Tehran says it will respond ‘in kind’ to any attacks on its infrastructure, warns Trump threats an ‘incitement to war crimes’.
At least 34 people have been killed, including six children, as the United States and Israel carried out massive attacks across Iran, targeting a top university as well as residential areas, after US President Donald Trump set a Tuesday deadline for Tehran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its power plants and bridges.
The Fars news agency reported on Monday that an air attack killed 23 people, including four girls and two boys aged below 10 years, in Tehran province’s Baharestan County.
At least five people were killed in an attack on a residential building in the city of Qom, according to the political and security deputy of the governor, Morteza Heydari. Six others were killed in Bandar-e Lengeh, in southern Iran, authorities said.
At least a dozen cities were hit across Iran, including Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Mahshahr, Shiraz, Isfahan and Karaj.
US-Israeli strikes also hit Sharif University in Tehran, one of Iran’s leading scientific universities, often compared with the US’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the facility was severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound’s mosque and laboratories.
“The Sharif area has witnessed other attacks, including one on a gas facility,” Asadi said, adding that other civil facilities, including roads, power plants and bridges were also targeted across Iran.
“Iran’s Ministry of Science and Technology told us that at least 30 universities have been hit” since the beginning of the war on February 28, he said.
Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, accused the US of deploying a “bunker-buster” bomb to target the university.
“The bunker-buster bomb attack on Sharif University is a symbol of Trump’s madness and ignorance,” Aref said in a post on X.
“He fails to understand that Iran’s knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites,” Aref, who is a Stanford University-educated engineer, said of Trump.
Later on Monday, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organisation, Major-General Majid Khademi, was confirmed killed, according to an IRGC statement published by Fars.
Khademi died during a “terrorist attack by the American-Zionist enemy”, Fars reported, citing the IRGC statement. No additional details were provided.
Israel’s military also claimed to have killed the leader of the IRGC’s undercover unit in its expeditionary Quds Force.
A military spokesperson told reporters Asghar Bakeri had planned attacks on Israeli and US targets as well as operations in Israel, Syria and Lebanon.
Also on Monday, the secretary-general and CEO of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Jagan Chapagain, said he was “deeply concerned” by reports that another Iranian Red Crescent ambulance was hit on Sunday.
“Since the escalation of hostilities, several Red Crescent ambulances have been damaged, and four volunteers have lost their lives while saving others – in just five weeks of conflict,” Chapagain said on X.
“Any attack on health workers, ambulances, or medical facilities is unacceptable.”
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said an attack hit the petrochemical facility in South Pars.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military “carried out a powerful strike on the largest petrochemical facility in Iran, located in Asaluyeh, a central target responsible for about 50 percent of the country’s petrochemical production”.
Tasnim, citing Bushehr deputy governor, said petrochemical production units have been damaged in Asaluyeh.
Local media reported that petrochemical plants, including Jam and Damavand, were targeted, as well as the Mobin and Damavand companies, which supplied electricity, water, and oxygen to the Asaluyeh facility.
Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) condemned an attack on its heavy water facility as a “crime against science and human health”. It did not specify when the facility was bombed.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that Iran’s Khondab heavy water production plant was hit in an attack on March 27 and that it was no longer operational. The US and Israel have carried out multiple strikes in the vicinity of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, including one on Saturday that killed a security staff member.
Iran vows retaliatory attacks
The attacks follow Trump’s expletive-laden threat on Truth Social, demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face “hell”. Iran has warned of retaliatory attacks, saying it will respond “in kind” to any attacks on its infrastructure, with senior officials condemning the president’s remarks as an “incitement to war crimes”. The strait, through which some 20 percent of global oil and gas passes, has been under effective blockade by Iran in response to the war.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iranians were unfazed by Trump’s threats and that they would not be forced into any unfavourable deal. He said Trump’s statements were “an indication of a criminal mindset” and amounted to an “incitement to war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
Baghaei also warned that Iran would respond to any attacks on its infrastructure by launching similar attacks in the region.
Amid reports of new diplomatic efforts, he said Tehran is focused on the country’s security. Baghaei acknowledged diplomatic efforts by Pakistan, which has shared a plan with Iran and the US to end hostilities, according to the Reuters news agency.
He told the IRNA news agency that the latest “proposals are both extremely ambitious, unusual, and illogical”. Baghaei said Tehran would never accept a 15-point plan put forward by the US last month.
Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a “temporary ceasefire”. Tehran has reiterated that it seeks a permanent end to the war and a guarantee that the US and Israel will not attack in the future.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said a single misstep by either country could severely disrupt global energy flows and international trade.
Velayati added that while the US has learned certain lessons from Iran’s history, it “has yet to understand the geography of power”.
Meanwhile, Israel also faced several missile attacks, with alarms going off in parts of the country. According to the official Israeli radio station, four volleys of Iranian missiles were launched in the early morning hours on Tuesday.
Rescue workers pulled two bodies from the rubble of a building struck in Haifa, while two residents remained missing.
Ambulance and civil defence services reported several injuries, some serious, in more than 20 locations, including Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva and Ramat Gan.
The Ynet News outlet said a 34-year-old woman was “seriously injured” by interceptor missiles in Petah Tikva.
The Channel 2 broadcaster published images of smoke rising over Gush Dan and Bnei Brak, as well as a video of minor damage to a building in Tel Aviv.