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Article: Mideast Fighting: Live Updates: New Wave of Airstrikes Batters Tehran

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The Israeli military launched a new wave of airstrikes on Tehran, reportedly hitting infrastructure near Mehrabad Airport. Iran responded with missile and drone launches toward Israel and other regional countries, with defenses intercepting some. The escalating conflict has caused surging oil prices, expanded to include strikes in Lebanon, and resulted in significant civilian displacement and casualties.

Main Topics Covered: 1. Israeli airstrikes on Tehran. 2. Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks. 3. Regional military alerts and interceptions. 4. Economic impact, including rising oil prices. 5. Expansion of the conflict into Lebanon. 6. Civilian evacuations and casualties.

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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/07/world/iran-war-trump-israel-lebanon

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NYT > World News

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2026-03-07 09:35

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2026-03-07 07:00

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2026-03-07 07:00

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Tehran1:30 p.m. March 7
Tel Aviv/Beirut12:00 p.m. March 7
Live Updates: New Wave of Airstrikes Batters Tehran
The Israeli military said Saturday that it had launched more strikes on Iran’s capital. The Mehrabad airport, a major domestic hub, was hit. Footage shared on state media showed explosions and columns of smoke.
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- UNHCR, via Reuters
- Reuters
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Reuters
- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
- Reuters
- Agencia EFE, via Associated Press
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- AFP
- Mahmoud Zayyat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
- Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
The Israeli military said it had launched “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on Iranian government infrastructure in the early hours of Saturday. Soon after, Iranian state media said Israeli strikes had hit the area near Mehrabad Airport in Tehran.
Two Tehran residents who live near the airport said in text messages that it appeared to have been badly damaged and that they could see what looked like commercial planes burning on the tarmac. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about whether it had struck the airport.
Separately, the Israeli military said missiles were launched toward Israel from Iran early Saturday, and other countries in the region remained on alert for incoming drones and missiles. The United Arab Emirates defense ministry said Saturday morning that its air defenses were intercepting missiles and drones from Iran. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said early Saturday that it had intercepted and destroyed several drones and missiles but did not say where they came from.
The fighting, now in its second week, has had economic ramifications around the world, with oil and gas prices surging. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have pounded targets across Iran, while Iran has responded with waves of drones and missiles.
President Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” by Iran on Friday, the most uncompromising goal he has set so far for the war, and one that could portend a much longer conflict.
The Israeli military has also intensified its campaign in Lebanon against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. On Friday, it struck the southern outskirts of Beirut and issued additional evacuation warnings in Lebanon. About 300,000 people in Lebanon have fled their homes since the bombing began, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimated.
“We civilians are paying for the price of war,” said Mohamed Hjoula, 35, who had taken refuge with about 40 family members on Beirut’s waterfront promenade after leaving their homes.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Oil and gasoline prices: The price of the U.S. domestic benchmark crude soared by almost $10 a barrel in a single day, closing near $91 on Friday, the highest price since 2023. The average price of unleaded gasoline in the United States reached $3.32 per gallon, up 11 percent since the war began. The concurrent increases could be a serious shock to an already-slowing world economy.
Bunker strike: Iranian state television reported attacks on a compound in Tehran where the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had lived, and Israel published video showing a series of airstrikes in roughly the same area, saying that its military had destroyed an underground bunker in the compound. The New York Times reviewed satellite imagery showing fresh damage to buildings at the site.
Evacuations: The State Department is battling accusations from diplomats and travelers who say the Trump administration endangered U.S. citizens by beginning a war without adequate plans for helping Americans leave the Middle East.
Death toll: Hundreds of people have been killed in Iran since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attacks, according to the Red Crescent Society, Iran’s main humanitarian relief organization, including at least 175, many of them children, who died in the bombing of a girls’ elementary school. More than 200 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
In Lebanon, at least 26 people were killed, including three Lebanese soldiers, in overnight clashes with Israeli ground forces in the eastern Bekaa Valley on Saturday, the country’s National News Agency reported. It said that an Israeli commando team had deployed to the area by helicopter before being confronted in the town of Nabi Sheet by local residents and armed fighters, sparking heavy clashes and Israeli airstrikes. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah also said it had targeted the Israeli force with rockets. In a statement, Israel’s military said it had carried out strikes overnight in the Bekaa Valley but did not reference any ground operation in Nabi Sheet, and an Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on whether a commando raid had taken place in the area.
Reporting from Sanaa, Yemen
As the fighting has rapidly spread across the Middle East, the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen has not yet entered it. A senior political official with group said the group said it was ready to join the war. “The expansion of the conflict to include other countries, including Yemen, is only a matter of time, and our hands are on the trigger,” said Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, the Houthi official, said in a phone interview. “Ultimately, the United States will be the biggest loser in this trajectory.”
Major developments — March 6
The Israeli military said it has begun a broad wave of strikes targeting what it described as infrastructure belonging to the Iranian regime in Tehran and the central city of Isfahan. Iranian media reported explosions in Isfahan. Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli military said more than 80 of its fighter jets had attacked sites across Tehran and elsewhere in central Iran overnight.
The price of gas in the United States reached an average of $3.41 per gallon on Saturday, a day after crude oil prices soared to levels not seen since 2023 as the spillover from the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran continued.
That gain means gasoline has jumped 14 percent in the past week, according to data from the AAA motor club. The prices recorded Saturday were the highest for gasoline since 2024.
The suddenly rising energy costs — everything from jet fuel to diesel for trucks and tractors is more expensive — are rooted in supplies of crude oil coming from the Persian Gulf. The tankers that normally carry oil out of the region are not sailing, cutting the world off from about one-fifth of its oil supply.
That’s led to a surge in oil prices globally. By Friday, the U.S. crude benchmark, called West Texas Intermediate, had climbed more than 35 percent for the week, to settle at $90.90 a barrel, with much of that gain coming on Friday alone. The last time crude was trading at those levels, gasoline in the United States was above $3.80 a gallon, the data from AAA shows.
There are already big variations in how much drivers pay. Though oil prices make up the largest share of the cost of gasoline — about 60 percent — taxes, refining margins, and distribution costs can raise prices further. Drivers in California, for example, paid an average of $5.08 a gallon on Saturday, the highest in the country, while those in Kansas paid $2.90, the lowest.
Prices at the pump could steady once oil channels reopen, but the impact on American wallets could extend beyond that time.
“Even if it’s a short-term increase in prices and in two to three months we go back to where we were, you still significantly squeeze people’s budgets, and you significantly impacted the economy,” said Wayne Winegarden, an economist at Pacific Research Institute, a think tank. “That will have long-term implications.”
In an interview on Thursday with Reuters, President Trump suggested that the military operation in Iran was his priority and that he was willing to tolerate a rise in prices. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit,” he said.
Energy experts generally say presidents have little control over the price of oil, but the United States does have its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has a storage capacity of 714 million barrels, to turn to in case of shortages. In 2022, as gas prices spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. released millions of barrels from the stockpile to level out commodity prices.
But if any effect is felt, it would likely only be temporary, and the reserve was not designed to be an economic cushion.
If the United States “is being impacted and we don’t have supplies, and the military needs oil, or the government, that’s the purpose of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for those types of kind of emergency conditions,” Mr. Winegarden said. “If its purpose is to ameliorate market trends, it’s just insufficient to that job.”
Pezeshkian said Iran would stop attacking nearby Gulf States but it’s not clear what effect that would have. His speech came on the same morning as drone and missile alerts were sounded in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. And the Iranian president added an important caveat — that Iran would not strike as long as as long as attacks against Iran don’t originate from those countries. Kuwait, Bahrain and others countries host American military bases that Iran says have been used against it.
President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said in a televised address Saturday that his country would not attack neighboring countries “unless an attack on Iran originates from those countries,” according to excerpts published by state media. Pezeshkian also apologized to Iran’s neighbors and said his country had no intention of attacking them. Referring to the strikes in Gulf countries, Pezeshkian said Iranian military units acted on their own authority and did what “they deemed necessary” after their commanders were killed.
Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, met with Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to discuss “Iranian attacks on the Kingdom and the measures needed to halt them.” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense agreement last year stipulating that an attack on one is considered an attack on both. Nuclear-armed Pakistan shares a 565-mile border with Iran.
“Both sides expressed hope and desire that brotherly country Iran would manifest prudence and sagacity to avoid any miscalculation,” said a readout of the meeting from the Pakistani military.
President Trump said in a social media post Friday that he would attend the dignified transfer of the remains of the U.S. soldiers killed in the war so far. The ceremony is scheduled to take place on Saturday afternoon at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
The United States is investigating the Iranian drone strike that killed six of its soldiers at the Kuwaiti port of Shuaiba.
Gulf countries reported more drone and missile launches early Saturday. The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said that its air defenses were intercepting missiles and drones from Iran. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said that it had intercepted and destroyed several drones and missiles, but did not say where they came from.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that more than 80 of its fighter jets attacked sites across Tehran and elsewhere in central Iran overnight. Among other targets, Israeli warplanes bombed Imam Hossein University, an institution under American sanctions for its affiliation with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, according to the Israeli military.
It is Saturday morning in Jerusalem. Many Israelis spent the night repeatedly heading to bomb shelters as air-raid sirens were triggered several times by what the Israeli military said were missiles launched from Iran. There were no reports of major damage or casualties. The intensity of Iranian ballistic missile fire has dwindled as Israeli and U.S. forces have destroyed Iran’s stockpiles and launchers.
Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport is close to a sprawling apartment complex called Shahrak Ekbatan. It is a town unto itself, with tens of thousands of residents. Early Saturday morning, its residents received a warning from management, seen by The Times, to close their windows and remain inside because of toxic fumes from burning “fuel and oil.”
The Israeli military said that missiles were launched toward Israel from Iran early Saturday, directing people in affected areas to take shelter. Nearly half an hour later, the Israeli military said that it was safe for people to leave shelters.
The Iranian naval forces have suffered heavy losses in the first week of U.S. and Israeli strikes, according to a New York Times analysis of satellite data and videos. At two bases, Iran lost at least seven moored ships, along with critical naval infrastructure, and the entrance to an underground naval facility in the Strait of Hormuz was hit. But challenges remain for U.S. and Israeli forces seeking to neutralize it completely.
So far, the strikes have heavily targeted Iran’s regular navy, known as The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, which operates conventional warships. The country also has a second navy, run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, that specializes in asymmetric warfare.
In addition to traditional warships, some of which were destroyed this week, the Guards’ fleet includes lighter assets, such as large numbers of speedboats and uncrewed vessels that can be harder to target. The Revolutionary Guards navy is primarily responsible for securing the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. The United States would need to degrade it further, along with other threats, to make the Strait fully navigable again.
A look at a map of the region shows the continuing challenges for U.S. forces and international energy supplies.
“The bottom line here is that the sinking of the Iranian naval vessels belonging to the regular Navy is great progress,” said Nicholas Carl of the Washington-based Critical Threats Project. “But there are still ways for Iran to threaten vessels around the Persian Gulf, especially civilian ships.”
At least 10 merchant vessels have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz and the two bodies of water it connects, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, according to a New York Times analysis. Most of these vessels reported being struck by “unknown projectiles,” several above the waterline, suggesting they could be naval drones or other small vessels.
Satellite images show the U.S. military targeted Revolutionary Guards and regular naval forces at key locations this week.
Island of Qeshm
Damage can be seen at a base at the Island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz. The base includes an underground cove that shelters both crewed and uncrewed speedboats, including explosive-laden suicide boats, according to a report by Farzin Nadimi, a security and defense analyst specializing in Iran and the Persian Gulf.
Bandar Abbas
A large naval base at Bandar Abbas, 10 miles north of Qeshm, also suffered heavy losses. Multiple strikes show that both Iran’s navy and Revolutionary Guards vessels failed to disperse in anticipation of an attack.
Yesterday, the U.S. military struck a Guards Corps drone carrier near the base. U.S. officials said it had been hit previously, but it had continued to sail in the Bandar Abbas area without major visible damage.
On Wednesday, videos showed an attack on one of Iran’s newest vessels, a catamaran stealth missile corvette. The Revolutionary Guards have only four of the advanced combat ships, according to The Military Balance 2026, an assessment of armed forces published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Konarak
The destruction at Konarak naval base shows how severely U.S. strikes have degraded Iran’s regular navy. Three combat ships sank there while anchored at the pier, and satellite imagery shows capsized or partially submerged vessels.
Konarak is a regional naval headquarters responsible for operations in waters off the country’s southeast coast. The strikes there “dealt a significant blow to the Iranian Navy’s surface fleet and immediately began reducing their presence around the Gulf of Oman,” Mr. Carl said in an email.
The destruction of the base came as the U.S. Navy’s Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was operating near the Gulf of Oman, southeast of Konarak.
Eight buildings at the base, next to the sunken ships, were destroyed or damaged, satellite imagery showed. It also showed attacks on nearby drone and air bases.
Damage was also visible at the Jask naval base in the Gulf of Oman and at a naval base in Asaluyeh in the Persian Gulf.
Christiaan Triebert contributed reporting.
President Trump insisted on Friday that the United States had no shortage of munitions with which to pummel Iran, even as concern grew about the risk that a monthslong war could deplete American weapons stocks and that the Pentagon would need to ask Congress for funding to replenish them.
Mr. Trump, after meeting at the White House with executives from seven major defense contractors, said the companies had already agreed to quadruple their production of what Mr. Trump referred to as “‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry,” in an apparent reference to sophisticated air defenses and cruise missiles. He said the increase would come “as rapidly as possible” to “the highest levels of quantity,” though it was not clear how long such a ramp-up would take and how much the initiative went beyond a similar one that the administration announced in January.
“We have a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions, which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela,” Mr. Trump continued in a post on social media.
Iran has fired thousands of drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. forces and other targets in the Persian Gulf, rapidly reducing the stocks of expensive air defense interceptor missiles available to the United States and its allies. At the same time, the United States has fired longer-range weapons, like Tomahawk cruise missiles, at Iran, denting stocks of sophisticated munitions that are time-consuming and expensive to produce.
Some national security experts argue that the extensive use of such weapons — likely what Mr. Trump referred to as “Exquisite Class” — could divert resources that are necessary to deter China from trying to take control of Taiwan.
“If this were to go on for months, and we’re using the same kind of munitions, we’d start having real challenges,” said Jerry McGinn, the director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Analysts say that Iran’s air defenses and missile launchers appear to be getting depleted and destroyed enough to reduce the U.S. need to launch its most sophisticated weapons. And the United States does, indeed, have large stockpiles of the less expensive, airdropped precision bombs that the military can increasingly use as its warplanes fly deeper into Iranian airspace, they say.
“Our munitions status only increases as our advantage increases,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday.
But the level of urgency in the Pentagon’s need for more weapons depends in large part on defense planners’ assessment of the need to deter China. In a war with China over Taiwan, the United States could quickly run through its stocks of air defense missiles to protect American military bases and aircraft carriers in the Pacific, said Michael O’Hanlon, the director of research at the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program.
“These trend lines are enough to get through the immediate crisis,” Mr. O’Hanlon said, arguing that the United States and its allies had the munitions to manage Iran’s dwindling ability to fire at targets in the Gulf. “It really boils down to the China question.”
The breadth of the U.S. campaign against Iran, coupled with Mr. Trump’s military interventions in Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen and elsewhere over the last year, has given a new impetus to the long-running debate in Washington about the adequacy of U.S. weapons stocks and the defense industry’s ability to produce more.
The American military has used an array of weaponry and systems in the Iran war so far, including Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from warships, 2,000-pound bombs fired from B-2 stealth bombers and a slew of precision missiles fired from fighter jets.
As part of the stated effort to sink the Iranian Navy, American submarines have also taken to firing heavyweight torpedoes. And multiple-rocket launchers known as HIMARS have fired precision missiles at Iranian military bases. The U.S. military has also used some weapons in combat for the first time, including cheaper attack drones and short-range ballistic missiles.
After Mr. Trump’s meeting with defense contractors on Friday, one of them, Lockheed Martin, confirmed that the company had agreed to step up critical munitions production, an effort that began months ago and will play out over years. The company reached a deal with the Trump administration to increase production of PAC-3 missile interceptors to 2,000 per year by 2030 from about 600 per year.
A Lockheed Martin spokeswoman said that the company was moving with urgency, adding that the new agreement on Friday covered a range of munitions, not just the PAC-3s.
It was not the first time the Trump administration has met with defense contractors and demanded an increase in weapons production. In January, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that threatened to limit executive pay and prohibit stock buybacks and dividend payouts at defense companies that have not made capital investments or are deemed “underperforming.”
How the administration will pay for any additional weapons it says it needs, especially amid the war with Iran, is not clear. Top Republicans have said in recent days that Pentagon officials are weighing sending them a supplemental funding request, but have received little information about how much the Pentagon would need or how soon defense officials might formally make the request.
Depending on the size of the request, such a vote could present Republicans with a politically wrenching choice before the November midterm elections. While most have been broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s military operations against Iran, many Republicans had also embraced the anti-interventionist “America First” foreign policy that he had promoted on the campaign trail, and would prefer to avoid an on-the-record vote endorsing billions of dollars for an entanglement abroad.
At the same time, underscoring how messy an intraparty battle over a funding bill could quickly become, some senior Republicans in positions of power on Capitol Hill have long been urging the White House to ramp up spending on munitions. That includes Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chairman of the subcommittee responsible for funding the Pentagon.
Republicans provided the Pentagon with roughly $153 billion in additional funding in their marquee tax cuts bill passed last summer. Defense Department officials told Congress in a report in February that they intended to spend it within the next year, including $24 billion on munitions such as medium-range missiles, though some on Capitol Hill were weighing whether the administration could redirect some of those funds to meet more immediate needs.
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said administration officials told lawmakers during a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill this week that the campaign in Iran was going to stretch on for some time.
“The sheer volume is going to deplete a lot of our stocks; it’s going to require a lot of resupply,” said Mr. Kim, who worked on the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. “Undoubtedly this is going to be something that leaves us at a significant shortage, and I worry about our ability to keep up with other concerns and threats around the world.”
Helene Cooper and Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
The Mehrabad Airport is a historic landmark in Tehran. It was the Iranian capital’s first airport, opening in 1938, and until 2007 it was also Tehran’s international airport. Generations of Iranians traveled to and from the country from the airport, and it was customary for Iranian families to greet arriving relatives with flowers at the terminal. Iran’s national carrier, IranAir, has its headquarters at the airport, as does the Civil Aviation Organization.
Tehran’s landmark Mehrabad Airport appears to have been struck tonight, exploding into a giant ball of fire and smoke, according to two Tehran residents who live near the airport. The residents said in text messages that they saw what looked like commercial planes parked on the tarmac burning, adding that smoke is filling the air.
The United Nations humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said on Friday that the Middle East was in “grave peril,” with tens of millions of civilians caught in the crossfire on multiple fronts of the escalating war, which was brewing into a sprawling humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Fletcher, speaking to reporters at the U.N. headquarters in New York, warned that the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, along with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a major maritime corridor for energy, food and other goods, could affect supply chains and prices.
“When maritime corridors, such as the Strait of Hormuz, are disrupted, food prices will rise, health systems will be squeezed, and basic commodities, including our humanitarian supplies, will become much harder to access,” he said.
The U.N.’s humanitarian agency was fully mobilizing to assist civilians as the crisis unfolded, Mr. Fletcher said. In Iran, at least 1,000 people had died and attacks had targeted over 100 civilian sites, with some 100,000 Iranians internally displaced in the past week alone, Mr. Fletcher said, citing figures from the U.N.’s refugee agency and the Iranian authorities. He said Iran’s government had not asked for U.N. humanitarian assistance.
Mr. Fletcher said that U.N. relief workers were mounting a response that included positioning supplies, scaling up staff, identifying alternative logistical routes and preparing rapid-response sources of humanitarian aid, including the U.N.’s Central Emergency Response Fund.
He had sharp words for the politicians waging the war, calling for an immediate de-escalation of the conflict and the resumption of diplomacy.
“We’re seeing staggering amounts of money, reportedly $1 billion a day, funding this war, spent on destruction, while politicians continue to boast about cutting aid budgets for those in greatest need,” Mr. Fletcher said. “So too many warning lights are flashing on the dashboard right now.”
The American-Israeli campaign against Iran began on Saturday, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and pounding the country with airstrikes. Iran has retaliated with a barrage of ballistic missiles and drones targeting Israel, U.S. interests in the region and Arab countries in the Persian Gulf.
Lebanon has also been drawn into the conflict, with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacking Israel. Israel bombed Shiite strongholds in Lebanon, where more than 100 people have been killed and around 100,000 people were seeking shelter this week.
Across the region, the U.N. refugee agency reported that hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, said over 190 children had been killed since Saturday, including over 180 in Iran, seven in Lebanon, three in Israel and one in Kuwait.
“Homes, hospitals and schools are being hit,” Mr. Fletcher said.
An Israeli strike hit the area near Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, the country’s primary international hub, according to Iranian state media. Footage posted online by the news agency showed multiple explosions and pillars of smoke rising into the night sky.
Large explosions are rocking Tehran in the middle of the night, residents said in text messages and in an online town hall where the sounds of booms could also be heard. Photos on Iranian media showed a huge ball of fire and smoke billowing from the direction of the Mehrabad airport and behind a high-rise apartment complex in northern Tehran.
The Israeli military said early on Saturday that it had begun “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on Iranian government infrastructure in Tehran.
Russia has provided intelligence to Iran during the U.S.-Israeli war, including satellite imagery showing the locations of warships and military personnel, according to U.S. officials.
The information sharing could complicate relations between the United States and Russia, given that President Trump has often taken a more conciliatory stance toward Moscow than his predecessors.
But some of the officials played down the partnership, saying Russia has long provided similar intelligence to Iran. And it is not clear how much Tehran has been able to use the new intelligence, if at all. Iran has advanced missiles, but they lag far behind Russia’s and it is not clear Iran could use the intelligence to target a ship.
Furthermore, given the immense pressure of the combined U.S.-Israeli assault, which began last Saturday, Iran’s ability to launch missiles has been degraded, officials said.
But officials confirmed that Russia has provided updated intelligence on the position of U.S. assets since the beginning of the war, information meant to help Iran target the assets.
So far Iranian forces have not hit any U.S. warships, but they have struck at U.S. military bases, killing six service members in Kuwait and damaging facilities in Bahrain. Iranian drones have also struck a building housing the C.I.A. station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, though no one was injured in that attack, officials said.
The Russian intelligence sharing was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran on Friday to discuss the U.S.-Israeli campaign. In a statement, the Kremlin said that the two leaders agreed to continue contacts and that Mr. Putin expressed condolences for the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader.
Mr. Putin also called for hostilities to stop and urged “a swift return to the path” of a diplomatic resolution.
The statement made no direct mention of the intelligence sharing, but said that communication through “various channels” would continue.
In its initial barrage, Iran launched thousands of attack drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. bases throughout the Middle East. But the Iranian response has begun to lessen, according to the Pentagon, as U.S. bombers place more pressure on Iranian launchers and command and control centers.
As part of a defense partnership, Iran has been a crucial supplier of attack drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine. In return, Russia has supplied technology and intelligence to Iran, according to U.S. officials. Throughout the Biden administration, the White House regularly declassified information about Iranian drone shipments to Russia, as it tried, unsuccessfully, to pressure Tehran to stop supporting its partner.
The U.S. military’s Central Command and the C.I.A. both declined to comment on the classified intelligence sharing. In a statement, Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, noted that the pace of Iranian retaliation had slowed.
“The Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed,” she said. “Their ballistic missile retaliation is decreasing every day, their navy is being wiped out, their production capacity is being demolished and proxies are hardly putting up a fight.”
When Israel abruptly ordered people to evacuate from Beirut’s southern outskirts on Thursday, a bustling district of markets and apartment towers was transformed into a scene of mass exodus.
Residents of the area known as Dahiya, a Hezbollah stronghold, were ordered to move east and north. Soon after, the neighborhood endured a night of heavy Israeli bombardment, with blasts that shook the walls and jolted residents across the city, continuing through Friday.
The evacuation order had rippled through Dahiya like a shock wave on Thursday, causing businesses to shutter and sending families into the streets with armfuls of hastily gathered belongings.
Many were unsure where they would end up that night, and some strapped mattresses to their car roofs. Residents streamed between the dense traffic, carrying plastic bags bulging with clothes, documents and mementos of home.
“We civilians are paying for the price of war,” said Mohamed Hjoula, 35, standing on Beirut’s waterfront promenade, where he had taken refuge with about 40 members of his family, including his ailing parents.
Mr. Hjoula said he learned on Friday afternoon that his home in Dahiya had been destroyed by airstrikes. “We are feeling so much pain,” he said.
Hezbollah fired rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel on Monday, and Israel retaliated with full force, attacking what it said were Hezbollah targets around the country as the hum of its drones filled the daytime skies.
The nights have been shattered by relentless bombardments, and more than 200 people have been killed in Lebanon so far, with almost 800 others wounded, the local health ministry said Friday.
An estimated 300,000 people have been displaced in the country since Israel began carrying out strikes and ordering mass evacuations this week, the Norwegian Refugee Council said.
The evacuation orders for Dahiya were followed by similar orders for parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, another bastion of Hezbollah.
For many in Dahiya, the evacuation order upended their observance of the holy month of Ramadan, tearing them abruptly from the daily rhythms of breaking the fast and prayer.
Some said they had been displaced before, during clashes between Israel and Hezbollah more than a year ago. The two sides had agreed to a cease-fire in November 2024, but that broke down this week.
On Friday, many families had strung sheets together to pitch makeshift tents along the roadside. Some said they were turned away from government-run shelters because they were already full, and they did not know where to find food, water or diapers for their children.
Shefgar Othman, 32, said his brother had ventured back to Dahiya on Friday in order to retrieve some belongings from their home. Shortly after he got there, however, the bombing started again, and he had to flee, he said, returning empty-handed to their family of 10.
“We are stranded in the streets,” Mr. Othman said. Like many who had fled Dahiya, he said he and his family felt abandoned by the government, left to fend for themselves amid the bombardment.
Mr. Hjoula, on Beirut’s corniche, was particularly critical of Hezbollah, saying the group had drawn Dahiya into a war with little regard for the people living there.
Before fighting erupted on Monday, he said, he had hoped to support his parents and save enough money to buy his own apartment and find a bride — plans that now felt impossibly distant.
“My life here has failed,” Mr. Hjoula said, turning his ire on both Israel and Hezbollah. “They have taken us back a thousand years. They have taken us back to the Stone Age.”
For others fleeing the strikes, the worry extended beyond their own safety.
On Friday afternoon, Dahiya resident Zeinab Srour was in Martyrs’ Square, in downtown Beirut, carrying her two cats, Tuti and Virus, in separate pet carriers, and waiting to meet a contact from a pet shelter that would take them in.
One of the cats gave her an infectious kind of joy, Ms. Srour said, but with her family displaced, she could no longer care for them both, and hoped to find a safe place for them until she could return home.
“The sounds of bombings disturb them as much as they do us,” Ms. Srour, 23, said. “We hope this war won’t last long.”
Hwaida Saad and Sarah Chaayto contributed reporting.