In today’s newsletter: senior international correspondent Julian Borger on what next as Iran targets its Gulf neighbours and the conflict escalates Good morning. The regional war many countries had long feared is here. On Saturday, global attention turned to Iran after an extraordinary joint aerial assault by the US and Israel.
Speed and scale of US military’s AI war planning raises fears human decision-making may be sidelined The use of AI tools to enable attacks on Iran heralds a new era of bombing quicker than “the speed of thought”, experts have said, amid fears human decision-makers could be sidelined. Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, was reportedly used by the US military in the barrage of strikes as the technology “shortens the kill chain” – meaning the process of target identification through to legal approval and strike launch. Continue reading...
None of the prime minister’s critics engages with the hard strategic dilemmas arising from Britain’s perilous dependency on US power It is not easy being a friend of Donald Trump, but it is a lot less dangerous than being his enemy. There isn’t a huge range of options in between. War in the Middle East is exposing how limited the choices are for a British prime minister.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio says Saturday’s strikes on Iran were a pre-emptive action; Benjamin Netanyahu says it will not be ‘an endless war’ US-Israel war on Iran – live updates The United States attacked Iran after learning that ally Israel was going to strike, which would have meant retaliation against US forces, secretary of state Marco Rubio said . “We knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters. The justification for the attack differs from justifications given by Donald Trump and defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
In the past three months, Donald Trump’s White House has reportedly used AI twice to effect regime change – once in its capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and more recently to help plan the strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The most recent strikes coincided with the end of the Pentagon’s relationship with the AI company Anthropic over concerns its AI tool Claude was being used for purposes the company had explicitly prohibited. The government swiftly signed a new contract with Open AI.
This blog is closed. Follow news and updates from the US-Israel war on Iran in our new live blog here US-Israel war on Iran live: latest news and updates Bahrain has said that one person was killed by shrapnel from an intercepted missile. The death of a foreign worker at Salman Industrial City , working on a boat there, marks the kingdom’s first reported fatality in the war.
Since Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war on Iran, the world has been asking “why? ” and “what’s the plan? ” But does the US president have one, and does the American public have the appetite for a war that could continue indefinitely?
Liberal MP says rules are irrelevant when Trump acts as an ‘apex opportunist’, following a drone strike at UAE’s Al Minhad airbase where Australian troops are based Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie has declared anyone who thinks the rules-based order still exists is living in a “fantasyland”, amid an escalating US-Israel war on Iran, and as the government confirmed Australian troops in the region were safe after a weekend drone strike. Australian troops posted at the defence force’s headquarters in the United Arab Emirates are all accounted for after a weekend drone strike, the federal government said, amid the growing conflict sparked by US and Israeli bombings in Iran . Continue reading...
This live blog is now closed. Trump news at a glance: president offers goals but no end date for military offensive against Iran Hegseth says US won’t get ‘bogged down’ in Iran What is the legality of the US and Israeli attacks on Iran? Sign up for Breaking US News email alerts While speaking today, Pete Hegseth acknowledged the fourth US service member killed in Iran’s counterattacks.
Democrats disturbed by rationale that Trump ordered pre-emptive strikes out of concern about Tehran retaliation US-Israel war on Iran – live updates Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict. The rationale drew divided reviews from top members of Congress who on Monday evening received the first briefing by the Trump administration since it ordered the air campaign to begin over the weekend. Continue reading...
Trump said military campaign could ‘go far longer’ then initial four-to-five week projection as violence and chaos ripple across Middle East – key US politics stories from Monday 2 March at a glance Donald Trump has laid out four goals in Iran and said the US campaign had been projected to last four to five weeks but could “go far longer than that”. On Monday, the US president offered his most extensive comments yet about the war, going beyond two video messages and a series of brief phone interviews with reporters that offered sometimes conflicting objectives. Continue reading...
Trump’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran has divided the American right – from Murdoch’s cheerleaders to Maga isolationists Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to get the US out of “endless wars”, put “America first” and focus on domestic policy. After his first term, he was fond of boasting, somewhat misleadingly , that there were “no wars” during his presidency. Now the Trump administration’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran has shocked the US and the world.