Natanz nuclear facility hit in air strike, says Iran

Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility has been hit in an air strike, an official Iranian news agency reported, saying there was no radiation leakage.

It comes as Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz warned of an upcoming surge in attacks on Iran as the war in the Middle East entered its fourth week.

Mr Katz said in a video statement that next week “the intensity of the attacks” by Israel and the United States against Iran’s ruling theocracy will “increase significantly”.

He spoke shortly after fragments from an Iranian missile slammed into an empty kindergarten near Tel Aviv.

Israeli army spokesman Nadav Shoshani posted a video on X of the kindergarten building; no casualties were reported as the place was empty at the time.

Overnight and into the morning, Iran’s capital Tehran saw heavy air strikes, residents said.

In Iraq, a drone struck the intelligence service headquarters in Baghdad, killing an officer.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for that attack.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he was considering “winding down” military operations in the Middle East even as the United States was sending three more amphibious assault ships and roughly 2,500 additional marines to the region.

Mr Trump’s post on social media followed an Iranian threat to attack recreational and tourist sites worldwide.

The mixed messages from the US came after another climb in oil prices plunged the US stock market, and was followed by a Trump administration announcement it was lifting sanctions on Iranian oil already loaded on ships, a move aimed at wrangling soaring fuel prices.

The three-week-old war has shown no signs of abating, with Israel saying Iran continued to fire missiles at it early on Saturday, while Saudi Arabia said it downed 20 drones in just a couple of hours in the country’s eastern region, which is home to major oil installations.

The attacks came a day after Israeli air strikes hit in Tehran as Iranians celebrated the Persian New Year, known as Nowruz, a normally festive holiday that has been muted by the war.

The US and Israel have offered shifting rationales for the war, from hoping to foment an uprising that topples Iran’s leadership to eliminating its nuclear and missile programmes.

There have been no public signs of any such uprising and no end to the war in sight.

On social media, Mr Trump said: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”

That seemed at odds with his administration’s move to bolster its firepower in the region and request another 200 billion dollars from Congress to fund the war.

The United States is deploying three more amphibious assault ships and roughly 2,500 additional marines to the Middle East, an official told The Associated Press.

Two other US officials confirmed that ships were deploying, without saying where they were heading.

Days earlier the US redirected another group of amphibious assault ships carrying another 2,500 marines from the Pacific to the Middle East.

The marines will join more than 50,000 US troops already in the region.

Mr Trump has said he has no plans to send ground forces into Iran but has also asserted that he retains all options.

Iran’s top military spokesperson, General Abolfazl Shekarchi, warned on Friday that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide will not be safe for the country’s enemies.

The threat renewed concerns that Tehran may revert to using militant attacks beyond the Middle East as a pressure tactic.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei praised Iranians’ steadfastness in the face of war in a written statement read on Iranian television to mark Nowruz.

Mr Khamenei has not been seen in public since he became supreme leader following Israeli strikes that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and reportedly wounded him.

With little information coming out of Iran, it was not clear how much damage its arms, nuclear or energy facilities have sustained in the punishing US and Israeli strikes, which began on February 28 – or even who was truly in charge of the country.

But Iran’s attacks are still choking off oil supplies and raising food and fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.

The Israeli military said early on Saturday that it began a wave of strikes targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Smoke was seen rising, fires broke out and loud explosions were heard across parts of central Beirut, hours after the Israeli army renewed evacuation warnings for seven neighbourhoods.

Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than one million, according to the Lebanese government.

More than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran during the war.

In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missiles and four others have died in the occupied West Bank.

At least 13 US military members have been killed.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, has soared during the fighting and was around 106 dollars per barrel, up from roughly 70 dollars before the war.

The newly announced US pause in sanctions applies to Iranian oil loaded on ships as of Friday and is set to end on April 19.

The new move does not increase the flow of production, a central factor in the surging prices.

Iran has managed to evade US sanctions for years, suggesting that much of what it exports already reaches buyers.

Looking for ways to boost global oil supplies during the Iran war, the Trump administration has previously paused sanctions on certain Russian oil shipments for 30 days, which critics said rewarded Moscow while having only a modest effect on markets.