The US and Iran conflict live: strikes, retaliation and what it means for Australia

• Iranian drones hit Erbil as Iraq's largest gas field is attacked
• Iran erects a public gallows in Isfahan as fears of protester executions grow
• Iran's IRGC linked Tasnim publishes a video urging supporters to kill Melania Trump
• Iran's state media recycles October 2024 photos of the missing Mojtaba Khamenei
• Trump says Iran took a beating and asked 'very nicely' for the US to stop

7:56am 28 July 2026 — Iranian drones hit Erbil as Iraq's largest gas field is attacked

Explosions tore across Erbil in northern Iraq early this morning, including near the US consulate, with Iraqi police sources telling Al Jazeera that at least four Iranian drones targeted the Khalifan and Soran districts. Iran's own state broadcaster IRIB reported that the Khor Mor gas field in Sulaymaniyah, which supplies much of the Kurdistan Region's electricity, was attacked in the same window, and IRGC affiliated Fars News put the number of blasts across the Kurdish capital at seven.

Tehran cannot touch the US Navy sitting off its coast, so it is bombing the power supply of Iraqi Kurds instead. Khor Mor keeps the lights on for millions of people who have nothing to do with this war, and Iran's answer to being squeezed on its oil, its dollars and its strait is to switch them off. That is not strength. That is a regime reduced to hitting the only targets left that cannot shoot back.

7:38am 28 July 2026 — Iran erects a public gallows in Isfahan as fears of protester executions grow

An iron scaffold was erected on Monday in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, raising fears the regime is preparing to publicly execute more of the protesters it arrested during January's nationwide unrest, sources told Iran International.

This is what Tehran does when it is losing. It cannot hold the Strait of Hormuz, it cannot sell its oil, it cannot keep its own commanders alive, so it turns the machinery of the state on unarmed Iranians who marched in January and builds the scaffold out in the open where everyone can see it. A government that needs a gallows in the town square to stay in power has already told you how much of the country it still holds.

5:40am 28 July 2026 — Iran's IRGC linked Tasnim publishes a video urging supporters to kill Melania Trump

Tasnim News Agency, the news outlet affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has published a video mapping the movements of US First Lady Melania Trump and encouraging “freedom fighters” and supporters of the Islamic Republic to kill her. The video identifies the places she visits, the locations she is said to favour and the stores where she shops. It closes by threatening President Donald Trump's son Barron, telling him he “should wait for us”.

Tehran has spent this entire war telling the world it is the victim of American aggression. Its Revolutionary Guards then spent Monday morning publishing a woman's shopping route and a threat against a teenage boy. That is the reach of a regime with nothing left to fire. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lane on a 60 day leash, and the tighter that leash pulls, the lower the men running Iran are willing to go.

4:45am 28 July 2026 — Iran's state media recycles October 2024 photos of the missing Mojtaba Khamenei

Iranian state media have republished what they billed as “rarely seen” photographs of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, images taken at Friday prayers led by his father on 4 October 2024. Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since his father Ali Khamenei was killed in the 28 February airstrike, and the regime has produced no current footage of the man it says is running the country.

A government that can put its leader in front of a camera does so. Iran is going back through a photo library from October 2024 because it has nothing from this year. Trump said on Monday that the US had destroyed Iran's navy, its air force and its leadership, and the regime's answer is a photograph of a man at Friday prayers taken 21 months ago. Tehran spent this war promising it could close the Strait of Hormuz. It cannot currently produce the man who is supposed to give the order.

3:19am 28 July 2026 — Trump says Iran took a beating and asked 'very nicely' for the US to stop

US President Donald Trump says Iran has spent the last two weeks taking a beating and has now come to Washington asking him to call it off. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that Tehran asked 'very nicely' for the attacks to stop, and warned the US goes back to the same thing if no deal is reached. He put Iran at 8% of what it was four months ago, and said Israel would have been terminated had he not moved against the nuclear program.

A fortnight ago Tehran was promising to close the Strait of Hormuz and bury the American fleet. On Monday it was asking politely. Beijing, which needs that strait open far more than Tehran does, will have noticed how fast the pressure worked. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lane, and the regime has worked out that threats won't buy any of them back.

2:51am 28 July 2026 — Trump says Iran's own money will pay for the ships wrecked in the Strait of Hormuz

US President Donald Trump says Iran will be made to pay for the ships wrecked in the Strait of Hormuz, out of its own money. Asked on Monday whether Washington would compensate the shipping companies directly, Trump said no, and that the Iranian funds the United States already controls would be used to cover the damage instead.

This is the leash in its purest form. Tehran spent this war treating the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon it could fire for free, and it has just been handed the bill, payable from an account it cannot touch. Iran's oil is throttled, its shipping lane is contested, and now its own cash is being spent repairing what it broke.

10:38pm 27 July 2026 — Saudi Arabia intercepts Iran-backed drones fired from Iraq at Riyadh and its oil fields

Saudi Arabia's Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted and destroyed a wave of drones launched from Iraqi territory by armed groups backed by the Islamic Republic, sent at oil facilities in the kingdom's Eastern Province and at Riyadh itself. The Foreign Ministry called the attacks reprehensible and said Saudi Arabia reserves the right to respond. Jordan's Foreign Ministry condemned them within hours as a violation of Saudi sovereignty and declared full solidarity with the kingdom, and Yemen's Houthis then claimed strikes on crude oil supply and transport sites running from eastern Saudi Arabia to Yanbu on the Red Sea.

Tehran cannot reach the Americans, so it is shooting at the neighbours. It has not broken the strait and it has not slowed Trump's tempo, so the regime is sending Iraqi militia drones at Saudi oil fields and the Saudi capital instead. Every one of them costs Iran another Arab government. Riyadh is now reserving the right to hit back, Amman has lined up behind it, and the Gulf states Tehran spent a decade trying to peel away from Washington are hardening against Iran rather than against the White House.

9:16pm 27 July 2026 — Iran's Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani admits Chinese satellites are guiding Tehran

Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, said on Monday that the Islamic Republic is being fed intelligence by China. “We do not buy weapons from China. Instead, we receive intelligence systems from them. Their satellites help us,” he said, adding that “it is natural for China and Russia to say they do not help Iran, but in reality, they do.” He also said Tehran had helped Moscow in the war on Ukraine by supplying it with drones.

Beijing has spent this entire war denying it helps Iran, and a member of Iran's own national security committee has just put Chinese satellites inside the targeting loop. It is why Washington has gone after Iran's barrels and not only its bunkers, because the oil leaving Kharg goes east to Chinese refineries and the support comes back the other way. Ardestani also confirmed on the record what Kyiv has said for years, that Iranian drones are killing Ukrainians, which is worth remembering every time Tehran lectures the UN about international law.

7:36pm 27 July 2026 — Jordan's armed forces down two drones as Israel intercepts two more

Jordan's armed forces intercepted and shot down two drones on Monday morning, with no casualties and no material damage, the military said. It did not say who launched them. About an hour earlier the Israeli military said it had intercepted two suspected drones near the Jordanian border and the Dead Sea, and was still reviewing where they came from.

Neither military named the source, and neither needed to. Iran has spent a fortnight firing drones and missiles at Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and has almost nothing to show for it beyond intercepted wreckage and a Gulf that has closed ranks against Tehran. Trump's pause in strikes has not bought Iran a battlefield win. It has left the regime burning through an arsenal it cannot replace while its oil, its dollars and its access to the strait stay on his leash.

6:53pm 27 July 2026 — Britain's Andy Burnham condemns Iran and Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham condemned recent Iranian and Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia during a call with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Downing Street said on Monday. A Number 10 spokesperson said Burnham "began the call by condemning the recent attacks made by Iran and the Houthis on Saudi Arabia". The Saudi readout of the same call, reported by Arab News, has him condemning the Houthi attacks and the threat to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, and reaffirming Britain's support for the security and sovereignty of the kingdom. The two leaders also discussed defence and trade ties.

Iran has spent this war insisting it is the wronged party, and Britain has just put its name to the opposite in writing. Burnham is no cheerleader for the Trump White House, so when Number 10 lists Iran alongside the Houthis as the author of attacks on Saudi Arabia, that is not American spin, it is the plain reading of who is doing the firing. Tehran wanted this war to prise the West away from the Gulf. What it has produced instead is a British prime minister ringing Riyadh to promise support for Saudi sovereignty, while Trump keeps Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a 60 day leash.

6:04pm 27 July 2026 — Iran's Esmaeil Baghaei says Tehran has not asked the US for talks

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters on Monday that Tehran has not asked to resume talks with the United States to end the war, and that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, though he called discussions with Oman on managing shipping through the waterway useful. In the same appearance he accused Gulf states of taking part in the strikes on Iran, saying they had made their territory available to the countries attacking it and that in some cases they had "independently participated in the military aggression against Iran".

Line those three claims up and Baghaei has read out the case against his own government. Iran is refusing the talks Trump has left open, it is still holding the world's most important oil route shut, and it is blaming the neighbours it has been firing missiles at since the middle of the month. The Gulf did not turn on Iran out of spite, it turned on Iran because Iran attacked it. Every day Tehran is too proud to ask for a meeting is another day it pays for that pride in fuel queues, a collapsing currency and an oil trade Washington can switch off whenever it chooses.

5:32pm 27 July 2026 — Shin Bet chief David Zini warns Iran is trying to interfere in Israel's election

Iran and other countries are trying to interfere in Israel's 27 October election, Shin Bet Director David Zini has warned senior Israeli officials, according to a report by Israeli Channel 13. Zini said the issue was a top priority for the agency and its second greatest concern after the threat of a major terrorist attack. The report did not say how the interference was being carried out. Zini is due to put his findings on foreign meddling, and on illicit funding aimed at shaping Israeli political outcomes, to a closed door Knesset committee, Israel National News reported.

A regime that cannot keep the lights on in Tehran or fuel in its own petrol pumps is now spending its energy trying to pick Israel's next government. That is what Iran does when it is losing on the battlefield, it goes hunting for a softer front, and a democracy holding an election in October is the softest one it can find. Tehran spent decades building proxies to fight Israel head on. Being reduced to its ballot papers is not strength, it is what is left when the missiles stop landing and Trump has your oil money on a leash.

3:03pm 27 July 2026 — Iran's state TV says it turned back five of six ships defying its Hormuz route

Iran's state broadcaster said on Monday that Iran turned back five of six ships that tried to use what it called an unauthorised route through the southern Strait of Hormuz, and that the sixth vessel suffered an unspecified "incident". The ships had switched off their navigation transponders, an unnamed official told the broadcaster, who said vessels must use Iran's designated shipping route because every other route remained hazardous. Al Jazeera carried the same account.

This is Tehran describing its own blockade and calling it traffic management. Merchant crews are running the strait with their transponders dark because Iran has turned the lawful route into a toll booth and everything else into a minefield, and the one ship that would not comply had an "incident". Trump paused the strikes on Friday and Iran has spent that pause tightening its grip on the waterway rather than opening it. That is the argument for keeping the strait on a leash, and Washington still holds the other end of it.

2:29pm 27 July 2026 — Iran's Kayhan newspaper demands more attacks and calls US talks a fatal mistake

Kayhan, the hardline Tehran daily whose editor is appointed directly by the supreme leader, told the regime on Monday to keep attacking and to break what it called a US maritime blockade. "Trusting the deception of negotiations again would be a fatal mistake," the paper wrote. "Now is not the time to halt military action, but to consolidate the new order by continuing forceful attacks and breaking the maritime blockade." It argued that no location in the Persian Gulf used by Iran's adversaries should be considered safe until Iranian oil exports were fully secure.

Kayhan is not a stray columnist. Its editor answers to Mojtaba Khamenei, so this is as close to the supreme leader's own thinking as Iranian print gets. Trump stopped the bombing on Friday and handed Tehran an off ramp, and the regime's loudest mouthpiece has answered by demanding more attacks on shipping and declaring the Gulf states fair game. Every capital from Manama to Kuwait City can read that sentence for itself. Iran's oil income is still throttled, its tankers are still being boarded, and the pause remains Trump's to end.

2:03pm 27 July 2026 — Republican Thomas Massie says the war with Iran has weakened America

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie has broken ranks on the Iran campaign, posting on X that the United States has been "significantly weakened" by the war. He lists depleted missile defences, drained oil reserves, American dead and wounded, higher consumer prices and a bigger national debt, then signs the post off "all for Israel". Massie is one of only a handful of Republicans openly criticising the President's handling of the conflict.

Massie is a long standing critic of American military intervention, so the position is no surprise. The timing is the problem. He posted it as Brent crude fell 7% at the open, Asian share markets rallied and Iran halted its retaliatory strikes for a second day after Washington paused first. On the two measures Massie picked, fuel prices and the cost to American households, the weekend went the right way and not the wrong one. That pause happened because Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lane on a 60 day leash, and he has not let go of any of it.

12:29pm 27 July 2026 — Iran demands a service fee from every ship that passes through Hormuz

Iran is still demanding a service fee from vessels using the Strait of Hormuz, and still insists Tehran alone should manage the waterway, even as indirect talks with Washington make progress. Al Jazeera reports that an Omani delegation which travelled to Tehran proposed a regional consortium to run the strait with no transit tolls at all, and that Iran rejected it.

Iran is not defending a waterway, it is trying to bill the world for one it does not own. Oman handed Tehran the dignified exit, a shared regional body and free passage for everyone, and Tehran knocked it back. The country that would actually end up paying that fee is China, which moves most of its crude through the strait. Trump already holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lane on a 60 day leash, and the day Iran tries to run that toll booth for real he takes the strait outright.

11:50am 27 July 2026 — Brent crude falls 7% as Trump's strike pause strips Iran of its oil weapon

Brent crude fell 7% at the open and Asian share markets rallied on Monday after President Donald Trump paused US strikes on Iran. Reuters put Brent down $5.58, or 5.8%, at $91.20 a barrel, with US West Texas Intermediate off $4.91 at $84.40, unwinding the spike that carried crude above $100 a barrel last week.

The oil price is the honest scoreboard in this war. Iran's one real weapon was the threat to choke the Strait of Hormuz and make the world pay for it at the bowser, and the market wrote that threat down to almost nothing the moment Trump chose to hold his fire for a day. Beijing still carries the risk on whatever barrels Iran can shift, but the lesson for Tehran is simpler. It no longer sets the price of its own crude. Washington does, and the leash tightens or loosens on Trump's say so.

10:35am 27 July 2026 — Iran's Yadollah Eslami urges Masoud Pezeshkian to open direct talks with Washington

Yadollah Eslami, secretary-general of Iran's Assembly of Former Members of Parliament, has published an open letter urging President Masoud Pezeshkian to "set aside official protocols" and declare he is ready to open direct, unconditional talks with the United States. "Iran today needs the courage for peace more than war rhetoric and calls for revenge," Eslami wrote, warning that every day peace is delayed costs the country more of its human capital, material resources and infrastructure.

This is Iran's own political class breaking ranks in public. Eslami is not an exile or a street protester, he runs the body that speaks for the regime's former MPs, and he is telling the President on the record that the war rhetoric has failed and the country is being ground down by it. Trump has spent two weeks squeezing Iran's oil, its dollars and its access to the strait, and the pressure is now doing exactly what it was built to do. Senior figures inside the system are arguing out loud that Tehran should come to the table.

9:44am 27 July 2026 — Iran's Mojtaba Khamenei makes Hezbollah the price of ending the war

Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has told Washington there will be no deal to end the war unless Israel stops its campaign in Lebanon. In a post on X on Sunday he said Iran has made the preservation of Lebanon's territorial integrity and the “absolute, unconditional termination” of Israeli aggression the “primary condition for any agreement”, and in a series of posts reported by Al Jazeera he called the defence of Hezbollah's fighters Iran's “strategic mandate”. Khamenei is the son of Ali Khamenei and took the job after the US and Israel killed his father on the first day of the war in February.

That is the tell. Iran's oil income is being throttled, its ships are being boarded one by one, its own ministers are warning Iranians to expect fuel rationing, and the single thing Mojtaba Khamenei will not trade away is a militia in another country. Trump is holding Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a 60 day leash, and Khamenei has just confirmed he would rather wear all three than let go of Hezbollah. He is not negotiating for Iran. He is negotiating for his proxies, and every Iranian queuing for petrol is paying the bill.

6:28am 27 July 2026 — Iran's Zabihollah Khodaeian puts unreturned foreign currency at €94 billion

The head of Iran's State Inspectorate Organization, Zabihollah Khodaeian, told state television that more than 20,000 individuals and companies are holding €94 billion in unresolved foreign currency obligations, and that 225 of them each owe more than €50 million, three of those linked to oil companies. In plain terms these are traders who were handed hard currency by the state to bring goods into Iran and never delivered either the goods or the money. Khodaeian named nobody and did not say what the authorities intend to do about it.

That single figure is the regime in one number. On Saturday, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani was telling Iranians that fuel price rises or rationing are now unavoidable. The money that could have spared them was not destroyed in an American airstrike, it walked out through the connected 225, and the official whose job is to chase it cannot bring himself to say one name out loud. Trump's blockade is squeezing what is left of Iran's oil income while Tehran cannot account for the money it already took.

5:47am 27 July 2026 — Trump posts AI images of a strike on Kharg and claims an Iranian tanker for America

US President Donald Trump spent Sunday posting AI generated images of the war on his own social media accounts. Three of them show him standing aboard an Iranian oil tanker flying a US flag under the caption “It’s Our Oil Tanker Now!”, with two men in white robes leaping over the side, and a separate image carries the words “STRIKE ON KHARG” over fighter jets hitting Kharg Island, the terminal in the Persian Gulf that loads most of Iran’s crude exports.

Tehran can read a picture as well as anyone. Kharg is the single point where Iran’s oil economy turns into real money, and most of the crude that leaves it sails to China, which is why the island has always been the true pressure point, ahead of the nuclear sites. The strikes are paused while Oman shuttles messages between the two capitals, and Trump has just shown the regime what the next phase looks like if those talks go nowhere. For Australian drivers, whether that image stays a picture will decide where petrol prices sit for the rest of the year.

2:46am 27 July 2026 — US envoy Mike Waltz says Iran’s regime is divided and fighting itself

Mike Waltz, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, says the Iranian regime is coming apart from the inside under the pressure of the war. He told NBC News that Tehran’s leadership is split between officials still waiting on instructions from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and others who want to go a different way, and that the infighting is making it hugely challenging to land any reasonable settlement even with talks now running at every level.

A regime that cannot agree with itself cannot make the one decision Trump is waiting for, and every day it argues is another day the oil, the dollars and the strait stay on his 60 day leash. Waltz framed the pause in strikes as the President giving the talks a little room while every option stays on the table. Washington loses nothing by waiting, and Beijing pays for the delay, because the crude China needs is still sitting behind a US blockade.

9:49pm 26 July 2026 — Iran's Defa Press admits a tanker exploded on an Iranian mine in Hormuz

A news agency run by Iran's own armed forces has confirmed that an oil tanker exploded after striking a naval mine in the Strait of Hormuz, then blamed the ship for it. Defa Press, the outlet of Iran's military establishment, cited an informed source describing the vessel as “in violation” of a shipping route the regime itself drew up, an admission that Tehran has seeded the world's busiest oil chokepoint with mines and is now detonating civilian ships that do not take its orders.

There is no version of this Tehran can defend. The regime cannot keep the Strait of Hormuz shut, cannot hold its own airspace and cannot beat the US Navy, so it has taken to laying mines and waiting for someone else's crew to find them. Beijing buys most of the oil that moves through this water, and its own client is now blowing up the route. Trump has kept Iran's oil, its dollars and this strait on a 60 day leash for exactly this reason, and every mine Tehran lays strengthens the case for taking the waterway off it altogether.

8:27pm 26 July 2026 — TankerTrackers names the sanctioned Iranian fuel ship boarded by US forces

TankerTrackers.com, the maritime tracking service that follows sanctioned oil cargoes by satellite, has identified two of the tankers caught up in the US naval blockade of Iran. It says the Comoros flagged MT Charminar, boarded by US Central Command in the Arabian Sea, was sanctioned by Washington in July 2025 for hauling Iranian fuel to the Houthis in Yemen as part of the Shamkhani network, and that the vessel CENTCOM identified as the Mozambique flagged MT Lavine is really the tanker Disha, disabled near the Persian Gulf on 24 July after its crew repeatedly tried to run the blockade.

This is Iran's war economy with the paint scraped off: a flag of convenience, a false name and a hold full of fuel bound for the terror group shelling Saudi Arabia and shooting at ships in the Red Sea. CENTCOM says it has now turned back 12 vessels, disabled 2 and boarded 2 more, and every one of those cargoes is money the regime never sees. Trump's leash is around Iran's oil and its dollars, and this is the sound of it tightening.

10:30am 26 July 2026 — US State Department’s Riley Barnes condemns Iran’s execution of protesters

Riley Barnes, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, has condemned Iran for executing citizens who protested against the regime, calling them “brave young Iranians who dared to raise their voices”. Barnes demanded Tehran release every political prisoner it holds and stop putting people to death for the peaceful exercise of their rights, and told the regime “the world is watching”.

Unable to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut, unable to defend its own airspace and now unable to protect a ship on its own inland sea, the regime is taking its losses out on the Iranians who dared to say so out loud. Trump already holds Iran’s oil, its dollars and its shipping lane on a short leash, and Washington has now put the executions on the same account Tehran will have to settle. Iran’s own pollster found nearly half of its internet users are angry at the regime’s blackout. The people it is killing are the ones it fears most.

9:16am 26 July 2026 — Iran’s Abbas Araghchi demands a UN response after Ukraine bombs an Iranian ship

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has demanded the United Nations Security Council and the European Union hold Ukraine to account after a Ukrainian attack blew up an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, killing one sailor and wounding another. Tehran summoned Ukraine’s most senior diplomat in the country and branded the strike “hostile and criminal” through state news agency IRNA, Al Jazeera reported. Kyiv says the vessel was carrying military linked cargo.

A regime that spent this week threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz can’t keep a single ship safe on its own inland sea. Iran is being squeezed at both ends now, with Trump’s naval blockade throttling its oil exports in the south while Ukraine picks off its shipping in the north, and Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tehran reported the attacks are putting extra pressure on Iranian maritime trade. Note who Tehran is begging for help: the same Security Council and European Union its own spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei was accusing of hypocrisy a day earlier. International law is sacred when Iranian cargo is hit and an irrelevance when the IRGC is shooting at civilian ships in Hormuz.

7:23am 26 July 2026 — Iran demands $11 billion from Iraq's Ali al-Zaidi over unpaid gas bills

Iran demanded that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi pay around $11 billion in accumulated debts for Iranian gas imports during his recent visit to Tehran, two Iraqi sources told Al-Hurra, the US funded Arabic language broadcaster. Baghdad told Tehran it cannot currently pay the full amount, and Iran rejected an Iraqi proposal to settle part of the bill through alternative arrangements.

A regime that spent this week boasting it can close the Strait of Hormuz is now chasing its poorest neighbour for cash Baghdad plainly does not have. That is what the sanctions and the US naval blockade have done to Iran's books. The oil money is stranded offshore, the budget is short, and Tehran is reduced to shaking down the Iraqis it spends every other day claiming to protect.

6:14am 26 July 2026 — Iran's IRGC threatens Britain with attack if it backs the US campaign

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime's most powerful military arm and a designated terrorist organisation in the United States, warned on Saturday that Britain would become a 'definite and legitimate target' if it supports the US campaign against Iran, according to Iranian state television.

Tehran cannot keep the Strait of Hormuz shut, cannot hold its own airspace and cannot stop CENTCOM turning its tankers around, so it has moved on to threatening London from a state television studio. The IRGC has spent this war firing on civilian shipping and sending drones at its neighbours' cities, and every threat like this one makes Trump's case for him that the regime understands pressure and nothing else.

5:32am 26 July 2026 — Netanyahu to hand Trump new intelligence on Iran's nuclear rebuild

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hand US President Donald Trump fresh intelligence on Iran's military and nuclear recovery when the pair meet at the White House on Tuesday, Israel's Channel 12 reported on Saturday, in comments carried by The Times of Israel. Israeli officials believe Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader installed during the war, is accelerating the regime's push for a weapon, and a senior Israeli official told the network the chances of a US and Iran agreement are virtually nonexistent.

Tehran spent the ceasefire insisting it had surrendered nothing and wanted nothing, and Israel's intelligence services say the centrifuges went back to work the moment the bombs stopped. Trump walks into Tuesday's meeting holding Iran's oil, its dollars and its access to the Strait of Hormuz, and the strike plans he declined to sign on Friday have not gone anywhere. If Netanyahu's file shows Mojtaba Khamenei running for a bomb, the pause ends, and Beijing, which buys the oil that pays for the whole programme, gets another lesson in who sets the price.

4:59am 26 July 2026 — Trump says he is absolutely considering a return to full scale war with Iran

US President Donald Trump told French broadcaster LCI on Saturday he would absolutely consider resuming a full scale war with Iran if Washington does not get 100% of what it wants. LCI correspondent Sonia Dridi asked him directly on the phone whether a large scale campaign against Iran was back on the table, and Trump answered that it was, if we don't get 100% of what we want. Asked whether he had a message for Washington's European allies, he said they are lucky they have him as their friend.

This is the leash working exactly as designed. Iran spent the week insisting it would never bend, and within hours of Trump putting full scale war back on the table its negotiators were in Oman chasing terms on the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran still gets to choose. It can keep the strait open and the oil moving, or it can find out what 100% looks like.

4:49am 26 July 2026 — Iran's Mohsen Paknejad admits selling $18 billion of oil through war and ceasefire

Iran's Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said on Saturday the regime sold $11.5 billion worth of oil during the war that began on 28 February and another $6.5 billion during the ceasefire period, a total of $18 billion, and that the sales delivered a little over 60% of the oil revenue Tehran had budgeted for the year. Reuters reported the figures, which Paknejad offered as proof that war and sanctions had failed to shut down Iran's export trade.

Read the boast again, because Iran's own oil minister has just put the case against his government on the record. He has confirmed the regime kept pumping and selling crude straight through a ceasefire it then went on to tear up, and that even doing so it came up almost 40% short of the money it had budgeted for. Trump holds the buyers, the banks and the strait. Tehran has just published the receipt.

3:40am 26 July 2026 — Trump holds fire on Iran as Oman brokers a deal to reopen Hormuz

US President Donald Trump ordered the American military not to strike Iran on Friday, breaking 13 straight days of attacks, Axios correspondent Barak Ravid reported on Saturday. The order came hours after an Omani delegation arrived in Tehran for talks on a new arrangement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and two regional sources told Axios a deal could be reached this weekend, with Trump then deciding whether to accept it.

Nothing here is a retreat. Trump approved a strike plan every afternoon for a fortnight, the military can move again on short notice, and Israel's cabinet spent Friday night braced for the biggest raid of the war. What changed is that Iran has finally started offering something on the strait it spent months threatening to close, and Trump would rather take that than keep bombing for it. The oil, the dollars and Hormuz stay in his hand while Tehran decides whether to sign, and every day the strait stays open is another day China's tankers sail on Washington's terms.

9:45pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's state media shows children given rifle training in Azadi Square

Images published by Iranian state news outlets on Saturday show children being given firearms training at a night time gathering in Tehran's Azadi Square. The pictures come months after an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official confirmed the minimum age for taking part in war support activities had been cut to 12, clearing 12 and 13 year olds to work patrols, checkpoints and logistics.

A regime that hands rifles to 12 year olds has run out of adults willing to fight for it. Trump has Iran's oil boxed in, its money frozen and the Strait of Hormuz open on his terms, and Tehran's answer is a night time photo opportunity with children in a public square. Rights groups have raised the regime's use of minors in security work before, and the mullahs are now staging it for the cameras.

9:24pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's IRGC opens fire on four civilian ships in the Strait of Hormuz

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps opened fire on four vessels in the southern Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours, forcing them to stop and change course, the state broadcaster IRIB said on Saturday. The IRGC's stated reason is that the ships were using what it calls an illegal and unsafe route, which means the shipping lane Washington opened and told captains to use instead of the one Tehran designated for them.

Strip the language away and Iran has just admitted to shooting at civilian shipping in an international waterway because the crews took a route it did not pick. There is no legal theory under which the Strait of Hormuz belongs to Tehran. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spent Saturday complaining that Washington had opened a rival lane and urged captains to use it, a curious grievance from a regime that has spent the week insisting it decides who sails through. This is exactly the behaviour that keeps Trump's hand on the leash, and the moment Iran fires on the wrong hull the US takes the strait outright.

9:05pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's Fatemeh Mohajerani concedes fuel price rises or rationing are inevitable

Iran's government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Saturday that new measures to curb petrol use are unavoidable, telling reporters Tehran will have to either raise fuel prices or change its rationing system because petrol is still being sold at subsidised prices. She said the public would be told before anything took effect and that any final decision would be announced officially.

Iran sits on some of the largest oil reserves on earth and can no longer keep its own cars running. Four days ago the regime was only floating a petrol price rise; tonight it is telling Iranians the rise or the ration book is coming. Petrol subsidies are the one thing Tehran has never dared touch since the 2019 fuel protests were put down with live fire, and Trump's squeeze on Iran's oil sales and dollars has forced the mullahs onto the one lever that has already put crowds on Iranian streets.

9:03pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's Quds Force is smuggling operatives into Britain on migrant boats

Iran is using the same small boat smuggling routes that carry migrants into Britain to move covert operatives into the country, the Telegraph reported on Saturday, citing Iranian officials, people smugglers and analysts. The paper says the operation runs through Unit 700, the logistics and smuggling arm of the IRGC's Quds Force that Britain sanctioned in 2024 for activities meant to destabilise the UK. The same transport network that spent decades running guns to militias across the Middle East now moves heroin, migrants and, on the account of Tehran's own officials, spies.

This is what an unguarded border actually buys you. Britain put Unit 700 on a sanctions list back in 2024 and the boats are still landing, which tells you how little a designation is worth with no enforcement behind it. Trump has spent this war squeezing Iran's oil, its dollars and its access to the Strait of Hormuz precisely because Tehran does not fight like a normal state, it fights through smugglers, proxies and cutouts. Every Western government with a coastline and a boat problem should be reading this one, Canberra included.

8:07pm 25 July 2026 — UAE condemns Iran's renewed attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan

The United Arab Emirates foreign ministry has condemned Iran's renewed missile and drone attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, calling them a flagrant violation of the three countries' sovereignty. The ministry said the attacks threatened the security and stability of all three, declared the UAE's full solidarity with them and backed whatever measures they take to protect themselves.

Iran insists its war is with America, yet the missiles keep coming down over Arab capitals. The UAE has now had to put out this same condemnation more than once in a single week, and every repetition drives the Gulf further towards Washington. Trump already has Iran's oil, its banking system and its only shipping lane on a 60 day leash, and the regime has now spent what little standing it had left with the neighbours it needs most.

7:59pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr demands US surrender as strikes continue

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, wrote on X that missile strikes on US targets would carry on until Washington "fully surrenders", and claimed that "every column of smoke in the region means a US military, security, or financial center has been targeted". He said the attacks were punishment for what he called the "dominant system" and would continue until Tehran had avenged deaths in southern Iran.

The boast does not survive contact with a map. Iran's punishment campaign this week has been intercepted over Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which is to say it has been landing on Arab neighbours rather than on America. Washington has meanwhile disabled tankers in the Gulf of Oman, shut Iran's ports to smuggled crude and pushed Gulf shipping onto a route Tehran does not control. Zolghadr is demanding surrender from the one government that can switch his country's income off whenever it chooses.

7:38pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's parliament moves 12 bills to tighten its grip on the Strait of Hormuz

Iran's parliament has referred 12 draft bills on what it calls strategic management of the Strait of Hormuz to its National Security and Foreign Policy Committee. Parliamentary spokesman Abbas Goudarzi told the Iranian outlet Tabnak the bills will be merged into a single piece of legislation this week before going to the floor for a full vote, with other committees reviewing maritime navigation rules, common funding pools and legal penalties for non-compliance.

The strait isn't Iran's to manage. It's an international waterway that carries about 20% of the world's oil, and a regime that has lost control of its own airspace is now reaching for the statute book because it has run out of leverage everywhere else. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its access to that water on a 60-day leash, and a floor vote in Tehran doesn't move a single US warship.

7:00pm 25 July 2026 — Iranian security source threatens a new target list inside Israel

An unnamed Iranian security source told Al Jazeera that Tehran has drawn up a fresh list of targets inside Israel to strike if Israel attacks again, claiming the sites could not be repaired or rebuilt for years and that hitting them would accelerate emigration from Israel. The threat lands as Tehran grows twitchy about the Shahid Alimohammadi site near Natanz, known in English as Pickaxe Mountain, which US and Israeli intelligence suspect houses a covert uranium enrichment plant.

This is an anonymous official briefing a foreign broadcaster about a list nobody has seen. Iran has spent the week losing tankers, telecommunications towers and control of its own internet, and it is now threatening civilians in a country it has already failed to hit at scale. The boast about driving Israelis out of their homes tells you who the regime aims at when it can't reach a military target.

6:56pm 25 July 2026 — UKMTO reports a tanker caught up in an encounter with military forces off Oman

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said on Saturday that a tanker had been involved in an encounter with military forces in the Gulf of Oman. UKMTO told vessels transiting the area to consult the latest maritime security information and to stay alert to what it called an evolving operational environment.

That stretch of water is the loading bay for Iran's sanctioned crude, and Washington has spent the past fortnight pulling Tehran's shadow tankers out of service one by one. Tehran still calls the Gulf its own front yard, yet it can no longer move a cargo through it without the US Navy deciding whether the voyage happens at all. Trump's leash on Iran runs through this water.

6:45pm 25 July 2026 — Houthi spokesman says the sea blockade on Saudi Arabia is only the first step

Mohammed Abdulsalam, chief negotiator and spokesman for Iran's Houthi proxies in Yemen, said on Saturday that the maritime blockade the group announced this week was 'only the first step' in a campaign of 'blockade for blockade', and warned Saudi Arabia it faced 'serious consequences' for its security and its economy. He accused Riyadh of hiding behind statements and unjust UN resolutions while keeping Sanaa airport closed.

Tehran's proxy has just told the world's biggest oil exporter it intends to strangle its shipping. The only blockade actually biting in this war is the one CENTCOM is running on Iran's own ports, and every threat like this one hands Trump another Gulf partner who wants American warships closer rather than further away.

6:30pm 25 July 2026 — Tehran admits it is still trading messages with Washington through mediators

Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, Resul Serdar Atas, said Iranian officials were confirming to the network on Saturday that messages are still being exchanged between Washington and Tehran and that mediators are actively involved. He said the mediators had carried proposals that Tehran is still reviewing, that there had been little progress, and that mistrust between the two sides was now the main obstacle.

Iran's public position all week has been that it will not bend. Abbas Araghchi told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation that the Americans were making excessive demands and showing no goodwill. In private his government is reading American proposals and passing notes through middlemen. Trump left the offramp open while keeping Iran's oil, its dollars and the strait in his hand, and Tehran is quietly asking what the price is.

6:30pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's own pollster finds nearly half of internet users angry at the blackout

A survey by the Iranian Students Polling Agency, commissioned by Iran's own communications ministry, found that 46.1% of internet users were 'very' or 'to a great extent' angry and frustrated at the shutdown of international internet access during the conflict with the United States. Another 47.1% said it caused them little or no anger. Most of those surveyed also opposed letting government officials keep unrestricted access while ordinary Iranians went dark.

The regime pulled the plug on its own people and then commissioned a poll to ask them how they felt about it. Nearly half said furious. Iranians spent the blackout cut off while the officials who ordered it kept their own connections live, and the regime's own pollsters wrote the resentment down.

6:22pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's Esmaeil Baghaei accuses the EU of hypocrisy over human rights

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei accused the European Union on Saturday of hypocrisy, saying the bloc's stated human rights concerns about Iran could not be reconciled with its support for military attacks on the country.

This is a government whose own judiciary is preparing to execute 10 men seized during the Isfahan uprising, lecturing Europe on human rights. Baghaei's complaint is a bid for European sympathy from a regime that jails and hangs the people he claims to speak for.

5:48pm 25 July 2026 — Iran's Mohammad Mirzaei tells state TV to let other political voices on air

Mohammad Mirzaei, a lawmaker and spokesman for the council that supervises the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, said IRIB had been told to reflect a broader range of political views "within the framework of the law" and to avoid creating controversy in its programming. He said the broadcaster should be "one of the symbols of national unity" and should invite "reasonable figures" from political groups that operate "within the framework of the system".

Every one of those qualifiers does the work. Broader views are welcome so long as they come from figures the regime has already cleared, which is what passes for reform at a broadcaster accused this week of censoring President Masoud Pezeshkian's own remarks about talks with Washington. It lands 13 nights into a war Tehran chose, with the regime's own pollster reporting that nearly half of Iranian internet users are angry about the blackout. The Islamic Republic is worried its propaganda arm has become the story.

5:27pm 25 July 2026 — Greek-crewed Patriots down Houthi missiles aimed at Saudi oil at Yanbu

An air defence battery crewed by Greek personnel in Saudi Arabia shot down two ballistic missiles fired from Yemen at oil refineries in Yanbu on Saturday, Greek security sources told Reuters. The Houthis, Tehran's proxy in Yemen, had vowed retaliation against the kingdom hours earlier.

A NATO crewed Patriot battery knocking Iranian supplied missiles out of the sky over Saudi oil is the coalition working exactly as designed. Tehran farms its war out to the Houthis and the Houthis miss, because the West quietly stitched an air defence net across the Gulf while the regime was busy issuing threats. Iran wanted to spike the oil price; instead it keeps advertising how well its enemies are protected.

4:45pm 25 July 2026 — Saudi strikes on Kamaran Island draw fresh Houthi threats of retaliation

Saudi Arabia's military said it had struck military sites in Yemen, and the Houthis said the targets included the island of Kamaran and telecommunications facilities in Hodeidah province. Kamaran sits beside the Bab al-Mandeb strait, the choke point where Iran's Yemeni proxies have been hitting Saudi oil tankers, and Saudi officials believe some of those attacks were launched from the island.

Riyadh has stopped absorbing the attacks and started removing the launch sites. Tehran built the Houthis to make the Red Sea ungovernable for everyone else, and the bill is now landing on the Yemeni sites it armed. The Houthis answered with a missile at Jizan, which is what pressure looks like when it is actually being felt.

4:36pm 25 July 2026 — Araghchi complains of no US goodwill as Washington reroutes Gulf shipping

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi complained on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kyrgyzstan that Iran had seen 'no goodwill' from the United States, griping that Washington had opened a new Gulf shipping route and told vessels to use it instead of the one Tehran designated.

Read that again: Iran is furious that ships would rather sail a route the US guarantees than one the regime 'designates'. That is the whole war in a sentence. Tehran spent the fortnight attacking tankers and menacing chokepoints, then acts wounded that the world will not trust it to run a shipping lane. No goodwill is owed to the arsonist complaining about the fire brigade, and the audience for the whine, Moscow and Beijing, tells you who Araghchi has left.

3:56pm 25 July 2026 — Houthis claim a missile attack on the Saudi city of Jizan

Iran's Houthi allies in Yemen said on Saturday they had fired a missile at the southern Saudi city of Jizan, announcing it through the group's Ansarollah channel on Telegram. Saudi authorities had earlier sent emergency alerts to residents in Jizan and the Red Sea city of Yanbu after the Houthis vowed to retaliate against the kingdom, and Saudi civil defence later said the immediate threat in both places had passed.

Iran cannot reach American warships, so it reaches for Saudi towns instead. Every siren in Jizan pushes Riyadh further into the arrangement Trump has spent the month building, where American air defence and the US Navy are what keep Saudi oil moving.

3:51pm 25 July 2026 — Kuwait signs a $16 billion deal with US giants Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said on Saturday that its $16 billion Project Peregrine has signed US firms Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR as long term partners under a lease and leaseback deal, the largest foreign direct investment in Kuwait's history. KPC expects it to generate $7.85 billion in upfront proceeds at closing.

While Iran fires missiles at the Gulf, the Gulf is signing $16 billion cheques to American capital. This is the other half of Trump's strategy, the half Beijing hates: a Gulf that ties its future to Washington's money and Washington's security guarantee rather than China's. Every deal like this makes the region a little more American and a little less exposed to the regime next door.

2:30pm 25 July 2026 — Iranian hardliners demand the bomb if the US hits Pickaxe Mountain

Iran's hardline Farhikhtegan newspaper called on Saturday for Tehran to quit the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and enrich uranium to weapons grade if the US strikes Pickaxe Mountain, a fortified underground site near Natanz that UN inspectors have never seen inside. The paper also urged Iran to extend the range of its missiles.

The mask slips a little further every day. For years Tehran insisted the bomb was forbidden by religious decree; now its own hardline press is demanding weapons grade enrichment out loud. It is proof of exactly what Trump has argued all along, that the fatwa was always a fiction and the program was always the point. Naming Pickaxe Mountain is also a tell: they are frightened it is next.

12:55pm 25 July 2026 — Senator Tim Sheehy tells the Senate the US will finish the war Iran started

Republican Senator Tim Sheehy grew emotional on the Senate floor on Friday as he remembered a friend killed by an Iranian bomb, and argued Washington must confront Tehran harder. 'We didn't start this war, but we will finish it,' Sheehy said, adding the regime has been killing Americans 'for 47 years'.

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, put into words the reality the regime's apologists keep dodging: Iran has been at war with America for decades, whatever Washington chose to call it. The point lands harder from a man who buried a friend to an Iranian bomb. This is why the pressure has backing well beyond the White House.

12:16pm 25 July 2026 — Trump says Iran wants a deal but may not be ready, and he is listening

Speaking at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Friday, Trump said Iran wants an agreement but he is not sure Tehran is ready for one. 'They want to make a deal and I'm not sure they are ready, but I would listen,' he said, adding that US strikes have severely damaged Iran's military and that Tehran will not be allowed a nuclear weapons program.

This is a man setting terms, not seeking them. Trump will 'listen', on the single condition that Iran gives up the bomb, precisely because the strikes have already done the heavy lifting. Tehran is the one that needs the off ramp; Washington is the one deciding whether to offer it. That is what negotiating from the top of the leash looks like.

10:23am 25 July 2026 — Secret Service switched Trump's plane over an Iranian missile plot

The Secret Service moved President Trump onto an older Air Force One when he left Turkey after the NATO summit, after US officials flagged a credible threat from Iran and its allies, the New York Times reported. Officials described a possible plot to fire a missile at the presidential aircraft.

If the reporting holds, Tehran just tried to kill a sitting US president in mid air, and failed at that too. It shows how cornered the regime is that a plot on Air Force One is even on the table, and it shows why Trump is in no mood to hand Iran a soft deal. A regime that reaches for the president's plane is not bargaining from strength, it is flailing.

8:32am 25 July 2026 — Bahrain intercepts a fresh wave of Iranian attacks

Bahrain's Defence Force said its air defences intercepted and destroyed several Iranian aerial attacks on Friday, accusing Tehran of pressing on with a campaign aimed at civilians in the kingdom. The interceptions followed fresh air raid sirens over Manama.

Every one of these intercepts is a small advertisement for why the US built this coalition. Iran keeps firing at a Gulf neighbour that hosts the US Fifth Fleet, and the missiles keep falling out of the sky before they land. Tehran wanted to prove it could still reach across the water; instead it keeps proving the American designed air defence umbrella over its enemies actually works.

8:13am 25 July 2026 — Lloyd's insurers warn Hormuz transit payments could void ship cover

The Lloyd's Market Association warned that vessels making transit payments to pass through the Strait of Hormuz could lose their insurance if the payments raise sanctions or terrorism law concerns. Its new model clause tells marine hull insurers they will not cover payments made to move ships through Iranian waters or the strait.

This is the financial leash doing what missiles cannot. Iran's game in Hormuz has always been the quiet toll: lean on shipping, extract a payment, call it safe passage. London's insurers have just made that toll radioactive, pay Tehran and you may sail uninsured. It squeezes the regime's protection racket without a shot, and lines the shipping world up behind Washington's sanctions rather than Iran's threats.

7:55am 25 July 2026 — US forces disable a tanker in the Gulf of Oman as Washington throttles Iran's smuggling

US forces disabled the merchant tanker M/T Lavine in the Gulf of Oman on Friday, the Associated Press reported, citing a US official. It is the latest American move to choke the seaborne smuggling that keeps Iran's oil and gas money flowing.

This is the leash tightening on the one artery that funds the regime. Every tanker the US pulls out of service is cash Tehran cannot spend on missiles for the Houthis or drones for Bahrain's skyline. Iran's outlets are already recasting these interdictions as attacks on innocent ships, but the pattern is deliberate and it is working: Washington is squeezing the money, not chasing headlines.

7:00am 25 July 2026 — US intelligence warns Iran's new supreme leader is more open to the bomb

US intelligence agencies believe Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is more willing than his late father to chase a nuclear weapon, the New York Times reported, citing officials briefed on the assessment. Mojtaba took power after Ali Khamenei died during the war and has kept a low profile since.

It is the clearest vindication yet of the pressure Trump has kept on Tehran. The old fatwa that supposedly banned the bomb died with the man who issued it, and Washington's analysts now read the son as more dangerous, not less. Officials note Iran still has not restarted enrichment, which is the whole point: the leash is holding the weapon back, and letting it slack is exactly what the hardliners are counting on.

6:41am 25 July 2026 — Trump warns a nuclear-armed Iran could have wiped out the Middle East

President Trump told reporters on Friday that a nuclear armed Iran could have erased the region entirely. 'You saw that when they shockingly started shooting at everybody all over the Middle East,' he said. 'If they had a nuclear weapon, there wouldn't be a spot... there might not be a Middle East today.'

This is the case for the whole campaign, made in one line. The regime that spent the fortnight lobbing missiles at Gulf capitals is the same one Washington has spent years keeping away from the bomb. Trump's point is blunt: the world just watched what Iran does with conventional weapons, and the only reason it cannot do worse is that the US never let it cross the nuclear line.

5:49am 25 July 2026 — Saudi cargo ship damaged in the Red Sea as the Houthi blockade tightens

The Saudi cargo ship NCC Masa took minor hull damage after it was attacked in the Red Sea on Friday, the Saudi Press Agency said, citing an official at the kingdom's General Transport Authority. The vessel and its crew were checked and cleared as safe, and it sailed on to its destination.

The attack lands four days after the Houthis, Tehran's proxy in Yemen, declared a blockade on shipping tied to Saudi Arabia through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Every chokepoint on this map runs back to Iran and the militias it funds, and it is exactly the disorder Trump's pressure campaign is built to shut down while the US keeps the Strait of Hormuz under watch.

5:43am 25 July 2026 — Trump says talks with Iran are underway and the US is 'locked and loaded'

President Trump said on Friday that Washington is talking to Tehran and has not yet decided whether to launch major new strikes, even as he warned the US military is 'locked and loaded' to escalate. 'We're talking to them right now,' Trump said. 'While we're talking, we'll see what comes in.'

This is the leash in a single sentence. Trump says he can keep hitting Iran 'piece by piece' or move 'in a more rapid fashion', and he calls a deal the smarter play only because Tehran now knows he holds the whip. Even as he talks, CENTCOM has logged a 13th consecutive night of strikes on Iranian military targets. Iran is at the table because the alternative is worse, not because Washington blinked.

5:40am 25 July 2026 — Trump says a weakened Iran opens the path for Saudi-Israel normalisation

Trump said on Friday that Saudi Arabia now has to join the Abraham Accords, arguing the one obstacle has finally been removed. 'The problem that they had with Iran, you don't have that problem anymore,' he said. 'You don't have a great power there anymore.'

This is the prize behind the whole campaign. With Iran's regional reach shredded, the Saudi and Israeli normalisation that slipped through every previous administration's fingers is suddenly back on the table, and Trump is the one holding the pen. The quiet loser is Beijing, which spent years brokering itself into the Gulf and now watches Washington set the terms.

5:39am 25 July 2026 — India confirms all 28 crew safe after tanker attack in Iranian waters

India's embassy in Tehran said on Friday that the Mozambique flagged LPG tanker DISHA was attacked in Iranian territorial waters, and that all 28 of its Indian crew are safe.

The confirmation sits awkwardly beside Tehran's own claim, pushed hours earlier through the IRGC linked Fars outlet, that a US missile strike on a gas tanker had killed two crew. New Delhi says its sailors are unharmed. It is a familiar pattern in this war, the regime reaching for a casualty figure before the facts are in, and the facts declining to cooperate.

5:07am 25 July 2026 — Araghchi runs to the SCO to complain of Trump's 'excessive demands'

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi used a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kyrgyzstan to complain to Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar about Washington's 'excessive demands' and an alleged 'breach of commitments', Iran's semi-official ISNA agency reported, while thanking Islamabad for months of mediation.

A foreign minister who was winning wouldn't be touring Central Asia thanking middlemen. Araghchi is shopping for anyone willing to carry Tehran's messages to Washington now that the direct line has gone cold since Iran rejected Trump's ceasefire. The 'excessive demands' he resents are simply the price of the leash: give up the enrichment, stop menacing the Strait, and the pressure eases. Iran keeps calling that price an outrage rather than paying it.

4:52am 25 July 2026 — Iran claims a US strike crippled a gas tanker off Oman

Iran's IRGC-linked Fars News agency claims US forces fired two missiles at an LPG tanker in the Gulf of Oman on Friday, killing two crew and disabling the vessel, alleging Washington suspected it was carrying Iranian gas. The United States has not commented and the claim is unverified.

Strip away the outrage and Tehran is describing exactly the kind of cargo Washington has spent months trying to choke off. The regime keeps oil and gas moving out through the Gulf to fund itself and to feed Beijing, so an unverified story about a stranded gas shipment, if it happened at all, is really an admission that the route is no longer safe. That is the energy leash doing its work on the one revenue stream the regime cannot survive without.

4:49am 25 July 2026 — Trump weighs a major escalation as Tehran spurns his ceasefire

The New York Times reports Donald Trump gathered his top advisers on Friday to weigh intensifying US strikes on Iran, citing four people briefed on the talks, after Tehran rejected his latest ceasefire offer and the two sides traded fire for a 13th straight night.

The timing is the message. Days out from hosting Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, the President is making clear the offramp was Iran's to take and Iran walked away from it. Trump still holds Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash, and every night Tehran keeps firing is another night it builds his case for pulling that leash tighter.

4:10am 25 July 2026 — Qatar and Britain meet in Doha to keep the Strait of Hormuz open

Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met Britain's new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband in Doha, where the two backed keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and urged both sides to stick to the US and Iran shipping deal, according to a Qatari Foreign Ministry statement.

The alignment says everything. The Gulf's wealthiest state and a G7 power are both throwing their weight behind Washington's demand that the strait stays open, while Tehran is reduced to threatening the one waterway its own oil depends on. Trump holds the leash, and his allies are helping him pull it tighter.

3:51am 25 July 2026 — Iran's judiciary chief claims no hostility to neighbours as Tehran signs deals with Iraq

Iran's judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei told visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi that Tehran has no hostility towards its neighbours, hours after the two governments signed four cooperation agreements and as Iran keeps rejecting a US ceasefire.

The claim is hard to square with the sirens going off across the Gulf. On the same day Ejei was talking about friendship, Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan were shooting Iranian drones out of the sky and Egypt was condemning Tehran for violating their sovereignty. Iran signs deals with the one neighbour it needs and bombs the rest, which is exactly why Trump is keeping the pressure on.

3:40am 25 July 2026 — France's embassy in Tehran mocks Iranian state media over a fabricated diplomats meeting

France's embassy in Tehran publicly mocked Iranian state media after the Tehran Times claimed European diplomats had gathered at the French ambassador's residence, telling the paper's journalists to check their facts with the Iranian intelligence services who keep the building under constant surveillance, in a post on X.

It's a rare moment of the regime's propaganda machine being caught inventing a story and getting laughed at for it. The Tehran Times ran a fabricated meeting to push the line that Europe is coordinating against Iran, and France simply pointed out that the Iranian spies watching its embassy would know none of it happened. When even the enemy's own surveillance debunks the story, the propaganda has stopped working.

3:29am 25 July 2026 — UN investigators warn Iran is about to execute 10 men seized in the Isfahan uprising

The UN Fact Finding Mission on Iran has urged Tehran to halt the imminent execution of 10 men arrested during protests in Isfahan, warning that the families of at least two have already been called in for final visits, after the regime hanged two others in the same case on 19 July.

This is the government Trump is squeezing. While Tehran threatens the Gulf and demands the world lift its sanctions, it's preparing to hang 10 more of its own citizens for protesting. The regime that casts itself as the victim is the one marching people to the gallows, and it's the reason the pressure campaign has such broad support.

2:21am 25 July 2026 — Pakistan explores a path to restart US-Iran talks after a Chinese push

Pakistan is quietly exploring a way to restart the stalled talks between the United States and Iran, three Pakistani sources told Reuters, after a diplomatic push initiated by China and a visit to Islamabad by Iran's Interior Minister.

The direction of travel is clear. It's Tehran, not Washington, that is casting around for a way back to the table, and one Pakistani official said halting Iran's attacks on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states would be the price of admission. Trump's leash on Iran's oil, dollars and shipping is doing exactly what it was built to do, and even Tehran's backers are now looking for the exit.

3:32am 25 July 2026 — Trump thanks Bulgaria after its parliament clears US use of Bezmer air base

Trump has thanked Bulgaria's Rumen Radev after Bulgaria's parliament approved allowing the US military to use Bezmer Air Base in support of American operations against Iran, a vote taken in the face of Tehran's warnings to Sofia. "Thank you Prime Minister Radev!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, sharing a report on the result. Radev is Bulgaria's president, not its prime minister.

Iran threatened Bulgaria over exactly this three days ago, and Bulgaria went ahead and voted for it anyway. That is the pattern of the whole month. Every time Tehran warns a capital off helping the Americans, the capital signs up, and the list of governments still willing to take Iran's calls gets shorter.

3:18am 25 July 2026 — US and Britain to convene a Hormuz shipping coalition in London next week

The United States and Britain are planning a high level meeting in London next week on an international coalition to protect commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Axios reported on Friday, citing two European diplomats and two other people familiar with the matter. The date and agenda are not settled, but the meeting could draw in defence ministers and senior military commanders from Western and regional countries, and Washington wants allies to contribute de-mining vessels, naval ships and drones.

Iran's one real weapon in this war is the threat to shut the strait, and the answer taking shape in London is to make the strait everybody's business instead of Tehran's. Once allied de-miners and frigates are working those lanes under a shared flag, the blockade Iran keeps promising stops being a threat and turns into a job for other people's navies. Australia buys most of its refined fuel from overseas refineries and has a direct stake in who ends up guarding them.

3:05am 25 July 2026 — Wall Street Journal says Bahrain and Kuwait secretly bombed Iran with UAE air cover

Bahrain and Kuwait secretly sent warplanes to strike military sites inside Iran in early July, their first direct retaliation against Tehran, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The strikes hit drone and missile storage depots and other military sites, and the United Arab Emirates provided intelligence and defensive air cover for the operation.

Iran's whole Gulf strategy rested on the assumption that the Arab monarchies would never shoot back, that they would absorb the drones, complain at the UN and quietly lean on Washington to stop. What Tehran has actually produced is Arab air forces flying combat missions against Iran with an Emirati air umbrella over the top of them. Iran did not just fail to split the coalition against it. It went and built one.

2:52am 25 July 2026 — Iran's Abdollahi vows to kill one American for every Iranian killed

Major General Ali Abdollahi, commander of Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, told IRGC-linked Tasnim News that Iran would kill one American service member for every Iranian citizen killed in US attacks. "For every proud citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran who is martyred, one American force will be sent to hell," he said, adding that Iran had prepared "free, direct tickets to hell" for US troops.

Going by his own government's casualty figure released the same day, Abdollahi has just promised to kill 59 Americans. The Guards have been issuing versions of this threat for four weeks, and what they have actually delivered is drones into a Kuwaiti border post, sirens over Manama and a crash at Erbil airport. A threat this loud, aimed at forces Iran cannot reach, is a confession dressed as a warning.

2:20am 25 July 2026 — US Embassy in Jerusalem tells Americans to stay alert and expect flights to be cancelled

The US Embassy in Jerusalem said on Friday that tensions in the region could escalate and disrupt travel, telling American citizens to exercise increased caution, stay alert, keep a low profile and be ready for flight cancellations, airspace closures and other disruptions.

Embassy advisories are the least dramatic documents a war produces and often the most informative. Washington is telling its own citizens to expect the airspace to shut, which is not the posture of a government that thinks this wraps up next week. Any Australian with travel booked through the Gulf or Israel should be reading the same signal.

1:36am 25 July 2026 — Trump says Xi and Putin have both promised him they will not arm Iran

Trump said on Truth Social on Friday that Xi Jinping told him at their recent Beijing meeting that he would not, in Trump's words, "under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran", and that the assurance covered Chinese companies. Trump said Vladimir Putin had told him the same thing. "Therefore, two major Countries that people speak of often in terms of Iran are, in my opinion, not participating," he wrote. "If they did, it would be very bad for them."

This is the quiet half of the campaign. Iran's war runs on resupply, and the only two governments capable of resupplying it have now both given Trump their word that they won't. Whatever Beijing and Moscow are calculating privately, the President has put their assurances on the public record, where breaking them carries a price. That is how you strangle a war without firing a shot at the people bankrolling it.

1:15am 25 July 2026 — An Omani delegation lands in Tehran to talk Hormuz as Muscat insists the strait stays open

An Omani delegation arrived in Tehran on Friday to discuss a mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media reported, and Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Omani counterpart Badr Albusaidi discussed maritime security and ways of preventing further escalation. Oman has publicly reaffirmed that vital waterways including Hormuz must stay open to international navigation and free of anything that disrupts traffic or global trade.

Oman is the most patient neighbour Tehran has, the one Gulf state that has spent decades keeping a diplomatic line open to the mullahs. Even Oman is now saying out loud that the strait is not Iran's to close. When your last friendly mediator turns up to negotiate the terms of a waterway you claim to control, the leverage has already changed hands.

1:07am 25 July 2026 — Iran's Health Ministry puts its own death toll at 59 after 13 nights of US strikes

Health Ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour said on Friday that 59 people had been killed and 666 wounded in US airstrikes on Iran since 27 June. The figures come from the Iranian government and have not been independently verified.

Take Tehran's own number at face value for a moment. Thirteen consecutive nights of strikes across a country of more than 90 million people, hitting naval bases, missile depots, telecommunications towers and Revolutionary Guards facilities, and the regime can produce 59 dead. That is what a precision campaign looks like when it is aimed at hardware. Then look at what Iran has been aiming at: apartment blocks in Manama, a border crossing in Kuwait, an airport in Iraqi Kurdistan.

12:46am 25 July 2026 — US Treasury sanctions 13 targets in Babak Zanjani's sanctions-busting network

The US Treasury announced sanctions on Friday against four individuals and nine entities linked to Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani, hitting parts of his network across financial services, gold and precious gems, digital assets, transport and infrastructure. The designations cover companies tied to Zanjani's Iran-based Dot One conglomerate, along with firms and executives behind the Zedcex and Zedxion digital asset exchanges in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which Treasury said had processed funds linked to wallets attributed to the Revolutionary Guards.

Zanjani is the man Iran leaned on to shift billions around sanctions the last time the screws went on, so going after his crypto rails and his gold traders says something about where this campaign is heading. The bombers close the strait. Treasury closes the bank accounts. Tehran needs both of them open and is losing both at once.

12:39am 25 July 2026 — Kuwait's army says it is shooting down hostile Iranian drones

Kuwait's military said on Friday that its air defences were confronting attacks by hostile drones launched from Iran, and that any explosions residents heard were its own interceptors doing their work. The armed forces told the public to follow the safety instructions issued by the authorities.

That makes four Gulf states Iran has now attacked in a war it insists is only with Washington. Kuwait's own army called it heinous Iranian aggression in its statement, which is not the language of a country Tehran can still pretend it is courting.

12:27am 25 July 2026 — Netanyahu will fly to Washington on Tuesday to meet Trump

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Washington on 27 July to meet Trump, according to a statement from Netanyahu's office.

Netanyahu lands in Washington on day 16 of an American campaign that Israel is not flying in, at a moment when Tehran is openly threatening to hit Israel first and widen the war. That timing sets the agenda by itself. Whatever the two of them settle on Tuesday, Iran will be the last to hear about it.

10:38pm 24 July 2026 — Jordan shoots down 13 Iranian missiles and drones as the Guards claim a hit on al-Azraq

Jordan's military said it intercepted seven Iranian missiles and six drones on Friday, according to Jordanian state television. Hours earlier Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed the 27th wave of what they call Operation Nasr 2 had struck the US al-Azraq air base in Jordan, damaged several warplanes and hit accommodation used by American troops, and destroyed a Patriot battery and a surveillance balloon in Erbil.

Hold those two statements side by side. The Guards say they smashed warplanes and a Patriot battery. Jordan says it shot down all 13 things Iran fired. One of those accounts comes with wreckage on the ground that reporters can photograph, and the other comes from a press office in Tehran that has now claimed the same Jordanian base four times this month.

10:05pm 24 July 2026 — Iran's state TV reports fresh explosions at the southern port of Jask

Iranian state television said several explosions were heard in Jask, in Hormozgan province, at about 2:30pm local time on Friday. Jask sits on the Gulf of Oman just outside the Strait of Hormuz, hosts Revolutionary Guards naval and missile units, and was struck by the US campaign a day earlier.

Jask is not a random dot on the coastline. It is where Iran keeps the anti-ship missiles and drone launchers that have been used to wreck tankers in the Hormuz approaches, which makes it precisely the kind of target Trump has promised to keep hitting for as long as ships keep getting attacked. Tehran gets to pick the day that stops.

9:23pm 24 July 2026 — Bahrain's air defences destroy another Iranian barrage aimed at civilians

The Bahrain Defence Force said on Friday that its air defences had intercepted and destroyed a number of Iranian aerial attacks on the kingdom, and accused Tehran of running a systematic campaign against civilians and private property. It said all military units remain at their highest level of readiness, and warned residents away from debris while Royal Field Engineering teams clear unexploded remnants.

Bahrain is a kingdom of about 1.5 million people that has never fired a shot at Iran. It hosts the US Fifth Fleet, and because Tehran cannot touch the Fifth Fleet it throws drones at the neighbourhood around it instead. Every one of those drones swatted out of the sky over Manama drives another Gulf capital further into the American column, which is the exact opposite of what Iran's generals told themselves would happen.

6:45pm 24 July 2026 — Iran's drone war spills into Iraq as a crash shuts Erbil airport

A drone came down near Erbil International Airport in northern Iraq on Friday, forcing a temporary halt to flights before they resumed a short time later. Two security sources told Reuters that firefighters were still working to bring the blaze at the crash site under control. No casualties have been reported.

Iraq is not a party to this war, and its Kurdish north is the one corner of the country that actually functions. It keeps wearing the debris of Tehran's drone campaign anyway. Every stray airframe on an airport apron is another argument for taking the launchers away.

6:13pm 24 July 2026 — Iran claims drone strikes on four US bases in Kuwait including Ali Al Salem

Iran's army says it hit three American facilities in Kuwait, Camp Arifjan, Camp Doha and Camp Adairi, with Arash suicide drones, and the Revolutionary Guards separately claimed to have destroyed six buildings and an ammunition depot at the US-operated Ali Al Salem Air Base, asserting that American personnel were killed or wounded. Al Jazeera reported another wave of drone attacks on Kuwait, and neither Washington nor Kuwait has confirmed a single one of the regime's damage claims.

Look at what Tehran is boasting about. Not a US carrier, not a target it can reach inside a war zone, but a neutral Arab state that has spent this entire war shooting Iranian drones out of the sky above its own suburbs. The Islamic Republic's answer to losing 13 nights in a row is to add another country to the list of nations it has made permanent enemies of.

5:46pm 24 July 2026 — Iran's trade with China collapses 75% as Hormuz traffic falls to a single tanker

New Chinese customs figures show Iran's non-oil trade with Beijing fell to US$830 million between March and June, down from US$3.3 billion in the same months last year, a fall of roughly 75%. Kpler ship-tracking data has Chinese ports unloading about 550,000 barrels a day of Iranian crude in the first half of July, against 1.74 million barrels a day in April. Just one tanker crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, the lowest daily count since 7 May, while Kuwait's state marketer put its own crude at US$102.39 a barrel, up US$7.68 in a day.

This is the leash tightening on exactly the neck it was meant for. Tehran squeezed the strait to punish the world and has instead strangled its own exports and the one customer keeping the regime solvent. Beijing is paying for Iran's tantrum, and Beijing was always the audience this campaign was written for.

5:42pm 24 July 2026 — Bahrain sounds its sirens again as Iran's drones reach another Gulf neighbour

Bahrain's Interior Ministry told citizens and residents to stay calm and head for the nearest safe place after air raid sirens sounded across the kingdom on Friday evening, the second such warning in Manama in a little over three hours.

Bahrain has no quarrel with Tehran. It hosts the US Fifth Fleet, and in the Islamic Republic's arithmetic that makes 1.5 million people fair game. Every siren over Manama does Trump's diplomatic work for him, because it shows the Gulf exactly who the danger in this region is.

5:23pm 24 July 2026 — US missile strike damages an IRGC naval base on Iran's Caspian coast

A US missile strike damaged equipment at a Revolutionary Guards naval base at Zibakenar on the Caspian coast at about 7.30am local time, the deputy governor of Gilan province for political and security affairs, Ali Bagheri, told the state news agency ISNA. He said preliminary assessments showed no reports of human casualties so far. Al Jazeera reported explosions in multiple Iranian cities on Friday morning.

The Caspian is the far side of the country from the Gulf, the shoreline Tehran has always treated as its safe rear area. That it is now being hit says the Guards have run out of places to hide the navy that started this.

4:46pm 24 July 2026 — US strikes reach five Iranian provinces and the border town of Piranshahr

US missiles and drones struck Isfahan, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Markazi and Hormozgan early on Friday, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported, and a separate strike hit Piranshahr in West Azarbaijan near the Iraqi border, according to the head of that province's crisis management organisation. Iranian officials say four people were killed and five wounded near Ahvaz, and two were injured on the outskirts of Khorramabad, in what Al Jazeera logged as another round of US attacks across Iran.

Five provinces plus the Kurdish frontier is not a warning shot, it is a map of where the Guards keep their drones, their depots and their coastal radars. Tehran can hand the arsenal over or keep watching it burn one province at a time.

4:32pm 24 July 2026 — Trump vows to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship attacked

President Donald Trump has vowed to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's chief negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, answered that nobody will sell oil through a region where Tehran cannot, writing on X that the equation of the war is simple, either everyone or no one.

That is the leash in a single sentence. Tehran priced this war on the assumption Washington would answer a burning tanker with a statement of concern. Trump has turned every hull into an invoice, payable in the infrastructure the regime needs to keep the lights on at home.

3:35pm 24 July 2026 — Araghchi threatens the countries hosting US forces with Iranian retaliation

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's foreign ministers meeting in Kyrgyzstan that the source of any attack on Iran is a “legitimate target” for its armed forces, and that any state taking part in, cooperating with or assisting the strikes bears international responsibility. Al Jazeera reported that Iran would hold accountable any state assisting the US.

Strip the legal costume off it and Araghchi has just told Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar that their airbases and power stations are on his list because American aircraft fly from their soil. Tehran spent 20 years telling the Gulf that Washington was the threat. It has taken 13 nights to talk them out of it.

2:54pm 24 July 2026 — Iran's army claims drone attacks on US bases in Bahrain and Jordan

Iran's army says drones flown in its “Saegheh” operation struck fuel storage, equipment warehouses and accommodation for American forces at Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, and aircraft shelters, maintenance hangars and housing at Azraq Air Base in Jordan. Bahrain's Interior Ministry had sounded its sirens shortly beforehand, and neither government has confirmed any damage.

Jordan and Bahrain are Arab states that were assured this war would never reach them. Tehran has now attacked both inside a single afternoon and still expects the region to pretend America is the destabilising force.

2:06pm 24 July 2026 — Trump says Iran's frozen billions will pay for the ships its proxies have wrecked

Donald Trump says damage to ships and cargo in the Strait of Hormuz will be paid for out of “Iranian Money that the United States has in its possession, and controls”, calling it “the fair and equitable thing to do”. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the plan an “incendiary precedent” and warned that once governments normalise confiscation, “no one's assets are safe”, a reaction Al Jazeera reported as strong condemnation from Tehran. Estimates put the frozen Iranian holdings at about US$100 billion.

Araghchi's objection is not to theft, it is to consequences. The regime mined a shipping lane, set fire to other people's tankers and assumed the bill would land on insurers in London and Singapore. Trump has simply forwarded it to the arsonist.

2:01pm 24 July 2026 — CENTCOM completes a 13th straight night of strikes and says Hormuz stays open

US Central Command says it has finished a 13th consecutive night of strikes on Iran, hitting military command centres, drone storage, communications networks, coastal surveillance sites and maritime capabilities. CENTCOM says the Strait of Hormuz remains open and commercial vessels are still transiting it with US military support, with more than 50,000 American service members now operating across the Middle East.

Thirteen nights in, the scoreboard is not complicated. Iran's navy is being dismantled piece by piece, the strait Tehran swore it had shut is still carrying ships, and the regime's only reply has been to fire drones at its neighbours. That is what losing looks like when it happens slowly.

8:11am 24 July 2026 — Iran claims its Guards shot down a US Tomahawk over Kerman province

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are claiming a local air defence team intercepted and destroyed a US Tomahawk cruise missile over Kahnuj in Kerman province, an assertion carried by the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency and sourced to the city's own Guards commander. No debris, no footage and no independent confirmation has been produced.

Treat it the way Tehran's commanders privately do, as morale management for a population sitting under a bombing campaign. The Islamic Republic keeps announcing interceptions it cannot show while American missiles go on landing at its refineries, its radar sites and its ports. Each unverifiable claim is really an admission that the strikes are getting through.

7:52am 24 July 2026 — Ted Cruz says Trump will strip Iran's arsenal without a long troop deployment

Republican Senator Ted Cruz has told Iran International he expects President Donald Trump to avoid any sustained deployment of US troops inside Iran, defending the strikes as necessary to eliminate Tehran's military capabilities and stop the regime obtaining a nuclear weapon.

That is the doctrine in a sentence, and it is why this campaign is working where 20 years of occupation did not. There are no divisions to bog down in the desert because Trump is not buying ground. He is removing the regime's ability to shoot, from the air and the sea, while Iran's oil revenue and its access to dollars stay switched off.

7:30am 24 July 2026 — Iranian media report fresh explosions on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz

Iranian media are reporting a new round of explosions on Qeshm Island, the largest island in the Strait of Hormuz, hours after Iranian state media said a US missile had struck the same island. Tehran has not said what was hit, and the reports remain unverified.

Qeshm is not a random dot on a map. It sits astride the shipping lane the regime keeps threatening to close, and it carries the radar and anti-ship missile infrastructure Tehran would need to actually close it. Striking it twice inside a night is Washington making the point that the strait is not Iran's to shut.

6:45am 24 July 2026 — Iran's Araghchi threatens Trump with a heavier price for any deal

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has accused what he called compromised individuals in the Trump administration of burying their heads in the sand and focusing only on the 2028 election, writing on X that their aggression will only ensure the President pays a heavier price for the deal he is trying to achieve.

Read it again, because it is a confession dressed as a threat. Araghchi is not walking away from a deal, he is haggling over its price, which tells you Tehran wants sanctions relief far more than it wants this war. Iran broke the ceasefire by hitting tankers in Hormuz, and it is now learning that the bill goes up every night it holds out.

5:51am 24 July 2026 — Kuwait's army says its air defences are intercepting Iranian drones and missiles

Kuwait's military says its air defences are engaging what it described as hostile Iranian missile and drone attacks, hours after two drone strikes hit the Abdali border terminal and a command building near the Iraqi frontier. Kuwait's Defence Ministry has confirmed the crossing was struck and says it strongly condemns the continued Iranian attacks.

The Islamic Republic is now firing on a neutral Gulf Arab state that never joined this war, and Kuwait's answer was to condemn Tehran and reach for its interceptors. That is the pattern of the entire campaign. Iran cannot reach the Americans, so it hits the neighbours, and the neighbours respond by binding themselves tighter to Washington.

5:10am 24 July 2026 — Iran's Tasnim claims allied drones struck Kuwait's Abdali border crossing

Iran's IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency has claimed for the first time that Iran-allied armed groups carried out two drone strikes on Kuwait's Abdali-Safwan border terminal and a command building, calling it retaliation for a US airstrike near the Shalamcheh crossing. Kuwait's Defence Ministry had already confirmed the crossing was hit for a second time on Thursday, causing material damage but no casualties, and Kuwait says it strongly condemns the continued Iranian attacks.

It is a revealing admission. Tehran is now openly boasting about bombing a neutral Gulf Arab neighbour, and the region's answer has been swift. Kuwait is condemning the strikes and Jordan is calling them a flagrant violation of Kuwait's sovereignty, with one Gulf capital after another lining up behind Washington. Every drone Iran fires at its neighbours does Trump's work for him, driving the Gulf deeper into the US camp and tightening the economic and naval leash he already holds on Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz.

4:50am 24 July 2026 — IMO chief condemns Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping as indefensible

The world's shipping regulator has branded the fresh attacks on Red Sea vessels indefensible, after Iran's Houthi proxies hit two Saudi oil tankers overnight. International Maritime Organization Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said he unequivocally condemned the strikes and warned of the pollution risk hanging over the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, the IMO said.

It is another neutral umpire lining up against Tehran. Every tanker the Houthis torch on Iran's orders hands Trump a cleaner case that the regime, not the US blockade, is the menace to the sea lanes the whole world, China included, depends on.

4:47am 24 July 2026 — Trump says Iran is not ready for a deal and needs more of the same

Donald Trump says Iran is not ready to make a deal and needs more of the same, declaring the US is doing extremely well as his pressure campaign on the regime grinds on. Speaking at the White House, the President said Tehran had evil intentions and would never be allowed a nuclear weapon, he told reporters.

This is the leash doing its work. Trump is in no rush to hand Iran an off ramp while its oil sits stranded offshore and its currency slides, and every night he waits the price of a deal climbs. The regime wants relief, he wants surrender, and only one of them is running out of road.

4:45am 24 July 2026 — Iran's Araghchi flies to Kyrgyzstan for a Shanghai bloc summit

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is heading to Kyrgyzstan for a meeting of the China and Russia led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, as the cornered regime leans on its eastern patrons for cover. Russia's Sergei Lavrov has also touched down for the foreign ministers' gathering.

It shows where Tehran now shops for friends. Shut out of the West and squeezed by Trump's blockade, the regime is running east to Beijing and Moscow, the very capitals with the most to lose if the Strait of Hormuz slams shut and the cheap Iranian crude keeping China's factories humming dries up.

4:32am 24 July 2026 — US Central Command disables one ship and turns back 12 more enforcing its Iran blockade

US Central Command says it has disabled one commercial ship and redirected 12 others since it resumed its naval blockade of Iran nine days ago, tightening the squeeze on the traffic moving in and out of Iranian ports and coastal waters, CENTCOM said in an update.

It is the leash tightening in real time. Every hull Trump's Navy turns back is more of Iran's oil and hard currency stranded offshore, and a message to the real audience in Beijing that the cheap crude keeping China's factories humming can be cut off the moment Tehran pushes too far.

4:13am 24 July 2026 — Western intelligence warns Iran may try to strike Israel first, Ynet reports

Western intelligence agencies believe Iran may be looking to drag Israel into a direct fight and could move first, Ynet reported, gambling that Israel is reluctant to reopen the war.

If Tehran is betting that opening a second front buys it leverage, it has misjudged the moment. Trump already holds Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait on a short leash, and a first strike on Israel would hand Washington every reason it needs to pull that leash tight.

4:09am 24 July 2026 — France denies Iran's claim it evacuated its embassy in Tehran

France has knocked down a report by Iran's IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency that it had evacuated its embassy in Tehran, a claim the Guards' mouthpiece pushed after Britain shut its own embassy doors this week. Paris says its diplomatic mission remains in place.

It's a small but telling lie. With Trump's campaign grinding into its 12th night, Tehran's propaganda arms are now inventing Western retreats that aren't happening, hoping to paint a regime on the back foot as the side everyone else is fleeing. France staying put says the opposite.

3:49am 24 July 2026 — Israel's Katz warns any attack on Israel will draw a devastating response

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has warned Tehran that any attack on Israel would draw a devastating response, speaking after a high-level security consultation with the country's senior military and defence leadership.

The warning is aimed as much at Washington's critics as at Tehran. While Iran fires on Gulf neighbours and threatens allied bases, Israel and the US keep calmly setting the terms, and Katz is making clear the leash Trump holds on Iran has Jerusalem's full weight behind it.

3:43am 24 July 2026 — UK says its armed forces stand ready after Iran's warning over US bombers

Britain says its armed forces are ready to defend the country after Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned of consequences for letting US bombers operate from UK bases, with London signalling it will not be intimidated into closing its runways to Washington.

Iran's threat only tightens the alliance it hoped to split. Rather than spooking London into distancing itself from the campaign, Tehran has pushed a key ally to publicly back the US basing that keeps the pressure on, another sign the coalition is hardening around Trump, not fracturing.

3:12am 24 July 2026 — Two China-linked supertankers run 4 million barrels of Saudi crude through Bab el-Mandeb

Two China-linked supertankers carrying a combined four million barrels of Saudi crude have transited the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, CBS News reported, citing MarineTraffic, as buyers scramble to keep oil moving around Iran's Hormuz chokehold and the Houthi threat in the Red Sea.

The cargoes underline who really loses if the Gulf stays shut. China leans on this crude far more than America does, yet it's the US Navy's Omani lane keeping any of it moving at all, and Trump still holds the tap.

3:07am 24 July 2026 — Iran's Fars claims blasts near Larak and Qeshm before Tasnim denies any strike

Iran's IRGC-linked Fars news agency reported explosions near the southern islands of Qeshm and Larak in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday evening, only for fellow Guards outlet Tasnim to insist within the hour that no blast or projectile impact had been recorded on Larak.

The confusion tells its own story. As US strikes press onto the very islands that guard the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran's rival propaganda arms cannot even agree on what's been hit. It's a regime scrambling to spin the story while Washington controls the map.

3:00am 24 July 2026 — Kuwait says Iranian drones strike the Abdali border crossing with Iraq

Kuwait's Defence Ministry says hostile drones carried out multiple strikes on the Abdali crossing on its northern border with Iraq on Thursday evening, causing material damage but no casualties, Al Jazeera reported. It came hours after Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed a separate strike on a base in Kuwait and warned Britain over the use of its bases.

Kuwait is now the third Gulf state Iran has dragged into its war, and every drone that lands on a neighbour's soil hardens the coalition forming against Tehran. The regime keeps casting itself as the victim while it rains munitions on the very states pleading for calm.

2:31am 24 July 2026 — Iran spurns the latest US mediation offer as Trump's pressure tightens

Iran's leadership hasn't accepted the newest proposal put to it by regional mediators, Israel's Channel 12 reported, citing two sources involved in the talks. "We're trying, but the Iranians are not cooperating," one told the broadcaster.

It fits the pattern Marco Rubio spelled out hours earlier: Tehran keeps walking away, and every night it does the price climbs. With oil past US$100, its currency crumbling and the Strait of Hormuz choking its own exports, Iran is refusing the one thing that would ease the squeeze, and only Trump holds the valve.

2:19am 24 July 2026 — Britain, France, the UAE and Qatar condemn Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers

Britain, France, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have all condemned the Iran-backed Houthi attacks on Saudi oil tankers, with the UK Foreign Office declaring on X: "We stand in solidarity with Saudi Arabia and urge the Houthis to stop." France called the strikes "irresponsible".

The united front lines the region up behind Washington and against Tehran. Four governments in a single night naming Iran's proxies as the aggressor and Saudi Arabia as the victim is exactly the diplomatic isolation Trump has been building, tightening around a regime that thought outsourcing its war to the Houthis bought it deniability.

2:00am 24 July 2026 — Israel says Mossad and Shin Bet foiled an Iranian plot to kill senior officials

Israel's Mossad and Shin Bet have thwarted an Iranian plot to slip an operational cell into the country to assassinate senior officials, Israeli media reported, saying Tehran recruited foreign criminal networks it dubbed "proxies of proxies" to hide its hand. The lead recruit was picked up in France and deported, while his Iranian handler was killed during the war.

It's the regime's playbook in miniature: outsource the killing, deny the fingerprints. The plot's collapse is another win for the intelligence services that have spent this war staying a step ahead of Tehran.

1:52am 24 July 2026 — US missile strikes Iran's Qeshm Island on the Strait of Hormuz, state media says

A US missile has struck the coast near Suza on Iran's Qeshm Island, in the heart of the Strait of Hormuz, at about 6:50pm local time, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, with authorities still assessing the damage. Guards outlet Fars also reported explosions near neighbouring Larak Island, though Tasnim later said no impact was recorded there.

Qeshm sits astride the shipping lanes and hosts several Iranian military sites, so the strike drives the campaign right into the mouth of the strait Tehran keeps threatening to close. The message is blunt: the waterway Iran wants to weaponise is the one the US can reach at will.

1:45am 24 July 2026 — Oil tops US$100 a barrel as Iran's Hormuz squeeze and Houthi attacks choke supply

Crude has pushed past US$100 a barrel for the first time since May as Iran's mining of the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers throttle the world's most important oil route, Al Jazeera reported.

Even Iran's own parliament speaker admits the pain is landing on Tehran, not Washington, and the regime is now rerouting its exports north to dodge the very chokehold it created. The barrels that keep moving move under US Navy escort through the Omani lane.

1:43am 24 July 2026 — Trump is weighing a massive strike on Iran, Israeli and Arab media report

US President Donald Trump is considering a "massive" attack on Iran, Israel's Channel 12 reported on Thursday, with Al Jazeera carrying the same account of his deliberations as US strikes on Iranian targets widen.

If the warnings were the leash, this is Trump reaching for the collar. Every Iranian missile fired at Gulf shipping and every proxy attack on a Saudi tanker narrows Tehran's room to bluff, and the White House is now signalling it will meet escalation with overwhelming force rather than another statement.

12:59am 24 July 2026 — Reuters says Iran flew IRGC commanders, missiles and gold to the Houthis in Yemen

Iran flew Revolutionary Guard commanders, military advisers and missile and drone equipment into Yemen on 13 July to bolster the Houthis' ability to menace Red Sea shipping, Reuters reported, a charge Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly levelled at Tehran. Reuters said between 10 and 21 Guards personnel, plus gold to fund Houthi operations, were aboard a Mahan Air flight from Tehran.

So much for Iran's claim that the Houthis act alone. The reporting hands Trump the receipts for holding Tehran responsible for every tanker its proxies set alight, and it catches the regime spending gold on missiles abroad while its own workers go months without wages at home.

12:53am 24 July 2026 — Senate blocks a bid to curb Trump's Iran war as the House rebuke falls flat

A Democratic push to force Trump to seek congressional sign-off for the Iran campaign has collapsed in the Senate, which voted 49 to 47 against advancing the war powers resolution, according to Al Jazeera. Hours earlier the House passed its own non-binding version 214 to 208, with four Republicans crossing the floor.

The theatre changes nothing. The House measure carries no legal force and the Senate has now killed the only vote that could have bound the President's hands, leaving Trump free to keep the pressure on Tehran while his critics settle for a symbolic protest.

10:32pm 23 July 2026 — Trump warns Iran of major military punishment over Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers

Donald Trump has warned the US will hold Iran directly responsible if its Houthi proxies keep hitting shipping, writing on Truth Social that after the Houthis fired on two Saudi ships overnight, "major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves" if it happens again.

The message lands the accountability exactly where it belongs. Tehran arms, funds and directs the Houthis, so Trump is refusing to let it hide behind a proxy, and France, Britain, Qatar and the UAE all lined up to condemn the tanker attacks as a reckless escalation.

10:00pm 23 July 2026 — Trump makes the US-Saudi civil nuclear deal conditional on joining the Abraham Accords

Donald Trump has told Saudi Arabia it will only get its US civil nuclear deal if it joins the Abraham Accords, posting on Truth Social that the agreement covers civilian power only, bars uranium enrichment and is "totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords".

It's leverage, not charity. With Iran's oil, its currency and the Strait of Hormuz already on a tightening US leash, Trump is using the nuclear carrot to pull Riyadh into the same peace bloc that has boxed Tehran in, and Benjamin Netanyahu's office called a Saudi signature "an historic leap forward for peace".

7:35pm 23 July 2026 — Oman races to revive Yemen talks after Iran's Houthi proxies hit Saudi tankers

Oman said on Thursday it's coordinating with Saudi Arabia, Yemeni factions and the UN's Yemen envoy to restart peace talks, moving to contain the fallout after Iran-backed Houthi militants attacked Saudi tankers in the Red Sea.

It's the same script every time Tehran lashes out. Iran's proxies choke a waterway and America's Gulf partners scramble to steady the region while Washington keeps up the pressure. Trump still holds Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash, and every Houthi provocation only sharpens the point that the real prize behind this fight is China's energy lifeline through the Gulf.

7:30pm 23 July 2026 — Bahrain sounds sirens and tells residents to take shelter

Bahrain's Interior Ministry sounded sirens across the kingdom on Thursday and urged citizens and residents to stay calm and head to the nearest safe place, with AFP correspondents reporting the alerts in the capital, Manama.

Bahrain is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, so Iran's willingness to put a close American ally under threat shows exactly why Washington isn't easing off. Every siren over a friendly Gulf capital is another reminder that it's Tehran, not Trump, widening this war.

7:26pm 23 July 2026 — Two strikes hit Iran's Konarak as the campaign presses into the southeast

Two projectiles struck the city of Konarak in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province on Thursday, a provincial security official said, with Iranian state broadcaster IRIB confirming the hits on the far southern coast.

Konarak sits beside an Iranian naval base near the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, the very stretch Tehran has used to menace shipping around Hormuz. Reaching that coast tightens the squeeze on Iran's navy, and twelve nights in the message from Washington hasn't changed: the strikes stop when Iran does.

5:42pm 23 July 2026 — Gulf states demand the UN Security Council act to deter Iran

The Gulf Cooperation Council urged the UN Security Council to take decisive action to deter Iran and condemned Houthi threats to shipping, telling a high-level Council debate that Tehran's attacks demand the world meet its legal responsibilities.

This is the Arab world's own verdict. The GCC says Iran's leadership has chosen escalation over development and is harming the Iranian people themselves, while its proxies threaten to shut the Bab al-Mandab and choke global trade. When Iran's own neighbours are the ones begging the UN to rein Tehran in, it guts the regime's claim to speak for the region and lines the Gulf up squarely behind the pressure Trump is applying.

6:50pm 23 July 2026 — Iraqi PM Ali al-Zaidi lands in Tehran days after Trump courted him at the White House

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi touched down in Tehran on Thursday for an official visit at the invitation of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iraq's government confirmed, arriving with a high-level delegation to sign cooperation deals.

The red carpet in Tehran comes just eight days after Trump hosted al-Zaidi at the White House, called him 'a fantastic champion' and promised 'a lot of deals' on Iraqi oil and gas, and after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Iraqi leader to his face to disarm the Iran-aligned militias behind hundreds of attacks on US troops. Iran has spent two decades using Baghdad as its back door, the place its sanctioned oil got laundered and its proxies got paid, and now that Trump is buying that door off it, Tehran is scrambling to reel its neighbour back in. The tug-of-war over Iraq is really a fight over the pipelines and cash that keep the regime, and its patrons in Beijing, in business.

6:35pm 23 July 2026 — Rubio says Iran is begging for a deal and the price rises every night

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila, said Iran is calling Washington every day begging for a deal, that the price on Tehran climbs every night the strikes continue, and that America's goal is a denuclearised Iran that can never build a bomb, not regime change.

This is what leverage sounds like. Rubio is not asking Tehran for anything, he is naming the price and watching it rise, because Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a leash and tightens it every night the regime holds out. Iran can end the strikes tomorrow by giving up the weapon it was never allowed to have. Until then the calls keep coming and the terms keep hardening.

6:26pm 23 July 2026 — Jordan intercepts four Iranian missiles and six drones

Jordan's armed forces shot down four Iranian missiles and six drones on Thursday, the kingdom's official Petra news agency reported, as Iranian fire again spilled across the border of a US ally.

Iran keeps making Washington's case for it. Tehran cannot land a clean blow on American forces, so its missiles and drones stray into Jordan, a US partner, and get knocked out of the sky. Every intercepted barrage hands Trump another reason to keep the pressure on and pushes one more Arab capital firmly onto the American side of the ledger.

4:44pm 23 July 2026 — Iran's parliament claims it has sent Trump a court summons over the war

A senior Iranian lawmaker claims Tehran has sent a court summons for US President Donald Trump to the White House through international channels. Manouchehr Mottaki, a Tehran MP and former foreign minister, told Iran's ISNA news agency that "some of the letters have gone to the White House and have been returned to the judiciary through international channels," days after Iran's judiciary said it had issued indictments against Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war.

It is theatre, and empty theatre at that. A regime whose oil exports, dollars and Strait of Hormuz shipping all sit under American pressure is reduced to mailing out summonses no court on earth can enforce, even as US forces pound its military for a twelfth straight night. Tehran cannot stop the strikes, so it posts Trump a letter. The gesture measures how little leverage Iran has left.

4:30pm 23 July 2026 — Jordan and Saudi Arabia's top diplomats meet to coordinate an Iran de-escalation push

Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and his Saudi counterpart held talks on Thursday over the widening conflict and maritime security, Jordan's official Petra news agency said, as Arab capitals lined up to press Tehran toward an off-ramp after weeks of Iranian missiles and drones slamming into the Gulf.

The diplomacy tells its own story. It is Amman and Riyadh working the phones to rein Tehran in, not Washington being leaned on to hold Israel back, because Iran's own barrages turned the Gulf against it. Trump's terms have not shifted: the US strikes stop the moment Iran's attacks do, and every Arab capital now carrying that message to Tehran is doing Washington's work for it.

4:18pm 23 July 2026 — Iran admits the Hormuz squeeze is choking its own trade as it reroutes exports north

A senior Iranian lawmaker admitted on Thursday that maritime cross-border trade through Iran's southern provinces has been slashed by the US naval blockade, saying authorities are now scrambling to reroute commerce through the country's northeastern land borders to offset the damage.

The admission is the tell. Tehran spent weeks boasting it could choke the Strait of Hormuz, and it has ended up choking itself. Trump's leash was always Iran's oil, its dollars and the very strait its economy leans on, and with its southern ports strangled the regime is reduced to hauling freight overland to the north. Squeezing Beijing's energy lifeline is the wider game, but right now it is Iran footing the bill for its own blockade.

4:00pm 23 July 2026 — Iran's Revolutionary Guards claim they destroyed US air defences at a Jordan base

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps put out a statement on Thursday addressed to the Jordanian people, boasting that its strikes on US military bases in Jordan had destroyed a THAAD missile defence radar, a Patriot air defence battery, a C-RAM radar, fuel storage tanks and helicopter maintenance facilities. The Guards branded the American bases on Jordanian soil “occupied” territory and called hitting them a “legal, religious and logical right”.

It is Tehran's now-familiar battle-damage theatre, offered without a shred of proof. Jordan's US-supplied air defences have shot down Iranian missiles and drones aimed at the kingdom over and over through this war, and CENTCOM has repeatedly dismissed the regime's boasts of wrecking American bases as fiction. Iran talks up phantom victories in Jordan precisely because the real scoreboard is running against it: US forces have pounded its military for a twelfth straight night, its oil sits trapped behind the very Hormuz mines it laid, and its own MPs now concede the squeeze is throttling Iranian trade. A regime that was winning this war would not need to invent it.

3:40pm 23 July 2026 — Qatar, Pakistan and Egypt float a fresh truce push as Iran's Gulf attacks widen

Qatar, Pakistan and Egypt have put a fresh ceasefire proposal to Tehran to halt the fighting, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday, the latest scramble to broker a pause after Iran's missiles and drones kept slamming into Kuwait and other Gulf states.

The push says everything about who is on the back foot. It was Tehran, not Washington, that turned its fire on its Arab neighbours, and any pause brokered now would still leave Trump holding the whip hand over Iran's oil exports and the Strait of Hormuz it keeps threatening to close.

3:19pm 23 July 2026 — Iran's army threatens 'new measures' and a possible ground war as US strikes press on

Iran's army has warned it could adopt "new measures" and prepare for a ground war if the United States keeps striking its southern coast and infrastructure. Army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia told the Defence Press agency that Tehran's retaliation was "entering a new phase" and that unspecified "new scenarios have been anticipated," claiming Iran's air defences were better prepared after the ceasefire and that a US ground assault would leave American forces far more vulnerable.

The bluster is the tell. An army reduced to promising secret "new scenarios" it will reveal "at the appropriate time" is an army that has run out of answers to the strikes landing on it right now. Trump's terms have not moved: the US campaign stops the moment Iran's attacks do. Every night Tehran keeps firing at Gulf shipping is another night CENTCOM keeps grinding down the forces behind these threats, and no amount of talk about a ground war changes who is holding the leash.

3:10pm 23 July 2026 — US strike hits central Iran's Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province

A US air strike hit Kiar county in Iran's central Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province early on Thursday, a provincial official confirmed, extending the American campaign into Iran's central highlands well beyond the coastal and border targets of recent nights.

The official reported no casualties and said authorities were still assessing the damage, the regime's standard line as the strikes march inland night after night. Each new province on the target map is another sign that CENTCOM, not Tehran, is setting the pace of this war while Trump keeps Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash.

2:29pm 23 July 2026 — Iran's Guards tell Kuwaitis America, not Tehran, violated their sovereignty

Iran's Revolutionary Guards issued a statement on Thursday addressing the Kuwaiti public directly, insisting that “it is America that has violated your territorial integrity and sovereignty” even as it is Tehran's own missiles and drones falling on the Gulf state. The Guards claimed they had struck US assets at Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base and the Al Adairi camp and that American personnel were killed or wounded, while Iran's regular army separately claimed a 23rd wave of drone attacks on three US bases, including Camp Doha and Camp Arifjan.

It is a grotesque inversion. The only power firing on Kuwait is Iran, whose barrages have been knocked down for weeks by Kuwaiti and US Patriot batteries and whose casualty boasts CENTCOM has branded false time and again. The propaganda broadcast is a tell: with its oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz all held on Donald Trump's leash, the regime cannot win the war it started, so it is reduced to lecturing the very Gulf states its own missiles are terrorising.

2:14pm 23 July 2026 — US strikes hit Eslamabad-e Gharb as the campaign presses into western Iran

Iranian authorities reported two explosions near Eslamabad-e Gharb in the western province of Kermanshah early on Thursday, saying they followed a fresh US attack and caused no casualties. The town sits on the corridor running toward the Iran-Iraq border, the same axis where US strikes this week have already reached the Shalamcheh crossing and hit Ahvaz, Ramshir and Kermanshah.

Each night extends the map. A twelfth straight night of US strikes is steadily dismantling the depots, missile stores and militia corridors the regime uses to push weapons west toward Iraq and its proxies, and the reach into Kermanshah shows Washington methodically closing that route. For a regime that spent decades arming others with impunity, the ground beneath its own logistics network is now the target.

2:00pm 23 July 2026 — Iran claims US strikes damaged two of its rescue boats off Hormozgan

Iran's ISNA news agency, citing the Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Department, claims two of its naval search and rescue vessels, Naji 15 and Naji 16, were hit and seriously damaged in a US strike early on Thursday in the southern province, on the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran wants the world's sympathy for boats caught in the very waterway it has mined and where its Revolutionary Guard has spent weeks setting civilian tankers ablaze. Every Iranian vessel now in danger near Hormuz is a casualty of the regime's own decision to turn the planet's most important oil chokepoint into a war zone, and Washington has made clear the strikes will not ease while Iran keeps its hand on the strait.

1:35pm 23 July 2026 — US agencies warn Iran-linked hackers are targeting American infrastructure

US security agencies including the FBI, CISA and the NSA have renewed their warning that Iranian-affiliated hackers are actively targeting the internet-connected controllers that run American water, energy and government systems, urging operators to pull the devices offline.

It is the familiar move of a cornered regime. Beaten in the air and at sea, Tehran reaches for the softest civilian targets it can find, and this time it is American taps and power grids in the crosshairs. Naming the threat, the exact hardware and the fix before a single valve is turned is the kind of quiet vigilance keeping the lights on at home while Iran's own grid goes dark under a 12th night of US strikes.

1:23pm 23 July 2026 — US flies B-1 bomber against Iran for the first time since the war reignited

Axios reports the US has flown a B-1 Lancer heavy bomber against Iran for the first time since the war reignited, putting Washington's most punishing conventional strike aircraft over the regime's hardened military sites.

The B-1 carries the biggest payload in the US arsenal, and reaching for it tells Tehran the Commander in Chief is nowhere near the top of the escalation ladder while Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz stay firmly on his leash.

12:50pm 23 July 2026 — CENTCOM says US completes a 12th straight night of strikes on Iran

US Central Command says its forces have now struck Iran for a 12th consecutive night, with the latest wave aimed at further degrading Tehran's ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial shipping.

Twelve straight nights of American firepower, and the regime's best answer is Abbas Araghchi reciting an eye for an eye while its air defences come apart one province at a time. The strikes will keep coming for as long as Tehran keeps menacing the shipping lanes, and every night they press south tightens the leash Trump holds on Iran's oil and its cash.

1:08pm 23 July 2026 — Rubio says no nation may choke the world's waterways as Iran boasts of shutting Hormuz

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared that no country has the right to restrict passage through international waterways, flatly rejecting Iran's claim that its Revolutionary Guard now controls who sails through the Strait of Hormuz. Rubio cast it as a fundamental principle of freedom of navigation, warning that if the chokepoint is threatened, the global economy is threatened.

That is Trump's whole point. The real prize beyond the Gulf is China, whose energy lifeline runs through the very chokepoint Iran keeps threatening to shut. Tehran can claim the water on paper, but it cannot hold it against a US Navy that keeps the lanes open and Iran's oil, dollars and shipping on a short leash. Washington, not Tehran, decides whether Hormuz stays open.

11:38am 23 July 2026 — US State Department issues a worldwide caution for Americans as the Iran war spreads

The US State Department has issued a Worldwide Caution for American citizens, warning that heightened tensions across the Middle East have left the security environment complex and open to sudden escalation. It urged Americans in the region to stay vigilant and be ready for flight disruptions as Iran's war widens into a third Gulf state.

An alert like this measures Iran's recklessness, not America's. Tehran chose to mine Hormuz, fire on shipping and drag Kuwait and Bahrain into its war, and a worldwide caution is what that behaviour earns. Trump's answer has been to surge forces and keep pounding the regime's military rather than beg for another doomed ceasefire, and that is the fastest route back to Americans travelling safely.

12:03pm 23 July 2026 — Explosions rock Iran's Jask near the Strait of Hormuz as the US campaign presses south

Iran's state broadcaster IRIB reported explosions in the southern city of Jask, in Hormozgan province, which sits on the coastline commanding the eastern approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, as the American campaign against Tehran pressed into its 12th night.

Jask guards the mouth of the Gulf, the very chokepoint Iran's rulers keep boasting they control and threatening to shut. Every blast reported along that coast tightens Washington's grip on the strait and leaves the regime narrating its own retreat to a home audience.

12:00pm 23 July 2026 — UN food agency says Iran's Hormuz blockade now threatens Bangladesh's food supply

The World Food Programme warned that Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz is creating 'serious risks' for food production in Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most densely populated countries on earth, Al Jazeera reported.

Tehran likes to sell its Hormuz blockade as a blow against America. The bill lands instead on Dhaka's dinner tables. Trump's answer has been to keep the strait open by force, while Iran's mines squeeze the very developing world its rulers claim to speak for.

11:32am 23 July 2026 — Two Chinese supertankers carrying Saudi crude flee the Red Sea for Bab el-Mandeb

Two Chinese supertankers loaded with Saudi crude are steaming for the Bab el-Mandeb strait to escape the Red Sea, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing shipping data, as Iran's war on Gulf shipping reshapes how the world's oil moves.

This is the war's real prize. Every tanker forced to reroute is a reminder that the energy artery Tehran is choking runs to Beijing, not the West. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its strait on a 60-day leash, and it is China that pays the toll each time Tehran pulls it tight.

11:00am 23 July 2026 — Oil climbs to US$96 a barrel as US strikes and Hormuz mines choke supply

Brent crude pushed to US$96 a barrel on Wednesday, its highest in weeks, as the American campaign against Iran and Tehran's own mining of the Strait of Hormuz left traders bracing over supply through the world's single most important oil chokepoint. Al Jazeera flagged the jump as prices climbed on the back of the widening war.

For Trump this is the leash doing its job. Every dollar of the rise lands hardest on the buyer Tehran depends on most, China, which hoovers up the bulk of Iran's sanctioned crude through these very waters. Washington can tighten or ease that grip whenever it chooses, and the message to Beijing is blunt: the energy lifeline it has built on Iran runs through a strait the US Navy controls.

10:58am 23 July 2026 — US strikes choke Iran's Shalamcheh militia corridor as regime claims mount

US forces have hit the Shalamcheh crossing on the Iran-Iraq border, one of the main corridors the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps uses to move weapons and fighters between Tehran and its Iraqi Shiite militias. IRGC-affiliated channels including Tasnim News first claimed the strike caused no injuries and that pilgrim traffic was flowing normally, then said it had killed two people, and by mid-morning were putting the toll at three.

The shifting numbers tell their own story. When a regime that insisted its border was open starts inflating a body count within the hour, the aim is to cast Washington as hitting civilians rather than the supply line that keeps its proxies armed. What the US has actually done is sever a route Tehran has spent years using to push force into Iraq, and it has done it without shutting the crossing to the pilgrims the regime keeps hiding behind.

10:53am 23 July 2026 — Reuters says US is probing whether Russia helped Iran hit its CIA sites

US intelligence analysts are examining whether Russia helped Iran carry out this week's strikes on CIA facilities in the Persian Gulf, either by feeding Tehran targeting information or by supplying more advanced drones, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the intelligence. Two Western officials said the attack on a US-linked site appears to have used two Russian-enhanced versions of Iran's Shahed drone.

If it holds up, the finding drags the war's real shape into the open. Iran does not menace American intelligence sites on its own account, it operates as the forward arm of an axis that runs back to Moscow and leans on Beijing for its markets. That is the case Trump has made for keeping the pressure on, and every strike Washington lands on Iran's launch sites is a blow to a network its patrons would rather keep hidden.

10:47am 23 July 2026 — US strikes widen across western Iran, hitting Ramshir, Ahvaz and Kermanshah

The American air campaign pushed further across western Iran overnight. Iran's IRNA news agency reported fresh strikes on Ramshir and Ahvaz in oil-rich Khuzestan, while the province's deputy governor confirmed a US missile hit near Andimeshk, and initial reports described two heavy blasts in Islamabad-e Gharb in Kermanshah province, further north near the Iraqi frontier.

The spread is the point. What began as precise hits on Iran's Gulf coast is now reaching inland across the provinces the regime uses to move oil, missiles and men, and Tehran's state media are again left logging the damage themselves. CENTCOM has kept up an almost nightly tempo, and each new town on the target list shrinks the ground from which Iran can still threaten the strait.

10:35am 23 July 2026 — Hardline Iranian outlet reports a fresh US strike on Bushehr

Even Iran's own hardline media are now charting the American campaign as it presses deeper into the country. The pro-regime outlet Saberin News reported on Wednesday that the United States had carried out another strike on the southern city of Bushehr, though it gave no further detail on the target or the damage.

A second reported hit on Bushehr in a matter of hours points to the tempo Washington is keeping up. Trump is working methodically through the sites the regime uses to threaten Gulf shipping, and when Tehran's own propaganda channels are reduced to logging the strikes on their own soil, there is little doubt who holds the initiative.

10:20am 23 July 2026 — Khuzestan officials say a US missile strike hit near Andimeshk in western Iran

US strikes rolled across western Iran overnight and into Wednesday morning. Khuzestan Province's security deputy governor said a location near the city of Andimeshk had been targeted in a US missile strike, while Iran's IRNA news agency reported air attacks on Ramshir and Ahvaz. Blasts were also reported further north around Islamabad-e Gharb in Kermanshah, close to the border with Iraq.

The spread of targets, from the Gulf coast up to the Iraqi border, tracks a campaign that is widening, not winding down. Each strike is another turn of the leash Trump keeps on the regime's military and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran's own officials are left confirming the hits one province at a time.

9:58am 23 July 2026 — US strikes reach the Shalamcheh crossing on the Iran-Iraq border, Iranian outlet reports

US forces have pushed their air campaign against Iran into a twelfth straight round, and even hardline Iranian media are now reporting the strikes reaching the Shalamcheh crossing on the border with Iraq. The pro-regime channel Saberin News published images on Wednesday it said showed an American strike near the crossing, one more hit in a campaign CENTCOM says is systematically degrading Iran's ability to threaten Gulf shipping.

Each new strike pulls the same leash tighter. Trump is working methodically through the military network Tehran uses to menace the Strait of Hormuz, and when the regime's own outlets are left mapping the damage on their own soil, it says everything about who now holds the initiative.

9:53am 23 July 2026 — IRGC says a tanker caught fire crossing a minefield it laid in the Strait of Hormuz

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has all but confessed to mining the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC said on Wednesday that one of three tankers trying to cross what it called an unsafe route in the southern strait caught fire while the other two turned back, an admission the regime has strewn naval mines across the world's busiest oil chokepoint and is now watching civilian vessels burn on them. It is the very threat to freedom of navigation that Washington has vowed to break.

Mining a lane that carries a fifth of the world's oil is not the act of a power in control of Hormuz, whatever the IRGC boasts. It is a regime lashing out as Trump keeps its exports, its dollars and its access to the strait on a tightening leash, and every burning tanker only hands CENTCOM another reason to keep striking.

9:29am 23 July 2026 — Senate to vote Thursday on Van Hollen bid to limit Trump's Iran war

The US Senate will vote on Thursday on a resolution led by Democrat senator Chris Van Hollen that would strip Donald Trump of the authority to keep striking Iran, forcing a floor fight over a campaign that has already run to a 12th straight round of American strikes.

It's an odd moment for Senate Democrats to reach for the handbrake. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash, Gulf states are lining up behind Washington, and it's Tehran that is firing on Kuwait and setting tankers alight. Tying the President's hands mid-campaign would only hand Iran the breathing room it wants, and it wouldn't change who started this war.

9:21am 23 July 2026 — GCC's Albudaiwi tells the UN Iran's attacks demand a global response

The Gulf Cooperation Council's secretary general, Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, has told a high level UN Security Council debate in New York that Iran's missile and drone attacks on Gulf states, together with Houthi threats to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, demand immediate accountability and a firm international response to protect shipping and energy supplies.

This is the isolation Tehran built for itself. The Gulf bloc, once cautious about picking sides, is now naming Iran at the Security Council for mining shipping lanes, threatening two of the world's most vital chokepoints and tearing up the UN Charter. Beijing, the real customer for the oil Iran keeps threatening to bottle up, can only watch. Every siren over Manama and every drone over Kuwait drives the Arab states further into Washington's corner.

8:55am 23 July 2026 — US House passes $1.15 trillion defence bill to rearm against Iran

The US House of Representatives has narrowly passed its version of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, approving a record $1.15 trillion in military spending by 216 votes to 212. Lawmakers said the package pours money into replenishing the missile interceptor stocks that Iran's barrages have run down, and it carries a provision deepening the Pentagon's ties with Israel. The bill now heads to the Senate.

Democrats grumbled about the price tag, but the vote hands Trump the hardware to keep Iran's oil, dollars and access to the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash. Tehran emptied its magazines trying to exhaust American air defences, and Washington's answer is a record cheque to rebuild the very interceptors it hoped to run down.

8:32am 23 July 2026 — US surges forces to the Middle East as Trump weighs expanding the Iran war

The United States is moving additional troops, medical personnel and weapons into the Middle East as Donald Trump weighs expanding military operations against Iran, the Wall Street Journal reports. Special operations forces have deployed to the region, fighter jets have been repositioned across the theatre, and bomber aircraft at bases in the US and Britain have been placed on high alert.

The build-up tightens the noose Trump has kept around Tehran since the first strikes. Every extra jet, bomber and special operator in the region is another signal that how far this war goes is decided in Washington, not Tehran, and that Iran's rulers picked a fight with the one military that can escalate at will.

8:11am 23 July 2026 — Kuwait intercepts Iranian drones as Tehran's war reaches a third Gulf state

Kuwait's air defences are shooting down Iranian drones over the country, the General Staff of the Kuwaiti Army has announced, warning residents that any explosions they hear are its own interceptors destroying the attacks. An IRGC-linked channel claimed the 'suicide drones' were aimed at US bases on Kuwaiti soil.

Tehran has now dragged Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait into a war it started, and every Gulf capital it strikes drives the region further into Washington's arms. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has already condemned the attacks on Kuwait and pledged full solidarity. Iran set out to look strong, and instead it is uniting the Gulf against it.

8:08am 23 July 2026 — CENTCOM launches its 12th straight round of strikes on Iran's military

US Central Command says American forces began their 12th consecutive round of strikes on Iranian military targets, launched at 5:30pm Washington time on Donald Trump's direct order. CENTCOM said the campaign will keep degrading Iran's ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial ships transiting the region's waters.

Twelve rounds in, the pattern is unmistakable. Trump is methodically dismantling the regime's capacity to choke the Strait of Hormuz, one target at a time, while Iran's oil, its dollars and its grip on the strait all sit under Washington's boot. Tehran overreached, and the President is making it pay night after night.

7:53am 23 July 2026 — Tanker ablaze off Saudi Arabia as Iran's Houthi proxies hit Red Sea shipping

UK Maritime Trade Operations says a tanker was struck by a projectile about 70 nautical miles off Saudi Arabia's Al Shuqaiq on Wednesday, sparking a fire the crew fought with no casualties, after Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis said they had targeted Saudi oil tankers for 'violating' their self-declared naval blockade.

This is who is actually threatening the world's oil. While Tehran's proxies set fire to tankers in the Red Sea, it is the US Navy keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and more than 900 ships moving since May. Every projectile Iran and the Houthis fire at Gulf shipping only strengthens Trump's case for tightening the leash on Iran's oil, its dollars and its lanes.

7:52am 23 July 2026 — Bushehr governor says a US missile struck Iran's southern port capital

Bushehr's provincial governor said a missile fired by what he called the 'American enemy' struck a point in the provincial capital on Wednesday, according to Iranian state media. Bushehr, a port city on Iran's Gulf coast, is home to the country's only operating nuclear power plant.

Another Iranian official conceding another American strike landing deep inside the country. Tehran can brand the US the 'enemy' all it likes, but its own governors keep confirming the reach of Trump's campaign, from Ahvaz to Sirik and now the Gulf coast, while Iran's air defences have nothing to show but a single downed drone over the capital.

7:22am 23 July 2026 — US strikes near Ahvaz as blasts rock Sirik in southern Iran

Iran's semi-official Mehr News says a site near Ahvaz in the oil-rich Khuzestan province was hit in a US missile strike on Wednesday, while Iranian state media reported several explosions in Sirik on the southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz.

The reach is the point. Even Tehran's own outlets are now confirming American firepower landing on its oil heartland and on the doorstep of the strait, while Iran's air defences can only boast of downing a single drone over the capital. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lanes on a short leash, and every strike deeper inside the country pulls it tighter.

7:15am 23 July 2026 — US and Saudi Arabia announce a civil nuclear cooperation deal

The United States and Saudi Arabia have announced a civil nuclear cooperation deal, a 30 year agreement that lets American firms including Westinghouse build the kingdom's nuclear industry and gives Riyadh a path to enrich nuclear fuel at home after a joint study. It deepens Washington's partnership with Saudi Arabia even as US forces press their strikes on Iran.

The timing is the message. As Iran threatens the region's power grids and vows to choke the Strait of Hormuz, Washington is locking the Gulf's biggest economy into an American built nuclear future. Tehran spent decades trying to make itself the region's nuclear power, and now it is watching Riyadh sign with the United States while its own facilities sit under Trump's strikes.

6:45am 23 July 2026 — Iran's spokesman Baghaei calls it 'shameful' the US ignored the war's human toll

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has branded it 'shameful' that US lawmakers weighing the cost of the war never paused on civilian suffering, claiming not a single question was raised about what he called the human dimensions of the conflict and pointing to Tehran's alleged crimes at Minab and Lamerd.

It's a strange lecture from a regime that has just hanged one of its own people as an alleged US and Israeli agent, that killed four American soldiers whose coffins have only now come home to Dover, and that lit this war itself by mining and attacking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Baghaei is not grieving civilians, he is feeling the squeeze of the sanctions, strikes and naval blockade Donald Trump keeps clamped on Iran's oil, cash and shipping lanes until Tehran drops the aggression it started, with the real prize the Chinese buyers still craving the crude the President can choke off whenever he chooses.

6:19am 23 July 2026 — Trump receives four US troops killed by Iran and vows Tehran pays a big price

President Donald Trump stood on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base to receive the flag draped remains of four American service members killed in Iran's attacks, telling reporters Tehran would pay a big price for their deaths.

Iran killed these Americans, and Trump made sure their return was met with the full weight of the presidency rather than a quiet statement. He has kept the war on his terms from the start, holding Iran's oil and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash while the regime bleeds. The families got a Commander in Chief who names the enemy and promises a reckoning.

6:15am 23 July 2026 — CENTCOM says Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz despite Tehran's boasts

US Central Command declared that Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz and that the international waterway remains open for transit, directly rebutting the Revolutionary Guards' threats to close the chokepoint.

This is the gap between Iranian propaganda and reality. The regime keeps announcing it has shut the strait while the US Fifth Fleet keeps the water open and the ships moving. Trump holds the chokepoint, not Tehran, and the only thing Iran's boasts achieve is another reminder of how little leverage it has left. The real prize is denying Beijing the oil route it depends on, and that stays firmly in American hands.

5:43am 23 July 2026 — Oil hits a six-week high as US strikes and Iran's threats rattle supply

Oil prices climbed to a six-week high, Reuters reported, as US strikes across Iran and Tehran's threats against Gulf energy sites stoked fears over supply through the Strait of Hormuz.

Higher prices at the bowser are the cost of Iran's recklessness, not Trump's resolve. Every barrel that gets dearer is a barrel Tehran can no longer sell freely, because the US blockade has its exports pinned. The regime is choking its own economy to score headlines, while Trump keeps the strait open for everyone else and the pressure squarely on Iran.

5:37am 23 July 2026 — Britain pulls its embassy staff out of Iran as the campaign presses on

The United Kingdom temporarily withdrew its embassy staff from Tehran, its Foreign Office confirmed, as US strikes on Iran entered their 11th straight night and the security situation deteriorated.

Even the governments Tehran hopes will restrain Washington are heading for the exits. Britain closing its embassy doors is a quiet admission that Iran, not the US, is the danger here. Trump has kept his allies close and the regime isolated, and London's retreat only underlines how alone Tehran now stands.

5:25am 23 July 2026 — US probes a possible Russian hand in Iran's strikes on CIA sites

US officials are investigating whether Russia helped Iran target CIA facilities in recent strikes, Reuters reported, a sign Washington believes Tehran is not acting alone.

This is the axis Trump has warned about from the start. Iran does not have the reach to hit American intelligence sites without help, and the trail running back to Moscow, and behind it Beijing, is exactly why this war was never only about Tehran. The regime is a front line for powers that want the US bogged down, and Washington is treating it that way.

4:56am 23 July 2026 — Iran's foreign minister threatens a powerful response if its infrastructure is hit

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that any attack on Iran's infrastructure would be met with a powerful and decisive response, as Tehran's Revolutionary Guards threatened to strike regional energy sites and cut power to US allies.

Araghchi is threatening the region's power grids precisely because Trump already holds the switch on Iran's own. Tehran cannot defend its coast, its oil terminals or its capital from nightly US strikes, so it reaches for the only card it has left, which is menacing its neighbours. It is the language of a regime running out of options, not one dictating terms, and the leash only tightens the louder it shouts.

3:20am 23 July 2026 — US blockade turns back nine ships and disables one off Iran's coast

US Central Command said its naval blockade has now redirected nine ships and disabled one off Iran's coast, tightening the squeeze on Tehran's seaborne trade and oil smuggling.

The number keeps climbing, and every hull turned back is another dollar Iran cannot earn. Trump's blockade is doing what sanctions alone never could, cutting the regime off from the cash it needs to keep firing missiles. Tehran threatens to close the strait to the world while the US quietly closes it to Iran.

3:15am 23 July 2026 — Gulf bloc's secretary-general condemns Iran's attacks across the region

The Gulf Cooperation Council's secretary-general, Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, condemned Iran's attacks across the region and warned they threaten maritime security and global energy stability, calling for international action to halt them.

The Gulf states have picked their side, and it is not Tehran's. When the bloc that shares Iran's own neighbourhood pleads for the world to stop the regime's attacks, the mask of Iranian victimhood slips. Trump has spent months lining up the Gulf behind Washington, and Albudaiwi's statement is the payoff, a region that now looks to America, not Iran, for its security.

11:01pm 22 July 2026 — Trump threatens to hit Iran's oil and power grid over its Hormuz ship attacks

President Donald Trump warned the US will destroy a bridge or a power plant in Iran every time the regime fires on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, drawing a direct line between Iran's attacks and its own infrastructure.

This is the leash made plain. Trump is telling Tehran that its lights, its roads and its oil sit under American guns, and that every shot at a tanker will cost the regime a piece of the country it can barely run as it is. Iran can keep threatening the strait, but it is the one with everything to lose, and Trump has made sure it knows exactly what the next target list looks like.

9:50pm 22 July 2026 — US strikes Iran's Larak Island in the Persian Gulf, state media says

Revolutionary Guards affiliated Tasnim News said the United States launched a missile strike on Iran's Larak Island in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, with residents reporting a loud explosion near the island and Iranian authorities still assessing the damage.

Larak sits right at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, so a strike there tells Tehran the US can reach any target it likes, whenever it likes. Night after night the regime loses more of its coast and more of its grip on the very waterway it keeps threatening to close. Trump holds the chokepoint, and Iran is running out of places to hide.

9:47pm 22 July 2026 — Saudi Arabia triggers emergency alert in Dammam as Iran's war spills into the kingdom

Saudi Arabia's Civil Defence activated its national emergency alert system in Dammam on Wednesday and urged residents to follow safety instructions, before saying a short time later that the danger had passed.

Another Gulf city thrown under an Iranian threat, another American partner Tehran has turned into an enemy. The regime cannot lay a finger on Washington, so it rains fire on the neighbours, and every alert over Dammam pushes Saudi Arabia further into the coalition lining up behind Trump. Iran is manufacturing its own isolation, one panicked siren at a time.

9:43pm 22 July 2026 — Bahrain sounds its sirens yet again as Iran lashes out at the Gulf

Bahrain's Interior Ministry set off air raid sirens across the kingdom late on Wednesday and urged citizens and residents to stay calm and move to the nearest safe place, the latest warning as Iran hurls drones and missiles at the US allies ringing the Gulf.

Every siren over Manama makes Trump's case for him. Iran cannot lay a glove on the US fleet, so it flails at small neighbours who host American forces, and each attack only hardens the coalition against Tehran. It also hands Washington one more reason to keep the noose on Iran's oil and the Strait of Hormuz pulled tight.

9:02pm 22 July 2026 — Iran claims missile strikes on two Jordanian air bases used by US forces

Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed on Wednesday they had hit the King Faisal and Prince Hassan air bases in Jordan, where US forces operate, saying they struck hangars used to prepare American F-15 jets and MQ-9 drones, as missile alert sirens wailed over the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Take the boast at face value and it still spells trouble for Tehran, not triumph. Firing on a peaceful Arab neighbour that wants no part of this war only widens the front lining up behind Washington, and Jordan says it knocked four of the six incoming missiles out of the sky. Iran is burning through the last of its arsenal to scorch hangars and car parks while the US keeps dismantling the regime night after night.

8:48pm 22 July 2026 — EU naval force tells US, Israeli and Saudi linked ships to avoid the Red Sea

The European Union's Aspides naval mission has warned merchant ships with US, Israeli or Saudi links to steer clear of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden until the danger eases, after Iran's Houthi proxies in Yemen threatened vessels bound for Saudi ports, and ship trackers logged fresh tankers turning away from the route.

This is the Iran playbook laid bare. Unable to beat the US at sea, the regime leans on the Houthis to choke the shipping lanes and drive up the oil price, betting the pain lands on Western economies rather than its own. It is exactly why Trump keeps a hand on Hormuz and the wider Gulf, ready to prise the chokepoints back open the moment Tehran squeezes too hard.

7:50pm 22 July 2026 — Rubio says Iran will never be allowed to choke the Strait of Hormuz

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran was under crushing economic and military pressure and rejected Tehran's claim that a memorandum signed in Islamabad gave it any right to attack commercial shipping, telling reporters in Manila the US would keep targeting that threat while staying open to a deal.

Rubio's message is the leash in one line. Washington holds the door to talks open, but the price of walking through it is Iran's hands off the world's tankers. "We remain open to diplomacy," he said, even as US forces pressed an eleventh straight night of strikes, a reminder that the offer comes from strength, not weakness.

7:08pm 22 July 2026 — Trump to honour four US troops killed by Iran at Dover homecoming

President Donald Trump will attend a ceremony at Dover Air Force Base for four US service members killed in Iranian attacks in the Middle East, the White House said, as their caskets return home to American soil.

This is the cost Iran chose when it fired on US forces, and Trump is not letting it pass quietly. Standing with the fallen while the campaign presses on tells the regime exactly why the strikes keep coming, and why there will be no let up until the threat is finished. Tehran spent its missiles killing Americans, and it is now watching Washington answer with resolve, not retreat.

4:24pm 22 July 2026 — US strikes hit a substation near Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant

US forces struck an electrical substation next to Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant overnight, part of an eleventh straight night of strikes that reached provinces the campaign had not touched before. Bushehr province's own deputy governor for security affairs confirmed the strike and said it caused no casualties.

It is a calibrated message. Washington can reach the power network feeding Tehran's flagship nuclear site whenever it chooses, yet spares the reactor itself, keeping Iran's oil, its banks and the Strait of Hormuz in reserve. Eleven nights in, Trump is still setting the tempo and Iran is still absorbing it.

4:09pm 22 July 2026 — Iran hangs a protester it brands a US and Israeli agent

Iran's judiciary has executed Mehdi Khanaki, a man arrested during the anti-government uprising in January, after accusing him of taking up arms for Israel and the United States, according to the regime's own judiciary outlet Mizan. Mizan alleged Khanaki had joined an armed opposition group in 2023 and said weapons were found at his home when he was detained in Karaj in February, giving no detail of any trial or legal defence.

This is what the Islamic Republic does when it cannot land a blow on American forces. It hangs its own young people and calls them foreign spies, trying to frighten a population that has already been chanting against the leadership in the streets. A regime executing protesters to survive is not bargaining from strength, and it is exactly why Trump is holding the pressure on rather than handing Tehran any relief.

3:20pm 22 July 2026 — Iran denies assaulting two French embassy staff after Paris summons its envoy

France has accused Iran's security forces of detaining two of its embassy staff in Tehran and assaulting one of them, and summoned Tehran's charge d'affaires over what Paris called a serious breach of diplomatic protection. Iran has now rejected the allegations, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi telling his French counterpart the diplomats were detained for breaking Iranian law.

It's the kind of denial that fools no one. A regime that jails foreign nationals as bargaining chips and manhandles accredited diplomats is not a partner Trump has any reason to trust, and Paris moving to thin out its embassy shows how little Tehran's word is worth. Every episode like this hardens the case for keeping Iran boxed in until its behaviour changes.

2:04pm 22 July 2026 — Iran claims it hit US military sites in Kuwait as Kuwaiti air defences shoot the attack down

Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed it struck US military facilities inside Kuwait, saying it destroyed radar and communications gear at an air base used by American forces. Kuwait's armed forces told a different story, saying their air defences intercepted the drones and missiles over several parts of the country, with the blasts heard across Kuwait coming from those interceptions.

Tehran keeps lashing out at Washington's Gulf partners because it can't touch the US Navy throttling its ports, and even these strikes on a neighbour are mostly knocked out of the sky. Firing on Kuwait doesn't project strength, it advertises how few options Iran has left as Trump's blockade tightens around its coastline.

12:36pm 22 July 2026 — Wall Street Journal says Iran is scrambling to rebuild the missiles US strikes destroyed

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran is racing to reconstitute the ballistic missile programs the US and Israel battered in the opening months of the war, rebuilding launchers and restarting production lines from deep underground sites to prove its arsenal is still a threat.

Far from undercutting the campaign, that's the whole argument for it. Trump has said from the start that a wounded regime left to catch its breath will simply rearm, which is exactly why US forces are into an 11th straight night of strikes and why the naval blockade stays clamped down. The job is not finished while Tehran is still bolting missiles together, and the President has shown no sign of easing the pressure until it is.

11:50am 22 July 2026 — Rubio says the US is ready to talk but Iran refuses to come to the table

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Washington is still willing to negotiate, but Iran has kept none of the commitments it made and is not serious about talks. Speaking at an ASEAN summit, Rubio said Tehran was demanding a right it holds under no legal mechanism, to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and warned the standoff had set a dangerous precedent for global trade.

The message is simple: the offer to talk stays on the table, and it is Iran, not the US, walking away from it. Trump keeps Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash, ready to take the strait outright the moment Tehran overreaches, with China's energy lifeline the real prize at the end of it.

11:37am 22 July 2026 — US strikes push into Ilam and Kurdistan as the campaign fans across Iran's west

Iranian state media say US airstrikes have now reached Ilam and Kurdistan provinces in the country's west. The reports name hits around Chavar and Abdanan in Ilam, where Abdanan's governor confirmed a strike on the Dinar Kuh area, and an area outside the city of Baneh in Kurdistan.

Eleven nights in, the target list is only getting longer, not shorter. Trump is tightening the leash on Iran's oil, dollars and the Strait of Hormuz rather than easing it, and every fresh strike keeps the squeeze on the energy network that ultimately feeds China.

11:16am 22 July 2026 — Trump approves a landmark civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia

President Trump has formally approved a landmark 30-year agreement giving Saudi Arabia a civilian nuclear program, with US companies set to lead the build and the door left open to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil, The Wall Street Journal reported.

It is a major win for Washington in the middle of the Iran war. While Tehran's own nuclear sites are pounded night after night, Trump is handing a US-run nuclear industry to Iran's chief Gulf rival, locking Riyadh closer to America and its firms for the next three decades and boxing Tehran in further across the region.

10:57am 22 July 2026 — US strikes fan out to Tabriz, Hamadan and Hormozgan across Iran

US Central Command says its forces completed an 11th consecutive night of strikes on Iran, and this time the targets ran the length of the country. Iranian state media reported hits on a military area near Tabriz in the northwest, several locations in Kabudarahang county in Hamadan province, and an area near Sirik on the Hormozgan coast in the south, on top of the earlier strikes around Bushehr. CENTCOM said the raids targeted Iran's military operations centres, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage and military logistics.

The widening target list shows Trump tightening the leash rather than easing it, walking the strikes from Iran's northern military sites down to its Gulf coastline while Tehran's oil, dollars and shipping stay pinned under Washington and the Strait of Hormuz is kept open on America's terms. The message to the regime is blunt: the pressure only lifts when Iran stops overstepping.

10:33am 22 July 2026 — Trump to honour US troops killed by Iran at a Dover transfer ceremony

President Donald Trump will attend a dignified transfer ceremony on Wednesday at Dover Air Force Base for the US service members killed in Iran's attacks, the White House says. Trump said he would be going to Dover for something he feels is a great honour to do.

It is the solemn counterpoint to a regime that stages funerals for the cameras: Trump meeting the flag draped cases of the Americans Iran's forces killed, on the same day his campaign presses into an eleventh straight night of strikes that keep Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz under pressure.

10:02am 22 July 2026 — US strikes hammer Bushehr and towns across Iran's southern coast

Iranian state media reported fresh US strikes hitting Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, Sirik and a string of towns down Iran's southern coast overnight, with residents reporting blasts and air-defence fire from Hormozgan up to Tehran. The IRGC-linked Tasnim agency claimed two sites near Bushehr, home to Iran's only nuclear power plant, were among the targets, though none of the Iranian claims has been independently confirmed.

Tehran can map every crater it likes; the message from CENTCOM is the tempo. Night after night the US is walking its strikes down the coast that feeds Iran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz, and every siren the regime sets off over the Gulf only hands Washington another reason to keep the leash tight.

9:36am 22 July 2026 — CENTCOM says US launches an 11th straight night of strikes across Iran

US Central Command said its forces began hitting military targets across Iran for the 11th consecutive night, with explosions reported near Sirik in the south, in Khuzestan's Mahshahr and near Tabriz, and fresh air defence fire over northeastern Tehran.

The tempo is the whole message. Eleven nights in, Trump is grinding down the regime's air defences and command posts while keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and Iran's oil money choked off, tightening the leash another notch every night Tehran refuses the ceasefire sitting on the table.

9:15am 22 July 2026 — Democrats move to block Trump's Iran war funding as Hegseth rounds on them

Congressional Democrats moved to block the extra billions President Trump has requested to sustain the Iran campaign, prompting Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to round on them in a heated Senate hearing and tell one senator to stand up to fellow Democrats who will not fund the troops.

The maths is brutal for the war's critics. Trump has Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a leash for a fraction of what a nuclear armed Tehran would cost the world, and every vote to starve the campaign hands the mullahs breathing room. Hegseth made plain he will not let a partisan squabble in Washington loosen a grip Trump has fought eleven nights to tighten.

9:08am 22 July 2026 — Lebanese army rolls into the south to test Hezbollah's retreat under a US-backed deal

Lebanon's army has started deploying into three southern towns as the first 'pilot zones' under a US-backed framework with Israel, a live test of whether the Lebanese state can take back the border from Hezbollah. Al Jazeera reported the rollout is meant to prove Beirut's forces can hold the ground and keep the Iran-backed militia out.

It is another brick pulled out of Tehran's wall. Every town the Lebanese army walks back into is ground Hezbollah loses, and it is happening because Washington, not Iran, is now writing the terms in Beirut while the regime pours its money into missiles that keep getting shot down over the Gulf.

8:46am 22 July 2026 — Democrat John Fetterman breaks ranks to back Trump's strike on Iran's Pickaxe Mountain

Democratic Senator John Fetterman publicly backed President Trump's decision to strike Iran's Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site, posting on X that he is fully behind the president unloading on the site. The Pennsylvania senator has become one of the very few Democrats to openly support the campaign.

Fetterman crossing the aisle leaves the Democrats trying to block Trump's Iran war funding looking increasingly isolated. His backing for the strike on a half finished enrichment site fits the wider play: keep Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash, and deny Tehran, and behind it China, the nuclear leverage it is chasing.

8:33am 22 July 2026 — Bahrain and Oman's foreign ministers coordinate against Iran's Gulf strikes

Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani and Oman's Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi spoke by phone on Tuesday to line up the Gulf's response to what Bahrain called Iran's continued attacks on GCC states and Jordan.

It is another sign that Tehran's missiles and drones keep pushing its Arab neighbours towards Washington. Every siren over Manama and Amman hardens the coalition behind Trump's blockade and leaves Iran's rulers more isolated, with the President still holding a hand on their oil, their dollars and the strait.

7:48am 22 July 2026 — Kuwait's air defences knock down a fresh Iranian drone attack

Kuwait's armed forces said their air defences engaged and intercepted a fresh wave of Iranian drones early on Tuesday, the latest round in Tehran's nightly barrage against the Gulf states that host US forces, with the military telling residents to stay clear as interceptors went up.

It is the same story every night now: Iran throws drones and missiles at its neighbours and watches most of them knocked out of the sky by largely American-supplied defences. Every failed salvo burns through a stockpile Tehran cannot replace while Trump's blockade keeps its oil landlocked and its cash frozen, and every intercept hands Washington another reason to pull the leash tighter.

7:40am 22 July 2026 — US names Sgt Michael Swinton as the third soldier killed in Iran's drone war

US Central Command has named the soldier killed clearing an Iranian drone in northern Iraq as Sergeant Michael Emmanuel Swinton, a 30-year-old from North Carolina serving with the US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command. Swinton died on 18 July while safely detonating the unexploded warhead of a downed Iranian one-way attack drone, days after two of his comrades were killed and a third left missing by an Iranian missile strike on a base in Jordan. He is the third American confirmed killed in the war with Iran.

Every one of these deaths traces to the same source, the drones and ballistic missiles Iran has rained on American bases and Gulf allies for weeks. On Tuesday the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, read the names of all three fallen Americans aloud, and the White House shared the tribute. It is a plain reminder of who started this war and who keeps paying its price, and of why Trump has refused to loosen his grip on Iran's oil, its banks and the Strait of Hormuz while the regime keeps killing.

7:30am 22 July 2026 — Mediators wait on Iran to answer a 10-day ceasefire offer as Trump holds firm

Regional mediators are pushing hard to broker a pause in the US-Iran war, with reporting from the region putting a proposed 10-day ceasefire in front of Tehran and awaiting its answer. Al Jazeera has set out how narrow the path to any truce now is, while Iran's interior minister spent Tuesday touring Pakistan, a sign of a regime hunting for friends as the war grinds into its fourth month.

The tell is who the offer is aimed at. It is Tehran being asked to take a ceasefire, not Washington, and Trump has already said Iran is "desperate" to meet while he has no interest until it comes to the table in a meaningful way. He holds every card that matters: Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz are all clamped inside a US blockade. Any pause comes on Washington's terms and on Washington's clock, or it does not come at all.

7:07am 22 July 2026 — Iran threatens a 'powerful assault' if the US strikes its nuclear sites

Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the joint command that coordinates the regime's armed forces, warned on Tuesday that any US strike on its nuclear or other sensitive sites would expand the war across the region and bring a "powerful assault" on American interests and Washington's allies, Iranian state media reported.

The threat is bluster from a cornered regime. It lands hours after Trump said the US would hit Iran's Pickaxe Mountain nuclear complex "pretty soon, and very heavily", and with Tehran's oil money, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz all already clamped inside a US blockade, Iran is issuing ultimatums it has no way to back. The leash stays in Washington's hand, and Trump has made the choice plain: negotiate meaningfully, or keep dealing with the War Department every night the strikes grow heavier.

6:50am 22 July 2026 — Trump says just 18 US troops have died in four months of the Iran war

Donald Trump used a Truth Social post on Tuesday to weigh the human cost of his Iran campaign against America's past wars, putting US deaths at 18 over four months against 58,220 in Vietnam, 36,574 in Korea, 4,600 in Iraq and 2,000 in Afghanistan, with none from the one-day Venezuela operation that toppled Nicolas Maduro.

The tally is the President's answer to every critic warning of another forever war. Four months in, Iran's nuclear program is set back decades by Trump's own estimate, its navy is bottled up behind a US blockade and its oil buyers are peeling away, and the price in American lives is a fraction of the wars Washington fought to far less effect. Every loss is real, but the contrast is the point Trump wants voters to hold onto.

6:16am 22 July 2026 — Hegseth tells the Senate the Iran campaign has cost $37.5 billion and is worth every cent

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has put a price on the war, telling the Senate Appropriations Committee that the US campaign against Iran has cost about $37.5 billion so far as he defended the supplemental funding request.

His message to the senators picking at the bill was blunt: the money is buying the one outcome that matters, stopping Iran from ever building a nuclear bomb, and Trump has no intention of easing the pressure with the job unfinished.

5:51am 22 July 2026 — Trump clears US airlines to fly directly to Lebanon after meeting President Aoun

Trump has directed his administration to let all US carriers fly directly to Lebanon, a reward handed down straight after his meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who this week backed the US and Israeli plan to disarm Hezbollah. Trump has also said he is open to talks with Hezbollah and vowed to help rebuild the country.

The move rewards Beirut for stepping out of Tehran's shadow. As Iran fires on its neighbours, Trump is dangling open skies and American tourists in front of any Arab capital willing to help sideline the regime's proxies.

5:40am 22 July 2026 — CENTCOM says its blockade has turned back eight ships and disabled one off Iran

US Central Command says its naval blockade of Iran has now redirected eight commercial vessels and disabled another since the cordon took effect on 14 July, steadily choking the tanker traffic that keeps Tehran's oil money flowing.

This is the leash in action. Trump is squeezing the ships that carry Iran's crude without firing on them, a calibrated chokehold aimed as much at Beijing's refineries as at the regime, and the pressure only eases when Tehran stands down.

5:16am 22 July 2026 — Qatar condemns Iran's fresh attacks on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait

Qatar's Foreign Ministry has condemned Iran's renewed attacks on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, the latest Gulf capital to round on Tehran as its missiles and drones keep landing on its neighbours.

Every siren over the Gulf pushes another Arab government further into Washington's camp. Doha, which spent years mediating with Tehran, is now publicly branding the regime the aggressor while the US keeps the Strait of Hormuz and the region's shipping lanes open.

5:14am 22 July 2026 — Kuwaitis ration electricity as Iran's strikes cripple the power grid

Kuwaitis are being forced to ration electricity after days of Iranian strikes on power and desalination plants, with Kuwait's Defence Ministry reporting a fourth straight day of attacks that have sparked fires and severe damage. Al Jazeera reports residents are cutting back to keep the grid standing.

This is what Iran's so-called retaliation actually looks like: not a blow against the US, but blackouts and water shortages inflicted on Gulf civilians, which is exactly why one Arab capital after another is lining up behind Trump's campaign to break the regime.

5:13am 22 July 2026 — UK's new PM Burnham clears US to strike Iran from British bases

Britain's new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has signed off on American forces using UK military bases for what London calls defensive strikes against Iran, Bloomberg reported, handing Washington another launch pad for its campaign.

The move lines America's closest ally up behind the pressure campaign just as Iran hunts for cracks in the coalition. Every base Burnham opens is one more reason for Tehran to think twice before testing the Strait again.

4:45am 22 July 2026 — Aoun hands Trump a Hezbollah disarmament plan as Lebanon backs the US-Israel deal

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has given Donald Trump a plan to disarm Hezbollah, Al Arabiya reported, as Beirut welcomed a US-brokered framework agreement with Israel after the two leaders met at the White House.

It is a quiet rout of Iran's proxy empire. While Tehran throws drones at Gulf shipping, Trump is peeling away its Lebanese arm at the table, and a Hezbollah stripped of its rockets is one less card for the mullahs to play.

4:33am 22 July 2026 — Israeli officials expect Trump to widen the war on Iran

Israeli officials believe Trump is preparing to sharply expand America's military campaign against Iran, the Jerusalem Post reported, with a broader push expected to target the regime's strategic infrastructure and its senior figures.

The word from Jerusalem is that Washington is not finished. Netanyahu spent six hours with his security chiefs on Monday night war gaming the next phase, a sign the allies expect Trump to keep tightening rather than let Tehran regroup.

3:43am 22 July 2026 — Blasts rock Iraq's Erbil near the US consulate as air defences scramble

Several loud explosions hit Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region, late on Tuesday, with the blasts reported near the US consulate and air defences activated over the city, Rudaw English reports. It was not immediately clear how many projectiles were intercepted, and the source of the fire had not been confirmed.

The blasts land amid Iran's barrage across the Gulf and its Revolutionary Guards' boasts of striking US forces in Bahrain and Jordan, and any Iranian ordnance falling near a US diplomatic post would hand Trump the clearest possible pretext to tighten the leash further. The president and Pete Hegseth have already vowed to answer any strike on Americans ten times harder, and a regime set back decades by ten nights of US strikes can ill afford to add an American consulate to its target list.

3:39am 22 July 2026 — Bahrain sounds sirens again and orders residents to shelter as Iran presses its barrage

Bahrain's Interior Ministry sounded air-raid sirens across the country on Tuesday and urged citizens and residents to remain calm and head to the nearest safe place, the ministry said, as fresh Iranian fire bore down on the Gulf kingdom.

It is the latest Iranian salvo to send a Gulf ally's civilians running for shelter, after a week in which Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan have all had to scramble their air defences against Tehran's missiles and drones. Each attack on a civilian population achieves nothing militarily and hands Washington and its partners fresh justification for the campaign steadily grinding down Iran's war machine.

2:49am 22 July 2026 — Saudi cabinet condemns the Houthi Red Sea blockade and vows to protect its ships

Saudi Arabia's cabinet, chaired by King Salman, condemned the Iran-backed Houthis on Tuesday over their threatened Red Sea blockade, dismissing the militia's accusations against the Kingdom as false and baseless and vowing decisive measures to protect its security and its ships, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

The Gulf is lining up behind Washington, not Tehran. Riyadh branding the Houthi accusations baseless and pledging to safeguard maritime navigation leaves Iran's proxy exposed as the aggressor throttling world shipping. Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan have all rallied to the same side this week, a sign the region reads Trump's pressure campaign as the winning hand and the blockade threats as the flailing of a regime running out of options.

2:43am 22 July 2026 — Iran lashes out at France over the diplomats it detained and assaulted in Tehran

Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has told his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot that the conduct of two French diplomats in Tehran was unconventional and unacceptable, Paris says, a day after France reported the pair had been detained for hours and one of them assaulted by Iranian security forces in what it called a flagrant violation of their diplomatic immunity.

The gall is breathtaking. Tehran seizes two accredited diplomats, roughs one up in a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention, then lectures Paris about diplomatic norms. It is the conduct of a regime that treats international law as optional and every foreign mission as a bargaining chip, and it is exactly why France, alongside Washington, is tightening the screws on Iran rather than loosening them.

1:57am 22 July 2026 — Trump says Iran is set back decades and the war is far from over

President Donald Trump has declared that the US campaign has set Iran back decades and made clear Washington is nowhere near finished. Asked whether American forces might soon wind things down, he said that if the US left now it would take Iran 20 to 25 years to rebuild what it has lost, adding: “We're not finished at all. We are not leaving right now.”

It is the clearest answer yet to a regime that has spent weeks hoping to run out the clock. Trump is not offering Tehran an off ramp, he is telling it the pressure stays on until its nuclear program is finished for good. The ceasefire Iran keeps demanding only arrives on his terms, and he has just made clear those terms are nowhere close to being met.

1:42am 22 July 2026 — Trump vows to hit Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain nuclear hideout “very heavily”

Trump told reporters the US would strike the Pickaxe Mountain area “pretty soon” and “very heavily,” after Israeli and US intelligence assessed that Tehran had moved thousands of enrichment centrifuges and part of its highly enriched uranium stockpile into tunnels deep inside the site. He said Washington was tracking the nuclear material itself, and repeated that a “desperate” Iran would never be allowed a bomb.

This is the whole leash tightening in one sentence. Tehran buried its centrifuges under a mountain thinking that would keep them safe, and Trump has just told the regime, on camera, exactly where he intends to hit and how hard. Iran spent the June war learning that no bunker is deep enough, and it is about to be reminded.

1:33am 22 July 2026 — Iran threatens Bulgaria over US refuelling jets as its isolation grows

Iran has warned Bulgaria against letting the United States use its soil for the war, after Sofia agreed to host up to eight American tanker aircraft that keep US jets fuelled over the Middle East. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei claimed any such help would make Bulgaria “an accomplice of aggressors and lawbreakers”. Sofia flatly rejected the threat, saying no combat aircraft are flying over Bulgaria and none involved in strikes on Iran are being refuelled there.

The threat says far more about Tehran's shrinking options than about Bulgaria. A regime that cannot stop US and allied strikes on its own territory is now reduced to menacing a small NATO member for the crime of parking a few refuelling planes. It is the behaviour of a government running out of moves, lashing out at the edges of Europe because it cannot land a blow at the centre.

1:28am 22 July 2026 — Hegseth warns the US will hit Iran “10 times harder” over shipping attacks

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US would answer any Iranian attack on commercial shipping by hitting Tehran “10 times harder,” telling reporters the military is degrading Iran’s capabilities further every night. He said Iran had been given every chance to negotiate over the Strait of Hormuz, and could either come back to the table or “deal with the War Department.”

Iran keeps testing whether the threats are real, and every night the answer arrives over Bandar Abbas, Bushehr and Chabahar. Hegseth’s arithmetic is simple: shoot at a tanker, lose ten times what you fired with. Tehran can end this the moment it chooses to stop shooting.

1:06am 22 July 2026 — Bahrain and Kuwait intercept fresh Iranian barrage as Tehran claims 11 US bases hit

Bahrain’s Defence Force said its air defences intercepted several Iranian missiles and drones overnight, Kuwait’s army reported downing more incoming fire and Bahrain sounded public sirens. Iranian state broadcaster IRIB claimed the country had struck 11 US bases across Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan in 24 hours, a boast the three governments’ own interception reports flatly contradict.

The pattern has not shifted all week. Iran throws everything it has at the Gulf states hosting US forces, allied air defences knock most of it down, and Tehran’s television then declares a famous victory over bases that are still standing. Counting hits it cannot prove is about all the regime has left, because the strikes going the other way are landing on Iran every single night.

1:04am 22 July 2026 — Trump warns US will “take care of business” as Houthi blockade turns tankers back

With Iran’s Houthi proxies declaring a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia and at least five tankers, several carrying Saudi crude, making U-turns near the Bab al-Mandeb strait, Trump said the US would “take care of business” if the Houthis tried to open a new front across the Red Sea. The reversals, tracked by CBS and Reuters, briefly rattled oil markets already fixed on Hormuz.

The Houthis are the last card Tehran has to play, and it is a weak one. Trump has already shown in the Red Sea that he will hit them harder than they can absorb, and every ship they frighten away from Saudi Arabia gives the Gulf one more reason to line up behind Washington rather than behind the regime lobbing missiles at their cities.

12:43am 22 July 2026 — Kuwait summons Iran’s ambassador over Hormuz tanker attack

Kuwait summoned Iran’s ambassador and handed him a formal protest after the Islamic Republic attacked the Kuwaiti tanker Kaifan as it transited the Strait of Hormuz, injuring several crew, the Kuwaiti foreign ministry said. It is the latest Gulf capital to haul in Tehran’s envoy over strikes on its shipping and territory.

Iran spent years telling its neighbours that America was the threat to Gulf shipping. Now it is Iranian missiles hitting Kuwaiti and Qatari tankers in the Hormuz lane, and one Arab government after another is turning up at Tehran’s embassy with a complaint. The regime is building the very anti-Iran front it always feared.

12:23am 22 July 2026 — Supertanker giant offers crews six months' pay to run the gauntlet of Hormuz

The world's largest supertanker owner, South Korea's Sinokor, is offering seafarers an extra six months' salary to make a single voyage through the Strait of Hormuz, a stark measure of how dangerous Iran has made the world's most important oil chokepoint. The bonus covers a month-long round trip to load crude in Saudi Arabia or Iraq and unload it in the Gulf of Oman. At least 59 commercial ships have been attacked in and around the Gulf since the war began, with 17 seafarers killed.

Every dollar of danger money is a direct cost of Tehran's decision to turn the Gulf into a shooting range, and it flows straight through to the petrol price from Sydney to Shanghai. It also underlines where the real leverage sits. Trump holds the strait, and for now he is keeping it open. The regime is being reminded every day that the tap it keeps threatening to close belongs to Washington, while its biggest remaining customer in Beijing watches the bill climb.

12:21am 22 July 2026 — Bessent says China has slashed its purchases of Iranian oil

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that China’s purchases of Iranian crude have fallen sharply, with US pressure squeezing the one big buyer keeping the regime’s oil revenue alive. He said Beijing, sitting on a large strategic reserve, has pulled back as prices and risk climb.

This is the part of the war that actually decides it. Iran’s missiles are theatre; its oil sales to China are the lifeline, and Washington has just confirmed that lifeline is being throttled. Choke off the cash flowing to Tehran from Beijing and the mullahs cannot pay for the war they are trying to fight.

12:02am 22 July 2026 — Israel says Iran hid its centrifuges and uranium inside Pickaxe Mountain

Israeli intelligence believes Iran has moved thousands of nuclear centrifuges, and part of its enriched uranium stockpile, deep into the fortified tunnels of Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz, according to assessments shared with the United States and reported by the Wall Street Journal and CNN. The hardened site, buried under a mountain in central Iran, was built to be almost impossible to destroy from the air.

It is exactly why the site now sits at the top of Trump's target list. Tehran spent months burrowing its most sensitive nuclear work underground in the belief it would be untouchable, and Trump has all but promised to prove it wrong, warning he will hit the area “pretty soon”. The intelligence turns his threat from a boast into a stated objective: finish the job the regime tried to bury under a mountain.

11:18pm 21 July 2026 — Trump brands Iran’s rulers “savages” over protester executions

Trump used Truth Social and a White House appearance to condemn Iran’s execution of two young protesters, 18-year-old Erfan Esfandiari and 23-year-old Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, hanged at Isfahan’s Dastgerd Prison, calling the regime “savages” and saying it kills its own people “like they’re candy.” He shared images of Iranians pleading for the killing to stop.

While Tehran spends its missiles trying to look strong abroad, it is hanging its own young men for protesting, and Trump is making sure the world sees both at once. The regime that lectures everyone else about human rights answers a teenager holding a sign with a rope, and no amount of state-TV bluster drowns that out.

10:54pm 21 July 2026 — France summons Iran’s envoy after embassy staff detained in Tehran

France summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires after French embassy staff were detained and, Paris said, physically intimidated by Iranian security services in Tehran. The foreign ministry demanded Iran explain the incident, punish those responsible and guarantee the safety of its diplomats.

Roughing up French diplomats is what a cornered regime does when it runs out of better options and starts lashing out at anyone within reach. Tehran is turning Europe against it at the very moment it can least afford new enemies, and Paris has just joined the queue of capitals with a grievance.

8:23pm 21 July 2026 — Qatar demands Iran pay for attack damage in letters to the UN

Qatar told the United Nations and the Security Council that Iran bears “full legal responsibility” for attacks on its territory and must compensate Doha for all damage, citing the strike on the Qatari tanker Al-Rukayyat near Hormuz and missile attacks on 12 and 17 July that injured three people, including a child. It reserved the right to respond under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Every one of these letters is another Gulf state putting its grievance with Iran on the official record, and it is Tehran, not Washington, that they are billing. The regime told the Arab world for decades that America was the danger in the Gulf. Its own missiles have now made the opposite case far better than any US diplomat could.

6:26pm 21 July 2026 — Iran's regime floats a petrol price hike as the war drains its finances

A spokesman for the Iranian parliament's Energy Committee, Reza Sepahvand, says the government is weighing a rise in petrol prices even as the country reels from war and severe inflation, telling the ILNA agency such a move would be “in no way advisable” while confirming Oil Ministry officials are set to raise the issue with lawmakers this week.

This is what a leash looks like from the inside. Petrol subsidies are the one thing the regime has never dared touch since the 2019 fuel protests turned deadly, and now, with Trump keeping Iran's oil boxed in and the Strait of Hormuz open on his terms, Tehran is so short of cash it's floating the very price hike that has put crowds on the streets before. The mullahs are being forced to choose between fuelling their war and keeping their own people quiet, and they cannot do both.

6:23pm 21 July 2026 — Pakistan and Bangladesh pay years-high gas prices as Iran's war chokes supply

Pakistan and Bangladesh have been forced to buy some of their most expensive liquefied natural gas cargoes in years as the conflict disrupts Middle East supply, Bloomberg reports, with state-owned Pakistan LNG paying about US$21.88 per million British thermal units for a late-July shipment, its highest price since 2022.

Iran sold its threats against the Strait of Hormuz as leverage over the West, but the bill is landing in Asia. It's Pakistan and Bangladesh, not Washington, paying 2022-level prices, while the United States, the world's largest gas exporter, sells straight into the gap Tehran has opened. The chokepoint the regime keeps rattling runs the energy lifeline of its supposed friends in the East far more than it touches America, and Trump is content to hold that pressure exactly where it squeezes Iran's own camp hardest.

6:08pm 21 July 2026 — Iran runs to the IAEA after US missiles hit its Darkhoveyn nuclear site

Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami has written to IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi demanding “effective and appropriate measures” after US missiles struck the site of the Karun nuclear plant at Darkhoveyn in the country's south-west, Iran's mission in Vienna says, casting it as the latest wave of strikes on its facilities.

Tehran wants the world to picture bombs falling on a peaceful power station, but the IAEA itself has said the Darkhoveyn site was in the earliest stages of construction and held no nuclear material when inspectors last visited. What Iran is really mourning is another rung of the programme Trump has spent this campaign methodically dismantling. A regime that spent years hiding centrifuges inside a mountain does not get to play the victim at the UN, and the letters to Grossi are the sound of a nuclear project being taken apart faster than it can be rebuilt.

5:52pm 21 July 2026 — Projectile hits a vessel off the UAE coast as Gulf shipping comes under fire

A vessel had its steering gear damaged after being struck by an unknown projectile about 17 nautical miles east of Dibba on the United Arab Emirates coast, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency says, adding that all crew are safe and no environmental damage was reported as authorities investigate.

The projectile is still unclaimed, but it lands in exactly the waters where Iran has spent this war menacing merchant shipping, and it's exactly the chaos the regime hoped would choke the Gulf. A single damaged rudder off Dibba is a long way from the blockade of Hormuz Tehran keeps threatening. With the US Navy keeping the strait open, the campaign against merchant traffic amounts to pinpricks that rattle insurers without shutting the tap, and every near miss is another reminder of who actually controls the water.

5:47pm 21 July 2026 — Jordan intercepts five Iranian drones as Amman's air defences hold

Jordan says its air defences have neutralised five Iranian drones that crossed into the kingdom, its state news agency reported on Tuesday, the latest time Amman has knocked Tehran's projectiles out of the sky with no damage or casualties reported.

Jordan is a US ally, and every drone it downs is one that never reaches an American base. Tehran keeps emptying its arsenal into its neighbours' skies for nothing while Trump holds the Strait of Hormuz open and the leash on Iran's oil short, and all the regime has to show for another night of launches is a fresh line of wreckage over Jordan.

5:26pm 21 July 2026 — Iran's army claims drone attacks on US forces in Bahrain

Iran's army says it launched drone attacks on US forces in Bahrain, the latest in a run of unverified boasts from a military that keeps claiming hits it cannot show. Bahrain hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and there is no independent confirmation that any American position was struck.

The pattern is familiar by now. Tehran announces a spectacular blow, the target turns out to be intact, and the Gulf states close ranks. Kuwait's news agency reported that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's foreign ministers spent Tuesday coordinating on regional security while Iran's drones and missiles keep falling short, and Trump's campaign grinds the regime's military down night after night.

5:16pm 21 July 2026 — Iran admits US strikes cut communications to two of its islands

Iran has admitted its own forces are taking real damage from American firepower. An Iranian minister conceded on Tuesday that US strikes had knocked out communications to two of the country's islands, the same Gulf outposts Tehran uses to menace shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

It is a rare confession from a regime that spends its days boasting about victories nobody can find. CENTCOM said the tenth straight night of strikes was built to degrade exactly this, the military kit Iran uses to threaten commercial traffic in the strait. Trump is holding Iran's oil, its dollars and its waterway on a 60-day leash, and with every island Tehran can no longer reach, the mullahs and their paymasters in Beijing lose another grip on the world's shipping lanes.

4:31pm 21 July 2026 — Qatar backs Saudi Arabia and takes Iran's attacks to the UN Security Council

Qatar hardened its line against Iran's axis on Tuesday, condemning the Houthi movement's accusations against Saudi Arabia and throwing its weight behind Riyadh, while calling on the world to enforce UN Security Council resolutions on Yemen and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. Doha's foreign ministry called free passage through international waterways a fundamental principle of international law, and Al Jazeera reported the emirate had resumed maritime navigation in the hours after the attacks. Qatar has also formally taken Iran's repeated strikes on its own territory to the UN, sending identical letters to the Secretary General and the Security Council president.

This is the story Tehran did not want coming out of the Gulf. Iran has spent the week threatening to choke the Strait of Hormuz and cheering a Houthi blockade of Saudi shipping, betting the region would buckle. Instead Doha, a state that keeps a line open to everyone, has lined up with Riyadh and with the principle Washington has enforced from the start: the sea lanes stay open. Every Gulf capital that reopens its ports and calls in the Security Council leaves Iran's leverage thinner and pulls tighter the 60-day leash Trump holds over its oil and its only route to the world. The real prize behind that strait was never Tehran's crippled economy, but the tanker lane that keeps China's refineries running.

4:13pm 21 July 2026 — Iran's Revolutionary Guards claim a deadly strike on US troops in Jordan

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on Tuesday that its air force had hit a complex housing US soldiers in Jordan's Rukban area, near the Syrian border, and said several troops were killed. The Guard, in a statement carried by Iranian state media, offered no evidence for the claim and named no unit or time.

Washington has confirmed nothing and no casualties have been verified by any US command, while Jordan's air defences have spent the week shooting Iranian missiles out of its sky. It is the pattern Tehran has fallen into as the campaign runs on: with American warplanes pressing a tenth straight night of strikes on Iran's coast and nuclear sites, the regime answers not with anything it can show on the battlefield but with bulletins claiming distant American dead. Trump still holds Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash, and each unverifiable boast measures how little else Tehran has left to fire back with.

3:58pm 21 July 2026 — IRGC claims it hit an Amazon data centre in Bahrain with cruise missiles

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says its air force fired several cruise missiles at what it called "Amazon's central data infrastructure" in Bahrain and completely destroyed it, casting the strike as revenge for US attacks on the Darkhoveyn nuclear site. Neither Amazon nor Bahrain has confirmed that anything of the sort took place.

It fits the pattern. Tehran keeps announcing spectacular hits it can never actually show, while the real scoreboard runs the other way. CENTCOM has just finished its 10th straight night of strikes on Iran's military, and it says roughly 900 tankers carrying about 450 million barrels of oil have kept moving through the very strait Iran swears it has closed. Lobbing missiles at a civilian data centre in a Gulf state, if the regime really did it, only hands Donald Trump another reason to keep his hand on Iran's oil, its banks and its shipping lanes, and pushes the Gulf capitals further into Washington's arms.

3:41pm 21 July 2026 — Iran's army threatens to strike US troops even on its own islands

Iran's army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia has declared that Tehran would attack American forces on any Iranian island even if that meant bombing its own soil. "If Americans set foot on one of our islands, we will certainly target them on those same islands, even though they belong to us," he told reporters on Tuesday.

It is meant to sound defiant. It reads as an admission. A military reduced to threatening to shell its own territory is a military that already expects to lose it, and the boast lands as Trump presses a 10th consecutive night of strikes on the regime's bases, launchers and air defences. The islands Akraminia is talking about sit astride the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point Tehran keeps threatening to close and cannot hold, and every threat like this only strengthens the case for keeping the strait, Iran's oil and its dollars firmly on Washington's leash.

3:18pm 21 July 2026 — Iranian daily Ettelaat admits closing the Strait of Hormuz would backfire on Tehran

Even Iran's own establishment press is now conceding that the regime's favourite threat is a bluff. The long-running conservative Tehran newspaper Ettelaat wrote on Tuesday that slamming shut both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb at the same time would hand Iran nothing more than short-lived leverage, while doing lasting damage to its own economy and greatly raising the odds of the major powers stepping in.

It's a striking admission to read in Tehran, and it lands exactly where Donald Trump has kept the squeeze. Iran's one big card, choking the world's most important oil chokepoint, costs the regime far more than it costs anyone in Washington, which is why the President has been able to hold Iran's oil, its dollars and the strait itself on a short leash. The heaviest blow falls on China, the last major buyer still taking Iranian crude, and now even the regime's own commentators can see the trap closing around Tehran.

2:31pm 21 July 2026 — US strikes nine Iranian cities overnight as the campaign hits its 10th night

Iran's own Islamic Labour News Agency, ILNA, has tallied the cities and coastal areas battered in the hours before Tuesday morning, naming Abdanan, Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Bushehr, Chabahar, Qeshm Island, Sirik, Shiraz and Konarak among the targets of the latest US strikes, according to Iran International.

When Tehran's own wire service is reduced to reading out a target list that runs from the Gulf coast to the country's heartland, the picture is clear enough. This is the 10th straight night the US has hammered the regime's military and its maritime machine, and every name on that list is another turn of the leash Trump is tightening around Iran's oil, its ports and the strait it keeps threatening to close.

2:20pm 21 July 2026 — Israel says Iran hid thousands of centrifuges inside Pickaxe Mountain

Israeli intelligence believes Iran quietly moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside Pickaxe Mountain last northern autumn, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing Israeli and US officials who say the machines were shifted underground after US and Israeli strikes tore through Iran's three main nuclear sites in the June 2025 war.

It is exactly the behaviour that makes a nuclear Iran the world's problem. Bombed once, the regime does not stand down, it burrows deeper and hides the hardware. Israeli and US officials caution the move may simply be Tehran trying to shield surviving equipment from the next strike, but that is the point: this is a regime that answers pressure by digging in. It is why Trump's campaign against Iran's military and its enrichment programme has more work to do, not less.

1:56pm 21 July 2026 — Oil price slips as markets shrug off Iran's Hormuz threat

Oil prices actually eased on Tuesday, even as Iran's Revolutionary Guards vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut, with Brent crude slipping 35 cents to US$88.87 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate holding near US$82.47, both back below the one-month highs hit a day earlier, Reuters reported. Traders were weighing fresh reports of US-Iran mediation against the fighting and Houthi threats to blockade Saudi Arabia.

The market's calm is its own verdict on Tehran's bluster. For all the Guards' talk of a closed waterway, the crude is still moving and the price is sliding, because traders can see US Central Command holding the lanes open, roughly 900 ships and 450 million barrels of oil waved through Hormuz since early May. Trump holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its strait on a leash, and the people who price crude for a living are betting on Washington, not the mullahs.

1:44pm 21 July 2026 — Qatar and Pakistan press Iran to reopen Hormuz to halt US strikes

Qatar and Pakistan have launched a joint push to revive Iran-US talks, with Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni flying to Islamabad carrying a message from President Masoud Pezeshkian and expected to meet army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan's foreign ministry said. Israel's Channel 14 reports Qatar has floated a deal under which Washington would suspend its strikes only after Iran first reopens both shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz for 10 days.

The shape of that offer tells you who is winning. Nobody is asking Washington to give ground. The proposal is that Iran hands back the strait it seized, and only then does Trump ease off. A week ago Tehran was boasting that Hormuz was its ultimate card. Now its own ministers are shuttling through Islamabad looking for a face-saving way to give it up, while the regime's hardliners fight even that.

1:30pm 21 July 2026 — US State Department issues worldwide caution alert over Iran war

The US State Department has told Americans around the world to exercise increased caution as its war with Iran drags on, warning of a heightened risk of attacks on US facilities and citizens and urging travellers to reconsider trips through the Middle East.

The alert is a plain measure of who the aggressor is. It is Iran's regime, not Washington, that has spent the past week firing missiles at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan and menacing civilian shipping, and it is Iran's reach the department is bracing Americans against. Trump has warned Tehran it will pay many times over for every US soldier it kills, and the worldwide alert is Washington closing ranks behind that warning, not backing away from it.

1:00pm 21 July 2026 — Iran's Revolutionary Guards claim control of Hormuz and order ships to seek clearance

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has declared that control of the Strait of Hormuz rests in Iranian hands and that vessels must coordinate with Tehran, and stick to a route close to the Iranian coast, before they are allowed to transit, in a fresh statement issued after Iran's own forces set two tankers ablaze for using a different lane.

The strait is not Iran's to license. US Central Command says the shipping lanes remain open: American forces have shepherded roughly 900 commercial vessels and 450 million barrels of crude through Hormuz since early May, and they stand postured and prepared to hold Iran accountable for menacing civilian mariners. Tehran's talk of designated routes is the bluster of a regime whose oil, dollars and waterway Trump already holds on a 60-day leash, with Beijing's Iranian oil lifeline the real pressure point behind it all, and Washington ready to take the strait outright the moment Iran overreaches.

12:56pm 21 July 2026 — Explosions hit western Iran's Abdanan as US presses its 10th night of strikes

Several explosions struck the western Iranian city of Abdanan early Tuesday, with the province's governor Behzad Nourmohammadi confirming that facilities in the Dinar Kuh area were targeted, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

The blasts come on the 10th straight night of US strikes, with CENTCOM confirming fresh raids on Iranian command centres, missile launchers and air defences. Abdanan sits deep in Iran's west near the Iraqi border, a sign the campaign is now reaching far beyond the Gulf coast and grinding down the regime's military machine while Trump keeps Tehran's oil, dollars and the Strait of Hormuz on a short leash.

12:06pm 21 July 2026 — IRGC claims it destroyed US radar and air defences in Bahrain

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has claimed its Aerospace Force wiped out an American radar and a Patriot battery in Bahrain overnight, telling the state outlet Fars News it had created a “dark night for US radars and air defense systems in the region” under its so-called Operation Promised Victory 2.

Tehran offered no evidence beyond its own propaganda channels, and the boast landed barely 90 minutes after the US Embassy in Manama warned Iran might strike the Bahraini capital. Bahrain is home to the US Fifth Fleet, and every unverified claim of hitting American hardware only hands Trump another reason to keep the oil, dollars and Strait that sustain the regime on a short leash.

12:01pm 21 July 2026 — Crew abandons a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz after it is struck

The crew of a merchant tanker has abandoned ship in the Strait of Hormuz after their vessel was hit by a projectile, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency, the latest vessel reported struck in the world's busiest oil chokepoint since dawn.

It follows Tehran's open boast that it had set two tankers ablaze to keep Hormuz shut, and Iran is now savaging the very shipping lanes it long claimed to protect. Each strike only sharpens the case for Trump and Britain's promised minehunters to prise the Strait out of the regime's hands for good.

11:47am 21 July 2026 — Iran claims it hit a US drone hangar and bases in Kuwait as Kuwait says it intercepted

Iran's Revolutionary Guards claim they struck an MQ-9 drone hangar at Ali Al Salem Air Base and US radar, communications and satellite sites in Kuwait with missiles and drones. Al Jazeera reported the claim, which Kuwait's military says its air defences intercepted.

This is the same pattern on repeat. Tehran fires at yet another Arab neighbour that hosts American forces, Kuwait's US-backed air defences knock the missiles down, and the Guards put out a victory statement anyway. Every failed wave does two things Trump wants: it proves Iran cannot land a decisive blow, and it drives Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar deeper into Washington's arms. The strikes on Iran will not ease while its missiles keep flying at US bases.

11:31am 21 July 2026 — CENTCOM says it has completed its latest round of strikes on Iran

US Central Command says it has completed another round of strikes on Iran, the 10th straight night of the campaign, hitting Iranian command centres, missile and drone launch sites, air defences and naval targets, in a post on X. CENTCOM says the strikes are aimed at stopping Iran attacking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The message from Tampa is control, not chaos. CENTCOM says it has helped move roughly 900 commercial vessels and 450 million barrels of crude through Hormuz since May, even as Iran tries to choke the waterway. That is the leash in action: Trump keeps the strait open, keeps Iran's oil and military on the back foot, and turns the screws a notch tighter every night Tehran keeps shooting. The strikes stop when Washington decides, not before.

11:17am 21 July 2026 — Iran boasts of setting two oil tankers ablaze and vows to keep Hormuz shut

Iran's Revolutionary Guards say they hit two oil tankers trying to use the southern route through the Strait of Hormuz, setting off explosions and fires that left the vessels dead in the water, according to state news agency IRNA. The Guards vowed that "not a single drop of oil or gas" would leave the region while US operations continue.

Read that again, because Tehran just made Washington's case for it. The regime is openly bragging about torching civilian tankers and trying to shut the world's most important oil artery, then asking why the US is bombing it for the 10th night running. Every neutral ship the IRGC sets alight is another reason Trump keeps CENTCOM parked over the strait, and another blow to the Chinese refineries that lean on that oil far more than America ever has.

11:00am 21 July 2026 — Qatar takes Iran to the UN Security Council over attacks on its soil

Qatar has written twice to the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council over Iranian attacks on its territory and is seeking compensation, Kuwait's state news agency reported, as Doha joins Kuwait and Bahrain in turning on Tehran diplomatically.

This is the coalition Trump has been building without firing a shot at the Gulf states. Qatar hosts the largest US base in the Middle East, and Iran has now handed it a reason to line up alongside Washington at the Security Council. Every missile the regime lands on an Arab capital does Tehran's diplomatic isolation for it, leaving Iran with fewer friends and a longer list of governments quietly cheering the US on.

10:12am 21 July 2026 — Iran hits a Greek tanker off its south coast as the earlier Hormuz victim is confirmed Kuwaiti

A Greek tanker has been struck and brought to a halt in waters off southern Iran, Iran's own IRGC-linked Fars News reports. Fars also identified the tanker hit by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz two hours earlier as Kuwaiti. That makes two commercial ships attacked in a single morning.

Note who is announcing it. The regime's own media is boasting about attacks on a Greek ship and a Kuwaiti ship, neither of them American, neither of them military. Every strike on a neutral tanker writes the next page of Washington's case, hands CENTCOM another night of targets, and pushes Athens and Kuwait City further into the US column. Tehran keeps proving that the blockade and the strikes exist for a reason.

9:16am 21 July 2026 — Iran claims it hit US HIMARS launchers in Kuwait as Kuwait says it intercepted

Iran's army claims it struck US HIMARS rocket systems at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait with ground-to-ground missiles, a boast carried by the IRGC-linked Tasnim agency and reported by Iran International. Kuwait's military tells a very different story, saying its air defences detected and intercepted the Iranian missiles and drones and that every threat was dealt with.

Tehran's latest “operation” is theatre for a home audience being told it's winning while its coastline is pounded nightly. Kuwait, a US partner, says the barrage was stopped cold. This is what the leash looks like from Iran's side: unable to touch the US Navy that's throttling Hormuz, the regime lobs missiles at its neighbours and calls the interceptions a victory. The Gulf states aren't buying it, and neither is anyone counting the wreckage.

8:31am 21 July 2026 — Financial Times says regime change in Tehran is back on the Trump administration's agenda

The idea of overthrowing Iran's regime is returning to the agenda in parts of the Trump administration after diplomatic efforts failed, the Financial Times says in a new analysis, with efforts to stoke an internal uprising also back on the table and Israel's earlier proposal to arm Kurdish groups now open for revival.

Tehran should read the sequence. Trump offered the deal, Iran broke it, and now the conversation in Washington has moved from sanctions relief to whether the regime survives at all. With a 19-year-old protester hanged in Isfahan days ago and Qezel Hesar's death row on hunger strike, the uprising Washington might stoke is one Iranians have already started themselves.

8:21am 21 July 2026 — UKMTO reports a tanker struck by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz off Oman's Limah

A tanker radioed over VHF Channel 16 that it had been struck by an unknown projectile in the Strait of Hormuz, eight nautical miles northeast of Limah in Oman, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency says. Authorities are investigating.

Another neutral merchant ship, another projectile out of nowhere, in the same strait Iran insists it has every right to hold hostage. This is the shipping war CENTCOM's ten straight nights of strikes exist to end, and every fresh attack on a civilian hull makes the case for the blockade better than any Pentagon briefing could.

8:18am 21 July 2026 — Trump says the US will help Britain's new PM Andy Burnham demine the Strait of Hormuz

US President Donald Trump says he has had “a very good conversation” with Andy Burnham, Britain's new Prime Minister, who has just replaced Keir Starmer, and that the pair discussed the Military Alliance and the demining of the Strait of Hormuz. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said “the U.S.A. will be there to help” and wished Burnham “GOOD LUCK AND GODSPEED”.

It is a striking turn. Burnham made his name as a Trump sceptic on Labour's left, yet his first big move in the top job has him lining up behind Washington on the one chokepoint that matters. Trump holds the Strait of Hormuz, and now Britain's new leader wants in on clearing it. The signal to Tehran is that the coalition keeping the strait open is widening, even as the regime lobs missiles at the Gulf and calls it a strategy.

6:27am 21 July 2026 — CENTCOM says US forces have launched a fresh round of strikes on Iran

US Central Command says American forces began a new round of strikes on Iran at 4pm Eastern on Trump's direction, posting on X that the strikes are designed to further degrade the Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. It pushes the campaign into a tenth straight night.

CENTCOM isn't hiding the aim. Trump wants Hormuz open and Iran's ability to threaten it dismantled, one night at a time. This is the leash doing its work: every launcher, radar and command node that menaces the tankers is taken off the board, and Tehran is left firing missiles at Gulf states while its own coast burns. The country that most needs Hormuz open is China, and Trump knows it.

5:52am 21 July 2026 — Pentagon says nearly 100 US troops wounded since the Iran campaign resumed

Nearly 100 US troops have been wounded since military operations against Iran resumed a fortnight ago, the US Department of War has confirmed, in figures carried by Kuwait's state news agency. The tally shows how hard Iran and its proxies have hit back at American forces across the region even as CENTCOM presses its nightly strikes.

Every one of those wounds is a bill Tehran is running up, and Trump has made clear it will be repaid many times over. The regime is trading away its last military capabilities for casualties it can parade at home, while the US methodically degrades the very systems Iran uses to attack Gulf shipping. A war of attrition favours the side that controls the money and the sea lanes, and that side is Washington.

2:46am 21 July 2026 — Pentagon names fallen soldiers Isabella Gonzales, 19, and Tyler James Feehan, 25, killed by Iran in Jordan

The Pentagon has identified the two American soldiers killed in Iran's attacks on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and released their photographs. Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, an air and missile defence crewmember, was killed in action on 17 July. First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of the 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, was killed the following day.

Two young Americans who stood at the missile screens protecting their mates from Tehran's barrages, and gave everything doing it. Their names now sit behind every strike of the US campaign. Trump has told his commanders Iran will pay many times over for each of them, and ten straight nights of CENTCOM strikes say he means it. Lest we forget.

2:49am 21 July 2026 — Trump warns Iran will pay many times over for every US soldier it kills

President Trump has warned that Iran will pay “many times over” for every American soldier it kills, posting on Truth Social that he has passed the directive to War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine and every military leader. The message follows the Pentagon's confirmation that two US soldiers were killed in Iran's missile strike on a base in Jordan.

Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over! This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military.

This is the leash tightening. Trump spent weeks holding Iran's oil, its dollars and the Strait of Hormuz in his grip while leaving Tehran a way out. Kill American troops and the way out closes. The regime has spent 47 years testing US presidents who blinked, and it has finally found one who doesn't.

10:16pm 20 July 2026 — Houthis declare a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia over the Red Sea

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis have declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, threatening to disrupt Red Sea shipping and the Kingdom's oil exports, Reuters reported. The militia says it will target vessels heading to Saudi ports, opening a second maritime front while Tehran squeezes the Strait of Hormuz.

It's the same playbook run by the same paymaster. Iran can't beat the US Navy that's throttling Hormuz, so it leans on its proxies to menace everyone else's shipping. Riyadh has already condemned the threat as the work of a terrorist militia, and every barrel the Houthis put at risk pushes the Gulf further into Washington's corner. The country that most needs these lanes open is China, which buys the oil that moves through them.

4:15pm 20 July 2026 — Pentagon sends F-35s and F-16s from Europe to reinforce the Middle East

The Pentagon is moving F-35 Lightning II fighters from the United Kingdom and F-16 Fighting Falcons from Germany to the Middle East, ABC News reported on Sunday, citing a US official. Air & Space Forces Magazine first reported the deployment, which adds dedicated strike platforms to a theatre already holding more than 50,000 American troops.

Every airframe pulled from NATO posture and stacked into CENTCOM's area of operations tells Tehran the campaign is escalating. These are strike fighters built to kill air defences and coastal targets, exactly the categories CENTCOM has been hitting for nine straight nights.

4:05pm 20 July 2026 — Trump calls on Congress to add Iran to the Russian sanctions bill

President Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday that Republicans should add Iran to the legislation imposing mandatory sanctions on buyers of Russian energy, calling it what the late Senator Lindsey Graham “wanted to do.” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told the Washington Times he would introduce a House version on Monday, calling it Graham's “final wish.” The bill already has bipartisan support from more than 60 senators.

Republicans should add Iran to the Russian Sanctions Bill. That's what Lindsey wanted to do, and it was going to happen. IMPORTANT!!!

If Iran lands on the same sanctions architecture as Russia, every Chinese refiner buying discounted Iranian crude faces the same dollar exclusion that crushed Russian energy exports. It turns one bill into a two-front economic weapon and gives Congress ownership of a pressure regime that currently runs on executive orders alone.

10:57am 20 July 2026 — Trump says the US hit Iran very hard again in honour of three killed Americans

Donald Trump told reporters on his return to Washington from the World Cup final that the United States had struck Iran “very hard again tonight” in honour of the American service members killed in the conflict. He put the toll at “probably three”, called them “great patriots” and said they had been fighting so that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

That is the leash tightening, not slipping. Trump has spent nine nights answering Iran's attacks on shipping with strikes he can escalate or stop at will, and he is now doing it with American dead to point at. Tehran handed him the justification when it went after civilian mariners in Hormuz, and the President is spending it. Iran's oil, its dollars and its strait all still sit under Washington's hand, and every night of this campaign costs Beijing more than it costs Trump.

10:35am 20 July 2026 — US Embassy in Bahrain warns Iran may be about to hit central Manama

The US Embassy in Bahrain has warned that Iranian forces may be preparing to strike central Manama, telling Americans in the capital to move away from the diplomatic and government district. Al Jazeera carried the alert at 10:30am AEST, minutes after Iran opened a fresh missile wave across the Gulf.

Tehran is now openly threatening the capital of a country that hosts the US Fifth Fleet, which tells you the regime has run out of military targets and has moved on to civilians. Trump has Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lane on a 60 day leash, and every salvo Tehran fires at a Gulf neighbour hands Washington another Arab government willing to help tighten it.

10:33am 20 July 2026 — IRGC claims a second strike on al-Tanf after CENTCOM called the first one false

The IRGC says it has attacked the American garrison at al-Tanf in eastern Syria for a second time, a claim carried on Iranian state-linked media at 10:33am AEST. CENTCOM publicly demolished the identical claim on 17 July, posting that no US troops in the region had recently been killed or captured and labelling Iran's version false.

Iran is recycling a lie its own enemy already fact checked in public, which is what an army does when it cannot land a real blow. The regime needs a victory to show its people while US aircraft work through a ninth straight night over Iranian territory, so it has invented one.

10:32am 20 July 2026 — Oil jumps more than 3% as Iran's attacks on shipping squeeze Hormuz supply

Oil prices surged more than 3% in early Asian trading on Monday as the fighting between the US and Iran disrupted energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, Al Jazeera reported at 10:32am AEST.

Iran is burning its own leverage. Every tanker it attacks lifts the price of the crude it can no longer sell, while Washington keeps the strait open for everyone else and Beijing, which takes the bulk of Iran's exported oil, pays more for the privilege of standing by its client. That is the leash doing exactly what Trump built it to do.

10:21am 20 July 2026 — UKMTO reports a vessel on fire off Oman's Kumzar inside the Hormuz approach

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency has reported a vessel on fire off Kumzar at the tip of Oman's Musandam peninsula, alongside the shipping lane running through the Strait of Hormuz. Al Jazeera carried the UKMTO alert at 10:14am AEST.

Kumzar sits at the narrowest point of the strait, so a burning ship there is Iran attacking the one asset the entire world can see. CENTCOM says its blockade has already redirected six vessels and disabled one, and every fire Tehran lights makes the case for taking the strait outright that much easier for Trump to make.

10:16am 20 July 2026 — Iran claims a fresh missile wave from Lorestan as CENTCOM's ninth night runs on

Iran's state news agency IRNA claims a new wave of missiles has been fired from the western province of Lorestan toward what it called “enemy targets”. No target was named, no damage was shown, and no US or Gulf authority has confirmed anything was hit.

Note where the regime says it is now shooting from. Lorestan is deep inland, hundreds of kilometres back from the coastal launch sites CENTCOM has been dismantling for nine straight nights, and firing from the interior is what an air force does when its forward positions are gone. Tehran started this by attacking commercial ships and civilian crews in Hormuz. The claim is for domestic consumption, and it will not move the only numbers that matter to Iran, which are the barrels it cannot sell and the dollars it cannot bank.

9:45am 20 July 2026 — Residents report explosions in Tabriz as US strikes push far beyond the Gulf

Residents in Tabriz, in Iran's far northwest, reported multiple explosions from about 2:37am local time, according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies analyst Joe Truzman, who said residents in Chabahar and Konarak on the southeastern coast reported at least 10 powerful explosions over the same window. Iranian media also reported blasts at Mahshahr. US Central Command had announced its ninth consecutive night of strikes hours earlier.

Until now the campaign has hugged Iran's coastline, hitting the missile and drone units firing on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Reaching Tabriz tells Tehran the map isn't fixed and the leash gets longer every time the regime attacks another tanker or another Gulf neighbour. Iran's rulers picked this escalation, and Trump is showing them the bill.

9:23am 20 July 2026 — CENTCOM opens a ninth straight night of strikes on Iran's shipping war

US Central Command says it began a new wave of strikes on Iran at 7pm US eastern time on Saturday, the ninth consecutive night of the campaign. CENTCOM said the strikes will keep degrading the Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

Nine nights in, the campaign is doing exactly what Trump said it would. Iran's military gets degraded a little further every night while the tankers keep moving through Hormuz, and Tehran is reduced to firing drones at Kuwaiti water plants because it can't reach the fleet enforcing the blockade. Trump still holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its strait, and every night of this makes the grip tighter.

9:02am 20 July 2026 — Islamic Resistance in Iraq threatens US bases while denying recent attacks

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the umbrella name for Iran's armed proxy militias inside Iraq, says it will target American interests and military bases in Iraq and across the region with full force if Washington widens its campaign against Iran. In the same statement the coalition denied carrying out any attacks on US bases in recent days.

The denial and the threat arrive in the same breath, which tells you how much confidence Tehran's Iraqi proxies have in their own position. These are the same groups Pete Hegseth named over 600 attacks on US forces, and they are now at pains to insist they have done nothing at all. Eight consecutive nights of CENTCOM strikes have made the price of joining in perfectly clear, and the militias have done the arithmetic.

8:48am 20 July 2026 — Kuwait's army says its air defences are intercepting a fresh Iranian drone attack

The General Staff of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces says its air defences are engaging hostile drones launched by Iran, and has told the public that any explosions they hear are interceptions rather than impacts. It urged Kuwaitis to follow the safety instructions issued by the relevant authorities.

Iran has now spent days firing drones at a Gulf neighbour that is not fighting it, and Kuwait keeps knocking them down. Unable to reach the US Navy, Tehran reaches for power stations, desalination plants and the water supply of Kuwaiti families instead. Every salvo aimed at Arab civilians costs Iran another friend in the Gulf, and Kuwait's condemnation of Saturday's strike on its water plant shows that bill is already being paid.

5:30am 20 July 2026 — Kuwait says Iran hit a power and desalination plant for a second time in two days

Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy says a power generation and water desalination plant was struck for the second time in two days, starting a fire in part of the facility. Kuwait's Defence Ministry went further, with spokesman Major General Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi saying Iran "continues to target civilian and vital facilities" and has caused severe damage, while the General Staff of the Army issued its own statement naming the same pattern of attacks.

Iran cannot hit the American forces it says it is fighting, so it is burning the electricity and drinking water of an Arab neighbour that is not even in the war. Kuwait was one of the more cautious Gulf capitals a fortnight ago and Tehran has now bombed its utilities twice in 48 hours, which is why the condemnations from Kuwait City, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Amman keep arriving faster than Iran can absorb them. Trump's leash on Iran's oil, its dollars and the strait holds because Tehran keeps handing the region reasons to want it held.

7:22am 20 July 2026 — Bahrain sounds sirens again as Iran fires a fresh salvo at the Gulf

Bahrain sounded air raid sirens across the kingdom and told residents to take shelter, the latest Iranian salvo aimed at a Gulf neighbour rather than the American forces Tehran says it is fighting. IRGC-linked Iranian media claimed within minutes that missiles had been launched at US targets across the region, a boast Tehran has made after almost every barrage of this campaign and has yet to back with a single confirmed hit on a US installation.

The pattern is now well established. Iran cannot reach the US Fifth Fleet at Manama, so it fires at the countries hosting it and calls the result a victory. Every siren over Bahrain buys Tehran another Arab capital lining up against it, and the tally of Gulf states publicly condemning these attacks has grown with each wave. Trump still holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its shipping lane on a 60 day leash, and Tehran keeps spending what little leverage it has left on salvos its own neighbours intercept.

7:01am 20 July 2026 — Wall Street Journal says the Pentagon is planning for a wider war with Iran

The Wall Street Journal reports that US military planners are drawing up options for a wider war with Iran, while warning that stocks of precision munitions are under strain after eight straight nights of strikes.

Planning the next phase is what a winning side does. Tehran has spent the week firing on Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan and killing American soldiers, and Washington's answer is to widen the options on the table. The munitions strain is real, and it gets solved on a production line while the leash stays tight on Iran's oil, its dollars and the strait.

7:00am 20 July 2026 — CENTCOM says the blockade has now redirected six ships and disabled one

US Central Command says sailors aboard the guided missile destroyer USS John Finn are still enforcing the naval blockade of Iran, and that as of 19 July American forces have redirected six commercial vessels and disabled one to force compliance.

That is the leash working exactly as designed. Every ship turned around is Iranian oil that never reaches a buyer and dollars that never reach the IRGC. China's refiners are the ones counting the cost of a strait the US Navy controls.

6:53am 20 July 2026 — Iranian state media reports an explosion in Arak as US operations push inland

Iranian state media says an explosion was heard in Arak in central Iran and has linked it to what it called offensive operations, putting the campaign hundreds of kilometres inland from the Gulf coastline the US has hammered for eight nights.

Arak matters because it hosts the heavy water reactor complex Tehran spent years insisting was peaceful. The campaign that started on Iran's coast is now reaching the sites the regime cares about most, and it is Tehran's own media telling Iranians about it.

6:42am 20 July 2026 — Israel Katz says Israel will answer any Iranian attack with full force

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz says Israel will respond with full force to any Iranian attack, hours after IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said the military is ready to resume fighting.

Tehran is now hearing the same message from two directions. It has spent the week proving it will fire on anyone in range, and Jerusalem's answer is that the next launch buys a response Iran's depleted air defences cannot absorb.

6:30am 20 July 2026 — Iran blames Washington for the consequences of the strike near its Darkhovin nuclear site

Iran's foreign ministry says the United States bears responsibility for the consequences of a strike on its nuclear facility, after the IAEA opened an inquiry into a reported hit at the Darkhovin site in Khuzestan.

This is a regime that spent two decades hiding enrichment from the very inspectors it now wants to call as witnesses. Tehran broke the ceasefire, fired on four neighbouring states and killed American soldiers. The consequences it is warning about are the ones it chose.

6:30am 20 July 2026 — Iranian regime academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi says Tehran wants a US land invasion

Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a Tehran University academic and former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiating team who is one of the regime's most visible English language voices, claimed in remarks reported by Fox News that "the Iranians actually want the Americans to carry out a land invasion" because Tehran believes it would win a ground war. He said the IRGC had "last night introduced a new missile to the war", without naming it, and claimed Iran had spent decades burying and dispersing its arsenal so it could survive an air campaign.

A regime that is winning doesn't invite the world's strongest military to come ashore. Eight straight nights of American strikes have taken apart Iran's coastal radar, its air defences and the logistics running inland from Bandar Abbas, and Tehran's answer is to dare Washington into the one fight Trump has been careful not to start. He doesn't need boots on the ground to hold the leash. He already holds Iran's oil, its dollars and its access to the strait, and every night that passes costs Tehran more of all three.

6:10am 20 July 2026 — Qezel Hesar death row prisoners enter a seventh day of hunger strike over executions

Prisoners at Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj, west of Tehran, have carried a hunger strike and sit in through a seventh consecutive day in protest at executions and at the transfer of several death row inmates into solitary confinement, according to reports from inside Iran carried by Iranian opposition media. Relatives of prisoners moved to the prison's quarantine section ahead of their executions held their own protest outside the facility on Sunday, demanding the hangings be called off and the sentences cancelled.

Iran's new Supreme Leader spent Sunday publicly begging his own factions for "sacred unity" while families stood outside a prison near Tehran pleading for their sons' lives. That is what the Islamic Republic is doing to its own people in the ninth day of a war it started by breaking the ceasefire in Hormuz. Anyone calling for Washington to ease off should be clear about exactly what they would be preserving.

4:24am 20 July 2026 — Rubio praises Lebanon's Joseph Aoun for moving to disarm Hezbollah before Trump talks

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun in Washington on Sunday and praised what the State Department called Lebanon's "determined efforts to reclaim Lebanon's sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure". Aoun meets President Trump on Tuesday and is expected to hand him a written proposal on dismantling Hezbollah's arsenal under the US brokered agreement Lebanon and Israel signed on 26 June. Hezbollah has rejected both the talks and any disarmament.

Hezbollah is the most valuable asset Tehran has outside its own borders, and Lebanon's president has flown to Washington to offer a plan for taking its weapons off it. Iran spent the weekend firing missiles at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan to prove it still frightens the region. What it has actually managed is to push the Arab capitals further into Washington's arms while its own proxy sits in Beirut watching its disarmament get negotiated in the White House.

4:29am 20 July 2026 — Mojtaba Khamenei calls for sacred unity as cracks open in Iran's leadership

Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has appealed for what he called "sacred unity" between the country's rival political factions, Al Jazeera reports, an unusual public plea for calm that lands as the regime's divisions spill into the open under a ninth day of American strikes.

Leaders who are winning don't need to beg their own officials to stop fighting each other. Trump has spent the past week stripping Tehran of its coastal defences, its export terminals and its ability to move anything through the Strait of Hormuz, and the regime's answer is a sermon about staying united. That's what a leash looks like when it starts to bite.

2:55am 20 July 2026 — IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir says Israel is ready to resume fighting Iran

Israel's Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir says the military is closely monitoring developments inside Iran and holding a high level of readiness, adding that Israeli forces tracked a missile launch toward the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba earlier on Sunday.

Tehran spent months telling its own people that Israel had been deterred. It hasn't been. Iran is now staring at a second front that can open the moment it overreaches, on top of a US campaign that has already taken apart its southern coast. Every option Tehran has left runs through somebody else's air force.

2:15am 20 July 2026 — UAE condemns Iran's missile and drone attacks on Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan

The United Arab Emirates has condemned Iran's repeated missile and drone attacks on Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan, calling them a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of all three countries and a threat to their security and stability, in a statement carried by Kuwait's state news agency KUNA.

Iran's strikes on the Gulf were supposed to split the Arab states away from Washington and make hosting American forces too costly. They've done the exact opposite. The UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain are now publicly lined up against Tehran, and Iran has turned its own neighbourhood into the best argument going for Trump's campaign.

5:15am 20 July 2026 — CENTCOM says another American is killed in Iraq clearing Iranian drone wreckage

A US service member was killed in northern Iraq on Saturday during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one way attack drone, US Central Command said. A second service member was wounded and treated for a minor injury. CENTCOM also said American personnel had found unidentified remains in Jordan after the Iranian attack on 17 July that killed two US service members and left one missing, and that work to verify the remains was still going on.

He died clearing away the wreckage of a weapon Tehran fired at an Arab neighbour, which is the part every call for restraint keeps skipping. Iran's drones do not stop being lethal when they fail. Trump's answer has been an eighth straight night over Hormozgan and Khuzestan, and CENTCOM searching Jordanian ground until it brings its missing man home is the same message in another form. The leash stays short until Iran stops firing.

4:41am 20 July 2026 — Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the campaign runs until Trump's goals are met

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday that Washington's military campaign against Iran would continue until Donald Trump's objectives were achieved, telling ABC News that the aim was to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon and to strip its ability to threaten shipping and its neighbours.

The president's mission is essential for peace in the Middle East and peace in the world, and that is to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons, and to degrade their ability to terrorize their neighbors and the world and global commerce. So yes, this mission will go on until the mission is done.

Wright holds the energy portfolio, and that is what makes the line land. Washington is treating Iran's ability to choke global shipping as an energy problem with a military answer, and it has put the energy secretary out to say the campaign has a finish line Tehran does not get to move. Iran's oil, its dollars and its access to the strait all sit in Trump's hand, and Wright has just told it none of that comes back early.

3:11am 20 July 2026 — Iraq's PM Ali al-Zaidi heads to Tehran as Iran sends a delegation to Islamabad

Iraqi state media said Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi will travel to Tehran at the end of this week and sign memoranda of understanding on areas of cooperation, Al Jazeera reported. Al Arabiya separately reported, citing sources, that a senior Iranian delegation would arrive in Islamabad on Monday for a two day visit.

Tehran spent the weekend firing at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan, and the diplomatic result is a scramble to lock in the two neighbours it has left. Iraq and Pakistan are what remains after every Arab capital that matters spent 48 hours condemning Iran by name. A regime reduced to signing cooperation papers in Baghdad while its own coast is taken apart night after night has already lost the argument in the Gulf.

4:52am 20 July 2026 — Qatar and Jordan work the phones as Arab capitals turn on Tehran

Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani spoke by phone with Jordan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi on Sunday, one of a string of calls across Arab capitals after Iran spent the weekend firing at Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. Safadi and Egypt's Badr Abdelatty condemned the attacks in a separate call, the United Arab Emirates called them a flagrant violation of sovereignty, and Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Fahmy said Arab countries should not carry the cost of Tehran's escalation.

Tehran spent years selling itself as the defender of the Muslim world against Washington. It has now bombed a power and water plant in Kuwait, set off air raid sirens in Bahrain and put missiles over Jordan, and the Arab states it claimed to lead are lining up to say so out loud. Every one of those statements makes it easier for Trump to keep the strait open and the pressure on, because the region is no longer arguing about who started this.

4:21am 20 July 2026 — Iran claims it downed more American drones as the US campaign presses on

Iran's state news agency IRNA claimed on Sunday that Iranian forces had shot down further US drones, including a surveillance aircraft in the south and an MQ-9 over Ahvaz in the southwest, and intercepted an American cruise missile in the country's west. Iran's military separately claimed it destroyed a US drone earlier in the day. None of the claims were confirmed by US Central Command.

This is the same regime that told the world two oil tankers had exploded on mines in Hormuz, a claim CENTCOM publicly marked false. With its coastal radar and air defences being taken apart night after night, Tehran needs a scoreboard it can show at home, so it invents one. The tally that actually matters is the one over Khuzestan and Hormozgan, and it is not going Iran's way.

3:53am 20 July 2026 — US strikes hit Abadan's outskirts as the IAEA investigates a hit on the Darkhovin nuclear site

Iran's state broadcaster said a US missile strike hit the outskirts of Abadan in Khuzestan on Sunday, citing the province's deputy governor for security, who said there were no casualties. Earlier, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said American forces had hit the construction site of the planned Darkhovin nuclear power plant with a number of projectiles. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was investigating and that the site was in the very early stages of construction and held no nuclear material when it was last inspected.

The IAEA line is the important one: no nuclear material on site, so there is no contamination story for Tehran to sell. What there is instead is a half-built reactor project that will not be finished, in the province where the US campaign has been pushing inland all week. Trump said the objective was to stop Iran getting a weapon, and Darkhovin is what that objective looks like from the air.

2:46am 20 July 2026 — Jordan summons Iran's envoy and calls its sovereignty a red line

Jordan summoned Iran's chargé d'affaires in Amman on Sunday and delivered what its foreign ministry called a strongly worded protest over continued Iranian attacks on the kingdom, demanding they stop immediately. Spokesperson Fouad al-Majali said the envoy was told to carry a clear message to Tehran that Jordan's security, sovereignty and the safety of its citizens were a red line that could not be crossed.

Jordan is a country Iran has spent years courting as an Arab neighbour it could keep out of the fight. Two dead Americans on Jordanian soil and missiles over Aqaba have ended that. Amman is now publicly drawing a line in the same week Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and the Arab League did, which is precisely the regional isolation Tehran cannot afford while its coast is being taken apart.

11:18pm 19 July 2026 — Israel tracks Iranian missiles fired at Jordan's Aqaba as sirens sound across the kingdom

The Israeli military said it identified missiles launched from Iran towards the Jordanian Red Sea city of Aqaba on Sunday and warned of possible spillover into southern Israel, as air raid sirens sounded across Jordan. Jordan later said it shot down three Iranian missiles. The US embassy in Amman had warned Americans to stay away from Aqaba's airport and seaport over what it called a specific and credible threat, though Jordanian authorities said no evacuation had been ordered.

Aqaba sits next door to the Israeli port of Eilat, so a missile aimed there puts three countries under the same flight path. Iran is now firing at Arab neighbours and dragging Israel's air defences into the intercept, which is how a regime with no good targets left starts making new enemies instead. Israel's chief of staff Eyal Zamir said his forces were ready to resume fighting immediately, and Tehran should take him at his word.