Israel’s defense minister threatened on Saturday that “the intensity of the attacks” by Israel and the United States against Iran’s ruling theocracy will “increase significantly” as the war in the Middle East entered its fourth week.
Britain condemned Iran for targeting Diego Garcia, a joint U.K.-U.S. base in the Indian Ocean. The distance of Saturday's attack suggests Tehran is able to send missiles much farther than Iran had acknowledged.
Iran’s Natanz
nuclear enrichment facility was hit in an airstrike, an official Iranian news agency reported Saturday, saying there was no radiation leakage. Israel denied responsibility.
The U.S. and Israel have offered shifting rationales for the war, from hoping to foment an uprising that topples Iran’s leadership to eliminating its nuclear and missile programs. There have been no public signs of any such uprising, and the war shows no sign of abating.
The death toll has risen to more than 1,300 people in Iran, more than 1,000 people in Lebanon, 15 in Israel and 13 U.S. military members in the region. Millions of people in Lebanon and Iran have been displaced.
Here is the latest:
The joint British-U.S. base in the Indian Ocean is almost 4,000 miles (2,500 kilometers) away. Iran previously limited the range of its ballistic missile program to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers), but U.S. officials have said Iran’s system for satellite launches could extend their range.
Iran’s Simorgh space launch vehicle could offer greater range “at the likely cost of terminal accuracy,” said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think-tank.
“Ballistic missiles are space rockets. They launch, they go really high up and they come down really fast,” said Steve Prest, a retired Royal Navy commodore. “If you’ve got a space program, you’ve got a ballistic missile program.”
Prest said the launches were likely a message of defiance, to say “look what we can do,” in response to Trump’s claims that Iran’s military has been obliterated.
Egypt’s president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stressed Saturday that the Iranian escalation against Gulf states endangers the safety and the stability of the region.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency reported that el-Sissi reiterated his country’s rejection of the Iranian attacks on the Gulf states, adding the the Egyptian president expressed solidarity with the Kingdom against threats.
Also Saturday, Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit welcomed the visits of el-Sissi and his Jordanian counterpart King Abdullah II to multiple Gulf states over the past few days, saying that these visits “reflect full Arab solidarity.”
Trump’s fellow Republicans appear unlikely to directly challenge him, even as the conflict drags on. House Speaker Mike Johnson has said the military operation will be over quickly.
“I do think the original mission is virtually accomplished now,” Johnson, R-La., told the AP and others at the Capitol this week. “We were trying to take out the ballistic missiles, and their means of production, and neuter the navy, and those objectives have been met.”
Johnson acknowledged that Iran’s ability to threaten ships in the Strait of Hormuz is “dragging it out a little bit,” especially as U.S. allies have largely rebuffed the president’s request for help, but said “As soon as we bring some calm to the situation, I think it’s all but done.”
The Republican president’s decision to launch the U.S.-Israel-led war with Iran is testing the resolve of the Congress, which is controlled by his party.
Under the War Powers Act, the president can conduct military operations for 60 days without approval from Congress. So far, Republicans have easily voted down several resolutions from Democrats designed to halt the military campaign.
But the administration will need to show a more comprehensive strategy ahead or risk blowback from Congress, lawmakers said, especially as they are simultaneously being asked to approve billions in new spending.
The Israeli military denied that Israel was responsible for a strike that hit Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. An official Iranian news agency reported on Saturday that the site was damaged in an airstrike but there was no radiation leakage. The Israeli military said it wasn’t aware of Israeli strikes in that region.
The denial came as Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a video statement that next week, “the intensity of the attacks” by Israel and the United States against Iran’s ruling theocracy will “increase significantly.”
A hospital and tourist site in southwestern Iran have been damaged from U.S. or Israeli strikes, killing at least one child, according to Iranian news agencies.
Strikes killed a child at the Ritaj entertainment complex in Ahvaz, according to Iran’s state news agency, and damaged the Andimeshk’s Imam Ali Hospital hospital, according to the semi-official Mehr and Fars news agencies. Both are in the Khuzestan province on the border with Iraq. The hospital said the blast created significant damage and it is no longer accepting patients, but did not give any other information.
The death toll has risen to more than 1,300 people in Iran, more than 1,000 people in Lebanon, 15 in Israel and 13 U.S. military members in the region as the war enters its fourth week.
Trump took the United States to war without a vote of support from Congress, but lawmakers are increasingly questioning when, how and at what cost the war with Iran will come to an end.
Three weeks into the conflict, the toll is increasing: At least 13 U.S. military personnel have died, and more than 230 wounded. A $200 billion Pentagon request for war funds is pending at the White House. Allies are under attack, oil prices are spiking and thousands of U.S. troops are deploying to the Middle East with no endgame in sight.
“The real question is: What ultimately are we trying to accomplish?” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told The Associated Press. “I generally support anything that takes out the mullahs,” he said. “But at the end of the day, there has to be a kind of strategic articulation of the strategy, what our objectives are.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called strikes on the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility “a brazen violation of international law.”
In a statement posted on the ministry’s website Saturday, Zakharova said such “irresponsible actions” posed a “real risk of catastrophic disaster throughout the Middle East” and were “clearly aimed at further undermining peace, stability, and security in the region.”
Authorities in Bahrain say sirens have sounded Saturday, signaling a potential attack.
The head of U.S. Central Command says in his latest video update on the war that U.S. forces “remain on plan to eliminate Iran’s ability to project meaningful power outside its borders.”
Adm. Brad Cooper also detailed steps taken to undermine Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway vital to international commerce such as oil shipments.
He says in a post on X that earlier in the week, multiple 5,000-pound bombs were dropped on an underground facility along Iran’s coastline that was used to store anti-ship cruise missiles, mobile missile launchers and other equipment “that presented a dangerous risk to international shipping.”
Cooper says intelligence support sites and missile radar relays used to monitor ship movements were destroyed.
“Iran’s ability to threaten freedom of navigation in and around the Strait of Hormuz is degraded as a result and we will not stop pursuing these targets,” he says in the video.
Cooper also said that “we have built the most extensive air defense umbrella in the world over the Middle East right now.”
Countries including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia have also condemned Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels as well as oil and gas facilities in the region.
“The effects of Iran’s actions will be felt by people in all parts of the world, especially the most vulnerable,” they said in a joint statement Saturday.
Thousands of Iranian worshipers on Saturday converged on Tehran’s grand mosque for Eid al-Fitr prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Associated Press footage showed worshippers lining up at Imam Khomeini Mosalla and in its vast courtyard for the prayers as Israel and the United States continued launch massive airstrikes against Iran.
“It’s really a painful feeling,” Masoud Alibenam, 50 said its “really a painful feeling” that the Eid prayers are being offered without Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed in the first days of the war. “The leader (Khamenei) is no longer here, and we are offering the prayers in his absence.”
Worshippers also held funeral services for Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guard, who was killed in an Israeli strike Friday. The funeral procession of Amir Hossein Bidi, a pro-government cultural activist also was held after Eid prayers.
Jordan’s military said on Saturday this week’s attacks, which involved at least 14 missiles, left a child injured.
That brought the total number of wounded to 24 since war’s Feb. 28 start.
Over the last three weeks, a total of 240 missiles and drones have been fired at Jordan, the military said.
The Diego Garcia air base is home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel and has supported U.S. military operations from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan and strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands, a remote archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814.
They are at the center of a U.K. spat with President Donald Trump over Britain’s plans to hand sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius. Britain would then lease back the Diego Garcia base.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer says that will safeguard the future of the base, which is currently vulnerable to legal challenge. The Trump administration initially welcomed the deal, but in January Trump called it “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”
Iran currently has a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles).
That puts all of the Mideast and some of Eastern Europe in range, but Diego Garcia would be far beyond it.
However, U.S. officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Britain has condemned “Iran’s reckless attacks” after its military fired missiles at the U.K.-U.S. air base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
U.K. officials have not given details of the attempted strike, which was unsuccessful. It’s unclear how close the missiles came to the base, which is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran.
The Ministry of Defense said Saturday that Iran’s “lashing out across the region and holding hostage the Strait of Hormuz, are a threat to British interests and British allies.”
Britain has not participated in U.S-Israeli attacks on Iran, but has allowed American bombers to use U.K. bases to attack Iran’s missile sites.
On Friday, the British government said U.S. bombers can also use U.K. bases, including Diego Garcia, in operations to prevent Iran attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran targeted the base before that U.K. statement.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said attacks against Iran will “increase significantly” in the coming week.
Katz spoke Saturday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was considering “winding down” military operations in the Mideast.
“This week, the intensity of the attacks that the IDF and the U.S. military will carry out against the Iranian terrorist regime and against the infrastructures on which it relies will increase significantly,” Katz said in a video statement.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a social media post Saturday that Iran has informed it of the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility.
The IAEA said it was looking into the report, adding that “no increase in off-site radiation levels reported.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a message Saturday congratulating Iranians on the new year festival Nowruz that he wished them to “overcome these severe trials with dignity.” The Kremlin press service also quoted Putin as sayin that “Moscow remains Tehran’s loyal friend and reliable partner.”
The United Arab Emirates' Defense Ministry said Saturday that it has responded to three ballistic missiles and eight drones.
Iran's official news agency Mizan said Saturday's airstrike on the country's Natanz nuclear facility did not result in any radiation leakage.
Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment site, was hit in the first week of the war and several buildings appeared damaged, according to satellite images.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said that “no radiological consequence” was expected from that earlier strike.
The nuclear facility, located nearly 220 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of Tehran, had been targeted by Israeli airstrikes in the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025, and by the United States.
Israeli army spokesman Nadav Shoshani on Saturday posted a video on X showing a damaged building that he said was a kindergarten.
He said it was hit by fragments of an Iranian missile. There are no reports of casualties.
In a statement, the National Intelligence Service described Saturday's drone strike as a “terrorist attack” and vowed to bring those responsible to justice.
Earlier Saturday, Gen. Saad Maan, head of the Iraqi Security Media Cell said the drone targeted Service's headquarters in Baghdad’s Mansour area.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
South Korea says it’s also in talks with Iran after Iran’s foreign minister said Teheran may allow Japanese vessels to pass the Strait of Hormuz.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday in a statement it was having “multifaceted” talks with Iran and other related nations to find ways to “protect our citizens and secure energy transport routes.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Kyodo news agency Friday that Tehran is ready to facilitate the passage of Japanese vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and that negotiations with Tokyo are ongoing.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on social media Saturday that the "only beneficiary of our differences is the Zionist entity,” referring to Israel.
Iran held a funeral service Saturday for Minister of Intelligence Esmail Khatib in the holy city of Qom, a center of Shiite Muslim shrines and scholarship, the Islamic Republic’s state-run media reported.
Khatib was killed in an Israeli strike last week. He was one of the top Iranian officials killed in the war including the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
A funeral procession was also held Saturday for Revolutionary Guard spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini, who was killed a day earlier in an Israeli strike, according to Iran’s state-run media.
Iran’s state TV and other semiofficial outlets aired footage showing funeral prayers they said were for Naini.
