Israel strikes Iran but UN says nuclear sites safe after explosions near city of Isfahan

Israel has launched a strike against Iran in retaliation for Tehran’s unprecedented missile-and-drone assault on the country at the weekend.

Air defences were fired in several provinces, including from a major military airbase and nuclear facilities near the central city of Isfahan, where state media said three drones had been shot down.

So far, there have not been any reports of damage or casualties.

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Israel has declined to comment, but a US source familiar with the situation has described the operation as a strike.

Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC, they also said Washington had been notified in advance.

The attack coincided with the birthday of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Meanwhile, Iran has no plans for immediate retaliation, a senior official has said.

Speaking to Reuters, the unnamed official said the country was looking at whether the operation was an “infiltration” rather than an “external attack”.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had warned before Friday’s strike that Tehran would deliver a “severe response” to
any attack on its territory.

The US and other countries, including the UK, had also urged Israel not to respond to Iran’s recent assault, which followed an airstrike on the its embassy in Damascus.

It comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, as Israel continues its war against Iranian-backed Hamas in Gaza, launched after the deadly incursion by the militant group on 7 October.

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The airbase in Isfahan has long has been home to Iran’s fleet of American-made F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, bought before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

There is also a nuclear site and although Tehran says its work is peaceful, the West believes the regime aims to build a weapon.

Iranian state media television said the facilities near the city were “fully safe”.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said there was no damage but said it was monitoring the situation “very closely” and called for “extreme restraint”.

Sky News’ military analyst Michael Clarke said Isfahan “would make sense” as a target as it hosts one of the least sensitive nuclear sites.

“It’s a research site, about 3,000 or so scientists work there and there’s no evidence this was targeted on the nuclear site,” he added.

“But the fact that Isfahan is one of the cities that does quite a lot of nuclear work is also symbolically quite important, I think, if the Israelis are indicating that they’re not frightened to go after these sites.”

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Isfahan is more than 1,000 miles from Israel, which suggests this was not a drone attack, Mr Clarke said, adding it was “almost certainly” led by Jericho missiles.

Iran shut its airports in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan and also closed the western portion of its airspace for several hours after the attack.

The US Embassy in Jerusalem imposed travel restrictions on government employees “out of an abundance of caution”.

Around the same time, Israeli warplanes flying over Syria’s southern province of Daraa struck a military radar for government forces after it spotted the fighter jets, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Separately, the US and Britain have announced a fresh round of sanctions on Iran.

The moves came as European Union leaders meeting in Brussels pledged to ramp up sanctions on Iran to target its drone and missile deliveries to proxies in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon.