The military conflict involving Iran has intensified as it enters its fourth day on Tuesday. Overnight exchanges of missiles and rockets have escalated, and Israel has announced the launch of a ground invasion in Lebanon to secure strategic areas from Hezbollah’s control.
In response to these developments, both Berlin and Rome have taken diplomatic action. The Iranian ambassadors in Germany and Italy have been summoned by their respective governments.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has called in the Iranian ambassador to Rome following a suspected Iranian drone attack on a British Royal Air Force base in Cyprus that took place on Sunday evening.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have both openly criticized Tehran’s actions, condemning the Iranian regime for its aggressive strikes across the Gulf region.
Germany’s Foreign Office summoned its Iranian ambassador on Tuesday in response to the “reckless attacks on states” in the Gulf region. Berlin said that it condemns the “arbitrary and disproportionate rocket and drone attacks by the Iranian regime, including on civilian targets. The attacks threaten our allies, our military personnel, and our nationals in the region.”
Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also summoned the Iranian ambassador to Rome in the wake of a suspected Iranian drone attack against a British Royal Air Force base in Cyprus on Sunday evening.
Both German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have condemned the regime in Tehran for its strikes across the Gulf.
09:00 AM: CENTCOM publishes footage of U.S. “hunting” Iranian missile launchers
U.S. Central Command said that its forces are “hunting” down mobile launchers being used by Iran to fire missiles “indiscriminately” across the region.
08:45 AM: Qatar halts more production
QatarEnergy, one of the world’s largest producers of liquid natural gas, said on Tuesday that it is stopping production of “downstream products” such as aluminum, methanol, polymers, and urea. This followed Monday’s announcement that it would halt LNG production in Qatar amid Iranian attacks. Qatar accounts for around 20 per cent of global LNG production.
08:10 AM: Iran Prez delegates power to governors
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that to ensure that “decision-making is carried out swiftly and in proportion to local conditions,” he announced that Tehran will delegate the “necessary authorities” to governors.
“We are in direct contact with the governors. The situation is exceptional, but the country has not come to a halt,” he said, adding: “National unity is our primary asset.”
In addition to serving as president, Pezeshkian has been tapped for the three-person emergency council tasked with selecting the successor to the slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
08:00 AM: Time for talking is over, says Trump
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that what remains of the Iranian regime wants to negotiate an end to the conflict.
“The Iranians want to negotiate. I replied: ‘Too late!’” President Trump quipped.
07:50 AM: Huckabee lays out escape routes from Israel for Americans
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has said that American citizens seeking to flee the country should do so through Egypt, noting that there are “limited” options given airport closures. He said that the Israeli Tourism Ministry is providing buses from Haifa, Herzliya, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv to the Egyptian border city of Taba, which has an international airport or ground transport to Cairo.
On Monday, the U.S. State Department urged American citizens to evacuate from Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel (and the West Bank and Gaza), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen amid the conflict with Iran.
07:30 AM: IDF says Iranian presidential complex “dismantled”
The Israel Defence Forces said that it has struck the Iranian Regime’s “leadership compound”, including the Supreme National Security Council building, the Presidential complex, and the assembly area of the Council of Experts.
“This command headquarters was one of the most heavily secured assets in Iran. The compound that housed the regime’s most senior forum was struck by the IAF overnight using precise intelligence,” the IDF. “The leaders behind this terror regime, and the headquarters in which they sat, have been eliminated.”
However, it is currently unclear if any senior leaders were killed during the strikes, such as the head of the National Security Council, Ali Larijani, who has emerged as a top power broker in the wake of the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
07:10 AM: Saudi rages over Iran drone attack on U.S. Embassy in Riyadh
In a statement posted on social media, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expressed its “rejection and condemnation in the strongest terms of the flagrant Iranian attack that targeted the U.S. Embassy building in Riyadh.”
Saudi described the attack — which resulted in a fire at the building, but no injuries — as “cowardly and unjustified” and said that it “blatantly” violated international norms and laws, including the Geneva Convention.
“The Kingdom reaffirms its full right to take all necessary measures to protect its security, territorial integrity, citizens, residents, and vital interests, including the option of responding to the aggression,” the statement said.
07:00 AM: IAEA weighs in on Natanz nuclear site
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday that it can “confirm” that there has been damage to the entrance of Iran’s underground Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP).
However, the monitoring agency said that there are “no radiological consequence expected and no additional impact detected at FEP itself, which was severely damaged in the June conflict.”
06:45 AM: France deploys to the region
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told broadcaster BFMTV on Tuesday that Paris has deployed Rafale fighter jets over the United Arab Emirates to protect its air and naval bases from Iranian attacks. It comes after a base in the UAE housing French troops and aircraft was struck on Sunday by an Iranian drone. Barrot said it was unclear whether France was the target of the attack and noted that the damage was “limited,” with no injuries.
05:40 AM: Farage thinks of the future
While much of the focus is presently on the immediate urgency of military operations, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has a weather eye on what comes next, which decades of experience in Europe suggests an inevitability of a migrant crisis. Britain can’t take any more migrants, Farage warned — we “simply can’t”, he said — saying instead the focus should be on ensuring Persia is a place that makes the Iranian diaspora worldwide want to go home to rebuild.
Farage said of the many “wonderful Persian people” he’d met, “many” would “love to go back to their home country, but away from the barbarity of this regime”. Read more here.
Trump’s Iran strikes have triggered something of a political crisis in the United Kingdom as weak and unpopular Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer initially refused to allow the country to get involved, only to later relent under specific circumstances and while decrying the U.S. strikes as illegal and badly thought-through.
President Trump has expressed his despair at Britain, which, until the Starmer era, was traditionally America’s most staunch ally, for having turned its back on Washington. Yesterday, Trump said he is “very disappointed”, and has gone further today, lamenting, “I never thought I’d see that. I never thought I’d see that from the UK. We love the UK.”
Trump suggested this change was down to the UK’s ruling Labour party trying to appease the many Muslim voters in the country it once took the votes from, but who are now deserting it for more obviously Islamist, foreign-interest political parties. We wrote about that last week; you can read more on these demographic-political changes here.
President Trump reflected on Britain: “It’s also not such a recognisable country… London is a very different place, with a terrible mayor. You have a terrible mayor there, some terrible people. But it’s a very different place.”
– London’s Simon Kent has written about Trump’s latest remarks, and you can read them here.
05:00 AM: Israel announces it is moving into Lebanon
Hezbollah has joined “the campaign of the Iranian terror regime”, Israel has said this morning, amid barrages of rockets against communities in the Galilee region and elsewhere. The IDF will roll into Lebanon and take strategic sites to deny them to Hezbollah, said Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Katz said terror organisation Hezbollah would “pay a heavy price” for firing rockets. Read more about this expansion of the conflict in the Middle East in our full report at – News.
TOPSHOT – Smoke rises from Israeli bombardment on the southern Lebanese area of Kfar Tibnit on March 3, 2026. Israel on March 3 ordered the military to take control of more positions in Lebanon, where the army pulled back some of its forces after Hezbollah attacked Israeli bases in support of its backer, Iran. (Photo by Rabih DAHER / AFP via Getty Images)
— Tuesday — 02:15 AM: U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States has a “virtually unlimited supply” of “medium and upper medium grade” munitions. President Trump said that such weapons could be used to fight wars “forever”. He said that the United States is currently “not where we want to be” in terms of the “highest end” munitions, which he criticised former President Joe Biden for having given much of the “super high end” weapons away to Ukraine and others, without “bothering to replace” them.
“Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social.
For earlier livewire updates from Monday please click here
