Israel kilos Tehran after Iran’s evening drone blitz hit US Consulate in Dubai, CIA station and Qatar base – dwell updates

Top White House officials have been in active discussions with Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support to strike the Iranian regime.

Iranian Kurdish militants have thousands of soldiers along the Iraq-Iran border with major support in Northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

An on-ground rebellion could begin in the coming days.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, this semi-autonomous region has served as a haven for local Kurdish groups that pose a military threat to Iran’s regime.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has targeted these groups with dozens of drone strikes since the start of the war on Saturday.

Yesterday President Donald Trump reportedly spoke with the president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, one of the major Kurdish opposition groups targeted by Tehran’s military.

The Lebanese capital Beirut was rocked by explosions shortly after midnight as Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes and rocket fire.

AFPTV footage showed an air strike hit Hezbollah’s bastion in the southern suburbs of Beirut, after an evacuation order from the Israeli army.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes on two towns south of Beirut – outside of Iran-backed Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds – killed six people and wounded eight.

Lebanese state media later said Israeli strikes had hit a hotel in the Beirut suburb of Hazmieh, as well as a four-storey building in the eastern city of Baalbek, where five people were reportedly killed.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have today declared they have ‘complete control’ of the crucial Strait of Hormuz

Iranian forces say any vessels seeking to pass the strait – a vital route for world oil and gas supplies – risked damage from missiles or stray drones.

It comes as US President Donald Trump said yesterday the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the crucial Gulf passage

The Guards said they had also launched more than 40 missiles at US and Israeli targets in a new wave of strikes

The US Consulate building in Dubai was struck by a drone as Iran continues its retaliatory attacks on the Middle East.

A primitive Shahed drone evaded high-tech defences over the United Arab Emirates and struck a car park adjacent to the consulate, which had been evacuated in advance.

Videos posted to social media yesterday evening showed a huge plume of smoke rising from the building, which local authorities revealed was hit by a missile.

No one was injured in the strike and the fire has since been extinguished.

A statement read: ‘The competent authorities in Dubai succeeded in extinguishing a limited fire in the vicinity of the U.S. Consulate in Dubai resulting from a drone targeting operation, and the incident did not result in any injuries.’

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this evening that the drone is understood to have struck a car park adjacent to the consulate building, which is situated close to Dubai’s British embassy.

Iranians will bid farewell to late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a ceremony in Tehran late today, a senior Iranian official told state media.

Hojjatoleslam Mahmoudi, head of Iran’s Islamic Propagation Council, said the farewell ceremony would continue for three days and the funeral procession will be announced later.

The official said the public will be able to pay their respects to the body of late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Prayer Hall starting at 10pm (6:30pm UK time).

‘The Mosalla (prayer hall) will be receiving visitors and the dear people can attend and take part in the farewell ceremony and mark a strong presence once again,’ he said in comments carried by Iranian media.

Iran’s Ali Khamenei, who based his iron rule of Iran on hostility to the US and Israel, was killed on Saturday, aged 86, in air strikes by Israel and the US, according to Iranian state media.

by Adam Pogrund

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reportedly been appointed Iran’s new Supreme Leader.

Mojtaba, 56, Ali Khamenei’s second oldest son, has strong links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and was chosen by Iran’s Assembly of Experts ‘under pressure from the Revolutionary Guards’, according to Iranian opposition outlet Iran International.

Mojtaba is not a high-ranking cleric, has never held office and does not have an official role in the regime.

But he served in the Iranian armed forces during the Iran-Iraq war and is believed to wield considerable influence behind the scenes. He has been touted as a possible successor to his father for years.

However, he was not included in a list of three senior clerics Ali Khamenei reportedly identified last year.

Iran has blown up a CIA station at the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia as the agency works to arm militants for an uprising against the Islamic regime.

A suspected Iranian drone struck the CIA station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, on Monday, just two days after the spy agency pinpointed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s location in the strike that killed him.

An internal State Department alert revealed that Tehran’s attack ‘collapsed’ part of the station’s roof and ‘contaminated’ the compound with smoke, according to the Washington Post.

The station also sustained ‘structural damage’ while personnel were advised to ‘shelter in place.’

The US and Saudi governments confirmed that two drones hit the US embassy complex, but did not disclose that the CIA station was impacted, the Post said.

There was no indication that CIA personnel were wounded.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the US-Israel war with Iran as the conflict enters its fifth day.

Israel has launched fresh strikes on Iran and Lebanon, while Iran’s Guards said they had sealed off one of the world’s most vital shipping routes for energy.

Governments across the world are scrambling to evacuate citizens stranded in the Middle East.

With global energy prices already on the rise over the expanding war, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it has ‘complete control’ of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial chokepoint into the Gulf.

But Trump said the US had ‘knocked out’ Iran’s navy, along with its air force and radar systems, and that the US Navy was ready to escort tankers through the waterway through which one-fifth of global seaborne oil pass.

Stick with us as we bring you the latest updates throughout the day.