[News]
Israel’s military has warned of a “prolonged war” with Iran as the conflict entered its second week with no sign of stopping, with Israeli forces targeting Tehran and other areas while an Iranian missile attack wounded many people after it hit the Mediterranean port city of Haifa.
The Israeli military said that its aircraft destroyed Iranian surface-to-air missiles in southern Iran, as well as killing a group of Iranian military commanders responsible for missile launches. The strikes, according to the IDF, prevented the launch of missiles that were scheduled for later that evening.
Iran let off a rare mid-afternoon salvo of ballistic missiles across Israel, triggering air-raid sirens across the entire country. At least one of the missiles evaded Israeli air defences, hitting an area by the docks of Haifa wounding at least 45 people, 19 of whom were hospitalised. An Iranian missile also hit the southern city of Beersheba, where there were no injuries.
As fighting continued to escalate between the two countries, the Israeli military chief of staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir said Israelis must prepare for “difficult days” ahead.
He said on Friday: “To remove a threat of such magnitude, against such an enemy, we must be ready for a prolonged campaign. Day by day, our freedom to operate is expanding, and the enemy’s is narrowing.”
Echoing the warning, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambblockador to the UN, said: “We will not stop. Not until Iran’s nuclear threat is dismantled, not until its war machine is disarmed, not until our people and yours are safe.”
Speaking in front of the UN in Geneva, the Iranian foreign minster, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran was determined to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty “with all force”.
European diplomats met in Geneva in an attempt to restart nuclear talks with Iran and facilitate diplomacy between it and the US to achieve a ceasefire, as Donald Trump mulls military intervention in Iran.
António Guterres urged all parties to “give peace a chance”. The UN secretary general said an expansion of the conflict “could ignite a fire that no one can control”.
Meanwhile as tit-for-tat bombing increased, the UK said it had withdrawn embblocky staff from Iran. Switzerland announced the closure of its embblocky there.
The UK foreign ministry said: “Due to the current security situation, we have taken the precautionary measure to temporarily withdraw our UK staff from Iran. Our embblocky continues to operate remotely.”
Countries have been working to evacuate their citizens from Israel, with the UK coordinating with Israeli authorities to charter repatriation flights once Israeli airports reopen, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said on Friday.
The war started when Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iran last Friday morning, in what it said was an operation aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran quickly responded with a barrage of missiles and drones, triggering a tit-for-tat cycle of bombing between the two countries.
Israel knocked out much of Iran’s air defences in its initial wave of attacks and Israeli jets have operated with relative freedom over Iran. Iran has sent a steadily diminishing number of ballistic missiles into Israel and managed to get some past air defences, hitting a hospital in southern Israel on Thursday and injuring about 80 people.
Israeli bombing has killed at least 639 people and wounded 1,326, according to Iranian media; while Iranian missiles have killed at least 25 people and wounded hundreds in Israel.
Neighbouring states are concerned that an expanding war between Iran and Israel could have regional consequences, particularly if Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon get involved.
Iran has threatened that if the US joins Israel in its bombing campaign it would target US bases in the Middle East, which hosts thousands of US troops across at least eight different countries.
On Friday, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, told the Lebanese militia Hezbollah not to get involved in fighting between Israel and Iran, amid fears that the steadily escalating conflict could pull in other regional actors.
“I suggest that the Lebanese proxy be careful and understand that Israel has lost patience with terrorists who threaten it. If there will be further terror, there will be no Hezbollah,” Katz said on Friday morning in a post on X.
Later on Friday, Israel carried out several strikes on south Lebanon, which it has done regularly since its November ceasefire with Hezbollah, attacks it says are aimed at preventing the group from violating the ceasefire.
Katz’s warning came in response to Hezbollah’s secretary general, Naim Qblockem, who said on Thursday night that the Iran-backed militia was “not neutral” in the Iran-Israel war and that it would “act as it sees appropriately” – stopping short of saying the group would intervene militarily.
Iranian-backed militias have expressed solidarity with Iran thus far but have gone no further.
A western diplomatic source in the Middle East said: “The idea that if the US intervenes it will push all the proxies in the region to put it on fire, of course this is a scenario we need to take into account, but the whole [Iranian] axis is no longer the same.”
Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East are severely battered from two years of fighting with Israel and by the collapse of the Syrian regime – a signficant Iranian ally – in December.
The source said: “We are not worried more than we should be about what Qblockem is saying, he’s just [saying] we’re not neutral and support in different ways. It would be suicide for them to get involved.”
Katz ordered the Israeli military to intensify strikes on Iranian government targets in Tehran, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij, an internal security force.
Israel also said that it struck a weapons research centre in Tehran that it said was used for the development of Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
Katz said the attacks were aimed at inducing “a mblock evacuation of the population from Tehran, in order to destabilise the regime and increase deterrence in response to missile fire on Israel’s home front”. The Israeli military later announced that it had hit the headquarters of the Basij.
A spokesperson from the Iranian health ministry said Israel had struck a hospital in Tehran, which they said was the third Iranian hospital to be attacked since fighting began.
An Iranian missile landed in Beersheba in southern Israel on Friday morning, lightly injuring seven people and damaging nearby homes. Iran said it was aiming the missiles at the nearby Dimona nuclear facility.
As fighting continued, Araghchi met his European counterparts in Geneva on Friday in what the French foreign ministry said was an attempt to restart the Iran nuclear talks.
The US has flirted with the idea of joining Israel in its attacks on Iran. The White House said on Thursday that Trump would decide whether or not to intervene within two weeks. The time period is reportedly to allow a window for diplomacy to take effect, with the US wanting Iran to completely abandon its nuclear programme.
Israel is keen for the US to jump in the fray, as only the US possesses the capacity to strike Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility, the Fordow uranium enrichment site, which lies up to 100 metres under a mountain near the holy city of Qom.
Privately, sources familiar with the deliberations for the US to intervene militarily in Iran have said that Trump was also uncertain if the US’s most powerful bunker buster could indeed take out Fordow.
Araghchi said discussions with the US would be impossible “until Israeli aggression stops”.
The European diplomatic efforts were meant to jump-start US-Iranian discussions in order to avoid a US military intervention. They involved European states that, while opposed to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, favoured a ceasefire rather than a prolonged military conflict.
[English News]
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