{"id":507751,"date":"2026-04-01T21:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/507751\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:28:10","slug":"israel-hits-iran-with-waves-of-attacks-and-says-it-killed-top-hezbollah-commander-us-israel-war-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/507751\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel hits Iran with waves of attacks and says it killed top Hezbollah commander | US-Israel war on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel unleashed two waves of attacks on Tehran and said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Wednesday with little sign of the war easing up despite Donald Trump<\/a> repeating a claim that Iran\u2019s leadership was seeking a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

The US president, writing on social media, said that Iran\u2019s president had \u201cjust asked\u201d for a ceasefire and that American troops would be \u201cout of Iran<\/a> pretty quickly\u201d as he sought to extricate the US from the war. However, he confused the picture by incorrectly describing the president as a \u201cnew regime\u201d leader.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been in post since 2024, well before the start of the month-long war. The country\u2019s former supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the first minutes of the attack and has been succeeded by his son, Mojtaba, who is widely considered more hardline than his father, especially after the killing of other members of his family in the same initial attack. The younger Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking over but in a written statement on Wednesday night he said \u201cthe cruel and ruthless American and Zionist enemy knows no human, moral or vital limits\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump nonetheless persevered later on Wednesday with the assertion that there had been \u201cfull regime change\u201d in Iran. He said his agreement to a ceasefire would depend on the Iranian blockade of the strait of Hormuz being lifted. But Iran\u2019s foreign ministry spokesperson denied there had been a ceasefire request from Tehran and said the US president\u2019s account was \u201cfalse and baseless\u201d.<\/p>\n

When asked when he would withdraw from the conflict, Trump said: \u201cI can\u2019t tell you exactly \u2026 we\u2019re going to be out pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m dealing with a very good chance that we\u2019ll make a deal because they don\u2019t want to be blasted any more,\u201d Trump told Reuters. \u201cI didn\u2019t need regime change, but we got it because of the casualties of war.\u201d After withdrawal, Trump suggested that the US would continue to carry out occasional airstrikes, referring to them as \u201cspot hits\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ebrahim Azizi, the chair of the Iranian parliament\u2019s national security commission, mocked Trump for his boasts. \u201cTrump has finally achieved his dream of \u2018regime change\u2019 \u2013 but in the region\u2019s maritime regime!\u201d Azizi said in a post on X. \u201cThe strait of Hormuz will certainly reopen, but not for you; it will be open for those who comply with the new laws of Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, Pezeshkian posted a letter to Americans on his X account, asking: \u201cExactly which of the American people\u2019s interests are truly being served by this war? Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behavior?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Iranians \u201charbor no enmity towards other nations, including the people of America\u201d and that \u201cdespite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbors, Iran has never initiated a war\u201d.<\/p>\n

Iran fired about 10 missiles into central Israel a couple of hours before the start of the annual Jewish Passover festival on a day when its allies, Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah and Yemen\u2019s Houthis, also attacked with rockets and missiles.<\/p>\n

Qatar also reported in the morning that a fuel oil tanker used by its state-owned energy company was struck by an Iranian missile, though there were no casualties reported among its 21-strong crew or environmental damage.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s military said it had struck approximately 400 Iranian regime targets over the past two days, including two waves on Wednesday, while Iranian media reported areas in northern, eastern and central Tehran had been under attack in the morning.<\/p>\n

At least 1,900 people have been killed and 20,000 injured in Iran since the start of the war, according to estimates from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, though precise figures are hard to come by.<\/p>\n

An Israeli navy strike on Beirut killed seven people including Youssef Hashem, the commander of Hezbollah\u2019s southern front, the most senior leader of the Iranian proxy group to have been killed since the start of the war.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s military said Hashem had more than 40 years\u2019 experience and his death would be \u201ca significant blow\u201d to Hezbollah\u2019s efforts to resist Israel\u2019s plans to occupy southern Lebanon in a rapidly escalating ground campaign.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah officials acknowledged his death, describing him as a \u201cbeacon of the Islamic Resistance\u201d and \u201ca tier one commander\u201d, one of the most high profile casualties in a conflict that has killed 1,260 people in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Most of those who have died have been Lebanese civilians, but Hezbollah estimated about 400 had been its fighters. Israel said 10 of its soldiers had been killed since 2 March when fighting broke out on the Lebanese front.<\/p>\n

In Israel, an 11-year-old girl was in critical condition after being wounded by shrapnel to her limbs, the country\u2019s emergency medical service reported, after a missile strike at Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. It also said 13 others were less seriously wounded.<\/p>\n

Further waves of attacks \u2013 including an estimated 10 ballistic missiles \u2013 triggered alarms across the densely populated centre of Israel in the late afternoon, just before the start of Passover, which begins with the traditional family Seder meal.<\/p>\n

Brig Gen Effie Defrin, the IDF\u2019s spokesperson, said \u201cit was possible\u201d that Iran and Hezbollah \u201cwill fire toward Israeli territory in an attempt to harm Israeli civilians during the holiday\u201d, which runs from Wednesday evening for a week.<\/p>\n

Yemen\u2019s Houthis said in the morning they had conducted a missile attack on southern Israel, their third since the group joined the war four days ago, in a coordinated attack with Iran and Hezbollah. Israel\u2019s military said it had intercepted a ballistic missile that had been launched by the pro-Iran group; no casualties were reported.<\/p>\n

A total of 19 people have been killed and 515 injured by missile fire in Israel, according to reports by the Magen David Adom emergency medical service, since the war began.<\/p>\n

The strait of Hormuz has in effect been closed to oil and gas tankers and other merchant shipping since the beginning of the conflict, hiking oil prices and causing a growing range of critical shortages around the world.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, 10 vessels transited the straits, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, the fourth busiest day since the start of the war. However, shipping volumes remain sharply down by more than 90% from pre-conflict levels.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s unfounded insistence that there has been regime change, which had been echoed by the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has added weight to speculation that Trump is anxious to declare victory and withdraw the US from the battlefield as the consequences of the war, in form of an oil price spike and shortages of fertiliser and medicines, send shockwaves through the global economy.<\/p>\n

In his remarks on Wednesday, Trump did not mention the thousands of marines and paratroopers that have massed in the region to give the US the option of mounting a land attack, possibly on one or several islands in the Gulf and the Hormuz strait.<\/p>\n

He did however, appear to rule out a military operation to extract Iran\u2019s 440kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, enough if enriched further to make about a dozen nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n

Since launching the attack on Iran, Trump has frequently cited the regime\u2019s potential to make nuclear bombs, asserting without evidence that it was two to four weeks from making a warhead and using it against the US. Experts unanimously rejected those assertions as groundless.<\/p>\n

Trump declared himself unconcerned by Iran\u2019s enriched uranium stockpile, believed to be buried in deep shafts under Iranian mountains. \u201cThat\u2019s so far underground, I don\u2019t care about that,\u201d he told Reuters. \u201cWe\u2019ll always be watching it by satellite.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president also said: \u201cThey won\u2019t have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that now, and then I\u2019ll leave, and I\u2019ll take everybody with me, and if we have to we\u2019ll come back to do spot hits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reuters also reported on Wednesday that the US vice-president, JD Vance, had been in touch with Pakistani intermediaries with the message that the administration was open to a ceasefire as long as certain US demands were met, including reopening the strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel unleashed two waves of attacks on Tehran and said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-507751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}