Israel says Tehran nuclear infrastructure sites hit as Iran strikes Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other overnight into Sunday, stoking fears of a wider conflict after Israel expanded its surprise campaign against its main rival with a strike on the world's biggest gas field. Israel's military said on Sunday it had struck Iran's defence ministry headquarters, "nuclear weapons project" infrastructure sites and other targets, as the rival nations exchanged fire for a third day. The Israeli military said at around 2.40am local time that its air force had just "completed an extensive series of intelligence-based strikes on a number of targets in Tehran related to the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons project", as well as on fuel tankers. "The targets included the Iranian Ministry of Defense headquarters, the headquarters of the SPND (Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research) nuclear project, and additional targets" which Israel said advanced Iran's efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were "nothing" compared with what Iran would see in the coming days. Netanyahu said Israel's strikes had set back Iran's nuclear program possibly by years and rejected international calls for restraint. "We will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs' regime, and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days," he said in a video message. Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, warned of a "more severe" response if Israel continued its attacks. "The continuation of Zionist aggression will be met with a more severe and powerful response from the Iranian armed forces," Pezeshkian said, according to state media.
Israel's military said more missiles were launched from Iran towards Israel overnight, and that it was attacking military targets in Tehran. Early on Sunday morning, air raid sirens blared across Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Several missiles were seen streaking through the sky over Tel Aviv, while interceptor rockets were launched from the ground. Explosions echoed in both cities. Israel's ambulance service said three women were killed and 10 other people injured in an earlier missile strike near a house in northern Israel.
Iran said the Shahran oil depot in Tehran was targeted in an Israeli attack but that the situation was under control, and that a fire had erupted after an Israeli attack on an oil refinery near the capital. Israeli strikes also targeted Iran's defence ministry building in Tehran, causing minor damage, Iran's Tasnim news agency said on Sunday. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Iranian missiles and drones targeted Israel's energy infrastructure and facilities for fighter jet fuel production. The elite force warned Tehran's attacks will be "heavier and more extensive" if Israel continues its hostilities. US President Donald Trump had warned Iran of worse to come, but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if Tehran accepted a sharp downgrading of its nuclear program. Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel's campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-storey apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.
In the first apparent attack to hit Iran's energy infrastructure, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world's biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on Saturday. The South Pars field, offshore in Iran's southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in Iran. An Iranian general, Esmail Kosari, said on Saturday that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz controlling access to the Gulf for tankers.
A round of US-Iran nuclear talks that was due to be held in Oman on Sunday was cancelled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel's "barbarous" attacks.
Israel sees Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists the program is entirely civilian and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. However the UN nuclear watchdog reported it this week as violating obligations under the global non-proliferation treaty.
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ABC News
38 minutes ago
- ABC News
Iran and Israel carry out more strikes as Trump says US involvement 'possible'
Israel and Iran have launched multiple waves of missile strikes at each other for the third successive day, as the conflict between the two sides escalates. It came as US President Donald Trump urged the two countries to "make a deal" and said it was "possible" for the United States to become militarily involved in the conflict. Both sides launched daytime strikes on each other on Sunday, with air raid sirens and booms heard in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Sunday evening local time. Local police confirmed an Iranian missile struck a settlement in the coastal city of Haifa. Israel also carried out widespread strikes across Iran, including on its nuclear facilities and on at least 80 sites across its capital Tehran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US news channel Fox News that Israel had destroyed the main Iranian nuclear enrichment facility, Natanz. He also strongly suggested to Fox News that Israel had killed Iran's intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi, saying it had recently "got the chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran" as its jets carried out raids over the capital. Iran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi said Israel had "crossed a new red line in international law" by striking its nuclear facilities. Among the Israel Defense Forces' targets on Sunday was Mashhad Airport in Iran's east, which it claimed was being used by Iranian refuelling aircraft. Iranian state TV said there was no damage to the facility. Israel later announced further strikes against surface-to-surface missile installations in western Iran. Iranian media, citing the health ministry, said at least 128 people had been killed by Israeli attacks from Friday to Saturday, including women and children, with 900 more reported injured. With no end in sight to the exchanges, officials said mosques, metro stations and schools would be opened up as makeshift bomb shelters for civilians. The head of Tehran's traffic police, Ahmad Karami, told IRNA news agency "heavy traffic was reported at the capital's exit points". Local media also reported long queues at petrol stations. The latest exchanges came as Mr Netanyahu visited the site of a deadly Iranian missile strike on a residential building in the coastal city of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv. At least 10 people, including children, were killed in a missile strike in the city, raising the two-day toll in Israel to 13. "Iran will pay a very heavy price for the premeditated murder of civilians, women and children," Mr Netanyahu said. He later told Fox News the ongoing conflict could result in regime change in Iran, which he accused of wanting to destroy Israel. That appeared to contradict comments by IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani, who earlier on Sunday said the goal of Israel's operation "was not regime change". Mr Netanyahu also refused to comment on a Reuters report that Mr Trump had vetoed a plan to kill Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. "There's so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I'm not going to get into that," Mr Netanyahu told host Bret Baier. "But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do, we'll do what we need to do. And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States." The escalating tensions came as US President Donald Trump warned Iran not to strike American facilities in the Middle East. Speaking to ABC America, Mr Trump said it was "possible" for the United States to become militarily involved in the conflict. He added that he was open to the idea of Russian President Vladimir Putin acting as a mediator between the two sides, after the two leaders held a phone conversation on Saturday. In a further post on his social media platform Truth Social, Mr Trump also urged Iran and Israel to "make a deal" to end the conflict. "We will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place," he wrote. Other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, urged both sides to avoid further escalation. ABC/wires
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
With Israel and Iran trading missiles, the global economy looks precarious once again
Three questions remain after Israel's attack on Iran during the past few days. First, with two parts: will Iran now accelerate its nuclear weapons program in response, and can Israel stop that from happening? Second, will Iran block the Straits of Hormuz, through which passes a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a third of the gas? And third, will Israel take out Iran's oil production facilities on Kharg Island? The answers to the first are probably yes and no, and if either or both of the other two are "yes," it would be disastrous for the global economy. Israel's strike against Iran was inevitable as soon as the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on May 31 that Iran had enriched more than 400kg of uranium to 60 per cent. The report was embargoed until last Wednesday, June 11, although Mossad would already have known the contents. The Israeli government couldn't let it stand. It was also probably inevitable once Donald Trump, in May 2018, withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Barack Obama had signed with Iran three years earlier, and then reimposed all sanctions. Trump's complaint, apart from the fact that Obama did it and not him, was that the agreement was not permanent, and IAEA inspectors didn't have full access to all sites. Both of which were true, but at least for a few years, Iran seemed to have stopped enriching uranium, or at least the IAEA couldn't find evidence that it hadn't. But in 2019, Iran's effort to become a nuclear-armed state was back to full steam ahead, and in the past few months, it went to a new level. In a footnote on page 8 of its May 31 verification report for United Nations resolution 2231 (with which the UN endorsed Obama's JCPOA), the IAEA noted that it had "verified all 432.3 kg of UF6 enriched up to 60 per cent U-235 that has been produced since 21 November, 2022". (UF6 is uranium hexafluoride gas used to enrich uranium with a centrifuge. U-235 is the unstable, or fissile, uranium isotope needed for a chain reaction bomb, and for that to work, the uranium must be enriched to 90 per cent U-235. There is no civilian use for 60 per cent enriched uranium — it has no purpose other than as a precursor to the 90 per cent enrichment needed for nuclear weapons.) In its February report, the IAEA said Iran's stockpile of 60 per cent enriched uranium was 265.7kg, in November it was 147.8kg, and in August it was 132.1kg. So, it has increased by 62 per cent in three months and tripled in nine months. Then, on Thursday last week, the day after the IAEA report became public, Iran announced it would launch a new enrichment facility in a "highly secure" place in response to the adoption of a "political" resolution against it by the IAEA, which accused Iran of "non-compliance" with its nuclear commitments. It was the final straw, and the last in a series of catastrophic mistakes by the Iranian leadership that left it vulnerable and friendless. On Friday, Israel attacked. us military parade Apart from pre-empting Iran's nuclear capability, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu also wanted to pre-empt the planned new talks between Iran and the United States that were due to get underway on the weekend to coincide with Trump's birthday military parade yesterday. Netanyahu would also have been keen to change the subject away from Gaza, with increasing, and increasingly credible descriptions of Israel's conduct there as genocide. The oil price surged more than 7 per cent on Friday after news of the attack hit commodity traders' screens, and any thought of the price staying below $US60 a barrel this year now seems dead. This latest conflict between Israel and Iran is very different from the skirmishes that took place in April and October last year, and which did nothing to disturb oil's slide from $US89 in early 2024 to $US58 at the end of April this year. Importantly, Israel did knock out a lot of Iran's air defences in October in response to some ineffective Iranian missiles, but decided not to "take the win" as president Joe Biden advised. This time, Israel, emboldened by its "success" in Gaza, now seems to think it can win against Iran and de-fang its nemesis entirely. The attack this time was not part of a sort of chess move-and-counter-move process; it was done without US help, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made clear, and it gave Iran's leaders no off-ramp to avoid an uncontrolled escalation. Yet, all-out conventional war, as in Ukraine, is unthinkable. Neither side can viably invade the other, so the conflict will be confined to missile strikes, drones, and targeted assassinations, which Netanyahu has vowed to keep going until the nuclear threat is removed. But as the two sides go at it, and with the Straits of Hormuz and Kharg Island at risk, the oil price, global inflation, and the world economy are once again in a very precarious spot. Donald Trump, for one, thinks it will all be fine. He told the Wall Street Journal in an interview: "I think ultimately, it … should be the greatest thing ever for the market. Iran won't have a nuclear weapon that was a great threat to humanity." That could be true eventually if Israel really could stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon, but short of regime change, that is questionable. This is the most telling Israeli attack since its 1981 destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor near Baghdad, in Operation Opera, but Iran's enrichment facilities are deep underground in protected sites that would challenge even the most powerful conventional US-made bombs. Iran's nuclear program will suffer a setback, and as Israel's assassinations by agents on the ground have demonstrated, the generals and scientists running the program are more vulnerable and may be hard to replace. What happens next could depend on how effective Iran's direct retaliation is against Israel. Some strikes on Tel Aviv and Haifa have been getting through, but if Iran's leadership judges that they're not doing enough damage, they might be inclined to try something else, such as an attack on Saudi Arabian oil production or desalination, US military bases, or the Straits of Hormuz. Any of those things would be counter-productive for Iran and probably disastrous, both for Iran and the world economy. But Iran's leaders have left themselves with few options. Alan Kohler is finance presenter and columnist on ABC News and he also writes for Intelligent Investor.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Middle East at war: Celebration, trepidation and anger: Iranians have conflicting emotions over Israeli airstrikes
'I understand them both and at different times my own feelings are closer to one of these groups and then the other,' Behnaz said. Given government repression, it can be difficult to gauge public sentiment in Iran. Polling is limited, many Iranians are unwilling to speak to foreign journalists, and those who do may hold views that aren't representative of the wider population. And if Israel widens its attacks beyond military and nuclear program targets – a possibility, given Defence Minister Israel Katz's warning on Saturday that if Iran continued to fire missiles, 'Tehran will burn' – those views could change. Loading The Iranian government, meanwhile, is trying to control public reactions. The Ministry of Communications said on Friday it would temporarily limit internet access, and Iranians said they were struggling to connect using the virtual private networks that allow them to circumvent government censorship of foreign websites and applications. Some Iranians rallied to protest against Israel and express support for the government. They held up pictures of generals and scientists who had been killed. Participants in a pro-government demonstration on Saturday in Tehran told a state television journalist that they wanted the harshest response possible against Israel. 'We won't relent until the complete destruction of Israel,' said a woman in a black-and-white checked scarf that indicates support for Iran's security forces. 'It's not a question of revenge. Israel must be wiped off the page of time forever.' Iranians in a protest march on Saturday against the Israeli attacks. Credit: Getty Images A man surrounded by his wife and daughters said they had come to the rally to show 'Israel that my family, all my compatriots and I stand behind our armed forces, and whatever step they take, we will support with our lives and property'. On the surface, several Iranians said that life in Tehran and other cities had carried on as usual during what was a holiday weekend for the nation's majority Shiite Muslims. People went to coffee shops with friends or did their shopping. Those who didn't have the day off went to work. But behind the veneer of normality lay stress and worry – particularly among those old enough to remember Iran's protracted war with Iraq in the 1980s when cities were targeted with airstrikes. Nima, who was a child during the Iran-Iraq War in a city that was heavily bombed, heard the sounds of missiles and air defence systems in Tehran for three or four hours overnight on Saturday. 'Tonight in Tehran, it's scarier,' he said, adding that he could hear loud booms and what appeared to be a succession of missiles fired from Iranian territory. Some said the news appeared more frightening to those outside the country; Iranians, they said, had been through far worse. Seventy-eight people were killed and more than 320 wounded in the initial Israeli attacks, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations said on Friday. It was unclear how many were civilians. Parnia Abbasi, a young female poet, and Mehdi Pouladvand, a competitive equestrian, had been killed with their families, Iranian media reported. Fire and smoke rise into the sky after an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot in Tehran. Credit: Getty Images But many expressed satisfaction, particularly at the deaths of top officials in the Revolutionary Guard, which plays a major role in domestic repression. One of the men killed, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, headed the Revolutionary Guard's aerospace force, which shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight in 2020, killing all 176 people on board. Mehrdad, a 36-year-old man in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, said he had not been this happy in 10 years. 'We have no fear,' Mehrdad said. 'We know that even if there's a war that involves the [Iranian] people, it's still better than the situation we are in with this government.' Some used the celebration of Eid al-Ghadir on Saturday to express their glee. Iranians mark the day by buying sweets and gifts for family and friends. Elham, a 37-year-old woman in the western city of Hamedan, said she saw more Iranians happy and celebrating than during past holidays, and suspected they were using it as cover to celebrate Israel's attacks. Loading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attempted to capitalise on that spirit. On Friday, he urged Iranians to 'stand up and let your voices be heard.' 'Israel's fight is not with you,' he said. 'Our fight is with our common enemy: The murderous regime that both oppresses you and impoverishes you.' The Washington Post The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day's most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.
