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

Over in the US, the latest attempt by Congress to rein-in Donald Trump’s attacks in the Middle East has failed in the Senate.

The war powers resolution failed in a 49-50 vote. Democratic senator John Fetterman voted with Republicans to sink the measure. But notably, Republicans senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul voted in favor of the motion to prevent Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran.

Mitch McConnell was absent for the vote as he recovers from a June fall and has not received clearance to return to work.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, wrote on X:

Senate Republicans just voted to continue Donald Trumps war with Iran for the 13th time.

– Rising gas prices
– Increasing grocery bills
– 18 U.S. service members have been killed
– Over 600 Americans have been injured

We must end Trump’s war.

It comes as a new poll was released on Thursday on American attitudes about the war, with most people believing it is not worth fighting. Trump’s approval rating also showed a slump, according to the new AP-NORC poll.

The results are a stark repudiation of Trump’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.

About two-thirds of US adults say the war with Iran has not been worthwhile, according to the new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That includes the vast majority of Democrats and independents, as well as about 37% of Republicans.

On Wednesday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer gave a speech on the chamber floor in which he implored Republicans to abandon their support of Trump’s war in Iran.

“Are Senate Republicans listening? The country is clamoring for you to end this war,” he said. “I urge and plead with my Republican colleagues: listen to the American people. Vote to end this war. We’re going to keep forcing Republicans to vote until we do.”

On Thursday before the vote was finalized, Schumer posted on X:

Trump’s war with Iran has been one of the greatest foreign policy dumpster fires in American history, and it seems to be expanding with new attacks now targeting Egypt. Our troops’ lives are unnecessarily at risk fighting a war that was totally avoidable. All while Trump is too busy playing keyboard warrior on Truth Social. We must end this war now.

Following reports of Iranian strikes hitting a Chinese company in Kuwait, the Chinese embassy in Kuwait released a statement on Thursday, saying:

“According to the information we have, the attack occurred in northern Kuwait, where a vehicle belonging to a Kuwaiti subcontractor working on a project being carried out by a Chinese company was attacked, resulting in the death of a driver of Nepalese nationality.

We express our condolences to the family of the deceased. The Chinese side reiterates that any attack targeting innocent civilians or non-military targets should be condemned. It also calls on all relevant parties to immediately cease hostilities, resume communication and dialogue, and avoid further escalation of the conflict.”

Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun concluded talks with his Turkish counterpart today during a visit to Ankara.

President Aoun spoke with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after a visit to the United States earlier this month, as Lebanon seeks to recover from the violence of recent months.

Turkey has expressed interest in participating in a new security initiative in the south of the country, part of which remains occupied by Israel.

The mandate of the current UN peacekeeping mission, Unifil, will come to a close at the end of this year after the Security Council voted to terminate the operation, which was set up in 1978.

A joint statement has been issued by 14 countries, including Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, supporting the proposal of a multinational maritime defence coalition.

According to Reuters, the Saudi defence ministry said that the coalition would seek to increase defence cooperation in the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

It follows a meeting on the proposed alliance, which was attended by representatives of 43 states and an EU delegation, with attendees discussing the possibility of Saudi Arabia hosting its headquarters.

Other signatories include Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Yemen, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Somalia.

• The IRGC has claimed responsibility for an attack on Kuwait, according to Iranian state media. The semi-official Fars news agency reported the IRGC attacked the Ali al-Salem airbase in Kuwait this morning. It claimed two drone hangars and a fuel tank for aircraft and military helicopters were destroyed in the strike.

• The IRGC also said three of its members were killed in a US attack on the north-western Zanjan province this morning, state media reported.

• Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least four people, including two children, health officials said. An eight-year-old girl and an 18-month-old child were among the people killed in Israeli attacks in Bureij refugee camp, Khan Younis and Gaza City today, Reuters reported, citing Gaza health officials.

• Pakistan said negotiations between the US and Iran are “ongoing” despite escalating attacks in the Middle East. Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi, said Islamabad was doing its “utmost” to bring the warring parties back to the negotiating table under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the US and Iran in June.

• A drone strike on the Egyptian port of Damietta, the first attack on the country since the US-Iran war broke out, could be a high-risk message for American interests everywhere in the Middle East, analysts say. No party has claimed the strike on the Mediterranean port and Egypt has not assigned blame for the attack, which struck an American-owned and operated floating gas storage vessel, AFP reports.

• Shell more than doubled its profit in its second quarter of the year, as Europe’s biggest oil and gas company reaped the benefits from the jump in oil and gas prices triggered by war in the Middle East. The FTSE 100 company’s net profit hit $9.84bn (£7.4bn) in the three months to June, more than double compared with the same period last year.

• The US military said it completed a “heavy wave of strikes” against Iran on Thursday in retaliation for Tehran targeting American bases in Jordan, as intensified fighting fueled the risk of a return to all-out war in the region.

• The new strikes were launched hours after Donald Trump vowed to hit Iran “very hard” after a days-long pause in violence between the two sides.

• Jordan’s military said later it had foiled an Iranian attempt to target the kingdom with five missiles, the state news agency reported. There were no casualties.

• US forces struck dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets including military command centres, US Central Command said.

• Iran’s state news agency Irna reported strikes on several cities in the south-western Khuzestan province, as well as on Qeshm island in the Gulf. Areas around the cities of Abadan, Shadegan, Arvandkenar and Ahvaz – all in Khuzestan – were struck, Irna said, citing provincial authorities.

• Earlier, the US partnered with Saudi Arabia to strike Iran-backed militias in neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers. Saudi Arabia had reported two days of drone attacks targeting crude facilities.

• The Israeli military accused Iran-backed Hezbollah of a truce violation in Lebanon, saying it had fired a drone at an Israeli vehicle.

The US military has carried out a wave of airstrikes against Iran in response to Tehran targeting American bases in Jordan.

The strikes were launched after Donald Trump vowed to hit Iran ‘very hard’ following a days-long pause in fighting.

Iran has expanded its military strikes in the region, raising fears of an all-out war.

Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian senior international reporter Peter Beaumont…

The US military ⁠said on Thursday that no ⁠US aircraft ⁠were ​destroyed or damaged in ⁠recent attempted Iranian attacks, denying a claim ⁠it said was ​made ‌by ‌Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that ‌three US F-35 jets and three other aircraft were destroyed.

In a statement, US ‌Central Command also said the commercial ​vessel M/T Nora had not broken through America’s blockade ⁠of Iranian ports, ​denying a ​claim ​it said was ​made ‌on Iranian ​state ​media.

Patrick Wintour

Iran, in the midst of an escalating five-month war with the US, continues to stumble from one internal crisis to another – whether it is over public executions, the rising cost of living, the alleged bias of the state broadcaster or even the post-midnight destruction of pavements outside liberal-leaning Tehran cafes. Very little that happens in Iran, cultural or political, momentous or trivial, does so uncontested.

But there is now a growing threat of a long diplomatic deadlock, forged by mutual distrust in which neither side believes the other will stick to any agreement. That impasse has occurred as the war broadens, drawing in Yemen, Iraq and now Egypt. In Iran, at least, the advocates of escalation are winning. As a result, a convergence of Iran’s conflicts, internal and external, becomes more likely.

Parts of the Trump administration and the Iranian opposition – including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former deposed Shah – have never abandoned the belief that the Iranian government is on the brink of collapse.

What is true is that the picture of cohesive if brittle society presented by the millions attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month revealed only one side of the public mood.

The Trump administration is facing growing demands to explain why wounded US soldiers went more than a week without adequate hospital care after a March drone strike in Kuwait, just days into the US-Israel war on Iran.

In a letter to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, congressional Democrats urged the Pentagon to answer their questions – which include why the Pentagon’s public casualty count for the war with Iran briefly changed – by 12 August.

The letter, sent on Wednesday and led by the US senator Elizabeth Warren and the representative Pat Ryan, poses 23 questions to Hegseth over the 1 March strike on a US logistics hub at the port of Shuaiba, south of Kuwait City. It was first reported by the Washington Post.

A single Iranian drone evaded air defenses and hit the relocated operations center of the US army’s 103rd sustainment command, killing six reservists from Des Moines, Iowa, and wounding dozens more – the first US combat deaths of Operation Epic Fury, the war Donald Trump launched, alongside Israel, against Iran on 28 February.

The unit had asked for more medical staff and supplies before the strike and been turned down, according to reporting by the Washington Post and CBS News cited in the letter. There was no doctor on site afterward, no fixed aid station, and only one ambulance, with some of the wounded driving themselves to a hospital in Kuwait City, according to the reports. It took nine days before roughly two dozen soldiers, some still unscreened for brain injuries, were flown to the US military hospital at Landstuhl in Germany.

“Doctors told them that because they hadn’t been recorded as medical evacuees on the flight’s manifest or as seriously injured in [the defense department’s] casualty-processing database, they could only get limited treatment and had to wait in nearby barracks because the hospital was unable to admit them,” the letter states.

Yemen’s ⁠Iran-aligned Houthis attacked Saudi Arabia this week from Iraqi territory in coordination with Iraqi armed groups, according to assessments by Saudi Arabia and regional partners, reflecting growing coordination among Iran-aligned militias, two officials in the region said.

The assessments, which differ from official accounts, indicate that members ⁠of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance have ⁠deepened their ties and ability ​to inflict damage to US allies in the region despite years of US and Israeli strikes on them from Lebanon to Iran after Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel, Reuters reported.

The attacks included strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, the kingdom’s ⁠main crude hub.

A drone strike on the Egyptian port of Damietta, the first attack on the country since the US-Iran war broke out, could be a high-risk message for American interests everywhere in the Middle East, analysts say.

No party has claimed the strike on the Mediterranean port and Egypt has not assigned blame for the attack, which struck an American-owned and operated floating gas storage vessel, AFP reports.

Houthi militants in Yemen, who have imposed a Red Sea blockade on Saudi Arabia, have denied carrying out the attack, which raised fears for the only remaining safe maritime route for the world’s largest crude producer.

According to analysts, the goal of the attack – regardless of who launched it – could be to drag Egypt into the conflict, after months of Cairo acting as one of few diplomatic channels between Iran and the US.

The port strike, the furthest afield from the Gulf since the war broke out, also marks a new milestone by crossing the Red Sea into the Mediterranean.

The IRGC has claimed responsibility for an attack on a military base in Kuwait, according to Iranian state media.

The semi-official Fars news agency reported the IRGC attacked the Ali al-Salem airbase in Kuwait, which hosts the US air force. It claimed two drone hangars and a fuel tank for aircraft and military helicopters were destroyed in the strike.

There was no immediate comment from the US.

Iran ⁠is expected to receive within weeks a first shipment out of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defence missile launchers, three sources familiar with the deal told Reuters, as it rebuilds its defences amid war with the United States.

The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air ⁠defences since the outbreak of its war with ⁠the US and Israel, which exposed gaps in ​Iran’s ability to protect military sites and strategic infrastructure.

The contract covers the purchase of between 300 and 400 man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), including Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 missiles, the sources said.

The deal was signed with Zhongqing Baoshang International Investment, a Hong Kong-based company that the sources said was acting as an ⁠intermediary between the Iranian side and the Chinese supplier.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said three of its members were killed in a US attack on the north-western Zanjan province this morning, state media reported.

Iran’s state media reported that a couple and their child were killed in a US attack on a residential building in the Iranian island of Qeshm.

Two other children were also injured in the attack and taken to hospital, according to Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

Videos following the attack in the Chah-Tango neighbourhood of Qeshm city, in the southern Hormozgan province, show rescue workers searching through rubble for survivors.

The US military did not immediately comment on the report, but said earlier that it had “successfully completed a heavy wave of strikes against Iran”.

The island sits in the strait of Hormuz and has been subject to frequent US attacks.

Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least four people, including two children, health officials said.

An eight-year-old girl and an 18-month-old child were among the people killed in Israeli attacks in Bureij refugee camp, Khan Younis and Gaza City today, Reuters reported, citing Gaza health officials. The Israeli military said the strikes targeted Hamas militants, without ‌providing further details.

Israel has continued to launch strikes on Gaza on a near daily basis despite agreeing to a ceasefire with Hamas in October. More than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since the ceasefire took effect, according to Gaza health officials.

The latest attacks came as mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey held talks with Hamas leaders to work towards the next phase of the ceasefire, which includes a surge in humanitarian aid, governance by a civilian Palestinian administration, the ‌disarmament of Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the deployment of an international force to help maintain security.

A Hamas official said the group was coming ​with a “positive and good” response, but he did not say whether the group had agreed to fully disarm, according to Reuters. Sources close to Hamas told the news agency that the group was willing to “confine and store” heavy weapons under a Palestinian body, but not hand it over to Israel.