The U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran expanded into a wider international crisis on Wednesday after NATO air defenses shot down an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Turkey, the United States sank an Iranian navy ship in international waters and several European nations deployed military assets to the region to protect their interests.
U.S. officials reaffirmed that there would be no letup in American and Israeli strikes, which they said had devastated Iran’s ballistic missile program and its naval fleet. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said American and Israeli warplanes would soon gain total control of Iranian airspace, allowing them to pick off targets and deliver “death and destruction all day long.”
Just before Mr. Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 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 that had been heading toward Turkish airspace.
The ministry did not say what the missile’s intended target was, and Iran did not comment on the claim. But an attack on Turkey, a NATO member that hosts a major U.S. military base, would mark a dangerous escalation in Iran’s retaliatory targeting of neighboring countries.
In a sign of the growing international concern, China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, said it would send a special envoy to the Middle East to help conduct conflict mediation efforts, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The U.S. State Department ordered more employees to leave their posts at embassies and consulates in four more countries, and the United Kingdom, France and Greece said they were deploying military assets to the region to defend their citizens and interests.
Financial markets appeared to stabilize after days of turmoil, as investors assessed the effects of rising energy costs and fears that a prolonged war could send those costs surging. But gasoline prices in the United States jumped again, and are now up 20 cents this week.
Hundreds of people in Iran have been killed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes, but Iran’s leaders have vowed not to bow to the bombing campaign, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait all announced new Iranian attacks on Wednesday.
Top Iranian officials were deliberating 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 Ayatollah Khamenei’s ideology, he would become “an unequivocal target for elimination.”
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. Dozens were feared dead after 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. Read more ›
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. A top official told IRNA that millions of people were expected to attend and the 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 ›
Smoke billowed on Wednesday after a strike in Khiam, Lebanon. The escalating conflict has prompted some refugees to return home to Syria.Credit...Rabih Daher/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Thousands of Syrians living in Lebanon have fled to their home country in recent days after Lebanon was dragged back into conflict, with Israeli airstrikes bombarding several cities.
Earlier this week, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, fired rockets and launched drones toward Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with a barrage of airstrikes on Beirut and across more than 50 villages in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing dozens of people, according to authorities.
Syrian officials said that at least 40,000 Syrians had returned to the country from Lebanon over the past four days.
At the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria on Wednesday, suitcases and other belongings were tied to the roofs of vehicles heading back — suggesting that some of the returns may be permanent.
Among them was Kheder Shaabo, 22. He was at home in Bint Jbeil, a town in southern Lebanon, when his building was hit in an Israeli airstrike at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, he said. The windows shattered and glass shards cut his face.
“I felt great fear and I ran,” he said in an interview with The New York Times at the border. One side of his face and neck was visibly injured. “I saw the neighbors lying on the ground. In that moment I decided to return. I don’t have a house, but I’m going back to my family.”
Next to him stood his brother, who was also injured in the strike. His head was wrapped with bandages and his face was also scarred.
The pair came to Lebanon five years ago to work amid the economic crisis in Syria that resulted from the nearly 14-year civil war there.
Now, Mr. Shaabo said, they plan to return to their hometown, Aleppo, and try to rebuild their lives.
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Damage from an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Syrian officials said that more than 25,000 Syrians have returned to the country from Lebanon over the past three days.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Shaabo had remained in Lebanon during the previous war that broke out in 2024 between Hezbollah and Israel. But this time, he said, staying felt too dangerous.
At one point during the war in Lebanon in 2024, Amani Mubarak al-Hassan, 26, moved back to Syria with her three children. But they returned to Lebanon after two months to be with her husband, Ayed al-Hussein, who could not join them in Syria because he was wanted for military conscription by the now ousted Assad regime.
The threat of conscription, and frequent airstrikes, had prompted the family to first move to Lebanon years ago from their home in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzour. They lived in several cities, most recently in Sidon in southern Lebanon where they worked as caretakers of an apartment building.
“I planned to eventually return” to Syria, Mr. Al-Hussein said, “but we said, let’s wait for things to settle down a bit.”
Since the Assad regime was ousted in December 2024, many Syrians who fled the country during its civil war have wanted to return home, but have been waiting for signs that the new government can restore security and economic stability.
With drone and missile attacks now affecting many countries in the Middle East, Syria feels like a safer choice for some, even during its uncertain political transition.
For Ms. Al-Hassan and her husband, who is no longer subject to conscription in Syria, the catalyst was when their neighbor’s building in Sidon was hit in an airstrike this week.
“Is there anything better than one’s own country?” Mr. Al-Hussein said. “As soon as I arrived, I knelt down. I don’t have a house, unfortunately, but I’ll go back to my father’s house and we’ll manage there.”
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