By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
A plume of smoke rises over Tehran after an explosion on Saturday. © Getty Images.
The US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on Saturday with massive explosions rocking Tehran and smoke rising in an area where the Iranian president’s office is located.
The attacks came after US President Donald Trump expressed frustration at Iran’s stance in negotiations over its nuclear and missile programmes.
Trump said Washington’s goal was “eliminating imminent threats” from Iran, and Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz described the action as a “preventive strike”.
“The United States’ military began major combat operations in Iran,” Trump said in a video message posted on his social media site while he spent the weekend at his Florida golf club.
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. We’re going to annihilate their navy,” Trump said.
He offered the Iranian military “immunity” or “certain death” and told Iranians the “hour of your freedom is at hand”.
Initial Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday killed and wounded numerous Revolutionary Guard personnel, including key operational staff, ISNA news agency reported, citing a source.
Further explosions followed the strikes in the cities of Qom, Isfahan, Kermanshah and Lorestan, the Mehr news agency said, indicating the attacks extended beyond the capital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for regime change in Tehran on Saturday morning in his first video statement about the US-Israel strikes on Iran.
Netanyahu called on “all parts of the Iranian people” to “cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peaceful Iran.” He said, “Our joint action will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands.”
In response, Ebrahim Azizi, head of Iran’s parliament National Security Committee, said in a post on US social media company X: “We warned you! Now you have started down a path which end is no longer in your control.”
Iran, Iraq and Israel all closed their airspaces to civilian traffic once the strikes were underway, and the US embassies in Qatar and Bahrain urged US citizens to take shelter.
In June, the U.S. joined an Israeli military campaign against Iranian nuclear installations, in the most direct American military action ever against the Islamic Republic.
Tehran retaliated then by launching missiles toward the U.S. Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the largest in the Middle East.
Western powers have warned that Iran’s ballistic missile project threatens regional stability and could deliver nuclear weapons if developed. Tehran denies seeking atomic bombs.