Trump scolds NATO allies over lack of support; Iran's top national security official killed

Trump told reporters that he would delay his trip to China for “five or six weeks,” officially pushing the major summit after administration officials opened the door to the trip’s postponement as they focus on the war with Iran.

“We’re resetting the meeting, and it looks like it’ll take place in about five weeks,” Trump said, later saying five or six weeks. “We’re working with China. They were fine with it.”

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How Iran’s use of cheap drones is affecting the war

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The Iranian Shahed drones are cheap, becoming mass-produced — and are proving to be highly effective.

Iran’s soccer federation is in discussions with FIFA about moving its World Cup matches from the United States to Mexico because of concerns about the safety of its players, Iranian soccer federation president Mehdi Taj said.

Iran’s sports minister said last week that it was not possible for the Iranian players to participate in the tournament after the U.S. launched airstrikes against Tehran alongside Israel, killing the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader.

Trump has said Iran was welcome to participate but suggested it might not be appropriate for it to play in the U.S. for the players’ “own life and safety.”

Taj said on the X account of the Iranian Embassy in Mexico that because Trump had explicit stated “that he cannot ensure the security of the Iranian national team, we will certainly not travel to America,” and that his country was “negotiating with FIFA to hold Iran’s World Cup matches in Mexico.”

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Israel’s Arrow missile defense systems have intercepted Iranian high-altitude projectiles as questions rise over whether Israel can withstand repeated Iranian strikes.

No Australians were hurt when an Iranian projectile hit a road near Australia's Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

“There was minor damage to an accommodation block and a medical facility due to a small fire that was created as a result of that projectile hitting on a road leading up to that base,” Albanese told reporters today. 

Albanese has previously urged de-escalation in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.

How the war with Iran affects global energy supply

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With the critical Strait of Hormuz still blocked because of the war with Iran, some Gulf countries hope to mobilize oil pipelines to partially bypass the disruptions to keep up with energy demands.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran informed it “a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening,” referring to a nuclear power plant.

“No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported,” the IAEA said on X.

It said its director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, “reiterates call for maximum restraint during the conflict to prevent risk of a nuclear accident.”

The Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant is near the city of the same name in the southwest part of Iran, on the Persian Gulf coast.

A U.S. official familiar with operations told NBC News that more than 200 U.S. service members have been injured since Operation Epic Fury began. More than 180 of them have already returned to duty.

Nine U.S. personnel remain seriously wounded.

A man and a woman died in Ramat Gan, Israel, which is near Tel Aviv, on Wednesday morning after a missile attack, the emergency services organization Magen David Adom said.

Damage from a ballistic missile attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, Israel, on Wednesday. Alexi J. Rosenfeld / Getty Images

Damage is visible following a ballistic missile attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, Israel. Alexi J. Rosenfeld / Getty Images

The two “sustained severe shrapnel injuries,” a spokesperson for the organization said.

In Bnei Brak, near Ramat Gan, a Magen David Adom vehicle was struck by shrapnel, according to the organization. "We saw extensive destruction on the street,” a spokesperson said.

“The windows were shattered and the airbags deployed as a result of the impact,” the spokesperson said, noting that one person there suffered a minor shrapnel injury.

The U.S. military today bombed “hardened Iranian missile sites” along the coast of the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, U.S. Central Command said.

“Hours ago, U.S. forces successfully employed multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on hardened Iranian missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz,” Central Command said on X.

"The Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles in these sites posed a risk to international shipping in the strait,” it said.

Iran has attacked ships in the waterway, through which 20% of the world’s crude oil supply typically travels.

Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has vowed that the strait would remain closed in retaliation for attacks the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28. Gas prices in the U.S. and elsewhere have spiked because of disruption in oil markets since the war began.

The U.N. World Food Program said today that the Iran war and disruptions to trade and the economy could push 45 million people into acute hunger if it persists.

The organization, known as WFP for short, said its analysis shows that “almost 45 million more people could fall into acute food insecurity or worse” if the conflict does not end by the middle of the year and if oil remains above $100 a barrel.

There are already 318 million people around the world who are food insecure, the WFP said in a statement.

The State Department is ordering all U.S. embassies and consular posts worldwide to “immediately” undertake a security review, citing “the ongoing and developing situation in the Middle East and the potential for spill-over effects,” according to a cable seen by NBC News.

The order, which came from Undersecretary of State for Management Jason Evans and was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was first reported by The Washington Post.

The internal memo reiterates the need for continued vigilance and instructs “ALL posts worldwide to immediately convene” emergency action committees (EACs) to review their security posture and report their findings back to Washington.

The directive also requires confirmation that an EAC has taken place and that U.S. citizens, both officials and nonofficials, “have been notified where appropriate.”

A spokesperson said the State Department does not comment on internal communications. The spokesperson said all embassies in the region regularly conducted "emergency action committees" before the U.S. offensive against Iran began.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council confirmed the death of top national security official Ali Larijani in a statement, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

The statement also said Larijani's son Morteza and a number of guards "attained the exalted rank of martyrdom." No additional details about the circumstances of their deaths were given.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said at a news briefing earlier today that Larijani and Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Basij volunteer paramilitary force that Iran uses to crush civilian protests, were killed last night.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said today that Trump made the call that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S.

Gabbard said on X that Trump, as commander in chief, “is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.”

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions,” she wrote.

“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” she wrote.

She made the remarks the same day that Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over the war against Iran.

Kent said in a resignation letter that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S.

Trump has claimed an imminent threat to justify the war, which began when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28.

Civilians in Iran are paying a "heavy price" for the war, said the International Committee of the Red Cross’ head of delegation in Iran.

People fear for their lives, the safety of their loved ones and their livelihoods, Vincent Cassard said in a first-person account published on the Red Cross website.

“The heavy loss of life is alarming. Civilian infrastructure has been affected, and many homes have been severely damaged by the hostilities,” he said. “Daily life in Tehran has been profoundly disrupted: children are not attending school, and many businesses have temporarily closed as a precaution due to the ongoing strikes.”

Normally, this is a time when cities across Iran are filled with excitement as families prepare for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, Cassard added, but this year “families are gathering for funerals instead of festivities.”

Israeli and American strikes have killed more than 1,200 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.

Rescue workers help a woman through debris after a strike on a residential building yesterday in Tehran. Getty Images / Getty Images

The speaker of the Iranian parliament said in a short post on X that the Strait of Hormuz "won’t return to its pre-war status."

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, who has been speaker of the Islamic Republic's national legislative body since 2020, did not provide details about what the regime envisioned.

Iran's military has effectively choked oil tanker traffic along the Strait of Hormuz with a combination of sea mines and drone strikes. The regime's stranglehold on the crucial waterway has led to a spike in global energy prices.

Hezbollah has launched "rocket projectiles" toward several areas in Israel, according to Avichay Adraee, an Arabic-language spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces.

Adraee said Israel's air force responded by targeting rocket platforms and other Hezbollah-linked infrastructure in Lebanon, where the militant group and Iranian regime proxy is based.

"The Defense Army will not allow harm to the citizens of the State of Israel and will respond forcefully to every threat to the State of Israel," Adraee said on X.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed the death of Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Basij volunteer paramilitary force that Iran uses to crush civilian protests, in a statement posted on Telegram by the semiofficial Fars News Agency. It did not provide any details about how he was killed.

The IRGC is the most powerful military, political and economic force in Iran, currently directing attacks across the region.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said at a news briefing earlier today that Ali Larijani, the top national security official in Iran, and Soleimani were killed last night.

Gholam Reza Soleimani speaks at a news conference in Tehran in 2019.  Ebrahim Noroozi / AP file

A missile was intercepted and exploded near us last night, so we did not have electricity.

The attacks have intensified, and it feels like everywhere is being targeted. All night we hear explosions.

My aunt was injured near Shohada Square in eastern Tehran, and at the hospital where my friend is a doctor, many have been treated for injuries.

Another friend was in her office in north Tehran, trying to sort out expenses for her employees ahead of Nowruz, or Persian New Year, which is set to be celebrated Friday, when strikes landed close by.

As the death toll in Lebanon rose to nearly 900 people killed in Israeli strikes since the war began, the United Nations sounded the alarm today that at least 111 of those killed were children.

"In many instances, Israeli airstrikes have destroyed entire residential buildings in dense urban environments, with multiple members of the same family, including women and children, often killed together," Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in Geneva.

Al-Kheetan warned that "such attacks raise serious concerns under international humanitarian law."

He noted that at the same time, Hezbollah fighters have continued to launch "indiscriminate barrages of rockets at Israel," where at least 13 people have died since the war began.

Men inspect a site of overnight Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut yesterday.  AFP - Getty Images

The Iran war could become a “quagmire” similar to the war in Vietnam for Americans if they decide to put boots on the ground, according to Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh.

“I hope that, you know, wisdom prevails, and, you know, diplomacy prevails,” Khatibzadeh told NBC News’ British broadcasting partner Sky News in an interview in his Tehran office that aired yesterday. On the other side, he said, war can drag them into “a quagmire for them.”

Asked what happens if thousands of U.S. Marines on the way to the Middle East get deployed in Iran, Khatibzadeh replied, “We defend.”

“Even suggesting that a foreign country can put boots on the ground of another country, invade another country, occupy the land of another country, is something very much rogue, very reckless, illegal and against all international law,” he said.

“There is no mandate for Americans to do that. And they are doing this because they are so drunk of power, they think that they can do whatever they want. And this is not the case,” Khatibzadeh added.

Iran's intelligence ministry advised civilians to remain vigilant and report suspicious behavior during Chaharshanbe Suri, an annual fire dance festival held on the last Wednesday of the Persian New Year.

In a mass text message, the Iranian regime warned civilians that Israeli soldiers were "seeking to exploit" the festivities and "carry out acts of sabotage and disrupt the peace and security of society."

Chaharshanbe Suri is the first public festivity marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year observed by people in Iran and the Iranian diaspora.

Israel is claiming that Ali Larijani is dead. Larijani was one of the Iranian regime’s few senior officials to appear in public since the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war.

Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei succeeded his father as supreme leader but has made no public appearances.

But a defiant Larijani, considered one of the regime’s more measured figures, has delivered furious messages aimed at the U.S. and Israel and appeared in public as recently as Friday, walking in Tehran as part of the Quds rally, an annual event to show support for Palestinians.

Larijani comes from an influential dynasty described by Time magazine in 2009 as the “Kennedys of Iran.”

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it has started a rapid phase of airstrikes against Israeli and U.S. targets across the Middle East, "dedicated to all child martyrs" in the war, including schoolchildren killed in the southern Iranian city of Minab.

In a statement broadcast by the state-affiliated IRIB television, the Iranian regime's powerful paramilitary force said strikes were carried out against the Israeli cities of Nahariya, Beit Shemesh, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, as well as U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Trump slammed Joe Kent after the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center resigned this morning over the war with Iran.

“I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump said. “Very weak on security.”

In a bilateral meeting with Taoiseach Micheal Martin, Trump added, “I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat.”

Kent wrote in his resignation letter that Iran “posed no imminent threat” to the United States.

Trump: 'We don't need any help' with Strait of Hormuz

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Trump lambasted U.S. allies in Europe this afternoon as NATO members are not giving in to the president's demands to assist with reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

"I think NATO is making a very foolish mistake," he said. "And I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this was a great test, because we don’t need them, but they should have been there."

Trump said that he's "disappointed in NATO" after he said the U.S. spends "trillions of dollars" on the alliance.

He added, "We've had great support from countries in the Middle East, great support, but we've had no support from, essentially no support from NATO."

Two members of the Iranian women’s soccer team joined a training session with a professional club in Australia, in their first publicly shared appearance since they accepted a government offer of asylum.

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Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh were among seven people — six players and one staff member — who initially accepted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Five of them later changed their minds, joining the rest of the Iranian team in leaving Australia, where they had traveled for a regional tournament before the war began.

Read the full story here.

In a social media post, Trump blasted traditional NATO partners who he said had refused his demand to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, calling the alliance a “one way street.” He also insisted the U.S. did not need the cooperation of NATO members as it pursues its military campaign in Iran.

“Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Trump’s fiery rhetoric against NATO came after key European powers such as Germany and Italy rebuffed the president’s demand that they assist in breaking the Iranian regime’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he had never heard President Donald Trump “so angry” as when they discussed the war against Iran this morning and talked about “European allies’ unwillingness” to provide assets to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

"I have never heard him so angry in my life. I share that anger given what’s at stake," Graham wrote in a post on X.

"The arrogance of our allies to suggest that Iran with a nuclear weapon is of little concern and that military action to stop the ayatollah from acquiring a nuclear bomb is our problem not theirs is beyond offensive," he added. "The European approach to containing the ayatollah’s nuclear ambitions have proven to be a miserable failure."

President Donald Trump said yesterday that he didn’t know who to negotiate with in Iran, yet at the same time the U.S. and Israel keep assassinating senior leaders inside the Islamic Republic. 

Ali Larijani was one such leader. A well-known figure, he has been managing many of the day-to-day affairs in the country for some time, even before Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

A top, inner circle figure, he was not universally beloved, but respected as someone close to the center of power in the country, with good ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the clerics and the civilian government, which is often sidelined in times of crisis. Some had touted him as a future leader. 

So this was a powerful man, a serious guy who led the Iranian team in the recent nuclear negotiations. So while the U.S. is saying it doesn’t know who was in charge, it appears that one of the people who it certainly did know and who was in a position of considerable authority has just been taken out.

Ali Larijani speaks in Beirut in 2025.  Bilal Hussein / AP file

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said departing National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent is right to object to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

In a statement, Warner called Kent’s record “deeply troubling,” highlighting what he characterized as the longtime Trump supporter’s attempts to politicize the U.S. intelligence community.

“But on this point,” Warner said, “he is right: there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East.”

“Ignoring the facts to pursue a predetermined war puts American lives at risk and undermines our national security,” Warner added. “The United States cannot be led into conflict on the basis of politics, impulse, or a president’s desire for confrontation. We have seen where this road leads before.”

Oil tankers are beginning to move through the Strait of Hormuz, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said today, while insisting Iran’s efforts to halt traffic through the crucial shipping waterway had not damaged the U.S.

"Already you’re seeing tankers are starting to dribble ​through the straits, and I think it’s a sign of ​how little Iran has left," Hassett said in an interview with CNBC.

“We’re very optimistic ⁠that this is going to be over in the short ​run, and then there will be price repercussions when it ​is over for a few weeks, as the ships make it to the refineries," he added.

Israel is destabilizing the Iranian regime in the hopes of giving its citizens “the opportunity to remove it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today after his country said it had killed the Islamic Republic’s top security official, Ali Larijani, and the head of its Basij force, Gholam Reza Soleimani.

Local men sit in the rubble of a destroyed residential building in Tehran on Sunday. Shadati / Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

“This will not happen all at once, and it will not be easy. But if we persist, we will give them the opportunity to take their destiny into their own hands,” Netanyahu said in a video address shared by his office today.

Israel “eliminated” Larijani and Soleimani and was “determined” to win, he said. “I ask you simply to ignore voices of discouragement. We are achieving historic accomplishments,” Netanyahu added.

An American company that was targeted in a cyberattack that was purportedly carried out by an Iran-linked hacker group has said it is now contained.

Stryker, a medical tech company headquartered in Michigan, said in an update on its website that its products remained safe to use. "The incident has been contained, and we are now in the restoration process, which is progressing steadily," the weekend update added.

Last week's cyberattack on Stryker appeared to mark the first significant instance of Iran hacking an American company since the war with the U.S. and Israel began.

Handala Team, which cybersecurity companies say has ties to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, claimed responsibility for the hack in statements on its Telegram and X accounts. The group said the attack was carried out in retaliation for a strike on a children's school in Minab in southern Iran, according to Reuters.

The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a retired Green Beret and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, said he has resigned over the war with Iran.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Joe Kent said in a statement posted on X today. “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

 Jenny Kane / AP file

The National Counterterrorism Center oversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists.

Kent worked under Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and the two were political allies. Gabbard has kept a low profile since the war started and has previously criticized U.S. military interventions abroad.

Read the full story here.

United Nations investigators have requested access to the site of a deadly strike on a school purported to have killed scores of children at the start of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, a member of the Iran fact-finding mission said.

The U.N. had credible reports that at least 168 people were killed in the strike and that the majority were female students, many as young as 7 years old, Max du Plessis told British broadcaster BBC today.

The aftermath of a missile strike on a school in Minab, Iran, on Feb. 28. Abbas Zakeri / Mehr News via Reuters

“We’ve requested access to Iran and we’ll continue to seek that access,” he said, adding that the probe was still at an "early stage" and the U.N. was trying to determine who was responsible and what the legal consequences, if any, may be.

His comments came as an American investigation into the strike is ongoing. A U.S. official and three sources familiar with the preliminary findings previously told NBC News that outdated intelligence likely led to the deadly strike.

Keeping Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport open amid regular Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s capital is “very complicated,” the country’s transport minister told NBC News. 

Fayez Rasamny said it was “very challenging” but Lebanon had taken the decision to “keep our airspace open since day one of the war.” 

On one occasion, he said, a Middle East Airlines flight from Paris had been unable to land for 40 minutes “because there were fighter jets in the area.”

After considering whether to turn back to Cyprus and the plane’s fuel supply, Rasamny said, the pilot landed after around 40 to 50 uncertain minutes.

A Middle East Airlines aircraft takes off from the airport in Beirut as smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs today. Ibrahim Amro / AFP - Getty Images

As many as 45 million more people could be pushed into acute hunger by June if the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran carried on until then, the World Food Programme has warned.

Millions could fall into acute food insecurity if the war does not end by the middle of the year and if oil prices remain above $100 a barrel, according to a new analysis, the WFP said in a statement on its website today.

This would add to roughly 318 million people around the world who are already food insecure, it said.

The global numbers of food-insecure people could reach levels that were last seen at the start of the war in Ukraine, which triggered a cost of living crisis and saw global hunger reach record levels with 349 million people impacted, the WFP added.

It also warned that its “latest projections indicate we are at risk of facing a similar situation in the months ahead if the Middle East conflict continues.”

A displaced family outside their tent along Beirut's seafront Sunday. Ibrahim Amro / AFP - Getty Images

A tanker has been struck by falling debris while anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a British maritime monitoring agency said this morning.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said the vessel sustained minor structural damage and the crew was safe.

In an advisory yesterday, UKMTO said no confirmed vessel attacks have been reported since last Thursday, but the overall maritime threat level in the region remains critical due to prior attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The waterway, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, has been effectively blocked by Iran in response to the strikes by the U.S. and Israel.

The timing of a highly anticipated summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is in doubt after Trump asked to delay it by “a month or so” so he can focus on the widening war with Iran.

It’s the latest complication from the U.S.-Israeli attack on Tehran, which has close ties with Beijing, as the conflict adds another possible point of tension between America and China.

 Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images file

The summit was meant to focus on trade, as both Trump and Xi seek to extend a delicate tariff truce between the world’s two biggest economies. But China showed little immediate sign that it was bothered by the likely delay, which analysts said may actually prove beneficial to efforts to further stabilize relations.

Read the full story here.

An Iran-aligned militia group fired a combination of drones and rockets, at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier today, according to a U.S. official.

Of the seven projectiles fired, U.S. defenses intercepted six of them, but one got through and struck an empty slab of concrete on the compound, the official said. There were no injuries or serious damage, the official added.

Security outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad today. Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP - Getty Images

An image released by Israel's government press office today shows what it says is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the killing of senior Iranian regime officials.

@IsraeliPM via X

Hundreds of Starlink satellite internet terminals have been seized in Iran, the semi-official news agency ISNA reported today, citing the Intelligence Ministry.

The seizure happened in “a large-scale combined operation using extensive technological tools” to identify the locations of satellite systems and “criminal activities of their users,” ISNA quoted the ministry as saying.

“These measures will continue until all satellite internet terminals that in any way serve the enemy are fully identified,” the ministry was quoted as adding before it warned that the procurement and use of illegal Starlink systems was criminal and “during wartime it carries the most severe punishment for offenders, especially those linked to or cooperating with the enemy.”

Iran has been offline since the U.S.-Israeli military operation against it began last month. The blackout has now lasted for more than 400 hours, the monitoring service NetBlocks said earlier today.

Israel’s military said it has begun a “wide-scale wave of strikes” across Iran’s capital, Tehran. The announcement came shortly after air raid sirens were heard going off in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis today said that Europe should prepare short- and long-term measures to support consumers and businesses as energy prices soar due to the conflict in the Middle East.

More troops have joined ground operations in southern Lebanon with the aim of expanding Israel’s “forward defense,” the country's military announced this morning on Telegram.

Israeli soldiers are seen along the border with Lebanon in northern Israel today. Ariel Schalit / AP

The Israel Defense Forces said the “limited and targeted ground operations” had begun in “recent days.” Troops were working to “establish the forward defensive posture in order to remove threats and create an additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel,” it added.

The announcement came as fears of a prolonged occupation in southern Lebanon grew, where hundred of thousands of people have been displaced from in recent weeks.

The IDF said it would "continue to operate with determination" against Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.

Air raid sirens have been heard going off in Tel Aviv.

A family shelters as sirens sound, warning of a missile attack over Holon, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv today. Jack Guez / AFP - Getty Images

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has told reporters that his military will continue going after Iranian leaders.

Together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said he had instructed the IDF to "continue pursuing the leadership."

Katz said that Iran's powerful security chief, Ali Larijani, and Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Basij force, were killed last night. He did not say what formed the basis of the Israeli military assessment.

A handwritten note commemorating Iran's dead sailors was posted on Ali Larijani's X account, shortly after Israel said it had killed the powerful security chief.

The note was also posted on Iranian state media. There was no public evidence indicating when the note was written or whether Larijani wrote it.

"The security and field of effort of the nation’s soldiers in distant areas, aimed at safeguarding the country’s national interests, continues despite all hardships," reads the handwritten note, signed off with Larijani's name.

The funeral of the sailors, killed in a U.S. attack, is expected to be held today.

Iran has not confirmed Larijani's death, and it was not immediately clear what Israel was basing its assessment on.

The Israeli military has killed Iran's powerful security chief, Ali Larijani, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed this morning.

Ali Larijani, center, participates in the Quds Day rally in Tehran on Friday. Supreme National Security Council / ZUMA Press via Alamy

Iran offered no immediate response to the claim, and it was not immediately clear what Israel was basing its assessment on.

Israel will update Trump later today that the "high rate of turnover" in Iran's leadership is "continuing and even accelerating following the elimination of two of the most senior remaining figures," Katz said.

Larijani would be the highest-ranking Iranian official to be killed after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's death at the very start of the war.

Larijani was an influential figure in Iran's leadership who was viewed by some as a de facto ruler in the wake of Khamenei's death, and with the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei making no public appearances.

The Israeli military said today it had killed Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, an all-volunteer force of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard that is key in suppressing protests around the country.

Israel said Soleimani was killed in an airstrike yesterday. It said that he has acted as the unit's commander for six years and helped oversee the regime's repression of dissent and mass arrests.

Gholam Reza Soleimani. Atta Kenare / AFP via Getty Images

Iran gave no immediate confirmation of Israel's claim to have killed Soleimani. He would be one of the most senior Iranian officials to have been killed since the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei early in the war.

Both the U.S. and Israel have targeted the leadership of Iran's internal security apparatus throughout the conflict, hoping to damage the regime's ability to put down any unrest.

Multiple drones were intercepted by air defense systems near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as Iranian-backed militias target American interests in Iraq.

It was not immediately clear if the facility suffered any damage.

Drones intercepted near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

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Military officials have included options in regular war planning for Trump to end the conflict in Iran should he decide to do so, six people familiar with the plans told NBC News.

So far, he hasn’t.

Read the full story here.