President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States would attack Iran for as long as it took to leave it incapable of posing a threat, and his secretary of state signaled that the military campaign would escalate, in comments that indicated that the expanding war in the Middle East could intensify and continue for weeks or more.
“Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes,” Trump said at his first public event since U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran began Saturday. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that.” On Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that “the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military.”
Both men’s comments underscored the administration’s murky messaging on the Iran attack.
Speaking ahead of a classified briefing for congressional leaders, Rubio argued that U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran were intended to address an “imminent threat,” but then went on to describe an attack undertaken preemptively, on the expectation that Israel would begin strikes even without the United States and that Iran would include U.S. targets in its retaliation. He said the United States would strike Iran until it had achieved its objectives, including the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities.
Listing those objectives at the White House earlier in the day, Trump said, “We’re destroying Iran’s missile capability, and we’re doing that hourly.” He said the strikes were “annihilating their navy,” and ensuring that “this sick and sinister regime” in Tehran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon” or continue to sponsor militant groups across the Middle East.
The Pentagon said the death toll of U.S. service members killed in Iranian strikes had risen to six. And three U.S. jets were shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in what the U.S. military called an “apparent friendly fire incident.” All six crew members from the planes ejected safely and were recovered, the U.S. said.
The New York Post reported that the president had said in an interview Monday: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”
As U.S. and Israeli planes pounded targets in Iran for the third day, the fighting expanded into Lebanon, where the Iranian-allied militia Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, prompting Israel to bombard the militia’s strongholds outside Beirut. Early Tuesday, the Israeli military said it was attacking again in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah command centers and weapons storage facilities in the capital, Beirut.
Around the same time, the United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Defense said its air defenses were “dealing with a barrage of ballistic missiles” from Iran. And within hours, the Saudi Defense Ministry said that U.S. Embassy in Riyadh had been attacked by two drones, resulting in a “limited fire” and minor damage.
A senior Revolutionary Guard official vowed Monday that “not a single drop of oil” would pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for about one-fifth of the world’s supply. Ebrahim Jabari, an adviser to the Revolutionary Guard commander, said on Iranian state TV that Iran would “set on fire” any ships attempting to transit the strait. Traffic through the strait has already slowed to a trickle, after the Revolutionary Guard warned ships away over the weekend, but Iran had not directly threatened them.
In another sign of an expansion of attacks in the Middle East, Qatar’s Ministry of Defense said its air force had shot down two Su-24 bombers coming from Iran, the first report that Iran, which has fired missiles and drones at its gulf neighbors and Israel in retaliation for the Israeli-U.S. assault, had also sent warplanes into their airspace.
Iranian leaders remained defiant. The country’s top security official, Ali Larijani, denied news reports that Iran’s new leaders were seeking to negotiate with Washington, denouncing Trump for “delusional fantasies” and for plunging the Middle East “into chaos.” Iran, he said in a string of fiery social media posts Monday, “has prepared itself for a long war.”
Here’s what else is happening:
— Economic fallout: Oil and natural gas markets remained highly volatile as the fighting shut down shipping routes and damaged production facilities. Naval traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, has shut down, according to shipping companies and Iranian media. And Qatar’s state-owned energy company said that it would halt production of liquefied natural gas, cutting off a large share of the world’s supply of the fuel.
— Death toll: More than 550 people have been killed in Iran since the beginning of the war, the Iranian Red Crescent emergency service said Monday. The Lebanese Health Ministry said that at least 31 people had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. At least 10 people have been killed in Israel and six, including civilians, across the gulf since Saturday, according to the authorities.
— Persian Gulf: Iranian missiles and drone attacks led to explosions in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries where the U.S. has military bases. Iranian leaders have said the attacks have targeted U.S. assets, but they have also struck Dubai’s international airport, hotels and other civilian and economic infrastructure.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
