Iran attacks Gulf countries following fresh US strikes – Middle East crisis live

In comments given during a telephone interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press programme , the US president, Donald Trump, said the strait ⁠of Hormuz is open to commercial traffic, despite Iran having earlier claimed to have closed the waterway “until further notice” after the latest escalation in fighting.

The vast majority of the interview was Trump talking about the death of his close ally Lindsey Graham , the 71-year-old US senator who died on Saturday evening following a “brief and sudden illness”, according to his office.

But when asked he gave brief comments on the status of the strait of Hormuz towards the end of the interview. Trump said:

double quotation mark It’s open. We bombed the hell out of them last night. They are very, very evil and sick people.

We had meetings with them… they agreed to a deal yesterday, a perfect deal for us. No nuclear, no this, no that, no nothing.

They gave up everything and then after that they left the room and then within an hour they launched a drone at a ship.

I said you people are sick, you are sick people. And so it is one of those things. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about one person today, Lindsey Graham.