Bahrain accused Iran of striking a desalination plant on Sunday, raising concerns that civilian infrastructure could become fair game in the nine-day war, as Iran’s president vowed to expand attacks on US targets across the region in the face of intensifying US and Israeli air strikes.
A late-night Israeli raid on an oil facility shrouded the Iranian capital Tehran in smoke on Sunday, while Israel renewed its attacks in Lebanon.
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have pledged to press ahead with the campaign, which has spread across the region and appears to have no end in sight.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian threatened on Sunday to intensify attacks on American targets across the Middle East.
He appeared to back away from his conciliatory statements towards his Gulf neighbors on Saturday. Iranian hardliners quickly contradicted those comments, in which he apologized for the attacks that occurred on their soil.
In Lebanon, Israeli raids raised the death toll there to more than 300 after Israel ordered the evacuation of large swaths of the country ahead of an attack aimed at eliminating the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
The war, which broke out on February 28 after joint US-Israeli strikes hit Iran, has killed at least 1,230 people so far in the Islamic Republic, more than 300 in Lebanon and about a dozen in Israel, according to officials.
Six American soldiers were also killed.
The conflict has since spread across the region, rattling global markets, disrupting air travel and leaving Iranian leadership weakened by hundreds of Israeli and US air strikes.
The Iranian president hardens his tone
“When we are attacked, we have no choice but to respond,” Pezeshkian said in video comments on Sunday. “The more pressure is on us, the stronger our response will naturally be.” He added: “Iran, our country, will not bow easily in the face of bullying, oppression, or aggression, and it never has.”
These statements, which differed in stark tone, came a day after Pezeshkian said Iran regretted the regional concerns caused by Iranian strikes and urged neighboring countries not to participate in US and Israeli attacks against Iran.
Pezeshkian assured neighboring Gulf states on Sunday that Iran does not seek to fight them and described them as brothers, accusing the United States of trying to turn countries against each other.
Iranian hard-liners quickly opposed these statements. “The geography of some countries in the region – openly and secretly – is in the hands of the enemy, and these points are used against our country in aggressive actions. Intense attacks on these targets will continue,” Judiciary Head Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei wrote on the X website.
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Mohseni Eji and Pezeshkian are part of a three-member leadership council that has overseen Iran since a strike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei early in the war.
Pezeshkian’s statements on Sunday reinforced previous pledges that Iran would not surrender despite US and Israeli threats, as US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said their goal remains to replace Iran’s leaders.
“We are not looking to compromise,” Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One. “They want to settle. We’re not looking to settle.”
Water and oil desalination facilities were attacked
Iran and neighboring Bahrain said on Sunday that the strikes hit civilian infrastructure.
Bahrain accused Iran of indiscriminately attacking civilian targets and damaging one of its desalination plants, although it did not say that supplies had stopped.
The island nation, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, was among the countries targeted by Iranian drones and missiles. The attacks hit hotels, ports and residential towers, killing at least one person.
The attack on the desalination plant came after Iran said that a US air strike had damaged the Iranian desalination plant. Abbas Araqchi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, said that the raid on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz led to the cutting off of water supplies to 30 villages. He warned that by doing this, the United States “sets the precedent, not Iran.”
Neither US Central Command nor the Israeli military had an immediate comment on the facility.
Iran also said on Sunday that overnight strikes by Israel hit four oil tankers and an oil transport terminal, killing four people.
Witnesses in Tehran said that the smoke was so thick that the fire that swept through the oil depot north of Tehran looked as if the sun had not risen. The city’s governor urged people to wear masks outside due to air pollution, although rain eventually cleared some of the smoke.
Fais Karami, Director General of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company, told the official Iranian news agency that Iran reserves a sufficient amount of fuel.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that the targeted oil depots were being used by the Iranian army.
More strikes hit Lebanon
Israel renewed its attack early Sunday on parts of Lebanon, where health officials reported 12 more people killed, raising the death toll there to more than 300.
The Israeli military ordered tens of thousands of people across wide swaths of the country, including parts of the Beirut area, to evacuate during an offensive that its military said was aimed at eliminating Iranian-backed forces there.
It warned residents of southern Lebanon to move north on Sunday morning.
The renewed Israeli offensive began last week after Hezbollah fired rockets toward northern Israel during the first days of the war. The subsequent strikes were the most intense since the November 2024 ceasefire.
Israel withdrew from most of southern Lebanon at that time but continued its almost daily strikes, especially in southern Lebanon, saying Hezbollah was trying to rebuild its positions there.
Hezbollah said last week that after more than a year of adhering to a ceasefire as Israeli strikes on Lebanon continued, it had run out of patience, leaving it no choice but to fight.