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

• Iran’s vice president admits sanctioned oil sales run through middlemen and fraud
• Iran used the 60 day truce to prepare for a wider war, the Wall Street Journal reports
• Iran’s parliament speaker claims victory while conceding the US outgunned Vietnam
• Turkey’s Erdogan says the Strait of Hormuz must reopen and passage must be free
• Barzani’s office confirms he ran Trump’s secret channel to the Revolutionary Guards

1:54pm 17 August 2026 — Iran’s vice president admits sanctioned oil sales run through middlemen and fraud

Iran’s vice president Mohammad Jafar Ghaempanah told the news agency ISNA that selling sanctioned Iranian oil now depends on middlemen and opaque networks, and he compared the process to trafficking, saying Iran can’t move its oil or bring the proceeds home through ordinary banking, so intermediaries take commissions and money goes missing along the way. He also acknowledged that sanctions have created beneficiaries inside Iran who profit from the workarounds and therefore have an interest in seeing them continue.

Ghaempanah is a serving member of Iran’s government describing what sanctions have done to the country’s main source of revenue, which is that the oil still leaves but it leaves at a discount through brokers who take a cut, and Tehran can’t bank most of what comes back. Trump has kept that pressure on since June because it costs the regime money every day it refuses to move, and the discounted barrels go to China, which is the customer Washington is really aiming at.

1:10pm 17 August 2026 — Iran used the 60 day truce to prepare for a wider war, the Wall Street Journal reports

Iran’s leadership spent the two months after signing its June memorandum with the United States preparing for a broader conflict rather than winding one down, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing Iranian and Arab officials. The paper said Tehran rebuilt damaged military infrastructure and restored access to missile bases faster than Israeli officials expected, and coordinated with allied armed groups in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon as the fighting spread beyond the Persian Gulf, while hardline figures in Tehran treated the agreement as a possible attempt by Washington and Israel to ease the economic pressure and buy time before another strike.

The memorandum expires on Monday with the talks stalled, and the report sets out what Tehran did with the time the truce bought it, which was to spend a pause rebuilding missile bases and briefing its proxies in three countries rather than looking for terms. That is the case for keeping Iran’s oil, its dollars and its access to Hormuz on a deadline rather than handing the pressure back for another round of talks.

6:15am 17 August 2026 — Iran’s parliament speaker claims victory while conceding the US outgunned Vietnam

Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran had won the war “both militarily and politically” and that the United States and Israel had failed to achieve any of the nine objectives they set. In the same remarks he said the US used more firepower against Iran than it did in the Vietnam War, and that Tehran now had to reach what he called a point of deterrence so it was not caught in a cycle of war and peace. He also described the memorandum of understanding with Washington as “a document of pride and of our victory on the diplomatic front”, and said Iranians had not felt the victory as much as they should have.

Ghalibaf’s own government has spent the past several days describing an economy in serious trouble, with First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref calling rising prices painful, annual inflation running above 80%, parliament saying the US naval blockade has halted Iran’s petrol imports and the government weighing petrol rationing. The memorandum of understanding that Ghalibaf describes as a document of pride and a diplomatic victory expires on 19 August, and it will lapse with the US naval blockade still running, the Strait of Hormuz still shut and Iran still unable to import the petrol its drivers need.

5:18am 17 August 2026 — Turkey’s Erdogan says the Strait of Hormuz must reopen and passage must be free

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was “a serious global concern” and that the waterway was vital to international trade and to oil and energy in particular, adding in an interview broadcast on Sunday that it was “extremely important that the Strait of Hormuz be reopened as soon as possible”. He went on to say Turkey hoped navigation through the strait would be opened free of charge and without fees, which he said would be extremely positive and beneficial for global navigation.

Turkey has been the most useful voice Iran has in the region, a NATO member that spent the war attacking Israel’s conduct and kept its channels to Tehran open. Erdogan is now publicly asking Iran to reopen the strait and to stop charging ships for passage through it. Tehran has tied any reopening to an end to the US naval blockade, while Trump has said he will soon declare the strait US territory, so Ankara is now backing in public the same reopening Washington has been demanding by force.

5:04am 17 August 2026 — Barzani’s office confirms he ran Trump’s secret channel to the Revolutionary Guards

Iraqi Kurdistan president Nechirvan Barzani relayed messages between Washington and Tehran and worked to bring the temperature down, a spokesperson confirmed on Sunday. It follows an Axios report that the Trump administration went around Iran’s negotiators in May because US officials were no longer sure Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Abbas Araghchi spoke for the Revolutionary Guards. Axios said the then director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called Barzani around 10 May with the approval of Donald Trump and JD Vance and asked him to reach IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, and that Barzani spoke to Vahidi on a secure line on 14 May and was told the Guards backed the negotiating team.

Washington could not be sure Iran’s own negotiators spoke for the men holding the missiles, so it checked with the Guards directly before signing anything. That is what dealing with Tehran involves, and it is why Trump kept the blockade and the sanctions running all the way through the talks instead of trading them for assurances given at the table.

7:43pm 16 August 2026 — Iran’s army chief offers a $30,000 bounty for every US service member killed or captured

Iran’s army commander in chief Amir Hatami said any Iranian who kills or captures a US service member will be paid $30,000, and that the money would be provided by the Iranian people. Hatami said the reward would be doubled if the person who does it is a woman. Iranian officials have promoted bounties before, including a proposed parliamentary measure in May that offered 50 million euros for the killing of Donald Trump.

A state that is preparing to ration petrol at home is offering cash for the killing of American soldiers, announced by its army chief in public rather than passed quietly to a proxy. The Gulf governments hosting those troops now have a bounty on the record to point to, which is the reason the American presence in the region keeps growing rather than shrinking.

3:14pm 16 August 2026 — Israel says it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon

The Israeli military said it killed Abu Hassan Alaa, a senior commander in Hezbollah’s Badr Unit, in a strike on the Deir al Zahrani area of southern Lebanon on Saturday. It said Alaa had pushed attacks on Israeli troops, including launches of explosive drones, and had run several Hezbollah combat sectors. It said a Radwan Force battalion commander, Ali Samir al Haj Hassan, was killed separately at a headquarters in Ansar.

Hezbollah is the force Iran spent decades and billions of dollars building as its deterrent against Israel, and its commanders are being killed inside Lebanon at will. Tehran’s answer to the weekend’s strikes was a foreign ministry statement saying Lebanon had the right to use all means to defend itself, which is the extent of the help its proxies are getting now that the money is under blockade.

2:47pm 16 August 2026 — Iran hangs a protester it accused of working for Washington and Israel

Iran executed Shahram Sadeghi early on Sunday over the protests in Karaj on 8 January, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency said. It accused him of security offences and of deliberately driving a car into police officers, injuring seven, one of whom it said spent three months in a coma, and said he had carried out operational actions on behalf of Israel, the United States and other groups its espionage laws treat as hostile. The report did not say any officer was killed.

Iran routinely charges protesters with acting for Washington or Israel, a label its courts never have to prove and one that carries the rope. Sadeghi was arrested in January and hanged seven months later by the same government that spent the weekend promising Iranians their prices would come down within two years.

12:56pm 16 August 2026 — Iran’s first vice president calls rising prices painful as inflation stays above 80%

Iran’s first vice president Mohammad Reza Aref said rising prices had become increasingly painful for Iranians, and named curbing inflation, steadying markets and protecting purchasing power for essential goods as the government’s priorities for the next two years. The state news agency ISNA reported the same day that year on year inflation remains above 80%, easing slightly month to month after the currency collapse and the war.

Tehran spent the war insisting the blockade was not biting, and its own first vice president is now asking Iranians for two years of patience on prices. The government is separately weighing a petrol quota of 30 litres a month for each person. That is the pressure Trump said would reach Iranian households long before it reached the negotiating table, and it is why the blockade has not been eased as a gesture of goodwill.

11:09am 16 August 2026 — Iranian MP names the Bahraini, Emirati and Saudi ruling families as revenge targets

Iranian lawmaker Amirhossein Sabeti said the rulers of neighbouring Persian Gulf states that host US bases should be added to Iran’s revenge targets, naming Bahrain’s Al Khalifa, the UAE’s Al Nahyan and Saudi Arabia’s Al Saud. He said those governments played a part in the killing of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei during the war, and asked why senior Iranian officials had apologised to Arab countries on the fifth day of the war after US bases there were hit.

Sabeti sits in the same parliament that is drafting Iran’s Strait of Hormuz law, so the threat comes from inside the system rather than its fringe. Every capital he named already hosts American aircraft, ships and air defences, and threats to their ruling families are the reason those governments keep asking Washington for more of them.

8:02am 16 August 2026 — CENTCOM’s commander ends a six country tour with a second visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln

US Central Command said Admiral Brad Cooper had finished a 10 day trip through the Middle East taking in six countries and the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, with more than 50,000 American troops now operating across the region. CENTCOM said Cooper met sailors and marines aboard the carrier for the second time this year, after visiting it in February with peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

CENTCOM has spent this week knocking down false reports about the Lincoln, including claims that sailors had died aboard during its long deployment. Sending the theatre commander out to the carrier and publishing the visit answers that, and it tells Tehran the ship enforcing the blockade is not going anywhere.

7:23am 16 August 2026 — Iran fires on the Strait of Hormuz again hours after promising Oman a safe route

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on its Telegram channel on Saturday that it had fired again toward the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian outlet Saberin News reported that missiles designed to hit shipping were launched from Qeshm Island and Iran’s southern coast toward the strait and the Gulf of Oman, and neither the IRGC nor the report named a target or reported any damage.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said only hours earlier that Tehran and Oman had agreed a safe route for ships through the strait, and the IRGC fired on it anyway. That distance between what Iran’s diplomats offer in Muscat and what its military does at sea is why Trump is holding the blockade in place rather than easing it while the talks run.

5:26am 16 August 2026 — Qatar denies Iran’s claim that it is holding three Iranian pilots

Qatar’s foreign ministry has categorically denied Iranian claims that it is detaining three Iranian pilots, with spokesman Majed Al Ansari saying Doha was surprised by the misleading statements while diplomatic efforts to calm the region are under way. Qatar shot down two Iranian Su 24 bombers in March after they entered its airspace and did not answer attempts to contact them, and it says the crews were killed, with search teams recovering the remains of one pilot that Doha returned to Tehran.

Qatar returned what it found and invited an Iranian team in April to go through the search and rescue operation for itself. Tehran is now accusing it of secretly holding the crews, at the same time as an Iranian MP is naming Qatar’s neighbours as revenge targets, which is how Iran treats the Gulf states whose mediation it needs most.

3:49am 16 August 2026 — Israel displays the Iranian arsenal it seized from Hamas and Hezbollah

The Israeli military has opened its Tzrifin base in central Israel to Fox News Digital to show the arsenal it has seized from Hamas and Hezbollah since the October 2023 attacks, including mortars, cannons, sniper rifles and rocket launchers made in Iran. Israeli officers said the haul also holds weapons manufactured in Russia and China, rockets built in Gaza and Lebanon, and a German machine gun dating from the Second World War that was taken from a Hezbollah compound.

Every weapon on those tables reached a force that Iran arms, funds and directs, which is the same network Tehran says it does not control whenever its proxies fire on shipping or on Israeli soldiers. Trump has gone after the money that keeps the supply moving, tightening financial pressure at the same time as the naval blockade rather than choosing between the two.

3:44am 16 August 2026 — Iran’s parliament says the US naval blockade has halted its petrol imports

Iran’s parliament has confirmed the US naval blockade has stopped the country importing petrol. Reza Sepahvand, spokesman for the parliamentary energy committee, told the Iranian news agency ILNA on Saturday that imports had halted, and that refineries were turning out 130 million litres a day against national consumption of 137 million. He said that was peak output and Iran was still short. He also warned that a planned rationing scheme tied to national ID numbers would eventually force the government to buy petrol at Persian Gulf market prices, raising costs and widening the budget deficit.

Iran holds some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves and can’t keep petrol in its own pumps. Tehran spent the war insisting the blockade wasn’t biting, and its own energy committee has now put the shortfall at 7 million litres a day, with queues forming at stations from Hormozgan to Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari.

7:23pm 15 August 2026 — ADNOC says a third Emirati ship was attacked in Hormuz in under a week

The UAE’s state oil company ADNOC says one of its vessels was attacked while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, the third of its ships hit in less than a week. State news agency WAM reported no injuries and said the situation was under control. Abu Dhabi blamed Iran for the two earlier attacks but has not formally attributed Friday’s. Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said the repeated targeting of ADNOC tankers would not deter the Emirates, and that it would safeguard its rights to freedom of navigation through the strait under international law while continuing to pursue diplomacy.

Iran spent the week telling the Gulf it is the rightful guardian of the Strait of Hormuz while its neighbours’ tankers were hit one after another. Qatar and the GCC condemned the first two attacks, and on Saturday Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan called reopening the waterway a priority. Tehran is losing the argument with the countries it needs most.

6:08am 15 August 2026 — Donald Trump says he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory

US President Donald Trump said he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz American territory, telling a rally in New York that “after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States”. He also said Iran would already have a nuclear weapon if American B-2 bombers had not hit its sites during the 12 day war in June 2025, and that Tehran will never be allowed one.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi answered on X that the strait “has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian”, and said Iran would keep enforcing its blockade until Washington accepts a “strategic defeat”. CENTCOM said on Friday it has redirected 62 commercial vessels, disabled three and boarded two since the blockade was reinstated, and a member of Iran’s own parliament spent the same day demanding government action over the petrol queues in Hormozgan, the province that fronts the waterway Tehran says it commands.