Iran-US war live: Germany responds to Trump’s decision to withdraw 5,000 troops as dispute deepens

Earlier this week, the prime minister even suggested people may have to change “where they go on holiday”. Yet Britain’s airlines continue to insist they are not seeing any shortages.

So what is the prospective holidaymaker to make of it all? Simon Calder, travel correspondent of The Independent, has multiple flight bookings of his own for the coming months – and takes a look at what it all means.

Europeans must take greater responsibility for their own security, German defence minister Boris Pistorius has said, in response to the announcement of plans to withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany.

“Germany is on the right track” in this regard, Mr Pistorius said.

He noted the expansion of its Bundeswehr armed forces, greater and faster procurement of equipment and the construction of infrastructure.

Berlin recently unveiled a military strategy which envisages Germany holding Europe’s strongest military by 2039.

“It was foreseeable that the US would withdraw troops from Europe, including Germany,” he said.

We’re hearing reports in Iranian media that Tehran has executed two men accused of spying for Israel, including one accused of gathering intelligence near the Natanz nuclear site in central Isfahan province.

Reports quote the judiciary as saying Yaghoub Karimpour and Nasser Bakarzadeh were hanged after being found guilty of intelligence cooperation with Israel and its spy agency, Mossad.

They said Karimpour passed sensitive information to a Mossad officer, while Bakarzadeh was accused of collecting details on government and religious figures and key sites, including in the Natanz area.

Like many airlines, Spirit is grappling with intense pressure from soaring fuel costs, which have roughly doubled since the outbreak of the Iran war. Without a government bailout, these escalating expenses are rapidly depleting Spirit’s remaining cash reserves.

The struggling carrier had been engaged in negotiations with the Trump administration for a $500 million rescue package. However, these efforts have stalled, as Spirit was unable to garner the necessary support from its bondholders and other government stakeholders, sources familiar with the situation informed the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

With his next steps uncertain and no clear endgame, Donald Trump has in private meetings raised ​the prospect of a ⁠prolonged naval blockade of Iran, possibly for months more, aimed at further squeezing off its oil exports ‌and forcing it to reach a denuclearisation agreement, a White House official said on condition of anonymity.

At the same time, he has left the door open to resuming military action.

The US Central Command has prepared options for a “short and powerful” series of strikes as well as for taking over part of the strait to reopen it to shipping, Axios reported on Thursday.

European diplomats said their governments, whose relations with Trump have been strained by the war, expect the current situation with Iran to persist.

“It’s hard to see ‌how this will end soon,” said one, speaking on condition of anonymity. Iran has remained defiant.

It has exerted powerful leverage against the US and its allies, triggering ‌an unprecedented energy supply shock by choking off shipping in the strait, where tanker traffic flowed freely before the war, carrying a fifth of the world’s oil.

Analysts say Iran will be emboldened knowing that it will have this weapon at its disposal even after the war.

“Iran has realised that, even in a weakened state, it can shut off the Strait at will,” said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“That knowledge leaves Iran stronger than it was before the war.”

Iran has executed two people over alleged charges of espionage for Israel, its state media reported this morning.

The two individuals were also accused of intelligence gathering near the Natanz nuclear site, the media reports said.

The United States will withdraw 5,000 troops from Nato ally Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as a rift over the Iran war widens between ⁠Donald Trump and Europe.

Mr Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the US in talks to end the two-month-old war.

A senior Pentagon ⁠official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ​recent ⁠German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful”.

“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.

The US and Israel war on Iran has failed to achieve many of Donald Trump’s stated goals, experts have pointed out.

While there is little doubt that waves of US and Israeli strikes heavily degraded Iran’s military capabilities, many of Trump’s often-shifting war objectives – from regime change to shutting Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon – remain unfulfilled.

Fears for a more protracted deadlock have grown since Trump called off a trip by his negotiators to Islamabad last weekend and then dismissed an Iranian offer to halt the war, suspended since 8 April under a ceasefire agreement.

Tehran proposed setting aside discussion of its nuclear program until the conflict is formally ended and a deal is reached on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. That was a non-starter for Trump, who has demanded the nuclear issue be dealt with at the outset.

A failure to wrest the vital oil-shipping waterway from Iranian control at the conclusion of the conflict would be a major blow to Trump’s legacy.

“He’d be remembered as the US president who made the world less safe,” said Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East expert at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

An explosion of leftover bombs from strikes during the US-Israeli war against Iran killed 14 members of the Revolutionary Guard, Iranian media reported Friday.

A report by the Nournews website, believed to be close to Iran’s security apparatus, said the explosion happened near the northern city of Zanjan, northwest of Tehran.

It was the largest number of Revolutionary Guard members reported to be killed since the ceasefire began on 7 April. The report said the ammunition included cluster bombs and air mines dropped during the fighting.