U.S. and Israel Conduct Strikes on Iran
Title: U.S. and Israel Attack Iran as Trump Calls for Change in Government: Live Updates
URL Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/28/world/iran-strikes-trump
Published Time: 2026-02-28T06:23:38.000Z
Markdown Content:
Pinned
Updated
22 minutes ago
President Trump announced on Saturday that the United States had launched a major attack on Iran as he vowed to devastate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program and bring about a change in its government.
Massive explosions resounded in the Iranian capital, Tehran, while residents reported seeing smoke rising from the district where the presidential palace and the National Security Council are.
Israel also announced that it had begun its own attack on Iran on Saturday morning in coordination with the United States. Iranian state television announced that Iran’s armed forces were preparing to retaliate.
Mr. Trump, in a video announcing “major combat operations,” vowed to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy,” arguing that Iran had refused to reach a deal with the United States that would have averted war. He then called on Iranians to overthrow their government when the U.S. military operation came to an end. “It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generation,” he said.
U.S. officials say they expect the latest strikes to be far more extensive than the American attack last June, which targeted three separate Iranian nuclear facilities. Dozens of U.S. strikes are being carried out by attack planes from bases and aircraft carriers around the Middle East, one of the U.S. officials said.
It was not immediately clear what the American and Israeli attacks had targeted so far, but a U.S. official said the campaign could last several days.
The attacks began on Saturday morning, the first day of the Iranian workweek, as millions of people were at work and school. Explosions have also been heard in other cities across Iran, including Isfahan and Karaj, according to the semiofficial news agency, Fars. In Israel, air-raid sirens blared throughout the country as it braced for potential retaliation.
The attack followed weeks of rising tensions as Mr. Trump repeatedly threatened to strike Iran unless the country’s leadership agreed to U.S. demands. American and Iranian officials held a last-ditch round of mediated talks in Switzerland on Thursday over Tehran’s nuclear program. But the talks ended without a breakthrough, apparently paving the way for the strike.
Here’s what else to know:
- Chaos in Tehran:Ali Zeinalipoor, a Tehran resident, described watching a massive plume of smoke billowing from nearby Pasteur Street. “I rushed to school to get my daughter from middle school, the girls were hiding under the stairs and crying,” he said.
- The crisis: The latest tensions with Iran began after Mr. Trump vowed in early January to aid antigovernment demonstrators there. The Iranian government quelled those protests in a bloody crackdown that killed thousands, according to rights groups. Mr. Trump has since both threatened to attack Iran and sought to leverage the unrest in the country to reach a diplomatic solution.
- Last year’s strikes: The United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last June during a 12-day-war between Israel and Iran. While Mr. Trump initially said the Iranian nuclear program had been “obliterated” by those American strikes, it later emerged that the effort had been degraded, not decisively destroyed. Read more ›
- Israel readies for retaliation:Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, announced his country’s strikes in a statement, adding that the country would be under a state of emergency. Anticipating potential Iranian retaliation, the Israeli government announced that schools, workplaces, and the country’s international airspace would close, effective immediately.
_This is a developing story. Check back for updates._
3 minutes ago
Sirens blared in parts of Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf that is home to the headquarters of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet. Mobile phone alerts from Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior urged citizens and residents to “remain calm and head to the nearest safe place.”
5 minutes ago
So far, few members of Congress have awoken to news of the strikes on Iran but Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, a Democrat and former Marine who served in Iraq, said on social media early Saturday that the United States “can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.” He added that Americans should not have to “pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people.”
6 minutes ago
While President Trump recited a litany of Iranian attacks on American interests back to the hostage crisis during the Carter administration, he made little effort to argue that any immediate threat had prompted the latest U.S. and Israeli strikes. He repeated the allegation he made in the State of the Union address that Iran was working on missiles that could soon reach the United States, but the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded, in a 2025 report, that no decision had been made by the Iranian government to pursue an intercontinental ballistic missile. While Trump repeated that Iran could never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, he did not attempt to make the case that Iran was closer to producing one.
11 minutes ago
Videos verified by The New York Times show strikes in an area of Tehran that houses the presidential palace and Iran’s National Security Council, among other important government buildings. Another video shows a strike near Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.
16 minutes ago
A central goal of the first joint wave of strikes in Iran was to hit as many leaders as possible, according to three Israeli security officials familiar with the operations.
The officials said that, similar to the previous strikes in June last year, planners took into account that they would manage to achieve at least some degree of surprise. They calculated that if they wanted to kill senior Iranian officials, they had to try and hit them in the first round of strikes. Afterward, it is highly likely that more precautions would be taken to protect the leadership.
19 minutes ago
The Department of Defense is calling these strikes “Operation Epic Fury.”
20 minutes ago
Loud booms are heard in Jerusalem, likely from interceptions of incoming missiles.
20 minutes ago
Air-raid sirens are continuing to sound in Jerusalem and across Israel, warning of incoming Iranian attacks. There have been no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
21 minutes ago
Iran’s state news outlet, IRNA, said it was up and running again, after it announced it had been hacked during the U.S.-Israeli attack.
26 minutes ago
Iran’s state news agency IRNA is reporting explosions in the city of Isfahan, in central Iran, and in the western province of Ilam near the border with Iraq.
30 minutes ago
Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was not notified of the strikes in advance, his spokesman said.
31 minutes ago
One of the key questions is whether the United States and Israel can suppress Iran’s ability to strike back with its large supply of ballistic missiles and drones. Iran has promised a major response and is likely to try to use a significant number of its missiles sooner rather than later. How much damage they can cause to American forces and to Israel will likely dictate how long this war goes on.
37 minutes ago
Trump’s call for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard forces to surrender, with the promise of complete immunity, added a particularly unusual element to the speech. Because the campaign appears to be largely an air operation, there is no one for them to surrender to, no one to take them prisoner or to implement Trump’s offer of “total immunity.” It may have simply been intended to sow doubt in the ranks if they believed the government was going to collapse.
41 minutes ago
Trump’s statements effectively differentiated his war aims now from those last June. The targets back then were deeply buried nuclear facilities, most of them far from civilian populations. The sites that appear to have been hit today are at the core of Iran’s cities and its leadership compounds, and the goal as described by Trump is clearly different — to wipe out the leadership and make way for a revolution. It is a high-risk move: There are almost no successful examples in modern history of regime change through an air campaign. But administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have made clear they imagine a swift campaign with no U.S. troops on the ground.
42 minutes ago
Trump calls for a change in Iran’s leadership.
Video
Credit Credit...Donald J. Trump, via Truth Social
President Trump said early Saturday that the United States had launched a “massive and ongoing” military campaign against Iran in an effort to decimate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program and bring about a change in government.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” he said in an eight-minute-video posted on Truth Social at 2:30 a.m. “Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.”
Mr. Trump, standing behind a lectern and wearing a white USA hat, argued the Iranian regime has posed a threat to the national security of the United States for 47 years, ever since a revolution in Iran led to the installation of a theocratic government there. He ticked through a list of Iranian-led attacks that targeted Americans over the last four decades, starting with the hostage crisis that began in 1979, and called for the Iranian people to “take over your government” after the strikes end.
“For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it,” he said in a message directed to the Iranian people. “No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.”
The president said the U.S. military campaign was aimed at Iran’s missiles, its Navy and its proxy groups in the region — and warned that there could be U.S. casualties.
“My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region,” Mr. Trump said. “Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
The president implored members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian armed forces and the police to “lay down your weapons” and said they would have “total immunity” if they did. If not, he said they would “face certain death.”
43 minutes ago
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel announced in a video statement that Israel and the United States had launched a “joint operation” against what he called the “existential threat” posed by Iran. He said the American-Israeli attack against the Iranian government could “create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands.”
45 minutes ago
The constitution grants Congress alone the power to formally declare war, something that even Republicans on Capitol Hill have sought to remind Trump of this week. In his video remarks, the president indicated that he understood this operation to be a war, citing the possibility of American “casualties that often happens in war.” His declaration that “no president was willing to do what I am willing to tonight” speaks to the likely unilateral decision-making from the White House.
49 minutes ago
Just hours before the attacks began, senior officials from Arab states and European allies were saying that the White House was still not telling them what the objective of the strikes would be. President Trump left no doubt in his video that it is regime change.“When we are finished, take over your government,’’ he said. Trump went on to claim that only he, among the presidents who have confronted Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, was willing to seize the moment.
55 minutes ago
The Israeli military said it had detected ballistic missiles launched from Iran at the country — the first wave of Iranian retaliation in response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks earlier today.
53 minutes ago
Air-raid sirens are resounding throughout northern Israel and the coastal city of Haifa, warning residents to enter fortified shelters.
57 minutes ago
Iran’s state television announces that Iran’s armed forces were getting ready to retaliate against Israel.
1 hour ago
Several residents of Tehran said there had been no direction from the government so far, and that sirens did not sound when the attacks began. They said that state radio and television outlets were not giving people guidance on where to go and what to do.
Image
Credit...Associated Press
1 hour ago
Regime change in Iran would be the fulfilment of a decades-old obsession of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He has long portrayed the Islamic Republic as a menace to Israel, the Middle East and the world.
1 hour ago
Skeptics of U.S. military intervention expressed doubt that they would ultimately result in an Iran that abandoned its nuclear program. Edward King, the president of Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates a restrained foreign policy, said diplomacy would have been a better path.
1 hour ago
Rosemary Kelanic, a scholar at Defense Priorities, warned that it was easier to start a war in the Middle East than to end one. “The overriding imperative now is for the U.S. to avoid escalation into a prolonged conflict that wastes American power rather than enhances it,” she said.
2 hours ago
An attack on Iran carries risks for the U.S., experts say.
Experts have warned that an attack on Iran could potentially draw the United States into a protracted conflict, because Iran’s leadership oversees extensive military abilities and a network of regional proxy forces that could help sustain a resistance.
Iran has one of the biggest and most varied missile stockpiles in the Middle East, according to regional experts. Its arsenal includes drones and anti-ship weaponry, though the current volume of Iran’s missile inventory remains unclear after its 12-day war with Israel last year.
Iran’s medium‑range ballistic missiles are capable of traveling more than 1,200 miles, putting them in range of American bases as far away as western Turkey and across the broader Middle East, including in Israel and the Gulf States.
The Gulf States, which are home to a number of American bases, are anxious that any American military strike could lead to blowback against them. And an Iranian counterattack could strike cities in Israel.