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Four Iranian soldiers were killed in Saturday morning's Israeli air strikes on Iran that were in retaliation for the missiles it fired at Israel earlier this month.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry called the attacks “a blatant violation of international law” and said Iran “considers itself entitled and obligated to defend against external aggressive acts”.
Four Iranian military personnel, all from air defence units, were killed in the air strikes, the official Irna news agency reported on Saturday evening, doubling the toll announced earlier in the day.
Some hours after launching the air strikes, Israel said they had been concluded and warned Iran against responding.
Earlier, shortly after a number of blasts were heard in the Iranian capital, Tehran, Israel's military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari issued a video statement in which he said that “in response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran” the Israeli military was “conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran”.
“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7 – on seven fronts – including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” he said, adding in a later statement that the retaliatory military operations had ended.
The UAE strongly condemned the strike on Iran, expressing its deep concern over the continued escalation and the repercussions on security and stability in the region. Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack on Iran as a “violation of its sovereignty” and international law. Expressing its solidarity with Iran, the Syrian foreign ministry said it supported “Iran's legitimate right to defend itself and protect its territory and the lives of its citizens”.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday that Iran should not respond to Israeli strikes, urging restraint on all sides.
This is the first time Israel's military has openly attacked Iran, following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise to hit back after Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1. The strike took place just a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left the Middle East, where he urged Israel to temper its response to Iran.
Israel's military said it intercepted a drone crossing into Israel from Lebanon on Saturday, hours after Israel's strike on Iran.
Iranian state media reported explosions in Tehran after Israel announced striking Iran's capital. Iran’s military said the strikes targeted military bases in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces and caused “limited damage”. It did not elaborate.
“In the early hours of Saturday, several explosions were heard in Tehran,” Irna said. Mehr news agency said: “Reports suggest that some of the loud sounds were cause by the operation of air defence systems.”
The success of the attacks was not immediately clear, but news outlets NBC and CBS quoted an anonymous US official who said the Israeli strike had not targeted oilfields or nuclear sites. The US urged Iran to stop attacking Israel to break the cycle of violence.
“We urge Iran to cease its attacks on Israel so that this cycle of fighting can end without further escalation,” AFP cited US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett as telling reporters.
Saudi Arabia condemned Israel's attack and urged all parties to exercise maximum restraint. It also called on the international community to take action towards de-escalation and ending conflicts in the region, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
According to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Fars news agency, several military bases in the west and south-west of Tehran were among the targets. Hours after the first attack, Iranian media reported air defences had been reactivated over Tehran.
Semi-official news agency Tasnim cited an unnamed source who said that “Iran reserves the right and is ready to respond to any Israeli attack. There is no doubt that Israel will receive the appropriate response to any move [against Iran],” the source added.
Iran resumed airline flights as normal from 9am local time on Saturday, Tasnim reported, shortly after Israel said it concluded its strikes. Earlier, several flights were cancelled at Khomeini Airport in Tehran, according to the airport's website. Among the affected flights, at least four departures and two arrivals were halted.
Civilian aircraft-tracking website Flightradar24 showed that no commercial planes were approaching Tehran around the time of the attack and after. Hours later, Iran had announced the suspension of air traffic at all airports.
Saturday's air strikes follow weeks of speculation about how and when Israel would retaliate for Iran's October 1 missile attack, following an alleged leak of classified US intelligence documents describing Israel's preparations for an attack.
Earlier, Mr Savett said Washington understood that “Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran as an exercise of self-defence and in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1”.
“The US was informed beforehand and there is no US involvement,” a defence official told The National. A senior administration official also said that “the United States is not participating in this Israeli military operation”.
The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed and would continue to receive updates. A White House official said that Vice President Kamala Harris has also been briefed on the incident and will “closely following developments”.
Attack on Syria
The Syrian army said Israel targeted missiles at military sites in the southern and central regions of the country in the early hours of the morning. The state-owned news agency Sana quoted a military official as saying that “air defence systems were activated in response to the aggression”, which came from “the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese airspace”.
He said the Israeli missile barrage began around 2am local time, describing it as “air aggression aimed at military locations”, and that “the full extent of the damage is still being assessed”.
Residents in areas under the control of the central authorities said on Telegram groups that explosions were heard near Damascus, as well as in the central governorate of Homs, the city of Mesyaf in the adjoining Hama governorate, and the southern governorate of Suwaida.
Israeli planes, they said, either struck targets in these areas, or the explosions were due to air defences trying to intercept Israeli planes, possibly on their way to Iran.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported that Syrian air defences had fired at Israeli fighter jets, which were reportedly heading towards Iran. To reach Tehran, Israeli planes would need to cross neighbouring airspaces. One route would be through Jordan and Iraq, while the other would be through Syria and Iraq.
Jordan has already stated it will not allow its airspace to be used for such operations.
– With reports from Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Jordan
