The IDF said it struck dozens of Iranian regime infrastructure sites in Tehran and western Iran on Wednesday, and then launched an “extensive” wave of airstrikes on regime targets in the capital overnight, as US President Donald Trump said he didn’t want to end the war “too early.”
During the earlier strikes in Tehran, fighter jets identified Iranian soldiers operating at a headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran’s capital, and moments later, struck and killed them, the Israel Defense Forces said, publishing footage of the strike.
According to the IDF, other strikes in Tehran targeted headquarters and command centers of the IRGC air force; a compound at Imam Hossein University, the IRGC’s military academy, which was used as a staging ground by Iranian soldiers; ballistic missile storage and production sites; and air defense missiles.
Elsewhere, the IDF struck headquarters and military bases of Iran’s internal security forces, the Basij paramilitary force, and a headquarters of Iran’s intelligence ministry, the military said.
According to the military, the strikes were part of a new stage of the war aimed at “deepening the blow to the core arrays of the Iranian terror regime and its foundations.”
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Iran’s semi-official news agency reported that Israeli drone strikes killed “several members of the security force and the Basij force stationed at checkpoints” in southern and northern districts of Tehran. An AFP journalist in the northern part of the city also heard the loud noise of a drone flying over the area.
צפו בתיעוד: חוסלו חיילים ממשטר הטרור האיראני שפעלו במפקדה של משמרות המהפכה https://t.co/T3s4Way3Cp pic.twitter.com/s9L2fFy6E4
— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) March 11, 2026
It was the first time that Iranian media reported drone attacks on the capital since the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iran on February 28 in a bid to topple its clerical regime and destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Iran has responded with missile and drone strikes across the region, as well as choking off shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil travels.
Iran has told mediators that it will only agree to a ceasefire if it includes an American guarantee that the US and Israel will not attack the Islamic Republic again in the future, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter.
Israel had previously targeted Iran’s nuclear sites, missile production and military leadership in a 12-day war in June, during which the US also struck key Iranian nuclear facilities.
Speaking at a rally in Kentucky, Trump claimed those strikes had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear potential” but that “they started again.”
“That’s why we’ve got to finish it,” he said of the current war. “We don’t want to go back every two years.”
The US has already “virtually destroyed Iran” but will keep fighting to finish the job, even though “in the first hour it was over,” said Trump.
“We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he asked. “You never like to say too early you won. We won.”
sentdefender: Speaking to crowds of supporters tonight in Kentucky, President Donald J. Trump spoke about the ongoing war against Iran, once again referring to it as an “excursion,” with him stating: “We did an excursion. Do you know what an excursion is… pic.twitter.com/334WKC0DRF
— NΞMICO (@NemicoNetwork) March 11, 2026
During an earlier visit to an Ohio factory, Trump told reporters that the war was “a little excursion” from his administration’s effort to boost the US economy.
The war was moving ahead of schedule and would last just a “couple of weeks, a few weeks,” he said.
“We knocked out their leadership twice, and now they have a new group coming up. Let’s see what happens to them,” Trump said, after Iran on Sunday named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father, supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the start of the US-Israeli campaign.
Amid oil price hikes due to the Hormuz Strait closure and attacks on energy infrastructure, Trump insisted the market was holding up and that the hikes were expected.
He claimed oil prices would soon go lower than they had been before the war. “It’s just a matter of war,” Trump said.
The president has referred to Operation Epic Fury, the US name for the bombing campaign in Iran, as both a “war” and a “short excursion,” though US law requires that Congress be consulted before launching a war — something Trump did not do before bombing Iran.
Asked by a reporter whether the operation was a war or an excursion, Trump said “it’s both.”
“It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war,” he said. “For [Iran], it’s a war. For us, it’s turned out to be easier than we thought.”
Speaking later with reporters upon returning to Washington, Trump claimed that while Iran is “pretty much at the end of the line,” that “doesn’t mean we’re going to end it immediately.”
He said “the straits are in great shape,” apparently referring to the Strait of Hormuz.
Asked about a report that Iran is trying to carry out an attack in California, Trump said itwas being investigated, without offering more detail.
“You have a lot of things happening, and all we can do is take them as they come,” he added.
Trump said American law enforcement has eyes on “all” Iranian-linked terror sleeper cells in the US.
He repeated that the US would like to see a new leader in Iran who “knows what they’re doing… [and] can build a country.”
He also reiterated his threat that the US has the capacity to “hit sections of Tehran and other places” that would make it impossible for Iran to ever rebuild. “We don’t want that.”
“We could take apart their electric capacity within one hour,” he insisted.
“Many people are saying that [the war] has already been won,” Trump claimed.
US President Donald Trump speaks to journalists upon returning to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on March 11, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP)
Meanwhile, a senior military adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Iranian supreme leader, insulted Trump and vowed to destroy Israel in remarks to state television on Wednesday.
“Trump is the most corrupt and stupid American president,” Yahya Rahim Safavi said. “He is Satan himself.”
“In the Middle East region, Israel and Iran cannot be together. One of them must remain. The one that remains is Iran and the one that is destroyed is definitely the Zionist regime,” he said.