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Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Fires Missile Barrage at Israel After U.S. Claims Progress on Talks
Israeli officials said missiles launched from Iran had hit Tel Aviv and other parts of the country. President Trump said there had been “very strong talks” with Iran to end the war, though Iranian officials did not confirm that.
Waves of Iranian missiles targeted Israel and Iraq on Tuesday, according to authorities in both countries, after the United States and Iran sent conflicting signals about whether they were negotiating to end the war in the Middle East.
The attacks were a sign that Tehran is still able to inflict damage across the region despite weeks of intense U.S.-Israeli bombardment and of sustained retaliatory strikes.
Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Tuesday that the war in Iran violated international criminal law. He appeared to criticize his own government for not being prepared to be more clear in its condemnation. He went on to say that there seems little doubt that “the justification based on an imminent attack on the U.S. does not hold water.” Steinmeier, who made the comments at an event in Berlin, went on to call the war a politically disastrous mistake.
The Israeli military released a flurry of new evacuation warnings for southern Lebanon on Tuesday, ordering residents of nine towns and villages to leave their homes and flee several miles north. The sweeping evacuation orders in the country’s south in recent weeks have heightened fears of a large-scale Israeli ground invasion. Hours before the new warnings, Israel’s defense minister said that the country intends to control areas as deep in Lebanon as the Litani River, which lies around 15 to 20 miles north of the Israeli border.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines on Tuesday declared a state of national energy emergency amid global oil supply disruptions caused by the war in the Middle East.
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
The Lebanese government has withdrawn its approval of Iran’s ambassador, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, and given him until March 29 to leave the country, Lebanon’s foreign ministry said Tuesday. The Lebanese government cited “Iran’s violation of diplomatic norms and established protocols between the two countries,” but did not elaborate. The government typically uses such language to refer to interference in Lebanese internal affairs, especially in regard to Iran’s support for the Hezbollah militia.
Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, said Monday that Israel intends to control areas in Lebanon as deep as the Litani River, which lies about one to three miles from the Israeli border, as it continues its operations against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia. He also confirmed that the Israeli military is following a model used last year in the war in Gaza, where swaths of buildings were razed in urban areas, as part of operations against what Israeli officials said was a renewed Hamas insurgency. The demolitions exacerbated what was already a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Katz said Tuesday that the Israeli military is flattening homes in border villages as part of the operations, claiming that they are being “used as terrorist positions.” Katz said Tuesday that Israeli forces had destroyed all five bridges over the Litani River, saying that Hezbollah used them to transport militants and weapons. The bridges are vital for the Lebanese population living south of the river, the majority of whom have been displaced by the fighting.
Iranian missile attacks hit the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq on Tuesday, killing six Kurdish fighters and wounding 30 others, the Kurdistan Regional Government said in a statement. The volley of six Iranian ballistic missiles came in two separate attacks at dawn on Tuesday, according to the statement.
“While we condemn in the strongest terms this attack and all other terrorist attacks on the Kurdistan Region, we affirm that we have every right to respond to any aggression against our people and our land,” said the statement, from the KRG’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs. Iran did not immediately comment publicly on the attack.
One of the waves of Iranian missiles launched toward Israel on Tuesday resulted in four impact sites, the Israeli authorities said. It was not clear if all were missile hits or debris from interceptions. They caused extensive damage to at least three residential buildings and set cars on fire. In Tel Aviv, six people were treated for injuries, said Eli Bin from the national emergency service. One of the strikes in Tel Aviv was an Iranian missile with a warhead of around 100 kilograms, or 220 pounds, said Col. Miki David of the Israeli military. This missile was “something we have not yet encountered in the war,” David said.
The Israeli military reported more Iranian missiles launches toward Israel on Tuesday. It said search and rescue teams were going to several places in southern and central Israel where impacts were reported. Yoel Moshe, an official with the national emergency rescue service, said that they were searching an impact site in Tel Aviv for casualties. Earlier on Tuesday, an impact was reported in northern Israel after reports of Iranian missile launches.
Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, at the briefing in Canberra with the E.U. chief on Tuesday condemned Iranian actions in the Strait of Hormuz.
“This is having an impact on the global economy,” he said. But he did not directly respond to a reporter’s question about whether Australia might get drawn into securing the strait, saying his country has provided support for the United Arab Emirates at its request, including moving an aircraft to the region and supplying “AMRAAMs” or Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles for defense.
Asked whether the E.U. would contribute to a maritime operation to secure the Strait of Hormuz, Ursula von der Leyen, the E.U. chief, said, “Leaders in the European Union have been very clear that when the hostilities end, they could envisage an operation.”
“We think that it is time to go to the negotiation table and to end the hostilities,” she added Tuesday in Australia. “The situation is critical for the energy supplies worldwide. We all feel the knock-on effects on gas and oil prices, our businesses and our societies.”
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she is “deeply concerned” about the conflict in the Middle East. Speaking at a briefing on Tuesday in Canberra, Australia’s capital, she called on Iran to “immediately” cease retaliatory attacks and allow free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that has been rendered perilous in recent weeks. “The recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces is unacceptable and must be condemned,” she said.
Kuwait’s electricity ministry said that seven power lines in several areas of the country were taken out of service after they sustained damage from falling debris caused by air defense interceptions, Kuwait’s state news agency reported early Tuesday morning. The Kuwaiti army said on social media that it was confronting drone and missile attacks for the second time since about midnight.
The Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq said that a commander and some of his fighters were killed in a strike targeting their headquarters in Anbar Province, Iraq’s state news agency said Tuesday morning. The group blamed the United States for the attack. The P.M.F. is an umbrella organization of militias under Iraqi state supervision, some of whom support Iran and have targeted American assets including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad amid the conflict in the Middle East.
War planes were flying over Beirut as a series of airstrikes by the Israeli military that began late on Monday night continued into Tuesday morning. At least seven explosions were heard around the Lebanese capital. The Israeli military said earlier it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut.
The Israeli military said that search-and-rescue teams were operating at a scene in northern Israel where there were reports of an impact early Tuesday morning. The statement came after the military said that it had identified missiles launched from Iran. The national emergency rescue service, Magen David Adom, said paramedics were treating a woman who was injured on the way to a shelter but reported no other casualties.
A remote work mandate in Qatar, which was put in place earlier this month amid the war in the Middle East, has been terminated, Qatar’s state news agency reported in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the Middle East. Qataris in the public and private sectors will resume in-person work on Tuesday, it said.
Senior military officials are weighing a possible deployment of a combat brigade from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and some elements of the division’s headquarters staff to support U.S. military operations in Iran, defense officials said.
The officials described the military’s actions as prudent planning, noting that nothing had been ordered by the Pentagon or U.S. Central Command, which declined to comment. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing planning.
President Trump’s order to postpone strikes on Iran’s power plants gives the country a small reprieve, but U.S. and Israeli strikes have already battered critical infrastructure and stoked popular outrage over the war, even among Iranians who oppose their government.
Mr. Trump and Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, have at times urged Iranians to rise up against their government, but the U.S.-Israeli attacks are angering Iranians already struggling with the conflict’s devastating cost.
The energy crisis caused by the Iran war is worse than the combined effect of the oil shocks in the 1970s, the leader of the International Energy Agency said on Monday, warning that it would take time to resolve even if the war were to end soon.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the I.E.A., accused global decision makers of not appreciating the severity of the crisis. Speaking at an event in Canberra, Australia, he added that his agency, an organization of 32 nations, was in talks with governments in Asia and Europe about releasing more oil from their strategic reserves. Less than two weeks ago, it coordinated the biggest release of stockpiled oil in history.
Israel’s military said on Monday that its own errant artillery had killed an Israeli avocado farmer a day earlier near the Lebanese border.
Tributes rolled in for the farmer, Ofer Moskovitz, a colorful raconteur who was killed on Sunday in Misgav Am, a kibbutz on the border with Lebanon. He was buried an hour south by car, in Kibbutz Amiad, near the Sea of Galilee.
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