Key events
Further to the last post, travellers stranded by the widening war in the Middle East began departing the United Arab Emirates aboard a small number of evacuation flights on Monday, while governments around the world work to extract their citizens from the region.
Airlines Etihad Airways and Emirates, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and budget carrier FlyDubai said they would operate limited flights amid the US-Israel war on Iran.
Since Saturday at least 11,000 flights into, out of and within the Middle East have been cancelled, affecting more than 1 million passengers, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
The travel chaos looks set to continue, with Donald Trump saying on Monday that the conflict had been projected to last four to five weeks but that it could go on longer.
Late on Monday the US state department called on Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE amid the spiralling conflict.
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Indian airlines said on Tuesday they were resuming limited commercial services to the Middle East in a bid to collect thousands of passengers stranded by war.
IndiGo said it would operate four return flights to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as part of efforts to “progressively normalise” operations between the countries. Air India Express said it would resume flights to and from the Omani capital, Muscat, from Tuesday.
But services to and from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates remain suspended, the airlines said in a statement, cited by Agence France-Presse.
Budget carrier Akasa Air said it would operate select flights to Jeddah.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have targeted a US air base in Bahrain, the Islamic republic’s elite force said in a statement carried on Tuesday by the official Irna news agency.
“The IRGC announced that … its naval forces carried out a large-scale drone and missile attack at dawn on the US air base in the Sheikh Isa area of Bahrain,” Irna posted on Telegram, using the acronym for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Agence France-Press reports the force as saying in its statement that 20 drones and three missiles were launched, “destroying the base’s main command headquarters”, without providing evidence.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran and the widening Middle East crisis.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the US and Israel’s war against Iran may take “some time” but it will not take years.
The US and Israeli air war against Iran began with attacks across the country on Saturday, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and prompting Iranian retaliation against Arab nations hosting US bases across the Middle East.
President Donald Trump initially projected the war to last four to five weeks, but added it could go on longer, and has since sought to justify a broad, open-ended war on Iran.
Netanyahu rejected the idea of the conflict lasting years, like previous wars in the region. “I said it could be quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it’s not going to take years. It’s not an endless war,” Netanyahu said on Fox News’ Hannity program.
On Tuesday morning, the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for dozens of locations in Lebanon, including a warning for residents in two southern Beirut neighbourhoods to stay away from several buildings ahead of imminent military action.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had launched drones at northern Israel.
Here are the other big developments:
The US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was hit by a drone strike, causing a fire to break out. A loud blast was heard and flames seen at the embassy early on Tuesday morning, reports said. Black smoke was seen rising over Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter, which houses foreign missions.
The state department has urged that all US citizens leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries due to risks related to ongoing escalations that have pushed the region into chaos. The 14 countries included in the warning were Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
There was confusion over the status of navigation in the strait of Hormuz after a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to “burn any ship” seeking to navigate the waterway, a vital route for oil and gas shipments. However, US Central Command said the strait was not closed, according to Fox News.
The United States attacked Iran after learning that ally Israel was going to strike, which would have meant retaliation against US forces, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. “We knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters. The justification for the attack differs from justifications given by Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
Rubio also said the “hardest hits” are yet to come from the US military. “The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now,” he told reporters.
Trump signalled that US strikes on Iran could go much longer than originally predicted. The president laid out what he said were four key objectives for hitting Iran: “First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities … Second, we’re annihilating their navy … Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s No 1 sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon. Finally we are ensuring the Iranian regime can’t continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
US claims to have destroyed Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ command facilities
US Central Command has just claimed on social media that US forces have destroyed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ command facilities as well as Iranian missile and drone launch sites and more.
Centcom said in a post on X including military images:
U.S. forces have destroyed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control facilities, Iranian air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields during sustained operations. We will continue to take decisive action against imminent threats posed by the Iranian regime.
