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After only three days, the Israel-US war on Iran has spread across the Middle East.

As Israel and the US continued their airstrikes, the Islamic Republic responded on Monday with attacks. By the end of the day, casualties and damage were reported in at least nine countries.

The Israelis continue to pound Lebanon, following Hezbollah rocket fire across the border, killing more than 50 people.

Iran fired throughout the Gulf. Strikes on the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar and off their coasts damaged industrial facilities, ports, and tankers. One drone attacked the UK airbase RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, and two others were later intercepted.

The US Embassy in Riyadh was struck by drones, setting a fire. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi denied that Tehran launched the drones that suspended operations at Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura, one of the largest in the world with a capacity of 550,000 barrels per day.

US Central Command added that Kuwait’s air defenses mistakenly shot down three US F-15E fighters during an Iranian attack. All six crew members were safely recovered.

The Iranian Red Crescent put the death toll in Iran at 555, including 165 in a girls’ school in the south of the country, and said more than 130 cities across the country had been attacked. In Israel, 11 people have been killed, and there are several fatalities across the Gulf.

US Central Command confirmed that six American personnel have been killed in action.

An “Endless” War?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the US outlet Fox TV that airstrikes will continue for some time although the war will not be “endless”.

But Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “We have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought ‘forever’, and very successfully, using just these supplies.”

Trump was responding to a report in the US media that the US military is hastening to destroy Iran’s missile and drone force before the Americans run out of interceptors. “People familiar with the situation” said that with limited US air defense stockpiles, “there is concern about this lasting more than a few days”.

The reality TV star asserted that the US is “substantially ahead” of its time projections in the destruction of Iran. He said the Administration projected a war of four to five weeks at the beginning, but its forces have the “capability to go far longer”.

Trump’s officials scrambled throughout the day to define the war and their aims. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — perhaps conscious of Trump’s campaign promise not to get involved in “foreign interventions” and of the disastrous US war on Iraq in 2003 — said the aim was not “regime change”.

Trying to justify the flagrant breaking of international law, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Americans had to respond to an imminent threat of attack.

That threat did not come from an Iranian first strike, however. Instead, it was from Tehran’s retaliation against Israel’s airstrikes and targeted assassinations.

A US official said, “President Trump said new potential leadership in Iran has indicated they want to talk and eventually he will talk. For now, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated.”

But Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Council, rejected any contact with Trump, whom he said had “delusional ambitions” and was now worried about US casualties.