The US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz says striking Iran was necessary to protect American allies, prevent proxy militias, and to ensure that Tehran can never “threaten the world with a nuclear weapon.”
US President Donald Trump says Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in joint US-Israeli strikes. Israeli officials cite “growing signs” he’s dead. Iranian state media deny the claim, saying Khamenei remains in command. At least 201 reported killed as Iran retaliates.
Jack Lisowski pulled off a stunning comeback to beat five-time champion John Higgins and reach the Welsh Open final for the first time.
The 34-year-old Lisowski came from 3-1 behind to beat the Scot 6-5 in Llandudno to set up a meeting with fellow English left-hander Barry Hawkins in Sunday’s final (13:00 GMT).
He made breaks of 95, 79, 138, 58 and a closing 78 to deny 50-year-old Higgins a shot at the Ray Reardon Trophy.
“I knew I was playing well. I turned the game around after the interval and I was just thinking ‘keep it going’,” Lisowski told BBC Sport.
“Sometimes when the pressure’s like that, it gets a little bit easier because you go into auto-pilot.
“The crowd was amazing. I felt at 4-3 up, ‘I’m playing really good’, but you’re playing John Higgins. It’s like you’re playing a god.
Four-time world champion Higgins started the semi-final encounter strongly and led at the interval, helped by a 73 break in frame three.
But Lisowski was rampant immediately after the interval and won three successive frames – with Higgins failing to score a single point – to take a 4-3 lead.
The first of those saw Lisowksi miss the black for a century, but the crowd on the north Wales coast were soon treated to a sublime ton from the man who beat Judd Trump in the Northern Ireland Open final in October for his first ranking title.
Higgins responded with an 82 break to halt Lisowski’s surge and level the contest, but the match got away from the ‘Wizard of Wishaw’.
Earlier, Hawkins resisted a fightback as he clinched a 6-4 victory over Wu Yize to reach the Welsh Open final for the second time in his career.
‘The Hawk’ started strongly, winning four of the first five frames, with 72 and 66 breaks among his highlights.
But China’s Wu, 22, responded in stunning fashion to level the match at 4-4 by reeling off three consecutive frames thanks to a pair of half-centuries and a 122 break.
“I’m over the moon, I’m pleased with that. He threw everything at me at the end there,” Hawkins told BBC Sport.
“4-1 up, I miscued a red with the rest and then I didn’t see a ball. He just went into one.
Barry Hawkins 6-4 Wu Yize
Iran has retaliated, firing at Israel, as well as US military assets, in the Middle East.
The United States and Israel have attacked Iran, and Tehran has retaliated, firing missiles at Israeli targets and US assets in the region.
The attacks come after weeks of Washington’s massive build-up of military assets in the Middle East, as well as indirect talks between the US and Iran over its nuclear programme.
So, how dangerous is the situation?
Presenter: James Bays
Guests:
Daniel Levy – president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator
Mehran Kamrava – professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar
Michael Carrick says the chance to inflict damage on one of the men thought to be a contender to be Manchester United‘s next head coach will not be a motivating factor in Sunday’s game against Crystal Palace.
Palace manager Oliver Glasner is second favourite for the permanent role with most bookmakers, despite a troubled campaign in which he has openly criticised his club’s board, lost in the FA Cup to Macclesfield and fallen out with supporters amid a struggling Premier League campaign.
Interim Manchester United boss Carrick is now the favourite, thanks to five wins and a draw from his six games in charge.
It is a record which, after Aston Villa’s shock defeat at Wolves on Friday, means United will go third in the table for the first time since the end of the 2022-23 campaign if they beat Palace at Old Trafford.
That is enough of a motivation for Carrick, who says there is no personal element to his preparations at all.
“It is not something that would cross my mind until you mentioned it,” he said.
“It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.
“I have total respect for Crystal Palace and Oliver, in terms of the team that they are and the role they are doing. But it’s the next game for us.”
Palace were ahead of United in the table when the two sides met on 30 November.
One influential figure in United’s 2-1 success that day, Matthijs de Ligt, has not played since because of a back injury. Fellow centre-half Lisandro Martinez missed Monday’s win at Everton with a calf problem which Carrick regards as “a small issue” that will not keep the Argentine out “for very long”.
With fifth-placed Chelsea due to play Arsenal and Aston Villa in their next two games, this is looking like a chance for United to cement their position in the Champions League places.
It is an aim few thought likely when Ruben Amorim was sacked in January.
“We are in a decent spot,” Carrick said. “We feel like we are moving forwards, but it’s just about what’s in front of us, and trying to get to where we want to be, which is a little bit higher in the league.
Despite a second-term pledge to end US involvement in costly and destructive foreign wars, President Donald Trump has initiated a full-scale offensive to topple the Iranian government just more than a year after returning to office.
The attacks on Iran, considered a violation of international law, mark the most aggressive escalation yet of Trump’s embrace of military power to pummel foreign governments and extract concessions demanded by his administration.
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Despite widespread scepticism among the US public about Trump’s military campaigns abroad, his administration has carried out brash attacks on the governments of Iran and Venezuela, while also stepping up US strikes in the name of counterterrorism in Africa and the Middle East.
Here’s a quick look at Trump’s military actions abroad since returning to office in January 2025.
The joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began on Saturday morning Tehran time have so far killed at least 201 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, and fuelled fears about a widening war that could bring chaos and destruction to countries across the region.
The US strikes, which Trump said were “major combat operations” aimed at regime change in Tehran, appear far more extensive than a previous US attack on Iran in June 2025.
Those strikes, which, like the current attacks, took place as Iran was engaged in diplomatic talks with the US, targeted Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
Trump said that the attacks, which took place during a 12-day war launched by Israel against Iran that killed more than 600 Iranians, had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear capabilities.
Both US attacks on Iran are considered illegal under international law.
The Trump administration carried out an attack on Venezuela in January 2026, bombing the capital, Caracas, and abducting President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime figure of US ire.
The Venezuelan minister of defence said that 83 people were killed in the attack, including members of the Venezuelan and Cuban security services, as well as Venezuelan civilians.
Since September, the US has carried out at least 45 strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels in Latin America and the Caribbean, killing at least 151 people, according to a tally from the watchdog group Airwars.
Trump and his allies have framed the strikes as an effort to combat regional narcotics trafficking and have declared several criminal groups as foreign terrorist organisations, stating that drug trafficking is the equivalent of an armed attack on the US.
UN officials and international law experts have roundly rejected those arguments, stating that the strikes are a campaign of illegal extrajudicial killings that erase the distinction between criminal activity and armed conflict.
The Trump administration has also stepped up military operations in Africa, expanding collaboration with local governments and carrying out air strikes under the guise of counterterrorism.
In Nigeria, Trump has carried out a series of attacks and deployed 100 US military personnel to train Nigerian forces, threatening US strikes if the government does not do more to address what Trump says is a “genocide” of Christians in Nigeria by Muslim groups.
Nigerian officials say that the largely debunked claim miscasts widespread and violent civil conflict that has racked the country for years as a case of anti-Christian persecution.
Trump announced that the US had carried out “powerful and deadly” attacks targeting what he said were members of ISIL (ISIS) affiliates in northwestern Nigeria in December 2025, with the government’s cooperation.
Questions have emerged about whether the targets struck were in fact associated with ISIL, which is not known to operate in the region targeted in the strikes.
The Trump administration has expanded US military engagement in Somalia, where it has long worked with the government to counter armed groups such as al-Shabab and a regional offshoot of ISIL.
The US has massively stepped up air strikes in Somalia during Trump’s second term, with the New America Foundation finding that the US carried out at least 111 attacks in 2025. Monitors say the figure surpasses the total of attacks under the George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations combined.
The US launched dozens of naval and air strikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebel group between March and May of 2025, destroying infrastructure and killing dozens of civilians.
The Houthis had carried out attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea as a form of pressure on Israel to end its genocidal war on Gaza.
Human Rights Watch said in June that a US strike on the country’s Ras Isa port in Hodeidah in April 2025 killed more than 80 civilians and should be investigated as a war crime.
A ceasefire brokered by Oman was announced in May.
The US conducted strikes on ISIL targets in Syria in December 2025, following an attack that killed two US soldiers and a translator in the city of Palymra.
Trump said the US was “inflicting very serious retaliation” on those responsible for the attack, which the Syrian government said was carried out by an employee of the state security services who was set to be expelled due to his hardline views.
The US killed a high-profile ISIL commander in a strike in the al-Anbar province of Iraq in March 2025.
The group’s second-in-command, Abdallah “Abu Khadijah” Malli Muslih al-Rifai, and another unnamed operative were reported to have been killed in the strikes.