The 2026 Iran Battle started on February 28 when the USA and ‘Israel’ launched an operation dubbed Epic Fury by the US and Lion’s Roar by ‘Israel’, unleashing almost 900 airstrikes in 12 hours on Iranian missile methods, air defenses, nuclear amenities, navy bases, and management targets.
Yemen’s Houthi motion entered the warfare early, launching missile and drone assaults towards ‘Israel’ and increasing the battle past the Gulf and Levant theaters.
This direct assault adopted years of shadow warfare, together with the first-ever Iran-‘Israel’ missile exchanges in April and October 2024 and a restricted 12-day warfare in June 2025 that broken Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile packages.
Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of prime officers had been killed within the opening salvo, whereas a US Tomahawk strike on a faculty adjoining to a naval base close to Bandar Abbas killed about 170 civilians, largely kids.
Iran responded inside hours by firing lots of of ballistic missiles and launching hundreds of drones at ‘Israel’, US bases within the Gulf, and targets in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait.
Tehran restricted passage by way of the Strait of Hormuz—by way of which 20% of world oil flows—disrupting transport and spiking oil costs.
The retaliation reignited combating with Hezbollah in Lebanon, prompting ‘Israeli’ strikes there and spreading the battle regionally whereas hitting civilian infrastructure, together with hospitals, airports, and heritage websites.
Over the subsequent three weeks, US-‘Israeli’ forces performed sustained air campaigns that destroyed a lot of Iran’s air-defense community, missile manufacturing websites and navy property.
Iran appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as the brand new supreme chief, however pragmatic senior official Ali Larijani was assassinated in an ‘Israeli’ strike on March 17.
Greater than 80,000 civilian websites had been hit, together with 260 medical amenities and UNESCO-listed buildings, inflicting widespread blackouts, gas shortages, poisonous air pollution, and over 2,000 complete deaths throughout Iran, ‘Israel’, Lebanon, and Gulf states.
The warfare remained lively in its fourth week with ongoing US-‘Israeli’ airstrikes on remaining Iranian targets and Iranian retaliatory barrages, together with latest cluster-munition assaults on ‘Israel’ and a failed long-range missile try at Diego Garcia.
Trump has threatened to destroy Iran’s energy crops except the Strait of Hormuz reopens totally however has signaled attainable winding down or offers, which Tehran denies pursuing.
