Iran latest: US staff told to leave base in Qatar after Tehran threatens attack in major escalation

A senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has warned that Tehran is at the “highest level of readiness” to respond to any attack by US forces.

Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Mousavi also said Iran’s missile stockpile has increased since June – when the Twelve-Day war saw Iran, Israel and the UStrade blows

Some personnel were advised to leave the U.S. military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar by Wednesday evening, three diplomats told Reuters.

Iran has warned countries in the region that it will strike US bases if Washington decides to carry out attacks in Iran – something which Donald Trump has been threatening for days.

The US embassy in Doha has not commented.

Al Udeid is the Middle East’s largest US base housing around 10,000 troops. Ahead of the US air strikes on Iran in June some personnel were moved off US bases in the Middle East.

Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan has spoken over the phone to Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, according to a Turkish Foreign Ministry source.

Mr Fidan stressed the need for talks to resolve current regional tensions in a call with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday.

A Turkish diplomatic source separately said Turkey was also in touch with US officials, following Donald Trump’s threats to strike Iran.

Direct communications between Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff have been suspended, Reuters news agency is reporting.

It comes in response to Donald Trump’s threats to intervene amid nationwide protests in Iran.

A senior Iranian official told the news agency that US threats undermine diplomatic efforts and that potential meetings between the two officials to find a diplomatic solution to a decades-long nuclear dispute have been cancelled.

Iran has warned regional countries that it will strike US military bases in those countries in case of an American attack on its soil, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday.

The remarks follow President Donald Trump’s threats to intervene amid nationwide anti-government protests.

“Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that U.S. bases in those countries will be attacked if U.S. targets Iran… asking these countries to prevent Washington from attacking Iran,” the official told Reuters.

I say that with some hesitancy, given the fact that, in my opinion, his behaviour and policies represent a working definition of modern fascism, but the imposition of penal secondary tariffs of 25 per cent for countries that do business with Iran is one such.

At this critical juncture in Iran’s counter-revolution, any peaceful assistance that can be supplied to the Iranian people must, on balance, be the right thing to do. The move will add indirect pressure onto the regime in Iran via the effects on exports, principally oil, which fund the country’s leadership, security infrastructure and, of course, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the only people to do well out of theocratic rule.

The Independent’s associate editor Sean O’Grady writes:

A human rights expert has described the ongoing crackdown in Iran as one of the most severe in recent memory.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme how the speed and scale of the crackdown compares to previous protests, Awyer Shekhi, from Kurdish human rights organisation Hengaw, said such measures have been seen before but “not as severe as this time”.

“We have never witnessed this scale of mass killings in the big cities like Tehran,” she said.

“We believe that Iranian government is doing all of this to spread more fear among the people, to kind of use this to control the population, to not allow any more protests to happen.”

China has once again weighed in on Donald Trump’s threats to take military action in Iran, stating that it opposes any outside interference in Iran’s internal affairs.

Beijing does not condone the use or the threat of force in international relations, Mao Ning, spokesperson at the Chinese foreign ministry, said at a regular news conference when asked about China’s position following Trump’s comments.

Trump told CBS News in an interview that the United States would take “very strong action” if Iran starts hanging protesters.

Trump also urged protesters to keep protesting and said that help was on the way.