Israel strikes Iran killing top military leaders
Israel has launched a significant military operation against Iran, escalating tensions in the Middle East. The Israelis said more than 200 fighter jets took part in Operation Rising Lion. Hitting over 100 sites. And apparently fulfilling the Israeli Prime Minister's long held wish to deal Iran a decisive blow.
Iran's Supreme Leader has promised revenge in the form of 'severe punishment' – Iran has now launched over 100 drones toward Israel, although the IDF say many were intercepted.
The strikes have had a domino effect worldwide; spiking global oil prices, forcing neighbouring nations to close their airspace and jeopardizing ongoing US-Iran nuclear negotiations.
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Times
41 minutes ago
- Times
Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear sites are long overdue
Israel is only slightly larger in area than Wales, with a population more than three times as big. It would, therefore, take only a handful of relatively crude atom bombs, in the 50 kiloton range say, to destroy it as a functioning state. Given this degree of vulnerability, a surprise attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear sites was always a distinct possibility. For the United States and its European allies a nuclear-armed theocracy in Tehran would be a deeply damaging development; for Israel it would present an existential threat. Since the revolution of 1979 that brought it into being, the Islamic regime has consistently called for the destruction of the 'Zionist entity'. While Israel has reached some form of accommodation with most of its former enemies in the Arab world, Iran has remained its implacable foe, creating a web of terrorist proxies and hovering menacingly on the nuclear brink. Now, after years of warnings and actual, though limited, operations, the government of Binyamin Netanyahu has waded into the Rubicon. Israel's airstrikes on Iran were unprecedented in scale and scope, the initial wave involving two-thirds of its air force launching some 300 weapons against some 100 targets. How the Islamic regime reacts to this calculated affront to its authority could determine its fate. • How Israel attacked Iran: from masked men in the desert to devastation Israel's practical goals in launching the attacks are open to interpretation but the rightness of its cause is not. In their insatiable hunger for the destruction of the Jewish state, and by their unceasing efforts to attain the means for that destruction, the mullahs in Tehran and their henchmen in the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have brought destruction upon themselves. No country can be expected to stand idly by while an avowed enemy works steadily, decade after decade, in secret to create the ultimate weapon. Israel's initial attacks have been too big to be symbolic, but on their own they may not be powerful enough to put to an end Iran's nuclear ambitions entirely. Israel's fighter fleet cannot carry the most effective deep-penetration munitions made by the Americans, and a shortage of tankers makes sustained long-range operations difficult. Mr Netanyahu may be hoping for any one of a number of outcomes. He may indeed be intent on destroying the bulk of Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure, or he may regard the air campaign as an arm twister intended to force Tehran to once and for all renounce nuclear weapons at the negotiating table. Or he could hope to deal a potentially fatal blow to the Iranian leadership's prestige, further exposing its weakness following the hobbling by Israel of its warrior proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and the fall of its principal Arab ally, the Assad regime in Syria. These latter developments have seriously weakened Iran's ability to strike at Israel and have provided Israel's prime minister and his hawkish administration with a window of opportunity in which to act. A showdown with Iran might also help unify a country increasingly divided by Mr Netanyahu's prosecution of the war in Gaza. Whatever the end state desired by Mr Netanyahu, and he cannot himself be sure, the argument for this action is beyond dispute. If Israel cripples Tehran's nuclear programme it will have performed a service for all law-abiding nations, just as it did when it attacked the nuclear facilities of Iraq and Syria. Before the attack, Iran announced that it would begin work on an additional uranium enrichment site not previously disclosed to UN inspectors seeking to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A report just released by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency shows how for decades Iran lied and deceived its way towards an atomic bomb. That this state sponsor of terrorism, with the blood of countless innocents on its hands, should become a nuclear power is as terrifying as it is abhorrent. In protecting itself Israel is protecting the world.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Out of the shadows: drone-op claims show Israel's Mossad leaning in to its legend
Israelis were celebrating on Friday what many see as a stunning new success by their country's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. Hours after launching 200 warplanes in a wave of strikes against Iran, Israeli officials released footage they said showed the Mossad agents deep inside Iran assembling missiles and explosive drones aimed at targets near Tehran. According to unnamed security officials who briefed Israeli media, similar precision weapons were launched from trucks smuggled into the country and a 'drone base' hidden somewhere near Tehran. This was established well in advance of Friday's attack and used to destroy Iran's air defences, the officials said. The Mossad, an abbreviation of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Hebrew, has scored many such victories in almost 80 years of undercover operations, earning a unique reputation for audacious espionage, technological innovation and ruthless violence. The new operation in Iran comes just 10 months after the service managed to sabotage thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, an attack that killed 37 people and injured about 3,000 others while crippling the militant Islamist organisation. The service then contributed to the air offensive that wiped out Hezbollah's leadership in a matter of days. Over decades, the Mossad has built up deep networks of informants, agents and logistics in Iran. This has allowed a series of operations including the assassination with a remote-controlled automatic machine gun of a top Iranian nuclear scientist travelling at speed in a car on a remote road, the infection with malware of computers running key parts of Iran's nuclear programme and the theft of an archive of nuclear documents. Last year, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated with a bomb placed in his favourite room in a government guesthouse in Tehran. 'This most recent operation is impressive, of course, but Iran has been an open book for Israeli intelligence for a decade or more,' said Yossi Melman, a veteran Israeli security reporter and author. Melman said those pictured setting up missile launches in the grainy videos released by the Mossad were likely to be Iranians. 'The boots on the ground inside Iran are not Israeli, so they have to be recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed. Then all the components of the weapons have to be smuggled in. It all needs a lot of professionalism and skill.' Unusually, Israeli officials have highlighted the role of Aman, the military intelligence service, in building up targeting information for the Israeli offensive. Though Aman and the Mossad often work closely, it is the foreign service, much smaller, that gets most of the attention. Even then, most of the Mossad's work is never known outside tightly restricted circles. For decades, few had even heard of the Mossad, which was formally established in 1949. Former agents were ordered not to tell even their family or their previous employment and the service never admitted its involvement in any operation. Yossi Alpher, who took part in some of the service's best-known operations in the 1970s, told the Guardian last year: 'Everything the Mossad did was quiet, no one knew. It was a totally different era. The Mossad was just not mentioned. When I joined, you had to know someone to be brought in. Now, there is a website.' The Mossad's senior officials have long been more likely to spend their time on sensitive diplomatic missions, briefing senior Israeli decision-makers on regional political dynamics or building relationships abroad than recruiting spies or running operations such as that targeting Iran this week. For decades, the Mossad oversaw years-long clandestine efforts to build up 'enemies of Israel's enemies', such as Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria, and Christians in what is now South Sudan. As with many of its efforts, this had mixed success. The Mossad is blamed by some for ignoring warnings about the reputation of Maronite Christian militia in Lebanon for brutality and ethnic hatred, and encouraging Israel's disastrous invasion of that country in 1982, in which thousands of civilians were killed. The Mossad also played a significant, though still little-known, role in the covert supply of arms to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran to help fight Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan's presidency. The mythical reputation of the Mossad has been bolstered by films and TV series, with screenwriters attracted to some of the service's best-known exploits. One of the most famous is the 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi officer who was a key organiser of the Holocaust. Others include stealing warships from the French navy in 1969, warning of impending attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 and providing key intelligence for the famous raid on Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 that freed Jewish and Israeli passengers hijacked by Palestinian and German extremists. In 1980, the service set up and ran a diving resort on Sudan's Red Sea coast as a cover for the clandestine transport of thousands of members of Ethiopia's Jewish community to Israel. The Mossad spies lived among tourists before being forced to close down the operation after five years. After a deadly attack by Palestinian extremists on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the Mossad led a campaign to disrupt the networks and groups responsible. The effort ended when a Mossad team shot dead a Moroccan waiter in Norway in the mistaken belief he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization security official, and then made further errors leading to their arrest and trial by local authorities. In 1997, an effort to kill Khaled Meshaal, a powerful Hamas leader, went badly wrong when the Mossad team was caught in Amman by local security forces. Israel was forced to hand over an antidote and relations with Jordan were badly damaged. In 2010, agents were caught on CCTV camera in Dubai during another assassination. Then there is the failure to learn anything that might have warned of the Hamas raids into southern Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and led to the abduction of 251. The attack prompted the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the current war with Hezbollah and, indirectly, the new confrontation with Iran. Former Mossad officials say the service only gets noticed when things go wrong. This is not quite true, though – as the release of the Iran videos shows. Melman said one of the Mossad's aims – particularly with the publicity – is to sow fear among Iranians. 'The aim is psychological. The Mossad is telling the Iranian regime: we know everything about you, we can wander into your home when we like, we are an omnipotent force,' said Melman. 'It's also a very good way to boost the morale of the Israeli public.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
The Latest: Iran launches retaliatory strikes on Israel, killing at least 3 people
Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes on Israel into Saturday morning, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, after a series of blistering Israeli attacks on the heart of Iran's nuclear program and its armed forces. Israel's assault used warplanes, as well as drones smuggled into the country in advance, to assault key facilities and kill top generals and scientists. Israel said the barrage was necessary before Iran got any closer to building an atomic weapon, although experts and the U.S. government have assessed that Tehran was not actively working on such a weapon before the strikes. It also threw talks between the United States and Iran over an atomic accord into disarray days before the two sides were set to meet Sunday. ___ Woman dies in missile strike in Tel Aviv, hospital says A spokesperson for Beilinson Hospital in Tel Aviv said a woman was killed in an Iranian missile strike, bringing the total number of fatalities in the barrages from Iran to three. The hospital also treated seven people who were wounded in the strike early Saturday. Israel's Fire and Rescue Services said a projectile hit a building in the city. Israel's paramedic service says 2 people killed when missile hit central Israel Israel's paramedic service Magen David Adom says an Iranian missile struck near homes in central Israel early Saturday morning, killing two people and injuring 19 others. Israel's Fire and Rescue service said four homes were severely damaged. UN chief calls for escalation to stop, saying 'peace and diplomacy must prevail' UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel and Iran to halt their attacks on one another, while calling for diplomacy. 'Israeli bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites. Iranian missile strikes in Tel Aviv. Enough escalation. Time to stop. Peace and diplomacy must prevail,' Guterres wrote on X on Saturday. Iranian media reports a fire at Tehran's airport Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency is reporting a fire at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport, posting a video on X of a column of smoke and orange flames rising from what the outlet said was the airport. A handful of minor injuries reported from second wave of Iranian missiles Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv said it has treated seven people hurt by the second Iranian barrage; six had light injuries and the seventh was moderately wounded. Iran fires a second wave of missiles at Israel Sirens and the boom of explosions, possibly from Israeli interceptors, could be heard in the sky over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv early Saturday. AP journalists in Tel Aviv could see what appeared to be at least two Iranian missiles hit the ground, but there was no immediate word of casualties. The Israeli military said another long-range Iranian missile attack was taking place and urged civilians, already rattled by the first wave of projectiles, to head to shelter. Around three dozen people were wounded by that first wave. The Iranian outlet Nour News, which has close links with the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, said a fresh wave was being launched. Iranian air defenses are firing against Israeli attacks The sound of explosions and Iranian air defense systems firing at targets was echoing across the center of the capital, Tehran, shortly after midnight on Saturday.
