Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Is Defiant After Trump Threatens Power Plants
"President Trump said that he would “obliterate” Iran’s electricity plants if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. Iran dismissed the ultimatum as its missiles hit southern Israel, including near the country’s main nuclear research center.
Fresh threats between Iran and the United States to attack critical civilian infrastructure risked imperiling millions of people across the Middle East, as President Trump warned that he could target Iranian power plants and Tehran vowed that such attacks would lead to retaliation against vital energy and water facilities.
Iran dismissed Mr. Trump’s ultimatum that if the Strait of Hormuz — the vital oil shipping route choked off by Iranian strikes — were not fully reopened by Monday night, the United States would strike Iranian power plants. Tehran said the strait would be “completely closed” if its energy infrastructure were attacked, as it launched new missile attacks on Israeli cities.
Iranian missiles hit Dimona, a city eight miles away from Israel’s main nuclear facility, and the nearby city of Arad on Saturday night. More than 10 people were seriously injured and dozens more sustained minor injuries, underscoring Tehran’s ability to inflict damage despite three weeks of devastating airstrikes by the United States and Israel. More than 2,000 people have been killed across the region, mostly in Iran.
The escalating threats to attack key infrastructure increased the potential for civilian danger as the war entered its fourth week.
Just days after he warned Israel against targeting Iranian energy sites to avoid an escalating cycle of counter-strikes, Mr. Trump said late Saturday that the United States would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants — which millions of Iranians depend on — within 48 hours if the strait were not reopened.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, vowed that his country would strike infrastructure used by Israel, the United States and American allies — including desalination plants that are a lifeline for much of the Middle East.
Mr. Trump’s objectives in the conflict and his plans for next steps remained unclear. On Friday, he said that the United States did not want a cease-fire with Iran, and the Pentagon dispatched more troops and warships to the region that will not arrive for weeks, but later the president wrote on social media that he was considering “winding down” operations.
Israeli officials have told the public to expect a protracted campaign. On Saturday, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, told Israelis that they were “midway through” the war with Iran and that they would still be fighting during the Passover holiday next week.
A long war of attrition could strain even Israel’s sophisticated antimissile arrays, which have faced multiple daily barrages by Iran, like the missiles that struck Saturday night.
Here’s what else to follow today:
Nuclear infrastructure: Iran’s state broadcaster said the strike on Dimona was intended to target the nuclear facility near the city, though U.N. officials said there was no evidence it had been damaged. The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s security forces, said the missile was fired in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz on Saturday, as well as the Bushehr nuclear power plant last week.
Lebanon: Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, ordered the military to step up house demolitions in Lebanon, adding to concern that Israel could be preparing for a de facto occupation of the south of the country. Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah has displaced more than a million people and killed over 1,000, according to the Lebanese authorities. A person was killed in northern Israel on Sunday morning in an attack by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, the Israeli authorities said.
Death tolls: Iran’s U.N. ambassador has said that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed since the start of the war. On Friday, a Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,398 civilians had been killed. The number of Lebanese killed rose to more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday. At least 15 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13 service members.
Qatar crash: A Qatari helicopter crashed in the Persian Gulf because of a technical malfunction during a routing operation, killing members of the Qatari and Turkish armed forces and Turkish civilians, according to the Qatar defense minister. It was not immediately whether the crash was related to the fighting in the region.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, defended President Trump’s threat to attack Iranian energy infrastructure in televised interviews on Sunday. Speaking to both Fox News and CBS News, he said that Iran’s gas-powered thermal power plants were legitimate targets, claiming that much of the country’s energy infrastructure was controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the security apparatus directly controlled by the country’s theocratic leaders.
“The president is not messing around,” Waltz told Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “He stands on his red lines, and he’s not going to allow this genocidal regime to hold the world’s energy supplies or economies hostage.”
Iranian officials responded defiantly on Sunday to President Trump’s threat to escalate attacks, warning that Iran would retaliate in kind if the United States or its allies widened their strikes against the country’s critical infrastructure.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran did not start this war, but it will not hesitate in defending its people and its land,” the country’s first vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, said in a statement reported by Mehr, a semiofficial news agency. He added that Iran “will determine when and how this war will end.”
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, also appeared to downplay the urgency of an expected request to Congress for more defense funding, after the Pentagon asked the White House for $200 billionto help fund the war with Iran.
Presented with a series of clips in which congressional Republicans questioned the size of that funding package on “Meet the Press,” Bessent said the government has “plenty of money to fund this war.” Rather, Bessent said any money would be “supplemental,” allowing the administration to “make sure that the military is well supplied going forward.”
As the war with Iran sends gas prices soaring, Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, maintained that Americans understand the reasons behind the short-term pain — even if he could not estimate how long it would last.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bessent offered the hypothetical that “50 days of temporary, elevated prices” was a worthwhile tradeoff for “50 years of peace in the Middle East.”
Pressed on whether gas prices would indeed fall in 50 days, he continued: “I don’t know whether it’s going to be 30 days, I don’t know whether it’s going to be 50 days, I don’t know whether it’s going to be 100 days.”
The Israeli defense minister said Sunday that he had ordered the military to step up its destruction of bridges and houses in southern Lebanon, bolstering fears over Israel’s efforts to expand and entrench a military-controlled buffer zone in the area.
Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, in a separate front in the wider war with Iran that began in late February. Hezbollah has fired rockets and drones at Israel, which has responded with a major military campaign in Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it was bombarding sites affiliated with Hezbollah throughout southern Lebanon. Earlier on Sunday, an Israeli citizen was killed by Hezbollah fire on an Israeli border town, according to the Israeli authorities, raising the civilian toll in Israel since the war started in February to at least 15.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, appeared to rebuff President Trump’s threat on Saturday to attack Iranian power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is opened within 48 hours. If Iran’s infrastructure was attacked, Ghalibaf said on social media, “energy and oil facilities across the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be irreversibly destroyed.”
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
The Israeli military announced it is preparing to bomb the Qassmiye bridge, a major bridge in southern Lebanon, where it has also ordered civilians to flee their homes. Israeli officials have justified the attacks on the bridge, part of the fastest route from Beirut to southern Lebanon, by saying that Hezbollah is using these bridges to send fighters and weapons to the south to fight Israel. But the routes are also used by ordinary Lebanese, raising questions about the impact on civilians.
The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry reported four ballistic missile and 25 drone attacks from Iran today. It did not report any new deaths in the country.
The Iranian missile strikes in the cities of Dimona and Arad on Saturday night underlined the dilemma Israel faces between preserving relative normalcy in the country and protecting civilians from attacks. Last week, Israel’s military signed off on reopening schools in parts of the country — including both Dimona and Arad — due to reduced Iranian missile fire. Early Sunday morning, the military reversed that decision, again shuttering schools across the country for safety reasons.
A bulk carrier vessel off the coast of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates reported an explosion from an unknown projectile late Saturday night, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. The agency said that all crew members were reported to be safe.
Reporting from Arad and Dimona, Israel
Shards of glass and charred debris littered the streets of Arad and Dimona on Sunday morning, hours after missiles from Iran struck residential neighborhoods in these small desert cities in southern Israel.
The blast in Arad on Saturday night carved out a crater of sand and twisted metal in a grassy courtyard and shattered windows more than half a mile away, according to residents. In Dimona, a missile smashed into a sandy yard between several apartment buildings.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said he had ordered the military to accelerate the demolition of houses in Lebanese towns close to the border. Israel has been carving out a military-controlled buffer zone inside Lebanese territory, which many Lebanese fear could become a renewed de facto occupation in the south of the country. In a statement, Katz said he had ordered the demolitions “along the lines of Rafah and Beit Hanoun” — two Gazan cities which were largely razed by Israeli forces during the two year war in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel’s defense minister announced that he ordered the country’s military to immediately destroy more bridges over the Litani River in southern Lebanon, part of an Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah that has displaced more than a million people in Lebanon. Israel Katz, the minister, said he had given the order to prevent Hezbollah from moving militants closer to the border with Israel in the country’s south.
Iran has entered its 23rd day of an internet blackout, according to the internet monitoring group NetBlocks. On the second day of the Persian New Year, many families and friends remain unable to communicate. But individuals affiliated with the authorities in Iran, who have access to privileged “white SIM” services, appear to still have access to the internet and social media, experts said.
LEBANON DISPATCH
The shirtless jogger, his headphones in and his back slick with sweat, ran past a row of tents pitched along the seafront in downtown Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. In one tent, a displaced family of four — uprooted by weeks of war that have convulsed the nation — watched him pass.
For a moment, the scene held its uneasy calm. The evening sun faded into the Mediterranean Sea, the steady rhythm of the waves softened the edges of the day, and the runner kept his pace, eyes forward. And then a deafening roar shattered it all: An Israeli airstrike had hit a nearby neighborhood, sending plumes of smoke into the sky.
“We chose the seaside because it is peaceful,” said Hussein Hame, 37, who, along with his wife and two children, was displaced this month from Dahiya, a collection of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. “But this war finds you everywhere.”
War has returned to Lebanon, and the capital’s meandering seafront has become an unlikely front line. Here, a stark contrast has emerged: The displaced and destitute sit in the cold, while others live life as usual — jogging, cycling — amid the dizzying wealth and luxury that exist nearby.
In early March, Israel unleashed a barrage of attacks on Lebanon after the Iran-backed proxy group Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel following the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. The violence has uprooted more than a million people, with Israel issuing evacuation warnings across much of southern Lebanon and in parts of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Israel’s strikes have killed more than 1,000 people, injured more than 2,700 and put Lebanon, once again, on the precipice of disaster.
On the city’s seafront, the human toll is visible in stark detail: Tents line the promenade, cars serve as makeshift shelters and bundles of clothes scatter the sidewalks. Teenagers, with nowhere to go and no school to attend, roam around. Toddlers, hungry and exhausted, cry and fuss.
Families huddle through cold nights, lighting small bonfires that do little against the wind and rain. There is nowhere to shower, nowhere to change, barely enough to eat — especially difficult for those who were fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The displaced form a mosaic of Lebanon itself: locals uprooted from homes, businesses and farmlands. But there are also foreigners, many of whom are domestic workers and day laborers. They arrived from Africa, Asia and across the Middle East in search of better economic opportunities and safety only to find uncertainty.
A week into the fighting, an Israeli strike hit several cars along the seaside corniche, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more, health officials said.
But even as suffering persists along the waterfront, a different reality unfolds beside it.
From the corniche, the city opens to a breathtaking panorama: the glittering Mediterranean, the rugged peaks of Mount Lebanon and the iconic Raouché Rocks rising from the sea.
The promenade is also one of the city’s most affluent stretches, lined with upscale apartments and hotels, luxury car dealerships and swanky restaurants with well-heeled patrons sipping cocktails. Those displaced share the same stretch with cyclists, joggers in sleek athletic wear, families out for evening strolls and fishermen casting lines from the rocks below.
On a recent afternoon, Vera Noon, who was walking along the seafront, described a swell of conflicting emotions. Some people moved along the corniche, walking their dogs and laughing as if nothing had changed, seemingly untouched by the surrounding suffering. And yet, she said, she understood that people were navigating the crisis in their own ways.
“They didn’t choose this war,” said Ms. Noon, a Lebanese doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh who is researching the connection between the Mediterranean and her country’s heritage.
The seafront, she said, offers a sanctuary for both those clinging to daily routines and those with nowhere else to go.
“The sea is the last refuge,” Ms. Noon said. “It gives people peace. They relax, it gives them calm.”
The Beirut seafront is no stranger to war.
In April 1973, Israeli commandos departed from this coastline after targeting members of the Palestinian Fatah organization who were operating in the city. In August 1982, an image of coastal buildings ablaze after Israeli bombardment appeared on the cover of Time magazine. During the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, the waterfront was lined with bullet-scarred buildings.
In the years that followed, the area was rebuilt, most notably by the private development company Solidere, led by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which reshaped downtown Beirut with high-rise buildings and commercial projects. That transformation came at a cost: Cafes, hotels and beach clubs privatized large stretches of the shore, putting access out of reach for many.
Even so, the public never fully let go. Activists organized campaigns, protests and legal challenges to preserve access to the sea.
At the same time, crises kept coming. A financial collapse in 2019 fueled an antigovernment revolt that pushed crowds demanding change onto the waterfront. In 2020, an explosion at Beirut’s porttore through the city, killing hundreds and devastating entire neighborhoods. Then came war with Israel in 2024, once again driving people toward the seafront in search of refuge.
Now, with conflict returning, many like Gizelle Hassoun, a 52-year-old bar owner, say they feel exhausted and detached — and are drawn back to the waterfront for a fleeting touch of normality.
“We are all in a state of bala mokh,” said Ms. Hassoun, using an Arabic phrase that literally means “no brain” but colloquially describes being mentally drained and numb.
During the 2024 war, she said, she and those around her rushed to help the displaced along the waterfront whose homes and businesses had been destroyed. This time, she was spent, and the famed Lebanese resilience that usually carried her was gone.
When the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on March 2, she didn’t bother to stock up or fill her car’s tank.
“This is sad, but maybe we’ve gotten too used to this,” she said, strolling along the seafront with a friend as the buzz of an Israeli drone cut through the air.
Not everyone coming to the waterfront carries the same weariness.
Mohammed Ismail has been returning to this stretch of Beirut’s coast for more than a decade. Usually, he lives in Dahiya, the Hezbollah stronghold that has been evacuated, and runs an electronics store there. But even since fleeing, he has made sure to come to the waterfront.
On a recent afternoon, he sat tanning in the sun, reading the Quran open in his lap as he fasted for Ramadan. It was the second time he had been displaced in less than two years. His mind sometimes wandered to hardship, he said, but he was trying to carry on as normally as he could.
Nearby, a group played padel, others smoked and chatted, and some exercised. For a fleeting moment, life felt ordinary.
“This is the best place to remove the stress from your life,” he said.
On some days, the tranquillity of the beach masks a deadly reality.
In mid-March, Israeli airstrikes tore through several cars along the corniche in the Ramlet al-Baida neighborhood, splattering the sidewalk with bloodied sand. Just days before, a suite in the four-star Ramada Plaza Hotel farther down the seafront was hit. Israel says its attacks are aimed at reaching Hezbollah operatives and their Iranian backers.
For those taking shelter along the waterfront, like Mr. Hame and his family, life now swings between dread and relief. The night that Ramlet al-Baida beach was struck, his children panicked and leaped onto him inside their tent. He held them and tried to calm them, he said. When that failed, he raced them on his motorcycle to a church east of Beirut where displaced people were offered shelter.
They stayed there for the morning, but soon after, he said, the children insisted on returning to the shore.
A Qatari helicopter crashed in the Persian Gulf due to a technical malfunction during a routine operation, killing seven, according to statements from the country’s defense and interior ministries. Four were members of the Qatari armed forces, one was from Qatar and Turkey’s joint forces, and two were Turkish “civilian collaborators.”
Iran pushed back against claims that it had effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, saying that the vital oil supply route was only shuttered to the country’s enemies. Ali Mousavi, Iran’s permanent representative to the International Maritime Organization, said that the strait was “open to everyone” except Iran’s adversaries, hours after President Trump on Saturday threatened to attack Iranian power plants if the waterway was not fully opened in the next two days.
A person was killed in an Israeli town near the country’s northern border after fire from Lebanon, where Israeli forces have been fighting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, according to Israel’s emergency rescue service. The Israeli military said the attack had caused damage and casualties and was under review. At least 14 people have been killed in Israel since the war with Iran began last month.
Israel’s military said on Sunday morning that its defense systems were responding to missiles launched from Iran. Shortly afterward, it said that emergency teams were heading to a site in central Israel following reports of a strike. It did not provide further details.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense said it intercepted a ballistic missile launched toward Riyadh, its capital, while two others fell in an uninhabited area. It did not say where the missiles originated.
Israel’s emergency rescue service said it treated 115 patients after Iranian missiles struck Dimona and Arad, including 11 in serious condition. In Arad, where most of the serious injuries occurred, paramedics described a scene of “extensive destruction” and “chaos” according to the rescue service. In Dimona, where one person was seriously injured, paramedics reported damage to residential structures and people who were trapped inside buildings.
Iranian state news agencies also carried a warning from the country’s armed forces that if Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure is attacked, Tehran will target all energy infrastructure belonging to U.S. and Israeli allies in the region. The claim appeared to respond to President Trump’s threat on social media on Saturday evening that he would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the country does not fully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.
President Trump, who days ago publicly called on Israel to avoid targeting Iranian energy sites for fear of triggering an escalating cycle of counterstrikes, threatened to hit Iran’s power plants if it did not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz” within 48 hours. He said that American strikes on Iranian plants would start “WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST.”
Iran’s largest plant appears to be its only operating nuclear power plant, at Bushehr. For decades, nuclear power plants have been considered off limits because of the obvious risk of environmental catastrophe. The U.S. has led efforts to keep Russia and Ukraine from firing near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Bushehr is fueled by Russian-provided uranium and monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is not considered part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The spent fuel is returned to Russia.
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcaster, said that the Iranian missile strike on the city of Dimona was intended to target Israel’s nuclear facilities there. The report appears to be the first confirmation from Iran that Israel’s nuclear facilities — which were not damaged, according to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog — were the focus of the attack.
Israel’s military said early Sunday that it had begun a new wave of strikes on Tehran, targeting Iranian infrastructure.
An Iranian missile penetrated Israeli defenses on Saturday and injured over 40 people in a southern Israeli city eight miles from the country’s main nuclear research facility, according to Israel’s emergency rescue services. There was no evidence that the nuclear site had been damaged in the attack, U.N. officials said.
The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s security forces, reported that the missile, which hit a residential area in the small city of Dimona, was fired in retaliation for airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz on Saturday and on the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Tuesday.
David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents. He writes often on the intersection of technology and national security, and the revival of superpower conflict, the subject of his latest book.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Ever since President Trump began what he now delicately calls his “excursion” into Iran, Washington has been consumed by the question of when he would call it a day — even if many of his war goals remain unaccomplished.
On Friday evening, as he headed to Florida, Mr. Trump seemed to be designing that much-discussed exit. But he clearly has not yet decided whether to take it.
Iran’s attempted missile attack on Friday on a joint U.S.-British military base in the Indian Ocean, 2,500 miles away, immediately prompted questions of how far Tehran’s weapons can reach.
Before the current war on Iran, President Trump raised similar fears, noting in his State of the Union address that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
But for now, Iran’s missiles cannot reach the United States, and as the failed strike on the military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean demonstrated, the farther Iran fires, the less reliable its missiles and the less accurate its attacks become.
Iran fired two missiles at Diego Garcia, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. One failed mid-flight and the other was shot down by an American warship. The official added that the launch had surprised the United States because of its range.
Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military chief of staff, discussed the missile attack on Diego Garcia in a video statement on Saturday night, saying Iran had fired a “two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 4,000 kilometers” at “an American target” on the island on Friday. He did not elaborate, except to say that the attack underscored that Iran’s military capabilities could threaten Europe, not just Israel.
The strike came before the announcement that Britain would allow the United States expanded use of its bases, including at Diego Garcia. A senior Western military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack may indicate that Iran is trying to force the United States to spread out its defenses, and not merely focus on defending bases in the Middle East.
Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the 2,500-mile distance was “beyond what we and they usually advertise” as the range of Iranian missiles.
“Iran has made its missile program a top priority for many years, and have displayed solid rocket motor plans,” Mr. Karako said. “It’s not a surprise that hard work yielded more substantial capability than some of the more optimistic publicly stated estimates. This is one reason why the United States and our European friends have been deploying missile defenses for quite a while now.”
The United States has missile-defense facilities in Romania and Poland that are nominally meant to address the threat of Iranian missiles.
A report by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that Iran did not have ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, and that it might take as long as a decade for it to have up to 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
At a Senate hearing this week, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, affirmed the D.I.A. report that suggested Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile development was years away.
But others have estimated a shorter timeline.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he feared Iran could make a functioning ICBM in six months if it paired its space launch technology with its medium-range missile technology.
John Ratcliffe, the director of the C.I.A., said Mr. Cotton was right to be concerned. He said if Iran was unimpeded it would be able to develop missiles that could threaten the continental United States, though he did not cite a time frame for such a development.
“It is one of the reasons why degrading Iran’s missile production capabilities that is taking place right now in Operation Epic Fury is so important to our national security,” Mr. Ratcliffe said.
Other experts cautioned that it was hard to draw many conclusions about Iran’s capabilities until more is known about the type of missile that was fired. But Nicholas Carl, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, said it affirmed Iran’s ability to fire beyond 1,200 miles with its current capabilities.
“That upends some of the assumptions that many have long had about the Iranian threat,” Mr. Carl said. “Even if Iran cannot reliably hit precise targets at that range, this raises the question of whether it can reach that far with cluster munition warheads, which it has fired repeatedly at Israel in order to maximize collateral damage and terrorize civilians — rather than to destroy discrete military targets.”
Aaron Boxermanin Jerusalem contributed reporting."
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