The Middle East conflict has entered its seventh day, with Israel launching fresh strikes on Tehran and Beirut in the early hours of Friday. Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir confirmed in a televised address that the campaign had shifted focus to targeting "regime infrastructure" as part of what he described as a new operational phase. "We are now moving to the next phase of the operation. We have additional surprises coming up that I'm not going to reveal," Zamir stated.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that "firepower over Iran and Tehran is about to increase dramatically." President Donald Trump, speaking to NBC by phone on Thursday, dismissed the idea of deploying ground troops to Iran, saying: "It's a waste of time. They have lost everything. They've lost their navy. They've lost everything they can lose." Six American military personnel have been killed since hostilities commenced on Saturday. Trump also insisted he "must be involved" in selecting Iran's next supreme leader following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dismissing Khamenei's son as "a lightweight" and drawing a comparison to Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who was installed after US forces captured President Nicolas Maduro in January.
Overnight Israeli strikes hit multiple towns in southern Iran and caused extensive damage in Beirut's southern suburbs. In the city of Shiraz, at least 20 people were reported killed in US and Israeli bombardments targeting the residential area of Zibashahr. "20 innocent citizens were made martyrs and 30 others were injured in this terrorist attack," said Jalil Hasani, deputy governor of Fars province, as quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
The conflict has spread beyond Iran and Lebanon, with Saudi Arabia intercepting three drones east of Riyadh and three missiles aimed at an air base on Friday. Qatar thwarted a drone strike on the Al-Udeid facility, Washington's largest military installation in the region. Azerbaijan announced the withdrawal of its diplomatic staff from Iran after Iranian drones struck an airport and a school in a border area on Thursday. "The process applies to the embassy in Tehran as well as the consulate in Tabriz," foreign minister Jeyhun Bayramov confirmed. Thirteen people, including seven civilians, have perished in Gulf states since fighting began, among them Elena Abdullah Hussein, an 11-year-old girl in Kuwait.
The hostilities have triggered the most severe disruption to global air travel since the Covid pandemic. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr noted a surge in demand for long-haul flights after all services from Dubai and Doha were grounded. "The massive concentration of global traffic flow via the Gulf hubs is increasingly turning out to be a geopolitical Achilles' heel," Spohr cautioned on Friday, adding that the conflict heightened medium- and long-term forecast uncertainty for the airline.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that three of his country's military personnel were aboard an American submarine that sank an Iranian navy vessel near Sri Lanka this week, as part of training under the AUKUS defence pact. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said his country's navy had ordered 208 sailors from the IRIS Bushehr to abandon the ship before taking control of the vessel.
