Day 10: Hegseth Threatens 'Most Intense Strikes' as Iran Hits Bahrain, UAE and Israel Across All Fronts

Tuesday marks ten days since the U.S. and Israel launched the war that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promises maximum force. Iran responds by hitting a Bahrain apartment block, setting fire to UAE petrochemical plants, and keeping the Strait of Hormuz locked shut. Twenty million barrels a day are going nowhere.

U.S. carrier strike group operations in the Persian Gulf region. Credit: Unsplash

The Iran-U.S.-Israel war crossed its tenth day on Tuesday with a simultaneous escalation on every front. Iranian drones and missiles struck residential and industrial targets across the Gulf while the United States, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, prepared to unleash its largest single-day wave of strikes yet. Markets churned, oil held near $90 a barrel after briefly touching $120 Monday, and economists at the International Monetary Fund warned of a global inflation shock with no obvious off-ramp in sight.

The war began on February 28 when a joint U.S.-Israeli strike campaign killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and targeted Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure. What the administration had described as a short, targeted operation has instead metastasized across ten days of escalating exchanges, regional drone barrages, and the near-total shutdown of one of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints.

There is no ceasefire discussion on either side. Iran's parliament speaker said Tuesday his government was "definitely not looking for a ceasefire." Hegseth, speaking from the Pentagon, promised the opposite of de-escalation.

Hegseth's Warning: Maximum Force, Maximum Bombers

At a Pentagon briefing Tuesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a statement designed to be heard in Tehran as much as Washington.

"Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran: The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever." - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon briefing, March 10, 2026 (AP)

The warning came in an unusual sequence. Minutes before making the "most intense" statement, Hegseth told reporters that "the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest amount of missiles they have fired yet" - seemingly indicating Iran was degraded, then immediately escalating the rhetoric. The combination reads as a pressure signal: Washington believes it is winning the exchange ratio and plans to press the advantage hard.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided the operational picture. According to Caine, U.S. forces have now hit more than 5,000 targets inside Iran across the ten days of conflict. He outlined three core objectives driving the air campaign: first, the systematic destruction of Iran's ballistic missile stockpiles and drone manufacturing capacity; second, clearing Iranian naval and mine-laying assets from the Strait of Hormuz to restore commercial oil shipping; and third, striking "deeper into Iran's military and industrial base" to degrade the logistics chain sustaining the war effort. (AP, March 10)

The 5,000-target figure is significant. It represents a pace of roughly 500 targeted strikes per day - a tempo that suggests the campaign has moved well beyond initial nuclear and leadership targets into a broad suppression campaign across Iran's military-industrial network. What remains unclear is whether any of those 5,000 targets included nuclear hardening that would survive the campaign.

Tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf has collapsed since Iran's Hormuz closure. Credit: Unsplash

Iran Strikes Back: Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel

Iran's response to the anticipated escalation came in the form of coordinated multi-front drone and missile barrages hitting the Gulf states and Israel simultaneously on Tuesday.

In Bahrain, an Iranian attack hit a residential building in the capital, Manama. A 29-year-old woman was killed. Eight others were wounded. Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters, has been a recurring Iranian target since the war began - Tehran views its Gulf Arab neighbors as complicit in enabling American military operations. The killing of a civilian in a residential building underscores that Iranian targeting is not limited to military infrastructure. (AP, March 10)

In the United Arab Emirates, Iranian drones struck the industrial city of Ruwais. Firefighters battled a blaze at the facility, which is home to major petrochemical plants operated by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company subsidiary ADNOC Refining. No injuries were reported, but the target was not random. Ruwais sits on the UAE's western coast and processes crude oil and natural gas. Striking petrochemical infrastructure sends a signal: Iran can reach the economic arteries of Gulf states that have quietly supported U.S. operations. (AP, March 10)

Saudi Arabia reported destroying two Iranian drones over its oil-rich eastern region - the same territory that contains the Abqaiq processing facility, arguably the most critical single piece of oil infrastructure on the planet. Kuwait's National Guard shot down six drones. These interceptions indicate Iran is probing Gulf air defenses consistently, testing response times and gaps. (AP, March 10)

Israel again came under Iranian barrages. Air raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem. Explosions were heard in Tel Aviv as Israel's layered air defense network - Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow interceptors - worked to neutralize incoming projectiles. Israel responded with a new wave of airstrikes on Tehran in the afternoon, with witnesses reporting multiple explosions in the Iranian capital.

The multi-front nature of Tuesday's Iranian attacks matters strategically. Iran is not conserving its remaining missile and drone inventory. Instead it is distributing strikes across five simultaneous theaters: Israel, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The approach creates interception fatigue, generates economic disruption across multiple Gulf economies, and forces the U.S. and its partners to divide defensive resources.

The Hormuz Chokepoint: Twenty Million Barrels a Day Gone

The Strait of Hormuz - a 33-kilometer-wide passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman - is effectively closed. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stated plainly this week that it "will not allow the export of even a single liter of oil from the region to the hostile side and its partners until further notice." That is not a bluff. It is operational policy backed by naval mines, fast boat harassment, drone attacks on merchant shipping, and live-fire exercises in the waterway itself. (AP, March 10)

The scale of what has been cut off defies easy summary. The strait handles approximately 20 million barrels of crude oil per day - one-fifth of all oil consumed globally. Every barrel of oil leaving Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, and Iran must pass through those 33 kilometers, or take an alternative route that barely exists at meaningful scale.

"The Strait of Hormuz has to be reopened. It's 20 million barrels of oil a day going through there. There is no excess capacity anywhere in the world that can fill that gap." - Simon Johnson, MIT economist and 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient (AP)

Aramco CEO Amin Nasser confirmed Tuesday that tankers are being rerouted to avoid the strait. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, which moves crude overland to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, is being pushed to its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day - covering just 35% of what normally moves through Hormuz. The gap of roughly 13 million barrels daily has no current solution. (AP, March 10)

A bulk carrier reported a potential Iranian attack in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, off the UAE coast - the captain reported "a splash and a loud bang nearby," according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations monitoring center. At least seven sailors have been killed in attacks on merchant ships near the strait since the war began, according to the International Maritime Organization. Insurance costs for vessels that attempt the passage have become prohibitive for most operators.

Trump responded to the closure in a post on social media that appeared to not acknowledge it was already happening: "If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far." The IRGC has already stopped the flow. The threat lands in a vacuum. (AP, March 10)

Oil at $90, Gas at $3.48: The Global Economic Shockwave

Global energy infrastructure faces sustained pressure as Hormuz shipping volumes collapse. Credit: Unsplash

The economic damage from ten days of war is already measurable. Brent crude, the international benchmark, spiked to nearly $120 per barrel on Monday before falling back. As of Tuesday it sits around $90 - roughly 24% above the $72-per-barrel level it traded at on February 27, the day before the war started. American consumers are paying $3.48 per gallon at the pump, up from just under $3.00 a week ago. That is a 16% retail gasoline increase in seven days. (AP, March 10)

The IMF has issued explicit warnings. Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said every 10% sustained increase in oil prices pushes global inflation up by 0.4 percentage points and reduces worldwide economic output by as much as 0.2%. The current 24% oil price increase, if sustained for most of 2026, implies a roughly 1 percentage point inflation surge globally and a 0.5% drag on global GDP - on top of existing inflationary pressures from 2025 tariff cycles.

Maurice Obstfeld, former IMF chief economist and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, put it directly: "For a long time, the nightmare scenario that deterred the U.S. from even thinking about an attack on Iran - and which got them to urge restraint on Israel - was that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz. Now we're in the nightmare scenario." (AP)

The distributional impact is not even. Oil-importing countries bear the brunt. The effects in Asia are already visible in behavior: India's restaurants are warning of possible shutdowns as the government prioritizes gas supplies for households. Thailand has suspended overseas civil servant travel and is urging people to take stairs. The Philippines has introduced a four-day government work week. Vietnam is pushing work-from-home policies. These are economic adaptation signals - governments buying time while hoping the war ends before permanent damage sets in. (AP)

Pakistan faces the most acute exposure. The country imports 40% of its energy and relies especially heavily on liquefied natural gas from Qatar - a supplier effectively cut off by the Hormuz closure. Higher energy prices will compress Pakistan's already-thin fiscal margins at a time when the country remains on an IMF program requiring budget discipline. (AP)

The Federal Reserve and other central banks face a painful constraint. Monetary policy works against inflation by tightening credit and slowing demand - but a war-driven oil supply shock is not a demand problem. Raising rates to fight war-inflation would further depress economic growth without solving the underlying supply disruption. The central banks are trapped between two bad options.

The Intelligence Gap: Regime Change Was Never the Likely Outcome

A classified U.S. intelligence assessment completed in February - before the war started - concluded that American military intervention in Iran was not likely to lead to regime change, even if the current leadership was killed. The National Intelligence Council's finding, reported by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and confirmed by two people familiar with the document who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, directly undercuts the administration's public optimism about a quick resolution. (AP, March 10)

The assessment found: no powerful or unified opposition coalition was poised to take over in Iran if leadership was killed. Iran's establishment would attempt to preserve continuity of power. The existing institutional structure - the Revolutionary Guard, the clerical council, the bureaucracy - would fill any leadership vacuum rather than collapse under it.

That finding has been validated in real time. Within days of Khamenei's death, Iran's leading clerics selected a new supreme leader: Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain ayatollah. He is believed by U.S. and regional intelligence analysts to hold even more hardline views than his father. His selection signals that Iran's governing establishment is closing ranks, not fracturing. (AP, March 10)

The NIC assessment is politically significant for another reason. Director Tulsi Gabbard fired the council's acting chairperson last year after an unrelated NIC memo contradicted administration policy on Venezuelan deportations. That context matters: the intelligence community produced an assessment explicitly telling the administration that its war aims were unlikely to succeed, and the administration proceeded anyway. The result is now visible across ten days of escalating combat with no clear off-ramp.

Trump has simultaneously said the war "is not aimed at regime change" and that regime change is "something he wants to see." The contradiction has not been resolved. Hegseth says the three objectives - missile/drone degradation, Hormuz clearance, and industrial base attrition - are achievable without regime change. Whether achieving all three would actually end the war is an open question. Iran has already replaced its supreme leader and its parliament speaker has publicly refused ceasefire talks.

Iran's New Hardliner and the Calculus of Resistance

Mojtaba Khamenei ascending to the supreme leadership position after his father's death is precisely what the NIC assessment predicted: institutional continuity, not collapse. He has never held a significant public role - he operated in the background, known mainly as a confidant of hardline IRGC commanders and a figure who backed the violent suppression of 2022 protests. His elevation sends a clear signal to the Iranian population and to Washington: the political direction of the Islamic Republic is not moderating under military pressure. It is hardening.

Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made the position explicit Tuesday on social media: his government is "definitely not looking for a ceasefire." He added that "the aggressor should be punched in the mouth so that he learns a lesson so that he will never think of attacking our beloved Iran again." (AP, March 10)

The language from Ali Larijani, another top Iranian security official, went further - appearing to directly threaten Trump personally: "Iran doesn't fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn't eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself." Iran has previously been accused of plotting assassination attempts against Trump. The statement, however ambiguous, will be taken seriously by U.S. security services. (AP, March 10)

For now, Iran's war strategy reads as an attempt to generate enough global economic pain - via Hormuz closure and Gulf-wide drone pressure - to force U.S. and Israeli public opinion against continuation. The theory: make the war cost Americans at the gas pump, cost Asian allies at the fuel terminal, and cost Gulf partners in infrastructure damage until the political will to continue collapses. It is a slow-burn attrition play against democratic publics with short tolerances for expensive conflicts. Whether ten days of $3.48 gas is enough to move American opinion is unknown. Thirty days might be a different calculation.

Timeline: How the War Reached Day 10

Side Effects: Iranian Women's Soccer Team and the Asylum Signal

Amid the strikes and the oil market chaos, a quieter story emerged from Brisbane that carries its own implications. Twenty-six members of the Iranian women's soccer team had traveled to Australia for the Women's Asian Cup before the war began on February 28. When their tournament ended over the weekend - Iran was knocked out of the competition - the players faced the prospect of returning to a country under aerial bombardment.

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced Tuesday that players on the squad had been offered asylum. Five have so far been granted it. Burke posted photos of the players smiling and clapping as he signed the documents. The team had drawn attention earlier in the tournament when players declined to sing the Iranian national anthem before their first match - a visible act of distance from a government now fighting for survival. (AP, March 10)

The asylum decisions reflect a broader refugee reality that has received less coverage than the combat operations. Iranians are fleeing. The war created displacement pressure from the first night of strikes. Young professionals, families near military installations, people with the resources to travel - many are not waiting to see how the air campaign resolves. Australia's decision is one data point. European immigration agencies are monitoring accelerating asylum applications from Iranian nationals.

The soccer players' situation is also a useful proxy for the scale of the regime's delegitimization problem. These are not opposition activists. They are athletes representing Iran on an international stage, with all the vetting and state approval that implies. Their refusal to sing the anthem and their decision to seek asylum signals that the war has accelerated the collapse of loyalty among even officially-endorsed public figures.

What Comes Next: The Endgame Nobody Can Define

Trump called the war "a short-term excursion" as recently as Tuesday. His own intelligence community told him in February it would not produce regime change. His defense secretary is promising the most intense bombardment yet on day ten. His adversary has a new, more hardline supreme leader who has explicitly rejected ceasefire. The economic cost is measurable and rising. The Strait of Hormuz is closed and there is no plan to reopen it short of military clearing operations that would trigger further Iranian escalation.

The economic consensus is that a $70-$80 oil price range is survivable. At $90-$120, the damage accumulates. The IMF's Georgieva framed it clearly: "The Strait of Hormuz has to be reopened." It is not a policy suggestion. It is a structural requirement for the global economy to absorb this war without cascading damage to developing nations, food supply chains, and central bank inflation mandates.

MIT's Simon Johnson identified the core uncertainty: "The question is how long is it going to go on? It's hard to see Iran backing down now that it's announced this new leader. It's not clear when Trump is going to declare victory." Two actors, both with domestic political reasons to continue, both with maximalist public rhetoric, and no neutral third party with the credibility to broker a pause. (AP)

The war's tenth day closes with Hegseth's bombers overhead and Iranian drones burning in Gulf fire suppression foam. The Hormuz chokepoint remains shut. The arithmetic has not changed: 20 million barrels a day cannot be rerouted. The pipelines that exist cover 35% of the gap. Every week the closure holds, the global economic case for a negotiated pause grows louder - but neither side is taking the call.

Sources: Associated Press (multiple reports, March 10, 2026); International Monetary Fund; MIT Department of Economics; Peterson Institute for International Economics; UK Maritime Trade Operations; International Maritime Organization; Pentagon briefing (Hegseth/Caine, March 10); AP reporting on NIC assessment. Wire service contemporaneous reporting throughout.