France’s army chief, Gen. Fabien Mandon, said Tuesday at a Paris defense and security forum that while France’s relationship with the U.S. is “very strong,” he lamented that “they have just decided to intervene in the Near and Middle East without notifying us.”

“We acted immediately, surprised by an American ally, who remains an ally, but who is less and less predictable and doesn’t even bother to inform us when it decides to engage in military operations. This affects our security. This affects our interests,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron, the commander of chief of France’s armed forces, dispatched the nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and other naval warships to the Mediterranean, and deployed aircraft and other assets, to defend France’s interests and allies in the region and the Persian Gulf after the launch of the U.S.- Israeli war with Iran.

Israel’s military warned late Tuesday that Iran had fired a new salvo of missiles towards the country and that anti-missile defenses were active after a day of more than a dozen missile alerts.

Following the warning, sirens sounded in Jerusalem and a blast was heard in the city, while a loud explosion was also heard in the skies over the West Bank city of Jericho, Agence France-Presse correspondents said.

Israel Defense Forces wrote on Telegram that it “identified missiles launched from Iran toward” Israel and that its “defensive systems are operating to intercept the threat.” 

About one hour later, in the early morning hours local time Wednesday, the IDF reported on social media that it had launched a new wave of strikes across Tehran targeting “infrastructures of the Iranian terror regime.”

CBS/AFP

Financial markets experts are raising concerns about possible insider trading after an unusual spike in oil futures trading only minutes before President Trump announced talks with Iran on Truth Social.

Mr. Trump’s announcement, which he posted on social media shortly after 7 a.m. EST on Monday, caused oil prices to tumble and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to surge more than 1,000 points. The president also touted what he described as “productive” peace talks with Iran, providing relief to investors concerned about rising oil prices and their impact on inflation and economic growth.  

The message amounted to a sudden shift from Mr. Trump’s post on Saturday that threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic. That abrupt change, which caught investors by surprise, has drawn scrutiny over unusual trading activity just before Mr. Trump issued Monday’s market-moving announcement.

Read more here. 

The Pentagon is expected to send parts of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, according to two sources.

A command element and some ground forces are expected to be part of the deployment, according to a source familiar with the planning.

A U.S. official said the deployment is expected to be fewer than 1,500 troops.  

Read more here.

There was no damage to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant after it was targeted in a strike, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog reported late Tuesday night local time. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a social media post that it had “been informed by Iran that another projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant today. According to Iran, there was no damage to the NPP itself nor injuries to staff, and the condition of the plant is normal.” 

Bushehr was targeted in a strike last week, but Iran also told the IAEA at the time that there was no damage or injuries. 

The IAEA wrote Tuesday that its director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, “reiterates” the “call for maximum restraint to avoid nuclear safety risks during conflict.” 

Bushehr, Iran’s only commercial nuclear power plant, is located about 465 miles south of Tehran.

Construction on the plant began under Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the mid-1970s. 

CBS/AP

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump said Iran gave the U.S. a prize and a “big present” related to oil and gas.

“They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually, they gave us a present,” the president said of Iran. “And the present arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize. And they gave it to us. And they said they were going to give it, so that meant one thing to me — we’re dealing with the right people.”

The president said the present was related to oil and gas.

“It wasn’t nuclear-related. It was oil-and-gas-related. And it was a very nice thing they did,” he said.

The price of oil has skyrocketed since the war started, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast has cut off oil from the Persian Gulf.

Speaking alongside President Trump in the Oval Office, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he views the Pentagon as being a part of the negotiations with Iran as well.

“The air campaign that we’ve conducted, that Israel’s conducted alongside us, was one for the history books, truly,” Hegseth said. “And it’s because we have a president of the United States that, when he sends his warfighters out to fight, he unties their hands to actually go out and close with and destroy the enemy as viciously as possible from moment one.

“And that’s why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well,” the defense secretary said. “We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice, as we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future.”

President Trump expressed optimism that a peace deal will be reached with Iran, while insisting the war has already been won.

“This war has been won,” the president said in the Oval Office. “The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.”

President Trump said the killing of Iran’s leaders constitutes “regime change.”

“We killed all their leadership,” he said when CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe asked which Iranians the U.S. is negotiating with now. “And then they met to choose new leaders and we killed all of them. And now we have a new group, and we can easily do that, but let’s see how they turn out.

“It’s — we have really regime change,” the president said. “You know, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems. So this was, I think we can say, Jason, this is regime change, right?”

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the supreme leader who was killed at the beginning of the war, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

O’Keefe asked the president why he trusts Iran. 

“I don’t trust anybody,” Mr. Trump responded. “I don’t trust you “

O’Keefe asked why should the U.S. bother talking to the Iranians. 

“Because they’re going to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said.

Asked if he would send his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to conduct direct negotiations with Iran, President Trump told a reporter, “We’re in negotiations.”

“They’re doing it along with Marco, JD, we have a number of people doing it,” Mr. Trump said while answering questions in the Oval Office, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance.

“And the other side, I can tell you, they’d like to make a deal,” the president said.

A woman was killed in northern Israel on Tuesday following rocket fire from Lebanon, according to Israeli emergency services.

“Following a launch toward northern Israel … teams are reporting a woman of about 30 with no signs of life and severe multi-system trauma, and have pronounced her dead at the scene,” Israel’s Magen David Adom said in a statement, adding that teams were treating two other people in mild condition with shrapnel injuries.

This is the war’s first Israeli death due to fire from Lebanon, The Associated Press reported.

The Israeli military told AFP that dozens of rockets from Lebanon were fired at the area at the time the incident occurred. 

Hezbollah has called the decision by Lebanon’s foreign ministry to expel the newly appointed Iranian ambassador a “sin” and demanded the move be reversed immediately. 

“Hezbollah calls on the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister to demand that the Minister of Foreign Affairs… immediately reverse this decision because of its dangerous repercussions,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement Tuesday, calling the move a “national and strategic sin.”

Earlier, Lebanon ordered Iran’s ambassador to leave the country by Sunday and decided to declare him persona non grata, according to Lebanon’s foreign ministry.

Iran targeted Israel with at least nine waves of missile launches on Tuesday, including cluster munitions and conventional weapons. While some of the weapons were intercepted, falling cluster munitions and debris from interceptions caused damage to residential buildings and left at least nine people wounded, two of them seriously, according to military and medical officials.

Cluster munitions hit an apartment building in the northern city of Nesher and a community in central Israel, according to police, while in Tel Aviv, three buildings and a number of parked cars were severely damaged by a missile impact.

Israel’s national Magen David Adom [MDA] emergency rescue service said four people were lightly wounded in the Tel Aviv strike.

According to the Times of Israel, the Israeli Air Force was investigating the failure to intercept the ballistic missile that struck Tel Aviv. The newspaper cited military officials as saying the missile carried a conventional warhead, not a cluster bomb, and that several attempts to intercept it had failed.

Another missile targeting the north of Israel hit a Bedouin village, leaving three people wounded, one of them seriously, according to the MDA.

Separately, Israeli authorities reported repeated barrages of weapons launched from Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah is based, targeting northern Israel. The MDA said one impact late Tuesday afternoon in the far north, near the Golan Heights, left one woman critically wounded and two others with minor injuries. 

President Trump reshared a social media post by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday in which the Pakistani leader voiced his government’s readiness to support “efforts to pursue dialogue to end the WAR in Middle East,” including by hosting a potential meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials.

“Subject to concurrence by the US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Sharif said in his post on X.

President Trump reposted Sharif’s message on his Truth Social account without any comment. 

On Monday morning, Mr. Trump surprised many by announcing, in an all-caps post on Truth, that “good and productive” peace talks with Tehran were underway. Iran has denied any direct discussions, but a senior Iranian foreign ministry official told CBS News later Monday that the regime had received a list of points from the U.S. via an intermediary, which Tehran was reviewing.

Pakistan, which has maintained smooth relations with both the U.S. and Iran, was positioning itself as a mediator in the Mideast crisis. There have been numerous, unconfirmed reports that the Trump administration is pushing for a meeting as soon as this weekend between senior Iranian and U.S. officials, possibly in Pakistan.

The commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ naval forces said Tuesday that a container ship heading from the Port of Sharjah in the UAE was “turned back for failing to comply with legal protocols and lacking authorization to transit the Strait of Hormuz.”

IRGC navy chief Alireza Tangsiri did not provide any details about the Iranian force’s intervention to prevent the St. Kitts and Nevis-flagged container vessel SELEN from proceeding through the strait in his announcement on social media.

The MarineTraffic website’s tracking data indicate the SELEN departed the UAE port on Monday evening bound for Karachi, Pakistan, but it was stationary as of Tuesday afternoon between 10 and 20 miles off Iran’s coast in the Strait of Hormuz.

“The passage of any vessel through this waterway requires full coordination with Iran’s maritime sovereignty,” Tangsiri said in his post.

The U.K. military’s Maritime Trade Operations Center, which closely tracks and reports incidents affecting commercial vessels in the Middle East, has not reported any suspicious activity around or attacks targeting ships in the region since Sunday.

Iranian drone attacks targeting ships in and near the strait had been occurring daily, often multiple times daily, since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

The Pentagon and Israel’s military say those strikes have severely degraded Iran’s ability to launch missile and drone attacks, though Iranian missiles have continued to cause damage and claim lives in Gulf states and Israel this week.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told his Malaysian counterpart during a phone call on Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz remained “closed to vessels owned or associated with the U.S., Israel, or any party participating or assisting in their military aggression against Iran,” according to a readout of the conversation provided by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. 

“Other vessels, however, may transit safely through the strait with coordination from Iran’s competent authorities,” Araghchi was quoted as telling Malaysia’s Dato’ Sri Utama Haji Mohamad bin Hassan. 

The Iranian ministry’s statement said Araghchi explained to bin Hassan that Iran’s de facto closure of the vital shipping lane, which has fueled a steep rise in global oil and gas prices, was “a direct result of American and Israeli military aggression,” and a means by which Iran sought to “defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The statement did not mention any diplomatic efforts between Iran and the U.S. to resolve the Strait of Hormuz standoff or the wider conflict. 

President Trump claimed Monday that talks were well underway, suggesting an overall peace deal could be feasible, but Iran quickly denied any direct talks. A senior Iranian official told CBS News later Monday that the regime had “received points from the U.S. through mediators” but that Tehran was still reviewing them.

A group that has claimed a series of attacks against Jewish institutions across Europe told CBS News it would continue to target American and Israeli interests, a day after three men were captured on security camera video burning ambulances used by a Jewish nonprofit medical organization in London.

The Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia group has claimed credit for a series of arson attacks in Western Europe since the U.S. and Israeli launched their war on Iran. A representative of the group told CBS News late Monday that it would “avenge” the lives of children killed in Iran and the Gaza Strip. 

The group, whose name translates to The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous, has published propaganda videos showing attacks against mostly Jewish institutions since early March.

Experts told CBS News that Ashab al-Yamin’s amateur videos and sudden appearance in anti-Israel and anti-U.S. online spaces make it look more like an “astroturfed terror brand,” opportunistic individuals claiming responsibility for others’ actions to suit their objectives, or a loose collection of volunteer or paid recruits solicited by pro-Iran groups via social media.

Click here to read more.

The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defense said Tuesday that an Iranian missile strike in neighboring Bahrain had killed a civilian contractor working for the UAE Armed Forces.

The ministry’s statement said the contractor was a Moroccan national killed during “a routine mission” in a “blatant Iranian attack” that left five other UAE government personnel wounded.

At least two other people have been killed in Bahrain by Iran’s missile and drone strikes since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint war on the Islamic Republic 25 days ago, according to figures shared by Bahrain’s government.

The UAE has reported eight people killed in its territory, including two Emirati military service members.

The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Tuesday that the organization was coming under Israeli attack amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country.

Remarks by Ali Kolivand, head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society:

17 Red Crescent bases across the country have been struck by the aggressors.

94 ambulances and emergency vehicles were directly hit by enemy missiles, highlighting the scale of damage to the nation’s humanitarian and rescue infrastructure.

“Seventeen Red Crescent branches and Red Crescent bases have been targeted,” Ali Kolivand said in a video posted online by Iranian state media. “Some of our colleagues were injured. One of our colleagues has been martyred.”

Kolivand did not say whether the alleged attacks were carried out by U.S. or Israeli forces, but he said “aggressors” had “directly attacked by missiles” 46 ambulances and 48 other emergency vehicles, including three rescue helicopters, belonging to the organization since the war began.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos declared a state of “national energy emergency” on Tuesday, citing risks to the domestic fuel supply and energy stability created by the Middle East war.

“A state of national energy emergency is hereby declared in light of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and the resulting imminent danger posed upon the availability and stability of the country’s energy supply,” said an executive order released Tuesday evening.

The order authorizes the country’s Department of Energy to make advance payments of 15% to secure fuel contracts while taking direct action against hoarding or profiteering.

“The declaration… will enable the government, through the (energy department) and other concerned agencies, to implement responsive and coordinated measures under existing laws to address the risks posed by disruptions in the global energy supply and the domestic economy,” the order said.

The Philippines has some of the region’s highest energy costs and is heavily dependent on imported fuel to keep its power plants running.

The state of emergency was declared just hours after the country’s energy secretary said the Philippines planned to boost the output of its coal-fired power plants to keep electricity costs down as the war wreaks havoc with gas shipments. 

Pakistan “stands ready” to host talks aimed at ending the Iran war, the country’s prime minister said Tuesday.

“Subject to concurrence by the US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Shehbaz Sharif wrote on X.

“Pakistan welcomes and fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end the WAR in Middle East, in the interest of peace and stability in region and beyond,” he posted. 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to France on Friday for talks with the Group of Seven foreign ministers.

They will discuss the Middle East, the Russia-Ukraine war, “and threats across the world to peace and stability,” according to a news release.

Rubio “will meet with foreign ministers from partner nations to discuss shared security concerns and opportunities for cooperation,” the release said. 

Israel’s military says it has conducted more than 3,000 strikes across Iran since the start of Operation Roaring Lion – Israel’s campaign against the Islamic Republic. 

“Yesterday, the IDF targeted IRGC command centers, weapons storage facilities, and aerial defense systems,” the Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday on X. 

“Overnight, an additional 50+ targets were struck, including ballistic missile storage and launch,” it said. 

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that Israel’s military will control a “security zone” in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.

The hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people who have evacuated north of the river — fleeing Israeli airstrikes — wouldn’t be able to return home until “security is guaranteed” for residents of Israel’s north, he said in a meeting with top Israeli defense officials, according to a statement from his office.

The Israeli military has also destroyed bridges over the Litani River. 

Amazon’s cloud arm said Tuesday that its service in Bahrain had been disrupted after drone attacks hit the region.

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) spokesperson said the disruption was ongoing, without specifying the exact location affected or any potential damage done.

“The AWS Bahrain Region has been disrupted as a result of the ongoing conflict,” the spokesperson said, adding that the company was helping affected customers migrate to AWS servers elsewhere in the world.

“We are working closely with local authorities and prioritising the safety of our personnel.”

Bahrain and other Gulf countries have been regularly targeted by Iranian missile and drone strikes in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli campaign. AWS said in early March that drone strikes damaged two of its data centres in the United Arab Emirates and a facility in Bahrain.

AWS is the world’s leading cloud computing provider, competing with rivals including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud to offer infrastructure that underpins popular apps and websites, as well as powering generative AI. 

A source inside Iran told CBS News on Tuesday that many people who had wanted intervention in the country to end the repression of the Islamic Republic are now changing their minds.

“They supposed war could be [a] liberator and liberate them from the despotism in Iran, and theocratic despotic regimes. Now, they are thinking twice and revising,” the source said.

“They are reaching for any moment a ceasefire, no matter who is the boss… anything that can say ‘enough is enough and there is a ceasefire until further notice.'”

Lebanon has ordered Iran’s ambassador to leave the country by Sunday and decided to declare him persona non grata, according to Lebanon’s foreign ministry.

The Lebanese government has been critical of Iran and accuses its Revolutionary Guard of operating in Lebanon alongside Hezbollah, and dragging the country into another war with Israel. Israel has said that some of its strikes have targeted Revolutionary Guard officials operating in the country.

Lebanon’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Denise Rahme, told The Associated Press that Iran’s embassy will still have a charge d’affaires to head its diplomatic mission.

Iran named a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander as the new secretary of the country’s Supreme National Security Council on Tuesday, replacing Ali Larijani, who was killed in an airstrike.

Iranian state television identified the new secretary as Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr.

Zolghadr reached the rank of brigadier general in the Guard. He had been serving as the secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council.

Ali Larijani was killed in strikes last week by Israel, marking a significant moment for the Islamic Republic in the conflict.  

Bets on the oil market worth half a billion dollars were made by traders about 15 minutes before President Trump posted on social media Monday declaring “productive conversations” with Iran, the Financial Times newspaper reported. After Mr. Trump’s post, the price of crude oil tumbled.

“It’s hard to prove causality . . . but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” a market strategist at a U.S. brokerage firm told the FT.

The timing of the trades echoed large, profitable bets made on the prediction market Polymarket around the timing of the U.S. strikes on Venezuela and Iran, the FT reported.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said “the White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge, and any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”

The price of Brent crude crept back above $100 a barrel early Tuesday after plunging on President Trump’s claim the previous morning of advanced talks with Iran – which Tehran quickly denied.

Brent crude, referred to as the international standard in oil pricing, traded at $104 a barrel early Monday morning but later eased to $100.94, still a significant course reversal after it plummeted 10% on Mr. Trump’s remarks the previous day. At over $100 a barrel, the price represents an increase of at least 40% since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran on Feb. 28.

Stock markets appeared more optimistic after Mr. Trump’s remarks. Global benchmarks mostly rebounded Tuesday, with France’s CAC 40 gaining 0.4% in early trading, the German DAX edging up 0.2% and Britain’s FTSE 100 inching up less than 0.1%. 

In the U.S., Dow futures were up less than 0.1% at 46,536.00 and S&P 500 futures were also virtually unchanged, declining less than 0.1% to 6,634.50.

In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added finished up 1.4%, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.2% and South Korea’s Kospi got a significant bump to close up 2.7% along with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, which rose 2.8%.

CBS/AP

Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement Tuesday accusing Israel of “taking advantage of the regional war environment and the media’s focus” on Iran to ramp up its attacks against alleged Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The IRGC accused Israel of “widespread war crimes against civilians in Lebanon and Palestine, crossing all red lines in genocide.”

The Israeli military acknowledges ongoing operations in Gaza, where a ceasefire technically ended the three-year war with Hamas late last year, though there are routine accusations that the agreement is being violated.

Israel has announced multiple expansions of its operations in Lebanon since the Iran war began, including airstrikes across the country and ground forces seizing ground in the south and ordering tens of thousands of civilians to flee. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed the assault will continue until the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah no longer poses a threat to communities in northern Israel. 

The Israel Defense Forces says it takes all possible measures to avoid harming civilians, including evacuation orders, though residents have reported multiple strikes near the Lebanese capital that came without warning.

In its statement Tuesday, the IRGC said unless Israel changes its tactics, “enemy gathering points” in northern Israel and Gaza “will be targeted without hesitation by heavy missile and drone attacks.”

A missile slammed into a street in central Tel Aviv as Iran kept up its barrages targeting Israel and Gulf Arab states on Tuesday, hours after President Trump said the U.S. was in talks with Tehran to end the war.

Iran dismissed the claim of ongoing negotiations as “fakenews is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets,” and Israel’s leader vowed to continue striking Iran and Lebanon regardless of diplomatic forays, to “protect our vital interests, in any case.”

Iran fired multiple waves of missiles at Israel early Tuesday, with reports of an impact in the country’s north. In Tel Aviv, a missile with a 220 pound warhead slipped through Israeli defenses and slammed into a street, blowing out the windows of an apartment building and sending smoke billowing.

“We saw destruction, smoke, and chaos,” rescue service worker Yoel Moshe told reporters at the scene minutes after the missile struck. Four people suffered minor wounds, he said.

In Kuwait, power lines were hit from air defense shrapnel, causing partial electricity outages in several hours. Missile alert sirens sounded in Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry said it had destroyed 19 Iranian drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province.

Earlier in the day, Israel pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs again, saying it was targeting infrastructure used by the Iran-linked Hezbollah militant group. A strike on a residential apartment southeast of the Lebanese capital killed at least two people, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

While President Trump said Monday that he was extending his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic for five days to allow for talks, postponing his threat to attack Iranian power plants, the Israeli and U.S. militaries have said strikes will continue against Iranian military targets.

CBS/AP

The head of the International Energy Agency says the global economy faces a “major, major threat” because of the Iran war.

Fatih Birol told Australia’s National Press Club in Canberra the crisis in the Middle ⁠East has had a worse impact on oil than the two oil shocks of the 1970s combined, and a worse effect on gas markets than the Russia-Ukraine war.