Israel has carried out a series of overnight air strikes on Iran, hitting what Israel called “military targets”.
An attack had been expected for weeks in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on Israel.
Israel had vowed to hit back after Iran carried out a ballistic missile attack on Israel on 1 October. In that attack, Iran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel. Most were intercepted by Israel’s air defences and US-led allied forces. Some though hit air bases and other sites.
One Palestinian was killed by a falling missile casing. Israel said it would retaliate, but did not say when or how.
There had been constant speculation since then on the timing of an Israeli attack and what form it might take – from limited strikes to massive attacks on Iran’s oil fields and nuclear sites.
The attack came in the early hours of Saturday and appears to have been restricted to missile manufacturing and launching sites, and what Israel called “other aerial capabilities”, without being specific.
Why are Israel and Iran enemies?
Prior to Iran’s direct attack on Israel on 1 April, Iran and Israel had been engaged in a years-long shadow war – attacking each other’s assets without admitting responsibility.
Those attacks have ratcheted up considerably during the war in Gaza sparked by the Palestinian group Hamas’s assault on nearby Israeli communities last October.
The two countries were allies until the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which brought in a regime that has used opposing Israel as a key part of its ideology.
Iran does not recognise Israel’s right to exist and seeks its eradication. The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called Israel a “cancerous tumour” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed”.
Israel believes that Iran poses an existential threat as evidenced by Tehran’s rhetoric, its build-up of proxy forces in the region including the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah that are sworn to Israel’s destruction, and its funding and arming of Palestinian groups including Hamas.
It also accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, though Iran denies seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
