Strikes target Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Pezeshkian, Israeli official says; blasts heard throughout Islamic Republic; US president tells Iranian people: ‘The hour of your freedom is at hand’.
After long weeks of escalating regional tensions and burgeoning threats of conflict, Israel and the US launched a major joint strike on Iran on Saturday, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic. Strikes targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian, an Israeli official said. Other top regime and military commanders were also targeted, according to the official. The results of the strikes were not yet clear. Targets in the campaign also included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.
Several senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and political officials were killed in the strikes, an Iranian source close to the establishment told Reuters. US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.” “We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally… obliterated. We are going to annihilate their navy,” he said in a video statement posted on his Truth Social account.
“We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.” Trump indicated that the goal was to topple the regime, and he called on the Iranian people to seize the opportunity and take over their government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his own video message to the public that the operation was launched “to remove the existential threat” posed by the Islamic Republic, and “create the conditions” for Iranians to change their destiny. “The time has come for all parts of the Iranian people… to cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peace-seeking Iran,” the premier said. Iran vowed a crushing response to the military campaign and launched repeated missile barrages at Israel starting at around 10 a.m., sending millions into shelters. (Read More)
