Middle East crisis live: Israel strikes Tehran; Netanyahu suggests need for ‘ground component’ in Iran war | US-Israel war on Iran
Interim summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East.
If you are just joining us, here is a quick recap of the latest developments:
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Israel pounded Tehran with airstrikes on Friday as Iranians marked Nowruz, or the Persian New Year. Activists reported hearing strikes around Iran’s capital. The attacks occurred a day after Israel pledged to refrain from more strikes on a key Iranian gas field and Iran intensified attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf.
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Benjamin Netanyahu denied that Donald Trump was “dragged” into the war by Israel, as he tried to pour cold water on suggestions that Israel influenced the US’s decision to attack Iran and amid growing signs that the US and Israel are not aligned on their war aims. “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do,” the Israeli prime minister said, adding: “I misled no one.”
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Netanyahu also stated that Israel “acted alone” in striking Iran’s South Pars gasfield, though he didn’t address whether or not he had told Trump about the attack beforehand. “President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding out,” he added. Trump has distanced himself from Israel’s attack on the world’s largest gasfield (which he claimed on Wednesday that Washington “knew nothing” about), and confirmed today that he told Netanyahu to stop attacking Iran’s energy facilities.
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Netanyahu also claimed that Iran has “no ability to enrich uranium at the moment and no capability of manufacturing ballistic missiles”. He said that the war would take “as long as is necessary”, adding: “We will crush them entirely, all those capabilities.”
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The spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard insisted Friday that Tehran was still building missiles, seeking to counter a claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it no longer could.
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Kuwait’s state oil firm KPC said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, causing a fire in some units, with no initial casualties reported, the state news agency said.
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Iranian attacks on Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar have reduced the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity by 17%, according to QatarEnergy, the state-run energy giant. The “extensive damage” could reduce its annual revenues by $20bn and take “up to five years” to repair, Saad al-Kaabi, the Qatari energy minister and CEO of QatarEnergy, said in a statement.
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US Central Command said that it has destroyed the Iranian regime’s surface-to-surface missile plant in Karaj. The plant was used to “assemble ballistic missiles that threatened Americans, neighboring countries, and commercial shipping,” Centcom said.
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France will double its humanitarian aid to Lebanon to the value of €17m ($19.7m), foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, as Lebanon grapples with Israel’s latest military assault. Israeli strikes on Beirut and its ground invasion of southern Lebanon have killed over 1,000 people, including 118 children, and wounded more than 2,500 since Tel Aviv’s renewed offensive on 2 March. More than one million – roughly one in five – of the population have been displaced.
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An Iranian missile attack hit Israel’s oil refineries in the northern port city of Haifa but did not cause “significant damage“, Israel’s energy ministry said. Energy minister Eli Cohen said power was briefly disrupted, with electricity restored to most of those who were affected, Reuters reported.
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Petrol prices have surged in some regions, including in Vietnam where the cost of fuel was up 20% on Friday amid fears of oil and gas shortages caused by the war.
Key events
IRGC spokesperson killed in US-Israeli airstrikes, Iranian media reports
A spokesperson for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), Ali Mohammad Naeini, has been killed in US-Israeli airstrikes, Iranian media has been reporting, including the Tasnim news agency.
Before his death, Naeini issued a statement insisting Tehran was still able to build missiles despite the attacks coming from Israel and the US. We have not yet been able to independently verify this information.
Targeted Israeli/US-Israeli attacks have already killed the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the security chief Ali Larijani, head of the paramilitary Basij force, Gholamreza Soleimani, and the intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib, among others.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, has urged all sides involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran to ensure a stable and unimpeded oil supply. He did not name any countries in his comments to the media.
The comments come after the US indicated it may soon remove sanctions on Iranian oil in order to make more oil available to global buyers and reduce oil prices, which have surged since the start of the war as Iran has closed the strait of Hormuz to shipping and attacked tankers.
The move could free up 140m barrels of Iranian oil for global use, the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent claimed. “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days, as we continue this campaign,” he said on Fox Business.
The treasury recently took a similar step to temporarily allow the sale of sanctioned Russian oil stranded on tankers, which Bessent said added around 130m barrels to global supplies.
If proceeded with, the move would be a significant reversal of longstanding American policy towards Iran. Experts say it could have a limited effect on prices and could actually help Iran fund its war effort against the US.
Sri Lanka, which has strong economic and diplomatic ties with both Iran and the US, refused to allow the US to station two of its warplanes at an airport in the island’s south in early March, the country’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, told parliament earlier today.
“They wanted to bring two warplanes armed with eight anti-ship missiles from a base in Djibouti to the Mattala International Airport from March 4 to 8 and we said ’no’,” Dissanayake was quoted by the AFP news agency as having said.
Sri Lanka, an island nation in the Indian Ocean more than 2,000 miles from the Persian Gulf, has had a policy of non-alignment since it became independent in 1948.
But the country found itself in the diplomatic crossfire of the US-Israeli war on Iran after an American submarine strike sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka in early March, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors.
Interim summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East.
If you are just joining us, here is a quick recap of the latest developments:
-
Israel pounded Tehran with airstrikes on Friday as Iranians marked Nowruz, or the Persian New Year. Activists reported hearing strikes around Iran’s capital. The attacks occurred a day after Israel pledged to refrain from more strikes on a key Iranian gas field and Iran intensified attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf.
-
Benjamin Netanyahu denied that Donald Trump was “dragged” into the war by Israel, as he tried to pour cold water on suggestions that Israel influenced the US’s decision to attack Iran and amid growing signs that the US and Israel are not aligned on their war aims. “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do,” the Israeli prime minister said, adding: “I misled no one.”
-
Netanyahu also stated that Israel “acted alone” in striking Iran’s South Pars gasfield, though he didn’t address whether or not he had told Trump about the attack beforehand. “President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding out,” he added. Trump has distanced himself from Israel’s attack on the world’s largest gasfield (which he claimed on Wednesday that Washington “knew nothing” about), and confirmed today that he told Netanyahu to stop attacking Iran’s energy facilities.
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Netanyahu also claimed that Iran has “no ability to enrich uranium at the moment and no capability of manufacturing ballistic missiles”. He said that the war would take “as long as is necessary”, adding: “We will crush them entirely, all those capabilities.”
-
The spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard insisted Friday that Tehran was still building missiles, seeking to counter a claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it no longer could.
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Kuwait’s state oil firm KPC said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, causing a fire in some units, with no initial casualties reported, the state news agency said.
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Iranian attacks on Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar have reduced the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity by 17%, according to QatarEnergy, the state-run energy giant. The “extensive damage” could reduce its annual revenues by $20bn and take “up to five years” to repair, Saad al-Kaabi, the Qatari energy minister and CEO of QatarEnergy, said in a statement.
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US Central Command said that it has destroyed the Iranian regime’s surface-to-surface missile plant in Karaj. The plant was used to “assemble ballistic missiles that threatened Americans, neighboring countries, and commercial shipping,” Centcom said.
-
France will double its humanitarian aid to Lebanon to the value of €17m ($19.7m), foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, as Lebanon grapples with Israel’s latest military assault. Israeli strikes on Beirut and its ground invasion of southern Lebanon have killed over 1,000 people, including 118 children, and wounded more than 2,500 since Tel Aviv’s renewed offensive on 2 March. More than one million – roughly one in five – of the population have been displaced.
-
An Iranian missile attack hit Israel’s oil refineries in the northern port city of Haifa but did not cause “significant damage“, Israel’s energy ministry said. Energy minister Eli Cohen said power was briefly disrupted, with electricity restored to most of those who were affected, Reuters reported.
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Petrol prices have surged in some regions, including in Vietnam where the cost of fuel was up 20% on Friday amid fears of oil and gas shortages caused by the war.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says Tehran still building missiles
The spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard insisted Friday that Tehran was still building missiles, seeking to counter a claim by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it no longer could.
Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini made the comments in a report quoted by Iran’s state-run IRAN newspaper.
Referencing how Iranian schools consider a 20 as a perfect score, the general said:
Our missile industry score is 20 and there is no concern in this regard because we are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling.”
He also said the war would go on.
“These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” the general said of the Iranian public. “This war must end when the shadow of war is lifted from the country.”
The leaders of some Pacific countries have appealed for help with oil supplies while others urge against “panic buying” as the import-reliant nations grapple with fears over possible fuel shortages and escalating costs caused by war in the Middle East.
Oil prices have surged to nearly $110 a barrel after strikes against energy infrastructure in Iran and the Gulf states.
Read more about the impacts here:
Asian shares were mixed on Friday following Wall Street losses, and oil prices pared earlier gains on the intensifying Iran war, falling back to about $107 a barrel. US futures were higher.
Oil prices had a rollercoaster day on Thursday with the Brent crude, the international standard, briefly surging to about $119 per barrel as attacks by Iran on oil and gas facilities around the Gulf escalated after Israel’s attack of Iran’s key natural gas field.
In early Friday trading, Brent crude fell 1.6% to $106.90 a barrel, following Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that he would hold off on further attacks on Iran’s gas field at the request of US President Donald Trump. Benchmark US crude was down 2% to $93.63 a barrel.
The cost of petrol was up by more than 20% in Vietnam on Friday after the government announced an overnight hike amid fears of oil and gas shortages caused by the Middle East war.
South-east Asian countries have borne the brunt of surging diesel prices after strikes against energy infrastructure in Iran and the Gulf states.
Just before midnight Thursday, the Vietnamese government announced an increase in the price of 95-octane gasoline by 20% from the weekend to 30,690 Vietnamese dong ($1.20) per litre, while diesel was up by nearly 34% to 33,420 dong.
More than 3,000 people are believed to have been killed across Iran so far, and the Pentagon says more than 15,000 targets in the country have been hit in the first two weeks. A girls’ school in the south-eastern Iranian city of Minab lies in rubble, with about 175 children and teachers killed in a strike that the US is believed to have carried out. The strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea passage turned chokepoint for the Gulf’s oil and the world, is, in effect, closed.
And the bill, according to analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is growing by roughly half a billion dollars every day.
Read this clever interactive piece on the cost of Operation Epic Fury.
Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery hit by multiple drone attacks
Kuwait’s state oil firm KPC said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, causing a fire in some units, with no initial casualties reported, the state news agency said.
Firefighters responded immediately, with several units shut down as a precaution to ensure workers’ safety.
“The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery… was subjected early today to several hostile drone attacks, causing fires in some of its units,” the official Kuwait News Agency said, adding that “several refinery units were shut down”.
Some analysts believe that China will be in a stronger position to extract concessions from Donald Trump when the US president finally visits Beijing after becoming entangled in his Middle East war.
Trump had been due in the Chinese capital at the end of this month for talks with president Xi Jinping, but has delayed his trip by several weeks to deal with the fallout from the war.
His decision last month to join Israel in strikes on Iran has plunged the Middle East into violence, pushed energy prices to years-long highs and seeded fears of global supply shortages due to Iran’s effective closure of the strait of Hormuz.
With Trump struggling to define how the intervention will end and traditional allies reluctant to back him, the US leader may come to China needing a diplomatic win, analysts told Agence France-Presse.
A show of US force that was meant to intimidate Beijing has instead served to puncture the illusion of US omnipotence,” said Ali Wyne, a senior adviser focusing on US-China ties at the International Crisis Group thinktank.
Some more images of people preparing for Nowruz, or Persian New Year, in Tehran.
Israel pounds Tehran with airstrikes on Friday
Israel pounded Tehran with airstrikes on Friday as Iranians marked Nowruz, or the Persian New Year, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied he ‘dragged’ Trump into the war with Iran.
Activists reported hearing strikes around Iran’s capital. The attacks occurred a day after Israel pledged to refrain from more strikes on a key Iranian gas field and Iran intensified attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf.
The strikes come as questions mount about how aligned the US and Israel are in their war aims, with Netanyahu saying that Israel had acted alone in the bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field. He also confirmed that Trump had asked Israel to hold off on such attacks.
Iran is being “decimated” and no longer had the capacity to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles, but a revolution in the country would require a “ground component,” he said, without elaborating.
The Israeli premier also rejected the notion that he had dragged Trump into the conflict, implying that he was the junior partner in the joint assault on Iran.
“Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?” Netanyahu told reporters, at a press conference.
“He didn’t need any convincing,” he added.
“I don’t think any two leaders have been as coordinated as President Trump and I. He’s the leader. I’m, you know, his ally.”
As other Asian economies race to conserve energy amid a shortage sparked by the war, China has huge reserves of oil and gas, as well as alternative energy sources like wind and solar.
The Guardian’s Callum Jones look’s at how Xi Jinping has been preparing for a crisis like this for years.
South Korea, the world’s third biggest importer of liquified natural gas (LNG) has played down the impact of Iranian strikes on Qatari energy facilities.
QatarEnergy, the state-run energy giant, estimated earlier that Iran’s strikes on Ras Laffan Industrial City have reduced the country’s LNG export capacity by 17%, and warned it could take up to five years to repair “extensive” damage.
“Given that the share of imports from Qatar is relatively low (at around 14% in 2026) and alternative supply sources are available, there are no issues regarding gas supply and demand,” South Korea’s industry ministry said in a statement. “However, as uncertainty has been growing, we plan to closely monitor supply, demand, and price trends and respond accordingly.”
Only China and Japan import more LNG from overseas than South Korea.
One of Iran’s top football players has been expelled from the national team for a perceived act of disloyalty to the government, according to Iranian media.
Sardar Azmoun is said to have upset authorities this week by posting a picture on social media of a meeting with Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai.
A report on the Fars News Agency, which has links to Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, cited “an informed source within the national team” as saying that Azmoun, 31, had been expelled from the squad.
The country’s women’s football team returned to Iran earlier this week. While seven members of the delegation had sought asylum in Australia last week, five later changed their minds, including captain Zahra Ghanbari.
Israel launches fresh wave of strikes on Tehran
Israel says it has launched more strikes on the Iranian capital.
In a brief statement on X, the Israel Defense Forces said: “The IDF has now begun a wave of strikes targeting infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime in the heart of Tehran.”
Activists reported hearing strikes across the city, the AP reports.
UAE, Kuwait authorities say responding to missile attacks
Emirati and Kuwaiti air defences were responding to missile attacks early on Friday, Kuwait’s army and the UAE’s interior ministry said in separate statements.
Elsewhere in the Gulf, Bahrain’s interior ministry said air raid sirens were activated, and Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted a drone in the country’s east.
Welcome summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran and the effect the conflict is having on the region, the world and the global economy.
Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at a possible “ground component” to the US-Israel warn on Iran – while Donald Trump suggested the US had no plans to put boots on the ground.
“You don’t want to replace one ayatollah with another,” the Israeli prime minister said on Thursday, adding that the Iranian regime was unlikely to be overthrown using air strikes alone.
It is “often said” that you can’t “do revolutions from the air”, Netanyahu told a press conference. “There has to be a ground component as well. There are many possibilities for this ground component and I take the liberty of not sharing [those] with you.”
Trump, meanwhile, claimed he had no plans for the US to engage in such an operation. “I’m not putting troops anywhere,” he told a reporter, when asked about using ground troops. But he added: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
The president also confirmed that the Pentagon has asked Congress to approve a further $200bn to fund the war.
Some 65% of Americans believe Trump will order troops into a large-scale ground war in Iran, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, but just 7% support that idea.
In other developments:
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Benjamin Netanyahu denied that Donald Trump was “dragged” into the war by Israel, as he tried to pour cold water on suggestions that Israel influenced the US’s decision to attack Iran and amid growing signs that the US and Israel are not aligned on their war aims. “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do,” the Israeli prime minister said, adding: “I misled no one.”
-
Netanyahu also stated that Israel “acted alone” in striking Iran’s South Pars gasfield, though he didn’t address whether or not he had told Trump about the attack beforehand. “President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding out,” he added. Trump has distanced himself from Israel’s attack on the world’s largest gasfield (which he claimed on Wednesday that Washington “knew nothing” about), and confirmed today that he told Netanyahu to stop attacking Iran’s energy facilities.
-
Netanyahu also claimed that Iran has “no ability to enrich uranium at the moment and no capability of manufacturing ballistic missiles”. He said that the war would take “as long as is necessary”, adding: “We will crush them entirely, all those capabilities.”
-
Iranian attacks on Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar have reduced the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity by 17%, according to QatarEnergy, the state-run energy giant. The “extensive damage” could reduce its annual revenues by $20bn and take “up to five years” to repair, Saad al-Kaabi, the Qatari energy minister and CEO of QatarEnergy, said in a statement.
-
US Central Command said that it has destroyed the Iranian regime’s surface-to-surface missile plant in Karaj. The plant was used to “assemble ballistic missiles that threatened Americans, neighboring countries, and commercial shipping,” Centcom said.
-
France will double its humanitarian aid to Lebanon to the value of €17m ($19.7m), foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, as Lebanon grapples with Israel’s latest military assault. Israeli strikes on Beirut and its ground invasion of southern Lebanon have killed over 1,000 people, including 118 children, and wounded more than 2,500 since Tel Aviv’s renewed offensive on 2 March. More than one million – roughly one in five – of the population have been displaced.
-
An Iranian missile attack hit Israel’s oil refineries in the northern port city of Haifa but did not cause “significant damage“, Israel’s energy ministry said. Energy minister Eli Cohen said power was briefly disrupted, with electricity restored to most of those who were affected, Reuters reported.
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