Full House and Senate to be briefed on Iran strikes – US politics live

Rubio, Hegseth and Caine to address lawmakersSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxHello and welcome to the US politics live blog.With all members of Congress across both houses due to be briefed today on the Iran strikes, the Trump administration has presented a shifting new justification for its war.In his first conference since the joint US-Israel operation against Iran, Donald Trump laid out his administration’s objectives moving forward. This includes destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating their navy, preventing Iran from ever having nuclear weapons, and ensuring the country “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”.In a heated Pentagon press conference, Pete Hegseth initially said that US troops wouldn’t be in Iran, but later said he wouldn’t get into details. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless … Our generation knows better, and so does this president.”US Central Command (Centcom) said that six service members have been killed in action, and eighteen have been seriously wounded in the US-Israel war on Iran.The US state department is urging Americans to “depart now” from more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, following the US-Israel strikes on Iran. Hundreds of thousands of travelers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest airports, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.Kuwait air defences mistakenly shot down three US F-15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations, the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Monday. All six crew members ejected safely, were safely recovered and in stable condition.In an appearance on Fox News, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s “ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program” would have been “immune within months” if the United States and Israel had not struck the country this weekend. Continue reading...