People carry a casualty of an Israel and U.S. strike on a police station in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday. West Asia News Agency via Reuters-Yonhap
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran launched a new wave of attacks against Israel, American bases and countries around the region Thursday, while warning the U.S. would “bitterly regret” torpedoing an Iranian warship. Tehran’s expanding retaliatory strikes came even as Israel and the U.S. hammered Iran for a sixth day.
The war has escalated each day, affecting an additional 14 countries across the Middle East and beyond. On Thursday, Azerbaijan accused Iran of attacking it with drones — though Tehran denied that. A day earlier, the U.S. said it sank an Iranian frigate in the waters off Sri Lanka.
Israel meanwhile issued a mass evacuation warning for all of Beirut’s southern suburbs as the fighting escalated with Lebanon’s Iran-allied Hezbollah militants. U.N. peacekeepers reported ground combat in southern Lebanon as more Israeli troops crossed the border.
All the while, the U.S. and Israel have battered Iran with nationwide strikes, targeting their military capabilities, leadership and nuclear program. Israeli and American leaders have also suggested that toppling the government was a goal — and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed when they launched the war Saturday. But the exact aims and timelines have repeatedly shifted, and the conflict increasingly appeared to be open-ended.
Iran’s attacks have targeted their Arab neighbors, disrupted oil supplies and snarled global air travel.
The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 100 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six U.S. troops have been killed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the U.S. Navy of committing an “an atrocity at sea” for sinking the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean earlier in the week, killing at least 87 people.
“Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set,” he said on social media.
An Iranian cleric later called on state television for the shedding of both Israeli and “Trump’s blood.”
Source: Korea Times News
