US assault on Iran ahead of schedule, says US Middle East Commander

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DUBAI/TEL AVIV - The United States’ assault on Iran
was ahead of schedule, said the top American commander for the Middle East, as Israel and the US targeted sites deep inside the country, and Iran retaliated with strikes around the Gulf.

The five-day-old war continued to rattle global markets, as airline and tourism industries scrambled to deal with more than 20,000 flight cancellations and governments rushed to bring stranded travellers home from the Middle East.

The Israeli military said early on March 4 that it had begun a wave of strikes targeting Iranian launch sites, aerial defence systems and infrastructure.

In Israel, air raid sirens sounded early in the morning, warning of Iranian missiles, and loud blasts as the missiles were intercepted shook buildings, said witnesses.

US Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East as the head of Central Command, said the first 24 hours of the “Operation Epic Fury” bombardment of Iran were “nearly double the scale” of the first 24 hours of the “Shock and Awe” campaign that opened the Iraq War in 2003.

“We are seeing that Iran’s ability to hit us, and our partners, is declining, while our combat power, on the other hand, is building,” Adm Cooper said in a video briefing released on the evening of March 3. “My overall operational assessment is that we are ahead of our game plan.”

He said Iran’s air defences had been badly degraded, its navy had no operational vessels on key waterways after 17 were sunk, and that more than 2,000 Iranian targets had been hit.

Some 50,000 US troops were taking part in operations, and that “more capabilities” were on the way, he said.

The US military on March 3 identified four of the first American soldiers killed in the war, as the Trump administration warned the intensifying conflict would lead to more US casualties. US President Donald Trump has not ruled out using ground forces.

A source familiar with Israel’s war plan told Reuters that the campaign had been planned to last two weeks and was going through its target list faster than expected, with early success in killing Iran’s leaders - including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening salvos on Feb 28.

Mr Trump said on March 2 that initial US projections were for the operation to last four to five weeks.

Tehran now a ‘ghost town’

Iran said deaths from the attacks had reached 787 on March 3. That included 165 girls killed on the war’s first day when their school was bombed, the highest toll among several civilian sites reported to have been hit.

As Iranians have fled cities, the capital Tehran has become a ghost town.

“How long will this continue? Where are the shelters? Where is the government?” Bijan, 32, a bank employee, told Reuters by telephone from Tehran. “Every night my wife and I hide in the basement. The whole city is empty. There is smoke and blood everywhere.”

Israel continued to target the pro-Iran Hezbollah group in neighbouring Lebanon on March 4, after the militants fired on Israel in retaliation for the death of Khamenei, 86, who had ruled Iran for 37 years.

The Israeli military issued an evacuation warning on March 4 to 16 villages in southern Lebanon, urging them to leave their homes, saying anyone near Hezbollah fighters, facilities or weapons would be putting their lives at risk.

Several people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a four-storey residential building in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, the state news agency NNA reported early on March 4.

Mr Trump has sought to justify the assault on Iran, saying he had ordered the campaign because he had “a feeling” that Iran would attack after negotiations over its nuclear programme stalled.

Iran has called the war an unprovoked attack.

“We have told the enemy that if you try to harm our main centres, we will hit all economic centres in the region,” Revolutionary Guards adviser Ebrahim Jabari said in Iranian media.

Iran has fired missiles and drones at neighbouring Arab states that host US bases, and strangled shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas travel past its coast. REUTERS