Israel’s worst night: air strike and missile attacks on Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Petrah Tikvah, Israel, and a research center
At least eight people were killed and nearly 100 were wounded when Iran struck Tel Aviv and Haifa with missiles and drones early Monday.
The president warned that if Iran attacked the U.S., the troops would come down on them.
The worst night for Israelis since the start of the fighting occurred, with at least ten casualties and hundreds injured, according to Magen David Adom.
At least six people, including a boy and a girl, were killed in an air strike on a residential building in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Another 180 people were wounded and seven still missing, according to local police.
Four people were killed when an Iranian missile hit a building in Petah Tikvah. The dead included two men and two women, all in their 70s. There are pictures of babies being saved from the rubble.
In the central city of Rehovot, at least 42 people were injured and several campus buildings at The Weizmann Institute of Science, a prominent research center, were also struck. The center said no one on campus was hurt, despite the extensive damage.
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The rebels from Yemen said that they helped Iran by launching missiles at Israel. Israel’s military confirmed that the group also launched missiles at Israel on Friday, coinciding with Iran’s direct retaliation for Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military said it “precisely struck” command centers belonging to Iran’s Quds Force — an elite military and intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — overnight, killing four officials, including the head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization
It was not immediately clear how many people died from the latest blasts in Iran. On Saturday, Iran’s UN ambassador said 78 people had been killed and more than 320 wounded since the start of Israel’s attack.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on both sides to “show maximum restraint” and Pope Leo XIV called for “sincere dialogue” after stating the situation between Israel and Iran had “deteriorated drastically.”
In a video statement on Friday evening, Prime Minister Netanyahu said the attack on Iran was in the works for months since September, following Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, in Beirut.
The strikes came a day after the U.N. nuclear watchdog declared that Iran wasn’t complying with nuclear nonproliferation agreements aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons. Iran reacted saying it would create a new uranium enrichment facility. Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes.
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On Saturday, the Omani foreign minister said on social media that the meeting was canceled. But he said “diplomacy and dialogue remain the only pathway to lasting peace.”
The US Embassy in Tel Aviv will remain closed on Monday after one missile hit the building. No U.S. personnel were reported injured in the strike. Despite continued international calls for de-escalation, neither side showed signs it was prepared to enter talks.
We are committed to stopping anything that threatens our survival and I think we can achieve it.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard stated on Monday that there would be more strikes against Israel.
In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday, President Trump renewed calls for Iran and Israel to make a deal, but later told reporters “sometimes, they just have to fight it out.”
Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the Air Force had achieved “full aerial superiority” over the skies of Tehran on Monday. He said that the military had destroyed most of Iran’s missile launchers.
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“The irony in all of this is that Iran could still emerge from this conflict with a bomb,” Mr. Ostovar said. “Now, unlike the past, there’s a real explicit need for a nuclear weapon, because Iran has no deterrence left whatsoever.”
Many Iranians who already abhorred their theocratic and authoritarian rulers blame them for the sharp escalation of the conflict. As the civilian death toll rises, however, some may come to soften toward their leaders, or at least harden their attitudes toward Israel, Ms. Geranmayeh said. Patriotic posts, though not pro-regime ones, are already proliferating on Iranian social media.
Once, Iran might have turned to its tried-and-true strategy of using its short-range weaponry on neighbors such as Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, or on U.S. military facilities in the region. But relations with Gulf Arab states have improved in recent years, making Iran reluctant to target them. Analysts said that provoking the US into entering the war would only increase Iran’s problems.
While the U.S. military has said Iran had about 3,000 missiles, it is not clear that all of them have the range to hit Israel. And Iran must shoot off so many at a time to penetrate Israeli air defenses that it will deplete its stockpile more quickly than it can manufacture more, analysts said.
Israel is using that freedom of movement to go after Iranian missile launchers as well as the production facilities that would allow Iran to replenish its missile stocks, Mr. Hinz said.
Beyond its Hezbollah-and-missiles deterrence strategy, Iran had also invested heavily in air defenses to protect itself. Israel attacked the systems last year and left them out in the cold.
Israeli intelligence managed to penetrate Iran so thoroughly that Israel was able to launch drone attacks on Iranian targets from inside Iran on Friday and to kill some of the most senior figures in the military’s chain of command.
The portrayal of Israel has come into question since war started between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Over the year and a half that followed, Iran has suffered blow after blow.
One of those partners, Hezbollah, was on the Israeli side of the border with rockets. In Iraq, Iranian-backed militant groups were in position to target American military installations there. Iranian short-range missiles could also threaten U.S. bases in the Middle East. And Tehran could launch a barrage of long-range missiles and drones into Israel that would potentially overwhelm Israeli air defenses and shatter the country’s sense of security.
Iran has showed it was outgunned and outsmarted by Israel, according to an expert at the European Council of Foreign Relations.
Those humiliations accelerated on Friday with the start of an Israeli campaign that has gone after targets across Iran, crippled its air defenses and killed several of its top military commanders and a number of prominent nuclear scientists. Hundreds of people have died in Iran and 24 in Israel after a new round of conflict.
There was the airstrike on an Iranian Embassy building in Syria last year that killed several senior Iranian commanders. The assassination three months later of one of Iran’s top militant partners while he was visiting Tehran. Iranian air defenses were attacked in April and October of 2019. The systematic decimation of Iran’s allies in the Middle East include Hamas, Hezbollah, and President al-Assad of Syria.
Iran is often depicted as a dangerous state with a nuclear program that threatens Israel and the US, as well as other countries around the world.