Israel bombarded Lebanon on Monday, expanding conflict across the region after the massive Israel-US attack on Iran that President Donald Trump launched to topple Tehran’s ruling clerics.
Israeli forces pounded targets across Lebanon including Beirut, after Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed armed Shiite Muslim movement fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Large-scale strikes” were also ongoing in the heart of Tehran, Israeli forces said, as the US military widened its targets across Iran on Sunday.
Retaliating against the heavy strikes that Washington said destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian forces fired missiles and drones across the Middle East, claiming lives in Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Fresh explosions were heard across Doha, Dubai and Manama on Monday morning, AFP correspondents reported.
Trump vowed to avenge the first US deaths, telling the New York Times that the United States and Israel could keep up the same level of attacks for four to five weeks.
“It won’t be difficult. We have tremendous amounts of ammunition,” he said, adding he had a shortlist of three unnamed people he favoured to lead Iran after the war.
But Ali Larijani, the powerful head of Tehran’s Supreme National Security Council voiced defiance.
Iran “will not negotiate with the United States,” he wrote on X, adding that “Trump plunged the region into chaos with his ‘delusional fantasies’ and now fears more American troop casualties.”
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged Iranians to overthrow the government in Iran, the sworn foe of Israel and the United States since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the pro-Western shah.
In a video address, Trump urged Iranian security forces “to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.”
“It will be certain death,” he repeated. “It won’t be pretty.”
The Pentagon said that three US service members were killed in the operation and five seriously wounded in the operation it has called “Epic Fury.”
“Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends,” Trump said.
“But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization.”
Trump, who campaigned denouncing foreign interventions, has done little to explain the case for war to the US public.
Explosions rocked Beirut before dawn and southern Lebanon residents fled, according to AFP journalists, after the Israeli military announced it was striking both parts of the country.
In Israel, an Iranian missile attack killed at least nine people and injured dozens more in the central city of Beit Shemesh, after a death the previous day near Tel Aviv.
Three people were also injured on one of the main roads of Jerusalem.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose elected role is subordinate to that of the supreme leader, called Khamenei’s killing a “declaration of war against Muslims.”
Meanwhile, several American warplanes crashed in Kuwait on Monday morning but their crew survived, Kuwait’s defence ministry said, as Iran pressed on with a third day of strikes in the Gulf.
“Several US warplanes crashed this morning. Confirming that all crew members survived,” a defence ministry spokesman said in a statement, adding that the cause was under investigation.
“Authorities immediately initiated search and rescue operations, evacuating the crews and transporting them to a hospital for medical evaluation and treatment. He noted that their condition is stable,” the statement added.
Moreover, Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff on Sunday that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack US forces first, two people familiar with the matter said.