Kataib Hezbollah, one of several Iran-backed militias in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, saying it had fired on the embassy the previous night. A video verified by The New York Times showed a structure on the embassy’s roof was on fire. Two Iraqi security officials who were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the attack but could not give additional details.
Overnight, U.S. airstrikes hit military targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal. President Trump threatened to bomb Iranian oil infrastructure on the island if Tehran did not allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow opening to the Persian Gulf through which a fifth the world’s oil must transit.
But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps defied Mr. Trump’s threat, asserting in a statement on Saturday that the critical waterway was under its full control and that “any attempt to move or transit will be targeted.”
Claimed in a social media post the United States had “beaten and completely decimated” Iran, Trump nevertheless also called on other countries, including Britain, France and China, to send war ships to the Strait of Hormuz to try to ensure oil tankers could pass, and he promised the United States would coordinate with them. Oil prices have risen steeply since the United States and Israel launched their air war on Iran two weeks ago, rattling world markets.
Here’s what else we are covering:
Bombardments: Israel’s military bombarded the Iranian capital of Tehran on Saturday and the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital of Beirut, while Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group, fired rockets and drones into Israeli territory. A heavy, lifeless atmosphere hung over the streets of Tehran on Saturday, residents said. “No one knows what will happen,” said Meisam, 41, a resident and poet who asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisal. “And we are all somewhere on the edge between depression and hope.”
Death toll: At least 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, Iran’s representative to the United Nations told the Security Council on Wednesday, the latest figure the country has provided. In Lebanon, officials said that 826 people had been killed and over 2,000 others injured.
Attacks on the Gulf: Officials in several Persian Gulf nations reported a wave of aerial attacks overnight as Iran continued to retaliate across the region. In Dubai, debris from an intercepted projectile struck the facade of a building, the city’s authorities said. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it had intercepted 11 drones, while in Bahrain, the interior ministry sounded sirens and urged residents to seek shelter.
Oil shock: The Trump administration has struggled to sell the war with Iran to a skeptical American public, including Mr. Trump’s own right-wing supporters. His advisers appear to have miscalculated how severely Iranian retaliation could disrupt global energy markets. In part as a result of the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices have risen by more than 40 percent, defying efforts to calm markets. On Saturday, U.S. gasoline prices jumped again, to a national average of $3.68 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, an increase of 23.5 percent since the war began.
Mixed messages: While at first Mr. Trump enthusiastically called on the Iranian people to take to the streets and oust the decades-long rule of the Islamic Republic, on Friday he expressed skepticism a popular uprising could succeed right now, saying opponents to the government faced “a big hurdle” because they were likely to be gunned down if they mounted protests.
In an interview with MS Now, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said Iran will “certainly retaliate” for the U.S. attack on Kharg Island on Friday night. He accused the U.S. military of firing missiles from two locations in the United Arab Emirates, including one “very populated area” near Dubai.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war, accusing media outlets of “running hoaxes and news distortions.” The comments on social media came as he reposted a Truth Social post by President Trump that criticized news media for what he claimed was misleading coverage of the war with Iran. Carr, who has vowed to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts, said, “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Major developments — March 14
The New York Times
President Trump on Saturday afternoon reiterated calls for countries that rely on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz to help secure the shipping route. In a Saturday post on Truth Social he said the United States had “completely decimated” Iran and would assist other nations in securing the passage, adding, “This should have always been a team effort, and now it will be.”
Earlier today, Mr. Trump said in a separate post that “hopefully” many countries - including China, France, Japan and South Korea and the United Kingdom - would send naval assets to help secure the strait.
Nations in the Persian Gulf continued to report attacks by drones and missiles on Saturday, but the pace appeared to follow a broader slowdown in Iranian strikes. In Qatar and Kuwait, the daily number of strikes by missiles and drones were in the single digits, according to governments defense reports. The United Arab Emirates defense ministry said its air defenses “engaged” 9 ballistic missiles and 33 drones launched by Iran on Saturday, and Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry reported a handful of drone interceptions during the day. Bahrain’s military said it had destroyed 124 missiles and 203 drones since the start of Iran’s attacks, but did not specify a daily number.
After a day of relative quiet in Beirut, a heavy Israeli airstrike jolted the city as night fell, sending a deep boom rolling across the Lebanese capital. It was followed by the sound of fighter jets roaring in the skies above. The blast was so loud that some residents initially mistook it for thunder.
After two weeks of deadly and destructive bombardment by the United States and Israel, some Iranians who had initially been hopeful when the country’s supreme leader was killed are growing weary of the fighting.
One businessman in his 40s who lives in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said on Friday that the sound of explosions often wakes him around 5 or 5:30 in the morning. The man, who spoke in voice notes on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that while supermarkets, bakeries and some shops were open, the streets of the capital were empty and quiet.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the Strait of Hormuz “is open” to ships that do not belong to the United States, Israel and their allies. “Others are free to pass,” he said in an interview with MS Now. “Of course, many of them prefer not to because of security concerns. This has nothing to do with us.”
Iran claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on ships in and around the vital oil route, including a Thai vessel on Wednesday. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has previously said any vessel that wants to pass through must get permission from Iran.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with MS Now that there was “no problem” with Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The comment came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that Khamenei had been “wounded and likely disfigured,” and three Iranian officials similarly said that Khamenei had suffered injuries, including to his legs, on the first day of the war.
“There are lots of accusations like that,” Araghchi said, adding that Khamenei “is performing his duties according to the constitution and he will continue to do that.”
In Lebanon, the war is raging not only in the streets — it is also in hospitals and clinics.
Medical workers have been killed while treating patients or trying to assist others, underscoring the human cost of the ongoing strikes.
The U.S. embassy in Baghdad released a statement urging all Americans to leave Iraq immediately, saying that Iran-aligned militias have carried out attacks on U.S.-associated targets throughout Iraq, including diplomatic facilities, U.S. companies and hotels frequented by foreigners. The embassy said that “Iran and its aligned militias” pose “a major threat to public safety in Iraq,” and recommended that Americans leave by land routes to Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey because commercial flights are not operating.
The warning is a clear escalation from the embassy’s past recommendations, which 24 hours ago told Americans to keep a “low profile,” but not evacuate. It signals growing U.S. concern about the threat of Iran-aligned militias in Iraq.
Two weeks into the war with Iran, the Israeli military is relaxing national emergency restrictions in parts of the country. According to updated guidelines for the public, schools and universities should be able to reopen on Monday in much of southern Israel, as well as in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, as long as a fortified shelter is available. The loosened rules reflect assessments from U.S. and Israeli officials that Iran has been able to fire fewer and lighter missile barrages at Israel over the course of the war, in part because the Israeli military says it has been bombing and destroying the munitions and their launchers on the ground in Iran. Schools will still remain closed in the major metropolitan centers of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as northern Israel, according to the new guidelines.
The Lebanese health ministry raised the number of people killed in Lebanon during the Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah to 826, according to the country’s state media. More than 2,000 people in the country have been wounded since the war began.
An overnight strike in Baghdad hit a headquarters of the Iran-aligned militia, Kataib Hezbollah, killing three people, including one of its commanders, known as Abu Ali al-Amiri, according to an official from the group as well as an Iraqi security official. Both asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, was asked on Saturday about comments from some Israeli officials suggesting that the devastation in Gaza could be used as a model for Lebanon. He responded that such a scenario must be avoided. On Friday, Israel dropped leaflets over Beirut, the Lebanese capital, that referred to its invasion of Gaza as “a remarkable success.” Guterres said: “What happened in Gaza is a disaster that must be avoided anywhere else in the world.”
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, paid tribute to the United Nations peacekeepers who are positioned along the borderlands between Lebanon and Israel. Last week, three Blue Helmet soldiers serving with the Ghanaian contingent were seriously injured when they came under intense exchanges of fire. “Attacks against peacekeepers and positions are completely unacceptable, and they must stop,” Guterres said. “They are in breach of international law and may constitute war crimes.”
The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said on Saturday that one of its positions came under heavy machine-gun fire overnight. One peacekeeper was lightly injured while heading to a shelter. An investigation has been launched.
President Trump on Saturday called on other nations to send war ships to Iran to try to ensure the Strait of Hormuz was open for oil tankers to pass through. In a post on Truth Social, Trump first indicated ships from other countries had already agreed to send the ships but then said he hoped they would be on the way.
“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated,” he wrote.
With high gas prices hurting him politically, Trump has said the U.S. might begin accompanying oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz even while war rages.
But Trump has also long called on other countries to do more to protect their own ships through the waterway. In 2019, he wrote on Twitter that China and Japan “should be protecting their own ships on what has always been a dangerous journey.”
Sitting on a weathered bench overlooking the Mediterranean on a recent evening in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, Fidaa Malhas vented her frustration at being uprooted.
Ms. Malhas, 38, usually lives in Sidiqeen, a town in southern Lebanon, where she works in a supermarket. Like many across the country, she was displaced by Israeli airstrikes. With no shelter in Beirut, she has been sleeping outdoors by the beach.
Guterres said the Lebanese people had not chosen this war, which has been raging for two weeks. “They were dragged into it,” he said. He added that his message to the warring parties was: “Stop the fighting. Stop the bombing. There is no military solution — only diplomacy, dialogue and full implementation of the U.N. Charter and Security Council resolutions.”
Guterres said he had visited a shelter for displaced people and was “deeply saddened” by the testimonies he heard. With Israel’s order to evacuate the south, the region “risks being turned into a wasteland,” he said. Southern Beirut, which is under sweeping evacuation orders from Israel, “risks being bombed into oblivion.” It is “tragic to see all this happening in a country that has contributed so much to world civilization.”
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, is in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. He opened a news conference by highlighting Lebanon’s long history of religious and faith-based coexistence. He noted that Muslims were fasting for Ramadan while Christians were observing Lent. “It breaks my heart to see this period shattered by escalating attacks,” he said. Earlier, he made an appeal for $300 million in humanitarian aid for civilians affected by the war.
The war has threatened India’s supply of liquefied petroleum gas, the fuel used to power the country’s homes, restaurants and industries. After days of communication with Iran, two Indian oil tankers passed safely through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a news conference. Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman, said that the two vessels, the Shivalik and the Nanda Devi, which are collectively carrying 92,700 metric tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas.
Iranian ballistic missiles have continued to set off air raid sirens across Israel on Saturday. Most of them have been intercepted without casualties, but the most recent attack injured two people, including a boy in “moderate to serious condition,” according to Israel’s emergency service.
After President Trump threatened to “wipe out” infrastructure on Kharg Island if Iranian forces continued to block the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said the critical waterway was under the full control of its Navy. “The passage of oil tankers and commercial ships belonging to aggressors and their allies through the Strait of Hormuz remains prohibited,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by Iranian media. “Any attempt to move or transit will be targeted.”
Israeli airstrikes are expanding into areas where the Iranian-backed miltia Hezbollah does not exercise control, hitting Beirut’s largely Christian northern suburbs. A strike on Saturday hit an apartment building in the Bourj Hammoud district, sending a deafening boom across part of the city. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least one person was killed and four others injured. The same building had been hit the night before.
After the overnight strikes on Kharg Island, the Iranian oil hub, U.S. Central Command has released a video that it says shows the “large-scale precision strike” on the site. The footage shows an aerial view, labelled as “unclassified” that appears to show a number of strikes on roadways and what appears to be an airstrip. President Trump had earlier posted a version of the same clip on Truth Social. The island hosts facilities that handled about 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports before the war.
The Israeli military said it had launched a bombing sortie across Tehran overnight into Saturday morning, striking dozens of sites in the city. The Israeli military said it had attacked the Iranian government’s main space research center, which it said was developing military satellites for intelligence collection. The military also said it had struck a factory that helped build Iranian aerial defense systems. There was no immediate comment from the Iranian authorities on either claim.
A key command unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps urged civilians in the United Arab Emirates to stay away from ports and docks, accusing the U.S. military of using them to carry out attacks on Iran. According to its statement, carried on state media, the Guards said the launch sites of American missiles in the U.A.E. were legitimate targets. Iran has been targeting sites in the Emirates throughout the war, including Dubai’s airport, and this week warned that financial institutions linked to the U.S. and Israel in the Emirates could become potential targets.
After two weeks of deadly and destructive bombardment by the U.S. and Israel, some Iranians who had initially been hopeful when supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed are growing weary of the fighting.
A businessman in his 40s who lives in Tehran said on Friday that the sound of explosions often wakes him up around 5 or 5:30 in the morning. The man, who spoke in voice notes on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that while supermarkets, bakeries, and some shops were open, the streets of the capital were empty and quiet.
At night, the city is completely taken over by security forces, he said, and no one dares to protest. He added that some Iranians feel that the war facilitated the transition to a new supreme leader, something that the regime might have otherwise struggled to do.
At least 56 historical buildings and cultural sites in Iran have been seriously damaged in U.S. and Israeli strikes, Iranian media reported on Saturday, citing the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The capital, Tehran, tops the list with 19 damaged sites, the ministry added. UNESCO, the United Nations agency responsible for protecting global cultural heritage, has confirmed that several World Heritage sites had been damaged in the war, including the Golestan Palace in Tehran.
U.S. gasoline prices rose on Saturday to a national average of $3.68 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, an increase of 23.5 percent since the war began. Over the same period, the global price of oil is up 40 percent, ending on Friday at $103.14 a barrel. The price of gas typically trails movements in the cost of oil.
The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, is in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where he announced late Friday a humanitarian appeal for $308.3 million to support civilians affected by the war. More than 830,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced since the conflict began nearly two weeks ago, according to the country’s Ministry of Social Affairs. “I am here on a visit of solidarity with the people of Lebanon,” Guterres said in a statement. “Solidarity in words must be matched by solidarity in action.”
Iran fired more ballistic missiles at Israel overnight on Saturday, setting off air-raid sirens across the country. The Israeli military also issued alerts for possible drone attacks in several communities near the Lebanese border, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group. There were no reports of casualties. At least 12 people have been killed in Israel since the war began late last month.
The Iran-allied militia Kataib Hezbollah said it carried out an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Saturday, saying it had targeted a C-RAM interception system, according to the group’s news outlet, Sabereen. It also released a video of the strike that appeared to show a fire in the embassy compound. Two Iraqi security officials who were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the attack but could not give additional details. U.S. Central Command and the Embassy in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Officials in several Gulf nations reported a wave of aerial attacks throughout the region on Saturday morning. In Dubai, debris from an intercepted projectile struck the facade of a building, the city’s authorities said. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it intercepted 11 drones. In Bahrain, sirens sounded and residents were urged to seek shelter, the interior ministry said.
Elsewhere in the region, the U.S. State Department ordered non-emergency U.S. government employees and their families in Oman to leave the country.
Kharg Island, a small coral landmass that serves as Iran’s oil export hub, was the location of a major U.S. military bombing raid on Friday, President Trump said on social media. The island plays a key role in Iran’s economy.
U.S. military officials said the strikes were aimed at storage sites for missiles and mines. An Iranian official warned that any attack on Kharg Island’s oil and gas infrastructure would immediately halt operations at the export hub.
After the U.S. bombed military installations on a major oil export hub and threatened to target energy and oil infrastructure, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that, if the United States followed through with its threat, Iran would retaliate by immediately attacking “all oil, energy and economic infrastructure of oil companies across the region that have American stock shares or cooperate with America. We will turn them into a pile of ash.”
President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had conducted a large bombing raid on Friday on Kharg Island, a key port and Iran’s oil export hub. Mr. Trump said the raid had “totally obliterated” military forces on the island, but that he had directed the Pentagon not to damage its oil infrastructure, “for reasons of decency.”
The global price of oil has surged by 40 percent since the United States and Israel began the war with Iran last month.
Reporting from Washington
About 2,500 Marines aboard as many as three warships are heading to the Middle East from the Indo-Pacific region, as Iran increases its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, two U.S. officials said.
The shift, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as Iran’s response to nearly two weeks of aerial bombardment and long-range artillery strikes has proved more resilient than Trump administration officials anticipated.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Paul Sonne
Ivan Nechepurenko reported from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Paul Sonne from Berlin.
The U.S. decision to temporarily lift some restrictions on Russian oil has delivered a geopolitical victory to the Kremlin on top of the boon that Russia’s war-strained budget is already receiving from soaring energy prices.
The American move, announced on Thursday, is intended to ease an energy shock that has accompanied the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and at times sent the price of oil soaring over $100 a barrel.
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