Israel strikes Iran with missile in retaliation for huge drone siege
Israel retaliated after Iran fired a swarm of drones and missiles last week.
Flights were grounded across much of Iran as Israel fired a missile at the country in the early hours of this morning.
The world has been waiting for Israeli retaliation since Iran lobbed some 300 drones and missiles at the country last week.
Video footage shows a series of explosions in the sky over Isfahan as Iran’s air defence system shoots it down.
Israel’s attack may have consisted of ‘mini drones’, Iranian sources said.
Hossein Dalirian, spokesperson for National Centre of Cyberspace, took to X, formerly Twitter, to gloat.
He said: ‘Until this moment, there has been no air attack from outside the borders to Isfahan or other parts of the country, and they have only made a failed and humiliating attempt to fly quadcopters, and the quadcopters have also been shot down.’
Flights were suspended in several Iranian cities due to the attack, including from Tehran International Airport.
They have now resumed, although air traffic over Iran appears light according to flight monitoring website Flightradar24’s live map.
Isfahan ‘is safe and sound, people are living their normal lives’, Iran’s state broadcaster IRIB said.
Israel’s attack seems limited in scale, but it struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear programme.
Former US assistant secretary of state Mark Kimmitt told BBC: ‘It’s a likely site that Israel would hit because the greatest fear the Israelis have is not continued missiles today but a nuclear capability tomorrow.’
This attack will fuel fears of an all-out war in the Middle East.
So far Iran has mainly confronted Israel through its proxy groups like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
But tensions between Iran and Israel have escalated.
Israel’s attack this morning was in retaliation for an Iranian attack last Saturday, which itself was a response to Israel airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed 12 on April 1.
Allied states including the USA and UK intercepted the raft of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles on Saturday.
In response, Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group, said: ‘It is difficult to overstate how perilous this moment is, and how disastrous its consequences could prove.’
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