Iran war briefing: US lets India buy Russian oil after energy prices jump
US claims temporary waiver won’t provide ‘significant financial benefit’ to Moscow; IDF strikes Lebanon after mass evacuation; Trump wants say in choosing Iran’s next leader. What we know on day seven
The Israeli military announced a “new stage” in its campaign against Iran, with US and Israeli officials hinting at escalating strikes. The IDF said it had “additional surprising moves” as part of this new phase, without elaborating, while the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced that strikes on Iran would “surge dramatically”.
The IDF claimed to have destroyed the underground bunker of the killed Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which it said was still being used by senior Iranian officials. The Israeli military said approximately 50 fighter jets dropped about 100 bombs at the site in Tehran, which it claimed spread across multiple streets and included “many entry points”. There was no immediate comment from Iran.
The UN said nearly 100,000 people had been displaced within Lebanon and tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the country had fled back over the border. It follows a mass evacuation order by the IDF for people to flee a vast swathe of Beirut’s southern suburbs as it bombs what it says are Hezbollah targets in the area.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has urged the US to move “very quickly” with its investigation into a deadly strike on a school in southern Iran, which Tehran has blamed on the US and Israel. Türk also said the IDF’s evacuation order for southern Beirut raised serious concerns under international law, “in particular when it comes to issues around forced transfer”.
Officials in Azerbaijan said they were withdrawing diplomatic staff from Iran for their own safety. It comes a day after Azerbaijan said four Iranian drones had crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), sought to allay fears over a global oil crisis, saying there was “plenty of oil” in the markets. “We have no oil shortage … there is a huge surplus,” he said.
Boril’s comments were at odds with the remarks made by Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, who said it could take “weeks to months” for energy exports to return to normal levels even if the war ended immediately. “Everybody’s energy price is going to go higher. There will be shortages of some products and there will be a chain reaction of factories that cannot supply,” he told the Financial Times.
Four people in the UK have been arrested by counter-terror police on suspicion of spying on the Jewish community for Iran, the Metropolitan police said. The men, one Iranian and three dual British-Iranian nationals, were arrested on Friday morning shortly after 1am in Barnet and Watford.
The UK deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said 6,500 people had returned to the UK from the UAE. Emirates airline said it anticipated a return to full network operations in coming days.