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Middle East crisis live: Trump claims Iran war will be over ‘very soon’ but Tehran says it will determine when

A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry on Tuesday had harsh words for Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. In response to von der Leyen’s remarks that the “people of Iran deserve freedom, dignity, and the right to decide their own future”, Esmaeil Baqaei posted on X: “Please spare the hypocrisy”. “You’ve made a career out of standing on the wrong side of history — green-lighting occupation, genocide, and atrocities, and now laundering U.S./Israeli crime of aggression and war crimes against Iranians,” Baqaei wrote. Baqaei continued: “Where was your voice when more than 165 innocent IRANIAN little angels were massacred in the city of Minab? Why don’t you say anything when hospitals, historical sites, oil facilities, diplomatic police headquarter, firefighting stations and residential neighborhoods are wickedly targeted? “Silence in the face of lawlessness and atrocity is nothing less than complicity.”

Tuesday briefing: Inside the increasingly heated debate about who can – and can’t – vote in the UK

Good morning. In the wake of the Green party’s victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection, Nigel Farage claimed his party would have won if the vote had been restricted to “British-born voters”. The Greens dismissed the suggestion as “dangerous, racist nonsense”. But the argument has thrown fresh attention on a little-understood feature of the UK’s electoral system: who is actually allowed to vote. As it stands, some non-UK citizens – including certain Commonwealth nationals – can cast ballots in general elections, while millions of long-term residents cannot. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Lara Parizotto, executive director of the Migrant Democracy Project, about how the rules work, and why campaigners say the debate risks becoming increasingly heated. First, the headlines. Five big stories Middle East crisis | Donald Trump has said the war in Iran is “very complete, pretty much”, as the conflict disrupts global oil trade and threatens to engulf the Middle East in a regional war. AI | A multibillion-pound drive to “mainline AI into the veins” of the British economy is riddled with “phantom investments” and shaky accounting, a Guardian investigation has found. UK politics | Ministers need to act more quickly to combat fast-changing threats from technology such as deepfakes, the technology secretary has said, as she warned about the risks women and girls face online. UK news | A woman who alleged she was raped by Andrew Malkinson admitted to police 22 years ago that she “wasn’t too sure it was the right man”, a court has heard. Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for an attack he did not commit in what jurors heard was a “most terrible” miscarriage of justice. Technology | Liverpool and Manchester United have complained to Elon Musk’s X after the Grok AI feature made offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disasters. The posts were generated when users asked the AI tool to make hateful posts about the two football teams. In depth: ‘Millions are not able to participate in the elections around them’ Yesterday was Commonwealth Day, celebrated with pomp and circumstance at Westminster Abbey in the presence of King Charles, who issued a statement for the occasion: “Ours is a remarkable association that spans every ocean and continent. Embracing an extraordinary diversity of culture, language and faith.” That association spans not just trade and cooperation, but also democracy in the UK. The voting rights of those born in the Commonwealth but living here don’t usually make much impact in the news, until Farage’s comments. “The silver lining for us,” Lara Parizotto tells me of the Reform leader’s comments, “is that, although they are coming from a negative perspective, at least it has got people talking about it.” Her organisation has been campaigning on the issue of migrant voting rights since 2021, and in that time, she has been surprised to find out how little people – including politicians – understood about the complex framework of who can and can’t vote in different elections in different parts of the UK. *** A sharpening of rhetoric When Parizotto first helped start the campaign, the context was the recent settlement of a Brexit agreement. In the years since, Parizotto says the tone of the debate around migration and democracy has hardened noticeably. “Our work is at the intersection of democracy and immigration,” she tells me. “And both things have become very tough over the last few years.” Her organisation began campaigning when the last elections bill was going through parliament. At the time, she says, the focus was on expanding voting rights to all residents, regardless of immigration status. This is particularly important for those born in the Commonwealth, who as more and more countries fought for independence from the British empire, shifted from being “British subjects” to “Commonwealth citizens”. As subjects, they had the right to vote. “We knew that government wasn’t going to do what we were asking – to extend the franchise to all residents in all elections” she says. “But there was some hope then that the right to vote would be extended, and in opposition, Labour were making supportive noises.” Now, she says, campaigners feel they are increasingly defending the status quo rather than arguing for change. The Guardian’s data journalism team have demonstrated how the language used about immigration in parliament has become more extreme, and last week in the Critic, writer David Shipley argued for disenfranchising Commonwealth citizens in the UK, describing their voting rights as a “a hangover from the empire” and lamenting what he sees as the ability for “foreigners living here temporarily [to] choose our governments”. “We’re not just campaigning for the right to vote to be extended,” Parizotto tells me. “We feel like we’re now in a position where we have to campaign for the right to vote to be defended as it is.” *** How Commonwealth voting actually works One reason the issue can easily become politicised is that the rules themselves are complicated. The legal category is not simply “Commonwealth citizens”, but “qualifying Commonwealth citizens” – meaning people from Commonwealth countries who have some form of lawful immigration status in the UK. “In essence, it means you have some form of leave to remain,” Parizotto explains. That could include work visas, student visas, refugee status or spousal visas. The principle dates back more than a century, when people from across the British empire were considered British subjects and therefore eligible to vote. The law evolved, but many of those rights have been retained. Today, Parizotto estimates there are about 1.2 million Commonwealth citizens living in the UK who are eligible to vote under the current rules. Yet many do not realise they are allowed to do so. “We often speak to people who say: ‘No, but I’m not British – I can’t vote,’” she says. “And we have to show them the government website to explain that actually, as a Commonwealth citizen, they can.” According to Electoral Commission data, roughly two-thirds of eligible Commonwealth citizens are registered to vote. *** A system few people understand Part of the problem, Parizotto says, is that the UK’s voting rights system has become increasingly difficult to explain. Different rules apply depending on whether someone is a Commonwealth citizen, an EU citizen who arrived before Brexit, or someone who moved to the UK more recently from a country with a bilateral voting agreement. “It’s really difficult to make it simple,” she says. “You can have an Italian person who arrived in the UK in 2017 who can vote in local elections, but their niece who arrived to study last year can’t vote at all. Meanwhile, a Polish person arriving today can vote locally because Poland has an agreement with the UK.” That complexity can extend even to political campaigners. “We’ve noticed that politicians don’t always know all these complexities,” she says. “So when they’re out canvassing, they might not know who can and cannot register to vote.” To add to the complexity, the rules are different in Scotland and Wales, where the franchise has been expanded, from England and Northern Ireland, where it hasn’t. *** ‘A code word’ The debate intensified after the Gorton and Denton byelection, when the question of migrant voting rights became a political flashpoint. Parizotto believes the way the issue is framed sometimes masks deeper arguments about identity and belonging. “If we’re really honest,” she says, “it looks like Commonwealth is being used as the new code word for Muslims. I doubt they are talking about Canadians losing the right to vote.” As if to prove the point, Nigel Farage’s lengthy article in the Daily Mail griping about the result in Gorton and Denton and pledging to end Commonwealth voting only mentions one Commonwealth country by name: Pakistan. Parizotto argues that discussions about religion, nationality and immigration are often blurred together in political debate. “You saw headlines about young Muslims turning away from Labour over its immigration policies,” she says. “But being Muslim is not the same thing as being an immigrant.” *** The bigger democratic gap For Parizotto, the focus on Commonwealth voting rights risks overshadowing a larger democratic question: the millions of residents who cannot vote at all. Across the UK, she estimates, more than four million people who live and work in the country have no vote in general elections – regardless of whether they are working for our public services or paying tax. “When we talk about issues affecting immigrants but also everyone, there are millions of people who are not able to participate in shaping the elections around them,” she says. Politicians, she argues, should ultimately focus on persuading voters rather than narrowing the electorate. “There are going to be British Muslims voting in various different ways, and Commonwealth citizens voting in various different ways,” she says. “At the end of the day, the job of politicians is to win voters over with policies that attract them.” Her conclusion is simple: “We need a democracy that actually allows everyone to vote,” she says. “And, currently, that’s very far from the case.” What else we’ve been reading “We want to at least be able to give them their names back,” says Interpol’s Susan Hitchin, in this harrowing read about the team identifying Europe’s forgotten female murder victims (including Rita Roberts, pictured above). Martin Tory-watcher Henry Hill writes on how the Conservatives are adapting to no longer being the default rightwing option. “There is no long-term future for a party that remains in essence a sectional interest party for retirees,” he says, “but it could quite easily lose the (easily angered) older vote without picking up enough support elsewhere to survive.” Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team For Monocle, Rory Jones and Annelise Maynard have a delightful amble visiting 10 of London’s loveliest bookshops with gorgeous accompanying photos. Martin For this week’s edition of their newsletter (sign up here!), the Filter team have put together a quick guide to all the kit you need to refresh your garden this spring. Hori hori soil knife, anyone? Charlie Nicolaia Rips interviews Grace Ives, whose latest single has been an earworm for me. Martin Sport Winter Paralympics | The Russian national anthem has been played at the Paralympics for the first time since 2014 as the skier Varvara Voronchikhina claimed gold in the women’s super-G standing. Football | West Ham United defender Konstantinos Mavropanos struck the winning spot kick as his side beat visitors Brentford 5-3 in a penalty shootout to book a place in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Football | Five members of the Iranian women’s football team have been granted humanitarian visas in Australia, with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, offering assistance to the other players and saying “help is here”. The front pages “Reeves warns of cost-of-living rise as war on Iran hikes energy prices” is the Guardian splash. The Mail has “Trump: Iran war is ‘pretty much’ over”, the Times says “Trump: Iran has nothing left and war is nearly over” and the Sun runs “Trump: War is near end”. “Trump: Iran war ‘very complete’” says the Telegraph. Top story at the FT is “G7 ‘stands ready’ to tap oil reserves” and the Mirror splashes on “Cost of war”. The i Paper has “Revealed: Trump dismissed PM’s Iran plea in stormy call”. Today in Focus Inside Iran as the bombs fall Annie Kelly speaks to ordinary Iranians about the attacks on their country, and peace strategist Sanam Naghari-Anderlini explains her fears for the future. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad After a flurry of early spring sightings, the large tortoiseshell butterfly (Nymphalis polychloros) has been declared a resident species in the UK – as opposed to a migratory one – for the first time in 58 years. The tree-dwelling butterfly, whose caterpillars feed on elm, willow, aspen and poplar trees, first reappeared in the UK in significant numbers in 2006 and 2007, but many subsequent sightings have been attributed to unauthorised releases by butterfly breeders aiming to re-establish the species. The charity Butterfly Conservation is now urging people to log any sightings on the free science app, iRecord, to help build a picture of the butterfly’s distribution and expanding population. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

‘Sounds familiar’: how the US-Israeli war in Iran parallels Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Shifting goals, unclear timelines and a flimsy pretext: at times, the US-Israel campaign against Iran carries curious parallels of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The comparison is far from exact. In 2022, Putin sent a massive army across Ukraine’s borders in an unprovoked invasion of a democratic state, a campaign that quickly resulted in heavy losses. The United States has so far largely limited its involvement to airstrikes against Iran’s authoritarian regime. Yet the echoes are hard to ignore. In both wars, the aims of the campaign have been framed differently at different moments, while the legal justification, scholars say, is nonexistent. Early US statements framed the strikes as a response to an effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Officials have also emphasised degrading Iran’s missile capabilities and weakening the military infrastructure that supports its regional proxy network. But the goals have increasingly become more maximalist. Donald Trump has said that Iran’s leadership should be replaced, openly raising the prospect of regime change, and more recently called for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender”. In Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Kremlin has also repeatedly shifted its stated objectives. When Putin launched the invasion in February 2022, he said the goal was the “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine – language widely interpreted as a push for regime change in Kyiv. As the war dragged on, the Kremlin increasingly presented the conflict as one about protecting Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and securing control over territories Moscow later moved to annex. The similarities seep into language, too. Both sides have portrayed their actions as defensive, citing what experts say are at best dubious claims that they were acting to prevent an imminent threat. Last week, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said the US “didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it”. Throughout his own war, Putin used strikingly similar language. “We didn’t start the so-called war in Ukraine,” he said in February 2022. “We are trying to finish it.” Neither leader expected to be drawn into a prolonged conflict. Putin appeared to believe the full-scale war in Ukraine would last mere weeks and that he could repeat the swift seizure of Crimea in 2014. Trump, meanwhile, came into the confrontation buoyed up by the apparent success of the US operation earlier this year that captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Tellingly, some American officials and the Kremlin avoided describing their actions as acts of war, suggesting they expected the conflict to be brief. Four years into its invasion, Putin still avoids the term “war”, insisting on calling the invasion a “special military operation” – language enforced at home through strict censorship laws that have sent critics to jail. Some in Washington have also been reluctant to use the word. Asked last week if US actions amounted to war, the House speaker Mike Johnson replied: “I think it’s a limited operation.” The New Yorker was quick to quip, posting an image of Tolstoy’s classic War and Peace, with “War” replaced by “Limited Combat Operation”. In Russia, the same jokes were made four years ago. And then there was the reaction of the political and media elites. Much of the Russian establishment, initially horrified by the invasion of Ukraine, ultimately fell into line behind the war, arguing that Putin should finish what he had started. Some figures in Russia’s exiled anti-war movement were quick to point out the parallels in the reaction to the latest conflict, noting how US commentators who had strongly criticised Russia’s invasion were themselves struggling to maintain the same clarity when their own country went to war. “Once our presidents make a decision to go to war, even when I disagree with the decision and process – as is the case with our current war with Iran – I still want our armed forces to win,” wrote Michael McFaul on X, the former US ambassador to Moscow under Barack Obama and a frequent critic of Trump. The question now is whether the US can avoid the pitfalls that ensnared Russia in Ukraine – and whether more parallels will emerge. According to media reports, Trump has recently raised the possibility of sending elite troops into Iran to secure the country’s stockpiles of enriched uranium. In the early days of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia deployed elite airborne forces to seize a key airport near Kyiv, a risky operation that ended in heavy losses. Commenting on the US-Israel campaign, Danny Citrinowicz, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, cautioned on Friday that “when strategic goals become too ambitious or unrealistic, even a successful military campaign can gradually slide into a war of attrition”. “To avoid that outcome, it is essential to define clear, realistic objectives – ones that can be measured and that provide a clear point at which the campaign can end,” he added in a post on X. Vladimir Frolov, a retired Russian diplomat, responded drily: “Sounds familiar.”

Bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn

Israel’s bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure will have major long-term environmental repercussions, experts have warned, as monitors admitted they were struggling to keep track of the environmental disasters arising from the widening war. Even as Iranians filled the streets to mark the appointment of a new supreme leader, the Shahran oil depot north-east of Tehran and the Shahr-e fuel depot to its south continued to burn on Monday, two days after they were bombed by Israeli warplanes. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Iran’s environmental agency and the Iranian Red Crescent Society had warned Tehran residents to stay at home, warning the toxic chemicals spread by airstrikes on five fossil fuel installations around the city could lead to acid rain and damage the skin and lungs. On Monday, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “Damage to petroleum facilities in Iran risks contaminating food, water and air – hazards that can have severe health impacts especially on children, older people, and people with pre-existing medical conditions.” Iran’s deputy health minister, Ali Jafarian, told Al Jazeera that the soil and water supplies around Tehran were already beginning to be contaminated by the fallout from the weekend’s explosions. The black rain that fell across Tehran in the hours after the bombings was a mixture of soot and fine particulate matter from the explosions with rain from a storm that was already moving across the region, according to Dr Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading. “The airstrikes on oil depots released soot, smoke, oil particles, sulphur compounds, and likely heavy metals and inorganic materials from the buildings, whilst a low‑pressure weather system, which typically sweeps across Iran and west Asia around this time of year, created conditions favourable for rainfall,” Deoras said. “In terms of atmospheric chemistry, the oil fires produce sulphur and nitrogen compounds that could form acids if they dissolve in rainwater. “The risks to human health come from inhaling or touching the smoke and particles. Immediate impacts can include headaches, irritation of the eyes and skin, and difficulty breathing – particularly for people with asthma, lung disease, older adults, young children, and those with disabilities.” Tehranis reported difficulty breathing on Sunday, as well as headaches and burning sensations in their eyes and throats. But the acute effects of the black cloud that spread across the city could just be the beginning, according to Prof Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University College London. “The explosions will have exposed the local population to all manner of undesirable and toxic chemical species, a problem that is well known to accompany warfare,” he said, explaining that the crude oil will have contained a range of elements, including metals, that would “also be spread indiscriminately”. “There will be a real cocktail of chemistry including significant amounts of aromatic compounds that are known to interact with DNA and have been linked to cancers. Whether or not this manifests will depend strongly on how long and serious the exposure is of any individual. “And on top of this, once the containment provided by the tanks and pipes is destroyed the material will flow everywhere leaving a mess of harmful material that permeates the soil and coats everything else. There is the potential for contamination of drinking water supplies.” Despite US efforts to distance itself from the attacks, there are growing fears the attack might spark a tit-for-tat cycle of retaliation after a spokesperson for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps warned it could take “similar actions [against oil infrastructure] in the region”. On Monday, Bahrain’s state-owned energy company Bapco Energies declared force majeure on its operations after Iran attacked the country’s only oil refinery, and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting four Iranian drones targeting its Shaybah oil field. Those attacks followed drone strikes last week on the world’s largest natural gas export plant in Qatar, the Saudi refinery at Ras Tanura, fuel storage hubs in Oman and the United Arab Emirates, and multiple tankers in the Persian Gulf, each of which posed a potential environmental catastrophe. Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, said that his organisation’s efforts at tracking incidents of environmental harm caused by the fighting around the Persian Gulf was becoming increasingly difficult. “We are now aware of hundreds of environmentally problematic incidents in Iran and the region but the ongoing conflict, internet restrictions and delays in the availability of satellite imagery mean that this figure is an understatement,” Weir said. “Piecing together the war’s environmental footprint and its potential impacts on people and ecosystems will be a huge task, and one that grows more complex with every day that the war continues.” “After the first few days where military sites were targeted we are now seeing an expansion into civilian and dual-use facilities, with this comes a broadening of the range of environmental and public health risks associated with military actions.”

Vance and Hegseth attend dignified transfer ceremony – as it happened

This liveblog is closing now but you can continue to follow live coverage of the Middle East crisis on a new liveblog here. Thank you for reading.

New Zealand Covid response among world’s best but ‘scars’ remain, inquiry finds

A royal commission into New Zealand’s Covid response has found it was one of the best in the world but acknowledged the period had left “scars”. The second of two inquiry reports on the pandemic was released on Tuesday and focused on the period between February 2021 to October 2022, when the government changed from an elimination strategy to one of suppression and minimisation of the virus. It also examined vaccine safety and the government’s immunisation programme, lockdowns and tracing and testing technology. The royal commission was established in 2022 by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-led government, which was in power during the pandemic. New Zealand has recorded 5,641 Covid deaths since 2020. The country’s strict response, which included lockdowns, vaccine mandates and border quarantine helped to save tens of thousands of lives. But as the pandemic wore on, some anger over the restrictions set in and a small but vocal fringe of anti-vaccine and anti-mandate groups emerged, leading to a violent protest on parliament’s lawns. The first phase of the inquiry, released in late 2024, found New Zealand had one of the lowest rates of Covid deaths per capita among developed countries. It largely accepted the need for vaccine mandates, while acknowledging they had caused distress and economic harm to some New Zealanders. In the report released on Tuesday, the commission found that New Zealand did well in responding to the pandemic and the decisions and methods used in the response were “considered and appropriate” but also identified where the response was “lacking”. “New Zealand’s response strategy and settings weren’t always sufficiently responsive to changing circumstances; for example, they weren’t adapted early enough to deal with later variants of the virus,” it said. “At a time when speed was often critical, some decisions had to be made without enough information and data, or without sufficient consideration of all the impacts that might arise, or without important checks and monitoring.” The commission said it heard from many people who expressed pain and anger about the impacts of the pandemic and the response, and there were lessons to be learned from their experiences. “The pandemic, and the response to it, has left scars,” it said. “During the period examined in this phase, people continued to die and others suffered long-term health impacts. Some lost all faith in government and other institutions, and remain disengaged, sceptical or even hostile towards them today.” It said ministers and officials were facing a complex and high-stakes situation and were “doing the best they could”, adding that evidence showed New Zealand had “among one of the best pandemic responses in the world”. But it noted while restrictions such as vaccine mandates were a valid tool for a pandemic response, they should be “treated with great care”. Before listing 24 recommendations, the report noted that its goal was “not to apportion blame but to ensure New Zealand is better informed ahead of the next pandemic”. The commission found that exiting the elimination strategy was difficult, and the lack of a timely update on the strategy meant the response appeared to many to be “over-centralised and risk-averse”. It suggested leaders should present elimination strategies as “temporary from the outset” to help manage public expectations. On the issue of vaccine hesitancy, the commission said the concerns raised were “not grounded in reliable evidence or aligned with scientific consensus”. It suggested governments should continue to be guided by the best scientific evidence and an agency should be tasked with monitoring trust and social cohesion. The health minister, Simeon Brown, said while New Zealanders supported the initial 2020 Covid response, the restrictions continued longer than necessary and the economic costs were not given sufficient weight. “New Zealanders made enormous sacrifices and placed enormous trust in their government. We owe it to them to understand what happened and learn from it.” In a joint statement, Ardern and the former deputy prime minister Grant Robertson said they accepted the findings and recommendations of the commission, RNZ reported. “We got a lot right. More than most. But there are areas that could have been better,” they said. The Labour leader, Chris Hipkins, said the country now needs to strengthen its institutions, public trust and processes to face a future pandemic. “Over the past two years, the government has cut public health capability while commissioning multiple reviews that repeat the same conclusions,” Hipkins said. “National now needs to answer a simple question: are we better prepared for the next pandemic today than we were in 2020?”

Trump says Iran war is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “very complete, pretty much”, as the economic toll of the joint US-Israeli operation has risen, disrupting global oil trade and threatening to engulf the Middle East in a regional war. Trump made the comments before a speech and press conference in Florida where he sought to emphasise that the US military campaign would be ending soon amid concerns from Republican allies that the US was being dragged into another long-term conflict in the region. “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he said in a phone call with CBS News. “They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force.” Addressing Republicans on Monday afternoon, he said: “We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.” But he also indicated he was not yet declaring the US mission accomplished in Iran. “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” he said. US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on targets across Iran on Monday, as large crowds took to the streets in Tehran in a defiant show of support for Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s newly appointed supreme leader. The conflict, now in its second week, continued to escalate, with fresh Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, US bases across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf. In Lebanon, Israel pressed its offensive against Hezbollah with raids in the south and airstrikes in Beirut, while an Iranian missile was shot down over Turkey. As drone strikes were reported in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said France and its allies were preparing a “defensive” mission to the Gulf protect oil supplies. In Tehran’s Enghelab Square on Monday, thousands gathered to offer allegiance to Iran’s new supreme leader, hours after the appointment was formally announced. Chanting “Death to America, Death to Israel,” and “God is Great,” some waved Iranian flags, others banners bearing the portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the new leader’s father, who was killed after 37 years in power by an Israeli airstrike in the first moments of the war. Armoured vehicles lined nearby roads and security personnel were stationed on the rooftops of surrounding buildings. “The path of the martyred Imam Khamenei will carry on under the name of Khamenei,” said Hosseinali Eshkevari, a member of Iran’s assembly of experts, the body tasked with selecting the supreme leader. Another member, Mohsen Heydari, said the late Ali Khamenei had recommended the selection of the candidate who is “hated by the enemy”. Israel said it will target Iran’s new supreme leader, while the US president, Donald Trump, who has dismissed the younger Khamenei as a “lightweight”, criticised Mojtaba’s selection. “I think they made a big mistake,” Trump told NBC. “I don’t know if it’s going to last. I think they made a mistake.” The defiant rhetoric in Tehran and the appointment of Khamenei, who is seen by analysts as a hardliner with close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, intensified fears that the conflict could last for weeks or even months and leave deep instability in its wake. Stock markets across the world fell sharply on Monday after oil prices surged. But after surging as high as $119.50 per barrel, the oil price fell back down after Trump suggested the war could end “very soon”. Iran’s attacks in the strait of Hormuz have all but stopped tankers from using the key shipping lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil is carried. Speaking during a visit to Cyprus to discuss regional security, Macron said a new naval mission would be aimed at escorting container ships and tankers in order to gradually reopen the strait of Hormuz after the end of “the hottest phase of the conflict”. France has already sent about a dozen naval vessels, including its aircraft carrier strike group, to the Mediterranean, Red Sea and potentially the strait of Hormuz as part of defensive support to allies threatened by the conflict in the Middle East. Iran’s security chief, Ali Larijani, said in a post on X on Monday that safe passage through the strait of Hormuz would not be restored “amid the fires ignited by the United States and Israel in the region”. Analysts have said Iran is hoping that restricting the flow of oil to global markets and attacking energy infrastructure in the region will threaten sufficient damage to the global economy to force Trump to end the US offensive, and bring an end to the war on Tehran’s terms. Late on Monday Trump said on social media: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.” The remark was an apparent response comments from a spokesperson for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, who said “Iran will determine when the war ends.” Neither the US, Israel nor the Gulf states that have born the brunt of the Iranian attacks currently appear ready to consider concessions, however. On Monday, Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad al-Sabah, described Iran’s strikes on the kingdom as “a brutal attack by a neighbouring Muslim country, which we consider a friend, even though we have not permitted the use of our land, airspace, or coasts for any military action against it.” Saudi Arabia said Tehran would be the “biggest loser” if it continues to attack Arab states. In the United Arab Emirates, authorities said two people were wounded by shrapnel from the interception of Iranian missiles over the capital, Abu Dhabi. By mid-afternoon, the Emirati defence ministry said 15 ballistic missiles and 18 drones were fired on the country on Monday. A total of 253 missiles and 1,440 drones have been launched at the UAE since the war began. Four foreign nationals have been killed in the UAE and 117 wounded, authorities said. Iran also attacked Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, where it hit a residential area, wounding 32 people, including several children, according to authorities. Another attack appeared to have started a fire at Bahrain’s only oil refinery, sending thick plumes of smoke into the air. Bahrain has also accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants, though its electricity and water authority said supplies remained online. Desalination plants supply water to millions of residents in the region, raising new fears of catastrophic risks in parched desert nations. Iran continues to target Israel with drones and ballistic missiles. A man was killed in central Israel in a missile strike, the first such death in Israel in a week, in which a woman was also wounded. The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, at least 397 in Lebanon and 11 in Israel, according to officials. Israel reported its first military deaths on Sunday, saying two combat engineers were killed in southern Lebanon, where it is fighting Hezbollah. An Israeli military spokesperson accused Iran of targeting Israel’s cities with cluster bombs. “We are seeing on a daily basis [that] Iran is deliberately targeting densely populated civilian areas,” the spokesperson said. The official said that Israel was attacking “terrorist infrastructure” in Lebanon, which has been pulled deep into the war in the Middle East since Hezbollah opened fire to avenge the killing of Khamenei, triggering an Israeli offensive, which has so far killed more than 400 people there, according to Lebanese authorities. The Israeli military has ordered inhabitants to leave the southern suburbs of Beirut, much of south Lebanon and parts of the eastern Bekaa valley region – all areas that have served as political and security strongholds of Hezbollah. “Mass displacement across Lebanon has forced nearly 700,000 people – including around 200,000 children – from their homes, adding to the tens of thousands already uprooted from previous escalations,” Edouard Beigbeder, Unicef regional director, said. “Children are being killed and injured at a horrifying rate, families are fleeing their homes in fear, and thousands of children are now sleeping in cold and overcrowded shelters,” he said. In Turkey, Nato air defences intercepted a ballistic missile that entered the country’s airspace – the second such attack since the war started. President Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey’s main goal is to keep the country out of the “blaze” of the conflict.

Vague and contradictory Trump says Iran war ‘won’, but not ‘won enough’

At one of the most consequential moments of his two terms in office, wartime president Donald Trump on Monday delivered a vague and contradictory forecast for how long the United States will continue to fight in Iran and what the ultimate goal of the US military campaign there will be. With oil hovering above $100 a barrel for much of Monday and Middle Eastern allies fearing a further tumble into regional conflict, Trump appeared in Doral, Florida with the mission of calming global markets and reassuring skittish allies that he has a clear vision for how to end the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the Iraq war. If there is one, it was not delivered in this press conference. In a 35-minute appearance, the US president eschewed the specifics to hammer home how thoroughly the US has destroyed Iran’s military and to bolster suspicions that there has been little planning for what comes next. After floating remarks that the war was “very complete, pretty much” to a CBS News reporter in a phone call, he then evaded a reporter’s question about whether that meant the war could wrap up this week. “No but soon. I think soon. Very soon.” Reporters tried again. “You said the war is ‘very complete’. But your defense secretary says ‘this is just the beginning.’ So which is it?” “I think you could say both,” Trump replied. Straight away he added: “It’s the beginning of building a new country”. Never mind that Trump and his top advisers had ruled out managing an effort at nation-building in Iran; hours have passed and indeed Trump’s own vision for Iran seems to change with every telephone call he has taken from a reporter in the last 10 days. Thanks to his CBS call, there was a sense that he may be preparing to announce a drawdown. But he stopped short of a mission accomplished moment here and instead said the war would continue. “We could call it a tremendous success right now or we could go further,” he said. “And we’re going to go further.” “We have won in many ways,” he said in a characteristic moment during a speech to Republican allies before the press conference. “But we haven’t won enough.” It was a head-scratcher, and Democrats quickly jumped on those remarks to say that Trump’s goals for the Iran conflict were incoherent or simply absent. “One word to sum up Trump’s press conference: clueless,” wrote Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader from New York. “He can’t articulate a plan or a vision because he has no plan or vision. He can’t even decide whether or not the country is at war. He’s risking the world economy and the lives of millions on whims and vibes.” There were other reminders of how US foreign policy has now fully passed through the looking-glass. Trump on Monday said that he would relax sanctions on certain countries sales of oil to help calm markets, reversing his own policy of increasing economic pressure on Russian oil sales to help end the conflict in Ukraine. He then added that the US may not ultimately return those sanctions once global markets return to normal. “Who knows … maybe we won’t have to put them on, there will be so much peace.” But in the most striking moment, Trump suggested that Iran had covertly obtained a Tomahawk missile and then used it to strike a girl’s school in the city of Minab, killing more than 168 people – most of them children. Asked whether the US would accept any responsibility for the strike, which occurred not long before the US hit a naval base nearby, Trump suggested: “Tomahawks are used by many countries,” and that “Iran has some Tomahawks.” That was more than many reporters in the room could stomach. “You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war,” said one reporter, before asking why “you’re the only person in your government saying this”. “Because I just don’t know enough about it”, Trump responded. “I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation”.