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Protesters will be treated as 'enemies' - Iran's police chief
Iran’s police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan has warned Iranians on state TV that anyone who takes to the streets “at the enemy’s request” will be “confronted as an enemy, not a protester”.
We will do to them what we do to enemies. We will treat them the way we treat enemies.
All of our men have their fingers on the trigger and are ready to defend their revolution, to support their people and their homeland.
Radan said security forces are stationed in the streets “day and night”.
Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have called on Iranians to take to the streets and overthrow their regime in recent weeks.
Iran has brutally cracked down on protesters involved in a wave of anti-establishment demonstrations since late December. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had confirmed the killing of at least 7,000 people, including children and people not involved in the protests, during that period.
Welcome summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Here are the main developments:
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Iran’s police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan has warned Iranians on state TV that anyone who takes to the streets “at the enemy’s request” will be “confronted as an enemy, not a protester”. Radan said security forces are stationed in the streets “day and night”.
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Lebanese health authorities said Israel’s raids on the southern town of Qana, in the Tyre district, on Wednesday have killed five people and wounded five others.
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The Israeli military said it had begun an “additional wave” of strikes on targets in Tehran. It followed the IDF saying earlier that it had struck key command centres of the Iranian armed forces in Tehran and Tabriz.
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It comes as Iran’s UN ambassador accused the US and Israel of deliberately targeting civilians – saying that almost 10,000 civilian sites have been hit in the country, including about 8,000 residential homes, and the death toll has reached more than 1,300 people. Amir Saeid Iravani said “populated residential areas” and “critical civilian infrastructure” had been hit in attacks he described as “horrific crimes”.
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Donald Trump said the US has hit and “completely destroyed” 10 inactive mine-laying vessels, warning that more would follow. US Central Command added that it “eliminated” 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the strait of Hormuz. The updates came shortly after the US president initially said there had been “no reports” of Iran placing mines in the strait, but warned that if it had, they must be moved “IMMEDIATELY” or Iran would face military consequences “at a level never seen before”. US officials earlier told CBS News that Iran may be preparing to deploy naval mines in the strait to further disrupt the crucial shipping lane. According to CNN, a few dozen mines have been laid in recent days.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the US Navy has not escorted an oil tanker through the strait of Hormuz, after the US energy secretary Chris Wright said it had happened in a swiftly deleted X post. Leavitt also said that the US military is “drawing up additional options” to keep strait open.
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Leavitt also said that the US and Israel’s war won’t end until Iran’s “complete and unconditional surrender” and when Trump decides his objectives have been met and determines that Iran does not pose a direct threat. She told reporters that the US military is “making tremendous strides towards achieving our military objectives”, and is now moving to “dismantle Iran’s missile production infrastructure”.
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Meanwhile, the Trump administration is reportedly considering the deployment of special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which experts say could be used to make at least 10 nuclear warheads. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has told Congress that “people are going to have to go and get it”. Here’s our story.
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The United States reportedly asked Israel to halt strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, marking the first time the US has reined in its ally since they went to war 11 days ago. It comes after an Israeli bombing of fuel storage facilities blanketed Tehran - a city home to some 10 million people - in toxic black smoke and acid rain over the weekend, raising urgent health warnings for ordinary Iranians.
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Israel is set to expand its defence budget by almost 40 billion shekels (US$13bn) to fund the war in Iran, according to a finance ministry official, who wished to remain anonymous, Bloomberg reports. The defence budget will be expanded by 28bn shekels, with an additional 10 billion put aside as reserves for possible military needs, the offical said.
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A total of seven members of the Iranian women’s football team have now been granted humanitarian visas in Australia, home affairs minister Tony Burke has confirmed. An additional two women had sought asylum before the rest of the Iranian team departed Sydney on a flight to Malaysia on Tuesday night, one player and one support member, Burke told a press conference on Wednesday morning.
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Russia denied sharing intelligence with Iran on US military assets in the Middle East, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said. It follows reports on Friday that Moscow was providing Tehran with targeting information that included locations and movements of US warships and aircraft in the region. “Yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing,” Witkoff said when asked if Washington thought Moscow had shared intelligence about the location of US military assets with Tehran. “We can take them at their word. But they did say that. And yesterday morning, independently, Jared [Kushner] and I had a call with [Kremlin aide Yuri] Ushakov who reiterated the same.”
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Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed repeated claims from the Trump administration that Iran was planning a preemptive or preventive strike against the US or its military forces as “a sheer and utter lie”. “The sole purpose of that lie is to justify Operation Epic Mistake, a misadventure engineered by Israel and paid for by ordinary Americans,” Araghchi said in a post on X – riffing on the US’s name for the military operation, Operation Epic Fury.
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Approximately 140 US service members have been wounded since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, according to the Pentagon, eight of them severely.
