Tehran8:29 a.m. April 3
Tel Aviv7:59 a.m. April 3
Iran War Live Updates: Strikes Hit Infrastructure Sites in Iran After Trump’s Threat
President Trump celebrated an attack on a major highway bridge outside of Tehran after vowing to take Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” And a leading public health institution in the country was destroyed.
- Agence France-Presse
- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Ilia Yefimovich/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
- Video obtained by Reuters
- Social media, via Reuters
A day after President Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back into the Stone Ages,” an airstrike that a U.S. official said was an American attack caused at least a partial collapse of a major highway bridge, killing at least eight people, according to Iranian news outlets. A leading public health institution in Iran was also destroyed though it was unclear who was responsible.
Mr. Trump on Thursday celebrated the damage to the bridge, which is on a mountainous stretch of road between Tehran and the nearby city of Karaj. He posted a video of a strike hitting the bridge and warned that more critical infrastructure would be destroyed if Iran did not “make a deal.”
Another strike, in Tehran, destroyed the Pasteur Institute of Iran, a major public health agency in the country that produced and distributed vaccines, a spokesman for the health ministry said. It was unclear whether the United States or Israel was responsible.
Iranian officials remained defiant in the face of Mr. Trump’s threats, made in a national address on Wednesday night. Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on the country’s state news broadcaster that negotiations with Washington were impossible under current conditions.
The country’s military, despite being battered with thousands of bombs over nearly five weeks, kept up aerial attacks on Israel and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf. Israel’s military said on Thursday that it had intercepted missiles from Iran, while the United Arab Emirates said its forces had responded to Iranian drones and missiles. The Houthis in Yemen, who are allied with Iran, also launched a missile toward Israel.
“When it comes to defending our homeland, each and every one of us will become a soldier of this country,” Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s speaker of Parliament and a key figure overseeing the war, said on social media. He warned Iranians were “armed, ready and standing,” adding, “Come on in, we’re waiting.”
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Macron: Growing European frustration with Mr. Trump’s management of the war bubbled over on Thursday, when French President Emmanuel Macron lashed out at the U.S. leader for his shifting war goals and his undermining of the NATO alliance. Speaking to reporters during a trip to South Korea, Mr. Macron criticized Mr. Trump’s attacks on NATO. “If you create doubt every day about your commitment, you hollow it out,” he said.
Markets: Stocks recovered from morning losses on Thursday, but oil prices rose. Mr. Trump’s remarks on Wednesday night had spooked investors in the morning, but reports of talks between Iran and Oman to monitor but not restrict ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz appeared to soothe them. The S&P 500 ended the day 0.1 percent higher, even as Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, surged 7.8 percent to $109.03 per barrel.
War’s cost: Some estimates suggest the war could cost the United States as much as $1 billion a day, a soaring tally that underscores the economic trade-offs the Trump administration faces as the president had promised to focus on lowering consumer costs and other domestic issues.
Crackdown in Iran: The Iranian authorities have detained Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer, her daughter said on Thursday. Ms. Sotoudeh has taken on the cases of women accused of not wearing head scarves, and she has been arrested and imprisoned multiple times for her work.
Security Council: Russia, China and France on Thursday blocked Arab countries pushing the U.N. Security Council to authorize military action against Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying they opposed authorizing force, according to a diplomat and a senior U.N. official. Read more>
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,606 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Thursday. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 1,345 Lebanese had been killed as of Thursday, since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 17 people had been killed as of Friday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.
Iranian officials responded with defiance on Thursday after President Trump gave a televised address Wednesday night from the White House in which he vowed to take Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and repeated threats to attack the country’s infrastructure unless a deal was reached.
The speaker of Iran’s Parliament warned that “when it comes to defending our homeland, each and every one of us will become a soldier of this country.” A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, who has repeatedly argued that the country has no reason to trust Mr. Trump’s mediators when Israel and the United States have twice attacked the country in the middle of talks, said that negotiations were not feasible.
More than 100 international law experts signed a letter on Thursday warning that the United States’ conduct in the war and the statements of U.S. officials “raise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.”
Here’s what else happened on Thursday:
Iran: An airstrike destroyed the Pasteur Institute of Iran, a renowned public health institution that produces and distributes vaccines, the Iranian government said. A spokesman for the Iranian health ministry called the attack a “direct assault on international health security.”
A highway bridge connecting Tehran and the city of Karaj was also attacked, killing eight people and wounding 95 others, Iranian news media reported. Iran’s state broadcaster said that a second strike hit the bridge as emergency workers were trying to rescue the injured.
A U.S. military official said that American forces were responsible for the attack, which came on the last day of the Iranian new year holiday, when Iranians traditionally celebrate by spending time outdoors. The U.S. official said the bridge was a planned military supply route for Iran’s missile and drone forces, though Iranian news media said the bridge was not yet operational and was not being used by the military. Mr. Trump celebrated the bridge’s destruction, vowing there was “much more to follow.”
At least 1,606 civilians, including 244 children, have been killed in Iran since the war began, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Lebanon: The Israeli defense minister issued a direct threat against the leader of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, saying he would not survive to see the outcome of Israel’s fighting with the group. Israel killed Hezbollah’s previous leader in 2024.
More than 1,345 people in Lebanon have been killed and 4,040 others injured, Lebanese authorities said.
Strait of Hormuz: Military planners from around the world will meet next week to discuss how to make the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passageway for the world’s oil, “accessible and safe for navigation,” the British government said.
Separately, Iran said it would seek to oversee shipping traffic through the strait even after the war. An Iranian deputy foreign minister said that though Iran was drafting a protocol for his country and Oman to monitor transit through the strait, Iran would not be imposing restrictions.
After reports of the talks between Iran and Oman, stocks recovered from some earlier losses, with the S&P 500 ending the day roughly flat. But oil prices rose, with Brent, the international oil benchmark, hitting around $109 per barrel.
Israel: The Israeli military said it had detected missiles fired by Iran and a volley of rockets from Hezbollah. At least one missile was launched from Yemen toward Israel, the Israeli military said, after the Houthi militia in Yemen said last weekend that it would join the war in support of Tehran.
How much oil costs
Price of Brent crude
In the shadow of war, some Iranians in the capital city of Tehran gathered outside on Thursday to celebrate Sizdah Bedar, a nature festival marking the 13th day of the Persian new year and the end of the two-week Nowruz holiday period.
Typically on Sizdah Bedar, families picnic outside, gather around rivers or streams, tell stories and take part in simple traditions that bind them to their heritage. This year, the festival took place amid a daily bombardment of Tehran and other parts of the country that has killed civilians, destroyed buildings and infrastructure and brought much of normal life to a grinding halt.
Clusters of families and groups of teenagers gathered on Thursday near Tabiat (Nature) Bridge in northern Tehran, a pedestrian bridge that connects two large parks, and Park-e Mellat, another park nearby. Visible in the background at Tabiat Bridge was a skyscraper that had been damaged in Israeli strikes last year, still shorn of some of its glass paneling.
People prepared chicken kebabs on small grills, posed for pictures, and kicked around soccer balls. It was a brief moment of normalcy in the midst of an unrelentingly difficult few months.
Since the war began, many Tehran residents had left the capital for refuge elsewhere in the country. Coffee shops have been empty in recent days. But several Iranians said that Thursday was the busiest they had seen Tehran in weeks.
Russia, China and France on Thursday effectively stymied a push by Arab countries to get the United Nations Security Council to authorize military action against Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying they opposed any language authorizing force, according to a diplomat and a senior U.N. official.
The actual vote on the resolution, which was drafted by Bahrain with the support of the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, is expected to be scheduled for Friday. But it remained unclear whether extra hours of diplomacy would bring the three veto-holding countries on board.
Russia, China and France are among the five permanent members of the council with veto power. There were also divisions over the resolution among the 10 nonpermanent members, according to diplomats.
The current draft resolution is in its fourth revision after weeks of closed-door negotiations. The part of the text that has generated an impasse states that the Security Council “authorizes member States, acting nationally or through voluntary multinational naval partnerships, with advance notifications to the Security Council,” to use all necessary means “to secure transit passage and to deter attempts to close, obstruct or otherwise interfere with international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic choke point where a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally travels, shortly after the United States and Israel launched a war against it on Feb. 28. The closure has caused global energy disruption, hurt financial markets and increased the costs of oil, shipping and insurance. Iran has also launched thousands of retaliatory attacks on the Arab nations in the Persian Gulf — which host major American bases — killing at least 18 civilians and severely damaging military and energy infrastructure.
Bahrain’s foreign minister, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, told a session of the Security Council on Thursday that “Iran’s aggressive intentions” toward its Arab neighbors were “treacherous” and “preplanned,” and violated international law. He said Iran had targeted civilian structures such as airports, water stations, seaports and hotels.
Iran signaled on Thursday that it intended to continue to oversee shipping traffic through the critical Strait of Hormuz, even after the war.
For Iran, its Arab neighbors uniting against it at the Security Council represented a serious, perhaps irreparable, deterioration of relations. For years, Iran cultivated closer ties with its neighbors, only to blow them up during the past month of war.
Analysts say the Bahraini-led efforts at the Council are more symbolic than pragmatic; the militaries of most of the Persian Gulf countries are relatively small, and heavily dependent on U.S. support. They have minimal experience combating a military the size of Iran’s.
And France’s president, Emanuel Macron, said on Thursday that President Trump’s comments urging countries that rely on the strait to forcefully open it were unrealistic.
“It is unrealistic because it would take an inordinate amount of time and would expose anyone crossing the strait to coastal threats from the Revolutionary Guards, who possess significant resources, as well as ballistic missiles, a host of other risks,” Mr. Macron said.
Abdulaziz Sager, the chairman of the Gulf Research Center, a think tank based in Saudi Arabia, said any cease-fire agreement must also address Iran’s capability to attack Gulf countries and control maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. “We will not forget what they have done to us, and they will not forget that the U.S. had a lot of facilities here in the Gulf,” he said.
The blocking of the strait has cut off the main export route for the Arab countries, where economies and government budgets depend heavily on fossil fuel revenue. Qatar, one of the world’s largest exporters of natural gas, has been forced to shut down production entirely and declare force majeure, breaking contracts with buyers.
The Qatari government said it expects a $20 billion loss in annual revenue. Most of the Gulf countries had maintained cordial ties with Iran before the war, including Saudi Arabia, which re-established diplomatic relations with Iran in a China-brokered pact in 2023.
Saudi and Emirati officials in particular had come to believe that the best way to manage the threat posed to them by Iran was through nurturing diplomacy and shared economic interests, analysts say.
Bahrain was an exception. An island nation where a Sunni monarchy rules over a Shiite-majority citizenry, Bahrain has long had an antagonistic relationship with Iran, accusing it of meddling in its internal affairs and stirring up dissent.
But in the wake of the war, even countries like Qatar and Oman — which often served as a mediators between the United States and Iran — have indicated that their relationships with the Islamic republic are probably irreparably damaged. They have handed the mediator role to Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt.
Ali Vaez, the Iran director at the International Crisis Group, said the resolution by Bahrain was flawed and risked escalating tensions in the region, pointing out that the closure of the strait is a result of the war and it was open before the strikes. “It treats a political crisis as if it can be solved at gunpoint.”
Stocks recovered from morning losses to end the day roughly flat but oil prices rose. President Trump’s remarks on Wednesday night had spooked investors in the morning before reports of talks between Iran and Oman to monitor but not restrict the flow of ships through the Strait of Hormuz appeared to soothe them. The S&P 500 ended the day 0.1 percent higher, even as Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, surged 7.8 percent to $109.03 per barrel.
President Trump celebrated a strike on a highway bridge near Tehran on Thursday, warning on social media that there was “much more to follow.”
The attack on the B1 bridge between Tehran and the shores of the Caspian Sea killed eight people and wounded 95, according to Ghodratollah Seif, the deputy governor of Alborz province.
A U.S. military official said that American forces had struck the bridge twice, eliminating what the official called a planned military supply route for Iran’s missile and drone forces. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to share operational details.
Mr. Seif told state media that the bridge was not yet operational and that “there was absolutely no military activity on bridge B1.” He said the casualties were people from a nearby village who were picnicking outdoors in celebration of the last day of Nowruz, the Persian new year.
The bridge is part of an ambitious highway project intended to connect Tehran to the Caspian Sea, giving motorists an alternative to windy mountainous roads. The highway is used regularly for commerce and by many Iranians who travel back and forth for weekend getaways.
Mr. Trump’s post on Truth Social was accompanied by a video of an explosion on or near the bridge and a large plume of smoke rising into the sky. With the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran now in its fifth week and showing little sign of abating despite Washington’s diplomatic overtures to Tehran, Mr. Trump urged Iran’s government to “MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!”
The Israeli military said in a briefing to reporters on Thursday that it was not responsible, and that the bridge had been a U.S. target.
Mr. Trump has threatened to destroy all power plants and other infrastructure in Iran if its leaders did not agree to a peace deal and end their military’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for regional oil exports.
Some experts in the law of armed conflict say that a country’s infrastructure could be considered a legal and legitimate target if that infrastructure is used by its military or plays a role in military operations. The legality would vary on a case-by-case basis.
“Whether the bridge was a lawful military objective would depend on the facts,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specialized in the law of armed conflict and who now works at the International Crisis Group. “My read is that bridge was targeted not to provide any military advantage but in the hopes of coercing Tehran and generating content.”
Johnatan Reiss and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
U.S. forces struck the B1 bridge in Iran on Thursday, eliminating a planned military supply route for sustaining Iran’s ballistic missile and attack drone force, a U.S. military official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to share operational details.
The bridge connects Tehran and the nearby city of Karaj.
Iran signaled on Thursday that it intended to continue to oversee shipping traffic through the critical Strait of Hormuz, even after the war, though it insisted that it would not restrict transit.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said that Iran was drafting a protocol that would allow Iran and Oman to “oversee transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” in comments reported by Iran’s state news outlet.
But Gharibabadi said that such oversight “will naturally not mean restrictions; rather, they are intended to facilitate and ensure safe passage and to provide better services to ships passing through this route.”
The U.S. government insists that Iran has no legal right to exercise any control of the strait, which has generally been treated as an international waterway. But during the war, Iran has repeatedly ratcheted up its claims of authority there; it has recently made plans to charge tolls to passing ships.
At its narrowest, the passage is just 24 miles wide, from the northernmost point of Oman to the nearest Iranian land. That means the narrowest point of the strait lies entirely within the territorial waters of the two countries.
But under international law, the strait is open to unimpeded international shipping. That status was codified decades ago by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it is considered binding, though Iran has not ratified the convention and has disputed its reach.
Since the start of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign, Iran has blocked most traffic through the strait on its southern coast, which has driven up fuel prices across the world. It has said that only the ships of friendly nations may pass, and only with Iranian permission, and it has made threats against those who would defy the blockade. Some ships have been attacked in strikes that other nations have blamed on Iran.
Some countries, such as Malaysia and the Philippines, have said in recent days that Iran has promised to allow their vessels through, and Iran has allowed some Chinese ships to transit the strait. Officials from the United States, Europe and parts of Asia have discussed having warships escort commercial shipping through the strait, a big commitment of resources, but they have not agreed on any arrangements.
More than 100 experts on international law have signed an open letter expressing “profound concern” about what they see as “serious violations of international law and alarming rhetoric” by the United States, Israel, and Iran in the war.
The letter focuses primarily on the conduct of the United States government and its military forces in the war that began with U.S.-Israeli military strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. It was published on Thursday on Just Security, an online journal based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, and co-written by contributors to the journal. Many of the signatories are faculty at American universities and law schools.
The war as a whole has been broadly denounced in the United States as illegal by critics who point to its lack of authorization from Congress or the United Nations Security Council.
The initiation of the campaign by the United States and Israel “was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, and the conduct of United States forces since, as well as statements made by senior government officials, raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes,” the letter said. Signatories included Harold Hongju Koh, a former State Department legal adviser, and Beth Van Schaack, a former State Department official who teaches at Stanford University’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice.
Those violations not only pose a direct threat to civilians in the Middle East but also “risk degrading the rule of law and fundamental norms that protect every nation’s civilians,” the letter argued.
U.S. officials have not offered extensive legal justifications for the war. Shortly after the war began, President Trump said in a said in a video posted to Truth Social: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” He offered few details about those threats, beyond claiming Iran was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Asked last month for a detailed description of its legal views on the U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s longtime supreme leader, in the opening assault of the war, the White House released a statement that said President Trump had “exercised his authority as commander in chief to defend U.S. personnel and bases in the region.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said that the goal of the operation was to “remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran.” The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a brief legal analysis in which it said that the “decisive trigger” for the attacks was Iran’s “accelerated efforts to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities.”
The experts’ letter expressed particular concern over evidence that a U.S. missile struck a girls’ elementary school in the Iranian town of Minab on Feb. 28, killing at least 175 people, many of them children. Preliminary findings from a military investigation determined last month that it was likely the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part.
“The strike likely violates international humanitarian law, and if evidence is found that those responsible were reckless, it could also be a war crime,” the letter said.
Iran’s strikes against civilian infrastructure across the Middle East, including the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas, were also unlawful and posed a risk to civilians across the region, the letter said.
During his first run for the White House, President Trump assailed his predecessors for wasting trillions of dollars on unnecessary wars in the Middle East and argued that the money could have been used for the benefit of the United States.
“We could have rebuilt our country twice,” Mr. Trump said in a 2016 speech in Charlotte, N.C., arguing that costly American military adventures served only to further destabilize the region: “Imagine if that money had been spent here at home.”
Nearly a decade later, Mr. Trump is entrenched in his own Middle East conflict that by some estimates is costing the United States as much as a billion dollars per day. The soaring price of the war underscores the economic trade-offs that the Trump administration faces as it looks to enact an “America First” policy agenda that the president said would focus on lowering consumer costs and rebuilding domestic manufacturing.
More than a year into his second term, Mr. Trump can point to progress on what he considers his domestic priorities, including all but sealing the border to illegal immigration and cutting taxes and regulations. But as the White House prepares to unveil its 2027 budget this week, Mr. Trump made clear that military spending is a priority over any expansion of government social-safety net programs that many of his working-class supporters increasingly rely upon.
“The United States can’t take care of day care,” Mr. Trump said at the White House on Wednesday. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things, they can do it on a state basis.”
Adding that the United States is a big country that is “fighting wars,” Mr. Trump said, “We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”
The president said that states should raise taxes to pay for day care and that the federal government could, in turn, potentially reduce the taxes that it collects from states.
White House officials said Mr. Trump was referring to rooting out fraud in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which he would continue to work to strengthen.
“The president proudly signed historic legislation eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits for nearly all seniors and barring illegal immigrants and other ineligible individuals from fraudulently receiving Medicare and Medicaid benefits,” said Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman. “The Trump economic agenda will continue to lower costs, making everyday life more affordable for hard-working American families.”
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, wrote in a post on X that “Democrats and the left-wing media are dishonestly taking President Trump’s comments out of context.”
The president’s comments, at an Easter luncheon on Wednesday, drew criticism from Democrats about his priorities ahead of the midterm elections this year. The war with Iran has sent gasoline prices above $4 per gallon, increasing the financial burden on inflation-weary Americans.
“Trump would have you believe that spending taxpayer dollars on health care, food assistance and child care is a ‘little scam’ but wants Congress to authorize $200 billion for an illegal war he has no clue how to manage,” said Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia.
Representative Shri Thanedar, Democrat of Michigan, accused the president of choosing the war over helping children and the sick.
“He’s CHOOSING to cut Medicaid and Medicare for more money for war,” Mr. Thanedar wrote in a post on X on Thursday.
The Pentagon asked Congress last month for $200 billion for the war in Iran, and officials told lawmakers that the first six days of the fighting had cost more than $11.3 billion.
Analysts have estimated that United States is spending around $1 billion per day in its campaign to cripple Iran’s military and end its nuclear program, putting the cost of the fighting so far at just over $30 billion.
That is in line with the cost of a year of universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, according to a 2022 analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model.
Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of the National Economic Council in the Biden administration, said the Iran war funding that Mr. Trump has requested would pay for the free community college program that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. proposed. He suggested that Mr. Trump was shifting away from the populist ideas that made him so appealing to voters.
“Even for centrist or right-leaning voters who might have skepticism about government spending programs, a large group would probably say we should be spending on things that would benefit Americans rather than some Middle East war,” Mr. Ramamurti said.
Referring to the war, he added: “This is one of the most unpopular political positions to possibly hold and runs counter to all of his America First rhetoric.”
Expanding social safety nets has never been a priority for Mr. Trump, who has long focused on investments in border security and tax cuts intended to boost economic growth. Unlike many Republicans, Mr. Trump has avoided proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.
During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump suggested that tariff revenue could help pay for child care costs.
“We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s — relatively speaking — not very expensive, compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in,” Mr. Trump said in a speech at the Economic Club of New York in 2024.
However, Mr. Trump never sought to expand access to cheaper child care.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration tried to block federal child care funds from flowing to five Democratic-led states because of concerns about fraud. A federal judge in January blocked the move, saying that there was no legal basis for freezing the funds.
With costs of the war mounting daily, Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he expected fighting to end within weeks. Trump administration officials have argued that the war with Iran would be worth the short term-economic costs because it would guarantee security in the Middle East.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last month: “There is no prosperity without security, and what we had before was the illusion of security.”
President Trump celebrated the destruction of a bridge near Tehran in a social media post with a video of its collapse, saying there would be “Much more to follow.”
The strike near Tehran severely damaged a major highway bridge linking the capital to the nearby city of Karaj, according to Iranian state media. Photos published by IRIB, the state broadcaster, showed part of the B1 bridge collapsed after the attack.
Trump, in his post, urged the government to “MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!”
Hopes that the U.S. housing market was starting to thaw have ebbed as the war in the Middle East extended into April, raising costs for many Americans.
The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate hit 6.46 percent, the mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac said on Thursday. That’s up from 6.38 percent the week before and the highest since the first week of September. Mortgage rates fell below 6 percent before the war started, but they have been climbing ever since.
The jump in home loan rates comes as Americans are already under pressure from higher costs.
The war has pushed up oil prices, which have jumped more than 50 percent since the end of February. The average price of gasoline edged up to $4.08 a gallon on Thursday, according to data from the AAA motor club, some 37 percent higher since the war began.
Soaring energy costs have raised fears of higher inflation, which are reflected in elevated interest rates. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expects U.S. inflation to surge to 4.2 percent this year, up from 2.6 percent in 2025.
“As long as the conflict remains a threat to the price of petroleum, markets are going to continue to price higher inflation risks, which will translate into higher mortgage rates,” Eugenio Alemán, the chief economist at the investment bank Raymond James, wrote in an email.
The housing market was effectively frozen after mortgage rates started to climb during the Covid-19 pandemic, when central banks rapidly raised interest rates to deal with soaring inflation. Many homeowners who locked in low rates have been reluctant to give them up, stifling home sales.
There were glimmers of optimism when the year started. Prices for existing homes rose 0.9 percent in January from the previous year, the smallest annual gain since 2023, according to the Case-Shiller home price index. The cooling of home prices, coupled with a dip in mortgage rates, had created increased demand among home buyers.
“Unfortunately, the war in Iran has halted the momentum,” Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a statement.
Stocks pared earlier losses and oil prices moderated after unconfirmed reports that Iran and Oman were in talks to monitor traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping lane. The S&P 500 had fallen as much as 1.5 percent in earlier trading, before recovering to trade roughly flat for the day. Oil prices also eased from their highs but still remained markedly higher for the day, with Brent, the international oil benchmark, up 6 percent to around $107 per barrel.
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An Iranian man who was arrested during widespread unrest in the country that began late December was executed on Thursday, according to Mizan, an outlet affiliated with the judiciary. Amirhossein Hatami was charged and convicted with setting fire to a base belonging to the Basij, the plainclothes paramilitary militia in Iran, state media said. According to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, defense lawyers disputed that, saying that the Basij forces trapped protesters including Mr. Hatami inside a building, locked the doors and started the fire. Mr. Hatami was aged 19, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, HRANA, which said that he was the ninth “political prisoner” to be executed in Iran since the war began.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, has fired roughly 100 rockets at Israel in the past 24 hours, mostly directed at the north of the country, according to the Israeli military. Israelis have been observing the Jewish holiday of Passover since Wednesday evening. David Azoulay, the mayor of Metula, a town next to the border with Lebanon, said sirens warning of incoming rocket fire have blared repeatedly since the start of the holiday. “It was very challenging for our residents,” he said in a phone interview.
Military planners from nations around the globe will meet next week to discuss securing the Strait of Hormuz for shipping, the British government said on Thursday, underscoring the importance of safeguarding the key maritime route.
Word of the talks came a day after President Trump called on other countries to “build up some delayed courage” and reopen the waterway, which serves as a passage for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil deliveries.
But it remains unclear clear whether the discussions, scheduled for next week in northwest London, would satisfy Mr. Trump’s demand for greater involvement by other countries in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain has insisted that Britain will not be drawn into the conflict, and his foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, emphasized on Thursday that any military deployment would only follow the end of hostilities.
“We need the diplomatic pressure, the economic pressure and also the work that is being done separately by military planners on how to keep shipping safe for the long term when the conflict concludes,” Ms. Cooper said.
She made the remarks after a virtual meeting of ministers from 41 nations to discuss a political and diplomatic response to the war. Participating countries included France, Germany, Italy, Canada and some Gulf nations, but the United Stateswas not among them.
Since the war began, Iran has targeted several vessels in response to American and Israeli strikes, choking off traffic in the strait and sending global energy prices skyrocketing. Ms. Cooper said that during the past 24 hours, 25 vessels had navigated the Strait of Hormuz, which would normally be used by 150 ships a day, and that about 2,000 ships with around 20,000 seafarers were stranded nearby. She said the closure of the strait was threatening “our global economic security.”
Britain’s defense ministry said the military planners at the meeting next week would discuss “viable options to make the Strait of Hormuz accessible and safe for navigation,” but it did not elaborate. Planners from many of the countries are expected to join the meeting remotely.
While resisting direct involvement in the war, Britain and France are seeking to coordinate an international intervention after it ends.
Guillaume Vernet, a French military spokesman, told a news conference on Thursday that the process would be multi-phased, with a focus on reassuring shipowners to allow their vessels into the area, and on lowering insurance premiums, Reuters reported.
There would also eventually need to be coordination with Iran to ensure there are security guarantees for ships, he said, adding that it was unlikely for now.
“We will need to assemble a sufficient number of vessels and have coordination capabilities in the air, at sea, as well as the ability to share intelligence,” Mr. Vernet added.
Many governments from Thursday’s talks released a joint statement last month demanding that Iran cease its “threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the Strait to commercial shipping.” Signatories included Germany, France and other European Union countries, as well as Japan, Canada, Australia and some Gulf states.
On Thursday, the focus was on achieving consensus on the principle of freedom of navigation and on applying maximum diplomatic pressure on Iran, including from China and from countries in the global south affected by rising fertilizer prices.
“China can use its influence constructively on Iran: for a negotiated solution and cessation of hostilities against the Gulf states,” the German foreign ministry wrote on social media.
Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister, who took part in Thursday’s meeting, said it was important to work through the United Nations “not only to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait, but also to create a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for fertilizers and to avoid a new food crisis, starting with African countries.” The priorities were to safeguard freedom of navigation and to protect the stability of energy markets, he added.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said NATO and Europe, including Britain, have done little to support the U.S.-Israeli operation in Iran. Mr. Starmer initially refused to let the American military use British bases to strike Iran, although he reversed that position after Iranian retaliation began.
Iranian authorities have detained the famed human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, her daughter said in a post on social media on Thursday. Sotoudeh is renowned for her work defending human rights in Iran, including by taking on the cases of women prosecuted for not wearing their mandatory head scarves, and has been arrested and imprisoned multiple times as a result of her work. Her daughter, Mehraveh Khandan, said that Sotoudeh was detained on Wednesday evening when she was at home alone, and had not yet been in touch with her family.
The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, on Thursday threatened Naim Qassem, the leader of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, saying in a statement he would not live to see the results of Israel’s military campaign against the group in Lebanon. Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s previous leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in late 2024, when the two sides were last at war.
António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, called for the war to end immediately in remarks to reporters at the U.N. “To the United States and Israel, it is high time to stop the war that is inflicting immense human suffering and already triggering devastating economic consequences. To Iran, to stop attacking their neighbors,” he said. Guterres also called for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz and respect freedom of navigation.
The Iranian government said on Thursday that a strike had destroyed the Pasteur Institute of Iran, a storied scientific research facility in the capital, Tehran. The Pasteur Institute is one of Iran’s leading public health institutions, and produces and distributes vaccines. Hossein Kermanpour, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Health, said the attack was “a direct assault on international health security,” in a post on social media on Thursday. The Pasteur Network, a global health alliance that the institute is part of, did not immediately respond to a request for comment
The U.N. Security Council will convene at 10 a.m. on Thursday to vote on a resolution, drafted by Bahrain, authorizing countries to use military force if necessary to open the Strait of Hormuz for the free flow of shipping and commerce. The resolution, which has the support of Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, is being voted on after weeks of Iran blocking the strait.
Austrian officials said on Thursday that they have been denying American combat aircraft permission to fly over their country since the start of the war, as part of Austria’s long-standing national policy of neutrality. Nearby Switzerland has similarly barred overflights, also citing its neutrality. “Austria is a neutral country, and as such, we are obligated to adhere to certain principles,” Col. Michael Bauer, a defense ministry spokesman, said on Thursday. “Therefore, we have rejected requests for flights to or from countries at war.”
After absorbing a steady drip of anger, contempt and mockery from President Trump over Iran, Europe’s leaders have begun to snap back — and President Emmanuel Macron of France has emerged as the most vocal.
On Thursday, Mr. Macron lashed out at Mr. Trump for what he said was an unserious approach to the war and unhelpful attacks on NATO. “When we’re serious, we don’t say the opposite of what we said the day before,” Mr. Macron said during a visit to South Korea.
“We are talking about war, we are talking today about women and men who are in combat, about women, men and civilians who are being killed,” Mr. Macron said. “We’re also talking about the impact of this war on our economies.”
It was striking display of exasperation with Mr. Trump, coming from a leader who has long prided himself on dealing tactfully with the American president and his mercurial ways. But it reflected a growing defiance on the part of Europeans, who had previously tried to balance their deep reservations about the military campaign with a desire not to antagonize Mr. Trump.
Tensions are flaring over the use of Europe’s airspace and military bases, as countries have refused access to American or Israeli warplanes on offensive military missions. Leaders, even from pro-American countries like Britain, speak openly about the need for Europe to provide for its own security, apart from the United States.
Even Europe’s effort to marshal a coalition to secure the key trade routes through the Strait of Hormuz, which began as a response to Mr. Trump’s demands for greater European support, has come to reflect how Europe is going its own way. Its leaders, who met on Thursday in a call organized by the British government, have rejected his call to forcibly seize the strait, which Iran has effectively closed, or to act before the conflict has ended.
“That has never been the option we have chosen, and we consider it unrealistic,” Mr. Macron said. Seizing the strait, he said, would take “an infinite amount of time” and would expose ships passing through the strait to Iranian attacks.
For all the insults flung at Europe by Mr. Trump, European leaders have tried not to make it personal with the president. Even Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, who has expressed more public criticism of the Iran war than any other major European leader, rarely cites Mr. Trump by name in his statements.
But Mr. Macron’s falling out with Mr. Trump appeared to carry an extra tinge of bitterness because it is personal and involves the French president’s wife, Brigitte Macron. He was responding in part to remarks made by Mr. Trump during an Easter lunch on Wednesday, which included a derogatory reference to an incident in which Ms. Macron was caught on video appearing to shove her husband.
Mr. Trump’s mocking remarks “were neither elegant nor befitting,” a clearly bristling Mr. Macron said to reporters in Seoul, the South Korean capital. “So I’m not going to respond to them; they don’t deserve a response,” he added.
In this, he adhered to the turn-the-other-cheek policy of other European leaders, like Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who has stoically deflected Mr. Trump’s jibes that he is “no Winston Churchill.” But that didn’t stop Mr. Macron from unloading on Mr. Trump’s wartime leadership or his treatment of NATO.
He brushed aside Mr. Trump’s latest threat to carry out devastating airstrikes against Iran, delivered in a nationally televised speech on Wednesday.
“I’m not here to comment on an operation that the Americans decided on with the Israelis, on their own,” Mr. Macron said. “They can later complain that they aren’t being supported in this operation that they decided on alone. It’s not our operation.”
But Mr. Macron did weigh in on Mr. Trump’s mounting attacks on NATO, which the president has accused of not helping the United States, and which Mr. Trump has threatened, in an interview with The Telegraph newspaper published on Wednesday, to withdraw from.
Mr. Macron said the president’s criticisms were weakening the alliance.
“If you create doubt every day about your commitment, you hollow it out,” Mr. Macron said.
“When you’ve signed a treaty, when you’ve committed to an alliance, when you believe it’s important to defend the security of your allies — or at least your partners — you live up to the commitments you’ve signed,” Mr. Macron continued. “You don’t comment on them every morning.”
Other European officials have begun to speak out about the accumulated effect of Mr. Trump’s criticisms of NATO.
“This isn’t the first time he’s done this,” Stefan Kornelius, the spokesman for Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday, “and since it’s a recurring phenomenon, you can probably judge the consequences for yourself.”
Few leaders have had as full-bodied a relationship with Mr. Trump as Mr. Macron, in part because Mr. Macron, having served for nine years, is in his second round of dealing with him. Their first meeting, in 2017, was memorable for the prolonged, death-grip-like handshake between the two men.
Later in the year, they bonded at a Bastille Day military parade in Paris.
But by November 2019, after Mr. Trump had imposed tariffs on Europe, an impatient Mr. Macron cut him off with a curt, “let’s be serious,” when the president was trying to lighten the mood at a NATO summit.
Relations have not gotten better during Mr. Trump’s second term. After an Israeli strike on Iran in 2025, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Macron “always gets it wrong.” Last January, he shared screenshots of texts from Mr. Macron, who greeted him as “My friend” while pushing back gently on his designs on Greenland.
More recently, there appeared to be a thaw. In mid-March, after a phone call with Mr. Macron about Iran, Mr. Trump said, “On a scale of 0 to 10, I’d say he’s been an 8. Not perfect, but it’s France. We don’t expect perfect.”
Now, as France has refused to get more deeply involved in the war, Mr. Trump’s mood has soured again. His mockery of the incident with Ms. Macron, which Mr. Macron has denied was a dispute, is a new low in their relationship.