Iran war updates: Trump baulks at truce as attacks hammer Israel and Gulf

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Here are some of today’s top events:

• US President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t want a ceasefire in Iran, before saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that the US is “very close” to meeting its objectives in Iran and is considering “winding down” military action.
• Israel’s military has claimed it assassinated two more high-ranking Iranian officials earlier this week, identifying them as Esmail Ahmadi, intelligence chief of the Basij force, and Mehdi Rostami Shamastan, a senior Intelligence Ministry official.
• At least 20 people were killed and 57 wounded in the latest Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the Lebanese Disaster Risk Management Unit says, bringing the total number killed since March 2 to 1,021.
• Drones struck Kuwait’s largest oil refinery, the Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, for the second day as Iran continued a sweeping assault on energy infrastructure across the Gulf, causing a fire in the facility.
• A US logistics support camp near Baghdad international airport has been hit with successive attacks, an Iraqi security source has told Al Jazeera.
• NATO has temporarily pulled all personnel from its mission in Iraq and relocated them to a command centre in Naples, Italy, as fallout from the Israeli-US war on Iran raises regional security concerns.

Hezbollah says it carried out a series of attacks on the Israeli military, including launching rockets at troops in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon.

The Lebanese group said it targeted Israeli soldiers south of the Lebanese border towns of Maqba and Maroun al-Ras.

It also said it targeted the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona for the seventh time.

Iranian officials have a vision of a new regional order after this war. We saw this alluded to not just in Iranian President Pezeshkian’s Nowruz message today, but also in comments by Iran’s foreign minister and parliament speaker.

The Iranians think after this war ends, there should be a new regional system and that this system should be managed by regional states, without any intervention from international players or superpowers, mainly the United States.

Iran has threatened to expand its retaliatory attacks to include recreational and tourist sites worldwide.

Iran’s top military spokesman, General Abolfazl Shekarchi, warned that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide won’t be safe for the country’s enemies.

The threat renewed concerns that Iran may revert to using asymmetric attacks beyond the Middle East as a pressure tactic.

Iran has stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gasfield earlier in the week.

Two waves of Iranian drones attacked a Kuwaiti oil refinery early Friday, sparking a fire. The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, which can process some 730,000 barrels of oil per day, is one of the largest in the Middle East.

The war with Iran and the battle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are exposing deep rifts between the United States and its closest allies.

As President Trump pressures NATO and Asian partners to send warships and share the burden of securing a vital energy chokepoint, European leaders insist “this is not our war”, favour diplomacy over direct involvement, and resist turning NATO into a Middle East fighting force.

Donald Jensen, former US diplomat to Europe, and Heino Klinck, former director of US Army international affairs, join Al Jazeera live in Washington, DC.

Saudi Arabia’s Defence Ministry says it intercepted and destroyed five more drones in the country’s eastern region.

The ministry did not provide details on the origin of the drone or whether there were any casualties or damage.

The statement came shortly after it reported the interception of three other unmanned aerial vehicles in the east.

Qatar, Jordan and Egypt have expressed their strong condemnation of an Israeli attack on military infrastructure in southern Syria.

In a statement, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said Doha considered the attack “a flagrant violation of its sovereignty and a clear breach of international law and the Charter of the United Nations”.

It said the continuation of such attacks without deterrence was undermining the foundations of regional security, adding the international community’s inability to curb such violations has contributed to the worsening of the crisis facing the region.

Jordan and Egypt also condemned the attack, which the Israeli army said in response to what it called attacks on Druze civilians by Syrian authorities in the Suwayda area on Thursday.

Statement | Qatar Condemns Israeli Attack on Military Facilities in Southern Syria

Doha | 20 March 2026

The State of Qatar expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the Israeli attack targeting military facilities in the southern Syrian Arab Republic, considering… pic.twitter.com/lZzHMol9ws

— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) March 20, 2026

The ⁠Panama ⁠Canal is operating at top capacity with demand increasing for the passage of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers amid the impacts of the war on Iran, the waterway’s chief Ricaurte Vasquez told reporters.

He said the canal is seeing between 36 and 38 ⁠vessels pass each day.

Vasquez said it’s preparing to offer one slot a day for LNG tankers to pass through the canal, a significant boost from the four per month preceding the war.

President Trump has gone on a tear against NATO and the European allies. Speaking to reporters outside the White House earlier, he said the UK didn’t act quickly enough in letting the US use its military bases.

He went on to criticise Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea for not doing enough in his view to help out by sending ships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

What he apparently wants is some kind of big military operation because the US military is largely otherwise occupied. But one of the problems he runs into is that he didn’t warn most of these countries that the US was going to get into the war alongside Israel.

He said he wanted the “surprise” factor. Well, he got surprise, but what he didn’t get was cooperation. Now, Trump is attacking the US allies and trying to bully them into cooperation. Perhaps that contributed to the fact that the UK finally agreed to let the US use its bases, but of course, that didn’t satisfy Trump either. 

This is Trump versus his allies in the middle of a war.

Iran says it has no surplus crude oil to offer to international markets after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington could lift sanctions on Iranian oil at sea.

“Currently, Iran basically has no surplus crude oil left on the water or for supply in other international markets, and the US Treasury secretary’s statement is solely aimed at giving hope to buyers,” Oil Ministry spokesman Saman Ghoddoosi wrote in a post on social media.

Twenty-one people have been injured in an Israeli air strike on Deir ez-Zahrani in southern Lebanon, the Health Ministry says.

Two of those hurt were women, the ministry added.

As we reported earlier, Lebanon’s Disaster Risk Management Unit said 20 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon today.

Iran’s military has warned it will target the UAE’s Ras al-Khaimah if Iranian Gulf islands are attacked again from there.

“We warn the United Arab Emirates, in case of repeated encroachment from the source of that country to the Iranian islands … in the Persian Gulf, the powerful Iranian armed forces will put Ras al-Khaimah … under their crushing blows,” its spokesperson said in a statement carried by Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

The islands are located near the Strait of Hormuz, a globally vital shipping lane through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes.

The UAE government announced earlier this month that a drone had been successfully intercepted by air defence systems, causing debris to fall in the al-Hamra village area in Ras al-Khaimah.