Israel has launched an attack on Iran aimed at “dozens” of targets including its nuclear facilities, military commanders and scientists, claiming it took unilateral action because Tehran had begun to build nuclear warheads.
As Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, threatened “severe punishment” against Israel, the Israeli military said on Friday morning that Iran had launched 100 drones aimed at Israel and that the country’s defences were focused on intercepted them.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the Israeli attack, which it is calling Rising Lion, was aimed at “rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival”, adding that it would take “many days”.
“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme,” Netanyahu said in a recorded televised address. “We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation programme. We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile programme.”
Later, in comments that suggest the operation could be long and difficult, Netanyahu said: “Israeli citizens may have to remain in sheltered areas for lengthy periods of time.”
Iranian state media said the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen Hossein Salami, the army chief of staff, Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri, and the commander of the Khatam al-Anbia joint forces headquarters, Maj Gen Gholamali Rashid, had been killed in the strikes, as well as six nuclear scientists, including Fereydoun Abbasi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization from 2011 to 2013.
