Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

It's pretty quiet right now at the White House, where only a handful of reporters remain hours after White House briefing from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

We're yet to hear on-camera remarks from President Donald Trump, though he's been busy posting on Truth Social throughout Wednesday.

None of those posts, however, dealt with the conflict in Iran - they were focused on domestic concerns.

In a short while, Trump is going to leave the White House for nearby Union Station - Washington's primary train terminal - for a fundraiser organised by the Nation Republican Congressional Committee.

The president is expected to deliver remarks at the event, which will likely focus on the issues that Republicans in Congress are primarily focused on domestically, such as funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Over the last few weeks, though, Trump has often begun public speeches with a brief update on the military operation in Iran. It's possible he'll do the same later.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad
Senior reporter, BBC Persian

We've a bit more to bring you now from an interview Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has given to Iranian state media.

During the televised interview, Araghchi doesn't go as far as rejecting the US's reported 15-point plan to end the conflict. Though his position on the document is not immediately clear.

Acknowledging that "some ideas" have been put forward, and that in "one or two instances" he's seen this be referred to as a "15-point plan", Araghchi says: "These [ideas] were being presented in various formats as different ideas, all of which have been passed on to the country's senior authorities.

"If a position needs to be taken [regarding these ideas] it will certainly be determined".

In our earlier post, covering the same interview, we reported how Araghchi said Iran had "no intention of negotiating for now" - but confirmed that "the American side has begun sending various messages through different intermediaries".

Image source, EPA/Shutterstock

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres tells the US and Israel it is time to end the war, and calls on Iran to stop attacking nearby countries.

Speaking to reporters earlier, Guterres describes how people are living under "profound insecurity" - something he says he saw first hand during a recent visit to Lebanon.

"There too the war must stop," he says, calling on Hezbollah to stop launching attacks on Israel and for Israel to stop its military operations and strikes.

"The Gaza model must not be replicated in Lebanon," he adds.

Adam Goldsmith
Live reporter

Image source, Getty Images

As the US and Iran engage in a series of rebuttals over progress on peace talks, here's a rundown of what's been happening.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insists that Donald Trump is having "productive discussions" with Iran - we've a full round-up of her press conference remarks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accepts that the two countries have exchanged messages, but says Iran has "no intention of negotiating for now".

Meanwhile Leavitt has also dismissed a 15-point peace plan reportedly issued by the US as "speculative".

The impasse, our security correspondent writes, is that both sides want to end the war on their own terms - read Frank Gardner's full analysis.

Away from the US-Iranian grappling over negotiations, the wider war in the Middle East continues, as Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu announces his country will create a "larger buffer zone" in Lebanon to push back the threat of Hezbollah.

And, our correspondent in Dubai says Gulf countries remain on the front line of Iran's fury, as Kuwait international airport battles a fire following a drone attack.

Relationship with US might not offer protection Gulf nations hoped forpublished at 20:19 GMT

20:19 GMT

published at 05:19

05:19

Azadeh Moshiri
South Asia correspondent, reporting from Dubai

Image source, Anadolu via Getty Images

The reality for countries in the Gulf is clear: they are still on the front line of Iran’s fury, and the Strait of Hormuz, which their economies depend on, is still not safe.

At Kuwait International Airport, emergency crews battled a fire after a drone attack hit a fuel tank. No casualties were reported. But the incident was a reminder that major infrastructure is still at risk.

Kuwait’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nasser Abdullah Al Hayen, shared his anger, telling the UN Human Rights Council that "the manifestations of this aggressive approach have reached the pinnacle of contempt for international sovereignty and humanitarian law."

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has borne the brunt of Iran’s attacks. It said it refused to be “blackmailed by terrorists”. Should Iran’s regime survive, officials here have said the relationship won’t recover.

Leaders will want guarantees their region won’t be weaponised against Iran’s enemies again. There is also a growing sense their relationship with the United States is not the protection it appeared to be.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad
Senior reporter, BBC Persian

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said in a televised interview on Iran’s state TV news channel that for “several days” the US has "begun sending various messages through different intermediaries”.

But he says that the fact these messages were “conveyed via friendly countries”, and that Iran was responding by stating their “positions and issuing warnings”, is “neither dialogue nor negotiation, nor anything of the sort”.

Araghchi also says that Iran’s policy for now is to continue “defending”, and they have “no intention of negotiating for now”.

He adds that “this is Israel’s war and people of the region and people of the US are paying the price for it”.

Trump administration confident war will end - but how remains unclearpublished at 19:40 GMT

19:40 GMT

published at 04:40

04:40

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent

If the White House is clear about one thing it’s this: the war will soon be over.

Whether or not this turns out to be wishful thinking remains to be seen, but once again Karoline Leavitt was at pains to emphasise that Operation Epic Fury is “ahead of schedule.”

She continues to remind reporters of Donald Trump’s initial assertion that the war might last 4-6 weeks, and she threw in a new detail this afternoon: the president’s delayed trip to China will now go ahead on May 14-15.

That’s still more than seven weeks away, but clearly the White House believes – or wants us to believe – that the crisis will have passed and the Mr Trump and the Chinese leader can get down to their agenda without a war in the Middle East hanging over them.

But if the administration managed to sound confident about when the war will end, it’s still shedding very little light on how it will end.

Ms Leavitt says there are still “productive conversations” taking place, but that if Iran fails to accept that it’s losing, the president is prepared to “unleash hell.”

As things stand, there’s little sign that Tehran is giving up.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

The White House briefing earlier today left us with very few answers on the negotiations, or - vitally - who exactly they are taking place with.

Trump has now repeatedly claimed that the US is communicating with the "right people" in the Iranian government, after previous tiers of the country's leadership were killed in waves of US and Israeli strikes.

It is unclear, however, whether those "right people" include the country's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamanei, or top figures who remain at the IRGC.

The US president, for his part, this week insisted that the fact that senior figures in Iran are talking at all already represents "regime change".

"This is a change in the regime," he told reporters on Tuesday. "Because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with."

Early on in the conflict, Trump also said that he believes the US should have a role in choosing Iran's leadership.

Earlier, I asked Karoline Leavitt whether Trump still believes that it an objective of the operation.

"I think the president obviously believes that the United States want to have someone in leadership in the Iranian regime that will be much more favourable to work with the United States, that will no longer chant 'death to America'," she responded.

"These would be good, common sense things for the United States and our allies."

Footage of strike at Israeli industrial site in Negevpublished at 19:18 GMT

19:18 GMT

published at 04:18

04:18

Image source, Teelgram

By Shayan Sardarizadeh

BBC Verify has confirmed a video and an image that appear to show a strike targeting an industrial plant in Israel’s Negev desert.

One video, filmed from a vehicle, shows a thick plume of black smoke rising in the air near the Rotem Amfert industrial facility.

According to its website, the facility mines phosphate for use in fertilisers.

An image captured inside the facility, also verified by the BBC, shows damage to at least one structure in the plant.

The Rotem plant is located around 7km from Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex.

A missile strike on Saturday caused damage in the city of Dimona.

The BBC's US partner CBS News is reporting that nearly 300 American soldiers have been injured since the US-Israeli war with Iran began, citing the US Central Command (Centcom).

290 US service members have been wounded since the first day of the war according to a Centcom spokesperson, reports CBS.

The spokesperson says that 255 of these wounded soldiers have returned to duty and ten remain seriously wounded.

The status of the other 25 was not disclosed.

A group of Middle Eastern countries has published a joint statement on Iran's military action during its war with the US and Israel.

Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan have expressed "their strongest condemnation of the blatant Iranian aggressions" - which they call "a flagrant violation" of sovereignty.

During the war, Iran has carried out strikes targeting US assets in countries across the Middle East, including some of those issuing this joint statement.

The statement also condemns "the aggressions launched by Iran-aligned armed factions from the Republic of Iraq against a number of regional states".

The countries have called on the Iraqi government to take the necessary measures to "halt the attacks" launched from its territory.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad
Senior reporter, BBC Persian

The account affiliated with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iranian parliament speaker, has said on X that "based on some information, Iran’s enemies, with the backing of a regional country, are preparing to seize one of the Iranian islands".

The post by Ghalibaf's account has said that "all enemy movements are under the close surveillance of our armed forces. Should they step out of line, all vital infrastructure in that regional country will, without restriction, become the target of sustained attacks."

The post hasn't specified which country or which island.

Some unconfirmed reports suggested that the Trump administration was considering Ghalibaf as a potential partner, and possibly even a future leader.

Image source, Reuters

2,000 families in Tehran, Iran's capital, have been made homeless since the US and Israel began bombing the city, says its mayor.

"They struck down our ordinary Tehran fellow citizens," says Alireza Zakani in a statement originally in Persian.

He also says that that women, children and the elderly have had their homes destroyed.

Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace says she will not be supporting the deployment of US troops in Iran after leaving a briefing by the House Armed Services Committee on the conflict.

The representative for South Carolina says in a post on X: "I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing."

She adds in another post that the gap between what was presented to the American public and the military objectives presented today is "deeply troubling".

Image source, Getty Images

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt just spoke extensively about Iran at her regularly scheduled briefing.

Here's what we heard:

• Leavitt claims Trump is still engaged in "productive conversations" with Iran despite Tehran's statement that it has rejected a peace plan from the US
• She says a 15-point plan circulating on social media is "speculative" but with "elements of truth to it", refusing to go further into the "nitty gritty" details of how the talks are unfolding
• Meanwhile in the US, consumers continue to complain about rising gas prices. Leavitt reassures that Trump is keeping them "as low as he can" during the war
• The press secretary also refused to answer questions about the potential for US "boots on the ground" in Iran - but she did say formal authorisation from Congress to do so would not be necessary
• The big recurring question - how close to the end of the war are we? Leavitt repeated the White House line that we are "ahead of schedule" and touted what the administration calls a very successful operation

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has just finished giving a press briefing to journalists in Washington DC.

We'll shortly be providing a round up of key points she made about the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Stick with us.

Image source, Getty Images

The BBC's White House reporter Bernd Debusmann Jr then asks Leavitt whether the president still believes the US should have a role in choosing Iran's new leadership.

"I think the president obviously believes the US wants to have someone in leadership in the Iranian regime that will be favourable" and would work with the US and "no longer chant 'death to America'. That would obviously be good," she says.

Another journalist asks about Trump's recent comments that regime change has been achieved in Iran

"Has it not?" Leavitt responds. "Their entire leadership has been killed, and nobody has really seen or legitimately heard from this alleged new leader, so wouldn't you say there's been a change in the regime?

"There's been a change in the regime leadership, which is what the president said, so thank you for confirming he is right," she says.

Iran's Assembly of Experts earlier this month appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as the country's new supreme leader, after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in US-Israeli strikes.

The White House press secretary is pushed further on the alleged 15-point plan to end the war offered to Iran by the US.

She's asked to clarify information is accurate with respect to nuclear ambitions and the Strait of Hormuz in the plans.

"If you've heard it from the President of the United States, obviously it's true," she says, explaining that the objectives of the war have been repeated many times from the podium.

But, Leavitt cautions again against taking information from anonymous sources and doesn't go into specifics on the reported peace plan.

She's then quizzed on the criticism that Trump's approach has shifted from demanding that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon to tighter restrictions on nuclear enrichment overall.

Leavitt responds that the president has been "quite clear" on what he wants to see from the Iranian regime.

Image source, Getty Images

A reporter asks Leavitt if the US is providing support for Israel's offensive in Lebanon - and if the president is concerned about the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced as a result.

Leavitt says she can't comment on US support, but says "of course" the president is concerned about displacement, and that's why he wants to eliminate the threat of Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah, "who have terrorised Lebanon for far too long".

She is also asked if "boots on the ground" in Iran is the only option given that America's allies won't get involved.

Leavitt again says she cannot comment.

A journalist asks if there is a timeline on when oil can travel freely through the Strait of Hormuz.

There isn't a specific timeline, says Leavitt, but the Trump administration is "working towards" one "as quickly as we can".

She says the US government has taken "a number of actions" - including working with the International Energy Agency (IEA) to coordinate the release of 400m more barrels.

Just today, she adds, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a temporary fuel waiver across the country to provide "additional flexibility".