Russian drone strikes undermining ‘all diplomatic efforts,’ Zelenskyy says

(LONDON) — The death toll from major anti-government protests in Iran reached at least 2,000 as of Tuesday, according to data published by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), over 16 days of unrest.

U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday, “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price.”

“I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” Trump added.

At least 10,721 people have been arrested, HRANA said in an earlier update on Tuesday, in protests that have been recorded in 606 locations in 187 cities across all 31 Iranian provinces. Among the dead are at least nine children, the group reported.

The HRANA data relies on the work of activists inside and outside the country. ABC News cannot independently verify these numbers. The group earlier on Tuesday said 646 people had been killed. The Iranian government has not provided any death tolls during the ongoing protests.

Iranian state-aligned media, meanwhile, has reported that more than 100 members of the security forces have been killed in the unrest. HRANA said that 133 military and security personnel were among those killed in the protest wave to date, along with one prosecutor.

Trump on Monday announced a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran, after repeatedly warning Tehran against the use of force to suppress the ongoing protests.

“Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America,” Trump said in a social media post on Monday. “This Order is final and conclusive.”

In response to the announcement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the position of Beijing — which is a key trading partner for Tehran — “is very clear — there are no winners in a tariff war. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

China “supports Iran in maintaining national stability,” she added. “We have always opposed interference in other countries’ internal affairs and the use or threat of force in international relations.”

Members of Trump’s national security team — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe — met Tuesday morning to discuss Iran, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump did not attend the meeting, nor was he scheduled to, she said.

One U.S. official told ABC News that among the options under consideration regarding Iran are new sanctions against key regime figures or against Iran’s energy or banking sectors.

Leavitt suggested to reporters on Monday that military options remain open to Trump.

The president, she said, “is always keeping all of his options on the table and air strikes would be one of the many, many options on the table for the commander in chief. Diplomacy is always the first option for the president.”

Citing “escalating” protests and increased security measures, the State Department also urged Americans to leave Iran.

U.S. citizens should expect continued internet outages, plan alternative means of communication, and, if safe to do so, consider departing Iran by land to Armenia or Türkiye,” a new security alert posted on the U.S. “virtual” Embassy Tehran website on Monday stated.

Protests have been spreading across the country since late December. The first marches took place in downtown Tehran, with participants demonstrating against rising inflation and the falling value of the national currency, the rial.

As the protests spread, some have taken on a more explicitly anti-government tone.

The theocratic government in Tehran — headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — moved to tame the protests, with security forces reportedly using tear gas and live ammunition to disperse gatherings.

A sustained national internet outage has been in place across the country for several days. Online monitoring group NetBlocks said on Tuesday that the “nationwide internet shutdown” had been ongoing for 108 hours.

The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement on Tuesday that hundreds of people had been killed and thousands arrested.

Turk said he was “horrified by the mounting violence against protesters” and urged Iranian authorities to immediately halt all forms of violence and repression, and restore full access to internet and telecommunications.

Khamenei and top Iranian officials have said they are willing to engage with the economic grievances of protesters, though have framed the unrest as driven by “rioters” and “terrorists” sponsored by foreign nations — prime among them the U.S. and Israel — and supported by foreign infiltrators.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the wave of protests as a “terrorist war” while speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran.

Also on Monday, state television broadcast footage of pro-government rallies organized in other major cities.

The footage showed crowds waving Iranian flags in Tehran’s Revolution Square. State television described the Tehran demonstration as an “Iranian uprising against American-Zionist terrorism.”

Dissident figures abroad, meanwhile, have urged Iranians to take to the street and overthrow the government.

Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi — who from his base in the U.S. has become a prominent critic of the Iranian government — on Monday appealed to Trump to act in support of the protesters.

“I have called the people to the streets to fight for their freedom and to overwhelm the security forces with sheer numbers,” Pahlavi wrote on X. “Last night they did that. Your threat to this criminal regime has also kept the regime’s thugs at bay. But time is of the essence.”

“Please be prepared to intervene to help the people of Iran,” Pahlavi added.

ABC News’ Somayeh Malekian, Morgan Winsor, Meredith Deliso, Anne Flaherty, Mariam Khan, Othon Leyva, Britt Clennett, Joseph Simonetti and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that Russia is yet to respond to a U.S.-backed energy truce, as the two combatants continue to exchange long-range drone and missile strikes amid American-led peace talks.

Recent trilateral U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks in the United Arab Emirates were described by all sides as constructive, though appear to have failed to find a breakthrough on several contentious points or secure a new truce covering critical energy infrastructure.

After the most recent round of talks last week, Zelenskyy said that U.S. officials proposed a temporary pause in attacks on energy targets, which would have mirrored the brief pause on such attacks that occurred at the end of January.

Zelenskyy said on Thursday that Kyiv is yet to receive a response from Moscow on the purported offer. “On the contrary, we’ve received a response in the form of drone and missile attacks. This suggests that they are not yet ready for the energy ceasefire proposed in Abu Dhabi by the American side,” he said.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 25 missiles and 219 drones into the country overnight, of which 16 missiles and 197 drones were shot down or suppressed.

The impacts of nine missiles and 19 drones were reported across 13 locations, the air force said. “The main targets are Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa,” the air force wrote on Telegram.

Four people, including two children, were also injured in strikes on the central city of Dnipro, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. An earlier strike on the Synelnykove city just outside of Dnipro killed four people and injured three others, the regional administration said in posts to Telegram.

The Interior Ministry said that at least 13 people were injured in a series of drone strikes in the city of Barvinkove in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

The regional military administration in Odesa said one person was also injured there by Russian strikes.

The Interior Ministry reported damage to several areas of the capital. At least two people were injured by the attacks on Kyiv, according to the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that almost 2,600 residential buildings were left without heating due to “damage to critical infrastructure targeted by the enemy.”

In total, approximately more than 1 million people without heating in the Ukrainian capital, according to Klitschko and Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba.

DTEK — Ukraine’s top private energy firm — reported major damage to its energy infrastructure in Odesa, plus an attack on a thermal power plant.

Ukrenergo, the state energy transmission operator, reported power outages in Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the attacks as “Russian terror” in a post to X. “Each such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and deescalate,” he said.

Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram, “There needs to be more protection against these attacks.”

“The most effective defense against Russian ballistic missiles is the ‘Patriot’ system, and the supply of missiles for these systems is needed every day,” he added, referring to the U.S.-made surface-to-air missile platform.

“Everything currently available in the air defense program should arrive faster,” he said.

Ukraine continued its own drone strike campaign overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 106 Ukrainian drones overnight into Thursday morning.

Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported that two people were killed in drone attacks. At least 15 other people were injured across the region by Ukrainian attacks, the governor said. Gladkov also said Ukrainian forces fired several missiles into the region.

Local officials in the Volgograd, Tambov and Voronezh reported damage to industrial sites and falling drone debris in or close to residential areas.

Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, reported temporary flight restrictions for airports in Kaluga, Volgograd, Saratov, Yaroslavl, Kotlas, Ukhta, Perm and Kirov.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement posted to social media that among the targets of the strikes were the main arsenal of Russia’s missile and artillery forces in the Volgograd region. “This arsenal is one of the largest ammunition storage sites of the Russian army,” the General Staff said.

The ongoing peace talks have seen no easing of long-range strikes by either side, as the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion approaches.

As yet, no next round of talks have been scheduled. Zelenskyy said the U.S. had proposed a new trilateral meeting to be held in Miami, but that, “So far, as I understand it, Russia is hesitating.”

“We are ready. It doesn’t matter to us whether the meeting will be in Miami or Abu Dhabi. The main thing is that there should be a result,” the Ukrainian president said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday that Moscow had “a certain understanding” regarding the next round of talks. “We expect the next round to take place soon. We’ll also give you directions on the location,” he added, as quoted by the state-run Tass news agency.

Russian Foreign Ministry officials have this week been critical of the ongoing peace push.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week suggested that the U.S. side had drifted from the understandings reached between Moscow and Washington at the August meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

Lavrov also said Trump’s administration had failed to roll back former President Joe Biden-era sanctions against Moscow.

Lavrov and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova framed the lack of progress as the fault of Kyiv and its European backers.

“At the current stage, it is the European Union that is preventing the Kyiv regime from making any compromises in exchange for promises to provide everything necessary to continue military operations,” Zakharova said in a briefing on Thursday, as quoted by Tass.

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(LONDON) — The escalating Israeli operation against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon may prove to be the most intractable theater of the wider U.S.-Israeli confrontation with Iran, analysts who spoke with ABC News warned.

But the showdown unfolding in Lebanon could pose an existential threat to both Hezbollah and the Lebanese state, experts said, with the latter having long struggled to rein in the powerful militia but now facing growing pressure — and threats — from Israel to do more despite the danger of civil instability.

The technocratic government that came to power in Beirut on a wave of optimism in February 2025 is now facing “the worst possible combination of factors,” Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank told ABC News during a recent webinar hosted by the U.K.-based Chatham House think tank.

Lebanon “is a secondary front at the moment that is likely to burn for longer both because the Israelis see the political-military opportunity, but also the Iranians see it as a place where they can bleed and distract the Israelis,” Hokayem added.

Cascading crises
Even before the latest round of violence erupted, observers were noting rising discontent with Hezbollah among the wider Lebanese population and their elected representatives. 

The recent scars of Hezbollah’s activities were all too visible. On the edges of Beirut’s stylish downtown area and the trendy Mar Mikhael neighborhood is the devastated port area, wrecked by a massive explosion in 2020, with efforts to apportion responsibility for the disaster allegedly repeatedly stymied by Hezbollah. While some blame Hezbollah, others blame the entire political ruling class and the systemic corruption in the country.

Villages across the Hezbollah-dominated south and east of the country lay in ruins from Israeli missiles, bombs and artillery shells fired in clashes since Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Hamas after the latter’s deadly surprise Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. In a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in 2024, the Israeli army partially withdrew, holding on to five positions in southern Lebanon.

Parts of Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh area — a longtime Hezbollah stronghold — were cratered, with giant posters of its slain totemic leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in a massive 2024 Israeli airstrike on the city, seen by ABC News late last year rising above the arterial road which runs through the area from the airport to the rest of the city.

The conflict significantly degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities, apparently setting the stage for Lebanon to appoint a new government with fewer ties to the group — led by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun — after more than two years of a caretaker cabinet amid a political deadlock.

Neither were formally endorsed by Hezbollah. Aoun, the country’s former army chief, and his new government said they were committed to disarming Hezbollah, appealing to foreign partners to help.

Many observers suggested Hezbollah appeared to be in a historically weak position from late 2024 into early 2026. Its patrons in Tehran were themselves weakened by confrontations with Israel and, later, the U.S. Discontent inside Iran exploded into multiple rounds of anti-government protests, with Tehran’s funding and direction of foreign proxy forces a common grievance among demonstrators.

The fall of Tehran-aligned and Hezbollah-bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad across the border in December 2024 robbed Hezbollah of strategic depth, vital arms smuggling routes and financial opportunities. Nasrallah — an icon of the Iran-directed “Axis of Resistance” — was dead, as were many of the group’s most senior military and strategic minds, according to long-time observers of the group.

Meanwhile, strikes that Israel described as targeted against Hezbollah personnel and infrastructure in Lebanon continued, killing hundreds of people despite the November 2024 ceasefire deal. Hezbollah did not respond, apparently pursuing a policy of strategic patience that some observers interpreted as operational weakness.

Before the outbreak of its latest war with Israel in 2023, estimates of Hezbollah’s military strength ranged from 30,000 to more than 50,000 personnel. Its parliamentary party won 15 seats in the last Lebanese legislative elections in 2022, securing around 20% of all votes to the tune of nearly 360,000 ballots, according to data from Lebanon’s Interior Ministry.

Aoun’s government took some steps to curtail Hezbollah’s uniquely powerful position, in which it had been able to establish — with Iranian help — what analysts often described as “a state within a state.” 

The Lebanese Armed Forces claimed in January to have completed the first phase of the plan to disarm all non-state groups in the area south of the Litani River — around 18 miles north of Israel’s border — as part of the 2024 ceasefire deal.

Those efforts continued after the U.S. and Israel launched their latest military campaign against Iran in late February. In early March, the Lebanese government declared all military activities by Hezbollah illegal. The army also set up checkpoints to search vehicles headed south for weapons.

But the idea of the state’s open confrontation with the Iranian-backed militia group prompts fears of a slide back into the bloody anarchy of the 1975-1990 civil war that killed more than 100,000 people and devastated the young nation.

Sectarian tensions are again rising in Lebanon. Last month, Salam criticized the country’s sectarian political system — designed to ensure power sharing between the country’s ethnic and religious groups — as “a source of harm both for the state and for the citizens.”

The state’s forces, while popular, are broadly considered to be weak relative to other regional militaries and non-state actors. Meanwhile, despite its recent setbacks, Hokayem said Hezbollah remains “a very powerful coercive force domestically in Lebanon, where they can punish, intimidate and possibly assassinate their enemies.”

Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, said in August that the group would not surrender its weapons to the state, warning there would be “no life in Lebanon” if its arms were taken by force.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see, in addition to communal violence, more targeted hits — including assassinations — inside the country,” Hokayem said of intensifying Hezbollah activity. “If the military, the security forces are not able to prevent that or contain this, then you can easily see a loss of trust in central institutions, which is already very low.”

“Given the trajectory of events, more likely than not the state will weaken despite what some people in Washington say or would like to believe,” he added.

A ‘prolonged’ conflict
Israeli forces are now moving deeper into southern Lebanon, with the Israel Defense Forces having issued a series of “urgent” warnings for the full evacuation of the country south of the Zahrani River, which sits around 36 miles north of the border. That order came on top of an evacuation order for all residents south of the Litani River — 18 miles north of the border — and for all residents in the southern Beirut suburbs.

Human Rights Watch said that more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes — nearly one-fifth of the entire population of the country. More than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon in the latest round of fighting, the country’s health ministry said.

Israel’s aggressive policy in Lebanon came after Hezbollah fired on northern Israel on March 2, joining Tehran in its response to the U.S.-Israeli campaign launched against Iran on Feb. 28.

Hezbollah defied assessments it had been substantially weakened by its two-year involvement in the war in Gaza, firing rockets and drones daily toward northern Israel. 

The IDF said this week that Hezbollah had fired over 2,000 projectiles toward Israel so far. That fire has killed four people — two civilians and two soldiers.

IDF Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said on March 22 that the Israeli operation “has only just begun,” describing the nascent campaign as “a prolonged operation.” As of March 24, the IDF had destroyed multiple bridges spanning the Litani River.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he instructed the IDF to “accelerate the destruction of Lebanese homes in the line of contact villages, to thwart threats to Israeli communities, in accordance with the model of Beit Hanoun and Rafah,” referring to Israel’s destruction of Gaza towns during the war on Hamas.

Katz said troops would seize and hold southern Lebanon up to the Litani River to create what he called a “defensive buffer.”

More extreme voices have demanded a permanent occupation. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, for example, said the Litani should form “the new Israeli border,” in an echo of longheld ambitions of Israeli ultranationalists.

Lebanon’s president described the destruction of the bridges over the Litani and continued Israeli strikes elsewhere as a “dangerous escalation and flagrant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.” The measures, Aoun said, “are considered a prelude to a ground invasion.”

But there appears little hope of relief from Beirut’s two prime foreign partners — the U.S. and France — Hokayem said. “The Americans essentially have washed their hands of Lebanon,” he said, citing frustration with the government’s inability or unwillingness to rein in Hezbollah.

“In Washington there are people who have this illusion that you can break the back of Hezbollah, if only there was a bit more spine in some in Beirut,” Hokayem said. “It’s very difficult to see that.”

Barbara Leaf, who served as the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs under President Joe Biden, said during the Chatham House event that the U.S. had taken a “hectoring” approach with the new Lebanese government. The message, Leaf said, is, “Take care of Hezbollah, and if not, the Israelis will.”

The U.S. Department of State has urged all Americans in Lebanon — of whom there were around 86,000 in 2022, according to the State Department — to leave the country as soon as possible.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump said of the situation in Lebanon, “We’re working on it very hard. We love Lebanon. We love the people of Lebanon, and we’re working very hard.” Hezbollah, he said, “has been a disaster for many years.”

Days later, Trump again said Hezbollah has been “a big problem” that was “rapidly being eliminated” by Israeli military action.

With clear U.S. backing, Israeli leaders appear set on a decisive operation in Lebanon, which forms one theater of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s drive to create what he calls a “new Middle East” shorn of Iranian influence.

Those ambitions will require a long-term presence on Lebanese territory, Yezid Sayigh, of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center think tank in Beirut, wrote in early March. “A complementing Lebanese effort is necessary, hence the effort to force the Lebanese government’s hand one way or the other,” he added.

But the ongoing operation may undermine the very partners Israel needs in Beirut, Hokayem said. “A Lebanon in which so much territory is occupied will struggle to enter any kind of genuine peace negotiations with Israel,” he said.

“I don’t think they could be a central authority with enough strength and legitimacy,” he added.

Faced with yet another national crisis, many in Lebanon are pessimistic. The country must consider “the worst-case scenarios,” political scientist Ziad Majed wrote earlier this month.

This means, Majed said, huge destruction in Hezbollah’s heartlands in the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut combined with a military occupation blocking hundreds of thousands of displaced people from returning to their homes.

Such a scenario, Majed warned, could “lead to suffocating living crises and social and political tensions that many might exploit for political opportunism, incitement and other forms of sectarian conflict.”

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