Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli military said, as tensions between the two longtime foes ratchet up in the Middle East.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Telegram that “missiles were launched from Iran towards the State of Israel” and ordered Israeli civilians to obey air raid sirens and shelter in place. “The IDF is doing and will do everything necessary to protect the civilians of the State of Israel,” the statement said.
Iran’s volleys of missiles against Israel represents the latest, and starkest, escalation in tensions in the region, as the U.S. and others have worried that Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip over the last several months could plunge the region into a wider war and drag the West directly into another major Middle Eastern conflict.
The strike comes just a day after Israel launched a “limited” military operation into neighboring Lebanon against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group. And it follows an escalating series of Israeli air strikes and assassinations of top commanders of both Hezbollah and Hamas — another one of Iran’s regional proxies. On Friday, Israel conducted an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. And in August, Israeli intelligence killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while the militant group’s leader was in Tehran for the inauguration of the country’s new president Mahmoud Peszkesian.
In a post on X, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York wrote that “Iran’s legal, rational, and legitimate response to the terrorist acts of the Zionist regime — which involved targeting Iranian nationals and interests and infringing upon the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran — has been duly carried out.” The mission added that “should the Zionist regime dare to respond or commit further acts of malevolence, a subsequent and crushing response will ensue.”
It’s not Iran’s first attack against Israel since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip last October. In April, after Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed a senior leader in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran and its proxies fired a volley of missiles and drones against Israel. That attack was thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome air defenses and supportive defensive airstrikes from the Jordanian, Saudi and U.S. militaries.
Sean Savett, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, wrote on X that President Joe Biden “directed the US military to aid Israel’s defense against Iranian attacks & shoot down missiles targeting Israel.”
He added that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were monitoring the attack from the White House situation room and receiving regular updates on the strike. The White House had warned earlier in the day that such an attack was imminent.
