Article: A U.S. intelligence assessment in February found that an attack on Iran was unlikely to result in regime change.

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Summary: President Trump vowed to escalate strikes against Iran, claiming the country had "surrendered," following a statement by Iran's president that included an apology to Gulf states for recent attacks but also defiance of U.S. demands. Despite these statements, military actions continued, with reports of new strikes in Bahrain and Qatar and ongoing U.S.-Israeli operations targeting Iran and its allies in Lebanon. The conflict has resulted in significant casualties, regional displacement, and economic disruption.

Main Topics Covered: 1. Conflicting statements from U.S. and Iranian leadership regarding the status of the conflict. 2. Ongoing military strikes and escalation in the region. 3. The humanitarian and economic impact of the war.

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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/07/world/iran-war-trump-israel-lebanon/a-us-intelligence-assessment-in-february-found-that-an-attack-on-iran-was-unlikely-to-result-in-regime-change

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2026-03-07 16:01

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Tehran8:28 p.m. March 7
Tel Aviv/Beirut6:58 p.m. March 7
Live Updates: Trump Vows to Hit Iran Harder
President Trump claimed that Iran had surrendered. He made the statement after the country’s president said earlier that Iran would end strikes in Gulf states, with caveats. Qatar and Bahrain reported incoming fire.
- Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
- David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Erik Marmor/Getty Images
- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
- UNHCR, via Reuters
- Reuters
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
President Trump on Saturday vowed that Iran would be “hit very hard” — including “areas and groups of people” yet to be targeted since the Israeli-American joint assault began — as the spiraling war entered its second week.
Mr. Trump also said Iran had “apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors.” His remarks came after a televised speech earlier on Saturday by Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, who is also a member of the interim three-person council running the country.
While Mr. Pezeshkian apologized to Gulf states for shooting scores of missiles and drones at them in retaliatory strikes, he also called Mr. Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender “a dream that our enemies will take to the grave.”
Mr. Pezeshkian cautioned that Iran reserved the right to respond to countries from whose territory Iran was attacked. And later on Saturday afternoon — after criticism from Iranian hard-liners — Mr. Pezeshkian issued another statement.
“We have not attacked our friendly and neighboring countries. Rather, we have targeted U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations in the region,” he said on social media.
The mixed remarks by American and Iranian leaders left it far from clear whether an off-ramp to end the war was emerging. Shortly after Mr. Pezeshkian’s televised apology, air-raid sirens rang out in Bahrain and Qatar, suggesting that attacks were still continuing.
U.S. forces have struck over 3,000 targets since the American-Israeli air war against Iran began last weekend, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East. Senior U.S. officials last briefed the public on the fighting two days ago.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had launched “a broad-scale wave of strikes” overnight across the Iranian capital of Tehran and central Iran. Israeli attacks hit Mehrabad airport in Tehran overnight, the military said, targeting planes affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
After just over a week, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands; drawn in states from Oman to Turkey; snarled international travel and shipping; and sent oil and gas prices surging.
President Trump’s plan for the war remained very much unclear. His administration has zigzagged between outlining specific military goals for the war versus a broader attempt to oust the Iranian government.
Israel also intensified its attacks in Lebanon against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants there. Overnight, Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombarded the southern outskirts of Beirut, where the military had ordered hundreds of thousands of residents to flee or face imminent danger.
The Israeli military said its special forces had also launched a rare raid deep in eastern Lebanon to search — unsuccessfully — for the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli soldier deemed missing in action since the 1980s. The raid prompted clashes in which at least 41 people were killed amid Israeli airstrikes, according to Lebanese officials and state media.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
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. More than 200 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
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, its highest since 2023. The average price of unleaded gasoline in the United States reached $$3.41 per gallon, up 14 percent since the war began. The concurrent increases could be a serious shock to an already-slowing world economy.
Dubai airport: Dubai International announced on Saturday that it had partly resumed operations, after saying earlier that all flights were suspended. The Emirati authorities have not said what caused the disruption, but video circulating on social media appeared to show a drone strike near the airport. The sound of a whirring motor can be heard as an object plummets to the ground, causing an explosion.
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.
Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, had just apologized on state television on Saturday morning for waves of Iranian missile strikes that hit Gulf states since last week, when air-raid sirens blared in Qatar and Bahrain — warning of further attacks.
Hours later, following criticism from Iranian hard-liners, Mr. Pezeshkian issued another statement in which he asserted that Iran had not attacked its “friendly and neighboring countries” in this war — this time omitting any apology.
This back-and-forth occurred even as attacks on Gulf countries continued, revealing divides inside Iran’s leadership as the country struggled to respond to the American-Israeli attacks, now entering their second week.
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf since the war began last Saturday, arguing that it was targeting the American military bases located there. Iranian strikes, however, have also damaged civilian sites across the Middle East, including airports and hotels.
In an apparent attempt to mollify the outrage among Gulf states, Mr. Pezeshkian apologized on Saturday morning “on behalf of Iran to the neighboring countries affected” and pledged to stop. But the promise was conditioned on an end to attacks against Iran that originate from their territory, which still hosts U.S. bases, appearing to render the point moot.
Mr. Pezeshkian also suggested that the Iranian military and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had acted independently during the crisis, which began with Israeli attacks that assassinated the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior Iranian leaders.
“Because our commanders and our leader lost their lives due to the brutal aggression, our armed forces, when there were no commanders present, acted on their own authority,” Mr. Pezeshkian said.
Those comments raised questions about who exactly was overseeing Iran’s military response. Before his death, Ayatollah Khamenei had begun increasingly handing responsibility to Ali Larijani, one of Iran’s top security officials.
As Iran’s president, Mr. Pezeshkian wielded some authority, but Ayatollah Khamenei held ultimate power. A successor for Ayatollah Khamenei has yet to be chosen.
Mr. Pezeshkian is now a member of a three-member council charged with administering the country until a new supreme leader is selected, but analysts say Iran’s entrenched and powerful security state is likely far more influential.
“Pezeshkian’s comments, which were followed by further strikes on the Gulf, will only reinforce perceptions of his powerlessness within a military dominated system,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, the London-based research institute.
The comments also quickly aroused ire from the Iranian right. Hamid Rasaei, a hard-line member of Parliament, called Mr. Pezeshkian’s stance “weak and unprofessional.”
“Those who should apologize are the countries that have turned their soil into U.S. military bases,” not Iran, Mr. Rasaei wrote on social media.
President Trump was quick to seize on Mr. Pezeshkian’s apology. He called it evidence that the American-Israeli aerial campaign was compelling the Iranian leadership to accept his terms. He vowed that Iran would “be hit very hard” on Saturday.
“Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.
It is far from clear that Mr. Pezeshkian has the authority to make such a commitment.
Major developments — March 6
A report by the National Intelligence Council completed before the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran assessed that even a large-scale military assault on the country would be unlikely to topple its theocratic government, according to U.S. officials briefed on the work.
The N.I.C., which is part of Tulsi Gabbard’s Office of National Intelligence, is in charge of crafting intelligence assessments based on an array of views across the intelligence community. While some of their reports are joint products, others are produced independently, with less coordination.
The council’s document, drafted late last month, builds on work by the C.I.A. that assessed that a complete change of government was unlikely even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was killed in a U.S.-led military operation. But the actual report was an independent product of the council, the officials said.
Still, there seemed to be wide agreement that the theological government in Iran is deeply entrenched. Intelligence officials have been skeptical that a popular uprising could dislodge the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the organization that exerts control over much of the security apparatus in Iran as well as large sectors of its economy.
The N.I.C. report was earlier reported by The Washington Post.
Iranian attacks appear to have renewed along the Persian Gulf. The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said its air defenses were working to repel “incoming missile and drone threats from Iran.” Qatar also said it had intercepted a missile attack, without saying where it was from.
President Trump is making remarks to leaders of Latin American countries at his golf resort in Miami. He started by talking about Iran and the American service members who have been killed. “When it comes to war, there’s always that, but we’re going to keep it to a minimum, I think, Pete,” he said, looking to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is in the room, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Pete, you are fantastic. You’re doing a great job; I’m proud of you,” Trump added.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian appeared to clarify comments he made earlier Saturday in a televised address that Iran would not strike Gulf states if attacks did not originate in those countries. In his new comments, on social media, he claimed that Iran had targeted only “U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations in the region,” insisting that Tehran had not attacked neighboring countries. Pezeshkian said on X that Iran remained committed to “friendly relations” with regional governments but would continue to defend itself against what he called military aggression by the United States and Israel.
In his address Saturday morning, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, appeared to push back on President Trump’s demands on Friday for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” “The idea that we would surrender unconditionally is a dream that our enemies will take to the grave,” Pezeshkian said.
President Trump posted to social media that Iran had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore.” Trump appears to be reacting to remarks made on Saturday by Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, who apologized for the Iranian drone and missile attacks that have targeted Arab states along the Persian Gulf since the war began last week. Pezeshkian said that Iran’s leadership had ordered an end to those attacks. It is unclear whether anything has changed: Air-raid sirens rang out in Qatar and Bahrain this morning, warning of incoming fire.
In a post on Truth Social just after 6 a.m. on the East Coast, President Trump wrote, “Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.” The post did not elaborate.
A commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps said there was “nothing new” in the comments from President Masoud Pezeshkian that Iran would not attack neighboring countries unless an attack on Iran originated from those nations, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim. Hamidreza Moghadamfar, the commander, added that Iran’s attacks have been directed at U.S. positions and interests in the region and that the countries themselves have not been targeted.
The Guards carried out a massive drone attack on Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, saying the base was being used for operations in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, according to the judiciary-affiliated news agency Mizan.
Israel’s military said that its special forces had operated in Lebanon overnight on Saturday in an attempt to find the remains of the Israeli soldier Ron Arad, who has been officially missing since the 1980s. The mission was unsuccessful, according to the military, which said there had been no Israeli casualties. Although the Israeli military said only that they had operated in eastern Lebanon, the Lebanese National News Agency reported earlier on Saturday that an Israeli commando operation took place overnight in the Bekaa Valley and that 26 people had been killed.
Saudi Arabia’s massive Shaybah oil field has come under attack multiple times in the last 24 hours. The country’s defense ministry has reported at least 21 drones intercepted on their way to the field in several waves of attacks. The defense ministry did not name the source of the attacks.
President Trump is scheduled to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday to witness the return of the bodies of American service members killed in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. He wrote in a social media post Friday that he would be joined by the first lady, Melania Trump, and members of his cabinet.
So far, at least six service members have been killed since the strikes began a week ago. It was not immediately clear if Saturday’s ceremony would mark the return of the bodies of all six.
Several times in his first term, Mr. Trump witnessed the return of fallen service members to Dover in flag-draped coffins. But back then, he was honoring Americans who died in wars that he inherited from other presidents. This time, he will be coming face to face with the deadly consequences of a war in the Middle East that he launched and is presiding over with no clear end in sight.
In recent years, presidents have made a tradition of participating in what is known as a “dignified transfer” ceremony at Dover.
In 2009, President Barack Obama made an unannounced midnight visit to the base to greet a plane returning 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan. At the time, he was weighing whether to send more troops to that country.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. went in 2021 to watch as a gray C-17 transport plane returned the remains of some of the final Americans to die in the war in Afghanistan. There were 11 Marines, a Navy medic and an Army staff sergeant that time. Mr. Biden was back at Dover in 2024 for a ceremony to honor three service members killed by Iran-backed militias.
Mr. Trump made his first trip to Dover a month into his first term to honor a 36-year-old killed by Al Qaeda militants in Yemen. On another occasion, he brought the actor Jon Voight along to witness the solemn transfer of the bodies of two Army soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump would speak about his visits in his first term as reminders of what he described as the tragic futility of the “endless wars” he had been elected to stop.
He once called the ceremonies at Dover “a very tough experience.” He has spoken at his rallies about the guttural cries of anguish he heard from parents upon seeing their child’s coffin come out of a military cargo plane.
“The hardest thing I have to do, by far,” he said in 2019, “is signing letters to parents of soldiers that have been killed.”
Since his attack on Iran, Mr. Trump has spoken more matter-of-factly about the risks to Americans from an extended military engagement. In a video he posted to social media after the first three service members died, Mr. Trump said, “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.” He added, “That’s the way it is. Likely be more. But we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case.”
On Monday, the president said he would not rule out sending ground troops to the Middle East to fight Iran. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground,” he told the New York Post on Monday. “Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”
A few days later, Time magazine asked him if Americans should worry about retaliatory strikes at home. “I guess,” Mr. Trump said. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
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 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.”
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 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 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 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.