United States President Donald Trump painted a picture of a broken and desperate Iranian leadership on Friday, calling its members “deranged scumbags” while also describing them as hunted men hiding underground and wounded by US and Israeli strikes. The depiction echoed comments from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who told reporters that Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei had been wounded and disfigured and that Iranian leaders had “gone underground.” Trump promised that the strikes would intensify further in the coming days.
The war entered what appeared to be its deadliest phase yet on Friday, with Trump announcing that US forces had obliterated every military target on Kharg Island, Iran’s vital oil export hub, in one of the most powerful bombing raids in the region’s history. Combined US and Israeli forces have now struck over 15,000 targets since the conflict began. Israel alone reported more than 200 individual strikes in the most recent 24-hour period, targeting a range of Iranian military infrastructure. Iran reported over 1,300 deaths since fighting began.
Across the broader Middle East, the violence spread into new theaters on Friday. Qatar ordered evacuation warnings in parts of Doha before confirming a missile interception. Saudi Arabia intercepted close to 50 Iranian drones in a single day of defensive operations. Two people died in Oman from Iranian drone crashes. A building in Dubai’s International Financial Centre was struck by debris from an intercepted Iranian projectile. In Lebanon, over 600 people have been killed and 800,000 displaced since the latest fighting began.
Tehran’s residents offered the most personal accounts of a war that has fundamentally altered life in the Iranian capital. A retired professor described the despair of a trapped population unable to flee due to fuel shortages, with sick relatives at home and rubble in the streets. A shopkeeper said she had counted six explosions in a single hour and had taped newspapers over her windows as protection against blast damage. The sounds of drones, she said, had been drowned out entirely by the relentless explosions.
The United States has paid its own price in the conflict, losing 13 service members including six in a tanker aircraft crash in Iraq. France lost one soldier in Iraq to a pro-Iranian militia drone strike. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted global energy flows and prompted European governments to quietly seek diplomatic back-channels with Tehran. Trump warned Iran that its oil infrastructure at Kharg Island would be struck immediately if the disruption of the strait continued, a threat that kept global energy markets in a state of persistent anxiety.