Tehran launched more than 100 drones at Israel on Friday morning, Israel’s military said, not long after Israel announced it had begun a major operation against Iran, with a wave of airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, scientists and senior military commanders.Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in televised remarks that Iran had launched the drones, and that Israel’s air defenses were already “working to intercept the threats.” Later Friday, an Israeli military official told reporters that while the threat wasn’t over, Israel had managed to intercept many of Iran’s UAVs.make a deal with the U.S. on its nuclear program, but that despite his warnings to Tehran that the alternative would be “much worse” than anything seen before, “they just couldn’t get it done.” “There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Mr. Trump said. “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”Israel has intercepted virtually every Iranian weapon launched in previous large-scale attacks by the Islamic republic. The retaliatory action by Iran was long anticipated and well planned for, Defrin said.Israel says it destroyed Iran’s air defenses, killed top commandersEarlier Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the IDF had begun “Operation Rising Lion,” with a massive wave of airstrikes against dozens of Iranian nuclear sites, military commanders and research scientists, saying the goal was to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.”Tehran launched more than 100 drones at Israel on Friday morning, Israel’s military said, not long after Israel announced it had begun a major operation against Iran, with a wave of airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, scientists and senior military commanders.Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in televised remarks that Iran had launched the drones, and that Israel’s air defenses were already “working to intercept the threats.” Later Friday, an Israeli military official told reporters that while the threat wasn’t over, Israel had managed to intercept many of Iran’s UAVs.symbol00:1703:12Read MoreThe U.S. was not involved in Israel’s strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, adding a warning that “Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”President Trump said in a post Friday morning on his Truth Social media platform that he had given Iran “chance after chance” to make a deal with the U.S. on its nuclear program, but that despite his warnings to Tehran that the alternative would be “much worse” than anything seen before, “they just couldn’t get it done.” “There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Mr. Trump said. “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.”iran-drone-propaganda.jpg An Iranian-made Shahed-136 explosive drone is launched from a mobile launching unit in a file image taken from a propaganda video distributed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).IRGC/HandoutIsrael has intercepted virtually every Iranian weapon launched in previous large-scale attacks by the Islamic republic. The retaliatory action by Iran was long anticipated and well planned for, Defrin said.Israel says it destroyed Iran’s air defenses, killed top commandersEarlier Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the IDF had begun “Operation Rising Lion,” with a massive wave of airstrikes against dozens of Iranian nuclear sites, military commanders and research scientists, saying the goal was to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.”Like Netanyahu, IDF spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin, in a video statement delivered Friday, called the attack on Iran preemptive, saying Israeli intelligence had uncovered an Iranian “plan to destroy Israel that has taken shape in recent years.” He said that plan involved Iran “racing towards a nuclear bomb,” working to double or triple its ballistic missile stockpile, and continuing to “finance, arm, and operate its proxies throughout the Middle East against the State of Israel.””I can confirm that the senior security leadership of the Iranian regime has been eliminated in the strike: the Iranian Chief of Staff, [Mohammad] Bagheri; the Commander of the Revolutionary Guards, [Hossein] Salami; and the Head of the Emergency Command, [Gholamali] Rashid,” Defrin said, adding that other commanders had been killed and that Israeli would provide further updates. He said Israel had “targeted and struck the Iranian regime’s aerial defense arrays.”The IDF said its operation would continue for days, but that the first wave consisted of 200 Israeli fighter jets dropping “over 330 different munitions,” to hit more than 100 targets in Iran.”The breadth and scale of these strikes — against senior Iranian officials and other military facilities in addition to nuclear sites — suggest this operation is intended to not just dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, but also cripple any potential military response and even to destabilize the regime,” Matthew Savill, Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a British military think tank, said in a statement. “Israel has once again demonstrated its considerable conventional military superiority, and the size of the force allegedly assembled for this series of attacks represents the overwhelming bulk of their longer-range strike aircraft. They have the ability to conduct multiple such rounds of strikes, but operating for an extended duration over this considerable range will stretch even the Israeli Air Force.”
