Main Points
- Sinn Féin and Independent Ireland called on Martin to cut short the Dáil’s Easter recess due to the growing energy crisis
- On Saturday US president Donald Trump put Iran on a 48-hour countdown to make a peace deal before “all Hell will reign (sic) down”
- The niece and grand niece of a former top Iranian military commander were arrested on Saturday in the US after their residency status was revoked
- Iran has shot down two US military planes in separate attacks, with one service member rescued and at least one missing
- One person was killed after Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant was targeted in a US-Israeli attack
Key Reads
- Four ways the Iran war may affect your money, bills and airfares
- Iranians reel from US-Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure
- Analysis: Donald Trump’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” resonates profoundly in Japan
Anti-war protests have different styles and concerns in different countries as these photos of opposition to the Iran war show.
Opposition parties want Dáil recalled to deal with energy crisis
Sinn Féin and Independent Ireland have called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to cut short the Dáil’s Easter recess to discuss a response to the growing energy crisis sparked by the Iran war.
“Workers, families and key sectors of our economy are under huge pressure and there is silence from the Government,” said Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.
" People can’t be asked to wait for weeks for the Dáil to return. It should be recalled next week.”
Independ Ireland agriculture spokesman, Michael Fitzmaurice, also urged a recall.
“Ministers are telling people to walk, cycle, or use public transport, I even heard reference to carpooling,” he said.
“Some of these ideas might work in cities where those options exist, how are people in rural Ireland supposed to walk to work? What happens in areas where there are no bus links or services? That is the reality for many thousands of people.”
The Government has introduced a temporary cut in tax and levies on fuel and extended the winter fuel allowance by four weeks.
The Dáil has been on recess since March 27th and is due to sit again on April 14th.
Photos have emerged of bomb damage to a residential area of Karaj, north west of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Earlier this week US missiles blew up the newly built Karaj Bridge, the country’s largest bridge and an important link to Tehran.
Relatives of deceased Iranian military commander arrested in US after visas revoked
The niece and grand niece of a former top Iranian military commander have been arrested in the US after their residency status was revoked.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter who lived in California are in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
They are relatives of the late Major General Qasem Soleimani who was killed by the US in a targeted attack in 2020.
The US State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had revoked their permanent resident status, saying Soleimani Afshar postings on her Instagram account revealed her to be “an outspoken supporter of the totalitarian, terrorist regime in Iran”.
The statement said Afshar’s husband had also been barred from entering the United States.
Earlier this month the daughter a former senior Iranian official and her husband also had their residency terminated.
The State Department said they were “no longer in the United States”.
“The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regime,” the statement ended.
US threatens to unleash hell on Iran if shipping routes not open in 48 hours
US president Donald Trump has put Iran on a 48-hour countdown to make a peace deal before “all Hell will reign (sic) down”.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had given Iran ten days to do a deal or open the Hormuz Strait - the sea passage for one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments.
“Time is running out,” he posted. “48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them.” He signed off: “Glory be to GOD!”
Indonesia has received the bodies of three of its peacekeepers who were killed while on deployment in Lebanon.
The soldiers, who were serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), were killed in two separate explosions in southern Lebanon where Irish soldiers are also deployed.
US president Donald Trump has begun his day’s social media postings by praising his performance on domestic and foreign affairs.
On his Truth Social platform he posted: “Not only were the jobs numbers GREAT yesterday, 178,000 new jobs, but the TRADE DEFICIT was down 55%, the biggest drop in history. THANK YOU MR. TARIFF! All of this and, simultaneously, getting rid of a Nuclear Iran. MAGA!!!”
He offered no update on the search and rescue mission for the missing crew member of a US fighter plane shot down by Iran on Friday.
Message from the Editor
EU states seek tax on companies making windfall profits from energy crisis
Five European Union states are calling for a tax on windfall profits of energy companies in reaction to rising fuel prices due to the Iran war.
The finance ministers of Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Austria made the joint call in a letter to Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner.
They said such a measure would be a signal that “we stand united and are able to take action”.
“It would also send a clear message that those who profit from the consequences of the war must do their part to ease the burden on the general public,” they wrote.
Their letter referenced a similar measure introduced in 2022 when gas prices soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. - Reuters
Iran’s foreign minister provides a geography lesson on X: Bushehr is on Iran’s western coast - closer to Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates than to the Iranian capital
Some photographs from the aftermath on an Iranian missile attack on Ramat Gan, Israel where one person was reported wounded.
White House reshuffle rumoured as Trump battles political fallout from war
US president Donald Trump is considering a broader cabinet shake-up in the wake of attorney general Pam Bondi’s removal this week, as he grows increasingly frustrated with the political fallout from the war with Iran.
The five-week-old war has driven up gas prices, dragged down Trump’s approval ratings and intensified anxiety about the consequences for Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections.
Five people familar with internal White House discussions said a personnel shake-up was on the cards.
Several of the sources said Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are among those potentially on the chopping block, after Trump ousted Bondi and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem in recent weeks. - Reuters
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has urged “maximum military restraint to avoid risk of a nuclear accident” following the attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant this morning.
Iran reported a projectile had struck “close to the premises” but IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said plants “or nearby areas must never be attacked”.
The IAEA said no increase in radiation levels has been reported.
War taking heavy toll on children of the Middle East
Millions of children have been plunged into crisis by the war in the Middle East, with reports of child soldiers in Iran, mass forced displacements in Lebanon and the killing of hundreds of minors, The Guardian reports.
Catherine Russell, executive director of Unicef, the UN agency for children, is quoted as saying more than 340 children have been killed and thousands injured since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, which has retaliated with bombings across the region.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon – and its continued attacks in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – have compounded the bloodshed. Across the region, more than 1.2 million children have been displaced.
“Children in the region are being exposed to horrific violence, while the very systems and services meant to keep them safe are coming under attack,” Russell said.
Missile strike kills one near Iran nuclear power plant
Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant has been targeted in a US-Israeli attack on Friday morning, with a projectile striking the grounds near the facility, according to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.
One person was killed and the plant’s auxiliary buildings sustained damage, the news agency reported.
It added that there was no damage to the main section of the power plant and operations remain unaffected.
The news agency claimed it was the fourth attack on the power plant since the outbreak of war.
The US and Israel have not immediately commented on the claims.
Dubai authorities said on Saturday no injuries were reported after debris fell on the facade of an Oracle building in the emirate’s Internet City following an aerial interception.
Oracle featured on a list of 18 US companies Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has vowed to target in retaliation for attacks on the country.
Israel claims to have hit targets in Tehran
The Israeli military has said it hit air defence sites and missile storage facilities during a wave of airstrikes in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Friday.
Among the targets was a site belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “where missiles intended to strike aircraft were stored”, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.
The US and Israel have been bombing military sites in Iran over the past five weeks to erode Tehran’s ability to retaliate, but US intelligence assessments suggest they have yet to achieve that objective.
Citing such assessments, the New York Times reported that Iranian operatives have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by US-Israel strikes and returning them to operation hours after an attack.
CNN also reported US sources as saying about a half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact.
The reports contradict remarks by Donald Trump earlier this week, that Iran’s “ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed” and that the war was “nearing completion”.
‘Back to the Stone Ages’ threat resonates profoundly in Japan
US president Donald Trump’s threat to bomb Iran, a country of about 93 million people, “back into the Stone Ages” has special resonance in Japan, writes David McNeill
Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, later doubled down on the threat on X when he posted: “Back to the Stone Age”.
The phrase is attributed to Curtis LeMay, the US Air Force general responsible for America’s firebombing campaign against Japanese cities in 1945.
McNeill writes that more than 60 Japanese cities were bombed in 1945 – almost every urban centre in the country. By the time the droning of bombers had stopped, up to half a million people were dead.
Japan is regularly invoked in America’s contemporary wars. Last year, during the first US strikes on Iran, Donald Trump compared them to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. “That hit ended the war,” he said.
At a White House meeting with Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi last month, Trump made a now-notorious jibe about Japan’s attack on the US’s Pacific fleet in December 1941that drew the United States into the second World War.
Police investigate explosion at Israel Centre in Netherlands
Dutch police are investigating reports of an explosion overnight at the Israel Centre in the central Dutch town of Nijkerk.
There were no reports of injuries and the damage at the site, run by the Christians for Israel charity, was minimal, a police statement posted on social media said.
It was not clear if the incident was related to a series of attacks against Jewish sites in Europe since the war in Iran.
Police said there had been no arrests and appealed for witnesses to come forward.
Israel attacks Hizbullah targets in Beirut
The Israeli military said early on Saturday it had begun striking infrastructure sites of the Lebanese militant group Hizbullah in Beirut.
Two loud explosions were heard in the capital within half an hour early on Saturday and smoke was billowing from the area of one of them, AFP is reporting.
Local media reported two strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area that has been a target of repeated Israeli strikes in recent days as the military presses on with its ground invasion in the country’s south as it seeks to establish a “security zone”. – Agencies
A major search and rescue operation was under way on Friday night for a crew member of the F-15E fighter.
US helicopters, planes and reconnaissance drones took part in the search. Iranian state media released images of a tail fin and other debris allegedly from the downed plane, claiming that it had been hit by a new air defence system over central Iran and the pilot probably killed.
Meanwhile, an Iranian official called for a widespread chase to locate the F-15E fighter crew as the local governor offered a reward for anyone who captured or killed them.
One US service member was rescued and at least one was missing after Iran shot down two US military planes in separate attacks in a dramatic development in the war.
It was the first time US aircraft had been downed in the conflict and came just two days after US president Donald Trump said in a national address that the US has “beaten and completely decimated Iran”.
One fighter jet was shot down in Iran, officials said.
A US crew member from that plane was rescued, but a second was missing, and a US military search-and-rescue operation was under way.
Separately, Iranian state media said a US A-10 attack aircraft crashed in the Persian Gulf after being struck by Iranian defence forces. – AP
