By Parisa Hafezi and Steve Holland
DUBAI/WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) – Israel carried out heavy air strikes on Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut and started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure in Tehran on Friday, while Iran said it targeted the heart of Tel Aviv with missiles.
Explosions and flashes lit up the night sky over Beirut’s southern suburbs, Reuters footage showed. The Israeli military said it had carried out 26 waves of strikes overnight in the southern suburbs, saying targets included Iran-backed Hezbollah militia command centres and weapons storage facilities.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Kheibar missiles were fired toward Tel Aviv on Friday as part of the 21st wave of its “Operation True Promise 4″. In a statement, the IRGC said the wave began with a combined missile and drone operation targeting sites in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Overnight, Iranian drones attacked the U.S. Al Udied airbase in Qatar, the biggest U.S. base in the Middle East, Qatari officials said. There were no reported casualties.
The IRGC said Iranian forces had targeted the Ramat David air base and a radar site in Israel, the Al-Adiri camp in Kuwait where U.S. forces are stationed, and a drone attack on a base hosting U.S. troops in Erbil, Iraq.
A Guards spokesperson said new initiatives and weapons would soon be deployed to confront Israeli and U.S. aggression, without giving details.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean where a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian naval ship near Sri Lanka.
“This was an ‘existential war’ for Iran, leaving us with no choice but to respond wherever American attacks originate from,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said at the Raisina Dialogues conference in New Delhi on Friday.
Hezbollah, in a message published in Hebrew on its Telegram channel early on Friday, warned Israelis to leave towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
At least 1,230 people have been killed in Iran since the fighting began a week ago, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
The Lebanese health ministry has reported 123 people have been killed and another 683 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks this week. Its figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of Hezbollah attacks.
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave. Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbour.
TRUMP URGES IRANIAN KURDS TO ATTACK IRAN
U.S. President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened.
“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it,” Trump told Reuters on Thursday.
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after air strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the U.S. was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. Hegseth said the objectives are to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads U.S. forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing that the U.S. had enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The attack on Iran is a political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little public support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern.
Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas. Air transport still faces chaos and global logistics are increasingly snarled.
A slight pullback in oil prices on Friday offered some reprieve to battered global stocks, although share markets in Asia remained on track for their sharpest weekly drop in six years as the conflict in the Middle East showed few signs of easing.
(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Steve Holland in Washington and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Brad Brooks, Tom Perry and Michael Perry; Editing by Alex Richardson, Sharon Singleton, Diane Craft, Scott Malone and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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