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Two former US military officers have accused the country’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of firing them for questioning his orders, according to a report.

The officers, who spoke to MS NOW anonymously for fear of reprisals from the Pentagon, said Hegseth had effectively forced them to retire early after interpreting their raising issues about his directives as insubordination.

The secretary “is intimidated by people who have real warfighting background and don’t just talk about the warrior ethos”, one of the officers claimed. “I think he just can’t stand people around who will call him on his bulls***”.

They argued that if Hegseth were serious about encouraging “warfighters”, as he has frequently claimed, he would not have removed Gen. Christopher Donahue, the top Army commander for Europe and Africa, from his post.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon denied the claims, branding them “completely false”.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson has hit out at the European Union’s Kaja Kallas after she expressed concerns about human rights in the country.

On Saturday, Esmail Baghaei, wrote in a post on X: “Kaja Kalals speaks of the European Union’s ‘human rights concerns’ regarding Iran.

“How can a professed commitment to human rights be so easily reconciled with providing logistical and technical support for lethal aggressions against the Iranian people — aggressions that deliberately target civilians and critical national infrastructure?

“All while refusing to condemn even the most blatant war crimes, and offering not a single word of sympathy for Iranian children slaughtered by American-Israeli bombs and missiles enabled by the EU’s own ‘logistical and technical support.’

“This is not merely a loss of credibility. It is the banality of evil — and the purest form of hypocrisy.”

The US and Israel deny committing war crimes.

President Donald Trump said that Iran is now far “more serious” in discussions than it has been in the conflict so far.

“I think they are being by far the most serious that we’ve seen,” he said on Friday. “But that doesn’t mean we get there.”

He added: “They are talking to us right now. They’d love to make a deal. I don’t think they’re ready to. I don’t think it’s time yet, but I’m willing to listen.”

President Donald Trump has insisted that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” in comments made during the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Friday.

He also said that talks between the countries had been going “well” as he seemingly backtracked from the “massive” strikes he had earlier threatened.

“They are talking to us right now. They’d love to make a deal. I don’t think they’re ready to. I don’t think it’s time yet, but I’m willing to listen.

“But they cannot have a nuclear weapon. We don’t want to see Washington DC, or any of our cities, or Israel, or frankly the Middle East, destroyed with a nuclear weapons, because I know the power of nuclear weapons.

“I see it. I get to see it. We’re not going to let that happen. So this is all about we will not let them have a nuclear weapon. And they would use it. They would use if they had it.”

Saudi Arabia has Yemen’s Houthi rebel group has claimed responsibility for an attack on Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

The missile attack on the southern Saudi city of Jizan came after days of escalating tensions, in which they vowed retaliation against the country for attacking its military targets on Friday.

Accusing Riyadh of a “dangerous escalation”, it said its attacks would not go “unanswered”.

The Houthis had been threatening a maritime blockade in the Red Sea, impacting Saudi shipping.

“The terrorist Houthi military … targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea,” Turki al-Maliki, the Saudi-led coalition’s spokesperson, said on X, adding that after carrying out attacks on the Houthi targets the “military response is now over”.

The attacks hit Houthi targets in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida and a nearby island on Friday.

The Iranian army said it had attacked US military equipment depots at Al-Adiri, officially named Camp ‌Buehring, in northern Kuwait, and the positions of US troops ​at Camp Arifjan and at Camp Doha, near Kuwait City.

In the early evening, Kuwait said its air defences were intercepting “hostile” targets launched from Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they ​had significantly damaged a surveillance tower used by the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

The Houthi attacks forced several other tankers to turn around and head north ‌through the Suez Canal, which would be a much longer route to Asia, ⁠by sailing around Africa.

Still, half of the 18 ships exiting Bab el-Mandeb on Thursday were carrying crude oil, including two Chinese supertankers, while the number of tankers crossing through the Strait of Hormuz fell to just one, the lowest since 7 May.

Brent futures stood down more than $4 at a little over $96 on Friday, after the previous day’s attack on the Saudi tankers in the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb strait boosted oil prices 7 per cent to $100 per barrel for the first time since May.

Sources said Pakistan was exploring a path towards resuming stalled talks between the US and Iran to end the war, after China initiated a push.

Exploratory discussions took place during a visit by Iran’s interior minister Eskandar Momeni to Islamabad this week — his second ​in the last 10 days, three Pakistani sources said.

The US military launched air strikes on Iran late on Thursday and early on Friday, racking up 13 consecutive ⁠nights of attacks.

In a statement on X, the Iranian health ministry said 59 people had been killed and 666 wounded since the resumption of clashes with US forces in late June. Iranian media cited the head of Iran’s top joint military command as saying Iran would kill a member of the US forces for every Iranian killed.

The war has killed 18 US service members. The Pentagon has said 100 service members had been injured since 7 July. Officials have told Reuters that more than 500 US troops have been injured so far.