Trump says ‘too late’ for talks as US-Israeli strikes pummel Tehran

US and Israeli strikes pummelled targets across Tehran on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump warned it was “too late” for Iran to seek talks to escape a war now in its fourth day.

Drones and missiles crashed into oil facilities and US embassies in the Gulf as the Islamic Republic retaliated, and Israel pushed troops deeper into Lebanon to battle the Tehran-backed militia Hezbollah after it entered the fray.

Israel announced a “large-scale wave” of strikes targeting Iran’s capital on Tuesday, with local media showing columns of smoke rising over the centre of town – home to many government buildings – and reporting an attack on one of the city’s two airports.

“Their air defence, air force, navy, and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said: ‘Too late!’,” Trump posted on social media, two days after he said he was open to talks and four days after US and Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva denied that his country had approached the US for talks.

According to Iranian media, US and Israeli strikes targeted a building on Tuesday in Qom belonging to the committee that is to elect a new supreme leader. The Tasnim news agency reported that strikes had already targeted the body’s main headquarters in Tehran the day before.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said the UN Security Council “has a duty” to act to stop the war, even as its military has remained publicly defiant in the face of the campaign.

A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards warned, “the gates of hell will open more and more” upon the US and Israel.

A Guards general, Ebrahim Jabbari, said that if Iran’s foes “hit our main centres, we will hit all economic centres in the region”.

Economic targets came under fire elsewhere in the Gulf as Iran continued to launch volleys of retaliatory drones and missiles at its neighbours.

Qatar said it had downed missiles targeting Hamad International Airport in Doha, while Oman reported several drones attacking the port of Duqm, and in the UAE, falling debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at an oil storage and trading zone, authorities said.

Flights to evacuate stranded travellers

Evacuation flights are set to rescue tens of thousands of travellers stranded in the Middle East, even as some airlines resumed on Tuesday a limited number of scheduled flights.

Several countries have organised evacuation flights to repatriate their nationals.

Two evacuation flights with 200 passengers each landed in the Czech capital Prague on Tuesday morning.

“We are preparing to charter flights so that the most vulnerable people… can benefit,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

He said some 400,000 French nationals were located in the dozen countries affected by the conflict.

Germany had announced on Monday that it would send aircraft to Saudi Arabia and Oman as soon as possible to evacuate the most vulnerable travellers.

There are around 30,000 Germans stranded in the region, according to the German Tourism Association.

Travel firm TUI said Tuesday it would begin flying home 5,000 clients stranded on two of its cruise ships in the Gulf via Dubai.

Three Indian airlines – IndiGo, Air India Express and Akasa Air – announced a limited number of evacuation flights to the Middle East.

Three flights evacuating Italian nationals were expected to land in Rome and Milan later Tuesday, according to the airports.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Tuesday a UK government charter flight would bring home British nationals from Oman in the coming days.

British Airways said it had scheduled a flight from Oman on Thursday.

Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Spain was also organising evacuation flights, and an Etihad flight carrying Spanish nationals was set to land in Madrid on Tuesday evening.

The European Union has begun helping member countries Italy, Austria and Slovakia repatriate their citizens, the bloc’s crisis management chief told AFP Tuesday.

The situation remains dangerous in the region, with Qatar saying it had blocked Iranian attacks on its airport, one of the major hubs in the region.

The US and Israeli attacks on Iran, followed by Iranian counterattacks on Gulf states and Israel, have prompted several countries to shut their airspace.

At least 12,903 flights were cancelled between Saturday and Monday as a result, representing 40 per cent of planned flights, according to aviation data analysis firm Cirium.

The firm estimates that flights in the region account for around 900,000 seats each day, so the number of affected travellers could easily already be more than one million.

On Sunday, nearly all flights were cancelled out of the United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai airport, the second-largest in the world in terms of passengers.

That fell to 93.5 per cent on Monday.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s airports resumed limited operations on Monday.

Several Emirates flights took off Tuesday morning, according to the Flightradar24 flight tracking website.

The aircraft immediately flew south out of the Gulf region.

The vast majority of flights in and out of Dubai remain cancelled.

Only some flights by flag carrier Emirates, low-cost flydubai and Russia’s Aeroflot were operating.

Numerous Royal Jordanian flights took off and landed at Amman’s airport, but flew via the south of the country to avoid Israeli airspace.

Flights continue to come in and out of Saudi Arabia and Oman, and their airspace is being used by long-haul flights between Europe and Asia.

No civilian flights were circulating in the airspace above Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Libya or Qatar, however.

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