The expanding war in the Middle East entered its sixth day on Thursday as Israel and Iran launched new strikes in the region overnight.
The conflict has affected several countries, including America’s Gulf allies, which are running out of interceptors to shoot down missiles from Iran.
In a show of support for the U.S. military operation in Iran, Senate Republicans defeated a measure on Wednesday that would have forced President Trump to seek congressional authorization before launching further attacks on the Middle Eastern country.
Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. sank an Iranian warship in international waters with a torpedo fired from an American submarine, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“We are just accelerating, not decelerating,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon.
Israel and Iran stepped up strikes overnight in the region. Israel says it hit Iranian ballistic missile sites in Tehran, as well as Hezbollah-linked targets in Lebanon, while authorities in neighboring Azerbaijan said Iran carried out drone attacks at an airport.
At least 1,230 people have been killed in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli weekend assault on Tehran, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At least 11 people have been killed in Israel.
Six U.S. service members have died in retaliatory strikes, according to the U.S. Central Command. They were killed by a drone strike while stationed in Kuwait, according to the Department of Defense.
President Trump has defended ordering the U.S. strikes without congressional approval, saying Iran’s refusal to halt its pursuit of nuclear weapons, combined with a growing ballistic missile program, posed “an intolerable threat.” Trump and U.S. officials have not ruled out sending ground troops into Iran.
The president said that he expects the U.S. military campaign — dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” — to last four to five weeks. But he also said that the United States has the capability to go “far longer than that.”
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