Tehran endures ‘worst night of strikes’ amid mixed US messages about more to come

Tehran residents say the Iranian capital has endured what they described as its worst night of aerial bombardment, as the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, followed Donald Trump’s suggestion on Monday the war could soon be over with a warning of more strikes to come.“We are under heavy bombardment and I can hear back-to-back explosions. The place they hit has caught fire. It’s not clear where it exploded, but the buildings are shaking,” Niloufar, who lives in east Tehran said early on Tuesday, speaking under a pseudonym for security reasons. “They are destroying Iran,” they added, saying there were low-flying jets above.Israel, which launched an air campaign against Iran with the US on 28 February, on Tuesday said it had hit a weapons development facility among a wave of strikes.Other residents told the Guardian of rolling blackouts, and that much of Iran’s communications were down.The World Health Organization has urged Iranians to stay inside, saying “black rain” falling after strikes on oil facilities could cause respiratory problems.One Tehran resident described the city as “the last stop before hell”.At least 1,245 civilians have been killed, including 194 children, by the US-Israeli war on Iran, according to the US-based Iran" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="9778" data-entity-type="organization">Human Rights Activists in Iran group.In Lebanon, at least 486 people have been killed by Israeli bombing, while 11 have been killed in Israel. Seven US troops have been confirmed dead and 140 injured, eight severely.As jets bombed Tehran, US officials issued contradictory messages as to how long the war could last.Trump said on Monday that “the war is very complete”, in a call with CBS News. Hours later, Hegseth said the war would end on “our timeline” and that the US would not stop until “the enemy is totally and decisively defeated”, promising Tuesday would see the most intense strikes in Iran yet.“It’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle, or the end, that’s [Trump’s decision] and he’ll continue to communicate that,” Hegseth said.Gen Dan Caine, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, said US forces had hit more than 5,000 sites in Iran in a campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capacity, degrading its navy to reopen the strait of Hormuz, and hitting “deeper into Iran’s military and industrial base”.Iranian officials, meanwhile, said that they would not accept an end to the war until they had inflicted a painful price on the US and Israel. Iran’s head of the national security council, Ali Larijani, said in a social media post that the “nation of Iran does not fear your empty threats”, while implying Iran could target Trump himself.“Even those bigger than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself,” he wrote, responding to the US president’s threat that Iran could be hit “20 times harder” if it blocked the flow of oil through the strait of Hormuz.Trump’s remarks came as US consumers began to feel the pain at the pumps and investors the world over reeled at the skyrocketing price of fuel. Economists said a continued disruption to Gulf oil production and to shipping out of the strait of Hormuz – a choke point for a fifth of the world’s oil transit – could plunge the world into an energy crisis not seen since the 1970s.Iran continued pounding Gulf states and Israel on Tuesday, part of its strategy to inflict as much pain as possible on the US’s influential Gulf allies and on the world economy to raise the price of the war.In Bahrain, a woman was killed and eight more people wounded in an Iranian attack on a residential building in Manama, while firefighters in the UAE tried to put out a blaze near petrochemical plants after an Iranian drone strike. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait said they had intercepted drones over their territory.In the glitzy Gulf city of Dubai, despite the bombardment residents said life was continuing much as normal. People still flocked to the beaches, malls and rooftop bars, although many tourists had fled. Commercial flights also restarted as the country’s airspace tentatively reopened, even as UAE’s leaders condemned the continuing “blatant Iranian aggression”.So far, four people, all migrant workers, have been killed by falling missile debris in the UAE.Nader Farid, 30, who moved from Egypt to Dubai five months ago to work in real estate, interviewed on the beach, said: “They say it’s a war but it’s caused no problem for us, we don’t really see it at all.“The first day was scary when they warned about incoming missiles. But now it’s been more than a week and life here just goes on, only business is a bit slower. I’m from Egypt, I know that nowhere is safe from war, but this one does not feel bad. We are very protected here.”In Tehran, US and Israeli jets operated virtually unchallenged. A resident of central Tehran said: “The air was clearing up a bit yesterday, but last night’s strikes, which I can tell you were the most intense in the past 10 days, were so scary that our buildings were shaking. The glass windows also shattered even though the explosions were not on my street.“Even in the past hour, I heard several explosions, and those planning to flee today are forced to stay home. The sky right now is grey and so polluted … there’s a burning smell of gunpowder in the air,” they added.The skies over Tehran have been grey for the past two days as smoke billowed out of oil facilities in Tehran and the nearby province on Alborz, which Israel targeted on Saturday. Residents reported “black rain” falling from the sky.“The black rain and the acidic rain coming with it is indeed a danger for the population, respiratory mainly,” a WHO spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier, said in Geneva. The WHO backed the advice by Iranian authorities for people to stay inside while air quality remained poor.Many people have fled Tehran in search of safety in rural areas, but older and less able-bodied residents were unable to leave.In Lebanon, Israel continued its strikes against what it described as Hezbollah targets, hitting the southern suburbs of Beirut and the south of the country on Tuesday. Hezbollah continued to target Israeli troops in the south of the country and to launch rocket salvoes and drone swarms at northern Israel, prompting Israel reportedly to consider a widened offensive against the group.The Lebanese Red Cross condemned an Israeli strike on one of its ambulances in the Tyre district of south Lebanon on Monday night, which injured two emergency workers.