Iran retaliates on the fourth day of the conflict
Israel fires on Iranian energy facilities in response to Iran’s attacks on the country’s oil refinery and prominent research institute: State media reports
Israeli missiles struck two energy facilities in southern Iran, according to Iranian state media. In response, Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones into Israel, causing multiple casualties and causing significant damage to an oil refinery and prominent science institute.
President Trump warned that the full strength of the U.S. military will come down on Iran if it attacked the U.S.
Magen David Adom said that it was the hardest night since the start of the fighting, with at least ten casualties, including children, and hundreds injured.
The deadliest strikes hit a residential building in Bat Yam, a suburb south of Tel Aviv, killing at least six people including a 10-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl. Another 180 people were wounded and seven still missing, according to local police.
In the north, sirens blared and people ran for shelter as missiles struck the country’s largest oil refinery, located near the port city of Haifa. According to the Associated Press, four women were killed in a town of around 35,000 people. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had hit Israel’s fuel structure in response to Israel hitting its oil facilities in the south.
In the central city of Rehovot, at least 42 people were injured and several campus buildings at The Weizmann Institute of Science, a prominent research center, were also struck. The center said no one on campus was hurt, despite the extensive damage.
The Israel-Jemeni War and the War on Nuclear Enrichment: Iran’s War with the U.N. is a Form of Diplomacy
Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Sunday that they had assisted Iran by launching more ballistic missiles at Israel. Israel’s military confirmed that the group also launched missiles at Israel on Friday, coinciding with Iran’s direct retaliation for Israeli strikes.
According to the Israeli military, it bombed command centers of Iran’s Quds Force, killing four people, including the head of the Intelligence Organization.
Iran’s Health Ministry said more than 200 people had been killed and more than 1,000 had been injured since the beginning of Israel’s offensive.
The Secretary General of the UN and the Pope called for a truce after expressing grave concerns about the situation between Israel and Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel believes that an attack on Iran will stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, even if there’s another round of talks between the US and Iran.
The strikes came a day after the U.N. nuclear watchdog declared that Iran wasn’t complying with nuclear nonproliferation agreements aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons. Iran reacted saying it would create a new uranium enrichment facility. Iran’s program is for peaceful purposes.
On Saturday, the foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia claimed that the meeting had been canceled. “Constructive dialogue remains the only pathway to lasting peace,” he said.
A quick deal now that would give up enrichment would be seen as a surrender, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who served in the State Department during the Obama administration. That could make the Iranian government more vulnerable at home. “They won’t give up enrichment, not this easily,” he said. They are not going to give up.
Mr. Trump, who has said he knew about the Israeli attack before, has not done anything to stop the Israelis. It is not known how long the talks will continue but the Iranians are convinced that it was Washington who tricked them into thinking that Israel would attack.
In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday, President Trump renewed calls for Iran and Israel to make a deal, but later told reporters “sometimes, they just have to fight it out.”
Mr. Trump clearly sees the war as a form of diplomacy. He said that two months ago he gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to make a deal. They should have done it. Today is the 61st day of the year. I asked them what to do, but they couldn’t get there. Perhaps they have a second chance now.
The president continues to say that he wants negotiations to succeed. He believes the attack will bring Iran to the table in a more conciliatory position and he is willing to accept his demand that they halt all enrichment. But Iran insists that it has the right to enrich for civilian uses under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Mr. Netanyahu is against a deal in which Iran would be able to enrich nuclear fuel and therefore will be a nuclear-armed Iran in the future. He believes that a US-Iran deal would have kept him from his goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear program, and that he hopes it will bring about the fall of the Islamic Republic.
U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv after the Violation of the Law of the Second Law of Fundamental Law in the Context of Security and Security
The U.S. consulate in Tel Aviv was hit by one missile and will not open on Monday, the U.S. ambassador to Israel said in a post on X. No U.S. personnel were reported injured in the strike. Despite continued international calls for de-escalation, neither side appeared to be prepared to enter talks.
“The issue here is not ceasefire, the issue here is stopping those things that will threaten our survival and we are committed to stopping it and I think we can achieve it.”
On Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned more rounds of strikes against Israel would be “more forceful, severe, precise and destructive than previous ones.”
The military spokesman is from Israel. The Air Force achieved “full aerial superiority” over Tehran on Monday, said Gen. Effie Defrin. He mentioned that the military had destroyed a third of Iran’s missile launchers.
“The irony in all of this is that Iran could still emerge from this conflict with a bomb,” Mr. Ostovar said. Iran has no deterrent left so there is an explicit need for a nuclear weapon.
Many Iranians who dislike their rulers blame them for the conflict’s rapid growth. As the civilian death toll rises, however, some may come to soften toward their leaders, or at least harden their attitudes toward Israel, Ms. Geranmayeh said. Patriotic posts, though not pro-regime ones, are already proliferating on Iranian social media.
Iran could still go after ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which it controls, using drones, submarines or limpet mines. It would have limited effect on the conflict and could possibly draw in the United States.
While the U.S. military has said Iran had about 3,000 missiles, it is not clear that all of them have the range to hit Israel. Iran needs to shoot off as many as possible to penetrate Israeli air defense systems, which will deplete its inventory more quickly than it can make more.
Mr. Hinz said that Israel was using the freedom of movement to go after Iranian missiles and production facilities that would allow them to replenish their stock.
Beyond its Hezbollah-and-missiles deterrence strategy, Iran had also invested heavily in air defenses to protect itself. Israel did not allow its systems to fly over Iranian airspace last year.
Israeli intelligence managed to penetrate Iran so thoroughly that Israel was able to launch drone attacks on Iranian targets from inside Iran on Friday and to kill some of the most senior figures in the military’s chain of command.
“Hezbollah has been weakened so dramatically that its power is no longer the same as it was before,” stated an expert from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Berlin. Now, he said, “Iran does not have a lot of options left.”
Israel’s main targets are Iran’s two important nuclear sites that are used toEnrich radioactive uranium into the purity needed to produce atomic weapons. The first is the Natanz uranium enrichment site, which is largely underground and the second is the Fordow enrichment site built deep inside a mountain. They’re difficult to destroy and it’s unclear if additional assistance from the U.S. could allow Israel to penetrate the underground facilities.
According to the Iran expert at the European Council of Foreign relations, Iran showed that it was outsmarted by Israel.
The humiliations accelerated on Friday with the start of an Israeli campaign that has gone after multiple targets across Iran and killed many military commanders and a number of prominent nuclear scientists. Hundreds of people were killed in Iran and at least 24 in Israel in the new round of conflict.
Several senior commanders from the Iranian Embassy in Syria were killed in an airstrike. Three months after the assassination of one of Iran’s top militant partners, he was in Tehran. In October and April of 24th century, the Israeli strikes on Iranian air defenses. The systematic decimation or defeat of Iran’s strongest allies around the Middle East, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Iran is often cast as one of the world’s most dangerous villains, a rogue state whose growing nuclear program and shadowy military capabilities threaten Israel, the United States and beyond.
Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security advisor in Israel who is now at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, says that Israel has “cceeded in clearing Iranian airspace so that it can conduct operations against other sites.”
The U.S. is not involved in Israel’s operation right now, even as the deaths of Iranian commanders and hundreds of civilians have been reported.
As incoming Iranian missiles are hit by Israel’s defenses, they break up into large fragments that are still dangerous. Freilich states that Iron Dome is now being used to shoot down falling fragments.