The US and Israel’s war with Iran widened well beyond the Middle East on Wednesday, as Nato shot down a ballistic missile headed for Turkey and the US sank an Iranian frigate off Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors.
As Britain prepared to send a warship to defend Cyprus, and formulated plans to repatriate thousands of British nationals stranded in the region, Iran rained missiles and drones on its neighbours, and Washington prepared to expand its strikes – boasting that it had effectively sunk the Iranian navy.
Sir Keir Starmer said two more government-chartered flights would take off from Oman “in the coming days”, while British Airways announced that it would operate two more flights between Muscat and Heathrow on Friday and Saturday.
Unlike the aviation mega-hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, Muscat is not covered by the Foreign Office travel warning; it can be reached by road from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, both of which are around 300 miles away.
However, there is not expected to be a widespread evacuation of the 138,000 British nationals who have registered their presence in the Middle East, and experts believe it could take weeks to clear the backlog of passengers.
Meanwhile, the warship being readied to protect Britain’s base in Cyprus is not set to sail until next week. HMS Dragon is being loaded with ammunition in Portsmouth before departing for the Mediterranean, after RAF Akrotiri was hit by a drone on Monday.
Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters armed with Martlet drone-busting missiles are being deployed ahead of the warship, whose voyage is expected to take several days.
In a bombastic briefing in Washington, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth warned that Operation Epic Fury had “only just begun” as he announced that a US Navy submarine had destroyed the IRIS Dena, an Iranian frigate, off the Sri Lankan coast.
“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death,” Mr Hegseth told a briefing. He added that the US is prepared to sustain a long war with Iran, with even more US bombers and fighters arriving in the region.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” he said. “We are punching them while they’re down. Our air defences and [those] of our allies have plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”
Sri Lankan authorities said up to 87 people were killed in the torpedo attack, as pictures emerged of survivors being taken to hospital.
Nato was separately forced to shoot down an Iranian ballistic missile headed for Turkey – the closest Tehran has come to a direct attack on a Nato country, which could drag Turkey and its allies into a collective response.
A Turkish official said the missile had been aimed at an unspecified military base in Cyprus but had “veered off course”. The weapon had already passed over Iraq and Syria when it was shot down by Nato air and missile defence systems in the eastern Mediterranean.
Nato said it “stands firmly with all allies, including Turkey, as Iran continues its indiscriminate attacks across the region”. Turkey called for restraint to avoid further escalation.
Mr Hegseth downplayed suggestions that attacks on Turkey would trigger Nato’s collective defence clause, instead boasting that the United States had “only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralise, destroy and defeat” Iran’s capabilities. He also vowed to “avenge” the deaths of six US service personnel killed in the region since Saturday.
General Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, added that the US would now “begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory”, as he claimed that Iran was now firing far fewer missiles than it had at the outbreak of the conflict, and that its capability appeared diminished.
The head of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, said US forces had struck more than 2,000 targets across Iran since Saturday. The first 24 hours of the conflict saw nearly twice as many strikes as took place on the first day of the war in Iraq in 2003.
As the administration increasingly threatens to wage a war that could last for weeks, the US senate was preparing for a key vote on a war powers resolution that could demand congressional approval for future attacks.
Iran launched more retaliatory strikes on Wednesday, with hundreds of drones targeting Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It insisted its attacks were directed at US interests and not directly at its regional neighbours.
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said Iran’s government was making a strong case for its own demise by indiscriminately attacking its neighbours. “Iran’s strategy is to sow chaos and set the region on fire,” she said.
The widening war also poses a growing threat to commercial shipping, which is crucial to the global supply of oil and gas. Merchant ship MV Safeen Prestige, which flies the Maltese flag and is owned by an Egyptian company, was hit by two missiles on Wednesday while passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and caught fire. Its crew of 24 were rescued by Oman's navy.
Israel, meanwhile, said its forces had hit targets across Iran for a fifth day. An Israeli F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian Yak-130 over Tehran. It is believed to have been the first time the new-generation F-35 has downed a manned aircraft in combat. Israel’s air force said it had dropped 5,000 munitions on Iran since Saturday.
And in another spillover from the conflict, Israel’s military ordered dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate “immediately” on Wednesday as it intensified airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut.
Lebanon was dragged into the broader war on Monday when Iran-backed Hezbollah militants fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering retaliatory airstrikes by Israel that killed more than 70 people, wounded more than 400, and displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, a government agency, claimed that the death toll in Iran had now passed 1,000. The UN also said it was “deeply disturbed” by the deaths of children, estimating that 160 were killed when bombs fell on a girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab on Saturday. Mr Hegseth said the Pentagon was still investigating claims about that attack.
