Live updates: White House says Trump will do it

Two hundred and ninety American service members have been wounded since the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said Wednesday.

The spokesperson said 255 of those service members have returned to duty. Ten people remain seriously injured. The status of the other 25 service members was not provided.

Leavitt said the United States and Iran are still engaged in peace talks, even though Iranian state media reported that Tehran had rejected Washington’s plan to end the war.

“Talks are continuing. They are productive,” Leavitt said when asked about the Iranian report, adding that there were “elements of truth” in media reports about the details of a 15-point US plan setting out demands on Tehran.

Trump is prepared to “unleash hell” on Iran if Tehran does not agree to a deal to end the war in the Middle East, the White House warned Wednesday.

“If Iran does not accept the reality of the current moment, if it does not understand that it has been defeated militarily and will continue to be defeated, President Trump will ensure that it is hit harder than ever before,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing.

“President Trump doesn’t bluster and is prepared to unleash hell,” Leavitt said. “Iran should not make miscalculations again.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the “general campaign against Iran” remains “in full swing.”

Netanyahu also said that “the issue of Hezbollah disarmament is at the forefront” of Israel’s goals in the Middle East, and that the country is “fully determined to do whatever is necessary to fundamentally change the situation in Lebanon.”

Netanyahu made these remarks in a speech to local leaders.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Operation Epic Fury is “almost done” and is “concluding,” even as the Pentagon is expected to ship parts of the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East.

“The troop buildup is very different from the ‘on the ground’ buildup,” Johnson said at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. “We don’t have troops on the ground. I don’t think that’s the intention, but I think Iran should monitor that buildup and should take note of it.”

Johnson stated that the objectives of the operation “have been met”, but access to the Strait of Hormuz still needs to be “straightened”. Johnson said it is a “giant project” that will require help from “international partners.”

Johnson said the operation will be “conducted in a short time and as planned.” The timeline for the operation has never been officially clarified.

Before the United States and Israel launched their joint attacks on Iran 25 days ago, many Iranians said they would welcome foreign intervention if it meant the end of the Islamic Republic. The regime, in power for 47 years, had just crushed a huge wave of anti-government demonstrations; President Trump claimed that more than 30,000 people had died and promised to come to the rescue of protesters.

Now, two Iranians, one inside and one outside the country, tell News themezone that the feeling of optimism has changed markedly after more than three weeks of war.

“If we had a global situation where Europe and the rest of the world were more orchestrated and together, collectively, with a plan that combined a number of things, both force and diplomacy and sanctions and discussions, all kinds of things – a long-term plan – then that could have worked with this regime,” said Reza, a British-Iranian whose name News themezone changed to protect his identity. “But having just one or two countries, you know, coming in unilaterally without a proper plan? It’s never going to work. That’s why I think people are waking up to this rude awakening, realizing that they’re basically doomed.”

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called on the United States and Israel to end the war and told Iran to stop attacking its neighbors. He called the war “out of control” and said “this has gone too far.”

“The conflict has surpassed limits that even leaders considered unimaginable,” he said.

“The world is staring into the barrel of a broader war, a rising tide of human suffering and a deeper global economic shock,” Guterres said.

He also called for an end to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, saying that “Hezbollah must stop launching attacks against Israel” and “Israel must stop its military operations and attacks in Lebanon, which are hitting civilians the hardest.”

He said a number of dialogue initiatives are underway and “they must succeed.”

“We need a way out of this disaster,” he said.

Iran’s state-backed Press TV network on Wednesday offered a five-point plan as it said the regime rejected terms to end the war presented by the Trump administration.

The plan by an unnamed senior political security official included stopping the assassinations of Iranian officials, means to ensure that another war is not waged against Iran, reparations for the war, an end to hostilities, and “Iran’s exercise of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.”

Those measures, particularly reparations and their continued chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, will likely be unacceptable to the White House as energy supplies around the world remain affected by the war.

Joey Amor says his wife, Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor was “the rock” and “the glue” to those around her, a role he said defined her life and service before she was killed earlier this month during the war with Iran.

“In a time of chaos, darkness, worry, fear or uncertainty, she anchored them,” he told News themezone in an exclusive interview, adding that the soldiers who served alongside Nicole “all say the same thing” about her.

Nicole, from White Bear Lake, Minnesotawas one of six Army Reserve soldiers killed in a Iranian drone attack in Kuwait on March 1, a day after the United States and Israel launched a massive military operation in Iran. They were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Joey Amor said he became concerned when he saw news reports about an explosion that had hit a maintenance unit in Kuwait.

“When I heard it was a maintenance unit based in Kuwait, I knew enough about what was going on there to know there were very few left there, I knew it was their unit,” Joey Amor said.

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Iran’s state broadcaster Press TV said on Wednesday that the regime had rejected terms presented by the Trump administration to end the war launched by the United States and Israel on February 28.

Iran’s leaders have insisted that a diplomatic resolution to the war “will only occur on Tehran’s own terms and schedules,” Press TV said, citing an unnamed senior political security official.

The official “said Iran will not allow US President Donald Trump to dictate the timing of the end of the war. Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” according to the network.

The proposals conveyed to Tehran through an intermediary were considered “excessive and disconnected from the reality of the United States’ failure on the battlefield,” Press TV said.

The Lebanese military said after collecting shrapnel fragments scattered across several cities north of Beirut that they resembled a Qadr 110, an Iranian-made medium-range ballistic missile that had “smaller rockets attached to it.”

The military said the missile exploded at high altitude on Tuesday, suggesting it was not aimed at Lebanon. A Lebanese military source told News that it was heading towards Cyprus and was intercepted in the Mediterranean by a warship.

The incident horrified Lebanese residents as fragments scattered across cities and towns in the Keserwan district, north of Beirut, and far from the epicenter of the conflict.

“As for the cause of its explosion, it was probably a technical malfunction or an interceptor missile,” the military said. “The military command points out that there are no interceptor missile platforms located within Lebanese territory.”

The Qadr 110 missiles are capable of hitting any target in the Middle East, including Israel.

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Wednesday that negotiating with Israel under fire would amount to a “surrender” of Lebanon and urged the government to revoke its ban on the party’s military activities.

“When negotiations are proposed with the Israeli enemy under fire, it is an imposition of surrender,” said Qassem, rejecting the Lebanese president’s initiative to start direct negotiations “with an enemy that occupies our land and carries out daily attacks.”

Qassem called on the Lebanese people to embrace “national unity,” saying this could be achieved if the government reversed its March 2 decision to ban Hezbollah’s military activities.

The Israel Defense Forces said on Wednesday it had attacked the only production facility in Iran “that manufactures submarines and support systems for the Iranian Navy,” with an “extensive wave of attacks” the previous day.

The Israeli Air Force attacked the Underwater Research Center in Isfahan with strikes based on naval intelligence that the IDF said would “significantly” limit Iran’s ability to build new submarines and maintain its “existing fleet.”

President Trump has repeatedly said during the war that eliminating Iran’s naval power is a priority for the United States, a goal he claims has already been met.

The UAE Defense Ministry said it had attacked nine drones “coming from Iran” on Wednesday, but did not report any missile strikes.

“Since the start of the blatant Iranian attacks, the UAE Air Defenses have attacked 357 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,815 drones,” the ministry said in its daily update, shared on social media.

Th The attacks have killed three members of the UAE armed forces and six civilians in the country, all of them foreign nationals, according to the ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli Air Force strikes had caused “extensive damage” to “key naval cruise missile production sites” in central Tehran in recent days.

The sites “were used by the Iranian regime to develop and manufacture long-range naval cruise missiles, which are capable of rapidly destroying targets at sea and on land,” the Israeli military said, adding that their attacks “represent another step in deepening the damage caused to the regime’s military production infrastructure.”

The U.S. Department of Defense on Wednesday announced framework agreements worth hundreds of millions of dollars with three of the world’s largest defense manufacturers, part of an effort by President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “put the defense industrial base into wartime condition.”

The framework agreements are with the British BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin and Honeywell in the US.

Honeywell Aerospace will “increase production of critical components for the U.S. munitions arsenal,” the Pentagon said, including navigation systems, actuators and “electronic warfare solutions.”

“By providing stable, long-term demand for critical munitions, the Department has unlocked a $500 million, multi-year investment from Honeywell Aerospace to modernize and expand its manufacturing capacity, marking a key victory for the defense industrial base that directly responds to President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s call to build a resilient and durable Arsenal of Freedom,” he said.

BAE Systems will quadruple its production of munitions for the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile interceptor systems, which have been used heavily in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and even more reliable amid the current war with Iran.

Lockheed will increase its production of precision strike missiles, the Pentagon said, while making “investments in advanced tooling, facility modernization and critical test equipment to reduce production timelines.”

The three statements released by the Defense Department did not put a total price tag on the deals or say how the U.S. government would finance its investments in arsenal construction.

Even though Iran denies that meaningful negotiations are taking place and mocked President Trump’s claims of progress toward a de-escalation in the war, energy and stock markets appeared to cheer up his claims, with oil prices falling and stocks showing gains.

Oil prices fell more than 5% and global stocks gained on hopes of a reduction in the war, even though fighting continued and the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively blocked on the 26th day of the war.

In early European trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1% to 10,072.60. France’s CAC 40 rose 1.4% to 7,855.31, while Germany’s DAX rose 1.6% to 22,989.80.

The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo rose 2.9% to 53,749.62. South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.6% to 5,642.21. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.1% to 25,335.95, while the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.3% to 3,931.84.

Meanwhile, oil prices fell again. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 5.2% to $94.97 a barrel after hovering around $104 on Tuesday.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell 5.3% early Wednesday to $87.44 a barrel.

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“Do not test our resolve to defend our land,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament warned Wednesday, as thousands more U.S. forces head to the Middle East and President Trump considers ground operation despite declaring the war with Iran already won.

“We are closely following all US movements in the region, especially troop deployments,” Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in English in a post on X.

“What the generals have broken, the soldiers cannot fix; instead, they will fall victim to Netanyahu’s deceptions,” he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Two sources told News themezone on Tuesday that the Pentagon was expected to send a command element and some ground forces from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East.

Three U.S. warships and about 2,200 Marines from an expeditionary unit left California last week, the second Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed since the war began on Feb. 28.

Iraq’s Defense Ministry expressed anger Wednesday over an airstrike that it said had hit a military clinic just 50 miles from the country’s capital, Baghdad.

He said the Habbaniyah Military Clinic and the Habbaniyah Works Division, both affiliated with a Ministry command site, “were subjected to an unfair airstrike, followed by aircraft cannon fire” that left seven service members dead and 13 others wounded while carrying out “their national and humanitarian duties.”

The Iraqi military did not say who it believed was responsible for the attack, but the Arab network Al Jazeera reported that an Iranian-backed militia group, known collectively in Iraq as the Popular Mobilization Forces, has a facility near the clinic.

US forces have repeatedly attacked PMF fighters and equipment during and before the war with Iran. Iranian-backed militias have launched attacks on US bases in the region, also before and during the war.

Iraq called Wednesday’s attack “a serious and flagrant violation of all international laws and norms prohibiting attacks on medical facilities and their personnel” and “a dangerous escalation that requires strong action and accountability of those responsible.”

The Ministry said it reserves “its full right to take all necessary measures to respond to this aggression in accordance with the legal frameworks and approved laws.”

An Iranian military spokesman on Wednesday mocked US attempts to reach a ceasefire agreement, insisting that the Americans were only negotiating with themselves.

Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for the Iranian military’s Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, made the statement in a pre-recorded video broadcast on state television.

“The strategic power you talked about has become a strategic failure,” he said. “Whoever claims to be a world superpower would have gotten out of this mess by now if they could. Don’t disguise their defeat as an agreement. Their era of empty promises has come to an end.”

And he added: “Have your internal conflicts reached the point of negotiating among yourselves?”

Zolfaghari’s statement came shortly after the Trump administration sent a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran through Pakistan.

“Our first and last word has been the same since day one, and it will remain that way: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you,” Zolfaghari said. “Not now nor ever.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said they had fired missiles at Israel, as well as at military bases housing U.S. forces in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain, Iranian state television reported Wednesday.

A Guard statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB said that “targets in the heart of the occupied territories,” namely Israel, and US military bases in the region “were attacked by liquid- and solid-fuel precision-guided missile systems and attack drones.”

Financial market experts are raising concerns about possible insider trading after an unusual surge in oil futures trading just minutes before President Trump. announced talks with Iran about social truth.

Trump’s announcement, which he posted on social media shortly after 7 a.m. EST on Monday, sent oil prices tumbling and the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling. increase of more than 1,000 points. The president also touted what he described as “productive” peace talks with Iran, providing relief to investors concerned about rising oil prices and their impact on inflation and economic growth.

The message represented a sudden change from Trump’s post on Saturday that threatened to “destroy” Iran’s power plants unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic. That abrupt shift, which took investors by surprise, has drawn scrutiny for unusual trading activity just before Trump issued Monday’s market-shaking announcement.

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The Pentagon is expected to send parts of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, according to two sources.

A command element and some ground forces are expected to be part of the deployment, according to a source familiar with the planning.

A U.S. official said the deployment is expected to be fewer than 1,500 troops.

Read more here.

There was no damage to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant after it was targeted by an attack, the United Nations nuclear watchdog reported late Tuesday local time.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a social media post that “Iran had informed it that another projectile hit the facilities of the Bushehr nuclear power plant today. According to Iran, there was no damage to the nuclear power plant itself or injuries to personnel, and the condition of the plant is normal.”

Bushehr was the target of an attack last week, but Iran also told the IAEA at the time that there was no damage or injuries.

The IAEA wrote Tuesday that its director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, “reiterates” the “call for maximum restraint to avoid nuclear security risks during the conflict.”

BushehrIran’s only commercial nuclear power plant, is located about 465 miles south of Tehran.

Construction of the plant began under the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran in the mid-1970s.

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Speaking alongside President Trump in the Oval Office, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he sees the Pentagon also as part of the negotiations with Iran.

“The air campaign that we’ve waged “The war that Israel waged alongside us was truly one for the history books,” Hegseth said. “And it’s because we have a president of the United States who, when he sends his fighters out to fight, he unties their hands to go out, get in close, and destroy the enemy as viciously as possible from the get-go.

“And that is why we also consider ourselves part of this negotiation,” said the Secretary of Defense. “We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice, as you hang around the top of Tehran, as the president spoke, about your future.”

President Trump expressed optimism Tuesday that a peace deal with Iran will be reached, while insisting that the war had already been won.

“This war has been won,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “The only one who likes it to continue like this is fake news.”

“We killed all their leaders,” he said when News themezone’ Ed O’Keefe asked which Iranians the United States was negotiating with. “And then they met to elect new leaders and we killed them all. And now we have a new group, and we can do it easily, but let’s see how they turn out.”

“It’s… we really have a regime change,” the president said. “You know, this is a regime change, because all the leaders are very different than the ones we started with and who created all those problems. So I think we can say, Jason, this is a regime change, right?”

Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei He is the son of the former supreme leader, Ali Khameneiwho was killed on the first day of the war. While the new leader has not been seen since he was chosen to succeed his father, and is believed to have been wounded in the same attack, there have been no signs of disintegration of the Islamic Republic’s well-defined power structure, with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still defiant and apparently in control of Iran’s war effort.

O’Keefe asked the president why he trusts Iran.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Trump responded. “I don’t trust you.”

O’Keefe asked why the United States should bother talking to the Iranians.

“Because they’re going to make a deal,” Trump said.