2 days ago
Iran Retaliates against Israel with Barrage of Ballistic Missiles
Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post
First responders at the scene of a residential building in Ramat Gan, Israel, that was heavily damaged by Iran's barrage of ballistic missiles Friday.
Iran unleashed a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel late Friday as it retaliated for the waves of Israeli strikes that killed top military leaders and nuclear scientists, and damaged a key uranium enrichment site.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced the start of the retaliatory attack in a recorded message carried by state television. 'We will not allow them to get away with this great crime they committed,' he said. 'The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic will deal heavy blows to this enemy.'
Most of the missiles were intercepted or fell short, the Israel Defense Forces said Friday, but at least one appeared to have slammed into central Tel Aviv in an area where a major military base is located.
'Iran has crossed red lines by daring to fire missiles at civilian population centers in Israel,' Defense Minister Israel Katz said. 'We will continue to defend the citizens of Israel and will ensure that the Ayatollah regime pays a very heavy price for its criminal actions.'
Israeli leaders have portrayed the campaign as a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear program. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that only military force would denuclearize Iran.
But after a year of crippling military and strategic setbacks, including the loss of key allies in Lebanon and Syria, Iran has a limited arsenal with which to fight back. And it's unclear how Tehran plans to match Israel's escalation, which could last days or weeks, according to Israeli officials.
Iran and Israel, longtime rivals, began openly trading blows last year as part of the regional spillover from the war in Gaza. But the attacks – including an Israeli strike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria – were more narrowly calibrated to avoid spiraling into a wider conflict.
Now, Tehran is much more isolated, with its partner, Hezbollah, decimated in Lebanon and the regime it propped up in Syria gone. In October, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel after a covert Israeli operation killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. But on Friday, the IDF said fewer than 100 missiles were launched from Iran, although around 40 people were injured in the strike, according to medics and emergency services in Israel.
In Iran, the Israeli strikes 'crossed all red lines,' Ali Larijani, a prominent Iranian politician and adviser to the supreme leader, said in an interview with state television. Larijani spoke by phone, pledging: 'There are no limits left to respond to this crime, and the hand of divine vengeance will grip the brutal terrorist regime and its supporters.'
Previous Israeli strikes targeted Iranian military sites and hardware, many of them far from major cities, but Friday's raids included attacks on military leaders at their homes in residential areas.
'This was in the center of Tehran, entire apartment buildings collapsed. So this was not the kind of restrained engagement we saw last year,' said Nicole Grajewski, an Iran researcher and nuclear policy fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Rescue teams in Tehran dug through the rubble for hours Friday at strike sites where senior military officials and nuclear scientists were targeted. At least 78 people were killed in the Israeli strikes across Iran on Friday, according to Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. It was not clear if that toll included both civilians and military forces.
Among the senior officers killed were Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC Aerospace Forces; Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the army chief of staff who reported directly to the supreme leader; and Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was responsible for coordinating operations among Iran's military forces, according to Iranian broadcasters.
Grajewski said the conflict could expand if Iran determines there was U.S. involvement in the attacks. 'It would give Iran more targets,' she said.
In anticipation of the Israeli strikes, the Trump administration drew down the number of personnel it had in the region, scaling back diplomatic operations in Iraq, as the Pentagon authorized military families to withdraw from other places in the Middle East.
Patriot and THAAD missile defense batteries, operated by U.S. military personnel and originally deployed under the Biden administration, participated in Israeli air defense Friday evening, according to U.S. defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. That represented a more limited participation in Israel's defense than last year, when American air and sea assets helped shoot down incoming Iranian missiles during two retaliatory Iranian attacks.
Among Israel's targets Friday were enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, as well as a nuclear facility in Isfahan, according to Israeli officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog.
The agency's director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, told the U.N. Security Council that damage to Natanz had caused 'radioactive and chemical contamination at the site.' The potential impact on other facilities was unclear. There were reports of military activity around Fordow, but there was no confirmation it was hit.
Iran had been in talks with the Trump administration to negotiate a new nuclear deal, after the U.S. president withdrew in his first term from a comprehensive agreement Tehran struck with world powers, including the United States under President Barack Obama.
Iran's foreign minister and President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, were supposed to meet Sunday in Oman for another round of negotiations. '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 on Truth Social on Friday. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.'
Inside Iran, many residents were taking stock of the damage and preparing for the possibility of a drawn-out confrontation. The sheer scale of destruction from hours of relentless strikes that simultaneously hit multiple parts of the country appeared to initially frustrate the official Iranian response.
In Tehran, state television broadcast back-to-back coverage of the strikes' aftermath, with correspondents reporting from rubble-strewn streets. Outside a residential building in central Tehran, a television reporter said that a number of civilians had been pulled from the rubble, including children.
'The rescue teams are now lifting debris from one unit that hasn't been cleared yet,' he said, gesturing to a partially collapsed building facade. 'A few minutes ago, the bodies of two martyrs, a woman and a young kid, were taken out,' he said. A small crowd gathered behind him to watch the rescue teams work.
In the Saadat Abad neighborhood in northwestern Tehran, another strike targeted an apartment block that neighbors said housed some nuclear scientists. 'As you can see, the complex behind me has been badly hit. Three floors have collapsed,' a reporter said, adding that the force of the explosion triggered a fire and sent debris flying.
Other Iranians described terrifying scenes that stretched into early dawn Friday.
'It was scary at some points at night, of course. We live very close to one of the targets in Nobonyad. I think it was a military target,' said 32-year-old Saba, a housewife who lives in a neighborhood on Tehran's northern edge.
Neda, a swimming instructor from Tabriz, said the waves of attacks in her area seemed to grow louder as the day went on. Like Saba, Neda spoke on the condition that she be identified by only her first name because of fear of retribution.
Now, Neda said, her neighbors are scrambling to prepare for what's expected to be another night of heavy strikes.
'I heard from friends that there is already a kilometers-long petrol line,' she said.
