Summary
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Thursday. Here are the latest developments:
In his first conference since the joint US-Israel operation against Iran, Donald Trump laid out his administration’s objectives moving forward. This includes destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating their navy, preventing Iran from ever having nuclear weapons, and ensuring the country “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”. Notably, the president did not urge the Iranian people to push back against their government – something he’s pushed for in recent weeks. The president said he predicted the war to last four-five weeks but the US has the “capability to go far longer”.
Earlier, in a heated Penatgon press conference, Pete Hegseth initially said that US troops wouldn’t be in Iran, but later said he wouldn’t get into details. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better, and so does this president.”
US Central Command (Centcom) said that six service members have been killed in action, and eighteen have been seriously wounded in the US-Israel war on Iran.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff briefed senior congressional lawmakers on Operation Epic Fury. Before the briefing, Rubio said the United States attacked Iran “preemptively” to protect US forces from retaliation after learning that Israel was going to strike. After, Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump administration officials did not show that there was an imminent threat to the United States. “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory,” he said.
The US state department is urging Americans to “depart now” from more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, following the US-Israel strikes on Iran. Hundreds of thousands of travelers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest airports, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.
Kuwait air defences mistakenly shot down three US F-15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations, the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Monday. All six crew members ejected safely, were safely recovered and in stable condition.
In an appeareance on Fox News this evening, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s “ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program” would have been “immune within months” if the United States and Israel had not struck the country this weekend.
Melania Trump became the first spouse of a sitting world leader to preside over the UN security council today. Speaking as the body held a meeting titled “Children, Technology and Education in Conflict”, Trump called on UN member states to protect children’s access to education. Over the weekend, Iranian state media reported that an airstrike killed at least 165 people at a girls’ school.
The House oversight committee released the video footage of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s depositions, as part of lawmakers’ ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The former president and former secretary of state sat individually for closed-door testimony last week before the committee.
Donald Trump will attend the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time in either of his two terms in office. In 2017, Trump famously boycotted the dinner for the first time, and has not attended in any of the years since – notable because every president has attended the dinner at least once since the first one was held in 1921.
JD Vance said the United States’s aim is to make sure “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” in an appearance on Fox News this evening.
“The President wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” the vice president said.
Vance has repeatedly been the member of Donald Trump’s administration most opposed to military interventions and has spoken less frequently about the US’s actions in Iran than secretary of state Marco Rubio.
In an appeareance on Fox News this evening, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s “ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program” would have been “immune within months” if the United States and Israel had not struck the country this weekend.
“If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future. And then they could target America, they could blackmail America, they could threaten us, and threaten everyone in between. So action had to be taken”, Netanyahu told Fox host Sean Hannity. “Action had to be taken, and you needed the resolute President like Donald J. Trump to take that action.”
Answering reporters questions before a congressional briefing earlier today, secretary of state Marco Rubio said the United States attacked Iran “preemptively” on Saturday to protect US forces from retaliation after learning that Israel was going to strike.
After that briefing, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, said: “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.”
Updated
Melania Trump became the first spouse of a sitting world leader to preside over the UN security council today.
Speaking as the body held a meeting titled “Children, Technology and Education in Conflict”, Trump called on UN member states to protect children’s access to education. Over the weekend, Iranian state media reported that an airstrike killed at least 165 people at a girls’ school.
My colleague Joseph Gedeon reports:
Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, had earlier called it “deeply shameful and hypocritical” for Washington to convene a meeting on protecting children in conflict while simultaneously launching airstrikes on Iranian cities.
The US holds the council’s rotating monthly presidency for March, and the White House explained the selection of Melania Trump by saying that child welfare is known to be her top issue. The session was the second in three days – on Saturday, an emergency meeting called in response to the outbreak of war grew contentious after Guterres condemned the US-Israeli strikes and Iran’s retaliatory attacks as violations of international law.
Updated
The US embassy in Riyadh has issued a security alert advising American citizens to “shelter in place immediately”.
The embassy’s post on X said:
The US Mission to Saudi Arabia has issued a shelter in place notification for Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhahran and are limiting non-essential travel to any military installations in the region – we recommend American citizens in the Kingdom to shelter in place immediately.
The US Mission to Saudi Arabia continues to monitor the regional situation.
The alert came as a Saudi defence ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying an attack by two drones on the US embassy in Riyadh had caused a fire.
Fox News is reporting that the embassy was empty at the time of the strike and there were no injuries.
A fire broke out at the US embassy in the Saudi capital of Riyadh after a blast, Reuters is reporting, citing two sources.
Loud explosions were heard and clouds of smoke seen in the city’s diplomatic quarter, home to foreign embassies in the capital and residences of foreign diplomats, four witnesses told Agence France-Presse early Tuesday morning.
“I heard two explosions followed by smoke rising over the quarter,” a resident said.
The blasts were heard as Iran pressed its campaign targeting Gulf states including Saudi Arabia with waves of missile and drone attacks in response to US and Israeli airstrikes.
In a memo to congressional Republicans, the White House aimed to clarify its intentions in striking Iran, repeating talking points that Marco Rubio shared with the Gang of Eight at a briefing earlier today, including that the US’s mission was to take out Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and navy.
“We planned on this leaking to the press so they can recite our messaging for us!” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a social media post linking to a Politico article about the memo.
The memo includes answers to a series of expected questions, including naming Article II of the Constitution as legal justification for the attack and emphasizing that “a long and drawn-out war is not the President’s intention”.
Updated
Eighteen American service members have been seriously wounded in the US-Israel war on Iran, a spokesperson for US Central Command (Centcom) has told the Associated Press.
Earlier today, Centcom said that six service members have been killed in action in the war thus far. The Associated Press reports that all six “were Army soldiers and part of the same logistics unit”, citing a US official who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Speaking on Sunday about the three deaths known then, Trump said: “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is likely to be more.”
Updated
Donald Trump will attend the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time in either of his two terms in office.
Writing in a social media post, Trump said: “In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday, and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!”
In 2017, Trump famously boycotted the dinner for the first time, and has not attended in any of the years since – notable because every president has attended the dinner at least once since the first one was held in 1921.
Since Trump’s return to the presidency in 2025, his allies have purchased major media companies, including Paramount, the owner of CBS News, and Warner Bros Discovery, which operates CNN.
Mark Warner, a member of the Gang of Eight and Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member, said Trump administration officials did not show that there was an imminent threat to the United States during a congressional briefing today on this weekend’s strikes on Iran.
“There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory,” Warner said, after beginning his remarks by acknowledging the “six American soldiers who’ve been lost, and the expectation that more will be lost”.
Warner criticized the Trump administration for changing its rational for attacking Iran “four or five times,” noting “a week ago it was about the Iranian nuclear capacity, a few days later it was about taking out the ballistic missiles, it was then – in the president’s own words – about regime change” and “now we hear it’s about sinking the Iranian fleet”.
Warner also raised concerns about the United States’s obligations if Iranian citizens do go into the streets and face violence from IRCG forces, and said he would be voting in support of a war powers act.
“So far, our Congress has been basically – not basically, totally – irrelevant, because we have not used our power,” he said.
Updated
House speaker defends Trump administration after classified briefing on Iran
House speaker Mike Johnson echoed many of the points made by secretary of state Marco Rubio after attending a Gang of Eight briefing on the US-Israel strikes against Iran today.
Johnson said “this was a defensive measure” that the United States took after learning that “Israel was determined to act in their own defense”. Later, he said he believed the president had not violated his war powers because he acted defensively.
Johnson also repeated Rubio’s claim that the mission’s “objective was not regime change” but “to take out those short range missiles” and “eliminate their naval capabilities”. Although he added, “Iran was a great threat to everybody in the region and everybody in the world, because it was an evil regime,” and called Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death “a great development for freedom-loving people around the world”.
Updated
Schumer: Trump officials' Iran briefing 'raised many more questions than it answered'
The Senate’s Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said a briefing from Trump administration officials about the US war with Iran “raised many more questions than it answered.”
“Look, a whole lot of questions were asked. I found their answers completely and totally insufficient,” Schumer told reporters as he exited the meeting. He departed without taking questions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as CIA director John Ratcliffe are among those briefing Congress leaders in a classified facility in the Capitol. We expect other participants to come out and share their thoughts soon.
Updated
In a social media post today, Donald Trump said “Iran would have had a Nuclear Weapon three years ago” if he didn’t “terminate Obama’s horrendous Iran Nuclear Deal”.
Ex-president Barack Obama negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, which was implemented in 2016. Before leaving office, the Obama White House issued a statement, which did not mention Trump by name, but read: “The United States must remember that this agreement was the result of years of work,” and “represents an agreement between the world’s major powers – not simply the United States and Iran.”
As my colleague Martin Pengelly reported in 2017:
Trump has not been as outright hawkish on the deal as other leading Republicans, saying he could seek to renegotiate it instead of tearing it up entirely. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee who Trump considered for secretary of state, said this month the deal would have to be strictly enforced, not scrapped.
Nonetheless, figures including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have expressed hope that Trump will abandon the deal, an eventuality a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said would be a “disastrous”.
US urges citizens to evacuate over a dozen countries in Middle East
The US state department is urging Americans to “depart now” from more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, following the US-Israel strikes on Iran.
In a post on social media, the assistant secretary for Consular Affairs advised Americans to leave Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen “due to serious safety risks”.
Hundreds of thousands of travelers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest airports, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.
Updated
Warren presses Rubio over alleged first amendment violations in Gaza protest crackdown
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has questioned the Trump administration’s justification to try to remove several student activists who were living and studying in the US on valid visas and green cards.
In a letter written to secretary of state Marco Rubio, and first provided to the Guardian, Warren notes that these students – Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Yunseo Chung – appear to have been targeted for their political views, “potentially violating their first amendment rights … despite the fact that none of these students were accused of a crime at the time or have been to date.”
All of these students became flashpoints of the administration’s crackdown on protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Warren said that “recently unsealed court documents” also show that the state department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) assessed the students’ speech, written materials, and participation in protests around the war in Gaza, and that Rubio “personally approved their arrest and the revocation of their visas in the United States”.
Signed by Warren, and fourteen other Democratic members of Congress – including senators Chris Van Hollen, Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley and representatives Ayanna Pressley, Greg Casar, Rashida Tlaib and Summer Lee – the lawmakers write they there are “particularly concerned” about the use of Section 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to justify the removal of several student activists from the US. This is a rare provision that allows deportation if a person’s presence has “serious adverse foreign policy consequences”. The letter notes that this authority had almost never been used in this way before.
The lawmakers also write that Rubio justified the removals of these students by citing a national foreign policy objective of “combatting antisemitism”, while on social media labeling some of the students as supporting terrorists.
They also note internal assessments from the state department which found no evidence to support the administration’s claims “for deportation based on support to a foreign terrorist organization” for any of the five students.
For example, the letter notes a department memo which found that federal immigration enforcement did not provide any evidence showing that Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University who authored an op-ed in her student newspaper that resulted in her being detained in a Louisiana detention center for six weeks, engaged in “any antisemitic activity or made any public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization or antisemitism generally”.
The letter concludes with a list of formal questions for Rubio to answer by 16 March 2026. These include a historical record of how often these specific deportation powers have been used by a secretary of state since 1990; a request for the number of deportation determinations for individuals whose presence in the country “compromises a compelling United States foreign policy interest”; and documentation of any policy changes made under Section 237 since January 2025.
“In attempting to deport these five students, a court ruled that you took actions ‘to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble’ of students and academics across the country,” Warren wrote. “This abuse of your authority risks normalizing a future where Secretaries of State may summarily revoke visas based on speech, depriving individuals of their rights and whittling down the guarantees of the First Amendment.”
Updated
California governor Gavin Newsom denounced Donald Trump for spending “more time talking about his ballroom” than the US servicemembers who died in this weekend’s attack on Iran, while speaking at an event today.
Newsom also said “energy prices are up across the globe” and called the war “unfunded” as Trump’s administration is “cutting food stamps” and other social supports amid an “affordability” crisis.
The US embassy in Amman, Jordan was temporarily evacuated on Monday due to a threat, it said in a statement. The embassy did not elaborate on the nature of the threat.
In a security alert posted on X, embassy staff wrote:
Out of an abundance of caution, all personnel at the U.S. Embassy have temporarily departed the Embassy compound due to a threat.
Trump officials to brief key members of Congress about US war with Iran
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are set this afternoon to brief leaders of Congress as well as the chairs of several committees about the US war with Iran.
As he headed into the behind-closed-doors meeting in the Capitol, Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer made a brief comment to reporters: “This is Trump’s war. This is a war of choice. He has no strategy, he has no end game.”
He declined to take questions.
Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson entered the meeting shortly after him.
Updated
Marco Rubio claims US 'preemptively' attacked Iran after learning Israel planned to strike
Marco Rubio said the United States’s aim is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, and that it attacked Iran “preemptively” on Saturday to protect US forces from retaliation after learning that Israel was going to strike.
The secretary of state’s remarks came as he answered questions from reporters before briefing congressional leaders on the US-Israel strikes on Iran this weekend.
The US secretary of state said: “There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was, that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed that they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”
He added: “We knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
Six US service members have been killed since Saturday.
Later, Rubio said that the United States’s mission in Iran “is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities, and their ability to manufacture them, as well as the threat posed by their navy to global shipping,” but that “we would not be heartbroken, and we hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government”.
In response to a question about reports that the United States hit an Iranian girls’ school, Rubio said “the United States would not deliberately target a school” but referred questions about the hit to the Department of Defense.
“The hardest hits are yet to come from the US military,” Rubio concluded, before heading into the briefing.
Updated
US military says six service members killed in Iran conflict
In a statement, US Central Command (Centcom) said that six service members have been killed in action.
“US forces recently recovered the remains of two previously unaccounted for service members from a facility that was struck during Iran’s initial attacks in the region,” Centcom said. “ The identities of the fallen are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification.”
Updated
House oversight committee releases videos of Clintons' depositions on Epstein investigation
The House oversight committee has just released the video footage of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s depositions, as part of lawmakers’ ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The former president and former secretary of state sat individually for closed-door testimony last week before the committee.
The developments on the US-Israel war in Iran risks overshadowing the release of the footage, particularly as top administration officials brief congressional leaders on Operation Epic Fury. Secretary of state Marco Rubio just spoke to members of the press ahead of his meeting with lawmakers.
Melania Trump offers condolences to 'heroes who sacrifice their lives for freedom' at UN
In a somewhat vague statement before the UN security council, Melania Trump offered her “heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost their heroes who sacrifice their lives for freedom”, without naming a specific conflict, or the US-Israel war on Iran.
She added:
I extend my earnest wishes for a swift and smooth recovery to all those who have been injured. You are in my thoughts and prayers during these challenging times, the US stands with all of the children throughout the world. I hope soon peace will be yours.
Updated
Here's a recap of the day so far
In his first conference since the joint US-Israel operation against Iran, Donald Trump laid out his administration’s objectives moving forward. This includes destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating their navy, preventing Iran from ever having nuclear weapons, and ensuring the country “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”. Notably, the president did not urge the Iranian people to push back against their government – something he’s pushed for in recent weeks.
Speaking today, Trump said that he predicted the war to last four-five weeks but the US has the “capability to go far longer”. In an earlier interview the president also didn’t rule out the possibility of American boots on the ground in Iran. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says ‘there will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” the president told the New York Post. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”
Earlier, in a heated Penatgon press conference, Pete Hegseth initially said that US troops wouldn’t be in Iran, but later said he wouldn’t get into details. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said, while chiding reporters for asking for more clarity on the length of the US-Israel war on Iran. “We have plans,” he said. “But we would never in front of a press pool lay out how long that may take.” He also pushed back against Democratic lawmakers and the media at large. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better, and so does this president,” Hegseth said.
US Central Command also confirmed that a fourth US service member has been killed. A joint statement by Gulf states and the US condemned Iran’s “indiscriminate and reckless missile and drone attacks” across the Middle East and warned that the strikes threatened regional stability.
Kuwait air defences mistakenly shot down three US F-15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations, the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Monday. All six crew members ejected safely, were safely recovered and in stable condition.
Also today, secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – will brief senior congressional lawmakers on Operation Epic Fury. On Tuesday, top administration officials will address all members of the House and Senate for a Congress-wide briefing.
Updated
First lady Melania Trump has arrived in New York, where she will chair a UN security council (UNSC) meeting today. She’s presiding over a summit about education for children living through conflict. This comes as the US-Israel continue their ongoing military action against Iran.
Joining the growing chorus of commentators on the right who question the military action in Iran is Marjorie Taylor Greene – the former Georgia congresswoman who used to be a loyal foot soldier for Donald Trump before breaking with the president last year over several issues (most notably the Jeffrey Epstein files).
“And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right,” Greene said. “We are now a nation divided be those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.”
The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee –Mark Warner – said that Donald Trump “has ordered military strikes against seven nations since the beginning of his second term” in a post on X. Despite campaigning on a platform to no longer implicate the US in foreign conflicts, Donald Trump’s administration has launched strikes on several countries since he returned to the White House last year, including Iran, Venezuela, Somalia and Yemen.
“Is he still claiming to be the president of peace?” Warner wrote. The Virginia lawmaker is one of the eight members of Congress set to receive a briefing on Operation Epic Fury from top administration officials at 4pm ET.
'Killing terrorists is good for America': White House says 49 senior Iranian leaders killed in Operation Epic Fury
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “49 of the most senior Iranian regime leaders” have been killed during the Operation Epic Fury so far. This includes supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
“Preventing this radical regime and its terrorist leaders from threatening America and our core national security interests is a clear-eyed and necessary objective,” she wrote in a post on X.
Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte on Monday praised US and Israeli military action against Iran, saying it was degrading Tehran’s ability to get its hands on nuclear and ballistic missile capability, but he said Nato itself would not be involved.
“It’s really important what the US is doing here, together with Israel, because it is taking out, degrading the capacity of Iran to get its hands on nuclear capability, the ballistic missile capability,” he told Germany’s ARD television in Brussels.
“There are absolutely no plans whatever for Nato to get dragged into this or being part of it, other than individual allies doing what they can to enable what the Americans are doing together with Israel,” he added. Rutte offered similar praise about the operation during a Fox News interview today too.
Earlier, when Donald Trump addressed reporters for the first time since the US launched a coordinated attack with Israel against Iran, notably he did not urge Iranians to rise up against the government as he’s previously done in recent weeks.
Despite calling out the Iranian regime routinely, Pete Hegseth said that Operation Epic Fury is “not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change”.
Trump also underscored that the main objectives of the US attack are about destroying Iran’s military capabilities, from missiles to the country’s navy, and ultimately preventing them from developing nuclear weapons.
There was consensus among legal experts the Guardian spoke to that the initial US-Israel strikes against Iran were unlawful.
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the fact that Iran was “planning a bomb” was enough to justify the attacks. Under article 51 of the UN charter there is a right to self-defence in response to an armed attack. A broader interpretation of international law has been that a state has a right to use force in response to an “imminent threat”.
Susan Breau, a professor of international law and a senior associate research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, said: “Even the doctrine of imminent [threat of] use of force is very controversial. Academics are divided on what it actually means. But in this case, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of an imminent threat by Iran.”
Several experts cited Donald Trump’s claim to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear programme last year as evidence that directly countered the suggestion of an imminent threat.
Herzog highlighted Iran’s threats to “annihilate” Israel, but Victor Kattan, an assistant professor of public international law at the University of Nottingham, said: “Having blood-curdling rhetoric or threatening violence in and of itself does not give a state the right to use pre-emptive force.”
Read Haroon’s full report:
At the Third Way conference in Charleston, South Carolina - a meeting of political activists looking to improve Democratic party appeal to moderate voters - attendees are coming to terms with the attack on Iran and how to talk about it.
Michigan’s state legislative delegation sent several members to the conference.
“I would say that I’m not mourning the regime in Iran. The Ayatollah is a maniac,” said Joey Andrews, a Michigan state representative. “These guys just got done slaughtering, 30000 peaceful protesters. But as someone whose formative years in high school and college were during the Iraq war, I’ve got a real reflex that this wasn’t thought out or frankly legal.”
The attack goes against promises Donald Trump made as a candidate in 2024, said Jennifer Conlin, also a Michigan state representative.
“Trump’s said he would not do any kind of regime change when he was at rallies all over the country when he was running for president, and this is truly a violation of everything he said he was going to do,” she said.
State representative Mai Xiong of Michigan said the attack distracts from the pressing concerns of her constituents.
“I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and so I’m thinking about all of the people that are impacted by this conflict,” Xiong said. “There’s a conflict going on there and there are people being displaced, and I’m concerned because we have an immigration crisis in our own country, and we are going into another country, bombing this country, and leaving people in ruins.”
She went on: “I’m really worried about the family members, the children that were killed in the most recent event. ... When we have people here in our country, who are struggling with affording healthcare, groceries, we are more concerned about what is happening in another country, and I just think that’s wrong, we really need to take care of our people here in America first.”
Trump recognized three US Army soldiers with the Medal of Honor, with two of the commendations being awarded posthumously.
Trump is now talking about the military personnel being honoured at this medal ceremony. I’ll let you know if he brings up Iran again.
Updated
Trump says the country grieves for the four US serviceman who were killed in action, and thanks US service people.
He also briefly segues into a ramble about how much he loves the gold drapes in the East Room and his wife’s feelings about his White House ballroom renovations.
Updated
Trump says US's mission in Iran 'substantially ahead'
Trump says the US is already “substantially ahead” of its time projections.
He says they projected four-five weeks at the beginning, but adds they have “capability to go far longer”.
He adds that the US had predicted four weeks to terminate Iran’s military leadership, “and … that was done in about an hour, so we’re ahead of schedule there, by a lot.”
Updated
Trump details US objectives in Iran
Trump claims the objectives of the operation in Iran are “clear”.
They include “destroying Iran’s missile capabilities” and “annihilating their navy”, as well as preventing them from ever having nuclear weapons.
He adds that the country “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”.
Trump then goes on to cite the apparent lack of progress in diplomatic negotiations as further justification for the strikes.
And we thought we had a deal. But then they backed out and they came back and we thought we had a deal and they backed out. I said, you can’t deal with these people. You got to do it the right way.
Updated
Iran with nuclear weapons would be an 'intolerable threat' to Middle East and US
Trump goes on:
An Iranian regime armed with long range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people.
Our country itself would be under threat, and it was very nearly under threat.
“The purpose of [Iran’s] fast growing missile program was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these highly forbidden, by us, nuclear weapons,” Trump says.
We were the ones that were complaining. We were the ones that wanted it stop. But everybody was behind us. They just didn’t have the courage to say so.
Updated
Trump claims that Iran ignored US warnings and “refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons”, even after the US’s “obliteration” of its nuclear program last year, he says.
He goes on to claim that Iran posted an immediate threat to American forces in the region and the US.
The regime’s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.
The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America.
US continues to carry out 'large-scale operations' in Iran, Trump says
Donald Trump is speaking now, he begins with a brief update on the US’s attacks on Iran.
Today, the US military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations on Iran, he says, “to eliminate the grave threat posted to America by this terrible terrorist regime”.
Updated
'We are seeing the beginning of an all out war', says top House Democrat
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries decried the US operation in Iran in an interview with CNN today.
“There’s no indication that Iran had reconstituted its nuclear program. There’s no indication that Iran was prepared to strike the United States preemptively or to strike any of our interests in the region. And there certainly is no justification for a regime change war,” Jeffries said.
This week, Congress is set to vote on a war powers resolution that could curb the administration’s military action in Iran.
“Article one of the constitution explicitly provides Congress with the authority to declare war, period, full-stop,” Jeffries said. “Donald Trump chose intentionally not come before Congress, which is why we’re going to force this vote on a war powers resolution and make sure that we do everything we can to constrain him at this point in time.”
Top administration officials did brief congressional leaders ahead of the strikes on Saturday, and they’re set to speak with them again today.
“We are seeing the beginning of an all-out war in the Middle East,” Jeffries added in his CNN interview earlier.
A reminder that there is a video feed at the top of the blog if you want to follow along.
We’re waiting to hear from Donald Trump, who is due to speak at a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House shortly.
This will be the first in-person appearance the president has made in front of the media, since the US and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran on Saturday.
He’s only spoken via social media or to individual reporters over the phone since the war began over the weekend.
Reporting from Madrid
Spain has denied the US permission to use jointly operated military bases on its territory to attack Iran as Madrid stepped up its criticism of the “unjustified and dangerous military intervention”.
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has explicitly condemned the US and Israel’s “unilateral military action” against Iran, warning that it is contributing to “a more hostile and uncertain international order”. The rebukes have been reinforced by his government’s refusal to allow the US to use bases in Rota and Morón for the continuing strikes against Iran.
José Manuel Albares, Spain’s foreign minister, said on Monday that while the government wanted “democracy, freedom and fundamental rights for the Iranian people”, it would on no account allow its bases to be used in the ongoing military action.
“I want to be very clear and very plain,” he told Telecinco. “The bases are not being used – nor will they be used – for anything that is not in the agreement [with the US], nor for anything that isn’t covered by the UN charter.”
Social media showing US military aircraft shot down in 'friendly fire' incident
Footage circulating on social media appears to show a military aircraft falling from the sky in Kuwait.
US Central Command (Centcom) said on Monday that three US F-15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations had mistakenly been shot down by Kuwait air defences in an “apparent friendly fire incident”, and the cause was under investigation.
All six aircrew ejected safely, have been safely recovered and are in stable condition, Centcom said in a statement which you can read in full here.
Trump doesn't rule out possibility of US boots on ground in Iran
In an interview with the New York Post, the president noted that the possibility of American troops in Iran is not entirely off the table.
“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says ‘there will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Donald Trump told the Post. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”
This comes after Pete Hegseth initially said that there weren’t plans to have service members on the ground in Iran, but also was reluctant to say whether this was the administration’s lasting stance. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said at a Pentagon press conference earlier.
The US embassy in Beirut has shared the following on social media:
We urge US citizens not to travel to Lebanon. If you are in the country, depart Lebanon NOW while commercial flight options remain available.
The security situation in Lebanon is volatile and unpredictable. Airstrikes have occurred throughout the country, especially in the south, the Beqaa, and parts of Beirut.
Trump on Iran strikes: 'The big wave hasn’t even happened'
In an interview with CNN, Donald Trump said that the “big wave” of strikes against Iran is yet to come.
“We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” the president said.
“We’re knocking the crap out of them,” Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper during a nine-minute phone interview. “I think it’s going very well. It’s very powerful. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and we’re using it.”
When asked about the length of the war, Trump said he didn’t “want to see it go on too long”. Earlier, his defense secretary Pete Hegseth was belligerent with reporters, and insisted that he would not put a timeframe on the conflict.
“I always thought it would be four weeks,” Trump told CNN, “And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”
Also today, secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – will brief senior congressional lawmakers on Capitol Hill at 4pm ET on Operation Epic Fury.
On Tuesday, top administration officials will address all members of the House and Senate for a Congress-wide briefing.
New poll shows that only one in four Americans support military operation in Iran
A new poll by Reuters/Ipsos found that only one in four Americans support military action in Iran. What’s more, more than half of Americans – including one in four Republicans – think that Trump’s use of military force is excessive. The survey was conducted before the US military announced that four service members were the first casualties of Iran’s counterattack.
Additionally, 45% of respondents said they would be less likely to support the campaign against Iran if gas or oil prices increased in the United States. On Sunday, Brent Crude was trading at more than $80 per barrel, up by 13%, according to oil traders.
A reminder that my colleague, Tom Ambrose, is covering the latest developments out of the region today, at our dedicated live blog.
He reports that Israel announced simultaneous attacks on Tehran and Beirut earlier. The IDF also issued an “urgent” evacuation warning for buildings in the south of the Lebanese capital.
Ahead of wrapping up his press conference today, Pete Hegseth sparred with another reporter who asked if there is a concern that this operation spirals into a longer war.
“We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished,” Hegeth said. “But we are very clear eyed, as the President has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies of the past that recklessly pulled us in the things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives. We know, we have plans … but we would never in front of a press pool lay out how long that may take.”
Updated
General Caine said that he didn’t want to “talk specifics” about the additional troops that would be sent into the region because “that would tip the enemy off”.
However, he noted that there would be “more tactical aviation” flowing into the theater of operation. “I think we’re just about where we want to be in terms of total combat capacity and total combat power,” he added.
When asked about whether there would be American boots on the ground in Iran, Pete Hegseth was quick to say “no”, but then appeared murky on whether this would remain the case for the duration of the war.
“We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said, calling previous decisions by the Pentagon to disclose operational information to “American people and our enemies” as “foolishness”.
Hegseth says that destroying Iranian capabilities 'won't happen overnight'
Throughout his press conference at the Pentagon today, defense secretary Pete Hegseth insisted on various occasions that Operation Epic Fury would not be completed “overnight”.
“This is a big battle space with a lot of capabilities. That’s part of the reason why it’s such a threat to us,” he added.
When probed about the operation’s length, Hegseth proved adversarial with reporters. “President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take: four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up. It could move back,” he said. “We’re going to execute, at his command, the objectives we’ve set out to achieve, and what he has shown an ability to do what other presidents don’t quite seem to have the aptitude to do as well.”
Caine repeated the concerted and targeted nature of Operation Epic Fury. “I wish that every American could hear the voice communications like I have,” he said. “These joint operation centers remain calm, focused and cool, while executing under fire over and over again.”
Earlier he noted the US had gained “air superiority”, which, he said, will “not only enhance the protection of our forces, but also allow them to continue the work over Iran”.
Caine also said that, in addition to the four US service members killed, the US military expects to take “additional losses”.
Caine noted that Adm Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, will receive additional forces today.
“This rapid buildup of forces demonstrated the joint forces ability to adapt and project power at the time and place of our nation’s choosing,” he said.
He also noted that Operation Epic Fury was operation was “highly classified”, to ensure the enemy would see “speed, surprise and violence of action”.
Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is now speaking.
Earlier, he provided a timeline as the US began Operation Epic Fury, noting that on 27 February Donald Trump gave the go ahead.
“The president directed, and I quote, ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck’,” Caine said.
Hegseth acknowledges fourth US service member killed in action
While speaking today, Pete Hegseth acknowledged the fourth US service member killed in Iran’s counterattacks.
“War is hell and always will be,” he said. “Our grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far and those injured – the absolute best of America.”
Hegseth chides media: 'This is not Iraq, this is not endless'
During his opening remarks, Pete Hegseth insisted that the US “set the terms of this war from start to finish”, and noted that the military’s ambitions “are not utopian”.
He went on to chide the media, as many have challenged Donald Trump’s claims that he “ended eight wars” and campaigned on keeping the US out of foreign conflicts.”
“This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better, and so does this president,” Hegseth said.
Updated
When it comes to the targets of Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth said the intelligence was “laser focused”:
Destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure, and they will never have nuclear weapons. We’re hitting them surgically, overwhelmingly and unapologetically.
Hegseth said today that Iran was “building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions” and “had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb”.
The defense secretary said that after the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, the US threatened Iran with “far worse” consequences if they rebuilt their nuclear program. “They arrogantly refused,” Hegseth said, noting that Trump, top officials and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner “bent over backwards for real diplomacy”.
“The former regime had every chance to make a peaceful and sensible deal, but Tehran was not negotiating,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth: 'We didn't start this war, but under president Trump, we're finishing it'
Pete Hegseth has kicked off his Pentagon press conference, by saying that for “47 long years”, the Iranian regime has waged a “savage, one sided war against America”.
He noted that they did this through “the blood of our people, car bombs in Beirut, rocket attacks on our ships, murders at our embassies, roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
The defense secretary added: “We didn’t start this war, but under president Trump, we are finishing it.”
Updated
Donald Trump is in Washington on Monday. Just two days after the US and Israel launched a war on the country to trigger regime change. Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed by Israeli forces using US intelligence on Saturday.
Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US first launched strikes, and Trump said in a video on Sunday that more can be expected as Operation Epic Fury continues.
We’ll hear from the president at 11am ET, when it takes part in a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House for three soldiers – two of whom will be honored posthumously.
Trump will spend the rest of the day in closed door policy meetings, with signing time scheduled for 1:30pm. If anything else opens up we’ll let you know.
Pentagon to brief media this morning on Trump's Iran strikes
US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and general Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are planning to hold a press conference on Monday morning about the military operation against Iran.
The Pentagon announced the 8am EST media briefing on social media Sunday night.
On Tuesday, Hegseth and Caine will join US secretary of state Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe in briefing the full membership of Congress on the strikes, the White House said.
Rubio also was slated to brief Hill leadership on Monday.
Updated
Congress is about to launch a war powers debate over president Donald Trump’s authority to bomb Iran under largely unusual circumstances - he has already done it, and the country is essentially already at war, reports AP.
The moment is a defining one for Congress, which alone has the authority under the US Constitution to declare war, and for the Republican president , who has consistently seized power during his second term with an apparent limitless view of his own executive reach.
“The Constitution is intended to prevent the accumulation of power in any one branch of government - and in any one person in government,” said David Janovsky, acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog organization.
“Congress is the people’s representatives in a way that the president isn’t, even though we tend to focus on the president,” he said.
“We need the people’s representatives to weigh in on whether we, the people, are going to war right now.”
As Republicans celebrated the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with praise for Donald Trump’s decisive action, Democrats faced their own divisions and a reckoning over how to present a united front.
Most were quick to condemn the US president for sidelining Congress to launch an illegal and unconstitutional war and demanded a swift vote on a war powers resolution that would restrain his military onslaught.
But some in the party also felt obliged to acknowledge the authoritarian Khamenei’s death as a positive development and demonstrate their support for US troops. A small band of centrist Democrats have even threatened to scupper a war powers resolution if it comes to the floor.
“President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region,” tweeted John Fetterman, a Democratic senator for Pennsylvania and staunch supporter of Israel, declaring himself a “hard no” on a war powers vote and posting an image of the ayatollah with the provocative statement: “Let’s see who grieves for that garbage.”
Democratic leaders were outspoken during the massive US military buildup in the Middle East, decrying his unwillingness to engage with Congress and lack of long-term strategy for Iran. They noted that it was Trump, during his first term, who shredded Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.
Democrats demand immediate vote in Congress to limit Trump's war on Iran
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Top Democrats demanded over the weekend for an immediate vote in Congress on whether to restrain president Donald Trump’s military action against Iran.
The House and Senate were already expected to hold votes this week but Trump’s decision to launch attacks on Iran has increased the urgency of lawmakers to try to reassert their powers.
It comes as Israel and the US launched fresh waves of intensive attacks across Iran as part of their joint campaign to overthrow the country’s government, which has plunged the Middle East into a new regional conflict with no certain timeline or outcome.
The heated rhetoric from both Washington and Tehran suggests a further escalation in the coming hours and days.
New York representative Gregory W Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he would “get on the next plane flying” to vote against the war.
Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries both called for urgent action to restrain Trump’s attacks on Iran.
The Democrats’ strategy of forcing votes on war power resolutions have been portrayed as a way for Congress to reclaim its constitutional powers to declare war but have, so far, all failed.
In other developments:
Donald Trump appeared to link the massive attack he ordered against Iran to his persistent claims about his 2020 election loss in a social media post about allegations that Tehran’s government interfered in the US elections. This is the second military operation of the Trump administration where the president alluded to allegations concerning the 2020 result.
Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to talk to what was left of the Iranian leadership after the killing of the country’s supreme leader by US-Israeli airstrikes aimed at overthrowing the regime. Trump was speaking as a second day of intense bombing of Iranian cities and Tehran’s missile counterattacks sent tremors across the region and through the global economy.
Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday.
The Iranian community in Los Angeles has spoken out about the attack by Israel and the US, with some saying ‘it’s not an invasion, it’s a liberation’.
The US military reportedly used Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, to inform its attack on Iran despite Trump’s decision, announced hours earlier, to sever all ties with the company and its artificial intelligence tools.
National Democrats are watching the Texas Senate primary closely to see which style and message resonates – anti-Maga rage or a populist crusade against a “corrupt” political system.
All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.
