US AND ISRAEL ATTACK IRAN

A senior Iranian foreign policy figure has been seriously injured in a US‑Israeli strike on his Tehran residence, Arab media reported.

Kamal Kharrazi, head of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations and a former foreign minister, suffered severe wounds in the attack and was rushed to the hospital. His wife was reportedly killed.

Kharrazi has long served as a key adviser to the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and has retained his position under the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who opted to keep his father’s officials in place.

US President Donald Trump criticised some members of Nato, calling them “bad allies” and saying, “We don’t need them.”

He added, “We had some asks, and you know we spent trillions of dollars on Nato, and when we need them, which we never do, we never needed them here either. To be honest, I was really asking because I wanted to see what they’d do.

“The last thing I needed was Nato stepping in our way, because they’re a paper tiger,” Trump said, referring to the US campaign in Iran.

US President Donald Trump said Washington is “pretty much winding that up” as he referred to the ongoing military campaign in Iran.

Speaking at an Easter lunch, Trump added, “[We] have to take a few more hits, we want to make sure we don’t ever … allow them to have a nuclear weapon, because they’ll use it and you’ll see how serious they were.”

The letter says framing Iran as a threat serves the “political and economic whims of the powerful” and stems from a need to “manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a letter addressed to the American people that his country harboured no enmity towards ordinary Americans, Press TV reported on Wednesday.

He said in his letter that portraying Iran as a threat was "neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts."

Pezeshkian said that attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure targets the Iranian people, warning that such actions carried consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders.

China will at one point have to engage more directly on how to restore oil traffic flows in the Strait of Hormuz because the number of vessels it has going through is probably insufficient, France's navy chief said on Wednesday.

"We have not seen China's navy step in to reopen the strait. On the other hand, there is direct political dialogue between Chinese and Iranian authorities to ensure that a certain number of vessels can pass. Will that be enough to restore normal traffic flows? I don't believe so," Admiral Nicolas Vaujour told the War & Peace security conference in Paris.

"As a result, China will probably have to engage more directly in the debate and show its impatience with the fact that the strait remains closed."

Vaujour said France was working to bring a number of countries around the table at a political level first to determine the conditions under which the strait could be reopened in a lasting way.

Iran's military announced on Wednesday evening a new wave of missile and drone attacks targeting Israel and US bases in the Gulf, though there was no immediate word from either of any direct hits.

In a statement, the military's central command, Khatam Al-Anbiya, said the targets included Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast and Eilat on the Red Sea, as well as US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.

The announcement came hours before US President Donald Trump was set to make a highly anticipated address on the state of the war, which began on February 28 with a wave of US-Israel attacks against Iran.

US President Donald Trump threatened to stop supplying weapons for Ukraine in order to pressure European allies to join a "coalition of the willing" to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people briefed on the discussions.

According to the report, Trump threatened to stop supplies to PURL, Nato's weapons procurement initiative for Ukraine funded by European countries.

Iran is set to release an "important letter" from President Masoud Pezeshkian to the American people as the two countries remain engaged in over a month-long war.

The message the American people will be released in a few hours, Iranian official Mehdi Tabatabai wrote in a post on X.