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“During active combat -- that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones -- the US Air Force fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences,” CENTCOM said.

US President Donald Trump yesterday told CNN that the “big wave” is yet to come in the war with Iran, adding that Washington did not know who the country’s new leader would be following the killing of Khamenei.

“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon,” Trump said, telling CNN it was unclear who was now leading the country.

He also claimed 49 Iranian leaders were killed in initial strikes.

Reuters reported on Sunday that many senior US officials remain skeptical the military operation against the Islamic Republic will lead to regime change in the near term.

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump said he would not rule out sending ground troops into Iran if necessary.

“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground -- like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump told the Post.

“I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary,’” he said.

The US president also sought to counter criticism that his war on Iran lacked a clear purpose, listing four explicit goals.

“First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities... Second, we’re annihilating their navy... Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number-one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon.

“Finally, we are ensuring the Iranian regime can’t continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders,” he said.

“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections,” Trump said at the White House on a possible timeframe of the operations, adding: “From the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it.”

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that no US troops were yet on the ground in Iran, but added: “We’ll go as far as we need to go.”

However, he played down concerns that the US attack on Iran risked plunging the US into a new, open-ended conflict in the Middle East, even as officials declined to offer a timeline and cautioned that they expected more US casualties.

The United States and Israel launched their most ambitious attacks on Iran in decades on Saturday, killing Khamenei, sinking Iranian warships and hitting more than 1,000 targets so far.

“To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘ENDLESS WARS’ - stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” said Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Army veteran who served in Iraq from 2005 to 2006 and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.

Ali Larijani, the powerful head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, voiced defiance, vowing that Iran would defend itself “regardless of the costs and will make the enemies sorry for their miscalculation”. He also ruled out any negotiations with the US.

“Iran, unlike the United States, has prepared itself for a long war,” said Larijani in a post on X.

A total of 555 people have been killed across Iran in the conflict so far, the Iranian Red Crescent said yesterday.

“Following the Zionist-American terrorist attacks carried out in various regions of our country, 131 cities have been affected to date and, regrettably, 555 of our compatriots have been killed,” the humanitarian group said in a post on Telegram.

Four US service personnel were reported to have died, and Trump urged Americans to grieve their loss. But the campaign could pose a major political risk for the Republican Party in this year’s midterm elections, with only one in four Americans supporting the operation, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll over the weekend.

The attack on Iran has pitched the Gulf into war, thrown global air transport into chaos and shut down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil trade skirts the Iranian coast, sending oil prices surging.

Qatar, one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas, halted production, with no prospect of being able to ship safely through the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia shut its biggest refinery after drone strikes caused a fire there, one of a number of energy installations that became targets.

Meanwhile, an Iranian drone hit the runway of a UK air force base in Akrotiri in Cyprus, whose government announced that the major airport in its town of Paphos and the area around the British facility would be evacuated.

A Cypriot government spokesman said two more drones targeting the base were “dealt with in a timely manner”, and Greece announced it was deploying frigates and jets to help protect Cyprus, a fellow EU member.

In Lebanon, the strikes have triggered a new round of violence between Israel and Hezbollah, with the Iran-backed group firing rockets and its enemy responding with bombing.

“We will end this campaign with not just Iran being struck but with Hezbollah suffering a devastating blow,” Israel’s army chief Eyal Zamir said.

As Lebanon, which had vowed to disarm Hezbollah, was dragged into the war, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam announced “the immediate ban of all Hezbollah security and military activities”, deeming them “illegal”.

Explosions rocked Beirut, while in southern Lebanon residents fled, according to AFP journalists, after the Israeli military announced it was striking several parts of the country.

The Israeli military said it had struck a senior Hezbollah operative in Beirut, while Lebanese authorities said Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people and wounded 154.

As the war escalated, calls for de-escalation also grew.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday urged a ceasefire in the Middle East during phone calls with the leaders of several Gulf states. Putin held calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as with the leaders of the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.

Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart on a call that Beijing supports Tehran defending itself against US-Israeli strikes.

China had “urged the US and Israel to immediately cease military operations, avoid further escalation of tensions and prevent the conflict from spreading to the entire Middle East region”, Wang said, according to CCTV.

In a separate phone call with Oman’s foreign minister, Wang accused the United States and Israel of “violating the purposes and principles of the UN charter” by “deliberately instigating a war against Iran”.

Turkey joined Russia and China in condemning the operation, which President Tayyip Erdogan called a “clear violation” of international law.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday said he had spoken with his Israeli counterpart and urged an “early” end to the conflict after strikes on Iran.

In the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that is key to global oil transit, three ships were attacked on Sunday after Iran had previously warned vessels against crossing.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged Iranians to overthrow the government in Tehran, the sworn foe of Israel and the United States since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the pro-Western shah.