US-Iran war latest: Tehran calls US peace talk claims ‘fake news’ as Trump sets new deadline to end war – UK Times

US president Donald Trump has claimed that his defence secretary Pete Hegseth was the one to push the US towards launching a war on Iran.

Mr Trump last night said Mr Hegseth was the first person on his team to suggest launching military operations against Tehran.

“I called Pete, I called General [Dan] Caine. I called a lot of our great people… And I said, ‘Let’s talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country, known as Iran, that for 47 years has been just a purveyor of terror, and they’re very close to having a nuclear weapon,” Mr Trump said at a Memphis Safe Task Force roundtable in Tennessee.

“We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60, there’s no end,” he said, referring to the Dow Jones stock market index, “or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem”.

“And Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up, and you said, ‘Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon,” he added.

Mr Hegseth was sitting next to the president at the roundtable.

Amazon said its Amazon Web Services region in Bahrain has been “disrupted” amid the current conflict in the Middle East.

The disruption is due to drone activity in the area, an Amazon spokesperson said.

Amazon said it is helping to migrate customers to alternate AWS regions while it recovers, though it did not provide additional details such as the extent of the damage or how long it anticipates the disruption to last.

“… As we have advised before, we request those with workloads in the affected regions continue to migrate to other locations,” Amazon said in a statement last night.

AWS is Amazon’s cloud computing unit and critical for the operation of many well-known websites and government operations. It is also the company’s main driver of profits.

Qatar Airways has moved 20 of its long-haul aircraft to a storage facility in Spain due to the ongoing war in the Middle East, which has forced the closure of airspace over the subcontinent.

Over the past week, the airline ferried several aircraft to Spain’s Teruel Airport, a hangar built for deep maintenance and long-haul storage.

“Because of this turmoil, we’ve become a haven for aircraft from the Middle East,” Teruel airport’s director Alejandro Ibrahim told Spanish radio station COPE.

“The figure is already around 20 and a few more are expected,” he added.

“Due to the current exceptional circumstances in the region and the resulting disruption to flight operations beyond our control, Qatar Airways has positioned some of its aircraft at selected airports outside Qatar,” Qatar Airways said in a statement to AFP.

“This is a temporary measure, and the aircraft will be progressively returned to service as flight operations are restored to normal levels,” it added.

Iran has developed long-range missiles capable of reaching major European cities, Israel has warned, after the targeting of the UK-US base on Diego Garcia.

Iran took aim at the military base on the Chagos Islands before the UK government gave the US permission to strike missile sites targeting the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, but it is not clear exactly when the two intermediate-range ballistic missiles were fired.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said it was the first time Tehran had launched a long-range missile since the start of the war, and showed it is now capable of reaching cities such as London, Paris or Berlin.

Pakistan is reportedly positioning itself as the lead mediator to broker an end to the US and Israel’s war against Iran.

Pakistan has pitched Islamabad as a possible venue for the talks as early as this week, the Financial Times reported, citing senior members of the US and Iranian administrations.

According to the report, Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir spoke with US president Donald Trump on Sunday, while Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif held talks with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian yesterday.

The call between the Pakistani and Iranian leaders came as Mr Trump said he was delaying his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, citing “very good and productive” conversations aimed at ending the war.

Iran refuted that there had been any high-level communications with the White House and dismissed Mr Trump’s rhetoric as a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate jittery global markets.

“No negotiations have been held with the US,” Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X. “And fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of “complacency” by senior MPs as he faced a grilling over the UK’s lack of preparedness for the war in the Middle East.

The prime minister clashed with both Labour and Tory MPs as he appeared before the Commons liaison committee – made up of the chairs of parliamentary select committees – where he was challenged with claims that the UK “is at war”.

The appearance came ahead of the prime minister’s chairing of an emergency Cobra meeting on Monday afternoon to prepare for the war’s impact on the cost of living, and he admitted to MPs he was unable to give a timetable for the end of the conflict despite Donald Trump’s declaration of a ceasefire.

Iranian missiles and drones targeted Israel and Arab states this morning, even as US president Donald Trump claimed that the US was in talks with the Islamic Republic to end the war.

Mr Trump also delayed a deadline for Iran to open the strategic Strait of Hormuz for shipping or see its power stations targeted by airstrikes, briefly driving down oil prices and boosting stocks. But any information on the talks described by Mr Trump remains in dispute with Iran, which denied any talks had been held.

Iran fired three waves of missiles at Israel early this morning, with reports of an impact in the country’s north, the Israeli Home Front Command said.

In Kuwait, power lines were hit by air defence shrapnel, causing partial electricity outages. Missile alert sirens sounded in Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed 19 Iranian drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province.

Israel pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, saying that it was targeting infrastructure used by the Iran-linked Hezbollah militant group.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said Israel will continue to strike Iran and Lebanon even as the US considers a ceasefire. “There’s more to come,” he said.

Deutsche Lufthansa is extending its suspension of flights to Iran and parts of the Middle East for several more months as regional tensions rise, Bloomberg News reported.

Lufthansa flights to Dubai and Tel Aviv will remain on hold until 31 May, while services to other cities, including Abu Dhabi, Beirut and Tehran, are suspended until 24 October, the report said, citing the company.