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The Israeli military says six soldiers have been killed during combat in southern Gaza, Reuters just reported.
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Updated at 04.09 BST
Turning to Gaza, the Trump administration has authorised a $30m grant to the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), making the United States a direct backer of an aid organisation that is closely linked to private security contractors and has been accused by critics of “politicising” the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Palestinian territory, Andrew Roth reports.
According to a document seen by the Guardian, the state department has already disbursed $7m to GHF, a US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation that has been given preferential access to operate in Gaza because it says that it can deliver millions of meals to starving people without that food falling into the hands of Hamas.
Palestinians flock to a GHF aid centre to get food in Gaza City earlier this month.
Photograph: Habboub Ramez/ABACA/Shutterstock
The report continues:
But its rollout has been chaotic, with Israeli forces killing hundreds of people near distribution centres policed by private military contractors and Israeli soldiers, resignations by senior leadership who have said the humanitarian organisation’s mission was “politicised”, and reports of close ties and collaboration with the Israeli government.
Insiders said the application for the grant was rushed through the state department unusually quickly, especially for a first-time applicant that should undergo an audit to receive USAID funding.
“It was pushed through over the technical and ethical objections of career staff,” a source told the Guardian.
You can read Roth’s full report here:
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Updated at 04.07 BST
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has weighed in on Donald Trump swearing after becoming frustrated that Iran and Israel violated a ceasefire brokered by the US president.
Trump attacked both nations for breaching the agreement in the early stages, saying on live television “they don’t know what the fuck they are doing”.
Albanese said Trump’s views on the situation in the Middle East were obvious, while also calling for the ceasefire agreement to remain in effect, Australian Associated Press reports.
“President Trump made some pretty clear statements. I don’t think it needs any further reflection,” Albanese told reporters on Wednesday. “I think that he stated his views pretty abruptly and I think they were very clear.”
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said Australians shouldn’t be concerned about the words used. “Far be it from for Australians to quibble with that kind of language,” he told Sky News.
We heard some blunt speak from the president, and I think that just reflects the fact that the stakes are high in the Middle East.
I think those who haven’t used that word privately can cast the first stone.
Australian PM Anthony Albanese says Donald Trump has ‘made some pretty clear statements’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAPShare
Updated at 03.58 BST
Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has said talks between the US and Iran are “promising” and that Washington is hopeful for a long-term peace deal.
“We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors,” Steve Witkoff said on Tuesday. “I think that the conversations are promising. We are hopeful that we can have a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran,” he told a Fox News show.
Now it’s for us to sit down with the Iranians and get to a comprehensive peace agreement, and I am very confident that we are going to achieve that.
Reuters also reports that since April, Iran and the US have held indirect talks aimed at finding a new diplomatic solution over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel is the only country in the Middle East widely believed to have nuclear weapons. Iran is a party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty while Israel is not.
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Updated at 03.32 BST
Donald Trump’s administration told the UN security council on Tuesday that its weekend strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had “degraded” Iran’s nuclear program – short of the US president’s earlier assertion that the facilities had been “obliterated”.
The US’s acting envoy to the UN, Dorothy Shea, said in a statement to the security council that the US strikes “effectively fulfilled our narrow objective: to degrade Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon”.
Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that in its 12 days of war with Iran, Israel removed the threat of nuclear annihilation and was determined to stop any Iranian attempt to revive its program.
“We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles,” he said in video remarks issued by his office.
Iran has insisted its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes.
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Trump insists Iranian nuclear sites ‘completely destroyed’ and attacks media
Donald Trump has blasted CNN and the New York Times, claiming they have teamed up to “demean one of the most successful military strikes in history”, and has declared Iran’s nuclear sites are “completely destroyed”.
The US president also claimed in the post on his Truth Social platform that the two media organisations are “getting slammed by the public”.
Trump’s statement came after reporting of an initial classified US assessment of his strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend said they did not destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.
The report produced by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm concluded – as earlier detailed – that key components of the nuclear program including centrifuges were capable of being restarted within months. The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
The White House said the intelligence report was “flat-out wrong”.
Here is Trump’s Truth Social post on Wednesday in full:
FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!
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Updated at 02.59 BST
Opening summary
Welcome to our rolling coverage of the Israel-Iran war.
The shaky ceasefire between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding after Donald Trump expressed deep frustration with both sides for violating the agreement he brokered.
Israel earlier accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace after the truce was supposed to take effect. The Iranian military denied firing on Israel.
But while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel had brought Iran’s nuclear program “to ruin”, an initial classified US assessment of Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend says they did not destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.
The report produced by the Defence Intelligence Agency – the Pentagon’s intelligence arm – concluded key components of the nuclear program, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted within months. The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium was moved before the strikes.
The report also contradicts statements from Trump, who has said the Iranian nuclear program was “completely and fully obliterated”. The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong”.
In other key developments:
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Iran and Israel both said they would honour the ceasefire if the other side did the same. Earlier on Tuesday Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would respect the ceasefire announced by Trump, provided that Israel also upholds its terms. “If the Zionist regime does not violate the ceasefire, Iran will not violate it either,” he said. Hours later, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said he told his US counterpart Pete Hegseth that “Israel will respect the ceasefire – as long as the other side does”.
People leave an underground shelter in Tel Aviv after the ceasefire announcement on Tuesday. Photograph: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
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Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would strike again if Iran rebuilt its nuclear project. Describing his war on Iran as a “historic victory” that “will stand for generations”, the Israeli prime minister claimed that Israel, in its 12 days of war with Iran, had removed “the threat of nuclear annihilation”. He also said he had “no intention of easing off the gas pedal” and Israel “must complete” its campaign against the Iranian axis, to defeat Hamas and to bring about the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
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Netanyahu also declared that Israel “never had a better friend that President Trump in the White House”. His comments came only hours after Trump directed stinging criticism at Israel over the scale of strikes Trump said violated the truce with Iran negotiated by Washington, with the US president saying: “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen. We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Israel’s leadership was reportedly “stunned” and “embarrassed” by Trump’s rebuke.
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Iran’s air space would reopen on Tuesday night, Iranian state news reported, while Israel Home Front Command said Israeli citizens could resume full activity without restriction for most of the country and that Ben-Gurion and Haifa airports would return to full operations.
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Donald Trump said China can continue to purchase Iranian oil, a move the White House clarified did not indicate a relaxation of US sanctions.
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At the United Nations, France and its European partners are still prepared to reactivate sanctions on Iran if an agreement is not reached soon on its nuclear program, the French ambassador to the UN has warned.
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Updated at 02.33 BST