The deal is worth about 151.8 million U.S. dollars, the department said in a statement.
Israel has requested to purchase 12,000 BLU-110A/B general purpose, 1,000-pound bomb bodies, it said.
“The Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) has determined and provided detailed justification that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel of the above defense articles and defense services is in the national security interests of the United States, thereby waiving the Congressional review requirements under Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act,” it said.
“The proposed sale will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats, strengthen its homeland defense, and serve as a deterrent to regional threats,” it added.
The package also includes U.S. government and contractor engineering, logistics, technical support services, and other related elements of logistics and program support, said the statement.
The United States and Israel launched massive attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, multiple senior military commanders and hundreds of civilians. Iran has responded with multiple waves of missile and drone attacks targeting Israel and U.S. assets across the region.
Over 180 children across the country have been killed and more than 20 schools have been damaged, Iravani told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York, quoting the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
The United States and Israel have deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure across Iran, demonstrating that they recognize “no red line in committing their crimes,” he said.
Iravani said that Iranian cities are being attacked indiscriminately, and densely populated residential areas and critical civilian infrastructure are deliberately targeted.
“These acts constitute clear war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
To date, 13 healthcare facilities in the country have been attacked, and several civilian sports and recreational facilities in Tehran and other cities were deliberately targeted on Thursday, with more than 18 female athletes killed, and around 100 others injured, he said.
“Their intention is clear, to terrorize civilians, massacre innocent people, and cause maximum destruction and suffering,” the ambassador said.
Their claims that they have targeted only military objectives are baseless, he said.
Noting that Iran will continue to exercise its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter until the aggression stops, Iravani said Iran’s response is “lawful, necessary, and proportionate,” and it targets only the military objectives of the aggressors.
Iravani stressed that “Iran does not seek war,” but Iran “will never surrender its sovereignty” and “will take all necessary measures to defend our people, our territory, and our independence.”
On U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks on the election of a new supreme leader in Iran, Iravani said those constitute “a clear violation of the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of states enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations,” vowing that Iran “does not accept and will never allow any foreign power to interfere in its internal affairs.”
The Iranian ambassador called on all UN member states to condemn “this aggression, war crimes,” and stop the aggression that poses a serious threat to regional and international peace and security.
“The Security Council must act now, firmly, clearly, and without delay,” he urged.
Citizens gather for a mass funeral ceremony for students and staff members killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on a school in Minab, Iran’s southern province of Hormozgan, March 3, 2026.
“Today, an Iranian drone carrier, roughly the size of a WWII aircraft carrier, was struck and is now on fire,” the command said in a post on the social platform X.
“U.S. forces aren’t holding back on the mission to sink the entire Iranian Navy,” said the post.
U.S. forces have sunk or destroyed more than 30 Iranian navy vessels since the start of the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran early Saturday, said Adam.
Brad Cooper, commander of the Central Command, at a news conference together with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Command’s headquarters in Tampa, Florida, earlier on Thursday.
Over the last 24 hours, Iranian ballistic missile attacks have declined by 90 percent and drone attacks by 83 percent while U.S. strikes on Iran’s navy “have intensified,” he said.
In the past 72 hours, U.S. forces have struck nearly 200 targets deep inside Iran, including around Tehran, Cooper said, adding that U.S. B-2 bombers dropped dozens of 2,000-pound penetrative bombs on buried ballistic missile launchers.
The U.S. military has also struck Iran’s “equivalent of Space Command,” Cooper said.
Hegseth said the war with Iran will escalate in the coming days.
“The amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically,” Hegseth said. “When we say more to come, it’s more fighter squadrons, it’s more capabilities, it’s more defensive capabilities and it’s more bomber pulses more frequently.”
The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have set off a regional exchange of fire that entered its sixth day on Thursday, leading to increasing casualties and major political and security consequences, with impacts rippling across the region.
The measure comes after a process of sustained diplomatic dialogue between both parties, in which they agreed to resume institutional ties and move toward a new stage of bilateral cooperation, said the government in a statement.
The Venezuelan side is ready for a new stage in bilateral relations marked by the principles of mutual respect, the sovereign equality of states and cooperation between peoples, it said.
The moon rises during its crescent phase over the Petare shantytown in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela on March 2, 2026. (PHOTO / AFP)
The National News Agency reported that the victims included senior Hamas official Wassim Atallah al-Ali and his wife after an Israeli drone targeted their home in the camp.
One of al-Ali’s daughters was also injured and transferred to the hospital inside the camp for treatment.
Hezbollah on Monday fired missiles and drones toward Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike and for repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Israel has responded with massive airstrikes on Hezbollah targets and deployed ground forces into southern Lebanon.
There’s also the shrinking of civic space as well as increasingly organized pushback on gender equality and the regression of women’s rights, said Sarah Hendriks, UN Women’s director of the Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Support Division, on the global launch of the UN secretary-general’s report, “Ensuring and Strengthening Access to Justice for All Women and Girls,” ahead of International Women’s Day 2026 and the 70th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which is scheduled for March 9-19.
Hendriks warned that there are women who choose not to report the violence they experience, because they fear that they won’t be believed; there are women who are paid less than their male counterparts in the very same work in places where the law does not actually require equal pay; and there are girls who don’t have birth registration, face heightened risk of child marriage, and face heightened risk of trafficking.
“No country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men,” she said.
According to the secretary-general’s report, globally, women have 64 percent of the legal rights of men, as discriminatory legal frameworks continue to prevail; 54 percent of countries lack consent-based legal definitions of rape, while 72 percent allow child marriage in all or some circumstances; and in 44 percent of countries, the law does not mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value, meaning women can still legally be paid less for the same work.
While progress is possible as 87 percent of countries have enacted domestic violence legislation, and more than 40 countries have strengthened constitutional protections for women and girls over the past decade, discriminatory social norms — stigma, victim-blaming, fear, and community pressure — continue to silence survivors and obstruct justice, allowing even the most extreme forms of violence, including femicide, to go unpunished.
Women’s access to justice is also prevented by everyday realities such as cost, time, language, and a deep lack of trust in the very institutions meant to protect them, the report showed.
In a press release, UN Women’s Executive Director Sima Bahous said that “when women and girls are denied justice, the damage goes far beyond any single case. Public trust erodes, institutions lose legitimacy, and the rule of law itself is weakened. A justice system that fails half the population cannot claim to uphold justice at all.”
“Now is the moment to stand up, show up, and speak up for rights, for justice, and for action – so that every woman and girl can live safely, speak freely, and live equally,” Bahous stressed.
According to the release, as backlash against longstanding commitments on gender equality intensifies, violations of the rights of women and girls are accelerating, fueled by a global culture of impunity, spanning from courts to online spaces to conflict.
As technology outpaces regulation, women and girls face growing digital violence in a climate of impunity where perpetrators are rarely held accountable. And in conflicts, rape continues to be used as a weapon of war, with reported cases of sexual violence rising by 87 percent in just two years.
In the release, UN Women calls for urgent and decisive action: end impunity, defend the rule of law, and deliver equality — in law, in practice, and in every sphere of life — for all women and girls.
Sarah Hendriks, director of UN Women’s policy, programme and intergovernmental division, at the launch of the Beijing+30 Action Agenda.
Burundi, the current chair of the African Union, has nominated Macky Sall, former president of Senegal, while Costa Rica has put forward Rebeca Grynspan, economist and former vice president of Costa Rica, for the post.
With the new nominations, there are currently four candidates vying for the position. The other two candidates are former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, nominated by Chile, Brazil and Mexico, and Rafael Grossi, the current director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, nominated by Argentina.
In a letter to UN member states on Wednesday, UNGA President Annalena Baerbock revealed the modalities of the interactive dialogues with the candidates, scheduled for the week of April 20.
The dialogues will be structured around the three pillars of the United Nations, namely peace and security, human rights and development. Each candidate will present their vision, followed by questions and engagement from member states, according to the letter.
Nominations must be submitted in advance of the interactive dialogues, and no later than April 1, for candidates to be eligible to participate, the letter added.
By a 53-47 vote, the Republican-led upper chamber blocked the resolution, which is intended to prevent Trump from ordering further military strikes on Iran without congressional approval.
In floor speeches before the vote, Democrats largely lashed out at the military strikes against Iran while Republicans predominately defended the president.
Veteran Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who co-sponsored the measure, said that “the administration and their shifting set of rationales, and even in a classified setting, could produce no evidence, none, that the U.S. was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran.”
“Have we learned nothing from 25 years of war in the Middle East? 14,000 American troops and contractors killed in Iran and Afghanistan … hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths … in Iran and Afghanistan, more than 8 trillion spent that could have been spent on American health care, on American housing, on American education, spent on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. And what did we get for it?” said Kaine.
Democratic Senator Patty Murray, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said “we should not gamble American lives on incomplete plans, unclear objectives and completely uncertain future.”
Republicans argued that Trump’s actions in Iran were necessary and justified, accusing Democrats of objecting to Trump’s actions for partisan reasons.
“We expect to have complete and total dominance over Iranian airspace in the coming hours,” Leavitt said at the White House daily press briefing.
She added that deploying U.S. ground troops to Iran is not currently planned, though U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier he is open to the option in the future.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing that the U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran is still in its early stages.
Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces will begin striking progressively deeper into the Iranian territory as operations expand.
Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have conducted their first coordinated attacks on Israel amid the ongoing escalation, the Israel Defence Forces told CNN on Wednesday.
On Saturday morning, U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with some of the leader’s family members, senior military commanders and civilians. Iran responded through waves of missile and drone attacks targeting Israel and U.S. bases across the Middle East.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that the United States will have “complete and total dominance” over Iranian airspace in the next few hours.
The overall populations of China’s wild fauna and flora are showing a steady upward trend, according to the administration. Latest monitoring data indicates that wild populations of flagship species, including giant pandas, snow leopards and Siberian tigers, have kept growing.
Wild populations of endangered plant species have also recorded notable recoveries. The number of Abies beshanzuensis in the wild has exceeded 4,000 individuals, while Manglietiastrum sinicum has grown to 15,000 individuals. The population of Paphiopedilum purpuratum has also increased to more than 200 individuals.
Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), the administration said it will launch a series of key wildlife conservation projects and advance international cooperation regarding giant panda conservation and wildlife treaty compliance, in a bid to promote the high-quality development of wildlife conservation in China.
