US, Israel launch attack on Iran

US President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the United States had launched a major attack on Iran as massive explosions resounded in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

Trump said in an eight-minute video on social media that the United States had begun “major combat operations” in Iran. Israel also said it was attacking Iran.

Residents in Iran reported seeing smoke rising from the district where the presidential palace and the National Security Council are located. The attacks began Saturday morning, the first day of the Iranian workweek, as millions of people were at work and school.

U.S. officials say they expect the latest strikes to be far more extensive than the American attack in June, which targeted three separate Iranian nuclear facilities. Dozens of U.S. strikes are being carried out by attack planes from bases and aircraft carriers around the Middle East, one of the U.S. officials said.

It was not immediately clear what the American and Israeli attacks had targeted so far, but a U.S. official said the campaign could last several days. The U.S. and Israeli officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters.

The Middle East has been on edge for weeks as Trump has threatened military strikes against Iran unless its leaders agreed to his demands, including reining in its nuclear program. In parallel, the U.S. military has built up its forces in the region — the largest American deployment there in decades.

Explosions have also been heard in other cities across Iran, including Isfahan and Karaj, according to the semiofficial news agency, Fars.

In Israel, air-raid sirens blared throughout the country as it braced for potential retaliation.

U.S. and Iranian officials held a last-ditch round of mediated talks in Switzerland on Thursday over Tehran’s nuclear program. But the talks ended without a breakthrough, apparently paving the way for the strike.

Iran has targeted United States assets across the Gulf states in retaliation for a huge attack by the US and Israel, as the region’s worst fears of being ignited in the flames of a sustained war loom.

An Israeli strike targeting a girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, has left at least 57 students dead and 60 others wounded.

Minab’s provincial governor, Mohammad Radmehr, confirmed to IRNA on Saturday that the Shajareye Tayabeh school had been directly attacked and that several students had been martyred.

Radmehr also said that 53 students are still under the rubble.

He said rescue and aid operations were underway at the school, adding that the security situation in the city was under control.

Tehran called the attacks unprovoked and illegal, and responded by launching missiles at Israel and at Gulf States that host American bases.

It promised a stronger response to come, with a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander, Ebrahim Jabbari, saying it had so far used only “scrap missiles” and would soon unveil unforeseen weapons, state television reported.

Iran's Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Pakpour were killed in Israeli attacks, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Explosions rang out in nearby Gulf countries, which said they had intercepted missiles after Tehran.

He warned that it would strike the region if it were attacked.

The first wave of strikes in what the Pentagon named "OPERATION EPIC FURY" mainly targeted Iranian officials, a source familiar with the matter said, two days after indirect talks mediated by Oman failed to produce a breakthrough on Iran's nuclear programme.

An Israeli official said Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian were both targeted, but the result of the strikes was not clear.

A source with knowledge ⁠of the matter had earlier told Reuters that Khamenei was not in Tehran and had been transferred to a secure location.

An Iranian source close to the establishment said several senior commanders in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and political officials had been killed. Forty people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school, state media said. Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.

TRUMP SAYS 'BOMBS WILL BE DROPPING EVERYWHERE'

In a video message published on social media, Trump cited Washington's decades-old dispute with Iran, including the seizure of the 1979 US embassy in Tehran, when students held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, as well as a range of other attacks the US has blamed on Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution brought the clerics to power.