Interim summary

If you are catching up, here is a quick look at the newest events in the Middle East as risks rise of another front in the US-Iran conflict. It is 9:30am in Tehran and 2am in Washington.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia announced assaults on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea, and a Saudi news source later confirmed one vessel was ablaze on Thursday. The strikes followed the Houthis' declaration of a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia - a step that current and former US officials warned could greatly expand the US-Iran war and stretch American military resources.
The US carried out its 12th straight night of strikes against Iran, stating that military sites were targeted to reduce Tehran's power to strike commercial ships.
Iranian state television reported two deaths and 11 injuries in what a Khuzestan provincial official called a US missile strike on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated it struck US forces at Kuwait's Al-Adiri camp and Ali Al Salem airbase, while the army noted its targets there also included the Arifjan and Doha camps.
Ahead of the newest US strikes the Islamic republic's foreign minister cautioned on social media: "Our defense doctrine is clear: eye for an eye." Abbas Araghchi added: "Any aggression against Iran, including our infrastructure, will force a strong and firm reply. Those who aid such aggression, whatever the form of support, will also count as legitimate targets."
The US and Saudi Arabia signed a major nuclear agreement that might permit the kingdom to enrich uranium later. The pact has raised concerns across the Middle East and in Washington. Full details remain undisclosed but, as Patrick Wintour notes, the timing draws criticism since the US war with Iran aims partly to stop Tehran from enriching uranium at home and to block Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
The IRGC announced on Thursday it halted three oil tankers from crossing the Strait of Hormuz. A statement quoted by Iranian state media said the three oil tankers "provoked" by the US military tried to use a mine-filled path south of the strait "but after one exploded and caught fire, the other two swiftly reversed and retreated".
Earlier, Donald Trump warned on Truth Social that whenever Iran fires at a ship in the Hormuz strait, the US "will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran".
The IRGC said its navy "stresses that the Strait of Hormuz is under our control". US Central Command posted on X: "Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. The international waterway stays open for transit regardless of IRGC threats and attacks."
Two very large Chinese crude carriers carrying a combined 4m barrels of Saudi Arabian oil are moving toward the Bab el-Mandeb strait to leave the Red Sea, shipping data showed on Thursday - a test of how strictly the Houthis will enforce their naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.

Key events

33m agoRubio: 'Iran is begging for a deal'
55m agoOil giants see profits double amid Middle East war
3h agoInterim summary
3h agoAsean summit to call for open straits amid Iran war
5h agoTwo Chinese supertankers with Saudi oil head for Red Sea exit
6h agoExplained: the US-Saudi nuclear deal and why it is causing concern
6h agoUS says latest attacks against Iran completed
7h agoSaudi media confirms vessel hit in Red Sea
7h agoIran says it stopped three tankers transiting Hormuz strait
8h agoTwo killed in US strike at Iran border crossing - report
9h agoIran warns 'eye for an eye' response to US
10h agoOpening: US launches more strikes on Iran as Yemen's Houthis claim Red Sea attacks

Rubio was asked by a reporter if he believed "it would be easier to make a deal with Iran if the United States did not wipe out so many layers of their leadership?"

The US secretary of state replied: "The first two layers were not necessarily the nicest people on earth ... We will just keep going down the layers, I guess ... The first two layers were not like reformers. These were not like Renaissance men. You know what I mean?"

He later added: "Well, some of them are lunatics. Some of them are evil. Some of them are evil lunatics. You can be both."

It is not fully clear what Rubio meant by "first two layers", but the US and Israel killed the former Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a joint strike on the first day of the current war, on 28 February. My colleague Jason Burke reported more on that attack:

Khamenei was killed along with seven "members of the top Iranian security leadership who had gathered at several locations in Tehran" and about a dozen members of his family and close entourage in near-simultaneous strikes within 60 seconds, military officials in Israel said. Forty other senior Iranian leaders also died in the attack.

In further comments to the press at the Asean conference, Rubio criticized Iran for its "stupid lego videos", although he claimed to have "never seen them".

The Guardian's diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour wrote more on the AI-generated comedy videos and lego animations of Donald Trump that Iran has been releasing on social media, which has been called "slopaganda". Here is what he says:

Its once vibrant press has been reduced to reproducing army spokespeople statements, or articles culled from the western press saying Trump is suffering a strategic defeat. Some of Iran's best newspapers have been shut down, and ordinary Iranians still complain about the unwatchable propagandist official TV news channels.
But out of this darkness comes a creativity aimed at the west. Pro-government accounts are posting AI-generated Lego animations that link the Jeffrey Epstein cases to Trump's war, or using humour and confidence to puncture the west's failings.

Read Patrick's article here:

Here are Rubio's comments to reporters (after repeating Iran is "begging" for a deal and will pay a "heavy price"):

They are probably not ready to do a deal yet, but they will be soon because the price they are paying is very high, despite their tough talk and their flowery language and their stupid Lego videos they put out, I have never seen them, but they put these things out on social media. Despite all that bravado they are suffering tremendously and they are going to suffer more until they come to their senses. They are not there yet unfortunately.

Rubio: 'Iran is begging for a deal'

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has claimed that Iran is "begging" for a deal with Washington, but that ultimately it is not serious about agreeing to one.

As a result, Iran will "continue to pay a price" that will get "higher and higher and higher", Rubio added, after the US military announced it conducted a 12th night of strikes against the country yesterday.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) conference in Manila, Rubio was asked whether Donald Trump intended to make good his threat of hitting Iranian bridges and power plants, and whether this meant bombing civilian infrastructure.

Rubio responded:

Iran is begging us, OK, both directly and indirectly. Let's do a deal. Let's talk. Let's talk. Iran is begging every day.
The problem with Iran is every time they make a deal, the people that are in charge there, they either break it or they want to change it. So it looks like they are not ready to make a deal. So they are going to continue to pay a price, and every night the price gets higher and higher and higher.

He went further in saying that the price Iran will pay "will continue to get higher every single night until they come to their senses".

Oil giants see profits double amid Middle East war

French oil and gas company TotalEnergies said net profit doubled in the second quarter as conflict in the Middle East pushed up fuel prices.

In a statement, reported by AFP, TotalEnergies said net profit amounted to $5.4bn (about £4.04bn) in the period from April to June, up from $2.7bn (£2.02bn) in the same period last year.

Yesterday, my colleague Kalyeena Makortoff reported profits at Norway's state oil company Equinor nearly doubled to $11.5bn (£8.6bn) in the three months to the end of June.

Equinor - which is the UK's biggest gas supplier - benefited from a decision to increase oil and gas production at the start of the conflict, filling a gap in the market after a near-halt to shipping through the strait of Hormuz caused Gulf oil flows to slump. It also profited from the jump in oil prices, with the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, reaching $95 a barrel mark for the first time in six weeks as the US and Iran escalate attacks in the Middle East.

The climate campaign group Uplift hit out at Equinor for "raking in billions in profits while millions of people across the UK are struggling with unaffordable energy bills".

You can read Kalyeena's report here:

Some images on the newswires from Lebanon, where the health ministry says 4,328 people have been killed and 12,232 wounded in Israeli attacks since 2 March:

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it targeted a US base in Jordan, claiming to have destroyed a number of military equipment including air defence systems, an aircraft hangar and fuel tanks.

The IRGC's statement, published by Iranian state media this morning, did not name the US base.

Interim summary

If you are catching up, here is a quick look at the newest events in the Middle East as risks rise of another front in the US-Iran conflict. It is 9:30am in Tehran and 2am in Washington.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia announced assaults on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers in the Red Sea, and a Saudi news source later confirmed one vessel was ablaze on Thursday. The strikes followed the Houthis' declaration of a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia - a step that current and former US officials warned could greatly expand the US-Iran war and stretch American military resources.
The US carried out its 12th straight night of strikes against Iran, stating that military sites were targeted to reduce Tehran's power to strike commercial ships.
Iranian state television reported two deaths and 11 injuries in what a Khuzestan provincial official called a US missile strike on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated it struck US forces at Kuwait's Al-Adiri camp and Ali Al Salem airbase, while the army noted its targets there also included the Arifjan and Doha camps.
Ahead of the newest US strikes the Islamic republic's foreign minister cautioned on social media: "Our defense doctrine is clear: eye for an eye." Abbas Araghchi added: "Any aggression against Iran, including our infrastructure, will force a strong and firm reply. Those who aid such aggression, whatever the form of support, will also count as legitimate targets."
The US and Saudi Arabia signed a major nuclear agreement that might permit the kingdom to enrich uranium later. The pact has raised concerns across the Middle East and in Washington. Full details remain undisclosed but, as Patrick Wintour notes, the timing draws criticism since the US war with Iran aims partly to stop Tehran from enriching uranium at home and to block Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
The IRGC announced on Thursday it halted three oil tankers from crossing the Strait of Hormuz. A statement quoted by Iranian state media said the three oil tankers "provoked" by the US military tried to use a mine-filled path south of the strait "but after one exploded and caught fire, the other two swiftly reversed and retreated".