DUBAI — Israel launched airstrikes early Monday targeting central and western Iran in response to missile fire from Tehran, attacks that threatened to push the wider Middle East back into a regional war.
Iranian state television reported the sound of explosions heard in Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz and Tehran, without immediately elaborating. A witness in Tehran described hearing at least one large blast somewhere west of the capital. Iran closed the airspace around Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main airfield, after the Israeli attack.
Iranian officials offered no details on what had been struck, nor any damage information. Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles in its attack Monday morning, without elaborating.
The Israeli military at dawn in Iran issued a short statement as the strikes started: “A short while ago, the Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran.” It did not elaborate.
The White House did not respond to messages about the strikes and whether they were carried out in coordination with the U.S.
For days, negotiations between Iran and the United States over the fragile ceasefire in the war had been stalled by the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah. Israel now occupies southern Lebanon and has moved into areas of the country it hadn’t held in a quarter-century, leading to fears of a widening campaign.
On Sunday, Israel launched airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Iran retaliated with its own strike on Israel, which led to Monday morning’s attack by Israel on Iran.
President Trump earlier told a Fox News Channel reporter that he wanted the Iranians to stop firing missiles and return to the negotiating table. He also said that Israel’s strikes in Lebanon earlier Sunday were not coordinated with the U.S. and “I’m not happy about it.”
A senior U.S. official said Trump had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge him not to retaliate immediately for the Iranian missile attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private phone call, said that Trump believed he had convinced Netanyahu to wait.
Trump “got Bibi to hold off for the time being,” the official said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. The official would not offer any other details of the call, and there was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office.
Gambrell writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Michelle L. Price in Bridgewater, N.J., contributed to this report.
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