War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said 28 vessels, including oil tankers, containers and other commercial ships, passed through the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours “with the coordination and security of the IRGC Navy”.

“Intelligent control of the Strait of Hormuz is being carried out continuously and with firmness and authority,” its statement carried by the Fars news agency said.

Iranian authorities have shut down a cafe in central Tehran over allegations that it promoted “satanic” activities, AFP reports, citing local media.

The cafe, located on Tehran’s famed Valiasr street, had hosted events featuring Western-style music that “provided a setting for abnormal behaviours,” the Fars news agency reported.

The Mehr news agency said police accused patrons of engaging in “satanic movements”.

A 14-second muted video carried by Tasnim news agency showed a packed venue where performers played guitars while some customers nodded their heads in apparent rhythm with the music.

Iranian authorities have long carried out raids and arrests targeting gatherings or networks accused of promoting “satanism”, and have in the past labelled some rock and heavy metal concerts as satanist events.

A top IRGC commander says Iran’s enemies made a strategic miscalculation in assessing Iran’s capabilities and resolve, arguing that Tehran has emerged in a stronger position while the United States faces decline and failure.

Speaking to IRNA last night, IRGC Deputy for Political Affairs Yadollah Javani said the enemies had incorrectly assumed they could achieve a quick victory by imposing war on the Iranian nation.

The enemies’ strategic objectives, Javani said, included destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities, eliminating its missile defence capacity, and ultimately overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

He said those goals have failed, resulting in a shift in regional equations in Iran’s favour.

Javani said the United States must choose between accepting the conditions and rights of the Iranian people or continuing the war.

Rising fuel prices triggered by the Middle East war are driving a sharp increase in carpooling, with a ride-sharing platform reporting a surge in new users seeking cheaper ways to travel.

The world’s largest carpooling platform BlaBlaCar said soaring energy costs have pushed 600,000 additional drivers onto the app this year — 20 per cent more than initially projected — as commuters look to offset the rising cost of fuel.

In India, its single biggest market with more than 20 million users in 2025, the number of passengers has increased by 40pc since the start of the US-Israeli airstrikes against Iran on February 28.

Last year, the global carpooling leader posted record-breaking figures in the world’s most populous country India — outpacing Brazil with 19m users and France with 7m, according to Benjamin Retourne, the platform’s product director.

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The Israeli military claims a “suspicious hostile aerial target” has entered the country’s airspace from the north and has fallen in an open area, Al Jazeera reports.

The object triggered sirens in numerous towns along the border, according to the brief statement. The military said there were no casualties.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said that the military had captured the strategic medieval fortress of Beaufort in southern Lebanon, AFP reports.

“Forty-four years after the heroic Battle of Beaufort, and on this day commemorating the soldiers who fell in the First Lebanon War (1982), our troops have returned to the summit of Beaufort and once again raised the Israeli flag there,” Katz said on his Telegram channel.

The Israeli military has warned Lebanese civilians living south of the Zahrani river to evacuate the region, warning that it was stepping up operations it insisted were against Hezbollah, according to AFP.

“Residents of southern Lebanon, you must move immediately to north of the Zahrani,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on social media.

Israeli troops have captured a strategic mountain topped with a Crusader-built castle in southern Lebanon, the military says, with the Associated Press noting it was Israel’s deepest incursion into the country in more than a quarter century.

The capture of Beaufort castle near the city of Nabatiyeh came after days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages.

Describing the capture as a “major gain for Israel”, AP said Israeli troops previously captured the castle in 1982 and held it until they withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

The Israeli army’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted a photograph on X showing Israeli troops walking outside the Beaufort castle.

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Israeli forces have launched several air attacks on the town of Deir ez-Zahrani at dawn, killing several people, Al Jazeera reports, citing Lebanon’s National News Agency.

The attacks targeted residential buildings where people were sleeping and resulted in injuries to many, the NNA reported.

The agency said rescue workers were at the scene trying to recover victims. “A number of people remain trapped under the rubble,” it reported.

A senior Iranian commander has warned that any new aggression against his country will be met with a response far more forceful than previous attacks, Al Jazeera reports.

“The enemy should know that any aggression against the country’s territory will be met with a response even more forceful than before,” Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the deputy army commander for coordination, said, according to Press TV.

“Today, the army of the Islamic Republic stands firmly and resolutely against any hostile move by the enemy,” he added.

US President Donald Trump has said he had secured guarantees from Iran that it would not develop nuclear weapons, as reports emerged he had sent a tougher peace proposal back to Tehran, AFP reports.

“The one guarantee that I have to have is that there will be no nuclear weapons. They’ve agreed to that, and it was very interesting,” he told his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in an interview broadcast on her Fox News programme on Saturday night.

But Tehran has previously cast doubt on Trump’s assertions and the parties appeared far apart on their key priorities.

Israel’s military has said its forces were advancing in Lebanon as part of expanded ground operations to strengthen its military position in the south of the country, according to AFP.

“A significant number of IDF ground soldiers commenced offensive operations aimed at expanding the Forward Defence Line… The operation is currently expanding to additional areas,” the Israeli military statement said, adding its forces had crossed the Litani river.

The Israeli military said it launched an operation “a few days ago” in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki area in southern Lebanon, “with the aim of removing direct threats to the communities of the Galilee Panhandle and Metula, and as part of ongoing efforts to strengthen operational control in southern Lebanon”.

Spokeswoman Ella Waweya has said Israel’s military has launched “a large-scale operation” in the Shebaa Heights and the Wadi al-Salouqi area in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera reports.

In a post on X, she said the operation was “aimed at destroying terrorist infrastructure and eliminating saboteurs, as part of enhancing operational control in southern Lebanon and removing the direct threat to the Finger of the Galilee and the Metula settlement”.

“The operation began several days ago, with large ground forces,” Waweya said, adding that troops are “executing an offensive activity to expand the forward defence line”.

The Israeli forces “have crossed the Litani River and expanded their attacks against Hezbollah north of the river, while operations in the meantime are expanding to additional areas,” she said.

Waweya said that Israeli forces are “operating in the vicinity of Nabatieh,” and are “prepared and ready to expand the attack as required”.

A provision in a bill before the United States Congress could tie the American and Israeli militaries far more closely together, Al Jazeera reports.

The proposal, titled the “United States-Israel Defence Technology Cooperation Initiative”, appears as Section 224 of the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal year 2027 National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), the annual US defence policy bill.

The measure is still at an early stage. The NDAA is passed by Congress each year to set US military policy and authorise defence programmes and spending levels.

“If enacted, the provision could mark a major change in one of the world’s closest military relationships, shifting the two countries from a partnership centred largely on American military aid towards one in which their defence industries are more deeply intertwined,” the report read.

British foreign minister Yvette Cooper will travel to China tomorrow, and then onwards to India later in the week, with the visits to focus on global issues from the Strait of Hormuz and the Russia-Ukraine war to the recent Ebola outbreak, Reuters reports.

Cooper will meet her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on June 2, before travelling to the southern tech hub of Shenzhen for a programme focused on science and technology a day later, the government said.

Cooper’s travel to China and India — the world’s second-largest and sixth-largest economies — comes at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, soaring oil prices following the US-Israeli war on Iran, and as Britain struggles with sluggish economic growth.

US President Donald Trump has sought to change several terms of a proposal to end the Middle East war, US media reports, according to AFP, as a finalised deal remains elusive among the parties.

The New York Times reported that Trump’s changes involved toughening the terms of the deal, and has sent the new framework back to be considered by Iran, according to officials familiar with the proceedings.

The report said it was not immediately clear what the changes entailed, but news site Axios reported Trump wanted to reinforce multiple points of the deal that he personally felt were important, such as what is done to Iran’s nuclear material.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has shot down a US drone that entered Iran’s territorial waters, according to Al Jazeera.

Iran’s IRIB broadcaster, carried a statement from the IRGC which said the MQ1 drone “attempted to carry out a hostile operation”.

“It was immediately detected and targeted by the Revolutionary Guard’s modern defence missiles and shot down,” it said.

IRGC said that “any aggression will be dealt with decisively”.

Donald Trump has said the US was “close to a very good deal” with Iran to end the war.

However, he added: “If you’re going to be in a hurry, you’re not going to make a good deal, and slowly but surely, we’re getting, I think, what we want — and if we don’t get what we want, we’re going to end it a different way.”

Al Jazeera reports that at least one person has been killed in an Israeli air strike near Nabih Berri Governmental University Hospital in Nabatieh, Lebanon.

Israel’s military continues to attack health facilities and medics in southern Lebanon. Attacking hospitals is a war crime under international law.

Lebanon’s prime minister has accused Israel of pursuing a “scorched-earth policy” in his country’s south, urging a halt to incessant air and artillery strikes, according to Al Jazeera.

A day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his forces had advanced deeper into Lebanon, his counterpart Nawaf Salam warned the country is facing a “dangerous” escalation and called for “a swift and real ceasefire”.

In a televised address, Salam accused Israel of “collective punishment” by “destroying towns and villages, and forcing their inhabitants into exile”.

This will bring “neither security nor stability” to Israel, he said.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has posted a video calling on Israel’s prime minister to “level the southern suburbs in Beirut to the ground” as Hezbollah heavily bombards northern Israel, Al Jazeera reports.

Posting on his Instagram account, Ben-Gvir said he opposed the previous ceasefire with Lebanon, calling for targeting the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, where Hezbollah has a significant presence.

He addressed Israel’s leader directly in the video, saying: “Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I love and appreciate you, but now is the time to level the suburbs to the ground. We have appreciation for Trump and we must say thank you for the partnership. But the red line is the harm to soldiers or civilians, and the suburbs must be levelled to the ground.”

Hezbollah claims it launched 24 attacks yesterday targeting invading troops, military vehicles, and infrastructure as well as firing multiple rocket barrages at the Kiryat Shmona settlement in northern Israel, according to Al Jazeera.

In a statement, the group outlined its extensive use of rocket salvoes, artillery fire and attack drones to strike Israeli forces.

Key targets included five Merkava tanks, a military bulldozer, and military infrastructure in Safad, Nahariyya and Karmiel, the Meron air surveillance base, and Israel army barracks at Liman, Shomera, and Yaara.

Strikes focused heavily on repelling advancing soldiers around the areas of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, Yohmor al-Shaqif, Debel and al-Ghandouriyah, where the Lebanese group claimed to have carried out multiple ambushes and multi-weapon attacks.

The economic fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran has added hundreds of dollars to household expenses across the United States, Al Jazeera reports citing a new analysis.

Data from Moody’s Analytics finds that the average US household spent an additional $447.19 on fuel-related costs since the conflict began on February 28.

The increase, driven by higher petrol prices and rising air fares, cost US consumers almost $60bn collectively over the past three months, CNBC reports.

Economists warn that the financial strain is likely to intensify if the conflict drags on.

“Unless the war ends soon, financially pressed consumers will have no option but to turn more cautious in their spending, threatening the already soft economy,” says Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist.

The analysis suggests that if energy prices remain at current levels, the average household could face nearly $2,000 in additional costs by the first anniversary of the war.