Monday, 23 March 2026
Monday, 23 March 2026
Iran and the allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah stepped up attacks on Israel on Sunday after the United States and Iran threatened to target critical infrastructure in the war in the Middle East, now in its fourth week.
Iran said the Strait of Hormuz, crucial to oil and other exports, would be "completely closed" immediately if the US follows up on President Donald Trump's new threat to attack its power plants. Trump late Saturday set a 48-hour deadline to open the strait.
Iran's parliament speaker said Tehran also would retaliate against US and Israeli energy and wider infrastructure in the region.
Israeli leaders visited Arad, one of two southern communities near a secretive nuclear research site struck by Iranian missiles late Saturday, wounding scores of people.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a "miracle" no one was killed. He claimed Israel and the US were well on their way to achieving their war goals and asked the international community for more support.
The developments signalled the war, which the US and Israel launched Feb. 28, was moving in a dangerous new direction, despite Trump's comment last week he was considering "winding down" operations. It has killed over 2,000 people, rattled the global economy and sent oil prices surging.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an airstrike that killed a man in northern Israel, while Gulf Arab states - including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - said they intercepted new Iranian strikes.
Energy and desalination plants are threatened
Iran has practically closed the Strait of Hormuz that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Roughly one-fifth of global oil supply passes through it, but attacks on ships and threats of further strikes have stopped nearly all tanker traffic. Some of the largest oil producers have made cuts because their crude has nowhere to go.
The US and its allies in Europe and Asia rely heavily on the oil to meet energy demand. In its most recent attempt to relieve pressure on energy prices, the US has lifted some sanctions on Iranian oil at sea.
Trump said if Iran didn't open the strait, the US would destroy its "various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!"
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf responded on X that if Iran's power plants and infrastructure are targeted, then vital infrastructure across the region - including energy and desalination facilities - would be considered legitimate targets and "irreversibly destroyed."
Under international law, power plants that benefit civilians can be targeted only if the military advantage outweighs the suffering it cases to civilians, legal scholars say.
Separately, Iranian officials said they would keep providing safe passage through the strait to vessels from countries other than its enemies.
Strikes in Israel and Iran bring new nuclear concerns
Iran said its strikes in the Negev Desert late Saturday were in retaliation for an earlier attack on Iran's main nuclear enrichment site in Natanz, according to state-run media.
Tehran praised the attack as show of strength, even as Israel's military asserts that Iranian missile launches have gradually decreased in frequency since the war began.
"If the Israeli regime is unable to intercept missiles in the heavily protected Dimona area, it is, operationally, a sign of entering a new phase of the battle," Qalibaf said.
Southern Israel's main hospital received at least 175 wounded from Arad and Dimona, its deputy director Roy Kessous told The Associated Press.
Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, though it doesn't confirm or deny their existence. The UN nuclear watchdog said on X it had not received reports of damage to the Israeli center or abnormal radiation levels.
Israel denied responsibility for hitting Natanz on Saturday, while the Iranian judiciary's official news agency, Mizan, said there was no leakage. The Pentagon declined to comment on the strike.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said the bulk of Iran's estimated 972 pounds (441 kilograms) of enriched uranium is elsewhere, beneath the rubble at its Isfahan facility.
Iran says strikes also hit hospital
Iran said strikes hit a hospital in Andimeshk. Its health ministry said patients and doctors were evacuated to another city.
Iran's death toll in the war has surpassed 1,500, state media reported Saturday, citing the ministry. In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian strikes. More than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gulf Arab states have been killed in strikes.
A Qatari military helicopter crash on Saturday, blamed on a technical malfunction, killed all seven aboard, Qatari authorities said.
Hezbollah strike on northern Israel claims first fatality there
The Israeli civilian was killed in the northern town of Misgav Am in what Israel's military said "seemed to be" a rocket attack.
Hezbollah launched strikes on Israel soon after the war began, calling it retaliation for the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel then targeted Hezbollah in deadly airstrikes and expanded its ground presence in southern Lebanon.
Fighting there has intensified. Israel on Sunday expanded its list of targets to include all bridges over the Litani River, which Defense Minister Israel Katz said Hezbollah is using to move fighters and weapons into the south. Israel later struck the Qasmiyeh bridge near Tyre, giving an hour's warning.
Katz also ordered the military to accelerate its destruction of Lebanese homes near Israel's northern border.
Lebanese authorities say Israel's strikes have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1 million. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.
Southern Israeli towns woke to widespread damage on Sunday after air defences failed to intercept two Iranian missiles overnight that injured scores of civilians in one of the worst attacks of the war so far on Israeli soil.
As daylight broke, the scale of the damage in the desert town of Arad, where one of the strikes hit a multi-story apartment bloc, came into clearer view, with entire floors blown open by the blast.
Southern Israel's Soroka hospital described the attacks as a mass-casualty event. In Arad, 31 people, including 18 children, required hospitalization, at least nine of them in serious condition, the hospital said. Dozens more were lightly injured.
Footage verified by Reuters showed flames engulfing the top floor of an apartment building shortly after the strike. Search and rescue teams moved from floor to floor inside the damaged buildings.
Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said both strikes had been carried out with conventional ballistic missiles. He declined to comment when asked about the initial findings of a military investigation into the failure to intercept the missiles.
Netanyahu says miracle no-one killed
Most Israelis receive alerts on their mobile phone when launches from Iran are identified. An air raid siren sounds and they then have a few minutes to go to safe rooms or public bomb shelters.
Pointing at the blown-out walls of the apartment bloc and then at the reinforced undamaged wall leading to a shelter below ground, Netanyahu urged Israelis not to be complacent. No-one would have been hurt, he said, had all sought shelter in time.
Uri Shacham, the chief of staff of Israel's ambulance service, said at least eight buildings were damaged in the strike on Arad.
Israel said Iran was targeting civilian population areas. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they targeted military and security-related sites in retaliation for Israeli strikes.
Arad and Dimona, the other city that was hit, are located close to Israel's secretive nuclear reactor and several military bases, including Nevatim Air Base, one of the country's largest.
In Dimona, five people were hospitalized, including a 12-year-old boy who was in a serious condition, the hospital said.
Since joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, Israel has come under daily missile fire from Iran.
At least 15 hospitalised
At least 19 civilians have been killed in Israel and the occupied West Bank in Iranian attacks since the war started.
The Israeli military said Sunday evening it was investigating whether a man killed near the Lebanon border earlier that day, following a launch from Lebanese territory, had been struck by Israeli fire.
At least 15 people were hospitalized on Sunday in fresh Iranian attacks, according to emergency services, including a cluster munition that struck in Tel Aviv.
Israeli and US strikes have killed at least 1,300 people in Iran so far, according to the Iranian government. The US-based rights group HRANA, which tracks human rights violations in Iran, has recorded 3,320 people killed, including 1,406 civilians and 1,167 military personnel, with the remainder not yet determined.
