U.S. and Iran trade threats of expanding war after strikes near Israeli nuclear sites

ARAD, Israel — Iran and the allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah stepped up attacks on Israel on Sunday after the United States and Iran threatened to target critical infrastructure in the war in the Middle East, now in its fourth week.

Iran said the Strait of Hormuz, crucial to oil and other exports, would be “completely closed” immediately if the U.S. follows up on President Donald Trump ‘s new threat to attack its power plants. Trump late Saturday set a 48-hour deadline to open the strait.

Iran’s parliament speaker said Tehran also would retaliate against U.S. and Israeli energy and wider infrastructure in the region.

Israeli leaders visited Arad, one of two southern communities near a secretive nuclear research site struck by Iranian missiles late Saturday, wounding scores of people. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “miracle” no one was killed. He claimed Israel and the U.S. were well on their way to achieving their war goals and asked the international community for more support.

The developments signaled the war, which the U.S. and Israel launched Feb. 28, was moving in a dangerous new direction, despite Trump’s comment last week he was considering “winding down” operations. It has killed more than 2,000 people, rattled the global economy and sent oil prices surging.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an airstrike Sunday that killed a man in northern Israel while gulf Arab states — including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — said they were intercepting fresh barrages of new Iranian strikes.

Energy and desalination plants are threatened

Iran has practically closed the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point connecting the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world through which roughly one-fifth of global supply passes. Attacks on ships and threats of further strikes have stopped nearly all tankers from navigating the strait, compelling some of the largest oil producers to make cuts because their crude has nowhere to go.

The U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia rely heavily on the oil to meet energy demand. The U.S. lifted some sanctions on Iranian oil at sea to relieve pressure on energy prices.

Trump said if Iran didn’t open the strait, the U.S. would destroy its “various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”

Iranian parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf responded on X that if Iran’s power plants and infrastructure were targeted, then vital infrastructure across the region — including energy and water desalination facilities — would be considered legitimate targets and “irreversibly destroyed.”

Separately, Iranian officials said they would keep providing safe passage through the strait to vessels from countries other than its enemies.

Nuclear concerns

Iran said its strikes in the Negev Desert late Saturday were in retaliation to an earlier attack on Iran’s main nuclear enrichment site in Natanz, according to state-run media.

Tehran praised the attack as a show of strength, even as Israel’s military asserts that Iranian missile launches have gradually decreased in frequency since the war began.

“If the Israeli regime is unable to intercept missiles in the heavily protected Dimona area, it is, operationally, a sign of entering a new phase of the battle,” Qalibaf said.

Soroka Medical Center, southern Israel’s main hospital, received at least 175 wounded from Arad and Dimona, its deputy director Roy Kessous told the Associated Press.

Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, though it doesn’t confirm or deny their existence. The United Nations nuclear watchdog said on X it had not received reports of damage to the Israeli center or abnormal radiation levels.

Israel denied responsibility for hitting Natanz on Saturday while the Iranian judiciary’s official news agency, Mizan, said there was no leakage. The Pentagon declined to comment on the strike at Natanz, which was also hit in the first week of the ongoing war and in the 12-day war last June — after which Trump claimed U.S. strikes had “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.N. watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said the bulk of Iran’s estimated 972 pounds of enriched uranium is elsewhere, beneath the rubble at its Isfahan facility.

Iran says strikes also hit hospital

Iran said that strikes hit a hospital in Andimeshk. The Health Ministry reported patients and doctors were evacuated to another city.

Iran’s death toll in the war surpassed 1,500 on Saturday, state media reported, citing the ministry. In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian strikes. More than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and gulf Arab states have been killed in strikes.

A Qatari military helicopter crash on Saturday, blamed on a technical malfunction, killed all seven aboard, Qatari authorities said.

Hezbollah strike on northern Israel claims first fatality there

The Israeli civilian was killed in the northern town of Misgav Am in what Israel’s military said “seemed to be” a rocket attack.

Hezbollah launched strikes on Israel soon after the war began, calling it retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel then targeted Hezbollah in deadly airstrikes and expanded its ground presence in southern Lebanon.

Fighting there has intensified. Israel on Sunday expanded its list of targets to include all bridges over the Litani River, which Defense Minister Israel Katz said Hezbollah is using to move fighters and weapons into the south. Israel later struck the Qasmiyeh bridge near the coastal city of Tyre, giving an hour’s warning.

Katz also ordered the military to accelerate its destruction of Lebanese homes near Israel’s northern border.

Lebanese authorities say Israel’s strikes have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced more than 1 million. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.

Bernstein, Metz and Magdy write for the Associated Press and reported from Arad; Ramallah, West Bank; and Cairo, respectively. AP writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv; Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel; and Isabel Debre in Beirut contributed to this report.