Iran War News Highlights: Trump says US will leave Iran in 2 or 3 weeks

Iran’s ISNA news agency is reporting that an attack on the city of Mahallat in the Markazi province last night has killed 11 people and injured 15 others.

Three residential units in Mahallat city were “directly hit by projectiles”, causing significant damage, it said.

A likely strike by the United States hit the central Iranian city of Isfahan early Tuesday, sending a massive fireball into the sky, and Tehran struck a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.

The attacks were testament to the intensity of the monthlong war the US and Israel launched against Iran, which has maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, closing off the vital waterway for global energy shipments, sending oil prices skyrocketing and roiling world markets.

The Israeli military says it has targeted Iranian government infrastructure in “the heart of Tehran”.

The Israeli military has said that four more of its soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon.

They include two soldiers who were 21 years old, one soldier who was 22 years old and a fourth soldier whose details were not released because “his name has not yet been cleared for publication”.

At least 10 Israeli soldiers have now been killed in southern Lebanon since March 2 as Israel expands its military invasion south of the Litani River.

Blasts were heard in Tehran and power cuts hit some areas of the capital, Iranian media reported on Tuesday.

“Power outages in parts of Tehran after multiple explosions heard,” the Fars news agency reported, cited by AFP

Tasnim news agency also reported some residents in eastern Tehran were without electricity and that authorities were working to restore power.

Korean Air will enter emergency management mode from April as rising oil prices driven by the war in ⁠the ​Middle East weigh on costs, a source with knowledge of ​the ​matter told ⁠Reuters on Tuesday.

The airline said in ‌an internal memo reviewed by Reuters that if high oil prices persist, it expects significant disruption ⁠to ⁠its annual business targets, and will ⁠shift ‌to an emergency ​operating system ‌from April. (Reuters)

The average retail price of gasoline in the US has crossed $4 a gallon (3.78 litres) for the first time in more than three years, the Reuters news agency reported, citing data from price tracking services GasBuddy.

Since the US-Israel war against Iran began on February 28, the national average retail gasoline prices in the US have climbed about $1.06 a gallon, or 36 percent, the agency said.

Netanyahu has given an interview to the US network Newsmax [in which he was asked] about the prospect for when this air campaign might end.

He was reluctant to put any kind of a time limit on it.

There’s been a lot of speculation of what Israel would do if the US suddenly has some kind of negotiated breakthrough and declares a ceasefire.

Netanyahu was non-committal in this interview, but he said that in his view, they are over halfway through their list of what they want to strike in Iran. Now, that does raise more questions, because we’ve heard from other military officials in Israel that they’re quite close to the end of their list of “vital assets” that they want to strike.

The Lebanese group says its fighters have launched an attack targeting a military checkpoint in the Misgav Am settlement in northern Israel with a swarm of drones.

The group also said it struck an Israeli Merkava tank on the road between the towns of al-Qantara and al-Taybe in southern Lebanon with a guided missile. It said the tank “was seen burning, which prompted a force to arrive to evacuate casualties and tow the tank under a heavy smoke screen coinciding with phosphorus shell fire”.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier told Newsmax that the US-Israeli war on Iran had achieved more than half its aims, but would not give a timeline on when it would end.

He said the war is “definitely beyond the halfway point. But I don’t want to put a schedule on it,” adding that he believed Iran’s Islamic republic will eventually “collapse internally”, AFP reports.

In his Palm Sunday speech, Pope Leo said that God rejects prayers for war, just days after Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence, prayed for “overwhelming destruction” in Iran.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation says that more than 200 soldiers complained that their superior officers used religious rhetoric to justify war, including that Trump was anointed by Jesus to cause Armageddon and bring Jesus back to life.

The Iranian Embassy in India termed the alleged strike a “war crime” in a post on X. “The attack on an Iranian aircraft carrying medicines and medical equipment constitutes a war crime and a clear violation of international law,” the statement said, adding that targeting a civilian aircraft engaged in a humanitarian mission violates international aviation rules and humanitarian principles.

In a statement released on its Telegram channel, the Iraqi armed group Saraya Awliya al-Dam says it carried out five attacks targeting US bases in the region over the past 24 hours.

Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has thanked the Iraqi people and religious leadership for their support of Iran “in the face of aggression”, Iran’s state media reported on Sunday, without saying how this message was conveyed.

More than three weeks on from his appointment as supreme leader, Khamenei has still not been seen or heard from in public since he was injured in the US-Israeli airstrike that killed his father, the late ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his wife and son on the first day of the war.

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The Kuwait National Guard says it intercepted five drones, the country's state news agency reports this morning.

It follows the death of a worker from India in an Iranian attack on a power and desalination plant in Kuwait, Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water said in a statement overnight.

Yesterday, Kuwait's armed forces said 10 of its members were injured in Iranian attacks on military camps, and a warehouse belonging to a private logistics company was also targeted, in missile and drone attacks during the previous 24 hours.

A spokesperson for Saudi Arabia’s Defence Ministry has said five drones were intercepted and destroyed in the past few hours.

The Israeli military says it is continuing its operations in the southern suburbs of Beirut and is ordering residents of seven areas to flee their homes.

They are Haret Hreik, Ghobeiry, Laylaki, Haddad, Borj el-Brajneh, Tawhidat al-Ghadir and Shiyah.

The military claimed it is targeting Hezbollah military sites in the areas, but did not offer evidence.

Vietnam’s Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical has announced that it is in talks with Russian partners to buy crude oil and is also seeking to buy more crude oil from Africa, the US and Southeast Asia.

The US has issued a 30-day waiver lifting sanctions on Russian oil, allowing other countries to make purchases amid a global supply crunch.

Other Southeast Asian nations, including Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, have also started to purchase previously sanctioned Russian oil due to dwindling reserves brought about by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Israeli authorities say they intercepted two drones over the strategically important port city of Eilat in the south and claimed that they had come from Yemen.

Now, ever since the Houthis entered this conflict a couple of days ago, the Israeli military, and especially their air defences, have known they have now engaged on a third front, and have been looking southwards to see what has been coming from Yemen.

But all throughout Sunday, and now through the nighttime hours into Monday morning here, they’ve also been engaged very heavily on both of the other fronts, especially in the north.

Earlier today, we heard sounds of loud explosions in Baghdad. It’s not the sound of drones but rather sounds of rockets targeting the US Victory Base, which is about 20km (12.4 miles) west of the capital.

What we understand is that the air defence system were not able to intercept those rockets, and it hit an A32B Iraqi transport plane that was set ablaze.

This was the first time that the US Victory Base was hit. But there are no American soldiers on the ground, and the Americans have evacuated this military base.

Here's a wrap-up of today's developments: