We’re now seeing lines coming through from the Reuters news agency citing Iranian state media confirming that Iran’s national security chief Ali Larijani has been killed.
Israel announced earlier today that he was killed in an overnight strike on Tehran. This marks the first confirmation of his death from Iran.
US airlines don’t expect a significant dent in quarterly profits despite soaring jet fuel costs tied to the war in the Middle East adding hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses.
Executives from Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines told investors on Tuesday that strong ticket sales were helping offset those higher costs, with all three carriers reporting record bookings this year.
Jet fuel prices have jumped since the war began straining global oil supplies, particularly around the Straight of Hormuz. The volatile crude oil price that is driving gasoline prices higher has had the same effect on jet fuel, which is one of the airline industry’s biggest expenses.
Meanwhile, Pakistan International Airlines has suspended its flight operations to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates for the next 48 hours because of security reasons, a company spokesperson said today. The airline will operate flights only to Al Ain in the UAE during this period, a spokesperson said.
A projectile hit the premises of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant on Tuesday night.
But no damage to the plant or injuries to staff were reported, Iran told the UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA said on X.
The plant – the first civilian nuclear power plant built in the Middle East – is about 1,200km south of Tehran. We’ll keep you posted with any updates on that.
Saudi Arabia says it has intercepted several drones and Kuwait’s air defences responded to a rocket and drone attack, authorities from both countries said today.
The Saudi defence ministry said in two statements it had destroyed six drones in the east of the country. “Kuwaiti air defenses are currently intercepting hostile rocket and drone attacks,” Kuwait’s military also posted on X.
There are fresh reports of a drone attack targeting the US embassy in Baghdad today, with an explosion heard in the area, after similar reports on Tuesday.
You can read more about recent attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad and a separate strike that killed four people at a house reportedly hosting Iranian advisers in the Iraqi capital, in our story here.
More on the US targeting of Iranian missile sites in the strait of Hormuz from Central Command, and the type of munitions used.
US forces successfully employed multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on hardened Iranian missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz,” Central Command said in a statement on X.
Two people were killed near Tel Aviv during an Iranian missile barrage, Israeli emergency responders said on Wednedsay, after police reported they were responding to “several” impact sites around the city and its surrounding areas.
We saw smoke rising from a building with extensive damage and shattered glass. From among the debris, we saw two unconscious casualties, with no pulse and not breathing, with severe injuries to their bodies,” the Magen David Adom emergency responder said in a statement, adding medics had pronounced the two people dead at the scene.
The United States military said Tuesday that it targeted sites along Iran’s coastline near the strait of Hormuz because Iranian anti-ship missiles posed a risk to international shipping there, Reuters reports.
More than 1,000 cargo ships, mainly oil and gas tankers, have been blocked from transiting the strait of Hormuz by the Israeli-US war against Iran after Tehran closed the key maritime passage, with a potentially large global economic impact.
Read more here on the importance of the strait.
Earlier, the Israeli military issued a fresh evacuation order for the coastal Lebanese city of Tyre and its surrounding villages and Palestinian refugee camps, sparking an exodus of residents from Lebanon’s fourth largest city.
“Hezbollah’s terrorist activities are forcing the [Israel Defense Forces] to act against it with force. The IDF does not intend to harm you,” the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Colonel Avichay Adraee claimed in a post on X.
Images on social media showed long traffic jams of cars trying to leave the city. The IDF issued an evacuation warning for Tyre last week, but many residents stayed.
More than one million people in Lebanon – nearly one in five of the population – have been displaced as Israel has placed more than 100 towns and villages under forced evacuation orders in recent weeks.
As I reported earlier, the UN has stated that Israel’s repeated, extensive warnings and displacement orders “may amount to forced displacement, prohibited under international humanitarian law”, and its attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon may amount to war crimes.
Israel’s assault on Lebanon has killed at least 912 people, including 111 children, have been killed and wounded 2,221 others since 2 March, according to the latest figures from the Lebanese public health ministry.
Iran’s supreme national security council confirmed the death of Ali Larijani in a statement on Tuesday evening:
The pure souls of the martyrs embraced the purified soul of God’s righteous servant, Martyr Dr Ali Larijani.
It added that his son and his bodyguards had died with him.
After a lifetime of struggle for the advancement of Iran and of the Islamic Revolution, he ultimately attained his long-held aspiration, answered the divine call, and honourably achieved the sweet grace of martyrdom in the trench of service.
As my colleagues write of Larijani: “His death removes a pivotal figure at the heart of the regime’s political and security establishment at a moment of acute crisis and represents a devastating blow.”
Israel said earlier it had killed Larijani, a linchpin of Iranian politics, in overnight strikes. He is the most senior Iranian figure to die in the war since the supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on its first day.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike had killed the Basij paramilitary force commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures. Soleimani’s death was later confirmed by Iranian state media.
You can read the full report here:
Israel’s assassination of Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council and one of the linchpins of Iranian politics, is a devastating body blow to the country and probably a bigger reverse than the loss of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei at the outset of the war.
In any attempt to decapitate the Iranian leadership, Larijani would always be the prime target, largely because of his ability to straddle so many levels of Iranian politics and his huge personal influence not just in Iran but with foreign states including China and Russia.
Indeed, there has been probably no greater loss for the Iranian regime since the US assassination of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leader Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.
The significance of Larijani’s removal also lies in the confirmation that Israel and possibly the US never regarded him as an alternative leader for Iran in the event of the government breaking up, or in effect surrendering.
Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said:
[Benjamin] Netanyahu is now focused on blocking Trump’s pathways for a ceasefire and follow-up talks with Iran. Larijani would have been the man to get that job done.
You can read Patrick’s full profile of Larijani and analysis of this moment here:
Israel’s assassination of the influential Iranian national security chief Ali Larijani in overnight strikes on Tehran represents a devastating blow to the regime, and makes him the most senior official to die since the assassination of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei on 28 February.
In today’s episode of The Latest podcast, Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s deputy head of international news, Devika Bhat, about its significance.
We’re now seeing lines coming through from the Reuters news agency citing Iranian state media confirming that Iran’s national security chief Ali Larijani has been killed.
Israel announced earlier today that he was killed in an overnight strike on Tehran. This marks the first confirmation of his death from Iran.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
