Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu says war will take ‘some time’; US ’non-emergency’ staff to leave Bahrain, Jordan and Iraq

From 1h agoUS orders 'non-emergency’ staff to leave Bahrain, Jordan and IraqThe US state department said on Tuesday it had ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to leave Bahrain and Jordan, as well as announcing it had ordered staff in Iraq to leave a day earlier, as Iran retaliates to US-Israeli strikes.The department said in a post on X that it had updated travel advisories for Bahrain and Jordan “to reflect the ordered departure of non-emergency US government personnel and family members of government personnel”.In an updated Iraq travel advisory, the department said it had on Monday “ordered non-emergency US government employees to leave Iraq due to security concerns”, Agence France-Presse reports.Key events14m agoInterim summary20m agoUS orders 'non-emergency’ staff to leave Qatar and Kuwait1h agoUS orders 'non-emergency’ staff to leave Bahrain, Jordan and Iraq2h agoIran claims attack on US air base in Bahrain2h agoUS claims to have destroyed Iranian Revolutionary Guards' command facilities2h agoOpening summaryShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureInterim summaryIn case you’re just joining us, here’s a snapshot of the key developments as the US-Israel war on Iran dramatically expands across the Middle East. The Israeli air force said on Tuesday morning it was attacking Tehran and Beirut simultaneously with a “wave of extensive strikes” against the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for dozens of locations in Lebanon earlier on Tuesday, including a warning for residents in two southern Beirut neighbourhoods to stay away from several buildings ahead of imminent military action. Hezbollah said it had launched drones at northern Israel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the US and Israel’s war against Iran may take “some time” but not years. Donald Trump has sought to justify a broad, open-ended war on Iran after initially projecting the war would last four to five weeks while adding it could go on longer. The US embassy in the Saudi capital of Riyadh was hit by a drone strike, causing a fire to break out. A loud blast was heard and flames seen at the embassy early on Tuesday morning, reports said. The state department has urged that all US citizens leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries due to risks related to ongoing escalations that have pushed the region into chaos. The countries included in the warning were Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. There was confusion over the status of navigation in the strait of Hormuz after a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to “burn any ship” seeking to navigate the waterway, a vital route for oil and gas shipments. But US Central Command said the strait was not closed, according to Fox News. The US attacked Iran after learning that ally Israel was going to strike, which would have meant retaliation against US forces, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. “We knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters. The justification for the attack differs from justifications given by Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth. Rubio also said the “hardest hits” on Iran were yet to come from the US military. Here are some of the latest images coming in from Beirut and Tehran as the Israeli air force said it was attacking the Lebanese and Iranian capitals simultaneously with a wave of extensive strikes.Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, on Tuesday. Photograph: Hussein Malla/APThe skies above Dahiyeh. Photograph: Hussein Malla/APSmoke rises after an explosion in Tehran. Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/ReutersThe aftermath of an Israeli-US strike on a police station in Tehran. Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/ReutersUS orders 'non-emergency’ staff to leave Qatar and KuwaitThe US state department has reportedly ordered the departure of non-emergency government personnel and family members from Qatar and Kuwait.The move came after the department said earlier on Tuesday it had ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to leave Bahrain and Jordan.It also announced it had ordered staff in Iraq to leave a day earlier, amid Iran’s retaliation over US-Israeli strikes.The department said in a post on X before the latest order that it had updated travel advisories for Bahrain and Jordan “to reflect the ordered departure of non-emergency US government personnel and family members of government personnel”.In an updated travel advisory on Iraq, the department said it had on Monday “ordered non-emergency US government employees to leave Iraq due to security concerns”.The use of AI tools to enable attacks on Iran heralds a new era of bombing quicker than “the speed of thought”, experts have said, amid fears human ­decision-makers could be sidelined.Robert Booth and Dan Milmo report that Anthropic’s AI model was reportedly used by the US military in the barrage of strikes as the technology “shortens the kill chain” – meaning the process of target identification through to legal approval and strike launch.The US and Israel, which previously used AI to identify targets in Gaza, launched almost 900 strikes on Iranian targets in the first 12 hours alone, during which Israeli missiles killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Academics studying the field say AI is collapsing the planning time required for complex strikes – a phenomenon known as “decision compression”, which some fear could result in human military and legal experts merely rubber-stamping automated strike plans.See the full story here:US secretary of state Marco Rubio has claimed the US attacked Iran after learning that Israel was going to strike, which would have meant retaliation against US forces.“We knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” he told reportersThe justification for the attack differs from justifications given by Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth, as our latest “what we know” explainer on the war says.Rubio also said the “hardest hits” on Iran from the US military were yet to come.Trump signalled the US strikes on Iran could go much longer than the four to five weeks he originally predicted, and has sought to justify a broad, open-ended conflict.Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said the war against Iran may take “some time” but it would not take years, telling Fox News: “It’s not an endless war.”For more on those points and others as the US-Israel war on Iran dramatically expands across the Middle East, see here:Further to our earlier post, the Israeli air force is saying on X: double quotation markThe Air Force is now attacking Tehran and Beirut simultaneously The Air Force has now begun a wave of extensive strikes against the Iranian terror regime and the Hezbollah terror organization. US orders 'non-emergency’ staff to leave Bahrain, Jordan and IraqThe US state department said on Tuesday it had ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to leave Bahrain and Jordan, as well as announcing it had ordered staff in Iraq to leave a day earlier, as Iran retaliates to US-Israeli strikes.The department said in a post on X that it had updated travel advisories for Bahrain and Jordan “to reflect the ordered departure of non-emergency US government personnel and family members of government personnel”.In an updated Iraq travel advisory, the department said it had on Monday “ordered non-emergency US government employees to leave Iraq due to security concerns”, Agence France-Presse reports.The US embassy in the Saudi capital of Riyadh has reportedly confirmed it was struck by drones and said it was closing temporarily.Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry earlier confirmed on social media that the embassy was hit by two drones, according to initial estimates, and that it caused a limited fire and minor material damage to the building.A loud blast was heard and flames seen at the embassy early on Tuesday, reports said. There were no reported injuries.Black smoke was seen rising over Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter, which houses foreign missions.The Israeli military has just been quoting as saying it it currently attacking Tehran and Beirut simultaneously.More on this shortly.Further to the last post, travellers stranded by the widening war in the Middle East began departing the United Arab Emirates aboard a small number of evacuation flights on Monday, while governments around the world work to extract their citizens from the region.Airlines Etihad Airways and Emirates, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and budget carrier FlyDubai said they would operate limited flights amid the US-Israel war on Iran.Since Saturday at least 11,000 flights into, out of and within the Middle East have been cancelled, affecting more than 1 million passengers, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.The travel chaos looks set to continue, with Donald Trump saying on Monday that the conflict had been projected to last four to five weeks but that it could go on longer.Passengers of the first charter flight carrying 127 Italians stranded in Oman or transiting from the UAE to Oman arrive at Fiumicino airport in Rome, Italy. Photograph: Redazione Telenews/TELENEWS/EPALate on Monday the US state department called on Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE amid the spiralling conflict.You can read our full story here:Indian airlines said on Tuesday they were resuming limited commercial services to the Middle East in a bid to collect thousands of passengers stranded by war.IndiGo said it would operate four return flights to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as part of efforts to “progressively normalise” operations between the countries. Air India Express said it would resume flights to and from the Omani capital, Muscat, from Tuesday.But services to and from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates remain suspended, the airlines said in a statement, cited by Agence France-Presse.Budget carrier Akasa Air said it would operate select flights to Jeddah.Iran claims attack on US air base in BahrainIran’s Revolutionary Guards have targeted a US air base in Bahrain, the Islamic republic’s elite force said in a statement carried on Tuesday by the official Irna news agency.“The IRGC announced that ... its naval forces carried out a large-scale drone and missile attack at dawn on the US air base in the Sheikh Isa area of Bahrain,” Irna posted on Telegram, using the acronym for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Agence France-Press reports the force as saying in its statement that 20 drones and three missiles were launched, “destroying the base’s main command headquarters”, without providing evidence.Opening summaryHello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran and the widening Middle East crisis.Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the US and Israel’s war against Iran may take “some time” but it will not take years.The US and Israeli air war against Iran began with attacks across the country on Saturday, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and prompting Iranian retaliation against Arab nations hosting US bases across the Middle East.President Donald Trump initially projected the war to last four to five weeks, but added it could go on longer, and has since sought to justify a broad, open-ended war on Iran.Netanyahu rejected the idea of the conflict lasting years, like previous wars in the region. “I said it could be quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it’s not going to take years. It’s not an endless war,” Netanyahu said on Fox News’ Hannity program.On Tuesday morning, the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for dozens of locations in Lebanon, including a warning for residents in two southern Beirut neighbourhoods to stay away from several buildings ahead of imminent military action.Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had launched drones at northern Israel.Here are the other big developments: The US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was hit by a drone strike, causing a fire to break out. A loud blast was heard and flames seen at the embassy early on Tuesday morning, reports said. Black smoke was seen rising over Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter, which houses foreign missions. The state department has urged that all US citizens leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries due to risks related to ongoing escalations that have pushed the region into chaos. The 14 countries included in the warning were Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. There was confusion over the status of navigation in the strait of Hormuz after a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to “burn any ship” seeking to navigate the waterway, a vital route for oil and gas shipments. However, US Central Command said the strait was not closed, according to Fox News. The United States attacked Iran after learning that ally Israel was going to strike, which would have meant retaliation against US forces, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. “We knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters. The justification for the attack differs from justifications given by Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth. Rubio also said the “hardest hits” are yet to come from the US military. “The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now,” he told reporters. Trump signalled that US strikes on Iran could go much longer than originally predicted. The president laid out what he said were four key objectives for hitting Iran: “First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities ... Second, we’re annihilating their navy ... Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s No 1 sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon. Finally we are ensuring the Iranian regime can’t continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.” US claims to have destroyed Iranian Revolutionary Guards' command facilitiesUS Central Command has just claimed on social media that US forces have destroyed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ command facilities as well as Iranian missile and drone launch sites and more.Centcom said in a post on X including military images: double quotation markU.S. forces have destroyed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control facilities, Iranian air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields during sustained operations. We will continue to take decisive action against imminent threats posed by the Iranian regime.