Iran stepped up its attacks on economic targets and US missions across the Middle East on Tuesday as President Donald Trump warned it was “too late” for the Islamic republic to seek talks to escape the war.
As drones and missiles crashed into oil facilities and US embassies in the Gulf, Washington’s ally Israel bombarded targets in Iran and pushed troops deeper into Lebanon to battle the Tehran-backed militia Hezbollah.
“Their air defence, air force, navy, and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said: ‘Too late!’,” Trump posted on his social media site, two days after saying he had agreed to talks and four days after US and Israeli strikes wiped out much of Iran’s senior leadership.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday ruled out for now any negotiations with the US.
According to Iranian media, US and Israeli strikes had targeted the building housing the committee that is to elect Iran’s new supreme leader.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had carried out air strikes on Iran’s presidential office. “The military has launched a ninth wave of strikes in Tehran. The Air Force has now begun a large-scale wave of strikes targeting the Iranian terror regime’s infrastructure in Tehran,” the Israeli military said.
The Israeli military also said it had killed the commander of Iran’s Quds Force in Lebanon, Daoud Ali Zadeh.
At almost the same moment, the US embassy in Riyadh — which was damaged and briefly caught fire overnight in an Iranian drone strike — on Tuesday warned of an imminent attack in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran, home to much of the kingdom’s oil and gas installations.
Iran’s Red Crescent has reported 787 people killed in the Islamic Republic so far. Six US soldiers have died in the conflict and about a dozen people in Israel.
