Iran-US war latest: Trump claims outcome to ultimatum on Strait of Hormuz ‘will be very good’ despite Tehran’s counter-threats

Donald Trump has said Iran will soon find out what will happen with the 48-hour deadline he issued for Iran, saying the result will be “very good”.

The US president told Israel’s Channel 13 “there will be the total destruction of Iran and it is going to work great.”

It comes after President Trump issued a ultimatum for Iran on Saturday, demanding it opens the Strait of Hormuz or faces the destruction of its power plants.

“Iran has been very bad for 47 years. Now it is getting its due punishment.”

In the interview, President Trump also hit out against the Nato alliance, saying “Nato countries are doing nothing, it’s a great shame”.

The UAE’s emergency services has said it is responding to a missile threat.

Citizens have been told to remain in a safe location and follow official channels for warnings and updates.

The chief of Nato said Iran is very close to having the capability to strike European cities, and cannot confirm Israel’s claims that Iranian ballistic missiles could hit London, Paris, Berlin, and other European cities.

Asked whether Nato shares the Israeli assessment, Mark Rutte told CBS News’ Face The Nation: “We cannot confirm that at the moment, so we’re looking into that.

“But if this would be true, it is the more evidence that what the President is doing here, taking out the ballistic missile capability, taking out the nuclear capability from Iran, is crucial.”

Asked again whether he believes the cities were within direct threat range, he said: “What we know for sure is that they are very close to having that capability, whether this case with the UK base, Diego Garcia, we are still assessing. But if it is true, it means they already have that capability. If it is not true, we know they are very close to having that capability.”

Keir Starmer spoke with Donald Trump about the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday evening, No 10 said.

“The leaders discussed the current situation in the Middle East, and in particular, the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to resume global shipping,” a No 10 spokesperson said.

“They agreed that reopening the Strait of Hormuz was essential to ensure stability in the global energy market.

“They agreed to speak again soon.”

Donald Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran on Saturday, demanding it reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face having its power plants destroyed.

The UK has no way to stop ballistic missiles fired from Iran, military experts have warned – although they have also voiced doubts over Iran’s capability and its desire to carry out such a strike.

British defences lack the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles, they have claimed, and the systems that they do have are out at sea, and in numbers too small to be fully effective.

The base on the Chagos Islands is 3,800km (2,360 miles) away from Iran, further than previous estimates on the range of Iran’s missiles.

On Sunday morning, senior government minister Steve Reed stressed that Britain was safe, as he called Israel’s threat exaggerated and an attempt to garner support for the war. Hours later, a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson doubled down on Mr Reed’s comments, stating that the country had the resources to “keep the United Kingdom safe from any kind of attacks”.

The Independent’s Washington DC Correspondent John Bowden reports:

Israeli and U.S. forces launched strikes targeting Iranian installations and commanders on February 28, succeeding in the initial hours of the attack in killing the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Since then, progress has stalled. The Iranian government appears little closer to collapse under a barrage of munitions and threats from the West, the latest of which escalated on Saturday with the U.S. president’s threat to begin targeting civilian infrastructure in the country (which would be a war crime unless directly associated with military assets). The Strait of Hormuz, blocked by Iranian forces, has become a major strategic goal for the Trump administration as it struggles to show evidence of making progress towards victory in a war it claims to have already won.

On Sunday, Israel’s ambassador to Washington said that the end of the war could be much further away than Donald Trump and his allies in the administration have let on, telling CNN that his country would “continue with this campaign until we bring this regime to its knees”.

“We cannot live any more with a country that is malign, that is intent on destroying us,” Michael Leiter told CNN’s Dana Bash.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations said he would “never take anything off the table” when it comes to Iran, including bombing its power plants.

Asked by CBS’s Face the Nation if the president was planning to bomb a nuclear power plant, Mike Waltz said that “the important point here is to understand the IRGC, a declared terrorist organisation, not only by us but a number of European countries, controls a huge swath of Iran’s critical infrastructure, their economy, and certainly many of their governing institutions.”

“And so to the extent we’re degrading their military capability and their defence industrial base, all options should be on the table, and the president’s made that very clear,” he said.

French president Emmanuel Macron has posted on social media after holding talks with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.

As a representative of one of the G7 nations, that on Saturday night said they were ready to act to protect global energy supplies, Mr Macron wrote on X that it had become “more necessary than ever” for warring parties to agree to a temporary halt to attacks on energy facilities and civilian infrastructure.

He also said Iran must also restore the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

He said: “The current phase calls for responsibility and restraint, in order to create the conditions for resuming dialogue, which alone can guarantee peace and security for all.”