Hegseth estimates rising cost of Iran war now at $37.5bn – as it happened

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• The US military said it completed the 11th night of strikes on Iran early on Wednesday, with targets including aircraft hangars and drone storage sites.

• In the Red Sea, Iran-backed Yemen’s Houthi rebels have opened a new front against Saudi Arabia by declaring a naval blockade of the kingdom. A news agency in Yemen that is run by the Houthis, SABA, said on Tuesday six ships in the Red Sea were forced to reroute after they received warnings from the rebel group. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

• Brent crude was trading up 1.2 percent at $92.09 a barrel at around 0130 GMT, its highest intraday price since 11 June. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main US oil benchmark, climbed 1.1 percent to $85.23.

• Donald Trump said the US would soon target the area near Pickaxe Mountain – a fortified underground site near one of Iran’s primary nuclear enrichment facilities.

• The US war in Iran has cost $37.5bn so far, Pete Hegseth said, an increase of nearly $8bn since the last public estimate.

• The number of wounded US personnel in the Iran war has grown to well over 500 troops, a US official told the Associated Press.

• The US secretary of state Marco Rubio told Southeast Asian foreign ministers on Wednesday that Iranian control of the strait of Hormuz would set a dangerous precedent with repercussions beyond the Middle East.

• Trump said he would authorise the resumption of direct flights by US airlines to Lebanon, which have been suspended since the 1985 hijacking by Lebanese Islamist militants of a TWA flight with many Americans aboard.

Some more detail on the 11th night of US attacks on Iran: Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that explosions rocked Bushehr, East Azerbaijan, Hamadan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan and Sistan and Baluchistan provinces.

The US secretary of state Marco Rubio told Southeast Asian foreign ministers on Wednesday that Iranian control of the strait of Hormuz would set a dangerous precedent with repercussions beyond the Middle East.

If we create a precedent in the Middle East where a nation-state can decide to control an international waterway, charge a toll, and blow up your ships if you don’t pay, we have created a very dangerous precedent that will repeat itself in other parts of the world, including this region.”

The US military has confirmed a third service member is believed to be dead in Friday’s attack on a base in Jordan and identified them as Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of New York.

The confirmation brings the death toll to 18 US service members killed since the war began.

Donald Trump has returned to threatening Iranian nuclear sites, in particular Pickaxe Mountain. Here’s an explainer on the mountain, including why it has captured Trump’s attention and how the US could potentially strike at the deeply buried target.

US Central Command (Centcom) has just provided some more information about vessels attacked by Iran in the strait of Hormuz and the flow of oil through the chokepoint.

Over the past three months, Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels transiting the international waterway vital for regional and global trade. The unwarranted attacks have endangered hundreds of innocent mariners and undermined freedom of navigation.

Despite Iranian aggression, the Strait of Hormuz remains open for commercial vessel transit. Since early May, CENTCOM forces have helped facilitate the transit of approximately 900 commercial vessels and 450 million barrels of crude oil.”

Prior to today’s round of strikes, Iranian authorities say US attacks in just the past three weeks have killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 500 others.

Both the US and Iran have targeted civilian infrastructure relied on by millions of people. Workers on ships, as well as foreign workers and others in Gulf nations, Israel and Lebanon have also been killed during the conflict.

Iran’s Fars news agency is reporting a US strike has hit a military site near Tabriz, the capital city of East Azerbaijan Province, in north-western Iran.

A little more detail on those US strikes: Iranian state media says air defence activity has been heard in western, eastern and north-eastern Tehran. The time in Tehran is 3.40am.

To recap some news from earlier today, Donald Trump said the US ⁠will ⁠be hitting ​the Pickaxe Mountain area, ⁠located near Iran’s heavily damaged ⁠Natanz uranium enrichment ​facility, “pretty ‌soon”.

It is unclear if today’s US strikes are targeting Pickaxe Mountain.

Pickaxe ‌Mountain is a ‌heavily fortified site that hosts two deeply buried tunnel complexes ‌that experts assess as beyond ​the reach of the most powerful bunker ⁠buster bombs in ​the US arsenal. ​The ​site is ​linked ‌to Iran’s ​nuclear ​program.

Iran’s military leaders said any attack on nuclear or “other sensitive facilities” would be considered a major escalation, according to a statement reported by Iranian state media.

“We declare that if the invading and terrorist military of that country enters such a phase, we will regard it as an expansion of the war across the region, and all interests of the United States, its allies, and its supporters will become targets of powerful attacks by the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said the statement from the armed forces’ Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

The number of wounded US personnel in the Iran war has grown to well over 500 troops, a US official told the Associated Press.

The total is higher than the Pentagon’s official tally on the Defense Casualty Analysis System, which currently shows 482 wounded.

The US official, who was not authorised to discuss the matter with the media and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the system has a significant lag in reporting injuries. The official said that was a function of its design and not intentional.

Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif called for restraint from all warring sides during a meeting with Iran’s interior minister on Tuesday.

Sharif “urged all sides to exercise restraint and refrain from actions that could further destabilise the region”, a statement from his office said, adding that he told Iran’s Eskandar Momeni that Pakistan would continue to act as a mediator.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Donald Trump gave a dim view on possible talks, saying the US had “no interest in meeting”.

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, walked into the Senate on Tuesday to defend the Trump administration’s $87.6bn supplemental funding request, facing lawmakers furious that the US-Israel war on Iran is costing far more than the White House has admitted.

Hegseth and the chair of the joint chiefs, Gen Dan Caine, faced the Senate appropriations committee, chaired by Susan Collins of Maine, as the Pentagon said it was running low on cash to keep the fight going. Of the total request, $67.1bn of the request is earmarked specifically to keep the war effort funded.

It was the pair’s first sustained public questioning since a brief ceasefire collapsed and the war roared back to life. At least two US soldiers were killed in an Iranian attack on Friday, and another died in Iraq destroying an Iranian drone, pushing the American death toll since February to 17. Nearly 100 troops have been wounded in the conflict, officials confirm, though most injuries were minor.

Iran’s top joint military command said it would target the interests of the US and its allies if the American military targeted Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s state media reported.

The statement by Iran’s Khatem al-Anbiya Central Headquarters comes after Donald Trump said the US will be hitting the Pickaxe Mountain area “pretty soon”.

Lebanese president Joseph Aoun told Donald Trump a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory was essential to consolidating stability and enabling the state to extend its authority, the Lebanese presidency said.

In their first meeting, the two leaders discussed plans to disarm the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and secure Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. The Lebanese presidency said they also discussed US support for Lebanon’s army, reconstruction, economic recovery and American investment.

In a statement after the talks, the Lebanese presidency said Aoun stressed to Trump the “urgent need for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory,” calling it “an essential step to consolidate stability and enable the Lebanese state to extend its full sovereignty exclusively through its own forces.”

Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthis have warned shipping companies that their tankers risk being attacked if they use Saudi Arabian ports, as the militia moved quickly to enforce a blockade announced the previous day.

The Houthi warning for the Red Sea, coming on top of Iran’s threat to shipping on the other side of the Arabian peninsular in the Gulf, could affect the substantial Saudi oil exports that have so far been unscathed by the months-long conflict and deepen the rapidly escalating crisis in the region.

Underlining how seriously the Houthi threat is being taken, two oil tankers that had loaded Saudi crude ⁠this week for China and India made U-turns on Tuesday away from Houthi-controlled coast at the mouth of the Red Sea and headed towards the Suez canal. The Houthis claimed six ships had changed course.

The US’s war in Iran has cost $37.5bn so far, defense secretary Pete Hegseth said, an increase of nearly $8bn since the last public estimate.

Hegseth told lawmakers the figure also included anticipated costs through 30 September.

Hegseth also said that Iran is “at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in the past decade.”

He added:

“I acknowledge they still have capabilities, no doubt, but the amount of damage that we’ve done to them over the course of these series of operations has put them in the worst place they’ve ever [been].”

In response to a question from Washington senator Patty Murray on how Iran was able to shrink ship traffic across the Hormuz Strait last week despite Hegseth previously claiming that Iran does not control the strait, Hegseth said:

“We pushed almost, I believe, between 400 and 500 million barrels of oil onto the nose of Iran over the course of Project Freedom, which went underground, which I acknowledged after we did so covertly because it was more effective to do so quietly than to do so publicly. So we’ve been in control of moving traffic through there for quite some time.”

In response to whether the Donald Trump administration still holds the position that it does not require authorization from Congress for the US’s war on Iran, US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said:

“I know there’s a long longstanding legal debate on this particular topic, but we certainly, as a department, share the position of the White House that we have all the authorities necessary at this moment.”

US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and chairman of the joint chief of staff, General Dan Caine, are appearing before the US Congress to ask for additional money for the US’s war on Iran.

The defense department is set to request approximately $80 billion for the US’s military operations across Iran, the New York Times reports.

In total, Hegseth told Congress that “$1.5 trillion is what the president seeks and what we need to defend the country.”

“The members of this committee understand better than most that long-term strategic dominance cannot be funded through one-off supplements,” he told the senate appropriations committee.

Kuwait’s foreign ministry has summoned Iran’s ambassador Muhammad Tutunji where “he was handed a protest note regarding Iran’s targeting of the Kuwaiti tanker ‘Kifan,’ on Monday evening,” as it passed through the Hormuz Strait.

In a statement on X, the foreign ministry said that Kuwait’s deputy foreign minister Hamad Sulaiman Al-Mashaan “affirmed that this brazen aggression comes amid the escalation of the heinous attacks” that Iran has launched against the country since February.

It added that the attack “constitutes a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the state of Kuwait.”

“The state of Kuwait renewed its demand for Iran to immediately cease its illegitimate attacks, emphasizing Kuwait’s reservation of its right to take necessary measures, and holding Iran fully responsible for this aggression and its ongoing assaults against the state of Kuwait,” the ministry continued.

Alarm sirens have been activated across Bahrain, the country’s interior ministry said on Tuesday evening.

“Citizens and residents are requested to remain calm, head to the nearest safe location, and follow updates through official channels,” it said on X.

Andrew Roth and Sufian Taha

Even by the brutal standards of militant settler violence in the West Bank, the raid on Deir Jarir late on Sunday night that killed two Palestinians and left another in hospital with a gunshot wound was extreme.

Palestinians in the town said settlers from a nearby outpost arrived after 9pm on Sunday claiming that they were searching for stolen livestock. Israeli soldiers and police soon joined them, protecting them as they sought to take several villagers’ sheep by force.

But when villagers raised the alarm and a crowd gathered, soldiers shot two men, beginning a night of three successive raids by settlers from nearby outposts and Israeli soldiers that lasted until after 2am, according to Palestinian residents of Deir Jarir.

Saber Ajaj, a relative of one of the victims, 53-year-old Odeh Farajna, said he found him moments after he had been shot through the chest. Farajna, a member of the village council, owned a flower shop and helped with the stonework at the local graveyard.

The US has carried out a fresh round of strikes against Iran, after three US soldiers were killed in action.

The Pentagon has also admitted that nearly 100 US service members have been injured over the last two weeks, as Tehran launched a wave of reprisals to the tenth consecutive nights of attacks, even as peace talks mediated by Pakistan continue.

Lucy Hough speaks to senior international correspondent Julian Borger…

President Donald Trump said that the United States will continue attacks on Iran, while forecasting it would take the country more than 20 years to rebuild from current damage.

“If we left right now, it would take Iran 20, 25 years to rebuild. Okay, and we’re not finished at all...we’re not leaving right now,” he told reporters during a White House meeting with Lebanese president Joseph Aoun.

Trump also said he would “take care of” the Houthi rebels if the Iran-backed militant group follows through on its threatened blockade of Saudi ports.

“If something like that happens, we take care of it,” Trump told reporters during a White House meeting with Lebanese president Joseph Aoun.

“You know, we’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally.”

Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun has met with president Donald Trump to wrap up a four-day visit to Washington, in a bid for long-term calm after months of war at home between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.

Kuwait’s ⁠foreign ministry summoned Iran’s ⁠ambassador ⁠on Tuesday ​to protest against ⁠what it described as Tehran’s targeting ⁠of ​Kuwaiti ‌tanker Kaifan ‌while it was ‌transiting the Strait of Hormuz a day earlier.

The ministry ‌said in a statement ​that several members of the tanker’s ⁠crew suffered injuries ​as a ​result ​of the ​attack.

The US military has identified an army soldier killed recently during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone in Iraq as Sgt Michael Emmanuel Swinton, of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

According to a press release from the US defense department on Tuesday morning, the 30-year-old Swinton was supporting overseas contingency operations in Iraq – and he was “killed in action during a controlled detonation of a downed One-Way Unmanned Aerial System” on Saturday at Erbil airbase in northern Iraq.

The announcement follows the identification a day earlier of two other soldiers killed during the US war with Iran. First Lt Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, died in Jordan while defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks, the department said.

The latest deaths brings to 17 the number of US service personnel killed in the war, which began in February with US military strikes on Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

Hundreds of service members have been injured, including nearly 100 after an escalation of the conflict over the previous two weeks in which Tehran has launched reprisal raids for consecutive nights of US bombing.

Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif called for restraint from all warring sides during a meeting with Iran’s interior minister on Tuesday.

Sharif “urged all sides to exercise restraint and refrain from actions that could further destabilize the region”, a statement from the premier’s office said, adding that he told Iran’s Eskandar Momeni that Pakistan would continue to act as a mediator.

The Dutch government announced today that it would ban imports from Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli settlers from 22 September.

The Netherlands will join Ireland, Belgium and Spain among European Union countries that have imposed restrictions on trade with territories occupied by Israeli settlers.

There have been growing calls for the 27-nation bloc to impose EU-wide restrictions over Israel’s military action in Gaza and increased violence in the occupied territories, but some EU members are reluctant.

Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is considered illegal under international law.

The Dutch foreign ministry said:

With the proposed measures, the Netherlands is reinforcing its commitment to fulfilling its international legal obligation not to contribute to this unlawful situation.

Both Kuwait and Bahrain have issued alerts and sounded sirens in the past couple of minutes as they continue to intercept incoming Iranian drones.

Bahrain’s army said its air defence systems intercepted and destroyed “several” Iranian air attacks, while the Kuwaiti armed forces assured people that any explosion that may be heard are the result of “hostile targets” being shot down.

Two oil ⁠tankers loaded with Saudi crude for ⁠China ⁠and ​India have made ⁠U-turns in the Red Sea on Tuesday ⁠and were headed ​toward ‌the ‌Suez, shipping data on LSEG ‌showed.

As Reuters reports, on Monday, Yemen’s Houthi militia declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, ​opening a potential new front against the US ⁠in its war ​with Iran ​and raising ​the threat ​to ‌global energy supplies ​and ​trade beyond the Gulf.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ⁠has claimed that there has been a substantial decrease ⁠in China’s purchases of Iranian oil.

“We have ⁠sanctioned Chinese ... so-called teapot ​refineries, which ‌are the ‌private refineries, and we’ve ‌seen a substantial decrease in their purchases of Iranian oil,” Bessent said on Tuesday in an interview with Fox Business ‌Network.

“The Chinese, in general, because of the ​prices and because they have a very large strategic petroleum reserve, have ⁠dropped their purchases of crude ​over ​the past few ​months by about ​40%, and ‌that’s directly ​pressuring ​the Iranian regime,” Bessent said.

The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, said the deteriorating situation around the strait of Hormuz was accentuating security concerns about the supply of oil but that the markets “continue to benefit from several cushioning factors”.

Among these were supplies from Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, continuing to reach global markets through alternative routes to the strait of Hormuz, and producers from outside the Middle East increasing their exports to make some of the shortfall.

But, Birol added in a statement, the “full and unconditional reopening of the strait of Hormuz will be essential to avoid a further deterioration in global energy security”.

He said:

There is no room for complacency on oil security amid the escalation in hostilities and a continued drawdown of available commercial inventories. Refinery activity and product supplies have not picked up as much as crude deliveries, meaning that markets for refined oil products, including diesel and gasoline, are considerably tighter than those for crude.”

Kuwait’s energy ministry said Iran has targeted power and desalination plants for a fourth day in a row as attacks continued to escalate in the region.

In a statement on its website, the Kuwaiti ministry of electricity, water and renewable energy said "several” plants were attacked yesterday for a fourth consecutive day, resulting in fires and damage.

About 90% of Kuwait’s drinking water comes from desalination, according to the Associated Press.

Here are some early images of the Lebanese army being deployed to the village of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh in southern Lebanon after Israeli forces withdrew from the area:

As mentioned in a previous post, the Lebanese army will resume control of the village as part of the “pilot zone programme” agreed under the US-brokered deal between Lebanon and Israel, which will see the Israeli military gradually withdraw from areas it occupies in southern Lebanon.

Bahrain’s military has said it has intercepted a number of Iranian attacks. Earlier, the Iranian army claimed to have launched a drone attack against US military targets at the Sheikh Isa airbase in the Bahrain.

“The air defences of the Bahrain Defence Force intercepted and destroyed a number of Iranian aerial aggressions,” the military said in a statement on X.

Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, is due to meet Donald Trump for the first time today as he wraps up a four-day visit to Washington.

The meeting coincides with ongoing US-mediated talks between Lebanon and Israel. The two sides announced a “framework agreement” on 26 June which stipulates the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon as well as the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Aoun arrived in Washington at the weekend and met with US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Sunday. Reuters reports that Aoun, who was elected as president in January 2025, is the first Lebanese head of state in ⁠nearly 20 years to visit the ​White House.

The Jordanian military said it shot down five drones that were launched from Iran, the official Petra news agency reported.

It added that the overnight attack did not cause casualties or damage.

Iran has repeatedly targeted Jordan in recent weeks as it continues to launch retaliatory attacks against countries in the region hosting US forces.

The Lebanese army has issued a statement confirming the deployment of troops to Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, which had been occupied by the Israeli military.

In a statement shared online, it said: “Military units began deploying this morning in the town of Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, Nabatieh, following ongoing communications with the military coordination group for Lebanon.

“The army command renews its call for citizens not to go to the town until the security situation stabilises, and to abide by the instructions of the deployed military units in order to preserve their safety.”

Nearly 100 US service members have been injured over the last two weeks of escalating strikes on Iran, the Pentagon has said, as Tehran launched a wave of reprisals to the tenth consecutive night of attacks.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they had targeted US military sites including air defence systems and a radar installation in Bahrain and Kuwait, while a tanker in the strait of Hormuz reported being ⁠struck by an unknown projectile, forcing its crew to abandon the vessel and board a lifeboat.

Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan all said they had activated defences to repel the attacks, but the scale of US injuries at facilities across the region over recent week is likely to bring greater scrutiny to Iran’s reprisal attacks.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the vast majority of those injured only experienced “minor concussions” and 96% had since returned to work. Parnell was responding to a New York Times report that the Pentagon has withheld information about troop injuries from Iranian strikes. He denied that the Pentagon was hiding data about injuries.

In the last week three US soldiers have been killed in action in Jordan and Iraq.

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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is saying it has launched an attack on a US military site in Jordan.

Earlier, Jordanian state TV reported that three missiles launched from Iran overnight had been intercepted, citing the armed forces, while sirens had sounded in the capital of Amman on Monday evening.

Two US soldiers were killed in an Iranian strike on an airbase in Jordan on Friday as Tehran targets Gulf region countries hosting American forces amid continuing US attacks.