Caolán
Magee, Mariamne Everett and Umut Uras
- Iran continues to strike Israel and US assets in the Gulf as the number of casualties rises across the region amid intensifying Israeli and US attacks on Iran.
- Qatar says its air force “successfully shot down” two Su24 fighter jets incoming from Iran as well as seven ballistic missiles and five Iranian drones.
- In Iran, the joint US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 555 people with security chief Ali Larijani refuting US media reports he made a new push to resume nuclear talks with Washington.
- In Kuwait, the Defence Ministry says “several” US warplanes crashed in the country, with all the crew surviving. The US military said the jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences.
- In Lebanon, at least 31 people have been killed in Israeli attacks launched after Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at northern Israel. Lebanon’s prime minister announced a ban on Hezbollah’s military activities.
Dave DeCamp
The president said it's likely
more Americans will be killed
President Trump said in an
interview with the Daily Mail on Sunday that he expects his new war with Iran
to last “four weeks or so” as US and Israeli strikes continue to pound Iran and
Iranian missiles and drones continue to make an impact in Israel and target US
bases in the region.“It’s always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so. It’s always been about a four-week process, so – as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks – or less,” the president said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US is racing to deplete Iran’s ability to fire missiles and drones before its stockpiles of interceptors run out. The US military used an enormous number of THAAD, Patriot, and SM-3 interceptors defending Israel and its base in Qatar during the 12-Day War, and is now using many more in the current war.
Trump also addressed the three US troops who were killed by an Iranian attack on a US base in Kuwait, the first US deaths acknowledged by US Central Command. “They’re great people. And, you know, we expect that to happen, unfortunately. Could happen continuous – it could happen again,” he said.
The president also said that he expects more Americans to be killed in a short video statement he released later in the day. “And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is,” he said.
According to the Daily Mail, Trump “acknowledged that the three casualties were the first in his second term” because no Americans were killed during the attack on Venezuela, but two US National Guard soldiers and an American civilian interpreter were killed by a member of Syria’s security forces in an attack in Palmyra, Syria, in December.
So far, the president has not delivered a lengthy address to the American people about the war and hasn’t held a press briefing. Senior Trump administration officials were also notably absent from Sunday news shows, as they are likely afraid to answer questions about the rationale for starting the war since they have made blatantly false or unproven claims to justify the attack.
US Central Command on Sunday confirmed that three US troops have been killed and several more have been wounded since the US and Israel launched the war against Iran on Saturday morning, as Iranian missiles and drones have struck US bases in the region in retaliation.
“As of 9:30 am ET, March 1, three US service members have been killed in action and five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury,” CENTCOM wrote on X.
“Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions — and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing,” the command added.
When announcing the war in a short video statement on Saturday morning, President Trump said he expected there would be American casualties. “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. But that happens in war,” he said.
CENTCOM didn’t specify where or how the American troops were killed, but US officials speaking to The New York Times said they were hit at an Army base in Kuwait. US bases have also been hit in Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, and likely in other parts of the region.
Iran has also been able to launch significant missile strikes on Israel. On Sunday, an Iranian missile hit the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, killing at least nine people and wounding 28.
The Iranian Red Crescent said Saturday that at least 201 people have been killed by US and Israeli attacks in Iran, but the number is likely higher now as heavy strikes have continued. According to local authorities, at least 148 people, mostly girls between the ages of seven and 11, were killed by a US or Israeli strike on an elementary school in southern Iran.
HRANA, a US-funded and US-based NGO that’s very critical of the Iranian government, has said that it confirmed at least 133 civilians were killed in the US and Israeli strikes on Saturday. Iranian state media has confirmed the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders.
Former US House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Sunday urged Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to speak out against the US war against Iran, citing their previous opposition to a conflict with the Islamic Republic.
“[Vance] and [Gabbard] you both need to speak out against the war in Iran. People are paying attention, very close attention. Silence won’t cut it. You were both on record repeatedly, publicly, and loudly against going to war with Iran,” Greene wrote on X.
“Our friend, Charlie Kirk was adamantly against war with Iran. You cannot be silent. Americans are dying. You both know this is not what we campaigned for and this is 100% what we said would not happen. We said, I said, you said: NO MORE FOREIGN WARS AND NO MORE REGIME CHANGE. All we wanted was America FIRST. This is not it,” she added.
During the first Trump administration, then-House Rep. Gabbard ran a presidential campaign and made “no more regime change wars” a major plank of her campaign. She was also harshly critical of President Trump’s escalations against Iran, which included the January 2020 killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
“This was very clearly an act of war by this president without any kind of authorization or declaration of war from Congress, clearly violating the Constitution,” Gabbard said at the time. Trump also launched the current war with Iran without any authorization from Congress.
Amid the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, a clip of Vance warning against the idea of war with the Islamic Republic has resurfaced on X. “Our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country,” he said while on the campaign trail in October 2024.
Before the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on Saturday morning and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the CIA assessed that if the Iranian leader were killed, his rule would likely be replaced by “hardline” figures from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Reuters has reported.
The report said that the assessment was produced over the past two weeks as the US was building up its forces in the region and preparing to launch the war. The New York Times reported that the CIA had been tracking Khamenei for months and knew that he would be at his compound in Tehran meeting senior Iranian officials on Saturday morning, where he was hit by a joint US-Israeli strike.
Since Khamenei’s death, the Iranian government has created a council, headed by Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, to govern the country until Iran’s “Assembly of Experts” chooses a new supreme leader. Killing Khamenei does not appear to have impacted Iran’s military operations as Iranian missiles and drones continue to hit targets across the region, including in Israel and countries hosting US military bases.
During previous confrontations with the US, including the 12-Day War in June 2025 and when President Trump assassinated Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Iran’s response to the US attacks was minimal and more symbolic, as it provided notice ahead of time. But now, Iran has targeted multiple US bases, and there’s no sign Tehran is interested in de-escalation.
According to an unconfirmed report from Israel’s Ynet, after killing Khamenei, President Trump sought a ceasefire, but the idea was rejected by Iran. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, says that leadership in Tehran now believes that if it agrees to a ceasefire without inflicting enough costs on the US, the US and Israel will just attack again in the future.
“Iran understands that many in the American security establishment had been convinced that Iran’s past restraint reflected weakness and an inability or unwillingness to face the US in a direct war,” Parsi wrote on X. “Tehran is now doing everything it can to demonstrate the opposite – despite the massive cost it itself will pay. Ironically, the assassination of Khamenei facilitated this shift.”
Kyle Anzalone
President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is widely unpopular with the American people.
According to a Reuters poll conducted on Sunday, only 27% of Americans support the US attacking Iran. 43% of Americans oppose the war.
Trump ordered the war on Iran on Saturday morning. The US and Iran were in the process of negotiating a deal when the war started. The initial strikes killed several top Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader.
On Sunday afternoon, the Department of War reported the US had bombed over 1,000 targets in Iran.
Tehran has responded by attacking Israel and US bases in the Middle East. At least ten people have been killed in Israel, and Central Command reports three US soldiers have been killed.
US and Israeli strikes on Iran have also hit civilian targets. On Saturday, a girls’ school was bombed, killing over 150 people. On Sunday, a US or Israeli strike damaged an Iranian hospital.
Congress has not issued a Declaration of War or otherwise authorized the President to attack Iran. The House is scheduled to vote this week on a War Powers Act resolution intended to constrain the President’s war-making against Iran.
Mahmoud Aslan
Several
hours after a bomb struck a girls’ elementary school and killed 165, a strike
on the town of Lamerd killed teenagers in a gymnasium.
LAMERD, IRAN—Dozens of teenage
girls were attending their regular training sessions of volleyball, basketball,
and gymnastics in the main sports hall in Lamerd, a city near the Persian
coast, when a missile slammed into the building at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Additional strikes hit two nearby residential areas and a hall adjacent to a
school, as the U.S. and Israel pounded targets across Iran on the first day of
what President Donald Trump declared as a regime change war. According to local
officials cited in Iranian state media, the strikes on Lamerd killed at least
18 civilians and wounded scores more.“Within seconds of the missile strike, the windows shattered into thousands of fragments. Sports equipment, balls, tables, barriers flew through the air. Black smoke filled the space. The smell of gunpowder made breathing almost impossible. The screaming began immediately, layered with the sound of debris collapsing and concrete falling from the ceiling,” Mohammed Saed Khorshedy, a 29-year-old worker at the gym who witnessed the attack, told Drop Site News.
The facility sits on the outskirts of Lamerd, a quiet city in Fars province, near the surrounding Zagros mountain range, giving the natural landscape an uneven, rugged character. The rectangular building is at a crossroads connecting the city center to Bandar Assaluyeh, an industrial port and energy hub on the Persian Gulf.
The sports hall was poorly maintained, with deteriorating walls surrounded by a low perimeter fence. A high arched metal roof sat atop a reinforced concrete frame and a rubber floor for volleyball and other sports. The missile struck the middle of the roof, destroying a large part of the building. The main court, small spectator stands, changing rooms, and coach’s office were all reduced to rubble.
Hossein Gholami, a 50-year-old elementary school teacher, was returning from work when he heard the blast. His 16-year-old daughter, Zahra, was training in the hall.
“I noticed a strange gathering of people at the corner of the street leading to the sports hall,” Gholami told Drop Site. “The screaming was rising from a distance. A colleague ran toward me, waving his arm, and said in a shaken voice: ‘Zahra, the hall, there has been an explosion.’ I felt as though the ground had split beneath my feet. Everything around me became hazy,” he said. “I ran immediately, and with every step the columns of black smoke rose higher, while the smell of fire and flames entered my nose with force.”
When he reached the site, he came upon a scene of horror. “The continuous screaming of the injured mixed with the sounds of secondary explosions. The ground was covered in debris and shattered glass. It was difficult to move with all the rubble. Ambulances arrived after about twenty minutes, but most of the injured were in critical condition,” he said. “The smell of blood and burns covered everything…the survivors were injured with fractures and burns from the shrapnel.”
Later, he learned that Zahra was among the dead. “Every time I close my eyes I see her face, her smile, and I hear the sound of the explosion,” Gholami said.
There has been no public statement by the U.S. or Israeli on the Lamerd strikes. CENTCOM and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bombing of the sports hall in Lamerd came hours after a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, another small city on the Persian Gulf, further east near the Strait of Hormuz, that, according to the state-run IRNA news agency, killed 165 people, many of them schoolgirls. Neither the U.S. nor Israel claimed that strike. The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in the area of Minab; CENTCOM’s spokesperson said they were “looking into” reports. Another strike hit an adjacent IRGC naval base and the USS Abraham Lincoln is stationed nearby.
The governor of Lamerd said “The United States and the Zionist regime fired missiles at the sports hall while female students were playing inside,” according to the Fars news agency.
As of Sunday morning, the Iranian Red Crescent and state-linked media have reported preliminary casualty figures of over 200 people killed and more than 740 injured across Iran, though the actual toll is expected to be significantly higher. Iran launched retaliatory strikes across nine countries in the region: Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with a total of 18 killed, including three U.S. servicemen, according to a tally by Al Jazeera.
Mir Dehdasht, an administrative officer at Azad university whose 15-year-old daughter Rabab Dehdasht was training at the sports hall, was at home when a neighbor knocked on his door to tell him the facility had been attacked.
“I ran immediately toward the place, and when I arrived, I found burning cars and rubble scattered everywhere,” Dehdasht told Drop Site. “The injured were bleeding heavily, some had lost consciousness on the ground, others were screaming without stopping. Their voices were deafening.”
He continued: “Blood and dust covered everything, and the rubble blocked quick access to the building. Rescue teams were working with extreme care to bring out the injured athletes and the bodies of the victims. The screaming filled everything,” he said. “Robab did not survive the force of the explosion, while others survived but with life-threatening injuries. I felt complete helplessness.”
Farhad Za’eri, a retired Ministry of Health employee, received the news of the strike by phone. His 16-year-old daughter Elahe, was also there.
“I left immediately with some neighbors. The roads were unusually congested and there was a sense of anxiety throughout the neighborhood,” Za’eri told Drop Site. “When we arrived, the rescue teams were already there and they had begun bringing out the bodies one by one.”
“I did not know what I would see,” he continued, “but when I got close to the place where they were bringing out the victims, I felt a heaviness in my chest. Every body that was lifted carried the mark of pain, and the rescue effort was trying to distinguish between those who could still be saved and those whose lives had ended,” he said. “There were voices from every direction, everyone was trying to understand what had happened. In that moment, everything inside me was silent, and I was waiting for them to tell me about my daughter Elahe.”
Elahe’s body was eventually brought out. “My daughter’s body was completely destroyed. It appears she was directly hit by the strike. The lower part of her body was completely destroyed,” Za’eri said. “How can a father describe what he feels when he sees his child like this? All my memories of her, her laugh, her training, her dreams, collapsed before my eyes in a single moment.”
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