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United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz on Sunday said the U.S. is demanding that international allies help escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz amid the conflict in Iran.

“President Trump is calling upon the world, saying the entire world is affected,” Waltz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “Iran can’t hold your economies hostage, and we certainly welcome, encourage and even demand their participation to help their own economies.”

In recent days, the Trump administration has indicated it is looking to U.S. allies to help escort shipping traffic through the strait, one of the world’s key shipping lanes, which has been effectively closed since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes in Iran late last month.

The Hill reached out to the White House for comment on whether the administration has issued an explicit demand to other countries amid President Trump’s push for allies to assist in the region. Waltz noted that conversations on any possible escorts remain “ongoing.”

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On Sunday, March 1, a day after launching the war on Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entreated the Iranian people to overthrow their government, pledging that the U.S. and Israel would strike thousands of sites across Iran to weaken its hold on power. “Do not sit idle, because your moment will arrive soon. The moment when you must take to the streets, come to the streets in your millions to finish the job, to overthrow the regime of terror that has embittered your lives,” Netanyahu declared. “Now is the time to unite your forces to overthrow the regime and secure your future.”

That urging of Iranians to action was echoed by President Donald Trump, who told them: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”

The joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is the culmination of a decadeslong campaign spearheaded by Netanyahu and waged by powerful forces within Israel’s intelligence, military and political machine. Trump’s canceling of the 2015 nuclear deal and the intensification of economic sanctions morphed, in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, into an open campaign of periodic military attacks against Iran, with the U.S. finally declaring openly that it wanted the government in Tehran toppled.

For Israel, the widespread Iranian protests in January presented a grand opportunity. Though the peaceful demonstrations were spurred by worsening economic conditions and the collapse of the national currency—caused largely by U.S.-led sanctions—within days the dynamic shifted dramatically. Violent riots broke out, and Trump and Netanyahu issued public calls for an uprising to seize control of the country. The situation was viewed by Iranian officials as an armed insurrection backed by Israel and aimed at toppling the state. Amid peaceful protests, reports emerged of organized cells inside Iran who launched deadly attacks on Iranian police, mosques, and civilian infrastructure.

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US air defence systems and troops have been withdrawn from East Asia. Pleas for missile interceptors in the oil-rich Gulf have been "stonewalled". Even an air base in Romania has been roped into the US-Israeli war on Iran.

What US President Donald Trump has characterised as a “little excursion” is fast becoming the biggest drain on the security architecture of the world’s foremost superpower since the end of the Cold War.

The US is taking a lot from its partners across the globe to wage war on the Islamic Republic, even as lawmakers and world leaders question what the purpose of the conflict is.

To make matters worse, the Trump administration has yet to provide answers to tactical questions about how it will break Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz or tame energy prices that have skyrocketed as a result.

“The problem the US will need to recover from is the loss of credibility as it opened a Pandora’s box without thinking through what would happen next. Lack of competence is a terrible thing to display in public,” Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at Oxford University, told Middle East Eye.

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The United States is sending a 2,500-strong Marine expedionary force to the Middle East, a U.S. official said, as President Donald Trump declared he would end the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran "when I feel it in my bones."

The Marine deployment signals deepening American involvement in the 2-week-old Iran war and comes after U.S. Central Command confirmed the deaths of six U.S. troops when their refueling aircraft crashed over western Iraq.

The Thursday night crash raised the total number of United States war dead to 13. Officials initially believed that two members of the crew had survived.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth told reporters that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was "wounded and likely disfigured" in air strikes on the war's first day, and the average U.S. nationwide gas price hit $3.644 a gallon, with prices approaching $5 in some parts of the West.

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All six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed while supporting operations against Iran are dead, the U.S. military said Friday.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said the crash in western Iraq on Thursday followed an unspecified incident involving two aircraft in “friendly airspace” and that the other plane landed safely.

The crash brings the U.S. death toll in Operation Epic Fury to at least 13 service members, with the seven others killed in combat. About 140 U.S. service members have been injured, including eight severely, the Pentagon said earlier this week.

The KC-135 has been in service for more than 60 years and has been involved in several fatal accidents, most recently in 2013.

Here’s what is known so far about the tanker, which is the fourth U.S. military aircraft publicly acknowledged to have crashed since the war against Iran began on Feb. 28:

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Saghar recalls the airstrikes that targeted oil facilities in and around Tehran on Saturday with a terrifying clarity. It was exactly one week into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the constant roar of fighter jets overhead punctuated by loud explosions that rattled the windows had already become a familiar sound in the capital.

But at around 10:30 p.m. on March 7, three deafening blasts, distinctly larger than the strikes of previous days, shook her home. Saghar, 24, lives with her parents and sister in a residential complex in northeastern Tehran, perilously close to the Aghdasieh oil depot.

“The house shook, it truly shook. Far worse than an earthquake,” Saghar told Drop Site News. (Saghar is a pseudonym; she requested anonymity to speak with Drop Site News given the war.) “I remember the Tehran earthquake of May 2020—this was exponentially worse. The kitchen and living room windows shattered instantly, and the chandelier swung violently like a pendulum. My mother was at the sink washing dinner plates when the blast hit. The shockwave threw her so hard she landed head-first on the floor.”

A colossal orange flash ignited on the horizon. Israeli airstrikes had targeted major oil depots and infrastructure in the Tehran neighborhoods of Shahran, Aghdasieh, and Shahr-e-Ray, as well as in the nearby city of Karaj. The massive reservoirs of combustible fuel triggered apocalyptic-looking fires that raged throughout the night.

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