Iran has vowed to avenge the attack on its nuclear sites and the assassination in Tehran of its senior military leadership, saying it would respond forcefully and that the “end of this story will be written by Iran’s hand”.
In the first signs of a counterstrike, Israel said Iran had launched 100 drones towards Israel and that its air defences were intercepting them outside Israeli territory.
Iraq said more than 100 Iranian drones had crossed its airspace and, soon after, neighbouring Jordan said its air force and defence systems intercepted several missiles and drones that had entered its airspace, for fear they would fall in its territory.
Iran, in serious military disarray, denied it had launched any drones and claimed its counterstrike had not been launched.
Responding to what amounted to the most serious and largest ever attack by Israel, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened “severe punishment” and claimed residential areas had been targeted.
The Iranian leadership vowed a military and diplomatic response, saying women and children had been killed in the strikes across Iran. The Fars news agency claimed 78 people had been killed and more than 300 injured in Tehran province alone. A vast swathe of Iran’s military and air force leadership has been wiped out, and as many as six scientists working on Iran’s nuclear programme.
It remains to be seen if Iran will decide to attack US military sites in the Middle East, but its leaders will have heard Donald Trump praising Israel’s actions and claiming the US had known about the attacks in advance, even if it did not take part.
Iran also faces a decision on whether to accept Trump’s offer to continue with the bilateral talks on a diplomatic solution to its nuclear programme. The sixth round of Oman-brokered talks involving the US special envoy Steve Witkoff were due to be held in Muscat on Sunday.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, did not announce that the talks had been ended by the Israeli strike. Instead he said Israel had crossed every red line, accused Israel of a declaration of war, and called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council in New York. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, told the council that the above-ground pilot enrichment plant at Iran’s main nuclear facility in Natanz had been been destroyed, although he said the level of radioactivity outside the plant remained unchanged.
Iranian officials dismissed Trump’s suggestion that Tehran should have expected an attack since a 60-day deadline the US president claimed he had set for the talks had expired.
In a furious statement, the Iranian government accused Israel of terrorism and insisted the attack demonstrated it “does not adhere to any international rules or laws and, like a drunkard, openly and brazenly engages in terror and ignites the flames of war before the eyes of the world, including westerners who claim to uphold human rights and international law”.
“Starting a war with Iran is playing with the lion’s tail,” the statement added.
In a telling warning that the Iranian regime, if it survives, may now indeed feel the need to try to assemble a nuclear bomb in the face of Israel’s attacks, the statement further said: “The world now better understands Iran’s insistence on the right to enrichment, nuclear technology and missile power, and the enemy has made it possible to prove our injustice and righteousness, who is the aggressor and which regime is threatening the security of the region.”
Hardline MPs called on the supreme leader to lift the fatwa that is supposed to prevent Iran pursuing a nuclear programme. With its axis of resistance weakened over the past year by Israel’s actions, there has been a growing lobby arguing that Iran needs a nuclear bomb to defend itself.
Among those killed by Israeli strikes were Gen Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards; Gen Gholamali Rashid, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander; the nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi; and Fereydoun Abbasi, the former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
Replacements for two of the top roles were announced within hours of the attack. Maj Gen Abdolrahim Mousavi was appointed as chief of staff of the armed forces, replacing Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri, who was killed in the Israeli attack. Khamenei chose Mohammad Pakpour to lead the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, replacing Salami, state television reported.
Residential buildings across Tehran were hit. Pictures showed that specific floors on high-rise apartments were struck, but the damage had spread to many different floors.
Army barracks across the country appear to have been hit, with reports of deaths and damage. But Isfahan regional governors said there had been no leakage of uranium from the Natanz nuclear facility.
No electricity or oil installations were struck, but Israel may well return to hit economic targets in the coming days, depending on any Iranian response. It has also not sought to assassinate any of Iran’s political or diplomatic leadership.
Iran, aware that the savage blow to its prestige may lead to some form of uprising, urged its citizens to listen only to official channels, and ignore rumours.
The planned sixth round of talks, the first in which both sides had put forward proposals in writing, were to focus on whether Iran would be allowed to continue domestic uranium enrichment with monitoring by the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran says it does not have a covert plan to build a nuclear bomb, but all signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty including Iran have a sovereign right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
It says the comprehensive report put to the IAEA board this week showed no evidence that Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon. The report did say it could not be certain that the nuclear programme was entirely civilian in purpose. Tehran has consistently argued that its increased stockpiles of highly enriched uranium is a calculated and legitimate response to Donald Trump unilaterally withdrawing in 2018 from the nuclear deal agreed with Barack Obama three years earlier and imposing economic sanctions.
The highly experienced Iranian negotiating team were aware that Israel was increasingly worried that Trump, facing an open war for his ear on Iran in Washington, might strike an unsatisfactory deal with Iran. But the consensus among Arab diplomats was that Trump was sincere in saying he did not want Israel to strike.
The belief among Iranian negotiators that they had further time before Trump implicitly or explicitly sanctioned military action looks, in retrospect, to have been a severe error. But the right to enrich has been an Iranian red line for decades, and they will reject the accusation they overplayed a weak hand.
Moreover, Iranian diplomats had been led to believe initially that the US would permit Iran to continue some form of uranium enrichment, but had been struggling to convert that belief into a specific American offer in the talks held in Oman and Rome. Iran will now have to reflect whether it was being played by the US negotiators, or whether Israel has the freedom of action to mount such an assault without a green light from Washington.
To many Iranian eyes, despite the reports that Trump was distancing himself from Israel, the US president has done little in practice since taking office to restrain Israel either in Gaza or across the region.
Iran’s air defences have proved ineffective, partly due to the previous airstrikes launched by Israel in October that took out Russian-made air defence systems, including around its nuclear sites.
One of the few cards Iran has to play is that in recent months it has managed to improve its fractured relations with Arab states in the region, even though its policy of forward defence based on proxy groups in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Yemen and Iraq was largely dismantled by Israel. But the valued Gulf state sympathy for Iran is not likely to extend to joint military action against Israel.
