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Refugees return to Syria as caretaker prime minister appointed

Rebuilding Syria will be a colossal task following a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people

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Refugees from Syria’s long civil war were making their way home on Wednesday, as a new interim prime minister said he had been appointed with the backing of the rebels who toppled President Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. officials, engaging with rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), urged them not to assume automatic leadership of the country but instead run an inclusive process to form a transitional government.

The new government must “uphold clear commitments to fully respect the rights of minorities, facilitate the flow of humanitarian assistance to all in need, prevent Syria from being used as a base for terrorism or posing a threat to its neighbours,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

HTS is a former al Qaeda affiliate that led the anti-Assad revolt and has lately downplayed its jihadist roots, Reuters reported.

In a brief address on state television on Tuesday, Mohammed al-Bashir, a figure little known across most of Syria, said he would lead the interim authority until March 1.

“Today we held a cabinet meeting that included a team from the Salvation Government that was working in Idlib and its vicinity, and the government of the ousted regime,” he said.

Bashir ran the rebel-led Salvation Government before the 12-day lightning rebel offensive swept into Damascus.

Rebuilding Syria will be a colossal task following a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Cities have been bombed to ruins, swathes of countryside depopulated, the economy gutted by international sanctions and millions of refugees still live in camps after one of the biggest displacements of modern times.

With European countries pausing asylum applications from Syrians, some refugees from Turkey and elsewhere began making their way home.

Ala Jabeer cried as he prepared to cross from Turkey into Syria with his 10-year-old daughter on Tuesday, 13 years after the war forced him to flee his home.

He returns without his wife and three of his children who died in devastating earthquakes that struck the region last year.

“God willing, things will be better than under Assad’s government. We’ve already seen that his oppression is over,” he said.

“The most important reason for me to return is that my mother lives in Latakia. She can take care of my daughter, so I can work,” Jabeer said.

In the Syrian capital Damascus, banks reopened for the first time since Assad’s overthrow on Tuesday. Shops also opened again, traffic returned to the roads, cleaners were out sweeping the streets and there were fewer armed men about.

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Iran, US continue escalating attacks, recriminations over peace deal

US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

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Iran and the US continued their attacks in the Gulf as each accused the ​other of violating an increasingly precarious interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four-month-old war, Reuters reported.

Shortly after President Donald Trump warned the US might “militarily complete the job”, Iran early on Sunday ‌launched missiles and drones on US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, continuing a series of escalating attacks.

Beyond the Gulf, Israel said it had struck Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as fighting continued in an area Tehran says is key to its peace deal with Washington.

The U.S. military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran had largely cut off for most of ​the conflict.

The 14-point U.S.-Iran interim agreement was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on February 28, and reopen the strait to shipping while ​talks proceeded on more deep-seated issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.

One round of mediated talks, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, ⁠was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington then waived sanctions on Tehran, but the fighting and recriminations have since resumed and intensified.

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be ​reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump posted on social media. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

About an hour after Trump’s post, ​the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while sirens sounded in Bahrain, according to that country’s interior ministry.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent US strikes against Iran, read the report.

The Guards said in a statement the US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, according to state-run Press ​TV. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.

A US official, confirming the attacks on US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US ​sites in the Middle East but that the situation was still unfolding.

Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, and the foreign ministry there condemned the attacks as a deliberate and repeated violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty ‌and security. It ⁠urged the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.

US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement, adding that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said explosions were heard in Sirik in southern Iran, without providing details. The Guards said “America’s blind shots at ​Sirik will not resolve our dominance over the Strait ​of Hormuz. But our shots at violators will ⁠remind the rest of the vessels of the clear passage route.”

Saturday’s tanker attack in the strait followed one on a cargo ship on Thursday that triggered the latest escalation. Iran is seeking to assert control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the war and which had just begun ​to reopen after months of disruption, Reuters reported.

Hundreds of ships, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf since war broke out. As they began ​leaving through the strait over ⁠the past two weeks, oil prices have tumbled close to pre-war levels on the surge in supply.

Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.

In Lebanon, Israel said on Sunday it had killed Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and struck a rocket launcher in the ⁠Nabatieh area.

Iran ​accuses the US of violating its commitment under the peace deal to sustaining a ceasefire in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded ​in March in pursuit of Hezbollah.

Israel, which is not a party to the US-Iran deal, and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday. But these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it ​has seized and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.

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US strikes Iran in response to attack on cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz

The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.

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The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ​ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.

U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone ‌storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.

Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.

Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel ​and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would ​be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.

Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf ⁠states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.

“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by ​Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

The U.S. military said it ​would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.

Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.

“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” ​Vance said on X.

Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik ​toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.

On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at ‌eastern Hormozgan as ⁠saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.

The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.

“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. ​If the aggression is repeated, our response will ​be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.

The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a ​commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.

“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted ​on X.

Before the renewed outbreak ⁠of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.

Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.

Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to ⁠assuage concerns ​about a spike in global food prices.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies ​about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”

Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser ​to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.

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Iran’s Pezeshkian says without missiles his country would be ‘just like Gaza’

The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has defended Iran’s ballistic missile program, saying the country would have suffered the same fate as Gaza without its missile capabilities.

Speaking during a visit to Pakistan, which has played a mediating role in discussions between Tehran and Washington aimed at securing a lasting end to the Middle East conflict, Pezeshkian said Iran’s missiles serve as a critical deterrent.

“If the missiles we have for our defense did not exist, Israel and the United States would have ploughed Iran just like Gaza, showing no mercy to either the old or the young,” he said.

The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.

“We will never negotiate with anyone, under any circumstances, ever, about our defensive capabilities,” he added.

Before the recent conflict, the United States had pushed for Iran’s ballistic missile program and its support for regional armed groups to be included in talks over Tehran’s nuclear activities.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump has recently signaled a more flexible position on the missile issue. Speaking at the G7 summit in France last week, Trump said, “If other countries have them, it’s a little unfair for them not to have some,” referring to missile capabilities.

 
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