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People in Iran’s capital Tehran woke up to loud explosions as the Israeli Air Force conducted airstrikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear and military sites under ‘Operation Rising Lion’. The attack comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran over the latter’s progressing work on its nuclear program.
Following the strikes, Israel is anticipating a retaliation from Iran and said it was declaring a state of emergency, Reuters reported.
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said in a statement after the strikes, “Following the preemptive strike by the State of Israel against Iran, a missile and UAV (drone) attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate timeframe.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country’s strikes on Iran are aimed at hurting its nuclear infrastructure, its ballistic missile factories and many of its military capabilities.
“Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat,” he said.
During the strikes, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami was killed, reported the local media.
“Major General Hossein Salami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was martyred in the Israeli regime’s attack on the IRGC headquarters,” reported a news agency Tasnim.
Iran’s chief of staff of armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, was also killed in the strikes, reported Iranian state television.
Reacting to the attack, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned Israel of ‘bitter and painful fate’ and said that the country will suffer severe consequences.
“With this crime, the Zionist regime has set itself for a bitter and painful fate and it will definitely receive it,” Khamenei said in a statement.
The strikes come after the United States made it clear that they do not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances and also started withdrawing their personnel from the Middle-East.
According to an Israeli PM Netanyahu, “In recent years, Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs.”
Israel-Iran conflict: Key updates
- The United States has said that Israel’s strikes on Iran is the country’s ‘unilateral’ action and the US is not involved.
- “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement released by the White House.
- Both Iran and Israel have closed their airspace following the strikes.
- While it wasn’t immediately clear what had been hit, smoke was seen rising from Chitgar, a neighborhood in western Tehran, reported AP.
- “This operation will take as long as is needed to complete the task of fending off the threat of annihilation against us,” said Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu in a recorded video message.
Iran says it will not participate in nuclear talks with the United States which were scheduled on Sunday and until further notice, state media reported.
The US was reportedly hoping that nuclear talks with Iran will continue even after Israel’s barrage of strikes on Iran.
“Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb and we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table. We will see. There are several people in leadership that will not be coming back,” Fox News journalist quoted Trump as saying.
Saudi Arabia, which was an Iran rival for long before their reconciliation in 2023, strongly condemned Israel’s strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites.
The strikes, in which several key military commanders and nuclear scientists were killed, have not put US-Iran nuclear talks in jeopardy but pose a larger threat of tensions in the Middle-East.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the blatant Israeli aggressions against the brotherly Islamic Republic of Iran, which undermine its sovereignty and security and constitute a clear violation of international laws and norms,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
