Oman’s foreign minister reaffirmed on Tuesday his country’s call for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict between Iran and the US and Israel and a return to responsible regional diplomacy.

“There are off-ramps available; let’s use them,” Badr Albusaidi said in a post on X.

The Gulf country had been mediating talks between Iran and the United States before the Israeli and US airstrikes began on Saturday.

Israel and the US’s war on Iran is just days old, yet it is already unfolding as an environmental catastrophe that will reverberate across the region for years to come.

As the death toll mounts, so too does the devastation from oil spills from damaged supertankers, heavy metal contamination from bombed military sites and leaks of volatile chemicals from damaged fossil energy infrastructure.

A rapid environmental assessment by researchers from the Conflict and Environment Observatory (Ceobs) identified 120 individual incidents of environmental harm in the first 72 hours following the surprise attack on Iran on Saturday night.

“Three days in and we’re already seeing pollution incidents that are placing people and ecosystems at risk of acute and chronic harm, as well as trends that could lead to substantial environmental harm as the war continues,” Ceobs’s report says.

Researchers from Ceobs searched social and media for incidents before undertaking a verification and remote environmental assessment of each.

The most commonly reported targets were military facilities, with the US and Israel attacking missile bases, airfields, weapons depots, and military production facilities across Iran; Iran’s retaliation focused on US air and naval bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE. Israel has also carried out dozens of attacks on alleged weapons depots and launch sites in Lebanon.

Attacks on military sites risk causing pollution from fuels, oils, heavy metals, energetic compounds, and PFAS, with fires burning at such locations likely to release toxic contaminants such as dioxins and furans, Ceobs said.

Attacks on missile sites, which the US had identified as a main objective of its assault on Iran, were particularly concerning, according to the report, which noted that “some liquid propellants—such as unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and inhibited red fuming nitric acid used in SCUD-type systems—are highly toxic and have posed serious management and disposal challenges in other conflict settings”.

As a site of major fossil fuel production, the Persian Gulf is already beset with multiple related pollution problems, which the outbreak of war in the region can only exacerbate. Along with extensive damage to Iran’s navy and port facilities, five oil tankers – the MKD Vyom, the Stena Imperative, the Skylight, the Ocean Electra and the Hercules Star – have been hit so far during the conflict; however, whether they have begun spilling oil is not yet known.

A drone strike at Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanurah oil refinery is just one of a number of attacks on facilities for producing, refining, storing and exporting oil. The attack triggered a large fire and smoke plume. Ceobs said, “Such plumes can contain particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and toxic organic compounds—including PAHs and potentially dioxins—posing health risks to downwind communities.”

As well as the local effects on the environment of the Persian Gulf, the war will have consequences for the global environment through changes in greenhouse gas emissions, Ceobs notes.

“Attacks on oil and gas sites will release methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but the curtailment of production … does not necessarily reduce emissions.

“Instead, energy price signals can lead to short-term substitution, as well as more complex downstream energy supply changes over longer timeframes.”

Americans across the Middle East are scrambling to leave the region after the US State Department late on Monday urged US citizens in 14 countries there to depart immediately as the conflict with Iran widens.

Mora Namdar, the US assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, issued the advisory on Monday, urging Americans to “DEPART NOW” from more than a dozen countries, citing “serious safety risks”.

The warning was issued to US citizens in Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The BBC estimates that there are between 500,000 and 1 million US nationals living in the Middle East. In her message on Monday, Namdar urged Americans to leave “using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks” – and instructed those needing help arranging travel to contact the state department. So far, the US has not organised government evacuation flights.

Since Saturday, US and Israeli forces have carried out large-scale strikes across Iran, including an attack on the compound of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli strike on Saturday. Iran has retaliated, including by launching missiles toward Israeli and US military facilities in the region.

The State Department advisory on Monday came as major airlines have cancelled flights to and from the region since Saturday, and several airports have paused flights and scaled back operations, leaving thousands stranded.

Israel has deployed soldiers on the ground in southern Lebanon and is carrying out heavy airstrikes in the country as conflict in the Middle East continues to spread.

It comes after the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched missiles and drones toward Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Nosheen Iqbal speaks to the Beirut-based journalist Will Christou…

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was upset with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has not joined the US-Israeli attack on Iran but did let US forces use UK bases.

“I’m not happy with the UK,” Trump said as he met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House.

“It’s taken three or four days for us to work out where we can land,” Trump said. “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

It came as Trump said the United States would cut off all trade with Spain after the European country refused to let the US military use its bases for missions linked to strikes on Iran.

“Spanish has been terrible,” Trump told reporters, adding that he had told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “cut off all dealings” with Spain.

“We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he added.

US president Donald Trump has claimed that Iran was going to attack before he did, walking back top diplomat Marco Rubio’s assertion that Israel triggered the war.

“I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” Trump told reporters as he met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House.

Trump said that the US and Israel are hitting Iran, “where it is much more appropriate”. However, this comes after the worst mass casualty of the strikes so far was at a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran. The attack killed at least 168 people.

“We’re hitting them very hard,” Trump said today. “They no longer have air protection. They no longer have any detection facilities remaining. And so they’re going to be in for a lot of hurt. These are wicked people.”

The outcome and duration of the war in the Middle East may be decided by a grim calculus based on the size of Iran’s drone and missile stocks vs vital air defence munitions held by the US, Israel and Gulf states, analysts and officials say.

Since Saturday, Iran and its proxies have sought to counter the intensive joint US and Israeli offensive with more than 1,000 strikes against targets across almost a dozen countries spread over 1,200 miles. With its antiquated air force unable to compete with those of Israel and the US, Tehran has relied on its arsenal of missiles and drones.

The geographical extent of Iran’s retaliatory attacks has made the conflict the widest in the Middle East since the Second World War. Israeli and US aircraft and missiles have struck hundreds of sites across Iran, without losing a plane to hostile fire.

The US and Israel are seeking to destroy as much of Iran’s missile stockpile and infrastructure as possible, targeting launchers, stores and personnel.

Stacie Pettyjohn, the director of the defence programme at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said the conflict had become “a bit of a salvo competition”, a military strategic concept describing an exchange of simultaneous volleys of large numbers of precision-guided weapons between opposing forces.

“The question is who has the deeper magazines of key weapons, and the big unknown is how deep Iran’s inventories are,” Pettyjohn said.

Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s death is “historically significant” but will not “automatically” lead to the fall of the Iranian system, the widow of the country’s last shah told AFP in an interview Tuesday.

“The passing of a man – however central he may be to the architecture of power – does not automatically mean the end of a system,” said Farah Pahlavi, three days after US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic killed Khamenei.

“What will be decisive,” said the 87-year-old, is “the ability of the Iranian people to unite around a peaceful, orderly and sovereign transition to a state governed by the rule of law,” which she added her son Reza Pahlavi “is in the process of preparing.” ”.

The widow, who has lived in exile in Paris since being driven out of Iran with her husband in the 1979 revolution, urged the international community to respect the right of people in Iran to choose their path forward.

“What I want is for the international community to clearly support the fundamental rights of Iranians: the right to choose their leaders, to express themselves freely, and to live in dignity and prosperity,” she said.

“The support must go to the people, not to geopolitical calculations.”

Pahlavi also called on the Iranian authorities “to show restraint and avoid any bloodshed”.

Israel struck a headquarters belonging to the Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya, an ally of Hamas and Hezbollah, in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on Tuesday, state media reported.

“The Israeli enemy carried out an air raid a short while ago, targeting a headquarters of the Jamaa Islamiya” in the coastal city, state media said.

The group had previously been the target of Israeli strikes in Lebanon after claiming responsibility for rocket launches toward Israel during the war between Israel and Hezbollah that began in October 2023.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday offered US allies in the Middle East a swap of some of their air defence missiles in exchange for Kyiv’s vaunted drone interceptors to better protect them from Iranian drone attacks.

The Israeli and US strikes on Iran have triggered retaliatory Iranian strikes – including with drones – across the region.

Russia has been using Iranian-designed Shahed drones throughout its four-year invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv has developed a range of cheap and effective drone interceptors – aerial crafts designed to hit incoming attack drones mid-air – that it says are world-leading, AFP reported.

At the same time, Ukraine is struggling with a shortage of PAC-3 air defence missiles – expensive ammunition fired at incoming Russian missiles to defend Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

“The number one issue is how to protect their skies. We ourselves live with this question,” Zelenskyy said.

“Let’s speak about weapons that we’re short of: PAC-3 missiles – if they give them to us, we will give them interceptors,” he added.

With 30 people inside the neighbourhood bomb shelter on Sunday afternoon and sirens wailing outside, Oren Katz went to close the reinforced door.

It was a typical act of kindness for the father of four, but it cost him his life. An Iranian missile struck the shelter directly as he reached the entrance.

“Even when you were in trouble, you would say ‘give’, and that giving cost you your life,” his wife, Samadi, said in a tribute at his funeral. “You went upstairs to close the shelter and it took a heavy toll. I can’t digest it,” the Ynet news site quoted her saying.

Katz was one of nine victims, four of them teenage children, killed in the deadliest attack Israel has sustained since it joined the US in attacking Iran on Saturday.

The Biton family mourned the loss of three children: 13-year-old Sarah, 15-year-old Avigail, and their 16-year-old brother Yaakov, who left behind their parents and one sibling. The other boy killed was 16-year-old Gabriel Baruch Revah, Israeli media reported.

The force of the explosion entirely destroyed a synagogue that had stood over the shelter and left the thick, protective roof caved in. Astonishingly much of the structure withstood the force of the blast, despite its age and the intensity of the strike, said an officer who led the search and rescue mission.

“Even with the very severe impact that was here, and the price that was paid in this attack, the vast majority of people who were in the bomb shelter came out of it alive,” Lt Col Oded Revivi said at the site.

“In the bomb shelter there were over 30 people; two are dead, one is injured and 28 people came out alive,” said Revivi, adding that seven people were killed outside the shelter.

On Tuesday, strikes targeted Mehrabad, one of Iran’s two airports that mainly handles domestic flights.

The Mehr news agency published photos showing a cloud of grey smoke rising into the sky behind what appeared to be a runway.

“The American-Zionist terrorists attacked the area around the Mehrabad airport” in the capital’s west, it said.