Middle East crisis live: Iranian missiles intercepted over Turkey, Qatar and UAE as Israel resumes strikes across Tehran and Beirut | US-Israel war on Iran

In that interview with the New York Post, Donald Trump said he was “not happy” with Mojtaba Khamenei being chosen as Iran’s new supreme leader.

Asked about his plans for the late ayatollah’s son, Trump was coy, telling the paper:

Not going to tell you. Not going to tell you. I’m not happy with him.

It followed overt threats from the US president ahead of Khamenei’s election, after Trump made clear he considered him an “unacceptable” choice. On Sunday, he told ABC News that the new leader “is not going to last long” if “he doesn’t get approval from us”.

Trump told Axios last week that “Khamenei’s son is a lightweight” and that he must be involved in the selection of the new supreme leader “like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela”.

Donald Trump has announced that he will hold a news conference at 5.30pm ET today from the ballroom at Trump National Doral Miami before he heads back to DC from Florida.

As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its second week, the president said in his post on Truth Social that there have been “many important meetings and phone calls taking place today”.

This will be his first official press conference since the war began, and we’ll bring you all the key lines here later.

• Turkey’s defence ministry on Monday said a ballistic missile fired from Iran was intercepted in Turkish airspace by Nato defence systems, in the second such incident in five days.

• The UAE’s Ministry of Defence confirmed that it had detected 15 ballistic missiles today, destroying 12, while three fell into the sea. The ministry said it detected 18 drones, intercepting 17, with one crashing within UAE territory, BBC News reported earlier.

• Qatar air defences intercepted 17 ballistic missiles and six drones on Monday, the Qatari ministry of defence said on X. The air attacks came from Iran, the ministry said.

• Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his slain father Ali Khamenei as supreme leader, signalling that hardliners remain in charge.

• Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson downplayed the likelihood of a ceasefire as long as attacks continue, Iran’s Student News Network reported on Monday, adding that Iran would continue to defend itself.

• Fresh missile and drone strikes by Israel and Iran reverberated across the Middle East as the war entered its 10th day. The Israeli military said on Monday it had begun a “wide-scale wave of strikes” in Tehran, Isfahan and southern Iran after a man was killed in an airstrike fired at central Israel earlier. The Israeli military also said Monday that it had begun targeting Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a US-sanctioned financial organisation that Israel has accused of financing the Iran-backed Hezbollah, in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

• Lebanon’s ministry of public health said Israeli forces killed two paramedics and injured six more in two separate airstrikes on Monday, the state-run National News Agency reports.

• Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday said the Israeli military unlawfully fired white phosphorus munitions in the town of Yohmor in southern Lebanon. The highly toxic white phosphorus can be used by militaries to obscure operations and is not listed a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), but use of it against humans in a civilian setting is considered a violation of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCCW).

• Cyprus will not engage in any military operations surrounding the Iran conflict but will focus on its humanitarian role, president Nikos Christodoulides said on Monday. It comes as Cyprus’s foreign minister said there are “questions” about the future of the UK’s military bases on the island after the drone strike last week.

• Unicef, a UN agency, estimates that at least 83 children have been killed and 254 wounded in Lebanon since the start of the conflict – during which time an estimated 700,000 people – including around 200,000 children – have been displaced from their homes.

• Residents in Tehran are still reeling from “apocalyptic” scenes unfolding across their city after airstrikes on oil depots over the weekend filled the sky with black smoke and covered the streets in soot. “The situation is so frightening it’s hard to describe,” one resident told the Guardian. “Smoke has covered the entire city. I have severe shortness of breath and burning in my eyes and throat, and many others feel the same. But people still have to go outside because they have no choice. Many places reopened today, but closed again because it’s impossible to stay outdoors.”

• EU and Middle Eastern leaders are holding talks on how Europe can better support countries most affected by the US-Israeli war on Iran and on bringing the conflict to an end. The president of the European Council, António Costa, and European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said they had invited Middle Eastern leaders to take part in a video conference on Monday.

• The war has sent oil prices surging and Asian stock markets into a nosedive. Global oil prices rose past $100 (£74) a barrel for the first time since 2022 as fallout from the war continues to wipe 20m barrels of oil from the market each day.

In an interview with the New York Post, Donald Trump said today that he’s “nowhere near” deciding whether to send US troops into Iran to secure the stockpile of highly enriched uranium there.

“We haven’t made any decision on that. We’re nowhere near it,” Trump said when asked about reported discussions between Israel and the United States on possibly deploying special forces to Isfahan to seize and secure the material.

Trump claimed last month – without evidence – that Tehran was beginning to rebuild the nuclear program that he claimed had been “obliterated” by US strikes in June last year.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear arsenal, saying its enrichment of uranium is strictly for civilian use.

The United Arab Emirates has said that it was being targeted “in a very unwarranted manner” in the Middle East war, stressing it would “not partake in any attacks against Iran”.

“We’ve been very clear before and leading up to the current events we are witnessing in the region that as the UAE we will not partake in any attacks against Iran from our territory, and that we will not be involved in such a conflict,” the UAE ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Jamal Al Musharakh, told reporters.

EU ready to expand Middle East naval operations

Jennifer Rankin

The EU has said it is open to extending naval maritime operations in the Middle East to protect international shipping, following talks with regional leaders.

In a joint statement the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council president, António Costa, “expressed openness” to enhance maritime defensive operations Aspides and Atalanta, which are aimed at protecting waterways and preventing disruption to supply chains in and around the Red Sea.

Aspides was set up in 2024 following attacks by Houthi rebels on international shipping. Atalanta was established in 2008 to counter Somali pirates in the Horn of Africa, but has seen its remit extended.

Separately, French president Emmanuel Macron confirmed that France will send two frigates to the Red Sea to boost Operation Aspides. Earlier on Monday a European commission spokesperson declined to comment on which EU member states might contribute to enhanced naval operations in the Middle East, but said the EU was “exploring how to strengthen our presence”.

Both EU presidents also expressed concern about the impact of the regional crisis on Lebanon, especially the large-scale displacement of civilians. Von der Leyen pledged humanitarian aid to support 130,000 people in Lebanon, with the first flight due to leave on Tuesday, the statement said.

Von der Leyen and Costa held talks via video link with the leaders and senior ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman, earlier on Monday.

The EU statement described the video call as “the continued manifestation of solidarity and diplomatic outreach” adding: “The European Union is a long-standing, reliable partner for the region in these difficult moments and is ready to contribute in every possible way to help deescalate the situation and facilitate the return to the negotiating table.”

But in the last week the bloc has faced criticism in sharply critical commentaries from former insiders. One former senior diplomat, who served as the EU’s representative to the Palestinian territories, said Europe’s response to the Iran war was “shameful” and “disunited” in comments also aimed at the EU’s big powers, notably Germany. Another former senior EU diplomat, who was the chief civil servant in the bloc’s foreign policy service, described the EU as “a mere commentator on the geopolitical upheaval on its Southern flank” in an article published on 3 March.

Lebanon’s ministry of public health said Israeli forces killed two paramedics and injured six more in two separate airstrikes on Monday, the state-run National News Agency reports.

One strike took place near the municipality of Tyre Diba, about 83 kilometres (52 miles) south of Beirut and the other in Jouaiyya, about 8.6 kilometres (5 miles) further southeast.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that France will send two frigates as part of the EU naval mission Aspides in the Red Sea, Reuters reports.

“We are in the process of setting up a purely defensive, purely escort mission, which must be prepared together with both European and non-European states,” Macron said after meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Cyprus.

Jennifer Rankin

EU and Middle Eastern leaders are holding talks on how Europe can better support countries most affected by the US-Israeli war on Iran and on bringing the conflict to an end.

The president of the European Council, António Costa, and European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said they had invited Middle Eastern leaders to take part in a video conference on Monday.

Attendees include leaders or senior ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman, according to the EU side. The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas will also dial in.

The meeting “will provide an opportunity to hear leaders’ assessments of the situation and to discuss further support from the EU and its member states to countries in the region, as well as ways to bring the current conflict to an end,” a spokesperson for Costa said.

Speaking on Monday to EU ambassadors, von der Leyen said Europe had to focus on the reality of the situation. First of all, she stressed “there should be no tears shed for the Iranian regime”, which, she said, had slaughtered 17,000 people and caused devastation and destabilisation across the region. She went on: “We are now seeing a regional conflict with unintended consequences”, citing spillover effects on energy, finance, trade, transport and the displacement of people

“The people of Iran deserve freedom, dignity, and the right to decide their own future – even if we know this will be fraught with danger and instability during and after the war.”