DUBAI — Israel and the United States carried out a wave of attacks on Iran on Monday, killing more than 25 people, and Iran responded with missile fire on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors. U.S. President Donald Trump’s deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz loomed as mediators circulated a new ceasefire proposal.
Explosions rang out in Tehran and low-flying jets could be heard for hours as the capital was pounded. Thick black smoke rose near the city’s Azadi Square after one airstrike hit the grounds of the Sharif University of Technology.
Among those killed in one of the attacks on Tehran was the head of intelligence for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, according to Iranian state media and Israel’s defense minister.
Iranian missiles hit the northern Israeli city of Haifa, where four people were found dead in the rubble of a residential building.
Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia all activated their air defenses to intercept incoming Iranian missiles and drones, as Tehran kept up the pressure on its Gulf neighbors. Iran’s regular attacks on regional energy infrastructure and its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime, has sent global energy prices soaring.
Under pressure at home as consumers are growing increasingly concerned, Trump gave Tehran a deadline that expires Monday night Washington time, saying if no deal was reached to reopen the strait, the U.S. would hit Iran’s power plants and other infrastructure targets and set the country “back to the stone ages.”
