Live: Israel says it will control bridges and area south of Lebanon’s Litani River
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The Pentagon is planning to deploy a brigade combat team of roughly 3,000 soldiers from the army’s elite 82nd airborne division to the Middle East to support operations against Iran, according to two US officials, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
A written order to deploy the unit is expected in the coming hours, the officials said.
The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not specify where in the Middle East the troops would be sent to and when they would arrive in the region.
President Donald Trump's approval rating fell in recent days to its lowest point since he returned to the White House, with the US hit by a surge in fuel prices and widespread disapproval of the war he launched on Iran on 28 February, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found.
The four-day poll, which closed on Monday, shows 36 percent of Americans approve of Trump's job performance, down from 40 percent in a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted last week.
In a statement on Tuesday, Hezbollah called on Lebanon to "immediately reverse" the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador and called the decision a "sin".
Lebanon’s foreign ministry said Tuesday it had withdrawn the accreditation of Iran’s ambassador, giving him until Sunday to leave the country.
A senior State Department official on Tuesday said that the US is still assessing how to implement President Donald Trump's order to resume US nuclear weapons tests.
Undersecretary of State Thomas DiNanno for Arms Control and International Security told a Senate committee that no discussions have been held on conducting atmospheric nuclear tests.
An Iranian missile was intercepted over Lebanese airspace for the first time on Tuesday, three senior Lebanese security sources said.
Two of the security sources said a foreign naval vessel was responsible for the interception.
The Lebanese news agency reported that shrapnel from an interception had landed over a series of towns north of Beirut and led to some light wounds.
China's top diplomat told his Iranian counterpart in a phone call on Tuesday that "talking is always better than to keep fighting" after Tehran denied US President Donald Trump's claim that negotiations had taken place.
"It is hoped that all parties can seize every opportunity and window for peace and start the peace talks process as quickly as possible," Wang Yi told Abbas Araghchi, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
Reporting by AFP
Qatar's national gas company has declared force majeure on a number of its contracts, including with LNG customers in Italy, Belgium, South Korea and China likely to be affected.
QatarEnergy said the decision had come following Iran's attack on the Ras Laffan production facility last week.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar welcomed on Tuesday Lebanon's decision to expel the Iranian ambassador as a "justified and necessary step" and urged the government to take steps against the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
"We call on the Lebanese government to take practical and meaningful measures against Hezbollah, whose representatives still serve as ministers within it," Saar said in a post on X.
Reporting by AFP
Lebanon has declared Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Reza Raouf Sheibani persona non grata, ordering him to leave country, the foreign ministry has announced.
In a post on X, the ministry said: "This does not constitute a severing of diplomatic relations with Iran, but rather a measure taken against the ambassador for violating diplomatic norms and obligations as an appointed ambassador to Lebanon."
"Ambassador Shibani made statements in which he interfered in the internal politics of Lebanon and assessed the decisions taken by the government. In addition, he held meetings with unofficial Lebanese parties without going through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," it added.
The ministry said that the Lebanese ambassador to Iran, Ahmad Sweidan, has also been recalled for consultations.
1-على ضوء ما يتم تداوله في وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي والإعلام. يهم وزارة الخارجية والمغتربين إيضاح ما يلي: قرار سحب الموافقة على اعتماد السفير الإيراني محمد رضا رؤوف شيباني سندا للمادة ٩ من اتفاقية فيينا للعلاقات الدبلوماسية،
— Mofa Lebanon (@mofalebanon1) March 24, 2026
Africa's muted response to the US-Israeli war on its territory has led Iran to accuse Israel of leveraging its expanding diplomatic footprint across the continent to deflect criticism of its actions in the Middle East.
Since the war began in late February, most African states - alongside continental bodies such as the African Union - have largely skirted the crisis.
Instead, they have issued general calls for de-escalation while condemning Iranian retaliation against US-Israeli targets in the Gulf.
While analysts attribute this cautious posture to the continent's "limited" geopolitical leverage and exposure to global economic shocks, Tehran has provided a more pointed explanation, claiming that political pressure, particularly from Israel, is shaping Africa's response.
Read more: Iran questions Africa's silence as US-Israeli war grinds on
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with his G7 counterparts in France on Friday to discuss the war in Iran, the State Department announced.
This will be his first trip abroad since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February. Rubio will notably address "the situation in the Middle East," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement on Tuesday.
This trip comes after President Donald Trump announced that the United States was in talks with Iran, a claim denied by Tehran, and that he suspended for five days his threat to destroy the country's electrical grid.
Iran named on Tuesday a former Revolutionary Guards commander, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, as the new chief of the Supreme National Security Council to replace his slain predecessor Ali Larijani, state television said.
Larijani, a powerful figure in the Islamic Republic, was confirmed dead after Israel said it killed him in a strike last week.
With the approval of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and by order of Masoud Pezeshkian, Mohammad‑Bagher Zolghadr replaced the martyred Ali Larijani in the Supreme National Security Council. pic.twitter.com/smwEyggT59
— IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) (@iribnews_irib) March 24, 2026
There is no direct Qatari mediation between the United States and Iran, Qatar's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, said in a media briefing on Tuesday.
Israel's military on Tuesday said it had conducted a large number of air strikes in several areas of Iran, including the central city of Isfahan.
"The IDF has completed a large wave of strikes in Isfahan," the military said in a statement, adding that it had launched a "wide-scale wave of strikes... in several areas in Iran".
The Iran war is a "disastrous mistake" that breaches international law, Germany's president said on Tuesday, in an unusually blunt rebuke of US President Donald Trump's foreign policy, which he said marked a rupture for German ties with its biggest post-war ally.
In a scathing verbal attack, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose largely ceremonial role allows him to speak more freely than politicians, took a far more critical line than Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has skirted questions on the war's legality.
"Our foreign policy does not become more convincing just because we do not call a breach of international law a breach of international law," Steinmeier, a former foreign minister from the centre-left Social Democratic Party, said in a speech at the foreign ministry.
"We must address this with regard to the war in Iran. For, in my view, this war is contrary to international law," he said, adding he had little doubt that the justification of the imminent nature of an attack on US targets did not hold water.
Calling the war unnecessary and a "politically disastrous mistake", Steinmeier said Trump's second term marked a rupture in German foreign relations as profound as Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Just as I believe there will be no going back in relations with Russia to before 24 February 2022, so too do I believe there will be no going back in transatlantic relations to before 20 January 2025," said Steinmeier.
