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Since 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel have bombed Iran, and Iran has fired back at American forces, at Israel and at shipping. It is the first open war between the United States and Iran. It has been fought from the air and at sea, with no ground invasion, and interrupted by two ceasefires.
The wider confrontation, its history and each side's full account: Iran in regional and international confrontation.
On 1 September the United States and Iran exchanged new strikes, ending a monthlong lull. On 5 September the United States struck three Iranian oil tankers after Iran targeted US Navy ships with ballistic missiles. On 9 September the United States destroyed five Iranian oil tankers, and Iran retaliated against Jordan. On 16 September Congress moved to withdraw US troops from Iran as war costs reached $38 billion. On 17 September UN experts said the United States may have committed war crimes in its strikes on Iran.
Whether force can settle what talks did not, and who may use it. The United States and Israel say they act in self-defence against a threat that was about to become nuclear. Iran says it was attacked without provocation and without any mandate, and that everything it has done since is the defence the UN Charter allows. Neither can end the war on its own terms: Iran cannot stop the bombing, and the bombing has not produced an Iran that gives way.
Iran was weeks from a weapon, its allies had attacked Israel on every border, and negotiation had run its course. The strikes removed the leadership that ordered all of it and destroyed most of Iran's navy, air defence and missile industry. Iran answers by attacking merchant ships and neighbouring countries, which shows what it would do with a bomb.
The war began with the murder of Iran's head of state, two days after a round of talks. Iran has no bomb; its attackers have thousands. It has struck military targets that strike it, and it has offered to stop when they do. A country of ninety million will not be bombed into changing its government.
Washington's and Jerusalem's leaves out that the war opened during negotiations; the Iranian civilians killed; that allies asked to join refused; and that its own services say the programme was not destroyed.
Tehran's leaves out its attacks on merchant ships and on states that were not at war with it, and that its allies' fire on Israel preceded the strikes on Iran.
The critics' leave out what they would have done about enrichment at 60 percent once the inspectors were gone.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
Per-week distribution of events. Click a bar to see that week's top events.
Click a week bar to select. Light blue = active week.
In the American Congress, in Europe and across the global South the objection is the same: no Security Council mandate, no vote in Congress, no attack by Iran that it answered. They point to the intelligence finding that the nuclear programme survived, to the oil shock, and to Iraq in 2003.
