As the conflict intensified on Tuesday, with Israel bombing Lebanon and Tehran targeting US allies in the Gulf, including drones striking the US embassy in Saudi Arabia, US President Donald Trump issued a warning that his strike on Iran would last more than a month.
According to a Saudi defense spokesman, smoke erupted over the US embassy in Riyadh after it was struck by two drones shortly after the US advised Americans to leave all Middle Eastern countries from Egypt eastward. However, there were no early reports of injuries.
New powerful explosions also shook windows in Tehran as fighter jets flew over the Iranian capital, AFP journalists witnessed, as the Pentagon boasted that it had achieved air superiority over the country ruled since 1979 by Islamic clerics virulently opposed to the United States.
Trump said that the war, which began Saturday with a strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was going “substantially” ahead of schedule but that the United States was equipped for a prolonged conflict.
“From the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Trump said at the White House.
For the first time, he also outlined his goals, which included eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, and navy as well as ceasing to assist armed organizations in the area. Notably, the objectives did not include overthrowing the Islamic republic, despite Trump’s call on Saturday for Iranians to rebel and topple their government.
In a startlingly different account of the conflict’s origins, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States, which had increased its military to levels not seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, only launched an attack after discovering that its partner Israel was about to attack Iran.
Iran had been ready to strike US forces in the region in response to Israel, so Trump decided to intervene “pre-emptively” alongside Israel, Rubio asserted.
“The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked — and we believed they would be attacked — that they would immediately come after us,” Rubio told reporters before briefing lawmakers.
Rival Democrats voiced disbelief, with Senator Mark Warner saying it was “unchartered territory” for the United States to be triggered into action by Israel’s perception of a threat.
Iran has responded to the attack by unleashing missiles and drones across the Middle East, threatening explicitly to drive up energy costs, which could wreak havoc on the global economy.
“We will burn any ship that tries to pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” Revolutionary Guards General Sardar Jabbari said of the strategic waterway to the Gulf through which about 20 percent of global seaborne oil travels.
After Qatar’s state-run energy company announced that it had stopped producing liquefied natural gas in response to Iranian attacks, European natural gas prices increased by more than 39%.
Qatar, which had relatively cordial ties with Iran prior to the conflict, claimed to have shot down two Iranian bombers, marking the first time a Gulf Arab nation had struck aircraft from their massive neighbor.
