Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Is Defiant After Trump Threatens Power Plants

Beirut/Tel Aviv3:10 p.m. March 22 Tehran4:40 p.m. March 22 Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Is Defiant After Trump Threatens Power Plants President Trump said that he would “obliterate” Iran’s electricity plants if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. Iran dismissed the ultimatum as its missiles hit southern Israel, including near the country’s main nuclear research center. - Amit Elkayam for The New York Times - Agence France-Presse — Getty Images - Amit Elkayam for The New York Times - Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times - Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times - Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times - Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times - Agence France-Presse — Getty Images - Hussein Malla/Associated Press Iran and the United States traded threats over critical energy infrastructure in the Middle East, with Tehran vowing on Sunday to retaliate if President Trump followed through on a warning that he could target Iranian power plants. Mr. Trump said late Saturday that the United States would “obliterate” the power plants — which millions of Iranians depend on — if Tehran did not fully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. The strait, a key oil shipping route, has been choked off by Iranian strikes. Iran dismissed the ultimatum as it launched a new round of attacks on Israel and issued its own warning. Ebrahim Zolfeqari, an Iranian military spokesman, vowed on Sunday that if Iranian energy sites were attacked, it would strike more infrastructure in the region used by Israel, the United States and American allies, such as fuel depots and desalination plants. Iranian missiles hit Dimona, a city eight miles away from Israel’s nuclear facility, and the nearby city of Arad on Saturday night. More than 10 people were seriously injured and dozens more sustained minor injuries, underscoring Tehran’s ability to inflict damage despite three weeks of devastating airstrikes by the United States and Israel. More than 2,000 people have been killed across the region, mostly in Iran. Still, Mr. Trump’s objectives in the conflict and his plans for next steps remained unclear. On Friday, he said that the U.S. did not want a cease-fire with Iran, but later wrote on social media that the U.S. was considering “winding down” its operations. Israeli officials have told the public to expect a protracted campaign. On Saturday, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, told Israelis that they were “midway through” the war with Iran and that they would still be fighting during the Passover holiday next week. A long war of attrition could strain even Israel’s sophisticated antimissile arrays, which have faced multiple daily barrages by Iran, like the missiles that struck Saturday night. Here’s what else to follow today: Nuclear infrastructure: Iran’s state broadcaster said the strike on Dimona was intended to target the nuclear facility near the city, though U.N. officials said there was no evidence it had been damaged. The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s security forces, said the missile was fired in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz on Saturday, as well as the Bushehr nuclear power plant last week. Lebanon: A person was killed in northern Israel on Sunday morning in an attack by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group, the Israeli authorities said. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, ordered the military to step up house demolitions in Lebanon, adding to concern that Israel could be preparing for a de facto occupation of the south of the country. Death tolls: Iran’s U.N. ambassador has said that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed since the start of the war. On Friday, a Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,398 civilians had been killed. The number of Lebanese killed rose to more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday. At least 14 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13 service members. Qatar crash: A Qatari helicopter crashed in the Persian Gulf because of a technical malfunction during a routing operation, killing members of the Qatari and Turkish armed forces and Turkish civilians, according to the Qatar defense minister. It was not immediately whether the crash was related to the fighting in the region. The Israeli military said it was bombing sites affiliated with Hezbollah throughout southern Lebanon. Earlier on Sunday, an Israeli citizen was killed by Hezbollah fire on an Israeli border town, according to the Israeli authorities, raising the civilian toll in Israel since the war started in February to at least 15. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, appeared to rebuff President Trump’s threat on Saturday to attack Iranian power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is opened within 48 hours. If Iran’s infrastructure was attacked, Ghalibaf said on social media, “energy and oil facilities across the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be irreversibly destroyed.” Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon The Israeli military announced it is preparing to bomb the Qassmiye bridge, a major bridge in southern Lebanon, where it has also ordered civilians to flee their homes. Israeli officials have justified the attacks on the bridge, part of the fastest route from Beirut to southern Lebanon, by saying that Hezbollah is using these bridges to send fighters and weapons to the south to fight Israel. But the routes are also used by ordinary Lebanese, raising questions about the impact on civilians. The Iranian missile strikes in the cities of Dimona and Arad on Saturday night underlined the dilemma Israel faces between preserving relative normalcy in the country and protecting civilians from attacks. Last week, Israel’s military signed off on reopening schools in parts of the country — including both Dimona and Arad — due to reduced Iranian missile fire. Early Sunday morning, the military reversed that decision, again shuttering schools across the country for safety reasons. A bulk carrier vessel off the coast of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates reported an explosion from an unknown projectile late Saturday night, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. The agency said that all crew members were reported to be safe. Shards of glass and charred debris littered the streets of Arad and Dimona on Sunday morning, hours after missiles from Iran struck residential neighborhoods in these small desert cities in southern Israel. The blast in Arad on Saturday night carved out a crater of sand and twisted metal in a grassy courtyard and shattered windows more than half a mile away, according to residents. In Dimona, a missile smashed into a sandy yard between several apartment buildings. About 175 people were injured in the two strikes, at least 10 of them seriously, according to the emergency and health services. There were no fatalities. Dimona and Arad are the closest cities to Israel’s main nuclear research installation and reactor, one of the most guarded sites in Israel. Neither had been directly hit before, including in more than two years of wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, according to local officials. Yitzhak Salem, 62, was sheltering with his wife in a fortified safe room in his home in Dimona when the blast filled the room with dust and smoke. “It felt like a hurricane mixed with an earthquake,” he said. The mayor of Dimona, Benny Biton, told Israeli news media that many residents in the destroyed buildings had avoided injury because they had made it to bomb shelters after receiving alerts of incoming missile fire. In Arad, a city of roughly 30,000 people in the Negev Desert, three four-story apartment blocks closest to the impact site were set to be demolished, according to Kfir Levy, a spokesman for Arad’s city hall. Residents from surrounding buildings trickled in on Sunday morning to inspect the damage and try to collect their belongings. Some saw their hollowed-out homes for the first time. Many of the 80 or so people wounded in Arad were not inside a shelter when the missile hit, Mr. Levy said. Among them were many older residents who struggle to descend multiple flights of stairs when warning sirens sound, he said. Mike Getner, 45, a taxi driver who lives several blocks from the impact site in Arad, said the blast that followed the siren at roughly 10 p.m. felt like nothing he had experienced in his city before. “The house shook, you could feel the blinds shudder, you felt the ground shaking,” he said. “You could tell it was right here.” Isaac Waxler, a store owner who lives a block away from the impact site, said he was sheltering at home with his wife when they heard the blast. His son and eight grandchildren live in the buildings that surround the impact site. “It was a terror,” Mr. Waxler said, describing the moments he tried to reach his son. His son managed to tell him he was OK before the lines went down, Mr. Waxler said. The family of 10 then moved to Mr. Waxler’s house to spend the night. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said he had ordered the military to accelerate the demolition of houses in Lebanese towns close to the border. Israel has been carving out a military-controlled buffer zone inside Lebanese territory, which many Lebanese fear could become a renewed de facto occupation in the south of the country. In a statement, Katz said he had ordered the demolitions “along the lines of Rafah and Beit Hanoun” — two Gazan cities which were largely razed by Israeli forces during the two year war in the Palestinian enclave. Israel’s defense minister announced that he ordered the country’s military to immediately destroy more bridges over the Litani River in southern Lebanon, part of an Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah that has displaced more than a million people in Lebanon. Israel Katz, the minister, said he had given the order to prevent Hezbollah from moving militants closer to the border with Israel in the country’s south. Iran has entered its 23rd day of an internet blackout, according to the internet monitoring group NetBlocks. On the second day of the Persian New Year, many families and friends remain unable to communicate. But individuals affiliated with the authorities in Iran, who have access to privileged “white SIM” services, appear to still have access to the internet and social media, experts said. Lebanon Dispatch The shirtless jogger, his headphones in and his back slick with sweat, ran past a row of tents pitched along the seafront in downtown Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. In one tent, a displaced family of four — uprooted by weeks of war that have convulsed the nation — watched him pass. For a moment, the scene held its uneasy calm. The evening sun faded into the Mediterranean Sea, the steady rhythm of the waves softened the edges of the day, and the runner kept his pace, eyes forward. And then a deafening roar shattered it all: An Israeli airstrike had hit a nearby neighborhood, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. “We chose the seaside because it is peaceful,” said Hussein Hame, 37, who, along with his wife and two children, was displaced this month from Dahiya, a collection of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. “But this war finds you everywhere.” War has returned to Lebanon, and the capital’s meandering seafront has become an unlikely front line. Here, a stark contrast has emerged: The displaced and destitute sit in the cold, while others live life as usual — jogging, cycling — amid the dizzying wealth and luxury that exist nearby. In early March, Israel unleashed a barrage of attacks on Lebanon after the Iran-backed proxy group Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel following the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. The violence has uprooted more than a million people, with Israel issuing evacuation warnings across much of southern Lebanon and in parts of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Israel’s strikes have killed more than 1,000 people, injured more than 2,700 and put Lebanon, once again, on the precipice of disaster. On the city’s seafront, the human toll is visible in stark detail: Tents line the promenade, cars serve as makeshift shelters and bundles of clothes scatter the sidewalks. Teenagers, with nowhere to go and no school to attend, roam around. Toddlers, hungry and exhausted, cry and fuss. Families huddle through cold nights, lighting small bonfires that do little against the wind and rain. There is nowhere to shower, nowhere to change, barely enough to eat — especially difficult for those who were fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The displaced form a mosaic of Lebanon itself: locals uprooted from homes, businesses and farmlands. But there are also foreigners, many of whom are domestic workers and day laborers. They arrived from Africa, Asia and across the Middle East in search of better economic opportunities and safety only to find uncertainty. A week into the fighting, an Israeli strike hit several cars along the seaside corniche, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more, health officials said. But even as suffering persists along the waterfront, a different reality unfolds beside it. From the corniche, the city opens to a breathtaking panorama: the glittering Mediterranean, the rugged peaks of Mount Lebanon and the iconic Raouché Rocks rising from the sea. The promenade is also one of the city’s most affluent stretches, lined with upscale apartments and hotels, luxury car dealerships and swanky restaurants with well-heeled patrons sipping cocktails. Those displaced share the same stretch with cyclists, joggers in sleek athletic wear, families out for evening strolls and fishermen casting lines from the rocks below. On a recent afternoon, Vera Noon, who was walking along the seafront, described a swell of conflicting emotions. Some people moved along the corniche, walking their dogs and laughing as if nothing had changed, seemingly untouched by the surrounding suffering. And yet, she said, she understood that people were navigating the crisis in their own ways. “They didn’t choose this war,” said Ms. Noon, a Lebanese doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh who is researching the connection between the Mediterranean and her country’s heritage. The seafront, she said, offers a sanctuary for both those clinging to daily routines and those with nowhere else to go. “The sea is the last refuge,” Ms. Noon said. “It gives people peace. They relax, it gives them calm.” The Beirut seafront is no stranger to war. In April 1973, Israeli commandos departed from this coastline after targeting members of the Palestinian Fatah organization who were operating in the city. In August 1982, an image of coastal buildings ablaze after Israeli bombardment appeared on the cover of Time magazine. During the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, the waterfront was lined with bullet-scarred buildings. In the years that followed, the area was rebuilt, most notably by the private development company Solidere, led by former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which reshaped downtown Beirut with high-rise buildings and commercial projects. That transformation came at a cost: Cafes, hotels and beach clubs privatized large stretches of the shore, putting access out of reach for many. Even so, the public never fully let go. Activists organized campaigns, protests and legal challenges to preserve access to the sea. At the same time, crises kept coming. A financial collapse in 2019 fueled an antigovernment revolt that pushed crowds demanding change onto the waterfront. In 2020, an explosion at Beirut’s port tore through the city, killing hundreds and devastating entire neighborhoods. Then came war with Israel in 2024, once again driving people toward the seafront in search of refuge. Now, with conflict returning, many like Gizelle Hassoun, a 52-year-old bar owner, say they feel exhausted and detached — and are drawn back to the waterfront for a fleeting touch of normality. “We are all in a state of bala mokh,” said Ms. Hassoun, using an Arabic phrase that literally means “no brain” but colloquially describes being mentally drained and numb. During the 2024 war, she said, she and those around her rushed to help the displaced along the waterfront whose homes and businesses had been destroyed. This time, she was spent, and the famed Lebanese resilience that usually carried her was gone. When the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on March 2, she didn’t bother to stock up or fill her car’s tank. “This is sad, but maybe we’ve gotten too used to this,” she said, strolling along the seafront with a friend as the buzz of an Israeli drone cut through the air. Not everyone coming to the waterfront carries the same weariness. Mohammed Ismail has been returning to this stretch of Beirut’s coast for more than a decade. Usually, he lives in Dahiya, the Hezbollah stronghold that has been evacuated, and runs an electronics store there. But even since fleeing, he has made sure to come to the waterfront. On a recent afternoon, he sat tanning in the sun, reading the Quran open in his lap as he fasted for Ramadan. It was the second time he had been displaced in less than two years. His mind sometimes wandered to hardship, he said, but he was trying to carry on as normally as he could. Nearby, a group played padel, others smoked and chatted, and some exercised. For a fleeting moment, life felt ordinary. “This is the best place to remove the stress from your life,” he said. On some days, the tranquillity of the beach masks a deadly reality. In mid-March, Israeli airstrikes tore through several cars along the corniche in the Ramlet al-Baida neighborhood, splattering the sidewalk with bloodied sand. Just days before, a suite in the four-star Ramada Plaza Hotel farther down the seafront was hit. Israel says its attacks are aimed at reaching Hezbollah operatives and their Iranian backers. For those taking shelter along the waterfront, like Mr. Hame and his family, life now swings between dread and relief. The night that Ramlet al-Baida beach was struck, his children panicked and leaped onto him inside their tent. He held them and tried to calm them, he said. When that failed, he raced them on his motorcycle to a church east of Beirut where displaced people were offered shelter. They stayed there for the morning, but soon after, he said, the children insisted on returning to the shore. A Qatari helicopter crashed in the Persian Gulf due to a technical malfunction during a routine operation, killing seven, according to statements from the country’s defense and interior ministries. Four were members of the Qatari armed forces, one was from Qatar and Turkey’s joint forces, and two were Turkish “civilian collaborators.” Iran pushed back against claims that it had effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, saying that the vital oil supply route was only shuttered to the country’s enemies. Ali Mousavi, Iran’s permanent representative to the International Maritime Organization, said that the strait was “open to everyone” except Iran’s adversaries, hours after President Trump on Saturday threatened to attack Iranian power plants if the waterway was not fully opened in the next two days. A person was killed in an Israeli town near the country’s northern border after fire from Lebanon, where Israeli forces have been fighting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, according to Israel’s emergency rescue service. The Israeli military said the attack had caused damage and casualties and was under review. At least 14 people have been killed in Israel since the war with Iran began last month. Israel’s military said on Sunday morning that its defense systems were responding to missiles launched from Iran. Shortly afterward, it said that emergency teams were heading to a site in central Israel following reports of a strike. It did not provide further details. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense said it intercepted a ballistic missile launched toward Riyadh, its capital, while two others fell in an uninhabited area. It did not say where the missiles originated. Israel’s emergency rescue service said it treated 115 patients after Iranian missiles struck Dimona and Arad, including 11 in serious condition. In Arad, where most of the serious injuries occurred, paramedics described a scene of “extensive destruction” and “chaos” according to the rescue service. In Dimona, where one person was seriously injured, paramedics reported damage to residential structures and people who were trapped inside buildings. Iranian state news agencies also carried a warning from the country’s armed forces that if Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure is attacked, Tehran will target all energy infrastructure belonging to U.S. and Israeli allies in the region. The claim appeared to respond to President Trump’s threat on social media on Saturday evening that he would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the country does not fully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. President Trump, who days ago publicly called on Israel to avoid targeting Iranian energy sites for fear of triggering an escalating cycle of counterstrikes, threatened to hit Iran’s power plants if it did not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz” within 48 hours. He said that American strikes on Iranian plants would start “WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST.” Iran’s largest plant appears to be its only operating nuclear power plant, at Bushehr. For decades, nuclear power plants have been considered off limits because of the obvious risk of environmental catastrophe. The U.S. has led efforts to keep Russia and Ukraine from firing near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bushehr is fueled by Russian-provided uranium and monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is not considered part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The spent fuel is returned to Russia. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcaster, said that the Iranian missile strike on the city of Dimona was intended to target Israel’s nuclear facilities there. The report appears to be the first confirmation from Iran that Israel’s nuclear facilities — which were not damaged, according to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog — were the focus of the attack. Israel’s military said early Sunday that it had begun a new wave of strikes on Tehran, targeting Iranian infrastructure. An Iranian missile penetrated Israeli defenses on Saturday and injured over 40 people in a southern Israeli city eight miles from the country’s main nuclear research facility, according to Israel’s emergency rescue services. There was no evidence that the nuclear site had been damaged in the attack, U.N. officials said. The Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s security forces, reported that the missile, which hit a residential area in the small city of Dimona, was fired in retaliation for airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz on Saturday and on the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Tuesday. The Israeli military has denied attacking the Natanz facility, and the U.S. military declined to comment. A second missile caused damage in Arad, a city about 25 miles northeast of Dimona, leaving at least seven people seriously injured, according to Israel’s emergency services agency, Magen David Adom. Teams were searching for other casualties. “This has been a very difficult evening in the battle for our future,” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a post on X. Dimona is a sensitive target because it sits so close to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, thought by researchers to be connected to Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which the country has not publicly acknowledged. After the strike, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it had not received any indication of damage to the nuclear research center. The agency called for “maximum restraint” on military strikes in the vicinity of nuclear facilities. The Israeli military said it had unsuccessfully tried to intercept the missile before it struck and had opened an investigation into what went wrong. At least two people were wounded, according to Magen David Adom. A 10-year-old boy was listed in “serious” condition with shrapnel injuries, and a woman had “moderate” injuries from glass fragments. The others had only mild injuries. News Analysis Ever since President Trump began what he now delicately calls his “excursion” into Iran, Washington has been consumed by the question of when he would call it a day — even if many of his war goals remain unaccomplished. On Friday evening, as he headed to Florida, Mr. Trump seemed to be designing that much-discussed exit. But he clearly has not yet decided whether to take it. And there is mounting evidence — average gas price approaching $4 a gallon, infrastructure in ruins across the Persian Gulf, a decimated Iranian theocracy digging in and American allies at first rebuffing and now struggling with demands to patrol hostile waters — that the repercussions of Mr. Trump’s excursion may outlast his interest in it. As always, Mr. Trump’s messaging is inconsistent, which his critics cite as evidence that he entered this conflict with no strategy and his followers cheer as strategic ambiguity. With thousands of additional marines headed to the region and the pace of American and Israeli attacks quickening, Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday he had no interest in a cease-fire because the United States was “obliterating” Iran’s missile stocks, navy, air force and defense industrial base. Hours later, perhaps sensitive to a Republican base understandably nervous about the political effects, he posted on his social media site that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.” But his latest list of those objectives left out a few of his previous goals and watered down others. He made no mention of defeating the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which appears to remain in power, along with Mojtaba Khamenei, who has succeeded his father as supreme leader, though he has yet to be seen or heard in public. Mr. Trump also omitted any message to the Iranian people, whom he told only three weeks ago: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” And after insisting in the failed negotiations that led up to the war that Iran had to ship all of its nuclear material out of the country — starting with the 970 pounds of enriched uranium that are closest to bomb-grade — he suggested a new goal. “Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability,” he wrote, “and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation.” That is, essentially, where the United States was after it buried Iran’s nuclear program in rubble last June. The sites have remained under the watchful eye of U.S. spy satellites. Mr. Trump ended the posting with a new demand for American allies, whom he had frozen out of his deliberations before starting the war, and gave no warning to prepare for its consequences. “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — the United States does not!” American forces would help, he said. “Think of it as the new Trump Doctrine for the Middle East,” Richard N. Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served on the National Security Council and at the State Department during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq war, wrote on social media. “We broke it, but you own it.” Mr. Trump’s shifting goals continued into Saturday evening. Just a few days ago, he was calling on Israel to avoid targeting Iranian energy sites, for fear it would lead to an escalating round of retaliatory counter-strikes across the Gulf. But on Saturday, he threatened to hit Iran’s power plants if it did not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz” within 48 hours. He said that U.S. strikes on Iranian plants would start “WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST.” Iran’s biggest plant appears to be its only operating nuclear power plant, at Bushehr. For decades, nuclear power plants have been considered completely off limits for strikes because of the obvious risk of environmental calamity. This is not where Mr. Trump expected to be after three weeks of war. Foreign leaders, diplomats and U.S. officials who have spoken with the president said that in the first week he voiced expectations that Iran would capitulate. That was clear in Mr. Trump’s demand on March 6 for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” The demand was mystifying, said one European diplomat with long experience dealing with Iran, given the country’s competing power centers, its national pride and a Persian state that has existed within the rough boundaries of modern-day Iran, enduring many rises and falls, since the days of Cyrus the Great around 550 B.C. (That demand was also missing from his latest set of objectives. The White House has since said that the president does not expect a surrender announcement from Iran, but that Mr. Trump will determine when Iran has “effectively surrendered.”) Iran’s refusal to “cry uncle,’’ as Mr. Trump termed it to reporters on Air Force One, has been only one of the surprises to the president in recent weeks. The first was the crisis in the energy markets, which the International Energy Agency has called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” It has sent Mr. Trump and his aides scrambling. They have promised releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was only 60 percent full, reflecting a lack of planning. Over the past week the Treasury Department has issued licenses for the delivery of Russian and Iranian oil already at sea. In other words, to calm the markets, the president has approved enriching an adversary that is at war with Ukraine, an American ally, and another that is at war with the United States. So far, the effects are minimal. Brent crude closed at around $112 a barrel on Friday after the Treasury announcements, and Goldman Sachs warned on Thursday that if ships were reluctant to make their way through the Strait of Hormuz, prices could remain high into 2027. The Iranians clearly understand that market chaos is their one remaining superweapon. On Saturday, Tehran warned it could set fire to other facilities in the Middle East. The United States believes the country entered the war with 3,000 or so sea mines — some of which are believed to have been destroyed — and the United States has focused on destroying small boats in the Iranian fleet that are targeting tankers associated with American allies. “All it takes is for one of those things to get through to shut down traffic,” said John F. Kirby, who served as both Pentagon and State Department spokesman after retiring as a naval officer. “The fear alone can be paralyzing to the shipping industry, as we have already seen.” Mr. Trump’s second surprise was his sudden need for allies. He didn’t imagine it at the beginning of the conflict, the defense minister of one Gulf nation said recently, because he thought the war would be short. But patrolling the strait, and other checkpoints, appears to be a task that could last months or years. His third surprise was the absence of any uprising among either the Revolutionary Guards or ordinary Iranians. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the Oval Office earlier this week “we are seeing defections at all levels as they’re starting to sense what’s going on with the regime.” But American and European intelligence officials say they have no evidence of such defections — even after Israel targeted, and eliminated, Iran’s supreme leader, its top security and intelligence chiefs and many top military officials. All that could yet come. Wars are not won or lost in three weeks. But Mr. Trump entered the Iran war after enjoying the fruits of quick victories. A bombing run over Iran’s three major nuclear sites in June was a one-evening expedition, essentially burying the country’s nuclear stockpiles and wiping out thousands of its centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium. The commando raid to seize Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in Caracas was similarly swift. And so far, the government Mr. Trump left in place — essentially Mr. Maduro’s government — has been compliant. That operation has helped Mr. Trump destabilize Cuba, which has lost the Venezuelan fuel supplies that it has long depended on. The other day the electric grid in Cuba collapsed, and administration officials have been openly suggesting that the government will, too. Perhaps those quick results encouraged Mr. Trump to believe the U.S. military was all-powerful, and that the mullahs and generals and militias that run Iran, a country of 92 million people, would crumble. Perhaps he rushed. Military historians will be dissecting this conflict for a long time. But for now it is clear that Iran is a different kind of challenge. Mr. Trump started using the word “excursion” to suggest this is just a short trip, a brief diversion. But there is no real end in sight. Iran’s attempted missile attack on Friday on a joint U.S.-British military base in the Indian Ocean, 2,500 miles away, immediately prompted questions of how far Tehran’s weapons can reach. Before the current war on Iran, President Trump raised similar fears, noting in his State of the Union address that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.” But for now, Iran’s missiles cannot reach the United States, and as the failed strike on the military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean demonstrated, the farther Iran fires, the less reliable its missiles and the less accurate its attacks become. Iran fired two missiles at Diego Garcia, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. One failed mid-flight and the other was shot down by an American warship. The official added that the launch had surprised the United States because of its range. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military chief of staff, discussed the missile attack on Diego Garcia in a video statement on Saturday night, saying Iran had fired a “two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 4,000 kilometers” at “an American target” on the island on Friday. He did not elaborate, except to say that the attack underscored that Iran’s military capabilities could threaten Europe, not just Israel. The strike came before the announcement that Britain would allow the United States expanded use of its bases, including at Diego Garcia. A senior Western military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack may indicate that Iran is trying to force the United States to spread out its defenses, and not merely focus on defending bases in the Middle East. Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the 2,500-mile distance was “beyond what we and they usually advertise” as the range of Iranian missiles. “Iran has made its missile program a top priority for many years, and have displayed solid rocket motor plans,” Mr. Karako said. “It’s not a surprise that hard work yielded more substantial capability than some of the more optimistic publicly stated estimates. This is one reason why the United States and our European friends have been deploying missile defenses for quite a while now.” The United States has missile-defense facilities in Romania and Poland that are nominally meant to address the threat of Iranian missiles. A report by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that Iran did not have ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, and that it might take as long as a decade for it to have up to 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles. At a Senate hearing this week, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, affirmed the D.I.A. report that suggested Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile development was years away. But others have estimated a shorter timeline. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he feared Iran could make a functioning ICBM in six months if it paired its space launch technology with its medium-range missile technology. John Ratcliffe, the director of the C.I.A., said Mr. Cotton was right to be concerned. He said if Iran was unimpeded it would be able to develop missiles that could threaten the continental United States, though he did not cite a time frame for such a development. “It is one of the reasons why degrading Iran’s missile production capabilities that is taking place right now in Operation Epic Fury is so important to our national security,” Mr. Ratcliffe said. Other experts cautioned that it was hard to draw many conclusions about Iran’s capabilities until more is known about the type of missile that was fired. But Nicholas Carl, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, said it affirmed Iran’s ability to fire beyond 1,200 miles with its current capabilities. “That upends some of the assumptions that many have long had about the Iranian threat,” Mr. Carl said. “Even if Iran cannot reliably hit precise targets at that range, this raises the question of whether it can reach that far with cluster munition warheads, which it has fired repeatedly at Israel in order to maximize collateral damage and terrorize civilians — rather than to destroy discrete military targets.” Aaron Boxermanin Jerusalem contributed reporting.