The United States hit the central Iranian city of Isfahan early Tuesday, sending a massive fireball into the sky, while Tehran struck a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.
The attacks showed the intensity of the war more than a month after the U.S. and Israel launched their first strikes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in an interview that Israel has achieved more than half of its war aims.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been insisting there is progress in diplomatic talks toward a ceasefire, shared video of the attack on Isfahan, with fiery explosions lighting up the night sky.
Isfahan is home to one of three sites earlier attacked by the U.S. military last year. NASA fire-tracking satellites suggest explosions happened in a mountainous region on the city’s southern edge. Iran has not confirmed the attack.
Trump also expressed frustration Tuesday with allies — the U.K. and France in particular — in a social media tirade, telling them “go get your own oil” as the conflict with Iran and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues to roil global markets.
In response to U.S. and Israel attacks since Feb. 28, Iran has applied a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is shipped. Global oil prices have risen as a result, and U.S. gas prices jumped past an average of $4 a gallon on Tuesday for the first time since 2022.
The equivalent price of $1.47 per litre was exceeded at most Canadian pumps several days ago.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday the strait is “not just [a U.S.] problem.”
The strait, he said, citing Trump’s post, “is an international waterway that we use less than most, in fact, dramatically less than most.”
The UN Security Council planned to convene an emergency session Tuesday after officials said three peacekeepers in southern Lebanon had been killed in less than 24 hours during Israel’s invasion there.
The UN peacekeeping mission in the country, where Israel is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah, did not say who was responsible for the deaths.
Israel said early Tuesday that another four of its soldiers had been killed in that offensive in Lebanon.
Trump negotiating claims denied
Trump, who has spoken in recent days of dealing with “more reasonable” officials on the Iranian side, told the New York Post in an interview published Monday that the U.S. is negotiating with the country’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf. The former Revolutionary Guard commander was previously floated as Washington’s negotiating partner, but has denied Iran is talking to the White House.
Thousands of soldiers from the U.S. army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division have started arriving in the Middle East, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, part of reinforcements that would expand Trump’s options to include a ground assault in Iran, even as he pursues talks with Tehran.
Iranian missile strikes damaged an Israeli refinery, while Israel struck targets in Tehran on Monday as U.S. President Donald Trump again claimed high-level talks with Iran were ongoing, even as he threatened to ‘completely obliterate’ Iranian power plants and other infrastructure if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened.
In terms of its military campaign, Netanyahu told U.S. broadcaster Newsmax that Israel is “beyond the halfway point in terms of mission success.”
Netanyahu said that there are unspecified “military solutions” to ending Iran’s control of the Hormuz passage, and he accused many European leaders of “weakness” in not providing more support to the U.S. and Israel.
Netanyahu declined to put a timeline on when he thought the war could end. He said the U.S. and Israel have degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities and supply lines, but that Iran still has a stockpile of enriched uranium.
Speaking to reporters in Israel on Tuesday, military spokesperson Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani said the military will follow the decisions of political leaders but are “prepared to keep operating for weeks to come.”
“We have the targets for that, the munition for that, the manpower for that, and it’s up to the leadership to decide,” said Shoshani.
In the U.S., the White House did not seek Congress’s authorization for the military operation and there is stiff opposition, from Democrats and a small number of Republicans, over the Trump administration’s requested for an additional $200 billion US in funding for the war.
Adam Smith, top House Democrat on that chamber’s armed services committee, expressed skepticism about Trump’s frequent comments suggesting the U.S. was close to a deal with Iran.
“He wants to project this image that we’re heading towards something, but he doesn’t have any specific facts to show we actually are,” Smith told CNN in an interview broadcast Monday night.
Smith also said Trump’s threats on Monday to attack Iranian desalination plants — which are legally questionable under the laws of international combat — “undermine” the administration’s previous statements that they are seeking to help Iranian citizens living under a repressive regime.
Iranian drone hits Kuwaiti oil tanker
Officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership or there’s a dramatic shift in Iranian behaviour, according to U.S., Gulf and Israeli officials who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity but were not authorized to comment publicly.
The push from the Gulf nations comes as Trump vacillates between claiming that Iran’s decimated leadership is ready to settle the conflict and threatening to further escalate the war if a deal is not reached soon.
In response to growing Gulf Arab anger, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted Tuesday that Tehran is only targeting U.S. forces. Several states have been encouraging Washington to continue the war until Iran’s military capabilities are destroyed.
“Our operations are aimed at enemy aggressors who have no respect for Arabs or Iranians, nor can provide any security,” Araghchi wrote on X. “High time to eject U.S. forces.”
Despite Araghchi’s words, attacks on civilian targets continued as an Iranian drone hit a Kuwaiti oil tanker in Dubai waters, sparking a blaze that was later put out, the Dubai Media Office said.
Four people in Dubai were also wounded when debris from an intercepted drone fell into a residential area.
Air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, while Saudi Arabia’s Defence Ministry said it had intercepted three ballistic missiles launched toward Riyadh, and falling debris from a drone intercepted southeast of the capital caused minor damage to six homes.
Sirens were also heard in Jerusalem and loud explosions were heard not long after Israel’s military warned of an incoming missile barrage from Iran.
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