Welcome to our rolling coverage of the Middle East conflict as the US Senate prepares to vote on forcing US President Donald Trump to limit further attacks on Iran.

Here is a recap of key events:

• The US-Iran war has widened sharply after a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing at least 80 people, and NATO air defences destroyed an Iranian ballistic missile fired towards Turkey.
• The Pentagon boasted that “America is winning”, claiming Iran’s ballistic missile strikes were down 86 per cent from the first day of fighting.
• Israel continued its air offensive in Iran and deployed troops in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
• In response, Israel came under a co-ordinated missile assault launched simultaneously from Iran and Lebanon, marking a significant escalation in the regional conflict
• The first group of Australians stranded in the Middle East have landed in Sydney, marking the start of a complex return operation for the 115,000 travellers and expats.
• More than 20,000 of the more than 36,000 flights scheduled to or from the Middle East between Saturday’s start of the war and today have been cancelled.
• Read more on the US-Israel-Iran war:
  • Broadscale strikes: US submarine torpedoes ship in Indian Ocean, scores killed
  • Tracking the war: Where the US struck and where Iran retaliated
  • Iran’s nuclear threat?: A seven-page proposal was on the table. Then Trump learnt a tantalising fact, writes Michael Koziol
  • Israel attacks Lebanon: What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
  • The three men to stop Trump: Who are the Islamic Republic’s interim leadership team?
  • Opinion: Trump will be forced to end his reckless war very soon, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Supertankers have begun to abandon planned voyages into the Persian Gulf and seek safer destinations amid the turmoil at the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

At least three very large crude carriers that sailed from Asia with plans to load in the Gulf have diverted toward the Atlantic Basin, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

The move will mean fewer tankers are in place to load oil from key Middle East producers as and when conditions normalise. The region’s producers are filling up their storage because there aren’t enough oil carriers entering the Persian Gulf to collect cargoes.

The diverted tankers are avoiding the growing flotilla of vessels backed up in a queue that extends thousands of kilometres to the south of India. More than 60 empty tankers are holding position or reducing speed as the crisis deepens, according to vessel-tracking data.

That paralysis has sparked a scramble for available vessels, as traders seek out non-Middle Eastern crude to keep global refineries humming. Facing the possibility of a prolonged regional blockade and the sudden withdrawal of insurance, some shipowners now appear to be shifting toward collecting safer Atlantic Basin cargoes.

Bloomberg

Three more flights bringing stranded Aussies back home are set to depart from Dubai International Airport today, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Whether or not the flights will actually make it into the air is contingent on whether the airspace is deemed safe enough, she told ABC TV this morning.

“There are three flights, and I want to make sure I’m very careful about this, because this would move very quickly if there is further military activity that makes it unsafe for people to fly – obviously, those flights will not proceed,” Wong said.

“But there are currently three flights due to depart this morning from the UAE. And obviously that would be a great relief to see more Australians being able to come home.”

The news of more flights this morning follows the arrival of the first group of Australians stranded in the Middle East, successfully repatriated to Sydney late last night.

Yesterday, Wong announced she was deploying crisis teams to the Middle East to provide additional consular support to Aussies on the ground.

Donald Trump has berated European leaders who refuse to support the war against Iran, but some of them are stepping up their public criticisms of his actions. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made a televised address on Wednesday – early this morning, Australian time – to tell his country why he will oppose the war even if Trump retaliates with trade bans that hurt the economy.

“We’re not going to be complicit in something that’s bad for the world, nor contrary to our values and interests, simply to avoid reprisals from someone,” he said. “This is ​how humanity’s great disasters start. You cannot play Russian roulette with the destiny of millions.” He argued that the Iraq war led to an increase in terrorism and the Iran war could do the same.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has fallen out with Trump in a bruising dispute, kept up his criticism of the war in parliament on Wednesday in London and stood by his decision not to initially allow US forces to use two UK bases. “What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the UK to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan. That remains my position.”

The key criticism is that Starmer did not think Trump had a “viable” plan for the war. That criticism is shaping much of the commentary about this war.

Here is the situation among European allies:

• The UK has relented and allowed the US use two military bases, Fairford and Diego Garcia.
• Portugal has also allowed the US to use a base. Spain has refused access to bases on its soil.
• As well as this, the UK, France and Germany are prepared to strike Iran to prevent Iranian attacks, but they say this is only for defensive purposes.
• French President Emmanuel Macron says the US attacks were illegal, but he is willing to deploy forces to protect French interests.

It is clear Europe is involved in this fight. It may get more involved, also, after Turkey revealed it had shot down a missile it said came from Iran. Turkey, as a NATO member, could call on allies to bolster its defence.

The sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean is the first time a US submarine has sunk a vessel on the surface since World War II.

The IRIS Dena was a Moudge-class frigate from Iran’s Southern Fleet and had a crew of about 180. It was armed with heavy guns, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles and torpedoes, and could carry a helicopter.

The ship was thought to be heading back to Iran from a joint military exercise off India’s eastern coast. According to the London Telegraph, the ship’s commanders had attended a naval conference in India along with US naval chiefs before it was torpedoed on its return journey.

Earlier, the US military said it had already destroyed 17 Iranian vessels and that its goal was to sink “the entire navy”.

Sri Lanka’s foreign minister said its navy had responded to a ⁠distress call from the IRIS Dena and launched a rescue operation at 6am (12pm Wednesday, AEDT). Some 87 bodies have been recovered, he said, and 32 people have been taken to hospital.

The sinking is the first time in almost 50 years that a submarine has destroyed a major warship.

In May 1982, the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror destroyed the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War, killing 323 sailors.

A smaller South Korean navy ship, the Cheonan, sank in March 2010 after a North Korean submarine attack, resulting in the loss of 45 lives.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed concern this morning that the conflict between the US-Israel and Iran was spreading, after an Iranian ballistic missile was fired towards Turkey late last night.

“I am concerned that the conflict is spreading so much,” she told the Today show just moments ago.

“I am concerned, for example, that Iran is now seeking to strike Turkey, which is a NATO member. Now, the more this conflict spreads, the harder it will be for peace and stability to be resumed … at some point, there has to be a return to diplomacy and dialogue for there to be stability.”

It is the closest Wong has come to a concession that she may not agree with the conflict.

The minister again dodged questions about the legality of the US’s strikes on Iran, claiming that it was a matter for the US and Israel to determine.

Iranian military forces are trying to prove they can inflict more damage on the US despite the losses across Iran since Saturday.

In a video posted a few hours ago, the Iranian military shows how it is launching Shahed drones with rocket-fuelled boosters to hit targets around the Middle East.

The video was taken in darkness and cannot be verified as a reliable guide to Iran’s military capacity, but it shows how the disposable rocket boosters get the Shaheds into the air at speed. Once in the air, the drone reaches its target with a rear propeller doing the work.

One expert source on these weapons, the Open Source Weapons Portal, estimates the Shahed-131 can fly up to 900 kilometres and the Shahed-136 has a range of at least 2000 kilometres. It says they are guided with manually inputted geo-coordinates before diving onto their targets and exploding.

The video may be simply an effort to convince the world that Iran still has an arsenal. The US is confident it is degrading Iran’s ability to strike targets. US commander Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few hours ago that Iran was losing the capacity to attack with missiles.

“Iran’s theatre ballistic missile shots fired are down 86 per cent from the first day of fighting, with a 23 per cent decrease just in the last 24 hours,” Caine said at about 2am this morning.

Leavitt has said Trump’s decision to strike Iran was based on the “feeling” that “Iran was going to strike the United States and our assets in the region”.

Pressed by Independent journalist Andrew Feinberg to explain what “imminent threat” Iran posed that justified the US’s decision to attack Iran, Leavitt said: “You have had the president of the United States, the secretary of war, the chairman of the joint chiefs, the vice president of the United States, the secretary of state, and now I am here today to explain to you exactly what led the president to make the decision to launch Operation Epic Fury.”

She went on to tell reporters that Trump’s decision was made on “a feeling … based on fact”.

“The president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region, and he made a determination to launch Operation Epic Fury based on all of those reasons,” Leavitt said.

The White House has again rejected the assertion that the US was responsible for a strike on a girls’ school in Iran that killed 165 people, most of them children.

Asked whether the US struck the elementary school, Leavitt said: “Not that we know of … and the Department of War is investigating this matter. And I would just tell you very strongly, the United States of America does not target civilians.

“I would caution you from pointing the finger at the United States of America when it comes to targeting civilians, because that’s not something that these armed forces would do.”

Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said earlier this week that the circumstances around the strike were being investigated.

The strike, which happened during the first day of the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, is the single most deadly strike of the conflict so far.

During her press briefing, Leavitt claimed the US attacks on Iran were proof that US President Donald Trump “does not bluff”.

“The terrorists bet that President Trump would be like many of his predecessors, that he would just talk and he would refuse to enforce his clear red lines, but that has proven to be a catastrophic error in judgment,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House.

“When President Trump makes a threat – and I have reiterated that threat many times from this podium to all of you over the past year – President Trump does not bluff.”

NATO’s air defences intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Iran and heading toward Turkish airspace, the Turkish Defence Ministry confirmed.

It remains unclear whether the intended target was Turkey, a NATO member that borders Iran, but if so, it would mark a major escalation in the conflict.

The missile incident is the first time that Turkey, which has NATO’s second-largest military, has been drawn into the conflict, but US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said there was no sense that it would trigger the Atlantic alliance’s collective-defence clause.

The intercept comes after a US torpedo sank an Iranian warship overnight. The White House released dramatic video footage of the strike.