First responders inspect a residential building hit in an earlier US-Israeli strike in Tehran, Friday, March 27, 2026. (Photo | AP)
World

Israel hits Tehran with 'wide-scale' strikes as Netanyahu vows to press on, Trump signals exit

The strikes come as Netanyahu says Israel would press ahead with its military campaign even as Trump says US forces would end operations in Iran "very soon".

Agencies

The Israeli military said it carried out "wide-scale" strikes on Tehran on Wednesday, as Iranian state media reported blasts across the capital, with the conflict in West Asia now in its second month.

A brief military statement said Israeli forces had "completed a wide-scale wave of strikes targeting infrastructure sites of the Iranian terror regime in Tehran."

Iran's state broadcaster IRIB said areas in northern, eastern and central Tehran were under attack. The broadcaster said on Telegram that explosions were heard in the capital's north, east and centre, reporting "attacks on Tehran" without immediately providing more details.

The attacks come amid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that the country would press ahead with its military campaign against Tehran. "The campaign is not over," he said in a televised statement on Tuesday. "We will continue to crush the terror regime."

Hours later, US President Donald Trump presented a differing view saying that American forces would end operations in Iran "very soon", evoking a timeline of two to three weeks as his administration pursues talks while continuing its aerial campaign.

Asked about the impact of high fuel prices since the war began, Trump told reporters: "All I have to do is leave Iran, and we'll be doing that very soon, and they'll come tumbling down."

Meanwhile, President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran has the "necessary will" to end the war with the US and Israel, emphasising that Tehran was seeking guarantees the conflict would not flare up again.

The comment, which boosted US markets and led oil prices to fall, came after a day of heavy strikes on Iran and followed a warning from the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to retaliate against leading US tech firms such as Google from Wednesday if more Iranian leaders were killed in "targeted assassinations."

However, Tehran's retaliatory attacks targeting Gulf states continued on Wednesday as Kuwait's civil aviation authority said that the country's international airport had come under an Iranian drone attack that led to "a large fire" at fuel tanks.

Bahrain's interior ministry also said a fire broke out at a business facility "as a result of the Iranian aggression", while Saudi Arabia said it shot down several drones. A tanker was also hit in the waters off Qatar, a British maritime security agency said.

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