Middle East crisis live: US renews strikes on Iran as Donald Trump threatens to attack underground nuclear site

The Guardian reports that the US military has now completed an eleventh consecutive night of strikes on Iran, hitting targets that included aircraft hangars and drone storage sites, while President Trump has threatened to attack an underground nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth put the war's cost so far at thirty-seven point five billion dollars, up nearly eight billion from the last public figure, and a US official told the Associated Press that more than five hundred American personnel have been wounded. Markets are registering the strain: Brent crude climbed one point two percent to ninety-two point zero nine dollars a barrel, its highest intraday price since the eleventh of June. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Southeast Asian foreign ministers on Wednesday that Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz — the shipping channel that carries a large share of the world's seaborne oil — would set a dangerous precedent reaching well beyond the Middle East. The strikes continue to overshadow talks in Pakistan aimed at salvaging an interim ceasefire deal.

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