Iran has warned the US, UK andFrancethat their military bases and ships will be targeted if they help block the Iranian missile and drone retaliation for Israel’s attack, threatening to widen an already bloody war over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Donald Trump has said the US will help defendIsrael, and American officials have been quoted in news reports saying that US forces have already helped shoot down Iranian drones and missiles as they approached Israel. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, also said on Friday that his country would help defend Israel against Iranian reprisals.
The UK government has said its forceshad not provided any military assistanceto Israel as the prime minister, Keir Starmer, has emphasised the need for de-escalation.
Tehran is seeking to deter western support for Israel’s defence at a time most of the missiles and drones it fires at Israel are being intercepted before they reach their targets. However, following through on the threat, delivered on Saturday through state media, would be an enormous gamble forIran, drawing western forces into the conflict when it is already reeling under the force of sustained Israeli bombing.
Speaking at a session of the UN security council on Friday, the US diplomat McCoy Pitt warned: “No government proxy or independent actor should target American citizens, American bases or other American infrastructure in the region. The consequences for Iran would be dire.”
On Saturday, Israeli planes focused bombing sorties on Tehran while Iran sought to hit back with salvoes of missiles and drones as the aerial war entered its second day. Israel appeared determined to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme and Iran vowed it would make Israel regret its surprise attack.
Iran launched retaliatory missile and drone strikes on Israel into Saturday morning, killing at least three people and wounding dozens. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, warned Iran’s supreme leader,Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that “Tehran will burn” if it keeps firing missiles at Israeli civilians.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that dozens of its warplanes struck targets in the Iranian capital, focusing on its air defences. Iranian state media said that a fighter jet hangar at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport had also been targeted. Iran’s state TV said about 60 people, including 20 children, had been killed in an attack on a housing complex in Tehran.
Iran’s envoy to the UN security council, Amir Saeid Iravani, said on Friday that 78 people had been killed in the Israeli attacks, and that more than 320 were injured, most of them civilians. Many of Iran’s top generals were among the dead, as well as at least six nuclear scientists, as Tehran was caught unawares by the Israeli assault.
The Iranian government also confirmed limited damage at its uranium enrichment plant at Fordow, the second enrichment facility bombed by the Israeli air force. On Friday,the IDF claimedto have inflicted “significant damage” at the plant at Natanz. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed the above-ground part of the Natanz plant had been destroyed but noted no apparent damage to its underground chambers.
AnIAEA report saidthat attacks caused radiological and chemical contamination in the Natanz facility, but that it was manageable and there was no sign of higher radiation in the area around the plant. Iran also said there had been attacks on its nuclear site in Isfahan, which houses a uranium conversion plant, a fuel production unit and other facilities.
The IAEA reminded Israel that attacks on nuclear sites were illegal and contrary to the UN charter, with a potential to cause “radioactive releases with grave consequences”.
Israelis in Tel Aviv and other cities spent the dawn hours on Saturday in shelters as a new barrage of Iranian missiles headed towards them, while the IDF said it had intercepted incoming drones in the skies above the Dead Sea. Later in the morning, sirens went off in the West Bank and in northern Israel, near the Sea of Galilee.
The worst casualties from the incoming missiles were in the West Bank, where five Palestinians, including three children, were killed, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, reportedly by a projectile fired by Houthi forces in Yemen, who are Iranian allies.
Over the first 24 hours of the conflict, three Israelis were also killed, two in Rishon LeZion and one in nearby Tel Aviv, with dozens injured and extensive damage to buildings.
There were reports from Gaza of Israeli shooting of large numbers of Palestinians trying to reach food distribution points, but details were hard to confirm on the third day of a communications blackout after the severing of a critical cable by Israeli forces.
Before Israel’s attack in the early hours of Friday, Iranian and US negotiators had been due to meet in Oman to discuss a peaceful solution to the impasse over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said the talks had “become meaningless”. He stopped short of declaring the negotiations cancelled. The Mizan news agency, which is run by Iran’s judiciary, quoted him as saying: “It is still not clear what we decide about Sunday’s talks.”
There was every sign on Saturday morning that the war was far from over. Overnight Israel’s prime minister,Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed that a lot more Israel attacks were “on the way” while Khamenei pledged that Israel would be brought to “ruin”.
Earlier, the new head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Pakpour – hastily appointed after his predecessor was killed in Israel’s attack – threatened to open “the gates of hell” in retaliation with the Middle East facing the prospect of a full-scale war of uncertain duration.
In Tel Aviv on Friday night, smoke from one impact site rose up in columns so thick they obscured the city skyline, including nearby skyscrapers, as bright fragments of intercepted missiles arced above. One missile hit a high-rise residential building near the heart of Tel Aviv, shattering windows down most of the facade and reducing the worst-hit areas to a tangle of exposed, twisted steel bars.
On the ground floor, firefighters picked their way through the rubble beside the crumpled remains of a car caught in the blast, a report on Israeli TV showed.
Israel’s ambulance service said 34 people were injured on Friday night in the Tel Aviv area, most with minor injuries. Police later said one person had died. Another two people were confirmed killed in a direct missile strike on central Israel on Saturday morning.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, accused Iran of crossing “red lines” by attacking civilian areas, although some of Israel’s own strikes earlier in the day had hit residential parts of Iranian cities.
Katz said: “We will continue to defend the citizens of Israel and ensure that the Ayatollah regime pays a very heavy price for its heinous actions.”
The Israeli leadership and the IDF have insisted that its offensive against Iran, called Rising Lion, would continue until Tehran’s nuclear programme – which Netanyahu said was on the brink of producing weapons – was comprehensively destroyed.
“That’s the goal, to remove the threat and to make sure they don’t have a nuclear bomb and that there is not an active existential threat on the Israeli people,” an IDF officer said.
Addressing the UN security council, the IAEA director-general, Rafael Grossi, warned of the potentially disastrous consequences of such attacks.
Grossi said“I have repeatedly stated that nuclear facilities must never be attacked, regardless of the context or circumstances, as it could harm both people and the environment. Such attacks have serious implications for nuclear safety, security and safeguards, as well as regional and international peace and security.”
The US role in the Israeli operation remained murky. In the run-up to the Israeli 200-plane attack, Donald Trump had publicly urged Israel to give diplomacy more of a chance before US-Iranian talks that were planned for Sunday. On Friday, the US president insisted he had been well informed of Israel’s plans and described the Israeli attack as “excellent”.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal what kind of heads-up the US had been given, Trump responded testily: “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. It was, we know what’s going on.”
Speaking separately to ABC News, he praised the attacks and linked the timing to a 60-day ultimatum he had given Tehran in the spring, to negotiate a deal. “I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more,” Trump said.
On his own Truth Social online platform, Trump urged Iran to make a deal or face further planned attacks that would be “even more brutal”.
ABC quoted a “source familiar with the intelligence” as saying the US had provided “exquisite” intelligence and would help defend Israel as needed.