US-Israeli strike pounds city of Hamadan, Iran | US-Israel war on Iran News
Footage shows huge plumes of smoke from a heavy strike in the Iranian city of Hamadan, as the US-Israeli war against Iran enters its third week.
Published On 16 Mar 2026
BBC visits aftermath of Israeli strike on Lebanon that killed family as IDF targets Hezbollah
A relative tells BBC those killed were civilians and not Hezbollah operatives, but the Israel Defence Forces says it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure”.
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US-Israeli strike kills 15 at Isfahan factory, Iranian media says | US-Israel war on Iran News
Iranian media report the deaths in central Iran as Tehran launches new missile salvoes at Israeli targets.
Published On 14 Mar 2026
A missile strike on an industrial area of the central Iranian city of Isfahan has killed at least 15 people, with workers having been inside a factory at the time of the attack, Iranian media reports.
The strike hit a factory producing heating and cooling equipment on Saturday, a working day in Iran, according to the semi-official Fars news agency, which attributed the attack to US and Israeli forces.
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It came on the 15th day of a conflict that Iran’s Ministry of Health says has now killed at least 1,444 people and wounded more than 18,500 since the US-Israeli attacks began on February 28.
Cities across Iran have been repeatedly targeted following the onset of hostilities.
On March 8, shelling damaged Russia’s consulate in Isfahan, injuring staff, with Moscow calling the strike a “blatant violation” of international conventions.
Iran’s Ministry of Culture said on Saturday that 56 museums and historic sites had been damaged, including Naqsh-e Jahan Square, a 17th-century centrepiece of Isfahan, and the UNESCO-listed Golestan Palace in Tehran.
UNESCO said it was “deeply concerned,” noting that four of Iran’s 29 World Heritage Sites had been affected.
Separately on Saturday, Iran’s army confirmed that Brigadier General Abdullah Jalali-Nasab had been killed in an Israeli attack, saying he was “martyred while defending the country”.
Earlier, US forces also struck Kharg Island, which handles roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports, though a regional official said operations were continuing normally, and there were no casualties.
US President Donald Trump had previously threatened to target the island’s oil infrastructure if Tehran continued to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz.
Any prospect of negotiations appears remote. The Trump administration has rebuffed regional efforts to broker a ceasefire, with a senior White House official telling the Reuters news agency the president is focused on pressing ahead.
“He’s not interested in that right now, and we’re going to continue with the mission unabated,” the official said.
Iran has equally ruled out talks while the attacks continue, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous Iranian official.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi struck a defiant tone on Saturday, saying the US security framework in the region had “proven to be full of holes” and calling on neighbours to “expel foreign aggressors”.
Israeli Minister of Defence Israel Katz said the war was entering a “decisive phase”, which would “continue as long as necessary”.
Iran launched new missile salvoes at Israel on Saturday, with explosions heard over Jerusalem, according to reporters from the AFP news agency.
Six waves of missiles, some carrying cluster bomb warheads, struck wide areas of the country, the Israeli army said. In Eilat, a cluster munition impact injured three people, including a 12-year-old boy, according to The Times of Israel.
Fire and damage after strike on US embassy compound in Baghdad | US-Israel war on Iran
A strike on the heavily fortified United States embassy compound in Baghdad caused a fire and damage to the complex. It is the second attack on the embassy since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28.
Published On 14 Mar 2026
6 U.S. airmen die in crash; Hegseth says Iran’s leader is ‘likely disfigured’
WASHINGTON — Six American airmen deployed to operations against Iran were killed after their refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq, U.S. Central Command said Friday, bringing the U.S. death toll in the war to 13, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the heaviest day of strikes yet.
The crash involved two aircraft in “friendly airspace,” the Pentagon said, adding that the other plane landed safely. The downed KC-135 refueling tanker is the fourth U.S. aircraft to crash during the war against Iran.
“American heroes, all of them,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon on Friday. “We will greet those heroes at Dover and their sacrifice will only recommit us to the resolve of this mission.”
Central Command said the incident is under investigation but was “not due to hostile or friendly fire.”
During the briefing, Hegseth described the Iranian leaders as “desperate” and “cowering” underground like rats. He said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei “is wounded and likely disfigured,” but gave no intelligence to support the claim.
Khamenei has not been seen in public since he rose to leadership, but issued his first public statement Thursday vowing retaliation against U.S. and Israeli attacks, promising that Tehran will continue to choke off the world’s most crucial oil route — the Strait of Hormuz.
“Our revenge will be never ending, not only for the late supreme leader, but also for the blood of all of our martyrs,” he said.
The defense secretary said Friday would see Iran hammered with the heaviest round of air strikes yet seen in the two-week U.S.-Israeli operation that has razed buildings, complexes and factory lines all across Iran, killing at least 1,348 civilians, according to Iranian officials.
“No quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” Hegseth said.
And while Hegseth insisted that fighting will cease when the U.S. defeats Iran’s naval, missile, and nuclear weapons capabilities, President Trump’s public statements continue to sow doubt that the White House and Pentagon are aligned on the objectives of the mission.
Asked Friday by Fox News when the war might end, Trump said, “When I feel it — feel it in my bones.”
Iran’s blockade of the strait remains Tehran’s foremost leverage against its Western adversaries, and a serious political bane for Trump. The International Energy Agency warned Thursday that conflict has created “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” which has sent oil prices surging 40% to $95 a barrel since Feb. 28.
Some 1,000 ships remain stranded in the Persian Gulf, many of them energy tankers that have been unable to carry oil and gas shipments from the Middle East to importers across the globe. Vessels that have attempted to traverse the embattled channel have been destroyed in Iranian attacks. Hegseth described Tehran’s strategy as “an act of desperation.”
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations on Friday reported 20 incidents affecting vessels operating in and around the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman in March.
Drone and missile attacks continue to assail gulf states, threatening to draw more players into the conflict. Thick black smoke was seen rising over Dubai’s skyline Friday after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone strike caused a fire and minor damage to a building within the Dubai International Financial Centre, according to the Dubai Media Office.
Europe has become increasingly involved, too. U.S. long-range bombers have begun flying offensive missions from British airbases, even as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer explicitly permitted U.S. forces to use the bases “for defensive purposes only.” Starmer initially refused to cooperate in American hostilities in any capacity, but changed his approach after he drew criticism from Trump, who said, “He’s no Winston Churchill.”
The U.K., France, and Italy each deployed naval assets to the Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, situated just 125 miles from Lebanon, after Iranian drone strikes hit U.K. bases. The island has emerged as a strategic — and exposed — nerve center in the U.S. offensive against Iran.
Meanwhile, Israel said Friday its strikes are “continuing and intensifying” in Lebanon and Iran. The Israel Defense Forces issued new evacuation orders in southern Lebanon on Thursday after overnight airstrikes in Beirut triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Eight civilians were killed and nine others were wounded in attacks on the Lebanese city of Sidon on Friday, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. More than 100 children have been killed in the Israeli assault, the ministry said.
Lebanese father buries four daughters killed in Israeli strike | News
A Lebanese father mourned the death of his four daughters, mother, father, brother-in-law and nephew, after they were killed in an Israeli attack. Israel has killed at least 770 people in Lebanon since last Monday. Around 750,000 have been forcibly displaced.
Published On 13 Mar 2026
New Iranian leader Khamenei vows ‘never-ending’ revenge in first public statement
WASHINGTON — Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed retaliation Thursday against the United States and Israel and signaled that Tehran will continue to choke off the world’s most critical oil route, as the war strained global energy markets and raised new security concerns in the United States.
In his first public remarks since U.S.–Israeli strikes killed his father, former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei swore revenge. The new leader, notably, did not appear in person for the televised statement. Instead, his written words were read aloud on Iranian state media.
“We will never retreat and vow to avenge the blood of our martyrs,” he said. “Our revenge will be never ending, not only for the late supreme leader, but also for the blood of all of our martyrs. … Those who killed our children will pay the price.”
The new leader expressed condolences to families who lost children in a strike on a girls school in Minab that killed more than 165 people, many of them children. He also warned that the war could expand, declaring that the continuation of the conflict “depends on the interests of the parties.”
The Associated Press, citing two sources, reported that outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out the deadly missile strike on the elementary school. U.S. Central Command relied on target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to a person familiar with the preliminary finding.
Khamenei indicated that Tehran would maintain its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, a key choke point through which 20% of the world’s oil supply is shipped. He also said he believes in friendship with his country’s neighbors, but that attacks on U.S. military installations in the region will continue. He described maintaining pressure on the passage as a necessary part of Iran’s war strategy.
His remarks came as attacks continued to disrupt shipping and energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf. The war sent oil up 10% Thursday as hostilities in Iran drag on.
Reports from the region said Iranian forces have intensified strikes on vessels attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, leaving hundreds of ships stranded at its entrances and rattling global oil markets.
Two oil tankers were struck by explosives in Iraqi waters near the port of Basra. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed at least one crew member and set both vessels ablaze, according to the Associated Press. A third unnamed vessel was reported to have been struck by an “unknown projectile” near Dubai and Jebel Ali, causing a small fire, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations reported.
The latest incidents come after drone strikes targeted fuel storage facilities across the Gulf, including at energy sites in Bahrain and at the port of Salalah in Oman, an important hub for tankers seeking to bypass the Strait.
“They will pay the price. We will destroy their facilities,” Khamenei said. “It is necessary to continue our defensive activity, including continuing to close the Strait of Hormuz.”
Chevron and Shell to Strike Oil Deals Under Reformed Hydrocarbon Law
The Punta de Mata division produced over 400,000 bpd in the 2000s. (PDVSA)
Caracas, March 11, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Energy conglomerates Chevron and Shell are reportedly securing major oil deals in Venezuela following the recent pro-business reform of the country’s Hydrocarbon Law.
According to Reuters, joint venture Petropiar, where Chevron holds a minority stake, will expand its operations into the Ayacucho 8 bloc of Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt.
Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA completed exploration and appraisal of the 510 square-kilometer area located south of Petropiar’s current operations, but its development has been limited. Under the agreement, Chevron looks to significantly expand its extra-heavy crude output from the Orinoco Oil Belt, which holds three-quarters of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Chevron is reportedly looking to secure reduced royalties and taxes under the recently reformed Hydrocarbon Law in order to launch operations in the new area. Petropiar currently produces 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of upgraded Hamaca crude. PDVSA’s joint ventures with Chevron have a total present output of around 250,000 bpd.
In January, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a legislative overhaul that significantly improved conditions and benefits for private corporations in the oil and natural gas sector. Royalty and income tax levies, previously set at 30 and 50 percent, respectively, can now be slashed at the Venezuelan executive’s discretion.
In addition, joint venture minority partners can directly manage crude operations and sales, while legal disputes can be taken to international arbitration instances. Furthermore, PDVSA can also lease out projects to private operators in exchange for a percentage of the oil output.
Under the latter model, Shell is reportedly set to take over operations in PDVSA’s Punta de Mata division in eastern Monagas state, one of the most historically productive and profitable regions for Venezuela’s oil industry. The division produced over 400,000 bpd of light and medium crude grades in the 2000s but recent production was around 90,000 bpd.
The London-based multinational, which had a strong presence in the Venezuelan energy sector throughout the twentieth century, is likewise interested in capturing and processing natural gas that is currently flared in oil extraction processes.
Shell is additionally set to lead the Dragon offshore natural gas project alongside Trinidad and Tobago’s National Gas Corporation (NGC) in Venezuelan waters. The Nicolás Maduro government had suspended all joint initiatives with Trinidad due to its administration’s support for Washington’s Caribbean military buildup and threats against Venezuela last year.
Since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Maduro, the acting Venezuelan authorities led by Delcy Rodríguez have fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement with the Trump administration while also vowing to “adapt” legislation to attract foreign investment. Following the hydrocarbon reform, a new mining law has also been preliminarily approved by the Venezuelan parliament.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have visited Venezuela in recent weeks and hailed the investment opportunities in oil and minerals for US conglomerates.
Since January, the Trump administration has taken control of Venezuelan oil exports, with crude shipments handled by commodity traders Vitol and Trafigura and proceeds deposited in accounts run by the US Treasury. US authorities so far have only returned US $500 million, out of a reported $2 billion agreement, to the Caribbean nation.
The White House has also issued a number of licenses in an effort to boost US involvement in the Venezuelan energy sector, including limited waivers to export inputs and technology. In addition, Washington has allowed several corporations to negotiate agreements with Caracas while mandating that contracts be subject to US jurisdiction and that all royalty, tax and dividend payments be made to US Treasury-run accounts.
Alongside Chevron and Shell, the other companies with early access to the Venezuelan energy sector are BP, Eni, Maurel & Prom, and Repsol. The latter two held meetings with Rodríguez in February to discuss investment opportunities, while ExxonMobil has announced plans to send a delegation to the country in the coming weeks.
Venezuela’s oil production rebounded in February, with OPEC secondary sources registering an output of 903,000 bpd, up from 823,000 bpd in January. A US naval blockade since December had forced PDVSA to cut back production before exports began to flow again under Washington’s control. The oil sector remains under US financial sanctions.
For its part, PDVSA reported a February output of 1.02 million bpd, up from 924,000 bpd the prior month. The direct and secondary measurements have differed over time due to disagreements over the inclusion of natural gas liquids and condensates.
Edited by Lucas Koerner in Fusagasugá, Colombia.
Beirut building ablaze after apparent Israeli strike | Israel attacks Lebanon
A residential building in central Beirut was seen with flames erupting from a hole in its side after what appears to have been another Israeli strike.
Published On 11 Mar 2026
Hegseth threatens ‘most intense day of strikes’ as Iran war injures about 140 Americans
WASHINGTON — Some 140 American service members have been wounded since start of the Iran war, with eight of them “severely injured” and receiving medical care, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
“The vast majority of these injuries have been minor, and 108 service members have already returned to duty,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.
The casualty toll adds to the seven American troops killed so far in the war, which entered its 11th day with no clear sign of slowing down as U.S. officials indicated that the military campaign was likely to intensify.
Iran, too, took new actions that could escalate the conflict, reportedly laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a potentially devastating development for the global energy market.
President Trump said that if Iran put mines in the strait and did not remove them immediately, the U.S. military would hit Iran “at a level never seen before.”
“If, on the other hand, they remove what may have been placed, it will be a giant step in the right direction!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The warning was yet another escalation that came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday would bring the “most intense day of strikes” inside Iran, a fighting tempo that is at odds with Trump’s own assessment that the war is “very complete” and could end “very soon.”
At a Pentagon news conference, Hegseth said “the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes” would be deployed, but declined to say how much longer U.S. forces would be expected to fight in the region. He instead said the president will be the one to “control the throttle.”
“It’s not for me to say whether this is the beginning, the middle, or the end. He will continue to communicate that,” Hegseth told reporters.
That deference places the focus squarely on Trump, who a day earlier delivered mixed signals about the duration of the war, telling reporters at one point that the war is “very much complete” and a later time that it is “the beginning of building a new country.”
At a briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. military was “way ahead of schedule” on reaching its objectives in Iran, but reiterated that the president alone will decide what victory looks like.
“President Trump will determine when Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender and when they no longer pose a credible and direct threat to the United States of America and our allies,” Leavitt said.
The president’s shifting positions on the war’s conclusion have played out as Trump threatens to hit Iran “twenty times harder” if it attempts to halt the flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz, a key channel for the world’s oil supply — and as Democrats in Congress says they are growing concerned about the possibility of Trump sending U.S. ground troops inside Iran.
“We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters after being briefed on the Iran war.
When asked about Democrats’ concerns, Leavitt said Trump “wisely … does not rule options out as commander-in-chief.”
“I would hesitate to confirm anything that a Democrat says right now about the president’s thinking,” she added.
U.S. says Iran’s fire power is diminishing
As Washington plans out its next steps, the war has shown little signs of slowing. U.S. military officials say Iran’s military capabilities are eroding under sustained strikes that have targeted “deeply buried missile launchers” and made “substantial progress toward destroying” Iran’s navy.
Hegseth said “the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest amount of missiles they have fired yet.”
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that Iran’s ballistic missile attacks “continue to trend downward 90%” since the start of the war, and that drone attacks have decreased by 83%.
U.S. forces are also targeting Iran’s “industrial base in order to prevent the regime from being able attack Americans, our interests and our partners for years to come,” Caine said.
Caine said the Iranian military is adapting to the U.S. strategy, but remains confident in Washington’s ability to overpower Tehran. “They are adapting, as are we, of course. We have very entrepreneurial war fighters out there,” he said. “We are watching what they are doing, and we are adapting faster than they are.”
Asked whether Iran had proved to be a stronger adversary than anticipated, Caine said: “They are fighting, and I respect that, but I don’t think they are more formidable than what we thought.”
Iran, meanwhile, has refused to bow down to Trump’s demands and has issued warnings of its own.
Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official, called Trump’s threat against their targets on the Strait of Hormuz “hollow” and told him that he should instead focus on taking care of himself so that he is not “eliminated.”
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, however, said Iran was determined to keep fighting and was “definitely not looking for a ceasefire.”
“We believe that the aggressor should be punched in the mouth so that he learns a lesson so that he will never think of attacking our beloved Iran again,” Qalibaf said.
New attacks on neighbors
Meanwhile, Iran launched new attacks at Israel and gulf Arab countries. In Bahrain, authorities said an Iranian attack hit a residential building in the capital, Manama, killing a 29-year-old woman and wounding eight people.
Saudi Arabia said it destroyed two drones over its oil-rich eastern region and Kuwait’s National Guard said it shot down six drones. In the United Arab Emirates, firefighters battled a blaze in the industrial city of Ruwais — home to petrochemical plants — after an Iranian drone strike. No injuries were reported.
In Tel Aviv, explosions could be heard as Israel’s defense systems worked to intercept barrages from Iran.
Along with firing missiles and drones at Israel and at American bases in the region, Iran has also targeted energy infrastructure and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for traded oil, sending oil prices soaring. The attacks appear aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the U.S. and Israel to end their strikes.
Brent crude, the international standard, spiked to nearly $120 on Monday before falling back but was still at around $90 a barrel Tuesday, nearly 24% higher than when the war started on Feb. 28.
“The president and his energy team are closely watching the markets, speaking with industry leaders and the U.S. military is drawing up additional options, following the president’s directive to continue keeping the Strait of Hormuz open,” Leavitt said. “I will not broadcast what those options look like but just know the president is not afraid to use them.”
So far, the president has offered to have the U.S. Navy escort oil tankers.
The White House has insisted that soaring gas prices are temporary, but the shock in the energy markets has already prompted the Trump administration to lift oil-related sanctions on some countries, including Russia.
“We are going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out,” Trump said Monday. “And then who knows, maybe we won’t have to put them on because there will be so much peace.”
The war has created an opportunity for Russia to make gains in Ukraine, as hostilities draw the global spotlight away from Kyiv and its struggle to hold back the bigger Russian army. U.S.-brokered talks between the two adversaries have been sidelined as Washington shifts focus to its war in Iran.
As Russia enjoys economic gains from the war-fueled energy crisis in the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been gathering forces for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Key air defense systems have already been diverted from Ukraine to the Persian Gulf, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dispatched drone interceptors to the region and ordered anti-drone experts to pivot from their war with Russia to help Western allies help intercept Iranian attacks.
“At the moment, the partners’ priority and all attention are focused on the situation around Iran,” Zelensky said on X. “We see that the Russians are now trying to manipulate the situation in the Middle East and the gulf region to the benefit of their aggression.”
Times staff writers Gavin J. Quinton and Michael Wilner, in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report, which also includes reporting from the Associated Press.
Israeli air strike targets building in south Lebanon | Israel attacks Lebanon News
An Israeli air strike has heavily damaged a building in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district.
An Israeli air strike has heavily damaged a building in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district as Israeli forces continue to attack across the area. The army says it is targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure and has warned residents south of the Litani river to leave.
Published On 10 Mar 2026
Iranian strike kills Bahraini woman after hitting residential building | US-Israel war on Iran
A suspected Iranian attack on a high-rise residential building in Bahrain’s capital of Manama has killed a 29-year-old Bahraini woman and injured several others.
Published On 10 Mar 2026
U.S. and Israeli war in Iran, which Trump says will be ‘short term,’ has global reach
Dozens of civilians, including children, wounded by an Iranian drone strike in Bahrain. France deploying warships to secure shipping commerce in the Strait of Hormuz. Australia taking heat from President Trump over its handling of the Iranian women’s soccer team. Markets across Asia plunging as the price of oil surged.
Lebanon reporting half a million people displaced by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. State Department telling nonessential staff to get out of Saudi Arabia after attacks there killed workers from India and Bangladesh. Ukrainian anti-drone experts turning their attention from their war with Russia to help intercept Iranian attacks. The defense minister of ever-neutral Switzerland saying his country believes the U.S.-Israeli war violates international law.
In less than two weeks, the Trump administration has instigated a truly global conflict — and with no quick and clear path to resolution, despite Trump insisting to congressional Republicans gathered at his Miami resort Monday that it would be a “short term excursion.”
“Short term! Short term!” Trump said in a bullish speech about the conflict, in which he said “the world respects us right now more than they have ever respected us before.”
“We’re counting down the minutes until they will be gone,” he said of Iran’s remaining leadership, while adding that the U.S. “will not relent” until Iran is “totally and decisively defeated.”
The war is not isolated to Iran, though it has certainly caused devastation there — with more than 1,300 deaths reported and toxic clouds from strikes on fuel depots hovering over Tehran, a city of some 10 million people.
The war’s effects also are not limited to the Middle East, though they are widespread there — as Israel has pushed into Lebanon and Iran has launched a wave of retaliatory strikes on U.S. allies across the Persian Gulf. The fighting has grounded regional air traffic, threatened desalination facilities that provide drinking water to millions and undermined the safe reputation of modern metropolises such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Unlike the recent U.S. incursion into Venezuela to capture and oust President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. war on Iran has been met with stiff resistance militarily, drawn in a slew of allies, reignited proxy battles, drastically destabilized the oil trade and shifted dynamics between the U.S. and other major powers such as China and Russia.
China, which gets upward of 50% of its crude oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz, has largely stayed out of the conflict, though China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday that the war “should never have happened” and “benefited no one.”
Trump said Monday that the U.S. is less harmed by strait disruptions, and was “really helping China” by securing the strait.
Russia, meanwhile, has emerged the lone winner of energy disruptions in the region, said Robert David English, a UCLA international policy analyst — as the Trump administration considers reducing oil sanctions on Russia to take pressure off of Mideast sources.
Trump said he had a “good talk” with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Iran on Monday. He also said the U.S. was going to suspend sanctions against other countries in order to alleviate strain on oil markets while the Iran conflict persists, but did not provide specifics.
The scope of the war has been dictated in part by Iran, which has historically limited its responses to U.S. strikes but warned after the U.S. bombed its nuclear sites last summer that it would treat any new attacks — large or small — as an act of war, and respond in kind.
Its strikes on U.S. facilities and allies throughout the region reflect that strategy, and are aimed in part at making the war more politically costly for the U.S. by straining global markets and its regional allies, experts said.
However, “you can’t attribute the increasingly global characteristics of the conflict solely to an Iranian strategy, because wars in this region tend to spill over the longer they last, with unintended consequences” including “bringing in all kinds of actors that don’t want to be involved,” said Kevan Harris, an associate professor of sociology who teaches courses on Iran and Middle East politics at the UCLA International Institute.
That can serve as a deterrent to starting wars in the region, he said, but “also makes them more difficult to wind down.”
The surge in oil prices to nearly $120 a barrel Monday — before a remarkable reversal to below $90 by the time U.S. stocks closed — is one of the furthest-reaching effects of the war, and one that clearly had Trump’s attention.
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” Trump wrote on social media Sunday.
How long prices will remain elevated or volatile is a matter of debate, but Trump’s “short term” projections have been undercut by increasing strikes on oil and gas facilities in the region.
“If you can tolerate oil at more than $200 per barrel, continue this game,” Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Sunday.
Prices at the pump have surged for average Americans, some of whom were attracted to Trump’s candidacy because of his promises to avoid foreign wars and focus on driving down the cost of living for U.S. citizens.
Now, Trump and other administration officials are facing questions about their own role in putting the world at war, and offering various different justifications. They’ve asserted without proof that the U.S. faced an imminent threat of attack from Iran. Trump has repeatedly hinted that his goal was removing the government.
President Trump speaks at the Republican Members Issues Conference on Monday at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
In the meantime, Iran has shown no signs of bowing to Trump, rejecting his calls for “surrender” and for him to have a say in naming their next leader. Iran installed Mojtaba Khamenei after Trump said the hard-liner son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “unacceptable.”
The choice was hailed by the president of Azerbaijan and the leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, among other allies.
To date, seven U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict, according to U.S. officials. Every day, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $1 billion in war costs, according to one estimate. Democrats have slammed Trump for both.
“This war is coming from the same President that is building a $400 million ballroom in the White House. The same President that says $100 for a barrel for oil is worth it. The same President that doubled healthcare premiums for millions of Americans. But we have money for another endless war?” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote Monday on X.
Other world leaders focused on the global economic impact.
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which transports about 20% of the world’s oil, has nearly halted, while producers in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates ceased oil operations without open routes for export.
In response, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested French and other allied naval assets could escort oil tankers in the strait, shifting the security burden there from Washington onto Europe, leaving European vessels vulnerable to hostilities and potentially drawing the European Union deeper into the conflict.
Already, they’ve agreed to allow the U.S. to use bases in their territories, though the U.S. and Spain got into a spat after Spain rejected U.S. use of its bases and Trump threatened U.S. trade with the country.
Macron on Monday also threw additional military support behind Cyprus, following a meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at a Cyprus air base.
France will dispatch an additional 11 warships to operate across the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, Macron said, after an Iranian drone struck a British military base on Cyprus on Monday.
“When Cyprus is attacked, it is Europe that is attacked,” Macron said.
Located just 150 miles from Israel in the eastern Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus has emerged as a strategic — and exposed — nerve center in the U.S. offensive against Iran. It hosts vital British military bases and acts as an intelligence, surveillance, and logistics hub in countering Iranian influence and proxy attacks.
Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey said Monday that the United Kingdom was conducting air defense to support the UAE, and that Typhoon jets had taken out two drones — one over Jordan and the other headed to Bahrain.
Trump suggested Monday that the U.S. was on the path toward victory, but acknowledged it had not accomplished all of its goals.
“We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” he said — adding the conflict will end “pretty quickly.”
He said Iran had been “very foolish, very stupid” when it attacked its neighbors, hurting its own chances of success in resisting the U.S.
“Their neighbors were largely neutral, or at least weren’t gonna be involved, and they got attacked,” Trump said. “And it had the reverse effect. The neighbors came onto our side, and started attacking them.”
Iran may still attempt to widen the conflict’s economic and geopolitical impact to keep up pressure and push for a ceasefire in its favor, but that could also backfire, said Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.
“Iran’s becoming increasingly like North Korea in this sense,” he said, “isolating itself further.”
These 18 Southern California music venues have opened since the pandemic
Ron Mesh was a tour manager for Guns N’ Roses and hard rock acts for decades — he knows how a well-appointed club can make or break a band. He just opened Dune Room, an independent venue in Indio that aims to keep the desert’s edgier music scenes thriving for the non-festival-saturated months of the year.
“I put in everything I would have wanted playing clubs — bus parking, a great green room and amazing sound system,” Mesh said. “In L.A., I wouldn’t have come close to getting this. But Indio’s very exciting — a lot of young metal bands are thriving, and now you don’t even have to go to the high desert to find them.”
Mesh is well known in the desert’s music scene (he also opened Studio B, a high-end mix studio). The venue — formerly the Little Street Music Hall — had a knotty opening after some early ownership disputes with former partners. But for salty desert rockers and hungry young punks who can’t afford Coachella tickets, it’s a welcome addition to the scene. “Pappy’s has a vibe where you go to the club just knowing there’ll be something cool there,” Mesh said, “Indio is getting that too.”
Trump says U.S. ground troops in Iran ‘possible’
WASHINGTON — The war between the United States and Iran entered its ninth day Sunday with no clear path toward deescalation, as President Trump said deploying American ground troops to the Middle East remains under consideration and Iran’s foreign minister rejected calls for a ceasefire.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, Trump declined to rule out the possibility of sending U.S. forces inside Iran, saying it could “possibly happen” as the conflict intensifies.
“There would have to be a very good reason,” Trump said. “I would say if we ever did that they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level.”
As Trump weighs sending ground troops into the widening conflict, Iran has signaled it is not prepared to halt fighting and said it would be ready to fight American soldiers if they descend into the country.
“We have very brave soldiers, who are waiting for any enemy who enters into our soil to fight with them, and to kill them and destroy them,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Araghchi added that Iran is not considering a ceasefire at this time. He said the United States and Israel would first need to explain “why they started this aggression and then guarantee there would be a permanent end of the war.”
“Unless we get to that, I think we need to continue fighting for the sake of our people and our security,” he said.
Araghchi also pushed back on Trump’s demand last week that he be involved in determining Iran’s future leadership as part of condition to end the conflict.
“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” Araghchi said. “It’s only the business of the Iranian people, and nobody else’s business.”
As of Sunday, it remained unclear who would succeed Iran’s former leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, who was killed by American and Israeli strikes on the first day of the war. But the clerical body that will choose Iran’s next supreme leader appeared to be close to reaching a majority consensus on its pick, according to several news reports.
Trump said last week that Mojtaba Khamenei — the son of the former leader — would be an “unacceptable” choice.
As the war’s end remains nebulous, the battlefield actions continue to have an economic impact domestically, particularly on oil prices.
“If the war continues like this, there will be neither a way to sell oil nor have the ability to produce it,” Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a social media post Sunday. He added the war would affect not just the U.S., but also the rest of the world “due to [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s delusions,” referring to the Israeli prime minister.
Israeli strikes on Sunday hit an oil storage facility in Tehran, marking what appears to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that there’s currently a “fear premium in the marketplace” and sought to assure Americans that the soaring oil prices are a short-term problem.
“We never know exactly the timeframe of this,” Wright said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months thing.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the same assurances in an interview with Fox News‘ “Sunday Morning Futures,” calling the rising gas prices a “short-term disruption.”
“Ultimately taking out the rogue Iranian regime is going to be a good thing for the oil industry,” Leavitt said. “Those prices are going to come back down just like they have over the course of the past year, because of President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda.”
The strike on the oil storage facility came as Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the conflict.
Iran also hit a desalination plant in Bahrain, and according to Araghchi, a U.S. airstrike damaged an Iranian desalination plan on Qeshm Island that is a critical drinking water supply in the parched deserts of the gulf.
“Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences. The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X.
The United States has also come under scrutiny after evidence suggested that an American strike was likely responsible for an explosion at an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, most of them children.
Trump administration officials have said the matter is under investigation and that no determination has been made as to who was responsible for the strike. But on Saturday, Trump said Iran was to blame for the explosion.
“It was done by Iran,” Trump told reporters. “They’re very inaccurate as you know with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
Asked Sunday if Iran had any evidence that the strike was conducted by the Americans, Araghchi said it had to have been either the U.S. or Israeli military and said that Trump’s suggestion that Iran was responsible for the attack was “funny.”
“It is our school, these are our students and our girls and they are attacked by an American fighter, a jet fighter and they have been killed. Why [is] Iran responsible?” Araghchi said.
What is Trump’s true objective in the Iran war? U.S. targets provide a clue
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department last week outlined a concise set of military objectives in President Trump’s war against Iran, claiming its ultimate goal is to dismantle Tehran’s ability to project power beyond its borders. Yet it may be targets the Pentagon has largely left unacknowledged that offer the clearest insight yet into Trump’s true intentions.
U.S. military strikes have focused on Iran’s ballistic missile, drone and nuclear programs, as well as its naval assets, according to U.S. Central Command. But strikes have also increasingly targeted Iran’s internal security forces, used by the Islamic Republic to suppress public dissent, according to an analysis from the Institute for the Study of War and the Critical Threats Project shared with The Times.
The strikes have targeted at least 123 headquarters, barracks and local bases operated by Iran’s paramilitary organizations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Basij militia. Regional police forces, primarily in the capital region around Tehran and in western Iran, near areas dominated by Kurdish groups hostile to the Iranian government, have also been targeted.
Some of those groups are being armed and supported by the U.S. intelligence community, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
Nicholas Carl, with the Critical Threats Project, said the pattern indicates the campaign is already underway to set the conditions for a revolution.
“As we are going after these repressive institutions, we are degrading the ability of the regime to monitor its population, to repress its population,” Carl said. “And so it looks as though the strike campaign may be organized around trying to erode the ability of the regime to repress in those areas.”
Analysts said that strikes against internal forces could be greater than they have measured thus far, noting the difficulty of tracking targets in the war based on publicly available data due to an internet blackout strictly enforced by the Iranian government.
An explosion erupts after strikes near Azadi Tower close to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran on Saturday.
(Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty Images)
The quieter side of the U.S. campaign suggests a political strategy by the Trump administration that goes beyond simply containing the Iranian government, and may instead aim to lay the groundwork for its overthrow.
Trump and his top aides have been inconsistent in their messaging on their goals for the war, vacillating between calls for regime change and far shorter ambitions, such as an Islamic Republic that remains in power under leadership more acquiescent to the United States.
Before the war began, Trump was presented with an intelligence assessment that large-scale military action was unlikely to topple the Iranian government, two sources familiar with the assessment said. The assessment led analysts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon all to advise the White House against proceeding with the operation. The intelligence analysis was first reported by the Washington Post.
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Greasing the wheels for domestic unrest, for insurgency or revolution could serve other strategic purposes for the Trump administration beyond effecting regime change, adding new sources of pressure on an Islamic Republic that, if still intact by war’s end, would face renewed internal pressures at a moment of historic weakness.
Rob Malley, lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and special U.S. envoy for Iran under President Biden, said that a sustained U.S. campaign that cripples Iran’s ability to maintain domestic control could mean “the regime collapses, in the sense that it can no longer, genuinely and effectively, govern the entirety of the country.”
“Right now, what Trump is saying suggests an extremely ambitious, extremely long-term, extremely perilous campaign that will only end with Iran’s surrender, and it’s very hard to see Iran surrendering,” Malley said. But the campaign may already be working. “Their communications have certainly been penetrated — they cannot meet without being targeted by Israel or the United States,” he added.
A woman holds a portrait of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a protest Saturday by medical professionals outside Gandhi Hospital in Tehran, which was damaged in an airstrike earlier this week.
(Majid Saeedi / Getty Images)
“Either the regime stays in place weakened, bloodied, finding it harder to govern a more fragmented, chaotic country,” Malley continued, “or the regime no longer can govern.”
An Israeli official did not deny that internal security forces were being targeted, although the official said that Israel was focused on assassinating Iran’s political and security leadership — “tiers one, two and three,” the official said. The vast majority of the strikes against internal security services thus far have been conducted by the United States.
“Our goal is to weaken the ayatollah regime, to a point where the Iranian people can choose their fate,” the official told The Times. “It’s still not at the point where they can do that, but there is work still to be done.”
By all accounts, the campaign against Iran’s military assets has achieved success. Iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel and U.S. forces and allies in the region have decreased by 90% after just a week of combat, Defense officials said. Drone strikes have decreased by 83%. Over 30 Iranian vessels, including those used as launching pads for drones and aircraft, have been destroyed — a significant number for Iran’s aged and ill-funded naval fleet.
Trump could simply declare victory based on these results alone, said Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special representative for Iran in 2020.
“They will get weaker as they use up resources and we bomb more and more relevant sites. Already air traffic is starting up again,” Abrams said, noting that commercial flights in the region began resuming this weekend. “So I doubt that the president will need a protracted campaign.”
But that would leave the regime in place, leaving open the possibility of a revanchist Islamic Republic that could reconstitute its military and crack down further on democratic protesters — an outcome that could create political backlash for Trump, Abrams said, after losing U.S. service members in combat.
A woman jogs amid closed shops in south Tel Aviv on Saturday.
(Olympia de Maismont / AFP / Getty Images)
“The outcome remains entirely in doubt — regime collapse after a wave of protests, civil war, a deal that leaves the regime in place behind a new face,” Abrams added. “A real test for Trump would arise if there is a wave of protests as in January, and the regime again starts shooting. Can he do nothing? Unlikely.”
In his initial speech announcing the start of the campaign, Trump addressed the people of Iran, telling them to shelter in their homes until the U.S. bombing campaign concludes.
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” the president said. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond.”
But the president’s message grew muddled over the course of the last week, after he offered conflicting goals in a series of interviews with reporters.
He at once said he was expecting to hand-select the next ayatollah, after assassinating Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in the opening salvo of the war. In other interviews, he said that the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign had killed many of the potential leaders that Washington could have worked with.
On Friday, Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” He did not specify whether he was referring to a surrender of Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program, or on control over the country itself, and in a subsequent interview, said it could simply mean “when Iran no longer has the ability to fight.”
Over the last week, Kurdish leaders have shared accounts of Trump and his top aides reaching out to them and encouraging their involvement in the war, including a ground incursion in western Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan. But the president seems to have placed that effort on hold for the time being. “The war is complicated enough without having — getting the Kurds involved,” he told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One.
At Central Command headquarters on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that Trump maintains his promise to the Iranian people at the outset of the war, that a time will come for an uprising.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addresses the audience as President Trump listens during “The Shield of the Americas Summit“ on Saturday, a gathering with heads of state and government officials from 12 countries in the Americas at the Trump National Doral Golf Club in Doral, Fla.
(Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images)
“No one’s done more than President Trump to reopen the opportunity for those who want a free Iran to do so,” Hegseth said. “Ultimately, it’s common sense, as he said up front, don’t go out and protest while bombs are dropping inside Tehran and elsewhere. There will come a moment where he determines, or they determine, that it’s time to seize that advantage.”
Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Iran, said she expects the government to survive the U.S. assault, “still easily able to outgun and outmaneuver any challenges from the streets.”
But a concerted, prolonged campaign could change that assessment.
“Of course, months of full-scale war certainly could also break the system,” Maloney said, adding: “I don’t think the short-term result would be a stable transition to a more liberal system — but rather a collapse of the state itself, and at least for some period of time, a dangerous vacuum of power and order in the heart of the Middle East.”
Trump vows to escalate war as divisions in Iran emerge
WASHINGTON — Signs of division emerged in Iran’s leadership Saturday as U.S. and Israeli strikes continued battering targets throughout the country, with Tehran sending mixed signals on whether it would keep attacking Washington’s Arab allies entering the war’s second week.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian began the day offering an apology “on behalf of Iran to the neighboring countries affected,” promising to halt the attacks that have affected nearly every nation in the Middle East. But strikes continued within hours, hitting Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and Pezeshkian quickly issued a statement walking back his remarks.
President Trump vowed on social media to “hit Iran very hard” on Saturday, shortly before flying to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for the dignified transfer of six service members killed in the war.
Speaking at a summit of Latin American leaders in Miami before his trip to Delaware, the president said the fallen service members were heroes “coming home in a different manner than they thought they’d be coming home.” He said it was “a very sad situation,” and he pledged to keep American war deaths “to a minimum.”
And Israel launched its own wave of fresh attacks against Iran while taking incoming fire from Hezbollah, Iran’s allied force in Lebanon, that set off sirens in Tel Aviv. Reports of a fire at a major oil refinery outside Tehran sparked fears the conflict was only escalating, marking the first attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure, if confirmed.
The burst of activity over the weekend underscored that Trump’s unexpected war with Iran, launched alongside Israel just a week ago, is continuing at full force with no sign of slowing.
Missile and drone strikes by Iran against Arab nations, targeting U.S. military assets in the region as well as civilian targets, including hotels and airports, have been an effort by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to pressure regional governments to in turn press Trump to end the U.S. air campaign. The strikes have jolted markets worldwide and sent the price of oil soaring.
President Trump salutes Saturday as soldiers carry the coffin of Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa. Coady and five others were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait.
(Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images)
While the attacks have decreased substantially over the course of the week, with U.S. Central Command recording a 90% decrease in ballistic missile launches and an 83% drop in drone attacks as of Friday, Iranian strikes are still penetrating regional air defenses. One drone hit the world’s busiest airport, in Dubai, on Saturday, dashing hopes that flights could resume from the regional hub.
Hours after Pezeshkian’s apology, Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement vowing to continue strikes on territories that host U.S. offensive forces. Iran’s Defense Ministry said that its strategic stockpile of munitions was sufficient to sustain a protracted campaign. And a Revolutionary Guard spokesperson issued a statement addressing Trump, calling him “the corrupted island man,” referring to his former friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender who allegedly trafficked girls to his private island.
“The ground and the map of the war is in our hands,” the Revolutionary Guard official said. “This will continue.”
In his videotaped remarks, Pezeshkian also rejected Trump’s call for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender.” Trump later said he would be satisfied reaching a point at which Iran is no longer capable of fighting back.
“The idea of Iran surrendering unconditionally is a dream they will take to their graves,” Pezeshkian said.
A member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, a council of 88 clerics responsible for naming the country’s supreme leader, was quoted in local state media vowing to select a new ayatollah within the next day, more than a week after U.S. and Israeli forces assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening salvo of the war.
Trump has said he expects a say in that decision, preemptively rejecting the late supreme leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is seen as the most likely successor.
Mojtaba Khamenei is seen as even more ideological than his father, with deep ties throughout Iran’s security apparatus — and with a potential vendetta against Trump, on the heels of U.S. forces killing much of his family.
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council who formerly served as the late Khamenei’s top advisor, said in his first remarks since the ayatollah’s killing that his assassination was unprecedented. “The price for this is not small,” Larijani said.
“They shouldn’t think we’ll let America quickly sweep this under the rug and say, ‘We hit, now let’s move on,’” Larijani continued. “Things will only resolve when they understand they no longer have the right to violate Iran, and when they compensate the Iranian people for their losses.”
More that 1,200 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, according to Iranian officials.
“He killed and martyred our leader,” Larijani added. “We’re not letting it go.”
US downplays reports Russia gave Iran intel to help Tehran strike US assets | Conflict News
Pentagon asserts US forces are tracking Russian-Iranian operations amid escalating conflict in the region.
Published On 7 Mar 2026
Washington has downplayed reports that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran about United States targets across the Middle East amid the burgeoning US-Israel war on Iran, first reported by The Washington Post.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview on Friday, said the US is “tracking everything” and factoring it into battle plans when asked about the reports Moscow was aiding Tehran.
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Since the war began on February 28, Russia has passed Iran the locations of US military assets, including warships and aircraft, three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post.
“It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one of the sources told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, anonymous officials told The Associated Press news agency that US intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information, as the US and Israel continue their bombardment and Iran fires retaliatory salvoes at US assets and allies in the Gulf.
Hegseth said the United States is “not concerned” about the reports, also downplaying the possibility that Russia’s assistance could be putting US citizens in harm’s way.
“The American people can rest assured their commander-in-chief is well aware of who’s talking to who,” Hegseth said.
“And anything that shouldn’t be happening, whether it’s in public or back-channelled, is being confronted and confronted strongly.”
He continued: “We’re putting the other guys in danger, and that’s our job. So we’re not concerned about that. But the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna live.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday also claimed to reporters that “[the report] clearly is not making any difference with respect to the military operations in Iran because we are completely decimating them.”
Leavitt declined to say if Trump had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the reported intelligence sharing or whether he believed Russia should face repercussions, saying she would let the president speak to that himself.
First signs of Moscow’s involvement
Trump, for his part, on Friday evening berated a reporter for raising the matter of the report when he opened the floor to questions from the media at the end of a White House meeting about how paying student-athletes has recalibrated college sports.
“I have a lot of respect for you, you’ve always been very nice to me,” the US president said to Peter Doocy, the Fox News reporter.
“What a stupid question that is to be asking at this time. We’re talking about something else.”
The intelligence is the first indication that Moscow has sought to get involved in the war that the US and Israel launched on Iran a week ago.
Asked whether Russia would go beyond political support and offer military assistance to Iran, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there has been no such request from Tehran.
“We are in dialogue with the Iranian side, with representatives of the Iranian leadership, and will certainly continue this dialogue,” he said on Friday.
Pushed on whether Moscow has provided any military or intelligence assistance to Tehran since the Iran war’s start, he refrained from comment.
Russia has tightened its relationship with Iran as it looked for badly needed missiles and drones to use in its four-year war against Ukraine. But the pair have long maintained friendly relations, even while Tehran has faced years of isolation from the West over its nuclear programme and its support of proxy groups in the Middle East.
U.S. Denies F-15E Strike Eagle Went Down In Iran
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has denied claims circulating online of the loss of another F-15E Strike Eagle, this time over enemy territory, as part of ongoing operations against Iran. Earlier this week, three Strike Eagles were downed in an apparent friendly fire incident, reportedly by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet. All of this comes as the U.S.-Israeli air campaign continued to expand, and as the overall conflict has otherwise spilled further through the region.
You can catch up with our latest coverage of ongoing operations against Iran here.
“Rumors circulating on social media of a U.S. F-15E crash in Iran early Wednesday are baseless and NOT TRUE,” CENTCOM stated on X Thursday morning.
A CENTCOM spokesperson also told TWZ directly that there have been no aircraft downed other than those in Kuwait.
The denial came after a now-deleted post from the popular @sentdefender account on X claiming a F-15E had gone down went viral, with at least nearly 800,000 views. The post said the aircraft had gone down during a strike mission over southwestern Iran, but said the proximate cause was unknown. The Strike Eagles were said to have been able to eject safely and were then recovered in a joint U.S.-Israeli combat search and rescue mission. Claims about the loss had already been swirling amongst the open-source community.
“We have made the decision to delete reports made last night regarding the crash of a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle in Iran and the successful evacuation of the crewmembers by U.S. and Israeli Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR),” the account wrote in a new post today. “Defender Media maintains confidence in its sources, however, the story is as of now being officially and publicly denied by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).”
TWZ has reached out to @sentdefender for further comment.
This is not the first time CENTCOM has taken part in the online information war that has become standard for conflicts in the social media era. Yesterday, the command took to X to refute several claims made by Iran about killing 100 Marines, sinking a destroyer, taking down other aircraft, and forcing U.S. troops to withdraw from the conflict.
“ALL LIES,” CENTCOM stated in its post.
What is true is that the U.S.-Israeli air war over Iran is expanding and includes an increasing number of aircraft employing stand-in munitions closer to their targets. Potential risks can only be magnified, at least to a degree, as operations push deeper into Iran. There is always the potential for aircraft to go down for reasons other than enemy fire, as well.
The rest of our ongoing rolling coverage of the conflict continues below, with the latest updates at the top.
UPDATE: 4:57 PM EST –
U.S. Central Command edited a post on X that originally said “Rumors are circulating on social media of a U.S. fighter jet crash over Basra. These are baseless and NOT TRUE.” to read instead that “Rumors are circulating on social media of a U.S. fighter jet shot down over Basra. These are baseless and NOT TRUE.”
In speaking directly to TWZ, U.S. Central Command had also denied claims that a U.S. military aircraft had been shot down over Iraq, and said the change in the X post’s language was simply a matter of semantics.
Al Jazeera and Rudaw had earlier reported that a search was underway for a U.S. pilot after their plane went down in Iraq’s Basra region, citing local police officials, but did not give a reason for why the aircraft had come down.
Regardless, TWZ continues to highlight the potential risks associated with the expanding U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran. This all comes amid widespread misconceptions about the degree to which air superiority, let alone air supremacy, has been achieved, as you can read more about in our new piece here.
UPDATE: 3:45 PM EST –
“We are now moving to the next phase of the campaign, in which we will increase the damage to the foundations of the regime and its military capabilities,” IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has said in a statement. “We have additional surprising moves, which I do not intend to reveal. We will pursue our enemies, all of them, and we will find them.”
“The Israeli Air Force has carried out 2,500 strikes and dropped over 6,000 munitions,” Zamir also said. “We have neutralized and destroyed more than 60 percent of the ballistic missile launchers” and 80 percent of Iran’s air defense systems.
The IDF continues to release footage from strikes in Iran and Lebanon.
The IDF says its aircraft collectively flew more than 7,000 flight hours and struck more than 750 targets in the first 100 hours of Operation Roaring Lion.
The videos below are said to show a major strike in Iran’s Bushehr region earlier in the week. There are reports that Bushehr Air Base was the target.
The Ministry of Defense of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has released a new tally of interceptions of Iranian missiles and drones in the course of the conflict so far. The country’s forces have downed 196 ballistic missiles, eight cruise missiles, and 1,072 drones, per the latest data.
There are reports of a drone attack in Iraq’s Duhok province near an oilfield operated by U.S. firm HKN Energy.
The U.S. State Department has suspended operations at the American Embassy in Kuwait City, Kuwait, indefinitely. “While there have been no reported injuries to U.S. personnel, the safety of Americans abroad remains the highest priority of the U.S. Department of State,” the Embassy said in a press release.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that his government made the decision to kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayollah Ali Khamenei back in November and planned to do so within a six-month timeframe, according to Reuters.
The picture below is said to show Iranian sailors from the IRIS Bushehr being brought ashore in Sri Lanka.
UPDATE: 2:23 PM EST –
The IDF says it has now conducted 12 waves of strikes on Tehran. Israeli forces also continue to hit targets elsewhere in Iran.
Iranian authorities say the total death toll from U.S.-Israeli strikes is now 1,230, but again with no breakdown between civilians and members of the country’s military and security forces.
Israeli operations in Lebanon also continue to expand. Alerts were issued earlier in the day advising residents in broad swaths of the Beqaa Valley and the capital Beirut to evacuate ahead of air strikes. Lebanese authorities say that 102 people have died and 638 more have been wounded in Israeli strikes so far.
The video and pictures below are said to show a fire at the Bahrain Petroleum Company’s (BAPCO) oil refinery in the Ma’ameer following an Iranian attack.
The earlier Iranian attack on Azerbaijan has caused that country to close a portion of its airspace over the southern end of the country. This adds to already significant airspace closures across the broader region.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has told NBC News that his country is prepared for a ground invasion in a new interview. He also said that Iran is still refusing to engage with the United States and has not asked for a ceasefire.
UPDATE: 1:57 PM EST –
The IDF says it has now conducted 12 waves of strikes on Tehran. Israeli forces also continue to hit targets elsewhere in Iran.
Iranian authorities say the total death toll from U.S.-Israeli strikes is now 1,230, but again with no breakdown between civilians and members of the country’s military and security forces.
Israeli operations in Lebanon also continue to expand. Alerts were issued earlier in the day advising residents in broad swaths of the Beqaa Valley and the capital Beirut to evacuate ahead of air strikes. Lebanese authorities say that 102 people have died and 638 more have been wounded in Israeli strikes so far.
The video below is said to show strikes on an Iranian missile base in the country’s mountainous Damavand region.
U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that the U.S. government will have a role in choosing Iran’s future leadership, per Reuters. Trump said today that he would be personally involved in such a selection, according to Axios.
UPDATE: 1:20 PM EST –
U.S. Central Command has released a new video showing B-52 bombers flying in support of Operation Epic Fury. Closer inspection of the footage shows the aircraft carrying loads of AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) air-launched cruise missiles.
“This came up in one of my threads yesterday as to B-52s and B-1s likely executing standoff strikes using cruise missiles fired from outside Iran, not direct attacks,” our own Tyler Rogoway has written on X. “This video confirms it, AGM-158 JASSMs on the wings. They were not ready to push anything but B-2s over Iran.”
The Washington Post has reported on the U.S. military’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) driven tools to help with developing target packages and other tasks in support of Operation Epic Fury. U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, very briefly mentioned the contributions of AI at a press conference at the Pentagon yesterday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has visited Ovda Air Base, which is currently hosting U.S. combat jets. Pictures show U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors, which were reported to have arrived last week, as well as at least one F/A-18F Super Hornet. The presence of Super Hornets at Ovda does not look to have been previously disclosed.
IDF Logistics Command says it has already provided “hundreds of millions of liters of fuel” to support ongoing operations, according to The Jerusalem Post. Israel’s small fleet of KC-707 tankers has conducted 550 individual aerial refuelings, according to the Israeli Air Force. Before the conflict erupted, TWZ highlighted the immense value that U.S. tanker support would bring to any future operations against Iran.
The Institute for the Study of War has published additional satellite imagery analysis of damage to Ali al Salem Airbase in Kuwait from Iranian attacks.
Iranian authorities claim to be engaged in “preemptive” operations targeting Iraqi-based “separatist groups.” This follows still conflicting reports that began emerging yesterday regarding the possibility of a ground incursion by armed Iranian Kurdish groups.
Iranian state media has also carried threats, attributed to unnamed officials, of attacks targeting the Israeli nuclear site at Dimona in the event of any concerted effort to unseat the current regime in Tehran.
Italian authorities say they are joining the multinational effort to bolster the defense of Cyprus in the face of Iranian attacks.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Antony Blinken, who was U.S. Secretary of State under President Joe Biden, has suggested the Trump administration could seek to declare victory based on achievements so far as a possible off-ramp to the current conflict. Blinken also highlighted concerns about the impacts on U.S. munitions stocks and global energy markets if the fighting drags on.
There are reports that 1,000 commercial vessels, roughly half of which are oil and natural gas tankers, are currently anchored in and around the Persian Gulf as operators weigh the risks of attempting to sail in and out of the region, citing data from Lloyd’s Market Association. As already noted, ships are being attacked while sailing and at anchor in the Persian Gulf, as well as the Gulf of Oman.
UPDATE: 12:36 PM EST –
As the joint U.S.-Israeli Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran continues into a sixth day, the war is spreading beyond the Middle East. On Thursday, Azerbaijani officials said Iranian drones struck territory and vowed to retaliate. The country shares a border with northwestern Iran.
“At around midday on 5 March, drone attacks were carried out against the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of the Republic of Azerbaijan from the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “One drone struck the terminal building of the airport in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, while another drone fell near a school building in the village of Shakarabad. We strongly condemn these drone attacks launched from the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which resulted in damage to the airport building and injuries of two civilians.”
Four people were injured in the attack, according to Azerbaijani officials, and Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council that his country would respond militarily.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” he proclaimed, according to Reuters. “Our Armed Forces have been instructed to prepare and implement appropriate retaliatory measures. We are ready to demonstrate our strength against any hostile force – and they should not forget this in Iran.”
Aliyev did not offer specifics about what kind of retaliation.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi denied Tehran had targeted Nakhchivan, saying, “We do not attack our neighboring countries.”
Video seen below is said to show the aftermath of these attacks.
Meanwhile, several nations continue to send more military assets to Cyprus. Sky News reported on X that the U.K., Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands are all deploying warships to help bolster the island nation’s defenses. Notably, French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to head to the eastern Mediterranean. In addition, Greece has already deployed four F-16s to the island.
This comes as RAF Akrotiri, a British air base on Cyprus, continues to come under attack. On Thursday, an image emerged showing what appears to be a hole punctured in a hangar regularly used by U.S. Air Force U-2 Dragon Lady spy planes operating from the base. A one-way attack drone hit the RAF Akrotiri base late on Sunday, March 1. It is unclear if any aircraft were there at the time.
The U.K. Defense Ministry told us that there were no casualties and that damage to the base was “minimal.” There was “no damage to equipment inside the hangar,” the official added.
We’ve reached out to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. European Command for comment and will update this story with any pertinent details provided.
Iran claims it has now begun employing Khorramshahr-4 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) in strikes on Israel, but firm corroborating evidence has yet to emerge. The IRGC said it fired a volley of these missiles at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport earlier today.
The Khorramshahr-4 is said to carry a 3,300-pound warhead, the heaviest payload of any of Iran’s ballistic missiles, which would allow for a broader swath of targets to be threatened with greater damage from any successful impacts. Khorramshahr-4s could also be fired from areas further in the eastern interior of the country, reducing vulnerability to U.S. and Israeli strikes that have already significantly degraded Iran’s ability to launch missiles and drones. You can read more about what is known about this missile, which is derived from a North Korean design, here.
So far, Israel has not reported any casualties or major damage resulting from Iranian volleys today, and authorities in the country have highlighted a notable drop in overall attacks.
The IDF has now released a video of yesterday’s shootdown of one of Iran’s Russian-made Yak-130 light jets by an F-35I Adir fighter, which appears to be a view from the latter’s targeting system. You can read more about this engagement, which is the first known instance of an F-35 of any kind destroying a crewed aircraft, here.
The Pentagon and at least one Gulf Arab nation have reportedly reached out to Ukraine for cheap interceptors to help fend off waves of low-cost Iranian drones that have killed American troops and caused widespread damage across the Middle East. The talks, reported by the Financial Times, come amid continuing questions about the sufficiency of stocks of anti-air interceptors as Iran’s retaliatory attacks continue. As we have frequently noted, Ukraine has made significant investments in the development of new, lower-cost interceptors in response to years now of Russian drone attacks.
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also acknowledged the interest in his country’s counter-drone systems.
“We received signals from partners in the Middle East,” he explained on X. “There have been strikes by Iranian ‘Shaheds’ on civilians in those countries. They are seeking our expertise. We are open. If their representatives come, we will provide the expertise. Especially since there is also a request from Europeans and from the United States. Requests have come to us to share our experience with partners in the Middle East.”
However, Zelensky also stated his oft-repeated concern about his own country’s stock of interceptors and suggested a swap of those for Patriot missiles.
“Regarding weapons: we ourselves are at war. And I said, completely frankly, that we have a shortage of what they have,” the Ukrainian leader noted. “They have missiles for the Patriots, but hundreds or thousands of ‘Shaheds’ cannot be intercepted with Patriot missiles – it is too costly. Nothing is too much for the people, of course, but they simply do not have that many missiles. That is why they need interceptor drones, which we have. Meanwhile, we have a shortage of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles. So, when it comes to technology or weapons exchange, I believe our country will be open to it.”
While the Pentagon eyes Ukrainian interceptors, U.S. Central Command is reportedly seeking additional personnel to help handle the flow of intelligence pouring in from the Middle East. CENTCOM “is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days but likely through September,” Politico reported, citing a notification it obtained.
“It’s the first known call for additional intelligence personnel for the Iran war by the administration, and a sign the Pentagon is already allocating funding for operations that may stretch long beyond President Donald Trump’s initial four-week timeline for the conflict,” the outlet posited. “The rush to add people and resources to support efforts that are often organized well in advance of U.S. military action highlights how the Trump team had not fully anticipated the wide fallout of the war it launched alongside Israel on Saturday.”
It has been pointed out that the “through September” timeline for these temporary deployments may simply be dictated by standard personnel management procedures.
CENTCOM has released a new video showing attacks on Iranian hardened shelters and aircraft out in the open.
CENTCOM has also highlighted new attacks on Iranian mobile missile launchers. As we noted yesterday, these strikes have been a big focus of Epic Fury and have helped drastically reduce the number of missiles Iran has launched.
A new uncrewed surface vessel attack on a commercial ship has been reported. The Bahamas-flagged crude oil tanker Sonangol Namibe, which was anchored in Iraqi waters, is said to have been struck. As we previously reported, the first Iranian kamikaze boat attack during Epic Fury took place on March 2 on a ship in the Gulf of Oman.
A video emerged on social media purporting to show the moment that USV hit the Sonangol Namibe.
In the wake of the sinking of an Iranian frigate by a U.S. Navy fast attack submarine, Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi called the incident an “atrocity” and vowed revenge. The unnamed American submarine sank the Moudge class frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean near the island of Sri Lanka. Our sister site Task & Purpose has reported that a Los Angeles class submarine was responsible. Regardless, it is was the first sinking by a U.S. Navy submarine since World War II.
“Mark my words,” he stated on X. “The U.S. will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.”
The Indian government has also now released a statement with details about the rescue effort after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed.
Satellite imagery collected today shows what appears to be oil on the surface of the water near Galle, Sri Lanka, which could be tied to the sinking of the IRIS Dena.
Meanwhile, another Iranian ship is seeking shelter in Sri Lanka.
“The Sri Lankan minister Nalinda Jayatissa told parliament that another Iranian vessel was sailing close to Sri Lanka’s territorial waters on Thursday morning,” The Guardian reported. “We are making necessary interventions to resolve this issue, restrict the threat to lives and to ensure regional security.”
Unnamed sources told The Guardian that “the ship was a logistical pipe-laying vessel, which is not categorised as a warship. It may be as close as 10 nautical miles from the western coast of Sri Lanka, putting it within the country’s sovereign waters.”
The sources told the news outlet that the ship, which is reported to have a crew of more than 100 onboard, “had made an urgent request to dock at Colombo port for engine repairs.”
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
Europe commits to expanding Iran campaign as Israel strikes southern Lebanon
WASHINGTON — New signs of a widening regional conflict emerged Thursday as the war with Iran entered its sixth day, with European allies pledging warships and access to military bases for the U.S. campaign, Israel intensifying strikes in Lebanon against Hezbollah militants, and Kurdish forces preparing for a potential incursion into northern Iran.
Iran continued retaliatory missile and drone attacks against Israel and U.S. military sites across the region. The strikes hit at least “10 countries that did not attack [Iran],” British Prime Minister Kier Starmer said at a news conference Thursday.
Starmer announced new military deployments and confirmed the U.K. will allow American forces to use British bases for defensive operations against Iran. The move was a reversal of Starmer’s initial cautious approach, which drew criticism from President Trump, who said, “He’s no Winston Churchill.”
“I took the decision that the U.K. would not join the initial strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel,” Starmer said. “That decision was deliberate. It was in the national interest. And I stand by it. But when Iran started attacking countries around the Gulf and the wider region, the situation changed.”
The United Kingdom will send four additional RAF Typhoon jets to reinforce its squadron in Qatar, deploy Wildcat helicopters with anti-drone capabilities to Cyprus and dispatch the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean.
The moves place Britain among the most active European partners supporting the U.S. war effort, as Starmer warned that the conflict will likely “continue for some time,” he said. It comes after an Iranian drone struck a British military base in Cyprus on Monday, which has led to a mounting of European naval resources.
Located just 150 miles from Israel in the eastern Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus has emerged as a strategic — and exposed — nerve center in the U.S. offensive against Iran. It hosts vital British military bases and acts as an intelligence, surveillance, and logistics hub in countering Iranian influence and proxy attacks.
On Thursday, Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto, said Thursday that his country would follow the lead of France, Spain and the Netherlands to aid in the defense of Cyprus.
“Within the EU it made sense to send a message of support to Cyprus,” he said.
Smoke plumes billow following Israeli bombardment on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday.
(Ibrahim Amro/AFP via Getty Images)
Spain announced Thursday it would dispatch its advanced frigate Cristóbal Colón to Cyprus, after initially maintaining a “no to war” stance.
France also authorized temporary access to U.S. aircraft on bases located on French soil, a French army general staff official told Reuters.
And Germany, a country that has explicitly ruled out military participation in war with Iran and has criticized the legality of the initial U.S.–Israeli strikes, said Western powers must prepare for further escalation.
“Europe must remain united in the face of this crisis,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said during an emergency meeting of European leaders. “We will not allow ourselves to be divided while regional stability is threatened.”
Meanwhile, conflict has reached a fever pitch between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Iranian proxy and key pillar of what Iran has called the “Axis of Resistance.” Overnight, Israel launched heavy airstrikes across southern Lebanon and issued urgent evacuation warnings for the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut.
The outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon marks the end of a Israeli-Hezbollah truce and the opening of a major second front in the war with Iran. The fighting erupted after Hezbollah launched a barrage of drones and rockets at Israeli military sites—a retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Lebanon’s health ministry reported that at least 102 people have been killed by the Israeli strikes so far. In the Beirut suburbs, the Israeli military ordered residents of the Hezbollah-dominated Dahieh district to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately.”
“Dahieh? There’s not going to be a Dahieh any more,” one young man said as he talked to a family member on the phone at a media vantage point in the nearby hills.
The widening conflict has also drawn in Ukraine, which has some of the world’s most extensive experience in defending against Iranian-made Shahed drones. Such drones have been deployed by Russia in its war on Ukraine.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Wednesday that the United States and other allies in Europe and the Middle East have sought Kyiv’s “expertise and practical support” to help them stop Iranian drones.
“Of course, any assistance we provide is only on the condition that it does not weaken our own defense in Ukraine and that it serves as an investment in our diplomatic capabilities,” Zelensky said in a social media post. “We help protect against war those who help us — Ukraine — bring the war to a dignified conclusion.”
While the aerial and naval battle intensifies across the Middle East, a ground war may also be on the horizon.
People arrive to sign a condolence book in memory of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Embassy of Iran in New Delhi, India, on Thursday.
(Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
The United States and Israel have increased coordination with Kurdish armed groups along Iran’s western frontier, hoping to exploit longstanding tensions between Tehran and Kurdish factions opposed to the Iranian government, Kurdish officials told the Associated Press.
Iranian forces have already launched missile and drone strikes against Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq following the initial U.S.–Israeli assault on Iranian targets.
Those strikes targeted areas around the city of Erbil and on Kurdish opposition groups operating near the Iranian border, locations where U.S. military forces and diplomatic facilities are also present.
Officials have not publicly confirmed whether Kurdish groups will mount cross-border operations, but security analysts say an incursion into Iranian territory could open a new front in the conflict.
U.S. Central Command, meanwhile, is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days, but likely through September, according to a notification obtained by Politico.
The moves come as the House prepares to vote Thursday on a war powers resolution that would withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities in Iran, and limit the president’s power to wage war in the region. A similar measure failed Wednesday in the Senate, mostly along party lines.
Quinton reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.
Hegseth says U.S. is ‘accelerating’ war on Iran, but strike at Turkey won’t trigger NATO
The U.S. war effort against Iran was “accelerating” as American and Israeli forces fought for control of Iranian airspace and pressed farther inland to seek and destroy Iranian missile capabilities, top U.S. officials said Wednesday.
“Four days in, we have only just begun to fight,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“The throttle is coming up,” said Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
However, a reported Iranian missile strike at NATO member Turkey — intercepted by NATO defense systems — was not expected to immediately broaden the war theater by triggering a NATO clause requiring other member nations to get involved, Hegseth said.
Hegseth, striking an unapologetic tone, said Iran’s surviving leadership “don’t know what plays to call” after exhausting initial retaliatory strategies devised prior to the U.S. assault, while the U.S. is firing on all fronts and stacking up wins — including an American submarine recently sinking an Iranian warship with a torpedo in international waters, which Hegseth called the first such sinking since World War II.
“We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating,” he said. “We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”
Caine, striking a far more measured tone at the Pentagon briefing, spoke of the “sacrifice” of the six U.S. service members who have been killed in the conflict to date and the “clear military objectives” of the operation, which include dismantling “Iran’s ability to project power outside of its borders, both today and into the future.”
And he said the U.S. has made “steady progress” toward those goals in recent hours. He said Iran’s “ballistic missile shots” were down 86% from the first day of fighting, and down 23% “just in the last 24 hours.” He said their “one-way attack drone shots” are down 73% from the “opening days” of the war.
That has allowed the U.S. to establish “localized air superiority across the southern flank of the Iranian coast and penetrate their defenses with overwhelming precision and firepower,” Caine said. “We will now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of maneuver for U.S. forces.”
Hegseth and Caine spoke against a backdrop of escalating destruction across the Persian Gulf region, as Iran — which Hegseth acknowledged is a “formidable” enemy — continued to unleash a wave of retaliatory strikes and Israel pushed into Lebanon and against Iran-allied Hezbollah fighters there.
Their message of U.S. control in the region belied chaos in many parts of it — as sirens blared in Bahrain, U.S. and other foreign citizens scrambled to flee the area, global air traffic was in disarray and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for the flow of global energy, was down by about 90%, according to the Associated Press.
Turkey’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that NATO air defenses had shot down a ballistic missile fired toward Turkish airspace from Iran, which raised additional questions about a rapidly expanding footprint of the war given that Turkey is a NATO member and protected by a treaty clause — Article 5 — stating that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
Hegseth said the U.S. was aware of the strike, but that he did not believe it would trigger Article 5 or force all of NATO into the conflict — which has already drawn in nations throughout the Gulf region as Iran has targeted U.S. allies and military facilities.
Hegseth jettisoned any pretense of constraint or measured force by the U.S., instead casting its operations as an all-out assault on “radical Islamist Iranian adversaries” that he suggested both Democrats and the U.S. media were badly misrepresenting to make President Trump look bad.
He suggested the U.S. media was overly focused on losses, such as the deaths of U.S. military personnel, and not nearly focused enough on the progress the U.S. has made toward destroying Iran’s military capabilities in a matter of days.
“They are toast, and they know it — or at least soon enough they will know it,” he said of Iran. “And we’ve only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities, just four days in.”
He said that the U.S. and Israel in “under a week” will “have complete control of Iranian skies — uncontested air space,” which he said will mean that “we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders.”
“Death and destruction from the sky, all day long,” he said. “We’re playing for keeps.”
It was unclear what exactly Hegseth meant by that, given the Trump administration’s constant messaging that the war on Iran will not be another “endless” engagement for the U.S. in the Middle East.
The U.S. was using rules of engagement that are “bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it,” Hegseth said. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
Disruptions to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and their potential effect on global and U.S. gas prices, were clearly on Trump’s mind. On Tuesday, he posted to his Truth Social platform that the U.S. would be providing wartime insurance for “ALL Maritime Trade” through Gulf shipping lanes — as other insurers began canceling coverage — and that the U.S. Navy would begin escorting tankers if necessary.
“No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD,” he wrote.
The message drew immediate concern from some of Trump’s political opponents, who questioned the cost to the U.S. of securing energy shipments for the entire world, including rivals such as China, one of the largest purchasers of crude oil from the region.
“Very few, if any, of these tankers are coming to the United States,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) wrote on X. “This certainly looks like the United States will be subsidizing and protecting oil shipments to China.”
Is Cyprus safe to travel to? Latest holiday advice after flights cancelled following Iran strike
CYPRUS is one of the European countries that has been drawn into the Iran crisis.
Flights were cancelled earlier this week after a drone strike from Iran hit an RAF base, resulting in a major airport being temporarily evacuated.
Here is everything you need to know about travelling to Cyprus right now.
Is Cyprus safe to travel to?
Cyprus is still on the safe travel list, with no areas deemed too dangerous for travel.
However, there is some updated advice following the RAF base attack.
The UK Foreign Office website currently states: “On March 2, 2026, the Sovereign Base Areas Administration confirmed a suspected drone impact at RAF Akrotiri.
“British nationals in the Sovereign Base Areas should follow instructions from the Sovereign Base Areas Administration British Bases Cyprus Facebook British nationals in the Republic of Cyprus should follow any instructions from Cypriot local authorities.”
This is mainly for Brits living in the area, rather than tourists in the resorts of Larnaca and Paphos.
The latest travel advice for the rest of Cyprus states: “Regional escalation poses significant security risks and has led to travel disruption.”
Are flights to Cyprus affected?
Some flights to Cyprus have been cancelled in recent days.
EasyJet and British Airways cancelled a number of flights from the UK on Monday and Tuesday.
Today, easyJet cancelled four flights from the UK today – London Gatwick flight to Larnaca, as well as flights from Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh to Paphos.
TUI cancelled four flights to Cyprus, affecting flights from Bournemouth, East Midlands, and Cardiff to Paphos.
A TUI spokesperson told Sun Travel: “In light of the evolving situation in the Middle East, we have taken the decision to cancel the four TUI Airways flights scheduled to travel to Cyprus on March 4.
British Airways cancelled its London Heathrow flight to Larnaca today as well.
Brits with flights later this week should keep on eye on the current status as they could still be cancelled at short notice.
What if I have a holiday booked to Cyprus?
With travel still deemed safe in Cyprus, holidays are still going ahead.
If you decide to cancel, you will be left out of pocket as tour operators are under no obligation to issue a refund.
The Sun’s Head of Travel Lisa Minot said: “Only if the advice were to change, would your travel company have to offer you the chance to amend your travel to a different date or offer you a full refund.
“We have had lots of questions about holidays to Cyprus – both Larnaca and Paphos, later in June, July and September and the advice really remains the same.
“Unless you have paid a minimal deposit, you should continue to make payments.
“If you cancel now you could lose money – and discover that holidays are significantly more expensive when you look to book again.”
“What is important is to make sure you have bought good travel insurance NOW to cover you in the run up to your holiday dates. A lot can happen in the coming months.”
The Sun’s Head of Travel has answered some other questions regarding holidays right now.
