The war in the Middle East triggered by the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran expanded dramatically on Monday, with casualties and destruction reported across at least nine countries in under 10 hours.
Israeli and US warplanes launched a fresh wave of strikes across Iran, where the Iranian Red Crescent Society said more than 500 people have been killed since the conflict began. Israel also launched an intense wave of attacks into Lebanon after Hezbollah struck at northern Israel in retaliation for the Israeli strike on Saturday that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian attacks were reported on oil infrastructure and other targets across a 2,000km swathe of the region – with damage inflicted from the Gulf of Oman, where a bomb-carrying drone boat exploded against an oil tanker, to Cyprus, targeting a British military base.
The US military said Kuwait’s air defences had mistakenly shot down three American F-15E fighters during an Iranian attack. All six crew members were safely recovered. Video showed one of the planes spiralling out of the sky, an engine lit up in flames, until it hit the ground and exploded in a fireball.
Black smoke rose above the area around the US embassy in Kuwait, where there was a heavy presence of security, ambulances and fire trucks. There were loud blasts in Dubai and Samha in the United Arab Emirates, and in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Saudi Arabia shut its biggest refinery after drone strikes caused a fire there, one of a number of oil installations that became targets.
In the first strike to reach US allies in Europe, a drone hit Britain’s Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus overnight. Britain and Cyprus said the damage was limited and there were no casualties.
The effort to oust Iran’s leadership is the biggest US foreign policy gamble in decades.
The US president, Donald Trump, repeated his calls on Iranians to rise up and overthrow their leaders, and said the air campaign could last weeks. Within Iran, where residents have jammed highways to flee cities as bombs fell, there was uncertainty about the future and emotion ranging from apprehension to euphoria.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society put the death toll in Iran at 555 and said more than 130 cities across the country had come under attack. Israeli officials said its strikes on Monday were aimed at command and control centres and senior leaders of the ruling regime. In Israel, 11 people have been killed, with 31 in Lebanon, according to authorities.
European allies distanced themselves from Trump’s initial decision to go to war, saying it fell short of the legal threshold of meeting an imminent threat. But they have since said they would participate to help suppress Iran’s ability to retaliate, after Tehran struck their allies.
A senior White House official told Reuters that Washington would at some point talk with Tehran, but not yet.
“President Trump said new potential leadership in Iran has indicated they want to talk and eventually he will talk. For now, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated,” the official said.
It remained unclear what the longer-term prospects were for Iran to rebuild its leadership and replace Khamenei, 86.
Iran’s elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Sunday a leadership council composed of himself, the judiciary head and a member of the powerful guardian council had temporarily assumed the duties of the supreme leader.
In a post on X on Monday, Ali Larijani, the powerful head of Tehran’s supreme national security council, said Iran would not negotiate with Trump, who had “delusional ambitions” and was now worried about US casualties.
“Iran, unlike the United States, has prepared itself for a long war,” he posted.
In Jerusalem, booms rattled windows as missiles launched by Iran towards central Israel were intercepted.
An Israeli military spokesperson said there had been fewer attacks targeting Israel overnight since Sunday, which he attributed to Israeli strikes degrading Iran’s military capabilities. Hezbollah had made “a big mistake” by “joining Iran’s war”, he said.
US officials said B-2 strategic bombers had attacked Iranian missile launch sites.
Shipments through the strait of Hormuz – where about a fifth of the world’s oil trade passes along the Iranian coast – have been halted after threats from Iran and strikes against tankers. Oil prices leapt by double-digit percentage points when trade opened on Monday and stock markets fell.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had hit three US and UK oil tankers in the Gulf and the strait of Hormuz as well as attacking military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain with drones and missiles. Shipping data showed hundreds of vessels including oil and gas tankers dropping anchor in nearby waters.
Global air travel was also heavily disrupted as airstrikes kept major Middle Eastern airports closed.
The UN nuclear watchdog had no indication Israeli and US attacks on Iran had hit any nuclear facilities, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday, despite Iran’s envoy stating one was targeted a day earlier.
Iran’s nuclear programme is among the reasons Israel and the US have given for the attacks, alleging Iran was getting too close to being able to eventually make a nuclear bomb.
However, what remains of Iran’s atomic facilities after the two militaries attacked them in June appears to have been largely spared in this campaign so far.
“We have no indication that any of the nuclear installations … have been damaged or hit,” Grossi said in a statement to a meeting of his agency’s 35-nation board of governors.
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