US and Israel offer shifting justifications for Iran war: what we know on day four

US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says Saturday’s strikes on Iran were pre-emptive; Benjamin Netanyahu says it will not be ‘an endless war’

• The Israeli military said it began a new wave of strikes on Tehran early on Tuesday. This came shortly after the military issued an evacuation warning for Tehran residents, especially those located near the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB.

• Fighting continued in Lebanon, with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, approving a military ground incursion into the southern part of the country and the Israeli military issuing new evacuation orders for dozens of locations.

• On Tuesday morning, the Israeli air force said it was attacking Tehran and Beirut simultaneously, with “extensive strikes” against the Iranian regime and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon that launched drones at northern Israel. Israeli airstrikes have killed 52 people and displaced at least 30,000 in Lebanon.

• The Iranian Red Crescent Society said that at least 787 people had been killed across Iran. However, in its latest update, the Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said the death toll on day three had reached at least 1,500, including 200 civilians and 1,300 members of the Iranian forces.

• Casualties and destruction were reported across at least nine countries, with the United Arab Emirates recording 186 missiles and 812 drones sent toward the country since the start of the conflict and two ports in Oman targeted in drone strikes today.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday confirmed that the entrance buildings of Iran’s Natanz fuel enrichment plant had sustained some damage in the recent strikes.

• Israel’s military said in the early hours of Tuesday that it was working to intercept a new wave of missiles launched from Iran, warning residents in multiple locations to seek shelter. After the latest salvo, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency services said they were treating seven people with injuries.

• The US attacked Iran after learning that Israel was going to strike, which would have meant retaliation against US forces, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. “We knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters. The justification for the attack differs from justifications given by Donald Trump and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth.

• Rubio also said the “hardest hits” were yet to come from the US military. “The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now,” he told reporters.

• Netanyahu said the war against Iran may take “some time” but would not take years. He told Fox News: “I said it could be quick and decisive. It may take some time, but it’s not going to take years. It’s not an endless war.”

• Trump signalled that US strikes on Iran could go much longer than originally predicted. He initially projected the war to last four to five weeks, but added it could go on longer, and has since sought to justify a broad, open-ended conflict. The president laid out what he said were four key objectives for hitting Iran.

• The US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was hit by a drone strike, causing a fire to break out.

• The state department urged Americans to immediately leave more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, amid the worsening conflict. Mora Namdar, the state department’s assistant secretary for consular affairs, said US citizens should leave using available commercial transportation “due to safety risks”. The US has not organised its own evacuation flights.

• Other countries, including Italy, Germany and France are trying to organise the return of their citizens. The evacuation of Spanish citizens is under way by land and air, and the country expects a first group of 175 citizens to land in Madrid from Abu Dhabi on Tuesday afternoon. A British government charter flight is to take off from Muscat, the capital of Oman, “in the coming days”, according to the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper.

• There was confusion over the status of navigation in the strait of Hormuz after a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to “burn any ship” seeking to navigate the waterway, a vital route for oil and gas shipments. However, US Central Command said the strait was not closed, according to Fox News.

• The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that “49 of the most senior Iranian regime leaders” have been killed in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, declaring that “killing terrorists is good for America”. That number includes supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

• The number of US service members killed in Iran has risen to six, the US military said on Monday.

• The US military said that it had struck more than 1,250 targets in Iran since operations started on Saturday.