By MELISSA KOENIG, US REPORTER and STEPHEN M. LEPORE, US SENIOR REPORTER and NOOR QURASHI, NEWS REPORTER and DAVID OLASEINDE
Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Iran just moments after a stern warning from President Trump ‘not to retaliate’ against Tehran.
The Israeli Defense Forces launched strikes on military sites in western and central Iran as state-run news reported explosions heard across the country.
‘The Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran a short while ago,’ the IDF said in a statement.
Iran retaliated this morning with waves of attacks, and explosions could be heard in central Israel as Israeli air defenses sought to intercept incoming Iranian fire.
The strikes came after after a series of missile attacks between Iran and Israel. Trump had called Benjamin Netanyahu and warned that he ‘calls all the shots.’
‘I am going to call Bibi [Netanyahu] right now and tell him not to retaliate,’ Trump was quoted as saying by Axios journalist Barak Ravid in a phone interview.
‘If Bibi strikes them back, it’s just gonna keep going like the last 47 years, or the last 3,000 years,’ he added.
Trump ordered both sides to stop the battle after Israel’s strikes this weekend on Beirut and Iran’s strikes on Northern Israel Sunday.
‘Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one,’ Trump said.
Trump was insistent on forging a peace deal with Iran.
A streak of light illuminates the sky during a missile attack from Iran towards Israel today, as seen from Ashkelon
A projectile crosses the night sky over the West Bank city of Nablus today. Israel’s military reported air defence sirens sounded across northern Israel and central areas
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighbourhood in the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre today
‘It means [one of] two things,’ the President told The Financial Times about the breakout in fighting. ‘Number one, it would mean that possibly we would go in and take care of the rest of the place that we didn’t take care of militarily.
‘Or it would just mean that we would keep the blockade on Iran because the blockade has been probably more powerful than any attack that was ever made on that country.’
Trump described the first Iranian strikes on Israeli soil since April as ‘unhelpful’ to the peace process and called for calm between the two nations.
‘We’re very close,’ the president told Fox News about his progress on a landmark peace deal. ‘I would say an agreement would be signed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of this coming week. And now this takes place.’
Addressing Iran, he said: ‘You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.’
‘The Iranian strikes didn’t hurt anybody. Hopefully Israel is not going to retaliate,’ Trump added.
He told The Financial Times that Netanyahu did not have a choice about whether to accept the terms of the US deal with Iran.
‘He won’t have any choice,’ Trump told the FT. ‘I call the shots. I call all the shots. He [Netanyahu] doesn’t call the shots.’
He also told The New York Post that ‘things are going very well’ despite the chaos.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched strikes on ‘several targets’ at an Iranian petrochemical facility in in Mahshahr, in the south-west of the country.
The IDF and Iranian state media have both confirmed the attack, with Iranian outlets saying the complex near the northern coast of the Persian Gulf had been partially damaged.
Iranian media said more details on damage and ‘possible casualties’ will be announced later.
The attack comes a few days after the Lebanese and Israeli governments agreed to a ceasefire in US hosted talks.
Tehran had warned of retaliation after Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs today in defiance of Washington’s request days ago to stand down.
The strike on a residential building killed two people and wounded 20, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Israel has now said it will retaliate against Iran over this evening’s attack – though Iran has vowed to respond with greater force.
An Israeli air-defence missile flies in the sky over Israel, as seen from Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank today
Missiles launched from Iran today towards Israel are seen in the sky over the West Bank city of Hebron
Ahead of the regime’s strikes, senior member of Iran’s parliament, Ebrahim Rezaei, said on X: ‘Watch the sky of the occupied territories tonight.’
Iran’s parliament speaker said earlier today: ‘The (US) naval blockade imposed against the Iranian people, together with Washington’s green light today to the Zionist regime, makes U.S and Israeli bases and assets in the region legitimate targets.’
Brig Gen Effie Defrin, spokesman for the IDF, said Israel is ‘prepared for the possibility of additional fire’.
He added that air defence systems are ‘deployed across the entire country’ and the military’s chief of general staff is holding a ‘situational assessment’.
‘The IDF will continue to operate throughout Lebanon and will deepen the blow to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation’, he said.
Effie Defrin had previously said the Iranian regime had made a ‘grave mistake’.
‘Our acceptance of the ceasefire on April 8 was conditional on a ceasefire on ALL fronts; but as always, America and Israel did not adhere to their commitment, they continued the aggression and crimes in Lebanon, and attacked Iranian vessels,’ the Iranian military said in a statement on Sunday.
Netanyahu’s office had claimed the IDF strike on Beirut was in retaliation for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group firing at northern Israel earlier today, and that Israel targeted ‘command centres’.
A senior US official said the it was ‘not surprised’ by the attack in Beirut. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not say if the US had been given a heads-up on the strike.
Sirens sounded in several regions across northern Israel due to the missile attack, which followed an Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital, Beirut
President Donald Trump told Fox News he was ‘not happy’ about the Israeli attack on Lebanon today
Though, Trump told Fox News he was ‘not happy’ about the Israeli attack.
Netanyahu – who wants to remove Hezbollah as a threat – told his cabinet: ‘We are striking them very hard, and we know that Hezbollah is on the run.’
Israel’s military said ‘steps were taken to mitigate harm to civilians’ including aerial surveillance.
Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for firing at Israel earlier in the day.
Israel announced on Monday last week it would strike the southern suburbs after Hezbollah claimed attacks in northern Israel, but urgent talks via Washington halted the attacks on the condition that Hezbollah stop targeting Israeli border towns.
Lebanon and Israel later renewed a ceasefire agreement in talks that Beirut hopes will end the fighting.
An initial agreement took effect on April 17, days after a 10-minute Israeli bombardment of Beirut killed over 300 people.
Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs twice following the deal. Israeli strikes over southern Lebanon continue daily, and Israeli forces have seized around a fifth of Lebanon in a ground invasion.
Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, has expressed a desire to press ahead with Israel’s offensive until he believes Hezbollah no longer poses a threat.
Hezbollah has scathingly rejected a U.S brokered deal and urged Lebanon to end its direct talks with Israel. Instead, it backs Iran’s inclusion of a ceasefire in Lebanon as a condition in negotiations with the U.S.
The fighting threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil and gas and related products like fertilizer. Its closure has jolted the world economy and spiked warnings of hunger in vulnerable regions.
In an interview taped on Friday and aired today with NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump said: ‘I’d like to see Lebanon have a better life. I’d like to see a more surgical attack on Hezbollah. I think it should be more surgical.’
Trump added he is ‘not demanding’ that Lebanon be part of the short-term deal to extend the ceasefire in the Iran war.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war began March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel, two days after Israel and the U.S began attacking Iran.
More than one million people in Lebanon have been displaced. The fighting has killed at least 31 Israeli soldiers and three civilians.
Lebanon’s army commander, Gen. Rodolphe Haikal, went to Pakistan on Saturday at the invitation of Pakistan’s army chief, who has been involved in mediating talks between the U.S. and Iran.
The Lebanese army did not say whether the visit is related to mediation efforts.
Original source: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15881653/Trump-explodes-Israel-Iran-missile-barrage.html