The US and Israel on Feb 28 launched what they described as a “pre-emptive” joint strike against Iranian targets, with Trump announcing start of “major combat operations”
The European Union has called on Israel to cease its military campaign in Lebanon, after the latest Israeli strikes on Beirut, AFP reports.
“The EU is deeply concerned about the ongoing Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which already has devastating humanitarian consequences and risks triggering a prolonged conflict,” a spokesperson has said. “Israel should cease its operations in Lebanon.”
Qatar’s foreign ministry has ordered Iran’s military and security attaches, along with their staff, to leave the country within 24 hours, following an attack on its massive natural gas facility, AFP reports.
“Both the military attache and the security attache in the embassy, in addition to those working in the two attache offices, persona non grata, and requests that they leave the state’s territories within a maximum period of 24 hours,” the ministry has said in a social media post.
Kuwait has arrested 10 suspects reportedly affiliated with Hezbollah, who were accused of plotting “terrorist” actions against vital infrastructure, AFP reports citing the interior ministry.
“The State Security Agency has successfully thwarted a plot for a terrorist operation targeting vital installations,” the interior ministry has said. “Ten citizens, members of a terrorist group affiliated with the banned Hezbollah terrorist organisation, were apprehended.”
Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry says its air defence systems have detected and downed five drones that were launched in an “attempt to target an energy facility” in the Eastern province.
Saudi Arabia says four people have been injured in Riyadh by shrapnel that fell on a residential building following the interception of a ballistic missile, reports Saudi Press Agency.
Emirati air defence is countering a missile threat, say authorities.
“UAE air defences are currently responding to incoming missile and drone threats from Iran. MOD asserts that the sounds heard are the result of the air defence systems intercepting missiles and drones,” the Ministry of Defence has said.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called on the US and Israel to abandon attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, after a building near the Bushehr nuclear power plant was hit in a US-Israeli strike.
“We have repeatedly warned Israel and the US of the categorical inadmissibility of endangering the lives and health of the Russian citizens working at the Bushehr NPP (nuclear power plant),” Zakharova has said, according to the Russian foreign ministry.
“They must abandon their reckless attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.”
Qatar’s defence ministry says the Gulf country came under an “Iranian attack” involving five ballistic missiles.
A statement published on X by the ministry said the country’s armed forces intercepted four missiles, while one fell in Ras Laffan Industrial City, causing a fire.
“Civil Defence teams are currently responding and working to contain the fire,” the ministry said.
The Israeli military says it will not stop its “series of eliminations” of senior Iranian officials, after the assassination of Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, AFP reports.
Khatib’s assassination came soon after Israel targeted Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani, and another powerful figure, Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij paramilitary force.
“Over the past 24 hours, we have continued to track down and eliminate senior officials of the regime,” military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in a televised briefing.
“We will continue to hunt down all of the regime’s senior officials. The series of eliminations will not stop,” he added.
Qatar has said that Iranian attacks on its main gas facility, situated on its north coast, are a “direct threat to its national security”, AFP reports.
“Qatar expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the brutal Iranian attack targeting Ras Laffan Industrial City … Qatar considers this assault a dangerous escalation, a flagrant violation of its sovereignty, and a direct threat to its national security,” the Gulf state’s foreign ministry has said in a statement.
US Senator Bernie Sanders has said that Americans should not forget the mistreatment of Palestinians by Israel in the occupied West Bank amid the ongoing US-Israel-Iran war, urging Washington to end US military aid to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In one year, more than 36,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced and 240 were killed. There were over 1,700 attacks by Israeli settlers,” Sanders has said on X.
A spokesperson for Iran’s central military command, the Khatam al-Anbiya, has said that the war will continue until the “aggressors” surrender, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reports.
“The situation is this: some people have lost track of their days and nights!” the spokesperson is quoted as having said. “Their days have turned into nights by taking shelter in bunkers, and their nights have lost all peace upon seeing the bright sky of our assaults.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has condemned attacks on the Islamic republic’s energy infrastructure, writing on X, “Such aggressive acts will yield nothing for the Zionist-American enemy and their supporters.
“This will complicate the situation and could have uncontrollable consequences, the scope of which could engulf the entire world,” he adds.
A second round of loud explosions has rang out over Riyadh, AFP journalists report, after authorities previously said they intercepted four ballistic missiles headed towards the Saudi capital.
Kuwait’s interior minister says its explosive ordnance disposal teams have handled 17 reports of falling debris from interceptions over the past 24 hours, Al Jazeera reports.
This brings the total number of reports since attacks began to 421.
The ministry’s spokesperson, Brigadier General Nasser Bouslaib, said during a news conference that 94 alert sirens have also been activated since then.
Saudi Arabia says it has destroyed a drone headed towards a gas plant, as Iran threatened to attack Gulf energy infrastructure in retaliation for a US-Israeli strike on its own facilities, AFP reports.
“A drone attempting to approach a gas factory in the Eastern Province was intercepted and destroyed; the interception and destruction operation resulted in no damage,” the Saudi defence ministry has said.
Qatar’s Ministry of Interior is reporting a fire in the Ras Laffan area — home to the world’s largest LNG production facility — following “Iranian targeting”, Al Jazeera reports.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has slammed European nations for their “duplicitous and hypocritical approach” towards US-Israeli aggression in Iran in a call with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, according to a statement from Tehran’s foreign ministry.
The pair have had a telephone conversation on regional developments and their regional and international repercussions and consequences. According to the statement, Araghchi apprised Kallas of the US-Israeli attacks on schools, hospitals and infrastructure, emphasising the responsibility of all governments to condemn these strikes.
“The foreign minister sharply criticised the duplicitous and hypocritical approach of some European countries and senior EU officials towards military aggression by America and the Zionist regime against Iran, stating that any support or leniency toward the blatant lawbreaking by these two regimes would amount to complicity in the crimes they have perpetrated against the Iranian nation,” the statement adds.
Kallas, expressing deep concern over the security, humanitarian, and economic consequences of the war, emphasised the European Union’s position on the urgent need to end the conflict, the ministry has said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warns that the international order is experiencing a “calculated moral collapse”, where those who are supposed to defend it instead violate it with impunity.
In a statement on X, Tehran’s top diplomat gives the example of an Iranian president presenting foreign ambassadors with a “kill list” including the US president, top American generals and members of the US Congress.
“Within hours, the world would erupt. Emergency UN Security Council sessions. Relentless media hysteria. Sanctions, threats, perhaps even war — wrapped neatly in the language of ‘international law’ and defending the ‘global order’,” Araghchi has said, noting that the usual rules of the game do not seem to apply to Israel.
“The very same guardians of ‘law and order’ fall silent, equivocate, or worse, supply the weapons and the cover,” he adds.
“What is unfolding before our eyes is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy implies shame. This is something colder: a calculated moral collapse — where rules exist only for adversaries, and impunity is reserved for allies.”
Araghchi adds that Israel is dragging Washington “into an ever-deeper moral and political abyss” and that it has no regard for the repercussions of normalising its “heinous methods of terror”.
“But the international community should not disregard that recklessness; as for every action there will inevitably and always be a reaction,” he adds.
The National Iranian Gas Company says that “part of the refining units” were damaged in today’s attack on gas facilities in southern Iran, Al Jazeera reports.
“[Company] forces are fully present in the region and are managing the situation and restoring the situation to normal”, the company said in a statement published by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
“Gas production is currently underway with full safety precautions in mind, and the country’s gas network is also in a stable state.”
The fire at the South Pars facility has been extinguished, with equipment cooling operations now ongoing, the statement added.
