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BBC News with Fiona MacDonald.
President Trump says the war with Iran will end soon, but not this week. Addressing journalists, he said the U.S. has not yet, as he put it, "won enough" and is aiming for ultimate victory. He claimed Iran's navy and air force had both been destroyed, as well as many of their weapons. Our international editor Jeremy Bowen has this assessment. According to him, it's going brilliantly, much better than anyone ever expected that they've got to a stage where they weren't sure they'd even get to a month in. So of course does that mean that he's preparing the ground to declare victory? That's certainly what it sounded like to me. The problem with wars, though, is there are two parties in it, and wars don't necessarily end if one party wants it to end. The Iranians might want to continue it. Is it gonna be the endgame? Donald Trump hopes it might be. But for the Iranian regime, if they're there at the end of it, they'll say they've won. President Trump said oil prices have risen less than he'd expected following the Iran conflict, in comments that followed a day of turmoil in the global economy. With most exports from the Gulf halted, oil prices first soared to well over $100 a barrel, before easing back after G7 finance ministers said they were ready to release strategic oil reserves if necessary. From New York, here's our business correspondent, Michelle Fleury. The reaction last week from investors had been fairly muted, but that changed really overnight and into this morning. There are still lots of unknowns, and of course when you talk to people in the oil industry, particularly not just the Strait of Hormuz, but also the infrastructure in the region, which in some cases we've seen oil facilities or natural gas facilities temporarily closed down for safety reasons, it takes time to get those back up and running again, so the disruption won't end overnight. The United States and Israel have continued their bombardment of Iran, with powerful explosions echoing across Iran at the very start of the 11th day of hostilities. Iran has again been retaliating, firing missiles and drones against its Gulf neighbors. Caroline Hawley reports. Video released today by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims to show a wave of missiles fired today at American and Israeli targets. But one ballistic missile entered Turkish airspace and was shot down by NATO defense systems, the second time this has happened since the war began. In Israel, one man was killed by shrapnel, and countries around the Gulf are still trying to intercept incoming missiles and drones. Lebanon's president has accused Hezbollah of working towards the collapse of the state by firing missiles at Israel in support of Iran. Joseph Aoun said the rocket launches were an almost transparent trap and ambush for Lebanon, and he called on the international community to back his plan to end the conflict. World news from the BBC. President Trump has said there could soon be what he called a "friendly takeover" of Cuba. He said his Cuban-American Secretary of State Marco Rubio was dealing with the issue at present, but insisted the communist authorities in Havana were finished. The U.S. has been preventing deliveries of oil to Cuba following the ousting of its close ally, the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Marco Rubio has censured Afghanistan over its detention of American citizens. In a statement, the U.S. secretary of state demanded that Kabul release all U.S. citizens detained in the country and designated the Taliban government as a state sponsor of wrongful detention. He has previously warned that such a move could lead to a ban on U.S. passport holders travelling to the country. The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv says a Russian drone has struck near a high-rise apartment building, injuring six people. Russian shelling is reported to have injured seven more in the central city of Dnipro. The attacks came as President Putin and Donald Trump spoke by phone. The U.S. president described the call as positive, though he warned the conflict in Ukraine appeared never-ending. The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two people accused of trying to bomb a protest in New York City. They're alleged to have thrown a device towards an anti-Islam demonstration outside the residence of the city's first Muslim mayor. New York's Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the defendants had been charged with terrorism offences. "As alleged in the complaint, the defendants were inspired by ISIS to carry out their attack. There should be no confusion about what ISIS constitutes. It is a designated foreign terrorist organization responsible for deadly terrorist attacks across the globe and has taken credit for mass casualty attacks in Europe, the Middle East and right here in the United States." BBC News. |