Updated March 18, 2026 at 2:19 PM PDT
The United Nations' nuclear watchdog chief says he does not believe the war in Iran can entirely eliminate the nation's nuclear program, even if the main facilities are heavily damaged.
Iran confirmed the death of its intelligence minister, the third senior Iranian official killed by Israel in about 24 hours.
Israel's killing of another top security official the night before prompted Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to issue a rare statement Wednesday, vowing to avenge his death.
Already, in retaliation for officials' deaths, Iran launched missile attacks at Israel overnight, killing two people near Tel Aviv.
Israel also struck Lebanon's capital of Beirut overnight, killing 10 people.
Health authorities have reported about 1,300 killed in Iran, 968 in Lebanon and 16 in Israel since the war began on Feb. 28. U.S. Central Command has said 13 U.S. service members have been killed and eight severely injured. Several Gulf Arab countries have also reported lower fatalities.
Here are further updates from the conflict.
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Iranian nuclear program | Iran intel chief dead | Iran's retaliation | Iran says leadership intact | Accounts of Iranians fleeing Iran | Israel strikes Beirut
Grossi: At the end of this war, Iran will still have nuclear material and enrichment capacities
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says he believes some extent of Iran's nuclear program will remain, even after the heavy damage done by U.S. and Israeli military strikes.
"Of course, there is an enormous degradation of the physical facilities," Grossi told NPR's Geoff Brumfiel on Wednesday. "But most probably, at the end of this [military conflict], the material will still be there and the enrichment capacities will be there, perhaps some infrastructure will still be there."
This comes as President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have stated that an imminent threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon among reasons for waging two wars against the country in the past eight months.
But Grossi, who is in Washington Wednesday for a conference and to hold talks with Trump administration officials, said he does not believe the problem of Iran's nuclear program will be solved militarily.
He said Iran is "very big country" with a sophisticated scientific, technological and industrial base. It has a "very vast program" scattered across universities, facilities and labs. The "most advanced parts" of Iran's program have been "knocked down," he said. "But of course there is much more."
Grossi said his agency, IAEA, was notified by Iran and Russia that a drone strike hit a building on the premises of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, which he condemned. But the damage was "not very significant," he said. "The plant has not or the reactors have not been affected and there are no casualties," he said.
"Any attack to any nuclear facility should always be avoided. It's very important," Grossi said.
He also said the agency does not know the status of an Iranian enrichment facility in an underground nuclear complex in Isfahan. The IAEA was informed by Iran of the new facility on June 10 or 11, 2025, and sent inspectors to the area, he said. Israel launched attacks on Iran on June 13 and the inspectors had to be evacuated.
Israel says Khatib was a chief of "repression and assassination" in Iran
The Israeli military killed another high-ranking Iranian security official overnight: Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed his death on social media.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Khatib was "responsible for the regime's internal apparatus of repression and assassination, as well as for advancing external threats."
He said the government authorized the military to kill "any senior Iranian figure," saying, "We will continue to eliminate and hunt them all."
Iran hits back after the killing of two leaders in Tehran
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it targeted the Tel Aviv area Wednesday by firing multiple-warhead missiles, also known as cluster munitions.
A man and woman were killed in their apartment in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The Iranian missile attack also caused damage in other parts of central Israel, including a train station in Tel Aviv.
Iran's missile attacks across the region have been the most lethal in Israel, where at least 16 people have been killed since the war started, including two Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon.
Iran said the strikes were "in revenge" for Israel's killing of two top Iranian leaders, Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, which at that point were the highest-profile killings in Iran since Israel killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top leadership on the first day of the war.
Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, had a long career in the Iranian political upper echelons, having served as parliament speaker and a top adviser to the assassinated supreme leader.
He was also involved in talks with the Trump administration before the war.
"He seemed to be the one person who the international community could talk to and now with him having apparently been killed it's difficult to see how one speaks to in the IRGC," said Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, a former Jordanian ambassador to the U.S. who is president of the International Peace Institute. IRGC are the initials for Iran's powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Soleimani led the Basij forces for seven years. They're a volunteer paramilitary militia, a branch of the Revolutionary Guard, which Israel says was responsible for violently suppressing street protests against the Iranian government earlier this year.
Iran says killings of top officials won't destabilize Iran's political system
Iranian state media issued a written statement attributed to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Wednesday, expressing condolences and vowing to avenge the death of Ali Larijani, a top official killed by Israel this week.
"Nearly five decades of playing a role within the different layers of the Islamic system had made him a distinguished figure," the statement said.
"Undoubtedly, the assassination of such a person shows the extent of his importance and the hatred of the enemies of Islam toward him," the statement said.
"The shedding of this blood at the foot of the mighty tree of the Islamic system only makes it stronger," it added. "Every drop of blood has its price (blood money), which the criminal killers of these martyrs must soon pay."
The statement came on a day when thousands of mourners gathered in a large public square in Tehran for the funerals of Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij paramilitary forces who was also killed late Tuesday by Israel.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the recent killings will not destabilize the country's leadership.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran has a strong political structure with established political, economic, and social institutions," Araghchi said in a TV interview with Al Jazeera that aired Wednesday. "The presence or absence of a single individual does not affect this structure," he said.
"Of course, individuals are influential, and each person plays their role," he added, "but what matters is that the political system in Iran is a very solid structure."
NPR speaks to Iranians fleeing into Iraq amid fear and a tightening crackdown
Families fleeing Iran from the Haji Omeran border crossing, located between Iran and Iraq, told NPR about what they described as widespread fear of speaking openly, even outside the country.
One woman in her 60s, who requested not to be named because of fear of government reprisal, broke down in tears and said she wished recent airstrikes on her border city had killed her, stating that life had become unbearable between the war and recent security crackdown by Iranian authorities.
Multiple people NPR spoke to described an internet blackout, more checkpoints and Iranian security forces searching through people's phones.
A 40-year-old man, who lives in a city in eastern Iran and asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisal, said he had recently seen security forces move into a mosque and sports stadium, which he said were a sign of heightened security measures.
NPR cannot independently verify these accounts. However, they echo numerous testimonies shared with NPR reporters and those documented by human rights groups with sources in Iran.
— Arezou Rezvani
Israel strikes central Beirut and issues new warning for southern Lebanon
Israel struck central Beirut on Wednesday, saying it was targeting the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its installations, as Israel's offensive in Lebanon intensified. Lebanon's Health Ministry said 10 people were killed in two attacks Wednesday morning.
The Israeli military destroyed a building in the Bachoura neighborhood, which it had previously targeted. Israel had issued an evacuation order for the building on social media at about 4 a.m. local time, and the strikes followed around 5:30 a.m. Bachoura is a residential and commercial district near the Lebanese prime minister's office and several foreign embassies in Beirut.
The strikes came as Israel issued new evacuation warnings for parts of southern Lebanon. Lebanon's Health Ministry also condemned Israeli strikes that it said damaged three public hospitals in Nabatieh, a major city in the country's south.
Daniel Estrin and Carrie Kahn contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Israel, Hadeel Al-Shalchi from Beirut, Arezou Rezvani from Irbil, in Iraq's Kurdish region, Rebecca Rosman from Paris, and Geoff Brumfiel and Alex Leff contributed from Washington.
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