(The Guardian) 11:05pm Summary
--Donald Trump said he was “not at all” concerned about committing possible war crimes as he again threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if Tehran does not meet his Tuesday 8pm ET deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz. “I’m not worried about it,” the US president said. “You know what’s a war crime? Having a nuclear weapon.”
--Speaking at the White House, Trump refused to say whether any civilian targets would be off-limits. Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wanted a permanent end to the conflict.
--“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, the head of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Cairo, told the Associated Press.
--At a news conference, Trump said all of Iran could be “taken out” in one night “and that night might be tomorrow night”, referring to Tuesday. Without an agreement with Tehran, he said, “every bridge in Iran will be decimated” by midnight ET (0400 GMT) on Wednesday and “every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again”.
--Israel and the US carried out a wave of attacks on Iran on Monday, killing more than 25 people. Iran responded with missile fire on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbours.
--The UN security council is expected to vote on Tuesday on a resolution to protect commercial shipping in the strait of Hormuz but in significantly watered-down form after veto-wielding China opposed authorising force, Reuters is reporting, citing diplomats.
--The Israeli military said early on Tuesday it had completed an “air strike wave” aimed at damaging Iranian regime infrastructure in Tehran and additional areas across Iran. It said soon after that missiles were launched at Israel from Iran and defensive systems were operating to incept them.
--Israel’s military also said it carried out strikes on three airports in Tehran, targeting several Iranian planes and helicopters.
--The World Health Organisation suspended medical evacuations from Gaza to Egypt via the Rafah crossing after a contract worker for WHO was killed in Gaza on Monday. Separately, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people outside a school housing displaced Palestinians in central Gaza, health officials said. Before the strikes some Palestinians had clashed with members of an Israeli-backed militia who they said attacked the school, Reuters cited medics and residents as saying.
--Oil prices extended their rises on Tuesday amid Trump’s heightened rhetoric against Iran. The head of the IMF, meanwhile, said the war would lead to “higher inflation and slower global growth”.
--The head of International Committee of the Red Cross said that “deliberate threats ... against essential civilian infrastructure and nuclear facilities must not become the new norm in warfare”. Mirjana Spoljaric said, without singling out any country or leader: “Any war fought without limits is incompatible with the law.”
--Israel said it struck Iran’s largest petrochemical complex on Monday. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the facility had been “destroyed” and his country was “systematically eliminating the Revolutionary Guards’ money machine”.
--The intelligence chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Maj Gen Majid Khademi, was killed in US-Israeli strikes at dawn on Monday, the Guards said.
--Saudi Arabia intercepted seven ballistic missiles launched towards its eastern region and debris fell in the vicinity of energy facilities, the defence ministry of said on Tuesday.
--Two blasts were reportedly heard near the Erbil airport – which hosts advisers from the US-led anti-jihadist coalition – in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, an Agence France-Presse journalist said.
www.theguardian.com
