Israel launches fresh strikes on Tehran and Beirut | BBC News

US Israel war against Iran has entered its fourth day.

Israel says it's launching simultaneous strikes on the Lebanese capital Beirut and the Iranian capital Tehran.

Well these images show the aftermath of those strikes in Beirut. Israel says it's been hitting Hezbollah strongholds in the south of the country.

Hezbollah, which of course is backed by Iran, says it's targeted three Israeli bases in response. Iran's been striking back across the region.

Well, the US State Department says American citizens should leave the Middle East.

Let's see the scene live in Beirut at the moment, you can see there smoke hanging in the air and we are just hearing that at least 30,000 people are already displaced in Lebanon by the Middle East war.

Well, Israel's defense minister has told troops to take control of new positions in Lebanon.

Israel, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have also all reported Iranian missiles and drones entering their airspace in recent hours.

Well, the Iranian Red Crescent says more than 780 people have been killed so far. The United States says six of its service members are now known to have been killed.

Well, let's take a look at the picture in Lebanon. I've been speaking to our correspondent Lina Sinjab, who is in Beirut for us.

Well, continue the strikes and targeting Hezbollah stronghold both in Southern Beirut and in the south as well.

Hezbollah by itself is not stopping, they've resumed attacks and launched rockets in the early hours of the morning on various locations in Northern Israel, despite calls from the government to halt and ban any military or security activities by the group.

The country at large is blaming Hezbollah for dragging the country into war, some people even call them a treason because they have acted in interest of Iran and caused the killing of Lebanese.

Caused the displacement of thousands of Lebanese, those who lost their homes in the 2024 war with Israel as well, are now yet again having to flee their homes because of a single-sided decision taken by Hezbollah.

To act in accordance to what Iran wants, and that's how widely people are viewing the situation, and for the first time I have to say even voices of loyalists to Hezbollah.

Those from the Hezbollah, you know, groups and community, they feel that this was a wrong decision, they feel that this was a sort of a suicide attempt from Hezbollah by taking this decision and dragging the whole country into war.

Well, of course, it's a fast developing situation, just going to bring you some more updates that we are getting into us from the Middle East. We are hearing from Bahrain.

From the Interior Ministry there that sirens have sounded there.

We are also hearing from the United Arab Emirates that authorities are dealing with what they've described as an advanced fire in the port of Fujairah, that's from the government there as well, and as we were telling you a short while ago, at least 30,000 people are now displaced in Lebanon following the war in the Middle East.

Well, the US Vice President JD Vance has been talking about the war. He said President Trump wanted Iran to make a significant long-term commitment never to build a nuclear weapon and that commitment wasn't forthcoming.

After months, really almost a year of painstaking diplomacy, what the President determined is he didn't want to just keep the President or excuse me, keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three, four years of his second term.

He wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon and that would require fundamentally a change in mindset from the Iranian regime, so he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened, he knew that they were committed to getting on that brink of a nuclear weapon and he decided to take action because he felt that was necessary in order to protect the nation's security.

So Senator Marco Rubio, Secretary Rubio and the President have both said something along the lines of, you ain't seen nothing yet, we can hit three times as hard, what does that mean?

Well, what it means, Jesse, is we have a lot of capacity here. I think there's a lot of chatter about what our objectives is, what our goal is. I mean, I think the President's been extremely clear about our objectives and it's that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, but there's also been a lot of conversation about what are our capabilities.

And look, I I I know this stuff, obviously, I'm not going to reveal classified information here on air, but the President of the United States knows what we're able to do, he knows that we have much greater capacity to inflict damage on the Iranian nuclear program, but also on on various missiles that threaten our troops, as you've seen, they've been launching those at our troops for much of the past three days.

So I think the President has made it very clear that the United States has a lot of optionality here.

And, you know, we could go for a little bit longer, we could go for a lot longer, but I think the President just wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all important objective of ensuring that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, not just for the next few years, not just because we obliterated Fordow or some other enrichment facility, but because the Iranians themselves commit long-term to not building a nuclear weapon.

Well, the US Vice President JD Vance there. Well, let's hear now from our North America correspondent David Willis.

JD Vance, you mentioned there, making the point on Fox News that Donald Trump knew better than to embroil the United States in the sort of conflict that we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Mr. Trump has also been warning of what he calls a big wave of American military strikes on Iran, which is imminent, he made it appear, and Mr. Trump saying that basically the US attempts to destroy Iran's ballistic and nuclear weapons programs and obliterate its navy had, as he put it, just started.

But whilst the United States is about to increase its attacks on Iran, Iran is increasing its attacks on US allies in the region.

Saudi Arabia, the latest victim of a drone, Iranian drone attacks, eight of which were shot down, two though, managed to strike the US Embassy in the Saudi capital Riyadh, setting it briefly on fire, no injuries there, but the US State Department has nonetheless urged US citizens in basically the entire Middle East, 14 countries, to leave as soon as possible.