Iran-Trump newest: Two explosions depart 5 useless as regime denies army chief focused | EUROtoday

Four people were killed in a gas explosion at a residential building in Ahvaz, in the west of the country, according to the state-run Tehran Times.

It was unclear what had caused the blast.

Two Israeli officials told Reuters that Israel was not involved in the blast at Ahvaz or the one at Bandar Abbas.

Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that US, Israeli and European leaders had exploited Iran’s economic problems, incited unrest and provided people with the means to “tear the nation aside” in current protests.

Foreign leaders tried to “provoke, create division, and supplied resources, drawing some innocent people into this movement,” Pezeshkian stated in a reside state TV broadcast.

Trump, Netanyahu and Europeans “rode on our problems, provoked, and were seeking — and still seek — to fragment society,” he said.

“They introduced them into the streets and needed, as they stated, to tear this nation aside, to sow battle and hatred among the many individuals and create division,” Pezeshkian stated.

An explosion occurred at Iran’s southern port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, Iranian media reported, without giving a cause for the blast.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that social media reports alleging that a Revolutionary Guard navy commander was targeted in the explosion were “utterly false”.

Iranian media said the blast was being investigated but gave no further information. Iranian authorities could not immediately be contacted for comment.

The port of Bandar Abbas lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.

The Trump administration approved the $9bn sale of Patriot defence missiles to Saudi Arabia and another series of weapons sales totalling $6.67bn to Israel yesterday amid escalating tensions with Iran.

The Saudi kingdom plans to buy 730 Patriot missiles from Washington, according to the US state department.

The sale to Israel includes 30 Apache attack helicopters equipped with rocket launchers and advanced targeting gear, the state department said.

US allies in the Middle East are reportedly urging both Tehran and Washington to exercise restraint as president Donald Trump announced the buildup of naval assets closer to Iran.

The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Oman and Qatar are all making the case with both the US and Iran that escalation by either side could destabilise the entire region, ABC News reported citing an Arab diplomat familiar with the matter.

Saudi Arabia’s defence minister Khalid bin Salman posted on X that he discussed “efforts to advance regional and global peace and stability” yesterday.

That came after Trump threatened impending US military action against Iran, stating that his “armada” in the Gulf was “even bigger than what we had in Venezuela”.

“Hopefully we’ll make a deal. If we do make a deal, that’s good. If we don’t make a deal, we’ll see what happens,” the American president said.

The US warned Iran that it “will not tolerate unsafe” actions within the Strait of Hormuz after Tehran introduced a two-day live-fire naval train there.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) urged the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to conduct its naval train “in a manner that is safe, professional and avoids unnecessary risk to freedom of navigation for international maritime traffic”.

“Any unsafe and unprofessional behaviour near US forces, regional partners or commercial vessels increases risks of collision, escalation, and destabilisation,” CENTCOM stated in an announcement.

“We will not tolerate unsafe IRGC actions, including overflight of US military vessels engaged in flight operations, low-altitude or armed overflight of US military assets when intentions are unclear, high-speed boat approaches on a collision course with US military vessels, or weapons trained at US forces,” it stated.

Iranian president Masoud ‌Pezeshkian stated says ‌Donald ‍Trump, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and ‍Europe as an entire are accountable for stirring tensions within the current protests that gripped ‌the ​nation and “provoked” individuals to take to the streets.

Iran’s protests started final 12 months as a response to hovering inflation, with individuals struggling to make ends meet because the Iranian foreign money crashed.

Earlier Pezeshkian was quoted by state media as saying Iran welcomed dialogue and didn’t search warfare with the US, however would reply instantly to “any aggression”.

The Trump administration has accepted an enormous new sequence of arms gross sales to Israel totalling $6.67 billion and to Saudi Arabia price $9 billion.

The State Department introduced the gross sales to America’s allies within the Middle East late Friday as tensions rise within the area over the opportunity of US army strikes on Iran.

They have been made public after the division notified Congress of its approval of the gross sales earlier Friday.

The gross sales additionally come as president Donald Trump pushes forward along with his ceasefire plan for Gaza that’s meant to finish the Israel-Hamas battle and reconstruct the Palestinian territory after two years of warfare left it devastated, with tens of hundreds useless.

While the ceasefire has largely held, large challenges await in its subsequent phases, together with the deployment of a world safety drive to oversee the deal and the troublesome technique of disarming Hamas.

As we reported earlier, the EU has agreed to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, which she stated will put the regime “on the same footing” with al-Qaida, Hamas and the Islamic State group.

The group is usually touted as some of the highly effective forces within the Middle East – however how highly effective are they actually?

Unlike the abnormal army, which comes underneath the Defence Ministry within the elected authorities, the IRGC solutions on to the supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Formed quickly after the revolution, the IRGC’s function defending the Islamic system drastically expanded in the course of the 1980-88 warfare with Iraq and it’s now the strongest and best-equipped part of Iran’s armed forces.

Over the many years, the Guards have prolonged their affect by way of the worlds of politics and enterprise, gaining in energy at residence and overseas.

Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) giving a army salute throughout a army parade in Tehran

The Quds Force, an elite Guards unit, has spearheaded Iran’s regional technique of supporting affiliated Shi’ite teams throughout the Middle East, most notably in Lebanon and Iraq. That technique was hard-hit by the U.S. assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 air strike in Iraq, and by Israel’s pummelling of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in a 2024 warfare.

The Basij militia, a part-time paramilitary drive underneath Guards management, is usually used to quell protests inside Iran.

Since the early 2000s, the Guards’ financial energy has grown as its contracting firm Khatam al-Anbiya received initiatives price billions of {dollars} in Iran’s oil and fuel sector.