Analysis: how should we interpret Pezeshkian’s statement?
Patrick Wintour
The announcement by Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian that Iran will no longer attack Gulf and neighbouring states if they are not attacking Iran appears on the surface a significant change in tactics, reflecting the overpowering diplomatic pressure Iran was under to change course, or risk uniting the whole of the Arab world against Iran. It would be an admission that Iran’s current military strategy is heading for diplomatic disaster.
But the precise implications of his announcement remains open to interpretation. An Iranian armed forces spokesperson seemed to qualify its meaning heavily by saying:
double quotation markStrikes against the US and Israeli assets will continue. So far, we have targeted every base that was the origin of aggression against Iran and we remain committed to this matter. Countries that have not provided space and facilities to the United States and the Zionist regime have not been our target so far and will not be targeted in the future.
If the armed forces believe countries simply providing land, in terms of bases, remain legitimate targets, then effectively nothing has changed since there are US bases in almost every Gulf State. What Pezeshkian seemed to imply is that these countries will not be attacked if the US bases and airspace are not being used to attack Iran, an altogether different proposition.
Whether this reflects an internal disagreement, a reinterpretation of the decision taken by Pezeshkian and other members of Iran’s temporary executive council or simply a more hardline way of explaining the political leadership’s decision, time will tell. It is a test of where power lies in Iran in wartime.
But it was significant too that Pezeshkian chose to apologise and to argue Iran wanted to be on the right side of international law. Many lawyers claimed Iran’s attacks on US bases in the region could be justified as acts of self-defence, but the wider attacks on Gulf infrastructure and oil installations could not.
If Pezeshkian’s promise is translated into reality then Iran hopes the path to reunite the region and the focus can shift back to what it regards as the injustice of the US attacks in the midst of diplomacy.
The pressure to relent has been coming from all the Gulf states, but notably countries that have tried to be close to Iran, including Oman, Turkey and Qatar. Some of the phone conversations have been said to be seething.
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Updated at 10.23 GMT
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Patrick Wintour
Western officials were seeking to interpret Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian’s offer and on what authority he was speaking, but said it was best to be cautious in suggesting Iran was looking for an off ramp.
One official said: “We do not know definitely what is driving the Iranian president’s remarks. It is one data point and it is no more than that. We can infer that Iranian capability is degraded. There is no reason to doubt the briefing from centcom of a reduced number of attacks recently.”
The official said the Iranian offer to states in the region was implicitly conditional, but added it was not clear if this meant attacks could stop if countries did not allow US bases to be used to attack Iran or whether the very presence of a US base was sufficient reason to attack.
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Kuwait says it has implemented a precautionary reduction in crude oil production and refining following the ongoing attacks by Iran against Kuwait and “Iranian threats to safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.”
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the state oil company, said the move was part of its “risk management and business continuity strategy”.
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Harry Taylor
In the UK, Labour has accused Kemi Badenoch of scoring “cheap political points” after the Conservative party leader said Keir Starmer was “too scared” to join strikes on Iran.
Al Carns, the defence minister, said “serious politics” was required in response to Badenoch’s speech at the party’s spring conference where she criticised the prime minister’s stance on the US-Israel strikes on Iran a week ago.
Badenoch said: “At a time when Britain needs strong and decisive leadership, we have a prime minister who is too afraid of making the wrong decision, too afraid to make any decision at all.
“Last week’s byelection has spooked the Labour party. They watched the Greens campaigning on sectarian voting lines. A tactic Labour used for many years is now being turned against them. And now Keir Starmer is too scared to make foreign interventions for fear of upsetting a tiny section of that electorate.”
In response, Carns, a former Royal Marine, said: “Trying to score cheap political points off the back of a serious security situation is deeply irresponsible. This situation is above politics and requires calm collective decision making – not hyperbole and soundbites.”
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Turkey is considering the deployment of F-16 aircraft to Cyprus, a Turkish defence ministry source has told Reuters.
The person said such a move was one of the steps being considered amid the phased planning underway to ensure the security of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north of the island, as conflict spreads in the region.
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Aaron Glantz
For many US veterans of post-9/11 wars, the strikes on Iran bring troubling echoes of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. My colleague Aaron Glantz has spoken to some of them:
Nearly two decades after his second tour, Nathan Wendland is still troubled by his experiences in Iraq.
Like 700,000 other Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the 46-year-old former US army staff sergeant receives compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder. Last January, Wendland checked himself into a psychiatric emergency room because he was worried he would kill himself. He was on the mend, but then Donald Trump ordered a sustained campaign of airstrikes on Iran. All those memories came flooding back.
“This war brings triggers into the news cycle every hour,” the navy veteran said. “I cannot focus on my daily life.
“We’ve put young men and women and support staff in bases all over the world at risk for no reason.”
VanDiver said the irony was that many veterans voted for Trump specifically because he promised to keep the US out of wars. “Too many of our generation and friends died fighting these illegal wars that he said he wasn’t going to get us back into,” he said.
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Updated at 13.38 GMT
Reuters is reporting that the Iranian revolutionary guards say they hit a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in the strait of Hormuz.
The statement first came via Iranian state media. We’ll bring you more when we get it…
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Meanwhile, in London, anti-war protesters are marching towards the US embassy:
Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPAShare
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has told residents of a northern Israeli city close to the border with Lebanon to evacuate and head south.
A statement read:
double quotation markWarning. All residents of Kiryat Shmona are asked to evacuate immediately. Head south.
ShareDaniel Boffey
Iran’s targeting of commercial datacentres in the UAE and Bahrain signals a new frontier in asymmetric warfare. The Guardian’s chief reporter has this report:
It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacentre by the armed forces of a country at war.
At 4.30am on Sunday morning, an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacentre in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water.
Soon after, a second data centre owned by the US tech company was hit. Then a third was said to be in trouble, this time in Bahrain, after an Iranian suicide drone turned to fireball on striking land nearby.
Iranian state TV has claimed that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched the attack “to identify the role of these centres in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities”.
The network built by Jeff Bezos’s company could withstand one of its regional centres being taken out of action but not a second, let alone a third of their huge warehouses of technology. The coordinated strike had an immediate impact.
Millions of people in Dubai and Abu Dhabi woke up on Monday unable to pay for a taxi, order a food delivery, or check their bank balance on their mobile apps.
Whether there was a military impact is unclear – but the strikes swiftly brought the war directly into the lives of 11 million people in the UAE, nine out of 10 of whom are foreign nationals.
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Pictures: aftermath of deadly Israeli raid in Lebanon’s Nabi Chit
A grave dug by Israeli forces searching for Israeli co-pilot Ron Arad. Photograph: Ali Salem/APPeople check the damage left by Israeli airstrikes last night. Photograph: Ali Salem/APPeople inspect the damage where Israel’s military carried out an airborne operation. Photograph: Mohammad Yassine/ReutersA person holds bullet casings at the site of the Israeli raid in Nabi Chit. Photograph: Mohammad Yassine/ReutersShare
Israeli military orders people in southern Lebanon to leave
The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, has again warned people south of the Litani river in southern Lebanon to leave, saying the Israeli military is operating with “great force” in the area.
He said:
double quotation markStrikes are ongoing as the IDF is operating with great force in the region. Therefore, for your safety, we reiterate our call for you to evacuate your homes immediately and move to the north of the Litani river.
Anyone who is near Hezbollah operatives, installations, or weapons is putting their life at risk.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army issued its largest order yet for the immediate evacuation of the southern suburbs of Beirut,
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41 people killed in Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon, health ministry says
Lebanon’s official National News Agency, citing figures from the country’s health ministry, reported that 41 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the eastern Bekaa valley.
“The series of raids launched by the Israeli enemy on the town of Nabi Chit and surrounding towns in the Baalbek district resulted in a total of 41 citizens killed and 40 others wounded,” the ministry said in a statement.
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Updated at 12.36 GMT
Lebanon will pay ‘heavy price’ if Hezbollah attacks continue, says Israeli official
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz warned Lebanon that it will pay a “heavy price” if Hezbollah continues to attack his country.
In a statement broadcast on Israeli television, and reported by the Times of Israel, Katz said Israel will not allow attacks on its troops or communities from Lebanese territory, saying that residents will not be evacuated.
In a message to Lebanese president Joseph Aoun, he said that if “the choice becomes protecting our civilians and the safety of our soldiers or Lebanon, we will choose to defend our civilians and our soldiers, and the government of Lebanon and Lebanon will pay a very heavy price”.
Moments earlier, Hezbollah ordered residents of Kiryat Shmona, a northern Israeli city near the border with Lebanon, to evacuate and head south.
It did not say what action, if any, it planned to take.
Katz has repeatedly urged Israelis in the north to remain in their homes, saying the military will protect them.
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Updated at 12.21 GMT
Summary of developments so far
The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, apologised to neighbouring countries that were attacked by Iran. He said Iran’s interim leadership council had approved stopping attacks or missile strikes against neighbouring countries unless an attack against Iran originated from those countries.
US president Donald Trump vowed Iran “will be hit very hard” today. He said the US would target “areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time’, without elaborating.
Trump said Iran has “surrendered to its Middle East neighbours, and promised that it will not shoot at them any more”. He argued this was only made possible “because of the relentless US and Israeli attack”.
Pezeshkian said a demand by the US for an unconditional surrender is a “dream that they should to take to their grave”. Trump said that only Iran’s “unconditional surrender” would bring an end to the offensive launched a week ago.
Dubai airport has partially resumed services after reports of a nearby explosion. Emirates had initially announced that it would suspend flights to and from the airport but later said it was resuming operations today. News agencies on the ground reported several blasts were heard and the alert sounded.
Lebanese media reported that at least 26 people were killed, including three Lebanese soldiers, during an overnight clash with Israeli forces in the eastern Bekaa valley. Hezbollah said it was involved in the fighting in the town of Nabi Chit, where Israeli commando unit was reportedly deployed to the area by helicopter and confronted by local residents and armed fighters.
The Israeli military said its special forces carried out a raid in Lebanon to locate the remains of Lt Col Ron Arad, a navigator on an Israeli jet whose plane went down in southern Lebanon in 1986. The operation was unsuccesful, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, adding that there had been no Israeli casualties.
Iran and Lebanon continued to come under heavy Israeli strikes. The Israeli military said more than 80 fighter jets struck “key Iranian regime military infrastructure” in Tehran and central Iran today. Israeli warplanes also hammered Beirut after ordering an unprecedented evacuation of the city’s southern suburbs.
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Trump: ‘Today Iran will be hit very hard’
US president Donald Trump said Iran “will be hit very hard” today as he responded to the Iranian president’s apology to neighbouring countries.
In a post on Truth Social, he said Iran had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbours, and promised that it will not shoot at them any more”, and argued this was only made possible “because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack”.
He wrote:
double quotation markIran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries. They have said, “Thank you President Trump.” I have said, “You’re welcome!” Iran is no longer the “Bully of the Middle East,” they are, instead, “THE LOSER OF THE MIDDLE EAST,” and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely, completely collapse! Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
As reported earlier, the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a pre-recorded message that Iran’s interim leadership council had approved stopping attacks on neighbouring countries, unless an attack on Iran originated from those countries.
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Pictures: Explosion near Dubai airport
We have some pictures from the newswires of the explosions reported near Dubai airport today, forcing the suspension of flights.
Shows smoke rising from the Dubai International Airport. The world’s busiest for international traffic suspended operations before partially resuming services. Photograph: UGC/ANONYMOUS/AFP/Getty Images
Emirates airline announced on social media this morning that it had suspended flights to and from Dubai, but it has since deleted that post and said it has resumed operations. This was followed by a statement by Dubai airport confirming it has partially resumed services. Neither statements mentioned any attacks but said they were monitoring the situation to ensure safety for passengers and staff.
The Associated Press news agency reported that passengers at the airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, were ushered down into train tunnels as several blasts were heard and the alert sounded.
Earlier, the UAE government said operations at Dubai’s main airport had been suspended after the aerial interception of an object near the airport, the AFP news agency reported.
Shows smoke rising from the Dubai International Airport.
Photograph: UGC/ANONYMOUS/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
