The US and Israel launched air strikes against Iran on Saturday morning in what Donald Trump described as a “massive and ongoing operation”.
Huge explosions rocked Tehran on Saturday, with smoke rising on Pasteur Street, where the Iranian president’s office is located. Iranian media reported explosions in central, northern and eastern Tehran.
“The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests,” Trump said.
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” he added.
Trump said that after the US’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June, “we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried.”
He called on members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard to “lay down your weapons”. The president offered them “total immunity” or “face certain death”.
The strikes follow weeks of tensions as Trump has sought to pressure Iran over its nuclear programme, ordering the largest American military build-up in the region since the Iraq war in 2003 and threatening to launch strikes on Iran if it did not agree to a deal.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said that “the state of Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Iran to remove threats to the state of Israel”.
“As a result, a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future.”
Israel declared a state of emergency, shutting its airspace as well as most workplaces and businesses and imposing restrictions on gatherings across the country. It also sounded sirens to warn people to stay close to shelters as it expected an Iranian retaliation.
