Israel-Iran conflict LIVE updates: US bases in Middle East set to be targeted if Trump joins war; Ali Khamenei’s location known, US president says

As Iran’s president gathered his cabinet on Sunday afternoon to praise the armed forces for their performance, Tehran residents were filling their social media feeds with pictures and videos of fresh Israeli airstrikes that had destroyed buildings.

It was a dramatic split-screen moment, demonstrating how Iran’s government has tried to portray strength since Israel began its attack on the country on Friday morning even as a terrified population has decried the absence of adequate safety instructions and evacuation orders.

That President Masoud Pezeshkian convened such a meeting of top officials in a single location – just days after Israeli forces had wiped out much of Iran’s top military brass – showed an “arrogance and lack of adherence to basic security protocol”, Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iranian-born scholar of the Middle East, wrote on X.

“They don’t even need to look abroad for lessons at this point, yet refuse to learn,” he wrote.

Throughout Sunday and Monday, Iranian state television played clips of pro-government rallies and focused coverage on the damage in Israel wrought by Iran’s retaliatory missile barrages. On Sunday, however, Tehran residents began a mass exodus from the capital city for fear of being caught up in the conflict.

Even after Israel issued an evacuation warning on Monday for part of Tehran, Iran’s state-run television, whose offices are within that zone, continued as normal, airing videos of children singing patriotic songs and images of Iranian missiles hitting Israeli targets – up until the moment an Israeli strike hit the television studio. The news host sprang up from her chair, and a man, expressing defiance, could be heard saying “God is great” on air.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

Iran’s state television has urged citizens to remove WhatsApp from their smartphones, alleging that the messaging app has gathered user information to send to Israel.

In a statement on Tuesday, WhatsApp said it was “concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most”.

WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message. Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, owns the app.

“We do not track your precise location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging, and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another,” it added. “We do not provide bulk information to any government.”

Iran has blocked access to various social media platforms over the years, but many people in the country use proxies and virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access them. It banned WhatsApp and Google Play in 2022 during mass protests against the government over the death of a woman held by the country’s morality police. That ban was lifted late last year.

AP

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sought to rally the G7 leaders to support a ceasefire in Gaza, renewing the push amid an escalation of hostilities between Iran and Israel.

“This is a moment in which we can agree to a ceasefire in Gaza,” she told reporters at the G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday.

“I have shared this sentiment with everyone I’ve spoken to these days and I have found agreement – so much so that this common position is in the ‘allied nations’ Middle East statement.”

Israel has been engaged in a war against Gaza since October 2023, when Hamas launched a multipronged onslaught on Israel from the strip, killing 1200. Gaza authorities say the death toll there has topped 57,000 casualties, while the UN has warned of catastrophic humanitarian conditions.

Some of Israel’s closest European allies, including Germany, the UK and France, have grown increasingly critical of its prosecution of the war, which has destroyed much of the coastal strip and sparked what international aid agencies say is a hunger crisis.

“We must push for this result,” Meloni said.

“I have always backed the reconstruction plan put forward by Arab countries. I think the Gulf countries’ role in this phase in the region is fundamental, and we have to support their role as much as possible in trying to find a solution.”

She said the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin negotiating peace between Iran and Israel – an option put forward by US President Donald Trump earlier this week – was “not on the table”.

“Giving a mediating role in another war to a nation already at war doesn’t seem like one of the best options to me,” she said.

Bloomberg

The Israeli Air Force has issued an update just now in which it says it intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” launched from the east of Israel.

In a post to X, The IAF said sirens rang out in the northern part of the country after the target entered its airspace between 5.55am and 5.57am local time.

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded 1326 others, a human rights group says.

On Wednesday, the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said it had identified 239 of the dead as civilians and 126 as security personnel.

The group, which also provided detailed casualty figures during the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, crosschecks local reports in the Islamic Republic against a network of sources it has developed in the country.

Iran has not been publishing regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimised casualties in the past. Its last update, issued on Monday, put the death toll at 224 people killed and 1277 wounded.

AP

Suddenly, Donald Trump’s presidency is on the line.

Will there be war or Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”, as Trump has demanded on his platform Truth Social?

At home, will Americans revel in Trump’s “Golden Age” of economic miracles or be mired in recession?

If Trump stumbles in Iran, and if his “one big, beautiful” domestic policy legislation fails in Congress, Trump will be a lame duck for the balance of his term as president.

Read more here.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, Donald Trump is coming closer to deciding whether the United States will get directly involved in an escalating conflict in the Middle East.

CBS News reported earlier this morning that the US president is considering joining Israel’s effort to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

One possible target is the Fordow site, the most fortified nuclear facility in Iran that is buried under a mountain that only heavy US bombs can penetrate.

However, there is reportedly not full agreement among Trump’s closest advisers on what to do.

CNN also reported that Trump was “growing increasingly warm” to using US military assets to strike Iran.