DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel says it has killed two senior Iranian security officials in overnight strikes in a major wartime blow to the country’s leadership. Iran, which did not immediately confirm the killings, fired salvos of missiles and drones at its Gulf Arab neighbors and Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the deaths of Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force. With Iran maintaining a tight grip on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump said he’s been rejected by NATO and most allies to join a mission to secure the waterway vital to the global oil market.
Top counterterrorism official Kent resigns over Trump’s Iran war, says Iran posed no imminent threat
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is pushing back against claims by the director of the National Counterterrorism Center about the motivations for the Iran war. In announcing his resignation Tuesday, Joe Kent claimed Iran “posed no imminent threat” to the United States. Trump says Iran is a “tremendous threat.” Kent also says it’s clear the U.S. started the war “due to pressure from Israel.” The Republican president previously has denied Israel forced the U.S. to act. Kent is a former Washington state political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists. As head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent was in charge of an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats.
Trump postpones his China trip to focus on the war in Iran
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is delaying a diplomatic trip to China that was planned for months but began to unravel as he pressured Beijing and other world powers to form a military coalition to protect the vital Strait of Hormuz. Trump said Tuesday while meeting with Irish Prime Minister MicheઠMartin in the Oval Office that he would be going to China in five or six weeks’ time instead of at the end of the month. Trump’s visit to China is seen as an opportunity to build on a fragile trade truce between the two superpowers, but it became tangled in his effort to find an endgame to his war in Iran.
