Israel announces new wave of ‘broad-scale’ strikes on Tehran

Follow our live coverage here.

TEHRAN – Israel announced a new wave of “broad-scale” strikes on Tehran on March 7 as the escalating war in the Middle East entered its second week and oil prices surged on fears about global supply disruption.

The US-Israeli bombing campaign unleashed on Feb 28 has provoked Iranian retaliation against US allies across the region, with US President Donald Trump saying on March 6 that only “unconditional” Iranian surrender would end the war.

But early on March 7, air raid alerts and explosions were ringing out above Jerusalem as well as Gulf cities Dubai, Manama and near Riyadh – where Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired at an airbase housing US military personnel.

Israel’s military announced “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on government sites in the Iranian capital, and AFP photos showed fire and smoke billowing from Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport after it was hit.

The week of widening conflict has hit Lebanon, Cyprus in the EU, Turkey and Azebaijan – and reached as far as Sri Lanka, where US forces fired a deadly torpedo strike that sank an Iranian warship.

In addition to killing hundreds of people and causing significant damage to homes as well as infrastructure, the war has inflicted economic chaos.

Crude oil prices surged on mounting fears about global supply disruption as the war and Tehran’s pressure on the Strait of Hormuz upend the world’s energy and transport sectors.

The critical energy waterway is where tankers typically move nearly 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil and about 20 per cent of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf.

The main US contract, West Texas Intermediate, soared more than 12 per cent to over US$90 per barrel, topping off the biggest weekly gain on record.

The US government has so far said the war could last for weeks – potentially four or more – and Mr Trump has said the largest US defence firms have agreed to quadruple production of advanced weaponry.

US officials have tried to swat away questions over US stockpiles of air defence and other munitions as the US Central Command said more than 3,000 Iranian targets have been struck over the past week.

Though Iranian retaliation has been inflicted widely across the Middle East, US rivals China and Russia have stayed largely out of the fray.

But US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US is “not concerned” about reports that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran on US troop positions and movements.

While declining to confirm the reports, Mr Hegseth, in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, said: “We’re tracking everything.”

Renewed Israeli attacks on Tehran came a day after Israel intensified its air strikes on Lebanon, striking Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah holds sway, and Baalbeck in the east.

‘Unconditional surrender’

Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support for an “immediate” ceasefire in Iran during a phone call with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on March 6, the Kremlin said.

Mr Trump, who has given varying reasons for starting the war, has spurned fresh talks with Tehran, however, and said on Truth Social “there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that when the President determines Iran no longer poses a threat to the US and the operation’s goals are realised, “Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not”.

Mr Trump also promised to help rebuild the country’s economy if Tehran installs someone “acceptable” to him to replace Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed last weekend.

Mr Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, said the US would have no role in selecting Ayatollah Khamenei’s successor.

“The selection of Iran’s leadership will take place strictly in accordance with our constitutional procedures and solely by the will of the Iranian people, without any foreign interference,” he added.

‘Humanitarian disaster’

The war has killed six US service members, and Mr Trump is to attend the return of their bodies at a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on March 7.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 217 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned that a “humanitarian disaster is looming”.

In addition to the toll, 300,000 people in the country had been forced to flee their homes, the Norwegian Refugee Council said.

Three UN peacekeepers were wounded when their base in southern Lebanon was hit on March 6, the UN force and the Ghanaian military said.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of targeting them, and French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the attack as “unacceptable”.

Tehran was pummelled by Israeli strikes on March 6, which AFP journalists described as among the heaviest days of bombardments yet.

According to Iran’s Health Ministry, the US and Israeli strikes have killed 926 people, a number AFP could not independently verify.

Iran has launched missile and drone attacks on Israel and Gulf states since the war began, and at least 10 people have been killed in Israel, according to first responders.

Qatar said it had been targeted by 10 Iranian drones on March 6, nine of which were intercepted. The other landed in an uninhabited area.

Drones struck airports and oil facilities in Iraq the same day and targeted Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in the northern Kurdistan region, security officials said.

Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in Gulf countries since the war began, including an 11-year-old girl, Elena Abdullah Hussein, in Kuwait.

Two hours before she died, the girl called her father at work to tell him she loved him.

“It was as if she was trying to say goodbye,” the girl’s father, Mr Abdullah Hussein, told AFP at her funeral. AFP