Summary
Tehran5:55 p.m. June 8
Tel Aviv5:25 p.m. June 8
Live Updates: Iran and Israel Move to De-Escalate After Cease-Fire Breaks Down
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps signaled that it had concluded its latest military operation against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled back from preparations for another attack after pushback from President Trump, two Israeli military officials said.
Latest
Iran and Israel signaled on Monday that they were ready to wind down a military escalation that briefly shattered a fragile two-month cease-fire and brought the Middle East back to the precipice of full-blown war.
In remarks carried by Iranian state television on Monday afternoon, Iran’s military said that it was ceasing its attacks for now. But it warned that if Israel resumed its own strikes, including in southern Lebanon, “much harsher and more forceful actions than before will follow.”
Israel also appeared to be moving to de-escalate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after pushback from President Trump, instructed the military to halt preparations for another attack on Iran on Monday, according to two Israeli military officials with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli leader had yet to make any public remarks nearly a day into the crisis, in which Israel and Iran traded attacks for hours.
Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel on Sunday night in retaliation for an Israeli strike near the Lebanese capital, Beirut, against its ally Hezbollah. The Israeli military said on Monday morning that it had launched two waves of airstrikes across Iran, including against the country’s largest petrochemical complex, prompting further Iranian missile attacks on central Israel.
Mr. Trump on Monday called on both countries to “immediately stop” the attacks. He also promised that a final deal to end the war in the Middle East was on the way, although the president’s predictions of an agreement with Iran have frequently failed to materialize.
Here’s what else to know:
Energy markets: The price of oil jumped after Israel and Iran exchanged strikes, but pared back much of those gains. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was almost 2 percent higher to about $95 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. marker, was up around 2 percent to around $92 a barrel. Read more ›
Yemen: The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen fired a ballistic missile at central Israel on Monday and announced a naval blockade against Israel in the Red Sea, although it was unclear what that threat would mean in practice. Earlier Houthi attacks in the Red Sea snarled global shipping and prompted a U.S.-led bombing campaign.
Casualties: The attacks caused no casualties in Israel, according to the local authorities. Iran’s emergency services said that the strikes had injured 15 people, one of whom remained hospitalized, without providing details, according to a statement carried by state media.
Israeli politics: For Mr. Netanyahu, a resumption of fighting with Iran may offer some short-term advantages at home, though it could also further inflame regional tensions. Read more ›
Syria and Iraq fully reopened their airspaces to commercial air traffic on Monday, according to both countries’ state news agencies. Syria partially closed its airspace on Sunday and Iraq imposed a total closure, after Iran launched missiles at Israel.
The Iranian regulator said on Monday that its airspace would be closed indefinitely.
Reporting from London
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, whose country has been mediating between Iran and the United States, said that the latest violence underscored the fragility of the truce and the need for a lasting cease-fire. “Especially when the final objective is just about to be achieved, we sincerely urge all sides to exercise restraint and give peace a little more chance,” he wrote on social media.
Two days of strikes in the Middle East
LEBANON
On Sunday, Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut after it said Hezbollah attacked Israel.
IRAN
Iran retaliated to the Beirut strikes by launching missiles on Israel.
Attacks
IRAQ
ISRAEL
On Monday, Israel
said it struck military
sites and a petrochemical
complex in Iran.
QATAR
U.A.E.
EGYPT
SAUDI
ARABIA
OMAN
SUDAN
YEMEN
The Israeli military
said the Houthis
fired a missile at Israel
on Monday.
ETHIOPIA
LEBANON
On Sunday, Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut after it said Hezbollah attacked Israel.
TURKEY
Attacks
SYRIA
IRAN
Iran retaliated to the Beirut strikes by launching missiles on Israel.
IRAQ
ISRAEL
On Monday, Israel
said it struck military
sites and a petrochemical
complex in Iran.
QATAR
EGYPT
RED SEA
U.A.E.
SAUDI
ARABIA
OMAN
SUDAN
YEMEN
The Israeli
military said the Houthis
fired a missile at Israel
on Monday.
ETHIOPIA
LEBANON
On Sunday, Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut after it said Hezbollah attacked Israel.
TURKEY
Attacks
SYRIA
IRAN
Iran retaliated to the Beirut strikes by launching missiles on Israel.
IRAQ
ISRAEL
On Monday, Israel
said it struck military
sites and a petrochemical
complex in Iran.
QATAR
EGYPT
U.A.E.
SAUDI
ARABIA
OMAN
YEMEN
The Israeli military
said the Houthis
fired a missile at Israel
on Monday.
SUDAN
ETHIOPIA
The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen said on Monday that it would stop Israeli ships from operating in the Red Sea and had fired missiles at Israel, threatening to widen the Iran war and impede navigation through a crucial global trade route.
The Houthis have largely sat out the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, despite frequently warning that they could join the fighting. But the group’s threat on Monday appeared to signal a shift that could further disrupt shipping and energy markets roiled by Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which much of the world’s oil and gas is shipped.
Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, said in a statement on social media that the partial naval blockade would take effect immediately. Iran and Israel traded waves of attacks on Monday as a two-month truce between the countries broke down.
Mr. Saree also said that the Houthis had launched a “salvo of missiles” against Israel in response to “aggression” against Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinians and other targets.
“We will meet escalation with escalation,” he said.
It was unclear what the Houthi threat to Israeli ships would mean in practice. The territory controlled by the Houthis in Yemen sits alongside Bab al-Mandab, a narrow waterway that enters the southern end of the Red Sea. Cargo ships that cannot pass through the area must sail around the southern tip of Africa to transit between Asia and markets in Europe and the Americas, significantly lengthening travel times. Many shipping groups had already been avoiding the area.
During Israel’s war in Gaza, the Houthis regularly attacked ships in the Red Sea in what they described as an effort to try to force Israel to end its bombardment of the Palestinian enclave.
Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, the Red Sea has become a key outlet for Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, to reach international markets by avoiding the Strait of Hormuz.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi political official, said that the group would target only vessels linked to Israel, but he cautioned other states, such as Saudi Arabia, not to intervene.
“Any state that becomes involved will be targeted,” he said in a phone interview.
It would not take much for the Houthis to hinder shipping by increasing the risks for vessels transiting the Red Sea, a move that would also raise insurance premiums for shipping companies, said Farea Al-Muslimi, a research fellow focused on Yemen at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“They can just send a signal and only one attack has to happen — and that will send a shock across insurance companies,” Mr. Al-Muslimi said. “I won’t be surprised now if you have a joint lockdown of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab.”
Rashid al-Haddad, an economic analyst based in Yemen, said that if the U.S. military or other countries’ armed forces were deployed to the Red Sea to counter the Houthis, it could turn the entire waterway “into a theater of military confrontation.”
“This would also drive up maritime insurance costs and divert a significant portion of global trade,” he said. “If hostilities escalate, the Houthis will resort to a complete closure of the Bab al-Mandab strait.”
The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said Israel had attacked 12 locations across Iran but the strikes had not caused any casualties or deaths.
Dashing back and forth to bomb shelters. Classes canceled. Businesses closed.
It was an all-too-familiar cycle on Monday for Israelis whose nation has been at war for most of the past three years. After Israel and Iran traded attacks for the first time since an April cease-fire, some said the only way out is to choose new leaders in a national election planned for the autumn.
While a number of Israelis expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of military force against Iran, others said they hoped the renewed attacks would loosen Iran’s leaders’ grip on power.
“We’re in a never-ending loop of war,” said Eugene Koval, 47, who works in hospitality in the port city of Jaffa. “The only way out is through a political deal, but this government is incapable of getting on board with one.”
Such an agreement, he said, would only come after Israelis vote in a “sane” government, which understands the limits of force and the value of diplomacy.
The latest conflagration began on Sunday after the Israeli military said that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in neighboring Lebanon, had fired rockets into Israel. Israel responded with strikes on a Hezbollah stronghold, the Dahiya neighborhood on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Iran retaliated by firing waves of ballistic missiles at Israel late on Sunday, and Israel conducted airstrikes on Iran hours later.
Adam Or, 75, a resident of the Haifa area in northern Israel, said he hoped Israel would continue fighting Iran until the Tehran government can no longer function.
“I don’t care if it takes six months or a year,” said Mr. Or, who sailed on oil tankers from Israel to Iran in the 1970s, an era when the two countries maintained relations.
“We can’t keep shutting down the country every time,” he added. “We need to do whatever it takes, including targeting their energy infrastructure.”
Under international law, intentionally targeting a country’s civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime. But under certain circumstances, such facilities could lose their legal protection.
Power grids, for example, are civilian facilities by default, but experts say they can become lawful targets if they make an effective contribution to military action and offer definite military advantage.
Sarah Athias, 66, a therapist, said she was growing tired of living in a state of emergency. “Khalas,” she said, using a slang term in Arabic meaning “enough.”
“Our bodies have become used to all the movements — running to the shelter in the middle of the night — but it’s not normal,” she said. Like Mr. Koval, she said the only solution was a political agreement.
Or Shalom, her 67-year-old partner, strongly disagreed.
“You can’t have a deal with such a terrible regime,” he said. “The sole option is to strike until it’s on its knees.”
Before the U.S.-Iran cease-fire in early April, Israel and the United States fought a 40-day war against Iran. Israeli leaders had expressed hope that the joint assault would create the conditions for overthrowing the Iranian government, but it failed to achieve that goal.
Guy Edelstein, 25, a student of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, said he did not trust the Israeli government.
“The problem is there’s no plan or policy to stop what’s happening,” he said. “There’s no hope with this government, only with a new one.”
Reporting from London
Video verified by the New York Times shows a large cloud of smoke rising near the Mahshahr petrochemical complex in Iran. The footage began circulating on social media on Monday after Israeli said it had targeted the sprawling complex in southern Iran. It is unclear in the footage what the origin of the smoke is.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared to be moving to de-escalate after pushback from President Trump. Mr Netanyahu instructed the Israeli military to halt preparations for another attack on Iran on Monday, according to two Israeli military officials with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The jump in oil prices has moderated somewhat, with Brent Crude, the global benchmark, up about 1 percent, to just over $94 per barrel. Prices had surged much higher earlier in the day, after Israel and Iran traded strikes.
The reversal was accompanied by a rise in futures for the S&P 500 index. When stock markets reopen in New York, they appear poised to regain some of the ground lost in a steep, tech-led decline at the end of last week.
At first glance, Tehran’s retaliation for Israeli attacks in Lebanon might seem like a reckless act that risks rekindling a devastating regional war.
For Iran, that is a risk worth taking, one critical to fighting back against what it sees as Israel’s efforts to shift the regional balance of power, while Iran and Washington try to negotiate a deal to end the conflict.
“Failure to respond would signal weakness,” said Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.
For weeks, Iranian officials had criticized but largely tolerated Israeli strikes on its most important ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, warning that the fellow Shiite Muslim force should be included in the regional cease-fire it agreed upon with Washington in April.
As long as Israel’s attacks were contained to southern Lebanon, Iran had complained but not responded. Iran had warned that calculus would change if Israel expanded those strikes to the southern outskirts of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where Hezbollah is dominant.
“Iran’s attack in defense of Lebanon was not merely a military response; it was the formal declaration of a strategic doctrine, said Sadegh Larijani, the chairman of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, which advises Iran’s supreme leader.
“If any component of the Axis of Resistance is attacked, the response will extend beyond geographical borders and will alter the regional balance of power,” he said, using Iran’s term for the network of allied militant groups in the region that includes Hezbollah.
Iran wants to show it is serious about defending its regional militia allies. That position had been undermined by its former leaders when they refrained from retaliating against Israeli attacks in 2024 that badly degraded Hezbollah and killed its charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Since the U.S.-Israeli war began in February and killed much of Iran’s top former leadership, including its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s new rulers believe their willingness to act more aggressively — from blockading the vital Strait of Hormuz to attacking its Gulf neighbors — has been a major success.
To them, analysts say, being more aggressive allowed them to not only survive Washington and Israel’s attacks, but to inflict economic pain and emerge with strategic leverage through control of the strait, a crucial global shipping route for oil and gas.
Hard-liners see this as a repudiation of the comparative restraint the previous leadership often showed in military confrontations. In 2020, Tehran pursued only limited retaliatory strikes against Washington after it assassinated one of its most powerful military leaders, Qassem Soleimani. And it limited its retaliation against a U.S. base in Qatar after the 12-day war last June. The result, hard-liners argued, was only more U.S. and Israeli attacks.
By contrast, they see Iran’s more aggressive stance as arguably more useful. Last week, President Trump convinced Israel not to strike Beirut. Now, after Israel’s strikes on Beirut’s outskirts and Iran’s retaliation, Mr. Trump called for both sides to step back.
“We speak to those who break their commitments in the language of ‘power,’” Mohammad Mokhber, a hard-line political figure in Iran, wrote on social media after the strikes.
The defense of Hezbollah is not only posturing. Iran assessed the group’s ability to continue attacking northern Israel during the recent war as critical to giving Iran room to focus its attacks on its oil-rich Gulf neighbors, said Hamidreza Azizi, an Iranian security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Allowing Israel to weaken Hezbollah further, he said, would therefore be militarily costly for Iran in a future conflict, which it deems inevitable.
Iran also saw its retaliation as necessary, he said, because it views Israel’s attacks as part of an apparent U.S.-Israeli strategy to try to quietly erode its strategic gains in the recent conflict even as it tries to negotiate a deal to end the war with Washington.
For weeks, U.S. forces have been quietly escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Many analysts describe this as a U.S. attempt to alleviate pressure on the global economy while it tries to increase the economic pressure on Iran by reinforcing its own blockade of Iranian vessels. Iran worries that Israel’s efforts to weaken Hezbollah are another facet of that strategy.
The Iranians see these moves by the United States and Israel as a way to use the cease-fire to “shape the realities on the ground in a way that would erode the leverage Iran has achieved during this war,” Mr. Azizi said.
Tehran’s willingness to retaliate so forcefully is also an indication, diplomats in contact with Iranian officials say, of how comfortable it is with the idea of a return to war.
They believe it would take a great deal for Mr. Trump, facing a deepening global economic crisis and midterm elections this fall, to rejoin the fray.
“They don’t think Trump is going to go to war,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. “But even if he does, they’re fairly confident they can manage it.”
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
Reporting from London
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps signaled that Iranian forces had concluded the latest military operation against Israel, according to a statement issued by one of its top command forces, the Central Headquarters of Khaatam al-Anbiya. The statement, which was issued Monday afternoon and carried by IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, described the Iranian operation as a response to Israel’s recent military actions in Lebanon. It threatened to resume attacks “if aggression and hostile acts continue — including in southern Lebanon,” according to the state media report.
Israeli schools, which were already closed on Monday, will remain shuttered on Tuesday, and end-of-year matriculation exams set to take place this week will be either canceled or postponed, Yoav Kisch, the Israeli education minister, told reporters in a news briefing. The announcement suggested that the Israeli authorities could be preparing for the possibility that the escalation in fighting may continue for another day or longer.
The Israeli military said it attacked Iran’s sprawling Mahshahr petrochemical complex on Monday, its first strike there since a cease-fire was agreed between the countries on April 7.
The Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex, as it is formally known, is Iran’s largest such site. It is near the southern city of Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini, a major industrial port on the Persian Gulf. The facility is made up of more than 50 separate petrochemical plants and produces about 72 million tons of products annually, according to Iran’s oil ministry.
One of the installations, the Karun petrochemical plant, was hit twice at around 7:30 a.m., Iranian state media reported. No casualties were reported, a local official told Fars, a separate semiofficial news agency, but the facility was damaged. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps condemned the attack as a “dangerous game,” and threatened to expand how it retaliates against Israel, including by targeting energy-related sites.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Monday that it had struck several sites at Mahshahr, which it said were used by Iran’s military to manufacture raw materials for its ballistic missile program.
The Mahshahr complex was previously hit in early April, which prompted criticism that Israel was targeting Iran’s civilian economy. At the time, Iranian officials reported that the strikes had effectively shut down all production across the complex by targeting two utility plants that provided basic services.
As Iran seeks to diversify its economy away from oil, it has become increasingly dependent on exporting petrochemical products, which account for about a quarter of total exports, according to Iranian media reports.
The Mahshahr complex produces a wide range of basic chemicals, polymers and other materials with many uses. Karun, the Iranian petrochemical company that operated the facility targeted on Monday, says on its website that it specializes in the production of isocyanates, a highly reactive class of chemical used in the making of plastic products.
Israel has previously maintained that plants at Mahshahr were “dual-use,” meaning that they produced chemical materials that have both civilian and military purposes, and were therefore legitimate targets.
Dual-use infrastructure is civilian by default, but it can be lawfully targeted in times of war if it makes an effective contribution to the enemy’s military action and offers a definite military advantage, according to experts in international law. Even if a facility is considered dual-use, however, the Geneva Conventions require armed forces to ensure that any attack against it must be proportionate.
news analysis
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a resumption of fighting with Iran offered clear advantages — at least in the short term.
It showed his restive political base that he was willing to stand up to President Trump, who had scolded Israel on Sunday for bombing the outskirts of Beirut and, when Iran fired missiles at Israel in response, argued that Israel should exercise restraint.
Resisting Mr. Trump — or at least making a show of doing so, since it was unclear just what the two leaders said when they spoke Sunday night — was vital to Mr. Netanyahu, who is trailing in the polls heading into a difficult re-election fight. Just a week ago, Mr. Trump had humiliated him in an angry, profanity-laced phone call in which, the president later confirmed, he had called Mr. Netanyahu “crazy.”
Mr. Netanyahu also fears that the peace deal the Trump administration is pursuing with Iran would prove disastrous for Israel by, among other things, tying its hands in dealing with Hezbollah, the militant group that dominates Lebanon. If an exchange of airstrikes with Iran carries the risk of spiraling into a return to full-blown warfare, it could also make any broader peace agreement more difficult to achieve.
Some Israeli analysts suggested that a few days of Israeli attacks could help achieve better terms with Iran in those talks, by inflicting fresh wounds and pain.
“Now it depends on what the Iranians do,” said Eyal Hulata, a former Israeli national security adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group that pushes for a close U.S. partnership with Israel and confrontation with Iran. He said Iran’s boastful posture — that it won the war with the United States and Israel by surviving their onslaught, and by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz — belied the serious damage that it had sustained.
“I assume that they wanted to vent, not that they wanted a couple of weeks of Israeli jets all over their skies,” Mr. Hulata said of Iran’s modest missile barrages at Israel. “They appear strong, but that doesn’t mean they are strong.”
But others argued that Sunday’s Iranian missile strikes on Israel boded poorly for Israel in the longer term. Israel sees no alternative to hitting back though that appears likely to put it in conflict with Mr. Trump, sooner or later.
“There are no good choices here,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli military intelligence officer who specializes in Iran.
If Mr. Trump allows Israel to escalate the fighting, Mr. Citrinowicz predicted that Iran would expand its retaliation, and not just through Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, who fired two missiles at Israel Monday and threatened to attack Israeli and Israeli-affiliated shipping from transiting the Red Sea. He suggested that Shiite militias in Iraq could also be drawn in.
But if Mr. Trump demands that Israel stand down, Mr. Citrinowicz said, that could cement an equation that Iran has been trying to achieve. It could reinforce a direct linkage between the Iranian and Lebanese theaters, in which Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in and around Beirut can be met with Iranian attacks on Israel.
“And the strategic reality will be worse for Israel,” he said.
President Trump asserted on social media that “both sides, Israel and Iran” were aiming to achieve “an immediate CEASEFIRE.” He also reiterated his claim that “final negotiations” to reach an agreement with Iran to decisively end the war in the Middle East that began in February were moving ahead. Trump has repeatedly said for weeks that a deal with Iran is just around the corner.
Though Trump says that both Israel and Iran are seeking a cease-fire, that’s not entirely clear. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has yet to publicly comment on the escalation with Iran some 18 hours after it began on Sunday night.
Reporting from London
President Trump has urged both Israel and Iran to immediately end the escalation in fighting. “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting,’” he wrote on Monday in a brief message posted to social media.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have been discussing the unfolding regional escalation. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, has spoken twice over the past day with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the U.S. military’s Middle East command, an Israeli military official told reporters. They spoke on condition of anonymity to comply with protocol.
Iranian state news media reported a fresh wave of Israeli attacks against Tehran around midday local time. According to IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, the sound of explosions could be heard in western and southern Tehran, as Iranian defenses intercepted Israeli drones.
Residents of Tehran, the capital of Iran, woke up in the early hours of Monday to the sound of massive explosions from Israeli strikes. Large plumes of smoke and red flames billowed in the air.
Then came the drill of frantically checking their phones, social media and family WhatsApp groups to piece together what was happening. The pressing question: Was Iran back at war again?
“We were just starting to get back to some level of routine and normalcy,” said Keivan, a 46-year-old father of three and a business owner in Tehran. “It’s all up in the air again.”
Like others in the city, Sara, a 54-year-old chemist, said she had gone to bed anticipating that Israel would retaliate for Iran’s earlier barrage of ballistic missiles. Tehran was stormy on Sunday evening, and she woke up several times from thunder and lightning, thinking they were under attack.
On state television, conservative pundits on morning news shows blamed Israel and the United States for the renewed hostilities, saying the two had worked together, and praised Iran for its proactive strategy of aggression.
Tehran’s fire department said two nonresidential locations in the western part of the city had been attacked, according to state television. Isfahan’s deputy governor said on the broadcast that Najafabad — a city close to Isfahan, in central Iran — had been hit, but no casualties had been reported so far. A government official in East Azerbaijan Province said a military facility in Tabriz, the provincial capital, had been struck, also with no casualties reported, state media said.
Israel also attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical complex in the city of Mahshahr, located in the south near the Persian Gulf. Officials from Khuzestan province, where Mahshahr is located, told Iranian state media that the strikes had damaged the Karun petrochemical plant.
Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that tens of thousands of workers were being evacuated from the complex.
The Israeli military said it had bombarded Iranian military sites in central and western Iran, as well as a major petrochemical factory in southern Iran.
Golshan Fathi, a resident of Tehran, wrote on social media that she had prepared an emergency bag, filled up her gas tank and updated the apps on her phone in anticipation of an attack overnight. “Now I’m sitting here, waiting for the war,” Ms. Fathi wrote, adding that it was a “wait born of fear, not courage.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened to expand its retaliation after Israel struck petrochemical facilities in southern Iran, and said it had fired on a similar Israeli industrial site in the coastal city of Haifa. There was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli authorities.
In remarks carried by Iranian state television, the Revolutionary Guards said that the Israeli attack had “initiated a dangerous game whose scope will encompass all energy-related targets in the region.”
The Israeli attacks on Iran this morning included a “large-scale strike on strategic defense systems” throughout the country, the Israeli military said. Dozens of Israeli fighter jets attacked Iranian defenses as part of the operation, the military added. In previous operations in the war with Iran that began in February, attacks like these paved the way for broader aerial bombing by suppressing Iranian air defenses.
Iran launched another volley of ballistic missiles at central Israel on Monday morning, the Israeli military said, the latest in the tit-for-tat strikes between the two countries. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Houthis in Yemen on Monday announced a naval blockade against Israel in the Red Sea. The Iran-backed militia has targeted vessels passing near parts of Yemen that are under their control since the war in Gaza began in 2023, including some with no clear connection to Israel.
Earlier Houthi attacks in the Red Sea ensnarled global shipping, forcing vessels to sail thousands of additional miles around Africa and prompting a bombing campaign by the United States and its allies against them. It is unclear how the Houthis might carry out their threat this time, but the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has already rattled global markets. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for oil and gas, has caused energy prices to rise worldwide.
Diplomatic contacts were ongoing as concerns about the U.S.-Iran cease-fire mounted. Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, spoke with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of Iran on Monday, the Qatari foreign ministry said. The two discussed mediation efforts between the United States and Iran, and the developments in Lebanon, according to the statement, which did not mention the latest fighting between Iran and Israel.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA said all the workers of Mahshahr’s vast petrochemical complex, which employee tens of thousands of workers, were being evacuated under emergency provisions. Israel attacked a petrochemical plant earlier in the morning.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it had launched strikes on two Israeli air bases, Nevatim and Tel Nof. The attack was in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Iranian radar sites in three regions, it said in a statement carried by Iran’s state news agency, IRNA.
The Israeli military said it had attacked several targets at a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, southern Iran, on Monday morning. The governor of Khuzestan province, where Mahshahr is located, told Iranian state media that Israel had struck the Karun petrochemical plant.
Israel previously targeted the industrial facilities in Mahshahr in April. The area’s vast petrochemical complex is one of Iran’s key oil and gas production centers.
The Israeli military said Monday morning that it had detected more missile launches toward Israel from Iran. Israeli defenses were working to intercept the missiles, the military said.
Israel’s air defense systems are working to intercept a missile launched from Yemen, the Israeli military said on social media. The Houthis — an Iran-backed militia in Yemen — have launched strikes at Israel since the war in Gaza began in 2023, but those attacks had stopped following the cease-fire between the United States and Iran in April.