Donald Trump promised an unrelenting military campaign against Iran on Friday, using crude language to describe the country’s leaders and vowing that strikes would intensify in the days to come. His comments came as the United States and Israel simultaneously launched new waves of air attacks on Tehran, and as Iranian forces escalated their own campaign against Gulf states with waves of missiles and drones. The regional conflict has now drawn in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Dubai within the span of a single day.
Saudi Arabia reported shooting down nearly 50 Iranian drones in multiple waves on Friday, in one of the most significant defensive operations the kingdom has conducted in recent years. In Oman, two people were killed and an industrial area in the Sohar region was struck when drones crashed. Dubai’s International Financial Centre, a hub for banks and international wealth managers, sustained damage when debris from an intercepted projectile struck a building. Qatar issued evacuation warnings for parts of Doha before missile interceptions were confirmed.
In Tehran, residents described a city under siege from above. One 42-year-old shopkeeper said she had taped newspapers over her windows and could barely sleep as explosions rang out through the night. A retired professor described the desperation of people unable to flee due to fuel shortages, with sick relatives at home and rubble filling the streets. Iranian authorities reported over 1,300 deaths in the country since the war began with the Israeli strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Trump late Friday declared that US forces had completely destroyed every military facility on Kharg Island, Iran’s most important oil export terminal, in what he called one of the most powerful bombing raids in Middle East history. He warned that the island’s oil infrastructure would be the next target if Iran continued to interfere with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The waterway is crucial to global energy markets, with roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies passing through it.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed a death toll of at least 13 American service members since the conflict began, including six killed in a tanker aircraft crash in Iraq. A French soldier was also killed in Iraq in a drone strike by a pro-Iranian militia. Hegseth maintained that Iran’s leadership was on the run, going underground to escape the strikes, and repeated his claim that newly installed supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei had been wounded and disfigured.