The war with Iran stretched into a fifth day Wednesday, with Israel launching a new wave of strikes in Tehran and the U.S. saying it torpedoed an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka.
The Iranian authorities postponed public mourning rituals for the killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that were set to begin Wednesday. According to Iran’s state media, the ceremonies were postponed due to “overwhelming response.” A new date has not been specified.
Here are more of the key updates NPR is reporting on.
U.S. torpedoed Iranian ship off Sri Lanka
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said the U.S. was behind the overnight sinking of an Iranian navy ship in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Sri Lanka. He said the ship, which was hit by a U.S. submarine, was the first to be downed by a torpedo since World War II.
Sri Lanka’s navy said it rescued 32 people and recovered 87 bodies from the sea where the ship sank, The Associated Press reported.
Late Tuesday, Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said the military had destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including what he described as Iran’s “most operational” submarine.
In a video posted on social media, Cooper said Iran’s “air defenses and hundreds of ballistic missile launchers and drones” were “severely degraded” following U.S. and Israeli strikes on 2,000 targets.
Cooper said Iran has retaliated by launching more than 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones. The scale of the campaign — the largest buildup of U.S. forces in the region since the war in Iraq in 2003 — has sharpened questions in Washington about how far it could expand.
The U.S. has deployed 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets and two aircraft carriers in the Middle East, according to U.S. officials. Cooper said “more capabilities were on the way.”
After a closed-door briefing with senior Trump administration officials Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he was “more fearful than ever” that the U.S. could end up putting “boots on the ground.” Other senators, including Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., also raised concerns about escalation and called for greater public accountability.
Across the Gulf, U.S. diplomatic sites have come under attack in recent days. On Tuesday, drones hit near the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, in an attack that the Saudi Foreign Ministry said came from Iran. The embassy warned American citizens to shelter in place and avoid the embassy compound until further notice. The same day, a drone struck near the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, and the embassy in Kuwait was closed to the public following an attack.
Speaking in between meetings on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that U.S. embassies are under attack from a “terrorist regime.”
“A drone unfortunately struck a parking lot adjacent to the chancellery building and then set off a fire in that place,” he said. “All personnel are accounted for. As you’re aware, we began drawing down personnel from our diplomatic facilities in advance of this.”
Israel says it targeted the top body of Iran’s clerics
Inside Iran, Israel said it had targeted on Tuesday the building housing the Assembly of Experts, the body of top Shia clerics whose job it is to choose a new supreme leader. It was not immediately clear whether the assembly was meeting at the time.
Thousands of Iranians gathered on Tuesday for the funeral of children killed in an elementary school that was struck Saturday. Over 160 students, mostly girls, and 14 teachers were killed, according to Iranian officials. Israel denies it hit the school, and the U.S. military says it’s looking into it. Iran said the school was hit Saturday morning when the war began.
In Tehran, Shadi, a woman who identified herself to NPR without giving her last name out of safety concerns from the Iranian government, described government buildings, military bases and centers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shattered by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes — a debris of mangled metal and concrete and broken glass.