Israel are illegal, and that for as long as they continue to pursue hostilities, those states that launched this war are in breach of international law,” he said. Al Busaidi said the US decision to strike Iran while peaceful negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme were making progress demonstrated the conflict was solely an attempt to reorder the Middle East in Israel’s favour. Analysts emphasise that many Gulf states find themselves in a conflicting position: trying to bring down the temperature of the war while pushing for the US to finish the job in Iran and ensure they are not left with a worst-case scenario – a weakened, wounded and volatile Islamic republic on their doorstep. “This is the Gulf’s worst nightmare,” says Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and north Africa programme at Chatham House. “There’s deep anger and frustration at the United States because this is not their [the Gulf states’] war, and yet they’re bearing the brunt.” Vakil says Gulf states had long pursued a security partnership with the US similar to the one enjoyed by Israel, but had now realised “that may never happen”. Yet for all the recognition of the need to diversify their security partners, she adds, the Gulf currently has no alternative as its ultimate protector. “The Gulf is not going to move quickly, nor can they, in finding alternatives to the US. But they’re also not going to just double down with an unreliable partner,” she says. “It will likely move forward in the pursuit of strategic autonomy, which has already been on the horizon, perhaps at a more rapid pace.” For all the geopolitical ramifications, the economic effects have also trickled down to ordinary life. Standing at the boat and jetski rental firm he worked for in the marina next to Ras Al Khaimah port, Sumon, 27, says business has been throttled because none of their boats are allowed out to sea by the coastguard. “For many days, our boats and jetskis aren’t allowed to go out because of all these problems and fighting with Iran in the sea,” he says. “It’s very bad news, we don’t have customers and my boss can’t give me a salary.” Sumon points to the port opposite: “No boats are moving any more. No one knows when it will end.”