Israel has claimed to have gained control of the skies over the Iranian capital and warned that “Tehran will burn” if more missiles are fired at its territory, but the Iranian leadership remained defiant, vowing a “more severe and powerful response” and threatened to widen the war by striking ships and bases of Israeli allies.
The mutual threats reflected the risks of a dramatic escalation in the conflict, as US-Iranian negotiations planned before the war in Oman were abandoned after Tehran said they would be “meaningless”, and Israel appeared to target Iran’s gas industry. Israeli rhetoric reflected its leaders’ growing confidence that they have gained the upper hand, and raised questions over whether Israeli war aims could go beyond the stated objective of crippling Iran’s nuclear programme.
The threat to destroy Tehran was delivered by Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, after Iran responded to the surprise Israeli attack on Friday morning with a barrage of several hundred ballistic missiles and drones, a small percentage of which succeeded in penetrating Israeli defences and killed three people in Tel Aviv and Rishon LeZion.
Katz, whose forces have already razed large parts of Gaza, held Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responsible for Tehran’s fate.
“The Iranian dictator is taking the citizens of Iran hostage, bringing about a reality in which they, and especially Tehran’s residents, will pay a heavy price for the flagrant harm inflicted upon Israel’s citizens,” Katz said. “If Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted the air defences around the capital city on Saturday morning and became increasingly confident they had achieved complete air superiority and freedom of action.
“The aerial road to Tehran is effectively open,” an IDF official said. Later in the day, Benjamin Netanyahu said: “In the very near future, you will see Israeli air force jets over the skies of Tehran.”
Air force warplanes, the Israeli prime minister said, would target “any site and any target of the Ayatollah regime”, after dealing a “real blow” to Iran’s nuclear programme.
A few hours later, Iranian media reported a “massive explosion” at a refinery in the port city of Kangan, linked to the South Pars gas field, the world’s largest. The media reports said it had been struck by an Israeli drone, which would be the first attack on Iran’s oil and gas industry, a development with potentially huge economic and environmental consequences. The IDF did not immediately comment on the attack, and Iran’s oil ministry said the resulting fire had been extinguished by late evening.
Iranian leaders maintained a defiant front. The president, Masoud Pezeshkian, pledged that continued Israeli attacks would produce a “more severe and powerful response”, the new Revolutionary Guards commander vowed his forces would “open the gates of hell” on Israel, and Iranian state media quoted officials aswarning the US, UK and France that their military bases and ships will be targetedif they helped shoot down Iran’s missiles and drones.
The US and France have already stated their readiness to defend Israel, and American media reports have suggested that US forces have already been in action. The UK government has said its forces had not provided any military assistance to Israel and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, has emphasised the need for de-escalation.
Following through on the threat would be an enormous gamble for Iran, drawing western forces further 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.”
At the same time, Israel’s air defences have shown themselves capable of minimising the danger posed by Iranian missiles and drones. The IDF said Iran had so far fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel and launched more than that number of drones but claimed the overwhelming majority had been intercepted.
The Iranian response has also been further blunted by Israel’s targeted killing of Tehran’s senior generals, almost completely wiping out the top echelons of the chain of the command. On Saturday, the IDF claimed to have killed two more: the head of intelligence for the armed forces, Gholam-Reza Marhabi, and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ ballistic missile arm, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri.
In total since the start of the war, the IDF said Israeli warplanes had attacked 150 targets inside Iran with hundreds of munitions.
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. Alongside Iran’s top generals there were nine nuclear scientists among the dead, as Tehran was caught unawares by the Israeli assault.
An IDF official described the targeted scientists as the “people who were main sources of knowledge, the main forces advancing the nuclear programme”.
The Iranian government also said there was limited damage at its uranium enrichment plant at Fordow, its second enrichment facility but Israel denied having bombed it. 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”.
Israel’s justification for its attack on Iran was that the country was getting unacceptably close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and specifically that it was working on weaponisation, the assembly of components into a warhead. That is a claimnot found in US intelligence assessmentsor in IAEA reports.
An IDF official on Saturday gave more details of Israel’s allegation, claiming that Iranian technicians had been working on an explosive trigger mechanism for a nuclear bomb, and that part of that work was being done in Isfahan.
“We have seen clear intelligence indicating that they are taking steps forward rapidly, that cannot be understood in any other way than for a nuclear bomb,” the official said.
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.
The few missiles that pierced Israel’s defences caused significant damage but few fatalities. InTel Aviv on Friday night, smoke from one impact site rose up in columns so thick they obscured the city skyline.
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.
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.
Addressing the UN security council, the IAEA director-general, Rafael Grossi, warned of the potentially disastrous consequences of such attacks.
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”.
ABC quoted a “source familiar with the intelligence” as saying the US had provided “exquisite” intelligence and would help defend Israel as needed.