War Report - Day 7

Day Seven: Tehran's Worst Night, A New IRGC Commander, and Washington Slams the Exit Door

B-2 bombers drop penetrator munitions on buried missile silos. The death toll crosses 1,332. An Interpol-wanted general takes command of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. And the US Congress - by seven votes - decides the war continues on the president's terms alone.

File image: Combat aircraft operations over contested airspace. Operation Epic Fury has flown more than 2,500 strike missions in seven days. (Unsplash)

The Al Jazeera bureau on Pasteur Street felt it before they saw it. A shockwave rolled through the building at 4:15 in the morning - correspondent Tohid Asadi described it as heavier than anything in the previous six days. Minutes later, he was on air describing smoke columns rising over Tehran's most secured government corridor, the same street where Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei died in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury.

By the time daylight arrived over the Iranian capital on Friday, the seventh day of the US-Israel war on Iran had already claimed the title of worst night. B-2 Spirit stealth bombers had dropped dozens of 2,000-pound "penetrator" munitions - bunker-busters designed specifically to crack hardened underground structures - on deeply buried ballistic missile launchers. Iran's equivalent of Space Command was struck. A military academy took a direct hit while a state broadcaster journalist reported live nearby. Explosions rattled civilian neighborhoods, parking lots, and petrol stations blocks from the presidential office.

It was exactly what US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had promised: a surge. "It's more fighter squadrons, it's more capabilities, it's more defensive capabilities," Hegseth told reporters alongside CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper. "And it's more bomber pulses, more frequently."

On the same day the bombs fell heavier, the US Congress - by a razor-thin seven-vote margin - rejected a resolution that would have required Trump to come to Capitol Hill and justify the war. There is no off-ramp being built. The door has been shut from the inside.

The Surge Arrives: What Changed on Day Seven

The opening six days of Operation Epic Fury followed a recognizable pattern - devastating, but somewhat predictable. US and Israeli aircraft struck command infrastructure, missile depots, naval assets, and nuclear-adjacent facilities. Iran launched ballistic missile and drone barrages in response, targeting Gulf nations hosting American forces. Air defenses on both sides worked overtime.

Day seven broke the pattern. The introduction of B-2 stealth bombers dropping bunker-busting penetrator munitions signals a qualitative escalation - not just more strikes, but different strikes. Hardened underground facilities that conventional bombs cannot reach are now targets. According to CENTCOM's Admiral Cooper, the B-2 runs targeted deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, the kind sheltered behind meters of reinforced concrete designed to survive anything short of a nuclear strike.

Israel's military declared it had achieved "near-complete air superiority," claiming 80 percent of Iran's air defense network had been destroyed. Those are Israeli claims, unverified by independent sources on the ground - but the operational reality is consistent: Iran's ability to shoot down incoming strikes has visibly degraded since day one. Its own retaliatory capacity tells the same story. According to US officials, Iran's ballistic missile launches have dropped 90 percent since the war's opening salvos, and drone attacks are down 83 percent.

Iran's military said Friday it would expand its attacks in the coming days - a statement that reads as a promise but may reflect pressure to escalate rather than capability to do so. Iranian state television broadcast the announcement without elaboration on targets or timing.

"From the very early hours of today and into the morning, we have been witnessing a continued wave of massive strikes. Compared to previous days, we saw heavier bombardment overnight, at least in the capital."
- Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, March 6, 2026

Smoke rises over residential neighborhoods of an Iranian city following overnight strikes. UNICEF reports 181 children killed in the first seven days of the conflict. (Unsplash)

Tehran Under the Worst Bombing Yet

Pasteur Street runs through the administrative heart of Tehran. It is where the presidential office sits, where key state institutions are housed, and - until February 28 - where Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's official residence stood. It is also the most heavily secured corridor in Iran.

It burned again on Friday morning.

Explosions struck targets linked to Iran's military and political establishment, but the blasts did not stay within institutional perimeters. Al Jazeera's correspondent reported strikes in the vicinity of Tehran University, as well as residential buildings, car parks, and petrol stations. The distinction between military infrastructure and civilian neighborhood collapses quickly when you are dropping penetrator bombs in a city of 10 million.

Outside the capital, the bombardment was equally indiscriminate in its reach. In Shiraz, 20 people were killed and 30 wounded in an attack on the Zibashahr residential area, according to Jalil Hasani, deputy governor of Fars province, speaking to Iranian state media. Tasnim news agency reported that two paramedics were among the dead. Six more civilians were injured by an Israeli missile strike on residential buildings in Poldokhtar, in western Lorestan province.

Explosions were also reported across Isfahan, Qom, and Kermanshah - the latter home to multiple missile bases that have been consistent targets throughout the campaign.

The Iranian Red Crescent's total death count reached at least 1,332 as of Friday morning. That number is almost certainly an undercount. In any active bombing campaign, official tallies lag reality - rescue teams cannot reach every site immediately, some areas have had communications severed, and Iran's own government has every incentive to manage the information flow around casualties.

The Children of Minab: 175 Dead, One School, UN Demands Accountability

The number that stopped the room when UNICEF released it on Friday: 181. That is how many children have been killed in the first seven days of Operation Epic Fury, according to the UN agency's count.

The bulk of that number - at least 175 - came from a single strike on a girls' primary school in Minab, a coastal city in Hormozgan province. The attack happened earlier in the week, and its details are still emerging. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an immediate independent investigation and accountability for those responsible.

A preliminary inquiry cited by Al Jazeera found the US "likely responsible" for the school strike - language that is careful but, given the scale of the US bombing campaign across southern Iran, not surprising to analysts tracking the conflict's pattern.

Iran's government displayed images of the rubble to state media. The school's remains became a recruitment poster for Iranian hardliners arguing that any negotiation with Washington amounts to surrender. In that sense, 175 dead children have done something no IRGC missile barrage could: they have made the argument for continued resistance in terms that don't require a military briefing to understand.

Trump dismissed questions about civilian casualties on Friday, repeating his assertion that Iran has been "demolished," that the country now has "no air force, no air defence." He did not address the school.

Iran's New War Commander: Who Is Ahmad Vahidi

The IRGC has burned through commanders faster than any military institution in the world over the past nine months. First, Hossein Salami was killed during the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025. His replacement, Mohammad Pakpour, lasted until February 28 - the opening day of Operation Epic Fury - when he was killed in the first wave of strikes. Now Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi holds the most dangerous job in Iran.

Vahidi is not a caretaker. He has been inside the IRGC's machinery since its earliest formation in the late 1970s, rising through intelligence and combat roles during the brutal eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. He led the Quds Force - the IRGC's elite foreign operations arm - from 1988 to 1997, before handing that command to Qassem Soleimani. He knows exactly what that organization can and cannot do.

His political resume is equally substantial. He served as Defense Minister under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then Interior Minister under the late President Ebrahim Raisi until 2024. Supreme Leader Khamenei - killed on the war's first day - named Vahidi IRGC deputy chief in December 2025. His promotion to commander was prepared before the war started.

The international community has a different file on Vahidi. Interpol issued a red notice at Argentina's request, alleging Vahidi's involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires - a truck bomb that killed 85 people at a Jewish community center. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history. Iran denied involvement. The notice has never been executed. Vahidi has traveled internationally regardless.

The US and European Union sanctioned him after Iran's brutal crackdown on the 2022 protests that followed Mahsa Amini's death in police custody. He was interior minister when those orders were carried out.

Ali Alfoneh of the Arab Gulf States Institute described Vahidi to Al Jazeera as a "capable bureaucrat" - someone whose combined military-political background makes him uniquely suited to running an organization that is simultaneously a fighting force, an intelligence service, and an economic empire. That profile matters in a war where Iran's response depends as much on institutional coherence as on raw military capacity.

There is also this detail: in the mid-1980s, Vahidi reportedly participated in covert contacts between Iranian representatives and intermediaries linked to the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra affair - a channel through which Washington secretly supplied arms to Tehran. He knows the US negotiating style from the inside. That cuts both ways as a credential.

"Vahidi is intimately familiar with Israel and the US through his involvement in those talks. He is a key wartime leader and an ideal chief commander of the Revolutionary Guard."
- Ali Alfoneh, Arab Gulf States Institute, to Al Jazeera

IRGC's Ahmad Vahidi becomes the third Revolutionary Guards commander in under a year - the previous two were killed in combat. (Unsplash/illustrative)

The Gulf Spreads: Iran's Regional Counterstrikes

Iran cannot win an air war against the United States and Israel. Its air defense has been dismantled, its ballistic missile launch rate has fallen by 90 percent, and its navy has been effectively destroyed. What Iran can do - what it has been doing with mounting persistence - is make the region ungovernable for American interests.

In the past 24 hours, Iranian strikes have reached across the Gulf with deliberate breadth. In Bahrain's capital, Manama, Iranian missiles targeted the Financial Harbour Towers commercial complex - the building that houses the Israeli embassy. Bahrain's Defence Force reported destroying a total of 78 missiles and 143 drones targeting Bahraini territory since the war began. Their statement described the attacks as "treacherous." The military urged civilians to shelter at home "in cases of extreme necessity."

Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base - the largest US military installation in the Middle East, home to CENTCOM's forward headquarters - was targeted again Friday. The Qatari Ministry of Defence confirmed its air defense forces intercepted a drone barrage overnight. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Doha reported massive explosions at 4am local time. This was not the first attempt: on day five, two ballistic missiles hit the base, with one penetrating defenses.

Iran's army claimed drone attacks on US military bases in Kuwait, promising more to come. The US has suspended embassy operations in Kuwait City. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defence announced the interception of a cruise missile east of al-Kharj governorate and three drones near the Riyadh region.

The UAE said it intercepted multiple Iranian missiles and over 120 drones. In Jordan, air defenses shot down drones over the city of Irbid. In Iraq, forces intercepted a drone targeting a base near Baghdad International Airport with US military assets.

The pattern is not subtlety - it is saturation. Iran cannot break through Gulf air defenses consistently, but it does not need to break through every time. Drones cost a fraction of the interceptors used against them. Every Gulf state that has to scramble its defenses overnight is a government that wakes up asking Washington: is this worth it? Is hosting American forces worth becoming a target?

The EU answered that question Thursday, with foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and European leaders denouncing what they called "Iran's inexcusable attacks against the GCC countries." That diplomatic solidarity has not yet translated into European combat involvement - Germany, Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands have stuck to diplomatic responses - though the UK and France have repositioned naval and air assets in the eastern Mediterranean.

Washington Closes the Exits: Congress Backs the President

Seven votes. That is the margin by which the US House of Representatives decided on Thursday that this war does not need congressional authorization to continue. The vote was 219 to 212 against a war powers resolution that would have required Trump to seek formal approval for further military action against Iran.

It was the second failed attempt in two days. The Senate had already defeated a similar measure along party lines. Republicans, who control narrow majorities in both chambers, held together. The party-line break tells you everything about how this conflict is being processed in Washington - not as a constitutional question, but as a tribal one.

Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, framed the argument plainly: "Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case." His side lost.

Republican Brian Mast, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an Army veteran who worked bomb disposal in Afghanistan, called the war powers resolution an instruction for the president to "do nothing." The House also passed a separate measure declaring Iran the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism - unanimous in its way.

Six US military members were killed in Kuwait in a drone strike over the weekend. Trump acknowledged more American deaths are coming. Twenty thousand US citizens have been evacuated from the Middle East with government assistance. None of it moved the numbers enough to flip the vote.

On the question of what happens after the bombs stop - if they stop - Trump has been remarkably candid. He wants to choose Iran's next supreme leader. He told Axios that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the assassinated Supreme Leader, is "unacceptable" and "a lightweight." He said he must be "involved in the appointment." His preferred model is Venezuela: Washington carried out a limited military operation, Maduro disappeared, and Delcy Rodriguez took over as a pliant successor willing to sell oil and cut off Cuba.

"They are wasting their time. Khamenei's son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment," Trump said, per Axios reporting.

Iran's response to the successor question has been institutional silence. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said there is "no reason why we should negotiate with the US," adding that Washington cannot be trusted. Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, warned that Iranian forces are "waiting" for a US ground invasion and would "kill and capture thousands" of American troops. Trump dismissed the ground invasion question - "It's a waste of time. They've lost their navy. They've lost everything they can lose" - but has not ruled it out.

"Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case."
- Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member

The Math That Isn't In Anyone's Budget

The Center for Strategic and International Studies released cost estimates on Thursday that deserve more attention than they are getting. Operation Epic Fury has burned through $3.7 billion in its first 100 hours. That works out to approximately $891 million per day. Of that total, CSIS estimates $3.5 billion was never appropriated - it is being spent against no authorized budget.

To put that in context: the US defense budget for fiscal year 2025 was roughly $886 billion. This war is costing about one billion dollars per day more than that budget planned for. The Dow Jones dropped more than 1,000 points - 2.2 percent - earlier in the week as financial markets processed the implications of a sustained conflict at these rates. Oil prices climbed as the Strait of Hormuz situation remains unresolved.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi described his country as economically in a "state of near-emergency," warning that the regional war threatens to drive up prices across North Africa. Egypt's Suez Canal revenues - already stressed since Houthi attacks in 2024 - face further disruption. The war's economic blast radius extends well beyond the countries exchanging missiles.

A French evacuation flight chartered to rescue citizens stranded in the UAE was forced to turn back mid-flight due to missile fire in the region. Twenty thousand Americans have been helped out of the Middle East by government charter operations, with more waiting. The State Department's consular system is under the kind of operational pressure it has not seen since the chaotic Kabul evacuation of 2021.

Timeline of Operation Epic Fury

What Comes Next: No Off-Ramp, No Ceiling

The architecture of this conflict has no built-in termination point. Trump has stated publicly that regime change in Iran is a "question of time" - the same framing he used for Cuba in a Thursday interview. His stated goal is not military victory in the conventional sense but political replacement of a government. That is not a task that ends when the last missile launcher is destroyed or the last warship sunk.

Iran's negotiating posture is equally inflexible. Foreign Minister Araghchi has made clear there is nothing to discuss while the bombs are falling. Larijani's invasion warnings are partly theater, but the underlying message - that Iran will not capitulate without extracted costs - is consistent across every Iranian official statement this week. Vahidi, the new IRGC commander, has operational experience managing covert contacts with Washington. If there is ever a back channel to be opened, he would be the instrument. But that moment is not now.

The military trajectory is clearer than the political one. Hegseth has announced a surge. B-2 bombers are now in the rotation. Israel's air force is conducting what it calls a "new phase" of strikes targeting "regime infrastructure." The word regime is doing significant work in that framing - it is the intellectual premise for what comes after the bombs.

Trump's Venezuelan model is the closest thing Washington has offered to a post-war vision: a compliant successor, energy concessions, and the formal end of Iran's influence network across the region. Whether that scenario is achievable through bombing - and no serious Iran analyst believes it is - is a question that the 219 House Republicans who voted against a war powers check have decided they are comfortable leaving unanswered.

Meanwhile, on Pasteur Street in Tehran, Tohid Asadi is still on air. The smoke has not cleared. The jets are still heard at irregular intervals. The shockwaves still rattle the bureau windows. He reported what he could see, and what he could see was that Friday was worse than Thursday, and nothing about the day's announcements suggested Saturday would be better.

Seven days in. No exit visible from any direction.

Sources: Al Jazeera (March 6, 2026 liveblog and reporting); Reuters; Associated Press; CSIS analysis of Operation Epic Fury cost ("$3.7bn Estimated Cost of Epic Fury's First 100 Hours," March 5, 2026); UNICEF statement on child casualties, March 6, 2026; Iranian Red Crescent official death toll; US CENTCOM statement via war.gov; Qatari Ministry of Defence statement; Bahrain Defence Force official statement; Ali Alfoneh, Arab Gulf States Institute; Trita Parsi, Quincy Institute.

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