DUBAI/TEL AVIV: Israeli and US forces pounded targets across Iran on Tuesday, prompting Iranian retaliatory strikes around the Gulf as the conflict spread to Lebanon, rattling global markets and sending oil prices sharply higher.
Four days into the war, US President Donald Trump told reporters that the US military had struck numerous Iranian naval and air targets, saying that “just about everything has been knocked out”. “Their air defence, air force, navy, and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said: ‘Too late!’,” Trump posted on social media. Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, however, denied that his country had approached the US for talks.
Iran’s defence ministry said Tuesday that the country is ready for a long war against the United States and Israel and has so far not used its most advanced weapons.
“We have the capacity to resist and to continue an offensive defence longer than what (the enemy) has planned for this imposed war,” ministry spokesman Reza Talaei-Nik was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. “We do not intend to deploy all our advanced weapons and equipment in the first days,” he added.
In his most extensive public comments yet, Trump also sought to justify the assault on Iran, saying he had ordered his forces into action because he had “a feeling” Iran would attack after negotiations over its nuclear programme stalled.
In response to the fierce assault, Iranian drones struck the US embassy in Saudi Arabia after previously hitting the mission in Kuwait. Washington shut both embassies, as well as its one in Lebanon, and ordered non-emergency government personnel and their families to leave much of the Middle East.
A source familiar with Israel’s war plan told Reuters that the campaign had been planned to last two weeks and was going through its target list faster than expected, with early success in killing its leaders—including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening salvoes on Saturday.
When asked who he would like in charge in Iran following the death of Khamenei, Trump gave a blunt assessment: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.”
Iran’s capital Tehran was repeatedly shaken by violent explosions through the day, with Israel striking the headquarters of the state broadcaster IRIB as well as an area around the city’s Mehrabad airport.
The building housing Iran’s Assembly of Experts, tasked with choosing a leader to replace Khamenei, was also flattened by an air attack in the city of Qom south of Tehran, Iranian news agencies said.
It was not immediately clear if anyone died in the raid, but Trump said senior Iranians had perished on Tuesday, without giving details. “I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial also,” he said.
As Iranians have fled cities, the capital has become a ghost town. “How long will this continue? Where are the shelters? Where is the government?” Bijan, 32, a bank employee, told Reuters by telephone from Tehran. “Every night my wife and I hide in the basement. The whole city is empty. There is smoke and blood everywhere.”
Global stock markets slid as the disruption of Middle East energy supplies threatened to reignite post-pandemic inflation.
“We have told the enemy that if you try to harm our main centres, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Ebrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the Revolutionary Guards commander-in-chief, said in remarks carried by Iranian media.
The war has also spread to Lebanon, where Iran’s Hezbollah allies fired on Israel, which responded with air strikes and reinforcements of ground positions in the south. Thick black smoke blanketed Beirut as the sound of explosions rumbled in the air. Authorities said dozens were killed there.
Iran said its death toll from the attacks had reached 787, citing the Red Crescent.
While Israeli officials explicitly say they want to oust Iran’s government, US officials have said the war’s aim is to destroy Iran’s ability to project force beyond its borders.
Trump has also urged Iranians to topple the clerical leadership, which has tormented the US and its allies for generations, but urged caution.
“If you’re going to go out and protest, don’t do it yet. It’s very dangerous out there,” he said on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told a briefing that the duration could depend on developments.
In Israel, where Iranian missiles have killed 10 people since Saturday, air raid sirens sounded repeatedly, warning of incoming attacks and sending millions into bomb shelters as the blasts of interceptions shook buildings and shrapnel crashed through the roof of a residential building near Tel Aviv.
Global air transport has also been in chaos, with airports shut in the Middle East that serve as hubs linking Asia, Europe and Africa.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday that Iran’s new leadership, when elected and formed, could provide a window of opportunity to end the war with the United States and Israel.
The Turkish Foreign Minister said Iran’s strategy of attacking Gulf states in retaliation for US and Israeli attacks against it was an “incredibly wrong strategy” and increased instability in the region.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had struck a compound in Iran that it said aimed to develop “necessary capabilities” for nuclear weapons, without providing any evidence for the assertion.
US lawmakers on Tuesday criticised the State Department for urging Americans in the Middle East to evacuate three days after the U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran began, saying the late warning and widespread flight disruptions showed poor planning and “incompetence.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said: “It all happened very quickly,” referring to the war with Iran, when asked why there were no plans to evacuate US citizens.
President Trump welcomed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Tuesday, thanking the German leader for his support of the widening U.S.-Israel war against Iran.
Trump, speaking in the Oval Office alongside Merz, told reporters that Germany had been “helping out” by allowing US forces to access certain bases, and drew a sharp contrast to the actions of two other European countries: Britain and Spain.
Merz said Germany and the United States shared a desire to get rid of Iran’s current regime and said he would discuss with Trump what happened once the military operation ended.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday the US navy would escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz if needed amid the Iran war, and ordered Washington to provide insurance for shipping.
”If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible. No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
A senior Trump administration official told reporters on Tuesday the United States is not using any country as interlocutor with Iran.
The Pentagon’s policy chief on Tuesday distanced the United States from the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying he was killed by an Israeli strike.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Elbridge Colby said the strike that killed Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders was not part of the American military campaign. “Those are Israeli operations,” Colby said, pushing back when pressed by lawmakers about whether regime change was an objective of US action.
Iran fired another salvo of missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening, the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by the Fars news agency.
”The sixteenth wave of ‘Operation True Promise 4’ has begun with a large number of missiles and drones launched by the aerospace forces of the Revolutionary Guards against the heart of the occupied territories,” the statement said, referring to Israel.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed Saturday in US-Israeli strikes, will be buried in the holy city of Mashhad, the Fars news agency said Tuesday.
Khamenei, who died at 86 after leading for 36 years, was originally from Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, where his father is buried at the Imam Reza shrine. No date for the burial was disclosed. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to the official Xinhua news agency, warned Saar in a call that Beijing opposes the strikes, saying the use of force “will only bring new problems and severe after-effects”.
Saudi Arabia condemned on Tuesday an overnight Iranian attack on the US embassy in Riyadh, as Tehran keeps up its retaliation campaign in the Gulf over US and Israeli strikes.
The Saudi foreign ministry in a statement expressed “its strongest condemnation and rejection of the heinous attack that targeted the US Embassy building in Riyadh”, describing it as “cowardly and unjustified”.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he had ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation to provide insurance and guarantees for the financial security of all maritime trade, including oil tankers, traveling through the Gulf region. He made the comments in a Truth Social post.
Meanwhile, smoke was seen rising from an area near the US consulate in Dubai, two witnesses said on Tuesday. The US State Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
