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Middle East crisis live: Iran launches broad retaliatory attacks after US strikes over downed helicopter | US-Israel war on Iran

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Opening summary

Welcome to our live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.

Iran says it has launched a missile attack at an airbase in Jordan hosting US forces, after also targeting Kuwait and Bahrain. The Revolutionary Guards said missiles have targeted the Muwaffaq Salti airbase, which is known to host US F-35 fighter jets and other aircraft.

Neither Jordan nor the US has acknowledged any attack, but if confirmed it would likely be the first time that Iran has targeted Jordan since the start of the ceasefire in April.

The US strikes on Iran followed the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the strait of Hormuz, from which two crew members were rescued in a stable condition. In a post on social media Trump said the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash.

Here is the latest:

  • The US launched multiple waves of strikes on Iran in response to a military helicopter crash off the strait of Hormuz that Donald Trump said Iran had downed. The Associated Press reported that the Apache helicopter that crashed went down after colliding with an Iranian drone, but it was not clear whether the collision was intentional.

  • US strikes were reported across Iran’s southern coast, on the strait of Hormuz. After more than three hours of military action, US central command (Centcom) said strikes were “completed”, adding that the US remained ready to defend against “unjustified Iranian aggression.”

  • Soon after, Iran launched retaliatory attacks against the US, according to the countries state media, which said American bases in the region and the US fifth fleet in Bahrain were targeted with drones. Kuwait and Bahrain issued air raid alerts and reported that air defences were active in repelling attacks. Iran also claimed it had targeted a US base in Jordan with long range missiles.

  • Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said no attack would go “unanswered”, soon after the US launched strikes on Iran. Posting an image of the strait of Hormuz with the label, “Forever Persian Gulf”, Araghchi says that “despite its defeats on the battlefield, the U.S. opted to test our determination.”

  • Five hours before the airstrikes, Trump had posted on social media that the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash, from which two crew members were rescued in stable condition. Before his social media post, however, Trump appeared to downplay the crash, telling the Wall Street Journal in a phone interview that it “wasn’t a big deal” and that “the pilot is fine.”

  • Iranian state media reported that no air military operations have taken place in the strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours, according to Reuters.

  • Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Tyre on Tuesday. The state-run National News Agency (NNA) had reported the first strike taking place not long before Israel’s military issued an evacuation warning for the entire city and surrounding areas ahead of strikes there.

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Key events

The precarious US-Iran ceasefire explained

Wednesday’s strikes by the US on Iran are just the latest in a series of ceasefire breaches that have escalated considerably in the last two weeks.

After weeks of conflict, the US and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on 8 April and entered into protracted negotiations to reopen the strait of Hormuz and resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.

Since then the US and Iran have exchanged strikes on at least four occasions, but in every instance both sides have characterised their actions as “measured” and “limited”, and stressed the importance of maintaining the ceasefire.

The ceasefire faced its biggest test on Sunday, when Iran launched missiles at Israel in response to Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs. The Israeli military launched airstrikes on Iran in retaliation; the first exchange of fire between the two countries since the ceasefire was reached.

A man looks at the wreckage of an Iranian missile that landed near the West Bank city of Jericho on Monday. Photograph: Mahmoud Illean/AP

Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday, with Israel and Iran saying they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”.

The breaches of the ceasefire fly in the face of Trump’s continued claims that a longterm deal with Iran is close. The US president is reportedly very close to agreeing to a series of Iranian demands that would allow the strait to reopen to traffic, and begin the process of a new round of nuclear negotiations. However Trump has for weeks promised that a deal is close, but failed to follow through on those promises.

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