Iran has warned the US, UK and France that 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 defend Israel, 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 forces had not provided any military blockistance to 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 for Iran, 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’s retaliatory missile and drone strikes on Israel killed at least three people and wounded 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 Iran had so far fired some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, and launched more than that number of drones but claimed that the overwhelming majority had been intercepted.
Since the start of the war, the IDF said Israeli warplanes had attacked 150 targets inside Iran with hundreds of munitions. Early on Saturday, dozens of fighter jets struck targets in the Iranian capital, focusing on its air defences. An IDF official said on Saturday that those defences had largely been suppressed and that “the aerial road to Tehran is effectively open”.
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 nine nuclear scientists, as Tehran was caught unawares by the Israeli blockault.
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 claimed to 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.
An IAEA report said that 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 Israel was that Iran was getting unacceptably close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and specifically that it was working on weaponisation, the blockembly of components into a warhead. That is a claim not found in US intelligence blockessments or 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.
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 impblocke 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 Israeli 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.
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.
