US-Iran war as it happened: Trump’s secret plane switch; Iranian regime signals hardline pivot

The Pentagon has revealed to Congress that its airstrikes in Yemen last year killed 153 civilians, according to reports from the US.

It told Congress of the figures in a 12-page report, which said the casualties came from three incidents in April last year.

In addition, the documents claim 243 civilians were injured.

US President Donald Trump was full of bravado when asked about the current situation in Iran.

Asked how the situation in the Middle East was going, he said Iran is “going fine, going just absolutely fine”.

“We totally control the Strait of Hormuz, we have control over it, nobody else, only us,” he said to reporters at Andrews Air Base.

“Our navy is unbelievable, and things are going great for our country.”

He added he “does not trust Iran”, that Tehran has lied to him “constantly”, and claimed larger action from the United States could silence them once and for all.

“At some point maybe they’ll do something and then they get blown away, but right now we’re in a very good position,” he said.

“We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years. It’s really 51 if you think about it, right… and they’re no longer the bully of the Middle East.”

Donald Trump was also asked about whether he would try to engineer a situation in which he would make a third run for president, which is unconstitutional.

Trump seemed to acknowledge this fact, but was still somewhat vague in his answer.

“Everybody asked me that question, and you know that the law is very strong on that,” he said.

“I’d love to run, but the law is very strong. I get asked by every[one], well, even tonight they’re screaming at the event ‘2028!’

“Now everybody wants me to do it, but the law is very strong.”

He thanked his supporters for wanting him to continue as president.

The US Constitution states no one can be elected president more than twice.

At least two cabinet secretaries were aboard the larger Air Force One plane that departed Turkiye last month without President Donald Trump aboard, according to a US official, after Trump furtively switched jets on the tarmac.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had been accompanying Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara, stayed behind on the blue and white Boeing 747 along with other White House staffers, military personnel and members of the press, most of whom were unaware of Trump’s whereabouts.

The plane was believed to be the target of an Iranian threat deemed credible enough to force Trump’s secret swap, and was used as a sort-of decoy, departing Turkiye without the president on board.

It’s not yet clear which staffers joined Trump aboard the smaller plane that ferried him to a military base in Britain.

Trump claimed he took the “greater risk” by switching planes, despite the clear plan to imply he was aboard Air Force One the whole time.

“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for,” Trump said.

He said he wasn’t surprised by the ruse.

“I have a lot of threats. I have a lot of threats that you don’t know about. Any consequential president has a lot of threats. Non-consequential presidents don’t get threatened,” he said.

“And I think that I’m maybe the most consequential. Nobody who’s done more than me in a period of almost 6 years. There’s nobody. I don’t worry about anything, to be honest.”

Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, Trump said he was simply following the wishes of the Secret Service when he secretly transferred to a different plane from Air Force One when leaving Turkey.

“I just follow what they’d like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” Trump said.

“They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say.

“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it. I get a lot of threats.”

A new round of senior military promotions in Iran heralds a new-look regime that is more aggressive and risk-taking than its predecessor, multiple experts have told CNN.

Since the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the early stages of the war, observers have warned that hardliners in the Revolutionary Guard and other parts of the military were coming to the forefront.

New Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei this week announced six new promotions to senior echelons of the military and bureaucracy, and together they herald a change of tone from his father’s more “cautious” policy.

“The emphasis on offensive operations, unified command, and faster decision-making suggests that the leadership wants to move from Ali Khamenei’s traditionally more cautious approach to deterrence toward what could be described as offensive deterrence,” Hamidreza Azizi at the Clingendael Institute told CNN.

Most of the appointees have a background in intelligence, according to Saeid Golkar, associate professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

“The picture we are seeing is the Islamic Republic moving toward a security-dominated bureaucratic regime,” he told CNN.

The reshuffle reinforces the regime’s “current maximalist and hardline positions”, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, “including absolute Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, the removal of US troops from the region, and the development of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Trump continues to insist that the Strait of Hormuz is open and under the control of the US Navy, but shipping data suggests operators remain sceptical.

“Look, the only one that has control of the Strait of Hormuz right now is the United States Navy,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

However, he did acknowledge Iran could cause “trouble” in the waterway.

CENTCOM also has repeatedly insisted the US military has guided millions of barrels of oil through the strait since the conflict began.

But Marine Traffic showed just eight ships traversed the strait yesterday, and five of them stuck to the Iran-approved route.

Prior to the war, about 120 ships a day made use of the strait.

One of Donald Trump’s main political rivals has lashed the president for “slinking away” from danger in the now-exposed Air Force One bait-and-switch.

At the time, Trump - after he had been surreptitiously returned to Air Force One - was asked by a reporter about security threats to the plane.

“If I go, you go,” Trump said then.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat who has been mentioned as in the running for a presidential candidacy, did not hold back when asked about it.

“It’s obviously not true, ‘If I go, you go’,” he told CNN.

“That’s not what happened. He put people in harms way to save himself, that’s who Donald Trump is.”

Pritzker said Trump appeared “okay with the idea” that a plane full of his own staff and reporters, unaware of any threat, may have been targeted.

“He slinked away, literally, in a catering truck, while the reporters and his own staff were on a plane that, reportedly, was under threat,” Pritzker said.

“He did not need to put his staff and those reporters in harms way. He literally could have warned them and taken them off the flight.”