Israel envoy says Iran war must continue until regime weakens, people rise

Iran’s deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi said threats to target the country’s power plants and vital infrastructure violate international law and would be met with a proportional response.

“Any attack on Iran’s vital infrastructure will be met with a proportional countermeasure,” Gharibabadi said in a post on X Sunday.

“An open threat to target power plants and vital infrastructure … is directed at civilian objects,” he added.

He said such actions would amount to war crimes and warned that responsibility for any further escalation would lie with those initiating it.

Explosions were heard across central, southern and western parts of Iran on Sunday morning, while low-flying fighter jets were reported in multiple areas, eyewitnesses told Iran International.

Witnesses said blasts were heard in cities including Arak and Isfahan in central Iran, Ahvaz in the southwest, and Bandar Abbas and Bushehr along the southern coast, as well as Parsian, Karaj, Konarak, Mohammadshahr and Yazd.

Residents in Ilam, Qeshm, Malekshahi and Hamadan said fighter jets were flying at low altitude.

Iran’s exiled prince Reza Pahlavi called on US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue targeting Iran’s leadership while avoiding civilian infrastructure, after Trump threatened to target Iran’s energy facilities.

“Iran’s civilian infrastructure belongs to the Iranian people and to the future of a free Iran. The Islamic Republic’s infrastructure is the machinery of repression and terror used to keep that future from becoming reality,” Pahlavi said in a post on X Sunday.

“I ask President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu to continue targeting the regime and its apparatus of repression, while sparing the civilian infrastructure Iranians will need to rebuild our country,” he added.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday the government has sufficient funds to finance the war against Iran but is seeking additional congressional funding to ensure future military readiness.

“We have plenty of money to fund this war. This is supplemental. President Trump has built up the military, as he did in his first term, as he is now doing in his second term, and he wants to make sure that the military is well supplied going forward,” Bessent said in an interview with NBC News.

Bessent ruled out any tax increases to fund the war.

Israel’s military said on Sunday it completed a wave of overnight strikes targeting weapons production sites and security headquarters in Tehran.

“The targets included … a military base used for training forces and maintaining missile systems … a weapons production and storage site belonging to the Ministry of Defense … and a weapons production site affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace force,” the Israeli military said in a statement on Sunday.

It added that it also struck a headquarters of Iran’s intelligence ministry and an emergency command center of the country’s law enforcement forces.