Tehran1:23 a.m. March 31
Tel Aviv12:53 a.m. March 31
Iran War Live Updates: Trump Renews Threats Against Iranian Oil and Energy Facilities
President Trump claimed progress in talks to end the war but warned that lacking a deal he would order intense attacks on Iranian infrastructure targets. Oil and stock markets wavered on the news.
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
- David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
- Reuters
- Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
- Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Reuters
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
President Trump injected new uncertainty into global energy markets on Monday, renewing his threat to begin “completely obliterating” Iranian power plants and oil production facilities if the country’s new leaders did not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz “immediately.”
Mr. Trump has sought to pressure Iran to yield to his demands and end its chokehold over the strait, a vital shipping route for oil and natural gas, by alternating threats of destruction with unverified claims of diplomatic breakthroughs. Iran has denied holding substantive talks with the United States, and has rejected the Trump administration’s conditions as unreasonable. The mixed messages led to another nervous day for energy and stock markets: The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, briefly rose to $116 a barrel on Monday before falling back, and the S&P 500 closed down slightly.
The war, now in its fifth week and rattling much of the Middle East, continued to rage. In Israel, the military said it had destroyed more than 100 high-rise buildings in the Beirut area, claiming they were being used as command structures by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia. Iranian officials threatened to strike U.S. universities in the region in retaliation for American military attacks on several universities in Iran. And NATO said its air defenses had shot down a ballistic missile that had entered Turkish airspace, the fourth such interception since the start of the war.
As Mr. Trump strains to find an end to a conflict he originally mused would last four to five weeks, he has alternately narrowed his aims — arguing on Sunday that “regime change” in Iran had already been achieved — and raised the prospect of escalation, ordering thousands more U.S. troops to the Middle East, including Marines and Special Operations Forces.
His latest threats came in a Truth Social post on Monday morning in which he claimed there had been “great progress” in talks with Tehran but warned that if the negotiations failed to produce an agreement he would order the bombardment of Iranian power plants, oil production infrastructure and, potentially, desalination plants.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened such attacks in recent weeks, only to back down because of the potential consequences for the global economy. Experts have noted that attacking power and water plants can be considered a war crime.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Fractured government: By killing dozens of Iranian leaders and their deputies, the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has fractured the Islamic republic’s government. That has complicated Iran’s ability to make decisions, and made it more difficult for American envoys to negotiate the significant concessions Mr. Trump is demanding. Read more ›
Pakistan talks: Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey convened on Sunday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for further discussions aimed at ending the war. The United States, Israel and Iran were not part of the talks, and it was unclear whether any progress was made. Read more ›
University threat: Iranian officials have condemned a string of U.S. military attacks on universities across the country and warned of possible retaliation against U.S. universities in the region. Read more ›
Lebanon: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had ordered his forces to increase the territory they control in southern Lebanon, adding to fears among many Lebanese of a long-term military occupation of the area. Lebanon’s president has denounced Israel’s campaign there against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia.
Peacekeepers killed: Two United Nations peacekeepers were killed in southern Lebanon on Monday when their convoy was “struck by an explosion of undetermined origin,” according to a U.N. report seen by The New York Times. A day earlier, an Indonesian peacekeeper was killed in a separate attack amid clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Monday afternoon that it had received proposals for talks with the United States through intermediaries, including Pakistan. In a social media post, Mr. Baghaei maintained that Iran had held no negotiations with the United States since the U.S.-Israeli attacks began on Feb. 28 and would not while the military campaign continues. Pakistan has circulated messages between Iran and the United States in an effort to assemble peace talks in the capital of Islamabad.
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has fractured the Iranian government, complicating its ability to make decisions and coordinate larger retaliatory attacks, according to officials familiar with U.S. and Western intelligence assessments.
Several dozen Iranian leaders and their deputies have been killed since the war began four weeks ago. Those who survive have had difficulty communicating and are unable to meet in person, for fear of having their calls intercepted by the United States or Israel and being targeted in an airstrike.
While Iran’s security and military agencies continue to function, the government’s ability to plan new strategies or policies has been weakened.
The Trump administration has said a new government is in charge in Iran and has pressed it to make a quick deal. But the more degraded Iranian government decision making becomes, the more difficult it will be for it to negotiate with American envoys or make significant concessions.
With different leaders in place, Iranian negotiators may have little knowledge about what their government is willing to concede, or even whom precisely to ask.
What is more, American officials say hard-liners within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have become more influential in Iran, exerting more power than the religious leadership nominally in charge.
But whether someone emerges to make a deal, and whether that person can persuade other officials to agree to it, is far from clear. Former American officials say Iran will make a deal when it suffers enough economic pain from the war. While the damage has been severe, Iran may not yet feel as though it is losing, according to current and former officials.
On Monday, President Trump threatened to expand the war if a deal was not quickly reached, suggesting that U.S. forces might try to take Kharg Island, Iran’s main hub for oil exports.
Iran’s compromised communications have caused confusion and paranoia among the surviving government leaders, who fear that their calls and messages are being intercepted by Israeli intelligence, officials say. As a result, they have been reluctant to make calls, according to officials briefed on Western intelligence assessments.
Israel began the war with a strike on the leadership compound that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and much of the national security leadership. A number of lower-level officials seen by the United States as more pragmatic were also killed in the strike, U.S. officials said. Mr. Trump himself made reference in interviews that potential candidates to lead Iran had been killed.
The attack severed many connections between security, military and civilian policymakers, according to Western officials and others briefed on government assessments.
It is unclear how much control the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is exerting over the government. He has not been seen in public, and U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies believe he was wounded during the war.
Some intelligence officials believe that Mr. Khamenei may be more of a figurehead, and that the surviving leadership of the Revolutionary Guards is making the decisions.
A senior U.S. military official said Iranian command and control has been badly degraded by American and Israeli strikes. Still, the official and a senior intelligence official said, before the war Iran built a decentralized control system that allows local commanders in different regions of the country to make their own strike decisions, even in the absence of direct day-to-day orders from Tehran.
The United States is targeting those local commanders, the senior military official said. Nevertheless, Iran has proved it can still launch substantial offensive strikes like the missile and drone attack at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia last week.
But the retaliatory attacks have not been as large, or as effective, as they might have been because of the problems in the Iranian government. Given the decimation of its leadership, former U.S. officials say, Iran has been unable to launch larger barrages of missiles that could more easily overwhelm defenses. Instead, regional commands have had to muster counterattacks without coordinating with one another.
Mr. Trump has expressed frustration with what he has portrayed as mixed messaging from the Iranian leadership.
“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange,’” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Thursday. “They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal.’”
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump said the campaign of airstrikes had resulted in new leadership in Iran and again claimed progress in talks.
“It’s a whole different group of people,” Mr. Trump said on Sunday. “So I would consider that regime change, and frankly, they’ve been very reasonable.”
In a social media post on Monday, Mr. Trump offered optimistic assessments of the current government but also threatened to expand the war by targeting energy and civilian infrastructure. He said that if a deal was not reached shortly, and if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed, he would attack Iran’s electrical generation plants, oil wells and desalination plants.
People briefed on intelligence assessments said Mr. Trump’s frustration reflected the inability of the current Iranian government to coordinate a response and make a decision about the American peace proposals.
Israeli officials have said the communication problems in Iran are not dissimilar to the problems with hostage negotiations during the Gaza war. In Gaza, offers from the United States and Israel went to Hamas leaders in Qatar, and then were conveyed in written notes to leaders in Gaza, a time-consuming process that introduced confusion.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
Price of Brent Crude Oil
Stocks took a dip Monday, with the S&P 500 falling about 0.4 percent at close. The index remains on track for its worst monthly performance since March last year. The price of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, was about $114 a barrel in the afternoon, up more than 50 percent since the start of the war on Feb 28.
A parliamentary committee in Iran has approved a plan to impose tolls on ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, the semiofficial news agency Fars reported Monday. The plan also bans transit by American and Israeli ships. The plan requires further approval by the full parliament. The strait is considered an international waterway, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said an imposition of tolls would be illegal. Iran has not only rejected American demands to open the strait. It is also asserting sovereignty over it. More important, Iran can, in effect, control the movement of ships through the strait and has attacked ships trying to make passage.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the president “would be quite interested in calling” on Arab countries to help pay for the costs associated with the Iran war.
“I won’t get ahead of him on that,” she said. “But certainly it’s an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you’ll hear more from him on.”
Iranian officials have condemned a string of U.S. military attacks on several universities across the country and warned of possible retaliation against U.S. universities in the region.
The attacks on Iranian academic institutions come as the country’s critical infrastructure increasingly becomes a target in the U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran. Strikes on energy installations have plunged parts of the capital into darkness and enveloped it in toxic fumes. Other recent attacks hit a water reservoir in southwestern Iran and a steel plant in central Isfahan, and set fire to parts of a petrochemical complex in northwestern Tabriz.
The semiofficial news agency Fars reported that 20 universities and dormitories had been attacked in the monthlong war.
“Israel and its partner in crime believe that knowledge can be bombed away,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in a statement that only indirectly referred to the United States — part of Iranian officials’ efforts to portray Washington as serving Israeli interests by starting a war with Iran.
Intentional attacks against educational institutions may be considered a war crime under international law.
Israeli and U.S. military spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request for comment on four separate university attacks in the past two weeks. But on Monday, Israel claimed strikes on a university that it said was being used for military research.
On Sunday, the Revolutionary Guards warned of possible retaliation.
“We advise all staff, professors and students of American universities in the region, as well as residents in their surrounding areas, to keep a distance of at least one kilometer from these universities to ensure their safety,” said a statement published by Tasnim, a semiofficial news outlet affiliated with the Guards.
Many American universities in the region had already moved most of their courses online because of the war. But some campuses took further security measures after the warnings. The American University of Beirut said that while it had “no evidence of direct threats,” it had decided to move all classes online for Monday and Tuesday, and it had suspended the few exams and laboratory sessions still being held in person.
Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region — considered one of Washington’s most important regional security allies — closed not only American and international universities, but also all of its schools in response.
Videos posted on March 28 and 29 showed the aftermath of a recent attack on the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, in which an entire building was reduced to rubble, while other classrooms were littered with shards of glass and debris.
Another strike on a research institute at the Isfahan University of Technology damaged several buildings and injured four staff members, according to the semiofficial news agency Mehr.
Other universities that have been hit, according to United Students, a group run by student activists, are the faculty of pharmacy at Shiraz University, in the south, and both the science and technology campus as well as the veterinary hospital campus at Urmia University in northeastern Iran.
Some universities that have been attacked were the sites of large demonstrations against the government just days before the war began, as students defied a bloody crackdown on protests that had already killed thousands earlier this year.
On Monday, Israel claimed strikes on the Imam Hossein University, which it called the “main military university” of the Revolutionary Guards.
It said the university contained wind tunnels used to test and develop ballistic missiles, as well as a chemistry center used for research and development of chemical weapons.
Hwaida Saad and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting
As lawmakers leave Washington without reaching a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency remains shut down even as the Iran war has raised cyber threat levels. The D.H.S. agency, known as CISA, is tasked with defending the nation’s infrastructure against cyberattacks.
“CISA is shut down, but our adversaries are not,” Nick Andersen, CISA’s acting director, told a Congressional hearing last week.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, jumped to $116 a barrel on Monday before falling back in midday trading. It remains more than 50 percent higher than before the war in Iran. The S&P 500 gained slightly after five straight weeks of declines. The index remains on track for its worst monthly performance since March 2025, when inflation and tariff worries rattled investors.
The Israeli military said it had destroyed more than 100 high-rise buildings in the Beirut area since launching strikes there earlier this month. Israel said the buildings were used by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, as command-and-control centers for attacks against Israel.
Weeks of Israeli strikes in the Lebanese capital and its suburbs have caused extensive damage and killed large numbers of civilians, including children. More than 1,200 people in Lebanon have been killed in the nearly monthlong conflict, and more than a million others have been displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.
NATO air defenses shot down a ballistic missile fired from Iran that had entered Turkish airspace, Turkey’s defense ministry said in a post on social media. It was fourth time that the military alliance, of which Turkey is a member, has reported intercepting an Iranian missile in or near Turkey’s skies since the start of the war in Iran. The defense ministry did not say what Monday’s missile’s target was nor where it was intercepted. A NATO spokeswoman confirmed the interception.
A successful attack on a NATO member could escalate the war in Iran, given the alliance’s mutual defense clause, although Turkish officials have not called for the clause’s activation. Iranian officials have denied that their country has targeted Turkey.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with ABC News that the “clerical regime” that has led Iran for decades is the foundational problem with the country, reiterating his hardline stance on the Iranian leadership in recent months. He said if there is new leadership that has taken power during the war that has a more positive “vision” for Iran’s future, he welcomes that, but also said the United States is prepared for “the possibility, maybe even the probability,” that that is not the case.
Rubio’s comments came after President Trump said that “regime change” in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders had been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks.
Two U.N. peacekeepers traveling in a convoy were killed when it was “struck by an explosion of undetermined origin” in southern Lebanon on Monday and several other peacekeepers were injured, according to a U.N. report seen by The New York Times.
The blast came a day after the organization’s secretary-general, António Guterres, condemned the killing of an Indonesian member of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group, are engaged in escalating clashes as Israeli forces expand their ground invasion there.
About 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are stationed in the region as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which was established in 1978 during Lebanon’s civil war.
The internal report seen by The Times indicated that the U.N. peacekeeping force did not immediately know who was responsible for the latest strike and deaths. There was no immediate comment from Israel, Hezbollah or UNIFIL. The other strike was also being investigated, UNIFIL said in a statement.
In the latest explosion on Monday, a U.N. convoy that was heading between two UNIFIL bases was struck, destroying the lead vehicle and killing the peacekeepers. Several others were injured, one of them seriously, according to the report. The explosion, which again affected UNIFIL’s Indonesian battalion, occurred near the southern Lebanese town of Bani Haiyyan, the report said.
The three deaths over the past 24 hours were the first in a combat incident since a conflict that was sparked when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in 2023 in support of its Palestinian ally in Gaza, Hamas.
That war ended in a fragile cease-fire, but erupted again this month after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Tehran, opening a new front in the broader U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Israel has responded with a large-scale bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced well over a million others, according to Lebanese authorities.
Hezbollah has responded by attacking Israeli troops as they advance into southern Lebanon and keeping up rocket fire across the border into Israel, in a conflict that shows little sign of abating.
President Trump threatened on Monday to “completely” destroy Kharg Island, Iran’s main hub for oil exports, and other key energy sites in the country, if it did not agree to a peace deal and end its de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr. Trump said on social media that the United States had made “great progress” in discussions with “A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME” in Iran, and that a deal would probably be “shortly reached.”
But he also reiterated threats of extreme destruction against Iranian targets that he said the U.S. military had “purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” since it started bombing Iran alongside Israel over a month ago. Those targets included Kharg Island, electricity plants, oil wells and “possibly all desalinization plants,” he said.
Mr. Trump has made fluctuating and freewheeling public comments on the war, often alternating between claims of diplomatic progress and threats of stronger military action. In an interview published on Sunday, Mr. Trump had suggested that the United States might try to take over Kharg Island, which has emerged as a potential target for the U.S. military.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t,” Mr. Trump told The Financial Times. “We have a lot of options.”
He shrugged off Iran’s ability to protect the island, a territory about one-third the size of Manhattan that is in the Persian Gulf, about 20 miles offshore.
“I don’t think they have any defense,” Mr. Trump said. “We could take it very easily.”
Mr. Trump has said that he has no plans to send ground troops into Iran, but he has left himself some wiggle room. There are now over 50,000 American troops in the Middle East — too small a number for any major land invasion, military analysts say, but enough to give Mr. Trump new options to escalate the war, or attempt an operation like seizing Kharg island.
The U.S. bombarded the island this month, focusing on its military installations while leaving its oil export facilities untouched. An invasion would be a much riskier operation and would likely roil global energy markets even further.
Even if U.S. troops were able to take control of the island — a scenario that Mr. Trump has envisioned since the late 1980s — maintaining control of it would be costly and difficult. Mr. Trump told The Financial Times that American troops would have “to be there for a while.”
Airstrikes against Kharg Island’s oil infrastructure, or seizing the island outright, would cripple Iran’s ability to export oil. That would risk sending energy prices higher, especially if Iran retaliates by striking other infrastructure in the Middle East or oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz — which would remain a powerful source of leverage.
Helene Cooper, Anton Troianovski, Rebecca F. Elliott and Peter Eavis contributed reporting.
Spain has barred U.S. warplanes from flying through its airspace en route to strikes on Iran, the country’s defense minister said on Monday. The minister, Margarita Robles, said the restriction had been in place since the start of the war. Previously, Spanish officials had only publicly announced a ban on U.S. aircraft using Spanish air bases as a launchpad for attacks. Flight-tracking data on Monday showed that U.S. aircraft were still using Spanish bases before flying on to destinations other than Iran.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said that President Trump was the only person who could end the war with Iran. In opening remarks at an international energy conference in Cairo on Monday, he addressed Mr. Trump directly, saying: “I speak to you on behalf of myself, humanity, and lovers of peace — and you, Mr. President, are a lover of peace. Please, Mr. President, help us stop this war. And you are capable of doing so.”
Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, has been working on mediation efforts to try to end the war. The four countries’ foreign ministers met in Islamabad on Sunday, but no results from the meeting have been announced.
President Trump said on social media that the United States was in “serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” adding that “great progress” had been made in the talks. But he also warned that if Iran did not reach a deal with the U.S. and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping route, then the U.S. would respond by “blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).”
Iranian leaders have not publicly confirmed that they are participating in direct talks with U.S. officials, saying only that intermediaries have been passing messages between the two sides.
President Trump on Sunday suggested that “regime change” in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders have been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks, as he sought to show progress in a war that has entered a second month.
Though Iran’s clerical and military establishment remain in control of the country, and its most hard-line factions may even have emerged strengthened, Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “We’ve had regime change.”
“The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead,” he said. He suggested that Iran had moved onto its “third regime,” and that American negotiators were speaking to “a whole different group of people,” who have “been very reasonable.”
Iranian leaders have not confirmed that they are participating in talks with U.S. officials, and their de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for oil shipments, has rattled global markets.
The United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28, killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many top Iranian leaders. But a war that Mr. Trump initially predicted would last weeks and would create the conditions for Iran’s elite military forces to “surrender to the people” has shown little sign of letting up as more civilians are killed, and as Iran’s retaliatory attacks disrupt daily life across the Middle East.
Though the United States and Israel have killed a string of Iran’s leaders after Ayatollah Khamenei, its pillars of power — chiefly top clerics and the hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — remain in place.
Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain supreme leader, was chosen to succeed him. And there has been no sign of any popular Iranian movement to overthrow the government, as Mr. Trump had once signaled was an objective.
Some Iran experts and politicians from the country’s reformist movement argue that the killings have ushered more hard-line figures into top posts.
The slain head of Iran’s National Security Council, Ali Larijani, was seen as more pragmatic than the man appointed to replace him, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. The new commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, is also seen as more radical than his predecessor, and the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader was seen as a victory by hard-liners against backers of more moderate candidates.
Mr. Trump’s comments on Sunday appeared to be another sign of him scaling back his objectives in the war. The Iranian leaders the United States was dealing with now, he said, are “different people than anybody’s dealt with before.”
“I would consider that regime change,” he said, adding, “You can’t do much better than that.”
Since the start, Mr. Trump has not laid out a clear objective for the war with Iran, nor has he been explicit about what victory would look like. Weeks before ordering the bombing campaign, he was asked by reporters if he wanted regime change in Iran. He said it seemed “like that would be the best thing that could happen.”
But by mid-March, Mr. Trump did not mention regime change at all when he announced that he was considering “winding down” military operations in Iran.
In recent days, he has appeared to grow frustrated with the extent to which the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign has failed to keep the war from spiraling across the region. One key irritant is that Iranian attacks have all but sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, sending the price of oil climbing by 56 percent since the war began.
Erika Solomon contributed reporting.
Two Chinese-owned commercial vessels successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, according to the ship-tracking platform MarineTraffic, which called it “the first confirmed crossing by a major container carrier since the start of the conflict.” The ultra-large container vessels crossed the strait at around 9 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time after abandoning initial attempts on Friday. Both ships are Malaysia-bound. MarineTraffic said the successful transit could “signal a potential shift in conditions for commercial shipping” after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran prompted Tehran to restrict access to the strait, a crucial conduit for oil and gas.
Two members of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon were killed in an “explosion of undetermined origin,” according to a United Nations report seen by The New York Times. Several other peacekeepers were injured in the attack, the report said. It comes after the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, condemned an attack that killed an Indonesian member of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon on Sunday. The cause of the deaths was not immediately clear.
A oil refinery in the northern Israeli city of Haifa was struck during an Iranian missile attack on Monday morning, according to Israel’s fire and rescue service. Verified footage, as well as photos distributed by the Israeli authorities, showed a blaze at the site. According to the fire and rescue service, falling shrapnel struck a large container containing fuel, leading firefighters to rush to the site to extinguish the blaze. There were no reports of casualties.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran was “not at all happy that people in other countries are facing difficulties due to fuel and food prices,” prompted by Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. He urged those countries to press Israel and the United States to end their attacks on Iran.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, commented on the 15-point U.S. plan to end the conflict, saying the U.S. had “excessive, unrealistic, and unreasonable demands.” He said the meeting of regional foreign ministers in Pakistan on Sunday to discuss efforts to end to the war was “commendable,” but he stressed that Iran was not involved. “Iran was attacked in the middle of a diplomatic process, and this has happened for the second time within nine months,” he said, referring to the 12-day war last June and the current war.
Iranian state media has confirmed Israel’s killing of Alireza Tangsiri, who commanded the naval forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and who was one of the architects of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, released a condolence message in response to his killing from the country’s police chief. “Each drop of the pure blood of these dear martyrs will strengthen our resolve more than ever to continue along the sacred path toward the final victory,” the message said.
Ishaq Dar, the Pakistani foreign minister, is set to visit Beijing on Tuesday in hopes of securing Chinese support for a framework in which Pakistan would host talks between the United States and Iran, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said. Pakistan hosted discussions on Sunday with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, as regional powers search for a way to end the war.
President Trump said on Sunday night that Iran had agreed to release 20 more cargo ships of oil through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday, in what the president insisted was a “tribute” to the United States and a “sign of respect.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington from a weekend spent in Florida, Mr. Trump cast Iran’s decision to allow free passage for the ships as a sign that negotiations were underway toward ending the military conflict in the region, in what he said were direct and indirect talks.
But to many outside experts, Iran’s ability to turn the spigot of oil deliveries on and off simply demonstrates its power to control the narrow, 21-mile-wide passage. Previously Mr. Trump had said he did not care much about what went through the strait because most of the oil goes to customers in Asia and Europe, and very little to the United States.
It was not clear where the 20 cargo ships were headed. China and India are major buyers of Iranian oil. The ships may also belong to Gulf Arab states. Last week, the Iranians allowed about 10 ships to transit the strait, a development that Mr. Trump also hailed as a sign of progress.
The movement of the oil is an issue that has arisen only after the United States and Israel began their military action on Feb. 28. The core of the negotiations center on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, the size and range of its arsenal of missiles and, based on Mr. Trump’s earlier goals, the freedom of the Iranian people to protest without being shot in the streets by the government.
Mr. Trump insisted to the reporters, however, that he had already achieved “regime change” in Iran because the leaders in place when the attacks on the country began have been killed, starting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.
“I think we’ve had regime change,’’ said Mr. Trump. “It truly is regime change.”
But the government, led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the nation’s top clerics, remains in place. Only the leaders have changed.
Mr. Trump made no announcements of a face-to-face meeting between American and Iranian negotiators. Last week, the administration had hoped to send Vice President JD Vance to Pakistan, to lead a delegation to discuss peace terms with Iranian leaders. But the Iranians have insisted that the United States must agree to reparations for attacking the country, acknowledge Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and lift sanctions imposed by a series of American presidents.
Several hundred U.S. Special Operations forces have arrived in the Middle East, joining thousands of Marines and Army paratroopers in a deployment meant to give President Trump additional options to expand the monthlong war with Iran, two U.S. military officials said on Sunday.
The commandos, including Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, have not yet been assigned specific missions, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
But as specialized ground troops, they could be deployed to help safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively closed. Or they could be deployed as part of a mission to try to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s oil hub in the northern Persian Gulf. Alternatively, they could be used in a mission aimed at Iran’s highly enriched uranium at the Isfahan nuclear site.
The commandos join 2,500 Marines and another 2,500 sailors, who recently arrived in the region. Altogether there are more than 50,000 American troops in the Middle East now, roughly 10,000 more than usual, as Mr. Trump decides on his next step in the war.
While it is still unclear just what the Marines, from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, will be charged with, U.S. officials say the president is weighing how to try to open the strait.
The narrow waterway, through which around 20 percent of the world’s oil usually traverses, has been largely closed because of attacks by Iranian forces who are retaliating against the U.S. and Israeli war on their country.
Usually there are around 40,000 American troops scattered among bases and on ships at any time around the region, including in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. But as Mr. Trump has escalated the war in Iran, that number has reached more than 50,000, according to a U.S. military official.
The number of troops no longer includes the 4,500 aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, however. That ship has been hobbled by constant mishaps, including a fire that broke out in the laundry. The Ford withdrew from the region on March 23 and sailed to Crete. On Friday it arrived in Croatia. It remains unclear where it is headed next.
Last week, the Pentagon also ordered about 2,000 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East to give Mr. Trump additional military options.
The location of the Army paratroopers is not public, the military official said. But they will be within striking distance of Iran. The paratroopers could also be used on Kharg Island, where U.S. warplanes bombed more than 90 military targets earlier this month. Or they could be deployed for other ground operations in conjunction with the Marines.
But military experts caution that even 50,000 troops, many of them at sea, are a small number for any kind of major land operation. Israel used more than 300,000 troops for its operations in the Gaza Strip that began in October 2023. The U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 was close to 250,000 at the beginning.
At almost a third the size of the continental United States, Iran has around 93 million people. Taking, let alone holding, a country of its size and complexity and weaponry with 50,000 troops is not doable, military experts say.