What we know about the widening US war with Iran on the conflict’s third day
Originally Published: 02 MAR 26 06:18 ET
Updated: 02 MAR 26 12:00 ET
By Issy Ronald, CNN
(CNN) — Days after the US and Israel first launched strikes against Iran, the conflict is widening by the hour, drawing in other countries across the region, sparking fears for the global economy and leaving thousands of travelers stranded.
By Monday, retaliatory strikes launched from Iran shattered any sense of security that its Persian Gulf neighbors have enjoyed for decades, killing at least 18 people, including fourUS service members, across the region and in Israel.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump embarked on a series of media interviews, telling several outlets, including CNN, that he thought the conflict with Iran would last “four weeks,” the clearest indication yet of how long the administration anticipates the campaign could continue.
Speaking Monday at the Pentagon, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized that this was not a “single, overnight operation” and that more US losses should be expected. Trump struck a similar note, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that the “big wave hasn’t even happened, the big one is coming soon,” without offering further detail.
Three US military aircraft crashed in Kuwait on Monday, “due to an apparent friendly fire incident,” the US military said, adding that all six crew members ejected and are “in stable condition.”
The conflict spread to another front on Monday, too, when Israel launched a wave of strikes against Lebanon in response to a Hezbollah provocation. The strikes killed at least 31 people, Lebanese authorities said.
In Iran, the joint US-Israeli strikes that began Saturday morning have killed at least 555 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, including at least 168 people at a girls’ elementary school, the country’s state media reported.
Those strikes also killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, marking a turning point in the nation’s history and leaving Iranians confronting a surreal mixture of relief, disbelief and anxiety.
Here’s what we know so far.
What’s happening now?
As the war expands, new fronts are opening up.
Hezbollah fired six projectiles at a military base in northern Israel “in revenge for Khamenei’s death” in the early hours of Monday. Though they did no damage, the rockets prompted a furious wave of Israeli strikes on Beirut and southern Lebanon.
Later Monday, Israel launched further strikes across Lebanon, after earlier issuing evacuation warnings that spurred hundreds of people to flee the south of the country.
Four US service members had been killed in action as of Monday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said. An additional 18 have been seriously wounded since Saturday, the military added.
In Kuwait, meanwhile, three US jets were mistakenly shot down by the gulf country’s air defenses, CENTCOM said, adding that the cause of the incident is under investigation.Videos geolocated by CNN showed a fighter jet crashing and a pilot parachuting to the ground.
CNN teams in the major Persian Gulf cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha heard explosions Monday morning and saw what appeared to be missiles being intercepted in the skies above them.
Similarly, missiles from Iran were intercepted in the skies above both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Monday morning.
Qatar’s Ministry of Defense later said it had shot down two Iranian Su-24 bombers, marking the first time that any country has shot down Iranian aircraft since the latest conflict began. It also marks an escalation of Qatar’s involvement thus far.
In Iran, multiple rounds of explosions were reported in the capital, Tehran. Patients were evacuated from a hospital in the north of the city on Sunday after it was badly damaged, according to Iranian state media. One strike damaged the city’s Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, state media reported.
Why did the US and Israel attack?
Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said their main objectives were to defend their respective countries from imminent threats posed by Iran, most notably, to prevent the Islamic regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon, without providing any evidence that it was any closer to obtaining one.
That claim was undercut by Pentagon briefers who acknowledged to congressional staff Sunday that Tehran was not planning to attack US forces or bases in the region unless Israel attacked first.
Such uncertainty over precisely what the strikes aim to accomplish continued even after Trump gave interviews to several media outlets Sunday night.
He outlined various possible scenarios to the New York Times, suggesting that a repeat of events in Venezuela — where US forces seized the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and accepted his deputy Delcy Rodríguez as a substitute leader — would be a “perfect scenario.” At the same time, he said he hoped the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “would really surrender to the people.”
Still, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted Monday “this is not a so-called regime change war,” adding that the US has no intention of being caught in the same nation-building quagmire as in Iraq. Instead, he said, the US was aiming to “destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes.”
Since the turn of the year, Iran has been battling an economic crisis that sparked nationwide protests. As a crackdown left thousands of protesters dead, Trump promised to come to their aid, saying the US was “locked and loaded.”
Israeli and American intelligence agencies — including the CIA — had been tracking Khamenei’s movements for months, waiting for the moment to strike, even while US envoys were engaged in regular talks with Iran over a new nuclear deal.
Who is leading Iran now?
Inside Iran, the regime is battered, bereft of its supreme leader, but still able to launch attacks across the region.
A three-person leadership council now holds power until the new supreme leader is named. It includes the country’s moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, the hard-line head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and a senior cleric, Alireza Arafi.
It remains unclear how long the process of choosing Khamenei’s successor will take, a matter further complicated by the deaths of several senior military officials in Saturday’s strikes.
What has been struck elsewhere in the region?
Iranian missiles and drones have targeted Israel and several countries across the region that host US military bases — including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Although most of these missiles and drones have been shot down by air defense systems, some have reached their targets. At least 10 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in Israel, according to Magen David Adom, the country’s emergency service. Nine of those fatalities occurred when an Iranian missile struck a bomb shelter in the city of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.
For US-allied Persian Gulf countries such as the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, the spreading conflict has punctured the sense of security that had long attracted Western expats and tourists. Dramatic footage from Dubai on Saturday showed a luxury hotel ablaze and people fleeing a smoke-filled passageway at its airport, where four staff were injured.
And in Bahrain, a fire broke out on the upper floors of a high-rise residential building about a mile from a US Navy base after it was struck by an Iranian drone.
Commercial vessels in the region have also come under fire. One docked in Bahrain was struck by two projectiles on Monday, causing a fire to break out on board and crew members to evacuate.
How will this impact oil prices?
Iran’s vast oil reserves and its geostrategic position controlling the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water through which much global trade flows, means that the conflict has profound ramifications for the global economy.
Oil and natural gas prices surged Monday — futures contracts for Brent crude, the global benchmark, spiked almost 9% to trade at around $79 a barrel while WTI, the US benchmark, climbed 8% to $73 a barrel.
The price of Dutch natural gas, the European benchmark, surged almost 48% in Monday afternoon trading, after Qatar’s state-run energy company stopped production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) following an Iranian attack on its facility on Ras Laffan.
Although Iran has not officially closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s global trade in LNGand daily oil production passes, vessels are avoiding the waterway, particularly after oil tankers in the region were attacked over the weekend.
Energy facilities remain a major retaliatory target too, as shown by the attack on Ras Laffan and Saudi Arabia’s interception of two drones on Monday morning at Ras Tanura, one of the country’s largest oil refineries, which has the capacity to produce 550,000 barrels a day.
How is the conflict affecting travel?
With much of the region’s airspace closed and airlines forced to cancel flights through multiple cities, thousands of travelers have been left stranded.
Major airports like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha have positioned themselves as key connecting nodes for global airline routes, with millions of passengers transiting through them every year.
Several major airlines located there, including Emirates and Etihad in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and Qatar Airways in Doha, have suspended flights to and from their bases at least until Monday afternoon local time.
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