Iran launched a wave of missiles at Israel early on Thursday, sending millions of residents into bomb shelters as the U.S.-Israel war with Iran entered its sixth day and just hours after moves \u200bto halt the U.S. air assault were blocked in Washington. Republican senators in Washington voted against a motion aimed at stopping the air \u200bcampaign and requiring that military action be authorised by Congress, leaving \u2060President Donald Trump’s power to direct the war largely unbound, as the conflict continues to widen across the Middle East and beyond. The U.S. Senate voted 53 to 47 not to advance the resolution, \u200blargely along party lines, with all \u200cbut one Republican voting against the procedural motion and all but one Democrat supporting it. The U.S.\u2013Iran war has widened sharply, with a U.S. submarine sinking an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka on Wednesday, killing at least 80 people, and NATO air defences destroying an Iranian ballistic missile fired \u200btowards Turkey. The escalation came as
the powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader emerged as a frontrunner to succeed him, suggesting Tehran was not about to buckle to pressure from the United States and Israel’s military campaign that has killed hundreds and convulsed global markets. The missile incident is the first time that Turkey \u2013 \u200cwhich borders Iran and has NATO’s second-largest military \u2013 \u200chas been drawn into the conflict, but \u200bU.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said there was no sense that it would trigger the Atlantic alliance’s collective-defence clause. The war continued to paralyse shipping through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, choking off vital Middle East oil and gas flows. Trump has pledged to provide insurance and naval escorts for ships to contain soaring costs, with oil prices rising on Thursday. At least 200 vessels remain anchored off the coast, according to Reuters \u200bestimates. The U.S. Navy will escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as it can” but is focused on the conf
lict for now, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Fox News on Wednesday. “No, not yet … We’ll do that as soon as we can. Right now, our Navy, and of course, our military, is focused on other things, which is \u200bdisarming this Iranian regime,” Wright said, when asked if any commercial vessels had requested U.S. Navy assistance in the Gulf. Asian shares rallied on Thursday after days of sharp losses, while U.S. stocks closed up on Wednesday on hopes that the war might end soon. Some traders said the improved sentiment followed a New York Times report that Iranian intelligence had reached out to the CIA early in the war about a path towards ending it. A source from the Iranian intelligence ministry rejected the article as “absolute lies and psychological warfare \u200cin the midst of war”, Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim reported. Repatriation flights departed the Middle East on Wednesday as governments rushed to bring home tens of thousands of citizens stran
ded by the war. Commercial air traffic remained largely absent across much of the region, with major Gulf hubs including Dubai, the world’s busiest airport for international \u2060passengers, affected. KHAMENEI’S FUNERAL POSTPONED Plans were in doubt \u200bfor a funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, killed by Israeli forces on Saturday in the first assassination of a nation’s top ruler by an airstrike. The body had been expected to lie in state in a vast Tehran mosque from Wednesday evening, but Iran announced that three days of farewell ceremonies had been indefinitely postponed and no funeral date had been announced. Two \u2060Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that \u2060Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, was \u2060not in Tehran when his father was killed. Iran said the Assembly of Experts that will select the new leader would announce its decision soon, only the second time it has done so since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran launched a wave of missiles at Israel early on Thursday, sending millions of residents into bomb shelters as the U.S.-Israel war with Iran entered its sixth day and just hours after moves \u200bto halt the U.S. air assault were blocked in Washington. Republican senators in Washington voted against a motion aimed at stopping the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n