Israel and the US intensified their attacks on Iran on Tuesday, launching waves of strikes targeting command and control facilities, strategic state offices and missile launch sites, as Donald Trump said he had rejected what he claimed was an attempt by Tehran to restart negotiations.
Iran retaliated with hundreds of missile and drone attacks against Israel and across the Gulf region, targeting US military bases, embassies and civilian infrastructure.
Despite acute international fears, there appeared little chance of any de-escalation of the conflict as violence and chaos continued across an fast-widening swathe of the Middle East for a fourth day.
Hundreds of people have been killed, mainly in Iran where the Red Crescent said 787 were dead and thousands injured. Billions of dollars of damage has been inflicted on oil refineries, tankers, airports, luxury hotels and much else, with the world economy threatened with a severe crisis as energy prices soared.
“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!’,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform, saying the US was prepared “to go far longer” than a four- to five-week war against Iran.
In later comments in the White House with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, he said: “Just about everything’s been knocked out.”
Trump denied Israel had forced his hand into launching the war, while conceding he feared a “worst-case scenario” in Iran where “somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person”.
Also on Tuesday, Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva denied his country had approached the US for negotiations.
Among targets hit in new waves of US and Israeli airstrikes in Tehran and other main Iranian cities was a building used by the committee of senior clerics who will choose a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose assassination by Israeli planes on Saturday opened hostilities. It was not clear if the building was occupied at the time of the strike.
“The American-Zionist criminals attacked the Assembly of Experts building in Qom,” south of Tehran, Tasnim, an official Iranian news agency reported.
Iran’s foreign ministry said the UN security council had a “duty” to act to stop the war, even as its military remained publicly defiant.
A spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guards threatened that “the gates of hell will open more and more” on the US and Israel.
The US embassy in Riyadh, which was damaged and briefly caught fire overnight in an Iranian drone strike, on Tuesday warned of an imminent attack in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran, site of much of the kingdom’s oil and gas installations along the Gulf coast.
Economic targets came under fire elsewhere in the Gulf as Iran continued to launch volleys of retaliatory drones and missiles at its neighbours.
Qatar said it had downed missiles targeting Hamad International Airport in Doha, while Oman reported several drones attacking the port of Duqm, and in the UAE falling debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at an oil storage and trading zone, authorities said.
On one newly opened front of the expanding conflict, Israel said ground troops had entered southern Lebanon to protect people living in northern Israel. In response, the deputy head of Hezbollah’s political council, Mahmoud Qamati, declared “open war” with Israel.
The pro-Iran group continued to target Israel, saying it had launched two missile salvoes overnight towards military bases in northern Israel, and shelled a military base on Tuesday morning. Israel carried out strikes and issued evacuation orders for villages in southern Lebanon, emptying out the country south of the Litani River and turning the southern suburbs of Beirut into a ghost town.
The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Tuesday he had instructed Israeli troops to “hold and advance” into areas of south Lebanon to prevent further Hezbollah fire on northern Israel. It was the first acknowledgment that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah would involve boots on the ground.
So far, Israeli airstrikes have killed 52 people and displaced at least 29,000 in Lebanon.
US officials have maintained their bellicose rhetoric, with the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, raising the possibility of US troops on the ground in Iran, while the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that the “hardest hits are yet to come”.
Trump said on Tuesday that successive waves of US-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed figures he had considered could be new leaders.
“Most of the people we had in mind are dead … I guess the worst case would be, we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? … We’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people,” Trump said as he met Merz at the White House.
US officials offered varying justifications for why they had launched the war in Iran, with Rubio saying the US’s hand had been forced by Israel. Trump has at times said the goal was regime change in Iran, and at others that he was solely trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and to curb its ballistic missile programme. Iran has consistently denied it is developing nuclear weapons.
Benjamin Netanyahu was more plain in his objectives, saying the US and Israel were “creating the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple their government. Israeli analysts suggested the Iran campaign came at a good time for the Israeli prime minister and would boost flagging poll numbers before legislative elections.
Israeli authorities said 12 people had been injured on Tuesday in three Iranian missile attacks on southern Israel, some of which contained cluster munitions, a weapon banned by most countries.
The US said six soldiers had died, seemingly killed while stationed in Kuwait. Three F-14 fighter jets were shot down by accident by the kingdom’s air defence systems on Monday.
Trump on Tuesday criticised some allies for their lack of support for the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, saying Spain had been “terrible” and that he was “not happy with the UK either”. Referring to Keir Starmer, Trump said: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”
Iran’s strikes against energy infrastructure in the Gulf have paralysed the resource-rich Gulf states, with Qatar announcing a halt to its largest liquid natural gas production facility, while Saudi Arabia ceased operations at its Ras Tanura oil refinery.
Global energy prices jumped further after Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, a global choke-point for hydrocarbons, attacking several ships that attempted to cross through the narrow waterway.
Brig Gen Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, said continued US-Israeli attacks would bring Iranian reprisals against “all economic centres” in the Middle East.
“We have closed the strait of Hormuz … The price of oil … will soon reach $200. We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centres, we will hit all economic centres in the region,” Jabbari was quoted as saying by Iranian news agency ISNA.
On Tuesday night, loud explosions were heard in Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
