6 more U.S. deaths, vague threat from Trump as Iran war nears 2-week mark

Iran listed a number of major U.S. tech companies as potential targets this week, as it expands its attacks across the Middle East in retaliation for the ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes on its military and security forces and leadership.

Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency, which is linked to the country's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, published a list of major U.S. tech companies in a social media post on Tuesday, which included Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir, and Oracle, with the caption: "Enemy's technological infrastructure: Iran's new goals in the region."

Iranian drone strikes have already damaged data centers in the region, hitting Amazon facilities in two countries last week.

The list published by Tasnim was accompanied by a threat that, "with the expansion of regional war dimensions into infrastructure, cyberwarfare, and scope, Iran's legitimate targets are gradually expanding."

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All six crew members who were aboard a U.S. military refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq on Thursday are confirmed dead, U.S. Central Command said Friday.

CENTCOM confirmed earlier that four crew members died in the crash. The two additional confirmed deaths bring the confirmed U.S. military death toll in the Iran war to 13.

"The circumstances of the incident are under investigation," CENTCOM said in a statement. "However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire."

The military said the identities of the service members are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin are notified.

The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defense said Friday that the Gulf state was "currently responding to incoming missile and drone threats from Iran."

"The UAE's air defenses are currently dealing with missile attacks and incoming drones originating from Iran, and the Ministry of Defense confirms that the sounds heard in scattered areas of the country are the result of air defense systems intercepting ballistic missiles, as well as fighter jets intercepting drones and loitering munitions," the ministry said in a social media post.

According to regularly updated data from the independent National Institute for Security Studies, in Israel, the UAE has been targeted by Iran more than any other Gulf state, with at least 282 missiles and more than 1,500 drones detected flying at the country. Most have been intercepted or fallen in the sea or on empty ground, but as least six people have been killed in the UAE and over 130 wounded since the war began, according to the INSS.

Smoke rises above Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, March 13, 2026, as explosions rattled buildings and a large cloud of smoke hung over a central area of the Gulf financial hub, and the government said incoming Iranian missiles and drones were being intercepted. AFP/Getty

Ukraine and America's G7 partners have balked at the Trump administration's decision to temporarily ease sanctions on Russian oil sales, saying the impact on global energy prices from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran can not justify any letup in the pressure on Moscow as the war in Ukraine continues.

"This single easing by the U.S. could provide Russia with around $10 billion for the war," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday during a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. "It certainly does not help (to achieve) peace."

Germany's Chancellor Fredrich Merz said Friday that, during a conference call on Wednesday among the leaders of the G7, the world's biggest democratic economies, he and all other leaders, apart from President Trump, "were very clear" that lifting sanctions on Russia was "not the right signal to send."

"Six members of the G7 expressed a very clear view that this is not the right signal to send," Merz said during a news conference with his Norwegian counterpart in Norway on Friday. "We learned this morning that the U.S. government has apparently decided otherwise. Once again, we believe this is the wrong decision." 

Merz said there was "a price problem, but not a supply problem" facing global energy markets, adding that he hoped to learn more about what led to the Trump administration's decision.

"We will not allow" our Ukraine support "to be distracted or dissuaded by the war in Iran," he said.

France's Macron also said the G7's collective position remained that the war with Iran could not justify lifting sanctions on Russian oil.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (left) and France's President Emmanuel Macron arrive for a press conference at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, March 13, 2026. Ludovic MARIN/POOL/AFP/Getty

"It is entirely true that the United States has granted limited exemptions," Macron said at the joint news conference with Zelenskyy. "As for the G7, the common position has indeed been to maintain sanctions against Russia, and for the Europeans and France, it is also to maintain them. The current situation in no way justifies lifting these sanctions."

Friday will "yet again" see "the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran … ramping up and only up," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday in a Pentagon briefing. 

He said President Trump "holds the cards" in the Iran war, and only Mr. Trump "will determine the pace, the tempo and the timing of this conflict."

While President Trump has said he will end the war "very soon," he has not offered specifics about any timeline for an end to the conflict.

The Strait of Hormuz is a "tactically complex environment," Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Friday, acknowledging the difficulty in acting on plans to escort commercial shipping traffic safely through the strategic waterway.

"It's a tactically complex environment. Before, I think, we want to take anything through there at scale, we want to make sure that we do the work pursuant to our current military objectives," Caine said.

Asked if the Trump administration had adequately planned for Iran blocking the strait, through which a fifth of global crude oil supplies typically flow, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said yes, but did not provide details.

"We're actually closing in on, grabbing hold of and controlling what objectives we want to achieve, and how we want to achieve them," he said.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Thursday that the U.S. military was "not ready" to escort tankers through the strait, with forces focused on striking Iran, but he added that it was "quite likely" such escorts would be taking place by the end of the month.

CBS/AFP

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked at a Pentagon briefing Friday if Iran was "placing new mines" in the Strait of Hormuz. 

"We have no clear evidence of that," he said. 

U.S. officials told CBS News earlier this week that Iran may be getting ready to deploy naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz in an effort to keep the shipping lane, which is critical for the global oil trade, gridlocked.

The military's Central Command said Thursday that at least 30 Iranian mine-laying vessels had been destroyed since the war began.  

Pressed for information about U.S. casualties, Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Friday that a "large, large majority" of the service members injured in the war had received medical treatment and returned to duty.

He said U.S. forces had been wounded in places including Kuwait, where six were killed in an Iranian strike that hit a tactical operations center, as well as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, adding that most were hurt in one-way strikes rather than an exchange of fire.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said during the same briefing that the Pentagon was trying to "clarify those numbers … be more clear about that," but that the "overwhelmingly majority" had suffered only minor injuries and returned to duty.

"That number can look a certain way, and our job is to add some fidelity to it," Hegseth said.

The Iranian drone attack that killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait in the early hours of the war was more severe than previously revealed, CBS News learned earlier this week from multiple sources, leaving dozens of Americans with injuries including brain trauma, shrapnel wounds and burns. 

The sources described a chaotic scene in the aftermath of the strike and said more than 30 U.S. service members remained in hospitals as of Tuesday night.

The U.S. military plane that crashed Thursday, killing at least four crew members, was in friendly territory over western Iraq during a combat mission when the incident happened, Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine said at the Pentagon Friday.

The military is still "treating this as an active rescue and recovery operation," he said.

CENTCOM said earlier that recovery efforts were still underway, without giving any information on the condition of two other crew members who were aboard the aircraft, which went down at about 2 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military's Central Command had designated an officer from outside the command to investigate a strike that hit an Iranian girls elementary school in the early hours of the war, and he said the probe would take "as long as necessary."

Hegseth said Iran was the only nation involved in the war that deliberately targets civilians.

"We have a very high-fidelity process in that case. We don't target. Iran does," Hegseth said. "We will investigate. We'll get to the truth and we'll share it when we have it."

Sources have told CBS News the U.S. may have been responsible for the bombing of the girls school, which killed 168 people on Feb. 28.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mentioned the fatal crash of the KC-135 refueling aircraft in Iraq during his Pentagon briefing Friday, saying, "bad things can happen."

"War is hell," he said. "War is chaos."

He called the plane's crew American heroes and said "their sacrifice will only recommit us to the resolve of this mission."

"But war in this context and in pursuit of peace is necessary," he said.

U.S. Central Command confirmed Friday that four crew members from the KC-135 were killed in the crash in western Iraq. CENTCOM said recovery efforts were still underway, but it did not provide any information about the condition of two other crew members who were on the plane.

Asked by a reporter about the Strait of Hormuz and when it might be fully open again to commercial shipping traffic, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said it was Iran's attacks restricting transit through the vital shipping lane.

"It is open for transit should Iran not do that," Hegseth said.

Hegseth noted that Iran had previously used the strait as leverage, and he said the Trump administration had plans for potential actions by Tehran.

"That's not a strait that we're going to allow to remain contested, or with a lack of flow of commercial goods, so we're aware of that," he said.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, in the same briefing at the Pentagon, said the U.S. still had a "range of options to solve a whole variety of problems" related to the strait.

A group of Iranian-backed militias that collectively refer to themselves as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed Friday that they had caused the deadly crash of an American KC-135 refueling tanker plane in western Iraq, and hit a second aircraft of the same kind. 

The U.S. military's Central Command confirmed Friday that four crew members were killed the previous day when a KC-135 Stratotanker crashed in western Iraq, but the statement from the command said while the circumstances of the incident remained under investigation, "the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire."

CENTCOM said rescue efforts were still underway for two other crew members.

U.S. officials told CBS News separately that they believed the incident may have involved a mid-air collision, though they also stressed that an investigation was still underway.

Officials told CBS News Thursday that a second U.S. KC-135 Stratotanker was damaged but landed later safely. CENTCOM did not mention a second aircraft in its statement on Friday.

According to flight tracking service FlightRadar24, a KC-135 tanker declared an emergency before landing in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Thursday evening.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, in a second claim issued online Friday, said it had "targeted, with appropriate weapons, a second KC-135 aircraft belonging to the American occupation in western Iraq during the past twenty-four hours. Its crew managed to escape after it was hit, and it made an emergency landing at one of the enemy's airports."

Iran doesn't have the ability to build more missiles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.

"As of two days ago, Iran's entire ballistic missile production capacity, every company that builds every component of those missiles, has been functionally defeated," with buildings destroyed by ongoing U.S.-Israeli airstrikes, he said.

Iran's new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei "is wounded and likely disfigured," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a Pentagon briefing on Friday, without specifying what intelligence had led to his assessment.

Hegseth belittled the first statement attributed to Khamenei, which was read Thursday by a presenter on Iranian state TV, calling it "weak" and noting there was no voice or video to prove the new leader's condition. 

"Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement?" Hegseth said. "I think you know why: his father, dead. He's scared. He's injured. He's on the run, and he lacks legitimacy. It's a mess for them. Who's in charge? Iran may not even know."

An Iranian official said Wednesday that the new supreme leader was injured in the attack, but was "alive and well." He has not been seen publicly since the war began.

In the statement, Khamenei said Iran should continue using the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as leverage and vowed that attacks against U.S. targets will continue.

The U.S. and Israel have struck more than 15,000 "enemy targets" during the war with Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday.

"That's well over 1,000 a day," he said. "No other combination of countries in the world can do that."

He said the U.S. was flying over Iran on Friday with "fighters and bombers, all day, picking targets as they choose."

He said the volume of Iran's missile launches was down 90% on Thursday, and the frequency of its "one-way attack drones" was down 95%.

The United Kingdom will not loosen sanctions on Russian oil, despite a move announced Thursday by the Trump administration to do so as the ongoing Iran war drives energy prices up.

"The U.K. government will not be loosening sanctions on Russia at all. This is an absolutely critical moment in the Russian aggression against Ukraine and sanctions are important. And what we absolutely can't have is Putin sitting in the Kremlin thinking this is an opportunity to invest more in the war machine," Michael Shanks, U.K. Minister for Energy, told CBS News' partner network BBC News on Friday. "Sanctions are important and they'll stay in place from the U.K."

When asked about the U.S. decision to ease oil sanctions on Russia to try to mitigate the economic impact of the war, Shanks said he was "not going to be drawn into what other countries do. That's decisions that they will choose to make. But we've been really clear throughout that the U.K. government stands with Ukraine. We've been working to build a coalition of the willing to make sure we are supporting Ukraine's war effort. These sanctions against Russia are a really important part of that and the U.K. won't be changing its position."

French President Emmanuel Macron said one French soldier had been killed in the line of duty during an attack in Erbil, northern Iraq. He identified the soldier as Chief Warrant Officer Arnaud Frion, and added that others had been wounded.

"Several of our soldiers have been wounded. France stands by their side and with their loved ones," Macron said in a statement Friday on social media. "This attack against our forces engaged in the fight against [ISIS] since 2015 is unacceptable. Their presence in Iraq is part of the strict framework of the fight against terrorism. The war in Iran cannot justify such attacks."

Iran's president and foreign minister were among the senior officials who joined thousands of people marching through downtown Tehran on Friday, showing defiance as U.S.-Israeli airstrikes continued, sending up plumes of smoke not far from a crowd according to videos posted online.

Iran marks "Quds [Jerusalem] Day" on the final Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in solidarity with Palestinians, and that was the occasion for the large rally in Tehran, but the top officials showing up was a clear signal to the U.S. and Israel that their ongoing strikes had not dislodged the nearly 50-year-old theocracy that rules Iran.

New Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was not seen during the rally, and there have been rumors this week that he may have been seriously wounded — possibly even left in a coma — in the same strike that killed his father and predecessor on Feb. 28. But Iran watchers say, from past experience, it would be unusual for the supreme leader to appear in such an open forum as a public street rally.

"Today is Quds Day in Iran, and despite the brutal attacks carried out today by the Zionist regime and the United States, we are witnessing a massive turnout — millions of people — not just in Tehran, but across all cities," Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a video posted online, which showed him walking amidst flag-waving Iranians. "This demonstrates the firm resolve of the Iranian people in support of the Islamic Republic, the cause of Jerusalem, Palestine, and all the principles we have upheld over the years that have brought us to this point. God willing, we will continue with the same strength and power, and we will compel our enemies to acknowledge the strength of the Iranian people."

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi speaks with a journalist from the Turkish news agency Anadolu during a "Quds Day" march in Tehran, Iran, March 13, 2026. 

President Masoud Pezeshkian was also seen in videos walking through Tehran with other rally attendees, while another clip showed the head of Iran's powerful Judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, leading a prayer.

Speaking with a reporter surrounded by other people during the march, Mohseni-Ejei was interrupted briefly by the sound of another U.S. or Israeli strike hitting nearby. 

As he was saying Iran's leaders "want to stand with the people, beside the people, until the last breath and the last moment," a loud boom is head and he and the others around him look toward the apparent explosion, before he continues: "The people are not intimidated by these enemy attacks. They take precautions, but under this rain and under these missile bombardments, they will in no way retreat from resistance."

Four of six crew members were killed in the crash Thursday of a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft in western Iraq, U.S. Central Command said Friday, adding that rescue efforts were ongoing for the other two.

"The circumstances of the incident are under investigation," CENTCOM said. "However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.

"The identities of the service members are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified."

A second Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker was damaged but landed safely in Tel Aviv, officials told CBS News. Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 said a KC-135 tanker declared an emergency before landing in Tel Aviv Thursday evening.

U.S. officials have told CBS News they believe the incident may have involved a mid-air collision, but they were still investigating.

Saudi Arabia said it had downed nearly 50 drones sent in multiple waves throughout the early morning hours on Friday, including one that had targeted the diplomatic quarter in the capital Riyadh, which houses foreign embassies, the defense ministry said Friday.

The "hostile drone" was downed "during an attempt to approach the Diplomatic Quarter,", the ministry posted on X.

In Oman, two people were killed when drones crashed into an industrial area in the region of Sohar, the Oman News Agency reported.

Sirens also sounded in Bahrain warning of incoming fire, and in Dubai black smoke billowed from an industrial area after a blaze authorities said was sparked by debris from an interception.

CBS/AP

President Trump issued a vague new threat to Iran's leaders early Friday, as he also took a swipe at The New York Times.

Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the U.S. was "totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning. Iran's Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth. We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time - Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today. They've been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!"

Turkey's Ministry of Defense said in a statement Friday morning that NATO air and missile defense systems deployed in the eastern Mediterranean had neutralized a ballistic missile fired from Iran that had entered Turkish air space.

"All necessary measures are being taken resolutely and without hesitation against any threat directed at our country's territory and airspace, and discussions are being held with the relevant country to clarify all aspects of the incident," Turkey's ministry of defense said.

At least two previous Iranian missile launches targeting Turkey were also intercepted by NATO defenses since the war in Iran began.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of the country's military, warned Friday that any new protests against authorities would be met with a stronger response than in January, when several thousand people were killed.

"The evil enemy, failing to achieve its field battle goals, is once again pursuing the instillation of fear and street riots," the Guards said in a statement broadcast on TV, promising "a stronger blow than on January 8" in the event of new unrest.

The warning comes two weeks into Iran's war with the United States and Israel in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says one of the aims is to "create, for the Iranian people, the conditions to bring down" the Iranian government.

President Trump has also called for Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government.

In December, protests against the high cost of living in Iran turned into a broad protest movement against authorities.

They peaked on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9 with what Iranian authorities called "riots" blamed on "terrorists" working on behalf of Israel and the United States.

The official death toll from Iranian authorities stands at more than 3,000, with the government saying the vast majority were members of security forces or passers-by.

Mr. Trump said last month that 32,000 people were killed, a far higher death toll than had previously been reported.

Two sources, including one inside Iran, told CBS News at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people were killed throughout Iran in the protests.  

CBS/AFP