Iran…Israel …Trump…Evening …3/10/2026….Trump doing Israel’s Job?

Whether any Iranian mines have been deployed in the water since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28 was unclear. In the 1980s, Iranian forces laid mines in the Persian Gulf that required clearance by U.S. Navy minesweepers. In April 1988, an Iranian mine severely damaged — though did not sink — an American frigate, leading U.S. forces to launch retaliatory strikes.

News of the minelayer strikes came on a day when the Trump administration officials sent mixed messages about the war, including about oil transport. They were the latest in a string of muddled statements about a conflict that has so far killed more than 1,800 people and disrupted global energy markets.

The confusion was typified by Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, saying on social media that a Navy warship had “successfully escorted” an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, where the war has slowed ship traffic. Shortly afterward, a military official said that had not happened, and the social media post was deleted.

The day before, President Trump threatened to strike Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if it moved to stop the flow of oil through the strait, even though Tehran had already begun doing so days earlier.

And in a news briefing at the White House, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that President Trump, and not the leaders of Iran, would be the one to declare that Iran had unconditionally surrendered — one of the conditions he has laid out for ending the war.

“When President Trump says that Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender, he’s not claiming the Iranian regime is going to come out and say that themselves,” she said.

Early in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that Tuesday would be marked by a significant increase in American and Israeli strikes on Iran. As midnight passed in the Middle East that had not appeared to take shape, though Israel did begin a wave of attacks early Wednesday local time.

As Washington again struggled to come up with a consistent narrative for the war, a humanitarian crisis loomed in Lebanon, where nearly 700,000 people have been driven from their homes, the United Nations said Tuesday. Israel’s mass evacuation orders and bombing campaign have transformed the country into a major new front in the expanding Middle East war. Airstrikes in Lebanon continued on Wednesday.

In Beirut and its densely packed surrounding area, tens of thousands of people fleeing Israel’s attacks on the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah were living in schools and government buildings. Others slept in cars and on sidewalks along the city’s seaside promenade.

More than 667,000 people have registered on the Lebanese government’s online displacement platform, the U.N. migration agency said on Tuesday, citing government figures. That included more than 100,000 in the past 24 hours, it said.

Israel’s military also announced a new wave of strikes in Tehran, the Iranian capital, on Tuesday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he hoped the Iranian people would oust the Islamic republic. “Ultimately, it is up to them” when the war ends, he said.

Some Iranians said the strikes overnight Monday into Tuesday were among the worst so far. “It seems they are striking everywhere: homes, schools, mosques, hospitals,” said one resident, Javad, who asked to withhold his full name out of concern for retaliation.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• American injuries: The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Iranian strikes, which have killed seven U.S. service members since the war with the United States and Israel began, had also wounded 140 U.S. service members, eight severely.

• Russian oil: The Trump administration has started to loosen restrictions on Russian oil exports in a bid to temper rising gas prices, in the latest signal that the consequences of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran were cascading into other crises. The easing of Russian oil sanctions, which were intended to help force an end to the war in Ukraine, includes a 30-day waiver for India to buy Russian oil already at sea without retaliation from Washington. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the United States was considering lifting more sanctions on Russian oil.

• Death toll: U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed about 1,300 people in Iran, according to Iranian officials, while Iranian attacks across the Middle East have killed at least 30. Israeli strikes have killed more than 500 people in Lebanon, state media reported.

• U.S. casualties: Iranian strikes have killed seven American troops, and injured 140 U.S. service members overall, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. Of that number, military officials said 108 have returned to duty, but eight are severely injured. Read more ›

• Health fears: Strikes on Iranian fuel depots led to dark plumes of smoke, black rain and sanitary concerns for local residents. “The war has entered our throats,” one said. Read more ›

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• Iran’s police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan has warned Iranians on state TV that anyone who takes to the streets “at the enemy’s request” will be “confronted as an enemy, not a protester”. Radan said security forces are stationed in the streets “day and night”.

• Lebanese health authorities said Israel’s raids on the southern town of Qana, in the Tyre district, on Wednesday have killed five people and wounded five others.

• The Israeli military said it had begun an “additional wave” of strikes on targets in Tehran. It followed the IDF saying earlier that it had struck key command centres of the Iranian armed forces in Tehran and Tabriz.

• It comes as Iran’s UN ambassador accused the US and Israel of deliberately targeting civilians – saying that almost 10,000 civilian sites have been hit in the country, including about 8,000 residential homes, and the death toll has reached more than 1,300 people. Amir Saeid Iravani said“populated residential areas” and “critical civilian infrastructure” had been hit in attacks he described as “horrific crimes”.

• Donald Trump said the US has hit and “completely destroyed” 10 inactive mine-laying vessels, warning that more would follow. US Central Command added that it “eliminated” 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the strait of Hormuz. The updates came shortly after the US president initially said there had been “no reports” of Iran placing mines in the strait, but warned that if it had, they must be moved “IMMEDIATELY” or Iran would face military consequences “at a level never seen before”. US officials earlier told CBS News that Iran may be preparing to deploy naval mines in the strait to further disrupt the crucial shipping lane. According to CNN, a few dozen mines have been laid in recent days.

• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the US Navyhas not escorted an oil tanker through the strait of Hormuz, after the US energy secretary Chris Wright said it had happened in a swiftly deleted X post. Leavitt also said that the US military is “drawing up additional options” to keep strait open.

• Leavitt also said that the US and Israel’s war won’t end until Iran’s “complete and unconditional surrender” and when Trump decides his objectives have been met and determines that Iran does not pose a direct threat. She told reporters that the US military is “making tremendous strides towards achieving our military objectives”, and is now moving to “dismantle Iran’s missile production infrastructure”.

• Meanwhile, the Trump administration is reportedly considering the deployment of special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which experts say could be used to make at least 10 nuclear warheads. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has told Congress that “people are going to have to go and get it”. Here’s our story.

• The United States reportedly asked Israel to halt strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, marking the first time the US has reined in its ally since they went to war 11 days ago. It comes after an Israeli bombing of fuel storage facilities blanketed Tehran – a city home to some 10 million people – in toxic black smoke and acid rain over the weekend, raising urgent health warnings for ordinary Iranians.

• Israel is set to expand its defence budget by almost 40 billion shekels (US$13bn) to fund the war in Iran, according to a finance ministry official, who wished to remain anonymous, Bloomberg reports. The defence budget will be expanded by 28bn shekels, with an additional 10 billion put aside as reserves for possible military needs, the offical said.

• A total of seven members of the Iranian women’s football team have now been granted humanitarian visas in Australia, home affairs minister Tony Burke has confirmed. An additional two women had sought asylum before the rest of the Iranian team departed Sydney on a flight to Malaysia on Tuesday night, one player and one support member, Burke told a press conference on Wednesday morning.

• Russia denied sharing intelligence with Iran on US military assets in the Middle East, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said. It follows reports on Friday that Moscow was providing Tehran with targeting information that included locations and movements of US warships and aircraft in the region. “Yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing,” Witkoff said when asked if Washington thought Moscow had shared intelligence about the location of US military assets with Tehran. “We can take them at their word. But they did say that. And yesterday morning, independently, Jared [Kushner] and I had a call with [Kremlin aide Yuri] Ushakov who reiterated the same.”

• Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed repeated claims from the Trump administration that Iran was planning a preemptive or preventive strike against the US or its military forces as “a sheer and utter lie”. “The sole purpose of that lie is to justify Operation Epic Mistake, a misadventure engineered by Israel and paid for by ordinary Americans,” Araghchi said in a post on X – riffing on the US’s name for the military operation, Operation Epic Fury.

• Approximately 140 US service members have been wounded since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, according to the Pentagon, eight of them severely….

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ISW....Iran Update Morning Special Report, March 10, 2026

1. The combined force struck several targets in Tehran overnight on March 9 and 10, including the IRGC “Quds Force headquarters” and an IRGC weapons research and development facility.
2. The combined force struck multiple sites in Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan Province, on March 10, which may have included the Artesh Air Force 9th Tactical Airbase. ISW-CTP has recorded combined force airstrikes targeting 11 out of Iran’s 17 Artesh Air Force tactical airbases since February 28.
3. Iran launched three missile barrages at Israel between 3:00 PM ET on March 9 and 8:00 AM ET on March 10. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted during a Pentagon briefing on March 10 that Iran had fired its lowest number of missiles since the war began over the last 24 hours. The IDF said on March 10 that Iranian missile barrages in recent days have included only a few missiles at a time, but that around 50 percent of Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Israel have contained cluster warheads.
4. Hezbollah has claimed 18 attacks targeting IDF positions and forces in northern Israel and southern Lebanon since ISW-CTP’s last data cutoff at 3:00 PM ET on March 9. The IDF confirmed that Hezbollah is using long-range projectiles to attack Israel, after Hezbollah claimed that it launched “high-quality missiles” targeting the IDF Rehavam Camp in Ramla, Central Israel, on March 9.
5. The IDF has continued to conduct airstrikes targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks targeting Israeli forces and positions in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. The IDF has reportedly continued to advance into southern Lebanon on three separate axes since ISW-CTP’s last data cutoff on March 9…

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