In a week that a major war broke out in the middle east when the US and Israel attacked Iran from the skies, with air strikes that assassinated the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and at least forty senior Iranian officials all reportedly within a five minute period at the start of the bombing campaign on Saturday morning.
Now Day 7, and as other names in the regime are hunted, hundreds of police and paramilitary bases continue to be bombed, so too Iran’s ballistic missile and drone launch sites, storage facilities and Naval fleets. The legal justification being put forward by President Trump that Iran posed an imminent threat to Tel Aviv and Washington is disputed. The war plans of the Trump administration and accounts from his team appeared contradictory. The President initially spoke of regime change, telling the Iranian nation to rise up and seize this once in a generation moment. His secretary of war said it was anything but regime change.
It’s been a week that’s seen the conflict spread across the gulf and into Europe too as Iran retaliated, firing missiles and drones strikes across eleven countries where US bases or troops are stationed, or are accused to have aided Washington. Governments around the world scrambled to evacuate tourists after hotels as well as airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi were struck. Fuel depots, embassies and energy infrastructure were targeted by Tehran too in Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and there was a drone attack on the British military base in Cyprus, while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced it had closed the Straights of Hormuz, the corridor where one FIFTH of the world’s oil travels through.
It’s been a week that’s seen Israel restart it’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, hitting the capital Beirut and sending in troops once again in to the south, in response to rockets and drones fired by the Shia muslim militia group who’d threatened to avenge the killing of the Ayatollah. And as the conflict seems to spread somewhere new every day, the UK, France and Germany have committed to quote, “defensive action to protect Gulf countries”. But there were few words of appreciation from President Trump, angered at Britain’s delay in allowing US troops and planes to land at UK bases, as prime minister Keir Starmer said lessons had been learned from the quote, “mistakes of Iraq”, and stipulating that the US could only use sites in England, and on the Indian ocean island of Diego Garcia for defensive actions in targeting missile sites, NOT the regime. Cue a major rift in the once so-called special relationship of by-gone times.
Produced by Gavin Lee, Théo Vareille, Daniel Whittington and Melissa Kalaydjian.
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Vivienne WALT Time Magazine's Paris correspondent
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Constant MEHEUT Reporter, The New York Times
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Antonello GUERRERA La Repubblica UK Correspondent
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Jason BURKE International Security Correspondent for the Guardian, and author of The Revolutionists - The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s
English (US) · 