Military

The United States used Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) for the first time during its ongoing war with Iran, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Wednesday.

The war entered its seventh day on Friday, with attacks continuing across Iran and other countries in the Middle East.

CENTCOM stated in an X post that PrSMs provide an “unrivaled deep strike capability”.

“I just could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform leveraging innovation to create dilemmas for the enemy,” the post quoted Admiral Brad Cooper, head of CENTCOM.

It is unclear where these PrSMs were launched from, or which specific targets they hit in Iran.

So what is the PrSM, and why is it significant that it has been used by the US for the first time?

What are Precision Strike Missiles?

PrSMs are described as long-range precision strike missiles by their developer, the Maryland, US-headquartered defence firm Lockheed Martin, which delivered the first PrSMs to the US Army in December 2023.

PrSMs can hit targets ranging from 60km (37 miles) to more than 499km (310 miles) away, according to Lockheed Martin.

The company’s website adds that PrSMs are compatible with the MLRS M270 and HIMARS family of launchers, both also developed by Lockheed and used by both the United Kingdom and US armies.

MLRS stands for multiple-launch rocket systems, used to launch missiles. The UK sent a number to Ukraine in 2022. HIMARS stands for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. In 2022, the US sent a number to Ukraine, as well.

M-142 HIMARS is a high-tech, lightweight rocket launcher that is wheel-mounted, giving it more agility and manoeuvrability on the battlefield. Each unit can carry six GPS-guided rockets, or larger missiles like Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) and PrSMs, which can be reloaded in about a minute with only a small crew.

Lockheed Martin adds that PrSMs can be rapidly developed. “We are ready to produce and deliver to meet the US Army’s accelerated timeline for this long-range precision fires priority,” the website says.

PrSMs feature “open systems architecture”, which means that it is easier to plug in new components, upgrade parts, or work with equipment from other companies. Similarly, they are “modular and easily adaptable”, enabling components to be switched around.

They also feature “IM energetic payload”, or Insensitive Munitions energetic payload, which makes explosions safer, the producer says. This means the warhead is made from explosives that are less likely to blow up accidentally if hit by fire, shrapnel or by accident, but still explode properly when triggered as intended.

What is different about the PrSMs?

PrSMs will ultimately replace the ATACMs currently being fired from the HIMARS launchers, significantly increasing their range from 300km (186 miles) to more than 499km (310 miles), without changing the vehicle carrying the missile.

PrSMs also offer double the “missile load” of ATACMs. While a HIMARS launcher is able to carry one ATACMS missile in its pod, it can carry two PrSMs per pod.

Does the PrSM give the US a strategic advantage?

CENTCOM confirmed that PrSMs have been used in the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, codenamed Operation Epic Fury and launched on February 28.

CENTCOM posted a video of the PrSMs being launched from M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems in an open desert terrain.

PrSMs do give the US military a boost for its pre-existing long-range capabilities.

Gulf countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, specifically the Musandam Peninsula, which have military bases hosting US assets and troops, have at least some territory within 400km (250 miles) of Iran.

The US is using PrSMs in conjunction with other long-range missiles such as Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS) one-way drones, MQ-9 Reaper drones, ATACMs and Tomahawk Cruise Missiles.

The range for LUCAS one-way drones is about 800km (500 miles), while the range for ATACMs is about 300km (186 miles) and the range for Tomahawk cruise missiles is about 1,600km (1,000 miles).

Why is the introduction of the PrSM significant?

The range of this missile is significant as it is likely that it would not have been permitted under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, which the Trump administration withdrew the US from in 2019. This is because it can exceed the maximum 500km (310-mile) range the treaty imposed on certain land-launched missiles.

The treaty was signed in 1987 by US and Soviet Union leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. It sought to eliminate the presence of land-based nuclear missiles and medium-range arsenals between 500km and 5,500km (310 and 3500 miles) from Europe.

The US suspension of the treaty allowed Washington to resume development of its own medium-range, land-based arsenal.

Following the US suspension, Russia invited the US to reciprocate in a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of ground-launched intermediate-range missiles instead. While Washington initially rejected the offer, in 2022, it said it would be willing to discuss this.

In August last year, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Russia’s withdrawal from this moratorium, however, saying the US had “made significant progress” and “openly declared plans to deploy US ground-launched INF-range missiles in various regions”. INF stands for intermediate-range nuclear forces.

The statement added that such actions by Western countries posed a “direct threat” to Moscow’s security.

The head of US Central Command says B-2 bombers have dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs on buried Iranian ballistic missile launchers, contributing to a 90% drop in missile attacks. The commander added an Iranian “drone carrier ship” is currently on fire after being hit.

New Delhi, India — Dressed in a blue Navy uniform and sleek sunglasses, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in late October, addressed a gathering of the country’s sea warriors.

He listed out the strategic significance of the Indian Ocean — the massive volumes of trade and oil that pass through it. “The Indian Navy is the guardian of the Indian Ocean,” he then said, to loud, proud chants of “Long Live Mother India” from his audience.

Less than five months later, India has been shown up as a “guardian”, unable to protect its own guest.

On Wednesday, the Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, was torpedoed by a US submarine just 44 nautical miles off (81km) southern Sri Lanka, as it was returning home from naval drills hosted by India. During the “Milan” biennial multilateral naval exercise, Indian President Droupadi Murmu had posed with sailors from the Dena.

Yet it took the Indian Navy more than a day after the Iranian warship was struck to respond formally to the attack, which US officials made clear was a sign of how the Donald Trump administration was willing and ready to expand its war against Iran.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”

Tehran is furious over the attack on its warship hundreds of miles away from home. And Iran made sure to note that the IRIS Dena warship was  “a guest of India’s navy”, returning after completing the exercise it joined upon New Delhi’s invitation.

“The US has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles [3,218km] away from Iran’s shores,” Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said, referring to the sinking of the frigate. “Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.”

Now, the IRIS Dena is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and more than 80 Iranian sailors, who marched during joint parades and posed for selfies with Indian naval officers during their two-week visit, are dead.

What has also fallen, said retired Indian naval officers and analysts, is India’s self-image as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean. Instead, they said, the US attack on the Dena has exposed the limits of India’s power and influence in its own maritime back yard.

‘War reaches India’s backyard’

After participating in the naval exercises, IRIS Dena left Visakhapatnam on India’s eastern coast on February 26. It was hit in international waters, just south of Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, in the early hours of March 4, local time.

In response, Sri Lankan Navy rescuers recovered more than 80 bodies and picked up 32 survivors, reportedly including the commander and some senior officers from the warship. More than 100 men are still missing.

In a tweet welcoming the Dena to the naval drills, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Command had posted: “Her arrival … [reflects] long-standing cultural links between the two nations [Iran and India]”.

Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, the former vice chief of India’s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that he attended the Iranian parade at the function.

“I met and really liked them, especially their march for sailors travelling thousands of miles,” Sinha said. “It is always sad to see a ship sinking. But in a war, emotions don’t work. There’s nothing ethical in a war.”

Sinha said that the Indian Ocean — central to the strategic and energy security of the nation with the world’s largest population — was thought to be a fairly safe zone earlier. “But that is not the case, as we are learning now,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The unfolding battle [between the US and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other] has reached India’s back yard.
New Delhi has to be concerned,” Sinha, who served in the Indian Navy for four decades, added. “The liberty we enjoyed in the Indian Ocean has apparently shrunk.”

India’s Catch-22 situation

Only on Thursday evening did the Indian Navy issue any formal statement on the attack — more than 24 hours after the Dena was hit by a torpedo.

The Navy said that it received distress signals from the Iranian ship and had decided on deploying resources to help with rescuing sailors. But by then, it said, the Sri Lankan Navy had already stepped to lead the rescue effort.

Neither New Delhi nor the Navy has criticised — even mildly — the decision by the US to sink the Iranian warship.

Military analysts and former Indian naval officers say India is caught in a classic catch-22: Was India aware of the incoming US attack in the Indian Ocean on an Iranian warship, or was it blindsided by a nuclear-submarine in its backyard?

Admiral Arun Prakash, the former chief of India’s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that if New Delhi was blindsided, “it reflects on the US-India relationship directly.”

“If it is a surprise, then that’s a great concern since we have a so-called strategic partnership with the USA.”

And if India knew about the attacks, it would be seen by many as strategically siding with the US and Israel over their war on Iran.

C Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy officer and currently the director of the Society for Policy Studies, an independent think tank based in New Delhi, said that the US sinking an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean muddies the Indian perception of itself as a “net security provider” in the region.

Bhaskar said the incident is a “strategic embarrassment” for India and weakens New Delhi’s credibility in the Indian Ocean, while its moral standing “takes a beating” because of the Indian government’s near-silence.

‘India on aggressor’s side’

In the post-colonial world order, India was a leader of the non-alignment movement, the Cold War-era neutrality posture adopted by several developing nations.

India now no longer calls its approach non-alignment, instead referring to it as “strategic autonomy”. But, in reality, it has inched closer to the United States and its allies, most importantly, Israel.

Merely two days before the US and Israel bombed Iran, Modi was in Israel, addressing the Knesset and warmly hugging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called his Indian counterpart a brother.

But Iran, under the late Supreme Leader Khamenei, was a friend of India as well, with New Delhi making strategic, business, and humanitarian investments in the country.

However, Modi has not said a word in condolence after Khamenei’s assassination. On Thursday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited the Iranian embassy in New Delhi to sign a memorial book. Indian governments normally deploy ministers — not bureaucrats or diplomats — for such sombre occasions.

It is against that backdrop that India’s response to the attack on the Dena has come under scrutiny.

Because the frigate was hit when it was in international waters, India had “no formal responsibility”, said Srinath Raghavan, an Indian military historian and strategic analyst.

“But the US Navy’s actions underline both the spreading geography of this war and the sharp limits of India’s ability to manage, let alone control, its fallout,” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.

Diplomatically, India has “objectively positioned itself on the side of the aggressors in this war,” he said, by “acts of commission — visit to Israel on the eve of war — and of omission, with not even [an] official condolence, let alone condemnation, of the assassination of the Iranian head of state.” Modi visited Israel on February 25-26.

Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of India’s opposition Congress party, said the Modi government had recklessly abdicated “India’s strategic and national interests”. And the government’s silence “demeans India’s core national interests and destroys our foreign policy, carefully and painstakingly built and followed by successive governments over the years.”

In addition, Raghavan highlighted that Modi has only criticised Iran’s retaliation, which threatens to drag the Gulf region to the brink of war.

“It is difficult not to conclude that India has drastically downgraded its interests in the relationship with Iran,” he said.

“All of this detracts from India’s credibility as a player in the region and will have short and long-term consequences for the equities in West Asia [as the Middle East is referred to in India],” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.

Videos showed a projectile striking near Kuwait’s Ali al-Salem Air Base, which has hosted a substantial number of US forces. Earlier on Thursday, the United States announced it was closing its embassy in the country and is reportedly evacuating its staff.

US president says he’d be ‘all for’ Kurdish ground assault on Iran amid reports that Washington is egging on rebellion.

Donald Trump has expressed public support for a possible Kurdish offensive against Iran as the United States pushes to destabilise the Iranian governing system internally.

“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it,” the US president told the Reuters news agency on Thursday when asked about the prospects of a Kurdish rebellion in Iran.

Several US media outlets have reported that Trump called leaders in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq to enable Iranian Kurdish groups launch a ground offensive inside Iran.

In his comments on Thursday, Trump declined to say whether the US would provide air support for Kurdish rebels.

The White House had confirmed that the US president contacted Kurdish leaders in Iraq but denied that Trump agreed to a plan to push for an armed uprising by the Kurds in Iran.

“The president has held many calls with partners, allies and leaders in the region, in the Middle East,” Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday.

“He did speak to Kurdish leaders with respect to our base that we have in northern Iraq.”

US assets in Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq have come under repeated Iranian drone and missile attacks since the war started.

Iran is home to millions of Kurds, mostly living in the west of the country.

Kurds represent a sizable ethnic minority in Iraq, Syria and Turkiye, as well.

Earlier this week, Mustafa Hijri, head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), a prominent Kurdish opposition group, called for desertion from the Iranian army and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“I call upon all aware and freedom-seeking soldiers and personnel across Iran, and especially in Kurdistan, to abandon the barracks and military centres of the IRGC, the army, and other military forces of the regime, to refuse their assigned duties, and to return to the embrace of their families,” Hijri wrote on X.

“This action is important both for preserving their lives in the face of these attacks and as a sign of turning their backs on the regime’s military and repressive forces.”

On several occasions in recent decades, Washington has urged Kurdish groups seeking autonomy to rebel against governments it viewed as hostile in the region, only to cut off support to them or fail to come to their aid when the political situation changes.

Some critics have warned that stoking ethnic tensions in Iran could lead to a civil war that could further destabilise the entire region.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Press TV reported that the IRGC launched missiles and drones at the headquarters of “anti-Iran terrorist groups in the Iraqi Kurdistan region”.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has condemned the Iranian attacks on the region while also “categorically denying reports of playing a role in an offensive against Iran.

“At the same time, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the political parties within it are not part of any campaign to expand the war and tensions in the region,” the KRG said in a statement. “On the contrary, we call for peace and stability in the region.”

But with government troops showing no signs of defection despite thousands of US and Israeli strikes, the Trump administration has struggled to find a prominent friendly force on the ground in Iran.

Despite the US president’s repeated calls for Iranians to rise up against their government, there have been no significant protests since the war began on Saturday.

The United States-Israeli war with Iran continues to rage, as Washington pledges to send more troops and military assets to the Middle East and Tehran widens its retaliatory strikes across the region.

But on Thursday, top officials under US President Donald Trump shifted focus to another military front: Latin America.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has indicated he plans to exert US dominance over the entire Western Hemisphere. His push for control has coincided with military operations against alleged criminal networks across the region.

At Thursday’s inaugural “Americas Counter Cartel Conference”, speakers such as White House security adviser Stephen Miller assured reporters that Latin America would remain a top military priority for the US, regardless of events in the Middle East.

“We are not going to cede an inch of territory in this hemisphere to our enemies or adversaries,” Miller said, adding the US was “using hard power, military power, lethal force, to protect and defend the American homeland”.

Miller further maintained there is no “criminal justice solution” to drug cartels, which he likened to armed groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

Organised crime, he concluded, “can only be defeated with military power”.

Since Trump took office last year, his administration has applied what experts describe as a “global war on terror” approach to Latin America, including by labelling drug cartels “foreign terrorist organisations”.

Figures like Miller, a key architect behind Trump’s hardline immigration policies, have championed the president’s militaristic approach, even as critics warn it raises human rights and legal concerns.

Last September, for instance, the administration began striking alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, in what rights groups have decried as extrajudicial killings.

And in early January, the US launched an extraordinary operation to abduct Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. It has since pursued a pressure campaign against Cuba designed to weaken its communist government.

Just this week, on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it had launched joint operations with Ecuador’s military “against Designated Terrorist Organizations” in the South American country.

The announcement indicated a new front for US military actions in the region, which officials have said could include land operations.

But the broadening scope of Trump’s military involvement in Latin America, combined with the nascent war with Iran, has raised questions about the US’s ability to sustain such intense military activity.

Prepared to ‘go on offence alone’

The “Americas Counter Cartel Conference” came as Latin American leaders arrived in South Florida to attend a regional summit hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Attendees included officials from the Trump-allied conservative governments in Argentina, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

But despite support from several regional governments, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth nevertheless told the audience that the US was “prepared to take on” Latin America’s cartels and “go on the offence alone, if necessary”.

“However, it is our preference — and it is the goal of this conference — that, in the interest of this neighbourhood, we all do it together,” Hegseth added.

The secretary also praised Trump’s take on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which sought to establish a US sphere of influence, separate from Europe, in the Western Hemisphere. Administration officials have dubbed Trump’s parallel approach the “Donroe doctrine”.

Hegseth framed the administration’s attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats as a keystone of Trump’s effort to maintain regional influence.

The US military has carried out at least 44 aerial strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in an estimated 150 known deaths.

The identities of the victims have not been released, with several family members saying fishermen and informal workers were among those targeted.

The Pentagon chief said the approach was meant to “establish deterrence”.

“If the consequence was simply to be arrested and then released, well, that’s a consequence they’d already priced in a long time ago,” Hegseth said.

He then pointed to a “few weeks” in February in which there were no strikes on alleged drug boats.

The pause in attacks, he said, was evidence of the strategy’s success. But that break notably came as the US surged assets to the Middle East.

Emphasis on ‘heritage’

Neither Hegseth nor Miller specifically referred to the war with Iran, but the pair touched on themes that have been present in the administration’s messaging on the war.

Trump, for example, said Iran’s government “waged war against civilisation itself”. There have been reports, meanwhile, that US military officials have referenced the biblical “end times” as a religious underpinning for the war.

Those remarks have reflected what critics consider Trump’s embrace of Christian nationalism and his view of the Americas as a European-derived “civilisation” threatened by outside forces.

At Thursday’s conference, Miller himself referenced violence in European history as justification for the modern-day military actions in Latin America.

There were periods in European history throughout the 18th and 19th centuries during which “ruthless means were used to get rid of the people who were raping and murdering and defying established systems of order and justice,” Miller said.

He also echoed Trump’s allegation that Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” as a result of left-wing leadership and immigration.

“The reason why many Western countries are struggling today is they’ve forgotten the eternal truth and wisdoms they once followed,” Miller said.

Hegseth, meanwhile, described all the countries at Thursday’s meeting as “offsprings of Western civilisation”.

Representatives in attendance, he said, faced a test “whether our nations will be and remain Western nations with distinct characteristics, Christian nations under God, proud of our shared heritage with strong borders and prosperous people ruled not by violence and chaos but by law”.

He added that foreign “incursions” represent “existential questions” for the region, seemingly referencing the growing influence of China as an economic and political partner in the Americas.

“Covert action should not be confused with missionary work,” former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared after the sudden abandonment of Iraqi Kurds to their fate against the Iraqi government in 1975.

Half a century later, this doctrine of geopolitical expediency echoes across the Middle East. As the US and Israel encourage Kurdish militias to serve as a ground force against Iran’s central government, knowing their aspiration for “regime change” needs a ground force, history offers a severe warning.

From the mountains of Iraq in 1991 to the plains of Syria just weeks ago, Washington’s track record of using Kurdish fighters as disposable proxies suggests the current push for an Iranian Kurdish rebellion is fraught with risk.

Amid a rapidly escalating military confrontation that has seen US-Israeli air strikes assassinate top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Washington is seeking to open a new front.

Some US media reports claimed that thousands of Iranian Kurds have crossed from Iraq to launch a ground operation in northwestern Iran. That has not been verified. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly supplied these forces with light weapons as part of a covert programme to destabilise the country.

To facilitate this, US President Donald Trump reportedly held calls with Iraqi Kurdish leaders Masoud Barzani and Bafel Talabani as well as Iranian Kurdish leader Mustafa Hijri. While the White House and Kurdish officials in Erbil denied these reports, regional analysts remained wary.

The government of northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region on Thursday denied involvement in any plans to arm Kurdish groups and send them into Iran.

Its president, Nechirvan Barzani, said it “must not become part of any conflict or military escalation that harms the lives and security of our fellow citizens”.

“Protecting the territorial integrity of the Kurdistan Region and our constitutional achievements can only be achieved through the unity, cohesion and shared national responsibility of all political forces and components in Kurdistan,” he added.

Mahmoud Allouch, a regional affairs expert, told Al Jazeera that the current strategy is aimed not simply at an immediate government overthrow but at “dismantling Iran” by inciting separatist movements as a prelude to its collapse. “The US and Israel want to produce a separatist armed Kurdish case in Iran similar to the Kurdish case that America imposed in Syria,” Allouch warned.

Added to this volatile mix is Turkiye and how it would react to any Kurdish uprising in the region. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began steps towards disarmament last summer, closing a chapter on a four-decade armed campaign against the Turkish state in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people. Any armed advances by Iranian Kurds could rankle Ankara.

A legacy of betrayal and unintended gains

For the Kurds, acting as the tip of the American spear has historically ended in disaster. In the 1970s, the US and Iran heavily armed Iraqi Kurdish rebels to bleed the government in Baghdad. Yet, once the shah of Iran secured a territorial concession from Iraq in 1975, he cut off the Kurds overnight with Washington’s approval. He himself was deposed in a revolution four years later.

This scenario repeated itself with devastating consequences in 1991. After then-US President George HW Bush encouraged Iraqis – both the Kurdish and Shia communities persecuted under Saddam Hussein – to rise up, the US military stood by as loyalist forces regrouped and used helicopter gunships to indiscriminately slaughter tens of thousands of civilians and rebels.

However, David Romano, a Middle East politics expert at Missouri State University, countered in a statement on his Facebook page that the aftermath of the 1991 catastrophe eventually forced the US to launch Operation Provide Comfort and a no-fly zone, which laid the groundwork for the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. “At important junctures, the Kurds have done exceedingly well as a result of cooperation with the US,” Romano wrote although he noted the opposite was true in 1975.

The Syrian quagmire

The dark irony of Washington asking Iranian Kurds to take up arms today is compounded by the recent collapse of Kurdish autonomy in neighbouring Syria. For years, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) served as the primary US proxy against ISIL (ISIS) and led the way to vanquishing the armed group in 2019 after years of fighting and suffering.

Yet in January, a little more than a year after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, the Trump administration backed Syria’s new central government in Damascus, essentially ending support for the SDF and Kurdish autonomy.

The US envoy to Syria, Thomas Barrack, declared that the original purpose of the SDF had largely expired. Within weeks, the SDF lost 80 percent of the territory it had bled for. For the Kurds across the region watching these events unfold, the implications were profound: The US is no longer perceived as a reliable partner or supporter of minorities.

Allouch highlighted this as a primary reason for Kurdish hesitation concerning Iran today, noting that Kurdish leaders are “bleeding from yesterday’s stab” in Syria.

Calculated rejections and the Iranian gamble

The US and Israel are seeking “boots on the ground” to avoid deploying their own forces. But in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, the leadership understands the severe blowback. Barzani recently emphasised to the Iranian foreign minister that the region “will not be a party to the conflicts”.

Analysts suggested that Barzani remains angered by the US dismissal of a 2017 independence referendum for the region. Romano noted that because Baghdad vociferously rejected attacking Iran, Erbil has a perfect justification to decline Washington’s requests after decades of being told by the US to remain integrated within Iraq.

The calculus is different for Iranian Kurds, known as Rojhelati. Betrayed by the Soviet Union in 1946, they have acutely suffered under successive Iranian governments and may view this as their “first and only opportunity” to change their status.

However, Allouch warned that without a solid US military commitment, which Trump has shown no desire to provide, this move could be “suicidal” against a fierce Iranian military response.

The regional veto

Pushing Iranian Kurds into an open conflict remains a highly volatile endeavour that has triggered an immediate reaction from Turkiye. Allouch told Al Jazeera that Ankara will coordinate with the Iranian government to crush any uprising.

“The US and the international powers realise that they cannot, in the end, impose a reality that contradicts the interests of the ‘Regional Quartet’ – Turkiye, Syria, Iran and Iraq,” Allouch said. He argued that this regional bloc applies far more pressure regarding the Kurdish issue than shifts in international policies.

Ultimately, the Kurds have consistently paid the price of changing geopolitics. As Washington seeks a cost-free rebellion with no ground deployment or losses of its own soldiers in Iran, the Kurds will weigh seductive American promises against the blood-soaked lessons of 1975, 1991 and 2026.

Iran has launched operations targeting Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in neighbouring Iraq as the regional war ignited by the United States and Israel entered its sixth day, with more than 1,000 people killed across the country.

State television, Press TV, reported early on Thursday that Tehran was striking “anti-Iran separatist forces”, referring to Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups believed to be based in mountainous, hard-to-reach areas near the Iran-Iraq border.

Iranian missiles hit Sulaimaniyah city in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, according to local reports.

“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported on Thursday, quoting a military statement. The Iranian military said earlier on Tuesday it used “30 drones” on Kurdish positions.

The attack comes just days after multiple publications reported that US President Donald Trump was in active talks with Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups, and that Washington hopes to use them to spur a popular uprising.

Various Iranian Kurdish groups, which share close ties with Iraqi Kurds, have long opposed Tehran from their bases in northern Iraq and along the Iraq-Iran border. These groups reportedly have thousands of fighters between them.

Here’s what we know so far:

Why are Kurdish groups cooperating with the US?

US officials said the aim is to stretch Iranian forces and take out the remains of the military-dominated Iranian government, according to reporting by CNN.

There is also speculation that the groups could be supported to take control of northern Iran to create a ground buffer for Israeli forces, possibly streaming in from Iraq.

US-Israeli bombings have heavily targeted areas along the Iraq-Iran border since the start of the war on Saturday, possibly to degrade Iranian defences and allow Kurdish opposition groups to cross fully into Iran, according to a briefing by US-based think tank, the Soufan Center.

The US has not ruled out sending ground forces, although analysts told Al Jazeera Iran’s rugged territory would make that very difficult.

If the US does support these groups against Tehran, it would mean that Washington is treating them like armed “players on a board,” Winthrop Rodgers, associate fellow at the UK think tank, Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.

Which Kurdish groups are there?

Neither the US nor Kurdish groups had confirmed any agreements by Thursday.

However, it is known that Trump has spoken to the leaders of two Kurdish groups in Iraq: Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Bafel Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), according to US publication, Axios. Talabani confirmed the call on Wednesday.

Trump also spoke to Mustafa Hijri, head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), on Tuesday, CNN reported, quoting a Kurdish official.

Meanwhile, Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which have thousands of fighters along the Iraq-Iran border, formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK) alliance one week before the war broke out.

The group issued statements at the start of the conflict, signalling imminent intervention and urging Iranian military members to defect. According to Israel’s I24News, thousands of its fighters were in Iran by Wednesday.

Here are the different groups:

Kurdistan Democratic Party: The ruling party in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The party controls the capital city of Erbil as well as Duhok. It has historical ties with Iranian Kurdish groups.

However, the KRG is not eager to be seen as supporting attacks on Iran, even as Iranian drones have hit US assets in Erbil. On Wednesday, Kurdistan region President Nechirvan Barzani spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and told him his region “will not be part of conflicts” targeting Tehran.

In 2023, the two countries signed a security deal that saw Iraq promise to disarm and relocate Iranian opposition groups on its territory, although it appears many groups are still based there, reflecting the limited influence the government wields over them.

Iraqi Kurds, who have close ties with both the US and Iran, are in a “difficult position”, said Rodgers.

“They are under tremendous pressure from a wide range of forces, including (pro-Iran) Iraqi militias. They will try to stay out of the conflict as much as they can, but that will likely prove impossible,” he said.

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK): The PUK is the official opposition in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and also nationally relevant as Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid is a member. In a statement on Sunday, Rashid urged dialogue and an end to the war. Iraq declared three days of mourning following the killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on Tehran on Saturday.

Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK): Formed on February 22, 2026, the group includes six Iranian Kurdish opposition groups seeking an independent state.

Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) – Based in the Kurdistan region, the group has about 1,200 members and is proscribed as a “terror” group by Iran.

Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) – Also based in Kurdistan, it has an estimated 1,000 members.

Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) – A close ally of the Turkish opposition armed group, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), PJAK is proscribed as a “terror” group by Ankara. PJAK’s armed wing, the Eastern Kurdistan Units (YRK), is believed to have between 1,000 and 3,000 members, many of them women. It is based in the rugged Qandil Mountains near the Iran-Iraq border and in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region. It has launched numerous attacks on Iranian forces in the past decade. A recent Iranian strike reportedly killed one fighter.

Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan Struggle (Khabat) – It has an unknown number of fighters.

Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan – Based in Iraq’s KRG, it has an unknown number of fighters.

Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KPIK) – Also headquartered in the Kurdistan region, it has an estimated 1,000 fighters in 2017.

What is the history of US involvement with Kurdish resistance groups in the Middle East?

Kurds are an ethnic minority spread across the Middle East with a shared language and culture. They do not have a state of their own and have historically been marginalised across countries – mainly Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkiye.

For decades, several armed Kurdish groups have sought self-governance in Turkiye, Syria and Iran.

In Iraq, Kurdish nationalist groups gained some success during the 1991 Gulf War by working with the US, which helped establish the self-governing Kurdistan region of Iraq. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also trained and armed its army, known as the Peshmerga, after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. In 2005, the semiautonomous region was officially recognised in Iraq’s constitution.

Since 2017, Washington has also armed and trained the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia that Turkiye lists as a “terror” group because of its links with the proscribed PKK. The group, which successfully resisted ISIL (ISIS), now forms the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It controlled Raqqa and other ISIL strongholds.

However, when it began military clashes with Syrian forces under the President Ahmed al-Sharaa-led government last August, Washington turned away from the group and backed Damascus instead. In January this year, the SDF signed an agreement with the Syrian government to integrate into the government forces. In return, the Syrian government recognised Kurdish rights.

In Turkiye, meanwhile, the PKK, whose presence in northern Iraq has long been a source of tension with Ankara, declared a ceasefire in March 2025, after a call from its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to disarm.

How does Kurdish resistance in Iran compare with others?

Iranian Kurds opposed the Iranian government even before the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Rodgers said, and Tehran’s current weakness provides an opportunity for them to advance their political aims in the country.

However, the new coalition of multiple diverse groups is unprecedented, the analyst added, and their internal dynamics will be a key decisive factor in what role Kurdish groups will play in this war.

“Support from the US is helpful, especially in terms of targeting security forces’ infrastructure with air strikes, but they will likely be cautious about relying too much on Washington, especially from an administration as capricious and disorganised as Trump’s,” Rodgers said, noting how Washington abandoned the Kurds in Syria.

Unlike the split Iranian movements, Iraqi Kurds have long united to form a devolved government enshrined in the Iraqi constitution, built an advanced economy, and secured substantive relations with a wide range of foreign countries. That’s something Kurdish groups will also be hoping to establish in a democratic Iran, he said.

“I think it is unlikely that the Trump administration has made any commitments to the Iranian Kurds about supporting their political goals,” Rodgers said, adding that the US’s plan “does not look fully thought through at all”.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters he wants de-escalation of the Iran attacks but said he couldn’t rule out his country’s military participation. He was speaking alongside Australia’s prime minister during a visit to Canberra.

Kim Jong Un supervised the launch of sea-to-surface ‘strategic cruise missiles’ from country’s new naval destroyer.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen the test-firing of “strategic cruise missiles” from a new 5,000-tonne naval destroyer before the vessel’s official commissioning, according to state media.

Kim supervised the launch of sea-to-surface missiles from the destroyer Choe Hyon on Wednesday, assessing the test as a “core” element of the new warship’s capabilities, which he described as a “new symbol of sea defence” for his country.

Calling for the production of more warships of a similar class or better, Kim said his navy’s adoption of nuclear weapons was making progress.

“Our Navy’s forces for attacking from under and above water will grow rapidly. The arming of the Navy with nuclear weapons is making satisfactory progress,” Kim said at the Nampo Shipyard in the west of the country, according to North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“All these successes constitute a radical change in defending our maritime sovereignty, something that we have not achieved for half a century,” he said.

South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency noted that North Korea uses references to “strategic” weapons to indicate they could have nuclear capabilities.

According to KCNA, over a two-day visit to the shipyard, spanning Tuesday and Wednesday, Kim inspected the Choe Hyon, the lead vessel in a new series of 5,000-tonne “Choe Hyon-class” destroyers currently under construction in North Korea.

‘Wage a more active and persistent struggle’

In May 2025, North Korea’s ambitious naval modernisation programme suffered a major setback when a second Choe Hyon-class destroyer capsized during a botched side-launch ceremony at Chongjin Shipyard, an incident witnessed by the Korean leader.

Later, and in a rare admission of failure, KCNA reported that a launch mechanism malfunction caused the stern of the 5,000-tonne destroyer to slide prematurely into the water. The accident crushed parts of the hull and left the bow stranded on the shipway.

At the time, Kim characterised the launch failure as a “criminal act”, blaming the incident on “absolute carelessness” and “irresponsibility” across multiple state institutions.

This week’s missile tests come after the North Korean leader pledged in late February to lift living standards as he opened a rare congress of the governing Workers’ Party, held once every five years.

Kim told the congress that the ruling party was “faced with heavy and urgent historic tasks of boosting economic construction and the people’s standard of living”.

“This requires us to wage a more active and persistent struggle without allowing even a moment’s standstill or stagnation,” he said.

North Korea has prioritised nuclear weapons development and military strength above all else, claiming that it must be militarily strong to resist pressure from the United States and its ally, South Korea.

Since taking power in late 2011, Kim has maintained the military as a core priority while simultaneously emphasising economic strengthening to address the country’s chronic impoverishment.

Canadian leader also said the US-Israeli attacks on Iran appear to be ‘inconsistent with international law’.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that he could not rule out his country’s military participation in the escalating war in the Middle East, after earlier saying that the US-Israeli strikes on Iran were “inconsistent with international law”.

Speaking alongside Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra on Thursday, Carney was asked whether there was a situation in which Canada would get involved.

“One can never categorically rule out participation,” Carney said, noting the question was “hypothetical”.

“We will stand by our allies,” he said, adding that “we will always defend Canadians”.

Carney said earlier that he supported the strikes on Iran “with some regret” as they represented an extreme example of a rupturing world order.

The Canadian prime minister also stressed that his country was not informed in advance of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, in his first remarks since the war was launched on Saturday.

“We were not informed in advance, we were not asked to participate,” Carney told reporters travelling with him in Australia on Wednesday.

“Prima facie, it appears that these actions are inconsistent with international law,” he said.

“The United States and Israel have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada,” he added, according to Australia’s SBS News, while also condemning strikes on civilians in Iran and calling for “all parties … to respect the rules of international engagement”.

Whether the US and Israeli attacks on Iran had broken international law was “a judgement for others to make”, he added.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said on Wednesday that efforts were under way to help more than 2,000 Canadians who have requested assistance from the government to leave the ⁠Middle East region since the war broke out on Saturday.

Anand said about half of all inquiries for help were from Canadians in the United Arab Emirates, more than 230 from Qatar, at least 160 from Lebanon, more than 90 from Israel and 74 from Iran.

Canada’s Foreign Ministry has been instructed to contract charter flights out of the UAE ‌in the coming days, contingent on approval from the UAE government to use its airspace, the minister said.

Commercial ⁠air traffic remains largely absent across much of the region, with major Gulf hubs – including Dubai, the world’s busiest airport for international passengers – largely shut amid the conflict, in the biggest travel disruption since the COVID pandemic.

Repatriation flights chartered by foreign governments, including Britain and France, were due to leave on Wednesday and Thursday, while the UAE opened safe air corridors to allow some citizens to return home.

Under ⁠normal circumstances, thousands of commercial flights would depart the region each day.

Reports are emerging that the US and Israel are supporting separatist groups in Iran to launch attacks. The reports claim its part of an evolving US strategy to weaking Iran’s defences and possibly collapse the Islamic Republic. Soraya Lennie breaks it down.

Leaders in Israel and the United States have indicated that the conflict against Iran could continue for weeks.

The US, led by President Donald Trump, has emphasised that this will not be a problem, and that its military has the capacity to conduct an extended fight. But for Israel, already fatigued by the cost of having inflicted a genocide on Gaza, as well as wars or attacks in Lebanon, Syria, and a previous round with Iran, a lengthy conflict could be more costly.

Since it attacked Iran on Saturday, Israel has endured repeated missile and drone strikes, forcing widespread air raid alerts, school closures, and the mobilisation of tens of thousands of reservists.

Cities like Haifa and Tel Aviv have faced sustained attacks, emergency services are stretched, and a public, unused to war on the scale their government has inflicted upon others, has spent the past few days in and out of bomb shelters.

For now, enthusiasm for the war is high. Interviews with Israelis in most major cities show a hunger to confront an enemy that the public was told for decades was determined to exterminate them. With the exception of the far-left, politicians have rallied to the government banner.

“As soon as the war started, Israel was swept in a wave of militarism,” Israeli political economist Shir Hever said.

“It was not the same as [the June 2025 12-day war]. Then, it was mostly panic, an existential fear that Iran could destroy Israel. Now, it is gung-ho militarism and overconfidence. Even the war critics – who are few and far between – recommend that [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu keep the war ‘short’, as if Israel can decide when it ends.”

Support for the war is part of what many see as a radicalisation of Israeli society. Previously peripheral far-right politicians have made their way into the centre of government, with political polarisation and economic strain accelerating the flow of the young and talented out of the country.

Those who remain are already conditioned to think of Iran as the fundamental enemy of their country, and weeks of war may militarise the society even further.

“It’s like the UK blitz in World War II,” Daniel Bar-Tal, an academic at Tel Aviv University, said.

“Then, the British accepted this bombardment because they saw themselves as fighting this ultimate evil. Israelis have the same feeling. We are indoctrinated into believing, almost from birth, that Iran is evil, which is reinforced through kindergarten, high school, and the army.”

For Bar-Tal, it is impossible to guess what kind of Israeli society might emerge from weeks of renewed war, only that the country’s past moral certitude in the righteousness of its establishment had not been dented by the massacres committed during the 1948 Nakba, nor the recent Gaza genocide.

“Now, we have a generation who are still more militaristic and more rightist, with Netanyahu telling us we now need to live by the sword. It’s just more evidence that Israel needs enemies to survive.”

Bombs and guns

Beyond the social impacts, Israel has military calculations to take into account if the war does drag on.

Most pressing is determining how long Israel can sustain the current levels of warfare against an opponent of Iran’s scale and military heft. This will be affected by both the support it receives from its allies, such as those in the US and Europe, and whether its defences become exhausted before those of Iran, defence analyst Hamze Attar said.

“In the first three days of the war, Iran launched more than 200 ballistic missiles at Israel,” he told Al Jazeera. “To put that into context, during the 12-day war, they launched around 500, each requiring that Israel counter by launching an interceptor rocket. That’s probably more than Israel has the capacity to counter, so, without US help, it would probably have lost control of its airspace by now.”

Israel has three different air defence systems: the Iron Dome, for short-range rockets and artillery; David’s Sling, to counter medium-range rockets and cruise missiles; and Arrow 2 and Arrow 3, designed to intercept ballistic missiles

The Israelis do not disclose the number of interceptors they have in stock, but Israel began to run low on interceptor stocks during the 12-day war, indicating that it will become more difficult to maintain a high level of interceptions if the war continues for a lengthy period. This would lead to a rationing of interceptors and a focus on defending military and political targets, potentially leading to more civilian casualties.

According to Israeli and US sources, Iran has been producing ballistic missiles at a rate of 100 per month in the aftermath of June’s conflict, Attar said, which would suggest that Tehran had already amassed a significant stockpile.

However, Attar was quick to point out that the Iranian threat is also based on the types of ballistic missiles they have.

“We don’t know what type of ballistic missiles,” Attar said, outlining the different types of missiles: long-range, reaching as far as Greece and the Mediterranean; medium-range, reaching Israel; and short-range, which can target the Gulf states.

“Likewise, we don’t know how many [missiles] they [Iran] had before the 12-day war, how many were destroyed during that war, or how many launchers they have,” Attar added. “If you don’t have the launchers, which the US and Israel are targeting, it doesn’t matter how many missiles you have. It’s like having bullets without a rifle.”

Economic considerations

More than two years of almost constant war have taken their toll on Israel’s economy, analysts warned, with the cost of munitions weighing on the Israeli purse, and the deployment of a reservist force numbered in their hundreds of thousands for periods far longer than any planners had originally conceived of.

Israel’s spending in 2024 on the wars in Lebanon and Gaza was reported to have reached $31bn, contributing to the country’s highest budget deficit in years. Preliminary figures from 2025 show spending on war reaching $55bn.

The pressure on the economy led to the downgrading of Israel’s sovereign credit rating in 2024 by all three major credit rating agencies.

“Israel is experiencing a debt crisis, an energy crisis, a transportation crisis, [and] a health service crisis,” Hever said.

But none of these would be enough to halt Israel’s military campaigns on their own, the political economist cautioned. “This is not a question of economy, but a question of technology.”

“If the US can keep supplying Israel with weapons that are so advanced that they can load themselves, aim themselves, and kill from such a distance that the soldiers don’t need to risk their own lives, I don’t see how the economic crisis inside Israel would be enough to stop Israel’s aggression,” he said.

China’s foreign minister tells Israel to end attacks; Russian FM Lavrov says no sign Tehran seeking nuclear bomb.

Russia and China have criticised the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, with Moscow saying it had seen no evidence that Tehran was developing nuclear weapons, and Beijing demanding an immediate halt to the joint attacks.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang ⁠Yi told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, on Tuesday that the attack on Iran came as negotiations between Washington and Tehran had “made significant progress, including addressing Israel’s security concerns”, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Regrettably, this process has been interrupted by military action. China opposes any military strikes launched by Israel and the US against Iran,” Wang told the Israeli foreign minister during a phone call, according to the ministry.

“China calls for an immediate cessation of military operations to prevent the further escalation and loss of control of the conflict,” Wang said.

“Force cannot truly solve problems; instead, it will bring new problems and serious long-term consequences,” he added.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Saar agreed to a request from Wang to take “concrete measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel and institutions” in Iran.

The call on Tuesday with Israel and Beijing’s apparent efforts to stabilise the spiralling regional situation followed calls Wang made on Monday to discuss the conflict with the foreign ⁠ministers of Iran, Oman and France.

‘US doesn’t attack those who have nuclear bombs’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also criticised the US and Israel on Tuesday, saying their war on Iran could lead to the very outcome they claimed they wanted to prevent: nuclear proliferation.

Lavrov told a news conference that the logical consequence of the US and Israel’s actions could be that “forces will emerge in Iran… in favour of doing exactly what the Americans want to avoid – acquiring a nuclear bomb”.

“Because the US doesn’t attack those who have nuclear bombs,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov also said that Arab countries could now join the race to acquire nuclear weapons, given the experience of recent days and “the nuclear proliferation problem will begin to spiral ⁠out of control”.

Israel is widely seen as the Middle East region’s only nuclear-armed state, which it neither confirms nor denies.

“The seemingly paradoxical declared noble goal of starting a war to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons could stimulate completely opposite trends,” he said.

Lavrov, who said that Moscow had still seen no evidence that Iran was developing ⁠nuclear weapons, spoke with his Iranian counterpart, ⁠Abbas Araghchi, on Tuesday, and said that Russia stood ready to help find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, while rejecting the US and Israel’s use of “unprovoked military aggression” in the region.

As the US and Israel launched their first strikes on Iran on Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused the close allies of carrying out a “premeditated and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state”.

The two countries had hidden their true intention of regime change in Tehran “under the cover” of negotiations to normalise relations with Iran, the ministry said.

The US and Israel were “swiftly pushing the region toward a humanitarian, economic, and potentially even radiological disaster”, the ministry warned.

“Responsibility for the negative consequences of this manmade crisis, including an unpredictable chain reaction and spiralling violence, lies entirely with them,” the statement added.

Russia has faced its own accusations of aggression against a sovereign state after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a war now in its fifth year.

Kinshasa welcomed the sanctions while Kigali said the US move ‘unjustly’ targets Rwanda.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s military and four of its top officials for “direct operational support” of the M23 rebel group that has seized large swaths of territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Rwanda has long rejected allegations from DRC, the United Nations and ⁠Western powers that it backs M23 and its affiliated Congo River Alliance (AFC), which captured key cities in the mineral-rich east, including the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces last year.

The US Department of the Treasury said on Monday that the rebels’ gains would not have been possible without Rwandan backing.

The US State Department separately added that M23 continued to capture territory even late last year “in clear violation” of a US-mediated agreement.

US President Donald Trump in December brought together the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC to sign a peace deal, predicting a “great miracle”.

But just days afterwards, the State Department noted, the M23 captured the key Congolese city of Uvira.

The Treasury Department said those included in Monday’s sanctions are Vincent Nyakarundi, the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) army chief of staff; Ruki Karusisi, a major-general; Mubarakh Muganga, chief of defence staff; and Stanislas Gashugi, special operations force commander.

The US said they were critical to M23’s gains.

“M23, a US- and UN-sanctioned entity, is responsible for horrific human rights abuses, including summary executions and violence against civilians, including women and children,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.

“The continued backing from the RDF and its senior leadership has enabled M23 to capture DRC sovereign territory and continue these grave abuses,” he added.

‘A strong signal’

Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said in a statement that the sanctions “unjustly” target Rwanda and “misrepresent the reality and distort the facts of the conflict” in eastern DRC.

She accused DRC of violating the peace agreement by allegedly conducting “indiscriminate” drone attacks and ground offensives.

Rwanda’s government also told the Reuters news agency that Kigali was “fully committed to disengagement of its forces in tandem with the DRC implementing their obligations” under US-led mediation, but accused DRC of failing to keep promises such as ending support for militias.

The Congolese government, however, said it welcomed the sanctions, describing them as “a strong signal in support of respect” for its territorial integrity and ⁠sovereignty.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the department “will use all tools at its disposal to ensure that the parties to the Washington Accords uphold their obligations”.

“We expect the immediate withdrawal of Rwanda Defence Force troops, weapons and equipment,” Bessent said.

Fighting continues in eastern DRC on several fronts, despite the accord signed between Kigali and Kinshasa in Washington, and a separate peace deal signed between M23 and the Congolese government in Qatar last year.

Though M23 later pulled out of Uvira under US pressure, the rebels still hold other key Congolese cities, including Goma and Bukavu. The US Treasury Department said on Monday that M23’s continued presence near Burundi’s border “carries the risk of escalating the conflict ‌into a broader regional war”.

M23 is the most prominent of about 100 armed factions vying for control in eastern DRC, near the border with Rwanda. The conflict has created one of the world’s most significant humanitarian crises, with more than seven million people displaced, according to the UN agency for refugees.

M23 are already under US sanctions since 2013.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Spain says the United States is not using – and will not be using – joint military bases on its territory for operations against Iran, a mission condemned by Madrid.

“Based on all the information I have, the bases are not being used for this military operation,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish public television on Monday.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iran that began on Saturday as an “unjustified” and “dangerous military intervention” outside the realm of international law, in another break from US policy.

“The Spanish government will not authorise the use of the bases for anything beyond the agreement or inconsistent with the United Nations,” Albares said, referring to the Rota naval base and the Moron airbase.

The US operates at the bases under a joint-use arrangement, but they remain under Spanish sovereignty.

Defence Minister Margarita Robles said the bases “will not provide support, except if, in a given case, it were necessary from a humanitarian perspective”.

Spain also condemned the retaliatory attacks by Iran on Gulf countries.

According to maps by flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 on Monday, 15 US aircraft have left bases in southern Spain since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran. At ‌least seven of the aircraft were shown on FlightRadar24 as having landed at Ramstein airbase in Germany.

The Spanish position is an outlier among the major European countries.

Britain had also initially refused to allow the use of its bases for an attack on Iran, but on Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorised their use for “collective self-defence”, amid Iranian counterattacks targeting US assets across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf region.

France and Germany, meanwhile, are prepared to do the same.

The three countries’ leaders were “appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial US and Israeli military operations”, read a joint statement on Sunday.

“We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter,” they stated.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday refused to box himself in on how long U.S. military operations will last in Iran, saying the conflict in the Middle East could stretch from a month to potentially “far longer” as he frames the mission as one that is necessary to eliminate a “colossal threat” to American interests.

“Whatever the time is, it’s OK. Whatever it takes,” Trump said at a White House event. “Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it.”

Hours earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the duration of the military operation remains fluid, and that Trump has “all the latitude in the world” to determine how long the war in Iran will go on.

“Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move back,” Hegseth told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

The Trump administration’s shifting time frames and open-ended objectives in Iran have deepened uncertainty around an expanding conflict in the Middle East, particularly as American troops have already been killed in action and officials warn of more U.S. casualties.

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that additional U.S. military forces are already moving into the region, and warned that the conflict will not be a “single, overnight operation” and that he expects “additional losses.”

A fourth U.S. fatality

The development came as military officials confirmed a fourth American service member had been killed by Iranian counterattacks and that three American jets were mistakenly shot down in Kuwait in an “apparent friendly fire incident” — and as airstrikes continued to fall across the Middle East, where missile defense systems were unable to intercept every attack and deaths mounted into the hundreds.

As the U.S. and Israel continued to hammer Tehran and other targets across Iran and in Lebanon, retaliatory strikes by Iran and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, were reported in Israel as well as at U.S. facilities and other targets inside Bahrain, Cyprus, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, to Iran’s east, Pakistan and Afghanistan were engaged in their own battles, further destabilizing the region.

In addition to hundreds of people dead, including Iranian schoolchildren, other civilians and migrant workers in the Gulf, the fighting has impacted the world’s production of oil and natural gas — disrupting tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz at the southern end of the Persian Gulf and causing oil prices to shoot up.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted Iranian drones attacking an oil refinery near Dammam, with the refinery shutting down as a precaution, the AP reported. Iran denied targeting the facility.

Air travel disrupted

The war also disrupted air traffic globally, as major airports in the Gulf, including in Dubai, halted or radically scaled back flights. The travel interruptions rippled around the world, and airline stocks tumbled.

Israel had implemented nationwide restrictions on activities as it fended off attacks from Iran and residents hid in bomb shelters. Iran reported strikes at multiple schools in the country had left young students dead.

As the conflict unfolds in real time, Trump and Hegseth have refused to rule out sending American troops into Iran, and the president has signaled that the “big wave” of military attacks is yet to come.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump told the New York Post on Monday. ”I say, ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

When asked by a reporter whether U.S. troops were currently on the ground, Hegseth told reporters they were not, but then bristled at further questions about potential future deployments.

“Why in the world would we tell you, the enemy or anybody, what we will do or will not do in pursuit of an objective?” Hegseth said.

The Trump administration’s objectives in the war have been equally hard to pinpoint. Trump said Saturday that the operation is aimed at razing Iran’s military and nuclear capability and dismantling Iran’s theocratic regime, but on Monday said the goal is to eliminate the threats posed by the “sick and sinister regime” but not the government itself.

Hegseth said the attacks in Iran are not part of a “so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it today.” The U.S. and Israel attack on Saturday killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

‘Second or third place is dead’

In an interview with ABC News on Sunday evening, Trump suggested his administration had considered some figures to replace Khamenei, but said those people are now dead.

“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump said. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”

The Trump administration’s messaging, meanwhile, was consistent in its vengeful rhetoric.

Hegseth and Trump both warned that any threat to Americans would be met with force.

“If you kill Americans, if you threaten Americans anywhere on Earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation, we will kill you,” Hegseth said.

Kevan Harris, an associate professor of sociology who teaches courses on Iran and Middle East politics at the UCLA International Institute, said a long misconception in “the way the U.S. reads Iran” is the belief that Khamenei ruled the country alone, and that taking him out would create a massive leadership vacuum or a sharp shift in the nation’s policies.

But while Khamenei was certainly an “intransigent” force in Iran, killing him won’t “lead to a major shift inside the country,” Harris said.

Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said whether the U.S. can get out of Iran on a relatively short timeline depends on whether those in power in Iran now are willing to negotiate terms that Khamenei and other leaders who have been killed rejected.

“If the remnants of the regime are ideologically committed to what they were under Khamenei,” Radd said he “can’t see Trump backing down” and would expect the war to rage on.

Other leaders in Iran are fundamentalist and aligned with Khamenei, but given the U.S. has shown a willingness and ability to capture and assassinate foreign leaders, they might back down out of self-preservation.

“In the short term, there should be a wait-and-see approach as to what this reconstituted regime looks like,” he said.

Early on Monday, a suspected Iranian drone crashed into the runway at the United Kingdom’s RAF Akrotiri base in southern Cyprus. British and Cypriot officials said the damage was limited. There were no casualties.

Hours later, two drones headed for the base were “dealt with in a timely manner”, according to the Cypriot government.

The incidents came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer signalled on Sunday that the UK was prepared to support the United States in its confrontation with Iran – raising the prospect that it could be drawn deeper into a war it did not choose by its closest ally.

In a joint statement with the leaders of France and Germany, Starmer said the European group was ready to take “proportionate defensive action” to destroy threats “at their source”.

Later, in a televised address, he confirmed that Westminster approved a US request to use British bases for the “defensive purpose” of destroying Iranian missiles “at source in their storage depots, or the launches which are used to fire the missiles”.

But his agreement did little to placate US President Donald Trump, who said the decision came too late.

UK-based military analyst Sean Bell cautioned against reading too much into the Akrotiri incident.

“I understand the projectile that hit Cyprus was not armed, it hit a hangar [with] no casualties, and appears to have been fired from Lebanon,” he said, citing sources.

Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify the claim.

The broader context, he argued, is more consequential.

The US has taken the action “and everybody else is having to deal with the fallout”, he said.

Iran’s military strength lies in its extensive ballistic missile programme, he said, adding that while some have the range to threaten the UK, they do not extend far enough to strike the US.

“I don’t think [US] President Trump has yet made the legal case for attacking Iran, and … international law makes no discrimination between a nation carrying out the act of war and a nation supporting that act of war, so you’re both equally complicit,” he said.

Bell said that Washington likely reframed the issue, communicating to London that, whatever triggered the escalation, US forces were now effectively defending British personnel in the region.

That shift, he suggested, provided a legal basis to “not to attack Iran, but to protect our people”, allowing the UK to approve US operations from its bases under a “very, very clear set of instructions” tied strictly to national interest and defence.

UK officials ‘tying themselves in knots’

However, concerns of complicity had reportedly shaped earlier decisions, according to Tim Ripley, editor of the Defence Eye news service, who said the British government initially concluded that US and Israeli strikes on Iran did not meet the legal definition of self-defence under the United Nations Charter.

When Washington requested the use of bases such as RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, UK, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Starmer is understood to have consulted government lawyers, who advised against participation.

Up until Starmer’s televised address, in which he approved the US request, the UK had not considered the campaign a war of self-defence, said Ripley. While Washington’s legal reasoning has not changed, the war’s trajectory has.

Iranian retaliatory strikes – which have seen drones and missiles targeting Gulf states – have placed British expatriates and treaty partners under direct threat.

“The basis of our decision is the collective self-defence of longstanding friends and allies, and protecting British lives. This is in line with international law,” Starmer said.

According to Ripley, several Gulf governments, which maintain defence relationships with the UK, sought protection, allowing London to focus on protecting British personnel and partners rather than endorsing a broader campaign. However, with memories of the Iraq War hanging over Westminster, British ministers have stopped short of explicitly backing the US bombing campaign.

British officials are “tying themselves in knots” trying to describe a position that is neither fully participatory nor detached, he said.

US-UK: A strained relationship

Starmer on Monday told Parliament that the UK does not believe in “regime change from the skies” but supports the idea of defensive action.

But Ripley warned that any arrangement allowing US warplanes to operate from British air bases carries significant risks.

Iran’s missile systems are mobile and launchers mounted on trucks, he said. From RAF Fairford or Diego Garcia, US aircraft face flight times of seven to nine hours to reach Iranian airspace, necessitating patrol-based missions.

Once airborne, pilots may have only minutes to act. The idea that a US crew would pause mid-mission to seek fresh British legal approval is unrealistic, he said.

London must rely on Washington’s assurance that only agreed categories of “defensive” targets will be struck. If an opportunity arose to eliminate a senior Iranian commander in the same operational zone, the temptation could be strong. Yet such a strike might fall outside Britain’s stated defensive mandate. The aircraft would have departed from British soil, and any escalation could implicate the UK, Ripley said.

Bell highlighted another weakness: Britain has no domestic ballistic missile defence system.

If a ballistic missile were fired at London, he said, “We would not be able to shoot it down.”

Intercepting such weapons after launch is notoriously difficult, reinforcing the argument that the only reliable defence is to strike before launch.

The UK, therefore, occupies a grey zone: legally cautious, operationally exposed and strategically dependent on US decisions, it does not fully control.

Beyond the legal and military dilemmas, Starmer must also contend with a sceptical public.

A YouGov poll conducted on February 20 found that 58 percent of Britons oppose allowing the US to launch air strikes on Iran from UK bases, including 38 percent who strongly oppose.

Just 21 percent support such a move, underscoring limited domestic backing for deeper involvement.

March 1 (UPI) — The Israeli military was attacking Hezbollah targets in neighboring Lebanon, amid worries that its war with the United States against Iran may escalate and spill across the region.

The Israel Defense Forces announced its military offensive hours after sirens triggered by projectiles launched from Lebanon sounded throughout northern Israel.

The Israeli strikes were retaliatory, the IDF said in a statement.

Strikes targeted senior Hezbollah operatives in the capital, Beirut, according to the Israeli Air Force, which said it also struck “a key terrorist” in southern Lebanon.

“Hezbollah opened a campaign against Israel overnight, and is fully responsible for any escalation,” IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a statement.

“Any enemy that threatens our security will pay a heavy price — we will not allow any harm to come to the people of Israel and our northern border.”

In an update, the IDF said targets included command and control centers, launch sites and senior Hezbollah operatives.

In the recorded statement, an IDF spokesperson said they were prepared for a Hezbollah response prior to attacking Iran on Saturday.

The spokesperson said Israeli fighter jets were continuing to strike Iran.

According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, at least 31 people were killed and 149 wounded in the overnight attacks in the country’s south and Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, the state-run National News Agency reported.

It said 11 were killed and 58 injured in south Lebanon and 20 killed and 91 injured in the southern suburbs.

The strikes come less than 48 hours after the United States and Israel began their military operation to force regime change in Iran. Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the strikes, along with other senior officials. Iran will form a three-member interim council until a new leader is chosen, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.

Iran has responded by attacking U.S. bases throughout the Middle East. Tehran’s proxy militias have also launched attacks, including Hezbollah.

Three U.S. service members were killed and five seriously injured in Kuwait. At least nine Israelis were killed in strikes in Beit Shemesh, located about 20 miles west of Jerusalem, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said in a statement. More than 20 were injured in the strike.

In Iran, more than 200 people have been killed, according to state media citing the Red Crescent. The Iran Mission to the United Nations said more than 150 school children were killed in a strike on a school in the southern city of Minab.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the launching of rockets from southern Lebanon toward Israel.

He described the Hezbollah strikes as “an irresponsible and suspicious act that endangers Lebanon’s security and safety and provides Israel with pretexts to continue its attacks.”

“We will not allow the country to be dragged into new adventures, and we will take all necessary measures to stop the perpetrators and protect the Lebanese.”

Footage captured the moment an Iranian drone struck the US military’s Camp Buehring in northwestern Kuwait, impacting with an explosion and cloud of smoke.

March 1 (UPI) — The Defense Department is ending its relationships with several Ivy League universities and think tanks that service members are permitted to attend.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ended graduate school fellowships at 22 institutions starting with the 2026-2027 academic years, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, Princeton, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and The Brookings Institution, according to a memo released by the DOD.

The memo follows a Feb. 7 announcement that the DOD would end stop sending officers to Harvard as part of its Senior Service College Fellowship programs, which Hegseth said in the memo is being retooled and offered list of institutions that offer equivalent programs.

Like Harvard, the expanded list of institutions the department is removing from its SSC programs are alleged to be “woke” and no longer meet requirements for officers in the armed forces.

“Our Professional Military Education institutions are among our most sacred and essential means to restore and maintain the warrior ethos within the [DOD],” Hegseth said. “It is imperative that our war fighter education system forges strategic senior leaders who are trained to think critically, free of bias and influence.”

In a press release, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the “Aligning Senior Service College Opportunities with American Values” memo directs the DOD to focus SSC fellowships away from institutions that “diminish critical thinking, have significant adversary involvement or fail to deliver rigorous education grounded in realism.”

Universities that are replacing the Ivy League schools include three senior military colleges and three DOD or U.S. government programs, as well as 15 other universities, including Liberty, George Mason, Tennessee, Michigan, Iowa State and Hillsdale College.

Currently enrolled DOD personnel will be permitted to finish their courses of study, but the new policy and list of acceptable institutions applies to all personnel starting this fall, Hegseth said.

An Iranian missile attack on the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, 30 kilometers west of Jerusalem, has killed at least nine people and wounded dozens more. The strikes reportedly targeted an army headquarters and a weapons manufacturing complex.