{"id":328631,"date":"2026-03-08T17:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T17:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/328631\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T17:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T17:58:08","slug":"tehran-shrouded-in-toxic-smoke-after-israel-strikes-fuel-depots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/328631\/","title":{"rendered":"Tehran Shrouded in Toxic Smoke After Israel Strikes Fuel Depots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran\u2019s capital<\/a> was engulfed in a cloud of toxic smoke that unleashed black rainfall dozens of miles away on Sunday after overnight Israeli strikes<\/a> on several fuel depots caused fires to burn for hours.<\/p>\n

Images from Tehran, a city of nearly 10 million people, showed thick black smoke from the fires hanging over it, while residents reported difficulty breathing and oil-tainted rainfall staining everything around them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The rain is black, I can’t believe it, I’m seeing black rain,” Kianoosh, 44, a Tehran resident and engineer, told TIME. “It’s even in Tajrish, which is miles and miles away from the oil tanks.”<\/p>\n

Read More: The Iran War Has Distracted and Depleted the U.S. Military. But It May Also Have Saved Taiwan<\/a><\/p>\n

Parviz, 49, a university professor in a city about 70 miles north of Tehran, said he didn\u2019t recognize his car when he went outside: \u201cMy white car was almost black,\u201d he said, recounting his difficulty in finding it. \u201cI just washed it yesterday.\u201c<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Red Crescent Society warned residents of Tehran and the surrounding region that the rainfall after the strikes could be \u201chighly dangerous and acidic,\u201d and could cause \u201cchemical burns of the skin and serious damage to the lungs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leila, a 27-year-old teacher in Tehran, said the air was \u201cunbreathable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething like a black monster has swallowed the sky over Tehran,\u201d she told TIME. \u201cIt\u2019s as if all the cars and the street pavement have been coated in black paint.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday I was in the car for just 15 minutes, breathing this air. I don\u2019t even know what it is, and now I have a headache. The skin on my face, especially my lips, is sore and raw. It burns and feels like diluted tear gas is in the air. It irritates my eyes, and I keep needing to clear my throat,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ahmad, a 63-year-old Tehran resident, said he had to leave the city due to the air pollution. <\/p>\n

Iranian state media reported that the Aghdasieh oil warehouse in northeast Tehran, the Shahran oil depot north of the city, an oil refinery in the south, and an oil depot in Karaj, west of Tehran, were among those targeted.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military<\/a> took responsibility for the strikes, saying on X<\/a> that it targeted “several fuel storage complexes belonging to the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)] in Tehran” that it claimed were used to “distribute fuel to multiple military entities in Iran.”<\/p>\n

Israel also targeted the Shahran oil depot in northwestern Tehran during its 12-day air campaign against Iran in June last year. <\/p>\n

‘Destruction and certain death’<\/p>\n

The strikes came on the same day as President Donald Trump warned that the U.S. would escalate its bombing campaign, writing<\/a> in a post on Truth Social on Saturday that \u201ctoday Iran will be hit very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran\u2019s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time,\u201d Trump wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tehran residents reported heavy bombardment in other parts of the city on Saturday.<\/p>\n

TIME has reached out to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Pentagon for comment.<\/p>\n

\"AftermathAn Iranian woman shows a cloth used to clean oil-soot residue from Tehran’s petroleum storage facilities, which are struck during a U.S.-Israeli military campaign last night, while she stands on the balcony of her apartment in Tehran, Iran, on March 8, 2026. Morteza Nikoubazl\u2014NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The attacks constitute the most significant attack on Iran\u2019s civilian industrial infrastructure of the war so far, a little over a week into the U.S.-Israeli attack that has killed more than 1,000 civilians<\/a> and spiraled into a regional conflict that has seen hundreds of Iranian missiles fired at Israel and America\u2019s Gulf allies in retaliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A separate theater of the war has seen Israel launch a major attack on Lebanon in an attempt to disarm the militant group Hezbollah.\u00a0 Lebanon\u2019s health minister said Sunday that 394 people have been killed so far in that conflict, with 83 children among that number.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Red Crescent Society also said on Sunday that about 10,000 civilian structures across the country had been damaged, including homes, schools and medical facilities.<\/p>\n

Read More: How Russia Emerged as an Early Winner of the Iran War<\/a><\/p>\n

Iran has responded to the U.S.-Israeli offensive by launching a barrage of missiles and drones towards Israel and Gulf countries that host American military bases. It has struck not just military targets, but civilian targets such as hotels, airports and apartment buildings across the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei also said on X<\/a> that by targeting fuel depots, the \u201caggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air, poisoning civilians, devastating the environment, and endangering lives on a massive scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Water wars<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Iran\u2019s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the United States of attacking an Iranian desalination plant \u2014which turns seawater into drinking water\u2014on Qeshm Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,\u201d Araghchi said on X<\/a>. \u201cWater supply in 30 villages has been impacted. Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Israel and the U.S. military denied carrying out the attack. When Trump was asked by a reporter about the accusation on Saturday, he denied knowledge of the attack and attacked Iran\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are among the most evil people ever on Earth\u2026Take a look at October 7. Take a look at what they\u2019ve done over the last 47 years,\u201d Trump said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know nothing about a desalinization [sic] plant other than to say, if they’re complaining about a desalinization [sic] plant, we complain about the fact that they shouldn’t be chopping babies\u2019 heads off,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TOPSHOT-IRAN-US-ISRAEL-WAR\"Vehicles move along a highway past a war memorial statue and a billboard depicting Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed in an air strike on February 28, with plumes of black smoke billowing, in Tehran on March 8, 2026. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the day after Iran\u2019s warning of grave consequences, Bahrain accused<\/a> Tehran of carrying out a drone attack that \u201ccaused material damage\u201d to a desalination plant there. \u201cIranian aggression indiscriminately attacked civilian targets,\u201d Bahrain\u2019s Ministry of Interior wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

Iran, Bahrain, and other countries across the Gulf rely on desalination plants to sustain populations of millions in arid climates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United Arab Emirates\u2019 defense ministry also said<\/a> that the country was targeted by a barrage of Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As escalating attacks on infrastructure continue, Kuwait\u2019s defense ministry also reported a \u201cwave of drones\u201d that damaged fuel tanks at the Kuwait International Airport. The ministry did not name the source of the attacks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s capital was engulfed in a cloud of toxic smoke that unleashed black rainfall dozens of miles away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,87,46,43,31801],"class_list":["post-328631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-news-desk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}