President Donald Trump announced "major combat operations" against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israel strikes attack targeting military and government sites, officials said.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among those killed in Tehran on the first day of strikes and his son Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen to succeed him. Iran is responding with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, regional U.S. bases and multiple Gulf nations. Iran is also attempting to block some shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel is also intensifying its long-running strike campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
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President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the Iranian regime has "been literally obliterated.”
Emergency personnel work at the site of a strike on a residential building, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 16, 2026.
Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via Reuters
“The Air Force is gone, the Navy is gone, many, many ships have been sunk. ... Anti-aircraft is decimated. Their radar is gone, and their leaders are gone,” he said.
“They’ve been a terror for 47 years, and now, I guess, the world or the United States, with the help of Israel, is doing what should’ve been done many years ago,” Trump said.
Trump also said the U.S. has attacked Iran’s manufacturing plants for missiles and drones, noting, “We just hit three of them today."
Mar 16, 2026, 10:11 AM EDT
Leavitt calls on other nations to secure Strait of Hormuz
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt talked about President Donald Trump’s call for other nations to help protect the Strait of Hormuz in a gaggle with reporters and an appearance on Fox News on Monday.
Leavitt said Trump wants allies to "step up" and do more for the security of the Strait of Hormuz “because these other countries are benefiting greatly from the United States military taking out the threat of Iran.”
Oil tankers and cargo ships line up in the Strait of Hormuz as seen from Mina Al Fajer, United Arab Emirates, March 11, 2026.
Altaf Qadri/AP
"These countries are absolutely benefiting from ensuring that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” Leavitt told reporters.
"So I think the president is absolutely right to call on these countries to do more to help the United States to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, so that we can stop this terrorist regime from restricting the free flow of energy, and the fact that they are doing so just underscores why President Trump needed to take this action in the first place," she told reporters.
Leavitt also provided an update on the current state of the war, saying the U.S. “continues to totally decimate the rogue Iranian terrorist regime.”
“We've now hit more than 7,000 targets. We've sunk more than 100 of their naval vessels. We are completely annihilating their Navy ,and their ballistic missile and drone strikes against the United States are down 95%,” she told Fox News.
-ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart
Mar 16, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT
Displaced Lebanese can't return until northern Israel residents are safe, Israel says
After the Israel Defense Forces on Monday announced a "limited and targeted" ground operation in southern Lebanon, Israel's Ministry of Defense said that "hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents of South Lebanon who have been evacuated” cannot “return to their homes south of the Litani region until the safety of the residents of the north is guaranteed."
An Israeli self-propelled howitzer artillery gun fires rounds towards southern Lebanon from a position in the upper Galilee in northern Israel near the border, March 15, 2026.
Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
Over 831,000 Lebanese people have registered themselves as internally displaced, with 130,715 of them in shelters, according to the country's Disaster Management Unit.
Since the war began, 850 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 105 children and 66 women, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Mar 16, 2026, 5:01 AM EDT
Fire burns after drone attack in Fujairah, UAE, officials said
A large fire caused by a drone strike was burning the area near the Fujairah Petroleum Industries in the United Arab Emirates, according to a statement by Fujairah media office on Monday.
Satellite image shows smoke rising from UAE's Fujairah port, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, March 15, 2026.
NASA Worldview via Reuters
No casualties were reported, authorities said. Civil Defense teams in the emirate were responding to the incident, the statement added.
