Trump, on Friday said that he is no longer “interested” in winning the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming he had “no idea” whether Operation Epic Fury would “get him over the finish line” with committee members in Oslo, Norway.

“I’m not interested in it,” Trump said in a phone call with the Washington Examiner, a conservative news publication.

Asked whether the subject had been broached in his recent conversations with foreign leaders, Trump said: “No, I don’t talk about the Nobel Prize.”

Trump frequently opined on his desire for the prize in the past. The winner of the 2025 prize, Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado, handed her prize to Trump in January in a meeting at the White House, a move the Nobel committee criticized.

The United States has acknowledged that one of its aircraft has crashed in western Iraq, amid the country’s joint war with Israel against Iran.

On Thursday, US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees operations in the Middle East and parts of Asia, issued a brief statement announcing the aircraft’s crash and rescue efforts.

There was no immediate indication of deaths or survivors.

“U.S. Central Command is aware of the loss of a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft,” the statement said.

“The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing.”

The statement suggested that the crash involved two planes, possibly colliding or engaging in close manoeuvres. The second plane, it said, “landed safely”.

“This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire,” the statement added.

However, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for shooting down the plane, announcing that it shot down a US Army KC-135 aircraft in western Iraq “with the appropriate weapon”.

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said the information shared by CENTCOM is still vague on exactly what happened, despite announcing that the aircraft was not shot down by allies or enemies.

“It looks as if this may have been a refuelling attempt or operation, and then this air tanker went down,” she said.

“This is still a search and rescue mission for the crew, and at least three crew members are needed to pilot a KC-135 refueling air tanker,” our correspondent also said, adding that there might have been more personnel on board the aircraft.

Another 140 have been wounded overall, with Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell counting eight who face severe injuries.

Thursday’s crash is the latest to befall the US military since it began operations against Iran on February 28.

Already, three fighter jets were downed in an apparent friendly fire incident on March 1, just one day into the war.

CENTCOM explained that the jets, three F-15E Strike Eagles, were “mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences” during an active combat situation, as Iran issued retaliatory attacks across much of the Middle East.

In that incident, the six aircraft personnel on board the fighter jets ejected safely and were recovered in stable condition.

Still, the war against Iran has been unpopular among the US public, with polls showing it is the first conflict in recent decades to have a negative approval rating from the outset.

A survey released on March 9, for instance, from Quinnipiac University found that 53 percent of voters opposed the military offensive against Iran.

An even higher proportion, 74 percent, rejected the idea of starting ground operations, with “boots on the ground” for US troops.

Those findings were echoed by other polls. The research firm Ipsos, for example, found that a majority of Americans surveyed, 43 percent, disapproved of the US strikes, dwarfing the 29 percent who approved. The rest expressed uncertainty over whether they supported the military offensive.

The war against Iran has been divisive even among supporters of President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly defended the military assault as necessary for US national security.

Prominent conservative personalities, like talk show host Tucker Carlson, have questioned that logic, though. Carlson even suggested Trump may have been misled by his advisers.

“He’s being shown polling that this war is like a 90-10 win for him,” Carlson said of Trump.

In an interview with ABC News, Carlson went so far as to call the war “absolutely disgusting and evil”.

Trump has responded by disavowing his critics, even those, like Carlson, who count themselves among his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. “MAGA is America First, and Tucker is none of those things,” Trump told ABC News.

But the president’s administration has struggled to make a public case for the war, citing an array of rationales for why military operations were necessary.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that a US attack was launched because “we knew there was going to be an Israeli action” against Iran, though he later backtracked on those comments.

In addition to the seven dead US military members, an estimated 1, 348 Iranians have been killed since the start of hostilities, as well as 15 Israelis. A further 17 people have died in nearby Gulf states, as violence spills across the region.

Source: Aljazeera

Israeli authorities are investigating a missile strike in central Tel Aviv that may have involved a weapon breaking into several parts before impact.

The Israeli government’s press office described the incident as a direct hit from a ballistic missile.

A police commander in the Tel Aviv area also told a local Israeli television station that the impact involved what he described as a “splitting missile.”

The description has raised the possibility that the weapon may have been a type of cluster munition. These weapons contain smaller explosive “bomblets” that separate from the main missile and spread across a wider area after the initial explosion.

Israel has previously accused Iran of using similar munitions earlier in the conflict and during the 12-Day War last June.

Cluster munitions are banned by more than 100 countries under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, although Iran, Israel and the United States are not signatories to the treaty.

At the scene of the explosion in Tel Aviv, a CNN reporter said investigators are examining debris believed to be part of the missile.

“Debris still falls in central Tel Aviv even after interceptions. One key piece behind me here that investigators are poring over, one official here telling us that it seems to perhaps be one of the warheads we’ve noticed that appear to split in the sky and send off separate fragments down. Now nobody as far as we understand injured in this location but it’s a sign that despite the fact we’ve seen probably less missiles overall fired by Iran over the past days, it only takes one even with the sophisticated air defences here to cause some havoc in a scene like this.”

The reporter, in to a CNN video, added that the strike has drawn attention from investigators trying to determine whether the weapon signals a change in Iran’s missile capabilities.

“But across the region the focus perhaps now turning as it’s clear Iran’s missile capacities have come down on their ability to wreak havoc closer to Iranian shores with drones that are hitting around the but the scene behind me here is still one of intense scrutiny as I think they try and work out if this marks some kind of new development in Iranian missile technology.”