Airstrikes by the United States and Israel have killed at least 787 people in Iran since the start of the war, the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Tuesday.
It offered the toll in a message on X.
Iran struck the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital with a drone early Tuesday as it kept hitting targets around the region, while the United States and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes in what US President Donald Trump suggested was just the start of a relentless campaign that could last more than a month.
The attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire” and minor damage, according to Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound. It followed an attack on the US Embassy in Kuwait, which announced Tuesday it had been closed until further notice. The US State Department also ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, as well as Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as a precaution.
Across Iran’s capital, explosions rang out throughout the night into the early morning, with witnesses describing hearing aircraft overhead. It was not immediately clear what had been hit. And in Lebanon, Israel launched more strikes on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group. Explosions could be heard and smoke seen in a southern suburb of Beirut. Israel also said its soldiers are “operating in southern Lebanon.” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the Lebanese army was evacuating some of its positions along the border.
The conflict could have far-reaching consequences
The expansion of Iranian retaliation across the Gulf and the intensity of the Israeli and American attacks, the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the lack of any apparent exit plan portend a possibly prolonged conflict with far-reaching consequences.
Iran has hit many countries deemed safe havens in the Mideast in retaliation for the US and Israeli strikes. Recent targets include two Amazon data centers in the UAE and a drone impact near another in Bahrain that caused damage, the company said Tuesday. Iran has also hit energy facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and attacked several ships in the of Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes, sending global oil and natural gas prices soaring.
“The Strait of Hormuz is closed," declared Iranian Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, threatening to set fire to any ships attempting to transit. “Don’t come to this region.”
US citizens urged to leave
The US State Department urged US citizens to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries due to safety risks, as have many other countries, though with much of the airspace closed many remain stranded.
Trump said operations are likely to last four to five weeks but that he was prepared “to go far longer than that.” He later added that the US had a “virtually unlimited supply” of munitions and pre-positioned “high grade weaponry.”
“Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies,” he wrote on social media.
