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Middle East crisis live: three ships hit in strait of Hormuz as ‘largest ever’ oil reserve release agreed by 32 countries

Donald Trump also evaded a question about the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children. A preliminary investigation found that the US is to blame for the strike, according to a report from the New York Times. When asked whether he takes responsibility for the attack, the US president simply replied: I don’t know about it. Trump has insisted in recent days that Iran was to blame, despite mounting evidence that suggests US liability and despite admitting that he “doesn’t know enough” about the strike. His administration officials are withholding blame until a full report is released. Trump has also said he is “willing to live” with the investigation’s findings. Per the NYT’s report, the Tomahawk missile strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school was the consequence of a “targeting mistake” by the US military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base, which used to include the school building. According to the officials briefed on the preliminary investigation whom the paper spoke to, officers at US Central Command (Centcom) created target coordinates for the strike “using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency”. The officials emphasized that “there are important unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double checked”.

Elevating injured Mojtaba Khamenei to supreme leader shows Iranian war machine can run on autopilot

The confirmation that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the first wave of Israeli attacks underlines how desperate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (ICRG) was to ensure their wounded choice was elevated to high office, and how confident it is that the wartime machinery can operate almost on automatic pilot without him. The full scale of Khamenei’s injuries and speed of his recovery remain unclear, but a broken leg and facial injuries are the minimum. It is not a medical bulletin on which the authorities are seeking to dwell, although Ali Larijani, the secretary of the supreme national security council, chose his words carefully in saying “his condition has not been reported as critical”, a phrasing that suggests he has not personally seen him. In a bid to show the government was functioning in line with its constitution, he added: “Despite this incident, he continues to provide full authoritative guidance and oversight of the operations, and all actions and attacks are carried out with his direct permission and orders.” But it now looks as if some of the delay around his election was not just a technical issue of assembling in wartime the assembly of experts, the 88 strong body of clerics that elect the Supreme leader, but also over doubts about Khamenei’s capacity and willingness to take on the job. That he could have survived the attack on the supreme leader’s office entirely unscathed seemed implausible given his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his mother, his wife Zahra Haddad-Adel, and one of his sons had also been killed. He also lost his sister, brother in law and a niece. His mother died three days after the attack from her injuries. The entire supreme leaders office was incinerated. At minimum, it would have left an indelible emotional if not physical mark. Opposition groups in the diaspora have claimed that Khamenei is in coma and is being treated in great secrecy in hospital, ignorant of both his elevation to the post of supreme leader and the devastating damage suffered by his family. The failure of the government communications machine to publish a single photograph, video or even text from Mojtaba three days after his elevation led to the inevitable speculation that the Assembly of Experts, wittingly or unwittingly, had elected a corpse or cardboard cut-out to run the country. The Israeli foreign ministry had little doubt about his health, printing a carboard cut out photograph of him alongside the caption: “You can run, you can hide but cardboard regimes fold”. The lack of a public appearance or even a sound recording undermined the sense of continuity engendered by his election, and led to claims on social media that the IRGC had knowingly pressed the candidacy of a dead man. Not even the sense that his hideaway needed to be protected from circling Israeli bombs seemed a sufficient explanation. One Iranian journalist insisted: “Iran’s leader can lead without appearing in public. There is no need for him to be on the street or in a religious centre. The important point is the management of the country.” Loyalists published a photograph of him that could have been AI generated, and claimed he had chaired a meeting of top IRGC commanders. The handling of the episode was all the more strange since, despite the Iranian media being heavily censored, it started to speculate about the welfare of their silent new leader. On Tuesday, local media in Iran asked Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson of Iran’s foreign ministry, if Khamenei had taken charge and assumed his new role as the country’s top religious and political figure and the commander in chief of armed forces. Baghaei avoided a direct answer, saying: “Those who have to receive the message have received the message.” Instead, confirmation he was injured came almost in passing in a telegram post by Yousef Pezeshkian, the temperamentally open son of the president, in which, along with a passing reference to news of snow in Tehran, he revealed that he heard Mojtaba had been injured but that he was healthy and there was no problem. Inevitably Mojtaba’s appointment, already denounced by regime opponents including some in Evin jail as a disgraceful IRGC puppet show, will be seen as a sign that they were desperate to install their man, regardless of his health. The IRGC is not just an army, it is a business empire with investments spread through the economy Maryam Alemzadeh, associate professor in history and politics of Iran at St Antony’s College, Oxford, argues the system is robust, having been intentionally designed to have a very easily replaceable leadership. “The resilience has relied on this semi-formal network of IRGC, Basij and other state services that have fulfilled multiple roles, including service provision, surveillance and repression. Decapitation does close to nothing to affect this network. If anything it creates a limited rally round the flag effect amongst this particular group, but not the larger population,” Alemzadeh said. Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said it might anyway take as long as four years for Khamenei, at age 56, to establish himself personally just as his own father struggled for authority at the outset. “The office does not give you power It’s the personality of the occupant of the office. It takes time.” Overall, the military strategy has been set, and the conduct of the war is on autopilot, to try to maximise the external economic costs on Iran’s opponents by conducting an asymmetrical war in which there are no limits. At present Iran does not need a new leader – dead, alive or injured – to update the IRGC target base. It instead can watch Donald Trump tie himself in knots daily explaining what he is trying to achieve. What will matter more is if he is needed to help decide if and when the conflict can end. But for the moment if there is one country in this war that is rudderless, it is not Iran.

Iran escalates attacks on infrastructure and transport networks across the Gulf

Iran dramatically escalated its strategy of striking civilian infrastructure and transport networks across the Gulf on Wednesday, attacking commercial ships travelling through the Gulf and targeting Dubai’s international airport, as US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on the Islamic Republic. Senior Iranian officials struck a defiant tone, warning of a long “war of attrition” that will threaten global economic chaos as energy supplies from the oil and gas rich region are throttled. Amid what appears to be a growing stalemate in the 12-day-old conflict, violence continued across a swath of the Middle East, with Israeli strikes on what it says are Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and barrages of Iranian missiles and Hezbollah rockets targeting Israel. The UN refugee agency said at least 759,000 people have been internally displaced in Lebanon, while more than 92,000 others have crossed into neighbouring Syria. In the Gulf, Kuwait said its air defences downed eight Iranian drones and Saudi Arabia said it intercepted five heading toward the kingdom’s Shaybah oil field. In Tehran and other cities, huge crowds took to the streets for funerals for senior Iranian commanders killed by US and Israeli airstrikes since the beginning of the war 12 days ago. Mourners carried caskets and brandished flags and portraits of the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the first minute of the US-Israeli offensive, and his son and successor, Mojtaba. Iranian officials admitted for the first time on Wednesday that Iran’s new leader had been wounded in the airstrikes that killed his father, mother, wife and a son. The 56-year-old has not appeared in public or issued any direct message since the war began. “I have heard that he was injured in his legs and hand and arm … I think he is in the hospital because he is injured,” Alireza Salarian, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus, told the Guardian. Despite growing pressure for the US and Israel to consider reining back their joint offensive, decision-makers in both countries appeared to continuing the campaign for now. Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, said on Wednesday the joint offensive against Iran “will continue without any time limit, as long as required, until we achieve all objectives and win the campaign”. Donald Trump has sent more mixed messages in recent days, going from calling the war a “short-term excursion” that could end soon to proclaiming “we haven’t won enough” during a single speech in Washington on Monday. On Wednesday the US president told Axios the war would end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target … Any time I want it to end, it will end.” Governments across the world fear economic turmoil from surging oil prices which would anger many voters. On Wednesday, Trump appeared to praise the “tremendous impact” of decisions being by leaders of the Group of Seven nations as they met to discuss the war and its economic consequences, according to a short video clip shared by the French presidency. “I think we are having a tremendous impact, unbelievable actually, on the world,” Trump said, after being given the floor by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who chaired the G7 meeting, though it was not entirely clear who or what Trump was referring to. The US president was speaking after a recommendation by the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release 400m barrels of oil, the largest such move in the IEA history, in a bid to restrain soaring oil prices. But so far there is no sign that ships can safely sail through the strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil. Three more merchant ships were struck in the Gulf by unknown projectiles on Wednesday, according to agencies that monitor maritime security, raising the number of ships reportedly hit since the war began to 14. Crew were evacuated from a Thai-flagged bulk freighter after an explosion caused a fire. A Japanese-flagged container ship and a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier also sustained damage. Trump told reporters on Wednesday that oil tankers passing through the strait would “see great safety, and it’s going to be very, very quickly”, without giving further details. Hundreds of ships are now blockaded behind the narrow channel along the Iranian coast for fear of Iranian attack in the worst disruption to energy supplies since the oil shocks of the 1970s. The Revolutionary Guard said Iran would not allow “a single litre of oil” through the vital waterway until the US stopped its bombing campaign. Iran has also continued to target oilfields and refineries in Gulf Arab nations as it seeks to force the US and Israel to stop their offensive. “Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security which you have destabilised,” Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran’s military command, said in comments addressed to the US. Iran’s army said it had attacked key targets in Israel, including the military intelligence headquarters, a naval base in Haifa and a radar system. It also said it targeted US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. US and Israeli officials say their aim is to end Iran’s ability to project force beyond its borders and to destroy its nuclear programme, though they have also encouraged Iranians to overthrow the Islamist clerical regime, which took power after the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah, a US ally. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Tuesday repeated a call for the Iranian people to rise up. Iran’s police chief, Ahmadreza Radan, said any protesters in Iran would be treated “as an enemy … All our security forces have their fingers on the trigger”. Residents of Tehran said they were getting used to nightly airstrikes that have sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to the countryside and contaminated the city with black rain from oil smoke. “There were bombings last night but I did not get scared like before. Life goes on,” Farshid, 52, said by phone. Iran accused the US and Israel of striking a maritime ambulance boat at an island in the strait of Hormuz, Mehr news agency reported. Adm Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, said that as a result of the US strikes, including one on a “large ballistic missile manufacturing facility”, Iran’s ballistic missile and drone attacks have “dropped drastically”. The targets have included more than 60 ships, he said in a video posted to social media Wednesday. Cooper also confirmed that the military was using “advanced AI tools” to “sift through vast amounts of data in seconds”. He said these tools are enabling leaders to make smarter decisions faster, but stressed that “humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot”. In Israel, explosions rang out before dawn from air defences intercepting missiles. Sirens sent Israelis to shelters. Twelve people have been killed and hundreds injured by Iranian attacks and those by Hezbollah. Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Iran of using cluster munitions, which are illegal under international law, against population centres. Israel also launched a barrage on Beirut, targeting southern suburbs that are a stronghold of Hezbollah, which has fired into Israel from Lebanon in solidarity with Tehran. More than 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed since the US and Israeli airstrikes began on 28 February, according to Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani. In Lebanon, Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah has killed 570 people, the country’s health ministry says, including 45 women and 86 children. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but the total includes 14 healthcare workers, the ministry says. Washington says seven US soldiers have been killed and approximately 140 have been wounded.

US responsible for deadly bombing of Iranian girls school, preliminary findings reportedly say – live

As John Thune battles conservative blowback for refusing to alter Senate rules and mandate a traditional “talking” filibuster that would force Democrats to hold the floor to block the Save America Act, Donald Trump had a blunt message for the Senate majority leader. “He’s got to be a leader,” the president told reporters outside the White House today. The upper chamber’s top Republican has said he’ll likely hold a vote on the legislation, which requires proof of citizenship while registering to vote and significantly curbs mail-in voting, next week. However, staunch Democratic opposition means it will fall short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance. Thune has said the votes “aren’t there” for a talking filibuster, or doing away with the legislative filibuster altogether – the so-called “nuclear” option. Today, Trump said it was up to the South Dakota lawmaker to “get them” regardless.

US responsible for deadly missile strike on Iran school, preliminary inquiry says

A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children. According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners. Iranian officials had put put death toll from the attack as at least 175 people, the majority of them children, in one of the worst and most shocking American strikes producing civilian fatalities in recent memory. The findings appear to confirm assertions by Tehran, which had produced video footage of the US missile strike and fragments of US-made missile parts, despite Donald Trump’s efforts to suggest Iran had hit the building. According to the report, the inquiry – which has yet to be completed – has found that officers at US Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using obsolete data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency. While independent analysis of the strike had pointed strongly to US culpability, the Trump administration has continued with a policy of evasion around the attack that hit the school in the town of Minab close to buildings used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) naval forces. On Saturday, Trump declared that Iran was responsible for the school bombing. “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran … They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.” The president presented no evidence for his claim. His assertion has not been repeated by spokespeople for the US military, who have said only that they are “investigating” the bombing. But the Trump administration’s efforts to avoid responsibility for the attack continued on Wednesday, withthe Pentagon saying in a five-word statement to the Guardian: “The incident is under investigation.” An official at the US military’s Central Command said: “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.” Historic satellite imagery shows that while the school’s building was once part of the wider IRGC complex, it has been walled off from the barracks for at least nine years. It has had clear visual indications that it is an educational facility, including colourful murals on the walls and small sports playing fields – both visible in some satellite imagery. There is no indication that the school was a military-use building at the time of the strike. Its location, however, provides a plausible reason why the US or Israel may have selected targets in that area. A number of videos of the bombed school, which have been verified by the Guardian, were shared on Iranian social media after the explosion. At least four show what is clearly the same site from different angles and approaches, with shared motifs such as the school’s distinctive, colourful murals. One of those videos shows the rubble of the destroyed school and pans to show thick smoke rising over the fence – from the direction of the IRGC base. The video was one of the first indications that the bomb that hit the school was one of a series of strikes that also targeted the IRGC complex next to it. On 8 March, Iranian state media Mehr News Agency released a video of a missile hitting a location in Minab. The video was geolocated by the investigative collective Bellingcat. Geolocation is the process of cross-referencing physical features shown in an image or video (such as buildings, billboards, signage or mountains) with verified images of a site, such as satellite images, to confirm where it was captured. Bellingcat was able to match buildings, water towers, trees and roads from the video with satellite images of the Minab site, to locate what angle it was filmed from and where the missile landed. It determined that the missile had struck the IRGC compound next to the school. The missile shown in the video has been identified by munitions experts as a Tomahawk missile. “Given the belligerents, that indicates it is a US strike, as Israel is not known to possess Tomahawk missiles,” said NR Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, an intelligence consultancy that provides munitions analysis to governments and NGOs. The US is the only country involved in the Iran war to have this weapon. He added: “Despite various claims circulating online, the munition in question is clearly not an Iranian Soumar missile: the Soumar has a distinctive external engine located towards the rear, on the underside of the munition.” Additional reporting by Joseph Gedeon in Washington

Swiss bus fire that killed six caused by ‘disturbed’ man setting himself alight, prosecutor says

Police investigating a bus fire that killed at least six people in western Switzerland have said they believe it was started by a “marginalised and disturbed” Swiss man onboard who set himself ablaze. The vehicle, operated by a service that transports passengers and mail, went up in flames on Tuesday evening in Kerzers, a town of about 5,000 people about 12 miles (20km) west of Berne in the canton of Fribourg. “A witness statement indicated that a man … of Swiss origin boarded the bus carrying bags. At some point, he doused himself with a flammable substance and set himself alight,” Fribourg canton’s public prosecutor Raphael Bourquin told a news conference on Wednesday. He said the family of the man, who was from Berne canton and in his 60s, had recently reported his disappearance, and “current evidence describes him as a marginalised and disturbed individual”. “There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this could be a terrorist act,” said Bourquin, adding that “it appears that this person is among the deceased”. Public prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation. As well as the six deaths, five people were injured in the blaze. Police were unable to say how many passengers were on the bus at the time. Fribourg police’s communications chief, Martial Pugin, said two of the victims were in a serious condition while a third was able to return home overnight. The victims were aged between 17 and 65, the authorities said, without giving details on nationalities. The Swiss president, Guy Parmelin, whose country was struck by a devastating fire on New Year’s Eve in the ski resort of Crans-Montana, expressed his condolences to the victims’ families. “I am shocked and saddened that people in Switzerland have once again lost their lives in a serious fire,” he said. In the early hours of 1 January, a basement bar in Crans-Montana was engulfed in flames as people celebrated the new year. Forty-one people died, with another 115 injured. Images from Kerzers posted on social media showed tall flames shooting from the windows of the bus and a plume of black smoke rising into the sky. Emergency services staff worked late into the night at the scene. Video after the fire was extinguished showed the charred remains of the yellow vehicle. It was removed from the road during the night. “Everything happened so quickly – and then within moments everything was in flames,” a witness told media outlet Blick. “The heat even caused the tyres to explode and fly up to 200 metres away.” Others told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper they saw injured people screaming and writhing in pain on the street. “It was awful,” said Hans-Jürg Stocker, who lives near the scene. Two women who work in a building close to the site of the fire reported hearing a loud bang and people throwing objects at the bus. “Apparently they wanted to break open the windows to free people,” one of the women told the Tages-Anzeiger. Nirosan Vickneswaran, 37, was waiting anxiously for news of his cousin, who was on the bus when it went up in flames. “We don’t know if he’s injured or worse,” he told Reuters. Police had taken DNA samples from the family and indicated it could take up to 48 hours to find out, he said. Mina Gendre was about to close up the shop where she works when she saw the bus, which had stopped unexpectedly across the road, had a small fire inside. She said that within half a minute or so, it had burst into flames. “It was so shocking. I saw someone come running out of the bus on fire,” she said. With smoke billowing out of the bus, Gendre shut the door of the shop to protect it as bystanders helped put out the fire on a person with a jacket. Romain Collaud, a member of the Fribourg state council, said the bus involved was not an electric vehicle. Although the cause of the blaze has yet to be determined, the theory that an electric motor caught fire can be ruled out. “It was a bus with a combustion engine,” he told broadcaster RTS. The vehicle involved was a PostBus, a fixture of rural life in the Alpine country. The distinctive yellow buses serve people in more remote areas, connecting them with towns and carrying letters and parcels. They are used by about half a million people every day, including schoolchildren. Stefan Regli, the chief executive of PostBus, said in a statement: “It is a terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday. Like me, all the employees of PostBus and Swiss Post are shocked.” Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

Echoes of Iraq invasion in Trump’s Iran plan | Letters

At the final meeting prior to the invasion of Iraq between UK chiefs of staff (of which I was one), the then prime minister Tony Blair, the defence secretary, senior Ministry of Defence officials and the foreign secretary, in the Old War Office building in March 2003, I asked what the plans were for phase four of the war that was about to start (ie what were the plans for actions after we had won). We were told by the prime minister that the Americans had this all in hand. I asked if we could see their plans and was told we would. I saw nothing before or after the war started. Beating Iraq was clearly going to be relatively easy – what happened then was much harder and not clear. The same seems to be true of Donald Trump’s war against Iran. Alan West Labour, House of Lords • Simon Tisdall’s assertion that the US is the enemy is painful for me to hear as an American who values our long, two-way friendship – but it is hard to deny its truth (The first lesson of war is ‘know your enemy’, 8 March). America isn’t really an enemy to the UK specifically, but it is no longer a friend to the free world. For most of us, it is heartbreaking to see our long-lasting democracy crumble. Spencer Hines Germantown, Maryland, US • Since Donald Trump no longer needs our military help (Report, 8 March), maybe we should send our aircraft carrier to Greenland, where it could deter any power that may have evil intent. Margaret Squires St Andrews, Fife • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.