The U.S. Embassy in Saudi capital Riyadh was hit by a Iraninan drone early Tuesday as U.S. and Israel ramped up attack on Iran.
The escalation comes after what U.S. President Donald Trump suggested was just the start of a relentless campaign that could last more than a month.
The attack from two drones on the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh caused a "limited fire” and minor damage, according to Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
It followed an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, which announced Tuesday it had been closed until further notice.
The U.S. State Department also ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Bahrain, Iraq and Jordan as a precaution.
Across Iran’s capital, explosions rang out throughout the night into the early morning, with witnesses describing hearing aircraft overhead.
It was not immediately clear what had been hit. And in Lebanon, Israel launched more strikes on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group, with explosions heard and smoke seen in a southern suburb of Beirut.
The expansion of Iranian retaliation across the Gulf and the intensity of the Israeli and American attacks, the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the lack of any apparent exit plan portend a possibly prolonged conflict with far-reaching consequences.
Many countries deemed safe havens in the Mideast have been hit by Iran in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli strikes, with recent targets including two Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a drone impact near another in Bahrain that caused damage, the company said Tuesday.
Iran has also hit energy facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and attacked several ships Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes, sending global oil and natural gas prices soaring.
"The Strait of Hormuz is closed," declared Iranian Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, threatening to set fire to any ships attempting to transit. "Don’t come to this region.”
The U.S. State Department urged U.S. citizens to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries due to safety risks, as have many other countries, though with much of the airspace closed many remain stranded.
Trump said operations are likely to last four to five weeks but that he was prepared "to go far longer than that.”
He later added on social media that the U.S. had a "virtually unlimited supply” of munitions and pre-positioned "high grade weaponry.”
"Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies,” he wrote.
