FROM PAGE 1

abating as airstrikes and missiles targeted a wide range of targets across the Middle East.

Trump also scaled up threats to pull the US out of the Nato defence alliance if European states did not help stop Iran blocking Hormuz.

“I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told Britain’s Daily Telegraph, saying he had moved beyond merely reconsidering US membership.

On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his call for countries to “get” oil by going to Hormuz themselves, after many allies refused US calls for military help to free up tanker traffic.

The remarks on the war underscored Washington’s shifting and at times contradictory statements about a conflict that has killed thousands, spread across the region and caused unprecedented energy disruption.

Asked when the US would consider the Iran war over, Trump yesterday told Reuters: “I can’t tell you exactly .... we’re going to be out pretty quickly.”

He said US action has ensured Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.

“They won’t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now, and then I’ll leave, and I’ll take everybody with me, and if we have to, we’ll come back to do spot hits,” Trump said.

Late Tuesday, the US president told reporters that US withdrawal does not depend on a deal with Iran.

“Iran doesn’t have to make a deal, no,” he said, when asked if successful diplomacy was a prerequisite for the US to end what it calls “Operation Epic Fury”.

Meanwhile, International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol said the main issue so far from Iran’s effective closure of the Hormuz was the lack of jet fuel and diesel.

“We are seeing that in Asia, but soon, I think, in April or May, it would come to Europe,” Birol told a podcast with Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. The loss of oil in April would be twice that lost in March, he said.

Trump is set to address the nation at 9:00pm Wednesday (0100 GMT Thursday).

Tehran has insisted there are no ongoing negotiations and that it has not responded to a reported 15-point proposal from Washington to end the war.

But Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the Islamic republic had the “necessary will” to end the war, provided its enemies guaranteed it would not flare up again.

With the status of diplomatic efforts uncertain, Iranian state television reported that Tehran was under attack yesterday, and explosions were heard in the capital.

An AFP journalist said strikes hit an area near the former US embassy -- which was transformed into a museum known as the “Den of Spies” and has become a symbol of the decades-long animosity between Tehran and Washington.

Strikes also hit steel complexes in central and southwest Iran, according to Iranian media, causing “significant damage and destruction”.

The Israeli military confirmed it had carried out the strikes, while it also intercepted an Iranian missile attack, which medics said wounded 14 people, including an 11-year-old girl.

Israel also said its air defences had responded to a missile fired from Yemen -- the third attack by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels since they entered the war over the weekend.

Thousands of people have been killed throughout the region during the conflict, which has displaced millions more from their homes.

In Lebanon, seven people were killed in strikes around south Beirut, the health ministry said yesterday, while the Israeli military said it had struck a senior Hezbollah commander.

A Lebanese security source and a Hezbollah source both told AFP that the strike had killed Hezbollah’s top commander for Iraq military affairs, Yousef Hashem.

Since March 2, when the latest fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah started, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Lebanon.

On Tuesday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country’s military would occupy a swathe of southern Lebanon even after the current war against Hezbollah has ended.

US allies in the Gulf have also been pulled into the war, with Iran carrying out retaliatory attacks on nations it says have been launchpads for strikes.

A Bangladeshi national was killed yesterday by falling shrapnel from an intercepted drone in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

Kuwait said its international airport had come under Iranian drone attack that led to “a large fire” at its fuel tanks, while the National Bank of Kuwait said it will close its headquarters for two days “in the interest of everyone’s safety”.