Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, and Israel vowed a ‘painful response’ against its enemy.
The US warned Iran that it would face severe consequences for its ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday, saying the barrage marked a significant escalation but appeared to have been thwarted.
Hamas praised on Tuesday what it called Iran’s “heroic” missile attacks avenging the deaths of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan.
Israel vows response after Iran hits it with ballistic missiles
Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, and Israel vowed a “painful response” against its enemy.
Alarms sounded across Israel and explosions could be heard in Jerusalem and the Jordan River valley after Israelis piled into bomb shelters. Reporters on state television lay flat on the ground during live broadcasts.
Israeli army radio said nearly 200 missiles had been launched into Israel from Iran. Israel’s military later sounded the all-clear and said residents were free to leave their shelters.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Iran had launched tens of missiles at Israel, and that if Israel retaliated Tehran’s response would be “more crushing and ruinous”.
But Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the attack would have consequences, as did Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon.
“As we have previously made clear to the international community, any enemy that attacks Israel should expect a painful response,” said Danon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a few other ministers were meeting in a bunker near Jerusalem, where the security Cabinet was due to convene shortly, said two Israeli officials.
Israel’s military was not aware of any injuries from the Iranian missile attacks, said Hagari. But the Palestinian civil defence authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank said a man was killed near Jericho and falling rocket debris had caused damage and started fires in the area.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters the order to launch missiles at Israel had been made by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei remained in a secure location, the senior official said.
Tehran informed Russia before the missile attack and alerted the US “shortly before”, said a second senior Iranian official.
Reuters journalists saw missiles intercepted in the airspace of neighbouring Jordan.
Oil prices shot up by 5% on the news of the Iranian missile strikes, which raised the prospect of a wider war between the two arch-enemies.
A previous round of Iranian missiles fired at Israel in April — the first ever — were shot down with the help of the US military and other allies. Israel responded at the time with airstrikes in Iran, but wider escalation was averted.
Iran had vowed to retaliate following Israeli strikes that killed the top leadership of its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, including that group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, a towering figure in Iran’s network of fighters across the region.
Israel said overnight that its troops had launched ground raids into Lebanon, though it described the forays as limited.
Israeli media cited Israel’s military as saying on Tuesday that the air force would continue conducting “powerful strikes” through the night throughout the Middle East.
In Washington, US President Joe Biden said the US was prepared to help Israel defend itself from Iranian missile attacks.
“We discussed how the United States is prepared to help Israel defend against these attacks, and protect American personnel in the region,” Biden said on X about a meeting held with Vice-President Kamala Harris and the White House national security team earlier in the day.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking after Iran fired its salvo of missiles at Israel, condemned what he called “escalation after escalation”, saying: “This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire.”
Though so far characterised by Israel as limited, a ground campaign into Lebanon for the first time in 18 years pitting Israeli soldiers against Hezbollah, Iran’s best-armed proxy force in the Middle East, would be a major regional escalation.
More than a thousand Lebanese have been killed and a million have fled their homes in weeks of intense Israeli airstrikes.
In the latest announced killing of a senior Hezbollah figure, Israel said on Tuesday it had assassinated a commander named Muhammad Jaafar Qasir, describing him as in charge of weapons transfers from Iran and its affiliates.
Near the city of Sidon along the Mediterranean south of Beirut, mourners wept over coffins containing black-shrouded bodies of people killed in Israeli strikes.
“The building got struck down and I couldn’t protect my daughter or anyone else. Thank God, my son and I got out, but I lost my daughter and wife, I lost my home, I have become homeless. What do you want me to say? My whole life changed in a second,” said resident Abdulhamid Ramadan.
US condemns Iran attack on Israel as major escalation
The US warned Iran that it would face severe consequences for its ballistic missile attack on Israel on Tuesday, saying the barrage marked a significant escalation but appeared to have been thwarted.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said US military forces in the region helped Israel defeat the attack and that the Biden administration was consulting with Israel on a response.
“This is a significant escalation by Iran, a significant event,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House. “We have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences, for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.”
Sullivan did not specify what those consequences might be, but he stopped short of urging restraint by Israel as the US did in April when Iran carried out a drone and missile attack on Israel.
The Pentagon said two US Navy destroyers fired about a dozen interceptors against Iranian missiles aimed at Israel.
Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder described the attack as significant and said the US supported Israel’s right to defend itself.
Ryder said the attack was about twice the scope of Iran’s April attack on Israel in terms of the number of ballistic missiles fired.
The European Union on Tuesday condemned “in the strongest terms” the ballistic missile attack on Israel and called for an immediate ceasefire across the Middle East.
“The dangerous cycle of attacks and retaliation risks ... spiralling out of control,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell posted on X. “An immediate ceasefire across the region is needed.”
Hamas praises ‘heroic’ missile attacks launched by Iran
Hamas praised on Tuesday what it called Iran’s “heroic” missile attacks avenging the deaths of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan.
“We congratulate the heroic rocket launch carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, on large areas of our occupied territories, in response to the occupation’s continuing crimes against the peoples of the region, and in retaliation for the blood of our nation’s heroic martyrs,” said the group.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, locked in nearly a year of war with Israel, celebrated as they watched dozens of rockets en route to Israel. Some of those rockets fell in the Palestinian enclave after being intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, but caused no human losses, said witnesses.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel almost a year ago, in support of its ally Hamas in the war in Gaza, which began after the militant group staged the deadliest assault in Israel’s history on 7 October.
The assault, in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, triggered the war that has devastated Gaza, displacing most of its 2.3 million population and killing more than 41,600 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
At least six dead in suspected terror attack in Tel Aviv
At least six people were killed and nine wounded in a suspected shooting and stabbing terror attack in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Israeli police said.
They said two “terrorists” started a killing spree on the Tel Aviv light rail and continued on foot before being killed by civilians and inspectors using personal pistols. There has been no claim of responsibility, but Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said they were Palestinians from the West Bank city of Hebron.
The hardline Smotrich said he would demand of the Cabinet that members of the suspects’ families be deported to Gaza and their homes destroyed.
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 37 in Gaza, say Palestinian medics
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 37 people in Gaza on Tuesday, local medics said and fighting ramped up, as the Israeli military said it had been targeting command centres used by its Islamist militant foe Hamas.
Palestinian health officials said at least 13 people, including women and children, were killed in two Israeli strikes on two houses in Nuseirat, one of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps.
Another strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City killed at least seven people, medics said.
The Israeli military said in a statement the airstrike targeted Hamas militants operating from a command centre embedded in a compound that had previously served as Al-Shejaia School.
It accused Hamas of using the civilian population and facilities for military purposes, which Hamas denies.
Later on Tuesday, two separate Israeli attacks killed five Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, said medics.
In Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave, six Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a tent housing displaced people, said medics.
Hours later, an Israeli airstrike on a car in western Khan Younis killed six Palestinians, medics said.
The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other smaller factions said in separate statements that their fighters attacked Israeli forces operating in several areas of Gaza with anti-tank rockets, mortar fire and explosive devices.
The renewed surge in violence in Gaza comes as Israel began a ground operation in Lebanon, saying its paratroopers and commandos were engaged in intense fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah. The conflict follows devastating Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah’s leadership.
Netanyahu rides wave of support after killing of Nasrallah
For Israel, the killing of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah has been a moment to savour, lifting the spirits of a nation still grappling with the trauma of the 7 October Hamas attack and a year of war, and boosting the once-embattled Netanyahu.
After Nasrallah’s death in an Israeli air strike in Beirut was confirmed on Saturday, Netanyahu delivered a televised statement, saying the assassination was a “turning point” in the war.
“One year later, blow after blow ... their hopes have been dashed. Israel has momentum, we are winning,” he said.
On Tuesday, the military announced that after weeks of intensifying air strikes, commandos had crossed into Lebanon to conduct targeted raids in areas close to the border. Hours later, it confirmed that special forces units had been operating in Lebanon for months.
A survey for the Israel Democracy Institute published on Tuesday found that 80% of Israelis, including 90% of Jewish Israelis, supported the decision to start the offensive against Hezbollah even while the war was continuing in Gaza.
Netanyahu, who has been gradually recovering ground since the start of the war when he was widely blamed for the security failures that allowed the 7 October attack to occur, may benefit from it too.
Lifted by the success of the attack on Nasrallah and the assassination a few weeks earlier of the then Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, he has strengthened his grip on his sometimes fractious coalition by bringing former ally-turned-rival Gideon Saar into his government, increasing his majority to a comfortable 68 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
A survey published on Sunday by Israel’s N12 News showed a continuing trend of Netanyahu’s Likud party slowly recovering in the polls, though still losing an election. Asked how they would rate Netanyahu’s conduct of the war, 43% of respondents said “good”, up from 35% in the last poll, 10 days earlier.
The Channel 12 poll showed Likud still short of a winning margin but with 25 seats, it would be the largest party in the 120-seat parliament, well up from the position earlier in the war, when surveys regularly gave it no more than 16-18 seats. DM
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