Israel announced on Saturday the launch of ‘precision strikes’ on military targets in Iran, in retaliation for the attacks against it, at a time when several explosions were heard by AFP in Tehran.
Iranian state television reported ‘six loud explosions’ around the Iranian capital. They are ‘linked to the activation of the air defense system against the operation of the Zionist regime which attacked three sites on the outskirts of Tehran’, said the channel, in reference to Israel which the Islamic Republic does not recognize.
Israel’s strikes in Iran are ‘self-defense,’ White House says. The United States was informed in advance by its Israeli ally of these strikes but Washington is not involved in this operation, said an American defense official.
These arise in a context of regional tensions exacerbated for a year by the war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, and its spillover into neighboring Lebanon, where the Israeli army is confronting Hezbollah. These two Islamist movements are allies of Iran which arms and finances them.
Tehran launched some 200 missiles at Israel on October 1, including for the first time several hypersonic missiles. Israel had vowed to make Iran pay for this attack.
“In response to months of continued attacks by the Iranian regime against the State of Israel, the Israeli army is currently carrying out targeted strikes on military targets in Iran,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
‘The Iranian regime and its allies in the region have continued to attack Israel since October 7 (2023) – on seven fronts – including attacks from Iranian soil (….). The State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond. Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized,’ the Israeli army further assured.
The first detonations rang out around 2:15 a.m. local time (12:45 a.m. Saturday Swiss time), mainly west of Tehran, according to the official Irna news agency.
After a series of six detonations reported earlier in the night by state television, continuous detonations accompanied by light trails were heard and seen from the center of Tehran by AFP journalists.
Tehran announced the suspension until further notice of all flights in its airspace.
‘No fire or explosion’ was reported at Tehran’s main refinery, local news agency Tasnim said.
‘Self-defense’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday led a review meeting with the country’s top military and security officials following the launch of ‘precision strikes’ on Iran, his spokesperson said.
The meeting, at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, was attended by the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff of the army, the head of Mossad (foreign intelligence) and the head of the Shin Bet (domestic intelligence),” the spokesperson added in a statement.
Washington said it ‘understands that Israel’s targeted strikes against military targets in Iran constitute self-defense maneuvers and come in response to the Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel on October 1.’
The Iranian missile launches of October 1 were presented by Tehran as retaliation for Israeli strikes in Lebanon, which cost the lives of an Iranian general and the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, at the end of September.
The latter, who had led the Lebanese movement for more than 30 years, maintained close ties with Iran.
Iranian officials also justified this operation as a response to the assassination on their territory, attributed to Israel, of Ismaïl Haniyeh, then leader of Hamas.
In recent weeks, Iran has played on both tension and relaxation, faced with threats of Israeli retaliation for its missile launches.
‘We will hit you again painfully’ in the event of an attack, warned General Hossein Salami, the leader of the Revolutionary Guards, the powerful ideological army responsible for defending the regime of the Islamic Republic.
Diplomatic tour
At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi engaged in an intense diplomatic campaign, visiting all Middle Eastern countries except Israel in two weeks.
‘We do not want war, we want peace’, insisted Mr. Araghchi several times, assuring however that Iran was ‘totally ready to face a war situation’.
In April, Tehran had already fired missiles and drones against Israel, during an unprecedented operation after a deadly attack against its consulate in Syria, blamed on the Israeli army.
Detonations in central Iran were subsequently reported, with senior American officials speaking in the media about an Israeli response. Israel, for its part, has never claimed responsibility for an attack.
Iran, for its part, minimized these detonations, the origin of which has never been clearly explained.
– Israeli strike in Syria –
In Syria, the state news agency announced that Israel had carried out an air attack from the occupied Golan and the airspace of neighboring Lebanon against ‘military positions’ on its territory overnight.
‘Our anti-aircraft defense confronted the enemy’s missiles and shot down a number of them,’ the source said.
‘The anti-aircraft defense was activated’ in several regions, notably in Homs (center), Damascus and its surroundings, to ‘try to target Israeli planes which were crossing Syrian airspace,’ he said. AFP Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of OSDH (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights), an NGO which has a vast network of sources in Syria.
Iraq, for its part, announced the suspension of traffic at all its airports until further notice due to ‘regional tensions’.
The factions of the ‘Islamic Resistance in Iraq’, a nebula of Iraqi armed groups allied with Tehran, claimed responsibility for a drone attack at dawn on Saturday against a ‘military target’ in northern Israel, after the announcement of strikes Israeli forces on Iran.
/ATS
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