The United Arab Emirates city of Dubai Early Saturday morning, Israel attacked Iran from the air, saying it was doing so to punish the Islamic Republic for firing a barrage of nuclear missiles at Israel earlier this month.
In Tehran, the city of Iran, explosions could be heard, but there was no information yet on how many people were hurt or damaged.
The attack could bring the two countries closer to a full-scale war at a time when violence is rising across the Middle East. Militant groups backed by Iran are already at war with Israel, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had launched “precise strikes on military targets.” Two Israeli sources said that the strikes were not aimed at oil or nuclear sites. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t allowed to talk to the public about the ongoing operation.
From October 7 to the present, “the regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel,” an early Saturday morning video statement from Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said. The attacks have included direct attacks from Iranian soil. If an independent country in the world says something, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to answer.
At first, nuclear facilities and oil installations were thought to be possible targets for Israel’s reaction to Iran’s attack on October 1. But by the middle of October, the Biden administration thought it had made Israel promise not to attack those places.
The state-run media in Iran confirmed that people in Tehran could hear explosions and said that some of the sounds came from air defence systems around the city.
But other than a brief mention, Iranian state TV didn’t give any more information. In fact, to downplay the attack, it started playing what it called “live footage” of men loading trucks at a vegetable market in Tehran.
A person who lives in Tehran told the Associated Press that they heard at least seven blasts that shook the area. The person spoke without giving their name because they were afraid of being punished.
As the blasts were heard, people in Tehran saw what looked like tracer fire light up the sky. In other videos, what looked like surface-to-air missiles were being fired into the sky, along with other explosions.
Iran shut down its airspace early Saturday morning. The Associated Press looked at flight-tracking data and found that most commercial planes had left the skies over Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
The White House said that President Joe Biden had been told about the situation and would keep getting new information.
A military source who did not want to be named told the state news agency SANA that early Saturday morning, “barrages of missiles from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan and Lebanese territories targeted some military sites in the southern and central regions.” It said that some of the rockets were shot down by Syria’s air defences. There was no immediate word on how many people were hurt.
In the past few months, Iran has fired two ballistic missiles at Israel. This is happening during the current war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which began with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. About 1,200 people were killed in the first attack, and 250 others were taken hostage and sent back to the seaside community.
Since then, local health officials say that more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. They don’t say whether the deaths were of civilians or fighters. The U.N. says that hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya with little food and supplies as Israeli troops close in on the area. Food and other aid are still hard to come by in the enclave. Many more people have died since then in Israeli military actions in the West Bank.
Israel has also attacked Lebanon from the air and on the ground, which has caused a lot of damage in that country.
The attack on Saturday happened right as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was getting back to the U.S. from a trip to the Middle East. While there, he and other U.S. officials had warned Israel to come up with a response that would not make the conflict worse and leave out Iranian nuclear sites.
In a statement, Sean Savett, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said, “We understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran.” He then told reporters to ask the Israeli government for more information about the operation.
Two U.S. sources said that Israel told the U.S. about the strikes ahead of time. They said that the U.S. had nothing to do with the operation. The officials talked about an active operation while keeping their identities secret.
After Iran fired a huge number of missiles at Israel on October 1, Israel vowed to hit them hard. Iran said its attack was in response to Israeli attacks that killed people supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. It has also said it will react to any attacks that are returned.
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Israel and Iran have been very angry at each other. Israel sees Iran as its biggest threat because its leaders want to destroy Israel, they back anti-Israel terrorist groups, and the country has a nuclear program.
Their war has been going on in the background for years. Top Iranian nuclear experts have been killed in what is thought to be an Israeli plot. Iran’s nuclear facilities have been hacked or damaged in attacks that are thought to have been carried out by Israel. In the meantime, Iran has been blamed for a number of attacks on ships in the Middle East over the past few years. These attacks later turned into attacks by Houthi fighters in Yemen on ships going through the Red Sea corridor.
But since Hamas’s attack on October 7, the fight has become more public. Hezbollah has been shooting rockets at Israel since the war in Gaza started, and Israel has recently turned its attention to them. Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon have killed a number of important Iranian military figures over the course of the year.
In April of last year, Iran fired a lot of missiles and drones at Israel after two Iranian generals were killed in what seemed to be an Israeli attack in Syria on an Iranian diplomatic post. The missiles and drones did not do much damage, and Israel reacted with a limited strike because Western countries were pressuring it to be calm.
But after Iran’s missile attack in early October, Israel said it would be harder.
In the meantime, 38 people were killed Friday when Israel attacked civilian areas in southern Gaza. Thirteen children from the same extended family were among those killed.
Health officials in northern Gaza said that Israeli troops had attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is one of the few hospitals still open in the area. In the past few weeks, Israel has started an attack against Hamas in the north again, and aid groups are warning that things are getting very bad for people who need help.
In Lebanon, three journalists working for news sites thought to be linked to Hezbollah were killed when Israel bombed the southeast of the country.
