War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

The Saudi civil defence agency issued an alert warning of “potential danger” in southern Jazan province along the border with Yemen that has been targeted by Houthi rebels recently, reports AFP.

“A warning has been issued by the National Early Warning Platform in the Jazan Province to alert of a potential danger,” read the statement by the agency, with similar alerts usually issued ahead of potential strikes targeting an area.

Iranian parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says that Iran achieved “true victory” in the war with the United States, Iran’s ISNA news agency reports.

He added that the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was a document of victory in the field of diplomacy.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the recent agreement with the US — the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) — was reached with “dignity” and “strength” and in accordance with the principles held by the martyred leader Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ISNA news agency reported.

The General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces says it will not back down until the “complete defeat” of its US and Israeli enemies in the region, Al Jazeera reports.

In a statement marking the anniversary of the 1990 return of Iranian prisoners of war from Iraq, the military body said the legacy of “resistance” had been passed to a new generation of Iranians who had stood against what it described as the world’s most heavily equipped military.

It said Iran would continue pursuing what it called the country’s legitimate rights and the demands of its leadership “until the enemy surrenders”.

The statement, carried by the Fars News Agency, also praised public support for Iran’s armed forces and accused the US of aggression and domination in the region.

An official with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says more than 85 per cent of the force’s air defence production capacity remained undamaged during the war, Al Jazeera reports, citing Fars news agency.

In an interview featured in a documentary published by Fars, the official said despite attacks on Iran’s military production infrastructure, the rate of production and delivery of missiles and air defence systems had not fallen compared with levels before the conflict.

He said a large part of the IRGC’s air defence equipment is produced by the force’s own self-sufficiency organisation and claimed that production in some areas had since increased.

The official also said Iran’s current stock of operational air defence systems was in a better position than it had been at the beginning of the fighting.

Yemeni government forces claim that Houthi fighters have launched new attacks on the coastal city of al-Makha, using missiles and drones, Al Jazeera reports.

They said their air defences had intercepted a drone affiliated with the Houthi group.

Recent Houthi attacks have reignited fears of an all-out war in Yemen, years after a 2022 truce halted fighting with government forces.

Baqerzadeh says Kuwait is withholding information about the fate of four Iranians held in Kuwait, Reuters reports.

In May, Iran said the four were affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards and had been on a maritime patrol before entering Kuwaiti territorial waters because of a navigation disruption. Kuwait has said they were suspected of planning hostile actions against the country.

An Iranian military official says that Qatar should let an Iranian team in to investigate the fate of Iranian pilots who Tehran says are being held there, Iranian media says according to Reuters.

Mohammad Baqerzadeh, commander of the Committee for the Search for Missing Persons of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, said the air force and fact-finding team had been waiting for months to enter Qatar, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Baqerzadeh accused Qatari officials of repeatedly delaying the investigation and preventing the pilots’ return to Iran. He called for the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently follow up on the case.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims Israel wants new and more ambitious talks with Lebanon, after Israeli forces carried out their deadliest strikes on the country since a US-brokered truce in June, Al Jazeera reports.

Doron Spielman told the AFP news agency that the strikes should “jumpstart” the talks, “not do the opposite”.

Spielman said Israel was still upholding the US-brokered framework agreement with Lebanon.

“We believe in the agreement. We very much hope that the Lebanese Armed Forces are going to be able to step into the foray, and together we’re going to remove Hezbollah from the picture,” he told AFP.

The agreement calls for the Lebanese army to “restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament” of Hezbollah, after which Israeli forces would “progressively redeploy out of the Lebanese territory”.

Hezbollah has rejected the deal, with the group’s chief Naim Qassem saying it “grants Israel everything it wants, and the Lebanese authorities relinquish their sovereignty, leaving nothing for Lebanon”.

Civil defence teams have extinguished a fire that broke out near the town of al-Rafid in Syria’s Quneitra region following Israeli incursions into the area, according to local authorities, Al Jazeera reports.

The Quneitra Media Directorate said in a post on Telegram that “the fire was caused by flares fired” by Israeli forces.

“No injuries were reported,” it added.

The Anadolu news agency meanwhile reported that Israeli forces had raided al-Rafid and searched several homes there. The raid is part of a string of Israeli incursions into southern Syria since 2024, when Israel moved troops into a UN-monitored buffer zone and seized Syrian territory there.

The Arab League has condemned Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon, calling the attacks that killed 11 on Saturday as “a dangerous escalation that threatens to derail any efforts aimed at resolving the ongoing conflict”, Al Jazeera reports.

Israel’s policies and practices, he added, “blatantly expose the occupation’s intentions to prolong the confrontations, obstruct negotiations, and impose a new reality on the ground that is completely unacceptable and rejected”.

The spokesman also warned that the conflict could spread unless the international community, and Washington in particular, stops Israel’s “war machine” and compels it to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says in comments to Shahrara News that talks with Oman are a “completely separate” matter from the issue of reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“Our negotiations with Oman are ongoing. That is a completely separate matter. It is a technical issue concerning the designation of maritime routes in the Strait of Hormuz for the passage of ships,” he said, according to Al Jazeera.

“The routes that existed previously are no longer functional, so a new route needs to be defined. For now, we are designing a temporary route, which can then, at a later stage, be turned into a final route.”

He added, “We may reach an outcome soon, but I want to emphasise that these negotiations and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz are two separate issues. This is a technical negotiation concerning the designation of a maritime route.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei has shared a Homer Simpson meme as he reacts to a statement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

He posted a statement by Rubio on Iranian spending, according to which the US official said: “Imagine an Iranian regime who, instead of spending billions of dollars supporting terrorist groups and building up all of these weapons, had invested that money into Iran, for the people of Iran.”

In the same post, he also shared a statement by Trump, who said: “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things … We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

He posted these along with a GIF showing Homer Simpson disappearing into bushes, which implies a silent, awkward retreat from an embarrassing situation.

“The process of fully restoring security in the Strait of Hormuz … depends on the cessation of unlawful actions, interference, threats, and the naval blockade imposed by the United States, as well as compensation for the violations of commitments that have occurred over the past two months,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei has said in an interview, according to state-owned Press TV.

He added that the current insecure situation in the Strait of Hormuz is a “direct” outcome of illegal and aggressive measures by the United States and the Israeli regime.

Yemen’s Mocha port has suspended commercial and maritime operations after being hit by more than 25 missiles in Houthi attacks over recent days, the port’s director says according to Reuters.

The attacks killed seven people and caused an estimated $16 million in losses, the director told a news conference.

The Israeli military claims that its strike on the Lebanese village of Ansar, where authorities reported seven people killed including children, targeted a Hezbollah commander, AFP reports.

It claimed it “struck a central headquarters of the Radwan Force”, referring to an elite Hezbollah unit, adding that “the strike eliminated terrorist Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, a battalion commander in the Radwan Force”.

The military further acknowledged what it called a “claim” that “Hassan’s family was also present with him inside the military headquarters,” adding that they “were not the target of the strike”.

Qatar denies holding Iranian pilots in custody, saying they had violated the country’s airspace earlier this year and failed to respond to attempts to contact them, Reuters reports.

A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson says on X that search and rescue teams found the remains of one of the pilots and that it had contacted Iran to coordinate a handover. He adds that Tehran has yet to respond to an invitation to review details of its operations.

The Israeli military says three soldiers, including one officer, were wounded by an explosive drone in southern Lebanon overnight, Al Jazeera reports.

In a post on X, the army says the soldiers have been evacuated from Lebanon to receive medical treatment and their families have been notified.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tells Al Jazeera that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a priority and its prolonged closure is in no one’s interest.

Speaking in an exclusive interview that will air tomorrow, Erdogan said that he had discussed the need to end Israel’s war on Lebanon and Washington’s key role in achieving this goal with US President Donald Trump.

The Turkish president has also commented on the recently announced joint defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, saying the future accession of other countries, such as Egypt, is a possibility.

Israel wants new and more ambitious US-brokered talks with Lebanon after carrying out strikes, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, adding the countries’ common enemy is Hezbollah, AFP reports.

The Israeli strikes against Hezbollah “should jumpstart the talks and make them much more serious, not do the opposite”, Netanyahu spokesman Doron Spielman tells AFP.