Iranian attacks in the Gulf continued Monday morning, with residents in Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates reporting hearing loud explosions, according to The New York Times.

Air-raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, warning of impending attack, the country’s interior ministry said.

Iran has said it is only targeting US bases in the Gulf, but its drones have also hit targets like hotels and international airports, killing and wounding civilian

A speech Marco Rubio gave on the floor of the Senate warning about the dangers of Iran becoming a nuclear power has re-emerged.

Rubio, now the US secretary of state, spoke out against former President Barack Obama’s Iran deal, saying at the time that it would only expand the country’s arsenal.

‘They’ll also work with other terrorist groups in the region to target American servicemen and women, and they may or may not deny that they’re involved, but they will target us and raise the price of our presence in the Middle East until they hope to officially pull us out of the region,’ he prophesized.

‘They’ll also continue to build long-range missiles – missiles capable of reaching the United States,’ Rubio continued, likening the ayatollah getting nuclear weapons to Kim Jung Un having nuclear weapons in North Korea.

‘And this is the goal Iran has as well, to reach a point where they become immune to any sort of credible military threat, because the price of a military strike would be too high and then they become an established nuclear weapons power.

‘And never in the history of the world has such a regime possessed weapons so capable of destruction.’

Rubio then went on to talk about Ayatollah Khamenei, who he called a ‘radical Shia cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future.’

‘He has a religious apocalyptic vision of the future – one that calls for triggering a conflict between the Muslim world and the non Muslim world. One that he feels especially obligated to trigger – and he’s gonna possess nuclear weapons.’

‘And so I want to be recorded for history’s purpose if nothing else to say those of us who oppose this deal understood where it would lead, and we are making a terrible mistake,’ the then-senator concluded.

‘And I fear that passage of this deal will make it even harder for us to prevent it. And I hope that there’s still time to change our minds.

‘But here’s the good news – Iran may have a supreme leader, but America does not.

‘In this nation, we have a republic and soon we will have new leaders… and I pray that on their first day in office they will reverse this deal and reimpose sanctions and back them up with a credible threat of military force or history will condemn us for not doing what needed to be done at this critical moment in the world’s history.’

President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal in his first term in office.

The president of Lebanon decried Israeli attacks on the country, saying it does not want to enter the war.

President Joseph Aoun did not mention Hezbollah in his remarks, which had claimed responsibility for strikes on an Israeli missile defense in his statement.

Israeli officials have said they responded to that attack by striking Hezbollah locations in southern Lebanon.’

‘While we condemn the Israeli aggressions on Lebanese territory, we warn that persisting in using Lebanon once again as a platform for support wars in which we have no involvement will expose our homeland once more to risks for which those parties … bear responsibility,’ Aoun said in a statement.

‘This is something the state will not allow to be repeated, and the Lebanese people—who are still working to this day to heal the wounds caused by previous confrontations—will not accept it.’

The US and Israel postponed their planned strike on Iran by one week due to bad weather as both countries coordinated an attack plan, a report said Sunday.

The opening strike, which ultimately killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had originally been scheduled for the previous Saturday, senior American and Israeli officials told Axios.

Military planners were prepared to move after a second round of US-Iran nuclear talks ended on February 17 without major progress, but the final authorization was withheld.

The US Central Command said that the USS Gerald R. Ford is ‘in the fight’ against Iran, launching aircraft from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

CENTCOM posted images of aircrafts preparing to take off from the aircraft carrier on Sunday.

‘USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is in the fight with U.S. forces supporting Operation Epic Fury – launching aircraft from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea,’ CENTCOM wrote on X.

The Israeli military has announced it has just begun launching an additional wave of strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite the president and prime minister’s pleas to not get involved in the conflict.

‘The strikes continue – their intensity will increase,’ the Israel Defense Forces said.

Iran’s top national security official Ali Larijani said the country will not negotiate with the US.

His post on X referenced a Wall Street Journal report, citing US and Arab officials, said he had made a fresh attempt to resume nuclear talks with Washington.

Iranians received a text message from a verified Revolutionary Guards number warning them against protesting, according to The New York Times.

‘Any action that disrupts security will be viewed as cooperation with the enemy and will be met with the iron fist of the intelligence wing of the revolutionary guards,’ read the message.

A spokesperson for Cyprus’ government said that a drone that struck a British air base on the island nation’s southern coastline ’caused limited damage.’

It remains unclear where the drone originated from and what kind of drone it was.

But spokesman Constantinos Letymbiotis said Cypriot authorities have enacted security protocols and are monitoring the situation in coordination with the UK and its two military bases in Cyprus.