Waves of Fire on Day 14: US and Israeli Strikes Escalate Across Iran and Lebanon

Smoke and flames rise at the site of airstrikes on an oil depot in Tehran on Saturday. Sasan / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images

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Waves of Fire on Day 14: US and Israeli Strikes Escalate Across Iran and Lebanon

Daoud Al-Jaber - Middle East Affairs Analysis
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BEIRUT - The sky above Tehran glowed again last night. For the fourteenth consecutive day, the thud of explosions rolled across the Iranian capital as Israel's military announced the start of yet another extensive wave of strikes on regime infrastructure — a phrase now so routine it has become grimly familiar to the correspondents huddled in press shelters from Beirut to Baghdad. What began on the night of February 28 as a joint US-Israeli campaign with declared objectives — eliminating Iran's nuclear programme, its missile arsenal, and ultimately its leadership — has metastasized into something far less defined, and far more dangerous.

US Central Command has confirmed that American forces have struck more than 5,000 targets inside Iran since the operation began. The Pentagon describes a systematic dismantling of Iran's military infrastructure — its navy, air defenses, radar networks, ballistic missile sites, and nuclear facilities. President Trump, speaking in Kentucky on Wednesday, told supporters that he had won, before contradicting himself hours later by telling reporters the campaign was not finished. It is a dissonance that captures the fog at the heart of Washington's war aims.

On the ground in Tehran, the picture is far bleaker than the victory laps in Washington suggest. Iran's UN representative reports that more than 1,348 civilians have been killed — a figure the Iranian Red Crescent broadly corroborates. Among the dead are more than 160 people killed in a single strike on a girls' school, an incident now under separate UN investigation. Eleven healthcare workers are confirmed dead, four of them physicians. The World Health Organisation has identified at least thirteen Iranian health infrastructure sites damaged or destroyed.

The war's most consequential act came early: on March 1, Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose compound was obliterated in the opening hours of the campaign. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei — reported to have suffered a fractured foot and minor injuries in the first wave — has since been selected as successor by a hastily convened leadership body. How much authority the younger Khamenei wields over an increasingly battered state apparatus remains deeply unclear.

Lebanon did not ask for this war. But Lebanon is now inside it. On March 2, four days into the Iran strikes, Hezbollah fired its first rockets into northern Israel since the fragile 2024 ceasefire — targeting a missile defense site south of Haifa. Hezbollah's secretary-general Naim Qassem framed it as a defensive act following Khamenei's assassination and more than a year of near-daily Israeli operations inside Lebanon that had never truly honoured the truce. Israel's response was immediate and overwhelming.

Since that first salvo, Lebanon's Health Ministry has confirmed at least 680 people killed and more than 600 wounded. Over 800,000 Lebanese have been displaced — the second mass displacement this country has endured in less than two years. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned this week that Lebanon risks becoming a key flashpoint and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Israeli forces have been issuing evacuation orders ahead of strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, warning residents to save their lives and leave.

Among the specific strikes drawing international censure: a residential building in central Beirut was bombed, causing fires across several floors. In the village of Arki, near Sidon, nine people were killed in a single strike — five of them children. A hotel building in central Beirut was struck, killing four senior commanders from Iran's Quds Force who Israeli military intelligence said were planning operations against Israel. Near Tripoli, Israel's navy killed a Hamas commander in the first reported strike on that part of the country since the war began.

An Israeli air force strike also killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Zaid Ali Jumaa, described by the IDF as a key figure in the group's rocket and drone operations. Israel said it destroyed a Hezbollah drone warehouse and what it called a leadership headquarters. Four Iranian diplomats were killed in a separate Beirut strike — an act Tehran has condemned at the UN Security Council as a terrorist attack.

Iran warned that any attack would be met with retaliation against US military bases across the region. It was not an idle threat. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has now confirmed strikes on at least 27 bases in the Middle East where American troops are deployed. Seven US service members are dead; 140 others have been wounded, according to the Pentagon. Iran's operations have touched nine countries: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. A British military base on Cyprus was struck by an Iranian drone.

In the Strait of Hormuz — through which approximately one-fifth of the world's crude oil flows — the US military destroyed sixteen Iranian minelayers before they could complete the seeding of the waterway. Trump has insisted Iran did not succeed in laying any mines. Oil prices have surged to their highest level since September 2023. In Iraq, two foreign oil tankers came under attack in territorial waters, their crews later rescued. Two people were killed in Oman after a drone was brought down in Sohar province.

On Wednesday, the IRGC claimed a joint operation with Hezbollah involving five consecutive hours of sustained fire that struck more than fifty targets across Israel. Fifteen Israelis have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded since the conflict started. Nine were killed in a single Iranian ballistic missile strike on Beit Shemesh on March 1. Israel has declared a nationwide state of emergency.

The United Nations is now warning of toxic black rain — contaminated precipitation carrying industrial pollutants from strikes on fuel depots and oil facilities, mixing with rain clouds over Tehran and surrounding areas. The WHO has flagged catastrophic risks to civilian health. Strikes have also damaged Golestan Palace, the Azadi Sports Complex, and the historic sites of Isfahan — including Naqsh-e Jahan Square, the Shah Mosque, and Chehel Sotoun — all UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A medieval fortress at Falak-ol-Aflak was also hit.

There is no ceasefire in sight. Iran's foreign minister this week flatly rejected any resumption of nuclear talks, saying Tehran is prepared for the possibility of a US ground invasion. The White House has articulated a demand for unconditional surrender. A UN Security Council resolution passed this week called on Iran to halt its strikes on Gulf states — but notably omitted any mention of US or Israeli strikes on Iran or Lebanon.

Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, alongside the leaders of France and Germany, condemned Iran's counter-strikes and called for a return to diplomacy — while stressing that he did not believe in regime change from the skies. France denied use of its military bases for offensive US flights, provoking a threat of economic retaliation from Washington. Spain issued a similar denial. Canada said it could not rule out participation in the coalition.

Lebanon's government has unequivocally condemned Iranian attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbours and reiterated it does not need Hezbollah to defend Lebanese sovereignty — a position that rings increasingly hollow as Israeli bombs continue to fall on Beirut.

Fourteen days in, this war has already killed more than 1,700 people across multiple countries, displaced nearly a million, threatened one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, damaged irreplaceable world heritage, and brought the Middle East closer to an uncontrollable regional conflagration than at any point since 2003. The objectives declared on February 28 — regime change, nuclear disarmament, the destruction of Iran's military — remain as distant as ever. What is no longer distant is the prospect that this conflict, born of calculation and hubris, could outlast any of the plans made to contain it.

Casualty figures are subject to ongoing revision. Due to restricted media access in Iran, some events cannot be independently verified.