Iran struck the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital with a drone early Tuesday, as it continued to target areas around the region.
Across Tehran, explosions rang out overnight as the US and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes. Iran and its allies have hit back against Israel, neighboring Gulf states and targets critical to the world’s oil and natural gas production.
Iran has said its death toll from the attacks had reached 787 in the US-Israeli strikes, citing the Red Crescent.
The conflict has also spread to Lebanon, where the Iranian-supported militant group Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on Monday, prompting Israel to retaliate.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military hit Beirut with more airstrikes and said it had moved additional troops into southern Lebanon and taken new positions on several strategic points close to the border. The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon later said its peacekeepers saw Israeli troops going into and then out of Lebanon. But Israel’s army said its troops are still operating in Lebanon.
US President Donald Trump warned that his attack on Iran could run longer than a month, as Tehran retaliated to ongoing strikes by targeting US allies in the Gulf and drones hit the US embassy in Saudi Arabia.
New powerful explosions shook windows in Tehran throughout the night as fighter jets flew over the Iranian capital, AFP journalists witnessed, and the Pentagon said it had achieved air superiority over the country, ruled since 1979 by Islamic clerics virulently opposed to the United States.
Beyond launching missile and drone attacks that forced Qatar’s state-run energy firm to halt liquefied natural gas production, Tehran also vowed to choke one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes.
“We will burn any ship that tries to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” Revolutionary Guards General Sardar Jabbari said of the strategic waterway to the Gulf through which about 20 percent of global seaborne oil travels.
Trump said that the war, which began Saturday with a strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was going “substantially” ahead of schedule but that the United States was equipped for a prolonged conflict.
“From the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Trump said at the White House.
The US president laid out for the first time the operation’s objectives — destroying Iran’s missiles, navy and nuclear programme and stopping its support for armed groups across the region. The goals notably did not include toppling the Islamic republic, even though on Saturday Trump had urged the people of Iran to rise up and overthrow their government.
Speaking to the NewsNation network, Trump said “you’ll find out soon” how the United States would respond, without providing further detail.
The US mission in Riyadh asked its citizens in the capital as well as the cities of Jeddah and Dharan to shelter in place, while the US State Department ordered its “non-emergency” staff and their families to leave Bahrain, Jordan and Iraq.
Qatar, which had comparatively good relations with Iran before the war, said it shot down two Iranian bombers, the first time a Gulf Arab country has hit planes from their giant neighbour.