Iran says it 'will not negotiate with the United States'

Iran's security chief Ali Larijani has just said on X that his country "will not negotiate with the United States".

Larijani was responding to a report that officials in Tehran are planning to revive talks with Washington.

Larijani is the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and was an adviser to the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In his speech announcing the start of Operation Epic Fury against Iran early on Saturday, Donald Trump clearly laid out the prospect that US service members may fall in the days and weeks ahead.

"That often happens in war," he added.

Now, US Central Command has confirmed that three US service members have been killed and five seriously wounded.

As far as wars go, these casualties are still light. Military experts I've spoken to said they believe that combat casualties were to be expected, alongside non-combat deaths from the inherent risks of moving massive amounts of personnel and materiel across the world.

But for Trump, each American casualty raises the stakes domestically - where he is keen to juxtapose quick, successful and relatively clean military actions with the drawn-out conflicts of the Global War on Terror, which saw a steady trickle of US casualties in the headlines.

In the coming days, we are likely to hear that case be repeatedly made by President Trump and other administration officials.

If American deaths grow, Trump's comments could come back to haunt him

The joint US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran now has an American casualty count, after the Pentagon confirmed that three US military service members had been killed in action.

Donald Trump has said that the nation grieves their deaths, but they may not be the last.

“That’s the way it is,” he said in a video recorded from his Mar-a-Lago club and released by the White House while Air Force One was in flight, en route back to Washington DC.

The line seemed unscripted. And it may turn out to be ill-advised.

If the number of American deaths grows, Trump’s remark, along with an earlier comment in an interview that “we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world”, could come back to haunt him.

George W Bush’s speech under a “mission accomplished” banner, delivered from the deck of an aircraft carrier returning from the early action during the Iraq War in 2003, is but one memorable example of how words — and images — can become significant political liabilities as circumstances change.

For the moment, however, the bombing grinds on, while life in America continues almost as normal.