Trump suggests extended war on Iran as US adds to forces in Mideast.

The remains of a police station are searched after airstrikes in Tehran, Iran, on Monday, March 2, 2026. Iran and allied militias, including Hezbollah, attacked Israel and U.S. targets, and Israel struck in Lebanon. Top U.S. officials talked of new attacks and an extended campaign. (Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times)

By SHAWN McCREESH, TYLER PAGER, ERIC SCHMITT, HELENE COOPER and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States would continue attacking Iran for as long as it takes to leave it incapable of posing a threat, indicating that an expanding war in the Middle East could continue for weeks or more.

“Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes,” Trump said at his first public event since U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran began Saturday. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it.”

Listing his objectives, Trump said, “We’re destroying Iran’s missile capability, and we’re doing that hourly.” He added that the strikes were “annihilating their navy” and ensuring that “this sick and sinister regime” in Tehran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon” or continue to sponsor militant groups across the Middle East.

But his latest comments underscored the administration’s murky messaging about its ongoing military attacks. Trump, who had said Saturday that toppling Iran’s theocratic regime was a goal, did not cite it Monday as one of his aims. Experts inside and outside the government have said his claims that Iran was close to having missiles that could reach the United States were false, and they also have disputed his contention that Iran would have had nuclear weapons by now if he had not abrogated a 2015 deal to restrict its nuclear program.

And hours before the president said the United States would keep striking Iran for as long as it takes, his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said at the Pentagon that the widening attacks would not become another protracted Middle East war, adding, “This is not Iraq.”

Trump took no questions at the event at the White House, a Medal of Honor ceremony. But in interviews earlier in the day, he told CNN that the huge U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran that began early Saturday could soon intensify: “We haven’t even started hitting them hard, the big wave hasn’t even happened.” And The New York Post reported that the president had said in an interview that “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”

In another sign of an expansion of attacks in the Middle East, Qatar’s Defense Ministry said its air force had shot down two Su-24 bombers coming from Iran, the first report that Iran, which has fired missiles and drones at its Persian Gulf neighbors and Israel in retaliation for the Israeli-U.S. assault, had also sent warplanes into their airspace.

As U.S. and Israeli planes pounded targets in Iran for the third day, the fighting expanded into Lebanon, where the Iran-allied militia Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, prompting Israel to bombard the militia’s strongholds outside Beirut.

Three U.S. jets were shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in what the U.S. military called an “apparent friendly fire incident.”

Iran’s leaders remained defiant. The country’s top security official, Ali Larijani, denied news reports that Iran’s new leaders were seeking to negotiate with Washington, denouncing Trump for “delusional fantasies” and for plunging the Middle East “into chaos.” Iran, he said in a string of fiery social media posts, “has prepared itself for a long war.”

Here’s what else is happening:

— Economic fallout: Oil and natural gas markets remained highly volatile as the fighting shut down shipping routes and damaged production facilities. Naval traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, has shut down, according to shipping companies and Iranian media. And Qatar’s state-owned energy company said it would halt production of liquefied natural gas, cutting off a large share of the world’s supply of the fuel.

— Death toll: More than 550 people have been killed in Iran since the beginning of the war, the Iranian Red Crescent emergency service said Monday. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 31 people had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. At least 10 people have been killed in Israel and six, including civilians, across the Gulf since Saturday, according to authorities.

— U.S. deaths: Four U.S. service members have been killed so far, and “we expect to take additional losses,” Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference.

— Persian Gulf: Iranian missiles and drone attacks led to explosions in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries where the U.S. has military bases. Iranian leaders have said the attacks have targeted U.S. assets, but they have also struck Dubai’s international airport, hotels and other civilian and economic infrastructure.

— Cyprus: The Mediterranean island nation’s president said an Iranian drone had crashed into a British air base there. The incident risked dragging Britain deeper into a conflict from which Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to maintain distance.