Israel bombed Tehran and pushed ground troops into Lebanon, while Iran struck the US embassy in Riyadh with drones and hit targets across several Gulf countries, on the fourth day of a Middle East war with no clear end point. The death toll in Iran has risen to more than 780 since the conflict was triggered on Saturday by joint US and Israeli strikes on Iran, according to Iran’s Red Crescent. This figure has not been able to be independently verified.
The escalation is rattling oil-rich Gulf monarchies and driving up crude prices, though the impact on oil so far remains smaller than during other shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine. The US embassy in Saudi Arabia was targeted by two Iranian drones that sparked a fire, forcing it to close, as the US mission in Kuwait had already done. Later, a journalist and witnesses heard explosions in central Riyadh.
Evacuations from 14 countries
A resident said he felt his house shake. Washington, which has reported six military deaths, took the drastic step of urging Americans to leave the Middle East, from Egypt eastward, citing security concerns, covering a total of 14 countries. Iran warned European powers to stay out of the conflict after Germany, France and the United Kingdom signaled they were prepared to take “defensive actions” to destroy Iranian military capabilities.
“That would be an act of war,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghai said at a press conference in Tehran. Tehran has stepped up attacks against US targets in the region. The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological military force, threatened the United States and Israel with opening “the gates of hell” to their “enemies,” and in recent hours claimed an attack on a US air base in Bahrain.
Iranian drones also struck Amazon data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar said it foiled attacks targeting Hamad International Airport. In Tehran, described as a ghost town, the roar of explosions continued, as it did in Karaj west of the capital and in Isfahan in central Iran.
Israel said Tuesday it carried out air strikes on Iran’s presidency and the offices of the Supreme National Security Council in Tehran. Hours earlier it said it had struck and “dismantled” the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster, though the broadcaster said it was still on the air.
The European Union’s asylum agency has warned of a potential refugee outflow of “unprecedented magnitude” from Iran, a country of around 90 million people.
Ground incursion into Lebanon
In Lebanon, evacuation orders continued amid Israeli strikes launched in response to rocket fire by the pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah. Lebanese authorities say the Israeli strikes have killed 52 people in total, a figure AFP has not been able to verify. The United Nations reported at least 30,000 displaced people.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army carried out a ground incursion into a border area in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese military source said. “Israeli ground troops advanced from the plains of Kfarkila and Khiam,” near the Israel-Lebanon border, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hezbollah, a powerful party-militia in Lebanon backed for decades by Iran, said it had targeted three military bases inside Israel. At the start of the operation on Saturday, in which Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed, US President Donald Trump called on Iranians to rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic, in power since 1979.
But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that while such an outcome would be welcome, it is not “the objective” of the war, which Washington says could last weeks or even “much longer.” Israel says its primary goals are to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb and to destroy Iran’s ballistic capabilities.
After the 12-day war last June, Iranian authorities “began building new installations, underground bunker complexes that would have made their ballistic missile programs and nuclear weapons programs untouchable within months,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
“And then they could have targeted the United States,” he added. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi responded to Rubio, saying “there has never been any supposed Iranian ‘threat.’”
