The five-week-old conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran intensified sharply on Thursday as US President Donald Trump declared that American forces had largely destroyed Iran's military capacity and were close to achieving their war objectives, while Tehran defiantly rejected any ceasefire and continued missile strikes against Israel and US assets across the region.
Trump's Primetime Address
In a nationally televised address, Trump claimed that Iran had requested a ceasefire — an assertion Iranian officials swiftly and mockingly denied. He warned Tehran that it must agree to a deal within two to three weeks or face strikes on every one of its power plants, threatening to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages" — a phrase widely associated with US Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who supervised the destruction of Japanese cities in World War II. The threat echoed a pattern of similar US ultimatums stretching back to the Korean War, Vietnam, and the post-September 11 era.
Iran Fires Back — Literally
Hours after Trump's speech, Iran launched one of its largest missile barrages in weeks against central Israel, injuring at least 14 people and causing widespread damage. Air raid sirens were activated in northern communities including Hatzor HaGlilit, Amuka, and Kiryat Shmona, where two men were wounded by shrapnel and a house was severely damaged. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei issued a defiant statement: "This is an unjust war that has been imposed on the Iranian people. We have no choice but to fight back strongly." Baghaei also rejected what he called a "vicious cycle of war, negotiations, ceasefire, and then repeating the same pattern."
A spokesman for Tehran's mayor disclosed that US-Israeli strikes have so far damaged approximately 33,000 residential units across the Iranian capital, with 1,869 families facing housing difficulties and 1,245 households relocated to emergency complexes. Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth cited a senior Israeli military officer confirming that the Israeli Air Force had completed all its pre-planned strikes in Iran — targeting military industries and nuclear-linked facilities — with all sites previously classified as "vital and strategic" now rendered non-operational, following roughly 400 sorties against some 400 targets.
Lebanon Front, Iraq and Gulf Struck
The conflict's spillover into Lebanon continued to deepen. The death toll in Lebanon over four weeks of war has reached 1,318, including 125 children, with nearly 4,000 wounded. An entire family — a man, his wife, and their two daughters — was killed in an airstrike in the Nabatiyeh district on Wednesday. Further raids killed at least three people in the southern town of Kfar Sir, and strikes also hit Yatar, Harouf, and Zibdine. A political commentator based in Jaffa told Al Jazeera that Israeli leaders, facing domestic elections at year's end and a public promise of "absolute victory," are preparing to continue the war in Lebanon even if a ceasefire is reached with Iran.
Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) reported that two US-Israeli strikes targeted its Nineveh Operations Command within 24 hours. Kuwait extinguished a fire at its airport following an attack, while Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia reported intercepting incoming missiles. The Israeli army separately announced strikes on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base and a mobile command headquarters in Tehran.
International Reactions
China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called on all parties to "immediately cease military operations," warning that "military means cannot fundamentally solve the problem." Mao specifically flagged the situation in the Strait of Hormuz — where the Iranian parliament has moved to introduce legislation restricting freedom of navigation — as a threat to global energy security and the world economy. Pakistan revealed that no US delegation had arrived on its soil for talks aimed at resolving the conflict, despite Islamabad hosting a regional meeting to explore avenues for ending the war.
South Korea's President Lee Jae-myung called on the National Assembly to fast-track an emergency supplementary budget to offset the economic fallout from the Middle East conflict. The UAE, meanwhile, has begun dispatching emergency crude oil shipments to South Korea under a bilateral agreement, with Seoul confirming receipt of the first delivery. A third US carrier strike group, the USS George H.W. Bush, is expected to arrive in the region within days, joining two already-deployed formations.
Diplomatic Deadlock
NATO allies have been pushing back against US pressure over the war, with one analyst describing Trump's labelling of the alliance as a "paper tiger" as reflecting deep frustration within the administration over burden-sharing. Pakistan's disclosure that no American diplomatic envoy has arrived to seek a settlement underlines the absence of any serious ceasefire track, even as China and regional powers signal growing alarm over the conflict's trajectory and its global economic consequences.