Iran war latest: US fires at ship in Hormuz as Israel captures key Lebanon castle – The Independent
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Senior Iranian official accuses Donald Trump of ‘betraying diplomacy for third time’
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US forces attacked a cargo ship they claimed was attempting to breach their naval blockade of Iran on Saturday.
Centcom said Lian Star ignored over 20 warnings before its forces struck the Gambia-flagged vessel’s engine room with a missile, stranding it in the Gulf of Oman.
The incident came as Tehran awaits the US president’s response to a proposed peace deal, as efforts to bring an end to the war drag on.
A senior official accused Trump of “betraying diplomacy for the third time”. Mohsen Rezaei pointed at the continuing naval blockade and what he called the president’s excessive demands in negotiations as he blamed the White House for failure to reach a peace deal.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Israeli troops pushed beyond the Litani river and seized the Crusader-era Beaufort fortress in their deepest invasion of the neighbouring country in over 25 years.
Defence minister Israel Katz said the country’s troops will remain stationed in the 900-year-old castle, where the flags of Israel and the IDF’s Golani Brigade have been hoisted.
On Friday morning, it issued a fresh evacuation warning for residents south of the Zahrani River in southern Lebanon.
Iran has restored gas production at three offshore platforms in the South Pars gas field that had been forced to halt output after Israeli attacks, the chief executive of the Pars Oil and Gas Company told state media on Sunday.
Touraj Dehqani said the platforms had not been damaged in the attacks, which disrupted processing capacity at some onshore facilities.
He added that production from the three platforms was being routed to other processing plants in the region while repairs continue at damaged facilities, including the Phase 14 refinery.
Our Washington DC correspondent John Bowden writes:
Donald Trump has now said that Iran’s military was largely untouched by U.S. strikes over the past three months, contradicting countless statements he has made and continues to make about the scale of the U.S.’s successes in the ongoing war.
The president spoke in an interview that aired Saturday with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump on Fox News. As the war in Iran now runs past the three-month mark, the U.S. remains mired in a stalemate with Iran under the shadow of a shaky ceasefire that Trump is now considering an offer to extend for another 60 days.
A war that the president and his team have long insisted would be over in “days” or even just a few weeks is now at a flashpoint with the U.S. having proven largely unable to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global energy shipping traffic. Negotiations continue, but details of a pending agreement to extend the ceasefire indicate that the sides are still far apart on the eventual question of Iran’s nuclear program, including its future enrichment capabilities.
On Saturday Trump gave another description of the U.S. operation, and seemed to break from his past claims of having obliterated Iran’s military.
After saying Iran’s navy and air force were “totally gone”, the president then commented on Iran’s “military”, telling Lara Trump: “Their military, we’ve sort of left it alone, because we think that their military is somewhat, somewhat moderate….We’ve actually left their military alone. People would be surprised to hear that.”
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Israeli troops have captured a strategic mountain topped with a Crusader-built castle in southern Lebanon in the deepest incursion of the country in more than a quarter-century, the military said Sunday.
The capture of Beaufort castle, near the city of Nabatiyeh, came after days of airstrikes and intense fighting in nearby villages where Israeli troops fought Hezbollah members in the rugged area.
Its capture marks a major development in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, which began on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked its main backer, Iran.
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As we earlier reported, Iran’s top negotiator and parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf earlier warned there will be no deal with the US without tangible results, according to state media.
He also said Tehran did not trust the US side to keep its promises.
We can now bring you more quotes: “There is no trust in the enemy’s words and promises. Our only criterion is to achieve tangible results before we fulfill our commitments in return,” he said after taking an oath as the re-elected speaker of parliament alongside its presidium.
Palestinian militant group Hamas has warned that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that his country would expand its area of control in Gaza is a dangerous escalation.
European states and residents of the Palestinian territory have also voiced alarm at the plan, which would see the Israeli military further breach the terms of an agreed ceasefire deal.
Under the deal in October Israel’s military was to temporarily remain in control of 53 per cent of Gaza, but Netanyahu said on Friday that it would expand that area to an initial 70 per cent, without laying out details or a timeline.
“Any attempt to impose a new reality of occupation in Gaza is null and illegitimate,” said Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, adding that Netanyahu’s statement “represents a dangerous escalation”.
More than eight months into the ceasefire, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the territory since the ceasefire agreement was announced.
Israel has already expanded its area of control in Gaza from the 53 per cent lying behind a “yellow line” mapped into the ceasefire deal up to around 64 per cent, with an area it has designated as restricted in maps shared with aid groups.
Senior foreign affairs reporter James Reynolds writes:
Jules Hurst III, the chief financial official for the Pentagon, said on 12 May that the US war on Iran has cost around $29bn so far, an increase of $4bn from the end of April due to repair and replacement costs, as well as the “general operational costs to keep people in theatre”.
The Pentagon has been reluctant to share a detailed breakdown of costs, but the latest figures yield a mean average spend of $386.67m per day – quite a departure from the $2bn a day the Pentagon was said to be spending in March, according to Republican lawmakers.
Professor Linda Bilmes, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, told The Independent that the reported upfront costs are just the “tip of the iceberg”.
“When the Pentagon talked about their figures of $29bn, they systematically underestimate the cost because they are basing this on the historical cost of inventory of munitions. But the actual replacement costs are much higher,” explained Professor Bilmes, who served as assistant secretary and CFO of the US department of commerce during the Clinton administration.
A Tomahawk missile may be valued at around $2m each in inventory, she said, but replacement today would cost between $3m and $3.5m. Patriot missiles are priced at $1m to $2m, but the newer models cost $4m to $5m.
Late last month, and after the ceasefire took effect, the Center for Strategic and International Studies assessed that the United States had used upwards of 1,000 Tomahawks and between 1,060-1,430 Patriots since 28 February.
Professor Bilmes said the $29bn figure could be double or “probably three times as much” with accrual accounting.
But behind that figure, the United States will still have to make repairs to damaged military sites and facilities, like embassies, spread across the region, she added, giving a ballpark figure of an additional $300bn.
The Independent’s political correspondent Millie Cooke reports…
Britain’s special relationship with the United States is “meaningless” unless it “locks arms and shields” with the US and matches its military capabilities, Donald Trump’s war secretary has warned.
Giving a speech in Singapore, Pete Hegseth said that “model allies” who comply with US demands will benefit from arms sales and access to intelligence, while those seen to be “freeloading” on US capabilities will be penalised.
Referring to conversations with the UK defence secretary, the politician said: “As my friends, Mr [Richard] Marles [the Australian defence minister] and John Healey know, I’m probably the most blunt with our closest friends about what our capabilities are and where they need to be to ensure that we’re locking arms and shields, considering the threats of the world.”
He continued: “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, we’ve been friends for a long time, so let’s work together.’ It’s: ‘We’ve been friends for a long time, so you better have the same capabilities we do, because if we don’t, our alliance is meaningless.’”
Mr Hegseth also vowed to move allies who step up their military capabilities to “the front of the line” when it comes to closer ties, praising countries such as South Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
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