The war in the Middle East continued to escalate on Monday, with multiple countries now dragged into the growing conflict between the US, Israel and Iran.
The US and Israel have continued to pound Iran following the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the weekend, with Donald Trump warning the worst is yet to come.
“We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” he told CNN. “The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”
Tehran and its allies have hit back, with Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia among the nations struck in retaliatory attacks.
A series of loud explosions were heard across Gulf cities on Monday, with civilian targets in the region, including hotels and airports, also hit.
Tourists and residents in supposed Middle Eastern safe havens like Dubai have described missiles going past their windows, while hundreds of thousands of airline passengers have found themselves stranded by flights cancelled in hotspot areas.
The conflict is already having a global economic impact with oil prices shooting up in response to the crisis.
The death toll continues to climb on all sides, with fears the strikes could go on for weeks. The Iranian Red Crescent Society said that the US-Israeli operation has already killed at least 555 people, with reports of 165 victims at a girls’ school in southern Iran.
In Israel, where several locations were hit by Iranian missiles, 11 people were killed. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group also targeted Israel, which responded with strikes on Lebanon, killing more than two dozen more.
Four American service members have now been killed. There people were also killed in the UAE, and one each in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Amid growing concerns that the conflict could spiral into a protracted regional war, including over the lack of any apparent exit plan, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth insisted “this is not endless” as he held the Trump administration’s first news briefing since strikes were launched on Saturday.
But Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani vowed on X on Monday: “We will not negotiate with the United States.”
In an indication that the war could draw in yet more nations, the UK, France and Germany have pledged to help the US stop Iranian attacks.
A drone hit the British RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus on Sunday with two more intercepted on Monday. Sir Keir Starmer said this was “not in response to any decision that we have taken” but was launched before Britain’s announcement that it would allow America to use its bases.
