Middle East crisis live: Trump claims Iranian supreme leader is involved in US negotiations
President says he would โlike to meetโ Mojtaba Khamenei, who US officials have previously said was injured in attacks, and says Iran has said it will not have a nuclear weapon Hello and welcome to the Guardianโs continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East. Donald Trump has claimed Iran has agreed it will not have a nuclear weapon and that the countryโs supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is involved in negotiations with the US. One person was killed and several people were injured in an Iranian drone attack that targeted Kuwaitโs airport, according to authorities and state media. Flights were suspended this morning but some later resumed after the countryโs civil aviation authority said it assessed the damage at the airport. The attack came hours after US forces fired a Hellfire missile to disable a tanker attempting to break through the American blockade of the strait of Hormuz, and later said they repelled Iranian reprisal attacks in the region and attacked sites on Iranโs Qeshm Island. Iranโs Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it attacked the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain with missiles and drones in response to the strike on Qeshm, a claim the US militaryโs Central Command (Centcom) denied. Centcom said two Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait โfell short or broke apart enrouteโ, and that three missiles targeting Bahrain were intercepted by US and Bahrain. US forces also said they shot down three one-way attack drones โlaunched by Iran toward civilian mariners that were rightfully transiting regional watersโ but gave no further details. Israel kept up strikes on southern Lebanon, pressing its campaign against Hezbollah a day after Donald Trump asked Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Beirut to avert further escalation in the three-month-old war. Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire hit south Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, Lebanese state media reported. Israelโs military ordered residents of the city of Nabatieh, a major Hezbollah stronghold, to leave ahead of strikes. Lebanonโs government has said it would seek a full ceasefire in a new round of talks with Israeli officials in Washington that began on Tuesday, the latest in a series of face-to-face meetings Beirut has attended despite Hezbollah objections. Hezbollah said it fired artillery shells at Israeli troops near Beaufort and targeted Israeli military vehicles south of Nabatieh on Tuesday. It has not announced cross-border attacks since Monday. Continue reading...