Iran war updates: Tehran denies Iran targeted UAE with missiles

A former US State Department adviser on Syria tells Al Jazeera’s This is America that the improved relationship between Washington and Damascus makes sense.

Syria’s new leadership’s priorities overlap with US interests, namely, regional stability and containing armed groups.

Watch below for more analysis:

This live page is now closed, but our 24-hour coverage of the conflict continues.

Join us for all the latest developments, analyses and reactions here.

We will be closing this live page shortly and moving over to a new one, but before we do, here are the main developments of the day:

• Iran has rejected accusations from the UAE that it launched two ballistic missiles at the Gulf country as “baseless”.
• The UAE’s Foreign Ministry says Iranian missiles targeted maritime traffic and has announced that “all trade, commercial exchange and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice”.
• Syria condemned Israeli strikes on the Idlib airport in identical letters to the UN secretary-general and the Security Council president.
• The Israeli prime minister’s office says Israel and Syria had agreed to a security “status quo” that Syria was “on the verge of breaching” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo. It added that Israel “will not tolerate threats to its security and would welcome a return to the status quo”. But a Syrian Foreign Ministry diplomatic source told Al Jazeera that no agreement existed between Syria and Israel involving a specific security arrangement.
• At least seven Palestinians, including a child, were killed in an Israeli attack west of Gaza City. The Israeli military said it targeted “Hamas commanders”.
• A US official has told Al Jazeera that Trump has asked the US negotiating team to hold off on talks with Iran until Tehran is “ready to make a deal.”

Syria has strongly condemned “Israeli aggression” of eight air strikes on the Abu al-Duhur military airport in Idlib in identical letters sent to the UN secretary-general and the president of the UN Security Council, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.

The letters said that continued Israeli attacks since December 8, 2024, including shelling, incursions and abductions, have persisted “despite Syrian restraint”, and are obstructing efforts towards stability while threatening the region with further tension.

Syria demanded an immediate halt to the attacks, and called on Israel to implement the 1974 disengagement agreement and fully withdraw from territory it entered after December 8, 2024, as well as from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

The letters said Syria’s pursuit of being “a pillar of security and stability” at the regional and international level does not conflict with its right to defend its interests “by all legitimate means guaranteed by international laws and norms”.

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Israeli forces moved into the UN-monitored buffer zone in the Golan Heights and have carried out repeated strikes inside Syria, saying they are aimed at preventing weapons from falling into the hands of armed groups. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since the 1967 war and annexed it in 1981, in a move not recognised by the UN.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised US Secretary of State Marco Rubio after Rubio announced new sanctions on International Criminal Court (ICC) officials.

Rubio said he had launched a diplomatic campaign last month “to dismantle the ICC’s threat to our national sovereignty”, and that the Trump administration was sanctioning ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye as part of an “unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court”.

Responding to Rubio’s post on X, Netanyahu described the ICC as having become “a kangaroo court” that uses the language of international law to disguise abuses of power. He said he commended Rubio for leading the Trump administration’s “determined efforts against the ICC’s illegitimate overreach” and for making clear that the court’s leadership “will face consequences”.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel has rejected the warrants as anti-Semitic and without legal basis.

The US, which is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the court, sanctioned then-ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan in 2025 and has separately sanctioned several ICC judges and officials over the court’s Israel-related investigations and its probe into US conduct in Afghanistan.

The UAE has condemned Israeli air strikes on Abu al-Duhur military airport in Syria’s Idlib province, calling the attacks a “flagrant violation” of international law.

In a statement, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry said it “rejects in the strongest terms” the violation of Syria’s sovereignty and threats to its security and stability. It said the ongoing Israeli aggression on Syrian territory constitutes a breach of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, which Israel is obligated to respect.

The ministry called on the international community to take immediate action to halt the repeated attacks on Syrian territory and stop all escalation that would increase regional tensions and threaten international peace and security.

The strikes on Abu al-Duhur airport are the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on military sites inside Syria.

Brent crude futures were up 59 cents, or 0.7 percent at $91.46 a barrel at 16:31 GMT, whereas US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 75 cents, or 0.9 percent, at $85.25 a barrel.

Both contracts hit their highest price levels in three weeks in trading on Tuesday.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has held a phone conversation with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, according to Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry.

The top diplomats discussed ways to develop bilateral relations, as well as enhance consultation and coordination on regional issues, the ministry said.

About 3 percent of the Gaza Strip’s cropland is both accessible to farmers and undamaged, according to a new geospatial assessment by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and UNOSAT.

As of June 24, 448 hectares (1,100 acres) of cropland were found to be both accessible and undamaged, down from 601 hectares (1,490 acres) in October last year – a drop of more than a quarter.

The report attributed the decline mainly to continued bombardment and reduced access to farmland since the “ceasefire”, driven largely by the westward expansion of Israel’s “Yellow Line” separating the civilian zone from Israeli military-controlled areas.

Gaza’s southern city of Rafah was found to be the worst affected, with 97.2 percent of its cropland now inaccessible.

“The loss of access to farmland is further shrinking the space available for farmers to produce food, even where agricultural assets remain physically intact,” said Rein Paulsen, director of FAO’s Office of Emergencies and Resilience, calling for urgent action to restore safe access to land and agricultural supplies in the enclave.

The United Arab Emirates announces that “all trade, commercial exchange and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice”, according to the country’s Foreign Ministry.

The ministry said the decision came due to regional escalation ⁠that it ⁠said undermined ⁠regional and international peace and ‌security.

Earlier, Israeli air strikes targeted an airbase in northwest Syria, about 70km (43.5 miles) east of the Turkish border, which has been ⁠out of service as a dedicated military airfield since 2013 and has changed hands several times during Syria’s 14-year civil war.

While Israel has yet to officially claim the attacks, Syria, the United States and Jordan have all said the attack on the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Idlib was the latest Israeli strike on its neighbour.

The Israeli prime minister’s office now posted a short statement on X, in which it claims Israel and Syria have agreed “to a status quo in security matters, which Syria was on the verge of breaching by permitting Turkish troops to deploy at an airbase near Aleppo”.

“Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings,” it said. “Israel will not tolerate threats to its security and would welcome a return to the status quo,” the statement read.

US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said earlier on Tuesday that Israel’s perception about Turkiye’s presence at that base might be “accurate or misplaced”.

The US Department of Justice has announced charges against 17 members of Iran’s Mabna Institute for cyber activity and hacking “carried out on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other Iranian entities”.

In a statement, the Department said Mabna Institute was involved in “a widespread cyber campaign” targeting “more than 100,000 accounts belonging to university professors worldwide, successfully compromising approximately 8,000 accounts at American and foreign universities”.

The statement clarified that the Mabna Institute’s activities date back to at least 2013, adding that the 14-count indictment included eight additional defendants, joining nine who were previously indicted in 2018.

The campaign targeted 144 US universities and 178 foreign universities, at least 42 US companies and 11 foreign companies, as well as at least five US federal and local government agencies and two nongovernmental organisations, according to the statement.

The defendants stole more than 31 terabytes of academic and intellectual property data, along with email accounts belonging to employees at the targeted entities.

The “operations targeting companies and government agencies resulted in costs exceeding $20 million for investigating and addressing the breaches”.

French FM Jean-Noel Barrot has slammed Iran in a new post on X, after Tehran told two French diplomats to leave the country.

“The Iranian people, a great people, are the primary victims of this period of extreme tension in the Middle East, caught in a vice between the bloody repression of the January 2026 protests and the bombings,” the top diplomat said. “It is precisely because France stands alongside the Iranian people, supporting its artists, scientists, and researchers, that two French diplomats were scandalously and deliberately assaulted last July 19.”

“Two Iranian diplomats in France will be expelled in the coming days,” Barrot said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying two diplomats stationed at the French embassy in Tehran were unwelcome to stay in the country “in light of activities contrary to international law, particularly the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations”.

It added, “considering that despite several weeks having passed since the disclosure of their illegal actions, no action was taken by their home government to correct their behaviour and ensure such actions would not be repeated”.

We have previously reported that the UAE’s Ministry of Defence had “detected two ballistic missiles launched from Iran toward the country, with the first falling outside the country’s territorial waters, while the second fell within the territorial waters”.

The ministry now posted an update on X, in which it said the missiles “were targeting maritime traffic and fell into the sea”.

“The Ministry affirms its readiness to address any threats and to resolutely confront any attempt to undermine the security of the nation or maritime navigation in the region, thereby safeguarding the nation’s sovereignty, security, and stability, and protecting its national interests and resources,” the statement read.