Israel launched a major attack on Iran in the early hours of Friday, targeting “dozens” of sites including its nuclear facilities, military commanders and scientists, claiming it had taken the action because the Islamic Republic had begun to build nuclear warheads.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was aimed at “rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival,” adding that it would take “many days.”
“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme,” Netanyahu said in a recorded televised address.
“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation programme. We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile programme.”
Explosions were reported in Natanz, Tehran and elsewhere in Iran, and Iranian state media reported that the head of the Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, had been killed, as well as two scientists, who it named as Fereydoun Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.
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Abbasi was the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation from 2011 to 2013, who survived an assassination attempt in 2010, whilst Tehranchi was a theoretical physicist.
They appear to have been targeted in their homes. Iranian state television also reported that children had been killed in at least one of the airstrikes, on a residential area of Tehran.
Nour News, reported several “loud explosions” in and around Iran’s capital, adding that the country’s air defence system was on full alert, and all flights at Imam Khomeini international airport have been suspended.
Less than an hour after the attacks, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Israel would face a “severe punishment” over the strikes, and confirmed that the military officials and scientists had been killed.
“With this crime, the Zionist regime has prepared for itself a bitter, painful fate, which it will definitely see,” Khamenei wrote on X.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that the US was not involved in the strikes, and urged Iran not to target American interests or personnel in the region.
“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Iran’s Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh had warned that his country would target US military bases in the region if nuclear talks break down and the US launches attacks.
Democratic senator Chris Murphy, said that Israel’s decision to act unilaterally was a measure of Trump’s weakness on the world stage.
“Israel’s attack on Iran, clearly intended to scuttle the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran, risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America and is further evidence of how little respect world powers – including our own allies – have for President Trump,” Murphy said.
