The US and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday in what US president Donald Trump said was an expansive operation to destroy the country’s military capabilities and eliminate the threat of it creating a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s foreign ministry said it would defend its homeland as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps initiated counterattacks, launching drones and missiles at Israel. Further strikes were launched at US military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar.
The strikes follow weeks of pressure from Trump on Tehran to make a deal to constrain its nuclear programme. In the lead-up to the strikes, Washington built up a significant fleet of warships near Iran.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three guided-missile destroyers arrived in January to bolster the number of warships in the region. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, and four accompanying destroyers were also dispatched from the Caribbean.
At least 165 people were reported killed at a girls’ school in southern Iran in the Israeli-US strikes, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the capital of the UAE killed one person, state media said.
Israel announced it had launched an attack on Iran shortly after explosions were heard in Tehran on Saturday morning. One of the first strikes hit near the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It wasn’t immediately clear where Khamenei was at the time, as he hadn’t been seen for days.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News that Khamenei and president Masoud Pezeshkian were alive “as far as I know” – though President Trump later said the Ayatollah had died in the attacks. This was then confirmed by Iran state media later on.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said the attacks had been conducted “to remove threats”. Sirens were heard across Israel to warn the public about possible incoming missile strikes.
Later on Saturday, Bahrain said a missile attack targeted the US Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in the island kingdom. Witnesses heard sirens and explosions in Kuwait, home to US Army Central. Explosions could also be heard in Qatar, where Al Udeid Air Base hosts thousands of service members.
Iraq and the United Arab Emirates closed their airspace, and sirens sounded in Jordan.
An apartment building in northern Israel was damaged and shrapnel fell in multiple sites, according to media and police. But Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said there had been no significant hits in Israel and rescue services said there were no injuries reported from missile barrages across the country.
Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, meanwhile, have vowed to resume attacks on Red Sea shipping routes and on Israel, according to two senior Houthi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
It took over an hour for Trump to make an official announcement on the US involvement in what he termed “major combat operations”.
In an eight-minute video on social media, Trump indicated the US was striking for reasons far beyond the nuclear programme, listing grievances stretching back to the beginning of the Islamic Republic following a revolution in 1979 that turned Iran from one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East into a fierce foe.
