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Article: Live Updates: Turkey Says NATO Shot Down Iranian Missile Heading to Turkish Airspace

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Summary: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that American military operations against Iran are intensifying, with increased air power and continuous strikes. Concurrently, NATO forces intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile near Turkish airspace, indicating a regional escalation. The conflict has resulted in significant casualties in Iran, whose leaders are deliberating on a successor to the assassinated Supreme Leader while vowing continued defiance.

Main Topics Covered: 1. Escalation of U.S. military campaign against Iran. 2. Regional security incidents, including a NATO interception of an Iranian missile. 3. Internal Iranian political deliberations following the Supreme Leader's death. 4. Broader regional attacks and economic impacts of the conflict.

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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/04/world/iran-war-israel-lebanon-trump

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NYT > World News

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2026-03-04 13:30

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2026-03-04 10:53

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2026-03-04 10:58

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Present

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Tel Aviv3:50 p.m. March 4
Tehran5:20 p.m. March 4
Live Updates: Hegseth Says There Will Be No Letup In U.S. Attacks on Iran
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military campaign against Iran was accelerating, with more warplanes arriving in the region. Earlier, Turkey said NATO had shot down an Iranian missile heading to Turkish airspace.
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- WANA via Reuters
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Ariel Schalit/Associated Press
- Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- AFP
- Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
- Iranian Foreign Media Department, via Reuters
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
- Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the U.S. military campaign against Iran was accelerating, with more warplanes arriving in the region, as he warned Iranian leaders that American forces would deliver “death and destruction all day long.”
Just before Mr. Hegseth briefed reporters on the fifth day of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, Turkey’s defense ministry announced that NATO air defenses had shot down a ballistic missile fired from Iran and heading toward Turkish airspace. The ministry did not say what the missile’s intended target was, but an attack on Turkey, a NATO ally that shares a 300-mile border with Iran, would mark a dangerous escalation in Iran’s retaliatory targeting of neighboring countries.
Hundreds of people in Iran have been killed in the U.S-Israeli strikes, and Mr. Hegseth said there would be no letup in the attacks. But Iran’s leaders have vowed not to bow to the bombing campaign, as top officials deliberated over the replacement for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader assassinated by Israel on Saturday.
Iran’s leaders are leaning toward anointing his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-liner who would likely carry on his father’s legacy, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations. Israel’s defense minister vowed that if the next supreme leader followed Mr. Khamenei’s ideology, he would become “an unequivocal target for elimination.”
Israeli forces took aim at command centers of the powerful state Basij paramilitary on Wednesday, after striking Iran’s police stations, detention centers and intelligence offices alongside U.S. forces. Analysts say the goal may be to weaken the Iranian government’s ability to crack down on any future protest wave and encourage Iranians to rise against their leaders, one of Mr. Trump’s avowed goals.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait all announced new Iranian attacks on Wednesday. The U.S. Central Command said Tuesday evening that the U.S. military was conducting “24/7 strikes into Iran from seabed to space and cyberspace.”
In Lebanon, Israel ramped up its escalation with Hezbollah, ordering a mass evacuation in the country’s south. The Israeli military ordered Lebanese to flee north of the Litani, a river long seen as a front line in the conflict.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Iranian vessel sunk: Mr. Hegseth said that a U.S. submarine-launched torpedo was used to sink an Iranian warship, the first time an American sub has fired a torpedo against an enemy ship since World War II. An Iranian naval ship with a crew of 180 people sank in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday off the coast of Sri Lanka, according to the authorities in that country, who said that about 30 people had been rescued and that a search was underway for any other survivors. Read more ›
Markets tumble: Global market volatility continued for a third day on Wednesday, as investors assessed the effects of rising energy costs stemming from the war. Asian stocks fell precipitously, and oil prices rose again, though stocks in Europe and the United States appeared to stabilize. Investors fear that a prolonged conflict could send energy costs surging as shipping through the Persian Gulf stalls and drone attacks target energy infrastructure.
Funeral rites: The farewell ceremony for Ayatollah Khamenei was postponed, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported. The three-night observance had been scheduled to start on Wednesday. Hojjatoleslam Seyed Mohsen Mahmoudi, head of the Islamic Propagation Coordination Council of Tehran, told IRNA that millions of people were expected to attend and authorities need to provide “the necessary infrastructure.”
Evacuations: Western governments were working to evacuate hundreds of thousands of their citizens from the region. The State Department said it was facilitating charter fights from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, after Mr. Trump was asked why the government was not helping Americans evacuate. Read more ›
Death toll: The Red Crescent Society, Iran’s main humanitarian relief organization, said the death toll had risen to 787 since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attacks. The bombing of a girls’ elementary school in Iran killed at least 175 people. Dozens of people in Lebanon also have been killed, according to the Lebanese health ministry, in Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah. Read more ›
Americans killed: Six U.S. service members have been killed in the conflict. The Defense Department released the names of four Army Reserve soldiers killed over the weekend in Kuwait in a drone attack on U.S. military facilities. Read more about them ›
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday ordered more employees to leave their posts at embassies and consulates in four countries, citing risks to safety as Iran expanded its retaliatory attacks.
In Pakistan, the department recalled nonessential government employees and their family members at consulates in Lahore and Karachi. In the capital, Islamabad, the U.S. Embassy resumed normal operations on Tuesday, according to its website.
The order came after more than 20 people died in demonstrations on Sunday across Pakistan, including at least 10 in Karachi, where crowds tried to storm the U.S. Consulate.
The department also ordered the departure of nonemergency government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Cyprus. A drone attack on the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Tuesday started a small fire and caused minor damage to the building, prompting its closure. In Cyprus, an Iranian-made drone crashed into a British air base late on Sunday. There were no casualties. And in Oman, where officials had mediated talks between Iran and the United States, a drone attack damaged a fuel tanker in a commercial port.
The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait was also closed after a drone struck its compound on Monday, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The origin of the drone was not immediately clear.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe Pentagon news conference is over. The overall message from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is that the United States and Israel are “winning” the war in Iran, that the two countries will soon establish air superiority, that Iranian counterstrikes are down, and that the American military has unleashed a punishing array of strikes that have decimated Iran’s ballistic missile program and its navy.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that American allies in the Persian Gulf, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, are closely collaborating and coordinating their air defenses with the United States to combat Iranian missiles and drones. In recent years, the United States has pushed its allies in the region to drop their rivalries and cooperate more closely against a common threat.
The Pentagon continued to decline responsibility for a strike on an Iranian girls’ school on Saturday, one of the deadliest attacks of the U.S.-Israeli campaign that killed at least 175 people. “All I can say is that we’re investigating, and that we, of course never target civilian targets,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, adding that an investigation into the strike was continuing.
Many of the victims were attending class at the Shajarah Tayyebeh school, in the southern town of Minab, according to local health officials and Iranian state media. Several videos and images verified by The New York Times showed that at least half of the two-story building was destroyed in the explosion.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTGen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the destruction of air defenses would allow the U.S. military to use fewer stand-off munitions, which are expensive and in shorter supply, and shift to more plentiful precision guided gravity bombs. This would allow the military to increase the pace of an already robust air campaign, he said.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Iran’s ballistic missile strikes are down 86 percent from the first day of fighting, “with a 23 percent decrease just in the last 24 hours.” Iran’s one-way attack drone strikes are down 73 percent, he said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. moved 90 percent of American troops out of range of Iranian fire before the war started. That is a curious statement, given that Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least six American service members.
More than 870 people have been killed in the fighting in the Middle East since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, officials said. The vast majority of them have been in Iran, but Iranian strikes have killed others in Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Israel.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTDefense Secetary Pete Hegseth is making the case that the U.S. military is dominating Iran from the air. Iranian leaders, he said, are looking up at the skies “every minute of every day until we decide it’s over. Death and destruction all day long.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTDefense Secretary Hegseth said that the U.S. assault on Iran was “accelerating,” with more bombers arriving on Wednesday. He also dismissed reports that stocks of munitions were running low, saying the U.S. attack planes will be using 500 pound, 1,000 pound and 2,000 pound precision and unguided bombs “of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the United States and Israel will have control of Iranian airspace in the next two days. “I hope all the folks watching understand what uncontested airspace and complete control means,” he said. “It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are soon to begin their second news conference in two days, as the Trump administration tries to take control of the narrative for the war in Iran. Six Americans service members are known to have been killed since the American and Israeli attacks began.
A ballistic missile fired from Iran was shot down by NATO air and missile defenses in the eastern Mediterranean while heading toward Turkish airspace, Turkey’s defense ministry said on Wednesday.
The missile had flown over Iraq and Syria, according to a ministry statement posted on social media. It did not say what the missile’s target was believed to be. Remnants of the ordinance that shot it down fell in Turkey’s south-central province of Hatay, near the border with Syria, injuring no one, the statement said.
Iran has launched missiles and drones at neighboring countries that host U.S. military facilities and personnel in retaliation for the American and Israeli air campaign against Tehran. Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base hosts a sizable United States Air Force contingent, but Turkey has said that it would not allow its airspace to be used for attacks on Iran.
An attack on Turkey, a NATO member that shares a 300-mile border with Iran, would mark a major escalation and could activate NATO’s mutual defense clause, potentially drawing the alliance’s 32 member states into the war.
In a statement, Allison Hart, a NATO spokeswoman, said the alliance condemned the targeting of Turkey.
“NATO stands firmly with all allies, including Turkey, as Iran continues its indiscriminate attacks across the region,” the statement said. “Our deterrence and defense posture remains strong across all domains, including when it comes to air and missile defense.”
A strike on Turkey could also alter Turkey’s relationship with Iran. The two countries have longstanding diplomatic and trade relations, and Turkey was heavily involved in recent diplomatic efforts aimed at preventing the current war.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, spoke by phone with his Iranian counterpart about the missile and said that any action that could cause the conflict to spread should be avoided, Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Turkish defense ministry said it would consult with its NATO allies and protect the country from any attacks. “All necessary steps to defend our territory and airspace will be taken resolutely and without hesitation,” it said.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAir-raid sirens have blared out multiple times across Israel over the past hour, as both Iranian ballistic missiles and rocket fire from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed armed group, have come at the same time in different parts of the country. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Hezbollah’s military news media has announced a total of six attacks on Israel today, while the Israeli military said just now that it was launching another wave of attacks on Lebanon.
Prime minister Keir Starmer defended his position on the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran conflict after President Trump intensified his criticism of the British response.
Mr. Starmer said Britain was deploying fighter jets, military assets, ships and counter-drone systems in a defensive capacity across the Middle East and in Cyprus, and that he had reached an agreement with the United States to allow the use of British bases “to strike Iranian missiles and launchers.”
He added: “What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the U.K. to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable thought-through plan. That remains my position.”
Eva Hrncirova, a spokesperson for the European Commission, confirmed that the European Union is supporting evacuation efforts, and that Italy, Slovakia, Austria, Romania and France have activated E.U. emergency response support. Seven E.U.-supported flights were planned in the coming days to evacuate people from the region, and the passenger list was being finalized.
Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. launched missile attacks on Wednesday that hit three bases in neighboring Iraq, which were used by Iranian Kurdish militant groups that oppose Tehran, according to Iran’s state broadcaster. One of the groups, the PAK, confirmed an attack on its facilities. The strikes occurred as several exiled Iranian Kurdish militant groups based in Iraq have said they were preparing to try to enter Iran.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTRising energy prices have stoked concerns about a resurgence of inflation, but central bankers have said in the past day that they were watching developments in the US-Israel war with Iran closely and that it was too early to make policy decisions.
In Japan, the governor of the central bank, Kazuo Ueda, warned that there could be a “significant impact” on the economy because of the energy prices but it would depend on how the situation unfolded.
In Europe, a number of rate-setters said they wouldn’t rush to change interest rates. Martins Kazaks from Latvia said the longer that prices remain elevated, the stronger the effects on inflation could become. “And then potentially, we may need to take a policy decision,” he told Bloomberg. “But not now.”
In the United States, a Federal Reserve official told The New York Times that higher energy prices could translate to a more persistent inflation problem, but that it was too soon to know the overall economic impact.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to give a news conference at 8 a.m. Eastern on the U.S. military operation against Iran, the Defense Department said in a post on social media. It will be their second such news conference this week.
Turkey’s defense ministry announced on Wednesday that a ballistic missile fired from Iran had been shot down by NATO air defenses in the eastern Mediterranean while heading toward Turkish airspace.
The ministry’s statement, posted on social media, did not say what the missile’s target was believed to be but that remnants of the ordnance that shot it down had fallen in the south-central province of Hatay, near the border with Syria.
An attack on Turkey, a NATO member that shares a 300-mile border with Iran, would mark a major escalation in Iran’s targeting of neighboring countries in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli air campaign against Tehran.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTFor more than a year, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain has positioned himself as the leader of Europe’s left-wing resistance to President Trump.
As Mr. Trump scaled up deportations, Mr. Sanchez gave undocumented migrants a pathway to residency. As the president championed American tech companies, Mr. Sánchez sought to restrict them. And this past weekend, Mr. Sánchez refused to let American warplanes use Spain as a launchpad for strikes on Iran, leading Mr. Trump to threaten to end trade with Spain.
On Wednesday, those tensions came to a head as Mr. Sánchez gave a special address to the nation in which he condemned the campaign against Iran and reiterated his refusal to participate despite Mr. Trump’s threats of economic retaliation.
“We are not going to be accomplices to something that is bad for the world, simply because of fear of reprisals from some,” Mr. Sánchez said in the televised speech.
“It’s not even clear what the goals are of those who launched the first attack,” Mr. Sánchez added, referring to the United States and Israel.
Mr. Sánchez’s address from the Moncloa Palace in Madrid escalated the standoff between Mr. Trump and his most vocal European critic, who has sought a path different from the leaders of Britain, France and Germany, who issued a joint statement promising to help in defensive actions against Iran.
The speech came less than a day after Mr. Trump held a freewheeling briefing in the Oval Office, during which he threatened to inflict economic pain on Spain and dismissed Spanish restrictions on U.S. warplanes.
“We could use the base if we want,” Mr. Trump said. “We could just fly in and use it.”
The contretemps is the latest example of how Mr. Sánchez, facing political strife at home, has sought to distinguish his policies from those of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Sánchez has lamented Mr. Trump’s “unjustified and unfair” trade tariffs. He has described Mr. Trump’s plans to move Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as “immoral” and described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “genocide.”
Spain, alone among NATO members, rejected Mr. Trump’s demand that they spend 5 percent of their budget on defense, with Mr. Sánchez calling the idea “incompatible with our worldview.” In July, he buddied up with some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent critics, including Brazil’s president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, and vowed to stand up to “oligarchs and the far right.”
Mr. Sánchez has also implicitly criticized Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigrants — “Some leaders have chosen to hunt them down and deport them through operations that are both unlawful and cruel,” he wrote in a New York Times essay in February — and called the American abduction of the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro a “terrible precedent” that promoted the “law of the jungle.”
For Mr. Sánchez, Mr. Trump is not only an ideological foe but also a useful foil as the Spanish prime minister faces growing problems at home.
Opinion polling shows that Mr. Sánchez is seen unfavorably by more than half the country. He controls less than half the seats in the Spanish Parliament, hasn’t passed a budget in years, is losing regional elections and enduring corruption scandals. Mr. Sánchez has turned to foreign policy, Pablo Simón, a Spanish political analyst, said, “to gain political leverage within Spain.”
Mr. Trump’s reaction to Spain’s restrictions on U.S. warplanes, and the global attention it attracted, was “exactly what Sánchez wanted,” said Ramón González Férriz, an author and a columnist at El Confidencial, a Spanish news website. “He has been looking to create an open confrontation with Donald Trump,” who is unpopular in Spain, Mr. González Férriz added.
Mr. Sánchez’s track record has also made him a hero to the global left. The left-wing Italian newsmagazine L’Espresso called him 2025’s person of the year, and Britain’s left-leaning New Statesman magazine called him a “left-wing icon.”
The Spanish left has long had an ambiguous relationship with the United States, showing significant opposition to joining NATO in 1986. In 2004, the Spanish prime minister at the time, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, became a leftist hero when he pulled troops from Iraq. There was a history, Mr. González Férriz said, of Spanish leftists showing that they would “not be vassals of America.”
For Mr. Sánchez, in office since 2018, an assertion of independence was also a political necessity. His anti-Trump positions give his Socialist party a chance to shore up their base and ward off challenges from far-left rivals.
Still, there are political risks. Some analysts have questioned whether, given Mr. Trump’s renewed threats against Spain, Mr. Sánchez’s glaring opposition would eventually cause real economic pain.
It also makes Mr. Sánchez vulnerable to criticism from the right-wing Spanish opposition, which said this week that Mr. Sánchez was sacrificing Spain’s international reputation for domestic political gain. “In trying to win a few votes at home,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the Spanish Popular Party, “we cannot put at risk our security.”
The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, has taken a similar line, questioning whether Mr. Sánchez was on “the ‘right side’ of history.”
Carlos Barragán contributed reporting.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, said on Wednesday that a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean as part of a widening military campaign against Iran.
Although Mr. Hegseth did not name the ship, an Iranian vessel with a crew of 180 sank in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, officials in the country said. About 30 people were rescued and a search was underway for any other survivors.
The Iranian ship “thought it was safe in international waters,” but “instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Mr. Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing.
“America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” Mr. Hegseth said.
Iran’s naval fleet has been under attack since the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran last weekend, targeting the country’s military and security apparatus.
The Iris Dena, described as a destroyer, was sailing outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters when it sent a distress signal at 5:08 a.m. local time, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, Vijitha Herath, told Sri Lanka’s Parliament. Sri Lanka responded, sending naval ships and the air force to the endangered vessel.
Sri Lankan officers rescued 32 critically injured sailors, who were taken to the Karapitiya Hospital, in the southern coastal city of Galle, Mr. Herath said.
A search was continuing for the rest of the crew, a spokesman for Sri Lanka’s navy said. Officers found bodies floating in the water where the ship went under.
“We haven’t seen the ship, but observed oil patches and life craft,” Capt. Buddhika Sampath, spokesman for the Sri Lankan navy, said during a news conference.
While the incident took place outside of Sri Lankan waters, the island nation responded in line with its commitment to an international maritime search and rescue treaty, the foreign minister said.
“We are signatories so we intervened on a humane basis as is our responsibility,” Mr. Herath told Parliament.
The Iris Dena, a prized destroyer in the Iranian navy, had participated in an international naval exercise in India last month.
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