Live Updates: Strikes Launched Across Middle East, With No Compromise in Sight
President Trump traveled to Delaware to be present for the arrival of the remains of the six U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran war. He vowed earlier to expand the aerial assault on Iran to new targets.
President Trump met on Saturday with the families of the first six U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran conflict as their bodies arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, even as the United States and Israel pressed on with their bombardment of Iran and Iran fired retaliatory missiles at its neighbors with U.S. bases and at Israel.
Earlier the president had vowed in a morning social media post that the week-old onslaught on Iran would escalate and expand to target new “areas and groups of people.”
The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a televised address on Saturday that Mr. Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender was “a dream that our enemies will take to the grave.”
Shortly after Mr. Pezeshkian’s speech, air-raid sirens rang out in Bahrain and Qatar, a sign Iran’s retaliatory attacks were continuing. The defense ministry for the United Arab Emirates reported on Saturday evening that the country’s forces were intercepting Iranian missiles and drones entering its territory.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement a few hours later that it had launched another wave of attacks on American and Israeli targets, including ballistic missile attacks on Haifa, Israel, and drone attacks on Dubai’s marina area.
In his televised address, Mr. Pezeshkian sought to blunt anger at Iran in the Arab world by apologizing to Persian Gulf nations for launching strikes into their territories. That comment appeared to prompt Mr. Trump to claim Iran had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors.”
But the Iranian president said later on social media that Iran would keep trying to damage American bases in the Gulf. “We have not attacked our friendly and neighboring countries,” he said. “Rather, we have targeted U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations in the region.”
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Pentagon tight-lipped: The details of American attacks on Iran on Saturday remained unclear. Senior U.S. officials last briefed the public on the fighting two days ago. On Friday, the U.S. military released a statement saying that U.S. forces had struck at least 3,000 targets since the war began last weekend, up sharply from 2,000 strikes earlier this week, but provided few details.
Death toll: The death toll in Iran also remained shrouded in uncertainty. Earlier this week, the Red Crescent Society had said nearly 800 people had been killed, but it has not provided an official update to that figure in recent days. On Friday, Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. put the number of dead at over 1,300.
Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said in a televised address that Israel “still has many more targets” to strike in Iran to destabilize its government “and allow for change.” His remarks suggested that there was no immediate end to the conflict in sight. “We are continuing at full power,” he said.
Intelligence report:A report by the National Intelligence Council completed before the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran predicted that even a large-scale military assault on the country would be unlikely to topple its theocratic government, according to U.S. officials briefed on the work.
Lebanon: Overnight, Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombarded the southern outskirts of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold where the Israeli military had warned hundreds of thousands of residents to flee or face imminent danger. About 300,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimated.
Airport struck: Israeli attacks hit Mehrabad Airport in Tehran overnight, the military said, setting it ablaze. The targets were planes affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the military said. At least 17 large planes were destroyed, according to a satellite image analysis by The New York Times.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported that an oil storage facility in south Tehran had been attacked and in response the Revolutionary Guards public relations had said it would launch a strike on Haifa’s refinery in Israel.
The State Department has brought American citizens out of the Middle East on more than a dozen charter flights in recent days as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has continued, said Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs. The department plans to continue increasing the number of such flights, he said.
The department has come under intense criticism for not giving adequate warning to thousands of Americans in the region about the need to leave before the war and for not working quickly enough to help Americans depart as commercial airspace shut down.
Major developments — March 7
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Israel bombards Beirut and Bekaa Valley
Israel strikes Tehran airport and elsewhere in central Iran
Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, speaking to the nation on state television, says the plan of President Trump and his allies to break up Iran and instigate a mass uprising against the government has failed.
“Our leaders are united,” Larijani said, “We have no divisions among ourselves in fighting Israel and the United States.” He added: “America is stuck in the swamp of its own miscalculations.”
Multiple residents in Tehran said in text messages that they heard a huge explosion and saw a huge fire that had lit up the night sky in red, from the direction of south Tehran. Naft Khabar, a Iranian media outlet focused on energy and oil, reports that an oil depot in the Shahran district in eastern Tehran and one in the southern suburb of Shahr Rey were attacked.
Residents walking amid the aftermath of deadly strikes in Nabi Sheet, a town in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israel’s military said on Saturday that it sent special forces into Lebanon overnight to search for information on a member of the Israeli air force who has been missing for four decades.
The details of that operation remain unclear. At least 41 people were killed and dozens more wounded in overnight airstrikes and clashes in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, according to the Lebanese health authorities.
Israeli forces deployed by helicopter to the Bekaa Valley, a largely agricultural region in eastern Lebanon, late on Friday, and were confronted by residents and armed fighters in the town of Nabi Sheet, according to Lebanon state media.
The Lebanese military, which also detailed the Israeli deployment in a statement, said that three of its soldiers were killed amid heavy skirmishes. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had targeted the Israeli force with rockets.
A New York Times reporter visited Nabi Sheet on Saturday. The town center was littered with debris, mangled cars and destroyed shops. Authorities worked to clear the streets, as residents grappled with the devastation.
“It was a massacre,” said Moflih Shukr, a 44-year-old electrical engineer, who said that his uncle was among those killed in the overnight clashes.
The Israeli military, when approached for comment, did not say whether it had conducted operations in Nabi Sheet, or provide details of any fighting.
In a statement about its operation overnight, the Israeli military said that there were no injuries among its forces, which were searching for information about Ron Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator shot down over southern Lebanon in 1986.
The violence capped a week of intense Israeli strikes in Lebanon. It has rapidly intensified as a front in the expanding U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, amid renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy force.
Since Monday, Hezbollah has fired rockets into northern Israel. The Israeli military has largely focused its bombardment on what it calls Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, and parts of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
On Saturday, Lebanese state media also reported an Israeli strike in Shmistar, another town in the Bekaa Valley, that killed six people, including four children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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A boy looks out from the wreckage of a building, in the town of Nabi Sheet, on Saturday.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Members of Hezbollah guided journalists through Nabi Sheet to a grave that they said had a body removed from it overnight, a claim that could not be independently verified.
About 300 people have been killed in Lebanon this week, and more than 1,000 wounded, according to Lebanon’s ministry of health.
The Israeli military has ordered mass evacuations in large swathes of the south and parts of the east of Lebanon, as well as a district in south Beirut considered a Hezbollah stronghold. At least 300,000 people have been displaced, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, with many forced to sleep in parking lots, mosques and makeshift shelters.
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A body was removed overnight from a grave in a family cemetery in Nabi Sheet, according to members of Hezbollah who guided journalists through the town on Saturday.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
The Israeli special forces operation late Friday was the country’s latest attempt to locate Mr. Arad.
In 1994, Israeli forces stormed an area of the Bekaa Valley to abduct a guerrilla leader believed to have information on the airman’s whereabouts. Israeli officials have previously said they believed Mr. Arad was sold to Iranian forces or their allies, though Iranian officials have denied that he was being held on Iranian soil.
On Saturday, Mr. Arad’s wife, Tami, commented on the Israeli military’s recent efforts to locate her husband.
“For 40 years, we have lived with the fact that Ron is missing,” Ms. Arad said in a post on social media. “We want to know what happened to him, but not at any cost. The sanctity of life comes above all certainty and closure for us.”
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Lebanon’s military said three Lebanese soldiers were killed in the fighting overnight. Israel has not commented on the violence in Nabi Sheet.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Aaron Boxerman and Sarah Chaayto contributed reporting.
An air defense system appears to have been activated near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Saturday night, according to video posted to social media and verified by The New York Times.
A Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) system was activated a short time ago in the area of the American embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, due to reported drone and missile fire. pic.twitter.com/f2VOtE1ZbU
The Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed al-Sudani, appeared to confirm an attack targeting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, saying that targeting embassies operating in Iraq “is an act that cannot be justified or accepted under any circumstances.” He ordered military and security forces to pursue those responsible and “bring them to justice.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said in a televised address that Israel “still has many more targets” to strike in Iran “to destabilize the regime and allow for change,” appearing to suggest that there was no immediate end in sight to the war as it entered its second week. “We are continuing at full power,” he told the Israeli public.
Netanyahu added that the decision to go to war with Iran was motivated, in part, by the Iranian government’s decision to move its nuclear and missile projects so far underground that they would be “immune to any assault.” And he repeated a slogan that has become a touchstone for him since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel that incited the crisis of the past two and a half years: “We are changing the face of the Middle East.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Saturday that President Trump had derailed a potential path to de-escalation in the region, warning that Tehran is prepared if the war expands.
Iran’s willingness to ease tensions with its Arab neighbors “was almost immediately killed by President Trump’s misinterpretation of our capabilities, determination and intent,” Araghchi said in a statement posted on social media.
His remarks came after Iran’s president apologized to Gulf nations for Iranian attacks, then backtracked after criticism from other Iranian leadership and Trump announced a renewed assault on the country.
Authorities in the emirate of Dubai said on Saturday that a man had died after debris from an “aerial interception fell on vehicle” in the al-Barsha area of the city. Authorities also said another attack resulted in a “minor incident” to the facade of a tower in the popular marina area of Dubai.
Israel carried out strikes at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport overnight, destroying at least 17 large planes, according to a satellite image analysis by The New York Times. The large airport is a hub for domestic flights, and also has an airforce base, which was heavily hit. An aircraft shelter for fighter jets was also struck, and more planes were likely destroyed there.
Notably, Israel also destroyed several planes outside the airport’s official military area that appear connected to a sanctioned aviation company linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The satellite image did not show damage to the passenger terminal and planes there. The planes are among a number of Iranian military assets destroyed at bases and ports.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that it had launched another wave of attacks on American and Israeli targets, including ballistic attacks on Haifa, Israel, and drone attacks on an area of Dubai’s marina where it said American troops were stationed. The statement said a structure belonging to “Warner Brothers” was also attacked in Dubai and the Guards naval forces had attacked U.S. military warehouses in the Salman Port of Bahrain.
Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, will address the nation tonight, according to Iran’s state television. On Saturday, senior Iranian officials were publicly displaying divisions on their war strategy, with the president saying Iran would stop attacking neighboring Arab countries and military commanders contradicting him. Larijani is expected to try to project a more cohesive message in his speech.
Air defense systems in the United Arab Emirates were intercepting incoming missiles and drones from Iran on Saturday evening, the country’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement. Loud sounds heard across the country came from interceptions by air defense systems and fighter jets, the ministry said.
Caroline Houck
Airstrikes continued to pound Tehran on Saturday afternoon, video published by The Associated Press showed.
Crowds protesting the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday.Credit...Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan stood beside President Trump last October in Egypt and effusively praised him for “saving millions of lives” in the Middle East and stopping eight wars, noting that Pakistan was nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Many in Pakistan now say that Mr. Sharif’s praise has aged poorly.
Since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran last week, videos of his comments have resurfaced online, highlighting the complications that the war has created for Pakistan — a nuclear-armed nation that has a border with Iran, ties to Gulf Arab states and a brittle relationship with the United States.
On Friday in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, hundreds of protesters trampled on portraits of Mr. Trump and of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Some held photographs of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes last Saturday.
Mr. Sharif’s government now has to justify its overtures to the Trump administration, which it pursued as an economic strategy to yield crypto and critical minerals deals and a geopolitical move to get more clout in South Asia at the expense of its rival, India. Pakistan, home to what is estimated to be the world’s largest Shiite community outside Iran, is now grappling with deadly anti-U.S. protests and an energy crisis sparked by the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign.
“The Pakistani government is now under a lot of pressure for cozying up to Trump,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and the United Nations.
Arif Hussain Wahidi, a Shiite political leader, told the crowds at Friday’s protests that he was ashamed that Mr. Sharif had nominated Mr. Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a move that the Pakistan prime minister made last year after the Pakistani government said Mr. Trump helped stop a short-lived conflict with India.
“The government must now recognize who the real victims of terrorism are and who the terrorists are,” Mr. Wahidi said.
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President Trump and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in October.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
At least 26 people died in anti-U.S. and anti-Israel protests in Pakistan in the past week, including 11 who were shot and killed as demonstrators tried to storm the U.S. Consulate in Karachi. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad declined to say whether it was U.S. armed personnel or Pakistani security forces who opened fire.
Pakistan has walked a delicate line so far, condemning the strikes on Iran without criticizing the United States directly.
“The prime minister and the field marshal have to find a balance, but a good relationship with the U.S. is good for Pakistan,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, a government spokesman. Referring to Mr. Sharif and to the Pakistani army chief, Syed Asim Munir, he added: “They have the courage to withstand the criticism at home, which they know comes from a place of good will and pain for our Muslim brothers.”
Ms. Lodhi, the former ambassador, said that anger was not limited to the Shiite community. “That anti-U.S. sentiment is a national sentiment, not a sectarian one,” she said.
Pakistan also has had to manage its longstanding ties to the Gulf states that have been hit by Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone strikes. More than half of the $40 billion worth of remittances sent to Pakistan every year comes from the Gulf.
“It cannot be that Iran keeps hitting the Arabs and we say that we are neutral,” said Anwaarul Haq Kakar, a Pakistani senator and former caretaker prime minister.
On Saturday, Field Marshal Munir met with Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, to discuss “Iranian attacks on the Kingdom and the measures needed to halt them,” according to a Pakistani military statement. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact last year stipulating that an attack on one is an attack on both, and on Tuesday Pakistan warned Iran that it is bound by that agreement.
Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim-majority country where 15 to 20 percent of the population is Shiite, has had a rocky relationship with Iran since its 1979 revolution. Pakistani officials say they have often tried to mediate between Iran’s leaders, the United States and Arab states.
But the impact of the current conflict is straining those efforts.
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Protesters gathered to condemn the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Karachi, Pakistan, on Friday.Credit...Ali Raza/Associated Press
To preserve Pakistan’s dwindling energy stocks, which it hasn’t been able to replenish from the Gulf, the government is considering imposing a four-day workweek, and remote school and work. Pakistan has crude oil reserves for less than two weeks and liquefied natural gas through the end of the month, according to the oil ministry.
The chaos in Iran also threatens to spill over into Balochistan, a resource-rich province in southwestern Pakistan along the border with Iran. The United States has pledged $1.25 billion to finance a gold-copper mine in Balochistan, even as a separatist insurgency there has surged. Experts say it carried out more than 200 attacks last year.
“Any security vacuum on the Iranian side would make it easier for militants to move between Iran and Pakistan,” said Pearl Pandya, a senior analyst for South Asia at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a conflict-tracking group.
Pakistan is also counting on U.S. support in a conflict with another neighbor — Afghanistan, where it has been carrying out airstrikes on military installations for more than a week. As Pakistan has accused the country’s Taliban government of supporting militant groups that target Pakistani security forces, the State Department said Pakistan had a right to defend itself.
Pakistan “is far better off staying on the right side of the Trump administration particularly in times of instability, so long as it’s able to balance out the domestic side,” said Elizabeth Threlkeld, an analyst at the Stimson Center.
Privately, some Pakistani officials have expressed fears that Mr. Trump is too mercurial to build a lasting partnership. The relationship also remains troubled by a deep-seated view in Washington that Pakistan played a double game during the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan by covertly supporting the Taliban.
The latest conflict in the Middle East is likely to threaten that fragile balance, analysts said.
“We’ve had our challenging times with the United States,” said Jauhar Saleem, a Pakistani diplomat and former acting foreign minister. “It’s one of those times.”
Salman Masood and Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting from Islamabad.
A correction was made on
March 7, 2026
:
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and the United Nations. She is Maleeha Lodhi, not Maleeha Lodi.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at corrections@nytimes.com.Learn more
Over 6,000 civilian buildings across Iran have been damaged since U.S. and Israeli airstrikes began, Pir Hossein Kolivand, the president of the Iranian Red Crescent, said in a statement on social media on Saturday. The damage included 5,535 residential units, 1,041 commercial buildings, 14 medical centers, 65 schools and 13 Red Crescent facilities, he said.
Pir Hossein Kolivand, President of the Iranian Red Crescent, says that 6,668 civilian units, 5,535 residential units, 1,041 commercial units, 14 medical centers, 65 schools and 13 centers belonging to the Red Crescent have been damaged so far during the US‑Israel airstrikes. https://t.co/5vK7kaK802pic.twitter.com/5HpPKsniUA
— جمعیت هلالاحمر ایران (@Iranian_RCS) March 7, 2026
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Iranian parliamentary speaker, pushed back against the Iranian president’s apology to the Gulf states earlier on Saturday. The speaker said in a post on social media that as long as they were hosting U.S. bases, “the countries will not enjoy peace.”
Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, had also suggested that Iran’s forces had been acting independently in their attacks on neighboring countries. Mr. Ghalibaf fired back that they were following guidelines drawn up by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who was assassinated at the start of the war last Saturday.
President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in September.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, had just apologized on state television on Saturday morning for waves of Iranian missile strikes that hit Gulf states since last week, when air-raid sirens blared in Qatar and Bahrain — warning of further attacks.
Hours later, following criticism from Iranian hard-liners, Mr. Pezeshkian issued another statement in which he asserted that Iran had not attacked its “friendly and neighboring countries” in this war — this time omitting any apology at all.
This back-and-forth occurred even as attacks on Gulf countries continued, revealing divides inside Iran’s leadership as the country struggled to respond to the American-Israeli attacks, now entering their second week.
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf since the war began last Saturday, arguing that it was targeting the American military bases located there. Iranian strikes, however, have also damaged civilian sites across the Middle East, including airports and hotels.
In an apparent attempt to mollify the outrage among Gulf states, Mr. Pezeshkian apologized on Saturday morning “on behalf of Iran to the neighboring countries affected” and pledged to stop. But the promise was conditioned on an end to attacks against Iran that originate from their territory, which still host U.S. bases, appearing to render the point moot.
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A damaged building near a U.S. Navy headquarters in Juffair, Bahrain, on Wednesday.Credit...Reuters
Mr. Pezeshkian also said that the Iranian military and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had acted independently during the crisis, which began with Israeli attacks that assassinated the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior Iranian leaders.
“Because our commanders and our leader lost their lives due to the brutal aggression, our armed forces, when there were no commanders present, acted on their own authority,” Mr. Pezeshkian said.
Those comments raised questions about who exactly was overseeing Iran’s military response. Before his death, Ayatollah Khamenei had begun increasingly handing responsibility to Ali Larijani, one of Iran’s top security officials.
As Iran’s president, Mr. Pezeshkian wielded some authority even as Ayatollah Khamenei held ultimate power under the laws of the Islamic Republic. A successor for Ayatollah Khamenei has yet to be chosen, although his son Mojtaba Khamenei is seen as a leading candidate.
Mr. Pezeshkian is now a member of a three-member council charged with administering the country until a new supreme leader is selected. But analysts say Iran’s entrenched and powerful security services are likely more influential than he is.
“Pezeshkian’s comments, which were followed by further strikes on the Gulf, will only reinforce perceptions of his powerlessness within a military-dominated system,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, the London-based research institute.
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, another member of the three-man transitional council, criticized Mr. Pezeshkian’s remarks without naming him. He argued that “the geography of some countries in the region is openly and secretly in the hands of the enemy.”
“Severe attacks on these targets will continue,” Mr. Mohseni-Ejei, the hard-line head of the judiciary, said in remarks carried by the Iranian news agency Tasnim.
Mr. Trump was quick to seize on Mr. Pezeshkian’s apology. He called it evidence that the American-Israeli aerial campaign was compelling the Iranian leadership to accept his terms. He vowed that Iran would “be hit very hard” on Saturday.
“Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.
It is far from clear whether Mr. Pezeshkian would have the authority to make such a commitment. But the Iranian president also seemed to push back on that in any case, calling Mr. Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender a “dream that our enemies will take to the grave.”
People in Tehran on Friday mourning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who was killed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes. There seems to be wide agreement in the U.S. intelligence community that the theological government in Iran is deeply entrenched. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
A report by the National Intelligence Council completed before the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran assessed that even a large-scale military assault on the country would be unlikely to topple its theocratic government, according to U.S. officials briefed on the work.
The N.I.C., which is part of Tulsi Gabbard’s Office of National Intelligence, is in charge of crafting intelligence assessments based on an array of views across the intelligence community. While some of their reports are joint products, others are produced independently, with less coordination.
The council’s document, drafted late last month, builds on work by the C.I.A. that assessed that a complete change of government was unlikely even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was killed in a U.S.-led military operation. But the actual report was an independent product of the council, the officials said.
Still, there seemed to be wide agreement that the theological government in Iran is deeply entrenched. Intelligence officials have been skeptical that a popular uprising could dislodge the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the organization that exerts control over much of the security apparatus in Iran as well as large sectors of its economy.
Iranian attacks appear to have renewed along the Persian Gulf. The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said its air defenses were working to repel “incoming missile and drone threats from Iran.” Qatar also said it had intercepted a missile attack, without saying where it was from.
President Trump is making remarks to leaders of Latin American countries at his golf resort in Miami. He started by talking about Iran and the American service members who have been killed. “When it comes to war, there’s always that, but we’re going to keep it to a minimum, I think, Pete,” he said, looking to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is in the room, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Pete, you are fantastic. You’re doing a great job; I’m proud of you,” Trump added.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian appeared to clarify comments he made earlier Saturday in a televised address that Iran would not strike Gulf states if attacks did not originate in those countries.
In his new comments, on social media, he claimed that Iran had targeted only “U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations in the region,” insisting that Tehran had not attacked neighboring countries. Pezeshkian said on X that Iran remained committed to “friendly relations” with regional governments but would continue to defend itself against what he called military aggression by the United States and Israel.
In his address Saturday morning, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, appeared to push back on President Trump’s demands on Friday for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” “The idea that we would surrender unconditionally is a dream that our enemies will take to the grave,” Pezeshkian said.
President Trump posted to social media that Iran had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore.” Trump appears to be reacting to remarks made on Saturday by Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, who apologized for the Iranian drone and missile attacks that have targeted Arab states along the Persian Gulf since the war began last week. Pezeshkian said that Iran’s leadership had ordered an end to those attacks. It is unclear whether anything has changed: Air-raid sirens rang out in Qatar and Bahrain this morning, warning of incoming fire.
In a post on Truth Social just after 6 a.m. on the East Coast, President Trump wrote, “Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.” The post did not elaborate.
A commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps said there was “nothing new” in the comments from President Masoud Pezeshkian that Iran would not attack neighboring countries unless an attack on Iran originated from those nations, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim. Hamidreza Moghadamfar, the commander, added that Iran’s attacks have been directed at U.S. positions and interests in the region and that the countries themselves have not been targeted.
The Guards carried out a massive drone attack on Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, saying the base was being used for operations in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, according to the judiciary-affiliated news agency Mizan.
President Trump at Dover Air Force Base in December for the dignified transfer of the remains of two National Guard members killed in Syria.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
President Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday to witness the return of the bodies of American service members killed in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. He wrote in a social media post Friday that he would be joined by the first lady, Melania Trump, and members of his cabinet.
So far, at least six service members have been killed since the strikes began a week ago. It was not immediately clear if Saturday’s event would mark the return of the bodies of all six.
Several times in his first term, Mr. Trump witnessed the return of fallen service members to Dover in flag-draped transfer cases. But back then, he was honoring Americans who died in wars that he inherited from other presidents. This time, he will be coming face to face with the deadly consequences of a war in the Middle East that he launched and is presiding over with no clear end in sight.
In recent years, presidents have made a tradition of participating in what is known as a “dignified transfer” at Dover.
In 2009, President Barack Obama made an unannounced midnight visit to the base to greet a plane returning 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan. At the time, he was weighing whether to send more troops to that country.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. went in 2021 to watch as a gray C-17 transport plane returned the remains of some of the final Americans to die in the war in Afghanistan. There were 11 Marines, a Navy medic and an Army staff sergeant that time. Mr. Biden was back at Dover in 2024 for an event to honor three service members killed by Iran-backed militias.
Mr. Trump made his first trip to Dover a month into his first term to honor a 36-year-old killed by Al Qaeda militants in Yemen. On another occasion, he brought the actor Jon Voight along to witness the solemn transfer of the bodies of two Army soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump would speak about his visits in his first term as reminders of what he described as the tragic futility of the “endless wars” he had been elected to stop.
He once called the ceremonies at Dover “a very tough experience.” He has spoken at his rallies about the guttural cries of anguish he heard from parents upon seeing a transfer case containing their child’s body come out of a military cargo plane.
“The hardest thing I have to do, by far,” he said in 2019, “is signing letters to parents of soldiers that have been killed.”
Since his attack on Iran, Mr. Trump has spoken more matter-of-factly about the risks to Americans from an extended military engagement. In a video he posted to social media after the first three service members died, Mr. Trump said, “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.” He added, “That’s the way it is. Likely be more. But we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case.”
On Monday, the president said he would not rule out sending ground troops to the Middle East to fight Iran. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground,” he told the New York Post on Monday. “Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”
A few days later, Time magazine asked him if Americans should worry about retaliatory strikes at home. “I guess,” Mr. Trump said. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
The conflict in Iran has disrupted the world’s supply of oil and driven up prices at the pump.Credit...Matt Rourke/Associated Press
The price of gas in the United States reached an average of $3.41 per gallon on Saturday, a day after crude oil prices soared to levels not seen since 2023 as the spillover from the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran continued.
That gain means gasoline has jumped 14percent in the past week, according to data from the AAA motor club. The prices recorded Saturday were the highest for gasoline since 2024.
The suddenly rising energy costs — everything from jet fuel to diesel for trucks and tractors is more expensive — are rooted in supplies of crude oil coming from the Persian Gulf. The tankers that normally carry oil out of the region are not sailing, cutting the world off from about one-fifth of its oil supply.
That’s led to a surge in oil prices globally. By Friday, the U.S. crude benchmark, called West Texas Intermediate, had climbed more than 35 percent for the week, to settle at $90.90 a barrel, with much of that gain coming on Friday alone. The last time crude was trading at those levels, gasoline in the United States was above $3.80 a gallon, the data from AAA shows.
There are already big variations in how much drivers pay. Though oil prices make up the largest share of the cost of gasoline — about 60 percent — taxes, refining margins, and distribution costs can raise prices further. Drivers in California, for example, paid an average of $5.08 a gallonon Saturday, the highest in the country, while those in Kansas paid $2.90, the lowest.
Prices at the pump could steady once oil channels reopen, but the impact on American wallets could extend beyond that time.
“Even if it’s a short-term increase in prices and in two to three months we go back to where we were, you still significantly squeeze people’s budgets, and you significantly impacted the economy,” said Wayne Winegarden, an economist at Pacific Research Institute, a think tank. “That will have long-term implications.”
In an interview on Thursday with Reuters, President Trump suggested that the military operation in Iran was his priority and that he was willing to tolerate a rise in prices. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit,” he said.
Energy experts generally say presidents have little control over the price of oil, but the United States does have its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has a storage capacity of 714 million barrels, to turn to in case of shortages. In 2022, as gas prices spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. released millions of barrels from the stockpile to level out commodity prices.
But if any effect is felt, it would likely only be temporary, and the reserve was not designed to be an economic cushion.
If the United States “is being impacted and we don’t have supplies, and the military needs oil, or the government, that’s the purpose of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for those types of kind of emergency conditions,” Mr. Winegarden said. “If its purpose is to ameliorate market trends, it’s just insufficient to that job.”
The Port of Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz in 2023.Credit...Nicolas Economou/Reuters
The Iranian naval forces have suffered heavy losses in the first week of U.S. and Israeli strikes, according to a New York Times analysis of satellite data and videos. At two bases, Iran lost at least seven moored ships, along with critical naval infrastructure, and the entrance to an underground naval facility in the Strait of Hormuz was hit. But challenges remain for U.S. and Israeli forces seeking to neutralize it completely.
So far, the strikes have heavily targeted Iran’s regular navy, known as The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, which operates conventional warships. The country also has a second navy, run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, that specializes in asymmetric warfare.
In addition to traditional warships, some of which were destroyed this week, the Guards’ fleet includes lighter assets, such as large numbers of speedboats and uncrewed vessels that can be harder to target. The Revolutionary Guards navy is primarily responsible for securing the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The United States would need to degrade it further, along with other threats, to make the Strait fully navigable again.
A look at a map of the region shows the continuing challenges for U.S. forces and international energy supplies.
Major Iranian naval bases
Iranian Navy
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy
Iran
Leb.
Iraq
Saudi Arabia
Afghanistan
Kuwait
U.A.E.
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan
Qatar
Bahrain
Oman
Persian Gulf
Gulf of Oman
Bandar Abbas
Jask
Konarak
Asaluyeh
Bandar Lengeh
Bushehr
Bandar Mahshahr
Chabahar
Dayyer
Sirik
Qeshm
Strait of Hormuz
“The bottom line here is that the sinking of the Iranian naval vessels belonging to the regular Navy is great progress,” said Nicholas Carl of the Washington-based Critical Threats Project. “But there are still ways for Iran to threaten vessels around the Persian Gulf, especially civilian ships.”
At least 10 merchant vessels have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz and the two bodies of water it connects, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, according to a New York Times analysis. Most of these vessels reported being struck by “unknown projectiles,” several above the waterline, suggesting they could be naval drones or other small vessels.
Satellite images show the U.S. military targeted Revolutionary Guards and regular naval forces at key locations this week.
Island of Qeshm
Damage can be seen at a base at the Island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz. The base includes an underground cove that shelters both crewed and uncrewed speedboats, including explosive-laden suicide boats, according to a report by Farzin Nadimi, a security and defense analyst specializing in Iran and the Persian Gulf.
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A close up of the entrance to the underground cove at the Revolutionary Guards naval base on the Island of Qeshm in August 2025.Credit...Airbus
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Smoke rising from the entrance to the underground cove at the Revolutionary Guards naval base on the Island of Qeshm on March 4, 2026.Credit...Airbus
Bandar Abbas
A large naval base at Bandar Abbas, 10 miles north of Qeshm, also suffered heavy losses. Multiple strikes show that both Iran’s navy and Revolutionary Guards vessels failed to disperse in anticipation of an attack.
Yesterday, the U.S. military struck a Guards Corps drone carrier near the base. U.S. officials said it had been hit previously, but it had continued to sail in the Bandar Abbas area without major visible damage.
On Wednesday, videos showed an attack on one of Iran’s newest vessels, a catamaran stealth missile corvette. The Revolutionary Guards have only four of the advanced combat ships, according to The Military Balance 2026, an assessment of armed forces published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Konarak
The destruction at Konarak naval base shows how severely U.S. strikes have degraded Iran’s regular navy. Three combat ships sank there while anchored at the pier, and satellite imagery shows capsized or partially submerged vessels.
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Sunken naval ships in Konarak. March 4, 2026.Credit...Planet Labs
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Destroyed structures at Konarak naval base. March 4, 2026.Credit...Vantor
Konarak is a regional naval headquarters responsible for operations in waters off the country’s southeast coast. The strikes there “dealt a significant blow to the Iranian Navy’s surface fleet and immediately began reducing their presence around the Gulf of Oman,” Mr. Carl said in an email.
The destruction of the base came as the U.S. Navy’s Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was operating near the Gulf of Oman, southeast of Konarak.
Eight buildings at the base, next to the sunken ships, were destroyed or damaged, satellite imagery showed. It also showed attacks on nearby drone and air bases.
Damage was also visible at the Jask naval base in the Gulf of Oman and at a naval base in Asaluyeh in the Persian Gulf.
President Trump said an increase in weapons production would come “as rapidly as possible” to “the highest levels of quantity.”Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
President Trump insisted on Friday that the United States had no shortage of munitions with which to pummel Iran, even as concern grew about the risk that a monthslong war could deplete American weapons stocks and that the Pentagon would need to ask Congress for funding to replenish them.
Mr. Trump, after meeting at the White House with executives from seven major defense contractors, said the companies had already agreed to quadruple their production of what Mr. Trump referred to as “‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry,” in an apparent reference to sophisticated air defenses and cruise missiles. He said the increase would come “as rapidly as possible” to “the highest levels of quantity,” though it was not clear how long such a ramp-up would take and how much the initiative went beyond a similar one that the administration announced in January.
“We have a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions, which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela,” Mr. Trump continued in a post on social media.
Iran has fired thousands of drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. forces and other targets in the Persian Gulf, rapidly reducing the stocks of expensive air defense interceptor missiles available to the United States and its allies. At the same time, the United States has fired longer-range weapons, like Tomahawk cruise missiles, at Iran, denting stocks of sophisticated munitions that are time-consuming and expensive to produce.
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The aftermath of an explosion in the industrial zone caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defense in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday.Credit...Christopher Pike/Getty Images
Some national security experts argue that the extensive use of such weapons — likely what Mr. Trump referred to as “Exquisite Class” — could divert resources that are necessary to deter China from trying to take control of Taiwan.
“If this were to go on for months, and we’re using the same kind of munitions, we’d start having real challenges,” said Jerry McGinn, the director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Analysts say that Iran’s air defenses and missile launchers appear to be getting depleted and destroyed enough to reduce the U.S. need to launch its most sophisticated weapons. And the United States does, indeed, have large stockpiles of the less expensive, airdropped precision bombs that the military can increasingly use as its warplanes fly deeper into Iranian airspace, they say.
“Our munitions status only increases as our advantage increases,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday.
But the level of urgency in the Pentagon’s need for more weapons depends in large part on defense planners’ assessment of the need to deter China. In a war with China over Taiwan, the United States could quickly run through its stocks of air defense missiles to protect American military bases and aircraft carriers in the Pacific, said Michael O’Hanlon, the director of research at the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program.
“These trend lines are enough to get through the immediate crisis,” Mr. O’Hanlon said, arguing that the United States and its allies had the munitions to manage Iran’s dwindling ability to fire at targets in the Gulf. “It really boils down to the China question.”
The breadth of the U.S. campaign against Iran, coupled with Mr. Trump’s military interventions in Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen and elsewhere over the last year, has given a new impetus to the long-running debate in Washington about the adequacy of U.S. weapons stocks and the defense industry’s ability to produce more.
The American military has used an array of weaponry and systems in the Iran war so far, including Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from warships, 2,000-pound bombs fired from B-2 stealth bombers and a slew of precision missiles fired from fighter jets.
As part of the stated effort to sink the Iranian Navy, American submarines have also taken to firing heavyweight torpedoes. And multiple-rocket launchers known as HIMARS have fired precision missiles at Iranian military bases. The U.S. military has also used some weapons in combat for the first time, including cheaper attack drones and short-range ballistic missiles.
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Multiple-rocket launchers known as HIMARS are among the array of weaponry and systems the U.S. military has used in the Iran war so far.Credit...Samuel Corum/Getty Images
After Mr. Trump’s meeting with defense contractors on Friday, one of them, Lockheed Martin, confirmed that the company had agreed to step up critical munitions production, an effort that began months ago and will play out over years. The company reached a deal with the Trump administration to increase production of PAC-3 missile interceptors to 2,000 per year by 2030 from about 600 per year.
A Lockheed Martin spokeswoman said that the company was moving with urgency, adding that the new agreement on Friday covered a range of munitions, not just the PAC-3s.
It was not the first time the Trump administration has met with defense contractors and demanded an increase in weapons production. In January, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that threatened to limit executive pay and prohibit stock buybacks and dividend payouts at defense companies that have not made capital investments or are deemed “underperforming.”
How the administration will pay for any additional weapons it says it needs, especially amid the war with Iran, is not clear. Top Republicans have said in recent days that Pentagon officials are weighing sending them a supplemental funding request, but have received little information about how much the Pentagon would need or how soon defense officials might formally make the request.
Depending on the size of the request, such a vote could present Republicans with a politically wrenching choice before the November midterm elections. While most have been broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s military operations against Iran, many Republicans had also embraced the anti-interventionist “America First” foreign policy that he had promoted on the campaign trail, and would prefer to avoid an on-the-record vote endorsing billions of dollars for an entanglement abroad.
At the same time, underscoring how messy an intraparty battle over a funding bill could quickly become, some senior Republicans in positions of power on Capitol Hill have long been urging the White House to ramp up spending on munitions. That includes Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chairman of the subcommittee responsible for funding the Pentagon.
Republicans provided the Pentagon with roughly $153 billion in additional funding in their marquee tax cuts bill passed last summer. Defense Department officials told Congress in a report in February that they intended to spend it within the next year, including $24 billion on munitions such as medium-range missiles, though some on Capitol Hill were weighing whether the administration could redirect some of those funds to meet more immediate needs.
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said administration officials told lawmakers during a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill this week that the campaign in Iran was going to stretch on for some time.
“The sheer volume is going to deplete a lot of our stocks; it’s going to require a lot of resupply,” said Mr. Kim, who worked on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. “Undoubtedly this is going to be something that leaves us at a significant shortage, and I worry about our ability to keep up with other concerns and threats around the world.”
Helene Cooper and Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
The Strait of Hormuz is a major maritime corridor for energy, food and other goods.Credit...Sahar Al Attar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United Nations humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said on Friday that the Middle East was in “grave peril,” with tens of millions of civilians caught in the crossfire on multiple fronts of the escalating war, which was brewing into a sprawling humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Fletcher, speaking to reporters at the U.N. headquarters in New York, warned that the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, along with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a major maritime corridor for energy, food and other goods, could affect supply chains and prices.
“When maritime corridors, such as the Strait of Hormuz, are disrupted, food prices will rise, health systems will be squeezed, and basic commodities, including our humanitarian supplies, will become much harder to access,” he said.
The U.N.’s humanitarian agency was fully mobilizing to assist civilians as the crisis unfolded, Mr. Fletcher said. In Iran, at least 1,000 people had died and attacks had targeted over 100 civilian sites, with some 100,000 Iranians internally displaced in the past week alone, Mr. Fletcher said, citing figures from the U.N.’s refugee agency and the Iranian authorities. He said Iran’s government had not asked for U.N. humanitarian assistance.
Mr. Fletcher said that U.N. relief workers were mounting a response that included positioning supplies, scaling up staff, identifying alternative logistical routes and preparing rapid-response sources of humanitarian aid, including the U.N.’s Central Emergency Response Fund.
He had sharp words for the politicians waging the war, calling for an immediate de-escalation of the conflict and the resumption of diplomacy.
“We’re seeing staggering amounts of money, reportedly $1 billion a day, funding this war, spent on destruction, while politicians continue to boast about cutting aid budgets for those in greatest need,” Mr. Fletcher said. “So too many warning lights are flashing on the dashboard right now.”
The American-Israeli campaign against Iran began on Saturday, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and pounding the country with airstrikes. Iran has retaliated with a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones targeting Israel, U.S. interests in the region and Arab countries in the Persian Gulf.
Lebanon has also been drawn into the conflict, with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacking Israel. Israel bombed Shiite strongholds in Lebanon, where more than 100 people have been killed and around 100,000 people were seeking shelter this week.
Across the region, the U.N. refugee agency reported that hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said over 190 children had been killed since Saturday, including over 180 in Iran, seven in Lebanon, three in Israel and one in Kuwait.
“Homes, hospitals and schools are being hit,” Mr. Fletcher said.
TehranSmoke rising from airstrikes on Saturday morning.
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