U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday would be the most intense day yet of U.S. strikes inside Iran as the Islamic Republic, its firepower diminished, vowed to fight on. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile said the war’s aim is a popular overthrow of Iran’s government, and “we are breaking their bones.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, for his part, has sent contradictory signals about how long the war could last, causing wild swings Monday in financial and fuel markets. The U.S. stock market and oil prices were holding relatively steady Tuesday.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf dismissed any suggestion of seeking a ceasefire, while another top Iranian security official, Ali Larijani, warned Trump himself, writing on X that “Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”
Here is the latest:
UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on Lebanon fighting
Humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher will brief the Security Council at an emergency meeting Wednesday morning, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
France called for the meeting with support from the council’s other European members: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece and Latvia. Paris expressed deep concern about escalating violence in Lebanon, where Israel has resumed deadly airstrikes, and condemned Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel since March 1.
France’s Foreign Ministry urged Hezbollah “to end its operations and hand over its weapons” and on Israel “to refrain from any land-based or long-term interventions in Lebanon.”
Putin speaks with Iran’s president a day after a call with Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin noted the need for a political settlement to the war during his phone call Tuesday with Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian.
Putin also reaffirmed his “principled position in favor of a quick de-escalation of the conflict,” the Kremlin said in a readout, adding that Pezeshkian thanked Putin for Russia’s support, including humanitarian assistance.
The two men last spoke by phone on Friday, and their second official call of the war comes a day after the Russian leader discussed the conflict with Trump.
Israeli fire kills 1 person in Gaza
Several people also were wounded when Israeli forces fired at a house in central Gaza’s Zawaida area on Tuesday, according to Al-Aqsa Hospital. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Gaza has seen near-daily Israeli strikes during the current war with Iran, killing at least 18 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry says. Nearly 650 people in Gaza have been killed since Israel and Hamas agreed to a fragile ceasefire deal in October, according to the ministry.
Gaza’s militants have so far stayed on the sidelines during the current U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Canadian police investigate gunfire at US consulate
Toronto Police Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said two individuals emerged from a white Honda CRV SUV at around 4:30 a.m. and fired multiple shots at the building before fleeing. Nobody was injured.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Chief Superintendent Chris Leather called it a national security incident and said the American and Israeli consulates as well as embassies in Ottawa will see more security.
Two Toronto-area synagogues were struck by gunfire last weekend. Toronto has a large Iranian community and there have been demonstrations outside the U.S. consulate both in support and in protest of the war.
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Ukraine is sending anti-drone military experts to the Middle East
Three fully equipped teams will arrive this week in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists Tuesday.
Answering a follow-up question, Zelenskyy’s communications advisor said an expert team was also being sent to a U.S. base in Jordan. An official in the president’s office confirmed that these are military personnel.
Last week, he said the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East were seeking Ukraine’s expertise in countering Iran’s Shahed drones.
Russia has fired tens of thousands of Shaheds at Ukraine since it invaded its neighbor just over four years ago.
International Energy Agency holds emergency meeting
IEA chief Fatih Birol convened the agency’s 30 member states for talks Tuesday to assess security of oil supplies and "inform a subsequent decision on whether to make emergency stocks of IEA countries available" now that the situation in the Middle East “is creating significant and growing risks” for the oil market.
IEA member countries, including the U.S., currently hold over 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks. The IEA hosted a meeting at its Paris headquarters earlier in the day with G7 energy ministers.
US bombers take off from a British base
The three B-1 bombers took off just hours after the U.S. defense secretary said Tuesday would bring the most intense strikes yet on Iran.
Britain initially refused U.S. requests to use bases there for the war, angering Trump. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer later said the bases could be used for attacks on Iran’s missile program but not other targets.
The British destroyer HMS Dragon also sailed Tuesday from Portsmouth toward the eastern Mediterranean to help defend Cyprus after an Iranian-made drone struck the U.K.’s air base there.
Kelly says Trump administration has no exit strategy in Iran
Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday that the war in Iran does not appear to be coming to a close any time soon.
Kelly pointed to conflicting statements between Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, about whether the military operation was beginning or nearing its end.
“Clearly they do not have a strategic goal,” Kelly said. “They didn’t have a plan. They have no timeline. And because of that they have no exit strategy.”
Democratic senator is ‘dissatisfied and angry’ after a classified briefing
“I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told reporters after the briefing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The potential deployment of American ground troops to achieve Trump administration objectives is Blumenthal's biggest concern. He's also worried about Russia and China assisting Iran.
“The American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform, and the potential for further escalation,” Blumenthal said.
Pro-government volunteer force is out in force to crush dissent, Iranian lawyer says
The home of a 39-year-old Iranian lawyer in the city of Ahvaz shook with each explosion before she fled with her brother, sister, their relatives and their dogs to the family’s strawberry farm.
The U.S.-Israeli campaign has struck heavy blows to Iran’s leadership and targeted the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and the all-volunteer paramilitary Basij, which led the crushing of waves of anti-government protests.
But members of the Basij are out in force and heavily armed, “waiting for the slightest movement” showing dissent, the lawyer said. She once campaigned against the mandatory hijab and stopped wearing it years ago, but now wears one outside their home for fear of provoking the Basij.
— By Sarah El Deeb and Lee Keath
US House speaker says Iran war is ‘limited in scope’
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the operation in Iran is “by design limited in scope and mission.” He also told reporters Tuesday in Florida that he thinks the mission “is being achieved.”
“It’s nearly completed,” the Republican said.
He characterized rising U.S. gas prices as a “temporary blip” that would come down in “a couple of weeks."
Senators are expecting a report on Iran school strike
U.S. senators emerged from a classified briefing confirming an ongoing Department of Defense investigation into a strike that killed 165 people at a girls school near an Iranian military base.
“They have a timeline in which they want to be able to provide us with a full report,” said Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We are a nation that does not target civilians,” he added.
Mounting evidence points to U.S. culpability for the Feb. 28 strike, but Trump has repeatedly claimed Iran was responsible for the blast.
Witkoff says Russians told Trump on Monday that they were not sharing intelligence with Iran
The president’s envoy said during an interview Tuesday on CNBC that the issue was raised during a call Trump had with Putin and the Russians told the president they were not sharing intelligence.
“We can take them at their word,” Steve Witkoff said.
He also said: “Let’s hope that they’re not sharing.”
When asked if Russia had in fact been sharing intelligence with Iran, Witkoff said: “Well, I’m not an intelligence officer, so I can’t tell you.”
State Department says more than 40,000 Americans have returned to US from the Middle East since start of Iran war
The vast majority have returned commercially without government assistance.
The State Department said in a statement on Tuesday that it has organized more than two dozen charter flights that have carried thousands of U.S. citizens from various Mideast countries to either the United States or Europe but that most of the more than 27,000 who have sought help “have declined assistance when offered, opting either to remain in country or book more convenient commercial flight options.”
“At this time, seats available on the department’s charter options are significantly greater than the demand from Americans in the region,” it said, adding that those charter flights “continue to operate with less than 40% occupancy on average.”
Syria accuses Hezbollah of firing artillery across the border
The Syrian military said Tuesday that the Lebanese militant group had launched shells towards Syrian army positions near the border town of Serghaya, state-run news agency SANA reported.
The Syrian military said in a statement that “appropriate options are being studied to do what is necessary” and the army “will not tolerate any aggression targeting Syria.” Lebanese President Joseph Aoun later said that he spoke with Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and agreed that the countries need to coordinate “to control the borders and prevent any security breaches.”
Hezbollah said Israeli helicopters landed an infantry force in Serghaya as part of an attempted incursion into eastern Lebanon and that it clashed with them. In a statement Tuesday, it denied firing on Syrian troops and said “we have no intent of opening a (second) front while we are engaged with the Israelis.”
State Department authorizes up to $40M in emergency funds to pay for evacuation charter flights for Americans
With transportation disrupted by the Iran war, the U.S. State Department approved using the $40 million from a fund normally reserved for emergencies involving diplomatic and consular staff, according to two U.S. officials who weren’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The State Department confirmed the use of the emergency funds but declined to specify the amount.
“We have sufficient funding to cover our efforts to date,” it said in response to a query from The Associated Press. “The administration will work with Congress should additional funding be necessary.”
Under federal law, private Americans are obligated to reimburse the government for such transportation but Secretary of State Marco Rubio waived that requirement last week.
— By Matthew Lee
Iranians fleeing cities under attack seek refuge in the countryside
Terrified by explosions shaking their homes in Tehran and other cities, tens of thousands of Iranians have sought refuge in small, remote towns to wait out the massive bombardment by Israel and the United States.
Pouya Akhgari, 22, is holed up in a family house with aunts and cousins in a village in the mountainous countryside 200 kilometers (120 miles) from his home in the capital. Meanwhile his friends in Tehran tell him about the blasts all around them.
“It just feels so chaotic. I thought it’d be very short but it’s dragging on,” he told The Associated Press by a messaging app. ”If it goes on like this, we’ll run out of money.”
The U.N. refugee agency said that in the first two days of the war, about 100,000 people fled Tehran, a city of around 9.7 million. It said that the scale of displacement is likely much higher.
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Just the first 2 days of Iran war cost the US $5 billion in munitions alone
An estimate the Pentagon sent to Congress does not appear to include other war-related expenses besides munitions, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private briefing.
The tally is higher than previous estimates by outside analysts, and the daily amount is expected to fluctuate. The war is currently in its 11th day.
The Trump administration has said it may seek supplemental war funds from Congress, but several lawmakers have insisted they would refuse to approve any more money for the Pentagon.
The annual Defense bill sent some $838 billion to the Pentagon earlier this year and the Defense Department was provided $150 billion in extra funds last year as part of Trump’s big tax breaks bill that became law.
—By Lisa Mascaro.
About half of Americans worry about US safety as the Iran war continues, polls show
Many Americans worry Trump’s recent military decisions have made the U.S. less safe, according to new polling.
About half of voters in Quinnipiac and Fox News polls said the U.S. military action in Iran makes the U.S. “less safe,” while only about 3 in 10 in each poll said it made the country safer. A CNN poll found about half of U.S. adults thought the military action would make Iran “more of a threat” to the U.S., while only about 3 in 10 thought it would lessen the danger.
In that same CNN poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they trusted Trump “not much” or “not at all” to make the right decisions about the U.S. use of force in Iran.
War with Iran delivers another shock to the global economy
The war with Iran is inflicting collateral damage — driving up energy and fertilizer prices; threatening food shortages in poor countries; destabilizing fragile states such as Pakistan; and complicating options for the inflation fighters at central banks like the Federal Reserve.
Causing much of the pain: the Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes — was effectively shut down after the U.S. and Israel launched missile strikes Feb. 28 that killed Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“For a long time, the nightmare scenario that deterred the U.S. from even thinking about an attack on Iran and which got them to urge restraint on Israel was that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz,” said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “Now we’re in the nightmare scenario.”
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Voters are worried about gas prices, a new poll shows
Fluctuating oil prices may already be alarming voters, a new poll suggests.
A Quinnipiac poll conducted over the weekend found about 7 in 10 registered voters are “very” or “somewhat” concerned that the war will cause oil and gasoline prices to rise. Only about one-quarter of voters are “not so concerned” or “not concerned at all.”
The highest levels of concern are driven by Democrats and independents, but about half of Republicans are also at least somewhat concerned about the war increasing gas prices.
More people oppose than support the US military action, polls show
Americans are divided along party lines on U.S. military action against Iran, according to polls conducted since the war began, with most polls showing opposition is higher than support.
About half of registered voters — 53% — oppose U.S. military action against Iran, according to a Quinnipiac Poll conducted over the weekend. Only 4 in 10 support it, and about 1 in 10 are uncertain.
That’s similar to the results of text message snap polls from The Washington Post and CNN, both conducted shortly after the joint U.S.-Israel attacks began, which also indicated that more Americans rejected the military action than embraced it.
A recent Fox News poll found opinions more evenly divided.
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Palestinians in Gaza are forced to live amid garbage and debris
More than two million people in the Gaza Strip are struggling to protect their health as they live near waste dump sites and piles of debris. Some fear that the widening U.S.-Israeli war on Iran war could overshadow their fragile situation.
Israel’s two-year war on Gaza has been muffled since a ceasefire agreement last October, but much of the territory remains in ruins with no clear timeline for reconstruction. Local municipalities and the United Nations Development Program have only limited resources to clear waste and debris. AP images show garbage piles accumulating beside destroyed buildings in Khan Younis, Nuseirat, Gaza City and near the Netzarim Corridor.
In time of Iran war, Americans unite in aggravation over gasoline prices
The cost of the Iran war is aggravating Americans across the political spectrum. That’s the message from Associated Press interviews Monday with people at gas stations and beyond in five states. The national average gas price was $3.48 a gallon on Monday, up from $2.90 just before the war, according to tracking by AAA.
A Quinnipiac poll over the weekend found about half of registered voters oppose the U.S. military action against Iran while about 4 in 10 support it, and three-quarters were concerned about the war raising fuel prices.
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Hegseth says US is taking the investigation on a school strike ‘very seriously’
Responding to a question shouted by a reporter at a news conference about accountability for the strike, Hegseth said that “we take things very, very seriously and investigate them thoroughly.”
“No nation takes more precautions to ensure there’s never targeting of civilians,” he said, adding that “open source information” shouldn’t be used to determine what happened.
Satellite images, expert analysis, a U.S. official and public information suggest the explosion that killed at least 165 people, mostly children, was likely caused by U.S. airstrikes that also hit an adjacent compound associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Trump erroneously claimed Monday that Iran has access to the American Tomahawk cruise missile, the weapon likely used to strike the school.
WHO documents dozens of attacks on medical care in Iran and Lebanon
The attacks have killed at least 22 health care workers since the start of the war, the World Health Organization’s top regional official said.
Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the head of WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region, told The Associated Press that these attacks include strikes on medical facilities, personnel and ambulances. Eighteen of the documented attacks were in Iran and 23 were in Lebanon, where the agency verified 12 deaths and 26 injuries among health care workers after fighting between Israel and Hezbollah resumed earlier this month.
It’s an “unprecedented situation,” she said, adding that the intensity of attacks and the massive displacement have added more burden on the health care systems of both countries.
More than 100,000 people fled their homes in Iran, while over 500,000 were forced to flee in Iran, she said.
Iran is firing off fewer ballistic missiles, drones since U.S. campaign began
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the number of ballistic missiles fired off by Iran continues to go down since the first day of the U.S. military’s campaign against Iran.
Speaking at a Pentagon news briefing, Caine said missile attacks have fallen 90% and one-way attack drones have decreased 83% since the war began.
Hegseth said the numbers show U.S. strikes are making progress by wearing down Iran’s defenses and its ability to strike its neighbors and U.S. forces.
“That is strong evidence of degradation,” Hegseth said of the numbers.
Hegseth says Tuesday will be the “most intense day of strikes inside Iran”
The U.S. defense secretary told reporters Tuesday morning from the Pentagon that “today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.”
Hegseth’s statement came shortly after he said that “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, said at the same news conference that the U.S. military is moving into the 11th day of its operation against Iran.
New attacks on Tehran, Bahrain, Qatar and United Arab Emirates
Bahrain’s defense ministry said it continues to deal with Iran’s “heinous terrorist attacks,” that it says targeted civilian infrastructure and private property. The tiny Gulf nation, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters, said it has intercepted 105 ballistic missiles and 176 drones since the war began. One hit a residential building in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, killing a 29-year-old woman and wounding eight others, the Interior Ministry said.
Meanwhile, Qatar said it intercepted five Iranian ballistic missiles launched Tuesday afternoon, with no casualties or damage reported.
Israel’s military says it has launched new airstrikes targeting Iran’s capital, Tehran, where witnesses reported hearing several explosions in the city.
The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry said in a statement that nine drones hit the country on Tuesday, while it intercepted eight missiles and 26 drones. It said the attacks on the Gulf country have so far killed six people and injured 122 others.
A ship likely came under attack in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Abu Dhabi, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center reported. If confirmed, that would expand the radius of ongoing assaults against shipping by Iran.
Iranian security official threatens Trump
Iranian security official Ali Larijani wrote a message on X after Trump threatened to attack Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if Tehran stopped oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Larijani wrote: “The sacrificial nation of Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”
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