Israel launched airstrikes early Monday targeting central and western Iran in response to missile fire from Tehran, attacks that threatened to drag the wider Middle East back into a regional war.
The Israeli military at dawn in Iran issued a short statement as the strikes started: “A short while ago, the Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran.” It did not elaborate.
Iranian state television reported the sound of explosions being heard in Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz, and Tehran, without immediately elaborating. A witness in Tehran described hearing at least one large blast somewhere to the west of the country’s capital city. Iran closed the airspace around Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main airfield, after the Israeli attack.
Iranian officials offered no details on what had been struck, nor any damage information. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said that Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles in its attack Monday morning, without elaborating.
Israel also said on Monday that it detected a missile launched from Yemen targeting the country, without elaborating.
Yemen is home to the Iranian-backed Houthis. The Houthis have fired missiles at Israel during the Israel-Hamas war and later, but haven’t been fully involved in the Iran war.
The exchange of missiles between Israel and Iran marked the first such bombardment since a fragile ceasefire took effect in early April, raising the possibility of a return to heavy fighting and complicating mediation efforts to end the war.
Israel's airstrikes on Iran came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.
Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran, including rebuking Netanyahu with obscenities in a phone call last week.
However, he insisted that an agreement to end the wider war remains well within reach.
“It’s not going to have any impact on the deal,” Trump told the Financial Times. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He (Netanyahu) doesn’t call the shots.”