The US and Israel started “major combat operations” against Iran early Saturday morning, telling the people of Iran to get rid of their clerical leaders.
The action is known as “Lion’s Roar” in Israel and “Epic Fury” in the US.
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, and other top leaders have been killed.
The attack came two days after talks between the US and Iran about Tehran’s nuclear program finished without a deal.
In response to what Iran’s foreign minister called a “unprovoked, illegal” attack by the US and Israel, it began its own attacks all over the Middle East.
So far, this is what we know:
How many people have died?
Three US soldiers were killed in action and five were badly hurt, US Central Command said on Sunday, but did not name the dead.
CBS, the BBC’s US partner, says that the staff was based in Kuwait.”Several others got minor injuries from shrapnel and concussions and are on their way back to work,” Central Command wrote on X.
The Red Crescent said on Saturday that more than 200 people have been killed and more than 700 have been hurt in Iran.
The state news service, Irna, says that an explosion at a school in southern Iran killed at least 165 people, some of whom were children.
A missile fired from Iran hit a synagogue bomb shelter in the central Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, killing at least nine people. Hugo Bachega of the BBC reports from the scene.
Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, says that an Iranian missile hit several buildings in downtown Tel Aviv and killed one person and hurt at least twenty.
Iran also fired drones and missiles at Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, all of which are in the UAE and have US troops stationed there.
At airports in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, one person was killed and eleven were hurt, according to the government and airport officials.
Did Trump have to get Congress’s OK to attack Iran?
Trump called the strikes on Iran by the US and Israel “major combat operations” in his video message.
Art. I of the US Constitution says that Congress has the right to officially declare war, but it has not done so.
The Constitution does, however, give the president a lot of power to use the troops.
There has been a lot of talk in Washington lately about this gray area.
On Capitol Hill, reactions to the attack on Iran by the US and Israel have mostly been political. Republicans, who run both houses of Congress right now, were mostly in favor.
A Republican named House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the Trump administration had told the “Gang of 8,” which is made up of diverse congressional leaders, about the strikes ahead of time.
Democrats mostly spoke out against the strikes and said Trump was starting a war without getting permission from Congress.
Democrats were calling for Congress to pass a war powers resolution again, like the one that failed last year because Republicans didn’t back it.
If there was another war powers resolution that was presented and passed, it would stop the president from using force without telling Congress first.
But for now, it doesn’t look like such a plan will pass.
Only Congressman Thomas Massie and Senator Rand Paul have said they would support such a bill. That’s about it.
Why did the US attack Iran?
As soon as explosions were reported in Tehran on Saturday, Trump went on social media to say that Iran was “targeting the United States with an endless campaign of bloodshed and mass murder.”
He said that Iran had turned down every chance to give up its nuclear program and that it was working on long-range weapons that could target Europe, US troops abroad, and even “soon reach the American homeland.”
In 1979, the US mission in Tehran was violently taken over, and dozens of Americans were held hostage for 444 days. He also said that in 1983, 241 people were killed when Iran’s agents bombed a US Marine barracks in Beirut.
In January, the US president also said he would step in when Iranian security forces put down protests in the middle of an economic disaster.
The US bombed three nuclear sites in Iran in June of last year. The US operation Midnight Hammer was said to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program by Trump.
Iran and Israel had been fighting for 12 days before the US attacked last summer. This led to a halt.
Iraqi nuclear, military, and infrastructure areas were hit by Israeli airstrikes. To get back at Israel, Tehran fired hundreds of rockets and drones at it.
How many of the people in charge of Iran have been killed?
At the time of his death, Trump called Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “one of the most evil people in history” on social media.
Later, Iran’s state TV reported that Khamenei, 86, had died. He had been president since 1989 and had been in charge for 40 years.
Trump told Fox News that the attack had killed 48 Iranian rulers.
BBC Verify got pictures from space that showed that part of Khamenei’s office in the Iranian city, Tehran, had been damaged quite badly.
Are there going to be US troops on the ground?
There are no signs that US combat troops will be sent to Iran, in part because most Americans don’t want a ground attack.GOP Senator Tom Cotton told CBS, the US partner of BBC, on Sunday, “The president has no plans for any kind of large-scale ground force inside of Iran.”
“An extended air and naval campaign” will be part of the US action, Cotton said. Search-and-rescue teams could “go in and extract any downed pilot.”
The United States has 13 military bases in the Middle East. Between 30,000 and 40,000 troops are usually stationed at these bases.
The US military has been building up its footprint in the Middle East for weeks. The USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln are two aircraft carriers that are currently there.
Is it possible for Iran to attack the US?
Jeremy Bowen, the foreign editor of the BBC, says that Iran has enriched uranium to a level that can’t be used for civilian purposes in a nuclear power program. However, the Iranian government has always said that it doesn’t want a nuclear weapon.
He also says that Israel and the US have not yet shown any proof that it was planning to make a bomb.
There have been no public reports of an impending attack on the US mainland by Iran, but police in cities from New York City to Los Angeles said they were very alert.
