Iran-US war latest: Trump warns he’s ‘prepared’ to launch fresh attack ‘any time we want’

Iran’s currency has dropped to a record low of more than 2.2 million rials per U.S. dollar, two websites tracking the free market rate showed on Wednesday, amid renewed military strikes.

The rial has dropped about 10 per cent in the past week. The troubled currency has lost about half of its value in a year of tightening U.S. sanctions and U.S. and Israeli attacks that began in February.

US secretary of energy Chris Wright said on Tuesday that 17 million barrels of oil transited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.

He said that this marked the highest level of crude oil to pass through the waterway since the Iran war had reduced flows.

Russia has been helping Iran to develop supersonic cruise missiles in secret for years, including through the US-Iran war, according to a report.

Moscow has enlisted some of its most experienced specialists to help Iran to develop a new class of missile capable of threatening US aircraft carriers and warships stationed in the Middle East, according to an investigation by the Financial Times.

The programme’s central objective was to help Iran to develop a special ‘ramjet’ propulsion system that would allow its cruise missiles to fly at several times the speed of sound, the report said.

Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iranian missiles, framed the programme as a major transfer of sensitive technology from Moscow that Tehran had been after for decades and would require authorisation “from the very top”.

The Independent has never been under any illusion about this American president. As our world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes, Donald Trump’s “infantile” folly in the Middle East has strengthened outlaw nations Russia and Iran, while “locking America into another forever war”.

The United States, and the world, survived Mr Trump’s first term in the White House in reasonable shape. Although he revels in his unpredictability, it was hard to imagine quite how perverse he would be in his second.

In recent weeks, he has laid about America’s longstanding allies with the irresponsible abandon of, as Kiley puts it, “a toddler with a chainsaw”.

As Dubai looks to build a new port and terminal to bypass the beleaguered Strait of Hormuz, it appears that Gulf countries are already preparing for a life without the crucial waterway.

Port operator DP World is in talks to develop new facilities in the coastal area of Fujairah to take pressure off its flagship Jebel Ali port, according to the Financial Times.

Jebel Ali, built in 1977, has made the UAE a hub of finance and trade, but weeks ago it was set alight by a piece of fallen debris from an Iranian missile. Since then, Dubai International Airport, US military bases and other facilities have come under direct attack.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotion of at least six more U.S Army officers, according to reports.

Sources told The Hill the unnamed individuals had been set for the rank of two-star general until Hegseth intervened, the latest in a series of similar moves by the secretary this year as he seeks to reshape the Department of Defense.

In August the same outlet reported Hegseth had obstructed four other officers from receiving one star promotions, and in March the secretary was said to have blocked four other Army officers – two women and two Black men – in similar fashion.

Iran’s military command has doubled down on justifying attacks on its neighbours following US strikes on the country.

“American evil in the region will be met with heavier, more widespread, and devastating responses, and any country that cooperates with the aggressive American army must accept its dangerous consequences,” it said.

The US military said it struck air defences, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites on Tuesday. Iran reported hits on multiple targets near the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran responded by striking what it said were US assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq, and said its aim was now to drive US forces from the vast network of military bases they have occupied for decades across the Middle East.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the renewed US campaign against Iran would not continue for “too long” after the biggest exchange of fire between Tehran and Washington since July.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Iran was trying to build a rocket that drops mines and the U.S. had destroyed it.

He also said Iran had been working to restore its radar and missile systems, which were also targeted in the U.S. strikes.

Iranians living across the southern coast of the country have recounted their experience of living through US bombing after Tehran and Washington exchanged strikes overnight.

“Last night was like the end of the world,” Mahmoud, 38, a municipal worker in Sirik County along the strait, told Reuters by telephone, describing attacks on the area that includes the city where the wedding was reported to have been hit.