JERUSALEM/DUBAI/WASHINGTON: – Israel said it targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders on Friday at the start of what it warned would be a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions including at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, while Israel declared a state of emergency in anticipation of retaliatory missile and drone strikes.
Iranian state television reported that Hossein Salami, the chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards corps, had been killed and the unit’s headquarters in Tehran had been hit. Several children had been killed in a strike on a residential area in the capital, it said.
Firefighters work at the scene of a damaged building in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, on June 13, 2025.”We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded video message.
“Moments ago Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement that Israel had “unleashed its wicked and bloody” hand in a crime against Iran and that it would receive “a bitter fate for itself”.
Israel strikes Iran nuclear facilities, missile factories
