Read the daily news to learn English

US-Israel war on Iran: Netanyahu says ‘all indications’ show supreme leader Khamenei has been killed – live

Contradicting Israeli reports that Ali Khamenei is dead, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim and Mehr news agencies are reporting that the supreme leader is “steadfast and firm in commanding the field”. Again, we still haven’t had any official confirmation on Khamenei’s fate, and there is a strong incentive for both sides to control the narrative about him being dead or alive. We’ll bring you more clarity as we get it.

The rise and fall of Iran’s ruthless and pragmatic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

When he appeared in public for the first time in five years in October 2024, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had an uncompromising message: Israel “won’t last long”, he told tens of thousands of supporters at a mosque in Tehran in a Friday sermon. “We must stand up against the enemy while strengthening our unwavering faith,” the then-84-year-old told the gathering. Seventeen months later, Khamenei might well have faced his final climactic confrontation after decades of bitter struggle against multiple enemies. Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that there were many signs indicating Khamenei “is no longer with us”, without explicitly confirming his death. While there has been no official confirmation of his death from Iranian officials, it is very clear that he was in the crosshairs from the earliest moments of Saturday’s strikes, with satellite imagery showing that his secure compound was heavily damaged in the initial barrage. Iranian authorities have yet to provide proof that he escaped. Certainly, Israel and the US have made little secret of their keen desire to eliminate Khamenei and so trigger the downfall of the Islamic Republic of Iran in its present form. Back in October 2024, Khamenei already appeared to have his back to a wall. Days before, Israel had killed Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran secretary general of Hezbollah, with huge bombs dropped on the militant Islamist movement’s headquarters in Beirut. The assassination was a personal blow to Khamenei, who had known Nasrallah for decades. The Israeli air offensive against Iran in June last year was another such blow, revealing the weakness of both Iran’s air defences and the coalition of Islamist militias that Khamenei had built up to deter Israel. The Iranian barrage of missiles and drones launched at Israel inflicted some damage but far from enough to stop Israeli attacks. The war ended after Donald Trump dispatched US bombers to strike Iranian nuclear sites, a grave setback to a programme that Iran’s supreme leader had cherished. That brief conflict revealed that Khamenei had few good options left - a situation this careful, pragmatic, conservative and ruthless revolutionary always sought to avoid. Born the son of a minor cleric of modest means in the eastern Iranian shrine city of Mashhad, Khamenei took his first steps as a radical in the febrile atmosphere of the early 1960s. The then-shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had launched a major reform project largely rejected by the country’s conservative clergy. As a young religious student in Qom, a centre of theology, Khamenei had soaked in the traditions of Shia Islam and the radical new thinking of the emerging leader of the conservative opposition, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. By the late 1960s, Khamenei was running secret missions for Khomeini, who had been exiled, and organising networks of Islamist activism. Khamenei soaked up other influences, too. Though an avowed aficionado of western literature, particularly Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and John Steinbeck, the young activist was steeped in the anti-colonial ideologies of the time and the anti-western sentiment that often went with them. He met thinkers who sought to meld Marxism and Islamism to create new ideologies, liked works describing the “westoxification” of his country and translated works by Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who would inspire generations of Islamist extremists, into Farsi. Imprisoned repeatedly by Iran’s feared security services, Khamenei was nonetheless able to take part in the vast protests of 1978 that eventually convinced the shah to flee and allowed Khomeini to return. A protege of the implacable cleric, he swiftly rose up the hierarchy of the radical regime that seized power, and by 1981, after surviving an assassination attempt that deprived him of the use of an arm, he had won election to the largely ceremonial post of president. When Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei was selected as his successor, once the constitution changed to allow someone of lesser clerical qualifications to take on the role and with much greater powers than before. Khamenei swiftly deployed these to consolidate his control over the sprawling and fragmented apparatus of Iran’s post-revolutionary state. One key power base was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the beating activist heart of the new regime and a powerful military, social and economic force. But Khamenei, as ever, was careful to find other powerful allies and clients, too. Through the 1990s, he further strengthened his grip, eliminating opponents and rewarding those loyal to him. Even poets Khamenei had once professed to admire were targeted by security services. Overseas dissidents were hunted down, and the relationship with Hezbollah, which the IRGC had helped found in the aftermath of the revolution, was reinforced. At all times, he followed his strategy of pragmatically advancing the inflexible principles of the project bequeathed him by his late mentor. When in 1997, Mohammad Khatami, a reformist candidate, won the presidency in a landslide, Khamenei allowed him some freedom of action but worked hard and often forcefully to protect the core of the regime and its ideology from any serious challenge. Khamenei did not, however, stop Khatami reaching out to Washington in an ultimately abortive effort to establish better relations in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and, following Khomenei’s example, forswore weapons of mass destruction. But he also backed the IRGC’s efforts to bleed US forces in Iraq after their 2003 invasion and extend Iranian influence in the neighbouring country. This marked the further extension of his strategy of relying on proxies to project power across the region and deter and threaten Israel, named “Little Satan” by the revolutionaries in 1979, with the “Great Satan” being the US. Khamenei was sceptical of the nuclear deal painstakingly negotiated by Iranian officials with the US and others, but he did not oppose its implementation in 2015. Analysts argue over whether he has sought to restrain or encourage hardliners in the IRGC who have pushed for Iran to acquire a bomb. Successive waves of unrest and reform efforts were met with surges of vicious repression alongside continuing harsh treatment of measures targeting women, gay people and religious minorities. This, along with deteriorating economic circumstances, disillusioned many erstwhile supporters of the regime and broadened existing unrest. A pressure cooker of discontent was building. Overseas, Khamenei chose to invest heavily in the so-called axis of resistance – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi movement in Yemen and a motley assortment of Islamic militant militias in Syria and Iraq. This may have seemed a clever tactic but it collapsed under the weight of Israeli attacks following the outbreak of war in Gaza, while Iran’s historic alliance with Damascus was ended with the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December. On Saturday, as US and Israeli jets and missiles pounded Iran, striking Khamenei’s offices and perhaps killing him, Hezbollah’s new leadership offered rhetorical support to Iran, but nothing else. There is little Hamas can do to help, and the Houthis seem frozen. Thus weakened, Khamenei has spent the last months facing spiralling crisis. During his more than three decades in power, Khamenei sought to navigate the pressures of conflicting forces within Iran, to avoid outright war and to preserve Khomeini’s legacy – as well as his own power and that of his immediate loyalists, of course. On the international scene, it is possible to detect evidence of some remaining pragmatism. Faced with the huge military power of the US and Donald Trump’s demands for massive concessions that would strip away the last defences of his regime, Iran’s supreme leader played for time, offering at least some concessions to forestall immediate attack. Domestically, it was the hardline ideologue, not the master tactician, who took centre stage as he sent police and paramilitary thugs to bloodily crush the biggest wave of internal protest and unrest since the 1970 revolution that set him on his way to power. In the run-up to the US and Israeli attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessed that even if Iran’s supreme leader were killed in the operation, he would probably be replaced by hardline figures from the IRGC, the most powerful military force within the country and the most ideologically committed to continuing what they consider the values and project of the 1979 revolution, two sources told Reuters last week. For a long time, Khamenei has been ailing, prompting feverish speculation over a successor. The end of his long career has made his many failings and many challenges manifest. Dead or alive, it looks now that Khamenei’s brutal balancing is over.

With few good strategic options, Iran’s best prospect may be to retaliate while it can

Venezula’s Nicholás Maduro was captured. But Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have chosen a different strategy for Iran: to target and aim to kill the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, , and as many other senior regime figures as possible. Though Iranian military sites and its air defence systems were also targeted by coordinated US and Israeli bombing, beginning in the morning, the most significant attack was on Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. Film on social media showed heavy plumes of smoke emerging from the site in the capital following the daylight strike, and soon after satellite imagery showed it had been destroyed in what appeared to be a targeted attack. Khamenei’s fate remains uncertain, but its intention was: an attempt to effect regime change in Iran through bombing and killing with no credible justification in international law. It is a tactic that is disturbingly easy to start, but its results are profoundly uncertain. Last summer during the 12-day war with Israel, Khamenei had named three potential successors should he be killed. Reports earlier this month indicated that Khamenei had named four layers of succession for key government and military jobs, in an effort to ensure regime survival in the face of a US-Israeli attack. “There is no sign that the US or anybody else is going to put boots on the ground, so the monopoly of force domestically remains with the Iranian regime,” said HA Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “The only way that changes [is] if there is an uprising with mass defections.” Explosions were heard in Tehran, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Qom and other large cities in a broad assault that began in the morning, a deliberate change from a more normal pattern of night-time strikes, to achieve a measure of operational surprise. Hundreds of targets were struck in multiple waves, the Israeli military said, with little evidence of opposition from what was left of Iran’s air defences – already depleted after last summer’s 12-day war and hit again on Saturday. Political and military targets were struck, with 200 Israeli fighter jets striking at air defence and ballistic launch sites, according to the country’s military. Over the past month, the US has amassed two carrier strike groups in the region – the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, joined recently by the USS Gerald R Ford in the eastern Mediterranean. Each carrier has an air wing of about 75 combat aircraft, while allied destroyers and submarines have Tomahawk cruise missiles available, each with a range of about 1,000 miles or more. Iran, recognising it was faced with an existential crisis for its regime, responded by quickly launching ballistic missiles and drones against Israel and US allies and bases in several countries in the region: Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, immediately drawing six other countries into the conflict. Though the UK was not party to the US-Israeli assault – clearly believing the initial attack on Iran to be illegal – it has already been drawn in, supplying fighter jets to protect regional allies. Initial signs are that the fight, as a traditional military contest, is extremely one-sided. Alma, an Israeli military thinktank, reported that Iran had targeted Israel with 25 waves of attack by 5.30pm local time, while Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service reported 89 peoplehad been wounded One person was killed in Abu Dhabi from falling debris from an intercepted missile, a fire broke out at Fairmont hotel in Dubai after it was hit. So far it appears casualties from Iran’s regional retaliation have been limited, though all it takes is for one missile to get through somewhere across the regional war. A missile was filmed smashing into the US naval base in Bahrain – the level of damage it caused as yet unclear – followed by a single Shahed-type delta winged drone targeting a radar dome. Both hits were surprising given that the US had airlifted Patriot air defence systems into regional bases over the past month in anticipation. Iran, meanwhile, appeared to be taking heavier casualties. A primary school for girls in Minab, southern Iran, was struck, killing 85, according to the country’s Tasnim news agency, a grim reminder that so called precision bombing is often not accurate, civilians the victims. By the evening Iran appeared to be trying to enforce a closure of the strait of Hormuz, through which an estimated fifth of the world’s oil supply passes from Iran and Gulf nations. Warnings were being broadcast to merchant shipping on VHF radio, according to the UK’s Maritime Trade Organisation. Iran could attempt to mine the two 1.9 miles wide shipping lanes with Russian Kilo class and midget Ghadir submarines, though it is unclear such an operation, if attempted, would be successful. The strategy is sufficiently obvious that the US is almost certain to have submarines available to prevent or disrupt a mine laying operation. The early indications are that the US and Israel plan a bombing campaign that could last weeks, while Iran runs down its estimated stock of 2,000 ballistic missiles. Its ability to retaliate at scale may only last a few days, while the US can run in excess of 125 bombing missions a day from each of its aircraft carriers alone. Iran has few good strategic options now it is under sustained attack. The regime’s best prospect may be to try to endure the waves that are likely to come, continue to retaliate while it can, and try to retain control of the streets given that the US and Israel have so far expressed no intention of mounting a ground invasion. If that is the case, it is not obvious how the war will end. “In short, the US and Israel have started this war with vague and unachievable objectives, with no international law base, and little or no support from Gulf states or other US allies,” said Lord Ricketts, former UK national security adviser.

Explosions rock Bahrain, Dubai, Jordan and Kuwait as war spreads across Middle East

Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday. Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured. One resident said that “everyone is very scared” as the situation in Dubai continued to deteriorate. “There is footage of missile interceptions all over the city,” they said. “I am packing a suitcase just in case … not that we can leave, because airspace is closed. It is the thing we have all been frightened about happening, and now it has.” Elsewhere in the Gulf, previously considered oases of stability in the Middle East, similar scenes unfolded. Within hours of the first US and Israeli bombs being launched, Iran responded with a wide-ranging attack targeting more than six countries, pulling in places that had been previously untouched by the escalating crisis. In Bahrain, an Iranian drone flew into a high-rise building in what looked like a targeted attack, exploding and engulfing the skyscraper in flames. Earlier, the country’s national security agency was also struck by an Iranian missile. Social media footage also appeared to show a missile hitting the huge US naval base in Bahrain. In Kuwait, a drone crashed into the country’s main airport, wounding several employees and damaging the facility. As Iran responded to US and Israeli strikes by bombing the Gulf and Israel, its proxies joined the fray. Bases belonging to the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq were struck by either the US or Israel, killing at least two members of the armed Iraqi group Kataib Hezbollah. The Iran-backed groups responded by coming to its aid, with Kataib Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis both warning they would be joining strikes on US military bases across the region. Just a few hours into what Washington was calling Operation Epic Fury, fighting had already expanded far beyond the geographic scope of the previous war in Iran in June 2025, which was almost entirely confined to Israel and Iran. For citizens in the Middle East, the escalating war prompted anxiety and concern. In Lebanon, gas stations across the country had lines 10 cars deep within an hour of the strikes. People in Beirut airport watched as commercial flights were cancelled, and grocery stores were filled with the more cautious stocking up on essential goods – the memory of the 2024 war with Israel fresh in their minds. All eyes were on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that previously said the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a red line. A statement from the group on Saturday afternoon made no mention of whether it would help its chief patron, Iran, but instead condemned what it described as a violation of the UN charter by the US and Israel. Many Lebanese dreaded the entry of Hezbollah into the ongoing conflict, fearful of triggering a response from Israel, which has signalled through diplomatic channels that it would unleash a wide-ranging attack against Lebanon in the case of Hezbollah’s involvement. Explosions rocked the rest of the Middle East as Israel intercepted incoming Iranian ballistic missiles above other countries. In Jordan, fires blazed in the northern city of Irbid as missile shrapnel fell from the sky and caught alight. The attacks drew condemnation from Arab states around the region for what they called a violation of their sovereignty by Iran. Qatar called the Iranian strikes on its territory a “direct assault on national security”, while it and other Gulf states warned they have the right to respond. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with NBC that he told Gulf states “we have no intention to attack them but we are actually attacking the American bases in the act of self-defence”. Attacking the Gulf states was a line Iran did not cross in past rounds of conflict, with rare attacks on oil infrastructure remaining unclaimed. Gulf states had previously tried to prevent the Trump administration from attacking Iran, fearful of blowback and unintended consequences destabilising the country of 93 million. Imposing material costs on Gulf states, stable kingdoms unused to wars in their back yards, could be to get the monarchies to put pressure on Trump to halt the bombing campaign. Some of the ruling families, such as the al-Thani family in Qatar and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, have close relationships with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has a heavy hand in shaping the president’s Middle East policy. Conversely, some analysts warned targeting the Gulf kingdoms could backfire, alienating voices that were previously lobbying the US to reconsider its military campaign on Iran.

‘The most bitter news’: Iran reels as more than 80 children reportedly killed in school bombing

Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack. At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 80 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the IRNA news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for. In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background. The report of the bombing, its death toll and the video’s source could not immediately be independently verified by the Guardian. Persian factchecking service Factnameh was able to cross-reference the video with other photographs of the school site, and concluded that the video was authentic. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school. Hossein Kermanpour, spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, said in a post to X that the bombing of the school was “the most bitter news” of the conflict so far. “God knows how many more children’s bodies they will pull from under the rubble.” The school appears to be adjacent to a Revolutionary Guards barracks. If the death toll is confirmed, the school bombing would be the largest mass casualty event of the US-led attack so far. Across the country, Iranians said they were feeling a mixture of terror and hope as the bombings continued. Some expressed relief that the long-expected strikes had arrived, and opponents of the regime spoke of hope that they might lead to political change – but both were tempered by fear that the attacks would bring more civilian deaths to a country already reeling from recent bloodshed. In Tehran, some people sheltered in their homes, while others rushed through gridlocked traffic to find their children as schools shut down. Many said they had been preparing for weeks for a possible war, stockpiling water and supplies. Amir*, 37, owner of a bakery in Tehran, said he was “relieved” to hear that strikes appeared to have hit government buildings, but feared there would be collateral damage. “My worry is that innocent people will be killed,” he said. Amir had family members injured in the Iranian regime’s recent crackdown on nationwide protests, and feared there was more bloodshed to come. “We have endured so much grief – despite that, we don’t want to see the body bags on the streets due to US and Israeli strikes,” he said. The attacks came in the middle of diplomatic negotiations between Iran and the US, about seven weeks after Tehran violently crushed nationwide anti-regime demonstrations, with government forces opening fire on unarmed protesters. According to the US-based Human Rights Activist news agency (HRANA), which has been documenting casualties, more than 7,000 people have been confirmed dead in the protests, with more than 11,000 deaths still under investigation. Some, who had lost friends or family members in the protests, were defiant: Mohsen, 25, an IT worker in Tehran, said: “We do fear that compatriots will be killed [by the US/Israeli strikes], but I have witnessed friends gunned down by the regime – like thousands of us have. “I don’t really know what we are going to witness. But thanks to the regime and its killing machine, we have already seen what a war zone feels like.” Moein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran, said he could hear loud bangs from near the university as the bombs struck. He was involved in the recent protests and had two friends killed in the crackdown. He said: “We were not in favour of foreign intervention, because we did not want our loved ones to be killed, but the regime has massacred our families anyway. When weapons come from the US, do they strike us more gently than when they come from the regime’s killing machines?” Moein said that while the city felt apprehensive, it had not plunged into panic. “We have been preparing for war so we have stocked up on essentials,” he said. “As far as I know there are no bomb shelters for us ordinary people.” He and others on the ground said they had been intermittently unable to access state media – although it was not clear whether this was due to cyber-attacks or websites being overwhelmed by traffic. The war was launched by the US and Israel on Saturday morning, with Donald Trump announcing that he was beginning “major combat operations” against Iran, and urging Iranians to rise up and “take over your government”. The US had built up a significant military presence in the region over recent weeks in preparation for an attack. “I wasn’t surprised because we were expecting an attack for weeks,” said Mehnaz*, 27, based in Tehran. She was having breakfast when she heard loud explosions about 9am. “We live close to the presidential office and the administrative headquarters of the leader of the government,” she said. The first sets of strikes appeared to hit close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s offices and compound. Mehnaz said there were mixed feelings, particularly among opponents of the current government. “It’s a strange feeling,” she said. “Both fear and hope for the end of the regime.” * Names have been changed

Yet another mid-talks attack suggests Trump was never serious about peace

The attack mounted jointly by Israel and the US on Iran had been planned for months, but the timing, in the midst of negotiations between Iran and the US, will again raise questions about whether Washington was ever serious about striking a deal with Tehran. Judging by Donald Trump’s statement launching the war, the US had no interest in any ingenious plan to make it impossible for Iran to stockpile highly enriched uranium, Trump wanted rid of the entire regime, “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people”. In June last year, Israel, with the US later in tow, launched a 10-day attack on Iran just three days before Iran and the US were due to meet for a sixth set of talks. So this assault, in the middle of a second negotiation process, must torpedo the chances of the Iranian regime ever taking a US offer of talks seriously. They have been stung twice. As one Iranian Telegram channel put it: “Once again the US attacked while Iran was pursuing diplomacy. Once again diplomacy does not work with the terrorist state of the US.” Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, was acutely aware that Trump might jettison diplomacy, but felt relaunching talks was a risk worth taking, and worth persuading the supreme leader Ali Khamenei to endorse. Clearly knowing by the end of last week what the US had ready, and how imminent a US military attack was, Badr Albusaidi, the foreign minister of Oman, which has been mediating the talks, made an emergency dash to Washington in a desperate attempt to put the best gloss on their progress. He even took the unusual step of going on CBS to reveal many of the secrets of the deal taking shape. A peace agreement was in reach, he said. But in a sign the door was closing Albusaidi was permitted only to meet the vice-president, JD Vance, to make the case that the talks were on the brink of a breakthrough. The deal would be far better than the 2015 agreement which Trump left in 2018, he insisted. He claimed Iran had agreed to zero stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, the down-blending of its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium inside Iran, and full verification access for the International Atomic Energy Agency. US weapons inspectors might even be allowed inside Iran alongside the inspectors from the IAEA UN body, he said. Iran would enrich only what it needed for its civil nuclear programme. A final agreement on principles could be signed this week and the details of how the verification system would work might take another three months. There was little or nothing on offer on human rights, Iran’s ballistic missile programme or on its support for proxy forces in the region. From Iran’s perspective, the issue of the 1,250-mile (2,000km) range of its ballistic missiles could be discussed in talks with the Gulf Cooperation Council, but the missiles were in principle part of Iran’s defences and, as the joint US-Israeli attack demonstrated, central to Iranian national security. The previous Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, had always defended the missiles by pointing out how defenceless Iran had been during the Iran-Iraq war. He suggested that if the US stopped selling arms across the Gulf, Iran would have less need for its own missile programme. But this was neither an agenda nor a timetable that suited Trump. Indeed Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, hinted at what the president wanted when he said Trump was surprised Iran had not yet capitulated. For Albusaidi the US decision to attack was dismaying. Although Trump went through the pretence of a legal justification, claiming Iran represented an imminent threat to the US and its allies, he produced no evidence, and his claims have not yet been backed by a senior UN officials, or European leaders. In justifying the attack, Trump did not delve into the progress of the talks, or the gaps that existed between the two sides. He simply declared: “Iran’s threatening activities put the US, its forces and bases abroad and our allies around the world at risk.” Inside the US, the debate will soon start over whether Albusaidi’s assessment of the talks’ fruitfulness was justified. Needs-based enrichment at low levels and eradication of highly enriched stocks, if indeed that was offered by Iran, alongside verification would, on the surface, deprive Iran of the means to make a bomb. If so, Trump, encouraged by Israel and Republican hawks, will be accused of wilfully spurning an agreement that would have peacefully ended the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme for the last 30 years. Others will argue that the continuance of an irredeemable and repressive Iranian regime in itself was a threat to world security. Either way, what is extraordinary is that Trump himself, prior to the attacks, made next to no attempt to articulate or justify to the American people, to Congress or to his allies his actions or his objectives.

A visual guide to US-Israeli strikes on Iran – and Tehran’s response

The US and Israel have announced the beginning of an unprecedented joint operation against Iran, beginning with a wide-ranging bombing campaign aimed at regime change. Israeli jets and US missiles struck hundreds of targets across Iran, sending residents fleeing in panic from major urban centres. Among the targets were Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, as well as weapons facilities across the country. Israel announced the beginning of what it called Operation Lion’s Roar in tandem with Trump, which an Israeli military official said was aimed at “degrading the regime’s capabilities”. The Israeli official added that operations would continue for “as long as necessary”. Before Trump even announced the start of the campaign against Iran, a swarm of Tomahawk missiles and F-16s were flying towards hundreds of targets. The barrage of US and Israeli missiles and bombs landed across the country, hitting key security and political targets in Tehran, including the residence of Iran’s supreme leader, and ballistic missile caches on the peripheries of the country. Satellite footage shows destruction and black smoke coming from the secure compound of Khamenei. Hundreds of strikes hit at least 14 cities across Iran in what an Israeli military official said was a much more wide-ranging campaign than the previous US-Israeli attack on Iran in the 12-day war last summer. Strikes were aimed at intelligence and security headquarters, homes of Iranian officials, as well as ballistic missile launchers and caches – a tactic intended to limit Iran’s ability to respond to the US and Israeli attacks. At least 85 people were killed and more than 63 wounded in a strike on a girls’ school in Minab in the southern Hormozgan province, according to state media. The attack was verified by Reuters. There is an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base in the same city. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school. Iran’s retaliation to the military campaign was swift. It launched waves of missiles at Israel, while striking US military bases in five Gulf countries – pushing past previous red lines that had excluded the Gulf from the Washington-Tehran conflict. Within hours, the conflict consumed much of the Middle East. People in Damascus, south Lebanon and Amman were shaken by explosions above their heads as Israel intercepted incoming Iranian missiles in the sky. Iran also targeted US military bases in Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and Bahrain, as well as a strike in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Gulf states reacted with outrage, condemning the attacks and saying that they reserved the right to respond. The US also carried out strikes on Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq, injuring several members of the Iranian-backed group. The speed at which the conflict turned regional was dizzying. The geographical scope of the conflict exceeded that of the 12-day war within just a few hours. Panic consumed the streets of Tehran as explosions rocked the densely packed city. Israeli military spokespeople told Iranians to distance themselves from military and industrial facilities. Iranian authorities instructed citizens to flee big cities for safety in scenes reminiscent of the mass exodus of Iranians from Tehran this summer, when Israeli bombs rained down upon them. Smoke rose above Tehran’s skyline as people ran for cover as strikes continued to pound the capital. The city is densely populated. Many security institutions and officials are located in residential areas, making civilian casualties likely as large airdropped bombs hit targets nestled between apartment buildings. Israelis spent much of the day on Saturday in blast shelters as the sound of air-raid sirens were near constant. Israel’s home command instructed its citizens to take shelter as Iran launched wave after wave of ballistic missiles at the country. Most of them were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system, which hits projectiles heading towards populated areas in mid-air.

US lawmakers condemn Trump over Iran strikes: ‘acts of war unauthorized by Congress’

Donald Trump’s failure to build a case with the US public for striking Iran and then going ahead apparently after a last-minute alert to Congress’s key national security experts – the so-called “gang of eight” – has fuelled fierce domestic criticism of the military action against the Islamic Republic on Saturday. Belying the gravity of Saturday’s attacks, the president spent just three minutes of Tuesday’s record-length one hour and 48 minute State of the Union address trying to explain why the need to act against a regime that had been a strategic foe for decades had suddenly become so urgent and whose nuclear facilities he claimed to have “obliterated” in previous strikes last June. The recent precipitous buildup of what Trump called a “vast armada” in the region aimed against Iran starkly contrast with the long steady drum-beat to war with Iraq in 2003 under President George W Bush, who publicly and repeatedly made the case – ultimately disproved – that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Against that backdrop, condemnation on Saturday was swift, amid protests that the strikes breached the 1973 war powers resolution mandating congressional approval. Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, accused the president of pre-empting a Senate vote scheduled for next week on a motion he has sponsored with the Kentucky Republican, Rand Paul. He called for Congress’s urgent return to address the issue. Asked by NPR how much notice the Trump administration had given Congress, Kaine said: “Zero. The evidence suggests that the secretary of state called the speaker of the House, and that was it. We did not receive notice. “The White House knew that I had a war powers resolution scheduled for vote by the Senate early next week. I assume they wanted to try to rush the initiation of an illegal war before Congress had a chance to vote on it.” The 1973 act – passed in the wake of the Vietnam war and designed to rein in a president’s ability to embark on military adventures without authorization – demands consultation with Congress and 48-hours notification for troop deployments. It also imposes a 60-day limit on unauthorized engagements. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, called on Congress to return and for the administration to brief senators in a classified briefing and public testimony. “The administration has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat,” Schumer said in a statement. “Confronting Iran’s malign regional activities, nuclear ambitions, and harsh oppression of the Iranian people demands American strength, resolve, regional coordination, and strategic clarity. Unfortunately, President Trump’s fitful cycles of lashing out and risking wider conflict are not a viable strategy. Mark Warner, a senator from Virginia and vice-chair of the select committee on intelligence, called the strikes “a deeply consequential decision that risks pulling the United States into another broad conflict in the Middle East”. David Janovsky, of the non-partisan Project on Government Oversight (Pogo), said: “The constitution is clear: Congress has the sole authority to declare war. The president’s announcement today that the US has conducted military strikes in Iran without congressional approval is yet another flagrant abuse of power by this administration. Significant military actions should have more than the sole backing of a single leader – that’s why the constitution requires the people’s representatives to make these decisions.” Kaine – a member of the Senate armed services and foreign relations committees – said the war powers act could be invoked even after hostilities began, thus justifying his call for Congress to return immediately. Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, likewise condemned the action as “illegal”. “I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war,” he wrote on social media. “Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. “We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.” Thomas Massie, the maverick Republican representative from Kentucky – who is a frequent Trump critic – echoed Kaine’s theme in condemning the strikes as “acts of war unauthorized by Congress”. Massie had a joint resolution with the Democrat, Ro Khanna, on war powers which shadows Kaine’s and Paul’s Senate motion and is scheduled for a vote in the House of Representatives next week. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called the strikes “a war of choice with no strategic endgame”. In a particularly striking response, the rightwing broadcaster, Tucker Carlson – a strident supporter of Trump’s Maga movement – excoriated the actions as “disgusting and evil”, the journalist Jonathan Karl, posted on Instagram. Carlson’s comments reflected a prominent view among many of Trump’s supporters that his vaunted “America first” foreign policy should preclude open-ended military entanglements such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the president himself has repeatedly criticized as a mistake. But Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator and staunch Trump loyalist, praised the strikes in ecstatic terms as a historical turning point. “The end of the largest state sponsor of terrorism is upon us. God bless President Trump, our military and our allies in Israel,” he posted. In a separate post, Graham wrote: “My mind is racing with the thought that the murderous ayatollah’s regime in Iran will soon be no more. The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us.” Addressing members of the US military, he added: “If you are injured or fall, I believe with all my heart that your sacrifice makes your country and the world a better and safer place. This moment is why you chose to serve.” • This article was amended on 28 February 2026. Congress’s “gang of eight” was given a last-minute alert about an impending US strike on Iran. An earlier version stated they apparently were not notified.