Israel strikes Iran nuclear sites and military leadership as Middle East braces for retaliation

CNN

2 days ago

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Title: Iran suspends all domestic and international flights, state media says
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Iran has suspended all domestic and international flights, the country's state-affiliated Fars News Agency reported, citing the civil aviation authority.
Israeli strikes continued Friday morning across different cities, including Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan, Qasr-e Shirin, Kangavar, state media reported.
CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment.
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Title: Netanyahu will speak with Trump today, Israeli official says
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to speak to US President Donald Trump later today, according to an Israeli official.
Netanyahu is also expected to hold a situational assessment on Friday, the official said. The timing of both is unclear.
A US official confirmed that Trump is expected to speak with Netanyahu. CNN has also reached out to the White House for comment.
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Title: President Trump tells CNN Israel strikes on Iran were "very successful"
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President Donald Trump told CNN that the US supports Israel and called the strikes on Iran last night 'a very successful attack.'
'We of course support Israel, obviously and supported it like nobody has ever supported it,' Trump said in a brief phone call.
'Iran should have listened to me when I said — you know I gave them, I don't know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61,' he added.
'They should now come to the table to make a deal before it's too late. It will be too late for them. You know the people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners,' the president said. He would not specify which people he was referring to.
Asked if this was a result of Israel's attack last night, Trump responded sarcastically: 'They didn't die of the flu; they didn't die of Covid.'
Remember: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there was no US involvement or assistance in the strikes.
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Title: Israeli military says country needs to prepare for "prolonged operation"
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Israel must prepare for 'a prolonged operation,' Israeli military spokesperson, Effie Defrin, told reporters on Friday.
'We will continue operating until the war's objectives are reached,' Defrin said, referring to tensions with Iran as well as Israel's war in Gaza.
The spokesperson said that Israel is preparing for a response from Iran.
'We know they're preparing for a response and to fire at us,' he said.
Defrin added that most Iranian drones fired in retaliation toward Israel Friday were intercepted.
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Title: Iranian president asks people to trust Iran's leadership after Israeli attack
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Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian urged the Iranian people to remain unified and trust Iran's leadership after Israel struck the nation in an unprecedented attack on Friday.
'I ask the entire nation to maintain their unity… at the same time to trust the officials,' Pezeshkian said.
'The nation needs unity… more than ever,' he added.
The president vowed to give Israel a 'tough, rational and powerful response'.
Top officials from the Islamic Republic have been issuing warnings to Israel after an attack killed its top military commanders, scientists and hit its nuclear facilities.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Israel will face 'severe punishment' while the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the attack 'a declaration of war'
Meanwhile, crowds of protesters rallied in Tehran on Friday, calling for retaliation against Israeli strikes on Iran.
This post has been updated with additional remarks from Iran's president.
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Title: Israel's Mossad smuggled weapons into Iran ahead of Friday strikes, Israeli security official says
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Israel's Mossad spy agency smuggled weapons into Iran ahead of Friday's strikes that were used to target its defenses from within, according to an Israeli security official.
The official said that 'a base for launching explosive drones was established inside Iran and that the drones were activated during Friday's attack to target missile launchers at a base near Tehran.'
Israel had also 'smuggled precision weapons into central Iran and positioned them near surface-to-air missile systems,' the official said, adding that Israel also deployed strike systems on vehicles.
Israel struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear, missile and military complex early Friday, in an unprecedented attack that killed several of Iran's most powerful figures and plunged the wider Middle East into dangerous new territory.
Israel has launched unprecedented strikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear program and military leaders. Israel's spy agency, Mossad, released video of operatives inside Iran before the strikes. #CNN #News
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Title: The scale of Israel's strikes on Iran stands alone in the region's history
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Not since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s has Iran seen such a devastating series of strikes in a single day.
The attacks surpass a series of historical flashpoints, and signal a new phase in a conflict between Israel and Iran that for decades was waged in the shadows, before exploding into real-world confrontation in the past two years.
Last year, Iran launched its largest ever ballistic missile attack on Israel, in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others. That briefly threatened all-out war between the two powers, before tensions were calmed for the time being.
Before Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel, the tensions between the two nations were characterized by covert operations, cyber attacks and occasional, targeted strikes - some of which Tehran blamed on Israel, and others on the United States.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, believed to be the mastermind of Iran's nuclear program, was traveling by car east of Tehran when he was shot dead in November 2020. Several months earlier Qasem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, was killed by a US airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump at Baghdad International Airport.
The same year, a building used to assemble machines for uranium enrichment at the Natanz industrial complex was rocked by an explosion.
But no single attack compares in size and scale to the wave of strikes Israel carried out on Friday. Israel used 200 fighter jets in its attack, dropping more than 330 'various munitions' and striking more than 100 targets across Iran, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
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Title: Iranian Revolutionary Guards air chief and other leaders killed in strike on command center, Israel says
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The Israeli military says it killed several senior leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Air Force in a strike, including its commander, Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said overnight Friday it 'identified that the senior chain of command of the Air Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had assembled in an underground command center to prepare for an attack on the State of Israel.'
'As part of the combined opening strike, IAF fighter jets struck the command center where the Commander of the IRGC's Air Force, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, was located along with other senior officials,' the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
Hajizadeh was killed alongside Commander of the UAV Force of the IRGC's Air Force, Taherpour, and the Commander of the Aerial Command of the IRGC's Air Force, Davoud Shaykhian, the IDF said, adding other senior officials were 'eliminated.'
Some context: Hajizadeh's death, which has been confirmed on Iranian state media, is a major blow to Tehran.
He headed the country's missile program which was involved in defending the country's air space and carrying out attacks overseas.
Hajizadeh was the mastermind of Iran's previous attack on Israel in April 2024 as well as the missile attack on a US base in Iraq in 2020.
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Title: Israeli strikes ongoing in Iran, state media say, with reports key nuclear site again hit
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Israeli strikes are ongoing in Iran, targeting several cities across the nation, state-run media said.
Iranian state television and state-affiliated media said the Natanz nuclear site was struck in a missile attack.
The outskirts of the cities of Tabriz and Shiraz were also targeted in what state television called 'an aggressive attack'
CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.
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Title: Israel launches major attack on Iran, putting the region on the brink of war. Here's what you need to know
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The Middle East is hanging on the cusp of a generational conflict Friday, after Israel launched an unprecedented attack on Iran, killing three of its most powerful men and striking locations key to its nuclear program.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the operation — whose scale already stands alone in history — is not over.
But Iran's retaliation has begun. Tehran has fired more than 100 drones toward Israeli territory, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which said Israeli defenses were working to intercept the drones.
Here's what you need to know.
Read more: Follow this page for developments as they happen, or read more detail on why Israel attacked now, who has been killed, how we got here, and what it might mean for the region and for the US.
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Title: Netanyahu has angled for a bigger fight with Iran for decades. Now he's got one
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Throughout his time as Israel's longest-serving leader, Benjamin Netanyahu has moved slowly, a reactive politician waiting to the last possible moment to make a decision.
Until now, that was true even on Iran. For decades, Netanyahu preached on the world stage about the threat Iran poses to the region and beyond. He used his numerous speeches at the United Nations General Assembly to rail against Tehran, perhaps most famously when he held up a cartoon picture of a bomb.
But he pushed for presenting a credible military threat from Israel together with the US, not alone. Israel has carried out attention-grabbing covert actions in Iran over the years – such as the theft of Iran's nuclear archive in 2018, or the killing of Tehran's top nuclear scientist in 2020 — but those operations did not amount to massive and overt military action against Tehran's nuclear program.
That all changed in dramatic fashion in the last 24 hours. Netanyahu saw himself as leading the charge against Iran, warning the world that often didn't want to hear his message. On Friday morning, that message was delivered with unprecedented force, coming just days before the sixth round of nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
Netanyahu was faced with the real possibility that Trump was going to reach virtually the same nuclear agreement the American leader torpedoed in 2018 - one that would have left Iran with some ability to enrich uranium and crucially with the nuclear knowhow it had built up over decades.
With Iran and its proxies weakened across the region – and with a chance to derail nuclear negotiations — Netanyahu, who had delivered threatening rhetoric for years, finally chose to carry out that threat.
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Title: Damage to Iran's Natanz nuclear facility was on the surface, says country's atomic energy agency
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Israel's attack on one of Iran's primary nuclear enrichment facilities caused 'superficial damage,' according to the spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
Behrouz Kamalvandi said the agency does not have an estimate of the damage to Natanz, but most of it was on the surface. Natanz's enrichment capabilities are underground.
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Title: Iran's supreme leader names replacements for assassinated commanders
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Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed new commanders to head key military entities after Israel assassinated his top brass.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour was appointed on Friday as the new commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an entity parallel to the regular military that Iran established to crush dissent at home and project the Islamic Republic's power abroad. He replaces Hossein Salami, who was killed by Israel on Friday.
Khamenei also appointed Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi to the position of Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces to replace Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, who was killed earlier Friday.
And Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani replaces Lt. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid as head of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, an entity that coordinates between the IRGC and the regular army.
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Title: Trump warns Iran to agree to nuclear deal before "even more brutal" attacks
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US President Donald Trump has warned Iran to agree to a nuclear deal 'before there is nothing left,' suggesting that subsequent Israeli attacks on the country will be 'even more brutal.'
In a post on Truth Social early on Friday morning, Trump wrote that Iranian leaders 'didn't know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!'
'There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,' Trump wrote. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.'
Negotiations over a new nuclear deal with Iran intensified in recent weeks, but Tehran's insistence on its right to enrich uranium had proven a major sticking point.
Read Trump's Truth Social post in full:
'I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to 'just do it,' but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner's spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!'
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Title: Israel's strikes on Iran "not good news" for Gaza, says Haaretz columnist
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As the world's attention pivots to Israel's strikes on Iran and the regime's threatened retaliation, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza will once more go unnoticed and likely get worse, according to a columnist for Haaretz, a liberal newspaper in Israel.
'The world's attention will now move to Iran, and the starving and dying children in Gaza, the destruction and the massive killing, will be totally forgotten,' Gideon Levy told CNN on Friday.
Although Israel's blockade of Gaza has been partially lifted, and a new US-backed plan to deliver aid to the enclave is underway, the United Nations and other aid agencies have warned that the plight of Gazans is rapidly worsening.
'People in Gaza are starving,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an assessment last week. The UN also reported that the number of children in Gaza with acute malnutrition is rising.
'Gaza will – at least for the coming days and weeks – be under a shade,' Levy warned.
'Every day the (war in) Gaza continues, means the killing of dozens and dozens of innocent people, and now even the world will not pay attention to it. This is not good news for Gaza – not at all.'
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Title: "I just never thought this would happen": Huge Israeli attack stuns Iran
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Fear and panic consumed Iranians who were woken up with 'shaking' homes as Israel launched a sweeping attack on the country's nuclear, missile and military complex early Friday.
Azzam, a 35-year-old Iranian citizen who lives close to Saadat Abad in northern Tehran, an area which was targeted by Israel, said:
'I woke up with the whole house shaking. I was very scared, not knowing what had happened.'
Sam, 29, said he fears further attacks. 'I am concerned about the escalation of this, and what this means for us in Tehran.'
'We have no real information, and there are rumors that this will happen every night. Do we stay in our homes? There is just so much uncertainty,' he told CNN from the Iranian capital.
All of the people CNN spoke to in Tehran requested anonymity due to concerns for their safety.
Another Iranian, who preferred to stay anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said they were shocked that Israel hit civilian areas. 'I just never thought that would happen.'
A 17-year-old Iranian who also asked to remain anonymous said they saw people 'screaming on the streets' and buildings shaking.
'I didn't know what was happening, it was really scary,' the Tehran resident said.
Others feared their leaders could no longer protect them, having seen Israel's strikes take out some of Iran's top military commanders.
Bahram, 50, said the security guard for his building told him:
'When these military commanders can't take care of their own, how are they meant to take care of us against Israeli attacks?'
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Title: Iran state media reports new Israeli attack in northwestern city of Tabriz
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Iranian state media says there has been a fresh Israeli attack, showing a large plume of smoke rising after an explosion in the northwestern city of Tabriz.
Tasnim news agency said Tabriz Airport was 'currently under heavy Israeli attack.'
The Fars news agency said Israel struck Tabriz, without clarifying further, adding that about 10 sites in East Azerbaijan province had been targeted.
CNN has asked the Israeli military for comment.
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Title: How Israelis are preparing for Iran's retaliation
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Israel's military says that Iran has launched more than 100 drones toward Israeli territory in what is expected to be the first stage of a much larger counter-attack. CNN's Paula Hancocks shares how citizens are preparing.
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Title: Iran's primary nuclear enrichment facility damaged in Israel's attack
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Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility, Natanz, was damaged in Israel's attack on Friday, the Iranian atomic energy agency said.
The heavily fortified facility is 150 miles south of the capital Tehran and houses thousands of centrifuges, used to enrich uranium for nuclear energy.
The complex has overground and underground facilities and it's unclear what was damaged but no casualties were reported, the agency said.
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Iranian authorities have confirmed that Natanz was 'impacted' but there were no elevated radiation levels.
Grossi told members of the board at the International Atomic Energy Agency that other nuclear facilities in Iran, Isfahan and Fordow, 'have not been impacted.'
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Title: Germany increases protection of Jewish and Israeli institutions following Israel's strikes on Iran
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German chancellor Friedrich Merz said Israel has a right to 'defend its existence' and has moved to increase protections for Jewish institutions in Germany, after Israel launched an unprecedented round of strikes on Iran.
Merz had a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday morning, and convened a meeting of Germany's security cabinet, the chancellery in Berlin has said.
Merz reaffirmed Germany's position that Israel has the right to 'defend its existence and the security of its citizens' and stated that 'the goal must remain that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.'
'Iran continues to fail to fulfill its obligations to disclose its work on enriching nuclear-capable material,' Merz said, adding that it had 'threatened to further accelerate uranium enrichment.'
'This nuclear program violates the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and poses a serious threat to the entire region, especially to the State of Israel,' said the German leader.
Merz called for both sides to 'refrain' from steps that could 'lead to further escalation and destabilize the entire region.'