Iran-Israel conflict: Israel says ‘Tehran will burn’ after Iran targets Tel Aviv with missiles

The time has just passed 2pm in Israel and 2:30pm in Iran, and tensions between the two Middle Eastern nations are continuing.

Here is everything we know about the situation in both countries, after air strikes were exchanged through the night:

Iran has launched multiple retaliatory drone and missile strikes against Israel through the night.In Iran, around 60 people, including 20 children, were killed in the latest Israeli attack, according to Iranian state TV.Sirens sounded before intercepted projectiles lit up the night sky over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. At least three people were killed and dozens more wounded in those strikes, according to Israeli officials.The IDF says its preparing for more retaliatory strikes to come from Iran.Israel says it attacked more than 200 sites in Iran since Friday, including nuclear and military facilities. More than 150 targets were attacked through the night in the latest wave of strikes, including two key nuclear sites that the IDF says were significantly damaged.Iran has warned the United States, United Kingdom and France that their military bases and ships in the region will be targeted if they help to stop Tehran’s strikes on Israel.Israel also says it killed nine senior nuclear scientists and researchers, who were directly connected to the Iranian nuclear programme, in its latest wave of strikes.

Amid fears of being caught up in a nasty regional conflict, the Iraqi government has asked Iran not to strike sites linked to the United States that exist on Iraqi soil, according to an official in Baghdad.

The government in Baghdad is a close ally of Tehran but also a strategic partner of the US — Iran’s arch-foe — which has some 2,500 troops in Iraq as part of an anti-jihadist coalition.

“The request was made. They promised us positive things,” the Iraqi official told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The official also said that Tehran has shown understanding with regards to Baghdad’s request.

The comments come after several pro-Iran groups in Iraq called for an acceleration of the departure of US forces from the country, with the powerful Kataeb Hezbollah warning of “additional wars in the region”.

Reporting with AFP

  As part of its latest operational update, the Israel Defense Forces is now saying that it has killed more than 20 senior Iranian commanders in strategic strikes.

According to the Israeli military’s latest post on X, Iran’s top intelligence officer Gholam-Reza Marhabi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile chief Mohammad Bagheri and the Corps’ head of the Air Force Amir Ali Hajizadeh were all “eliminated”.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency has also confirmed the deaths of those two Revolutionary Guards.

“Following the brutal attack by the Zionist regime on the Zarandiyeh Basij base, two members of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were martyred,” the news agency said.

Some imagery is starting to come through to us of smoke plumes rising about Iran’s Abadan oil refinery, which is located near to the country’s far south-western border with Iraq.

It comes several hours after the Iranian Mehr News Agency reported that fresh Israeli air strikes hit near to the country’s north-western Tabriz refinery — some 16 hours north of Abadan.

(Reuters)

This latest vision published by the Reuters news agency appears to have been shot from the window of a moving vehicle and shows dark smoke clouds rising in between the refinery’s oil towers.

Despite that, there are still towers emitting flames in a suggestion that operations at the refinery haven’t been disrupted.

Israel’s military says it has launched a fresh wave of attacks on multiple sites across Iran, declaring it has cleared an aerial path to Tehran by destroying Iran’s aerial defence capabilities.

“The road to Tehran is open,” an Israeli military official said in a briefing with journalists.

The IDF didn’t give any further details about the current strikes, but there are reports on Iranian state media that industrial facilities have been targeted.

The IDF says its ongoing attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, scientists, weaponry and military personnel show Israel has established aerial superiority from West Iran to Tehran.

As we mentioned a short time ago, the Israel Defense Forces were providing an update on its aerial offensive against Iran.

The IDF’s Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee has just posted some more information on X about Israel’s overnight air strikes.

He says that the latest wave of attacks involved “more than 70 warplanes, targeting over 40 military objectives in Tehran, including missiles and advanced air defense systems, alongside other military infrastructure.”

This comes after earlier claims from the IDF that two of Iran’s key nuclear facilities were significantly damaged in those strikes.

The military also said it had killed at least nine senior Iranian nuclear programme scientists and researchers in the attack.

Iran’s top diplomat has provided more of an insight into the likelihood of any potential nuclear programme negotiations between his country and the United States, in light of the waves of air strikes seen over the past day.

The main takeaway is negotiations are unlikely to happen soon.

Iranian state media reported that the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has declared Iran-US nuclear talks are unjustifiable while Israel continues its aerial offensive.

Those comments come just hours after Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei also said the dialogue with the US is “meaningless”.

Reporting with Reuters

To the north of Iran, dozens of foreign nationals — mostly Russians — spent Saturday arriving and crossing the Astara checkpoint into Azerbaijan.

That was because Baku temporarily reopened the country’s border with northern Iran, in a bid to allow people to escape the impacts of Israeli air strikes.

The first group of evacuees listed 86 people, including two children, according to the Russian Foreign ministry .

The ministry also posted in its telegram channel a video of a coach arriving at the checkpoint and a photograph showing passengers on board.

(Reuters: Supplied / Russian Foreign Ministry)

The first group of evacuees included the Russian Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra and film crew headed by renowned actor and director Fyodor Bondarchuk as well as citizens from Belarus, Serbia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the foreign ministry said.

Among those evacuated via Astara were six citizens of Kazakhstan, the Kazakhstani and Azerbaijani news outlets reported.

Reporting with Reuters

Egypt’s top diplomat has offered his reaction to Israel’s latest air strike operation in Iran.

The Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty denounced the Israeli strikes, saying he believes they could topple the Middle East into “chaos”

He also labelled the strikes as a “serious escalation” that could spark “a state of instability”.

Those comments were made during phone calls involving Abdelatty’s Italian and Spanish counterparts, according to the Egyptian foreign ministry.

We reported earlier that Iran has issued warnings to the US, UK and France, saying their military bases and ships in the Middle East would be targeted if they help to stop Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel.

The French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has now revealed that his country is boosting security around Jewish and US sites on French territory.

“Special vigilance” must be given “to all sites that could be targeted by terrorist or malicious acts by a foreign power,” he said in a dispatch to French regional security chiefs.

Retailleau also said security should be heightened around “places of worship, schools, state and institutional buildings, sites with high traffic”, including “festive, cultural or religious gatherings”.

France is home to the biggest Jewish community in Europe.

Reporting with AFP

Ahead of the IDF releasing its next update on the situation in the Middle East, we’ve also seen reports from the military that an Iranian missile strike injured seven Israeli soldiers overnight.

An IDF spokesperson said that the incident occurred in one of several barrages launched by Tehran against Israel.

“Seven … soldiers were lightly injured last night, as a result of an Iranian missile hit to central Israel,” the spokesperson said.

The IDF says the soldiers were briefly hospitalised and sent home, in what would be the first report of military casualties in Israel’s operation against Iran.

The military provided no further details on where the soldiers were located.

We’re hearing reports that brigadier general Effie Defrin, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, is due to release a new statement on the situation in the country at around 3:05pm local time (10:05pm AEST).

We’ll keep you in the loop for anything we learn from that address.

In the meantime, the IDF has also claimed that over the course of the past day, dozens of Iranian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were intercepted by Israeli Navy missile boats, Israeli Air Force fighter jets and the country’s Iron Dome defence system.

As Iranians woke up on Saturday in Tehran, images of their country’s retaliatory strikes on Israel were being plastered across state TV channels.

The state broadcaster also showed people cheering in front of a large screen set up in Tehran to follow the strikes as if they were watching a soccer match.

An Iranian worshipper prays as he attends Friday prayers ceremony at Tehran University campus in Tehran. (AP: Vahid Salemi)

Traffic was lighter than normal on the capital’s streets, mostly due to a religious holiday.

Despite that, there still appears to be a palpable anger among Iranians.

“Israel killed our commanders and what do they expect in return? A kiss?” Mahmoud Dorri, a 29-year-old taxi driver, told The Associated Press.

“We will go after them to punish them: an eye for an eye.”

In downtown Tehran, 31-year-old teacher and mother of two Pari Pourghazi expressed her joy over Iran’s attack, linking it to Israel’s devastating war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Someone should stop the Israelis. They think they can do anything they want at any time,” she said.

“Iran showed the Israelis are wrong, though they could suppress people in Gaza or Lebanon by heavy bombing.”

Reporting with AP

Messages of concern and calls for a de-escalation of tensions and the conflict between Israel and Iran continue to come from major global powers, such as the United Kingdom.

This is the latest message from the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy:

The ABC’s Middle East Correspondent Allyson Horn has just hopped off a briefing with an IDF official, who says Israel is preparing for more retaliatory strikes by Iran.

The IDF claims its attacks inside Iran have caused significant damage to two nuclear facilities, in Natanz and Isfahan, and said evidence would be provided in due course to support the claims.

But the IDF official wouldn’t comment on what damage Israel sustained to its military capabilities, including a missile strike that hit on or near the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, apart from saying “the functionality of the IDF has not been harmed”.

The IDF says it is currently striking sites in Iran again, but wouldn’t provide any more detail.

I reported a short while earlier that the Israel Defense Forces has been claiming “nine senior scientists and experts who actively participated in the Iranian regime’s plan to develop nuclear weapons were eliminated” in Friday’s strikes on Iran.

It appears those numbers are being contested by Tehran.

The Iranian Tasnim news agency has reported that Iran has only so far confirmed the deaths of three nuclear scientists and three members of the country’s Revolutionary Guard in air strikes that hit north-western areas such as Zanjan, just outside of Tehran.

Reporting with Reuters

An Israeli military official has also said that Iran fired around 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel as part of its retaliatory strikes on Friday, according to Reuters.

The news agency has reported claims by the IDF official that Iran attacked Israel in four separate barrages, and that “most” of the missiles were intercepted.

There are also early reports from the Israeli military that it has launched fresh strikes as of Saturday morning local time in Tehran.

If we see further information on those strikes, we’ll let you know here.

Reporting with Reuters

We’re also seeing early reports from the Israeli military with claims that fresh strikes have targeted two Iranian nuclear sites.

An Israeli military official says that more than 150 strategic targets have been attacked by the IDF, including hundreds of munitions stores.

The official also says that Iran’s Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites have been significantly damaged.

Reporting with Reuters

The Arabic language spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee, has just released a statement with claims of the impact to Iran from his country’s air strikes.

Adraee says that since the beginning of Israel’s strikes on Iran, “nine senior scientists and experts who actively participated in the Iranian regime’s plan to develop nuclear weapons were eliminated”.

“All the scientists and experts who were eliminated are considered centers of knowledge and expertise, with decades of experience in the field of nuclear weapons development,” the lieutenant colonel said in a post on X.

The nine scientists have been named by the IDF as:

Fereydoun Abbasi – Atomic Engineering ExpertMohammad Mehdi Tehranchi – Physics ExpertAkbar Matlebzadeh – Chemical Engineering ExpertSaeed Borji – Materials Engineering ExpertAmir Hassan Fakhi – Physics ExpertAbdul Hamid Manouchehr – Nuclear Reactor Physics ExpertMansour Asgari – Physics ExpertAhmad Reza Zolfaghari Dariyani – Atomic Engineering ExpertAli Pakvaei Katrimi – Mechanics Scientist 

In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s initial strikes on Iran this week, airlines flying over the Middle East immediately decided to avoid the airspace predominantly over Tehran.

Following that, multiple countries also shut down their air space to reduce any potential risk to passenger flight services.

It appears now that Jordan, Syria and Lebanon have reopened their airspace, a day after imposing closures.

All three countries neighbour Israel, but only Jordan has formal diplomatic relations with it.

“Jordan has reopened its airspace starting 7:30am (2:30pm AEST),” the chairman of the Jordanian Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission, Haitham Misto, said in a statement.

Lebanon’s Transport Minister Fayez Rassamni announced the reopening of the country’s airspace from 10:00am (5:30pm AEST) on Saturday.

In Syria, the aviation authority also announced the reopening of the country’s airspace to civilian aircraft.

Despite those reopenings, there is still a marked exclusion zone over the entirety of Iran and neighbouring Iraq, where commercial flights are simply not flying.

Here is how the airspace looks as of 7:40pm AEST:

(Supplied: Flightradar24)

Reporting with AFP