U.S. Sending More Forces as Mideast Conflict Widens

 

Iran and allied militias, including Hezbollah, attacked Israel and U.S. targets in retaliation for Ayatollah Khamenei’s death, and Israel struck in Lebanon. Top American officials suggested an extended campaign.

U.S. military officials said on Monday that their operation against Iran was in its early stages, with more forces headed to the Middle East, as widening attacks claimed more lives, rattled global markets and risked spiraling into a full-blown regional war.

Israeli fighter jets streaked through the skies over the Iranian capital, Tehran. Iran fired explosive drones across the Persian Gulf. Iran-backed Hezbollah militants launched rockets from Lebanon into Israel, prompting Israel to bombard the militia’s strongholds outside Beirut. U.S. warplanes continued to batter Iran. And three U.S. jets were shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in what the U.S. military called an “apparent friendly fire incident,” with the crew members brought to safety.

At a Pentagon news conference, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not give a time frame for how long the operation against Iran would go on. President Trump told The New York Times on Sunday that the United States and Israel could keep striking Iran for “four to five weeks.”

The president has offered conflicting visions of how the war could end and who should take over in Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s autocratic supreme leader, was killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on Saturday. Critics say the Trump administration has no clear endgame and casualties are already mounting, including four U.S. soldiers whose deaths the Pentagon has announced since Sunday. “We expect to take additional losses,” General Caine said.

More than 550 people have been killed in Iran since the beginning of the war, the Iranian Red Crescent emergency service said on Monday. The Lebanese health ministry said that at least 31 people had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. At least 10 people have been killed in Israel and six, including civilians, across the Gulf since Saturday, according to the authorities.

Iran’s leaders remained defiant. The country’s top security official, Ali Larijani, denied news reports that Iran’s new leaders were seeking to negotiate with Washington, denouncing Mr. Trump for “delusional fantasies” and for plunging the Middle East “into chaos.” In a string of fiery social media posts, he wrote: “Iran, unlike the United States, has prepared itself for a long war.”

At the Pentagon news conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. military was attacking Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program and its navy because Iran had spent decades arming and funding groups that attacked the United States. “We didn’t start this war,” Mr. Hegseth said. “But under President Trump we are finishing it.”

Here’s what we’re covering:

• Iran: The Israeli military said it was bombarding sites in Tehran and across the country, with little apparent resistance from Iran’s air defenses. The U.S. and Israel have struck more than 2,000 targets in Iran since Saturday, including military bases and weaponry, military officials said.

• Persian Gulf: Attacks affected oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, where a small fire broke out at a refinery after drones targeting the facility were intercepted, and in Qatar, where unspecified “military attacks” on two facilities prompted the state-owned petroleum company to stop production of liquefied natural gas, the authorities in those countries said. Iranian missiles and drone attacks also led to explosions in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries where the U.S. has military bases.

• Lebanon: Hezbollah fired a volley of rockets at Israel overnight on Monday as a fragile yearlong truce between the two sides collapsed in the wake of Mr. Khamenei’s killing. Israel subsequently launched waves of airstrikes around the capital of Beirut and across Lebanon. Lebanon’s government issued a full-throated condemnation of Hezbollah’s actions, with its prime minister calling the militant group’s operations “unlawful.”

• Israel: Israelis repeatedly sought shelter as Iran fired more volleys of ballistic missiles and drones and set off air-raid sirens across the country. Israel’s air defenses have repelled most of the attacks, though a direct hit on Sunday killed at least nine people in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem.

• Cyprus: The Mediterranean island nation’s president said that an Iranian drone had crashed into a British air base there. The incident risked dragging Britain deeper into a conflict that Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to maintain distance from.

• Economic fallout: Oil and natural gas markets remained highly volatile as the fighting shut down shipping routes and damaged oil and gas facilities. Naval traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, has shut down, according to shipping companies and Iranian media. The shipping company Maersk said it was halting some shipping through the Red Sea, hundreds of miles to the west. ( New York Times)