Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Is Said to Have Sent Iran a Peace Plan

Beirut/Tel Aviv11:52 p.m. March 24 Tehran1:22 a.m. March 25 Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Is Said to Have Sent Iran a Peace Plan The 15-point proposal, sent via Pakistan, reflects the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy. - Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times - David Guttenfelder/The New York Times - Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times - Associated Press, Agence France-Presse - Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times - Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times - Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times The United States has sent Iran a plan for ending the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s desire to find an offramp to a conflict that has deeply rattled the global economy. It was unclear whether Iran was likely to accept the plan, sent via Pakistan, as a basis for negotiations, or whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States for four weeks, was on board with it. President Trump, speaking on a day in which Iran sent waves of missiles across the Middle East, said Tuesday that negotiations to end the war were already taking place and that the Iranians would like “to make a deal.” Iran has maintained publicly that no negotiations are happening, but speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said not only that they were occurring but also that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were involved. Mr. Trump cast Iran as a nation so near military defeat that it had little choice but to negotiate, but the Iranians made clear on Tuesday that they could still lash out across the region. Its missiles targeted Israel and Iraq, and Persian Gulf nations also reported new strikes — despite claims by American and Israel officials that the Iranian ballistic missile program has been severely battered. The Israeli authorities said a direct hit in Tel Aviv caused extensive damage to at least three residential buildings. At least six people were treated for injuries in Tel Aviv, according to the national emergency service. In the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, a volley of six Iranian ballistic missiles killed six Kurdish fighters and wounded 30 others, said the regional government, a U.S. ally. And in Bahrain, an Iranian missile attack killed a Moroccan contractor working for the Emirati armed forces and injured five Emirati service members, the Emirati defense ministry said on Tuesday. Mr. Trump, asked why he appeared willing to consider a cease-fire with the Iranians, told a reporter: “They’re talking to us and they’re making sense.” Though Iran has taken a public stance denying that negotiations are taking place, according to four Iranian officials and an Iranian diplomat, Tehran and Washington have been exchanging messages through intermediaries about de-escalating the conflict. Mr. Trump said that the vice president and the secretary state were joining negotiations that also include his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, one of his most senior advisers. Mr. Trump dodged a question about a report in The New York Times that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was encouraging him to pursue the war. “He’s a warrior,” he said. “He’s fighting with us.” Here’s what else we’re covering: Lebanon: Israel’s defense minister said its military would expand its occupation of southern Lebanon, retaining control of territory south of the Litani River. The waterway has long served as a geographic boundary in conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah. It is unclear whether Israel would deploy troops across the entire area or rely on its air force for some parts. Saudi Arabia: The kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing Mr. Trump to continue the war against Iran, according to people briefed by American officials on the conversations. Group of 7: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to travel to France on Friday to discuss the war and other topics with diplomats from the Group of 7 nations. Death tolls: A Washington-based group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, has reported that at least 1,443 civilians had been killed in Iran. More than 1,000 people in Lebanon have been killed, the authorities there said on Thursday. At least 15 people were killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials said. The American death toll stood at 13 service members. Energy crisis: Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, along with recent attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, had the international benchmark for crude oil trading above $100 on Tuesday. The Philippines declared a state of national energy emergency, and South Korea is urging people to take shorter showers and to avoid charging phones and electric vehicles at night. Iran: A former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps general, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, has been named as Iran’s top security official, an aide to the Iranian president announced on Tuesday. He replaces Ali Larijani, who was killed in an Israeli attack last week. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan said on Tuesday that the country could host talks between the United States and Iran, its neighbor, as Pakistan’s government tries to capitalize on its standing with the leadership of both countries. “Pakistan stands ready and honored to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Mr. Sharif said in a post on X. President Trump shared a screenshot of Mr. Sharif’s post on his platform, Truth Social. And Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, has emerged as the key interlocutor between the United States and Iran. The comments were a clear sign, amid growing speculation, of Pakistan’s eagerness to play a role as a mediator between the two countries, although no clear pathway to the talks has been detailed. So far, Pakistan has mostly tried to stay above the fray. It has condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran without naming the United States; vowed to defend Saudi Arabia under a mutual defense pact, but without retaliating against Iran; and maintained regular communications with Iranian officials, even as Iran’s strangling of the Strait of Hormuz has left the Pakistani economy battered. Pakistan’s top government and military officials have nurtured a close relationship with Mr. Trump. They nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize last year and offered partnerships with the United States on counterterrorism, critical minerals and crypto deals — what some Pakistani analysts have referred to as Pakistan’s “3Cs.” That effort appears to have earned Mr. Trump’s good graces. Mr. Trump has referred to the army chief as his “favorite field marshal,” and U.S. military officials have called the counterterrorism partnership “phenomenal.” While several countries have offered to serve as interlocutors with Iran, analysts say Pakistan brings several selling points as a potential mediator. “They know Iran very well,” Mr. Trump said last year about Pakistan after a lunch with Mr. Munir at the White House in the midst of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. It is a non-Arab, Muslim country, like Iran, and it does not host a U.S. military base — sparing it from Iranian strikes, unlike countries in the Gulf. Pakistan shares a volatile, 560-mile border with Iran, and nearly a fifth of its 240 million people are Shiite Muslims, one of the largest Shiite communities outside Iran. Pakistan has also managed to carefully balance its relationships in the Middle East during the conflict. The billions of dollars that Pakistani workers remit every year from Arab countries in the Gulf region are crucial for Pakistan’s economy. And with its economy heavily reliant on oil imports — 81 percent of which comes from the Gulf — it was among the first to provide military escorts for its ships through the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, Pakistani officials have indicated that they want to avoid a confrontation with Iran. Mr. Sharif has held regular calls and meetings with President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran this year, according to Mr. Sharif’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi. Though no talks in Pakistan have been confirmed, even the speculation serves a useful purpose. Pakistan has sought to be perceived as a diplomatic power at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. Shortly after it signed the defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan renewed a long-term economic partnership with China. While it seeks a larger diplomatic role, Pakistan is walking a fine line at home. Mr. Sharif’s government has faced criticism for wooing Mr. Trump, and protesters have in recent weeks demonstrated against the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, chanting “Death to America.” On March 1, protesters tried to storm the U.S. consulate in Karachi, and 10 people were killed. Pakistan is also engaged in a conflict with another neighbor, Afghanistan. Officials in Islamabad have been on high alert amid fears of an attack on the Pakistani capital in retaliation for Pakistan’s recent airstrikes on Afghanistan. The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout. It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal. But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries. The New York Times did not see a copy of the plan, but the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, shared some of its broad outlines, saying that it addresses Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Israel and the United States have targeted Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers and production facilities, and its nuclear program in the bombing campaign that began on Feb. 28. American and Israeli leaders have vowed never to allow Iran to possess a nuclear weapon. But Iran has continued to fire missiles at Israel and neighboring Arab countries and still holds 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in its territory. The plan also discusses maritime routes, one of the officials said. Since the beginning of the war, Iran has effectively blocked most Western ships from safely passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway in and out of the Persian Gulf, cutting the global supply of oil and natural gas, and sending the prices soaring. For now, there is no indication that the war will let up imminently; Israeli officials have said they expect it to continue for weeks. In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, acknowledged diplomacy was underway, but said, “As President Trump and his negotiators explore this newfound possibility of diplomacy, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated to achieve the military objectives laid out by the commander inchief and the Pentagon.” Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, has emerged as the key interlocutor between the United States and Iran, with Egypt and Turkey encouraging the Iranians to engage constructively, the officials added. Field Marshal Munir is believed to maintain close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, putting him in a position to pass messages between the warring sides, they said. He recently reached out to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament and a former Revolutionary Guards commander, proposing that Pakistan host talks between Iran and the United States, said an Iranian official and a Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive communications. Field Marshal Munir met twice in 2025 with President Trump, who has showered praise on him, saying he was his “favorite field marshal.” On Tuesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan wrote on social media that his country “fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end” the war in the Middle East. “Subject to concurrence by the US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” he wrote. Iran may have trouble delivering a quick response to American outreach. Senior Iranian officials have been struggling to communicate internally and they worry that Israel could bomb them if they meet in person, the officials added. On the first day of the war, Israel struck an Iranian leadership compound in Tehran, killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many other top officials. Who now holds the power to make decisions on diplomacy, war and peace remains to be seen. But the eagerness of the White House to negotiate suggests that Mr. Trump would be willing to leave the current regime in place, at least for now, albeit in a weakened and more pliant state. He and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel have vacillated on whether their demands for the war included regime change. Eric Schmitt and Tyler Pager contributed reporting. Stocks recovered from an earlier slide on Tuesday but it was not enough to avoid ending the day in the red, with the S&P 500 finishing 0.4 percent lower. Investors appeared buoyed by hopes of potential peace talks between the U.S and Iran, as well as reports that Iran would allow some “non-hostile” ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane which has become blocked, leading to a sharp rise in oil prices. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark rose on Tuesday, up nearly 5 percent to more than $104 per barrel. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization reported that a projectile struck the grounds of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant on Tuesday evening, in what officials described as a renewed U.S.-Israeli attack. Authorities said the incident caused no casualties or damage to the facility. As the war with Iran began to send oil and gas prices soaring around the world, President Trump shrugged off the fallout as a temporary setback for the U.S. economy. “When this is over,” he told reporters this month, “oil prices are going to go down very, very rapidly.” In the end, it may not be so simple. Even if Mr. Trump were to broker an end hostilities with Iran before his new, self-imposed Friday deadline, it may still be weeks, if not months, before American families and businesses see a true break in their spiraling energy costs, economists and industry executives say. An end to the war would abate a geopolitical crisis and most likely help to reopen clogged shipping lanes in the Middle East, nudging down oil and gas prices from their recent highs. But any relief would arrive gradually for most consumers — and probably not fast enough to undo the damage to the U.S. economy. By midday Tuesday, the markets seemed downbeat about the odds of a swift and easy resolution to the war. The price of a barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark, hovered around $100, up nearly 40 percent since the war started. An average gallon of gasoline also topped $3.97 nationally, according to AAA motor club, which reflected a roughly one-dollar jump from a month ago. Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, said the prospect of sustained high costs affirmed a well-worn adage in the energy industry: “Prices rise like a rocket, fall like a feather.” If the war were to end soon, he predicted that it would still take about six to eight weeks for oil production and shipments to normalize. At that point, oil could settle around $80 per barrel of Brent crude, higher than before the bombing began. Prices at the pump would probably fall slowly, too. The exact timeline will depend on many factors, including the extent of the damage to the energy infrastructure in the Middle East and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil and gas thoroughfare that has been all but closed for weeks. The trajectory for prices will also vary by fuel type: The war has strained the global supply of diesel and jet fuel, in particular, meaning those prices could stay higher for a longer period. Such spikes tend to ripple across the economy in myriad, lasting ways. Groceries could become more expensive because of higher shipping costs, for example, while airfares in the summer travel season similarly could rise. In an early, ominous sign, the top executive of United Airlines warned Bloomberg Television on Tuesday that it could raise ticket prices by 20 percent if the war with Iran continued to bog down jet fuel. “We don’t have any idea where the price is going to go,” said Mike Sommers, the chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil industry. “We don’t know what the condition of the assets are going to be. We don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get the production that’s come offline, how long that’s going take to get back up and going.” Asked about the administration’s economic projections, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, maintained in a statement that prices would drop “rapidly” once the war concluded. “President Trump has been right about everything, and he will be right again when these short-term disruptions are past us,” she said. The ever-shifting economic variables only add to the stakes for Mr. Trump, as the U.S.-led war with Iran now stretches into its fourth week. Even as experts continue to raise alarm about the consequences of a protracted conflict, the president has maintained that his war is worth the cost — and will yield substantial benefit by delivering a more stable Middle East. “Our economy was fantastic,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, as he sought to make the case for why he had to “stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem.” In fact, the U.S. economy had been showing signs of strain before the war began, evident in persistently high consumer prices and a recent rise in the nation’s unemployment rate. Those stresses had helped to contribute to sense of frustration among Americans, many of whom blamed Mr. Trump for their financial woes in recent polling ahead of the midterm election. Many analysts have warned that the nation’s trajectory could worsen considerably if the Iran war continues and oil prices stay sky high into next month or beyond, raising the risks that the United States could slip into a recession. But an early glimmer of relief arrived on Monday, after Mr. Trump said he would suspend his threat to escalate the bombing — by attacking Iranian energy facilities — so that the two sides could begin early discussions about an end to the conflict. Within hours, however, leaders in Washington and Tehran offered competing assessments about the scope of the negotiations and their progress. That discrepancy underscored a hard truth: While the United States and Israel may have started the war, all of the countries would have to agree to end the fighting if they hoped to bring calm to energy and financial markets around the world. Michael Pearce, the chief U.S. economist for Oxford Economics, said the market response reflected the reality that it “takes two to tango.” In a report on Friday, his firm predicted that persistently high oil and gas prices could push up the cost of groceries and other goods, causing inflation to “rise sharply” in March and April. The resulting hit to consumers, the firm found, could contribute to a slowdown in the economy, which they said would grow 2.4 percent this year, down from their previous 2.8 percent projection. Even if Mr. Trump can broker a faster end to the conflict, however, Mr. Pearce said there would not be a “sudden switch” that brought energy costs back to their prewar levels. Once the Strait of Hormuz is opened, the traffic may not return immediately, and the risk of traversing a recent war zone may keep prices elevated for some time, analysts say. It may also take time to restart energy production in countries including Saudi Arabia, which have halted some of their operations in recent weeks as storage tanks have filled up in the face of drone attacks and mounting security risks. “How quickly that production can actually come back online is an uncertainty that we’re going to have to deal with as we go forward,” Mike Wirth, chief executive of Chevron, said Monday at an energy conference in Houston, CERAWeek by S&P Global. “It’s going to take some time to come out of this.” The comments have offered a stark contrast with Mr. Trump’s oft-repeated claim that energy prices will plummet once the hostilities conclude. To help prevent even further price shocks, the administration in recent days has released oil from the nation’s strategic stockpile and moved to lift some sanctions on adversaries, including Iran, in the hopes of boosting global supply. Any decline in gasoline, in particular, would happen only gradually: By Mr. Zandi’s calculations, every $10-per-barrel increase in oil corresponds with a 25-cent increase in gas prices. Given the time it takes to process crude into gasoline, the pain at the pump may not dissipate as quickly as Mr. Trump has suggested. “The administration may want oil prices and gas prices to drop very quickly, but they are likely to be confronted by the laws of gravity in the energy markets,” said Neale Mahoney, a top economics professor at Stanford University who served at the White House under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Mahoney pointed to the price shock after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, which constrained the global supply of energy and left consumers reeling at the gas pump. Then, he said, “prices shot up during the spring, then there was a slow drift down of prices in the summer and into the fall of 2022.” This time, Mr. Mahoney said, the dynamic in the Persian Gulf is much different, given the reduced output of the region. But he said the impact of those sustained higher prices would be acute, since “history tells us those get passed” to consumers. Missile fire from Iran continued to cause damage and casualties in Israel on Tuesday. Nine people, including an elderly woman and six children, were injured a short while ago in the densely populated city of Bnei Brak after the Israeli military said that it had identified missile launches from Iran. Iranian state-affiliated media said the site was struck by an Iranian missile. This was the 12th time that the Israeli military said that it had detected missile launches at Israel from Iran since midnight on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, a direct missile hit in Tel Aviv caused extensive damage to several buildings. There were no fatalities. Lebanon ordered the expulsion of Iran’s newly appointed ambassador on Tuesday, a rare rebuke of Tehran over its backing of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that fired rockets into Israel earlier this month and opened one of the most active fronts in the Middle East war. Lebanon’s foreign minister, Youssef Rajji, said in a statement that the ministry had withdrawn its approval for Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, Mohammad Reza Shibani, and declared him persona non grata. The Iranian ambassador has been ordered to leave the country by the end of the week, Mr. Rajji said. The offices of Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, and Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they had signed off on the decision. But both officials have turned up their condemnation of Iran and of Hezbollah in the weeks since the group opened a new round of war with Israel, an action that Lebanese officials say was taken at Iran’s behest. Israel has since then engaged in large-scale bombardment across Lebanon and launched a ground invasion of the country’s south. More than 1,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced, according to the Lebanese authorities. The decision to expel the Iranian ambassador capped months of deteriorating relations and diplomatic spats between Iran and Lebanon’s new government, which was formed last year in the wake of the last war between Israel and Hezbollah. For decades, Tehran has provided the bulk of Hezbollah’s funding and supplied the group with weapons in a bid to establish a forward line of defense along Israel’s northern border. But after the group was severely weakened by the war with Israel, Lebanon’s government moved to curb its influence, setting the stage for a widening rift with Tehran. The decision to expel the Iranian ambassador has heightened fears of internal strife in Lebanon, which for decades has delicately balanced sectarian power through a fragile agreement that ended the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990. While many in Lebanon — including Christian political parties opposed to Hezbollah — welcomed the move on Tuesday, Hezbollah was swift to condemn it. Hezbollah called the expulsion a “grave national and strategic mistake” that “opens the door to internal division” and “places the country on a highly dangerous path.” It called on Lebanon’s president and prime minister to reverse the Iranian ambassador’s expulsion. “This does not, in any way, reflect the true interests of the country,” one Hezbollah lawmaker, Ibrahim Moussawi, said in a television interview. He accused the government of being subject to “external dictates.” Lebanon’s government has faced sustained pressure from the Trump administration and Israel for more than a year to disarm Hezbollah, as mandated under a cease-fire agreement that ended the last war in November 2024. But after banning the group’s military activities this month, it has placed itself at increasing odds with Hezbollah, which has continued firing rockets into Israel. Wafiq Safa, a senior Hezbollah official, said on Sunday that the group would compel the government to reverse the ban “regardless of the method.” He stopped short of calling for an immediate escalation, saying that Hezbollah did not intend to bring down the government through street protests. But he warned that a “different agenda” could emerge after the war, adding to growing fears of looming civil instability. In 2008, Hezbollah briefly seized parts of Beirut after the government moved to dismantle its private telecommunications network, a key part of its military infrastructure. Israel, which has continued its military campaign in Lebanon while publicly rebuffing Lebanese efforts to enter direct talks to halt the war, welcomed the move by Lebanon’s foreign ministry. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, called the decision a “justified and necessary step” against what he described as Iranian interference in the country. Dayana Iwaza and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut. The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it carried out heavy strikes on the ancient Iranian city of Isfahan, claiming the targets were “production sites.” Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency said dozens of shops were damaged. The agency also reported that U.S.-Israeli strikes hit residential buildings in the northwestern city of Tabriz, killing several people. In his appearance with top aides on Tuesday afternoon in the Oval Office, President Trump dodged a question about whether the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was encouraging him to continue the war in Iran, which The New York Times reported today. “He’s a warrior,” Trump told reporters. “He’s fighting with us.” President Trump told reporters during an appearance in the Oval Office that negotiations with Iran were continuing. He added that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were joining Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, one of his most senior advisers, in the discussions. He said Iran would like “to make a deal.” A reporter asked Trump what had changed with his willingness to consider a cease-fire, and he had a simple reply. “They’re talking to us and they’re making sense,” Trump said. Israel intends to send more soldiers into Lebanon in the coming days, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, the Israeli military spokesman, said in a news briefing on Tuesday. “We continue to reinforce and intensify the ground operation,” he said. Earlier in the day, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said Israel intends to expand the area under its control in southern Lebanon as part of an operation against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group. Debris from interceptor missiles fell in several areas east of Beirut on Tuesday, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency, which reported minor injuries. The Israeli military said a ballistic missile fired from Iran had fallen in Lebanon, but it was not immediately clear whether the impact was from a direct strike or an interception, or where Iran had been targeting. The Israeli military said earlier this week that two missiles fired by Iran at Israel had landed in southern Lebanon. A missile fragment near the Palestinian village of Hares, in the West Bank. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, said the photos show the remnants of an Iranian Fattah-series medium-range ballistic missile that has a range of about 870 miles. Qatar is not currently engaged in any mediation efforts between Washington and Tehran, the spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, marking a shift in Qatar’s willingness to engage with Iran diplomatically. “Our focus at this time is entirely dedicated to defending our country and addressing the losses resulting from the various attacks that the State of Qatar has endured,” the spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, said during a weekly news briefing in Doha. Mr. al-Ansari said there had been no new communication between his government and Tehran since a single telephone call between the Iranian and Qatari foreign ministers in the early stages of the war. Qatar, a peninsula that juts out from the Arabian Peninsula into the Persian Gulf, has traditionally played a significant diplomatic and economic role in the region. On Monday, President Trump said the United States and Iran were engaged in “very strong talks” to end the war and that he would postpone a deadline for a threatened attack on Iranian power plants. Iran, however, refuted that any negotiations were happening. Mr. al-Ansari, for his part, said Qatar wasn’t involved in any talks, “if they exist.” “I am not privy to the details of the current negotiations, but we stand ready to help, of course, if there is any role for Qatar,” he said. Mr. al-Ansari said that Qatar and its neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council have seen their trust in Tehran dissipate. “It’s now up to the Iranians, post this war of course, to decide how they’re going to rebuild the trust that was lost due to their attacks on our sovereignty,” he said. Since the U.S. and Israel initiated a military campaign against Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran has retaliated by launching thousands of missiles and drones at Israel and several Persian Gulf nations, including Qatar. During the June 2025 Iran-Israel war, Iranian forces fired missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which serves as the regional headquarters for the U.S. Central Command, in retaliation for the American bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. At the time, Qatar opted for restraint, successfully mediating a conclusion to the hostilities. Recent strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export plant, sent global gas prices soaring. Mr. al-Ansari said it could take up to five years to repair the damage. He also emphasized on Tuesday that the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council would need to re-evaluate and overhaul its collective defense protocols once the fighting stops. “One of the most significant outcomes of this war is the shattering of the concept of a regional security system in the Gulf region,” Mr. al-Ansari said. “The regional security framework in the Gulf was based on certain axioms. Many of these axioms have been bypassed in the current war.” One woman was killed and two others were injured in northern Israel on Tuesday after an intense afternoon of rocket and drone fire from Lebanon, officials from the Israeli military and emergency service said. The police said in a statement that the woman was killed after a rocket struck nearby. Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday that ticket prices could increase if the war in the Middle East continued to disrupt energy supplies. “If oil prices stay where they are today, that’s 11 billion of expense for us, and that would require prices to be up 20 percent to break even, to cover that cost,” he said. The man chosen to replace Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security adviser who was killed in an Israeli strike last week, is a hard-line former deputy commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards who is little-known to most Iranians but has a long history of helping the organization expand its reach into Iran’s politics. The appointment of the former commander, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, was announced on Tuesday by a senior aide to Iran’s president. Mr. Zolghadr’s appointment provided more evidence that hard-line military figures had consolidated their power in Iran, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an expert on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that is hawkish on Iran. Though the increase in the Guards’ power has been decades in the making, Mr. Taleblu said in a post on X, “there can also be no doubt that the war expedited and accelerated the ongoing trend of increasing I.R.G.C. control of the country.” The Revolutionary Guards are the military spine of the Islamic republic and are ideologically committed to maintaining Iran’s system of clerical rule. The Guards control the development and deployment of ballistic missiles and drones, protect the country’s nuclear development facilities, supervise proxy militias across the Middle East and control a sizable portion of the economy. After Mr. Larijani’s killing last week, some analysts expressed worry that Iran’s military would tighten its control over the country, dimming the prospects for a quick end to the war. Mr. Larijani oversaw a brutal crackdown that killed thousands of antigovernment protesters in January, but he was still seen as a relative pragmatist who served as a bridge between the military and more moderate political factions. Mr. Zolghadr helped the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, come to power in 2005, and he later acknowledged that Iran’s hard-line conservative forces had carried out a “multilayered plan” to help Mr. Ahmadinejad win. Mr. Zolghadr went on to serve as a deputy interior minister during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first term. When tensions building between Iran and the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Zolghadr, as a deputy interior minister, said that if the United States were to attack Iran, Iran would fire “tens of thousands of missiles at American targets every day" in response. In 2010, Mr. Zolghadr became a senior aide to Iran’s judiciary chief at the time, Sadegh Larijani, the brother of Ali Larijani. Since 2021, Mr. Zolghadr has led Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, a body that advises Iran’s supreme leader. Before Iran’s 1979 revolution, which deposed the Shah and established the Islamic state, Mr. Zolghadr was active in an armed group that carried out attacks against the monarchy. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, he led a unit that carried out cross-border operations. The damage in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning was caused by a direct hit from a ballistic missile fired from Iran that had not been intercepted, a representative for the Israeli military said. On Saturday, two ballistic missiles similarly evaded Israel’s air defenses and hit two desert cities near the country’s main nuclear research center. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said on Sunday that Israel had intercepted 92 percent of the missiles fired from Iran during the more than three weeks of war. President Trump’s threat to “obliterate” power stations in Iran if its leaders failed to open the Strait of Hormuz suggests that the United States is willing to violate international humanitarian law as part of its military campaign, according to current and former human rights officials. “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Saturday. He later extended the deadline to Friday. The president’s threat appears to be part of his erratic messaging campaign, which is often construed as bluster or misdirection. “Trump is openly threatening a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “And people aren’t saying anything because they’re numb to it.” By threatening to attack civilian infrastructure, Mr. Trump has once again pushed the United States into territory more familiar to its enemies than its allies. In 2024, the International Criminal Court issued four arrest warrants to Russian military officers and officials charging them with war crimes for attacking “Ukrainian electric infrastructure.” International law, specifically Article 52 of the first additional protocol of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits attacks on civilian objects. These laws are meant to protect civilians and those who can no longer fight, such as wounded soldiers, from the “barbarity of war.” Energy infrastructure such as power grids often has civilian and military uses. In the case of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, prosecutors deemed the strikes a violation of humanitarian law. Despite the charges, Russian forces continued their campaign. “I see no difference between what Trump is threatening to do in Iran and what the International Criminal Court charged four Russian commanders for doing in Ukraine,” Mr. Roth said. The court also issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Trump’s close ally, accusing the Israeli military of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Human rights groups say Israel’s actions in the territory constituted genocide. “What we are seeing from all sides — the United States, Iran and Israel — is a race to the bottom in which threats against civilian infrastructure are becoming normalized,” said Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “This kind of rhetoric doesn’t just escalate tensions irresponsibly, it signals a dangerous willingness to erode the very rules designed to protect civilians in war.” The U.S. military’s recent history of targeting power infrastructure goes back to the early 1990s, when the American-led air campaign during the Persian Gulf war damaged the Iraqi power grid, water treatment plants and parts of its oil industry. At the war’s end, most of Iraq’s electricity-generating plants were destroyed. The country, once an urbanized modern society, was set back decades, drawing condemnation from human rights groups. By 1999, when the United States and NATO started an air war over Yugoslavia to protect civilians in Kosovo from further repression and abuse by Yugoslav forces, the Pentagon had changed its tactics targeting energy infrastructure. U.S. forces dropped a new weapon designed to temporarily shut down power stations without destroying them. The weapons currently in the Pentagon’s arsenal spread tens of thousands of thin graphite strands over several acres. Released by hundreds of small submunitions the size of a soda can, the strands wreak havoc on unprotected electric wires and transformers. Their effect is designed to be temporary. Power can be restored once the graphite strands are cleared off and damaged electrical components are replaced. According to a 2009 U.S. Air Force fact file, the devices are called Power Distribution Denial Munitions and can be released from Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs. In a 2001 report, the RAND Corporation said a cluster bomb version was used in 1999 during attacks on several Yugoslav power distribution centers, “draping enemy high-voltage power lines like tinsel and causing them to short out.” The munitions were used again in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq, according to a U.S. defense official involved in the current targeting process for the war in Iran. The U.S. military currently does not have plans to completely destroy Iranian power plants, added the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military matters. But the military could disable the plants if there were a need to do so. Israel’s defense minister said on Tuesday that the country’s military plans to expand the territory under its control in southern Lebanon, suggesting it was ramping up its ground offensive against the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah. In a statement, the minister, Israel Katz, said Israel will retain control of the territory south of the Litani River, which runs a few miles from the Israeli-Lebanese border at its closest point and is 15 to 20 miles away at its farthest. The river has long served as a geographic boundary in conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah. It is unclear whether Israel would deploy troops across the entire area or rely on its air force to enforce its dominance over some parts of the area. The statement also suggested Israel was laying the groundwork to remain in large parts of Lebanon as President Trump tries to engage in talks with Iran to end the regional war. “Hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon, who were evacuated, will not return south of the Litani River until the security of northern residents is assured,” Mr. Katz said, referring to Israelis living near Israel’s border with Lebanon. Israel, he added, bombed five bridges along the river, which he asserted Hezbollah had used to send reinforcements to fight against Israel. The bridges are also a lifeline for civilians still living there, who rely on them for medicine and access to hospitals. After a previous round of fighting ended in a cease-fire agreement between the parties in late 2024, the Israeli military set up five outposts inside Lebanon in areas near the border. But now, some in the Israeli government are hoping Israel will take over a much larger piece of territory. “The current campaign in Lebanon must end with a fundamental change,” Bezalel Smotrich, the hard-line Israeli finance minister behind much of his country’s recent expansions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said this week. “The Litani must become our new border with the state of Lebanon.” Israel’s operation in Lebanon began earlier this month, after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in solidarity with its patron, Iran, following the surprise Israeli-American attack on Tehran on Feb. 28 that started the regional war. Israel launched a ground maneuver into Lebanon that it said was meant to push Hezbollah fighters away from its border, and also carried out extensive airstrikes across the country, including targeting its capital, Beirut. Those airstrikes brought widespread destruction to residential neighborhoods and killed more than 1,000 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Israel said its air force is targeting Hezbollah commanders and their fighters. Mr. Katz said the Israeli military is targeting villages near the Lebanese border that have mostly emptied after Israel issued evacuation warnings to the population. He said the practice of flattening houses there follows “the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model in Gaza,” where Israel has used bulldozers to erase entire neighborhoods. Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon. Taline Shehab’s family should have been celebrating her 5th birthday on Sunday. Instead, they are in mourning. An Israeli airstrike killed her on March 12 as she slept in the family’s apartment near Beirut. Her father, Mohamad Shehab, a well-known cameraman who had just finished work on a popular Lebanese television series, was also killed. Her mother, Natalie Shehab, who owns a clothing store, remains in a coma, unaware that her husband and only child are gone. The Shehabs are among the more than 1,000 people, including at least 118 children, who have been killed this month in Lebanon, according to the health ministry, as airstrikes that Israel says are targeting the Iran-backed group Hezbollah pummel Lebanese towns and cities. More than a million people — one in six in the country — have been forced from their homes. “My brother and his daughter are not just numbers,” said Ali Shehab, Mohamad’s brother. “They were people with a family, with loved ones who cared for them.” Ms. Shehab’s Instagram account preserves glimpses of the family’s life together: weekend getaways, beach holidays in Turkey, photos of Taline as a newborn. In some videos, Mohamad and Taline dance together in their living room. In others, Taline unwraps toys under a Christmas tree. The Israeli military said in response to questions about the killings that the strike on the apartment building had targeted another man, whom it called a Hezbollah commander, asserting that it “takes measures to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians.” The strike, unlike many others Israel has carried out in Lebanon, was not preceded by an evacuation warning. The same day as the Shehab family was killed, a few miles from their destroyed home, Hussein Bazzi, a chemistry professor at Lebanese University, was finalizing plans for distance learning after classes had moved online because of the war. Israeli airstrikes were pounding Beirut’s outskirts, but like many of his colleagues, Dr. Bazzi, director of the Faculty of Sciences, believed the campus would never be targeted. “We all thought it was safe,” said Hala Chamieh, a fellow professor. That afternoon, Dr. Bazzi sent a text message to colleagues, confirming everything was in place for online classes for the week ahead. Barely an hour later, he was killed by an Israeli airstrike, along with another professor, as they stepped out into a courtyard where he was known for tending to the plants. The Israeli military later said that his colleague, Murtada Srour, was a Hezbollah operative, a claim that Ms. Chamieh denied. Israel made no such allegation about Dr. Bazzi and said in response to questions that he was not the target of the attack. Early that Thursday evening in the southern town of Ain Ebel, the war upended another fragile sense of safety. For weeks, many residents had refused to leave the sleepy Christian village despite sweeping Israeli evacuation warnings, hoping that they would be spared. That was until an airstrike killed three young men in Ain Ebel. They had clambered onto the roof of a house to fix a satellite dish, trying to keep the village connected as the war closed in, residents said. The Israeli military said in response to questions that it had struck Hezbollah operatives “while they were observed attempting to install surveillance equipment on a rooftop.” Residents of the village said the three men, who were Christians, had no affiliation with Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim militant group. “These are youth that have never picked up a gun — they were not a threat to anyone,” said Rakan Ashkar Diab, a friend of the men who lives in Ain Ebel. One of them was Chadi Ammar, a 23-year-old aid worker with a Roman Catholic religious organization, the Order of Malta. He loved basketball and volunteered to decorate the streets of the town for Christmas. “Wherever the village needed him, he was there,” said Mr. Diab, who played on the same basketball team. Mr. Ammar was juggling several jobs and planning to start a business. He was eager to build a life beyond the cycles of crisis that define Lebanon’s southern borderlands with Israel, Mr. Diab said. When war erupted again this month, Mr. Ammar told his friend that those plans looked uncertain. But Mr. Diab reassured him. Just give it a bit of time, he said, and things would get better. Johnatan Reiss and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting. A Moroccan contractor working for the Emirati armed forces was killed by an Iranian missile attack in Bahrain, the Emirati defense ministry said on social media. Five Emirati armed forces members were injured in the attack, it added. The ministry did not clarify why Emirati armed forces members were deployed in Bahrain — a different Persian Gulf nation — saying only that the incident happened during “a routine mission.” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan said Tuesday on social media that the country could host talks between the United States and Iran. Pakistan has emerged as a potential mediator between the two countries in recent days. Pakistani officials have built a close relationship with President Trump over the past year, and the country ticks a few boxes: It is a non-Arab Muslim country that doesn’t host a U.S. military base, and is a neighbor of Iran and a close ally to Saudi Arabia. Sharif has spoken multiple times with President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran this year. President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines declared a national energy emergency on Tuesday, saying that high oil prices caused by the war in the Middle East were threatening the country’s energy security. The Philippines imports 90 percent of its oil from the Middle East, making it one of the Asian countries most vulnerable to supply disruptions there. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed by Iran, the Philippines has had to turn to Russia and China, and to other Southeast Asian countries, for fuel. Earlier on Tuesday, the Philippines’ Department of Energy said it had enough gasoline in reserve to last 53 days, enough diesel for 46 days and enough jet fuel for about 39 days. Diesel prices have doubled since the war began, surpassing 120 pesos, or $2, per liter. Many government offices have switched to a four-day workweek to save energy, and Mr. Marcos has called on the public to car pool. The government has also been handing out 5,000 pesos each to tens of thousands of autorickshaw and jeepney drivers around Manila who are suffering from the higher prices. Mr. Marcos is under intense pressure to deal with the situation. A coalition of transportation workers has called for mass protests around Manila, the capital, on Thursday and Friday about the price spike and what they consider inadequate measures by the government. On Tuesday, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a major newspaper, published a column with the headline, “Nation on brink: This oil crisis may destroy everything we built.” Since the war began, Mr. Marcos has expressed concern about its economic ramifications for the Philippines. “We are victims of a war that is not of our choosing,” he said earlier this month in a statement. Economists have warned that the fallout could be severe, noting the potential loss of remittances from thousands of Filipinos working in the Middle East. Many of them have lost their jobs because their workplaces in countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have shut down. The Philippine economy is heavily dependent on remittances from overseas workers, and in 2024, the Middle East accounted for roughly 18 percent of the total, according to the Philippines’ central bank. As part of the emergency declaration on Tuesday, Mr. Marcos signed an executive order that would allow the government to “implement responsive and coordinated measures under existing laws to address the risks posed by disruptions in the global energy supply and the domestic economy.” His government has not said what specific actions it might take under the order. The pain in the Philippines has been mirrored across other parts of Southeast Asia, which is heavily dependent on oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz. Like the Philippines, many countries in the region have precariously low oil reserves and have imposed energy conservation measures. Jason Gutierrez contributed reporting.