Israel Bombs Tehran

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Explosions have been reported northeast of Iran’s capital Tehran, according to the state-run news agency Nour News. The Israeli Air Force has reportedly conducted a strike in Iran, the Axios news agency reports, citing two unnamed sources with knowledge of the operation.

srael launched a massive wave of attacks across Iran on Thursday night, bombing nuclear and missile sites, targeting military leaders and nuclear scientists, and conducting covert sabotage operations on missile and air defense sites.

Why it matters: Israel is directly attacking its biggest and best-armed adversary without backing from the U.S., which swiftly distanced itself from the operation.

President Trump publicly opposed an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites on Thursday, saying he still believed a nuclear deal was possible.

Hours later, Israel began targeting nuclear sites as well as the Iranian military's top brass and senior scientists working on the nuclear program.

Trump told Fox News late Thursday that the U.S. was aware of the strikes ahead of time but was not involved militarily and hopes Iran will return to the negotiating table. He said CENTCOM is on high alert for retaliation against U.S. targets.

The latest: Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. commander Gen. Hossein Salami was among those killed, along with military chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri and at least one more high-ranking general, Iranian state media confirmed.

State media also confirmed the deaths of two top nuclear scientists and another senior general, and showed images of smoke billowing from residential buildings.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promised "a harsh punishment" for the attack.

Israel imposed a national state of emergency and Defense Minister Israel Katz told Israelis to expect drone and missile attacks from Iran "in the immediate future." All schools and most workplaces will be closed on Friday.

The big picture: The Israeli strikes have launched a new military conflict that poses grave danger to both Israel and Iran.

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official told reporters the operation to destroy Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities will take several days, and Israel expects Iran to retaliate with missile and drone attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the campaign would continue "as long as it takes."

The IDF official claimed that in recent weeks, Israel had indications that Iran was racing for a nuclear bomb — and that with every day that passed, Israel would have less visibility into Iran's advancements. "We are now in a strategic window of opportunity and close to a point of no return, and we had no choice but to take action," the official said.

Iran denies that it is pursuing a nuclear weapon, and the U.S. and other allies have made no such warning about Iran racing toward a bomb.

Behind the scenes: The U.S. notified several of its allies in private on Thursday that Israeli strikes were imminent and made clear it was not involved, a source familiar with those discussions said.

The Trump administration told Israel it would not participate in any strikes on the nuclear program, Axios reported.
However, the U.S. has previously helped defend Israel from Iranian attacks and is likely to do so again.

State of play: The Israeli operation is very broad in scale, with both nuclear and missile sites and high-ranking Iranians targeted.

Netanyahu said planning had been underway for months to simultaneously strike Iran's nuclear and missile programs. He claimed Iran had taken unprecedented steps in its nuclear program and was rapidly producing a massive stockpile of ballistic missiles, both of which Israel was seeking to "eliminate."

An IDF spokesperson said only "necessary" activities should take place in Israel starting Friday morning local time. That includes a ban on "educational activities, gatherings and workplaces, with the exception of essential businesses."

Israel closed its airspace, and Iran also suspended flights out of Tehran's international airport. Israel's political leaders were moved to a secure location.

What they're saying: "Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

"Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense," he continued.

"President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel."

Friction point: Israel has been preparing and drilling for weeks, but had previously told the U.S. it would wait to see what happened with Trump's nuclear talks.

In his statement, Netanyahu thanked Trump for his years of support for Israel and opposition to Iran's nuclear program. But he did not have public support from Trump for this attack.

A sixth round of U.S.-Iran talks had been scheduled for Sunday, but Israel has likely now wiped out any prospect of a deal.

Trump has a National Security Council meeting in the Situation Room on his schedule for Friday at 11am.

What to watch: Iran has vowed to strike U.S. targets in the region in the event of any attack on its nuclear program.

The U.S. is in the process of withdrawing diplomats and military families in Iraq, Bahrain and Kuwait who could be in harm's way.

The U.S. has also boosted air defenses around several of its sources in the Gulf.

WW3 would happen only if China, North Korea and Russia will declare war on US/Israel for the sake of Iran.

Which will never happen.

Those nations don’t like each other that much.

For me, it is not a bad news at all - it is time for the bastard Iranian regime to die: otherwise the nations under its rule will keep suffering. I don’t like Israel either, but the two can burn each other for all I care.

As I said in the other thread: The US-Iran talks had been going since early 2000s(?); went though under many different US presidents, and yet nothing is closed. And on every hiccup Iran used one of its proxy groups to shuffle the cards: ie. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers that led to July war 2006 in Lebanon; and the launch of Hezbollah missiles on 13th October 2023 which led to the 23th septembre 2024 war.

I mean it's one thing to be against two governments- but war has very real effects on a country's entire populace. And as shown in Palestine, the Israeli government has demonstrated their willingness to harm civilians in increasing number.

In the early morning hours of June 13, Israel launched a massive wave of strikes against Iran, targeting the latter's nuclear program. Today, we discuss how the timing of the attacks---late in a would-be nuclear power's production cycle---is unprecedented. We therefore do not have a good historical parallel for what happens next. In the absence of one, I discuss how Israel may not have stopped much. I also cover how Iran may find itself in a use-it-or-lose-it scenario, which could result in the actual use of nuclear weapons.

Let’s not pretend that we ignore how these wars started in the first place:
- The 7th October attacks (orchestrated by Iran) led to the Gaza massively destructive war
- The 8th October attacks (missiles attack from Hezbollah at north Israel, orchestrated by Iran too of course), which led to the Lebanon’s 2024 war.

These are facts.

I don't dispute that, but that's not the work of the average person in a country, and it is not fair to fight an organization's violence with violence to a large group of vulnerable people.

Hamas massively represents Gaza as government elections-wise (yet they threw Fatah leaders from the roofs of blocs, which makes the democratic aspect very questionable); therefore they accountable for the safety of their citizens (especially their voters) before anyone else.

They knew exactly what would be coming after the 7th of October attacks and yet they still went for it.

Stronger nations always responded more massively and bloody to a relatively smaller offense. That doesn’t require a genius to realize it.

Pearl harbor, anyone?

IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin told a press conference on Friday morning that Iran had launched over 100 drones toward Israel in recent hours.

He also noted that over 200 IDF aircraft have attacked over 100 targets in Iran with over 330 munitions.

He did not say when they would reach Israel, but in April 2025, it took such drones several hours.

During that Iranian attack and another attack by Tehran against Israel in October 2024, Israel had a wide alliance of the US, UK, France, and other countries helping to defend it.

It was unclear whether Israel had any such alliance this time, given that this time, it launched a preemptive strike.

n the hours before Israeli warplanes carried out an attack on Iran early Friday, raising fresh fears of all-out war in the region, President Donald Trump made clear it was an outcome he hoped to avoid.

“I don’t want them going in because, I mean, that would blow it,” he said, referring to his diplomatic efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The fact Israel went in anyway – without any US involvement, and against the president’s publicly stated wishes – now thrusts Trump into one of the biggest tests of his young presidency.

By his own telling, the strikes risk scuttling his attempts at diplomacy with Tehran, even as his top envoy was preparing to depart for Oman for another round of talks this weekend.

It casts a pall over his already tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has sharply disagreed for months and whom he urged as recently as this week to hold off on a strike.

And it presents him another global conflict without any easy resolution, this one with tens of thousands of US troops potentially caught in the regional crossfire.

Trump will now find himself caught between competing crosscurrents from within his own party. Many Republicans were quick to offer their support to Israel on Thursday, including Sen. Lindsey Graham – a longtime Iran hawk – who wrote on X: “Game on.”

Yet Trump has never quite adopted that strain of his party’s foreign policy, particularly in his second term. His administration is stacked with officials, starting with his vice president, who take a deeply skeptical view of US military involvement abroad without express American interests on the line.

Trump offered no signals in the immediate aftermath of the attacks that he was prepared to use American military assets to help defend Israel from expected Iranian reprisal, as his predecessor Joe Biden did when Israel and Iran exchanged fire last year.

Without American assistance, Israel’s air defenses could be unable to withstand a major Iranian onslaught.

The focus of public messaging from the US administration was instead on protecting American personnel in the Middle East, and warning Iran not to drag the US into the fray.

Still, for all the complicated dynamics for Trump to now sort through, the attack hardly came as a surprise to the president and his team.

Even as he was speaking from the East Room on Thursday, the president and his aides were aware the strikes were likely coming soon, sources said, despite Trump’s repeated attempts at urging Netanyahu to hold off.

As the strikes were getting underway, Trump was appearing on the South Lawn at a congressional picnic. He returned to the West Wing afterward to huddle with top officials, according to a White House official and other sources.

Afterward, a terse statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to put distance between the US and any role in the attack.

“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” read the statement, which was distributed by the White House.

“Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners,” Rubio continue. “Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”

Devoid of even boilerplate language offering support for Israel and its defense, the statement made clear: this would be Israel’s conflict, not Trump’s.

Or 9/11?

9/11 is even a better example, because like the 7th October attack, it was an attack against civilians.
Imagine if the Qaeda had a small nuke in its possession, do you think they would have hesitated to load the plane with it? They wouldn’t.
Those who are willing to kill ~3000 civilians wouldn’t bat an eye for killing 30,000; their dream is to obliterate the entire US if they could.
Same for Hamas, they would have not hesitated to kill much more on 7th October if they had a much more massive force.

So the response would be violent comparatively to the scale of attacker’s intentions, not to the actual damage they did.