Live – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say ‘waiting’ for US forces to escort ships through Hormuz Strait

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they were waiting for US forces to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway where traffic remains strangled as the regional war rages.

“We are waiting for their presence,” said Guards spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini, after the US energy secretary announced the Navy was preparing to escort ships through the strait “as soon as it’s reasonable to do it.”

“We recommend that before making any decision, the Americans remember the fire of the American supertanker Bridgeton in 1987 and the oil tankers that were recently targeted,” Naini said, according to Fars news agency.

For several days, Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas exports with a mixture of drone strikes and fear that has prompted major companies like Maersk and Hapag-Llloyd to suspend operations in the Middle East.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the US Navy would “begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible.”

A fifth of the world’s crude oil and LNG supplies passes through the waterway. Kpler said on 4 March that traffic through the strait was down 90%.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had targeted an oil tanker in the Gulf in their conflict with Israel and the United States.

“This morning, an oil tanker with the trade name Prima was hit by an exploding drone after ignoring repeated warnings from the IRGC naval forces regarding the prohibition of traffic and the insecurity of the Strait of Hormuz,” the Guards said in a statement carried by Tasnim news agency.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they have targeted “separatist groups” in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, as the war against Israel and the United States entered its second week.

“Three locations of separatist groups in the Iraqi region were hit…this morning,” the Guards said in a statement carried by Tasnim news agency.

“If separatist groups in the region make any move against Iran’s territorial integrity, we will crush them.”

Our reporters in Dubai are telling us that the all-clear has been sounded in the city after mobile phone alerts were sent out earlier in the day because of “potential missile threats.”

Authorities urged the public to seek immediate shelter and planes approaching Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest, were held in a holding pattern.

Passengers waiting for flights were ushered down into train tunnels at the sprawling airfield after the missile alert was sounded.

Multiple reports from and around Dubai Airport indicate that an Iranian drone caused the shutdown.

Loud explosions struck the Iranian capital on Saturday, state TV reported, as the war with Israel and the United States entered its second week.

The blasts were heard in several parts of Tehran, state TV said without specifying which areas were hit.

Israeli and US attacks on a central Iranian province killed at least eight people on Saturday, a provincial official said, as the regional war entered its second week.

“Eight citizens, including a woman, were martyred in these terrorist attacks,” said Akbar Salehi, a security official at the governor’s office in Isfahan province.

“American and Zionist regime fighter jets attacked areas of Isfahan city and seven other cities in the province,” Salehi said, according to the Tasnim news agency.

He added that “80 houses were severely damaged” in the city of Isfahan as well as the Lenjan and Borkhar areas.

Foreign ministers of the Arab League will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss “Iranian attacks on the territories of several Arab countries”, the bloc’s assistant secretary general told the AFP news agency.

The meeting, which will be held via videoconference, was requested by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Jordan and Egypt, Hossam Zaki said.

Qatar’s Civil Aviation Authority announced the partial resumption of air traffic on Saturday, “through designated navigational contingency routes with limited operational capacity.”

The authority said this was being done in coordination with the Qatari Armed Forces and the relevant state authorities.

Israel’s military said more than 80 fighter jets completed a wave of strikes on Iranian military sites, missile launchers and other targets in Tehran and central Iran on Saturday.

“Over 80 Israeli Air Force fighter jets… completed an additional wave of strikes targeting infrastructure belonging to the Iranian terror regime,” the military said in a statement.

Mobile phone alerts sounded on Saturday morning in Dubai over “potential missile threats” with authorities urging the public to seek immediate shelter.

People headed to bomb shelters across Israel early on Saturday after hearing loud booms as Iranian missiles attacked more targets.

There were no immediate reports of casualties by Israel’s emergency services.

Iran’s army said on Saturday that its navy had launched a wave of drone attacks targeting Israel as well as US bases in the United Arab Emirates, as the regional war rages into its second week.

“The Iranian Navy targeted American bases and occupied territories with a massive wave of drone attacks,” the army said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.

It said the targets included the UAE’s Al Minhad base and another in Kuwait, as well as a “strategic facility” in Israel.

This comes a week after the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior leadership and military figures.

Explosions sent up clouds of dark smoke in the Iranian capital early on Saturday and Tehran retaliated by firing missiles at Israel as the United States warned of a forthcoming bombing campaign that officials said would be the most intense yet in the weeklong conflict.

Video showed explosions flashing and smoke rising over western Tehran as Israel said it had begun a broad wave of strikes. 

Read the full report below.

Saudi Arabia’s Defence Minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, urged Iran on Saturday to “exercise wisdom and avoid miscalculation”, following repeated missile and drone launches at the kingdom.

After meeting with Pakistan’s military chief, the Saudi minister posted on X: “We discussed Iranian attacks on the Kingdom and the measures needed to halt them… We stressed that such actions undermine regional security and stability and expressed hope that the Iranian side will exercise wisdom and avoid miscalculation.”

International flight tracker Flightradar24 is reporting that several flights headed for Dubai are in a holding pattern over the airport.

Earlier on Saturday, the Dubai Media Office reported that there had been a “minor incident resulting from the fall of debris after an interception.”

Flights heading to Dubai International Airport, which is the world’s busiest for international travel and has been trying to restart services, circled a distance away just before the interception.

US President Donald Trump has arrived in Miami where he will spend the night after flying in from Washington.

He didn’t speak to journalists upon his arrival but did say earlier on Friday that the US was doing “phenomenally” in its military campaign in Iran.

On Saturday, Trump is expected to meet with Latin American leaders at the “Shield of the Americas” summit in Miami before he heads to Dover in Delaware.

That’s where he will attend what is called a “dignified transfer” ceremony, where the bodies of the six US military personnel killed in an Iranian strike on a base in Kuwait are returned home. 

More drones attacked Saudi Arabia early on Saturday, the country’s Defence Ministry said.

The ministry said it intercepted four drones attacking the country’s massive Shaybah oil field, located deep in the sands of the Empty Quarter desert. It was the second attack within hours.

Earlier, the ministry said it intercepted a drone attack targeting an area around the capital, Riyadh.

The ministry says it also intercepted two ballistic missiles targeting Prince Sultan Air Base.

An explosion and air raid sirens have been heard in the Bahraini capital Manama on Saturday morning.

“Citizens and residents are urged to remain calm and head to the nearest safe place,” Bahrain’s interior ministry posted on X.

A journalist with the AFP news agency heard an explosion in Jerusalem on Saturday, after air raid sirens warned of an incoming Iranian missile attack.

The Israeli military said earlier that air defences were “operating to intercept the threat”, before giving the all-clear.

Writing for the Qatar-funded news network Al Jazeera, Sultan al-Khulaifi of the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies said Gulf Arab states “watched with dread” as the US and Israel launched the war with Iran and they had “invested enormous diplomatic capital in preventing precisely this moment.”

“That Iran’s response has been to turn its missiles on these same neighbours is not only a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions, but is also a profound moral and legal failure that risks poisoning relations for generations to come,” he wrote.

He also argued that “the strategic logic Iran is operating on — that attacking Gulf states will pressure Washington to end the war — is not only flawed in practice, it actively serves Israeli interests.”

“By spreading the conflict to the Gulf, Tehran is doing precisely what Israel could not do alone: steering the war away from the Israeli-Iranian axis and transforming it into a confrontation between Iran and its Arab neighbours.”

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates say there was an interception over Dubai early on Saturday.

People heard several blasts in the morning and the government’s Dubai Media Office said there was “a minor incident resulting from the fall of debris after an interception has been successfully contained.”

Flights heading to Dubai International Airport, which is the world’s busiest for international travel and has been trying to restart services, circled a distance away just before the interception.

The Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah said early on Saturday that its fighters clashed with an Israeli force that landed along the border with Syria.

Israel did not acknowledge the fighting and its military did not respond to requests for comment.

The Iranian-backed group said the clashes late on Friday happened in a cemetery on the edge of the town of Nabi Chit.

Hezbollah said the Israeli miliary launched massive airstrikes to secure the withdrawal of its forces amid the clashes.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least three people were killed and 16 others were wounded in the strikes.

Russia has allegedly provided Iran with information that could help it strike American warships, aircraft and other assets in the region, two officials familiar with US intelligence said.

The officials, who were not authorised to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that US intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information as the US and Israel and Iran fires retaliatory salvos at American assets and allies in the Persian Gulf.

Still, it’s the first indication that Moscow has sought to get involved in the war that the US and Israel launched on Iran a week ago. 

Saudi Arabia faced repeated drone attacks early on Saturday targeting the area around its capital, Riyadh, and a major oil field.

The Saudi Defence Ministry said it intercepted all the drones it detected coming into the kingdom so far.

Coming under particular attack was Saudi Arabia’s massive Shaybah oil field, located deep in the sands of the Empty Quarter desert.

It produces 1 million barrels of oil a day, according to the state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco, which refers to the field as “most remote treasure on Earth.”

Iranian attacks increasingly have targeted oil infrastructure across the Gulf Arab states and disrupted ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded passes.

The State Department announced late on Friday that it approved the sale of thousands of 1,000-pound bombs to Israel.

It also said Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined there was an emergency need for the munitions and waived the normal congressional review process.

The notice to Congress informing it that lawmakers would be bypassed in the consideration of the sale did not say where Israel intends to use the bombs.

“The proposed sale will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats, strengthen its homeland defence, and serve as a deterrent to regional threats,” it said.

The Israeli military said that air defences were responding to an Iranian missile attack in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Forces had “identified missiles launched from Iran toward the territory of the State of Israel.

Defensive systems are operating to intercept the threat,” the military said in a statement.

Air raid alerts across the country’s north were lifted several minutes later.