LIVE: Iran hit out at Trump ‘lies’ over Strait of Hormuz

Here are the latest developments in the US-Israel war with Iran:

• Donald Trump has pushed back a deadline not to strike Iranian power plants by 10 days and claimed talks are going ‘very well’ with Tehran
• Iranian hardliners are ramping up calls to build a nuclear bomb as the regime claims it has one million fighters on standby for a US ground invasion
• US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has claimed Iranian missiles could strike London
• Iran’s military has warned that hotels housing US soldiers across the region would be targets in the war
• Israel has said it has struck the Iranian regime’s main facility for producing sea mines and missiles launched to attack ships
• Saudi Arabia said six missiles have been launched towards Riyadh while a maintenance facility for US air defence system Patriot was targeted in Bahrain
• The UAE is pushing countries to join an international force to reopen and defend the Strait of Hormuz
• Kuwait said its main commercial port has been attacked by ‘hostile’ drones

Stick with us throughout the day as we bring you the latest updates

by Stephen M. Lepore, US Senior Reporter

Donald Trump is reportedly considering the deployment of 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East to give Washington more military options as ​the president seeks peace talks with ‌Tehran.

The president has repeatedly insisted on a strategy of ‘peace through strength’ in his foreign policy while giving Iran 10 additional days before his threat to destroy their energy hubs unless Tehran reopens the Strait of Hormuz.

The additional troops would likely be sent to a US military base within striking distance of Iran’s Kharg Island. Trump has threatened to seize its energy assets.

Department of Defense officials with knowledge of the planning told The Wall Street Journal the deployment would likely include infantry and armored vehicles.

Already, about 5,000 Marines and several thousand paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division have been sent to the Middle East to bolster defenses.

Kash Patel appearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee

Iran-linked hackers have publicly claimed the breach of FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email after publishing photographs of the director and documents online.

On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel ‘will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims.’

A Justice Department official confirmed that Patel’s email had been breached and said the material published online appeared authentic.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The hackers did not immediately respond to messages.

Handala, which calls itself a group of pro-Palestinian vigilante hackers, is considered by Western researchers to be one of several personas used by Iranian government cyberintelligence units

A Democrat congressman has suggested Iran are not using all the weapons they have at their disposal.

Seth Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran, has disputed Trump’s claims about the impact of the war on Iran’s arsenal.

‘If Iran is smart they’ve retained some of their capability – they’re not using everything that they have. And they’re laying in wait,’ Moulton said.

The Trump administration has said it aims to weaken Iran’s military by sinking its navy, destroying its missile and drone capability as well as ensuring Tehran never has a nuclear weapon.

US strikes have hit more than 10,000 Iranian military targets as of Wednesday and have sunk 92 percent of the Iranian navy’s large vessels, according to Central Command.

The US can only be certain it has destroyed about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal, according to five people familiar with American intelligence.

The status of around another third is less clear but bombings likely damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, four of the sources told Reuters.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the information.

One of the sources said the intelligence was similar for Iran’s drone capability, saying there was some degree of certainty about a third having been destroyed.

The assessment, which has not been previously reported, shows that while most of Iran’s missiles are either destroyed or inaccessible, Tehran still has a significant missile inventory and may be able to recover some buried or damaged missiles once fighting stops.

The intelligence stands in contrast to President Donald Trump’s public remarks on Thursday that Iran had ‘very few rockets left’.

Gulf states have told the US any deal with Tehran must permanently curb the Iranian threat, Reuters is reporting.

Gulf officials have privately told Washington Iran’s retaliatory actions since the start of the war had left them no diplomatic ‘off-ramp’, according to multiple sources.

They want any deal to ensure Iran’s missile and drone capabilities are permanently curbed while global energy supplies are never again ‘weaponised’.

Yousef al-Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, has framed the war not as a crisis to be frozen but as a test of whether Iran can again shold the economy hostage.

‘A simple ceasefire isn’t enough,’ Otaiba wrote in a column for the Wall Street Journal. ‘We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, terror proxies and blockades of international sea lanes.’

Asda is today warning that some of its petrol stations are experiencing ‘temporary shortages’ caused by the war in Iran.

The supply issues at some forecourts come as the price of petrol jumped above 150p per litre for the first time in almost two years.

Fuel costs have been spiralling amid the conflict in the Middle East which has seen Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz – a vital shipping lane which sees 20 per cent of the world’s oil pass through it every year.

Allan Leighton, executive chairman of Asda, said: ‘Our fuel volumes are up quite significantly and clearly demand has been outstripping supply. Supply is tight and we are all trying hard on that.

The issue is a temporary one, and some could see issues when we are waiting for delivery, and we can expect to see that continue.

‘The spikiness at the moment makes this tricky for us, as spikes can lead to temporary shortages. These are temporary and are addressed very quickly.’

Two major steel plants in Iran have been damaged in new airstrikes, Iranian media is reporting.

‘Minutes ago, the American-Zionist enemy targeted the Khuzestan Steel (in southwest Iran) and Mobarakeh Steel factories in Isfahan (central Iran) in two separate attacks,’ the Fars news agency said, with state broadcaster IRIB also reporting the strikes.

‘Rescue forces have immediately arrived at the scene of the incident,’ Fars wrote.

The news agency added that initial information suggested an ‘electrical substation and an alloy steel production line’ were targeted at Mobarakeh Steel complex, while a warehouse was hit at the Khuzestan Steel Factory.

Steel is a strategically important material essential for industrial and military production, including of missiles, drones and ships.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has issued a warning amid reports Donald Trump is considering deploying boots on the ground in Iran.

Ghalibaf, who is understood to be playing a key role in Iranian negotiations to end the war, has questioned how the US can protect its soldiers in the event of an invasion.

In a statement written in English on X, he said: ‘How can the US, which can’t even protect its own soldiers at its bases in the region and instead leaves them stashed away in hotels and parks, protect them on our soil?’

It has been reported that some US soldiers have been forced to leave their bases because of strike damage.

Trump is said to be weighing up whether to send an extra 10,000 troops to Iran as Washington draws up a series of military options.

There are reasons to believe that there could be an escalation in the conflict in the Middle East in the coming days, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said.

‘I have reasons to believe, also based on information we’ve received from our allies, that stabilisation is unlikely in the coming days. On the contrary, a new escalation may occur,’ Tusk told reporters.

His warning comes as Donald Trump reportedly considers the deployment of 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East.

Two Chinese container ships were turned back from the Strait of Hormuz today as Iran looks to reassert its authority over the waterway, it has been reported.

The ships, named as the CSCL Indian Ocean and CSCL Arctic Ocean which are linked to China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping, attempted to exit the Persian Gulf before making a u-turn.

According to Bloomberg, the container vessels turning back near Iran’s Larak and Qeshm islands near the narrow opening of the strait after travelling northeast from waters off Dubai.

It comes as Iran claimed three ships of different nationalities were denied access to the strait today.

Tehran has said the strait is closed to ‘hostile’ shipping including vessels of US and Israeli allies but Chinese ships have previously been allowed to transit through.

by Jon Michael Raasch, US Political Reporter

Just minutes before Donald Trump announced a temporary pause on strikes targeting Iran’s energy sites, billions of dollars starting flowing through the oil market.

Contracts for at least six million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude were sold at around 6.50am on Monday – roughly ten times the daily average.

At 7.05am, President Trump dropped a bombshell on global markets as he said the US wanted to negotiate with Iran.

Oil prices dropped sharply, around 14 percent in a matter of minutes, and money flowed into the pockets of the early traders.

It’s not the first time that outsize bets have rippled across the markets since Trump took office: everything from Bitcoin to stock‑index futures options have made traders buckets of cash, with prediction sites making profiteering even more accessible.

But the prospect that insider traders are potentially making money on highly classified secrets from the heart of the Oval Office during the Iran war poses a far more glaring security and ethical question.