The U.S. announced the names of four soldiers who were killed by an Iranian drone on Sunday. The leader of the U.S. Central Command said more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters, two aircraft carriers and bombers were participating in the fighting.
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- Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
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- Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
- Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
- Iranian Foreign Media Department, via Reuters
- Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
- Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
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- Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
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The Defense Department released the names of four Army Reserve soldiers who were killed over the weekend in Kuwait by a drone attack on U.S. military facilities amid President Trump’s widening war with Iran.
The slain soldiers are Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Fla.; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Neb.; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minn.; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa. All four were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, Iowa.
With the Middle East war widening and no sign of when it will end, nations outside the region were struggling on Tuesday to get hundreds of thousands of their people out of countries who were left unable to leave the region.
The Israeli and U.S. bombardment of Iran continued, Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone barrage at Gulf nations intensified, and Israeli forces pushed into Lebanon to halt Hezbollah rocket fire, while global financial markets slumped on fears of inflation as the price of oil soared.
President Trump said that Iranian officials whom the United States had eyed as potential new leaders had been killed in the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, and that the worst outcome would be that whoever takes over Iran could be “as bad” as their predecessors — striking admissions of the uncertainty shrouding how the war will unfold and what will follow it.
Iranian clerics were expected on Wednesday to announce a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who was killed on Saturday by a targeted Israeli airstrike.
European countries and India were rushing to establish escape routes for their nationals in the region, including organizing emergency flights. France said some 400,000 of its people were in the Middle East.
The United States had said on Monday that Americans should leave more than a dozen countries, from Egypt to Iraq, on their own. After President Trump was asked on Tuesday why the government was not helping them evacuate, the State Department announced that it was “facilitating charter flights from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan,” and that 9,000 Americans had left the region on their own.
Millions of foreign nationals live in the Persian Gulf states, most of them low-wage workers from South Asia and the Philippines.
In a legally mandated notification to Congress, Mr. Trump said the strikes on Iran were carried out because of “the threat to the United States” and U.S. forces in the region, to advance U.S. national interests and “in collective self-defense of our regional allies, including Israel.” He also said “it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.”
Speaking to reporters at the start of a White House meeting with Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, Mr. Trump claimed that Iran had been about to attack its neighbors and Israel, and he made the decision to go to war on Saturday to pre-empt that action. He had previously said Iran was on the verge of having missiles that could reach the United States, though officials with access to U.S. intelligence have said that Mr. Trump exaggerated the immediacy of any threat Iran posed to the United States.
More than 800 people have been killed in the conflict across the Middle East since Saturday.
Iran succession: Asked whom he would like to take over Iran, Mr. Trump gave a strikingly blunt answer. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. “Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”
Congressional updates: Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a closed-door briefing with members of the Senate, and had another scheduled with the members of the House. Mr. Rubio told reporters that the Trump administration had “over-complied” with the War Powers act’s rules on notifying Congress about military action. Democrats leaving the first session said it did not provide any additional clarity on the president’s strategic aims in attacking Iran.
Hezbollah attacks: Fighting escalated between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said that it had targeted weapons storage facilities in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, as Hezbollah said it had fired attack drones at Israel. Israel’s advance in southern Lebanon prompted fears that it could be weighing a wider ground assault there. Read more ›
Navy escorts? President Trump said the United States might deploy its Navy to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway south of Iran through which a fifth of the world’s oil travels. Tanker traffic through the strait has nearly stopped because of the fear the ships might be attacked. Read more ›
Death toll: Iran’s Red Crescent Society, the country’s main humanitarian relief organization, said the death toll had risen to 787 since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Saturday. Six U.S. service members and dozens of people in Lebanon also have been killed. In one southern Iranian town, thousands of mourners filled the streets during the funeral for victims of an airstrike on a girls’ elementary school, according to footage and images verified by The New York Times. The bombing of the school on Saturday killed at least 175 people. Read more ›
The State Department has ordered nonemergency U.S. government employees and the families of U.S. government personnel from the consulates in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Karachi to leave the country because of safety risks. At least 22 people were killed on Sunday as thousands gathered across Pakistan to denounce U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, including 10 who died as crowds tried to storm the U.S. consulate in Karachi.
The U.S. State Department has increased its travel advisory on Oman to level 3, “reconsider travel.” Oman is in the Persian Gulf region, now a large war zone, and tried to act as a mediator between the United States and Iran on nuclear talks last month. Those talks failed at averting the U.S.-Israel war against Iran.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThere is little indication so far on Wednesday of hostilities easing. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed 10 drones and two cruise missiles, and the Israeli military said it had detected missiles launched from Iran toward Israel. The Israeli military also said early Wednesday that it had launched a “broad wave of strikes” in Iran. And Adm. Brad Cooper of the U.S. Central Command said Tuesday evening that the U.S. military was conducting “24/7 strikes into Iran from seabed to space and cyberspace.”
The United States government has urged Americans to leave the Middle East as the conflict worsens, but many are having trouble finding a way out.
If you are stranded or have had your travel plans affected by the conflict, we want to hear about it. Tell us here.
The Israeli military has issued an evacuation warning for the residents of 13 villages in Lebanon, saying it was responding to Hezbollah activities there. Earlier on Wednesday, it issued an evacuation warning for 16 towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
The State Department said late Tuesday that nonemergency U.S. government employees and the families of U.S. government employees have been authorized to leave Cyprus because of safety risks. The authorities in Cyprus are on heightened alert after an Iranian-made drone crashed into a British military base there. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said earlier Tuesday that his government was deploying a warship and helicopters with antidrone capabilities to help defend Cyprus.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe tumult in global markets continued for a third day as investors in Asia, worried that an escalating war would keep driving up energy costs, dumped stocks. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, all highly dependent on imports of oil and natural gas, were among the hardest hit. In South Korea, the Kospi index plunged so rapidly that trading was temporarily suspended to stem the selling.
The State Department said late Tuesday that non-essential government employees and the families of U.S government employees in Saudi Arabia and Oman were authorized to leave these countries because of safety risks. Earlier, it had ordered non-essential staff in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain and Jordan to leave those countries.
The Israeli military announced early on Wednesday, for the third time since midnight in Israel, that it had identified missiles launched from Iran. It said “defensive systems were operating to intercept the threat” and warned the public to remain in protected spaces.
A vessel seven nautical miles from the United Arab Emirates was struck by “an unknown projectile,” causing some damage, but all crew members were reported safe, according to an update on Tuesday evening from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which tracks security at sea. A loud explosion and smoke were also reported near a vessel in the waters east of Oman, the UKMTO said earlier on Tuesday evening. The incidents highlight the peril for mariners as the U.S. and Israel attack Iran and the Iranian military retaliates by aiming at American allies in the Middle East.
President Trump said earlier on Tuesday that the United States might deploy its Navy to escort commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway south of Iran through which a fifth of the world’s oil travels. Shipping companies are not sending oil and gas tankers through the strait because they fear they might be attacked.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTIranian strikes conducted over the weekend and on Monday damaged structures that are part of or near communication and radar systems on at least seven U.S. military sites across the Middle East, according to a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery and verified videos.
Visuals show damage on or close to mechanisms used to track incoming ballistic missiles, satellite dishes and radomes, which are weatherproof covers that protect sensitive equipment used by forces to communicate over long distances.
U.S. military communication infrastructure is highly classified, making it difficult to determine which exact systems may have been affected. But the targeted locations appear to indicate Iran was aiming to disrupt the U.S. military’s ability to communicate and coordinate. Iran has attacked the U.S. military’s communication capacity as recently as last June, when it struck a Qatari base it hit again over the weekend.
Strikes potentially affecting these systems also occurred on military facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
A press officer for United States Central Command declined to comment on the strikes.
Bahrain
Video verified by The Times showed that an Iranian one-way attack drone struck a radome on Saturday in the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain. The base is the United States’ primary hub for coordinating naval operations in the Middle East.
Satellite imagery taken of the headquarters the following day showed that at least one additional radome was destroyed.
The two demolished structures were AN/GSC-52B SATCOM terminals, which play a key role in facilitating high-capacity and near real-time communication for the U.S. military.
Qatar
Satellite imagery of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar taken on Sunday afternoon showed that a tent surrounded by satellite dishes had been destroyed and some of the dishes most likely damaged.
Al Udeid is the U.S. military’s largest base in the Middle East, accommodating thousands of troops across an area nearly six miles wide, and serves as the regional headquarters for the United States Central Command. Iran hit a radome the American military used for communications with a ballistic missile at the same base during the 12-day Iran-Israel war last June.
Kuwait
Satellite imagery of Camp Arifjan in Kuwait shows that by Sunday morning at least three radomes had been damaged or destroyed.
Fifty miles northeast, at the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, at least six buildings or structures adjacent to satellite communications infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, according to imagery captured on Sunday.
The same area of the base was hit again, with two additional buildings near the satellite equipment heavily damaged, according to satellite imagery from Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia
On Saturday night, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia had been targeted with missiles and drones. The following morning, satellite imagery captured a mile-long smoke plume rising from a building connected to the site.
Another satellite image captured on Tuesday showed the structure was largely destroyed.
The building that was hit is close to a radome and sits within a fenced-off area roughly six miles east of the main base, indicating Iranians may have been specifically targeting a communications section of the site.
United Arab Emirates
Low-resolution satellite imagery captured of a military installation just outside Al Ruwais in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday shows several structures were damaged.
A radar system known as AN/TPY-2, which is used to detect and track ballistic missiles and is crucial to coordinating missile interception, appears to have been stationed next to one of the buildings that was hit since June of last year. It is unclear from the imagery if the radar system itself was damaged.
The target of a strike over 100 miles east at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates was less clear. Satellite imagery captured on Sunday shows that tightly clustered buildings and tents within a compound about the size of a football field were heavily damaged. Imagery from previous years shows satellite dishes and antennas at the site, but it’s unclear if they were still there when the strikes occurred over the weekend.
The base was struck again in the same general area, according to satellite imagery captured on Monday.
The Times previously reported that additional American military facilities in Dubai, Iraq and Kuwait were damaged during the weekend strikes, and newly captured satellite imagery shows damage at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. But the structures damaged at these locations don’t appear to be near communications or radar systems.
Bora Erden and Christiaan Triebert contributed reporting. Lily Boyce contributed graphics.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada met with reporters for the first time since the start of airstrikes against Iran, he swiftly qualified the statement of support he gave in the immediate aftermath and called for a de-escalation of the conflict.
He said that Canada’s support for the military action comes “with regret, because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order.”
Speaking on Wednesday in Sydney, where he is on an official visit, Mr. Carney said Iran had persisted in its nuclear ambitions in defiance of years of diplomatic efforts. But he also criticized the United States and Israel, which “have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada.”
He also made the conflict another case for his call to “middle powers” to strike new alliances.
While Canada has long called for change in Iran and ended diplomatic relations with the country in 2012, Mr. Carney’s support for the attack was criticized by some Canadians as inconsistent with Canada’s support of international law and with Mr. Carney’s call during a speech in Davos, Switzerland, for “middle power” nations to no longer “go along to get along” with the United States.
A poll released on Tuesday in Canada found that nearly half of Canadians oppose the attacks on Iran.
On Wednesday, Mr. Carney emphasized that the Canadian government’s official support was based on the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program and its human rights record, not on any desire to placate President Trump ahead of key talks about the free trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States. Mr. Carney said Canada took its position without “asking for something” from the United States.
As for the position’s inconsistency with Canada’s support of international law, Mr. Carney offered a variation of another part of his Davos speech: “Canada is actively engaging in the world as it is, without passively waiting for the advent of a world as we want it to be.”
He stressed that Canada would not participate in the military action against Iran but would help with any efforts to find a negotiated settlement.
“Diplomatic engagement is essential to avoid a wider and deeper conflict,” he said, adding that it needed to “involve broader parties than just the United States, Israel and Iran.”
Mr. Carney, citing security concerns, said that he could not discuss any intelligence Canada may or may not have received about the imminent threat posed by Iran that Mr. Trump cited when he launched the attack. Mr. Carney said he has not spoken with the president since the attack started.
He also declined to comment on a prediction that Mr. Trump made when he said the battle would end in weeks.
“I won’t speculate,” Mr. Carney said. “Efforts should begin now to de-escalate the situation.”
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTMojtaba Khamenei, a son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appears to be a front-runner to become his father’s successor.
The younger Mr. Khamenei, 56, is the second son of the ayatollah, the supreme leader who was killed on Saturday in a strike on his compound in Tehran. Mojtaba Khamenei, a cleric, was born in 1969 in Mashhad, an important religious center in Iran, about a decade before the Islamic republic was established in 1979.
He grew up during a period of major political change as his father emerged as a prominent cleric opposing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah. Mr. Khamenei attended the Alavi high school in Tehran, which educates the children of many officials in the Islamic republic.
Mr. Khamenei first joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps around 1987 after finishing high school. He served during the latter period of Iran’s war with Iraq that lasted from 1980 to 1988, and he is still known for having ties to the Revolutionary Guards.
The next year, his father was named supreme leader, replacing the deceased Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Mojtaba Khamenei went on to study with the country’s most esteemed clerics in Qom and to teach in a religious seminary there himself, forging connections with the religious leadership and gaining esteem in their eyes, in part thanks to his father’s position.
He married Zahra Haddad Adel, the daughter of a conservative Iranian politician, Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel. The marriage strengthened his ties within the country’s conservative political establishment.
Despite his influence, Mr. Khamenei operated mostly in the shadows, running the office of the supreme leader from behind the scenes. He has made headlines only occasionally in recent decades.
In 2005, after the conservative candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president, reformers accused Mr. Khamenei of working with religious leaders and the Revolutionary Guards to ensure the victory of Mr. Ahmadinejad, a relatively unknown candidate.
Mehdi Karroubi, a reformer and one of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s competitors, criticized Mr. Khamenei in 2005, accusing “a leader’s son” of interfering with the elections. The supreme leader at the time defended his son, saying he “is a leader, not a leader’s son.”
Similar allegations were raised during the disputed 2009 presidential election, which led to mass protests.
In 2024, Iran’s Assembly of Experts met to plan the supreme leader’s succession. Ayatollah Khamenei said at that time that his son should be excluded from consideration.
His selection could ruffle feathers in Iran because it seems familiar. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 ousted the shah and, with him, it seemed, the dynastic passage of power, replacing it with the rule of clerics.
Installing the younger Khamenei in what was once his father’s role could anger Iranians who took to the streets in recent nationwide protests that started with frustration over bad economic conditions and turned into calls for regime change.
But selecting Mr. Khamenei would send a message, according to some analysts, that hard-liners tied to the Revolutionary Guards remain in charge, suggesting little would soon change.
Along with his father, Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife and a son were killed in strikes on Saturday, as was his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, the Iranian government said.
Since the United States and Israel launched coordinated attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, at least 13 American service members have been killed, and details of who they were outside of their roles in the military have emerged as family and friends mourn their deaths.
The war has pressed forward, expanding across the Middle East and resulting in more than 2,100 people being killed so far.
The latest casualties are the six crew members of a refueling plane that went down in Iraq on March 12. The service members in that crash had been assigned to the Sixth Air Refueling Wing at the MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and to the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Ohio, according to the Pentagon.
Of the service members who have died, six were killed on March 1 during an unmanned aircraft system attack in the Shuaiba port in Kuwait. The attack is under investigation. They had been assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, which provides food, water and ammunition to troops and transports equipment and supplies. Another service member died of injuries he suffered during a March 1 attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.
“Their sacrifice, and the sacrifices of their families, will never be forgotten,” Lt. Gen. Robert Harter, the chief of Army Reserve and the commanding general of U.S. Army Reserve Command, said in a statement.
Noah L. Tietjens, 42
Raised in a military family, Sgt. First Class Noah L. Tietjens joined the Army in the early 2000s and had completed at least four tours in countries including Kuwait and Iraq, said his twin brother, Nicholas.
He had proven himself to be a “great leader,” Nicholas said, and was three months away from wrapping up his deployment in Kuwait. “He just wanted to get there, and get it over with, and get back,” his brother said.
Sergeant Tietjens left behind a wife, Shelly, and a teenage son, Dylan. The three had taken up martial arts together and were constant figures at Martial Arts International in their hometown, Bellevue, Neb. Sergeant Tietjens had become certified as an instructor and dreamed of opening his own studio one day.
Julius Melegrito, the owner of Martial Arts International, said Sergeant Tietjens was calm, confident and soft-spoken, traits of a great teacher.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Sergeant Tietjens was invaluable in helping the martial arts studio handle social distancing, said Mr. Melegrito’s wife, Faith.
“He has this commanding presence and friendly aura around him,” Ms. Melegrito said. “Since then, whenever we would have events or he would be at the school, I would always feel more calm when he’s around, because I knew he would look at what’s needed and he would take care of it.”
Sergeant Tietjens was also a doting father, making sure to cheer on Dylan at his black belt ceremony. When Dylan accepted a special award that night, he asked his father to come onstage so he could dedicate it to him.
In Nebraska, flags have been ordered to fly at half-staff in honor of Sergeant Tietjens, said Gov. Jim Pillen. “Noah stepped up to serve and defend the American people from foreign enemies around the world — a sacrifice we must never forget,” Mr. Pillen said in a statement.
Cody A. Khork, 35
From an early age, Capt. Cody A. Khork “felt a calling to serve his country,” his family said in a statement. Captain Khork, a resident of Lakeland, Fla., enlisted as a multiple launch rocket system/fire direction specialist in the National Guard in 2009.
“He was deeply patriotic and took great pride in serving something greater than himself,” the family said. “He lived with purpose, loved deeply, and served honorably. His legacy will endure in the lives he touched, the example he set, and the love of country and family that defined him.”
The Department of Defense said Captain Khork commissioned as a military police officer in the Army Reserve in 2014. He deployed to Saudi Arabia in 2018, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2021, and Poland in 2024.
He had been honored numerous times over the years for his achievements, earning multiple awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal and Army Commendation Medal.
Nicole M. Amor, 39
Sgt. First Class Nicole M. Amor’s recent deployment to Kuwait, after nearly 20 years in the military, was likely going to be her last, her brother Derek Hoff said on Tuesday.
Sergeant Amor, a resident of White Bear Lake, Minn., seemed to be at a crossroads before she left in August, her brother said. Her 18-year-old son was graduating high school, and she didn’t want to miss more of her 9-year-old daughter’s childhood.
“She knew what she signed up for, and she did it because she had a job and a duty,” said Mr. Hoff, 42, of Eau Claire, Wis.
After joining the National Guard as an automated logistics specialist in 2005, she transferred to the Army Reserve a year later, and then was deployed to Iraq in 2019 and later Kuwait, where her duties revolved around logistics. Mr. Hoff said his sister was close to moving on to her next chapter, possibly retiring from the military to spend more time with her children.
“She just missed them,” Mr. Hoff said. “It was a yearning for her kids.”
Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20
Sgt. Declan J. Coady (posthumously promoted from specialist) grew up in Iowa and was a sophomore at Drake University in Des Moines when he died. In a statement shared with The New York Times, his family said he was an Eagle Scout and fencer who loved gaming and going to the gym.
He was often a man of few words, his sister, Keira Coady, wrote. “But if you ever had the chance to talk to him about something he was passionate about,” she added, “you were lucky.”
“He was so smart and could just talk your ear off for hours about what he loved,” she said. Ms. Coady said her brother was “just a baby” when he died, with his 21st birthday coming up in May. He was a rock for his parents and three siblings, she said.
Sergeant Coady enlisted in the Army Reserve in 2023 as an Army information technology specialist and had been awarded the Army Service Ribbon, National Defense Service Ribbon and the Overseas Service Ribbon.
At Drake, he was “a well-loved and highly dedicated” student who “had an incredibly bright future ahead of him,” the university said in a statement.
Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45
Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien was an Army Reserve soldier who resided in Waukee, Iowa, according to the Department of Defense. He commissioned in the Army Reserve as a signal corps officer in 2012 and deployed to Kuwait in 2019.
During his military career, he received several accolades, including the Army Achievement Medal, Meritorious Unit Commendation and Army Superior Unit Award.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan was a resident of Spotsylvania, Va.
He grew up in California and in 1990 enlisted in the Army. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 1994, and his assignments included deployments in Croatia, Bosnia and Egypt.
He had been awarded a Bronze Star, two Army Commendation Medals and a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among others. In a statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, called him “a courageous Californian whose service to our nation was marked by honor and distinction.”
Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26
Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington of Glendale, Ky., died on Sunday from injuries he suffered on March 1 during an enemy attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said on Monday.
Sergeant Pennington enlisted in the Army as a unit supply specialist in 2017, and he was assigned to the Space Battalion last year, in June. He was assigned to the 1st Space Brigade at Fort Carson, Colo.
He had been awarded the Army Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among others.
Col. Michael F. Dyer, the commander of the 1st Space Brigade, said in a statement on Monday that Sergeant Pennington was a “dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty.”
Ann Klein, Carol Rosenberg and Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAn 11-year-old girl died in Kuwait after being struck by shrapnel in a residential area, the country’s health ministry said early Wednesday. Emergency services attempted to save her, but she died at a hospital, it said. Separately, the Kuwait Army said that it intercepted and destroyed several incoming aerial targets early Wednesday, causing debris to fall on a residential building.
Adm. Brad Cooper, head of United States Central Command, said on Tuesday that more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters, two aircraft carriers and bombers from the United States are participating in the fighting with Iran, with more capability on the way, in what is “the largest buildup by the U.S. in the Middle East in a generation.”
“In simple terms, we’re focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us,” he said. “We are also sinking the Iranian Navy, the entire navy,” he added, noting that 17 Iranian ships were destroyed, “including the most operational submarine that now has a hole in its side.”
Admiral Cooper said the U.S. was continuing with “24/7 strikes into Iran from seabed to space and cyberspace.”
In a social media post, a senior United States military official acknowledged that American forces had used a new missile that would have been banned by the former Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Adm. Brad Cooper, head of United States Central Command, said on Tuesday that Army soldiers launched Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSM (pronounced like “prism”), a short-range ballistic missile that can fly father than the 310-mile-range prohibited by the I.N.F. treaty, at a target in Iran.
Update from CENTCOM Commander on Operation Epic Fury: pic.twitter.com/epEohq64Vf
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 3, 2026
Qatar’s official state news agency said in the early hours of Wednesday in the Middle East that the country’s authorities had “successfully arrested two cells” operating for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Qatar. Ten suspects were arrested, seven of whom were accused of being “tasked with espionage missions to gather intelligence on the nation’s vital and military infrastructure,” according to the Qatari authorities, while the other three were “assigned to conduct sabotage activities and trained in the use of drones.” According to the state news agency, Qatari authorities found they had “locations and coordinates of sensitive facilities and installations, along with communication devices and technological equipment” and during investigations the suspects had “confessed their links” to Iran, as well as their role in espionage and subversion missions.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe latest Israeli announcement about new strikes on Iran came after two warnings around midnight in Israel that the military had detected launches from Iran. The Israeli military did not provide details about those Iranian launches, but people have been told they could leave protected spaces in Israel.
The Pentagon released the names of four U.S. troops who were killed by a drone attack in an opening salvo of strikes on U.S. military facilities amid President Trump’s widening war with Iran.
The four Army Reserve soldiers were killed by an Iranian drone that detonated in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, on Sunday, about 68 miles from Iranian territory across the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon did not identify two other service members who were killed in the attack.
The slain soldiers are Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Fla.; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Neb.; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minn.; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa.
All four soldiers were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, Iowa. According to an Army statement, the drone strike that killed the troops is under investigation.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump had expressed condolences for the soldiers killed in the attack, and predicted that the U.S. death toll would rise, saying that “sadly, there will likely be more before it ends,” adding, “That’s the way it is.”
More than 870 people have been killed since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, setting off an intense Iranian military response across the region. The vast majority of deaths reported so far have been in Iran, which has been under relentless attack by the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
Civilians have been hit hard: On Tuesday, thousands thronged to a funeral for victims of a strike on a girls’ elementary school on Saturday that left 175 people dead, most of whom were believed to be children.
Six U.S. troops have been killed in the widening war as of Tuesday evening. The U.S. and Israel are launching long-range strikes from bases and ships that are often hundreds of miles from their targets in Iran. The U.S. has so far minimized casualties by intercepting many Iranian strikes before they hit their targets.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe U.S. Army released the names of four reserve soldiers who were killed when an Iranian drone exploded in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait on March 1.
They are Capt. Cody A. Khork, age 35, of Winter Haven, Fla.; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, age 42, of Bellevue, Neb.; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, age 39, of White Bear Lake, Minn.; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, age 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa.
All four of the deceased were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines. According to an Army statement, the incident that resulted in their deaths is under investigation.
The senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran’s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of the slain former leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged as the clear front-runner, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations.
The officials said that the clerics were considering announcing that the son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father’s successor as early as Wednesday morning but that some had expressed reservations, fearing that it could expose him as a target for the United States and Israel. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
The clerics, known as the Assembly of Experts, held two virtual meetings, one in the morning and one in the evening, according to the officials. Israel struck a building in Qum, one of Shiite Islam’s main seats of power, where the assembly was scheduled to meet and elect the new supreme leader, but the building was empty, according to the Fars News agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Vali Nasr, an expert of Iran and Shiite Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Khamenei would be a surprising choice — and a potentially telling one.
“He was slated to become the successor for a long time,” Mr. Nasr said, “but for the past two years, it seemed to have dropped off from the radar. If he is elected, it suggests it is a much more hard-line Revolutionary Guard side of the regime that is now in charge.”
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is an influential if reclusive figure who has operated in the shadows of the empire of his father, who was killed on Saturday in the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Mr. Khamenei is known for having close ties to the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards, according to the three officials, pushed for his appointment, arguing that he had the qualifications needed to steer Iran in this time of crisis.
“Mojtaba is the wisest pick right now because he is intimately familiar with running and coordinating security and military apparatuses,” said Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst in Tehran. “He was in charge of this already.”
Mr. Rahmati said that, nevertheless, not everyone would be pleased.
“A portion of the public will react negatively and forcefully to this decision, and it will have a backlash,” he predicted.
Supporters of the government would see him as a continuation of a ruler whom they view as martyred and would back him swiftly, Mr. Rahmati said. But government opponents, too, would see him as a continuation of the regime, which in recent months has killed at least 7,000, a number that may well grow, rights groups say.
Other candidates who have emerged as finalists are Alireza Arafi, a cleric and jurist who is part of the three-person transition council of leadership named after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, and Seyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic revolution’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Both Mr. Arafi and Mr. Khomeini are viewed as moderates, with the latter being close to the sidelined reformist political faction in Iran.
Abdolreza Davari, a politician close to Mojtaba Khamenei, said in public statements and in interviews with The New York Times that if Mr. Khamenei did succeed his father, he could emerge as a figure in the style of the Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed bin Salman.
“He is extremely progressive and will move to sideline the hard-liners,” Mr. Davari said in a text message before the war. “See his appointment as a shedding of skin.”
Earlier on Tuesday, at a news conference in Washington, President Trump said that many of the people his government had viewed as potential leaders of Iran had been killed since Saturday. “Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody,” he said.
Asked about a worst-case scenario in Iran, he said: “I guess the worst case would be we do this and somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person. Right, that could happen. We don’t want that to happen.”
The Assembly of Experts consists of 88 senior Shiite clerics who are picked in public elections and under Iran’s Constitution are responsible for appointing, supervising and discharging the supreme leader. This is the second supreme leader the assembly will pick in the Islamic republic’s 47-year history.
In 1989, the assembly picked Ayatollah Khamenei, handing him the reins of a newly created theocracy. For more than four decades he ruled with absolute power and little flexibility to change.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s wife, Zahra Adel; his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, and a son were killed alongside his father in strikes on Saturday, the Iranian government said.
An earlier version of this article understated the number of protesters killed by government forces in Iran in recent months. At least 7,000 protesters have been killed, rights groups say, not hundreds.
We acknowledge mistakes in our reporting with corrections. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected] more.
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The United States government has urged Americans to leave the region as the conflict worsens, but many are having trouble finding a way out, with some making arrangements to drive overland to airports in Saudi Arabia and Oman. Other travelers with connections in Gulf airports have found themselves trying to find new ways to get home via alternative airports.
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More than 870 people have been killed in the fighting in the Middle East since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, setting off an intensifying Iranian military response across the region.
The vast majority of deaths reported so far have been in Iran, which the American and Israeli militaries have been attacking relentlessly in what they say is an effort to destroy the Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities and to weaken its leadership.
But the conflict has already led to deaths in Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Israel as well, and six American soldiers have also fallen.
And the cost of war is being felt around the world. Among the deaths in Israel was a Filipino woman working as a caretaker. In the Emirates, Pakistani, Nepalese and Bangladeshi nationals were killed, the ministry of defense said.
In Iran, the Red Crescent Society said on Monday that 787 people had been killed across more than 150 counties since the hostilities began. Many of Iran’s top leaders have been targeted and killed, so much so that President Trump has acknowledged the American and Israeli strikes have eliminated some of those he hoped might replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who was killed on Saturday in an attack on his compound in Tehran.
Still, civilians have been hard hit in Iran. On Tuesday, thousands thronged to a funeral for victims of a strike on a girls school on Saturday that left 175 people dead, most of whom were believed to be children. The attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh school, which was close to a base belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the town of Minab, appears to be among the worst mass casualty events in the war so far.
In Bahrain, a shipyard worker was killed at Khalifa bin Salman Port in an attack on an oil tanker in dry dock flying the U.S. maritime flag, according to Crowley, the Florida-based company operating the vessel.
Kuwait’s defense ministry said on Monday that two of its soldiers were killed on duty. Their funerals were held on Tuesday. An 11-year-old girl also died in Kuwait after being struck by shrapnel in a residential area, the country’s health ministry said early Wednesday. Emergency services worked to save her, but she died at a hospital, it said.
The United States also lost six soldiers in Kuwait. The United States Central Command had reported three service members were killed and five were seriously wounded on Sunday after an Iranian strike on a base housing American troops in Kuwait.
On Monday, the military said one of the injured service members had died and, later in the day, Central Command said the remains of two soldiers, previously unaccounted for, were recovered “from a facility that was struck during Iran’s initial attacks in the region,” bringing American military fatalities to six.
The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry in a statement on Tuesday said Iran had launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at the Emirates, most of which were intercepted. But at least one missile and more than four dozen drones have landed in Emirati territory, the ministry said.
“These attacks resulted in some collateral damage, three fatalities of Pakistani, Nepalese and Bangladeshi nationals, and 68 minor injuries among Emirati, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Filipino, Pakistani, Iranian, Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Azerbaijani, Yemeni, Ugandan, Eritrean, Lebanese and Afghan nationals,” according to the defense ministry.
In Lebanon, at least 52 people have been killed since Monday in Israeli attacks on the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, including near the capital, Beirut. The fighting and evacuation warnings from the Israeli military for people in dozens of towns across southern Lebanon, which neighbors northern Israel, has also forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.
In Israel, an Iranian attack that directly hit a residential building in Tel Aviv in central Israel late on Saturday killed a 32-year-old Filipino woman who was working as a caretaker, the Israeli authorities said. The following day, nine people were killed in a direct hit on a residential district in Beit Shemesh, about 18 miles west of Jerusalem.
President Trump has said that more American casualties are expected, but as the early days of the war have already shown, soldiers will most likely not be the only ones to pay with their lives.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTGerman Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Trump and his aides do not appear privately to have settled on who they want to to run Iran after the war. “In my knowledge and understanding today, the American government does not have a clearly formulated strategy for the future civilian leadership of this country.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said he had supported the Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran “with regret, because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order.” Speaking in Sydney, where he is on an official visit, he said Iran had persisted in its nuclear ambitions in defiance of international law and years of diplomatic efforts, but also found fault with the United States and Israel, which “have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking at a news conference after meeting Trump at the White House, said he had explicitly urged the president to link the wars in Iran and Ukraine. “Anyone who fights for security and justice in the Middle East must also want security and justice in Europe,” Merz said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on Capitol Hill for briefings with Senate and House members, said that the United States is stepping up its military campaign against Iran, forecasting a widening scope and greater use of force.
“We’re gonna unleash Chiang on these people in the next few hours and days,” Rubio said. The phrase, which is used as a euphemism to indicate that one is about to use overwhelming force, dates to the Cold War, when it was a rallying cry for those who urged the United States to arm Chiang Kai-shek to retake China from the Communists.
Rubio said the increased intensity would be evident. “You’re gonna really begin to perceive a change in the scope and in the intensity of these attacks as frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it and take away its ability to threaten its neighbors or hide behind a zone of immunity that allows them to develop their nuclear ambitions.”
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident Trump has told Congress he ordered the United States military to carry out sweeping airstrikes on Iran, killing its top leaders and triggering counterattacks across the region, to advance American national interests and eliminate Iran as a global threat, contradicting his administration’s claim that the attack was necessary to respond to an imminent threat.
In a legally mandated, unclassified letter submitted on Monday, Mr. Trump declared that the military operation was designed to “neutralize Iran’s malign activities.” It was sent amid shifting explanations from senior administration officials about the justification for the strikes, calling into question their legality as the House and Senate prepare for votes this week on whether the president needs congressional authorization to use force in Iran.
The letter said the mission targeted Iran’s missile stockpile, nuclear program and navy, aligning with the objectives outlined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill on Monday. And it laid out a sweeping range of strategic goals. The president wrote that the strikes were undertaken to protect the U.S. homeland and forces in the region, and “advance vital United States national interests, including ensuring the free flow of maritime commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.”
The letter made no mention of plans to overthrow the current leadership in Tehran, even though the president called on Iranians to “take over your government” as the United States launched its opening salvo on Saturday morning.
It did echo the rationale put forward by Mr. Rubio on Monday that the United States acted over the weekend because Israel was prepared to strike with or without the Trump administration, and that Iranian counterattacks would target American troops.
The letter said the American-Israeli bombing campaign on Tehran, which killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was carried out “in collective self-defense of our regional allies, including Israel.”
But the president on Tuesday rejected the idea that Israel forced his hand in the lead up to the strikes.
“No, I might have forced their hand,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Mr. Rubio also sought on Tuesday to walk back his own suggestion a day earlier that the strikes had been made to confront the “imminent threat” that an attack by Israel would prompt Iran to target U.S. forces.
Officials with access to U.S. intelligence have said Mr. Trump has exaggerated the immediacy of any threat Iran posed to the United States.
The letter also affirmed that no ground forces were used in the strikes, but suggested that the United States could be engaged in a prolonged military operation against Iran, an outcome that top Trump officials including Mr. Rubio have not ruled out.
“Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary,” the letter stated.
The letter specified that the administration sent it to Congress in an effort to keep lawmakers “fully informed” about the operation, in compliance with the war powers law. The Senate and House are gearing up to vote in the coming days on resolutions that seek to block Mr. Trump from continuing to attack Iran without approval from Congress under that law, but Republicans are expected to block the bills.