An Iran-backed militia took responsibility for an overnight attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. President Trump called on other nations to help escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
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The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad urged all American citizens to leave Iraq immediately on Saturday after the embassy was attacked overnight for the second time since the war with Iran started.
The warning said militias allied with Iran had carried out numerous attacks on targets associated with the United States, including diplomatic facilities, American companies and hotels frequented by foreigners. It recommended Americans travel overland to neighboring countries because commercial flights were not operating and warned them not to come to the embassy or a U.S. consulate in the northern city of Erbil.
Kataib Hezbollah, one of several Iran-backed militias in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, saying it had fired on the embassy the previous night. A video verified by The New York Times showed a structure on the embassy’s roof was on fire. Two Iraqi security officials who were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the attack but could not give additional details.
Overnight, U.S. airstrikes hit military targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal. President Trump threatened to bomb Iranian oil infrastructure on the island if Tehran did not allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow opening to the Persian Gulf through which a fifth the world’s oil must transit.
But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps defied Mr. Trump’s threat, asserting in a statement on Saturday that the critical waterway was under its full control and that “any attempt to move or transit will be targeted.”
Claiming in a social media post the United States had “beaten and completely decimated” Iran, Mr. Trump nevertheless also called on other countries, including Britain, France and China, to send war ships to the Strait of Hormuz to try to ensure oil tankers could pass, and he promised the United States would coordinate with them. Oil prices have risen steeply since the United States and Israel launched their air war on Iran two weeks ago, rattling world markets.
Here’s what else we are covering:
Bombardments: Israel’s military bombarded the Iranian capital of Tehran on Saturday and the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital of Beirut, while Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group, fired rockets and drones into Israeli territory. A heavy, lifeless atmosphere hung over the streets of Tehran on Saturday, residents said. “No one knows what will happen,” said Meisam, 41, a resident and poet who asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisal. “And we are all somewhere on the edge between depression and hope.”
Death toll: At least 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, Iran’s representative to the United Nations told the Security Council on Wednesday, the latest figure the country has provided. In Lebanon, officials said that 826 people had been killed and over 2,000 others injured.
Attacks on the Gulf: Officials in several Persian Gulf nations reported a wave of aerial attacks overnight as Iran continued to retaliate across the region. In Dubai, debris from an intercepted projectile struck the facade of a building, the city’s authorities said. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it had intercepted 11 drones, while in Bahrain, the interior ministry sounded sirens and urged residents to seek shelter.
Oil shock: The Trump administration has struggled to sell the war with Iran to a skeptical American public, including Mr. Trump’s own right-wing supporters. His advisers appear to have miscalculated how severely Iranian retaliation could disrupt global energy markets. In part as a result of the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices have risen by more than 40 percent, defying efforts to calm markets. On Saturday, U.S. gasoline prices jumped again, to a national average of $3.68 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, an increase of 23.5 percent since the war began.
Mixed messages: While at first Mr. Trump enthusiastically called on the Iranian people to take to the streets and oust the decades-long rule of the Islamic Republic, on Friday he expressed skepticism a popular uprising could succeed right now, saying opponents to the government faced “a big hurdle” because they were likely to be gunned down if they mounted protests.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts.
As the war entered its third week, Mr. Carr accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” in a social media post and warned them to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”
“Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.
Mr. Carr shared a Truth Social post by President Trump that criticized the news media for its coverage of the war with Iran. Mr. Trump referred to a story published by The Wall Street Journal that reported five American refueling planes had been struck in Saudi Arabia, claiming its headline was “intentionally misleading.” He accused the news media of wanting the United States to lose the war.
Dow Jones & Company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a similar vein, delivered a lengthy complaint about CNN’s coverage of the war in the Middle East during a news conference Friday, saying that he looked forward to the news network being controlled by the billionaire David Ellison.
Mr. Ellison, who has a friendly relationship with Mr. Trump, is the owner of Paramount Skydance, which is seeking to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery for $111 billion. That deal, if it closes, will bring CNN under Mr. Ellison’s purview. He is best known in the journalism world for shaking up leadership at CBS News, where he has installed more conservative journalists.
Mr. Carr’s comments on Saturday follow a pattern he has charted, which critics say is dangerous and positions him as a national censor. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was temporarily pulled off the air after Mr. Carr took issue with some of the ABC host’s comments, and Mr. Carr has suggested the F.C.C. should investigate the network’s daytime talk show “The View” over its political content. And in February, Stephen Colbert blasted Mr. Carr and said that his network, CBS, had barred him from airing an interview with a Democratic candidate in a U.S. Senate race because of new guidance by the F.C.C. about equal airtime for political candidates.
The Trump administration’s messaging against the news media comes as polls show it faces low public support for the war and it tries to thwart Iran’s efforts to block a vital oil route amid skyrocketing global oil prices.
Major developments — March 14
Formula 1 and its governing body, FIA, have cancelled Grand Prix races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that were to be held in April because of worries about safety in light of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been targeted over the last two weeks with drones and missiles fired from Iran. Both have U.S. military bases.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq was attacked as the war with Iran entered its third week on Saturday, and Iran doubled down on its control over the Strait of Hormuz despite threats by President Trump.
Mr. Trump called on countries that rely on the strait, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil supplies before the war, to help secure the shipping route. In a Saturday post on Truth Social, he said that the United States had “completely decimated” Iran and would assist other nations in securing the passage, adding, “This should have always been a team effort, and now it will be.”
The Iranian government struck a defiant tone against the United States on Saturday. In an interview with MS Now, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the waterway would remain closed to ships that belong to the United States, Israel and their allies. He also insisted that there was “no problem” with Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, despite statements from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and three Iranian officials that Mr. Khamenei had been wounded.
Here’s what else happened on Saturday:
Death toll: More than 2,100 people have been killed since the start of the war, most in Iran. More than 1,348 civilians there had been killed as of Wednesday, said Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani. Up to 3.2 million people are now displaced inside the country, according to preliminary assessments by the U.N. refugee agency.
In Lebanon, officials said that more than 800 people had been killed — including over 100 children — and more than 2,000 others have been wounded. Over 800,000 people have been displaced in the country.
At least 13 American service members have been killed in operations related to the war, including six crew members on a U.S. military KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in Iraq on Thursday.
Iran: The Israeli military said it had struck dozens of sites across Tehran, the Iranian capital, overnight. Among the targets were a factory that helped build aerial defense systems, and the Iranian government’s main space research center, which was developing military satellites for intelligence collection, according to the Israeli military. There was no immediate comment from the Iranian authorities on either claim.
Residents in Tehran described the streets of the capital as empty and lifeless with many businesses closed or struggling. Those who remain mostly stay home, while others have fled to the Caspian Sea, one resident said.
Lebanon: The Israeli military continued to hit Beirut, the Lebanese capital, as it expanded airstrikes into other areas of the country where the Iran-backed miltia Hezbollah does not exercise control. A strike on Saturday hit an apartment building in the Bourj Hammoud district, northeast of Beirut, killing at least one person and wounding four others, Lebanon’s health ministry said. The same building had been hit the night before.
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, was in Beirut on Saturday to call for an end to the fighting. “They were dragged into it,” he said of the Lebanese people.
Persian Gulf: The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was attacked overnight for the second time since the war with Iran started. The embassy urged all American citizens to leave Iraq immediately. Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia in the country, claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday.
An overnight strike in Baghdad also hit a headquarters of Kataib Hezbollah, killing three people, including one of its commanders, according to an official from the group as well as an Iraqi security official.
Oil: Hours after U.S. airstrikes hit Iranian military infrastructure on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal, Mr. Trump threatened to bomb the island’s oil infrastructure if Iran did not allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz at the other end of the Persian Gulf.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps did not heed Mr. Trump’s threat, asserting on Saturday that the strait was under its full control and that “any attempt to move or transit will be targeted.” In the MS Now interview, Mr. Araghchi said the waterway was open to ships that do not belong to the United States, Israel or their allies.
“Others are free to pass,” he said. “Of course, many of them prefer not to because of security concerns. This has nothing to do with us.”
Israel: Israel has started relaxing national emergency restrictions in parts of the country, reflecting assessments by U.S. and Israeli officials that the pace of Tehran’s attacks have been slowing. Schools and universities should be able to reopen on Monday in much of southern Israel, according to updated guidelines. Schools in major metropolitan areas of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv still remain closed.
In an interview with MS Now, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said Iran will “certainly retaliate” for the U.S. attack on Kharg Island on Friday night. He accused the U.S. military of firing missiles from two locations in the United Arab Emirates, including one “very populated area” near Dubai.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war, accusing media outlets of “running hoaxes and news distortions.” The comments on social media came as he reposted a Truth Social post by President Trump that criticized news media for what he claimed was misleading coverage of the war with Iran. Carr, who has vowed to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts, said, “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
President Trump on Saturday afternoon reiterated calls for countries that rely on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz to help secure the shipping route. In a Saturday post on Truth Social he said the United States had “completely decimated” Iran and would assist other nations in securing the passage, adding, “This should have always been a team effort, and now it will be.”
Earlier today, Mr. Trump said in a separate post that “hopefully” many countries - including China, France, Japan and South Korea and the United Kingdom - would send naval assets to help secure the strait.
Nations in the Persian Gulf continued to report attacks by drones and missiles on Saturday, but the pace appeared to follow a broader slowdown in Iranian strikes. In Qatar and Kuwait, the daily number of strikes by missiles and drones were in the single digits, according to governments defense reports. The United Arab Emirates defense ministry said its air defenses “engaged” 9 ballistic missiles and 33 drones launched by Iran on Saturday, and Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry reported a handful of drone interceptions during the day. Bahrain’s military said it had destroyed 124 missiles and 203 drones since the start of Iran’s attacks, but did not specify a daily number.
After a day of relative quiet in Beirut, a heavy Israeli airstrike jolted the city as night fell, sending a deep boom rolling across the Lebanese capital. It was followed by the sound of fighter jets roaring in the skies above. The blast was so loud that some residents initially mistook it for thunder.
After two weeks of deadly and destructive bombardment by the United States and Israel, some Iranians who had initially been hopeful when the country’s supreme leader was killed are growing weary of the fighting.
One businessman in his 40s who lives in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said on Friday that the sound of explosions often wakes him around 5 or 5:30 in the morning. The man, who spoke in voice notes on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that while supermarkets, bakeries and some shops were open, the streets of the capital were empty and quiet.
At night, the city is completely taken over by security forces, he said, and no one dares to protest. The few demonstrations that were held this week in Tehran were in support of the Iranian government, mourning military commanders killed by American and Israeli strikes.
The businessman added that some Iranians feel that the war in fact facilitated the transition to a new supreme leader, which the regime might have otherwise struggled to do.
Since the start of the war, President Trump has offered little clarity on how a new government could take shape in Iran.
Tehran has endured relentless attacks, including some that hit street checkpoints staffed by the Basij militia, among dozens of other sites. At least 19 historical buildings and cultural sites in the city have been seriously damaged in U.S. and Israeli strikes, Iranian media reported on Saturday, citing the country’s cultural heritage ministry.
More than 1,348 civilians have been killed in Iran, the country’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani, said this week. Up to 3.2 million people are also displaced inside the country, according to preliminary assessments by the U.N. refugee agency.
Meisam, 41, a resident and poet who asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisal, said on Saturday that in some areas, the city appeared normal, but a heavy, lifeless atmosphere hung over the streets.
Those who remain mostly stay home, while others have fled to the Caspian Sea after days and days of feeling frustrated, restless and trapped. Some businesses remain open, but many are closed or struggling, he said.
Despite the hardships, some people cling to hope for the government to fall and a new one to take its place, even though the bombardment, as well as longstanding rampant inflation and widespread economic distress, has left people on edge.
“No one knows what will happen,” he said. “And we are all somewhere on the edge between depression and hope.”
Ashley Ahn contributed reporting.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the Strait of Hormuz “is open” to ships that do not belong to the United States, Israel and their allies. “Others are free to pass,” he said in an interview with MS Now. “Of course, many of them prefer not to because of security concerns. This has nothing to do with us.”
Iran claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on ships in and around the vital oil route, including a Thai vessel on Wednesday. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has previously said any vessel that wants to pass through must get permission from Iran.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with MS Now that there was “no problem” with Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The comment came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that Khamenei had been “wounded and likely disfigured,” and three Iranian officials similarly said that Khamenei had suffered injuries, including to his legs, on the first day of the war.
“There are lots of accusations like that,” Araghchi said, adding that Khamenei “is performing his duties according to the constitution and he will continue to do that.”
In Lebanon, the war is raging not only in the streets — it is also in hospitals and clinics.
Medical workers have been killed while treating patients or trying to assist others, underscoring the human cost of the ongoing strikes.
Since March 2, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 31 health professionals and wounded 51 others, the Lebanese health ministry said on Saturday. Israel has carried out at least 37 attacks against emergency medical workers, the ministry said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, condemned the attacks on health care workers and said it marked “a tragic development in the escalating Middle East crisis.”
The deaths illustrate the conflict’s intensity and the strain on a health system caring for over 2,000 civilians injured since the violence began. Some 826 people have also been killed.
The effects of the conflict were evident on Friday night, when an Israeli airstrike hit a health center in Borj Qalaouiyeh in southern Lebanon, the health ministry said. The strike resulted in nearly the entire medical team, including doctors, paramedics and nurses, being killed. Only one severely injured worker survived, while 12 people were killed, the ministry said. Authorities reported that four more individuals remained missing.
Lebanon’s health ministry described the strike as “criminal conduct” and accused the Israeli government of broader attacks on medical personnel and facilities, including targeting ambulance crews during rescue missions on the front lines.
This week, the Lebanese Red Cross reported that one of its volunteers, Youssef Assaf, died from injuries he sustained while assisting victims of an airstrike in southern Lebanon.
In a statement, the Israeli military said that it was aware of reports of a strike in Borj Qalaouiyeh and that the incident was under review.
Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah positions, focusing on infrastructure and facilities used to launch attacks against Israel. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed proxy group, launched rockets at Israel soon after the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28.
On Saturday, Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for the Israeli military, accused Hezbollah of “extensive military use of ambulances” and medical facilities. He did not specify any location or indicate whether the Borj Qalaouiyeh health center was currently being used by the group.
A senior Hezbollah official, speaking to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, dismissed Mr. Adraee’s accusation as false, and said it was meant to undermine people affected by the war.
On Saturday, the Israeli military also said, without offering any evidence, that Hezbollah was moving rockets and other weapons along Lebanon’s coast in civilian trucks.
Lebanon’s medical workers and facilities have previously been attacked. Dozens of health and rescue workers were killed during the 2024 conflict, while hundreds of ambulances and health facilities were damaged.
“The attacks on ambulances, primary care centers, civil defense organizations and medical workers responding to strike sites are extremely alarming,” Ramzi Kaiss, the Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in an interview with The New York Times. “Under the laws of war, doctors, nurses and paramedics are protected in all circumstances and must never be attacked.”
Hwaida Saad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
The U.S. embassy in Baghdad released a statement urging all Americans to leave Iraq immediately, saying that Iran-aligned militias have carried out attacks on U.S.-associated targets throughout Iraq, including diplomatic facilities, U.S. companies and hotels frequented by foreigners. The embassy said that “Iran and its aligned militias” pose “a major threat to public safety in Iraq,” and recommended that Americans leave by land routes to Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey because commercial flights are not operating.
The warning is a clear escalation from the embassy’s past recommendations, which 24 hours ago told Americans to keep a “low profile,” but not evacuate. It signals growing U.S. concern about the threat of Iran-aligned militias in Iraq.
Two weeks into the war with Iran, the Israeli military is relaxing national emergency restrictions in parts of the country. According to updated guidelines for the public, schools and universities should be able to reopen on Monday in much of southern Israel, as well as in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, as long as a fortified shelter is available. The loosened rules reflect assessments from U.S. and Israeli officials that Iran has been able to fire fewer and lighter missile barrages at Israel over the course of the war, in part because the Israeli military says it has been bombing and destroying the munitions and their launchers on the ground in Iran. Schools will still remain closed in the major metropolitan centers of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as northern Israel, according to the new guidelines.
An overnight strike in Baghdad hit a headquarters of the Iran-aligned militia, Kataib Hezbollah, killing three people, including one of its commanders, known as Abu Ali al-Amiri, according to an official from the group as well as an Iraqi security official. Both asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, was asked on Saturday about comments from some Israeli officials suggesting that the devastation in Gaza could be used as a model for Lebanon. He responded that such a scenario must be avoided. On Friday, Israel dropped leaflets over Beirut, the Lebanese capital, that referred to its invasion of Gaza as “a remarkable success.” Guterres said: “What happened in Gaza is a disaster that must be avoided anywhere else in the world.”
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, paid tribute to the United Nations peacekeepers who are positioned along the borderlands between Lebanon and Israel. Last week, three Blue Helmet soldiers serving with the Ghanaian contingent were seriously injured when they came under intense exchanges of fire. “Attacks against peacekeepers and positions are completely unacceptable, and they must stop,” Guterres said. “They are in breach of international law and may constitute war crimes.”
The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said on Saturday that one of its positions came under heavy machine-gun fire overnight. One peacekeeper was lightly injured while heading to a shelter. An investigation has been launched.
President Trump on Saturday called on other nations to send war ships to Iran to try to ensure the Strait of Hormuz was open for oil tankers to pass through. In a post on Truth Social, Trump first indicated ships from other countries had already agreed to send the ships but then said he hoped they would be on the way.
“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated,” he wrote.
With high gas prices hurting him politically, Trump has said the U.S. might begin accompanying oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz even while war rages.
But Trump has also long called on other countries to do more to protect their own ships through the waterway. In 2019, he wrote on Twitter that China and Japan “should be protecting their own ships on what has always been a dangerous journey.”
Sitting on a weathered bench overlooking the Mediterranean on a recent evening in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, Fidaa Malhas vented her frustration at being uprooted.
Ms. Malhas, 38, usually lives in Sidiqeen, a town in southern Lebanon, where she works in a supermarket. Like many across the country, she was displaced by Israeli airstrikes. With no shelter in Beirut, she has been sleeping outdoors by the beach.
“We love our land,” Ms. Malhas said. “But we are never allowed to live on it in peace.”
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese are wondering when they might return home and are dreading reports of a possible Israeli ground invasion into southern Lebanon. Each update sharpens their unease.
Last week, the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for all residents south of the Litani River, an area making up about eight percent of Lebanon’s territory and home to hundreds of thousands.
These orders, paired with sustained Israeli strikes, came after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group in Lebanon, launched rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. Israel also called for the evacuation of Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah holds sway, and parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The result has been massive displacement: more than 830,000 people — about 14 percent of Lebanon’s population — are uprooted, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Social Affairs.
Human Rights Watch said last week that the Israeli military’s call for the immediate evacuation of everyone south of the Litani River could violate the laws of war. The group said that the sweeping nature of the call raised doubts about the protection of civilians.
Many in southern Lebanon have now been forced from their homes for the second time in less than two years, mainly during a 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Some had only recently returned, attempting to rebuild and reclaim normalcy, even as Israel continued striking what it said were Hezbollah targets in the area for more than a year.
Between October 2023 and January 2025, over 10,000 buildings in southern Lebanon were heavily damaged or destroyed, reducing entire border villages to rubble, according to Amnesty International.
“We are suffering,” said Mirna Salman, who was displaced in 2024, and again more recently, fleeing to Beirut from Majdal Selem, a southern Lebanese village where she owns a farm.
Ms. Salman said she fled the south to stay with relatives in the Dahiya, but Israeli evacuation calls drove her north to downtown Beirut. Her three children, including a seven-month-old, sleep in their car to keep warm, while the adults huddle in a flimsy tent that barely holds back the cold.
“We miss home, but we have to stay patient,” she said.
The 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah ended with a fragile cease-fire, but the truce terms have done little to ease uncertainty for those uprooted from the south. The agreement called for a full Israeli withdrawal by late January, but Israeli forces continued to hold five points inside Lebanon. Israeli officials said their troops would remain to protect Israeli towns along the northern border.
On the Beirut waterfront, Ms. Malhas, who was fasting for the holy month of Ramadan, said it was hard to believe she would spend the upcoming Eid celebration in the streets.
“The south is better than all of Beirut,” she said, throwing up her hands, recalling the fertile hills, fragrant orchards, and citrus, tobacco and olive trees of her native region. Her family owns farmland there.
“We love our land,” she added, “and we want to go back.”
Guterres said the Lebanese people had not chosen this war, which has been raging for two weeks. “They were dragged into it,” he said. He added that his message to the warring parties was: “Stop the fighting. Stop the bombing. There is no military solution — only diplomacy, dialogue and full implementation of the U.N. Charter and Security Council resolutions.”
Guterres said he had visited a shelter for displaced people and was “deeply saddened” by the testimonies he heard. With Israel’s order to evacuate the south, the region “risks being turned into a wasteland,” he said. Southern Beirut, which is under sweeping evacuation orders from Israel, “risks being bombed into oblivion.” It is “tragic to see all this happening in a country that has contributed so much to world civilization.”
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, is in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. He opened a news conference by highlighting Lebanon’s long history of religious and faith-based coexistence. He noted that Muslims were fasting for Ramadan while Christians were observing Lent. “It breaks my heart to see this period shattered by escalating attacks,” he said. Earlier, he made an appeal for $300 million in humanitarian aid for civilians affected by the war.
The war has threatened India’s supply of liquefied petroleum gas, the fuel used to power the country’s homes, restaurants and industries. After days of communication with Iran, two Indian oil tankers passed safely through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a news conference. Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman, said that the two vessels, the Shivalik and the Nanda Devi, which are collectively carrying 92,700 metric tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas.
Iranian ballistic missiles have continued to set off air raid sirens across Israel on Saturday. Most of them have been intercepted without casualties, but the most recent attack injured two people, including a boy in “moderate to serious condition,” according to Israel’s emergency service.
After President Trump threatened to “wipe out” infrastructure on Kharg Island if Iranian forces continued to block the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said the critical waterway was under the full control of its Navy. “The passage of oil tankers and commercial ships belonging to aggressors and their allies through the Strait of Hormuz remains prohibited,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by Iranian media. “Any attempt to move or transit will be targeted.”
Israeli airstrikes are expanding into areas where the Iranian-backed miltia Hezbollah does not exercise control, hitting Beirut’s largely Christian northern suburbs. A strike on Saturday hit an apartment building in the Bourj Hammoud district, sending a deafening boom across part of the city. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least one person was killed and four others injured. The same building had been hit the night before.
Kharg Island, a small coral landmass that serves as Iran’s oil export hub, was the location of a major U.S. military bombing raid on Friday, President Trump said on social media. The island plays a key role in Iran’s economy.
U.S. military officials said the strikes were aimed at storage sites for missiles and mines. An Iranian official warned that any attack on Kharg Island’s oil and gas infrastructure would immediately halt operations at the export hub.
Mr. Trump, stated on the Truth Social platform that the United States had not wiped out the island’s oil infrastructure, but vowed to “immediately reconsider this decision” if Iran interferes with the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
What makes Kharg Island crucial?
About one-third the size of Manhattan, Kharg Island, a coral outcrop in the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf, plays an outsized role in the Iranian economy. Before the war, some 90 percent of the country’s crude oil exports transited through the island.
The deep waters surrounding the island provide the necessary clearance for large oil tankers to dock, unlike the shallower depths along the rest of Iran’s Persian Gulf coastline.
Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers, has depended heavily on Kharg Island to export oil by sea since the 1960s. It has storage facilities and pipelines connecting to some of Iran’s largest oil and gas fields. Disrupting its infrastructure would hurt Iran and also affect the global energy market.
How busy was it?
In recent years, the terminal has had the capacity to load 10 supertankers at a time for transport across oceans. Three main energy infrastructure sites operate on the island, including Falat Iran Oil Company, considered the country’s largest.
China has been the main recipient of the exports, buying the oil through a shadow fleet of tankers that evade the Western sanctions on Iranian oil. Oil exports to China represented about 6 percent of Iran’s economy and were equal to roughly half of the country’s total government spending. Iran provided about 13 percent of China’s oil imports.
What do we know about the strikes?
After the U.S. strikes on Friday, a senior official from Iran’s Oil Ministry said the attacks had been enormous and destructive, and that employees of the oil refineries had reported nearly two hours of nonstop explosions that shook the island like an earthquake.
The senior official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing sensitive issues, said that an attack on Kharg Island’s oil and gas infrastructure would immediately halt a major part of Iran’s oil exports.
Early on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said that a “large-scale precision strike” on the island destroyed “naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers and multiple other military sites.” But the statement, posted on social media, also said that while more than 90 Iranian military targets were hit, the island’s oil infrastructure had been preserved.
The operation, a U.S. military official said, targeted assets that U.S. officials had said were being used to block international shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, at the other end of the gulf. The Strait of Hormuz is a strategically important waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the northern Arabian Sea; about one-fifth of the world’s oil travels through it.
Fars, an Iranian news agency affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported on Saturday afternoon that Iranian exports were uninterrupted.
The last time the island came under significant fire was during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The Iraqi military, under Saddam Hussein, conducted heavy bombing raids on the island’s oil infrastructure at the time, causing extensive damage. But Iran was able to rebuild the facilities.
Reporting was contributed by Farnaz Fassihi, Helene Cooper and Liam Stack.