Middle East crisis live: Israeli military begins strikes on Beirut suburbs; Trump demands say in choosing Iran’s next supreme leader

Iran’s ambassador to Egypt, Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, says Iran is not engaged any direct or indirect communication with the US to bring an end to the war, and says Trump’s comments that Iran wants to negotiate are untrue, AP reports.

Ferdousi Pour blamed a lack trust after the US twice attacked Iran amid negotiations of a possible nuclear deal, saying there “will be no trust in Trump”.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the US “bears full responsibility for bloodshed”, in a post to X.

Long prepared for this war, Iran’s Powerful Armed Forces are ensuring that it becomes a quagmire for whomever chooses to pursue it.

Donald Trump said he had rejected what he claimed was an attempt by Tehran to restart negotiations on Tuesday.

“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!’,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform, saying the US was prepared “to go far longer” than a four to five-week war against Iran.

In his comments at the White House earlier, Donald Trump also renewed his call for Iran’s military to surrender and the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the theocratic government that has ruled the country since the 1979 revolution that deposed the shah.

I’m once again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military, and the police, to lay down their arms.

Now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country. You’re going to have a chance, after all these years, to take back your country. Accept immunity.

“We’ll give you immunity,” the president said, using a term more often associated with legal cases than war.

And we’ll be giving you- really the right side of history, because that’s what it is. So, you’ll be perfectly safe with total immunity or you’ll face absolutely guaranteed death. And I don’t want to see that.

We also urge Iranian diplomats around the world to request asylum and to help us shape a new and better Iran with great potential. It’s a country with great potential. There’s much better future for Iran. It’s now beginning. It’s going to be, I think, a great future.

Trump then reiterated that he intends to have a say in choosing the next leader of Iran.

The United States will ensure that whoever leads the country next, Iran will not threaten America or its neighbors, Israel, anybody.

“If you look at what happened, they had missiles aimed at all of these other countries, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, many others that weren’t really involved very much,” Trump said, without mentioning that all of those nations host US military bases or troops.

“And they had missiles aimed, well, they were aimed there long before this ever started,” the president said. “They were going after the entire Middle East. And then we came along. We blew up their party.”

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth also pushed back against criticisms that the US and Israel have created regional instability, saying “nothing could be further from the truth”.

He claimed that countries including the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are saying, “We’ll shoot with you, we’ll fly with you, we’ll defend with you”.

“It’s firming up the unity of the resistance,” he said.

This idea that [the war is] expanding … it’s actually simplifying in a number of ways.

Following Donald Trump’s criticism of the UK’s initial refusal to grant the US use of British bases in the Middle East to launch attacks on Iran, Hegseth said that it was “unfortunate” access wasn’t granted “from day one”.

But we got there. We got there, and that’s now part of the way that we’re operationalising bomber runs … It’s more fighter squadrons, it’s more capabilities, it’s more defensive capabilities, and it’s more bomber pulses more frequently.

The amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically, and part of it is that we’re gonna have even more bases. And it’s not just the UK. We’ve had other friends step up, and we’re grateful for that.

Head of US Central Command, Adm Brad Cooper, said that in the last 72 hours, the US has struck nearly 200 targets in Iran.

He said Iranian ballistic missile attacks have fallen by 90% and drone attacks had decreased by 83% since the first day of the war.

The US has, at this point, sunk more than 30 Iranian ships, he added.

And in just the last few hours, we hit an Iranian drone carrier ship roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier. And as we speak, it’s on fire.

US defense secretary Pete Hegseth has been speaking during a briefing on the US-Israeli conflict with Iran at US Central Command.

The US mission in Iran is “advancing decisively”, he said.

Iran is hoping we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad calculation.

The US has “no shortage of munitions” and can sustain its campaign as long as it needs to, he added.

We have only just begun to fight, and fight decisively.

“Our munitions are full up and our will is iron-clad, which means our timeline is ours and ours alone to control,” he went on.

• The IDF has begun striking what it describes as Hezbollah infrastructure in the Dahiya neighbourhood, a densely populated commercial and residential area in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The IDF had earlier issued forced evacuation orders for the whole population of Beirut’s southern suburbs – home to 500,000 people – sparking widespread panic and leading to huge queues of traffic as people tried to flee. It comes in spite of calls from world leaders including Emmanuel Macron urging Israel not to expand the war into Lebanon. According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israeli strikes have killed at least 123 people and injured 683 in Lebanon since Monday.

• Donald Trump has claimed – without evidence – that Iran’s air force and navy are “gone”. Speaking during an event at the White House, the US president said: “We’re destroying more of Iran’s missile and drone capability every single hour – knocking them out.” He went on: “So [Iran] have no air force, they have no air defence. All of their airplanes are gone, their communications are gone. Other than that, they’re doing quite well. Their navy is gone, [they lost] 24 ships in three days, that’s a lot of ships,” he said, along with 60% of Iran’s missiles and 64% of its missile launchers.” Echoing comments he made earlier this week, Trump added that the US military and Israel are “totally demolish[ing]” Iranian targets “far ahead of schedule”.

• Trump also said he must “be involved in the appointment” of Iran’s next leader as he was in Venezuela, and dismissed the idea of the assassinated ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeding his father as supreme leader as “unacceptable”. More on that here.

• Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives has voted down a Democratic-backed measure to halt hostilities with Iran, as Republicans cleared the way for Trump to continue the conflict that has drawn in countries across the Middle East, but criticized as having unclear goals. Our story here.

• The UK’s defence secretary John Healey declined to rule out Britain joining US-Israeli strikes on Iran. More on that here.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he received a request from the United States “for specific support” in dealing with Iran’s Shahed attack drones, as the US and its allies in the Middle East seek Ukraine’s expertise in countering such attacks from Russia. “I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security and protect the lives of our people.” More on that here.

Donald Trump is currently speaking at the White House, and has just thanked “wonderful Israeli partners” who “continue to demolish the enemy totally ahead of schedule and at levels people have never seen before”.

We’re destroying more of Iran’s missile and drone capability every single hour – knocking them out.

The US president claimed, without evidence:

So [Iran] have no air force, they have no air defence. All of their airplanes are gone, their communications are gone. Other than that, they’re doing quite well.

“Their navy is gone, [they lost] 24 ships in three days, that’s a lot of ships,” he said, along with 60% of Iran’s missiles and 64% of its missile launchers.

Echoing comments he made earlier this week, Trump added that the US military and Israel are “totally demolish[ing]” Iranian targets “far ahead of schedule”.

The US House of Representatives has voted down a Democratic-backed measure to halt hostilities with Iran, as Republicans cleared the way for Donald Trump to continue the conflict that has drawn in countries across the Middle East, but criticized as having unclear goals.

By a vote of 212-219, the House voted to reject a war powers resolution that would have forced the US to withdraw from the conflict until Congress authorized military action.

The vote was largely along party lines, with two Republicans breaking with their party to support the resolution, and four Democrats voting against it.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress and their leaders have made clear that they believe Trump was authorized to initiate the air and naval campaign that began over the weekend, prompting Tehran to launch drones and missiles across the Middle East. Six US troops have been killed, as well as 1,230 people in Iran.

The IDF has said it is striking what it describes as Hezbollah infrastructure in the Dahiya neighbourhood, a densely populated commercial and residential area in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The IDF had earlier issued forced evacuation orders for the whole population of Beirut’s southern suburbs – home to 500,000 people – sparking widespread panic and leading to huge queues of traffic as people tried to flee.

Per my colleague William Christou’s report, “traffic was at a standstill throughout the city and thousands of people resorted to walking, with women pushing strollers holding infants through bumper-to-bumper traffic. Families made appeals for rescue services to help extract elderly people who could not leave their homes on their own.”

Residents are also still scouring through the wreckage of residential buildings damaged by previous Israeli strikes on the Lebanese capital.

Indeed, Israel has been striking parts of Dahiya since Monday, but Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened widespread destruction in a video released on Thursday on social media.

Referring to a city in southern Gaza that Israel almost entirely destroyed during its military assault on the Palestinian territory, Smotrich said:

The Dahiya will look like Khan Younis. You wanted to give us hell, but you’ve brought hell upon yourself.

The evacuation order was issued just a day after the IDF ordered all residents to flee the area south of the Litani River, which compromises about 10% of Lebanon, raising concerns that it may be about to launch a ground invasion.

Per my last post, world leaders including Macron and Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez have been urging Israel to de-escalate and stop the US and Israel’s war from expanding into a new front in Lebanon.

Israel claims it is retaliating after Hezbollah fired several rockets towards northern Israel on Monday. According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israeli strikes have killed at least 123 people and injured 683 in Lebanon since then.