Iran-US war latest: Trump says Tehran not ready to make right deal after threatening Economic D-Day

An Iranian military official has called on Qatar to transfer detained Iranian pilots to a hospital on land, saying they were being held on water and were in “poor physical condition”, Tasnim news agency reported.

Mohammad Baqerzadeh, commander of the Committee for the Search for Missing Persons of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, said the location where the pilots were being held was unsuitable and requested that the International Committee of the Red Cross send an air ambulance to Qatar to expedite the return of injured and sick detainees to Iran.

Qatar denied last week that it was holding Iranian pilots, saying they had violated Qatari airspace earlier this year and failed to respond to attempts to contact them.

The chief of staff ​of Iran’s armed forces, Major General Ali Abdollahi, promised yesterday that Iran would respond to enemy threats militarily with “crushing, punishing and ‌devastating responses”.

Still, President Masoud Pezeshkian called for a diplomatic solution.

“It would be â better to end the war today, when we are powerful and have dignity, and the whole world acknowledges our victory and emphasizes â that America, contrary to all regulations, attacked our schools, hospitals, and infrastructure and is hated in the world,” Pezeshkian said, according to the ISNA news agency.

The Pentagon is considering reducing US military presence in the Middle East following the conclusion of the Iran war, according to a report.

Troops could be withdrawn from the Persian Gulf, officials told The Washington Post, following months of attacks by Iranian forces that have targeted US bases across the region since the war began in late February.

The Pentagon's policy office is evaluating US regional presence, with US Central Command (Centcom) and Joint Staff also looking at the situation, a senior Pentagon official told the outlet.

Donald Trump's Board of Peace published a 15-point roadmap for Gaza in late July in which Hamas would hand its weapons to a committee of Palestinian technocrats, certified by an international verification body, and Israel would withdraw from the strip in phases.

After Israel officially rejected the plan on August 9, US envoy Jared Kushner flew to the Egyptian coast to meet Hamas representatives.

From there, he travelled to Jerusalem where it was proposed the weapons would instead be handed over under the supervision of an American general. This change to the disarmament process is a clear illustration of what has gone wrong with each agreement reached over Gaza since January 2025: none have established, in advance, who certifies compliance.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said this morning that the imminent US announcement of new economic sanctions on Iran was an “assertion of extraterritorial sovereignty over every independent member state of the United Nations”.

“Such secondary sanctions â find no foundation in international law,” he said in a post on X.

US president Donald Trump, who has warned of economic consequences ​against any â country that provides “any type of lifeline to Iran,” said ‌yesterday that Washington was observing “what happens” in the conflict.

Iran has claimed that Qatar was holding its pilots captive in “poor physical condition” on water.

Iranian officials have called on Qatar to transfer the detained pilots to a hospital on land, according to the Tasnim news agency.

Qatar on Tuesday said that an Iranian delegation travelled to Doha and collected the remains of one of its pilots.

However, Tehran has claimed that three pilots who went missing after their aircraft entered Qatari airspace and were shot down in March were still in the country.

The Pentagon says 756 US service members have been wounded and 18 killed in the war against Iran since late February, bringing total US military casualties to 774.

The figures, per the Defence Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) data, were updated after the Pentagon added 50 wounded personnel to its casualty database.

The update comes amid renewed US strikes on Iran, stalled efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and US president Donald Trump's announcement of a major new economic campaign against Iran.

Iran has agreed to allow some Iraqi oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, after Iraqi parliament speaker Haibat al-Halbousi requested special permission from his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

According to Iran's official IRNA news agency, the move is aimed at protecting Iraq's oil exports and economic interests, but Iran has not said how many tankers will be allowed through or for how long.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah, has criticised the government's proposed fuel price increases, calling them an “unforgivable mistake†that would worsen hardship for Iranians.

In a post on X, Pahlavi wrote: “While the Islamic Republic squanders the nation’s resources on foreign terrorists and domestic oppressors, the regime’s officials and their cronies compete with one another in plundering national wealth, and the regime’s ineptitude in governing the country has broken the backs of households and impoverished Iranians. Imposing fuel price hikes on the people is an unforgivable mistake and a profound betrayal. Fuel prices cannot be compared to those in other countries when Iranians’ incomes are in rials and below the poverty line.

“Fuel and energy issues are managed on a daily basis without crisis in nearly every country in the world, even many with far fewer resources than Iran.â€

He continued: “On one hand, the IRGC smuggling mafia siphons off tens of millions of litres of Iran’s capital daily through tankers, pipelines, and smuggling docks; on the other, the automotive mafia foists low-quality, high-consumption vehicles on the nation. This criminal sect, incapable of solving the problem, uses its propaganda apparatus to shift the burden of fuel shortages onto the people, portraying them as the cause of increased consumption and fuel smuggling.

“The Islamic Republic is an incompetent, corrupt, and anti-Iranian regime that is itself the root of these disorders and will never be capable of resolving them.â€