Twenty-nine days into the US-Israel military campaign against Iran, the conflict showed no signs of narrowing. Friday brought a significant escalation: for the first time since the war began on February 28, Houthi forces fired a ballistic missile at Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces intercepted the missile with no reported injuries, but the attack confirmed what analysts had warned — the war's blast radius was widening well beyond Iran's borders.
Overnight, US-Israeli strikes targeted a major water source in Haftgel, in western Iran's Khuzestan province — home to some of the country's most critical oil infrastructure. The targeting of civilian water supply drew immediate condemnation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who called it a potential violation of the laws of armed conflict. The Iranian Red Crescent, which has been tracking casualties since the campaign's first night, put the total death toll at a minimum of 1,900 people as of Friday morning.
Friday's bombardment was among the most intense since the opening salvo. Explosions were recorded in northeastern, western, central, and eastern Tehran simultaneously — a pattern that military analysts at the Institute for the Study of War described as designed to overwhelm Iranian air defense coordination. Iran's acting government said its air defenses had intercepted "the majority" of incoming projectiles, but independent observers reported significant impact craters in the capital's residential districts.
