War in the Middle East widens as Trump says strikes on Iran could last several weeks

Is­rael and the Unit­ed States pound­ed Iran on Mon­day in a cam­paign that U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said would like­ly take sev­er­al weeks. Tehran and its al­lies hit back against Is­rael, Gulf states and tar­gets crit­i­cal to the world’s en­er­gy pro­duc­tion.

The in­ten­si­ty of the at­tacks, the killing of Iran­ian Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, and the lack of any ap­par­ent ex­it plan set the stage for a pro­longed con­flict with far-reach­ing con­se­quences. Safe havens in the Mideast like Dubai have seen in­com­ing fire; hun­dreds of thou­sands of air­line pas­sen­gers are strand­ed around the globe; oil prices shot up; and U.S. al­lies pledged to help stop Iran­ian mis­siles and drones.

With no sign of the con­flict abat­ing any­time soon, Trump said op­er­a­tions are like­ly to last four to five weeks but that he was pre­pared “to go far longer than that.”

He said U.S. forces were de­ter­mined to de­stroy Iran’s mis­sile ca­pa­bil­i­ties, wipe out its navy, pre­vent it from ob­tain­ing a nu­clear weapon and en­sure that it can­not con­tin­ue to sup­port al­lied groups like Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah, which fired mis­siles at Is­rael, draw­ing re­tal­ia­to­ry airstrikes.

“This was our last, best chance to strike -- what we’re do­ing right now -- and elim­i­nate the in­tol­er­a­ble threats posed by this sick and sin­is­ter regime,” Trump said.

Dan­ny Danon, the Is­raeli am­bas­sador to the U.N., said the con­flict would con­tin­ue “as long as it takes.” An Is­raeli mil­i­tary spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie De­frin, said Is­rael is keep­ing “all op­tions on the ta­ble,” in­clud­ing a po­ten­tial ground in­va­sion of Lebanon.

The chaos of the con­flict be­came ap­par­ent when the U.S. mil­i­tary said Kuwait had “mis­tak­en­ly shot down” three Amer­i­can F-15E Strike Ea­gles while Iran was at­tack­ing with air­craft, bal­lis­tic mis­siles, and drones. U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand said all six pi­lots eject­ed safe­ly and are in sta­ble con­di­tion.

As sev­er­al airstrikes hit Iran’s cap­i­tal, Tehran, the top se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial Ali Lar­i­jani vowed on X: “We will not ne­go­ti­ate with the Unit­ed States.”

The death toll grew on all sides.

The Iran­ian Red Cres­cent So­ci­ety said that the U.S.-Is­raeli op­er­a­tion has killed at least 555 peo­ple. In Is­rael, where sev­er­al lo­ca­tions were hit by Iran­ian mis­siles, 11 peo­ple were killed. Is­rael’s re­tal­ia­to­ry strikes against Hezbol­lah killed dozens of peo­ple in Lebanon.

The U.S. mil­i­tary an­nounced that two pre­vi­ous­ly un­ac­count­ed for ser­vice­mem­bers have been con­firmed dead, bring­ing the to­tal to six, while three peo­ple were re­port­ed killed in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and one each in Kuwait and Bahrain.

Iran’s top diplo­mat on Mon­day shared an aer­i­al pho­to show­ing rows of graves that he said were for more than 160 girls killed dur­ing a U.S.-Is­raeli strike on an el­e­men­tary school in Minab. “Their bod­ies were torn to shreds,” Ab­bas Araghchi, the coun­try’s for­eign min­is­ter, said on X.

In Is­rael, three young sib­lings killed by a dead­ly Iran­ian mis­sile strike were be­ing laid to rest at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem on Mon­day night. Yaakov, 16, Avi­gail 15, and Sarah Biton, 13, were among the nine killed Sun­day when a mis­sile slammed in­to a shel­ter lo­cat­ed in a syn­a­gogue in Beit Shemesh.

Iran ex­pands at­tacks to re­gion­al oil in­fra­struc­ture

With world mar­kets al­ready rat­tled by the fight­ing, QatarEn­er­gy said it would stop pro­duc­ing liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas, tak­ing one of the world’s top sup­pli­ers off the mar­ket. It of­fered no time­line for restor­ing pro­duc­tion. Eu­ro­pean nat­ur­al gas prices surged by 40% in re­sponse.

Sau­di Ara­bia’s Ras Ta­nu­ra oil re­fin­ery came un­der at­tack from drones, and its de­fens­es downed the in­com­ing air­craft, a mil­i­tary spokesman told the state-run Sau­di Press Agency. The re­fin­ery has a ca­pac­i­ty of over half a mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil a day.

Sev­er­al ships have been at­tacked in the Strait of Hor­muz, the nar­row mouth of the Per­sian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil trad­ed pass­es and where Iran has threat­ened at­tacks.

The Gulf state of Qatar said its air force had shot down two Iran­ian Sukhoi Su-24 bombers.

“The at­tack on Sau­di Ara­bia’s Ras Ta­nu­ra re­fin­ery marks a sig­nif­i­cant es­ca­la­tion, with Gulf en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture now square­ly in Iran’s sights,” said Tor­b­jorn Soltvedt, an an­a­lyst at the risk in­tel­li­gence com­pa­ny Verisk Maple­croft.

The Gulf is al­so a hub for air trav­el, and pas­sen­gers have been strand­ed around the world as car­ri­ers based there ground­ed flights. Long-haul car­ri­ers Eti­had and Emi­rates restart­ed lim­it­ed flights Mon­day.

Iran says nu­clear site was tar­get­ed

Reza Na­jafi, Iran’s am­bas­sador to the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency, told re­porters that airstrikes tar­get­ed the Natanz nu­clear en­rich­ment site on Sun­day.

“Their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that Iran wants to de­vel­op nu­clear weapons is sim­ply a big lie,” he said.

Is­rael and the U.S. have not ac­knowl­edged strikes at the site, which the U.S. bombed in the 12-day war be­tween Iran and Is­rael in June. Is­rael has said it is tar­get­ing the “lead­er­ship and nu­clear in­fra­struc­ture.”

Iran has said it has not en­riched ura­ni­um since June, though it has main­tained its right to do so while say­ing its nu­clear pro­gram is en­tire­ly peace­ful.

This image provided by U.S. Central Command shows a F/A-18F Super Hornet preparing to make an arrested landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72)) in support of Operation Epic Fury, on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (U.S. Navy via AP)

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Hezbol­lah fires on Is­rael, prompt­ing mas­sive re­sponse

Hezbol­lah said it fired mis­siles on Is­rael ear­ly Mon­day in re­sponse to Khamenei’s killing and “re­peat­ed Is­raeli ag­gres­sions.” It was the first time in more than a year that the mil­i­tant group has claimed an at­tack.

There were no re­ports of in­juries or dam­age from those at­tacks.

Is­rael re­tal­i­at­ed with strikes on Lebanon. The coun­try’s Health Min­istry re­port­ed at least 52 peo­ple were killed and 154 wound­ed in overnight strikes in the Beirut sub­urbs and south­ern Lebanon. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists in Beirut were jolt­ed awake by loud ex­plo­sions that shook build­ings and shat­tered win­dows.

Lt. Gen. Eyal Za­mir, the Is­raeli army chief of staff, said the mil­i­tary would not end its of­fen­sive against Hezbol­lah “be­fore the threat from Lebanon is elim­i­nat­ed.”

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said it had com­plet­ed a wave of strikes tar­get­ing branch­es of al-Qard al-Hasan, a char­i­ty op­er­at­ing out­side the Lebanese fi­nan­cial sys­tem that Is­rael says is used to fund Hezbol­lah’s mil­i­tary wing. An Is­raeli airstrike in Beirut heav­i­ly dam­aged a build­ing, as the mil­i­tary said it tar­get­ed a se­nior Hezbol­lah of­fi­cial.

In Iraq, the Iran-al­lied mili­tia Saraya Awliya al-Dam claimed a drone at­tack Mon­day tar­get­ing U.S. troops at the air­port in the Iraqi cap­i­tal, Bagh­dad. It claimed an­oth­er drone at­tack on Sun­day against a U.S. air base in Iraq’s north.

No end in sight to the US-Is­raeli cam­paign

The U.S. mil­i­tary said B-2 stealth bombers struck Iran’s bal­lis­tic mis­sile fa­cil­i­ties with 2,000-pound bombs. The U.S. mil­i­tary said Mon­day it had tak­en out 11 Iran­ian war­ships in the Gulf of Oman. Trump as­sert­ed a day ear­li­er that the Iran­ian navy’s head­quar­ters had been “large­ly de­stroyed.”

De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth said Mon­day the U.S. is not en­gaged in a na­tion-build­ing ef­fort in Iran, and that there is a clear mis­sion. “This is not Iraq. This is not end­less,” Hegseth said.

It’s not com­plete­ly clear what the U.S. ob­jec­tives are. In an­nounc­ing the ini­tial strikes, Trump re­ferred to the threat posed by Iran’s nu­clear and mis­sile pro­grams. But he al­so list­ed var­i­ous griev­ances dat­ing back to Iran’s 1979 Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion and urged Ira­ni­ans to “take over” their gov­ern­ment.

There have been no signs yet of any such up­ris­ing.

Trump, how­ev­er, has al­so sig­nalled he would be open to di­a­logue with Iran’s new lead­er­ship — which could be cho­sen soon.

In an in­di­ca­tion that the con­flict could draw in oth­er na­tions, Britain, France and Ger­many said Sun­day they were ready to work with the U.S. to help stop Iran’s at­tacks.

Tehran’s streets are de­sert­ed

Tehran’s streets have been large­ly de­sert­ed with peo­ple shel­ter­ing dur­ing airstrikes. The para­mil­i­tary Basij force, which has played a cen­tral role in crush­ing re­cent na­tion­wide protests, set up check­points across the city, wit­ness­es said.

In the north­ern Iran­ian city of Babol, a stu­dent, speak­ing anony­mous­ly over con­cerns of ret­ri­bu­tion, told the AP that armed ri­ot po­lice were on the streets Sat­ur­day night and in­to the ear­ly hours of Sun­day af­ter the death of Khamenei.

“We don’t know whether to be hap­py about the elim­i­na­tion of the crim­i­nals who op­press us or to re­main silent in the face of the U.S. and Is­rael’s war against the coun­try and its in­ter­ests and the ter­ror that is tak­ing place,” he said. —DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)

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Sto­ry by JON GAM­BRELL, MELANIE LID­MAN and SAMY MAGDY

Melanie Lid­man re­port­ed from Tel Aviv, Is­rael, and Samy Magdy from Cairo. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Bassem Mroue and Sal­ly Abou AlJoud in Beirut and Suzan Fras­er in Ankara, Turkey, con­tributed to this re­port.