Israel targets more Iran leaders as allies reject Trump's calls for help

The British military's U.K. Maritime Trade Operations agency said a tanker reported being struck near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, in the latest apparent attack by Iran.

The UKMTO said it received a report that a tanker was hit by an "unknown projectile" while anchored 23 nautical miles east of the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah. The tanker only suffered minor structural damage, with no crew injuries reported, UKMTO said.

The agency said Tuesday that it had received a total of 21 reports of incidents involving vessels in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman since Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, drawing the retaliatory fire on commercial ships that has virtually paralyzed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. 

UKMTO said 17 of the reports it had received were of attacks, while four were reports of suspicious activity near vessels.

President Trump has vowed to get tankers moving freely through the strait again soon, as the shutdown drives global energy prices up, but his calls for international help in doing so have brought no offers of imminent assistance to date.

"Of course, we are allies with America, but we don't really understand their moves recently," Kallas told Reuters in an interview.

"I think it is pretty clear after this one year that the word that we have to take into account is unpredictability. So we are now more calm because we are expecting the unpredictable things to happen all the time, and take it as it is, put some ice in our hats and be calm and stay focused," she added.

President Trump has argued repeatedly that Europe, and the entire world, will benefit from the U.S.-Israeli war against the Iranian regime, which he and his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist represented an imminent threat to the region and beyond.

The European Union — the 27 nation bloc that includes some of America's closest allies — made it clear Tuesday that it would not be racing to meet President Trump's calls for military assistance to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. 

The war launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran has seen traffic through the vital shipping lane grind nearly to a halt due to Tehran's retaliatory missile and drone fire across the Persian Gulf. Roughly a fifth of all crude oil supplies typically pass through the strait, so the closure has caused a sharp rise in global energy prices. 

Mr. Trump has issued repeated demands that America's European allies, all of whom were cut out of the planning ahead of the assault on Iran, deploy warships to help protect commercial vessels navigating the strait. 

"Nobody is ready to put their people in harm's way in the Strait of Hormuz," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. "We have to find diplomatic ways to keep this open so that we don't have a food crisis, fertilizers crisis, energy crisis as well."

Mr. Trump has focused significant criticism in recent days on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has also declined to commit to any specific assistance in the Persian Gulf. Starmer said Monday that the U.K. would work with allies to create a "viable collective plan" to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and he mentioned that British de-mining vessels were already in the region, but he noted the challenges of operating in an area still plagued by regular Iranian missile and drone launches.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday that the commander of Iran's feared Basij paramilitary force was among the senior leaders killed in overnight strikes in Tehran, and the Israeli defense minister Israel Katz later confirmed that Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, was also "eliminated."

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have instructed the IDF to continue pursuing the leadership of the terror and oppression regime in Iran," Katz said in a statement, adding that Israel would update President Trump on the killing of the two senior Iranian figures "when morning breaks in Washington."

"The Israeli Air Force, acting on IDF intelligence, targeted and eliminated Gholamreza Soleimani, who operated as commander of the Basij unit for the past six years," the IDF said in an earlier statement, accusing the Basij, under Soleimani's command, of leading "the main repression operations, employing severe violence, widespread arrests, and the use of force against civilian demonstrators" to quash anti-government protests that swept across Iran in January.

The IDF called Soleimani's assassination "an additional significant blow to the regime's security command-and-control structures" and it vowed to "continue to operate with determination against commanders of the Iranian terror regime."

Until Monday, Larijani was among the most senior leaders of the regime still alive in Iran. He had been a defiant voice since the war began and he warned only a week ago, in a message aimed at Mr. Trump, that the Iranian people "do not fear your empty threats; even those greater than you have failed to erase them… so beware lest you be the ones who disappear."

Netanyahu's office, meanwhile, posted a photo on social media of the Israeli leader on the phone, with a message saying only: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders the elimination of senior Iranian regime officials." 

Falling debris from a missile intercept killed one person on Tuesday in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, authorities said, as Iran presses its attacks against Gulf countries in the Middle East war.

The incident took place in the Bani Yas area "following the interception of a ballistic missile by air defences", the Abu Dhabi Media Office said on X.

The day before a Palestinian national was killed on the edge of the city when a missile hit his car.

It brings the death toll in the United Arab Emirates since the start of the Iran war to eight, with six civilians dead as well as two military personnel killed in a helicopter accident.

The oil-rich Gulf has borne the brunt of Iran's attacks in response to US-Israeli strikes that sparked the Middle East war, with Tehran targeting US assets but also civilian infrastructure.

On the east coast of the country, the oil industrial zone of Fujairah was hit on Tuesday morning, sparking a fire but causing no injuries, local authorities said.

It was the second day in a row that the site was hit, with a source telling AFP on Monday that oil storage loading had been shut down by an attack.

An AFP journalist heard several explosions in Doha on Tuesday, a day after similar blasts were heard across the Qatari capital.

Qatar, like several other Gulf nations, has been targeted by both drones and missiles in recent days.

Attacks from Iran-linked proxy forces continued in Iraq, as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was hit with shrapnel from drones that had been intercepted.

The embassy's air defenses were able to shoot down all four drones targeting the facility, according to two Iraqi security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A separate strike targeted a house in the heavily fortified Presidential Compound in Baghdad's al-Jadriya area, the officials said.

It wasn't clear who carried out either attack but Iran-allied militias have regularly been attacking American targets inside Iraq since the conflict began.

Separately, Iraq's oil minister said Baghdad has been in touch with Tehran in an effort to get Iran to let some oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the state news agency reported on Tuesday, according to the Reuters news agency.

Iraq is also working to resume exports through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey in an effort to lessen disruptions to shipments stemming from the war, Reuters reported.

CBS/AP

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Tuesday their forces had arrested 10 "foreign spies" as the war with Israel and the United States continued.

"Ten mercenary, treacherous elements were identified and arrested," the Guards' intelligence organization in the northeastern Razavi Khorasan province said, according to the ISNA news agency, without identifying their nationalities.

The Guards said four of them were gathering information "on sensitive sites and economic infrastructure" while others were linked to a "monarchist terrorist group."  

China said Tuesday it will provide humanitarian assistance to Middle Eastern countries, including Iran and Lebanon, targeted in U.S. and Israeli strikes.

"China has decided to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. It is hoped this will help alleviate the humanitarian plight faced by the local populations," foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a press conference.