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The day after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, and the subsequent Iranian counterattack against US bases in the Gulf, Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that the UK government would intervene in the conflict in two ways.

First, by intercepting Iranian drones and missiles to protect states not previously involved in the conflict.

And second, by allowing the US to use British bases for “specific and limited" defensive action against Iranian missile sites used to attack Gulf partners.

In his speech on 1 March outlining the government’s position, Starmer explained that the only way to stop the threat from Iranian missiles "is to destroy the missiles at source, in their storage depots or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles”.

He said that the UK would not join the US and Israel in their offensive strikes but would instead focus on “defensive actions”.

Starmer told the UK parliament: “We were not involved in the initial strikes on Iran, and we will not join offensive action now, but in the face of Iran’s barrage of missiles and drones, we will protect our people in the region, and support the collective self-defence of our allies, because that is our duty to the British people.

“It is the best way to eliminate the urgent threat, to prevent the situation spiralling further, and support a return to diplomacy. It is the best way to protect British interests, and British lives. That is what this government is doing.”

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In an exclusive interview with Drop Site News, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Esmail Baghaei rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that he launched the war because Iran was “going to attack first,” calling it a “big lie.”

“There was no intention on the part of Iran to attack the United States,” he said. “They claim that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” Baghaei added. “Did we come to the Gulf of Mexico to target Los Angeles and other U.S. cities? Or did they come 6,500 miles away to Iranian shores?”

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. decided to preemptively attack Iran because the White House knew Israel was going to begin bombing Iran and that Iran would strike back. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

On Tuesday, Trump sought to recast the U.S. rationale and said that he believed Iran was going to launch an attack first. “They were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first—I felt strongly about that,” Trump said, charging that the Iranians “were getting ready to attack Israel. They were gonna attack others.”

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“On the US calendar it’s still March 4,” Jabbarli said, “but so much happens in a single day that sometimes it would normally take months or years.”

Ramin Jabbarli is a sociologist and the director of the Seattle-based Foundation for Inclusive Society, an NGO that regularly monitors the human rights situation in Iran. He told Kyiv Post that since airstrikes began last Saturday, it has not only been the internet – but even phone lines have been cut off.

“It’s not only about protests,” Jabbarli said. “They don’t want information to spread quickly… They want to limit communications.”

Monitoring group NetBlocks reported Iran’s connectivity falling to around 1% of ordinary levels during the blackout. Jabbarli said some footage escapes via satellite links like Starlink or through devices brought out of the country, but described those routes as limited and risky.

The most urgent political question, Jabbarli said, is what comes after Khamenei – and whether the succession stabilizes the system or becomes another trigger for conflict.

“There are different alternatives being discussed,” he said. “One is Khamenei’s son. Another is [Iran’s first supreme leader Ruhollah] Khomeini’s grandson. Hassan Rouhani is also mentioned.”

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A respiratory virus that doesn’t have a vaccine or a specific treatment regimen is spreading in some parts of California — but there’s no need to sound the alarm just yet, public health officials say.

A majority of Northern California communities have seen high concentrations of human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, detected in their wastewater, according to data from the WastewaterScan Dashboard, a public database that monitors sewage to track the presence of infectious diseases.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-04/human-metapneumovirus-in-california-what-you-need-to-know?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

A Los Angeles Times data analysis found the communities of Merced in the San Joaquin Valley, and Novato and Sunnyvale in the San Francisco Bay Area have seen increases in HMPV levels in their wastewater between mid-December and the end of February.

HMPV has also been detected in L.A. County, though at levels considered low to moderate at this point, data show.

While HMPV may not necessarily ring a bell, it isn’t a new virus. Its typical pattern of seasonal spread was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its resurgence could signal a return to a more typical pre-coronavirus respiratory disease landscape.

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Israel’s military issued warnings to residents of dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate “immediately” Wednesday as airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut intensified and Hezbollah claimed more attacks.

Lebanon was dragged into the broader war in the Middle East early Monday when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory airstrikes that killed more than 70 people, wounded more than 400 and displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The ongoing conflict is not the first between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, a full-scale war erupted in September 2024 and Israel later launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.

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Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted down an attempt to require Donald Trump receive Congress’s permission before continuing the war with Iran, batting aside concerns from Democrats that the campaign is illegal and risks plunging the United States into a prolonged conflict.

The 47-53 vote on a war powers resolution introduced by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine broke largely along party lines. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the sole Democrat to vote against the measure, while Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only member of the Republican majority to support the resolution.

The measure would have forced an end to the US air and naval campaign against Iran and require the president to go to Congress before re-entering the war. Before the vote, Democratic senator Chris Murphy said the resolution was necessary to prevent Trump from repeating in Iran the follies of previous US presidents in Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere.

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The U.S. sank an Iranian warship in international waters, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday, as it intensified its bombardment with Israel of Iran’s security forces and other symbols of power. Tehran vowed to completely destroy the Middle East’s military and economic infrastructure — signaling the war was nowhere near over and could expand further.

The tempo of the strikes on Iran was so intense that state television announced the mourning ceremony for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the conflict, would be postponed. Millions attended the funeral of his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.

In addition to striking Tehran on the fifth day of the conflict, Israel hit the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, while Iran fired on Bahrain, Kuwait and Israel. As the conflict spiraled, Turkey said NATO defenses intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Iran before it entered Turkey’s airspace.

The war has killed more than 1,000 people in Iran and dozens in Lebanon, while disrupting the supply of the world’s oil and gas, snarling international shipping, and stranding hundreds of thousands of travelers in the Middle East.

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Minnesota on Monday sued the Trump administration for withholding hundreds of millions in Medicaid funds to the state, alleging it is a “political punishment” that will only serve to harm the more than 1million Minnesotans who are enrolled in the program.

Last week, Vice President Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced a six-month moratorium on $259 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota, pointing to accusations of fraud.

The lawsuit said the federal government had “weaponized Medicaid against Minnesota as political punishment,” despite it being a cooperative program with the state.

“Unless the deferral is quickly reversed, the state will be irreparably harmed. The Administration has already stated that the deferral will recur every quarter, crippling the state budget,” it stated.

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